Category Archives: Fiction

by | April 29, 2016 · 11:15 am

Brenna Crowe

Escargot

It’s raining and New York City smells like warm, wet dog. Aromas of rotting garbage, suspicious urine, and suffocating humidity percolate throughout the atmosphere, slowly killing us all.

We meet at Penn Station. A sizable orange and teal hat shadows light blue eyes, and a bright red smile kisses me on my cheek. Freshly manicured hands with cold rings squeeze my shoulders.

My aunt.

She’s glad to see me.

We’re going to a French restaurant she was told about by a periodical that writes about French restaurants. New York City with gloomy drizzle is expensive designer shoes dipping in oily puddles, and umbrellas dodging other umbrellas.

Someone let go of a pink balloon and it’s floating past all the buildings. I’m jealous of its destination. It will float 28,000 miles above sea level before the pressure inside the balloon is more than the pressure outside the balloon. And it will explode into a million tiny pieces.

I want to explode. I want to burst and rain down chunks of my organs, bones, and blood on innocent New York City pedestrians.

We get to the French place and are showed to our table. My aunt rejects the first table and requests the one in the corner by the window. The waiter is slightly inconvenienced (a reservation of five was set to dine there at eight) but she slips him a twenty to soothe the irritation.

She is a lady who will always get her way.

A broad-shouldered waiter in a white shirt pours us tall glasses of water that would be too tall in France. Genuine France is a minimalist. She has smaller proportions. The fluid capacity for this water glass is about sixteen ounces, but a water glass in France is less than eight.

That is why they think Americans are so gluttonous.

My aunt is frantic. She’s getting a new apartment soon. Everything she owns on this planet is scattered and scrambled. Her mind is also scattered and scrambled. Her gold and silver bracelets cling and chink in stressed motions that originate from her stressed mental state.

Sitting at that corner window table, sipping on the too-tall glass of water, an epiphany hits me. The word emotion contains the word motion. Motion means to move, so emotion is the movement of a mental state. If an object in motion stays in motion unless obstructed by an outside force, then a mental state will continue gnawing at the sufferer unless obstructed by an outside source. Another mental state needs to take the place of the previous mental state.

Looking out the window, an unsuspecting woman is hit in the head with an umbrella. Due to her incredulous expression, I cannot help laughing.

Maybe I’m a sociopath.

My aunt asks me how school is, and I tell her it’s fine. I tell her that my classes, being social sciences, are all rooted in philosophy.

I ask her if she believes in God, a question I find myself asking too many people. People say no more often than not. I should start keeping graphs.

I’m not sure if everything is made to be sad or invigorating in a godless world.

She tells me she goes back and forth between atheism and agnosticism. Between godlessness and half godlessness. She doesn’t ask what I believe. I’m glad she doesn’t, because I don’t know. I’m too young, and God is too abstract.

“Let me give you some advice, sweetheart. Number one,” she holds up her pointer finger, “always wash your neck the way you wash your face. Whatever scrub, cream, or mask you put on your face—put it on your neck, too. Also, never go to bed without taking off your make-up. You’ll get older quicker.”

Number one makes me aware of my unclean neck.

I take a sip of the glass of water to wash down the advice.

The broad-shoulder waiter with the white shirt takes our order. We order escargots and coq au vin to share.

Maybe the waiter is god. Creator of the universe and of satisfying customer relations.

“Number two,” she holds out her middle finger along with her pointer finger, “never stop being curious. It’s what keeps you interested in yourself and the people around you.”

I already know number two.

Our escargots arrive.

Being a snail must be a constant existential crisis. Am I a bug or a sea creature? Is this my home or is that my home? Every snail has a dick and a vagina. If you were a snail, you could both impregnate and be impregnated by your snail lover.

I would not be able to orientate myself in such an ambiguous lifestyle.

I feel bad for eating such a confused life form, but not bad enough to refuse ingesting it.

“Number three,” she adds her ring finger, “make sure when in a relationship that the person you’re with loves you more than you love them. Always be the one with the control. Men cheat when you put them on pedestals. I’ve had my heart broken once or twice, and the only thing you get out of it is a seemingly chronic case of cirrhosis. I want to see you with someone who is going to support you.”

Mouthful of water.

I don’t know what to say to her. I have no desire to control anyone or to be with anyone out of necessity.

I don’t like talking to most people, let alone the idea of spending the majority of my time with a single person.

But that’s okay. Most people probably don’t think twice about my conversational efforts or about the idea of getting to know me better either.

People aren’t awful. I just thrive in solitude. To the point where I am a tightwad with the time I spend with other people.

Sip of water.

Our coq au vin arrives.

I lose track of the conversation.

I’m not listening, but she keeps talking.

If anything, I want to spend all day doing nothing in complete silence with another person and still have confidence in the existence of a meaningful and loving relationship.

But I get no pleasure from being with someone whom I have to search for reasons to care about. Maybe it’s my lack of understanding or my lack of confidence. Maybe it’s a concoction of the two. I just think there should be some purpose in intimacy beyond function.

Most people function, but the quality of that functioning is questionable; their levels of genuine joy are questionable.

There’s no ecstasy in running out at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning to get coffee from the nearest 7-Eleven, if it’s just routine.

There has to be more.

Sip of water.

Note to self: I can’t tell her this. I’d look stupid. I’m too young. Her frequency is vibrating closer to reality’s frequency. My tragedies are too minimalistic, too casual for her deep understanding of social relationships.

I finish my confused snails and pretentious chicken, and the too tall glass of water is running through my veins by now. Nowhere else to look to hide the shame of my hope.

Her darting clear blue eyes and her bright red lips tell me, “Great sex can only fill so many voids for so long. You have to do what makes sense in the bigger context.” Talking more than listening, she still has some food left on her plate, and her wine glass is two-thirds empty.

She pays the check, and I thank her and tell her I love her.

We go our separate ways outside the restaurant. She gets into a taxi, and I walk back to Penn Station.

The city smells like warm, wet dog when it rains.

<< Love is Lemons 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Stone Village >>

 

Brenna Crowe is presently a junior at SUNY Oneonta. She’s majoring in psychology and philosophy, with a minor in professional writing.

 

Comments Off on Brenna Crowe

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | · 11:14 am

Amelia McNally

In Now

A beginning.

Ella dreams of a house on a hill. It will be two stories tall—that is decided from the start—with a garden in the back of blueberry bushes and tomato plants and a small attic up top that contains no ghosts or spooky shadows or scares (the spiders could remain, if they must).

On rainy days she talks about the house with her mother over mugs of hot tea on the rug in the living room, and on sunny days she talks about the house over cups of cool lemonade in the shade of the oak tree out front.

“Should the shutters be white or blue?” she asks.

“How dark is the blue?” her mother responds.

Ella considers for a moment. “Not dark at all. Paler than the sky.”

“And those flower boxes you’re going to plant, you wanted pink pansies, yes?”

“Yes,” Ella replies.

“Well, in that case, if the pansies are pink, and the blue paler than the sky, then I think the shutters should be blue.”

And so the shutters are to be blue, and they paint themselves in Ella’s mind, one more piece of the dream constructed. A blue paler than the sky. The rest of the house will be white, but not too white–a house that sparkles too brightly would be cold and uninviting, for no inhabited house looks completely pristine. The paint begins to chip the moment the first foot steps over the threshold. The headboard of the first bed brought through the doorway hits the frame and knocks a piece of painted wood free, and the house becomes a home. So the house is not to be too white, but yellowed by the sun, cracked in some places, and worn away so thin in others that the weathered wood shows through. And the shutters will be blue.

Then what? A beginning, and then Ella, the girl, contemplates the house, the dream, with her mother. Two characters in a place, places, in a time, or many times, or sometime. They dream up a wooden picket fence and a rusty weather vane and seashells strung into a wind chime on the porch. The house completes, the warm breezes blow, the tea mugs drain and what happens next? Tragedy, drama, suspense—that’s how a story goes, is it not? The beginning leads to a middle and the middle needs something, something new, something bad, or at least uncomfortable, or at least–something.

“It’s alright, baby, it’s alright,” her mother says, maybe, as a small Ella sits up shivering and feverish night after night, worse each time. “Just think about your house, think about that, how beautiful the mornings will be at the breakfast table, overlooking the meadow with the little baby ducklings and geese. You remember how we said it was going to look? Do you remember, baby?”

Or maybe not.

Maybe a healthy Ella sits up at her window one rainy summer night, waiting patiently for the sight of her mother’s headlights pulling into the driveway, but they never come because her mother’s car is crumpled on the interstate between a tractor trailer and a guardrail.

Or maybe not.

“Mom?” Ella might whisper over her honey-sweetened tea. “Why can’t we stay in one house? Why do we need to keep moving away?” And her mother might respond, “Because, baby, because.” And because might mean that no one can find them, especially not the ones who are looking, especially the ones who are bad, and they both know this because they have said it a million times: because because because.

Or they don’t. They don’t say any of these things but instead say hundreds of other things, live hundreds of other lives, all winding up in some tragedy because that is what has to happen to little girls who dream up beautiful houses with their mothers. There’s a fire, or a flood, or the world itself comes to an end and there’s just nothing anymore, and Ella and her mother no longer speak or are not allowed to speak or just disappear entirely.

Is this how it goes?

Is Ella now doomed to live a life of misery, the memory of a childhood dream home, the only sweet thing left to her in a world that is steadily crumbling around her? Is this the middle, leading to an end? Is the end even worth it after all of this? After any of this?

Just for once, maybe the story does not have to be sad. Maybe the world stays the same. Maybe the little dreaming girl does not get sick, maybe the mother does not get into an accident, maybe one woman never passes prematurely before the other, visions of pink pansies lulling her gently away. Maybe they are not running, not hiding, with no malicious figure tracking them down to cause them harm. Maybe there are no fires, no floods. They do not go to bed in pain or in fear, hungry or cold. They are unfamiliar with the feeling brought by loss, by death. Maybe they want for nothing.

Maybe every night Ella’s mother tucks her in with a kiss, and Ella is free to wish for more wonderful things in her life like puppies or new dresses or birthday cake for breakfast until her eyes flutter peacefully to rest. The house is just a fun activity for mother and daughter to dream up together in their lazy daytime hours, not an escape from an impossible present, and after time Ella grows older and they discuss the house a little less and a little less. Ella excels in school and matures into a beautiful young woman who still sits on occasion with her mother under the oak tree, now with longer limbs and a thinner face. They do not always talk about the house–now the conversation turns to Ella’s future, Ella’s plans. The real ones. No more debates on colors or designs, no more description of how the paint chips in the afternoon sunlight. Ella moves away, becomes a doctor or a teacher or a business entrepreneur, and she buys a house that has white shutters and yellow siding because she has, in truth, forgotten about the blue. Or maybe she does not forget, and finds the house on the hill, or she builds it herself, and it’s everything she imagined, except for the creak in the stairs and some dust that will not stop collecting on the countertops. What if Ella is happy, and her mother is happy, and they live happily ever after in the realest way it can be lived? With minor bumps and minor trials and an end that is not perfect but is good enough. Is the story now worse? Are there enough bruises along the way? Do we still care about the little girl, worry, wonder, reach to hold her hand? Is this not what we all want in the end?

Or what if, just maybe:

There is no future for Ella because it does not matter. It’s not written here in final, black ink, so it does not exist. Ella herself did not exist before the house on the hill, and she will not exist after, not that we know of. What exists of her is what is here and now, what she dreamed, will dream, dreams. There is nothing more than a girl with lemonade constructing a real-life fantasy in her mind, building board by board the most beautiful house that will have flower boxes, and an oak tree of its own, and white walls, and everything, everything wonderful in the whole wide world. Pink pansies. Blue shutters. Blue paler than the sky.

And an end.

<< Stone Village

Amelia McNally is a senior at Purchase College, SUNY, where she is double majoring in creative writing and piano performance. She was raised in Philadelphia before moving to northern New Hampshire at the age of thirteen and now spends much of her time balancing the pros and cons of city versus country life. She hopes to spend her future pursuing her writing.

Comments Off on Amelia McNally

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | · 11:12 am

Sarah Steil

Flickering

Her hands trace figure eights on her lower stomach, and at three and a half months pregnant, she fantasizes about a baby with small, tightening fists. On a lazy Sunday morning, Adam is still asleep beside her, and Olivia places her palm to her skin, as though she can feel the baby’s heart beating, a reassurance and a promise: I am here, I am here, I am here.

In her bones she knows she’ll be the mother of girls: she pictures a child with long, wavy hair that mirrors her own, and dark, confident eyes that could fell her at the knees.

She can envision a life where it’s just the two of them: the baby at her hip, chubby and mewling, hands curious and knotting themselves in her hair.

In little more than three months, she has found a love that she has not felt for anything or anyone before—an instinctual, heady kind of love, immense and consuming.

Beside her, Adam shifts, and she watches him for a moment. She wonders if the baby will have his eyes, lighter than her own, or his tall, skinny frame. She loves Adam as the person who has given her this small being that grows within her, who will raise this new life with her.

He grumbles, “I can feel you staring at me,” before opening his eyes and resting a hand on her belly. “I should shave,” he sighs, pulling her closer to him and burying his prickly beard into her neck. She laughs and moves to push him away, but he holds onto her and nuzzles his chin against her skin.

She shoves him. “We should get out of bed before it’s time to go to bed again.”

He turns his forehead into the pillow. “Soon we’ll have a screaming kid and you’ll regret saying that.”

She smiles. “What do you mean, soon? I already have you.” He laces his arms around her waist, but she moves to unbuckle them, and asks, “Why don’t you ask me to marry you?”

He speaks into her upper back, “Good question. Will you marry me?”

She laughs and shakes her head. “Are you crazy? Of course not.”

This is a running joke; they are the children of divorce. They believe they have discovered a formula for love that their parents couldn’t master, as if not being married would make losing one another simple.

Baloo, their English Bulldog, jumps with a thud onto the bed, and Olivia twirls her finger in his fur. He’d been a gift from Adam, a year after her graduation. She’d found her first job as a veterinary technician, shortly after they moved in together in a small city apartment. Adam had lifted the puppy up to her and said, “He’s all yours, Doctor.”

Now, she rests her head on Adam’s shoulder and Adam pats her knee. “Okay,” he says, “time for breakfast.”

Adam takes off work for her ultrasound that week, grips her hand as they wait. The technician offers small talk as she applies gel to Olivia’s stomach, and Olivia attempts to absorb it, but giddiness rises in her lungs, distracts her.

“And right there,” the technician finally says, with one pinky pointed at the screen, “is the baby’s heart beat.”

There’s a pulsing, gray and white, and somewhere amongst these things, Olivia can see this small organ pumping, small but persistent. It flickers like wings flapping, and she wonders how such a tiny thing could have such force. She nods and feels herself swelling.

“Do you want to hear it?” the technician asks Olivia, and she looks to Adam and nods. The sound closes in on them like a stampede, like a drum beating underwater.

“She’s so strong,” Adam says to her, and she wants to save his words, squeeze them into her palm and carry them with her—a gift. Against the baby’s heartbeat, she steadies her own. When she leaves with Adam, she will think only of that powerful beating.

Later that week, Olivia stretches across a tearing leather couch in their small living room, her feet in Adam’s lap. Her fingers circumnavigate the globe of her stomach.

Adam’s fingertips brush against her calves as he stares at the television screen across from them. “You know, when I was young and I’d get a paper cut or whatever, I’d show my dad my finger and he’d go, ‘This looks pretty serious, Adam. I think we’re gonna have to take off your whole hand.’”

She smiles at him, places one arm lazily behind her head, lets the other drift from the couch to rest on Baloo’s head.

He continues, “I hope I’m like that with our kid. You know, like I’ll know how to make him laugh.”

“The earlier we can traumatize our kid, the better,” she jokes.

He shakes his head. “That’s what I mean. Like he knew what would upset me and what would make me laugh. I wanna be able to do that.”

She admires the seriousness in his eyes, his intent, and smiles. “I think you will.”

He nods quietly, his face calm, and when he turns to the television screen she watches his face, picturing him with a crying toddler at his hip, a smile on his face.

She comes home late from work one night when she is five months pregnant, scrubs dirtied. When she places her keys on the table, she finds Adam boiling water on the stove.

“How was work?” he asks, turning to her.

She considers him for a moment before answering. His eyes point downward, so that they’re at a slight angle, sloped like they might melt from his face. His eyes have always made him seem sad, even when he’s smiling, and when they started dating a few years earlier she would tease him about this feature.

They’d met at a bar the night of her college graduation. She had drunkenly laughed, “Your face looks so sad,” while pointing to her own face, now contorted in a sorrowful expression, “like this.”

He smiled but didn’t respond, and she shook her head in frustration, “Oh, man, I’m sorry. That was like really rude of me. I’m really drunk, I’m sorry. Do you go here? I mean, the school. Did you just graduate?” she focused on him, eyes wide.

He stared down at his feet. “Uh, yeah, I majored in produce science. ”

She laughed and turned her head. “Sounds intense.”

He shook his head. “No, I, uh, I dropped out? My sophomore year,” he grimaced. “I work at a grocery store. I’m a manager, so you could say I’m going places.” She nodded, serious, and he stammered, “I don’t even know why I’m here. Mark, my friend, made me come out and I don’t even drink. I’m rambling, I’m sorry.”

She watched him, smiled at his blushing. She knew she made him nervous, and liked the softness of his voice, the calmness of his features.

Now, she laces her finger through the key chain loop and spins it around, “Someone brought in this stray from the side of the highway,” she sighs, head shaking. “She must’ve just had puppies and was all torn up and lactating…I’ve never seen a dog look so sad.”

Adam twists his lips to one side of his face. “Well, we should keep her then. Baloo could use a girlfriend.”

“Oh, no. The last thing she would want or need is a boyfriend. Especially one as dopey as Baloo,” she says, clapping her hands. “Isn’t that right, Baloo? C’mere.” Leaning over the dog and scratching him behind the ear, she watches as Adam empties a box of dry pasta in the pot, and says, “Oh! Look what I bought, I gotta show you.”

She brandishes two small white mittens from her bag and walks over to the stove. “So, how cute are these? She’ll be here February-ish, and I keep picturing her hands in the cold…” She kneads the mittens in her palm.

He looks at them and smiles at her. “Very nice. And gender neutral! I see you’ve accepted it may not be a girl.”

She sticks out her tongue. “No, I just liked the color.” She taps at her temple with an index finger. “She’s a girl. A woman just knows these things.”

He raises his eyebrows and turns to the pot. “Whatever you say.”

She balls the mittens into her scrubs pocket and looks to the dog, who stares up at her. “Who do you think is right, Baloo?” When the dog wiggles his body under her gaze, she nods. “Yeah, I thought so.”

Adam shakes his head at Baloo and says, “Okay, she can be a girl. But promise you won’t find out without me next week?”

When Adam first told her he couldn’t get off work for her next ultrasound appointment, she had bristled against him. But after a week of his apologies she’d grown excited to be alone with the baby, to see her heart, hear it. “I promise.”

The next Monday, the ultrasound technician, a younger woman with light brown eyes and platinum blonde hair, applies cool gel to her stomach and asks in a high pitched voice, “Are we trying to learn baby’s gender today?”

Olivia dislikes how this woman speaks in a singsong tone, as if addressing a toddler. “Yes. I mean, I think I already know. But Adam, uh, my partner, he wants you to write if she’s a boy or girl on a piece of paper, so we can find out together later.”

She wonders if she’s said too much, as the technician seems to have stopped paying attention to her, and she waits for a response that doesn’t come.

The technician glides the probe around her belly in wider and wider circles, pursing her lips and squinting her eyes at the screen.

Olivia, watching the stiffening face of the woman next to her, half jokes, “Well, she’s gotta be in there somewhere, right?”

The technician offers her a small smile but avoids her eyes. “Can you excuse me for just one second?” She leaves Olivia alone in the room with her heart racing, confused. Somehow the air in the room feels tighter, and she waits for this bubble of time to burst and the technician to show her that flicker of life again, that small beating.

The doctor enters the room with her fine hair pinned tightly back, brown eyes blank. Olivia searches her face for some warning of what’s happening, some smile that will loosen the air in the room and make it easier to breathe. The doctor travels the same winding loops that have already been traced on her stomach, and shakes her head at the monitor screen so slightly Olivia wonders if she imagined it. Exchanging a look with the technician behind her, the doctor sighs and her eyes meet Olivia’s.

“We’re not detecting a fetal heart rate.”

Olivia’s head has condensed inward and through the ringing in her ears the doctor’s words enter messy, disordered. In the spinning room everything slows—she locks her eyes onto the doctor’s face. She can’t understand the swelling in her chest, this sense of foreboding. Olivia shakes her head. “I don’t—”

The doctor speaks calmly, with the finality of someone who is used to delivering bad news. “There’s no heartbeat,” she says, pausing, head shaking. “I’m sorry.”

Olivia doesn’t breathe for a minute, and she thinks that the doctor is discussing her own heart, paused in its churning. Some part of her knows they’re discussing the baby, and she wants to tell them that this doesn’t make sense, because she had seen it and heard it beating herself, only a few weeks earlier.

Her lungs refuse to inflate but somehow her voice whispers, “It was just there.”

The doctor nods, smiles sadly. “I know. Sometimes these things happen, and we don’t know why.”

She thinks the doctor is speaking to her, but distantly, far away in a place she used to be. Loss charges through her body, and she trembles as she tries to hide her face. Her stomach is hollowing. She feels herself halving.

The doctor is telling her that she will have to come back and they will induce labor, and she wants to tell them they can’t, that it’s too early, that at twenty weeks the baby wouldn’t survive. She wants to tell them they’ve made a mistake, that she feels the life within her, and that she has never felt so sure of anything in her life. She’s still here, she wants to say, I saw her heart myself.

She loses what the doctor says to her, the sorrow in the eyes of the technician. Everything feels slower, sticky, and when she enters the waiting room again, she wonders if the other women can smell the loss on her. For a moment she thinks she can see them pulling away from her, retracting—whales moving out to sea before the storm hits.

Her hands shake as she calls Adam’s number, and when she hears his voice on the line, her throat ignites. “Please come get me. I need you to come get me.”

He tends to her like a baby bird pushed from its nest too soon. When they leave the doctor’s office, he guides her to their car, leads her to the passenger seat, buckles her in. They drive in silence and she presses her cheek to the cool window, lightly knocking her temple on the glass again and again. He rests his hand on her thigh, but she starts and pulls away.

Once Adam parks the car in the street outside their apartment, he reaches for her hands. “Olivia.”

Her face collapses, and she turns to him finally, folding in on herself, pulling her knees closer. The crying chops up her words, makes it hard for her to breathe or speak. “I feel like I did this,” she heaves, patting at her chest with her open hand. “I feel like this is my fault.”

“You know that’s not true,” he says, closing her hands within his.

“I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this.” Her face reddens, blisters. “I shouldn’t have to do this.”

He leaves the car, opens the passenger side door, helps her out of her seat. He leads her across the street, up the stairs, into their apartment, into their bedroom. He braces her body against his as she cries. He pulls her to him when she struggles to breathe. He waits until the shaking stops, until she’s fallen asleep in the empty belly of their silence.

At work a few days later, Olivia runs her hands along her stomach as she stands next to Caroline, her closest friend, a veterinarian at the hospital who was hired at the same time. She laces her fingers through the cage of a sedated cat, and when Caroline speaks, she starts.

Caroline, a heavier woman with thick red curls of hair, often confides in Olivia about her husband and her brood of children. She was the first person Olivia told about the pregnancy, only a couple weeks after she had found out. Olivia wants to tell her about the baby, about carrying two stilled hearts within her body, but when Caroline asks if she’s okay, the words stick to the sides of her throat. She nods. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

The next week, she dresses herself, stares in the mirror early on a Monday morning. She notices the creases around her mouth, feels removed from her body, her suddenly aged face, fuller from the pregnancy. Her hair, fine and dark, falls down her back in waves, and her eyes wander unfocused. She tells herself, “I’m going to have my baby today.” She places her hand to her womb, closes her eyes, and pictures the baby kicking.

Adam drives her to the hospital in a now familiar silence, hand to her knee, smiling weakly. He turns on the radio, but she reaches over and gently turns it back off.

At the hospital, they give her a pill to help induce labor, wash out her insides. Contractions rip through her abdomen, steadily rise in intensity until she thinks she will break open, and then die down again.

She cries during the first hour and Adam holds her hand through the current. As time passes, she closes her eyes and waits for when the pain grips her so tightly that she thinks her heart stops.

The doctor, the same woman with the tight ponytail, encourages her through the pain. Dr. Karen, Olivia thinks to herself, remembering the woman’s name now. Karen Tutunik.

The doctor checks in on her between hours, but at the very end, she waits with her. When the pain has receded for the last time, Dr. Karen asks, “Do you want to meet him?”

Olivia stares at her blankly for a moment. The doctor seems to sense her confusion and confirms with a small smile. “It’s a boy.”

Olivia turns to Adam with wide eyes, sure that the doctor has misspoken, but she nods.

And then, suddenly, there he is: tiny, still, the skin of his belly translucent, his insides dark. They wrap his body in a small cloth, and he’s so small Olivia can fit him in the palms of her hands. “Hi, baby,” Olivia says to him, Adam leaning over her.

The doctor tells them to let her know when she should come back for him, and as she walks from the room, adds softly, “You should name him.”

They speak to the baby in the hospital room for a few hours. They name him Luca. Olivia lightly touches her finger to the baby’s hands, his toes. She blinks for a moment and thinks she sees him breathing, but the baby is so still, so small, Olivia knows this can’t be true. She remembers listening to his heart beating only a few weeks earlier, and tries to picture this sound within his chest. She closes her eyes and imagines her life with her baby, her son.

When they leave the hospital, they leave with a small box. They leave with pictures of him, his small footprints in ink on paper. When they leave, they leave without their son.

That night, Olivia places her hand to her empty womb, aching for her son like a phantom limb. She will have to tell people that she lost the baby, and she considers the insufficiency of the word lost—as if her son is hiding, waiting to be found; as if he slipped away when Olivia’s back was turned. The word doesn’t convey the feeling that she’s been broken open and picked clean, her insides raw and bare.

She thinks the word implies blame—and in this way it may be fitting, because doesn’t she feel like she failed somehow? Doesn’t she feel guilt?

She holds Luca’s white mittens, tries to slip them over her fingers. Her thumb runs along the smooth stitching on the inside. She imagines kissing the mittens, the warmth of the baby’s fists rising through the stiches, and longs for the pressure of his hands within hers.

When Adam touches her, she recoils, lost, thinking of the baby between them.

“Why are you shutting me out?” he asks after a month of her pulling away from him, inching to the edge of the bed.

She wants to tell him that she’s sorry, that she doesn’t want to feel like this, that she doesn’t know where she stopped and this part of her life began. She wants to tell him that she thinks of Luca’s small, curled hands at night long after he has fallen asleep, that she wonders what his voice would sound like. She wants to tell him that she can imagine his hands within the mittens. She hopes that he wasn’t cold, even for a second.

She wants to tell him that she has never felt a love so strong as when she held that baby in her arms and imagined him in a high chair, laughing, eating Cheerios. That when she is alone, she pictures Luca at her hip, his baby belly round and fat.

Her grief is dense, settling to the distal areas of her body like acid, eating through her skin. She wonders if she is allowed to call herself a mother to a child she will never know.

Now, she thinks of work, of the stray dog, scarred and growling at anyone who goes near her. She wonders if the dog searched for her pups, wonders if she still feels just as hollow, just as rotted out.

Her own words swell but her mouth doesn’t open and she shakes her head at him and turns away.

One month later, Adam reaches for her when they are in bed together. Initially, sleeping with him had helped her fall in love with him—he is patient, yielding with her body. He kisses her, and she kisses him back for a moment, but sours at his body on hers and quietly pushes him off of her.

He sits at the edge of the bed, head in his hands. “You know, I lost a baby, too.”

She curls away from him, places a pillow to her stomach. “You weren’t there.”

He stares at his feet for a moment and shakes his head. “I wasn’t there for what?”

Olivia drags her hand down her scalp, feels her throat tightening. “You weren’t there when they told me. I was alone.”

His eyes focus on hers. “About the baby? You’re gonna punish me for the rest of my life because I missed the appointment? What do you want me to do?”

She hears his voice rising and turns from him, placing a hand to her chest, wanting to slow her racing heart, resting her other hand against her eyes. She tries to speak, but her throat won’t open, and she shakes her head and whispers, “I don’t want to feel like this.”

Adam leaves the bed to kneel before her and says quietly, “I don’t want to feel like this either. I’ve lost him and now I’m losing you.”

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He holds her against him and she feels herself being absorbed into his warmth and steadiness.

At work a week later, Olivia laces her arm around the neck of a German shepherd, holding her steady as Caroline places a stethoscope to the dog’s chest. “Okay, she’s all good,” Caroline says, and when Olivia doesn’t look at her right away she places a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Olivia nods, smiling. “Yeah, just thinking.”

Two months ago, when Olivia finally told Caroline about the baby, the words had forced themselves from her mouth, sour and angry. When Olivia told her of the loss, they’d sat with their knees touching, Olivia’s face bowed while Caroline’s hands reached to steady her.

Now, Caroline tells her, “You know, when I was younger my grandpa would always say, ‘you can’t dry in the same place you swam.’ You should get out. Go on a trip with Adam or something.”

Olivia laughs. “I’m definitely tired of swimming.”

Caroline’s mouth straightens. “I’m serious, Olivia. Even if it’s just for a day.”

Olivia nods. “Okay, okay.”

When Olivia comes home to Adam, who has already made her dinner, she says, “We should go somewhere. Anywhere in the world.”

He smiles, and with a fullness in his voice, he says, “Okay. I’m ready.”

When he turns to the stove, she admires the furrow in his brow, watches him, her companion in grief. She still feels the water in her lungs, but she nods at him, smiles, and helps him set the table.

<< Frontierland 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Love is Lemons >>

 

Sarah Steil is a junior English (creative writing) and pre-vet major at SUNY Geneseo. She loves spending time with her five crazy siblings and four crazy dogs.

Comments Off on Sarah Steil

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | · 11:10 am

Abigail Allen

Love is Lemons

A lemon lozenge on my tongue, I lean into the back of the couch, melting into the pillows like the belly of a gooey egg on a scalding pan. I feel myself curl. I forget I’m in the room with Peter. His hair is being braided by Georgia and Amy, who are giggling like the typical college girls they are. His watery green eyes laugh as their fingers tug on his long locks. I watch Steve and Chris and Felicity play Monopoly on the grubby carpet. A comb and a pizza crust and a wad of flattened gum the size of a quarter are stuck to the fibers. Felicity looks over at me and smiles. My back sinks deeper into the cushions, my skin softening, scratching with the fibers, tingling as they sew into my flesh, needle bobbing under the layers of muscle and liquids. I unwrap another lemon lozenge and fold it under my tongue, close my eyes, and let myself turn into a seat for someone else.

“Oh, my God, look at the picture she just sent.”

I open my eyes, the couch fibers stretching white over my eyelids. Peter takes Amy’s phone from her and laughs.

“Was that yesterday? How’d she know we were there?”

Amy combs her fingers through her blond streaks. I self-consciously touch the strands of my boyish hair tangled with couch lint.

“Maybe she followed us,” she says. “It’s not hard spotting us in a crowd.”

“The Deadly Blond Duo,” Peter says.

“Power to the blondes.”

They bump fists together. I feel a patch of soft cushion squeeze between my ribs. The lemon lozenge swirls inside my mouth—sticky yellow syrup. I think about my existence as a chair and not about Peter.

Felicity shouts in excitement. Her properties are crowded with plastic buildings. Steve scoffs.

“It’s because of that stupid chance card!”

“I’ll avenge you, Steve,” Chris says. “I’m not out of this yet.”

“Good luck,” Felicity says. “I’m about to make it rain.”

Steve raises one of his brows.

“Just remember, Felicity, we all pay the bank in the end.”

“Could you embroider that into a pillow for me?” she asks.

Chris laughs.

“Did you make that up or read it on a gum wrapper?” he says.

“Sometimes I’m deep, guys,” Steve says.

Felicity snorts.

“Yeah, deep in debt.”

I want to rip apart the cushions of the couch. Watching Peter watch Amy and ignoring it all, blurring their faces to fleshy smears, and shredding the couch fibers.

I peel away from the couch, wincing as the grid of fabric tears from my skin. Peter looks up at me, his freckled cheeks flaring red. I don’t know why. I hardly know him.

“I should get going,” I say.

They all stand up and walk me to the door, talking at once, blurs of white noise. The last time I will see them all, most likely. Peter hangs back and waits until the rest of them have hugged and cried with me, and then he steps forward.

“Drive safe, Star-catcher,” he says.

Peter squeezes my shoulder and turns away. I blink to keep myself steady, to remember that he means nothing to me. I open the door and slip outside.

It’s just like me to imagine life is a movie, to pretend Peter will come out after me and shout, “Hey!” and walk me to my car just a hundred feet away. His breath, sweet and tangy like the lemon lozenge under my tongue, filling up my lungs, and his dumb, frizzy blond braid catching the light from the moon. We’d stand there leaning against the car, talking about nothing, and then he would hug me, longer than proper, and then walk fast back inside, back to his yellow-haired goddess, away from the short-haired chick with her pink pick-up truck.

I linger by the driver’s door, watching the house. The sound of faint laughter mingles with a guitar and singing prickles my hair. I smile and blow that beautiful boy a kiss in the darkness where he cannot see who sent it. Crunching on the last small melt of lozenge, I open the door and slip inside the car.

My truck rolls away into the night, a slow pink beetle crawling over the dirt road. Somewhere inside the cabin, Peter feels a tiny prickle on his cheek, where my kiss has landed.

I wake up seven months later in the middle of the night, with the image of Peter burned into my brain. His arms coil around me, his throat smelling like apples and peaches and vinegar; he kisses me until everything’s blurred. The world sparkles like sapphires as he leads me to a bed sewn of butterfly wings and drags my soul over his. I jolt awake before he has a chance to bring me closer.

“Oh no,” I whisper.

The night is quiet and warm. I sit at the edge of my bed and peer out the window, willing his name to die in my memory. Peter. Peter. He’s always there, lingering, a ghostly thing—white and smooth like the shell of a coffin. I put my lips to the cool glass and close my eyes. He takes shape under my mouth, and I sink into his cold chest, his bare heart. Peter.

“Don’t haunt me,” I say. “Don’t be near in my mind and not in life.”

Outside the apartment a man is smoking. It’s 2:00 a.m., and he’s taking a long, sweeping drag on his cigarette. The smoke curls into whispers of words, formless brown letters. I squeeze my hands around my waist. How can a man, upon a chance meeting in summer, enter my mind after leaving my life?

I watch the sun come up. It’s bright pink like the soft wet petals of a rose unfurled. It scatters stripes of orange into the trees and sends golden beams snaking up along my window, crawling into my room, spiraling around my legs.

Peter’s face appears in the clouds, and I bite my lip so hard I’ll go to the hospital for stitches in fifteen minutes.

“Well, I’m just glad they haven’t gotten married yet,” Felicity says. She crunches on the ice cubes rolling around in her glass. “How long have they dated? Since the end of summer? That’s like eight or nine months.”

I smile and look out at the river below the balcony, at the sailboats with their bright crayon-colored sails and striped bellies.

“That’s a modest time to date someone,” I say. “Anything less is a concern.”

Peter.

I feel the thick scar left on my lip from months before. Felicity studies my face and I avoid the confrontation by taking up an origami project with the edges of my napkin. The bartender is humming and washing the empty counter space. The restaurant is nearly empty apart from Felicity and me and a lone college student at the bar. I pick up the dessert menu and browse the selections.

“You’re hiding something from me,” Felicity says.

“I’m not hiding anything from you,” I say. The waiter walks by and places the bill on the end of the table. I grab it from Felicity’s outstretched hands. “Except for this bill.” I stuff my credit card in the black-lipped folder and wave the waiter over again.

“You lie,” Felicity says. “I know because you have a scar on your lip you haven’t mentioned yet. And I know that has something to do with it.”

“Why don’t you want Georgia and Steve to get married?”

Felicity cocks her head and crosses her arms. “Did you know Amy and Peter are dating?” she asks.

My heart crumples in my chest. Felicity sees it in my face instantly. She grabs my hand.

“Star, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

I look across the water and see the sun bathe the water in blood as it sets. The clouds bruise and somewhere a gull shrieks. Without sound, I murmur, “I didn’t know.”

My fingers shake as I slip my hand into my pocket and grab a lemon lozenge. I don’t have any left. My tongue feels sour.

When I get home, I deactivate all my social media. If they die, I will never know. Perhaps they already have.

“Your article is incredible,” Ryan says. “A fascinating read. It reminds me of Arnold or Vico.” He grins. “But with the smugness and sarcasm of Nietzsche.”

I smile and wrap my hands around my mug. My lemony perfume clashes with the gritty coffee stench of the café we sit in. Ryan is drinking black coffee from a paper cup. I watch his lips as he lifts the cup to his mouth. There’s something uninviting about his lips, how unlovely they are. They don’t scream or beg to be kissed.

Ryan notices me staring.

“What?” he asks.

I shake my head. Outside, fall is dying away; a couple on the street crunch over the brittle skeletons of leaves. They swing their entwined hands back and forth, giggling, shivering, and huddling together in the cold, in the summer, in the seasons of their love. Ryan watches me still; I try to ignore him but at this point, doing anything around him is dangerous.

“You’re a brilliant writer, Star,” Ryan says. There is something serious in his voice that makes me look at him. His eyes are soft and fierce; my stomach feels sick. “You’ve got a way about words. The way you thread them together—it’s poetry.”

Ryan’s face blurs. My body sags against the seat. Isn’t this what I want? Someone who loves poetry and stars?

Ryan reaches for my hand across the table.

“We’ve been friends for a while now,” he says, “and it seems I get a little closer to you every time—”

I’ve never told him about my dreams.

“—never met anyone I’ve liked so much, that I—I ’ve, cared about—”

I have never told him about Peter and the summer he carved my heart out and kept it for himself.

“—I think about you all the time. That short hair and those, those eyes—“

Ryan hates lozenges. I’ve never told him about the nickname.

“—I want to date you, Star. Because, because I love you.”

It’s cruel to have let him go on so long. Not his speech, but his friendship. I knew from the beginning he would fall in love with me. We’re a perfect match. I don’t have any reasons to refuse him, yet I do every time.

Ryan’s smile wavers, nervous, clicking as time pours on. I feel heat from tears prickle my eyes. My stomach is seasick. Peter is dating Amy still, for all I know. It’s evil to keep the dream living in my mind, and it’s dangerous. But his memory has become wedged into my brain; there’s no carving him out without destroying me.

“I can’t, Ryan,” I say, pulling my hand away, stuffing it into a pocket and drawing out a lemon lozenge. My voice cracks. “You know why I can’t.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t know why because you never say,” Ryan snaps. He frowns. “You kissed me. Why did you kiss me?”

I had. I had kissed him. Under the fireworks at the summer festival. I remember thinking I was kissing him, I was kissing Ryan, but after I had pulled away and opened my eyes and looked up to Ryan’s face, I was disappointed. That night I had gone home and tried to stay awake, to keep me from dreaming. But then Peter asked me to dance in the rain and I began to snore.

I squeeze my eyes shut, silencing my tears.

“Ryan, you deserve—”

“Yes, I deserve better,” Ryan says, his voice sharp. “I deserve someone who returns my affection. Well, then, why do I fall for women who never do?”

He slides out of the booth. I cover my mouth with my hands, staring out the window. At first, I think it’s raining but realize it’s my tears on the glass. Ryan lingers by the table, watching me and shaking his head.

“What is it, Star?” he asks. “What are you holding onto?”

I remember my last dream, where Peter pulls me next to a roaring fire and reads me fairy tales. His hair is soft at my neck; I am a puddle in his lap.

“I’m a fool, Ryan,” I say. “My heart was gone a long time ago.”

Ryan abandons me in my booth, tears running down the windowpane, silent sobs in my lemon tea. I unwrap lozenge after lozenge and stuff them into my mouth, hoping to choke. My wish comes true and a woman from around the counter drags me out of the booth and does the Heimlich until the lozenges land on the floor, rolling around like wet yellow marbles. I sob and am not blamed—everyone thinks my tears are from shock.

My body feels cool, coated in the emerald dress that trembles along my thighs and the dripping pearls rumbling along my exposed collarbone. I resemble a sea creature, some wet green thing that crawled up from exotic shores with blood-red lips and blue flesh. My short brown hair curls around my ears. I grin and turn my chin, pretending I am confident when I’m not. Be unforgiveable.

It’s been a little over a year since I’ve seen them all, besides Felicity, who visits and calls often. The time and distance don’t stop the dreams from coming—Peter, hiding in birch trees until their flesh turns bright blue and their branches are heavy with peaches. Peter, dancing in fountains at night with me, the bottoms coated in layers of glimmering coins. Peter, kissing me up and down, whispering poetry into my throat, reading me scripture and running his hands through my short hair. I’ve dreamt us on wires, pulled tight from the tip of the Eiffel Tower to the top of the Empire State Building. I’ve dreamt of his hair—golden and long, curly tassels rustling over his shoulders. I’ve dreamt of us meeting again—somewhere random, like Target or Walgreens—me picking up a stash of lemon lozenges and him looking for a new fridge magnet to put in his apartment. We would bump into each other in the makeup aisle—I’d be looking for lipstick and he liked to buy lemon-flavored lip balm.

“Why, if it isn’t Star-catcher,” Peter would say, stepping toward me and standing too close in real life but far away in a dream. His hands would smooth over my short hair. “I still dream of you.” He’d kiss me lightly on the forehead.

I remember waking up from that dream and thinking that I’d never been kissed on the forehead by a man before.

My truck crunches over familiar dirt on familiar roads that lead toward the cabin, toward the lake. The stars are glorious, charged with electricity and light, green and violet like a Mardi Gras parade in the sky. I smile and tighten my hands on the wheel, bracing myself. Peter.

I don’t understand it. I hardly talked to him when he was still in my life. He’s a stranger. And yet…and yet….

I punch the radio on. The song is something stupid, something romantic and tragic, buttered and greased with the language of love. My hand hovers over the dial. I don’t end up changing it until an Adele song comes on.

The cabin rolls into view. I park the car and turn off the ignition. Popping in a lemon lozenge, I sit in the cooling car, staring at the light pooling from the windows. After a moment of silence for the dead memories I’d buried there, I step out of the car and head up toward the cabin.

The door swings open and bodies rush at me with shouts and squeals of excitement. Felicity pulls me into a hug, Steve and Georgia drape their arms across my shoulders, Chris pinches my cheek, Amy squeezes my hand and, and—

“Star.”

His voice in my dreams is thick, muddled, coarse, sexy. Peter grins beyond the unfolding crowd, his hands stuffed in his suit, curls brushing his shoulders. He says my name again and it’s better than the nightmares—velvet, deep and rich and liquefied like scalding tequila. He steps toward me and wraps his arms around me and—

And I swear it’s like he kissed me.

Something burning soft, infinite. His curls breathing into my neck. His hands pressing my back. His cheek rubbing into mine—fire versus flames. I gasp for air, my body buzzing, tingling, rippling, shivers inside my throat. My lozenge turns to yellow ooze on my tongue.

Peter pulls away, his grin just as big, no, bigger—faint, trembling, jittery. He steps back.

“How are you, Star-catcher?” he asks. His mouth twitches. “Do you get called that anymore?”

“No,” I say. Our eyes lock. “Not anymore.”

The night is filled with wine and hot food and laughter. I sit on the couch, in the same fold of cushion in which I’d been wilting a year ago, where I watched the similar timeline of events unfurl: Steve and Chris and Felicity setting up a game of Monopoly, Georgia and Amy begging Peter for his hair.

I watch Amy. Her face has thickened, her hair’s lobbed shorter, and there’s a dark smudge of a scar near her neck. I lick my lip where my scar is. Boys give girls scars, I decide, and God heals them. She’s in a yellow dress, almost the color of the lozenges in my pockets but less sweet, and the back zipper is slightly undone, the fabric folding like origami along her spine. Peter is laughing with Georgia, his eyes on her until Amy turns, and he notices the zipper. I ignore the reckless tingling that pricks my skin. But how curious I am.

“Oh, Amy, your zipper came undone, let me get it,” Georgia says. She reaches over and pulls it up again. A boyfriend would’ve done it without question.

Peter has turned away, watching the game of Monopoly.

“I’m going to step outside for minute,” he says.

Amy ignores Peter and giggles with Georgia. I swallow my smile and watch Peter start toward the door. He glances at me; the glimmer in his eyes and rustle of his curls is unmistakable. He nods once and slips outside.

I know things will change if I go to him or don’t. Two turns that spin and spiral and never collide again. He’s giving me the option.

But I remember that stupid night when the movie reeled in my brain, and he never chased after me. Over and over again, he didn’t walk, run, sprint down the steps and hug, press, hold me against the car door and murmur, “May I see you, may I kiss you, may I adore you?” Over and over the sleeping woods had answered: No, no, never. The loveliest constellations had burned into the sky with the warmest, sweetest summer air, and he had decided not to come. So will I go? Will it be begging if I do?

Peter stands on the porch, leaning against the railing, fingers knotting a loose string on his sleeve. The air breathes through his hair; his curls float like golden feathers, cool and soft in the gray moonlight. Beautiful stranger, why do you want me to come?

“May I have a lozenge?” Peter asks. He stares straight ahead. The lake is a silver puddle shivering under the moon’s beams. The warbled sound of a bird echoes from a tree. I lean on the railing beside him.

“How did you know I had any?” I ask.

Peter smiles.

“What is Star without her lemons?”

I cough to hide my smile. Be unforgivable tonight.

“Amy,” I say.

Peter looks over at me. His gaze forces me to look at him, so I do, stoically, tightly. He steps toward me, and I swallow my thundering heartbeat.

“I hardly know you,” he says.

“I know.”

“And you barely know me.”

“Yes.”

We stare at each other. I hate the silence—I want small talk. Stupid talking, dumb words, unforgiving. Peter’s eyes begin to melt, moonbeams softening the edges. I don’t know what to say. I turn toward the lake and rehearse my lines over and over and over in my head: be unforgiving tonight, unforgiving.

“Can I see you again, Star?”

The words lash surprise against my body. I look at him in alarm. Is there no Amy? Did he only want to catch a star?

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Peter shakes his head. He looks like an angel, that halo of gold.

“I never talked to you when we had a whole summer together and I’ve regretted it ever since. I was a stupid guy who passed up the chance to talk to a Star who loves lemons.”

I forget my lines.

“Yes,” I say. “I’d like to see you too.”

It doesn’t happen the way I have always pictured it.

He doesn’t talk about my writing or call me a poet or ask to kiss me, and the world doesn’t uninvent itself, and I don’t make his mouth taste like lemons, but he does reach for my hand, and I do give him a lozenge, and we suck on our candy as Peter tells a story about visiting his sister in Ohio at Christmas.

<< Flickering 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Escargot >>

 

Abigail Allen is currently a sophomore at SUNY Oswego, studying film and creative writing. As a freshman, she was published in The Great Lake Review, SUNY Oswego’s literary magazine. She has also written freelance for various local organizations and interned with Oswego’s newspaper, The Palladium Times.

Comments Off on Abigail Allen

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | December 8, 2015 · 11:24 am

Adreyo Sen

The Boy Who Loved to Dance

I was five when my mother signed me up for lessons at the Maharashtra Lawn Tennis Association.

But I was scared of my coach, who was critical of my sissy handling of the racket.

One day, I was in tears and his fellow instructor bought me a bottle of Pepsi.

My mother drove me home in silence. When we were in the living room, she began to beat me with my tennis racket.

“We paid so much for these lessons and this is how you repay me?” she yelled as I sobbed.

Later, my maidservant held me and made me a cup of tea when I was finally cried out. She let me play with her brightly-colored bangles.

When I was eight, I scored above 90% on my final exams.

My mother took me to buy a book.

When we got home, she took the book from me.

“I feel you didn’t put in your best effort,” she said. “What do you think?”

I went to the bathroom to cry and she stood behind me.

“I have no sympathy for you,” she said, “crying over spilt milk. Dry your eyes and come and do your lessons.”

I often cried those days. When I was five, I was brave and bold and bright. But by the time I was eight, I was scared of everything.

My father was unable to protect me from my mother’s slaps. He was a quiet man.

But he often took me out for a drive and something stirred in me as I saw maidservants returning home from shopping, clad in yellow or red or pink tunics.

I told myself I was attracted to them. But I knew I, too, wanted to be a bright bosom, to be crushed in some man’s strong arms.

I began crossdressing that year.

My father was often on tour for his engineering firm and my mother would join him.

While they were away, I would sleep by my maidservant’s side.

She would let me wear her blouse and petticoat and sing to me until I fell asleep.

This took me a while because I loved the feeling of her soft, worn garments against my skin.

Sometimes, in the morning, before I went to school, still in her blouse and petticoat, I would don her bangles and her silver anklets and dance for her in the style of the heroines of the old Bollywood movies we watched together. She was loud in her appreciation and would kiss me when I finished.

My maidservant and I were allies. My mother was angry with her all the time because she used to invite her lover, a security guard, into the house while the rest of us slept. I was only four when my mother caught her letting him in.

Even now, I like to imagine my maidservant’s slenderness in the ardent embrace of her lover, melting into the rough body that smelt of tobacco and sweat and oil.

When I was twelve, I was sent away to boarding school. My mother worried about my dreamy and soft ways and the tendency of my early friends to dismiss me as a hijra.

My friends were really teasing me for my clumsiness, for my inability to catch the ball during our interminable cricket games. They despised me and thus threw the word at me to criticize my useless girlishness. After all, to be a girl in India is to be a burden and the sum total of the dowry with which one is transferred into another family.

But the word hijra really referred to India’s transvestite community, a group of men who eked out a living by begging and by dancing in sarees and salwar suits at weddings and other occasions. Even then, I felt these “degenerate” men were women because they saw themselves thus.

I confided to my maidservant, who cooked me all my favorite dishes before my departure, that I longed to be a hijra myself, to break free, as these once-men had, from the constraints of their unsympathetic families, and lose myself, in dance and song.

At boarding school, I was a failure. I could not play sports. In class, I dreamt of being transformed into a woman by some act of courage and winning the adoration of a tall and muscular man. When my seniors scolded me, I dreamt of kissing their rugged faces.

I was often beaten up for my untidiness, for my poor marks and horrible sports performance, for my tendency to dream, for my effeminate ways.

When I was eighteen and just finished with boarding school, my mother threw my maidservant out. She said that she was too inefficient and lazy.

I cried for days until my mother slapped me.

I slapped her back and for the first time in my life, yelled back at her.

But my father took her side and threatened to put me in a mental hospital if I didn’t calm down.

I went to the only engineering college I could get into with my poor marks. I felt guilty about my behavior with my mother and I studied hard.

I was lonely, but my effort paid off, and I made it into a reasonably good engineering firm after my graduation.

The three years that followed were hard.

At home, my parents and I rarely spoke. I was still a coward, but I made it clear I would no longer tolerate my mother’s constant criticism. To taunt me, she complained about my ingratitude to the neighbors when I was within earshot.

At work, I was taunted for my quietness, my excessive neatness, for the way my eyes would fill up with tears whenever I was criticized.

When I was twenty-four, I’d had enough. I locked myself in the bathroom and slit my wrists.

At the hospital, my parents didn’t visit me. I was placed in a psychiatric ward and among the other unhappy souls who’d found their way there; I made many friends. They saw me as a woman because that’s how I saw myself and one of them told me I was so beautiful he’d like to take me out on a date.

My mother took me home when I was discharged and mocked me in front of our neighbors. But her words had ceased to have an effect on me and I laughed at the ridiculous woman.

The next morning, I left my house for the last time and went to a shopping mall. I bought myself a salwar kameez and changed into it.

People stared and called after me as I walked down the street. But I didn’t care.

I felt beautiful. I felt finally myself.

At the intersection near Victoria Memorial, I found the two hijras who normally begged on that route.

I knelt before one of them, a tall and wise woman, who must have been kind and beautiful even when she was an unhappy man.

“Guide me,” I begged. “Teach me to be beautiful.”

She kissed me and I felt myself blessed.

I won’t say that the last year has been easy. My parents still live in the same city as I do and often try to drag me home, or to have me committed.

One day, I was in a train on the way to a shrine beloved to the hijra community in a new floral salwar kameez when some of the passengers took offense at my presence.

A man caught hold of me and took me to the carriage door.

He was about to throw me out when the ticket collector saved me. He sat me down next to him and put his arm around me. He told me how he, too, had always felt trapped by his own body. That was why he took so little care of it.

I think he did see me as a woman. Bless him, dear man.

The police frequently raid the house in which ten other hijras and I live. If we don’t have enough money to give them, they beat us with their canes.

Once upon a time, all of this would have made me miserable. But even if there are hard days, I am always myself. And thus, I know happiness.

My maidservant, now married, has been to see me and has gifted me with some new salwar kameezes, as well as those bangles and anklets I always loved.

I wear her bangles and anklets and sing and dance to earn money.

I was always creative, but my parents saw my creativity as another example of my sissyness.

In the evenings, I tell my sisters, I mean my fellow hijras, the stories I used to tell my maidservant. Sometimes, the children from the neighborhood join us. And sometimes, their mothers and their aunts join us too.

When I was a terrified and captive boy, I was scared of the world. But now I have been set free by my flowing sarees and lovely salwar suits and know there is much to love everywhere.

I carry my anklets and bangles wherever I go, so I can dance to the beauty of the world.

Atelophobia >>

Adreyo Sen is pursuing his MFA at Stony Brook, Southampton. His thesis is a novel incorporating elements of fantasy and magic realism.

Comments Off on Adreyo Sen

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | · 11:14 am

Melissa Paravati

Atelophobia

There’s a common misconception about perfectionism making someone flawless. Mine doesn’t do that at all. My perfectionism is the devastating disappointment I feel when I don’t accomplish what I’ve decided I should. My perfectionism is my refusal to write in pen when completing assignments, the ulcer that developed after my first semester of college, and the dark bags that exist semi-permanently under my eyes. My perfectionism is the way I counted calories for months, but stopped when I decided that eating a nutritious diet was more important to an impeccable life than knowing how many calories are in an apple (ninety-five). My perfectionism became the pedometer strapped tightly around my wrist, constantly reminding me of how much exercise I had gotten that day and how much time was left for me to do more.

My sister expressed her perfectionism with much more impressive outlets. She had a perfect grade point average, a resumé that took up over three pages single spaced, and had enough scholarships that her PhD program was paying her to attend. If you didn’t hear her anxious sobbing at night, you might be fooled into believing the idealistic image that she projected.

My mother was affected as well, but she kept it under control better than I ever could. It had taken me eighteen years of my own neuroticism to recognize that the lipstick she hastily applied before her pre-dawn coffee run was masking lips tired from smiling all the time, and that she cooked dinner every night so that she could measure out her own carefully controlled portion.

My sister wore her expectations like the tassel hanging limply from her graduation cap. My mother painted her impossibly high standards on her face in gaudy hues. I fastened mine around my wrist.

On one of the rare occasions where my sister allowed herself to relax, she and I decided to watch television. We were flicking through channels when we found a documentary on a woman living with agoraphobia. Probably in an attempt to convince ourselves that we were normal, she and I watched the entirety of the film in fascinated silence.

The woman panicked even when she was opening the door to leave her home. She talked about feeling trapped, not by the four walls enclosing her and the restrictions she had placed upon herself, but by the boundless freedom outside. There was too much space, too much room, too much uncertainty.

When it was over, my sister stood and stretched. The hollow strip of skin exposed under her shirt reminded me that I had just spent over an hour sitting sedentary and needed to work out. For a moment, anxiety pulsed in my body like a heartbeat. I checked my watch and saw that I still had plenty of time, and I released the breath I did not even realize I was holding.

“That was so stupid,” my sister decided. “No one’s afraid of freedom.”

“You’re right. She’s probably just looking for attention.”

A week or two later, my pedometer died.

I was in the middle of a long run, 3.63 miles in, and the screen went blank. I slowed to a stop and stared for a moment incredulously. The wind pushed into me impatiently, demanding that I keep moving. But how could I, when I didn’t even know how far I could go. My life was measureless. I felt myself shrinking back inside of my body, unwilling to take a step further, because it was all too… free. How would I know if I had done enough exercise that day if I didn’t even know how much exercise I had done?

I trudged back home, each step pointless without something with which I could measure it. I loosened the watch and removed it, thrust it into my pocket, and suddenly my wrist seemed very bare. There was a tan line where the watch had been, a thin stripe going from golden brown to startling white. It reminded me of the summer days spent running, or biking, or making up excuses for why I couldn’t go out for ice cream with my friends.

The cool air felt good on my body. I paid more attention to the trees changing color when I walked instead of running, to the way that my footsteps struck the leaves on the sidewalk like thunder, how the clouds drifted lazily from one side of the sky to the next.

When I got back I thought about sucking down a protein shake. But I couldn’t shake the memory of missed ice cream sundaes from my thoughts, so I walked into the kitchen, a rebellious thrill pumping through my body. I reminded myself that these were my rules, so I wasn’t technically breaking them—just amending.

My brother was sitting at the table, eyes trained on his phone. I expected him to comment on how different and calm I seemed, but he didn’t even lift his head, he was so focused intently on what was in front of him. I deflated slightly, but the thought of eating what I wanted kept me moving towards the fridge. It was full of fruit and vegetables. That was the only snack that my mother and I bought while grocery shopping. But I knew in the back there was a secret stash of chocolates, something my mother had bought during a particularly stressful month and hadn’t touched. She had needed the reassurance that she was, at least, good at controlling herself.

I pushed aside cartons of sickly sweet berries and wilting lettuce. There they were: a crooked stack of three small chocolates, wrapped in shiny purple foil. They looked out of place amongst the produce, like coal wrapped in pretty paper. But I took all three and closed the refrigerator door.

My brother lifted his head, and I waited proudly and expectantly for him to comment his approval on the progress I had made.

“Hey,” he said, glancing down at his phone and back at me. His eyes were distant, almost glazed. “Do you know how many calories are in an apple?”

<< The Boy Who Loved to Dance 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Bones >>

Melissa Paravati is a junior at SUNY Geneseo, from New Hartford, New York, studying early childhood education and English. This is her first publication. Melissa is the National Communication Coordinator for Inter-Residence Council, an active member of the National Residence Hall Honorary, a Resident Assistant, a tutor for Perry Literacy Center, and a Zumba instructor. She would get along swimmingly with Hermione Granger.

Comments Off on Melissa Paravati

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | · 11:12 am

Allison Geise

Bones

2,072 miles

When I leave White Plains, the humid air is so thick that the sky is blurry. I don’t know where I’m going.

1,977

There’s an accident in Yonkers. I’m stuck in traffic for an hour.

1,706

It’s getting dark. I’m at one of those super rest stops with a McDonald’s. I mean, I guess I’ve traveled through a lot of states, but at the same time all I know of them are places like these. Nobody wants to stop here, after all.

1,499

I got one of those double espressos from Starbucks, and I am practically vibrating. It’s almost ten. Seventy miles an hour doesn’t feel fast enough. I feel nauseous. I feel dizzy, but not in the usual way, not from the vertigo attacks. I imagine that ghosts are walking in the great blue yonder on the side of the road. He never made it to his brother’s. He got as far as Tennessee before the cancer caught up with him and his lungs inflated with fluid.

I wonder if he’s with them now.

1,300

Somewhere on the side of the road, I stop for the night. I have never seen night this heavy. I lay on the hood of my car—all the while the engine pinging as it cools—and look up at the stars. I don’t know if I will sleep, but I know I will feel more comfortable in the car than in some dive motel.

I have never been so consumed in my life. The sky might just crush me.

987

I stop at some run-down diner for some real food. It’s quiet, nothing but a few truckers, a family, and me. My waitress is chatty. She asks me where I’m from. I’m too tired to explain. I say nowhere in particular.

“Well, ya’ll have to be careful out here, all alone. These hitchhikers can be crazy. One day, you might just disappear. And the people won’t even wonder.”

She’s right, but the thought terrifies me anyway.

635

I’m getting gas at a Texaco when I see it; a family, in a blue minivan, also getting gas. The mom pumps while the dad brings the kids inside for a potty break. They emerge with snacks and slushies in hand, all of them holding hands in a line. One of the kids is crying, which makes me glad that I can’t hear. Then something shifts. I can feel their panic simmering through the air. The line jerks in my hand—the tank is full. One of the kids is missing.

A teenage boy with red hair like his comes out of the station dragging the missing kid by the hand. The parents wring his arm over and over, thanking him, you saved my baby, my baby …

My heart stops and I sit on the curb, breathing hard with my head between my knees until another car honks for my spot. I’m almost there. I can feel it in my spine.

341

I stop on the side of the road to pee and suddenly he’s there, almost like he was never gone in the first place. Why are you here? he seems to say. I wonder if I’ve gone crazy. Too little sleep, too much caffeine, low blood sugar. Something. Of all the ghosts you have, why me, Aaron? Go home. Nobody said you had to live for me.

I’m not sure if I’m really hallucinating, or if I’m just pretending for my own sake. It’s desert out here, in the deep South; it could be a mirage. I rub my eyes. It’s not him, it’s a hitchhiker, a woman. Her hair is black, not red.

“It’s okay. I see them too sometimes,” she says to me, and keeps walking.

166

It’s very early. I am dirty, greasy. How long has it been at this point? The map says I’m where I should be. All that’s out here is sand and the occasional one pump gas station. I’m woozy thinking about it. Even with the AC on full, I’m sweating, almost feverish. In the rearview mirror, I can see him following me. I knew he wouldn’t understand. I have to know what is out here that was worth throwing everything away.

120

On the state border to New Mexico I make the mistake of turning on my phone. I told them that I was going, and not to worry, but still my phone explodes with messages, especially from my dad, and from Luke, my best friend. I tell them I’m fine and shut my phone again.

“Stop lying to them,” he says.

He startles me so badly that I drop my phone. I’m hard of hearing but I can hear his voice perfectly. I almost forgot.

My phone screen shatters on the hard-packed dust. I think about responding to him, but I don’t.

“You went to all this trouble to dig me up again,” he says. He leans against the car. “And now you won’t even talk to me.”

My eyes smart from the dust. I stoop to pick up the phone. The yellow dust is ground into the gaps between cracks. I open the car door.

“All right. Well, I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

The whole way down my eyes won’t stop watering, like a bucket dragged from the well again and again.

52

Without warning my car breaks down. I have been on empty highway for hours. The only thing telling me I’ve gone anywhere at all is the odometer. I keep turning the key but the engine won’t start. The little angry red light flashes at me—oil, oil. I passed a sign a while back telling me that the nearest town was ten miles. My phone is busted, and even if it weren’t I doubt there would be reception.

I reach into the back of the car, find the mostly-full gallon jug of water, and start walking.

50

It’s so hot. I have no idea what time it is, but it can’t be much later than 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. I’m sweating buckets and can feel the sunburn chafing already. I hate myself. I hate everything. I hate that I let it get this bad, hate that I let him fuck me, hate that I allowed myself to fall in love until I drowned.

48?

I keep drinking water but I still feel woozy. Heat boils off the dirt. I have come all this way without a vertigo attack, but my luck has run out. Even so, this feels bigger than that.

I trip over something in the shoulder of the road and plant face-first in the dirt. One of my hearing aids is knocked loose. Dust swarms in my lungs; my heart rate picks up, just like the car’s torque had before the engine seized.

Am I going to die here?

I can’t catch my breath. The thing I tripped on rips into my shinbone, and I reach for it. It’s some creature’s skull, crumbly and flooded with tooth marks. I sob into the dirt. My tongue is streaked with blood; I must have bitten it. I watch red droplets fall and let my head down. I am so tired.

A hand strokes my hair. I know it’s him before he speaks. “Oh, Aaron,” he says. “Why did you do this to yourself?”

“I can’t let you go. I tried. But you won’t leave me alone.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I can’t even look at him. “Louis, I…”

“Please don’t follow me anymore, Aaron,” he says. “For your sake.”

My head is going to explode. I lean into the dirt. The sand floods my mouth and erodes me away.

?

Someone hoists my head up and feels for a pulse at my throat. It’s getting dark. They say something, but as usual I can’t hear. Sand coats my tongue and makes it hard to breathe, much less speak. All of my bones, every last one, have been wrenched out of place and pain flares through my body. A flashlight clicks on and scorches my eyes. They say something again.

“I can’t hear you,” I say. “I’m hard of hearing, I can’t…”

The light is pulled away from my face and moves to the left so I can see. It’s a cop, a trooper in a black and gray uniform.

“What are you doing out here?” the officer asks. “You’re lucky I spotted you. Another hour or two and you would have blended into the side of the road.”

I force myself to my knees. My vision is swirling, and I can barely read the cop’s lips.

“Do you need an ambulance?” she asks me.

“I feel…” I look over my shoulder. He’s gone; the skull I held is gone, too. The gallon jug of water I carried is split on its side mostly empty, evaporated into the ground. “I’m…My car broke, down, and I…I was walking to…”

<< Atelophobia

 

Allison Giese is a sophomore at SUNY New Paltz. She is currently studying English with a concentration in creative writing and theatre arts with a concentration in theatre studies. She has been writing the same novel for seven years and will probably continue writing it for the rest of eternity. On the side, she indulges in writing a lot of terrible fan fiction.

 

Comments Off on Allison Geise

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | April 29, 2015 · 11:47 am

Keara Hagerty

Mr. Davey, President of The World

There was a long dirt road that fell parallel to the edge of the farm. Neither his father nor his mother ever used it as it was the service road, designated for the farm hands and infrequent deliveries made to their house. The road was the closest thing to the outside world Davey could see from the sprawling acres and he watched it with fervor from the backyard in the sun and from the covered porch in the rain. His mother suffered from nervousness and so she spent the majority of her time watching Davey watch the road, calling from inside the house if he ventured past the fence and into the cow field. This was the farthest he could go while her eyes bore on him. The farm was in a secluded patch of Wyoming, too far from any town and too far from the small school for the bus to reach. His mother homeschooled him, skipping over math, global studies, and language, spending hours on religion, reading from dusty books she kept locked in a cupboard next to the stairs, allowing Davey thirty minutes of free time while she took a nap on the sofa in the front room, as prescribed by the doctor.

“Matthew: 13.” His mother struck a match, letting the end of her cigarette burn, folding in on itself between her pink lips. Her blue eyes were intense and unblinking.

Davey looked around the room. When he was younger he had enjoyed the Bible, fascinated by the plagues, Moses, Eden, and Jesus. The years of memorization had taken the enjoyment out of the tales, which felt stale and robotic as he recited them.

“That’s the parable of the sower.”

“Good. Do you remember what it means?” Davey’s mother took a long sip of her iced tea, the glass fogging with the mixture of hot breath and ice.

Davey nodded. “A man’s reception of God’s Word is determined by the condition of his heart.”

“Amen. Now go play.”

Davey made his way up the steps to the porch, skipping over the last one, which had become rotten with water from the snow that past winter. His legs ached with puberty, growing so rapidly he half expected his bones to break through his skin. The house had fallen into disrepair in the last few years from a combination of the weather, money troubles, and his father’s frequent trips across state to look for better land. Davey remembered the hopeful conversations once tossed between his parents like coins in a well, plans to leave the farm in search of better land before the start of the next season, which came and went year in and year out. From his spot on the steps Davey watched the last farm hand, Trevor, feeding the cows at their bushel. They pushed with their noses, greedily lapping at the hay with purple tongues until he couldn’t tell one from the other.

The sun bore down enough to make the early spring air bearable and cast patches of warm greenery on the field beyond the dirt road. Twenty-six acres, only a third of which he had explored. From inside the house, Davey could hear his mother snoring sharply, as if someone had just surprised her. He walked to the edge of the fence before kicking off his brown leather shoes, knowing his mother would spy any dirt on them from a mile away. The ground was moist and dry all at the same time and Davey winced as he walked through the field, knowing that cow shit lurked beneath the milk thistles and grass. Halfway between the house and the road Davey turned around. He thought he heard his mother, but it was impossible to hear anything over the satisfied sounds of the cows feasting. He reached out to touch one of them as he walked past, the hide wincing as he brushed it. From behind the bushel Davey could hear someone coming. He crouched down until his small body was hidden amongst the herd, too busy to acknowledge his presence. Trevor set down two buckets of water next to the cow, only feet away from Davey.

“Move, go on,” Trevor called. “Let me get in here you fat heifers.” He tossed the water sloppily into the trough behind the hay, bits of water hitting Davey in the face. He knew Trevor would tell his mother where he had been; he took any excuse to talk to her. Davey would watch his eyes flit up and down his mother’s body until she excused herself from the conversation.

“Your mother is a fine lady, you hear me?” Trevor would say as he made his way back to the barn. “A real fine woman.” Davey knew his mother was a beautiful woman; her clear blue eyes and sunflower yellow hair had been the envy of all the women in the last town. She hadn’t wanted to move out to the farm when his father came back from the war, but there was no arguing with him—stoic and unnerving in his distance, they packed up and followed his dreams of isolation.

Davey waited until Trevor’s footsteps were too far to hear and he slowly began making his way toward the dirt road. The fence at the edge of the field was rusted and his shirt, a red and white striped crew neck, ripped at the seam as he crouched underneath it.

“Shit.” Davey sucked in his breath quickly, sure that his mother, Jesus, and the rest of the God-fearing county of Washakie had heard him. If he turned around now he would have enough time to sneak back into the house and change before his mother awoke, but instead he passed under the fence and onto the road. The dirt felt velvety under his feet and Davey marveled at how narrow the road looked close up, how small his house looked from where he stood now. There were only a few feet between him and the edge of the woods and so he walked toward them, cautiously at first, but then quickly, as if they were calling to him.

He had only been walking for what felt like a second when he stopped to look around. On all sides and in every direction thick masses of trees surrounded him. The path from the road had disappeared behind the leaves, and the footprints indented in the ground moss had inflated again, leaving him motionless and utterly lost.

“Hello?” Davey called. Somewhere in the distance a bird chirped and fluttered from branch to branch, its blue wings splattered like paint against the trees. He tried to calculate how long he had been gone—ten minutes? An hour? The sun was still casting small patches of light through the canopy of green and so Davey figured it couldn’t have been that long, at least he hoped. From the corner of his eye, Davey spotted what looked like a house in the distance. It was partially covered with vines that twisted around the roof and through the crumbling chimney, thick and knotted. He thought it might be a lodge for hikers that often came through the county on their way to the Continental Divide Trail, a famous route that even the most geographically ignorant were taught about. It reminded him of his house, with its sunken steps and chipped paint. Davey walked up to the porch and stopped, listening for the sounds of the house’s inhabitants—people or animals.

It was only silence that greeted Davey, and he knocked on the door for good measure before turning the knob and opening it.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Davey surveyed the room—a small coal-burning oven, a couple of pots and pans, a sturdy set of bunk beds stripped down to the wood. Bottles of every shape, size, and color hung suspended by rope from the rafters, clinking gently against one another in the breeze.

“What are you doing in here?” The voice was old and hoarse, and through the muddled clinking of the bottles he thought he recognized it. Davey froze, paralyzed by thoughts of his father finding him in the middle of the woods without explanation; his ass clenched instinctively, readying itself for the belt. Davey could only remember a couple instances in which his father’s belt had been fully removed—when he forgot to latch the chicken coop and three of the largest hens were ripped to shreds by the neighboring fox, and when Davey had called his mother a bitch just loudly enough that his father, passing through the kitchen, heard him—although his mother had not. Mostly it was unbuckled and pulled out far enough to strike fear into Davey that struck harder than the leather against skin.

“I’m sorry. I was walking and I got lost,” Davey stumbled over his words. “I thought someone might be in here.”

“I’m someone.” The man moved close enough so Davey could smell alcohol on his breath, “Don’t I look like a goddamned someone to you, kid?”

“Yes sir, I’m sorry.” The sun was setting outside and Davey knew he only had twenty minutes, tops, before it was pitch black. “I’ll just go now.”

“Whoa, whoa there.” The man grabbed Davey by the shoulder. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you scared?”

Davey wanted nothing more than to be nose deep in the Bible, vowing to never cross that road again. “No.” Before his father had gone off to “fight the good fight,” as he called it, he took Davey aside and told him one thing: a man has nothing to fear but what lies inside of him.

“Good.” The man pulled a chair out from the small table pushed in the corner and motioned for him to sit. “It’s just, I don’t usually have company and I like a little time to prepare. Tidy up, cook a seven course meal, maybe shave if I’m entertaining ladies.” He grabbed two beers from a cooler. “But there ain’t no ladies as far as I can see.” The man cracked one open and set the other down in front of Davey. It was the same brand his father drank; Davey recognized it from the small rounded bottle and red and white striped label. He used to peel them off from the dozens he would find strewn around the garage.

“Go on, have some.” The man popped off the cap and pushed it closer. “What, your old man never give you a beer?”

Davey shook his head.

“That’s a damn shame. What’s your name anyway?”

Davey took a sip. The taste of it—bitter and metallic—took him by surprise and he struggled to swallow it, choking on the last few drops. “Davey.”

“Well, Davey, did anyone ever tell you that you look just like John F. Kennedy?”

Davey shook his head. He had seen some of the young politician’s inaugural speech with his mother who, after much pleading on his part, allowed him to watch the history unfold on their small black and white television. Davey had watched her usual tight-lipped expression soften as the speech began, unable to hide her fascination and, he suspected, desire for the leader. She was captivated by his dark hair, chiseled jaw, and baby blue eyes as all women were; he was captivated by his voice: strong, respectful, and mesmerizing.

“Ask not what your country can do for you,” Davey spoke slowly, careful to correctly recite the quote that had stuck with him, “ask what you can do for your country.”

“He speaks!” The man took a cigarette out and stuck it between his two front teeth, yellowing and chipped.

“What’s your name?” Davey asked. The man recoiled at the question and Davey felt a pang of fear run through his chest.

“Name…name…” He pulled at his long, graying beard. “Well, I can’t for the life of me remember my real name, kid, but you can call me Randall. That was my brother’s name. Good man.”

“What are you doing here? I mean, in this cabin?” Davey asked.

“Hitchin’ my way over to Cali-for-nia.” The word poured smoothly out of Randall’s mouth and Davey could almost feel the warmth of the West Coast sun pouring down upon him.

“Caught the freight up this far before the conductor started doin’ night checks.” Night. Davey looked outside the small scratched window, the trees casting dark shadows on one another.

“Could you point me toward Route 6, sir?” Davey followed Randall out into the woods that darkened slightly, colder without the patches of sun. They walked together for a while in silence when they came to the edge of the trees and the start of the road. Davey stopped and watched Randall walk back towards his house, his gray beard the last thing to disappear in the early evening haze. As he came closer to the house, he could see soft yellow light cascading through the windows, the silhouette of his mother in the kitchen preparing dinner. Davey could feel his heart attempting to escape his chest as he made his way to the door. Imagined fury in his mother’s eyes would burn like two spotlights as she heard the door close and her jaw would clench when she saw the giant rip in his shirt and mud on his feet. Davey looked down—he had forgotten his shoes back at the fence, but it had started to rain and they wouldn’t help him now.

“There’s cornbread in the oven, could you grab it?” Davey’s mother leaned over a vat of steaming broth, mixing lumps of indistinguishable ingredients further into the milky liquid. She didn’t look up at Davey whose feet tracked a line of dirt across the floor as he walked toward the stove. A gust of heat hit him, prickling his cheeks and making his skin itch.

His mother filled two glasses with milk and set down a beer in front of his father’s place. She must have been ignoring his absence, not wanting to address the issue while his father was home. Davey knew his father would find a way to blame his mother as he always did. When he was younger their love was obvious, open, and enormous. Pet names for his mother and lingering embraces passed between them like steam. It was obvious to Davey even as a twelve year old that there was something gone between them; the conversations that once hummed in the dead of night were now shouting matches that lasted until his mother had to retire. The three sat in silence at the table. His mother watched his father eat, inhaling food between swigs of beer.

“So, Pop, you think we’ll move any time soon?”

“Don’t be a fool, boy,” his father grunted. “We’re never getting out of here.”

Davey’s throat lurched. Never. Davey thought of himself as an old man, still reciting parables and sitting on the porch in the afternoon, looking out over the trees rooted in the ground—still freer than him. Suddenly his fork felt like lead in his hand and he let it drop to the floor before pushing away from the table in silence.

From his bedroom, Davey could hear his mother trying to sway attention away from his exit. “Davey is really getting good at reciting the parables, Peter.” Her voice jumped an octave—whether out of fear or excitement Davey couldn’t tell. “Basically has all of them memorized.” She picked up her fork, taking small bites from her plate, which seemed to be eternally full. His father grunted before making his way out to the garage for the remainder of the evening.

That night, Davey lay awake in bed dreading the next morning when he would surely meet his fate. His mother woke him at six with two poached eggs and black coffee. It was the only vice she allowed him and he clung to it, draining the cup within minutes as she took drags on a Marlboro—the first of many. As promised, they continued where they had left off but his fate had yet to arrive. The day crept on until his mother lay down for her nap so seamlessly, he was unsure if she had ever awoken.

The walk to the road felt shorter than before and Davey curtailed around the cows gathered by the hay, picking up his shoes, caked with mud and shit around the edges. He walked aimlessly, letting the trees guide him.

1 2 >

<< Galatea in Blue  A Drop Left >>

Comments Off on Keara Hagerty

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,

by | · 11:47 am

Sarah Hopkins

Galatea in Blue

Elsie, on the beach, in a plastic yellow raincoat, soaked in salt water. Arms spread out, face turned toward the pale sun. I can see myself writing it. Sitting with my computer in bed, at work, or in the coffee shop down the street. Her paper skin. Her inky blood. Her curling, adolescent blue hair, bluer than the dreary sky, bluer than the slate gray ocean before her.

“Else!” I call out to her. I’m leaning against the hood of my car, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “We should get back—I can see lightning!”

And I can. When she turns around and looks at me, I can see it in the space behind her eyes. She kicks up wet sand around her.

“Well, I don’t hear anything,” she teases as her hair blows out in front of her, her wet ponytail tangling and whipping around in the salt breeze. The front of her white dress is soaked through and I can see her neon green bra, her soft stomach.

It is all a mistake, really. It is always a mistake to do what Elsie wants. Things like that get people like me in trouble. When I woke up to a text message from her begging me to pull her out of class, I should not have listened. After all, I had been Elsie-free for a month and change. I should not have called in sick to work. I should not have gone to pick her up at her high school, if only to see her run out the front doors looking almost like she’s happy to see me. I should have deleted her name from my phone and rolled over and gone back to sleep and never thought of her again.

But I am too much of an idiot for that. And by ‘that,’ of course, I mean ‘Elsie.’

“I should take you back to school,” I say as we climb back in the car. Rain pounds down on the windshield like a drum. “Don’t you have SATs to study for or something? They must be coming up for you.”

Elsie pinches the front of her wet dress with both hands, looking down through it, and she shakes her head. “I think this violates the dress code. Come on, let’s do something fun! You never want to do anything fun with me.”

“I should just take you home,” I admit, turning the key in the ignition. The engine stutters for a moment before the beat-up minivan comes back to life.

“My mom’ll kill me if I come home early looking like this,” Elsie whines, hugging her knees to her chest. “She’ll scream her head off, David, doesn’t that make you sad for me?”

In truth, I’m happy that she’s putting up such a fight. I hate to be apart from Elsie, but I also hate having to initiate any interaction with her. It always seems wrong, like seeing a raccoon in the daytime. Fortunately, Elsie is the type who will often show up at one’s doorstep unbidden. She’s so bright-eyed and innocent. I shouldn’t interrupt that.

“Well,” I say, chewing my lip for a moment. I don’t want to let her go. I have gotten into the habit of milking everything I can out of an Elsie day. “I guess we could just go get something to eat.”

Her smile is twisty and young. Her teeth are crooked with a little gap up front, but white and charming. Her wet hair sticks to the back of her neck, brown roots growing long through the blue, down to her ears. The windows match the drapes. Her eyes are brown too. Her spindly fingers with their chipped black nail polish button up the front of her raincoat to conceal her wet dress.

I pull up to a diner and she tumbles out of the car before I can go to open the door for her. I hope the other patrons will think that I’m her older brother. Or, I don’t know, her dad’s friend or something. It’s always hard to go out with Elsie, to feel so many eyes boring into the back of my neck.

“We should go to the mall later,” she says over pickles and coleslaw. “Some of the guys want to meet you. And then maybe we can do something else after that. And I need you to buy me a new bowl.”

“What happened to your old one?” I ask, wanting to know what had become of my previous investment.

She laughs and goes on to tell a story about some person named “Bones.” I can’t remember who Bones is, really, but I know he’s a member of Elsie’s ever-increasing cast of characters. She’s behaving as though I know him. She’s probably introduced me to him once, pulled poor Bones to the side of a party or a concert or a rave to meet her famous friend. He might be tall, with black hair and even blacker lipstick. Or he could be the one with the bike leathers and the crossed-out tattoo of his ex’s face on his shoulder blade. They both seem like they could maybe be called “Bones.”

“They love your book,” Elsie says. A lot of people love my book. It doesn’t mean they understand it.

“Who? Bones?”

She laughs and replies, “No, the guys we’re meeting at the mall. Seth and Rainbow and Tyler and all them. They think you’re like William fucking Burroughs or something. It’s kind of hilarious.”

I grin at my waffles and demur, saying, “Well, that’s flattering. I’d rather be Jack fucking Kerouac though.”

“Rainbow wants to get you to sign her arm. Then she’s gonna tattoo it. She’s got a collection. She’s got all sorts of people.”

“People?”

“Autographs.”

“Oh.”

Elsie laughs again, putting her tongue between her teeth. “She like, jizzed herself when I told her I knew you.”

I want to ask her if that was why she had called me this morning, after nearly a month and a half of silence. So that her friends could get my autograph. I don’t say anything. I just tip the waitress a little less. It doesn’t make me feel any better, but I suppose it was worth a try. Sometimes you have to communicate frustration. But other times, in my opinion, it is more helpful to simply punish the universe around you for the crime of being unhelpful. Unentertaining. Unfulfilling. Get the sunlight to bend toward you instead of having to twist yourself toward it.

The fat waitress waves us off as we head back to my car. Elsie gets in front of me, walking backwards over the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. She squints at my stormy expression.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

I skirt around her to unlock my door. “Your friends won’t like me,” I say. I know I’m falling back on my bad habit of self-pity, but I can’t help myself. “I’m not who they think I am. I haven’t written anything good since I was like, twenty. I’m a one-hit wonder.” If I actually put out what was in my head, they wouldn’t even understand it. My mind is a labyrinth, a puzzle box that not even I have the power to solve. No one could even imagine the complexity I possess.

“Oh my God, suck it up,” she says, laughing at my expense. “You sound like such a pussy.”

“I am a pussy,” I reply, and I smile in spite of myself.

We don’t talk much on the way to the mall. She puts her feet up on my dashboard, and I see that she has drawn all over her faded red sneakers with a ballpoint pen.

She’s just a kid.

“What a gross day,” Elsie says. “It was so sunny this morning, too, that’s why I wanted to go down to the shore. Augh, look at the sky.”

I simply nod in response. I don’t look at the sky. I look at the road ahead. It’s getting congested—a mixture of bad weather and the prelude to rush hour. I wish I had stayed in bed for a moment, but Elsie’s presence beside me is comforting. Even though I could never reach across to hold her hand, the physical possibility of interaction with her is good enough.

Elsie’s friends are waiting for us in front of the mall’s movie theatre, right near where we first met each other. The memory makes me smile.

A movie theatre is a temple. It is where we all gather to hold hands and examine our place in the universe. And it is where I go to sleep. My whole life, I’ve never been able to sleep without the television on, and for a long time after they turned my magnum opus into some god-awful romantic comedy, I found myself falling asleep in the back of movie theatres as well. It was like being hypnotized out of hysteria, it was like crying on the subway, it was sleep-catharsis. To say the least, it was a bad habit.

And a gateway drug to Elsie.

I had fallen asleep during an anniversary screening of Pretty Woman. I remember her thin, pale hand reaching down to my shoulder and shaking me.

Hey, wake up.

I wondered why she was alone too. Why she was like me. Like a teenaged version of myself that was somehow not horribly depressing. Or horribly embarrassing. I stammered out an apology and she said I could repay her by giving her a ride home. Her father was a cop and he was dead and her mother was a bitch and she was still at work.

I decided to repay her off-putting honesty with a truth of my own. I told her who I was, and she wrote my number on her arm with a pen that she borrowed from me. I hate those numbers. I hate that pen. I love that arm.

One of Elsie’s friends—the short one—scratches his own arm and throws his cigarette to the ground. The girl with red hair grinds it under her toes. The tall one is holding an umbrella.

Elsie introduces us.

The tall one is Seth. The girl is Rainbow. The short one is Tyler. I am David Fallow.

Nice to meet me.

“I can’t believe this!” Rainbow says as we get inside. The mall, a relic from the eighties, is mostly empty of people, even though it’s a stormy day. It’s made of concrete and dirt and linoleum, and it smells like perfume and sweat. “I’ve wanted to meet you like my whole life. I thought you would be older, I don’t know why. Maybe ’cause you wrote a whole book.”

I am old. Too old, that is.

Rainbow is much fatter than I anticipated, not as alluring as the girl that my mind had conjured up: the rainbow spirit who was lithe-limbed and rosy, with a sleeve of names on her arm. The kind of girl I imagined hung out with Elsie.

“I’m, uh, twenty-seven. I wrote the book when I was just a little older than you, actually. That’s probably why I’ve retained my, er, youthful glow.”

Rainbow laughs. Elsie doesn’t. She’s heard this joke before. And she’s never even read my book. I wouldn’t want her to, anyway.

Elsie is someone to be written about, not someone who should read.

“So what are you working on right now?” Seth asks eagerly. “Is it another book?”

Yes and no. I tend to think of all my interactions with Elsie as “working on another book.” But I haven’t managed to get much on paper.

“I’m a staff writer for Ace Crime Bot. On NBC.”

I can see the excitement fade from Rainbow’s eyes. I’m not some Aspergian hipster god. I sold out. I’m just like all the rest of them. Fuck, I’m not even the show runner. I’m just a guy who sits with twelve other guys around a table, saying, “Maybe there should be more crimes.”

“Do you work in the city?” Tyler asks.

“…Long Island City, actually.”

It goes on that way for some hours, with them gradually becoming less and less interested in me until I fade into the background. At one point, Rainbow pulls up her sleeve to show off all the names written all over her arm like spider webs.

“Oh,” I say, looking at an autograph on her fat upper arm, pink and bumpy like chicken skin. “I like Zach Braff.”

“Yeah,” she says, the timbre of her voice becoming bored and far away. All right. I guess she’s bored with me. I’m bored with her too.

“So, uh, did you want me to sign it?” I ask, unsure of how she wanted to go about the situation.

She shrugs, which is not very flattering, and says, “Yeah, whatever. Probably later.”

Elsie tries on a dress made of blue lace, like her hair. We all admire how it hugs to her slim, perfect body. The sheer sleeves, the gold zipper. One of her red tennis shoes turns in toward the other as she grins at her reflection in the mirror. I watch her soft white hands smooth down her front. She’s probably imagining herself older, at a grown-up party, with a glass of wine in hand. She’s being hugged to the side of someone smart and attractive. Laughing at his stories. Smiling and listening to what he has to say. Turning her head intimately toward his ear. Everyone else looking at him and envying the smartly-dressed young woman on his arm. Oh, this is Elsie Pierglass. Isn’t she charming? Even more charming behind closed doors.

“It’s too bad that it’s so much money,” Rainbow says. “This is why you can’t try on shit that’s over a hundred.”

Elsie nods, saying, “I know,” before biting her bottom lip and retreating back into the dressing room. I stand by a display of half-off tees and watch the gap between the door and the carpet. Her small socked feet slip out of her shoes and the dress slides down her body and then her legs before she has to bend and reach a slender, bare arm toward the ground to pick it up again. I set my teeth.

“Shit,” I say as we are leaving the store a few minutes later. “I left my keys in there. You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up with you in a second.”

Elsie waves me off as Tyler and Seth collectively shrug. They don’t even notice that I have another shopping bag with me when I catch up with them fifteen minutes later.

I go back and forth over when the best time to give her the dress would be, but I figure that I should do it when we are alone.

That’s more special.

“All right,” Elsie says, patting my arm and disturbing my train of thought. “Well, I’ll see you around, David!”

“Wait, you’re going off with them?” I say, and I take a half step toward her. I realize that I’m leaning over her slightly, but that’s probably just because of our height difference. “You don’t want me to give you a ride?”

Rainbow frowns. I realize that she has never actually asked me to sign her arm.

“I’m fine,” Elsie says. She reaches forward to pat my arm, like she’s calming down a wild animal. “Seth has a car. So I’m gonna go.”

“I, uh, wanted to drive you home, that’s all. I just…’cause I have a surprise for you.”

“Well, what is it?” Elsie asks, grinning.

Rainbow rolls her eyes and says, “We’ll just meet you in the car, Else.” She and the two boys make a quick exit. Elsie turns to me, her eyebrows raised.

I hold the bag out to her and she takes the paper loops in both her hands, looking inside.

“…Oh,” she says. I had expected her to pull out the dress and twirl around with it hugging the front of her body. Instead she closes the bag and looks up with the sort of sad smile that goes right through me. “Oh, David. You didn’t have to…you really didn’t have to do this. Um, why did you do this?”

“You just, I saw that you liked it so much, but you couldn’t, um, afford it. So I bought it for you. It’s not a big deal for me, or anything. It’s yours. That dress belongs to you, it really does. I didn’t want anyone else to, er, to have it.”

“Oh, cool. That’s…that’s very nice of you. I’ll, uh, see you around, Dave.”

I say goodbye to the back of her head.

1 2 >

<< The Ballad of Summer '72  Mr. Davey, President of the World >>

Comments Off on Sarah Hopkins

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as , ,

by | · 11:45 am

Margaret Thon

The Ballad of Summer ’72

Dewey met Dawn exactly one month after he became a graduate of Coburg High School and exactly two weeks after becoming a full time employee of the creamery in Springfield.

She rolled into town with suede boots up to her knees, shorts up to her belly button, and a white collared blouse tucked neatly in. His best friend Peter hadn’t warned him about her arrival. Why would he? She was Peter’s cousin from Seattle and her divorcing parents wanted her to spend time in the Oregon countryside for the summer, away from the city, away from the mess of ending a twenty-year marriage. The city burst from her like her round breasts burst out between the buttons of her blouse. That first day, Dewey sat on Peter’s orange loveseat, and listened to her sing-song voice jabber away about everything he had never heard about before in Coburg.

“Have you listened to the new Pink Floyd album yet?” Dawn asked. Dewey knew the band, but didn’t care to keep up with their album releases. Music didn’t really interest him all that much. “Oh come on, man, you’ve got to! It’s gotta be their best one yet!” She released an exasperated breath. Her teeth were so straight, and her pale thighs were porcelain against the eggplant armchair. Dewey wished he had changed from his work boots and sweat-stiff T-shirt before coming over to Peter’s house. He searched his brain, desperately trying to think of something interesting to say to Dawn.

“I work at a creamery. We make yogurt.” The words tumbled from his mouth, having nothing to do with the latest music trends, and causing heat to rush from his toes to his eyebrows.

“Nice one, tomato face,” Peter whispered low enough for only Dewey to hear.

“Ooooooh.” Dawn opened her eyes wide. “That is so awesome. I love yogurt. Seriously, it seems like that’s all I eat now. I’ve been a vegetarian for two weeks. I read some article in Mother Earth News and it talked about all the shit meat production does to the environment and all the people who are starving that could be fed using the land we keep cattle on.”

Dewey ran his fingers nervously through his greasy brown hair—he didn’t know how to respond. How was she filled with so much knowledge? He felt like he knew so little.

“Yeah, yeah, I thought about doing that once,” Dewey lied.

“No, you have NOT, you had a triple-dog-hot-dog at dinner last night.” Peter ratted Dewey out.

Dawn just smiled, ignoring her cousin. “Well, I could give you some pointers if you wanted to try again.”

Dewey realized she was the kind of girl who always knew what to say.

“I’d like that.” His green eyes locked with her brown ones, and Dewey swore they could hear his heart beating all the way to the silent monasteries of India.

“So what’re you boys doing tomorrow night? It is Saturday, after all.” Dawn raised her eyebrows mischievously.

“Uh, drinking some beers. Maybe having a fire out back by the barn,” Peter responded. Dewey and Peter had been taking every chance they got to enjoy the summer—the risk of getting drafted was always in the back of Dewey’s mind, but never discussed. Dewey felt as if they had an unspoken agreement; if one of them got sent, the other would go too. That was just the kind of friends they were.

“Fire, yes. Beers, nah. I’ve got a better idea.”

The first time Dawn kissed Dewey, he was high on her Seattle peyote, and the willow tree he was standing under looked like it was part of a comic book. His fingers tangled themselves desperately in her blonde ponytail, each individual strand becoming its own spaghetti entity on his sweaty skin. His eyes widened as her cubic face moved toward him and her pillow lips grazed his sandpaper ones. A few feet away, the fire crackled to the beat of Dewey’s heart, and Peter was staring at the ground, captivated by the movement of his tennis shoe in the dirt.

“I like you, Dewey, even though you’ve got a silly name. It’s like a nickname you’d give your friend who is always doing something. Or do you just have a perpetual sheen of morning dew on you?” Dawn’s words sounded mish-mashed to Dewey, and the flames of the fire framed her body, creating a soft cocoon around her and making her pale skin glow.

“It’s my grandpa’s name, and I like you too, Dawn.” This time Dewey glued his lips to hers, wishing the adhesive was permanent. Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was Jimi Hendrix’s staticky solo on the transistor radio in the background, but in that moment Dewey knew Dawn Montgomery was definitely going to be his girl.

Every day after work, Dewey would speed to Peter’s house on his bicycle, straight out of the city of Springfield and into Coburg’s rolling fields of corn and looming red silos reaching for the sky. He would run into Peter’s house to call his grandma and tell her he would be home late. His fingertips still ripe with the scent of sour milk, he would walk hand in hand with Dawn, around the quaint dairy farm. They never had a destination, until the day they found the small knoll in the woods behind the barn. They would lay down, letting the sun warm their bodies and the grass tickle them through their shirts, their hands always finding the neck or arm or thigh of the other. The sugary aroma of the flowers filled their nostrils and the KWRS station on Dawn’s radio whispered tunes that Dewey had never heard.

Dewey couldn’t get enough of talking to Dawn. Words flowed from his mouth as easily as the honey yogurt at the creamery stirred in the big silver vat. She told him she wanted to go to college after she graduated next year, and he told her about his dream to partner up with Peter and make the dairy farm into a state-wide business. Her nose scrunched at their plan—he should go to school and get a business degree, plus the farm was way better off staying local and homegrown, she said. Dewey shrugged it off, telling her that he had known since the sixth grade that college wasn’t for him. His grandma barely made enough money as a secretary to support the two of them, even with his full-time job, let alone pay for school. Dawn suggested he pick up more hours and save, and then they could go to Oregon State together in a year. He nodded, even though he knew he would never be smart enough to get in.

Nonetheless, on the Monday following the conversation about their futures, Dewey walked into the creamery with a mission. As he entered the cool building, the early August sweat on his face began to dry. He mazed his way through the stainless steel mixers, the refrigeration systems, and his coworkers before arriving at his labeling station. He straightened the pile of white labels with maroon print and immediately began gluing them to the plastic cups.

“Off to an early start this morning, Dewey.” The shift manager placed his hand on Dewey’s shoulder.

“Hey, Mr. Brown, I was wondering if I could pick up a few shifts here or there? I’m trying to save.” Dewey looked up eagerly at his six-foot-three manager.

“I don’t know, Dewey. You already work forty hour weeks,” Mr. Brown said. Dewey picked at the pile of labels in front of him.

“Please.” Dewey could only think about Dawn—and her hopes for him.

“You didn’t hear this from me, but the creamery isn’t doing so well. We’re deciding who to let off—you being a new employee isn’t really in your favor right now, Dewey.”

“What can I do?” Dewey asked. He would have to start looking for a second job tomorrow. Maybe Peter’s dad would hire him part time; he could do odd jobs around the farm.

“Actually, maybe there is something you can do. There’s a big band coming to town. The owners know them, I guess, and they’re coming here to play a benefit. They’ve got a huge following or something. Said they want to help save a local business—it’s what they stand for or something. Anyway, tell your friends, and buy some tickets. This is really the creamery’s last chance.”

“I’ll take three.”

The first time Dewey brought Dawn home to meet his grandmother, he was even more nervous than when he was a participant in Coburg’s fifth annual third grade spelling bee. He was hoping this case of the nerves wouldn’t impact him as much as when he was eight, as he had had to run out the gym and throw up in the bathroom before he had even spelled out one word.

Dewey tried to squash the churning in his stomach with his fist as he walked into the living room. He had already put away his blanket and pillow—he didn’t want Dawn to know his bedroom was their living room as well. Dewey had already told Dawn about his house but she hadn’t actually faced the situation yet. The once fluffed brown carpet was worn down flat, the upholstery on the chair and couch was frayed, and their small kitchen was littered with pill bottles—evidence of his grandma’s age. In her younger years, she had kept the house in tip-top shape, making its small size seem insignificant. Nowadays, his grandmother’s fading health and full-time job made housekeeping too large of a task at the end of the day. One day, Dewey knew he would buy his grandmother the nice home that she deserved to retire in, with floral furniture and a big window to set her chair by.

“When’s she getting here, Dewey?” His grandmother asked. “The chili’s going to get cold.” His grandmother’s opinion of Dawn was yet another worry of the night. He glanced out the window, his foot tapping repetitively on the floor.

“Soon, Grandma, soon. Be nice to her, okay? I really like this girl.”

“Really liking a girl at your age is trouble.” His grandma frowned. She had been strict with him growing up, but fair. She’d been stuck with him ever since his mom, her daughter, died in childbirth, and his dad skipped out of town a year later. Dewey knew he was lucky to have her. His hands flushed with sweat when he heard the doorbell ring. He leaped from the chair, wanting to get to the door before his grandma.

“Hey, Dawn!” He sounded overly enthused for having seen her only an hour before. She scrunched her eyebrows in a look that said he was acting weird.

“Hi, Mrs. Douglas, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Dewey has only ever had great things to say about you.” Dawn towered over his grandma as she hugged her.

His grandma put a hand to her chest, laughing, “Oh, now does he? I guess he failed to mention my reaction to the time the neighbors caught him leaving a paper bag of cow poo on their doorstep for the next innocent victim?”

“Did he really do that? What an awful child. He deserved every bit of punishment for that one.” Dawn laughed as Dewey’s grandma led her by the shoulders into the kitchen. Dawn turned her head back to Dewey, winked, and mouthed, “I got this.”

And for the rest of the night, Dawn did have it. He could barely get a word in edgewise while the two women in his life, old and new, chattered away.

“I don’t think I like them all that much,” Peter said, looking skeptically at the ticket before shoving it back into his pocket and picking up a rake.

“C’mon, you can’t miss out on these guys. They are so far out!” Dewey shoveled a pile of manure into the heaping wheelbarrow. Peter’s dad had agreed to hire him in the afternoons after all. It was the first time he had really hung out with Peter since Dawn had arrived.

“Dawn told you all that, didn’t she? You’ve never even listened to them, have you?” Peter asked.

“Well, not really. But they are cool. And this will help the creamery! C’mon, man, we’re like blood brothers and you need to help a brother out,” Dewey begged.

“I guess I owe them something for all the milk they supplied me in elementary school,” Peter said scratching his head. “I’ll go, but don’t expect me to stand around and watch you throw yourself at Dawn the whole time. She’s just a flirt, stringing you along for the summer.” Peter had stopped raking out the hay and grabbed Dewey’s shoulder.

“I just think she is so…perfect. I think she might be–”

Peter’s arm fell back to his side. “Shit, man. Don’t even say it. Dawn is not the girl you are going to marry. She’s here for the summer and that will be fun, but after that she’s off to senior year and then college. She’s always had big plans. Not to mention, she has plenty of dudes falling over her in Seattle, I’m sure. Ones that are going to be lawyers and doctors. Do I have to smack some sense into that thick tomato head?”

“We’ll be business men soon, Peter,” Dewey said.

“Are you stupid? That’s never going to happen, Dewey, that was just us kids talking. For all we know, we’re both going to get called up to Vietnam tomorrow. If not, well, I’m going to work on the farm until my dad’s back gives out for good, then I’ll take over completely. You, you’re going to work at the creamery, maybe move through the ranks to shift manager. We aren’t going anywhere, Dewey. Got it?”

Dewey nodded, but he didn’t get it. Peter’s words sounded to him like jealous slurs. Dewey knew that Peter was upset that he was spending so much time with Dawn, and so little with him. He was upset that Dewey’s life was coming together so quickly, and his was the one going nowhere. Dewey wasn’t going to let Peter’s jealousies convince him that his feelings for Dawn were false. He wasn’t going to let Peter degrade the dream they had talked about since they were young. The friends worked in silence for the rest of the afternoon, breathing in the potent fumes of cow manure.

When Dewey arrived at Peter’s house the day of the benefit concert, sweat was already soaked through his T-shirt, and the late August heat was baking him like a cake in the oven. As he walked up the uneven steps of Peter’s house, Dewey wondered if his friend would be joining them. He hadn’t seen him since their confrontation in the barn. Before he even got to the door, a twirling Dawn exploded through it and into his arms.

“I am so unbelievably excited for today!” she sang.

“Me too!” Dewey tried to match her enthusiasm as he looked over her shoulder trying to see if Peter was in the foyer.

“But you have no idea how long I’ve waited to see this band. Oh my, I’m sorry but I would leave you for any one of them. I’ve missed the Seattle music scene so much.”

1 2 >

<< Our Babies Are Coming Home  Galatea in Blue >>

Comments Off on Margaret Thon

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as ,