What Alex Johnson gives his reader in this story seems to be a simple plain evening party in New York City. My mind produces one question over and over in my head while reading this, which is: “Why am I reading this?” Amongst the exaggerating descriptions that are mainly lists of objects and senses, which do portray a good picture, yet at the same time can be too much because they bore the reader with nonsense if they do not have nay relevance. I found Johnson’s story a reminder of how crucial the questions, “Why are people reading my writing? Why am I interesting?”, can be.
The reason why this story addresses these questions is because the story fails to answer them. The main plot of this story does not give the reader any interest to drive the story other than the curiosity of having something that might happen at the end. Perhaps, I am disappointed in a story that Johnson writes about and it is not exceeding out of the ordinary. However, that is what gives him the drive for the reader. Having a party and a mild friendly connection certainly brings truth to the story, but that is not enough to make the story interesting. What Johnson has to work with here is nothing more than a few friends getting together and a girl that almost attempts to have sex with the narrator, but does not because of a really great friendship. Although that is nice, it does not give the reader any reason to read this story for that ending.
Other issues with this story are that the descriptions of things are trying to portray an image that does not need to be so graphic. Instead of it making it entertaining, the excessive lists of details cuts into the plot and sometimes loses the reader in the process. Such an instance is when the narrator is putting on his heavy clothes to go outside. There does not need to be such a huge list of things he needs to put on in order to give the reader the idea that he needs to dress up in warm clothes on. By saying instead, “I put on my heavy warm winter gear and went out the door.” would suffice.
Some details gave great insight to particular situation. Such as when the character Lesley enters the party and hugs the narrator as though she has not seen him every morning on her jog. That draws an interesting perspective to the party and it can be used to send hinting messages about how excited she is to be there, or that there is something more going on behind this narrator than he lets us know. However, nothing of the sort supports this explanation and Johnson fails to use the detail.
This story simply needs something out of the ordinary to it. There is too much plain uneventful stuff going on that eventually lead to nothing very exciting. I also find that it has too much going on outside what is being said than in it, that is due to the mistake of putting too much focus on the details and not on an interesting adventurous plot that drives the reader through the story. There is much here already laying out it just needs something more interesting to happen.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Critique: “A Small Amount of Darkness”
Melisa Miller’s story, “A Small Amount of Darkness”, one of the best stories that have come out of this class. There is smooth flow and great descriptions that are not too wordy and give a great display of what is occurring in the story. The plot is also very unique and pressures the reader forward. There are also bits of humor that add more to the entertainment and joy of reading.
I find the best trait in this story to be it’s simplicity. There is not much symbolism and poetry that can sometimes bring down what is actually trying to be said. Instead of that, there is this easy readable tail about a girl and her black mysterious box that then sends a message about what it means to be special. What makes this story simple is how the details are efficient, they explain what needs to be explained and they are descriptive enough to give the reader a great specific idea of what is taking place. One great part I like a lot from this story was when Wanda had a ketchup stain on her shirt and her mom said “Oh Wanda, everyday.” I found this to be just some simple funny dialogue that is something a mother would say. Other great details are how the kids make fun of Wanda, such as when the boys “accidentally” kick a ball at her and then make a crack a the rocks she losses. Miller does a really great job at staying within the boundaries of youthful dialogue, even though the narrator reads in a much more adult voice.
Some small issues that can be added to the story that really did not play much of the focus to the entire message of the story was the that the mother does not seem to be depreciated as much as the ending seems to open up to. I find this reasoning to be true because Wanda still goes to her mother for advice and sees her as an important person in her life. There is no lack of that parental value with Wanda so it does not make much sense as to why there was some reason why Wanda needs an urge to hug her mother, someone who she already values her opinion.
This story impresses me in how well written and thought out the details are. What I will take from this story and try and add to my own is the attention to efficient and simple detail that gets the point across and is short so that the reader is not spending all day getting a little aspect. I must say that there many other ways to creating details for a character and I’m not sure if I want to use Miller’s example because a lot of my details I like to give also tell other stories and are explained through past actions. As for descriptions of actions Miller holds the best examples, which makes this story so great.
I find the best trait in this story to be it’s simplicity. There is not much symbolism and poetry that can sometimes bring down what is actually trying to be said. Instead of that, there is this easy readable tail about a girl and her black mysterious box that then sends a message about what it means to be special. What makes this story simple is how the details are efficient, they explain what needs to be explained and they are descriptive enough to give the reader a great specific idea of what is taking place. One great part I like a lot from this story was when Wanda had a ketchup stain on her shirt and her mom said “Oh Wanda, everyday.” I found this to be just some simple funny dialogue that is something a mother would say. Other great details are how the kids make fun of Wanda, such as when the boys “accidentally” kick a ball at her and then make a crack a the rocks she losses. Miller does a really great job at staying within the boundaries of youthful dialogue, even though the narrator reads in a much more adult voice.
Some small issues that can be added to the story that really did not play much of the focus to the entire message of the story was the that the mother does not seem to be depreciated as much as the ending seems to open up to. I find this reasoning to be true because Wanda still goes to her mother for advice and sees her as an important person in her life. There is no lack of that parental value with Wanda so it does not make much sense as to why there was some reason why Wanda needs an urge to hug her mother, someone who she already values her opinion.
This story impresses me in how well written and thought out the details are. What I will take from this story and try and add to my own is the attention to efficient and simple detail that gets the point across and is short so that the reader is not spending all day getting a little aspect. I must say that there many other ways to creating details for a character and I’m not sure if I want to use Miller’s example because a lot of my details I like to give also tell other stories and are explained through past actions. As for descriptions of actions Miller holds the best examples, which makes this story so great.
Critique: “Life Audition”
My initial reaction to this story is more of confusion than anything. I am trying to grasp mainly what is being said overall about the “life audition”. What key aspects that lead me to this confusion are that the writing seems so much more focused to explaining how the narrator, a father, is convincing his son about the theory of “the audition of life” than actually describing exactly what the theory is and all the details about it. I also found the story is more of someone telling me what happens than the story acting out what happens. Some scenes can be written in ways that make them flow more with the story. Even though I can take great interest in the plot and that drives me to read on, I still find it hard to comprehend an end to this story there is no clear message overall, the story still leaves me questioning what is this “audition of life“?
First or all, the story is structured in a way that I do not find easy to read and would not encourage this form of plot development unless the writer can make it work. What Stimmler has done is explain the “audition of life” by using the explanation that the narrator makes to his son in order to convince him to believe in it. That way of describing the “audition of life” works, there needs to be more explanation on that matter.
However, the real confusion is within the subject of the entire story, all linking back to the title. “Life Audition” is misleading towards what the message or main theme is actually trying to display. I find myself continuously asking, “what about the life audition?” and not getting my answers. There seems to be too much talk about an accident leaving a man battered and disgruntled along with several children being saddened and afraid of losing their father’s sanity due to tragic accident. I’m uncertain where Stimmler would like to take this story, but since she has chosen to talk more about the broken family and less about the “life audition” then it seems perfectly clear that the title does not fit.
As for some other issues with Stimmler’s story is she makes some great details that I wish were drawn out more in actions and things that the characters do rather than simply explained. Such an instance is when she describes the character Jenny as following the typical middle child “patterned” behavior while growing up. I am really interested in learning more about this “patterned” behavior of a middle child, for one I am a middle child and I do not know how Jenny and I could relate on that level, but also it is an interesting detail that could be used to clear up confusion as to how she becomes effected by the accident. There seems to be a lot of these unexplained details and that’s most likely where I got lost in my overall analysis of the story.
Mainly there are some points made about the story being unclear, which can be easily fixed by changing the title, which is putting a lot of weight down on the focus to the plot that does not line up with it. Also there needs to be more focused detail on how the children are reacting to the accident, and the details that are already there need to be explained more through action and dialogue with the narrator. I found this story to have an interesting philosophical perspective, but because of the story’s lack of vivid and clear description it brings down the value of that message.
First or all, the story is structured in a way that I do not find easy to read and would not encourage this form of plot development unless the writer can make it work. What Stimmler has done is explain the “audition of life” by using the explanation that the narrator makes to his son in order to convince him to believe in it. That way of describing the “audition of life” works, there needs to be more explanation on that matter.
However, the real confusion is within the subject of the entire story, all linking back to the title. “Life Audition” is misleading towards what the message or main theme is actually trying to display. I find myself continuously asking, “what about the life audition?” and not getting my answers. There seems to be too much talk about an accident leaving a man battered and disgruntled along with several children being saddened and afraid of losing their father’s sanity due to tragic accident. I’m uncertain where Stimmler would like to take this story, but since she has chosen to talk more about the broken family and less about the “life audition” then it seems perfectly clear that the title does not fit.
As for some other issues with Stimmler’s story is she makes some great details that I wish were drawn out more in actions and things that the characters do rather than simply explained. Such an instance is when she describes the character Jenny as following the typical middle child “patterned” behavior while growing up. I am really interested in learning more about this “patterned” behavior of a middle child, for one I am a middle child and I do not know how Jenny and I could relate on that level, but also it is an interesting detail that could be used to clear up confusion as to how she becomes effected by the accident. There seems to be a lot of these unexplained details and that’s most likely where I got lost in my overall analysis of the story.
Mainly there are some points made about the story being unclear, which can be easily fixed by changing the title, which is putting a lot of weight down on the focus to the plot that does not line up with it. Also there needs to be more focused detail on how the children are reacting to the accident, and the details that are already there need to be explained more through action and dialogue with the narrator. I found this story to have an interesting philosophical perspective, but because of the story’s lack of vivid and clear description it brings down the value of that message.
Critique: “One Hundred Thousand
Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”
By: Danielle Orner
Through this story, “One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”, I find Danielle running over the same road blocks of writing that I myself try to avoid doing. With the plot being great and inviting to a reader, the main aspects of this story that need to be addressed are within the details and some minor structural changes. Along with that there can be things added that will bring about a much more elaborated trail of circumstances for the reader to be guided along with.
My biggest issue with this story is the details. Although they seem to be vivid and a good majority are perfectly implemented, some lack their pertinence to the scene, or require a greater amount of connection for the reader effectively acquire exactly what Orner is trying to symbolize. One example of this “pertinence” issue I am addressing can be seen when the narrator, Ellen, describes this massive vivid memory of a high school religion class and there is this massive focus on that particular picture in the beginning of the story. The problem this draws out is that the only details the reader acquires from this vivid memory is that Ellen is not an unusual person, and the key aspect that she had to drop out of high school in order to help her overworked mother and her crippled father. These two significant details do not require the dream for their explanation. Also the details do not pertain to anything discussed within the chapter/segment. Orner completely turns the reader away from this action pact scene of a wife being left in the middle of the night, which is a golden opportunity to tune the reader in and draw interest. The instances of improper details being added into the story appear common, but not of such magnitude. To avoid further instances such as this in my own writing I have to go through and re-read the sections separately and make sure that I acquire the message I wish to draw from the scene.
I also find the sections, since they are not in a chronological order, to be very hard to read. In one instance a section talks about Ellen bringing her kids to her parent’s place and her talking to her dad, to Ellen flashing back to the diner on a rainy day. Orner only mentions a slight reference to the flash back with no mentioning specifically that there is a flash back. I get lost while re-reading this particular spot, which means that the transaction here is not clear enough to the readers. It is very risky at times to go back and forth with segments, perhaps using the author of Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, Michael Jamie-Becerra’s, model of placing titles on those segments would help the reader understand that there has been a change in the plot’s focus.
Overall, I find Orner’s descriptions to be very vivid and delightful to read. However, there is much confusion with certain details that do not need to be included, or do not successfully describe exactly what needs to be described. She has a lot of potential with this plot, it simply needs to be reorganized with more explanation and more vivid details such as her description she does of the mother’s house and the empty bed; and less like the cactus flower on the truck.
Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”
By: Danielle Orner
Through this story, “One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”, I find Danielle running over the same road blocks of writing that I myself try to avoid doing. With the plot being great and inviting to a reader, the main aspects of this story that need to be addressed are within the details and some minor structural changes. Along with that there can be things added that will bring about a much more elaborated trail of circumstances for the reader to be guided along with.
My biggest issue with this story is the details. Although they seem to be vivid and a good majority are perfectly implemented, some lack their pertinence to the scene, or require a greater amount of connection for the reader effectively acquire exactly what Orner is trying to symbolize. One example of this “pertinence” issue I am addressing can be seen when the narrator, Ellen, describes this massive vivid memory of a high school religion class and there is this massive focus on that particular picture in the beginning of the story. The problem this draws out is that the only details the reader acquires from this vivid memory is that Ellen is not an unusual person, and the key aspect that she had to drop out of high school in order to help her overworked mother and her crippled father. These two significant details do not require the dream for their explanation. Also the details do not pertain to anything discussed within the chapter/segment. Orner completely turns the reader away from this action pact scene of a wife being left in the middle of the night, which is a golden opportunity to tune the reader in and draw interest. The instances of improper details being added into the story appear common, but not of such magnitude. To avoid further instances such as this in my own writing I have to go through and re-read the sections separately and make sure that I acquire the message I wish to draw from the scene.
I also find the sections, since they are not in a chronological order, to be very hard to read. In one instance a section talks about Ellen bringing her kids to her parent’s place and her talking to her dad, to Ellen flashing back to the diner on a rainy day. Orner only mentions a slight reference to the flash back with no mentioning specifically that there is a flash back. I get lost while re-reading this particular spot, which means that the transaction here is not clear enough to the readers. It is very risky at times to go back and forth with segments, perhaps using the author of Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, Michael Jamie-Becerra’s, model of placing titles on those segments would help the reader understand that there has been a change in the plot’s focus.
Overall, I find Orner’s descriptions to be very vivid and delightful to read. However, there is much confusion with certain details that do not need to be included, or do not successfully describe exactly what needs to be described. She has a lot of potential with this plot, it simply needs to be reorganized with more explanation and more vivid details such as her description she does of the mother’s house and the empty bed; and less like the cactus flower on the truck.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Disclaimer
I hate to make another appology, but here I am. The blog, for some reason, has butchered the spacing and indentation in my final story. So if it doesn't make sense, that's why. I'll most definitely bring in paper copies to remedy this. And again. Please don't crucify me.
Silver and Gold
I had been lying in bed for some amount of time and since I was in between jobs, sleep had become one of my new favorite activities. Most days I could sleep undisturbed until sometimes four o’clock in the afternoon, but yesterday I only caught fleeting hours in between tracing the cracks in the plaster ceiling with my eyes. Bleary grey light from the windows was bucketing itself onto the cracked, dusty brown boards of my apartment and blundering wind shook the windowpanes, ice filtering under the seal of the window. Brooklyn seems to lose its bustling, romantic charm on days like that. There’s no corner street vendors selling conglomerations of meat products, no ancient Jewish couples walking the streets hand in hand past the brownstone stoops with Cuban children play-fighting on them, no Haitian drug peddlers waiting around the corner for their broke and loyal customers. On days like that there’s only the wind, the dust of taxi-worn asphalt, the cold.
At some point during one of my brief lapses of unconsciousness, I rolled to my right side to pull a cigarette from my pack. It was sitting on the stack of New Yorker’s, Rolling Stone’s, and random poetry leaflets from The Blue Note and other random jazz clubs in the Village. I had noticed the ten butts in the ashtray on the floor next to the stack. It meant I had been in and out of bliss for about seven hours. I’d had a nagging at the back of my head that kept telling me that I had something to do, but I couldn’t remember what. As I sat myself upright and lit my cigarette I cursed whatever the something was. Once I’d finished I stubbed out the butt in the ashtray, settled back down into the groove in my pillow, and pulled my only two sheets, mismatched green and blue, up to my chin.
What seemed like minutes after I had shut my eyes there was a pounding on my door. The sound echoed off the bare white walls, through the hollow of my small oven, and over the cold floorboards and made me think for a moment that it had been going on for some time. This thought escaped my mind fairly quickly as a headache pushed its way to the small space under my temples. Three more even, dull crashes and I had sat bolt upright to pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger.
“I’ll be right there,” I barked as I pulled on the pants I’d worn the day before. I didn’t bother to dig a shirt from the hamper by the window despite the chill of the room as I was only concerned with making the pounding on my door and in my head stop. I winced as two more, seemingly final, thumpings rattled the chain of my lock as I approached the door. With my hands busy fussing with the brass door chain and the brushed chrome deadbolt, I had made a pact with myself to beat whoever was on the other side of the door absolutely senseless.
“WHAT!?”
My eyes had gone out of focus as they tried to adjust from the spilling dim sunlight in my room to the even dimmer, single bulb lighting the narrow hallway. I couldn’t make out any distinct features as the figure pushed past me, and I just caught their “oh, fuck you” muttered underneath their breath as they stepped into the doorway.
“Who are you and what the fuck do you think you’re doing,” I asked the figure as I tried to crush the dried mucus from the corners of my eyes.
“It’s nice to see you too, Jack”
I shut the door and sighed when I recognized the smooth feminine alto.
“Oh. Shit. Rose… Hi. What the hell’s the problem with you knockin’ on my door like you’re the goddamn police?”
My eyes had begun to adjust back to the light in the room and I could see Rose’s pea coated arm cocked and her hand on her hip. Her clipped-short straight brown hair jutted in nearly every direction and the grey in the room caught her red highlights, framing her glaring face.
“What’s your problem? Lesley, Will, and Andi called me and told me they couldn’t get in touch with you. You just deciding not to pick up your phone now?”
I groaned. What had been nagging at me and keeping me awake was that I was going to be hosting a birthday party for our friend Art. I’d met Art about a year before I graduated when Andi dragged his awkward, puffy-haired Jewish ass out to Bubba Gump’s in Times Square for a celebratory round of Cajun shrimp and beers on Mardi Gras. After that night Rose, me, my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend Carli, Will, and Andi kind of took Art in under our collective nightcrawling, Bacardi swigging wing. He turned out to be a pretty wild drunk, relatively anyway to the theorem testing math nerd he normally was, and we found out all too late that he plays an insane game of 8-ball.
Art and I, though, didn’t quite click like he did with the others. He grew up in the good area of Long Island, his parents were still together after 35 years, and he had been prepped so thoroughly for college and grad school that he joked about being full grown with a briefcase. I hadn’t had that. I was born in the back of a taxi cab between West 47th and 11th, just a few blocks from the ER of St. Vincent’s. I didn’t, and still don’t, know who my mother was and my father snuck out on me in the night when I was ten. I’d lived with my aunt and went to St. Peter’s in Belleville, New Jersey and got no preparation for life after high school. I changed my major from Art to Business to Political Science before I settled on English in my junior year at New York City College. When we would talk to each other I was either too crude for his tastes or he would embarrass me by bringing up some intellectual topic I had no knowledge of. Nevertheless I considered him a good, though not very intriguing, guy and we maintained a good acquaintanceship within our circle.
I smiled and took a step back, leaning up against the wall to the right of the door. I hooked a thumb at the phone on top of my bookcase.
“Phone service got cut off.”
“You didn’t bother to pay the bill, did you?”
“Yep.”
She rolled her eyes and I crossed the room to pick two cigarettes out of my pack.
“Hey. I’m sorry I totally blanked. What time is it?”
She lifted her arm and shook her black sleeve down so she could read her thin-banded, gold Seiko.
“Five thirty. We have maybe three hours before everyone shows up.” She, then, turned from me and took a look around my apartment.
“When was the last time you cleaned up in here?”
I handed her a cigarette, placed the other between my lips, and lit her cigarette before my own.
“Couldn’t tell you. When was the last time you were here? Like two weeks, maybe.” I exhaled and surveyed the place as well. “It’s not like it’s a total mess.”
For me, it wasn’t bad. But I guess the sink full of dishes and the adjacent countertop speckled with marinara and Chinese gravy, the overflowing hamper by the window, the LPs and CDs splayed all over the floor at the foot of my bed, and the three full ashtrays by my bed might have scared away some people. She cocked an eyebrow in that smug way that made me want to either slap her or smother her lips with mine just so she wouldn’t put on that condescending face towards me. I met her eyes and then looked away.
“Nevermind.”
“You look like you haven’t even washed your hair in almost a week. So, let’s get this place, and you, cleaned up enough for company.”
After a shower, two broken plates and my New Orleans shot glass, two bags of garbage, a half hour search for a broom and dustpan, and an hour reorganizing my music my room was deemed presentable. We still had an hour before people would show up and we decided to get some supplies considering that I’d drunk all of my own alcohol and my refrigerator was chock full of condiments and a few boxes of empty Chinese food. I had bundled myself up in a zip-up hoodie, my navy blue mechanic’s jacket, and my steel-toes and followed Rose down the six flights of stairs out onto the gunmetal street. We walked side by side and every so often a light gust would blow her smell up my nostrils. Cigarettes, tangerines, pine or some sort of earthy scented incense that she burned in her place by the windowsill.
We returned with two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, a cheap bottle of champagne, a two liter of Jack Daniels, and two large bottles of Coca Cola. We both set our bags down by the door as soon as I’d opened it, the two of us panting. Rose half-stumbled towards my freshly made bed and collapsed on it, vowing that she would start smoking less. I was still bent over gasping and when I’d caught my breath I willed my legs to carry me to the closet to take the fold-out chairs and collapsible card table so everyone wouldn’t have to sit on my bed when they arrived.
Rose lazed on my bed, propping her head on her hand to watch me set up the stow-and-go dining room. Once I had finished, I walked to the bed and pushed Rose’s feet off the edge so I could sit. I was intensely dizzy and mildly overheated from all the up and down of setting up and un-sticking the legs of the chairs. So I leaned back against the wall and unzipped my jacket and hoodie, reached for my pack of cigarettes, then sidled out of my outerwear.
“You’re gonna smoke another one? I’m not even that bad.”
“I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Smoking will keep me awake.”
She had taken her coat off while I had been setting up and had rolled it up to make a makeshift pillow. She curled her legs into herself and she propped her body up further, moving her jacket under the curve of her side. I lit my cigarette from my slumped position and quickly took in what she had been wearing under her plain black pea coat. She had on a pair of black slacks and an olive half-turtleneck under a black blouse which she’d left unbuttoned. I closed my eyes as I exhaled, the cigarette dangling from my lips. Sometimes I wondered if she dressed like that specifically to make me crazy. I, then, noticed the absence of the sustaining cancer and blew the rest of the smoke through my nose. I opened my eyes and saw her looking at me in a sidelong way, sucking greedily on the end of my cigarette. She reached over the edge and tapped the ash off the end in to the ashtray – never breaking sly eye contact – before she exhaled and placed the cigarette back in my mouth. She pushed her coat onto the floor and proceeded to stretch her legs out over my lap, her pointed black boots dangling just above the fabric on the other side of my legs.
“How much time have we got now?”
“I don’t know. Will’s usually the ‘we’ve got to be on time’ person, but Andi; you know Andi. She’ll take a lifetime to get anywhere. Plus they have to pick up Art. I figure we’ve got at least another hour.”
“So what was the point of rushing me to clean the place and get shit if you knew all that?”
She shrugged and reclined further
“I kind of just wanted to get out of my place. Marie went home and said she wouldn’t be back for a week. She told me that her brother’s gone out of state with his wife on a vacation. So she’s stuck babysitting their kids and I miss having company.”
I sighed and held up my cigarette so she could see the long stem of ash. She rolled over to grab an ashtray just enough so that her Old English script tattoo on her hip of “Bold As Love” was exposed. I held the cigarette over the ashtray just as the ash fell of its own volition.
“Thanks.”
I took the ashtray from her and she returned to reclining, crossed one leg over the other. We sat there for a while in silence as I finished my cigarette, listening to each other breathe.
“So what’s going on with your job? Will told me that you don’t have one right now. Did IG not need an extra editor or did you manage to piss off part of the liberal reich?”
“No. I quit. Too much drama going on in the office. People were just getting into all these heated debates about absolutely nothing. Like whether or not terminally ill children deserve all the charity they get from things like “Make A Wish”. Shit like that.”
“You serious? That’s too funny.” She pushed her head back into my pillow as she let her throaty laugh echo off the high ceilings.
“Yeah. It was a little ridiculous. I’m looking into trying to find work over at Harper & Row. They have a couple positions open, but it’s competitive; so I don’t know how that’ll pan out. I’ll fall on my feet, though.”
She sat up a bit and smiled at me before reaching in the pocket of her slacks for her cigarettes.
“So what’ve you been up too? You’ve been all over, from what I’ve heard from Lesley. DC one day, Philly the next, and then Boston?”
“Yeah. We have a new boss now and he really likes my work, so he’s sending me on a lot more assignments. I don’t think it’ll be for too long though. At least I hope not. Reporting and writing from the road is starting to give me the shakes.”
I let out a low chuckle and looked out the window, the sun was about to finally go down and the ice sky had faded to a black-purple.
“Hey. Do you know what Andi and them are bringing to eat?”
“I think maybe a whole duck from Penang and some kind of cake. That’s what Will said he’d planned.”
She moved her hands, which were resting on her stomach, so she was holding the backs of her upper arms and she moved her legs off my lap back to the curled up position they were in earlier.
“Cold, huh?”
“Yeah. You must be used to it, but I’m actually freezing.”
“Let me fiddle with the radiator real quick.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”
I walked over in between the windows and knelt down to unscrew the round knob that regulated the flow of hot water. I waited a minute before touching it quickly to test if it had started to warm up, if the pipes hadn’t frozen. I pulled my warm hand away and stood up, satisfied. I turned and walked back to the bed and picked up an ashtray. I’d thought I might as well start in on the JD and on my way to the door I dropped the ashtray on the table and picked up the bag with the sweet Tennessee brew. I picked up two short glasses that had been drying on the countertop and placed everything on the table. As I was cracking the seal on the bottle, Rose stepped out of the bathroom, the sound of toilet water gurgling behind her. I looked up from the bottle and met a half indignant stare.
“Hey, we were going to save that for when the party started.”
I looked from her to the bottle then back up to her and finished unscrewing the cap.
“Well, it’s open now. It tastes best when it’s freshly opened, and I don’t want to waste that taste.”
She shook her head, her hair waving a bit more than earlier as her hairspray had lost some of its hold. She pulled up a chair across from me and leant forward, her elbows on the table and her hands supporting her long face.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” and she pushed her glass across the scuffed brown tabletop. I poured each of us half a glass and she stood up again to get ice cubes for her drink. We lit cigarettes and sat sipping our drinks for a while, again in silence, enjoying the warm sweetness trickling down our throats.
I smiled and thought back to the first time I saw her. I’d seen her here and there during my bar crawls back in college. She worked the bar like most women in New York do: posting up at a corner and looking bored, sexy, waiting for a hopeful sucker to buy her a drink. I was usually with Carli at some table near the center of the room sipping on a Stella Artois while Carli munched idly on whatever low-cal dish the place was serving. I had also taken a few classes with her, though I had not noticed her in them – I was usually messing around on my laptop and not paying any attention.
We first actually met after a poetry reading by Donald Hall. Andi had gone with Rose and while I was standing outside smoking, the two approached me and Andi introduced us. She explained to me that both Rose and I were English majors and that we both wanted to do something in journalism. In the light of the lamppost I saw that she looked like one of those atypical feminists: short, thin hair dyed a red-purple, mildly conservative, loose grey wool sweater, dangling gold earrings, tight, plain brown pants that were tucked into her halfway knee high black leather boots. I remember her eyeing me with some sort of amused suspicion, that sly grin plastered under her slightly hooked nose. I had brushed off the look, though it bugged the shit out of me, and smiled with my cigarette still clamped between my lips. We shook hands and exchanged hellos and Andi mentioned that they were going to meet Will at a bar, so she made the suggestion that I tag along. That night I had made plans to meet Carli at her place to watch some movie I don’t remember anymore, but I accepted Andi’s offer and we headed out to Manhattan on the D train.
Andi spent most of that night knocking back shots of tequila to relieve the stress of mediating between me and Rose as we antagonized each other. We argued back and forth about jazz music and whether or not Miles Davis could or would trump Coltrane, whether or not Dickenson would have been lovers with Plath, and how blatantly Giuliani abused his power in between taking long swigs from our beers or glasses of whiskey. The whole time we had on these brilliant, smug smiles to try to further aggravate the other – we were having fun. After that night we started hanging out before and after class to smoke cigarettes outside Wagner and bitch about professors or exchange notes and books. We went out to some clubs in Harlem where we’d sit on the outer rim drinking G ‘n’ Ts and admiring the improv jazz and blues players. During finals we’d hang out in each other’s rooms and review dates, research articles, do a few lines to stay awake, and listen to Dylan.
Carli eventually accused me of cheating on her with Rose. And in some ways I guess she was right. I had started to become dissatisfied with Carli and felt like we never had anything we could talk about outside of where to eat or drink and when we could fuck. Rose could read me. She could challenge me intellectually and we could talk for hours about anything or not even make eye contact for hours without there being any awkward silence. When Carli and I broke up, Rose asked specifically if she was the reason why. I reassured her that it was all because I didn’t want to waste Carli’s time; that I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Though Rose wasn’t the cause of the end of my relationship, Carli distanced herself so much from our circle that she changed her major from Religious Studies to Business Management so she wouldn’t even have to be on the same side of campus as us.
There was finally a knock and Andi’s childlike voice warbling through the door.
“We’re heeere!”
We set our drinks down, wiped our lips, and stubbed out our cigarettes in the tray in the middle of the table. I walked to the door and re-smoothed my dress shirt before turning the faux crystal door handle.
“Hey! Jackie-boy!” Will grabbed my hand with his large one and shook hard.
“Hiiii! Jack, you look great! Oh, Rose. When did you get here?” She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and walked past me with the bottle of Ketel One that they had bought on the way over.
I’d managed to break free of Will’s grip and patted him on the back to usher him, Andi, and the crispy, orange smelling duck inside.
“Jack!” Lesley wrapped her arms around my neck as if we hadn’t walked around Central Park on Tuesday when we bumped into each other while she was taking her daily jog.
Art, being Art, had hung at the back of the crowd and after pulling Lesley off of my neck I greeted him as warmly as I could.
“Heeyy! Art! Birthday boy, come on in here.”
“Hey, Jack. Good to see you again.” He extended his hand and shook mine softly. He was just as reserved as ever and spoke with an even more nasal voice because of the cold outside.
The rest of the night went on without that many problems. I had to share silverware with Lesley because I didn’t have enough for everyone, Will got belligerently drunk halfway through and Andi had to take him out into the hall to talk him down, and Lesley gave Art a lap dance which he passed out halfway through because of the vodka that Rose and I kept feeding him. After we’d revived him, he rushed for the bathroom and vomited for what seemed like half an hour. Andi and Will, who could barely stand themselves, announced that they’d take Art back to his apartment. And Lesley drunkenly remarked under her breath that she would have given Art a happy ending if he weren’t already so drunk. After everyone had taken off, Rose and I sat across the table from one another again sipping smoke from our cigarettes and nursing our glasses of the last of the champagne.
Nina Simone’s “Wild Is The Wind” was playing quietly in the background when Rose broke the silence.
“They were in rare form tonight, huh?” We had been keeping up with each other pretty well the entire night – pouring each other glasses of wine and whiskey. Her Irish blood kept her above the rim of the glass where most others would have passed out with their head down on the table.
“Yeah, they were. I can’t believe that Lesley said that she’d sleep with Art. She must have smoked up or something before she got here. She was ridiculous.”
Rose half closed her eyes and smiled, sipping from her glass.
“I’d love to see that happen. Art needs to get laid. Since he got dumped by… What’s her name?”
“Amanda.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s had sex with anybody since Amanda dumped him.”
“Wasn’t that like a year or something ago?”
“Scary, huh?”
I just shook my head and kept looking down at my glass. I was catching up with him as I was going on a six month dry spell, though mine was intentional and self imposed. I didn’t feel like I needed the hang-ups and baggage of a lover.
“You heading out soon? Cause’ I think I wanna get to sleep.”
She exhaled, the smoke coming out in one long stream, and made a disappointed face.
“I don’t know.” She let her voice trail off as she lifted the cigarette to her lips again.
“I don’t really have enough cash for a taxi or a new Metro Card and I sure as shit don’t wanna walk home.”
For the first time, there was a semi-awkward silence that hung with the foggy smoke. I looked over her shoulder at the closet.
“Well, if you really don’t wanna go back I have a futon mattress in the closet. But it’s kind of lumpy.”
Her reaction was a bit quicker than I’d expected.
“That’d be great. I don’t mind about shitty beds. Remember the beds back in college?”
“Guess you can sleep on anything once you’ve slept on those bricks.”
When I reached to tap my ash in the tray on the table, just within my heavy-lidded field of view, I noticed a light smile gracing the corners of her mouth. I leaned back and downed the rest of my drink and then stood up to fetch the mattress from the top shelf of the closet. Once I rolled out the mattress and set down some sheets for her to sleep on, she stepped into the bathroom and got ready to go to sleep. I waited outside the door for my turn and when she reemerged she had her black boots and socks in hand and her black blouse and bra hanging on her arm. I tried to ignore the sexy black lace and the light flushing in her cheeks from the alcohol and because I’d startled her a bit. She smelled like my toothpaste, cigarettes, and her vanilla spray which she’d pulled from her bag before she went in.
I had my hands against the top of the sink with the water running and I was looking myself in the eye in the mirror. I repeated “just go to sleep, just go to sleep” over and over in my head as I tried not to let the alcohol make me do something I would regret in the morning. She was sexy and cool and a woman; not a little girl. She was everything I wanted at that moment, but I knew I would ruin the friendship and that was something I could not bear. I splashed my face with hot water, ran a wet hand through my hair, and swished some Listerine around in my mouth. When I walked into the room, Rose was already curled up and asleep on the floor, her purse and boots by her head, blouse folded around her bra by her feet. I smiled and went around the room turning off, first, the stereo and the other lights. I took off my shirt as I sat down on my bed and dropped it on the floor. I let my body fall back, crossed my legs, and put my hands behind my head before I fell asleep.
In the early morning I slowly rose out of sleep when I felt a tickle in my nostril and a weight against my chest. For a moment I panicked. I lifted my left hand to rub my eyes and I looked down onto the top of Rose’s small head. Both of us were still clothed and I breathed relief. I had fallen asleep belly up and she had her hand on my chest, she was just slightly curled up next to me, her body close. I swallowed hard as I felt the rise and fall of her breasts against my chest, and she slowly rose her head to meet my eyes. She blinked at me and half-smiled before putting her head back against my collarbone and reaching across my chest to bring me closer. I didn’t breathe for a moment and I pulled one hand from behind my head to put an arm around her back. Were it any other woman, by that point I would have been aggravatingly aroused; but I wasn’t. I was still looking down on her auburn head as the blue sun rose above the buildings, and I leaned my head back, sighing. It was going to be another grey day, but right then I didn’t mind. Right then I wouldn’t have minded to lay there forever.
At some point during one of my brief lapses of unconsciousness, I rolled to my right side to pull a cigarette from my pack. It was sitting on the stack of New Yorker’s, Rolling Stone’s, and random poetry leaflets from The Blue Note and other random jazz clubs in the Village. I had noticed the ten butts in the ashtray on the floor next to the stack. It meant I had been in and out of bliss for about seven hours. I’d had a nagging at the back of my head that kept telling me that I had something to do, but I couldn’t remember what. As I sat myself upright and lit my cigarette I cursed whatever the something was. Once I’d finished I stubbed out the butt in the ashtray, settled back down into the groove in my pillow, and pulled my only two sheets, mismatched green and blue, up to my chin.
What seemed like minutes after I had shut my eyes there was a pounding on my door. The sound echoed off the bare white walls, through the hollow of my small oven, and over the cold floorboards and made me think for a moment that it had been going on for some time. This thought escaped my mind fairly quickly as a headache pushed its way to the small space under my temples. Three more even, dull crashes and I had sat bolt upright to pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger.
“I’ll be right there,” I barked as I pulled on the pants I’d worn the day before. I didn’t bother to dig a shirt from the hamper by the window despite the chill of the room as I was only concerned with making the pounding on my door and in my head stop. I winced as two more, seemingly final, thumpings rattled the chain of my lock as I approached the door. With my hands busy fussing with the brass door chain and the brushed chrome deadbolt, I had made a pact with myself to beat whoever was on the other side of the door absolutely senseless.
“WHAT!?”
My eyes had gone out of focus as they tried to adjust from the spilling dim sunlight in my room to the even dimmer, single bulb lighting the narrow hallway. I couldn’t make out any distinct features as the figure pushed past me, and I just caught their “oh, fuck you” muttered underneath their breath as they stepped into the doorway.
“Who are you and what the fuck do you think you’re doing,” I asked the figure as I tried to crush the dried mucus from the corners of my eyes.
“It’s nice to see you too, Jack”
I shut the door and sighed when I recognized the smooth feminine alto.
“Oh. Shit. Rose… Hi. What the hell’s the problem with you knockin’ on my door like you’re the goddamn police?”
My eyes had begun to adjust back to the light in the room and I could see Rose’s pea coated arm cocked and her hand on her hip. Her clipped-short straight brown hair jutted in nearly every direction and the grey in the room caught her red highlights, framing her glaring face.
“What’s your problem? Lesley, Will, and Andi called me and told me they couldn’t get in touch with you. You just deciding not to pick up your phone now?”
I groaned. What had been nagging at me and keeping me awake was that I was going to be hosting a birthday party for our friend Art. I’d met Art about a year before I graduated when Andi dragged his awkward, puffy-haired Jewish ass out to Bubba Gump’s in Times Square for a celebratory round of Cajun shrimp and beers on Mardi Gras. After that night Rose, me, my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend Carli, Will, and Andi kind of took Art in under our collective nightcrawling, Bacardi swigging wing. He turned out to be a pretty wild drunk, relatively anyway to the theorem testing math nerd he normally was, and we found out all too late that he plays an insane game of 8-ball.
Art and I, though, didn’t quite click like he did with the others. He grew up in the good area of Long Island, his parents were still together after 35 years, and he had been prepped so thoroughly for college and grad school that he joked about being full grown with a briefcase. I hadn’t had that. I was born in the back of a taxi cab between West 47th and 11th, just a few blocks from the ER of St. Vincent’s. I didn’t, and still don’t, know who my mother was and my father snuck out on me in the night when I was ten. I’d lived with my aunt and went to St. Peter’s in Belleville, New Jersey and got no preparation for life after high school. I changed my major from Art to Business to Political Science before I settled on English in my junior year at New York City College. When we would talk to each other I was either too crude for his tastes or he would embarrass me by bringing up some intellectual topic I had no knowledge of. Nevertheless I considered him a good, though not very intriguing, guy and we maintained a good acquaintanceship within our circle.
I smiled and took a step back, leaning up against the wall to the right of the door. I hooked a thumb at the phone on top of my bookcase.
“Phone service got cut off.”
“You didn’t bother to pay the bill, did you?”
“Yep.”
She rolled her eyes and I crossed the room to pick two cigarettes out of my pack.
“Hey. I’m sorry I totally blanked. What time is it?”
She lifted her arm and shook her black sleeve down so she could read her thin-banded, gold Seiko.
“Five thirty. We have maybe three hours before everyone shows up.” She, then, turned from me and took a look around my apartment.
“When was the last time you cleaned up in here?”
I handed her a cigarette, placed the other between my lips, and lit her cigarette before my own.
“Couldn’t tell you. When was the last time you were here? Like two weeks, maybe.” I exhaled and surveyed the place as well. “It’s not like it’s a total mess.”
For me, it wasn’t bad. But I guess the sink full of dishes and the adjacent countertop speckled with marinara and Chinese gravy, the overflowing hamper by the window, the LPs and CDs splayed all over the floor at the foot of my bed, and the three full ashtrays by my bed might have scared away some people. She cocked an eyebrow in that smug way that made me want to either slap her or smother her lips with mine just so she wouldn’t put on that condescending face towards me. I met her eyes and then looked away.
“Nevermind.”
“You look like you haven’t even washed your hair in almost a week. So, let’s get this place, and you, cleaned up enough for company.”
~~~
After a shower, two broken plates and my New Orleans shot glass, two bags of garbage, a half hour search for a broom and dustpan, and an hour reorganizing my music my room was deemed presentable. We still had an hour before people would show up and we decided to get some supplies considering that I’d drunk all of my own alcohol and my refrigerator was chock full of condiments and a few boxes of empty Chinese food. I had bundled myself up in a zip-up hoodie, my navy blue mechanic’s jacket, and my steel-toes and followed Rose down the six flights of stairs out onto the gunmetal street. We walked side by side and every so often a light gust would blow her smell up my nostrils. Cigarettes, tangerines, pine or some sort of earthy scented incense that she burned in her place by the windowsill.
We returned with two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, a cheap bottle of champagne, a two liter of Jack Daniels, and two large bottles of Coca Cola. We both set our bags down by the door as soon as I’d opened it, the two of us panting. Rose half-stumbled towards my freshly made bed and collapsed on it, vowing that she would start smoking less. I was still bent over gasping and when I’d caught my breath I willed my legs to carry me to the closet to take the fold-out chairs and collapsible card table so everyone wouldn’t have to sit on my bed when they arrived.
Rose lazed on my bed, propping her head on her hand to watch me set up the stow-and-go dining room. Once I had finished, I walked to the bed and pushed Rose’s feet off the edge so I could sit. I was intensely dizzy and mildly overheated from all the up and down of setting up and un-sticking the legs of the chairs. So I leaned back against the wall and unzipped my jacket and hoodie, reached for my pack of cigarettes, then sidled out of my outerwear.
“You’re gonna smoke another one? I’m not even that bad.”
“I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Smoking will keep me awake.”
She had taken her coat off while I had been setting up and had rolled it up to make a makeshift pillow. She curled her legs into herself and she propped her body up further, moving her jacket under the curve of her side. I lit my cigarette from my slumped position and quickly took in what she had been wearing under her plain black pea coat. She had on a pair of black slacks and an olive half-turtleneck under a black blouse which she’d left unbuttoned. I closed my eyes as I exhaled, the cigarette dangling from my lips. Sometimes I wondered if she dressed like that specifically to make me crazy. I, then, noticed the absence of the sustaining cancer and blew the rest of the smoke through my nose. I opened my eyes and saw her looking at me in a sidelong way, sucking greedily on the end of my cigarette. She reached over the edge and tapped the ash off the end in to the ashtray – never breaking sly eye contact – before she exhaled and placed the cigarette back in my mouth. She pushed her coat onto the floor and proceeded to stretch her legs out over my lap, her pointed black boots dangling just above the fabric on the other side of my legs.
“How much time have we got now?”
“I don’t know. Will’s usually the ‘we’ve got to be on time’ person, but Andi; you know Andi. She’ll take a lifetime to get anywhere. Plus they have to pick up Art. I figure we’ve got at least another hour.”
“So what was the point of rushing me to clean the place and get shit if you knew all that?”
She shrugged and reclined further
“I kind of just wanted to get out of my place. Marie went home and said she wouldn’t be back for a week. She told me that her brother’s gone out of state with his wife on a vacation. So she’s stuck babysitting their kids and I miss having company.”
I sighed and held up my cigarette so she could see the long stem of ash. She rolled over to grab an ashtray just enough so that her Old English script tattoo on her hip of “Bold As Love” was exposed. I held the cigarette over the ashtray just as the ash fell of its own volition.
“Thanks.”
I took the ashtray from her and she returned to reclining, crossed one leg over the other. We sat there for a while in silence as I finished my cigarette, listening to each other breathe.
“So what’s going on with your job? Will told me that you don’t have one right now. Did IG not need an extra editor or did you manage to piss off part of the liberal reich?”
“No. I quit. Too much drama going on in the office. People were just getting into all these heated debates about absolutely nothing. Like whether or not terminally ill children deserve all the charity they get from things like “Make A Wish”. Shit like that.”
“You serious? That’s too funny.” She pushed her head back into my pillow as she let her throaty laugh echo off the high ceilings.
“Yeah. It was a little ridiculous. I’m looking into trying to find work over at Harper & Row. They have a couple positions open, but it’s competitive; so I don’t know how that’ll pan out. I’ll fall on my feet, though.”
She sat up a bit and smiled at me before reaching in the pocket of her slacks for her cigarettes.
“So what’ve you been up too? You’ve been all over, from what I’ve heard from Lesley. DC one day, Philly the next, and then Boston?”
“Yeah. We have a new boss now and he really likes my work, so he’s sending me on a lot more assignments. I don’t think it’ll be for too long though. At least I hope not. Reporting and writing from the road is starting to give me the shakes.”
I let out a low chuckle and looked out the window, the sun was about to finally go down and the ice sky had faded to a black-purple.
“Hey. Do you know what Andi and them are bringing to eat?”
“I think maybe a whole duck from Penang and some kind of cake. That’s what Will said he’d planned.”
She moved her hands, which were resting on her stomach, so she was holding the backs of her upper arms and she moved her legs off my lap back to the curled up position they were in earlier.
“Cold, huh?”
“Yeah. You must be used to it, but I’m actually freezing.”
“Let me fiddle with the radiator real quick.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”
I walked over in between the windows and knelt down to unscrew the round knob that regulated the flow of hot water. I waited a minute before touching it quickly to test if it had started to warm up, if the pipes hadn’t frozen. I pulled my warm hand away and stood up, satisfied. I turned and walked back to the bed and picked up an ashtray. I’d thought I might as well start in on the JD and on my way to the door I dropped the ashtray on the table and picked up the bag with the sweet Tennessee brew. I picked up two short glasses that had been drying on the countertop and placed everything on the table. As I was cracking the seal on the bottle, Rose stepped out of the bathroom, the sound of toilet water gurgling behind her. I looked up from the bottle and met a half indignant stare.
“Hey, we were going to save that for when the party started.”
I looked from her to the bottle then back up to her and finished unscrewing the cap.
“Well, it’s open now. It tastes best when it’s freshly opened, and I don’t want to waste that taste.”
She shook her head, her hair waving a bit more than earlier as her hairspray had lost some of its hold. She pulled up a chair across from me and leant forward, her elbows on the table and her hands supporting her long face.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” and she pushed her glass across the scuffed brown tabletop. I poured each of us half a glass and she stood up again to get ice cubes for her drink. We lit cigarettes and sat sipping our drinks for a while, again in silence, enjoying the warm sweetness trickling down our throats.
I smiled and thought back to the first time I saw her. I’d seen her here and there during my bar crawls back in college. She worked the bar like most women in New York do: posting up at a corner and looking bored, sexy, waiting for a hopeful sucker to buy her a drink. I was usually with Carli at some table near the center of the room sipping on a Stella Artois while Carli munched idly on whatever low-cal dish the place was serving. I had also taken a few classes with her, though I had not noticed her in them – I was usually messing around on my laptop and not paying any attention.
We first actually met after a poetry reading by Donald Hall. Andi had gone with Rose and while I was standing outside smoking, the two approached me and Andi introduced us. She explained to me that both Rose and I were English majors and that we both wanted to do something in journalism. In the light of the lamppost I saw that she looked like one of those atypical feminists: short, thin hair dyed a red-purple, mildly conservative, loose grey wool sweater, dangling gold earrings, tight, plain brown pants that were tucked into her halfway knee high black leather boots. I remember her eyeing me with some sort of amused suspicion, that sly grin plastered under her slightly hooked nose. I had brushed off the look, though it bugged the shit out of me, and smiled with my cigarette still clamped between my lips. We shook hands and exchanged hellos and Andi mentioned that they were going to meet Will at a bar, so she made the suggestion that I tag along. That night I had made plans to meet Carli at her place to watch some movie I don’t remember anymore, but I accepted Andi’s offer and we headed out to Manhattan on the D train.
Andi spent most of that night knocking back shots of tequila to relieve the stress of mediating between me and Rose as we antagonized each other. We argued back and forth about jazz music and whether or not Miles Davis could or would trump Coltrane, whether or not Dickenson would have been lovers with Plath, and how blatantly Giuliani abused his power in between taking long swigs from our beers or glasses of whiskey. The whole time we had on these brilliant, smug smiles to try to further aggravate the other – we were having fun. After that night we started hanging out before and after class to smoke cigarettes outside Wagner and bitch about professors or exchange notes and books. We went out to some clubs in Harlem where we’d sit on the outer rim drinking G ‘n’ Ts and admiring the improv jazz and blues players. During finals we’d hang out in each other’s rooms and review dates, research articles, do a few lines to stay awake, and listen to Dylan.
Carli eventually accused me of cheating on her with Rose. And in some ways I guess she was right. I had started to become dissatisfied with Carli and felt like we never had anything we could talk about outside of where to eat or drink and when we could fuck. Rose could read me. She could challenge me intellectually and we could talk for hours about anything or not even make eye contact for hours without there being any awkward silence. When Carli and I broke up, Rose asked specifically if she was the reason why. I reassured her that it was all because I didn’t want to waste Carli’s time; that I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Though Rose wasn’t the cause of the end of my relationship, Carli distanced herself so much from our circle that she changed her major from Religious Studies to Business Management so she wouldn’t even have to be on the same side of campus as us.
There was finally a knock and Andi’s childlike voice warbling through the door.
“We’re heeere!”
We set our drinks down, wiped our lips, and stubbed out our cigarettes in the tray in the middle of the table. I walked to the door and re-smoothed my dress shirt before turning the faux crystal door handle.
“Hey! Jackie-boy!” Will grabbed my hand with his large one and shook hard.
“Hiiii! Jack, you look great! Oh, Rose. When did you get here?” She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and walked past me with the bottle of Ketel One that they had bought on the way over.
I’d managed to break free of Will’s grip and patted him on the back to usher him, Andi, and the crispy, orange smelling duck inside.
“Jack!” Lesley wrapped her arms around my neck as if we hadn’t walked around Central Park on Tuesday when we bumped into each other while she was taking her daily jog.
Art, being Art, had hung at the back of the crowd and after pulling Lesley off of my neck I greeted him as warmly as I could.
“Heeyy! Art! Birthday boy, come on in here.”
“Hey, Jack. Good to see you again.” He extended his hand and shook mine softly. He was just as reserved as ever and spoke with an even more nasal voice because of the cold outside.
The rest of the night went on without that many problems. I had to share silverware with Lesley because I didn’t have enough for everyone, Will got belligerently drunk halfway through and Andi had to take him out into the hall to talk him down, and Lesley gave Art a lap dance which he passed out halfway through because of the vodka that Rose and I kept feeding him. After we’d revived him, he rushed for the bathroom and vomited for what seemed like half an hour. Andi and Will, who could barely stand themselves, announced that they’d take Art back to his apartment. And Lesley drunkenly remarked under her breath that she would have given Art a happy ending if he weren’t already so drunk. After everyone had taken off, Rose and I sat across the table from one another again sipping smoke from our cigarettes and nursing our glasses of the last of the champagne.
Nina Simone’s “Wild Is The Wind” was playing quietly in the background when Rose broke the silence.
“They were in rare form tonight, huh?” We had been keeping up with each other pretty well the entire night – pouring each other glasses of wine and whiskey. Her Irish blood kept her above the rim of the glass where most others would have passed out with their head down on the table.
“Yeah, they were. I can’t believe that Lesley said that she’d sleep with Art. She must have smoked up or something before she got here. She was ridiculous.”
Rose half closed her eyes and smiled, sipping from her glass.
“I’d love to see that happen. Art needs to get laid. Since he got dumped by… What’s her name?”
“Amanda.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s had sex with anybody since Amanda dumped him.”
“Wasn’t that like a year or something ago?”
“Scary, huh?”
I just shook my head and kept looking down at my glass. I was catching up with him as I was going on a six month dry spell, though mine was intentional and self imposed. I didn’t feel like I needed the hang-ups and baggage of a lover.
“You heading out soon? Cause’ I think I wanna get to sleep.”
She exhaled, the smoke coming out in one long stream, and made a disappointed face.
“I don’t know.” She let her voice trail off as she lifted the cigarette to her lips again.
“I don’t really have enough cash for a taxi or a new Metro Card and I sure as shit don’t wanna walk home.”
For the first time, there was a semi-awkward silence that hung with the foggy smoke. I looked over her shoulder at the closet.
“Well, if you really don’t wanna go back I have a futon mattress in the closet. But it’s kind of lumpy.”
Her reaction was a bit quicker than I’d expected.
“That’d be great. I don’t mind about shitty beds. Remember the beds back in college?”
“Guess you can sleep on anything once you’ve slept on those bricks.”
When I reached to tap my ash in the tray on the table, just within my heavy-lidded field of view, I noticed a light smile gracing the corners of her mouth. I leaned back and downed the rest of my drink and then stood up to fetch the mattress from the top shelf of the closet. Once I rolled out the mattress and set down some sheets for her to sleep on, she stepped into the bathroom and got ready to go to sleep. I waited outside the door for my turn and when she reemerged she had her black boots and socks in hand and her black blouse and bra hanging on her arm. I tried to ignore the sexy black lace and the light flushing in her cheeks from the alcohol and because I’d startled her a bit. She smelled like my toothpaste, cigarettes, and her vanilla spray which she’d pulled from her bag before she went in.
I had my hands against the top of the sink with the water running and I was looking myself in the eye in the mirror. I repeated “just go to sleep, just go to sleep” over and over in my head as I tried not to let the alcohol make me do something I would regret in the morning. She was sexy and cool and a woman; not a little girl. She was everything I wanted at that moment, but I knew I would ruin the friendship and that was something I could not bear. I splashed my face with hot water, ran a wet hand through my hair, and swished some Listerine around in my mouth. When I walked into the room, Rose was already curled up and asleep on the floor, her purse and boots by her head, blouse folded around her bra by her feet. I smiled and went around the room turning off, first, the stereo and the other lights. I took off my shirt as I sat down on my bed and dropped it on the floor. I let my body fall back, crossed my legs, and put my hands behind my head before I fell asleep.
~~~
In the early morning I slowly rose out of sleep when I felt a tickle in my nostril and a weight against my chest. For a moment I panicked. I lifted my left hand to rub my eyes and I looked down onto the top of Rose’s small head. Both of us were still clothed and I breathed relief. I had fallen asleep belly up and she had her hand on my chest, she was just slightly curled up next to me, her body close. I swallowed hard as I felt the rise and fall of her breasts against my chest, and she slowly rose her head to meet my eyes. She blinked at me and half-smiled before putting her head back against my collarbone and reaching across my chest to bring me closer. I didn’t breathe for a moment and I pulled one hand from behind my head to put an arm around her back. Were it any other woman, by that point I would have been aggravatingly aroused; but I wasn’t. I was still looking down on her auburn head as the blue sun rose above the buildings, and I leaned my head back, sighing. It was going to be another grey day, but right then I didn’t mind. Right then I wouldn’t have minded to lay there forever.
Crash
I am SO SO sorry for posting this thing so late. My computer decided to fail on me Sunday night so I had to essentially start from scratch with this new story. I will try to drop off some paper copies at Prof. Barnstone's office tomorrow and I will bring copies for everyone in class tomorrow. Please don't crucify me for this...
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Long Story: One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom
Danielle Orner
Story # 13
May 1, 2007
One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom
The moment she awoke, she already knew he was gone. She lay there with her eyes closed listening to the chimes tinkling and flailing madly in the wind outside. She imagined the slender metal tubes trying to jerk free of the thin fishing line that attached them to the retractable porch awning and flying glinting into the starless black night. The wind battered the cardboard-thin walls of the trailer as if trying to make a hole for the darkness to seep into her bedroom. The press of the vast night made her feel very small.
With her eyes still closed and her pale face illuminated by the greenish glow of the boxy message, 3:00AM, spilling over the edge of her nightstand, she ran a hand across the empty expanse of mattress next to her. The bed that had felt cramped all those many nights they slept together, tangled and sweaty, in a constant battle of limbs and sheet corners, now felt like a cold never-ending tundra stretching always beyond her fingertips. She let her hand pace back and fourth so that the lines of her palm could take in the memory of the creases in the slept-in sheets. The rhythm of her arm moving up and down over the length of the indent beside her reminded her of an image she had conjured up years ago in her high school religion class. It was an image of seductive red blossoms opening their perfumed chambers to a moist summer night while a gentle breeze rustled orange gauze curtains. The layers of curtains folded back to reveal an Indian woman on a luxurious mat buried among satin pillows. The ocean of her black hair waved about the soft island of her coffee-skinned face. The woman awoke to find herself alone.
Mr. Aggerman would be please to know that a student had remember anything from his class, even if it was only an image invented to match a single line in his lecture on Siddhartha’s life. She wondered what had become of the small, balding man who had taught religion without giving preference to Mormonism, which was his personal practice, and who had wept in front of the class when telling the story of burying his still-born seventh son. Mr. Aggerman probably didn’t remember the quiet teenage girl with mousy brown curls surrounding her vaguely pleasant face who dreamed up India in the back of his class. Ellen was one of those people that almost everyone fails to register in their minds because she has hardly any unusual features. Her face was that of an archetypal prairie girl’s; light skin with an almost perpetually sun-burned nose, freckles, flushed cheeks, and dark honest eyes. Hers was an ordinary prettiness that got less attention than even the smallest of blemishes on her classmates. When she dropped out of school halfway through the first semester of her sophomore year to help support her ailing father and over-worked mother, only the attendance woman in the front office took note.
Ellen spent the rest of the early morning with her arm bridging the void next to her. Drifting in and out of shallow sleep, her mind mixed strange combinations of exotic landscapes with dull grey high school classrooms. A wooden desk sat in the middle of an overgrown jungle and papayas grew out of a black board. Through this hybrid world, Mr. Aggerman and the Indian woman wandered trying to find each other.
* * * * * *
Robert began to cry in the other room. Ellen opened her eyes to find lemon yellow sunshine filling her bedroom with hot persistence. Last night’s wind had gone and the chimes were silent outside. His side of the bed was still empty but it was empty every morning. Ellen clung to a tiny hope for normalcy as she pulled on her ratty pink bathrobe and strained her ears for the sound of water running in the bathroom. Robert’s wails reached a higher pitch and Ellen could visualize his squinty red baby face contorted in rage before she even looked over the side of his crib. Lifting his tense, onesie-clad body out of the crib, Ellen smoothed back his mass of sweaty black hair and whispered to him through kisses on his forehead. “There, there little Robby boy, Mommy’s here.” She kissed him until his grumpy old man face relaxed. Holding him with one arm, she yanked down the collar of her robe and singled-handedly unbuttoned her pajama shirt with the other. She hoisted Robert to her exposed breast and walked through the tight hallway to the kitchen. Robert’s miniature kitten-mouth immediately latched on to Ellen and his eyes half closed as his body went contently limp. Only his little fists continued lazily flexing as he nursed.
In the kitchen, Anna sat at the table already dressed for school. She was organizing the smelly markers in her purple plastic pencil box with an intensity of concentration that was frightening in a seven-year-old. On the other side of the table from Ellen’s busy daughter, there was a folded piece of lined paper with a familiar scrawl of handwriting across the top indicating it was for Ellen and the kids. With the certainty she had felt in the early morning hours, Ellen knew he was gone. She snatched the note off the table, crumpled it, and threw it in the kitchen trash can. Anna looked up from her work and watched her mother. Their identical brown eyes meet and, for a moment, they stared at each other.
“You’re up awful early this morning sugar. What do you want for breakfast?” Ellen broke the connection as she reached over to the laundry basket sitting in a kitchen chair and riffled around for a spit-up rag.
“Robby always wakes me up with his whining and I’ll have an omelet with cheese please.” Anna went back to her marker arranging and spoke her concise order to the table top.
“You want coffee with that.” Ellen shifted Robert to her shoulder and began patting his back.
“No Mom. Coffee is for grown ups.”
“Oh, I see. Is orange juice okay?”
“Yes please.” Anna took a cap off the red marker and gave it a test sniff. Ellen took the two steps into the living room and laid Robert down on a blanket. She moved his baby gym over him and immediately his wrinkly face spasmed in delight and his brilliant blue eyes swelled with wonder. His arms twirled in a kind of carpet backstroke and then he snatched the mirror with a rattle inside. Ellen watched him shake the toy with fervor as if he had never encountered it in his short life. She smiled at his wiggles before walking to the stove. It amazed her how different her children were from the very start of their lives. Pulling out a frying pan, eggs, cheese, cooking spray, and the grater, Ellen started cooking. She stared out the small kitchen window over the sink as she worked. The land was all dirt and weeds except for one giant tree. The land looked exactly the same as on the first day that they had bought it, dreaming of building a real house and growing a lush lawn to cover the half-acre, eight years ago. In the half-naked branches of the tree, clusters of yellow blossoms clung. The ground was also littered with the little dried yellow flowers that the last-night’s wind had ripped from the tree. They blew across the yard and got stuck in the deep tracks left in the dirt by his truck.
Ellen cracked two eggs on the side of the pan and tossed the shells in the trash can. The transparent gel leaking from the empty shells seeped into the lined paper and smeared the ink.
“Momma, where is Daddy?” Anna’s voice was addressed to Ellen’s back as she leaned over the omelet simmering in the oily pan. Ellen let the question linger between them while she scraped the cheesy eggs from the pan with a plastic spatula.
“He’s gone, honey.” Ellen flopped the omelet on a plate to cool.
“For forever?” Anna finished organizing the markers and slipped the carefully closed pencil holder into her Disney princesses backpack.
“Yeah, for forever, sweetie.” Ellen placed the omelet in front of Anna and watched her pick up her fork and take the first bites. The cheese stretched from Anna’s lip all the way down to the plate making Ellen smile. “Now watch your little brother while I go get ready for work.”
* * * * * *
After dropping Anna off at Henry Happer Elementary School, Ellen drove with Robert in his car seat to her mother’s house. Watching the old fashion shops on main street roll by her windshield, Ellen thought of the first time she had seen her husband. She had been seventeen and was working her job at Allen’s Diner, the same job she has had for nine years. She had liked the job then. As the regular costumers came and went, she would use her power not to be noticed to stand close by and listen in on their conversations. With a hot pot of decaf cooling in her hands, she imagined where they went after they slid out of the sticky red plastic booths. She saw them at their dinner tables eating undercooked green beans and playing out the dramas of being a family in the circle of amber dinning room light. As she watched their laugh lines crease, she saw them swinging children on a backyard rubber tire hanging from a tree house. When she witnessed hands touch across the table, she saw them making love in big brass beds with the windows thrown open and curtains blowing in the breeze.
Three ancient fishing buddies came in every Saturday at 4:30AM to grab a coffee before heading to the river. As they spoke, she went with them out into the day and onto a rickety wooden boat named Sweet Lady tipping in the sun-soaked water. They would sit silently staring into the ripples and she would wear a red fisherman’s hat like the one the bearded man wore.
Before she first saw the man who would become her husband, her favorite patrons were two elderly bums who wandered in once or twice a month. She never saw them anywhere else but the diner. They were never in the street or sleeping in the park. They were like apparitions appearing from no where to buy slices of key lime pie with wadded dollar bills and lose change. They never spoke to one another but instead brought in huge stacks of newspaper. They sat for hours, smelling of unwashed skin and urine, reading every single article in their stack. They brought pens and circled different titles, pictures, sentences, and paragraphs. Ellen lingered over their shoulders and watched, unnoticed, as they circled bits of a travel feature on Fiji or lines from a review on a New York art opening. On those afternoons, she and her two well-read bums would snorkel in perfect blue water populated by impossibly colored fish and then enjoy an opera from their own red velvet box.
And then there was Adam. He had come from an even smaller town in order to attend classes at the city junior college. Both his father and mother had died in a car accident and left him with just enough money to move into a house with five other house mates, pay tuition, and feed himself on a steady diet of canned soup and beef jerky. He went to the diner for lunch as a treat on Tuesdays and Thursdays between his writing composition and computer skills classes. He had intense blue eyes and a hint of a scruffy beard growing sparsely along his jaw line. When he came to the diner, Ellen wasn’t the only one who listened in on his talk. Other patrons had a habit of arriving for lunch at the same time so that they could have discussions with Adam, who mainly liked to speak on religion and literature. The more timid costumers would simple choose booths close to his so that they could listen without being challenged. His views were nothing like what the community had heard at either the Methodist or the Lutheran church. He claimed that women should be allowed to be pastors because they were the first to speak the gospel as they ran, still clutching burial incense, bare footed from the empty tomb. Mixing eastern and western religious traditions, he described the little fragment of God residing in every human breast. He could become passionate in his arguments and occasionally shouted causing the timid costumers to sink more safely into their separate booth while the patron who dared to enter a conversation with Adam turned red with embarrassment. Adam was always so sure of what he was saying and illustrated his views with precision.
Ellen stood in her pink uniform skirt and blouse trimmed with brown and held platters of club sandwiches and omelets while being transported on the waves of Adam’s voice. He had a way of describing things to where Ellen didn’t have to wonder if she were inventing thoughts or lives for him as she did with the other customers. As he spoke, she was sure that they went to the same places: to olive tree groves where shepards slept, to mystic caves where oracles whispered through scented smoke, and to hidden moments tucked between verses.
Like with the other costumers, Ellen never spoke more to Adam then the ordinary diner chatter expected from a waitress. They may never have begun a relationship if it hadn’t been for the untrustworthy latch attached haphazardly to the door of the one-room unisex diner bathroom.
Ellen had gone back to the bathroom after a particularly busy lunch hour to rest her blistered feet and put a wet paper towel on the back of her neck. A woman, who she had never seen in the diner before and who had to be just passing through town on some trip, had yelled at her for standing in the corner and staring into space instead of refilling her coffee cup. After that moment, the woman was completely unhappy with the service at the diner and made loud angry complaints whenever Ellen got anywhere near her table. The woman had a fierce bob of perfectly linear grey hair and an overly made-up tired face. She was dressed in a crisp black skirt suit complete with tasteful black nylons, black pumps, and an elegant black sun hat. Small black pearls studded her ears and lined her neck. Ellen tried to forgive her rude comments and abuse because the woman was dressed as if she was on her way to the funeral. Yet, when the woman stalked out of the restaurant without leaving even lose change for a tip, Ellen had to sneak a break in the dingy unisex restroom.
She had just placed the wet paper towel on her neck and folded her small hands in her pink lap when the door swung open. The rusty old latch slipped as if it had never been locked and Adam stood in the doorway surprised to see the mousy young waitress sitting on the closed toilet set. She glanced up, too exhausted to be embarrassed, and found Adam’s intensely blue eyes studying her as if discovering for the first time some fascinating detail in a familiar sight. He looked like a person who has suddenly noticed a delicate dandelion growing at the edge of a driveway. In a moment that called for embarrassed fumbling, muttered apologies, and swift door shutting, the two contemplated each other. Ellen studied Adam’s face from this new angle. She was so used to seeing only his profile as he sat talking in a booth that she was surprised by his boyish frank appearance. She had never realized that he was so close to her in age.
As she watched him, Adam smiled a humble crooked smile like that of a young boy who has been caught by a doting grandmother with his shirt covered in fresh baked cookie crumbs. It was a smile that teasingly asked for forgiveness without displaying any regret. Ellen caught his contagious grin and returned it. Adam backed out of the doorway and carefully closed the door. Ellen slid the damp cloth from her neck and let it fall into the trash can. She stood and examined her face in the smudge, cracked mirror over the sink. “Hello” she whispered to the mirror and tried on her new smile. When she walked back into the diner, Adam had already left.
* * * * * *
Robert began banging his octopus teething ring against his car seat strap as Ellen turned onto her mother’s driveway. The two-story house she had grown up in sagged and curling paint flaked off the shutters. The grass had reached the height at which it had begun to grow its natural blossoms and looked more like dry prairie brush than a suburban lawn. Hoisting squirming Robert from his set, Ellen hauled his diaper bag onto her free shoulder and trekked through the grass to the front door. Before she even knocked on the faded blue door, she could hear the squealing children on the other side. Her mother had run an in-home daycare ever since her father had his second stroke. Her mother swore that it was the hot summer sun out at the construction sites that had done it to him. Ellen knew that her mother would be able to read Adam’s departure on her face so she took a breath before turning the knob.
Her mother, a slim woman with salt and pepper hair and cat-eye glasses, was kneeling on the living room carpet with four children and a pile of primary colored blocks. Three other kids leapt about the room in a chase game and Ellen could hear more chatter coming from the kitchen where the children were allowed to draw or do play dough at the table.
“Hey Mom, I brought your grandson to see you.” Ellen let Robert slide down her leg to the carpet. He was already clapping with excitement.
“Hey there Ellie. And how is my favorite little stinker? Oh, Ellen what’s wrong? Oh no, he left didn’t he. Oh God baby, he finally just went, didn’t he?” Carol ushered Robert, whose newly learned crawl was jerky and slow, over toward the blocks and stood up to study her daughter’s face.
“It’s fine Mom. I knew it was going to happen.” Ellen began unpacking Robert’s diaper bag on the sofa.
“Do you need to talk baby? You know you can call in sick today and we can talk. I know how much you love being with the kids. You were always so good with all of them. We can make a day of it. All of us. We will get ice cream and go to the park and …” Carol opened her arms to gesture to all the kids playing in every corner of the house.
“It’s fine Mom. I just want to talk to Dad real quick and then I am off to work. I am already all dressed anyway.” Ellen smoothed her pink skirt.
“Oh honey, you are always helping everyone and not thinking of yourself. That’s your problem.” Carol began but thought better of finishing. “Well, if you insist, your Dad’s in the back bedroom. Have a good day at work and try not to be hard on yourself.” Ellen headed for the back bedroom before her mother could start again. The look of concern wrinkling her thin mother’s face told her all the things her mother was longing to say.
In the dim bedroom, her father sat in a wheelchair staring out the window through the half-closed blinds. The static TV flickered with an infomercial. The volume was so low that Ellen could barely hear the murmured message. She pulled a chair close to her Dad being careful not to disturb the tubes and machines humming and glowing around him.
“Hey Daddy.” Ellen stroked a sweaty strand of hair off of his forehead in a gesture that reminded her of how she touched her children when they slept and adjusted his plaid bathrobe. Her father’s flesh hung on his frame as a memory of obesity and his grey eyes where misty. His jaw was slack and his lips chapped. He hadn’t spoken in five years and hadn’t walked in ten. The doctors kept saying it was only a matter of time now and didn’t bother trying new treatments. Ellen still gave her mother half her paycheck to keep him there and came over on Sundays to heal bath him so they wouldn’t have to hire a weekend nurse. The thought of his limp body covered in suds made her lip tremble. “He left Daddy. He left in the middle of the night while we were all sleeping. He left when he didn’t have to see our faces.” Ellen choked and let her face fall into her hands. “God damn it. God damn it. God damn it. I can’t even hate him for it. Shouldn’t I at least be able to hate him for it? Shouldn’t I Daddy? Shouldn’t I?” She felt herself losing control and becoming repetitive. She wanted to chant it over and over until it lost its power. “He didn’t have to see our faces, our faces, our faces, all lined up in the driveway and watching him pull away. God damn it.” But it was almost ten o’clock so she sucked in her words and wiped her face and kissed her father’s unmoving cheek.
* * * * * *
The Tuesday after the bathroom moment was rainy. Most of the regular lunchtime costumers stayed at home listening to their radio serials instead of braving the rain. The diner was nearly empty. Adam was there reading a novel over his plate of eggs. Ellen slid into the booth across from him and watched the drops streak down the window until he put his book down.
“Um. I’m Ellen.” She stuck her hand out awkwardly over the table in a more formal gesture than she intended.
“I know. It says so on your little gold name tag.” Adam didn’t look up. Ellen put her hand over her name tag as if to confirm its existence. Adam grinned at her nervous gesture. “I’m Adam, sorry I can be a bit of a prick sometimes.”
“I know I listen in on your conversations. I mean I know your name not that you’re a prick. I, oh never mind.” Adam laughed and slid his book into his bag. The rain pounded the windows and they talked. Adam told Ellen about his desire to convey God’s true nature through art and Ellen told Adam about watching costumers. The bell on the door tinkled as costumers came and went slopping water on the linoleum. Their umbrellas dripped by the door. Their places were set and cleared. Omelets and pancakes bubbled in the kitchen and waitresses carried coffee back and forth. Cups were filled and drained. Adam and Ellen fell in love.
* * * * * * *
The diner was busy that morning. Ellen avoided the faces of the costumers and waitresses by constantly carrying trays back and forth. She wondered if her mother had been right and she should have stayed home. She walked to the pizza place three doors down whenever she needed to use the restroom. She wore herself into a stupor by walking that small loop from the kitchen to the tables until her exhaustion overwhelmed her memory. She only remembered again when she pulled into the parking lot of the public library and walked in by habit. Looking into her purse to find this week’s list of titles, she found nothing but crimpled receipts and single sticks of gum that had been separated from their packs. She remembered he was gone and stood staring at the shelves without direction.
* * * * * *
“This one isn’t finished yet but I thought you might like it.” Adam pulled a faded sheet off of a canvas propped up on top of the second-hand dresser in his tiny bedroom. Ellen fidgeted nervously as she waited for him to reveal his art to her. This was the first time she had met Adam outside of the diner and she was worried she might spoil their relationship with the wrong reaction to the art Adam talked so much about. As the sheet came off, Ellen grinned to see a friendly-looking Jesus, complete with white robe and hippy hair, sitting in a diner booth and enjoying omelets with her two bums. “It’s inspired by you actually.”
* * * * * *
Anna was conceived accidentally on a worn quilt in the flatbed of Adam’s ancient blue pick-up truck. Adam’s breath was warmer than the summer night and the country road was deserted. The sky was bright with stars that couldn’t predict the future.
When they discovered Anna’s presence in the watery world of Ellen’s womb, Adam went out to find a ring at a pawn shop and to withdraw from the junior college, which didn’t bother Ellen much because she had found his report card crumpled in a pocket of a jean jacket he had left draped on the back of her parent’s sofa. He had been failing almost everything. The professor’s didn’t value his passion for talk and art over his inability to pass tests. Adam got Ellen’s father’s old job with Smith and Sons Construction Company and justified his abandonment of his artistic religious calling with the consolation that Jesus was born a carpenter.
They were married at the Lutheran Church and had a reception with pink Kool-Aid punch and store-bought sugar cookies in the basement. Ellen’s father couldn’t attend the reception because they couldn’t manage to get his wheelchair down the narrow stairwell. After the celebration, Ellen and Adam bought the trailer on a half-acre of land with the remainder of Adam’s inheritance and with a loan co-signed by Carol, whose only collateral was Ellen’s aging childhood home. And there they anticipated the birth of Anna.
Adam was disappointed by the wet bawling creature Anna turned out to be. He had expected a messenger from the divine origins who would still be alight with a purity of soul. When he looked into her eyes, he didn’t see a knowledge of God but only a reflection of his wife’s plain brown irises. Before her birth, he had given Ellen a list of books to check out from library every week on her way home from the diner. He had planned to educate his daughter in the grand traditions of art, philosophy, and literature. She was going to be what he had failed to be. Every night before the birth, Adam would predict Anna’s future in passionate monologues preformed over the lukewarm TV dinners that he and Ellen ate on a card table with torn fabric that they had purchased at yard sale to serve as their dining room table. The table was squeezed into the cramped kitchen because they had no dining room. On one such night, Adam leapt up from his folding chair and came around the table to where Ellen sat with her swollen feet in a plastic bowl filled with sudsy warm water and her swollen belly propped up against the edge of the card table. He smoothed the sweaty tangles of brown hair off her forehead with a callused hand rubbed raw by boards and tool handles and, with his equally rough other hand, traced the curves of her belly feeling for the kicks of little limbs. Adam leaned so close to whisper in her ear that she could feel the bristles of his now full beard and smell the familiarity of his breath. “This is what it is all about, Ellen. All of it, books and stories and philosophies and God and history, is about this: two ordinary people struggling to live and love and create. Anna is our art, you know that. She is our own little piece of human artwork. You know what is best about this kind of artwork? Do you know what’s best about it, Ellen?”
“No. What’s best about it, Adam?” Ellen leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. In the reddish darkness behind her lids, she tried to visualize Anna in her body. A transparent glowing white figure floated across the screens of her lids. An unintended smile drifted across her lips and she became absorbed in the feeling of Adam’s hand pacing over the curves of her belly. Anna was there, she knew, on the other side of the touch absorbed in the feeling of her father.
“The best thing about it is that this sort of art won’t become stagnant or dusty. We won’t have to worry about it being lost in some museum attic or about its color fading or paint eroding. Anna will be art that grows and lives and breaths. Art forever changing. Art forever the testament of God’s wonders. What could be a greater creation?” Adam’s eyes glazed over as he stared beyond the peeling yellow wallpaper barely holding on above the kitchen sink.
“Nothing I suppose. Nothing could be greater.” Ellen nuzzled her nose into her husband’s beard and drifted into her own dreams of sunlit family picnics. In her daydreams, a boy and a girl ran in tall grass before leaping onto a smiling Carol’s lap. They rolled across the old quilt and her father was there to catch them on the other side. He was free of a wheelchair and told stories in a husky voice to the doe-eyed children as they snuggled into his plaid shirt that smelled of fresh wood shavings.
The next morning, Ellen found Adam packing up all his canvases, sculptures, and art supplies that had been stashed in the second bedroom of the trailer. He was sweaty with the effort of dragging all his work to the center of the room. “Adam, honey, what are you doing?” She leaned against the door frame wearing nothing but his t-shirt and a pair of lavender underwear. The bottom of her belly stuck out of the t-shirt. With her matted curls wildly framing her simple face, she looked like a modern-day blue-collar Madonna.
“We have got to make room in The Studio for our latest collaboration.” He beamed up from his place kneeling on the floor before his pile of artwork. “This is the baby’s room now.” He added with a laugh in response to her look of confusion. He continued speaking plans to himself while packing up the room and Ellen went to the kitchen to make breakfast.
Adam left that afternoon with his pick-up bed filled with easels, brushes, canvas, and frames. A huge sculpted crucifix stuck out the back and Jesus’ face with a barbed wire crown puncturing his clay forehead gazed mournfully into the cloudless sky. The bums from the diner painting peered over their newspapers at her while they traveled down the dirt road. Adam return later with only a beat-up old crib in the bed of his truck. Ellen didn’t ask where the art had gone.
* * * * * *
After Anna was born, Adam discovered that he had little talent as a teacher. As Anna grew and proved to have less talent as a student than Adam expected, the list of library requests featured fewer and fewer books for Anna and more for himself. He arrived home from work aching and sun-burned lacking the old enthusiasm for Jesus’ family business. Over his TV dinner, he read his books instead of speaking. A silence settled around him as perpetual as the wood dust in his black hair. He left the tasks of feeding, cuddling, and bathing the child to Ellen who seemed to have a natural affinity for communication through touch.
Anna frustrated him with her already formed personality and disposition. He had imagined that she would be as malleable as wet clay with a mind as blank as a canvas waiting to be filled with colors. Although she showed no knowledge of the place from which she came, she did seem to be a miniature human being who arrived already knowing she hated baths and loved arranging toys by her own toddler organizational system. She finger-painted careful so as not to smear a single smudge on her child-size smock or the table or her delicate wrists. Adam observed this serious little person making straight lines across her page instead of painting flowers and stick figures like he would a stranger. He seemed to be trying to figure out what she had to do with him.
As Anna grew, Ellen watched Adam dwindle. He never complained about the small trailer or his dead-end, manual labor job or the screaming toddler or the endless march of frozen entrees or Ellen’s thickening middle. Unaware of his surroundings, he just seemed to be receding becoming more and more of a mirage in the house whose existence was only made real by a trial of dirty dishes neatly stacked in the sink, of white t-shirts stained yellow on the underarms, and muddy overalls spilling from a laundry basket.
On rare nights, Adam would gently shake Ellen awake and suddenly be his old self in that nighttime bedroom made into another world by the pale moon glow. He would speak again of God’s beauty and of capturing a small corner of that essence in art. He whispered his ideas into her ears and kissed them into her skin. He spoke of the desert, of its perceived bareness and its hidden beauty. His whispers took her to red rocked canyons and to cacti studded cliffs where a Jesus figure wandered in white robes being tempted. “The desert is like our lives: harsh and unforgiving but speckled with unconquerable life. God is the cactus flower blooming as red as the flaming sunset.” Adam stroked the words into her hair and left them tangled there. Then they would be eighteen again on the thread-bare patches of a quilt laid out in the bed of a pick-up. In the light of those early mornings, hope would dry out its wings in Ellen’s chest but by the evenings Adam was hauling his defeated body through the screen door and into the same old routine.
Ellen didn’t tell anyone but her invalid father about Adam’s withdrawal from the physical world. What could she say to the other waitresses in the diner whose husbands and boyfriends plowed through packs of Bud Lites or spent afternoons in other women’s beds or burned cigarette butt scars into their children’s wrists or gave out black eyes as anniversary gifts? Or to her mother whose husband had suffered two strokes before lingering on as a semi-vegetable and costing a fortune to maintain as a body without a spirit? So she spoke only to her father who was an expert on both being there and being gone.
Adam drank black coffee for breakfast, washed his face in the bathroom sink, loaded his pick-up with tools, rumbled out of the dirt driveway, built homes not his own in burning sun and freezing wind, came home dirty, stiffly kissed his wife and child’s cheeks, sat at the card table with a tattered book and a microwaved dinner, showered, and crawled between the sheets. Ellen made breakfast for Anna, cleaned and dressed her, braided her hair, dressed herself in the diner uniform, dropped Anna off at her mother’s, cried to her father, listened at the diner, took Adam’s list to the library, picked up Anna, microwaved dinners, played with Anna on the carpet, watched Adam eat, put Anna to bed, cleaned the trailer, sat at the card table staring out the kitchen window, and slid into bed next to sleeping Adam. This routine repeated itself until the bump that was Robert swelled to an unbearable size and Ellen discovered the sculptures lined up behind the trailer.
* * * * * * *
Ellen stared at the shelves in the library. There seemed to be so many more looming there then there had ever been before. She saw a familiar librarian approaching her to ask if she need any help locating a book and she began to panic. She didn’t want to shrink down to a weeping huddled mass on the carpet of the public library and she suddenly felt sure that she would be if the librarian asked her what she needed. Darting into the nearest aisle, she pretended to study the book bindings. As the librarian passed, Ellen read the titles slowly to herself like a calming chant. Her hand came up to touch the binding of a book whose title snagged her mind. It shocked her to find the book off the shelf and in her hand. She had never selected one herself. Before she dropped out of school, she had read as much of the assigned books as possible over the din of her mother’s at-home daycare before giving in to the noise and settling in the living room with the children climbing on her like a human jungle gym. But here was a book in her hand. She read the title again The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She took it to the check out counter, nodded when the librarian asks “just this one today?”, and left to collect Anna from school and Robert from daycare.
Anna was the last child left on the playground when Ellen pulled up. The chains of empty swings creaked in the wind and the slide loomed dark silhouetted against the backdrop of the setting sun. All the other after-care children had gone home already. Anna stood on the blacktop with her back-pack on her back and her eyes scanning the road beyond the chain-link fence. A yard duty sat lounging in a beach chair and flipping through a magazine not paying any attention to the girl with the late mother. “I am sorry, Anna, for not coming on time.” Ellen knelt on the blacktop and wrapped her arms around her serious daughter who had not cried.
“It is alright, Mom. I knew you would come.”
* * * * * * *
Two weeks before Robert’s due date, Ellen was sent home from the diner to rest. The day was hot and Ellen vomited in the dirt as soon as she stepped out of her car in the front yard. When she was done spitting the taste from her mouth, she walked behind the empty trailer to where an unused garden hose was coiled. There, lined up against the back wall of the trailer, were seven crosses with metal blossoms sprouting from there centers. They were made from rough material that Ellen recognized at once as scraps of wood, chunks of concrete, swathes of fiber glass, and twisted bits of metal. Adam must have scrounged the materials from various construction sights. All lined up the crosses simultaneously reminded Ellen of a little graveyard and of a trim flowerbed. She sunk to the ground in front of the crosses and her gigantic belly rested in the dirt. Gingerly, she touched the blossoms. A ragged edge of a metal petal sliced the pad of her index finger and a drop scarlet blood pooled in the dust. As she watched the red seep into the earth, Ellen knew. She lay down in the dirt curling around her unborn son and spent the afternoon watering the site that marked the death of their collaboration and the rebirth of Adam’s solo career.
* * * * * * *
Ellen fell asleep on the couch with her library book spread open on her lap. When the next morning’s sun washed over the trailer, Anna found her there. She watched her sleeping mother with her solemn brown eyes. In the next room, Robert squinted his whole face as light trickled into his baby dreams. The note smeared with egg dried in the trash can. The tree let lose it last yellow blossoms to swirl gracefully before falling to the dry dirt. The cook at the diner sprayed down the frying pans to make the morning’s first omelets. Carol opened bright yellow cans of play dough and dumped the multi-colored blobs onto the kitchen table. Ellen’s father’s chest rose and fell one last time in the back bedroom before becoming completely still. And a blue pick-up truck sped down a black stretch of highway with a red cactus blossom fluttering on the dashboard.
Story # 13
May 1, 2007
One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom
The moment she awoke, she already knew he was gone. She lay there with her eyes closed listening to the chimes tinkling and flailing madly in the wind outside. She imagined the slender metal tubes trying to jerk free of the thin fishing line that attached them to the retractable porch awning and flying glinting into the starless black night. The wind battered the cardboard-thin walls of the trailer as if trying to make a hole for the darkness to seep into her bedroom. The press of the vast night made her feel very small.
With her eyes still closed and her pale face illuminated by the greenish glow of the boxy message, 3:00AM, spilling over the edge of her nightstand, she ran a hand across the empty expanse of mattress next to her. The bed that had felt cramped all those many nights they slept together, tangled and sweaty, in a constant battle of limbs and sheet corners, now felt like a cold never-ending tundra stretching always beyond her fingertips. She let her hand pace back and fourth so that the lines of her palm could take in the memory of the creases in the slept-in sheets. The rhythm of her arm moving up and down over the length of the indent beside her reminded her of an image she had conjured up years ago in her high school religion class. It was an image of seductive red blossoms opening their perfumed chambers to a moist summer night while a gentle breeze rustled orange gauze curtains. The layers of curtains folded back to reveal an Indian woman on a luxurious mat buried among satin pillows. The ocean of her black hair waved about the soft island of her coffee-skinned face. The woman awoke to find herself alone.
Mr. Aggerman would be please to know that a student had remember anything from his class, even if it was only an image invented to match a single line in his lecture on Siddhartha’s life. She wondered what had become of the small, balding man who had taught religion without giving preference to Mormonism, which was his personal practice, and who had wept in front of the class when telling the story of burying his still-born seventh son. Mr. Aggerman probably didn’t remember the quiet teenage girl with mousy brown curls surrounding her vaguely pleasant face who dreamed up India in the back of his class. Ellen was one of those people that almost everyone fails to register in their minds because she has hardly any unusual features. Her face was that of an archetypal prairie girl’s; light skin with an almost perpetually sun-burned nose, freckles, flushed cheeks, and dark honest eyes. Hers was an ordinary prettiness that got less attention than even the smallest of blemishes on her classmates. When she dropped out of school halfway through the first semester of her sophomore year to help support her ailing father and over-worked mother, only the attendance woman in the front office took note.
Ellen spent the rest of the early morning with her arm bridging the void next to her. Drifting in and out of shallow sleep, her mind mixed strange combinations of exotic landscapes with dull grey high school classrooms. A wooden desk sat in the middle of an overgrown jungle and papayas grew out of a black board. Through this hybrid world, Mr. Aggerman and the Indian woman wandered trying to find each other.
* * * * * *
Robert began to cry in the other room. Ellen opened her eyes to find lemon yellow sunshine filling her bedroom with hot persistence. Last night’s wind had gone and the chimes were silent outside. His side of the bed was still empty but it was empty every morning. Ellen clung to a tiny hope for normalcy as she pulled on her ratty pink bathrobe and strained her ears for the sound of water running in the bathroom. Robert’s wails reached a higher pitch and Ellen could visualize his squinty red baby face contorted in rage before she even looked over the side of his crib. Lifting his tense, onesie-clad body out of the crib, Ellen smoothed back his mass of sweaty black hair and whispered to him through kisses on his forehead. “There, there little Robby boy, Mommy’s here.” She kissed him until his grumpy old man face relaxed. Holding him with one arm, she yanked down the collar of her robe and singled-handedly unbuttoned her pajama shirt with the other. She hoisted Robert to her exposed breast and walked through the tight hallway to the kitchen. Robert’s miniature kitten-mouth immediately latched on to Ellen and his eyes half closed as his body went contently limp. Only his little fists continued lazily flexing as he nursed.
In the kitchen, Anna sat at the table already dressed for school. She was organizing the smelly markers in her purple plastic pencil box with an intensity of concentration that was frightening in a seven-year-old. On the other side of the table from Ellen’s busy daughter, there was a folded piece of lined paper with a familiar scrawl of handwriting across the top indicating it was for Ellen and the kids. With the certainty she had felt in the early morning hours, Ellen knew he was gone. She snatched the note off the table, crumpled it, and threw it in the kitchen trash can. Anna looked up from her work and watched her mother. Their identical brown eyes meet and, for a moment, they stared at each other.
“You’re up awful early this morning sugar. What do you want for breakfast?” Ellen broke the connection as she reached over to the laundry basket sitting in a kitchen chair and riffled around for a spit-up rag.
“Robby always wakes me up with his whining and I’ll have an omelet with cheese please.” Anna went back to her marker arranging and spoke her concise order to the table top.
“You want coffee with that.” Ellen shifted Robert to her shoulder and began patting his back.
“No Mom. Coffee is for grown ups.”
“Oh, I see. Is orange juice okay?”
“Yes please.” Anna took a cap off the red marker and gave it a test sniff. Ellen took the two steps into the living room and laid Robert down on a blanket. She moved his baby gym over him and immediately his wrinkly face spasmed in delight and his brilliant blue eyes swelled with wonder. His arms twirled in a kind of carpet backstroke and then he snatched the mirror with a rattle inside. Ellen watched him shake the toy with fervor as if he had never encountered it in his short life. She smiled at his wiggles before walking to the stove. It amazed her how different her children were from the very start of their lives. Pulling out a frying pan, eggs, cheese, cooking spray, and the grater, Ellen started cooking. She stared out the small kitchen window over the sink as she worked. The land was all dirt and weeds except for one giant tree. The land looked exactly the same as on the first day that they had bought it, dreaming of building a real house and growing a lush lawn to cover the half-acre, eight years ago. In the half-naked branches of the tree, clusters of yellow blossoms clung. The ground was also littered with the little dried yellow flowers that the last-night’s wind had ripped from the tree. They blew across the yard and got stuck in the deep tracks left in the dirt by his truck.
Ellen cracked two eggs on the side of the pan and tossed the shells in the trash can. The transparent gel leaking from the empty shells seeped into the lined paper and smeared the ink.
“Momma, where is Daddy?” Anna’s voice was addressed to Ellen’s back as she leaned over the omelet simmering in the oily pan. Ellen let the question linger between them while she scraped the cheesy eggs from the pan with a plastic spatula.
“He’s gone, honey.” Ellen flopped the omelet on a plate to cool.
“For forever?” Anna finished organizing the markers and slipped the carefully closed pencil holder into her Disney princesses backpack.
“Yeah, for forever, sweetie.” Ellen placed the omelet in front of Anna and watched her pick up her fork and take the first bites. The cheese stretched from Anna’s lip all the way down to the plate making Ellen smile. “Now watch your little brother while I go get ready for work.”
* * * * * *
After dropping Anna off at Henry Happer Elementary School, Ellen drove with Robert in his car seat to her mother’s house. Watching the old fashion shops on main street roll by her windshield, Ellen thought of the first time she had seen her husband. She had been seventeen and was working her job at Allen’s Diner, the same job she has had for nine years. She had liked the job then. As the regular costumers came and went, she would use her power not to be noticed to stand close by and listen in on their conversations. With a hot pot of decaf cooling in her hands, she imagined where they went after they slid out of the sticky red plastic booths. She saw them at their dinner tables eating undercooked green beans and playing out the dramas of being a family in the circle of amber dinning room light. As she watched their laugh lines crease, she saw them swinging children on a backyard rubber tire hanging from a tree house. When she witnessed hands touch across the table, she saw them making love in big brass beds with the windows thrown open and curtains blowing in the breeze.
Three ancient fishing buddies came in every Saturday at 4:30AM to grab a coffee before heading to the river. As they spoke, she went with them out into the day and onto a rickety wooden boat named Sweet Lady tipping in the sun-soaked water. They would sit silently staring into the ripples and she would wear a red fisherman’s hat like the one the bearded man wore.
Before she first saw the man who would become her husband, her favorite patrons were two elderly bums who wandered in once or twice a month. She never saw them anywhere else but the diner. They were never in the street or sleeping in the park. They were like apparitions appearing from no where to buy slices of key lime pie with wadded dollar bills and lose change. They never spoke to one another but instead brought in huge stacks of newspaper. They sat for hours, smelling of unwashed skin and urine, reading every single article in their stack. They brought pens and circled different titles, pictures, sentences, and paragraphs. Ellen lingered over their shoulders and watched, unnoticed, as they circled bits of a travel feature on Fiji or lines from a review on a New York art opening. On those afternoons, she and her two well-read bums would snorkel in perfect blue water populated by impossibly colored fish and then enjoy an opera from their own red velvet box.
And then there was Adam. He had come from an even smaller town in order to attend classes at the city junior college. Both his father and mother had died in a car accident and left him with just enough money to move into a house with five other house mates, pay tuition, and feed himself on a steady diet of canned soup and beef jerky. He went to the diner for lunch as a treat on Tuesdays and Thursdays between his writing composition and computer skills classes. He had intense blue eyes and a hint of a scruffy beard growing sparsely along his jaw line. When he came to the diner, Ellen wasn’t the only one who listened in on his talk. Other patrons had a habit of arriving for lunch at the same time so that they could have discussions with Adam, who mainly liked to speak on religion and literature. The more timid costumers would simple choose booths close to his so that they could listen without being challenged. His views were nothing like what the community had heard at either the Methodist or the Lutheran church. He claimed that women should be allowed to be pastors because they were the first to speak the gospel as they ran, still clutching burial incense, bare footed from the empty tomb. Mixing eastern and western religious traditions, he described the little fragment of God residing in every human breast. He could become passionate in his arguments and occasionally shouted causing the timid costumers to sink more safely into their separate booth while the patron who dared to enter a conversation with Adam turned red with embarrassment. Adam was always so sure of what he was saying and illustrated his views with precision.
Ellen stood in her pink uniform skirt and blouse trimmed with brown and held platters of club sandwiches and omelets while being transported on the waves of Adam’s voice. He had a way of describing things to where Ellen didn’t have to wonder if she were inventing thoughts or lives for him as she did with the other customers. As he spoke, she was sure that they went to the same places: to olive tree groves where shepards slept, to mystic caves where oracles whispered through scented smoke, and to hidden moments tucked between verses.
Like with the other costumers, Ellen never spoke more to Adam then the ordinary diner chatter expected from a waitress. They may never have begun a relationship if it hadn’t been for the untrustworthy latch attached haphazardly to the door of the one-room unisex diner bathroom.
Ellen had gone back to the bathroom after a particularly busy lunch hour to rest her blistered feet and put a wet paper towel on the back of her neck. A woman, who she had never seen in the diner before and who had to be just passing through town on some trip, had yelled at her for standing in the corner and staring into space instead of refilling her coffee cup. After that moment, the woman was completely unhappy with the service at the diner and made loud angry complaints whenever Ellen got anywhere near her table. The woman had a fierce bob of perfectly linear grey hair and an overly made-up tired face. She was dressed in a crisp black skirt suit complete with tasteful black nylons, black pumps, and an elegant black sun hat. Small black pearls studded her ears and lined her neck. Ellen tried to forgive her rude comments and abuse because the woman was dressed as if she was on her way to the funeral. Yet, when the woman stalked out of the restaurant without leaving even lose change for a tip, Ellen had to sneak a break in the dingy unisex restroom.
She had just placed the wet paper towel on her neck and folded her small hands in her pink lap when the door swung open. The rusty old latch slipped as if it had never been locked and Adam stood in the doorway surprised to see the mousy young waitress sitting on the closed toilet set. She glanced up, too exhausted to be embarrassed, and found Adam’s intensely blue eyes studying her as if discovering for the first time some fascinating detail in a familiar sight. He looked like a person who has suddenly noticed a delicate dandelion growing at the edge of a driveway. In a moment that called for embarrassed fumbling, muttered apologies, and swift door shutting, the two contemplated each other. Ellen studied Adam’s face from this new angle. She was so used to seeing only his profile as he sat talking in a booth that she was surprised by his boyish frank appearance. She had never realized that he was so close to her in age.
As she watched him, Adam smiled a humble crooked smile like that of a young boy who has been caught by a doting grandmother with his shirt covered in fresh baked cookie crumbs. It was a smile that teasingly asked for forgiveness without displaying any regret. Ellen caught his contagious grin and returned it. Adam backed out of the doorway and carefully closed the door. Ellen slid the damp cloth from her neck and let it fall into the trash can. She stood and examined her face in the smudge, cracked mirror over the sink. “Hello” she whispered to the mirror and tried on her new smile. When she walked back into the diner, Adam had already left.
* * * * * *
Robert began banging his octopus teething ring against his car seat strap as Ellen turned onto her mother’s driveway. The two-story house she had grown up in sagged and curling paint flaked off the shutters. The grass had reached the height at which it had begun to grow its natural blossoms and looked more like dry prairie brush than a suburban lawn. Hoisting squirming Robert from his set, Ellen hauled his diaper bag onto her free shoulder and trekked through the grass to the front door. Before she even knocked on the faded blue door, she could hear the squealing children on the other side. Her mother had run an in-home daycare ever since her father had his second stroke. Her mother swore that it was the hot summer sun out at the construction sites that had done it to him. Ellen knew that her mother would be able to read Adam’s departure on her face so she took a breath before turning the knob.
Her mother, a slim woman with salt and pepper hair and cat-eye glasses, was kneeling on the living room carpet with four children and a pile of primary colored blocks. Three other kids leapt about the room in a chase game and Ellen could hear more chatter coming from the kitchen where the children were allowed to draw or do play dough at the table.
“Hey Mom, I brought your grandson to see you.” Ellen let Robert slide down her leg to the carpet. He was already clapping with excitement.
“Hey there Ellie. And how is my favorite little stinker? Oh, Ellen what’s wrong? Oh no, he left didn’t he. Oh God baby, he finally just went, didn’t he?” Carol ushered Robert, whose newly learned crawl was jerky and slow, over toward the blocks and stood up to study her daughter’s face.
“It’s fine Mom. I knew it was going to happen.” Ellen began unpacking Robert’s diaper bag on the sofa.
“Do you need to talk baby? You know you can call in sick today and we can talk. I know how much you love being with the kids. You were always so good with all of them. We can make a day of it. All of us. We will get ice cream and go to the park and …” Carol opened her arms to gesture to all the kids playing in every corner of the house.
“It’s fine Mom. I just want to talk to Dad real quick and then I am off to work. I am already all dressed anyway.” Ellen smoothed her pink skirt.
“Oh honey, you are always helping everyone and not thinking of yourself. That’s your problem.” Carol began but thought better of finishing. “Well, if you insist, your Dad’s in the back bedroom. Have a good day at work and try not to be hard on yourself.” Ellen headed for the back bedroom before her mother could start again. The look of concern wrinkling her thin mother’s face told her all the things her mother was longing to say.
In the dim bedroom, her father sat in a wheelchair staring out the window through the half-closed blinds. The static TV flickered with an infomercial. The volume was so low that Ellen could barely hear the murmured message. She pulled a chair close to her Dad being careful not to disturb the tubes and machines humming and glowing around him.
“Hey Daddy.” Ellen stroked a sweaty strand of hair off of his forehead in a gesture that reminded her of how she touched her children when they slept and adjusted his plaid bathrobe. Her father’s flesh hung on his frame as a memory of obesity and his grey eyes where misty. His jaw was slack and his lips chapped. He hadn’t spoken in five years and hadn’t walked in ten. The doctors kept saying it was only a matter of time now and didn’t bother trying new treatments. Ellen still gave her mother half her paycheck to keep him there and came over on Sundays to heal bath him so they wouldn’t have to hire a weekend nurse. The thought of his limp body covered in suds made her lip tremble. “He left Daddy. He left in the middle of the night while we were all sleeping. He left when he didn’t have to see our faces.” Ellen choked and let her face fall into her hands. “God damn it. God damn it. God damn it. I can’t even hate him for it. Shouldn’t I at least be able to hate him for it? Shouldn’t I Daddy? Shouldn’t I?” She felt herself losing control and becoming repetitive. She wanted to chant it over and over until it lost its power. “He didn’t have to see our faces, our faces, our faces, all lined up in the driveway and watching him pull away. God damn it.” But it was almost ten o’clock so she sucked in her words and wiped her face and kissed her father’s unmoving cheek.
* * * * * *
The Tuesday after the bathroom moment was rainy. Most of the regular lunchtime costumers stayed at home listening to their radio serials instead of braving the rain. The diner was nearly empty. Adam was there reading a novel over his plate of eggs. Ellen slid into the booth across from him and watched the drops streak down the window until he put his book down.
“Um. I’m Ellen.” She stuck her hand out awkwardly over the table in a more formal gesture than she intended.
“I know. It says so on your little gold name tag.” Adam didn’t look up. Ellen put her hand over her name tag as if to confirm its existence. Adam grinned at her nervous gesture. “I’m Adam, sorry I can be a bit of a prick sometimes.”
“I know I listen in on your conversations. I mean I know your name not that you’re a prick. I, oh never mind.” Adam laughed and slid his book into his bag. The rain pounded the windows and they talked. Adam told Ellen about his desire to convey God’s true nature through art and Ellen told Adam about watching costumers. The bell on the door tinkled as costumers came and went slopping water on the linoleum. Their umbrellas dripped by the door. Their places were set and cleared. Omelets and pancakes bubbled in the kitchen and waitresses carried coffee back and forth. Cups were filled and drained. Adam and Ellen fell in love.
* * * * * * *
The diner was busy that morning. Ellen avoided the faces of the costumers and waitresses by constantly carrying trays back and forth. She wondered if her mother had been right and she should have stayed home. She walked to the pizza place three doors down whenever she needed to use the restroom. She wore herself into a stupor by walking that small loop from the kitchen to the tables until her exhaustion overwhelmed her memory. She only remembered again when she pulled into the parking lot of the public library and walked in by habit. Looking into her purse to find this week’s list of titles, she found nothing but crimpled receipts and single sticks of gum that had been separated from their packs. She remembered he was gone and stood staring at the shelves without direction.
* * * * * *
“This one isn’t finished yet but I thought you might like it.” Adam pulled a faded sheet off of a canvas propped up on top of the second-hand dresser in his tiny bedroom. Ellen fidgeted nervously as she waited for him to reveal his art to her. This was the first time she had met Adam outside of the diner and she was worried she might spoil their relationship with the wrong reaction to the art Adam talked so much about. As the sheet came off, Ellen grinned to see a friendly-looking Jesus, complete with white robe and hippy hair, sitting in a diner booth and enjoying omelets with her two bums. “It’s inspired by you actually.”
* * * * * *
Anna was conceived accidentally on a worn quilt in the flatbed of Adam’s ancient blue pick-up truck. Adam’s breath was warmer than the summer night and the country road was deserted. The sky was bright with stars that couldn’t predict the future.
When they discovered Anna’s presence in the watery world of Ellen’s womb, Adam went out to find a ring at a pawn shop and to withdraw from the junior college, which didn’t bother Ellen much because she had found his report card crumpled in a pocket of a jean jacket he had left draped on the back of her parent’s sofa. He had been failing almost everything. The professor’s didn’t value his passion for talk and art over his inability to pass tests. Adam got Ellen’s father’s old job with Smith and Sons Construction Company and justified his abandonment of his artistic religious calling with the consolation that Jesus was born a carpenter.
They were married at the Lutheran Church and had a reception with pink Kool-Aid punch and store-bought sugar cookies in the basement. Ellen’s father couldn’t attend the reception because they couldn’t manage to get his wheelchair down the narrow stairwell. After the celebration, Ellen and Adam bought the trailer on a half-acre of land with the remainder of Adam’s inheritance and with a loan co-signed by Carol, whose only collateral was Ellen’s aging childhood home. And there they anticipated the birth of Anna.
Adam was disappointed by the wet bawling creature Anna turned out to be. He had expected a messenger from the divine origins who would still be alight with a purity of soul. When he looked into her eyes, he didn’t see a knowledge of God but only a reflection of his wife’s plain brown irises. Before her birth, he had given Ellen a list of books to check out from library every week on her way home from the diner. He had planned to educate his daughter in the grand traditions of art, philosophy, and literature. She was going to be what he had failed to be. Every night before the birth, Adam would predict Anna’s future in passionate monologues preformed over the lukewarm TV dinners that he and Ellen ate on a card table with torn fabric that they had purchased at yard sale to serve as their dining room table. The table was squeezed into the cramped kitchen because they had no dining room. On one such night, Adam leapt up from his folding chair and came around the table to where Ellen sat with her swollen feet in a plastic bowl filled with sudsy warm water and her swollen belly propped up against the edge of the card table. He smoothed the sweaty tangles of brown hair off her forehead with a callused hand rubbed raw by boards and tool handles and, with his equally rough other hand, traced the curves of her belly feeling for the kicks of little limbs. Adam leaned so close to whisper in her ear that she could feel the bristles of his now full beard and smell the familiarity of his breath. “This is what it is all about, Ellen. All of it, books and stories and philosophies and God and history, is about this: two ordinary people struggling to live and love and create. Anna is our art, you know that. She is our own little piece of human artwork. You know what is best about this kind of artwork? Do you know what’s best about it, Ellen?”
“No. What’s best about it, Adam?” Ellen leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. In the reddish darkness behind her lids, she tried to visualize Anna in her body. A transparent glowing white figure floated across the screens of her lids. An unintended smile drifted across her lips and she became absorbed in the feeling of Adam’s hand pacing over the curves of her belly. Anna was there, she knew, on the other side of the touch absorbed in the feeling of her father.
“The best thing about it is that this sort of art won’t become stagnant or dusty. We won’t have to worry about it being lost in some museum attic or about its color fading or paint eroding. Anna will be art that grows and lives and breaths. Art forever changing. Art forever the testament of God’s wonders. What could be a greater creation?” Adam’s eyes glazed over as he stared beyond the peeling yellow wallpaper barely holding on above the kitchen sink.
“Nothing I suppose. Nothing could be greater.” Ellen nuzzled her nose into her husband’s beard and drifted into her own dreams of sunlit family picnics. In her daydreams, a boy and a girl ran in tall grass before leaping onto a smiling Carol’s lap. They rolled across the old quilt and her father was there to catch them on the other side. He was free of a wheelchair and told stories in a husky voice to the doe-eyed children as they snuggled into his plaid shirt that smelled of fresh wood shavings.
The next morning, Ellen found Adam packing up all his canvases, sculptures, and art supplies that had been stashed in the second bedroom of the trailer. He was sweaty with the effort of dragging all his work to the center of the room. “Adam, honey, what are you doing?” She leaned against the door frame wearing nothing but his t-shirt and a pair of lavender underwear. The bottom of her belly stuck out of the t-shirt. With her matted curls wildly framing her simple face, she looked like a modern-day blue-collar Madonna.
“We have got to make room in The Studio for our latest collaboration.” He beamed up from his place kneeling on the floor before his pile of artwork. “This is the baby’s room now.” He added with a laugh in response to her look of confusion. He continued speaking plans to himself while packing up the room and Ellen went to the kitchen to make breakfast.
Adam left that afternoon with his pick-up bed filled with easels, brushes, canvas, and frames. A huge sculpted crucifix stuck out the back and Jesus’ face with a barbed wire crown puncturing his clay forehead gazed mournfully into the cloudless sky. The bums from the diner painting peered over their newspapers at her while they traveled down the dirt road. Adam return later with only a beat-up old crib in the bed of his truck. Ellen didn’t ask where the art had gone.
* * * * * *
After Anna was born, Adam discovered that he had little talent as a teacher. As Anna grew and proved to have less talent as a student than Adam expected, the list of library requests featured fewer and fewer books for Anna and more for himself. He arrived home from work aching and sun-burned lacking the old enthusiasm for Jesus’ family business. Over his TV dinner, he read his books instead of speaking. A silence settled around him as perpetual as the wood dust in his black hair. He left the tasks of feeding, cuddling, and bathing the child to Ellen who seemed to have a natural affinity for communication through touch.
Anna frustrated him with her already formed personality and disposition. He had imagined that she would be as malleable as wet clay with a mind as blank as a canvas waiting to be filled with colors. Although she showed no knowledge of the place from which she came, she did seem to be a miniature human being who arrived already knowing she hated baths and loved arranging toys by her own toddler organizational system. She finger-painted careful so as not to smear a single smudge on her child-size smock or the table or her delicate wrists. Adam observed this serious little person making straight lines across her page instead of painting flowers and stick figures like he would a stranger. He seemed to be trying to figure out what she had to do with him.
As Anna grew, Ellen watched Adam dwindle. He never complained about the small trailer or his dead-end, manual labor job or the screaming toddler or the endless march of frozen entrees or Ellen’s thickening middle. Unaware of his surroundings, he just seemed to be receding becoming more and more of a mirage in the house whose existence was only made real by a trial of dirty dishes neatly stacked in the sink, of white t-shirts stained yellow on the underarms, and muddy overalls spilling from a laundry basket.
On rare nights, Adam would gently shake Ellen awake and suddenly be his old self in that nighttime bedroom made into another world by the pale moon glow. He would speak again of God’s beauty and of capturing a small corner of that essence in art. He whispered his ideas into her ears and kissed them into her skin. He spoke of the desert, of its perceived bareness and its hidden beauty. His whispers took her to red rocked canyons and to cacti studded cliffs where a Jesus figure wandered in white robes being tempted. “The desert is like our lives: harsh and unforgiving but speckled with unconquerable life. God is the cactus flower blooming as red as the flaming sunset.” Adam stroked the words into her hair and left them tangled there. Then they would be eighteen again on the thread-bare patches of a quilt laid out in the bed of a pick-up. In the light of those early mornings, hope would dry out its wings in Ellen’s chest but by the evenings Adam was hauling his defeated body through the screen door and into the same old routine.
Ellen didn’t tell anyone but her invalid father about Adam’s withdrawal from the physical world. What could she say to the other waitresses in the diner whose husbands and boyfriends plowed through packs of Bud Lites or spent afternoons in other women’s beds or burned cigarette butt scars into their children’s wrists or gave out black eyes as anniversary gifts? Or to her mother whose husband had suffered two strokes before lingering on as a semi-vegetable and costing a fortune to maintain as a body without a spirit? So she spoke only to her father who was an expert on both being there and being gone.
Adam drank black coffee for breakfast, washed his face in the bathroom sink, loaded his pick-up with tools, rumbled out of the dirt driveway, built homes not his own in burning sun and freezing wind, came home dirty, stiffly kissed his wife and child’s cheeks, sat at the card table with a tattered book and a microwaved dinner, showered, and crawled between the sheets. Ellen made breakfast for Anna, cleaned and dressed her, braided her hair, dressed herself in the diner uniform, dropped Anna off at her mother’s, cried to her father, listened at the diner, took Adam’s list to the library, picked up Anna, microwaved dinners, played with Anna on the carpet, watched Adam eat, put Anna to bed, cleaned the trailer, sat at the card table staring out the kitchen window, and slid into bed next to sleeping Adam. This routine repeated itself until the bump that was Robert swelled to an unbearable size and Ellen discovered the sculptures lined up behind the trailer.
* * * * * * *
Ellen stared at the shelves in the library. There seemed to be so many more looming there then there had ever been before. She saw a familiar librarian approaching her to ask if she need any help locating a book and she began to panic. She didn’t want to shrink down to a weeping huddled mass on the carpet of the public library and she suddenly felt sure that she would be if the librarian asked her what she needed. Darting into the nearest aisle, she pretended to study the book bindings. As the librarian passed, Ellen read the titles slowly to herself like a calming chant. Her hand came up to touch the binding of a book whose title snagged her mind. It shocked her to find the book off the shelf and in her hand. She had never selected one herself. Before she dropped out of school, she had read as much of the assigned books as possible over the din of her mother’s at-home daycare before giving in to the noise and settling in the living room with the children climbing on her like a human jungle gym. But here was a book in her hand. She read the title again The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She took it to the check out counter, nodded when the librarian asks “just this one today?”, and left to collect Anna from school and Robert from daycare.
Anna was the last child left on the playground when Ellen pulled up. The chains of empty swings creaked in the wind and the slide loomed dark silhouetted against the backdrop of the setting sun. All the other after-care children had gone home already. Anna stood on the blacktop with her back-pack on her back and her eyes scanning the road beyond the chain-link fence. A yard duty sat lounging in a beach chair and flipping through a magazine not paying any attention to the girl with the late mother. “I am sorry, Anna, for not coming on time.” Ellen knelt on the blacktop and wrapped her arms around her serious daughter who had not cried.
“It is alright, Mom. I knew you would come.”
* * * * * * *
Two weeks before Robert’s due date, Ellen was sent home from the diner to rest. The day was hot and Ellen vomited in the dirt as soon as she stepped out of her car in the front yard. When she was done spitting the taste from her mouth, she walked behind the empty trailer to where an unused garden hose was coiled. There, lined up against the back wall of the trailer, were seven crosses with metal blossoms sprouting from there centers. They were made from rough material that Ellen recognized at once as scraps of wood, chunks of concrete, swathes of fiber glass, and twisted bits of metal. Adam must have scrounged the materials from various construction sights. All lined up the crosses simultaneously reminded Ellen of a little graveyard and of a trim flowerbed. She sunk to the ground in front of the crosses and her gigantic belly rested in the dirt. Gingerly, she touched the blossoms. A ragged edge of a metal petal sliced the pad of her index finger and a drop scarlet blood pooled in the dust. As she watched the red seep into the earth, Ellen knew. She lay down in the dirt curling around her unborn son and spent the afternoon watering the site that marked the death of their collaboration and the rebirth of Adam’s solo career.
* * * * * * *
Ellen fell asleep on the couch with her library book spread open on her lap. When the next morning’s sun washed over the trailer, Anna found her there. She watched her sleeping mother with her solemn brown eyes. In the next room, Robert squinted his whole face as light trickled into his baby dreams. The note smeared with egg dried in the trash can. The tree let lose it last yellow blossoms to swirl gracefully before falling to the dry dirt. The cook at the diner sprayed down the frying pans to make the morning’s first omelets. Carol opened bright yellow cans of play dough and dumped the multi-colored blobs onto the kitchen table. Ellen’s father’s chest rose and fell one last time in the back bedroom before becoming completely still. And a blue pick-up truck sped down a black stretch of highway with a red cactus blossom fluttering on the dashboard.
Final Story, Erin Stimmler
Life Audition
By: Erin Stimmler
"There is something about the unknowing and absent idea of being rejected from life itself that would tragically hinge the life’s that we ultimately lead, should anyone find out that there is such a thing as the life audition." Luke and I are sitting in the front room of the house where Sue and I raised our children, where Luke led a seemingly simple childhood, and thoughts of what happened when others passed away were left to be solved by our pastor on Sunday mornings during church. He and his sisters were raised with this patterned belief I suppose because that is what Sue and I had decided was our belief.
We all look at our grandparents, our parents, and any other adults that surround us expecting they will teach us all we need to learn in order to become successful adults. We are taught this behavior from a young age, that people are going to tell us what the world and life are all about.
I sit and stare at Luke’s face with all the certainty that I can muster so that he sees that I am telling the truth, that I am in no way making this up.
"What about those people that ‘die’ mysteriously when they are young. Do you truly believe that these people have died? Do you really think that they were meant to die like people tell you, because, you see, it makes sense when an old person ‘dies’ and people understand it, but when someone has left the world without even making a substantial go at life what then? It’s the audition, they have not passed. Nobody is going to tell you the real truth but me, because they want to go on thinking that there is no such thing. They want to believe that their loved one is not having to start their lives journey all over, that they don’t have to try and take yet another stab at the audition of life, and have the possibility of failing yet again. Its true it’s a scary thing to think about, but that’s why I am telling you, that’s why I want you to know the truth. I believe that you have all the right abilities, and yes I believe that you have not encountered your’s yet. Just don’t miss that opportunity to do the right thing, to make the better choice, because you never know when its just another day, or its an audition"
"You know that sounds really unbelievable right Sir?" Luke was always calling me Sir. It was something he wouldn’t quit and now he was looking at me with a really strange expression, one I had certainly never seen in him before. I wished more than anything that I might be able to read his mind. He was twisting his fingers together in his lap and had been doing so since he sat down to talk with me. "I just don’t know why your telling me this Sir, its just that you sort of sound crazy. I have never heard of any ‘audition’. I just don’t believe there is such a thing."
If he would just call me dad this wouldn’t be such an aggravating conversation I was certain of that, something about the way Sir came out of his mouth sent a bristle up my legs and through my back. That word shot straight through my body and caused pain I thought not possible. If only I could make him understand.
"Listen Son, I am telling you the truth. I can show you what I am talking about, just come with me back here." I stand and lead the way out of the front living room. Ever since Sue, and Charlotte had died I had been spending more and more time compiling information in the office so that the kids would understand. Of all four of the children Luke I figured was who needed to understand this the most. I figured he was the one still facing his audition. The others had struggled with things in life and always seemed to pull through. Whether it was their faith, or maybe their love for one another and their spouses, I was sure that they had completed their transitions in life and I was safe from having to watch one of them give up and start again. I had been struggling with the fact that Charlotte was having to do this which is what had prompted me to develop more with this idea, to be sure it was real. It was, and that is what scarred me, what had kept me from telling anyone. That was until I thought through who had not gone through some kind of an audition, and Luke immediately came to mind.
"Sir, this is absolutely crazy, I am positive that there is nothing you can show me that will in any way convince me that what you have just said is true." I watched Luke standing in the doorway of my small office refusing to even look at my face, following only what my hands were doing as they shuffled through a large stack of papers.
"Here Luke, take a look at this. Then you can tell me what you think about death and auditions of life." I take a deep breath, willing the right words to come to mind.
"What you will find here is the facts, true and real. There is no reason for a child to be lost to the world forever, and I know what you and your siblings all think of afterlife, but what if there is more to it? What if there is something that we are missing and there is some kind of audition? What if there is more of a reason we, even as a Christian society, are aware of other religious believes, like say Buddhism? There is something there that is so Christian, and very much not." I watch as Luke slowly takes the papers from my hands and hope that he is listening to the words that I am saying, and not just letting me talk, taking the papers just to end the conversation.
"Anyway Luke these prove it all and I am not making this up. You will understand once you get on with it, read them." That was all I could do for now, I had to let the research show itself so that he would believe me. There were articles of accidents, Bible Versus. Versus from other religious manuscripts, even magazine articles that I had come to by accident, all together in the folder. Every ounce of information was covered with my handwritten comments, sometimes with highlighted sections of what I thought to be really important and sometimes with just a simple word or two that would trigger my thoughts when I re-read the article.
At first I thought that Luke was just going to stand there and flip through the pages without even looking into what I had discovered. He paused though when he got to the article about the car accident where a mother and three daughters were lost in a fiery accident. I knew exactly the article and what I had written on it. There was the mother, who had lived a full life and when her past was researched she hadn’t really dealt with much in the way of the disturbances that life often deals out. There was a couple outstanding parking tickets, and even a missed traffic school, but that was the worst thing she had in her background. The three kids, all just a year apart in age, were attending the local elementary school. The picture had shown most, if not all of the kids from this school surrounding the street light and block where the family had met their precarious end. Luke I’d hoped would find this particular accident as concrete evidence, especially if he could just see through the black and white of the article. His very own sister and mother had meet such a fate and if he would look, I knew he would see that I was not some looney old father that needed looking after. That just because I had lost my one true love and my youngest daughter, did not mean that I had not done real investigating on this topic. I knew what I was telling him was the truth, that it was real, I just needed Luke to see what I meant.
Charlotte, my youngest of four children, was bouncy and always happy. She never wore a frown for longer than a couple of seconds, even when she was just a baby in need of a feeding. As soon as she saw someone coming with a bottle, or blanket, she was all smiles and giggles. Charlotte had grown to become the splitting image of her mother, her hair was full of red curls, that fell well down to the middle of her back. She had big green eyes, just like her mother, and even her smile was one that filled the whole of her face. She was exactly what I imagined Sue to have been as a child, and perhaps that is the reason that she and I had become so inseparable. Charlotte had come later than the rest of the children, all of whom had started high school by the time she was born. The other three had moved out and were starting and finishing college by the time she entered the first grade. Sue continued working, figuring it unfair to heed special attention simply because of her difference in age. I on the other hand had found it deeply exciting to bestow on her all of my attention. With the other three I had not the opportunity to give them this kind of attention, and I must admit I so enjoyed being able to shower her with any amount of attention necessary to keep that smile on her face at all times.
Sue was the one who picked Charlotte up from school and by the time she had reached the sixth grade it was a ritual that the two had started to stop and get french fries and shakes from the local McDonald’s. On the particular afternoon of the accident I had thought very little of the fact that three fifteen had rolled around without their return back home. It wasn’t unusual for the two to sit and chat, or even stop by one of Charlottes siblings places to drop off some grocery’s or some other little trinket Sue had bought. It wasn’t until the call came from the hospital around four- forty-five that evening telling me that two of my family members had been brought in twenty minutes earlier. It was then I had become aware of the possibility that something was wrong. I had gone through the motions, called all of the children, assured them everything was probably fine, that the hospital attendant would have said something if it were bad. They were all to meet me at receptions desk as soon as they could. Luke I remember had asked if I wanted to ride with him, I had assured him that it was un-necessary, it was a car accident and they were probably just sent to the hospital as a precaution.
The rest of that day now seems to have passed as a blur. I had driven to the hospital with only the smallest of doubt that my sweet wife and smallest child were in any deal of danger. Only that evening, when the doctors had ensured there was nothing else to do, and I had been driven home by my eldest daughter and her husband to an empty home and similarly empty heart, that it all began to sink in. Those days that followed were drenched in sorrow. There was so much time that was left to spend with that sweet little girl, so many memories that needed to be made with the love of my life. Those were the things that swelled in my thoughts, the things that consumed me, there was little comfort that I bestowed upon my three surviving children and of this mistake I was going to have to try and redeem myself.
Thus came the scrambling of the past eight months. I worked endlessly, with no other real appointments in the days, to find out just what happened to my two beloved ones. In my determination I had completely forgotten the things that age does to you, the way that time seems to know no boundaries of speed, and thoughts become things of blurred unintelligence. I am certain now, upon looking back on my behavior, that my three older children must have thought me crazy. There was an age factor that I am certain they thought about. Maybe they even considered dementia, there was a couple of insisted upon doctors visits by my second eldest daughter. Jenny, who followed every "patterned" middle child path while growing up, had insisted on spending the first month after the funeral sleeping at the house and commuting to and from work in my old Rabbit, which I had insisted on keeping because all of our children had learned to drive in it and there was no reason Charlotte could not also have the experience. Jenny had been careful to ask every morning how I was feeling, and if there was anything she could do for me before heading off to work. It wasn’t until the end of the month, when I had to practically force her from the house, that she finally gave up babying me and went back to her apartment in the city, and all that her post graduate school life had to offer. That was when my quest had started. After Jenny had gone, and I was left with my computer in my study to occupy time.
The article that Luke was now re-reading, probably due to the amount of notes I had scribbled around the edges, was one of the first article that I had come across. It was the first article that had produced in me not a feeling of sadness and despair, but a rather rage. Anger had of course initially drowned me in the hospital, however since then I had not been faced with struggling through this specific emotion. I knew that Luke was faced with rage, he was a mommas boy he had always been, at the loss of his mother. He was protected as long as she was around, and always had someone who would cook him a great meal, or fold laundry with, a person that gave him the unspeakable knowledge of someone on his side at all times. This was the type of rage and anger that I had imagined Luke had experienced, and that particular article had taken me three weeks to get past the title without breaking down. It read; ‘Unsuspecting mother and daughters caught in fiery blaze of accident, no survivors.’. Every occasion that this particular article made it to the top of the stack, was another slap in the face about my girls taken away, and another reminder of the anger that my only son must face.
By: Erin Stimmler
"There is something about the unknowing and absent idea of being rejected from life itself that would tragically hinge the life’s that we ultimately lead, should anyone find out that there is such a thing as the life audition." Luke and I are sitting in the front room of the house where Sue and I raised our children, where Luke led a seemingly simple childhood, and thoughts of what happened when others passed away were left to be solved by our pastor on Sunday mornings during church. He and his sisters were raised with this patterned belief I suppose because that is what Sue and I had decided was our belief.
We all look at our grandparents, our parents, and any other adults that surround us expecting they will teach us all we need to learn in order to become successful adults. We are taught this behavior from a young age, that people are going to tell us what the world and life are all about.
I sit and stare at Luke’s face with all the certainty that I can muster so that he sees that I am telling the truth, that I am in no way making this up.
"What about those people that ‘die’ mysteriously when they are young. Do you truly believe that these people have died? Do you really think that they were meant to die like people tell you, because, you see, it makes sense when an old person ‘dies’ and people understand it, but when someone has left the world without even making a substantial go at life what then? It’s the audition, they have not passed. Nobody is going to tell you the real truth but me, because they want to go on thinking that there is no such thing. They want to believe that their loved one is not having to start their lives journey all over, that they don’t have to try and take yet another stab at the audition of life, and have the possibility of failing yet again. Its true it’s a scary thing to think about, but that’s why I am telling you, that’s why I want you to know the truth. I believe that you have all the right abilities, and yes I believe that you have not encountered your’s yet. Just don’t miss that opportunity to do the right thing, to make the better choice, because you never know when its just another day, or its an audition"
"You know that sounds really unbelievable right Sir?" Luke was always calling me Sir. It was something he wouldn’t quit and now he was looking at me with a really strange expression, one I had certainly never seen in him before. I wished more than anything that I might be able to read his mind. He was twisting his fingers together in his lap and had been doing so since he sat down to talk with me. "I just don’t know why your telling me this Sir, its just that you sort of sound crazy. I have never heard of any ‘audition’. I just don’t believe there is such a thing."
If he would just call me dad this wouldn’t be such an aggravating conversation I was certain of that, something about the way Sir came out of his mouth sent a bristle up my legs and through my back. That word shot straight through my body and caused pain I thought not possible. If only I could make him understand.
"Listen Son, I am telling you the truth. I can show you what I am talking about, just come with me back here." I stand and lead the way out of the front living room. Ever since Sue, and Charlotte had died I had been spending more and more time compiling information in the office so that the kids would understand. Of all four of the children Luke I figured was who needed to understand this the most. I figured he was the one still facing his audition. The others had struggled with things in life and always seemed to pull through. Whether it was their faith, or maybe their love for one another and their spouses, I was sure that they had completed their transitions in life and I was safe from having to watch one of them give up and start again. I had been struggling with the fact that Charlotte was having to do this which is what had prompted me to develop more with this idea, to be sure it was real. It was, and that is what scarred me, what had kept me from telling anyone. That was until I thought through who had not gone through some kind of an audition, and Luke immediately came to mind.
"Sir, this is absolutely crazy, I am positive that there is nothing you can show me that will in any way convince me that what you have just said is true." I watched Luke standing in the doorway of my small office refusing to even look at my face, following only what my hands were doing as they shuffled through a large stack of papers.
"Here Luke, take a look at this. Then you can tell me what you think about death and auditions of life." I take a deep breath, willing the right words to come to mind.
"What you will find here is the facts, true and real. There is no reason for a child to be lost to the world forever, and I know what you and your siblings all think of afterlife, but what if there is more to it? What if there is something that we are missing and there is some kind of audition? What if there is more of a reason we, even as a Christian society, are aware of other religious believes, like say Buddhism? There is something there that is so Christian, and very much not." I watch as Luke slowly takes the papers from my hands and hope that he is listening to the words that I am saying, and not just letting me talk, taking the papers just to end the conversation.
"Anyway Luke these prove it all and I am not making this up. You will understand once you get on with it, read them." That was all I could do for now, I had to let the research show itself so that he would believe me. There were articles of accidents, Bible Versus. Versus from other religious manuscripts, even magazine articles that I had come to by accident, all together in the folder. Every ounce of information was covered with my handwritten comments, sometimes with highlighted sections of what I thought to be really important and sometimes with just a simple word or two that would trigger my thoughts when I re-read the article.
At first I thought that Luke was just going to stand there and flip through the pages without even looking into what I had discovered. He paused though when he got to the article about the car accident where a mother and three daughters were lost in a fiery accident. I knew exactly the article and what I had written on it. There was the mother, who had lived a full life and when her past was researched she hadn’t really dealt with much in the way of the disturbances that life often deals out. There was a couple outstanding parking tickets, and even a missed traffic school, but that was the worst thing she had in her background. The three kids, all just a year apart in age, were attending the local elementary school. The picture had shown most, if not all of the kids from this school surrounding the street light and block where the family had met their precarious end. Luke I’d hoped would find this particular accident as concrete evidence, especially if he could just see through the black and white of the article. His very own sister and mother had meet such a fate and if he would look, I knew he would see that I was not some looney old father that needed looking after. That just because I had lost my one true love and my youngest daughter, did not mean that I had not done real investigating on this topic. I knew what I was telling him was the truth, that it was real, I just needed Luke to see what I meant.
Charlotte, my youngest of four children, was bouncy and always happy. She never wore a frown for longer than a couple of seconds, even when she was just a baby in need of a feeding. As soon as she saw someone coming with a bottle, or blanket, she was all smiles and giggles. Charlotte had grown to become the splitting image of her mother, her hair was full of red curls, that fell well down to the middle of her back. She had big green eyes, just like her mother, and even her smile was one that filled the whole of her face. She was exactly what I imagined Sue to have been as a child, and perhaps that is the reason that she and I had become so inseparable. Charlotte had come later than the rest of the children, all of whom had started high school by the time she was born. The other three had moved out and were starting and finishing college by the time she entered the first grade. Sue continued working, figuring it unfair to heed special attention simply because of her difference in age. I on the other hand had found it deeply exciting to bestow on her all of my attention. With the other three I had not the opportunity to give them this kind of attention, and I must admit I so enjoyed being able to shower her with any amount of attention necessary to keep that smile on her face at all times.
Sue was the one who picked Charlotte up from school and by the time she had reached the sixth grade it was a ritual that the two had started to stop and get french fries and shakes from the local McDonald’s. On the particular afternoon of the accident I had thought very little of the fact that three fifteen had rolled around without their return back home. It wasn’t unusual for the two to sit and chat, or even stop by one of Charlottes siblings places to drop off some grocery’s or some other little trinket Sue had bought. It wasn’t until the call came from the hospital around four- forty-five that evening telling me that two of my family members had been brought in twenty minutes earlier. It was then I had become aware of the possibility that something was wrong. I had gone through the motions, called all of the children, assured them everything was probably fine, that the hospital attendant would have said something if it were bad. They were all to meet me at receptions desk as soon as they could. Luke I remember had asked if I wanted to ride with him, I had assured him that it was un-necessary, it was a car accident and they were probably just sent to the hospital as a precaution.
The rest of that day now seems to have passed as a blur. I had driven to the hospital with only the smallest of doubt that my sweet wife and smallest child were in any deal of danger. Only that evening, when the doctors had ensured there was nothing else to do, and I had been driven home by my eldest daughter and her husband to an empty home and similarly empty heart, that it all began to sink in. Those days that followed were drenched in sorrow. There was so much time that was left to spend with that sweet little girl, so many memories that needed to be made with the love of my life. Those were the things that swelled in my thoughts, the things that consumed me, there was little comfort that I bestowed upon my three surviving children and of this mistake I was going to have to try and redeem myself.
Thus came the scrambling of the past eight months. I worked endlessly, with no other real appointments in the days, to find out just what happened to my two beloved ones. In my determination I had completely forgotten the things that age does to you, the way that time seems to know no boundaries of speed, and thoughts become things of blurred unintelligence. I am certain now, upon looking back on my behavior, that my three older children must have thought me crazy. There was an age factor that I am certain they thought about. Maybe they even considered dementia, there was a couple of insisted upon doctors visits by my second eldest daughter. Jenny, who followed every "patterned" middle child path while growing up, had insisted on spending the first month after the funeral sleeping at the house and commuting to and from work in my old Rabbit, which I had insisted on keeping because all of our children had learned to drive in it and there was no reason Charlotte could not also have the experience. Jenny had been careful to ask every morning how I was feeling, and if there was anything she could do for me before heading off to work. It wasn’t until the end of the month, when I had to practically force her from the house, that she finally gave up babying me and went back to her apartment in the city, and all that her post graduate school life had to offer. That was when my quest had started. After Jenny had gone, and I was left with my computer in my study to occupy time.
The article that Luke was now re-reading, probably due to the amount of notes I had scribbled around the edges, was one of the first article that I had come across. It was the first article that had produced in me not a feeling of sadness and despair, but a rather rage. Anger had of course initially drowned me in the hospital, however since then I had not been faced with struggling through this specific emotion. I knew that Luke was faced with rage, he was a mommas boy he had always been, at the loss of his mother. He was protected as long as she was around, and always had someone who would cook him a great meal, or fold laundry with, a person that gave him the unspeakable knowledge of someone on his side at all times. This was the type of rage and anger that I had imagined Luke had experienced, and that particular article had taken me three weeks to get past the title without breaking down. It read; ‘Unsuspecting mother and daughters caught in fiery blaze of accident, no survivors.’. Every occasion that this particular article made it to the top of the stack, was another slap in the face about my girls taken away, and another reminder of the anger that my only son must face.
Friday, May 11, 2007
A Small Amount of Darkness
Wanda slammed the front door with such vigor her whole family tree rattled on the living room wall. All her cousin’s faces shook like they were reenacting the last family reunion. She threw her backpack down on top of the shoes she flung off her feet. Her long brown curls bounced as she ran upstairs, skipping every other step, into her room. With another slam of her bedroom door, she dove under her bed off the diving board in her head and pulled out a small black metal box. The box was rusting around the edges and had scribbled writing circling the sides. It resembled cursive but was clearly in a different language. Just as Wanda started opening the lid a knocking came at her door and she slid the box back under her bed. Her mother opened the door with Wanda’s baby brother Joshua, bouncing in her arms.
“Well hello to you too, sweetie. What’s got you all in a flurry?” Thankfully, before Wanda could answer, her mother noticed a ketchup stain on Wanda’s shirt. “Oh Wanda, every day.” With a sigh, she kissed Wanda on the forehead and bounced Joshua out of the room. “I’m going to need that shirt,” her voice faded as she closed the door behind herself.
Wanda shifted gears with a spark of excitement. Reaching back under the bed and pulling out the box, she opened the lid and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper. She carefully unfolded the paper and read a message scribbled in pencil. The note read;
This is not true. I am just a box.
Wanda sat for a minute and stared at the writing, intent the words would suddenly change or jump off the page and run away. Such an event could not be missed. But after a good minute she threw down the paper like she’d never touched it at all, leapt off the floor like a world class gymnast and went to her desk, where she yanked out a piece of paper from a little pink notebook that said My Little Pony with little purple and blue ponies frolicking across the cover. After giving the matter some good thought, Wanda wrote on the paper;
Do you have secret compartments where little tiny people live?
After folding the paper up and setting it delicately into the bottom of the box, Wanda closed it, shoved it back under her bed and galloped downstairs to watch the afternoon cartoons.
The next day at school Wanda spent half of the math lesson daydreaming about her magic box filled with little dinosaurs or maybe ancient jewels that once belonged to Cleopatra. Her eyes would drag to a close and her head would lurch to a tilt until she’d jolt herself up, electrocuted by consciousness every other minute. In fact, ever since Wanda had found the box in her attic she’d been having these magnificent day dreams. Only at school of course, daydreams know where they’re needed.
About five days ago, give or take a few, Wanda’s lifelong desire to explore the great unknown led her up to the dusty attic where she crawled around the creaky wooden floor boards and sneezed on all the cobwebs at least twice. After digging through mountains of ugly lamps, funny looking purple dress coats with matching bell bottom pants, three blenders, four toasters and several varieties of dipping platters, Wanda discovered a large wooden chest with a key still in the lock. After unlocking the chest and creaking it open with all the strength she had in her little monkey bar-toned arms, Wanda peeked inside. To her astonishment the box was filled with fine linens that looked like they could have been a hundred years old. The pieces of cloth were finely beaded with rich aquas and deep purples. Wanda gently pulled the pieces of cloth out of the box and laid them on the floor like she was cradling a newborn. She picked up a cloth and wrapped it around her shoulders.
After serving at least twenty minutes as the princess of Arabia she bumped into a heavy stack of paper that scattered every which way and she sprawled out to reverse her mishap. In attempts to replace everything as she’d found it Wanda found herself in a dark angled corner of the attic, crawling on all fours smothered in cobwebs. Underneath a piece of paper was a small black mysterious looking box. Something drew Wanda to this box. She wasn’t even sure what yet, but somehow she felt akin with it, small and simple, a little worn, but peculiar none-the-less. Wanda caressed her fingers along the scrawl wrapping the box and held it tightly in her fingers.
It wasn’t until she decided to keep her rock collection in the black box a few days later that she realized its true magic. The morning after she put the rocks in the box Wanda opened it only to find the rocks replaced by a small piece of folded notebook paper that read;
Is this some kind of joke? I don’t fill you with rocks. Please have a little courtesy next time.
When Wanda’s teacher yelled her name for not giving the answer to four times seven, she jerked out of her trance and her cheeks went pink. The laughter from her classmates haunted her all the way home on the school bus. Her only distraction was the anticipation for today’s discovery from the mysterious black box. This time her hands shook as she opened it. Half expecting to see little tiny people smiling and waving up at her, her heart sank when all she saw was another small piece of paper, sloppily folded in the bottom of the box.
What do you take me for? I am but a box, just like any other.
Wanda leaned back against the wall with the note in hand and a sigh in her breath as she thought about how to respond to the box this time. For once in her life ideas didn’t jump out of her head. Little people weren’t crawling out of the box in her imagination anymore. As she dragged her body onto the bed even her toes looked disappointed as they curled under the sheets. Wanda picked up Simon, her favorite stuffed lamb and looked him straight in his beady black eyes. “I’m tired, Simon. I don’t care.” But in the silence that followed her declaration of independence from the box, Wanda got an idea. After tearing another piece of paper out of her rapidly thinning My Little Pony notebook, Wanda wrote;
I was wondering please sir, since you can talk so nicely, that you could maybe make Simon talk to. Simon is my lamb. He likes chocolate and he likes to be scratched under his ears and I know if he could talk he’d have a lot of nice things to say. I understand if you can’t but please sir if you could I would be very happy. P.S. If I could have my rocks back I’d also be very happy about that too.
After saying her goodbyes to Simon, Wanda set him in the box on top of the note and a Hershey’s kiss she’d been saving since last Easter. Simon’s fuzzy white ear stuck out of the box as she closed it and she tried to ignore the fact that he was far too big to for a little black box to handle.
The next morning Wanda woke to her mother practically dragging her out of bed. She’d apparently given up the gentle motherly coaxing sort of wake up call after months of Ok- I’ll- get- up- in- five- minutes- mom. After making Wanda eat every last ounce of oatmeal in her bowl and shoving a lunch sack into her hand, Wanda’s mother kissed her on the head and directed her out the door before she could come up with any kind of sensible explanation why she needed to go back up to her room and retrieve her talking lamb.
“My- umm”
“Honey, I can already hear the bus.”
“But my lamb. Simon’s-”
“Wanda, you haven’t brought your lamb to school since you were in kindergarten. You’re a big girl now. Come on. Get those wheels shifting and the gear turning.”
Wanda circled her eyes as she dragged her feet out to the bus stop. She never understood why her mom said that so often, or what on earth it meant. She grumbled even more when she realized it was Thursday the 2nd. Her day for show-and-tell had finally come and Wanda had the perfect item but the space between her and the box was rapidly widening. She squeezed her fists together as she thought back to the last time it was her turn for show-and-tell. Wanda had brought in her rock collection, which ended up all over the floor after the plastic grocery bag it was in gave out while she was standing and talking in front of the whole class for the first time in her entire life. Rocks danced across the floor in a rainstorm of sound and a ripple of motion. Wanda never did find her favorite rock, the one she had picked up off the ground in the parking lot outside the hospital after her brother was born. It caught her eye because it resembled the shape of a heart.
When show-and-tell rolled around that afternoon, Wanda dreaded her turn. Ironically it wasn’t until then that she realized she could have told her mom she wanted Simon for show and tell. Wanda’s first lesson in the rules of life; you never have the right words when you really need them.
Words would be the first thing to go in this kind of panic.
“Wanda? It’s you’re turn. What do you have for us today.”
Her unbearably cheery teacher, Ms. Willis, tilted her head as soon as she noticed Wanda was forcibly avoiding eye contact by staring at her own shoelaces. Ms. Willis knelt down next Wanda with a soft hand on her shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Wanda? Don’t you have any show-and-tell?”
“I found a pretty purple piece of glass on the sidewalk at my bus stop. But I don’t think anyone will see the purple because it got cloudy and it needs the sun and I don’t want-”
“Wanda? Can I have that piece of glass? It’s very pretty but glass can be dangerous sometimes.”
Wanda reluctantly handed her the glass and looked back down at her feet.
“It’s ok if you don’t have anything. Bobby can go and you can just wait unit it’s your turn again in two weeks.”
Wanda reluctantly whispered “Ok” and thought about all the days that would have to take place before she could finally show the class her box.
“Bobby?” Ms. Willis turned to a grinning little red haired boy who was holding a plastic terrarium in his hand containing a big brown toad moping in a puddle of water.
“It’s your turn, Bobby. You can go up and show the class what you’ve brought.”
Just then the class started whispering and sending shifting glances at Wanda. As she slid down in her seat she could hear someone say the word “rocks”. Her face went red.
When recess rolled around Wanda slipped out the door before the rest of the class as they all huddled around Bobby’s loudly croaking toad. She went directly toward the back of the soccer field and sat next to the fence where she looked out over the wetlands that bordered the school. After a few minutes of reliving show-and-tell, her bad thoughts began to float away, replaced by not only a talking lamb but a walking one as well. It ran with her in the backyard and eventually sat on the desk in front of the class and did a back flip as her classmates all looked on with dropped jaws. But in Simon’s second verse of Mary Had a Little Lamb, a red rubber ball came flying at Wanda’s face. She leaned out of the way as it hit the fence and three boys ran up to her. Their knees were brown with dirt, as well as their cheeks and foreheads.
“Sorry,” one of them blurted in a mocking voice. Wanda could hear the other two boys giggling behind him.
“I didn’t see you.”
Wanda didn’t respond. After giving them a stern glance she looked back out at the wetland.
“Looking for rocks, Wanda? Try looking in your head.”
And with a bout of laughter and a cloud of dust, they ran back out to the center of the field where they continued their scattered game of kickball.
Wanda couldn’t sit still the whole bus ride home and when the bus got to her stop she flew out of it and into the house where she didn’t even remember to take off her shoes. Tracking dirt all the way up the stairs, Wanda dove under her bed and pulled out the box. Half relieved just to see Simon hadn’t disappeared, she cautiously pulled him out and laid him in a comfortable sitting position on the carpet in front of her.
“Simon?” she spoke softly.
“Can you hear me? Can you say hello?”
After nudging him to no avail, Wanda’s excitement deflated right out of her body as she slouched over the box. After pulling out the note she read;
I’m not sure you’re aware but you put a stuffed doll inside of me. What part of that constitutes any kind of favor? If I could bring things to life do you think I would have spent the last thirty years in a dusty attic?
Wanda sat in awe realizing the box had been in her attic almost as long as her mother had been alive. She pictured centuries passing and people in frilly hoop dresses opening and closing the box. But her thoughts quickly turned to the lifeless sheep on her floor. Without warning, Wanda picked Simon up and threw him across the room. He fell between the bed and the wall, wedged like pineapple.
Wanda decided to wait until the evening to respond this time. She needed time to think. She moped down to dinner where she found Joshua in his high chair making funny squeaking noises and slapping his mashed potatoes with a spoon. Wanda went into the powder room and washed her hands. When she came back Wanda’s mother was in the dining room. After wiping Joshua’s face, she asked Wanda how her day at school was.
“Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing… Mom, what makes someone special?” Wanda’s mother put her fork down and gave Wanda a perplexed look. Wanda knew her mother would probably attempt to give her some overanalyzed answer designed just to make her feel good, but she couldn’t keep all these thoughts inside any longer. It took Wanda’s mother a minute to respond. Before she could answer however, Joshua threw his spoon at the table and it landed in the bowl of peas sitting right in the middle of the table between Wanda and her mother. Peas exploded out of the bowl in every direction. There were peas in Wanda’s mashed potatoes and in her iced tea. There was even a pea in her hair. Joshua started screaming and Wanda’s mother spent the next five minutes attempting to calm him down and clean up the peas at the same time.
“Everyone is special in their own way.” Wanda’s mother finally let out, half in a sigh. “Did someone say you weren’t special? Because-”
“-No,” Wanda cut in, and before her mother could fathom any kind of response Wanda leapt off her chair and dashed upstairs to her room. She tore a piece of paper out of her notebook and wrote;
But you must be special. My mom calls my brother special all the time and he can’t even talk.
The moment Wanda woke up the next morning she knew it was going to be a good day. She could smell an autumn breeze coming in through the window as the sun warmed her face. Wanda got dressed and had breakfast with twenty minutes to spare. As she passed the time doodling, something struck her, an idea that is. Wanda pulled the box out from under her bed and stuffed it into her book bag.
There was no day dreaming in Wanda’s head today. She spent a good half of the day in a state of perpetual peace. She didn’t fill her head with any silly ideas about boxes full of ice cream or limitless cotton candy. She greeted all her classmates with a pleasant dignity and sat in her desk with her back straight and her hands crossed. Wanda answered three multiplication problems by choice and didn’t get a single one wrong. As it came time for show-and-tell Wanda’s hand shot into the air before little Kerry Anne could pull her jewelry box out of her bag.
“Yes, Wanda?”
“Ms. Willis? I was wondering if I could do show-and-tell today since I didn’t do it yesterday.”
Without giving the matter any kind of thought, she said,
“Wanda, you know what the rules are. We don’t have time more than four.”
Clutching the box still hidden in her bag, Wanda pleaded as quietly as she could without making a scene,
“Please, Ms. Willis?”
And after a brief silence; “We’ll see how long the first four are. If there’s time after Kerry, Brian, Liz and Daniel, maybe you can go.”
The next twenty minutes crawled across the room. Over decks of baseball cards, under metal race cars and through a large pink hula hoop garnered with silver stars. Wanda pondered what more enjoyable toy Kerry’s plastic jewelry could be molded into after being melted down. And after seventeen agonizing minutes the butterfly’s in her stomach must have been doing a tap dance as the magic words finally drifted out of the teacher’s mouth.
“Ok, Wanda. You can go. But hurry, recess starts in two minutes.”
Wanda pulled out the box and strode to the front of the classroom where she set it on the table in front of her.
“This is my magic box. It’s very special and very old.”
Kids started looking at each other with raised eyebrows and Wanda started fidgeting with her hands.
“See, I can ask the box questions and it answers them. Or I can just tell it things and it responds.”
Whispers started hovering over the classroom and Bobby blurted, “Boxes don’t talk.”
“But this one does!”
“Where’s it’s mouth, then?”
“Bobby, that’s enough,” snapped the teacher.
“It doesn’t speak, it writes to me. That’s how we communicate.”
And as she pulled a brand new slip of paper out from inside the box the whole room burst into laughter.
“Her mom probably put those notes in there.”
“No, it’s real. It talks to me, see?”
“Just yesterday it didn’t think it was special because it couldn’t make Simon talk and I told it that it was special because my mom says my brother is special and he can’t talk.”
And she held the opened note in front of the class. With nothing but a weak wave of laughter, Wanda turned the note around and started reading it aloud.
“What’s wrong with your broth-” simultaneously the bell rang and Wanda stopped talking.
What’s wrong with your brother? Any old bloke can talk. Sounds to me like you come from a family of cretins.
Aside form the Ms. Willis, Wanda was now alone, tears ruthlessly dribbling down her face and onto the piece of paper.
“Wanda, honey, go out and play. Everything’s going to be fine.”
With no reply, Wanda just stood there. Ms. Willis knelt down beside her with a hand on her shoulder.
“I think it’s a very pretty box.”
“It’s a stupid box.”
“A box doesn’t have to be magic to be special.”
“I know.”
And after another silence, Ms. Willis said, “Yes, but I don’t think they do,” as she pointed to all the empty chairs in front of them. “You know what it means to you. That’s all that matters. I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
Wanda stuffed the box back in her bag. Ms. Willis didn’t know that she had only just found the box a week ago. It meant nothing to her. Anger was now her only attachment to it. As Wanda wiped her face on her sleeve and started walking toward the door, Ms. Willis interrupted.
“I almost forgot to mention, I found this the other day under the bookshelf when I was cleaning. I believe it belongs to you.”
Ms. Willis handed Wanda her favorite heart-shaped rock. As she took it in her hand she thought of the day her brother was born. Her mother was in the hospital bed and Wanda was visiting her for the first time after the labor was over. As she jumped onto the bed and dug her head into her mother’s pillow, the sterile smell of the hospital was drowned out by the soothing smell of her mother. As her mother tickled her, Wanda fell backwards and lay her head against the foot of the bed. She had been scared for her mother, she didn’t understand quite what giving birth entailed. But she knew now that everything was alright. And then she giggled some more.
Wanda took the stone into her pocket and kept it with her the rest of the day. She didn’t have a particularly enjoyable day. Plenty of classmates giggled and gawked at her the whole afternoon. But Wanda did get through it. And as she slammed the door to her house after school she flung her shoes off with reckless abandon. But instead of heading up to her room she ran to her mother and gave her a hug that could have very well knocked the wind out of her.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Everything.”
After her mother had gone to bed that night Wanda got up and pulled the black box out from underneath the bed. She put her daisy duck slippers on, tiptoed down the stairs and out the patio door. The air smelled of evergreen trees and the stars twinkled gently in the distant night sky. Wanda’s favorite summertime hideaway was a spot down by the brook that ran along the back of her family’s property line. She knelt down to the water, reached out, gently let go of the box and let it drift away. It bobbed in the breeze as it floated into nothing. And it was magic how Wanda walked away from that box with her head up and her eyes open to the night.
“Well hello to you too, sweetie. What’s got you all in a flurry?” Thankfully, before Wanda could answer, her mother noticed a ketchup stain on Wanda’s shirt. “Oh Wanda, every day.” With a sigh, she kissed Wanda on the forehead and bounced Joshua out of the room. “I’m going to need that shirt,” her voice faded as she closed the door behind herself.
Wanda shifted gears with a spark of excitement. Reaching back under the bed and pulling out the box, she opened the lid and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper. She carefully unfolded the paper and read a message scribbled in pencil. The note read;
This is not true. I am just a box.
Wanda sat for a minute and stared at the writing, intent the words would suddenly change or jump off the page and run away. Such an event could not be missed. But after a good minute she threw down the paper like she’d never touched it at all, leapt off the floor like a world class gymnast and went to her desk, where she yanked out a piece of paper from a little pink notebook that said My Little Pony with little purple and blue ponies frolicking across the cover. After giving the matter some good thought, Wanda wrote on the paper;
Do you have secret compartments where little tiny people live?
After folding the paper up and setting it delicately into the bottom of the box, Wanda closed it, shoved it back under her bed and galloped downstairs to watch the afternoon cartoons.
The next day at school Wanda spent half of the math lesson daydreaming about her magic box filled with little dinosaurs or maybe ancient jewels that once belonged to Cleopatra. Her eyes would drag to a close and her head would lurch to a tilt until she’d jolt herself up, electrocuted by consciousness every other minute. In fact, ever since Wanda had found the box in her attic she’d been having these magnificent day dreams. Only at school of course, daydreams know where they’re needed.
About five days ago, give or take a few, Wanda’s lifelong desire to explore the great unknown led her up to the dusty attic where she crawled around the creaky wooden floor boards and sneezed on all the cobwebs at least twice. After digging through mountains of ugly lamps, funny looking purple dress coats with matching bell bottom pants, three blenders, four toasters and several varieties of dipping platters, Wanda discovered a large wooden chest with a key still in the lock. After unlocking the chest and creaking it open with all the strength she had in her little monkey bar-toned arms, Wanda peeked inside. To her astonishment the box was filled with fine linens that looked like they could have been a hundred years old. The pieces of cloth were finely beaded with rich aquas and deep purples. Wanda gently pulled the pieces of cloth out of the box and laid them on the floor like she was cradling a newborn. She picked up a cloth and wrapped it around her shoulders.
After serving at least twenty minutes as the princess of Arabia she bumped into a heavy stack of paper that scattered every which way and she sprawled out to reverse her mishap. In attempts to replace everything as she’d found it Wanda found herself in a dark angled corner of the attic, crawling on all fours smothered in cobwebs. Underneath a piece of paper was a small black mysterious looking box. Something drew Wanda to this box. She wasn’t even sure what yet, but somehow she felt akin with it, small and simple, a little worn, but peculiar none-the-less. Wanda caressed her fingers along the scrawl wrapping the box and held it tightly in her fingers.
It wasn’t until she decided to keep her rock collection in the black box a few days later that she realized its true magic. The morning after she put the rocks in the box Wanda opened it only to find the rocks replaced by a small piece of folded notebook paper that read;
Is this some kind of joke? I don’t fill you with rocks. Please have a little courtesy next time.
When Wanda’s teacher yelled her name for not giving the answer to four times seven, she jerked out of her trance and her cheeks went pink. The laughter from her classmates haunted her all the way home on the school bus. Her only distraction was the anticipation for today’s discovery from the mysterious black box. This time her hands shook as she opened it. Half expecting to see little tiny people smiling and waving up at her, her heart sank when all she saw was another small piece of paper, sloppily folded in the bottom of the box.
What do you take me for? I am but a box, just like any other.
Wanda leaned back against the wall with the note in hand and a sigh in her breath as she thought about how to respond to the box this time. For once in her life ideas didn’t jump out of her head. Little people weren’t crawling out of the box in her imagination anymore. As she dragged her body onto the bed even her toes looked disappointed as they curled under the sheets. Wanda picked up Simon, her favorite stuffed lamb and looked him straight in his beady black eyes. “I’m tired, Simon. I don’t care.” But in the silence that followed her declaration of independence from the box, Wanda got an idea. After tearing another piece of paper out of her rapidly thinning My Little Pony notebook, Wanda wrote;
I was wondering please sir, since you can talk so nicely, that you could maybe make Simon talk to. Simon is my lamb. He likes chocolate and he likes to be scratched under his ears and I know if he could talk he’d have a lot of nice things to say. I understand if you can’t but please sir if you could I would be very happy. P.S. If I could have my rocks back I’d also be very happy about that too.
After saying her goodbyes to Simon, Wanda set him in the box on top of the note and a Hershey’s kiss she’d been saving since last Easter. Simon’s fuzzy white ear stuck out of the box as she closed it and she tried to ignore the fact that he was far too big to for a little black box to handle.
The next morning Wanda woke to her mother practically dragging her out of bed. She’d apparently given up the gentle motherly coaxing sort of wake up call after months of Ok- I’ll- get- up- in- five- minutes- mom. After making Wanda eat every last ounce of oatmeal in her bowl and shoving a lunch sack into her hand, Wanda’s mother kissed her on the head and directed her out the door before she could come up with any kind of sensible explanation why she needed to go back up to her room and retrieve her talking lamb.
“My- umm”
“Honey, I can already hear the bus.”
“But my lamb. Simon’s-”
“Wanda, you haven’t brought your lamb to school since you were in kindergarten. You’re a big girl now. Come on. Get those wheels shifting and the gear turning.”
Wanda circled her eyes as she dragged her feet out to the bus stop. She never understood why her mom said that so often, or what on earth it meant. She grumbled even more when she realized it was Thursday the 2nd. Her day for show-and-tell had finally come and Wanda had the perfect item but the space between her and the box was rapidly widening. She squeezed her fists together as she thought back to the last time it was her turn for show-and-tell. Wanda had brought in her rock collection, which ended up all over the floor after the plastic grocery bag it was in gave out while she was standing and talking in front of the whole class for the first time in her entire life. Rocks danced across the floor in a rainstorm of sound and a ripple of motion. Wanda never did find her favorite rock, the one she had picked up off the ground in the parking lot outside the hospital after her brother was born. It caught her eye because it resembled the shape of a heart.
When show-and-tell rolled around that afternoon, Wanda dreaded her turn. Ironically it wasn’t until then that she realized she could have told her mom she wanted Simon for show and tell. Wanda’s first lesson in the rules of life; you never have the right words when you really need them.
Words would be the first thing to go in this kind of panic.
“Wanda? It’s you’re turn. What do you have for us today.”
Her unbearably cheery teacher, Ms. Willis, tilted her head as soon as she noticed Wanda was forcibly avoiding eye contact by staring at her own shoelaces. Ms. Willis knelt down next Wanda with a soft hand on her shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Wanda? Don’t you have any show-and-tell?”
“I found a pretty purple piece of glass on the sidewalk at my bus stop. But I don’t think anyone will see the purple because it got cloudy and it needs the sun and I don’t want-”
“Wanda? Can I have that piece of glass? It’s very pretty but glass can be dangerous sometimes.”
Wanda reluctantly handed her the glass and looked back down at her feet.
“It’s ok if you don’t have anything. Bobby can go and you can just wait unit it’s your turn again in two weeks.”
Wanda reluctantly whispered “Ok” and thought about all the days that would have to take place before she could finally show the class her box.
“Bobby?” Ms. Willis turned to a grinning little red haired boy who was holding a plastic terrarium in his hand containing a big brown toad moping in a puddle of water.
“It’s your turn, Bobby. You can go up and show the class what you’ve brought.”
Just then the class started whispering and sending shifting glances at Wanda. As she slid down in her seat she could hear someone say the word “rocks”. Her face went red.
When recess rolled around Wanda slipped out the door before the rest of the class as they all huddled around Bobby’s loudly croaking toad. She went directly toward the back of the soccer field and sat next to the fence where she looked out over the wetlands that bordered the school. After a few minutes of reliving show-and-tell, her bad thoughts began to float away, replaced by not only a talking lamb but a walking one as well. It ran with her in the backyard and eventually sat on the desk in front of the class and did a back flip as her classmates all looked on with dropped jaws. But in Simon’s second verse of Mary Had a Little Lamb, a red rubber ball came flying at Wanda’s face. She leaned out of the way as it hit the fence and three boys ran up to her. Their knees were brown with dirt, as well as their cheeks and foreheads.
“Sorry,” one of them blurted in a mocking voice. Wanda could hear the other two boys giggling behind him.
“I didn’t see you.”
Wanda didn’t respond. After giving them a stern glance she looked back out at the wetland.
“Looking for rocks, Wanda? Try looking in your head.”
And with a bout of laughter and a cloud of dust, they ran back out to the center of the field where they continued their scattered game of kickball.
Wanda couldn’t sit still the whole bus ride home and when the bus got to her stop she flew out of it and into the house where she didn’t even remember to take off her shoes. Tracking dirt all the way up the stairs, Wanda dove under her bed and pulled out the box. Half relieved just to see Simon hadn’t disappeared, she cautiously pulled him out and laid him in a comfortable sitting position on the carpet in front of her.
“Simon?” she spoke softly.
“Can you hear me? Can you say hello?”
After nudging him to no avail, Wanda’s excitement deflated right out of her body as she slouched over the box. After pulling out the note she read;
I’m not sure you’re aware but you put a stuffed doll inside of me. What part of that constitutes any kind of favor? If I could bring things to life do you think I would have spent the last thirty years in a dusty attic?
Wanda sat in awe realizing the box had been in her attic almost as long as her mother had been alive. She pictured centuries passing and people in frilly hoop dresses opening and closing the box. But her thoughts quickly turned to the lifeless sheep on her floor. Without warning, Wanda picked Simon up and threw him across the room. He fell between the bed and the wall, wedged like pineapple.
Wanda decided to wait until the evening to respond this time. She needed time to think. She moped down to dinner where she found Joshua in his high chair making funny squeaking noises and slapping his mashed potatoes with a spoon. Wanda went into the powder room and washed her hands. When she came back Wanda’s mother was in the dining room. After wiping Joshua’s face, she asked Wanda how her day at school was.
“Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing… Mom, what makes someone special?” Wanda’s mother put her fork down and gave Wanda a perplexed look. Wanda knew her mother would probably attempt to give her some overanalyzed answer designed just to make her feel good, but she couldn’t keep all these thoughts inside any longer. It took Wanda’s mother a minute to respond. Before she could answer however, Joshua threw his spoon at the table and it landed in the bowl of peas sitting right in the middle of the table between Wanda and her mother. Peas exploded out of the bowl in every direction. There were peas in Wanda’s mashed potatoes and in her iced tea. There was even a pea in her hair. Joshua started screaming and Wanda’s mother spent the next five minutes attempting to calm him down and clean up the peas at the same time.
“Everyone is special in their own way.” Wanda’s mother finally let out, half in a sigh. “Did someone say you weren’t special? Because-”
“-No,” Wanda cut in, and before her mother could fathom any kind of response Wanda leapt off her chair and dashed upstairs to her room. She tore a piece of paper out of her notebook and wrote;
But you must be special. My mom calls my brother special all the time and he can’t even talk.
The moment Wanda woke up the next morning she knew it was going to be a good day. She could smell an autumn breeze coming in through the window as the sun warmed her face. Wanda got dressed and had breakfast with twenty minutes to spare. As she passed the time doodling, something struck her, an idea that is. Wanda pulled the box out from under her bed and stuffed it into her book bag.
There was no day dreaming in Wanda’s head today. She spent a good half of the day in a state of perpetual peace. She didn’t fill her head with any silly ideas about boxes full of ice cream or limitless cotton candy. She greeted all her classmates with a pleasant dignity and sat in her desk with her back straight and her hands crossed. Wanda answered three multiplication problems by choice and didn’t get a single one wrong. As it came time for show-and-tell Wanda’s hand shot into the air before little Kerry Anne could pull her jewelry box out of her bag.
“Yes, Wanda?”
“Ms. Willis? I was wondering if I could do show-and-tell today since I didn’t do it yesterday.”
Without giving the matter any kind of thought, she said,
“Wanda, you know what the rules are. We don’t have time more than four.”
Clutching the box still hidden in her bag, Wanda pleaded as quietly as she could without making a scene,
“Please, Ms. Willis?”
And after a brief silence; “We’ll see how long the first four are. If there’s time after Kerry, Brian, Liz and Daniel, maybe you can go.”
The next twenty minutes crawled across the room. Over decks of baseball cards, under metal race cars and through a large pink hula hoop garnered with silver stars. Wanda pondered what more enjoyable toy Kerry’s plastic jewelry could be molded into after being melted down. And after seventeen agonizing minutes the butterfly’s in her stomach must have been doing a tap dance as the magic words finally drifted out of the teacher’s mouth.
“Ok, Wanda. You can go. But hurry, recess starts in two minutes.”
Wanda pulled out the box and strode to the front of the classroom where she set it on the table in front of her.
“This is my magic box. It’s very special and very old.”
Kids started looking at each other with raised eyebrows and Wanda started fidgeting with her hands.
“See, I can ask the box questions and it answers them. Or I can just tell it things and it responds.”
Whispers started hovering over the classroom and Bobby blurted, “Boxes don’t talk.”
“But this one does!”
“Where’s it’s mouth, then?”
“Bobby, that’s enough,” snapped the teacher.
“It doesn’t speak, it writes to me. That’s how we communicate.”
And as she pulled a brand new slip of paper out from inside the box the whole room burst into laughter.
“Her mom probably put those notes in there.”
“No, it’s real. It talks to me, see?”
“Just yesterday it didn’t think it was special because it couldn’t make Simon talk and I told it that it was special because my mom says my brother is special and he can’t talk.”
And she held the opened note in front of the class. With nothing but a weak wave of laughter, Wanda turned the note around and started reading it aloud.
“What’s wrong with your broth-” simultaneously the bell rang and Wanda stopped talking.
What’s wrong with your brother? Any old bloke can talk. Sounds to me like you come from a family of cretins.
Aside form the Ms. Willis, Wanda was now alone, tears ruthlessly dribbling down her face and onto the piece of paper.
“Wanda, honey, go out and play. Everything’s going to be fine.”
With no reply, Wanda just stood there. Ms. Willis knelt down beside her with a hand on her shoulder.
“I think it’s a very pretty box.”
“It’s a stupid box.”
“A box doesn’t have to be magic to be special.”
“I know.”
And after another silence, Ms. Willis said, “Yes, but I don’t think they do,” as she pointed to all the empty chairs in front of them. “You know what it means to you. That’s all that matters. I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
Wanda stuffed the box back in her bag. Ms. Willis didn’t know that she had only just found the box a week ago. It meant nothing to her. Anger was now her only attachment to it. As Wanda wiped her face on her sleeve and started walking toward the door, Ms. Willis interrupted.
“I almost forgot to mention, I found this the other day under the bookshelf when I was cleaning. I believe it belongs to you.”
Ms. Willis handed Wanda her favorite heart-shaped rock. As she took it in her hand she thought of the day her brother was born. Her mother was in the hospital bed and Wanda was visiting her for the first time after the labor was over. As she jumped onto the bed and dug her head into her mother’s pillow, the sterile smell of the hospital was drowned out by the soothing smell of her mother. As her mother tickled her, Wanda fell backwards and lay her head against the foot of the bed. She had been scared for her mother, she didn’t understand quite what giving birth entailed. But she knew now that everything was alright. And then she giggled some more.
Wanda took the stone into her pocket and kept it with her the rest of the day. She didn’t have a particularly enjoyable day. Plenty of classmates giggled and gawked at her the whole afternoon. But Wanda did get through it. And as she slammed the door to her house after school she flung her shoes off with reckless abandon. But instead of heading up to her room she ran to her mother and gave her a hug that could have very well knocked the wind out of her.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Everything.”
After her mother had gone to bed that night Wanda got up and pulled the black box out from underneath the bed. She put her daisy duck slippers on, tiptoed down the stairs and out the patio door. The air smelled of evergreen trees and the stars twinkled gently in the distant night sky. Wanda’s favorite summertime hideaway was a spot down by the brook that ran along the back of her family’s property line. She knelt down to the water, reached out, gently let go of the box and let it drift away. It bobbed in the breeze as it floated into nothing. And it was magic how Wanda walked away from that box with her head up and her eyes open to the night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)