Season 08

Fiction

Half Life

What I remember now is the warmth.

Graphic by Sophie Keller

by

Jeremiadus
Season Categories Published
MP809 Fiction

Apr 09, 2024
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Tommaso Pellegrino was seven years old when he went through the ice. He had slipped quietly away from the rambunctious children sliding, gliding, lurching, and tumbling alongside their parents on the lake’s stubbled surface. He had paused for the briefest moment to take in the scene, then with sibylline grace simply vanished.

Old for the first grade, Tommaso was slender and short, with loose dark curls and blue eyes, fair skin and red lips—from his mother. He lived with his parents in the junior faculty housing by the lake.

Tommaso’s father Paulo was a cosmologist at the particle physics lab on campus. Paulo was often away from home. Monday mornings, effervescently kissing his children good-bye, grandly swinging his briefcase, he strolled to the rail depot, only a half mile from the apartment. He rode the shuttle to the junction, boarded a train to the city, and there hopped a bus to the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. He returned home in the evenings on Thursday.

While Paulo was away, Tommaso’s mother Juliana cared for Tommaso and his baby sister, Christiana. Juliana hailed from Bolzano at the base of the Tyrolean Alps in northern Italy. She possessed creamy skin and luxuriant blonde hair that she wore long and hanging nearly to the base of her spine in a pony tail or sometimes, adorably, Teutonically, in twin braids.

I taught at the elementary school where Tommaso was a student in my first-grade class. Male elementary school teachers were of course not common. Not then. Not now. The principal perhaps. The gym teacher. Maybe the art teacher. But only rarely a classroom teacher. It was not so much because of some institutional sense of custom or decorum. Honestly, it was probably more a lack of interest from men in the work, a prevailing awkwardness and discomfort in relating to first and second graders. And in the background, I imagine there was also a belief that men were insufficiently nurturing.

Nurturing was not an issue for me. I was unassuming and calm, organized and orderly. A good listener. Patient. I had learned to appreciate the value of shaping and holding generous space for the kids, establishing boundaries both expansive and firm.

But the messy truth is that I was also there for the mothers.

The first day of school of Tommaso’s first grade year, the other students, many of whom knew each other from kindergarten, bounced animatedly off each other, a hive of undifferentiated energy. Tommaso had arrived from Italy with his parents earlier that summer. He stood apart, appraising and watchful.

Tommaso packed a Theodore Tugboat lunchbox and talked volubly to his classmates about Theodore’s adventures with rest of the Big Harbour gang. He told me, more than once, about his preference for things that floated and aversion to things that sank. And honestly, that pretty much summed up his personality. In our class, he was the buoyant student, the unsinkable presence, a safe harbor for the rest of us. Including me.

Tommaso arrived by bus most mornings, but his mother often retrieved him at the end of the school day, particularly when it had been raining. Juliana’s English was good, nearly unaccented. But she appeared sad to me. She told me the apartment building where they lived was drab and lonely. She had not met other mothers. People were not friendly.

Her husband Paulo had grown up in Milan, she told me, but she came from picturesque and prosperous Bolzano. She had been a competitive figure skater as a child, I learned, but had happily put the skating behind her when she went to university, where she met Paulo.

In late October, we studied water—its properties, its uses, its significance for humans and other living creatures. I organized a field trip to visit the lake and the canal that flowed alongside it. Several mothers accompanied me to assist with the children, one of whom was Tommaso’s mother. She brought Christiana in the stroller.

The bus parked by the football stadium. We herded the students down the hill. It was a warm and glorious autumn day, the moist air saturated with light, the leaves stippled with faint drops, reflecting the emerging colors: rusts and golds and magentas.

I held Tommaso’s hand. Elise, who had become his closest friend, skipped happily just ahead, laughing for him to follow. Tommaso’s mother pushed the stroller on the other side of Tommaso, clasping his other hand. He too skipped along, chortling, his blue and red Theodore Tugboat backpack jostling happily on the thin blades of his shoulders. Juliana and I pulled him into the air, retrieving him to us.

Tommaso stopped to point at a blank, featureless tower planted on the crest of the hill. “That’s the physics building!” he shouted to Elise, who winced and pressed her palms to her ears. “Papa works there. He makes hot soup and then pours it into in a black hole!”

Juliana glanced at me and rolled her eyes. “Paulo’s a particle physicist.”

We descended to the lake. Juliana nodded across the road to where twin brick apartment buildings, each rising five stories, fronted the lake. “That’s Ribben and Magpie,” she said. “We live in Ribben.” She stared pensively at the buildings, which even in the golden light seated themselves heavily atop the earth, like unquiet tombs. “Our apartment faces away from the lake,” she added.

“Magpie’s a bird,” Tommaso confided, proud of his English.

“Yes,” I said. “And Ribben?”

Tommaso pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow. “Ribben’s a cold monster,” he said.

We reached the lake and marched on to the bridge toward the canal. Tommaso waved across the road at his apartment. “Hello Ribben. Hello Magpie.”

“Hello Baggy Pie,” Elise echoed. The children shrieked with laughter.

As we approached the lake, rowers swept by, gliding rhythmically through the serene water, clockwork dip and pull of the oars. The children were entranced by the tiny men and women perched in the stern, baseball caps flipped backwards on their heads, bullhorns pressed to their lips, counting out the beat, barking commands to the rowers.

Power 10 in two. One! Two! Square! Touch It Up!

We marched across an arched stone bridge spanning the lake and turned on to the far bank. Tommaso was telling Elise about the previous winter, when the lake had frozen solid for 10 days and Tommaso’s mother taught him to skate. He moved his arms in a synchronized, pendular motion in front of him while sliding his legs behind him like scissors snapping. “Swoosh Swish Slice / Swoosh Swish Slice,” he chanted. “That’s how Mama told me to skate.”

Tommaso turned on his heels and for a moment stared gravely at the canal on the other side of the towpath. I pivoted with Tommaso and, perhaps like him, found myself imagining the glassy surface itself to be a solid that would bear my weight if only I dared to test it, to trust it.

“Mama said I should never ever skate on the canal,” Tommaso whispered to Elise. “She said the water doesn’t get cold enough. The ice looks safe because it’s smooth. But she said smooth ice isn’t strong. It cracks!” He turned back to the lake and waved his arm panoramically. “Over here, the ice on the lake is rough. Mama says rough ice is safer.” Then he frowned.

“When we work on the land and on nature and change it, that’s called engineering,” I told the kids, sitting on blankets and eating sandwiches, a few minutes later. “Engineering is something people can do that most other animals cannot, at least not in the same way. We change the natural world to adjust it and bend it to our human needs. Or what we imagine those needs to be.”

More than 150 years ago, I told the children—now seated on blankets and eating sandwiches—workers from Ireland came to America and dug this 60 miles canal with hand tools like picks and shovels. I said, “Imagine if our principal, Miss Pigeon—” and had to pause here because the students always laughed at the name of the principal.

Starting up again, “Imagine if Miss Pigeon said to all of you, ‘Children of the first grade, there you are at the canal, almost two miles from our school. I am giving each of you a spoon, knife, and fork from the cafeteria. You must dig a ditch two feet wide and two inches deep from the canal to your classroom.’ What would you say to that?”

The students oohed and aahed, because of course this task appeared unfathomably difficult.

The qualities that made me a good teacher for young children also made me attractive to their mothers, and to girls and women generally, and oddly, for similar reasons. I packaged a stabilizing calm, stillness, and warmth within a strong and graceful physique. This combination—creating space, promising safety, harmonizing gentleness and strength—turned out to be pretty irresistible.

I was not classically handsome. Far from it. As a young teen, I suffered a devastating series of bouts with acne that permanently scarred my face, leaving it rough and pitted like the mountains of the moon. Craterface, my schoolmates called me. Indeed I was.

But while this disfigurement might have produced a corresponding layer of emotional scarring in other adolescents, I’d arrived at this moment of peril fortified with a lavishly secure childhood that somehow secured me from the devastation that this pox stamped upon others. Of course, I knew objectively that the acne scars were hideous, but I was nonetheless, without effort, able to accept these cracks and holes in my face as an unthreatening texture.

In spite of my cratered visage, or perhaps even partly because of it, females were drawn to me. My gentle and passive receptivity to whatever interior emotional needs they wanted to project on to me seemed a kind of vacuum of the sort nature abhors, and so a strange attractor for female affection and ardor. This pattern was so familiar and natural to me that at the time I graduated college and departed for Europe in the early 1990s with my girlfriend Miranda, I took for granted and navigated comfortably the potentially complex relationship dynamics that sometimes ensued.

Miranda was British. We spent several months in Oxford, then hopscotched to Paris, Paros, Prague, and Vienna. By the time we settled in Berlin—where for a year we partied like it was 1995 and I obtained a sinecure at the Goethe Institute as a teaching assistant—Miranda had become used to the attention I received from other women. She understood this attention was the current in which I swam, and, indeed, she perceived more clearly than most that this piece of my identity did not make me a threat to her and to our relationship.

Then Giselle entered my life. A fellow assistant at the Goethe Institute, a few years older than me, Giselle had until 1989 lived on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, and she subsequently staggered into West Berlin striped by Soviet-bloc-sized emotional wounds for which I was entirely unprepared.

I suppose she was malformed as a child by surveillance, suspicion, paranoia. It was easy for me in retrospect to imagine how the sensory maelstrom that was Berlin in the 1990s might quite easily have fragmented and dissolved what I took to be the slipshod fabrications of her mind.

With an unmediated urgency that I’d never before experienced with anyone, she latched on to me as if I were a life-preserver tossed to her drowning, flailing, sinking self. She would not yield, her emotional need subtracting fully the space that I—instinctively and without forethought—created for women, subdividing and zeroing it out until I found that I myself could not breathe. She wanted me in every conceivable way.

I needn’t divulge details. What would be the point? The only point, in the end, was that lacking me confirmed to Giselle that she lacked everything, that she would always be partial, emptying, never whole, always broken. And so one moist evening, drunk to a point of no return, she stepped in front of a train.

A hard lesson for an innocent kid, as I somehow still imagined myself to be (although I was 23 years old, nearly 24). My response was to flee. From Berlin. From Miranda. From myself. My unarmored grace now exposed to me as a dangerous ugliness no less grim and diminishing than my pocked flesh, which for the first time also horrified and repelled me.

After a few months back in the States with my parents, I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to a village outpost in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley. There I spent two years teaching primary school —and learned I had a knack for the classroom.

My beautiful, smiling, exuberant young charges, in their powder-blue school uniforms, called me Teacher and would not quit me. The change of scene—dry heat and clear skies and empty spaces—quite restored my calm, and my students explored me like a topographical map, as if my body were itself their textbook.

Swarming, they clambered and crawled upon me, touching my face, probing its bumps and colors as if it were indeed the surface of the moon, stroking my eyes, my ears, my lips, entangling their fingers in my hair (which had grown long and thickened with curls), tenderly tracing the line of my jaw and the stubble of my chin, testing the strength of my biceps, grasping and pulling at my fingers.

“You are a strong-quiet man,” they told me.

It was also there, in my classroom in my village in Zambia, that I first encountered the mothers. Well, one mother in particular. Her daughter was Ayanda. Her name was Thandi. I became her confidant and confessor, her friend and companion. There was nothing profound about our relationship. Thandi certainly wanted nothing more from me than I was prepared to give. Unlike with Giselle, I did not represent rescue or a way out.

From a distance, I realize now that we were a triangle, Ayanda the necessary bridge for Thani and my connection. We bonded from conversations about her daughter, sharing insights, discussing goals and prospects, devising paths forward toward imagined futures for the daughter, these also images of possibility for Thandi herself.

Throughout, I remained still. I allowed Thandi to claim me, to inhabit me, to want me. We together shared and loved something precious. Her daughter. Which somehow sanctioned our gentle, exquisite, private lovemaking.

The rain returned fell intensifying ardor in November, hardening into an unyielding sleet by December. The grownups fretted, of course, descending into cycles of negative speculation about what it all meant, the weather, as always the screen on which they projected their own anxieties.

But the children were resilient, unflappable even. Protectively wrapped, like mini-Michelin men and women, they bounced and careened and caromed into my classroom each morning with the earnest exuberance of the un-dammed. Carelessly and without heed, spirits buoyant, cheeks rosy, noses runny, they unspooled themselves from their hats, scarves, coats, mittens, and boots, shaking away the water like drenched pups, as if this heinous weather were absolutely normal, as indeed it may well have been for them, for what else did they know?

One morning in December, Tommaso marched from the cloakroom into the classroom, steam rising like smoke from his thick mop of dark curls. He approached my desk, bright-eyed, smiling incandescently. “Because it’s so wet, I am bringing one of my Theodore Tugboat books for you to read,” he announced. “It’s called Theodore and the Stormy Day.”

Juliana trailed behind Tommaso, in woolen tights, skirt, and sweater, her hair unbraided. She looked pale and exhausted. She offered me one of her own wan smiles.

The relentless rain had made their apartment unbearable, and after Thanksgiving, she and Paulo had agreed to hire a babysitter for Christiana and she’d taken to bringing Tommaso to school herself in the mornings, remaining until the end of the school day as a parent helper in the classroom.

When the students went to lunch, Juliana often joined me at my desk. We ate and talked. On this particular day, with the lights off and the room a cloistered and intimate shadow of itself, she told me of her deteriorating relationship with Paulo and its impact on Tommaso. “He’s such a happy boy, in his nature,” she said. “But he notices and he knows and it unsettles him, that somehow he might have to choose.” I chewed my food thoughtfully, my eyes locked on hers.

Juliana told me about Paulo’s second life at Brookhaven. “His half-life, he calls it,” she said mockingly. “He has relationships with women in this other life. He does not conceal them. He never has.”

Juliana elaborated. She said Paulo believed that the universe bends back upon, splits, and refracts itself. That we inhabit multiple alternative realities, each a portion of a larger plenitude. Each with its own emotional and physical claims. “Tommaso adores his father,” she said. “He says that one day he will join Paulo in his half-life and explore with him the mysteries of the universe.”

I suggested to Juliana that maybe she should consider her own second life, that she didn’t need to fully tether herself to Paulo. For a moment, the weight she carried lifted, as she pondered what that might look like. Her long fingers languidly kneaded the papers on the desk then curled themselves into the palm of her hand, as if seeking within its cartography something to touch and hold that belonged only to her.

Her knee pressed against mine. “It’s true,” she said. “Maybe it’s time for me to teach skating again.”

We stood to prepare the classroom for the return of the children from their lunch. Juliana took my hands and wrapped them around her waist and rested her head on my shoulder. “Thank you,” she murmured. “You are a good man. A good teacher. Tommaso adores you, too.” Tilting her face up toward me, she raised up on her toes and laughed, gently rubbing her nose against mine. Her fingers explored the bumps and grooves of my face. “Such a rough surface,” she said wondrously. “So many places to hide.”

She called me two days later. I was waiting for her call. Tommaso had been absent from school. He wasn’t sick, she said. But he had been having night terrors. He refused to go to school. He wouldn’t leave her side. He clung to her like a baby kangaroo. “I’m your baby kangaroo,” he kept saying. “Please let me stay in your pocket.”

Ribben was indeed a cold monster I thought as I stepped into the narrow lobby, really just some silver mailboxes, bolted to the dirty brown brick façade, adjacent to a sad plastic Christmas tree and a small, non-operating elevator. I climbed the stairs to the third floor and found the apartment at the end of a glowering corridor.

“What are you doing here?” Tommaso said, tugging at his forelock, staring at me as if I were a space alien. He clutched a toy boat in his hand but looked disheveled and slightly dazed. Without waiting for me to answer, and with no welcome in his voice, he shouted to his mother, “Mama, it’s Teacher.” Then to me, sotto voce, his voice chill and precise. “Go away, Teacher. Stay away. You’re ugly. You scare me.”

That was my fantasy, as I knocked on the door to the apartment, and I stifled an instinct, once more, to flee. But when the door opened, Juliana stood there alone, wiping her hands on a rag, smiling. She wore jeans and an Icelandic sweater, her hair fetchingly pulled back beneath a blue bandana. “Thank you for coming here,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

She’d made prior arrangements. It was a Thursday. It would be late in the evening before Paulo returned from Brookhaven. Tommaso would play at Elise’s house for two hours.

Juliana took my wet coat and scarf and tousled my hair. “Here, sit.” She led me by the hand to the worn couch, its cushions collapsing into themselves, and I sank down into its vortex.

I took in the room, which was carpeted and rectangular, the narrow side framed by a single window that faced a skeletal grove of trees lashed by the wind and the rain. Low bookcases lined the walls across from me crammed with physics texts and works of popular science and literature. Above the books, framed photos lined the wall—Tommaso holding Christiana, Tommaso’s school photo, the entire family, Juliana on the ice. Toys littered the dingy, carpeted floor—Tommaso’s boats, his Legos, an Etch a Sketch, a tangram puzzle, an N64 plugged into the television.

“That’s one busy boy,” I said.

Juliana smiled and nodded. “Too busy.” She handed me a cup of tea and settled into the sofa beside me. “Christiana’s napping,” she said.

She laid a crocheted blanket across our laps. She leaned into me and shivered. “You see? About the damp and the cold?”

“It’s not so bad.” I actually rarely experienced cold. “Tell me about Tommaso,” I said.

She sighed. “Two nights ago, he climbed into bed with me. He was shaking. Sweating. Cold sweats. He said he’d dreamed about a rocket ship that smashed into the earth, cracking it open. Paulo and I were on one side of the crack. Tommaso was alone on the other side.”

I took her hand, pressing it between both of my own, gently stroking the skin between her thumb and forefinger. I gazed quietly into her eyes, holding her gaze, liquefying the boundary between us.

“He was terrified,” she said. Her eyes pooled, and as they did, I could feel myself emptying, opening up, allowing her tears and her pain to fill and inhabit me.

“Younger children, they are not aware,” she said haltingly. “But as I told you, Tommaso, he is seven, he is old for his grade. But he also old for his age. He sees everything.”

“What does the crack mean?” I murmured.

She didn’t answer. Instead, her cheeks glistening, her eyes now closing, she kissed me, her warm mouth parting, and I could feel the dam breaking.

We waded into the new year, damp and bedraggled. Then in mid-January it all ceased. The skies cleared. The air dried. The temperature plunged. And one morning the children awakened to a miracle. The sun shone gloriously and with crystalline splendor upon our little patch of earth, unveiling a winter wonderland.

I’d been told snow days in the town were the high point of every year, a liminal state of joy and possibility where children, and indeed the entire town—shedding all rules and routines scaffolding their lives—converged upon the lake, clambered on to the ice, and there commenced a singular extravaganza, long known to all in the community as Ice Follies.

I sat atop the protruding root system of a willow, on the strip of land separating the lake from the canal, lacing my second-hand skates, taking in the scene, hundreds of children, their parents in tow, cantering and skidding upon the frozen lake.Kids playing hockey, racing each other, dancing, staggering, falling, lifting themselves up, all sparkling with a sun-kissed diamantine splendor.

At the center of the crowd, I spotted Tommaso, bundled from head to toe, skating in circles around a man in street shoes pushing a stroller across the ice. I recognized him from the apartment photos, of course. Paulo Pellegrino, a short, smiling fellow wearing smart-looking leather gloves and a pea coat. I didn’t see Juliana. I sauntered on to the ice myself, trying to appear more confident and composed than I felt. “Teacher!” Tommaso shouted when he saw me.

Tommaso was a natural, skating smoothly and in rhythm toward me—swoosh swish—while I hobbled lamely across the ice, my skates strapped like bear traps around my jellied ankles. Approaching at perilous speed, he dug in his right blade, pivoted and spun to a stop beside me, showering me with snow. I reached out to grab him for balance.

In that moment Juliana swept by on her skates, laughing. “You are like the drunken sailor doing the random walk,” she shouted. She spread her arms and lifted one leg high behind her. Tilting forward, she spun lazy eights in the ice while Paulo neared with the stroller. Just before he reached us, Juliana began skating in earnest again, with short and powerful strokes, carving several tight circles around us before pulling up short next to her son. She was breathing lightly, her face aglow. She touched her husband’s arm.

“Paulo, this is Tommaso’s teacher, you’ve heard so much about.”

Paulo peered curiously at me, his dark eyes merry, flickering beacons behind wire-rimmed glasses. Luxuriant curls poured floridly to his shoulders beneath a black watch cap. He was quite short, but very handsome, his posture a pugnacious assertion of self-regard.

“So we finally meet!” He shook my hand warmly. “Tommo and Julia speak so much of you. It’s as if we share in the same family!”

Did alarm bells peal? Did the hackles rise? Not really. Not for me. I was not that sort of person. I’d continued to spend time with Juliana in the classroom. When Paulo was at Brookhaven, she’d arrange play dates for Tommaso and babysitting for Christiana so she could see me alone. She’d been clear that Paulo would have no clue. “He’s too self-absorbed,” she said. “He orbits around himself.”

But now I wonder.

What I remember from that moment when Paulo and I faced each other on the ice, shaking hands, talking informally, about nothing really—what did I think of Ice Follies, his commute, platitudes about his family, an off-handed reference to his “half-life”—what I remember now is the warmth, bordering on heat, that this proximity generated, as if some force field had been created.

Paulo chattered away. Juliana, hovering in the background, arched an eyebrow meaningfully for my sake, then whispered something to Tommaso, kissed him on the top of his head, and skated toward the center of the lake.

Meantime, Tommaso had begun to tug on his father’s coat sleeve, pointing to the shore. “Papa, this is where Teacher brought my class. Do you remember?

Paulo idly pushed the stroller forwards and backwards, oblivious to Tommaso, absorbed by the sound of his own words, directed at me.

“By slamming small particles into heavy gold nuclei at nearly the speed of light, we create tiny, ultra-hot droplets of a bizarre type of matter”—his words grew louder—”called a quark-gluon plasma.” For just a few thousandths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense that atoms could not form at all! Instead, space was filled with this quark soup.”

While he rambled, I considered this Paulo. He was annoying but—second life or not—he also occupied a stable and appraisable position in the life of his family. Who was I to disturb this universe? And yet I had.

“My experiments involve shooting the gold with a helium-3 atom, which produces in the resulting droplets a remarkable triangle pattern. This occurs outside of anything we might understand to be space-time in the relativistic sense…”

I watched Tommaso from the corner of my eye. His expression had darkened. He was turning inward. His blue eyes twitched and shuddered in the glare of the sun. Perspiration beaded his brow. Initially restless, then impatient, several times, he skated away from us, then returned. “Papa, I’m exploring,” he said. “Come with me. We’ll find snorkel clams.” And then these words. “They’re on the other side. Where the water’s warm.”

Paulo ignored him.

“You’re boring, Papa,” Tommaso said finally. “I am going to find, Mama. Okay?”

“That’s good, Tommo,” Paulo said. “Bring Mama back. We’ll all play together.”

Tommaso skated past me and once more, I thought I heard him, under his breath. “Go away, Teacher. Stay away. You’re ugly. You scare me.”

They retrieved his body from the canal late that afternoon. The ice had collapsed beneath him near a pumphouse, where water temperatures were typically higher and any ice that formed was rotten.

Someone later reported having seen him in the morning, seated on the bank of the canal, pulling out his toys from his backpack, moving his boat back and forth on the ice. They saw him stuff the toys back into his pack, scramble his arms through the straps, then skid from the bank to the ice and begin to skate north.

As for me, I’d watched him retreat from his father, and from me, skating lazily on the margins of the pandemonium at the center of the lake. The sun was still climbing in the east, its bright clear light refracting through the hoar-frosted trees, curtaining the shoreline like a stage set. After perhaps 200 yards, he paused near a clearing on the bank, the sun here wreathing him in cold light.

I squinted, blinked, and when I could see clearly again, he was gone. I assumed he’d hurled himself into a nearby scrum of children, perhaps having seen within it his mother. In reality, he’d simply exited the stage, his swift passage through the trees, like a scimitar, instantly slicing him from this light, and from us. ▩

Author

Jeremiadus

Jeremiadus is your worst nightmare.

The Hero

Nobody knew Mish’s boyfriend. Nobody knew where she was from or where she lived either, which made us pretty much useless when the cops bothered showing up.

Bubbles

Graphic by Sophie Keller

by

Corinne Engber
Season Categories Published
MP803 Fiction

Jan 09, 2024
Share on

In the months afterward, I thought of her every time I got high. Which is to say: often, but not as often as everybody else I know. 

Discussion of her bled into every post-close blunt rotation. Sitting on Teddy’s crusty beige carpet, we tried talking about other things—tattoos, girlfriends, how a grill guy two towns over knocked up his teenage coworker—but mentioning work inevitably led either to speculation on her whereabouts or, if we were still too tired or sober, a thick silence. 

We spent weeks like this, whispering on backdoor smoke breaks or crowded three deep in Cheyanna’s dusty backseat on the way to the bars. Local mythology to be chewed over and over like gristle, picked apart beneath clicking lighters by line cooks and burrito rollers whose shifts never overlapped with hers by more than fifteen minutes. As soon as shit started burning, her name was there, in shallow puffs and hums: Creepy Mish. Mish the freak. 

Misha, Misha, Misha.

Mish joined us halfway through her junior year. When pressed, nobody could remember what she studied—the only kid who’d ever shared a class with her at the nearby university no-call no-showed after two weeks—but we were all pretty sure it was something artsy. Or maybe international affairs. Crybaby Elsie insisted she was pre-med, but she also thought the walk-in was soundproof enough to hide her fifty daily screams, so nobody took her seriously.

Anyway, it didn’t really matter. Mish had good weekend availability, had worked at three other chain locations for three previous summers, and turned up showered and on time for both interviews. This was more than enough for the general manager, whose prerequisites for cashiers began and ended with “tits yes, crying no.”

Mish wasn’t a crier, but she didn’t have much in the way of anything else, either. Most of the other cashiers were lean and pretty, sleek from years of volleyball or lacrosse. They wore their hair in high, tight ponytails fed over their hats’ Velcro closures and carried ice buckets from the back with both hands, one at a time. Mish was scrawny and bald as a tea egg, with black fish eyes. She shaved her head well into the winter, hid the stubble and the rest of her inside a ratty hoodie in the cool hours before the doors opened. Months back, a short-lived manager asked why she didn’t just grow it out.

“Because my boyfriend pulls it,” she said casually. Mish was always saying shit like that casually. “Behind.”

She was an all right cashier. Sometimes she’d fuck around with the customers a little too much and eat her foot. Dog somebody out for wearing a Reagan t-shirt, conveniently forget to complete transactions for crustpunks and working moms. Early on, somebody taught her to pad the tip jar with a couple ones on top of a crushed paper cup to make it look full—to a customer, an empty jar was probably empty for a reason—and check the change counter every so often for forgotten coins. 

On Midwest minimum wage, the jar was serious business. Like, the difference between putting a dollar fifty of gas in your car or hoofing it down the side of the highway in the dark serious. Whoever taught her the cup trick also taught her the prettiest, sweetest cashiers made the best money, so she showed up to every closing shift with a brand-new face, plucked and contoured for an hour before the mirror on her bedroom floor. In the summer, when business was slow, she wore tiny shorts, lined bags of chips on the lowest shelf, and bent at the waist to grab them. So obvious, dinner and a show, but it was hard to make fun when we all went home at 1 a.m. five or ten or twenty bucks richer.

She must have needed the money. We all did, but she was the one answering the phones, looking up at bored dads and grads through eyelashes caked thick with mascara. She was the one collecting numbers on brown napkins, scribbled with pens borrowed unasked from the cup beside her register. More than once, we walked together to her beat-up little car in case the guy waiting in the dining room followed her out.

“Your boyfriend can’t pick you up?” I asked her once while we were running trash, holding a dripping bag at arm’s length. Laden with bags of her own, she leapt back from the arc of lime and bean juice as I heaved mine one-handed into the dumpster. Under the streetlights, her eyes looked like painted tunnels.

“No,” she said. “Keep holding that open. I need both hands.”

Nobody knew Mish’s boyfriend. Nobody knew where she was from or where she lived either, which made us pretty much useless when the cops bothered showing up. I remember one of the line guys—Cody? Jody?—was holding an eighth in his jacket for after close, and when the dogs came he pretended to get suddenly squeamish so they would let him into the bathroom to flush it. Like he was just now getting sick over something he’d seen forty minutes ago.

According to Cheyanna, who fucked a lot of cops, the address Mish put on her application was a bust, too. Mish’s roommate hadn’t seen her in weeks and it wasn’t like campus police were gonna sit around staking the place out. City police weren’t either (“Wow, really moving up in the world, Cheyanna. What’s next, the FBI?” said Teddy the grill opener, which earned him a punch) and the trail went cold there. No pings in the system, no checkered past.

“But for real though?” Teddy ashed his cigarette onto the asphalt, breathing clouds. “It’s always the quiet ones. Remember that time we invited her out and she blew into the bong?”

“Oh my god, she did not,” said Crybaby Elsie, who was on keto and eating baby carrots with her mouth open. “What a fucking freak.” Then: “Don’t fuckin’ look at me like that, K.”

I wasn’t looking at her like anything, just smoking at the small and overcast sky. Across the chain-link, the Starbucks drive-thru line stretched long into the adjacent parking lot. Usually, when school was in session, college students trooped between them and us in packs, with a line to both doors from open to close. A positive feedback loop: caffeine to pick them up, burrito to lay them out. Eat, sleep, fuck, get high. Like foxes and dolphins, fighting to placate their oversized brains.

Now, though. Now they were lining up down the street at Wendy’s instead.

The night of the bong incident wasn’t the first time Mish had gone out with us. She’d swung by the bars for a drink once or twice, said something off-color and dipped before last call. Honestly, I’m not even sure Teddy meant to invite her, but she showed up to his place at midnight with her makeup rubbed off all the same. I stepped out for a smoke a couple minutes afterwards and Irish goodbyed when it made my migraine worse instead of better, so everything that happened next was relayed to me later in detail. The setting was easy: Teddy’s greasy apartment. Cheap furniture, dead houseplants. Six people swapping germs on blunts rolled in tropical wrappers. Half an empty two liter floating in the kitchen sink. The bong came around and Mish, who’d been talking incessantly about one of her tattoos, took it by the neck and, with all the confidence in the world, blew the bowl clear across the room. According to Cheyanna, who’d been in the splash zone, a full foot of carpet was drenched in ancient resin.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Teddy said, half to me and half to the silent figure shoveling ice behind the dish sink the following afternoon, “but that was the funniest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.”

It really wasn’t a big deal. The closers ribbed her for a few days and then Cody-Jody became the new clown for cutting his fingertip off right before an inspection. But Mish didn’t ask to tag along anymore. She still comped meals and dogged out customers, still put herself on display to survive the cavern between paychecks, but the embarrassment stayed on her.

She loved us. I know she did. She’d come back from her break laden with half a dozen Starbucks cups, walk into the back twice after close so she wouldn’t miss anybody doling out tips. “Bonus from the parking lot,” she said once, dropping a twenty into the jar. I remember Cheyanna asked why she told us, why she didn’t just keep it. Mish just blinked those black eyes.

“Why would I do that?” she asked. Sounded like she meant it, too.

What happened was the store had this curved bench that separated the front line from the main dining room. About armpit height on Mish, maybe a little lower on me. Bleached wood on top and on the seat to match the walls, and corrugated steel studded with rivets on the back. A lawsuit waiting to happen, just itching for some kid to trip on his shoelace so it could tear into his cherubic blond skull. A couple feet down, pitted concrete floors smooth from three weeks of Norwalk bleach scrubbing.

We were just starting the dinner rush, 5:45 to 7:15. All us animals sweating behind the sneeze guard and shouting over corporate’s looping playlist of Songs to Kill Yourself To. Mish, trapped at the register for an uninterrupted hour, ready to receive the masses. The first face in arm’s reach.

That evening, I was about ten hours into what was supposed to be an eight-hour shift, with another five, maybe six to go. Too tired and hot to think. Laying meat on autopilot. Barking back calls, watching piles of meat in quarter pans diminish in the reflection of the sneeze guard. Slugging warm Red Bull between breaths and dreaming of the cigarette I’d smoke in exactly thirty-six minutes.

And then some guy walked up to the register. Crew cut, red baseball hat. Indians jersey. Couldn’t tell you anything else.

There’s this funny thing about people. If you see enough of them, you start forgetting you are one. They melt together into a seething, indolent slurry. Not like you, though. You’re different. Under the most specific of circumstances, you actually possess the innate capacity to be a hero. At the last moment, a switch would flip and you’d catch the baby, break up the fight, throat chop the shooter. It would be you.

But it wasn’t. For the next few minutes, we were all useless together.

I saw Mish in the wild exactly once, about a month before that guy put his hands on the counter. With nothing but cornfields and meth labs in every direction, kids got creative and one of the locals had incredibly cool parents. They let him convert their unfinished basement into a venue for bands nobody had heard of, friends three times removed touring flyover states to play crowds of twenty, max. I’d been there since the opener, so close I could smell the amps. Drenched and seeing stars, teeth ringing from the physical force of noise. Sweat and cigarette smoke transfigured the air to living ambrosia.

Mish stood at the edge of the pit by the pebbly merch table. La Croix in one hand, CD folded in a makeshift paper sleeve in the other. She moved like a reed rooted to the lakeshore, rose to her toes, back down in time. Behind her, graffiti climbed to the ceiling in a technicolor halo.

I should’ve said something. Got her attention and pulled her into the crush of bodies. Been the hero. But then it got rowdy again and somebody’s boot heel raked my shin and by the time I thought of her again, it was morning.

What happened was Mish had a bad day. First thirty minutes of her shift, she answered the phone, told the guy on the other line something he didn’t want to hear and then hung up without a word after he shouted “FUCKING CUNT!” loud enough to carry into the kitchen. Then the Gourmand—easily our worst and somehow most loyal regular—appeared, demanding his steak cooked to charcoal briquettes and his salsa sans onion. Must’ve been a full moon because he dug into Mish too, even though hers were probably the only hands that hadn’t touched his flavorless burrito. Outside, it got dark quick and the sky dumped gallons of stinking rain for hours. That meant wrestling slimy anti-slip mats from beneath the soda machine in the moments between customers. By peak, back of house was a sauna. Everybody who came down the line was drenched and pissed and looking for someone to snip at for that tiny power trip.

Mish had just turned away from the register for a second to comment on the half-eaten chicken nuggets she’d just found beneath a table (“Where did they get chicken nuggets from?!”) when he arrived. College boy with his whole life in front of him. He walked up to the counter, waited patiently for Mish to turn around and then, smiling, wrapped an arm around the tip jar.

It was not a subtle move. The jar was a stainless steel cylinder with bills blooming from its mouth. Despite the rush, almost everything inside was small change. Nine bucks, forty-eight cents exactly. Enough for one meal here, if you skipped the drink.

It was ours, though.

What happened next happened fast. Guy turned on his heel to run for the door, but Mish was already around the counter. She caught a fistful of his jersey, Chief Wahoo’s grinning face crushed between her fingers, and he went down. Face-first, with an awful crunch, into the corrugated bench. Coins flew in arcs like rice at a wedding.

He wasn’t screaming, though. Not until Mish got him on his back and pinned his shoulders between her knees. Rice in the treads of her nonslip shoes, a gash through his right cheek opening into flesh like lean, raw pork chop. When he did make noise, it came out sharp—a high squeal between his teeth. 

And Mish didn’t say a word. She just nestled each thumb into the pink corners of his eyes and pushed.

He should’ve been able to fight her off, nearly did until the pain and shock made his muscles seize. Any of us could’ve wrestled her to the bleached floor, but his face was swallowing her thumbs to the knuckle. A wash of brown water, displaced by the weight, rose from the sodden mat beneath them to meet the hot, gelatinous cascade filling his ears. Humid air cut by the sounds coming out of him.

It couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds before Mish pulled her fingers from the pits with a sucking noise. She was breathing with her whole body, dripping black sweat from her eyelashes. Blood covered the first two fingers on both hands. Impossible to tell what covered the thumbs.

Gaze to the floor, she rose and carefully lifted two sodden bills from the growing puddle. Ran a wrist across her forehead. Stepped over the howling body. Silent, she clocked out on the register with one pruning fingertip and left through the back.

Only after the door had closed did anybody think to call the cops.

We never got to ask why she did it. What was going through her mind, what drove her to torpedo her life and disfigure another human being over a pile of spare change. And even if we could, were there words to describe the enormity of her love? Could she even begin without returning to the first instance of herself, without vomiting every living moment in reverse?

How else was she supposed to show us what she meant?

I worked at that location for another eighteen months. We hustled everybody out after the cops left and deck scrubbed the stain best we could, but the foam was still coming up strychnine pink days later. Finally, corporate gave and closed us for a couple weeks to put in new tile. By then, they were training a whole new cohort—ponytails, high-waisted jeans. Vaping mint pods in puffer vests and asking vaguely for details until the GM banned discussion of the event from the store. 

Eventually, they cut my hours and I skipped. College towns get smaller every year, and there are plenty of grills in the world. But I kept seeing ghosts of them, all over the new and unfamiliar city. Someone sitting opposite me on the train with Teddy’s bulldog jaw or Crybaby Elsie’s blue eyes. Cheyanna’s hair, burnt straight and Kool-Aid red, waving like a beacon over the commuter crowd. Once, I even swore the Gourmand sat beside me in a dive bar until he ordered a steak bloody.

And every so often, it’s her. In line at Trader Joe’s, or examining a six-pack through the frosted cooler door. The silhouette of her face in profile. The shorn nape of her neck. A thousand years later and still the thrill goes through me, an ice-in-oil hiss of adrenaline, until I see the rest and remember where I am. Eating, sleeping, getting high. Like foxes and dolphins. Living one animal life in the forest of everyone else. ▩

Author

Corinne Engber

Corinne Engber is a genre fiction writer and professional working stiff. She lives in Boston with her wife and cat. Find her on Tumblr @synonymsfordismember.

Don’t Run on Riley Wolff

One voice from the crowd was always clearer than any other

Graphic by Adam Strawbridge

by

Brenton Washington
Season Categories Published
MP611 Fiction

Feb 14, 2023
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The flag high atop the lone mast on the far side of the outfield fence hung limp and unruffled. Any flowing air ran light, unhurried, unlikely to affect the flight path of a well-hit ball. The late spring Carolina sun shone brightly. Scarcely a cloud wandered the sky.

Riley Wolff tugged on the brim of his baseball cap, and then adjusted his sunglasses. His gloved hand rested just above his hip, cocked casually. From his position in right field, the flaming sun stared him right in the eyes. Wayside High’s baseball diamond was constructed such that any contact sending a ball more than a few feet into the air would bring his gaze—at least, for an instant—directly into the harsh glare. But Riley knew that once he had a bead on any flyer headed towards him, the possibility of a few, brief moments of sun-induced blindness would hardly make a difference.

It was the opening round of state playoffs. The Wayside High Buccaneers held the number two seed. During Riley’s freshman year, the varsity team, with a similar ranking, had won the championship. Riley had spent that season competing alongside his friends on the JV squad, but the varsity coaching staff, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to call him up to the big time once the playoffs began, hoping to utilize his scorching speed along the basepaths. Throughout that stretch of highly contested, highly publicized games, the coaches requested his baserunning services again and again, and again and again Riley delivered with impressive effect, scoring when able and swiping a number of bags along the way.

Then, as a rugged sophomore, Riley began to round into form, showing even more flashes of brilliance. He, along with a few of his JV buddies from the previous year, had secured a spot on the varsity roster from opening day, the coach penciling Riley in as the starting right fielder. However, the team’s season was a letdown. The Bucs’ lineup from the previous year, consisting of a talented core of seniors who had roamed the same elementary school halls, played practical jokes on each other on the same class field trips, attended the same cotillion classes forced on them by their parents—and, perhaps most importantly—played on the same teams since their t-ball and Little League days, had all graduated to the college ranks. The team that remained for Riley’s sophomore season lacked the same firepower, or camaraderie.

They lost in the second round.

But this year was different. With the previous season under their belts, the squad was more experienced, more polished, more grounded, more cohesive. The coaching staff spotted championship potential early on, though they would never admit it aloud.

Riley’s lips hinted at a smile as he slid his hand back into his leather glove, stilling all other movement. The third batter of the inning finally approached the plate. At the top of the second, with only one out, the game was just beginning. Neither team had scored, but the opposition was threatening with a runner on second base.

The baserunner, who had ripped a double after a quick, three-pitch strikeout of his teammate to begin the inning, did not appear keen to try sneaking to third on a steal attempt. The pitcher on the mound—Riley’s pal, Dylan—kept a watchful eye anyway. In the outfield, Riley crouched into his ready stance as Dylan wound up and hurled the ball toward home plate.

“Strike one!”

From right field, Riley could barely make out the call, which was muffled by the claps and cheers of those watching the game.

“Yeah, Dylan! That’s how you do it! Take it to ’em now!”

One particular voice from the stands bordering the infield was always clearer to Riley than any other, including the umpire’s. It was the father of one of his squadmates—Josh Fisher, the third baseman. Mr. Fisher’s animated shouts were a regular feature of Bucs games—as was the other players’ jesting of Josh for his father’s fanatical style.

Riley stilled again. Waiting.

On the mound, Dylan coiled tightly, raising his knee to his chest, before he unleashed.

The batter swung.

Plink.

Riley heard the flaky sound of the accelerated pitch making uneven contact with the bat, sending the ball almost immediately out of play. Foul.

“That’s two!” announced the home plate ump.

“Yep, that’s right! That’s two!” The cheering of the other spectators did little to drown out Mr. Fisher’s commentary.

Relaxing again, Riley looked toward the crowd. The game had begun more than an hour after school had let out, so he was surprised at the number of people—adults, children, even fellow students—who had decided it was worth their time to come and show their support. The bleachers were packed, and even more had brought chairs or blankets, while still others stood along the fences or lounged in the surrounding grass. As far as Riley could tell, the opposing team had also drawn a healthy showing, but the Buccaneer faithful outnumbered them five to one.

Riley returned his attention to the infield.

Dylan readied. Threw.

“Ball!”

“Hey, that’s alright, that’s alright!” Mr. Fisher called from somewhere amidst the crowd. “Make ’em sweat a little!”

On impulse, Riley edged his gaze upward, chancing a fleeting glance at the ball of white light in the late afternoon sky. Even with his shades on, the sun blinded him, and he saw nothing but white even as he looked away. Like sticking your hand on the stove, he thought. Everyone tells you it’s gonna hurt, but you’re curious anyway. Riley smirked and shook his head, falling into his crouch again as his vision began to clear.

He watched Dylan once again confirm the opposing team’s baserunner was sticking close to second. Either the kid really didn’t want to chance being picked off, or he was simply too lazy to take a bigger lead off the bag.

Dylan cut his eyes back to home plate. Riley did the same.

The wind up.

The throw.

“Ball two!”

“String ’em out, Dylan! Give ’em the rope!”

Josh’s passionate father had received more than his share of warnings regarding his more colorful pronouncements during games. Earlier in the season, he had even reached the most rarefied level among high school spectators—to be thrown out for arguing with an umpire’s ruling. Riley had been in the dugout, about to take to the outfield, when it happened. He remembered glancing back to gauge Coach’s reaction as Josh’s father, still shouting, was escorted away.

The coach had tilted his ballcap down, attempting to hide his smile. His assistant coaches, seated alongside, laughed outright. The Bucs went on to win 14-2. As penance, Mr. Fisher treated the entire team to pizza afterwards.

Now, Riley shifted his gaze toward third, where Mr. Fisher’s son was staring resolutely toward home plate. Josh almost certainly knew he had once again drawn his teammates’ amused glances—he was simply trying his very best to ignore them.

On the mound, Dylan wound up and pitched towards his crouching catcher at home.

Ping!

The definitive echo of genuine contact. The ping! of a ball well-hit—an extra-baser if it fell into a gap, possibly even a home run if the batter had mustered enough power. In either case, the runner on second was set to tally the first score of the game.

Riley only caught a flash of the impacted ball as it exploded off the bat. Almost immediately it was swallowed up in the blazing, brilliant orb of fire in the sky. Still, he turned, taking quick strides toward the outfield wall, his back now facing both the infield and steadily rising ball.

As soon as the ball left the bat, Riley had unconsciously and instantaneously gauged its course and estimated loft time. That initial glimpse of the baseball lifting off, along with the solid reverberation of contact, was all he needed. Nevertheless, since Little League, multiple coaches had tried to warn him against taking his eyes off fly balls for any length of time—particularly the lengths to which he was prone: two, three, even four seconds on occasion.

Even his varsity coach expressed skepticism at first.

“You do that a lot?” he had asked after watching Riley snag a deep fly near the right side fence for the first time.

“I guess so,” Riley answered.

“And you still catch ’em?”

Riley nodded.

“I mean, you get to the ones you’re supposed to get to?”

“Yeah.”

Coach eyed him for a moment.

“Alright,” he said then, spitting out a sunflower seed shell. “Keep catchin’ ’em.”

And that was that.

Now, as he ran, Riley glanced over his shoulder. His eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses, rapidly searched for the approaching ball, just as rapidly locating it. He then broke his gaze, turning yet again as he approached the warning track and outfield wall.

It wouldn’t be a home run, but it was a solid hit nonetheless.

A few more strides, and then he turned to face the infield again.

“Talk to me!” Riley called.

“Green! Green!” shouted Chris, approaching from center field.

Chris was watching second base. The opposing team’s baserunner would be taking off as soon as Riley made the catch.

Riley backed more, glove raised, eyes focused solely on the dropping ball.

Forty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. The fall was always slower than he anticipated.

He sprung forward as he caught it, his momentum carrying him as he quickly transferred the ball from his glove to his throwing hand, the exchange smooth, practiced, precise.

One step. Two. Another.

His right arm cocked back. His face reflected steely determination—brow drawn, mouth cinched, his unwavering gaze holding third base captive. There, Josh was already in position.

Continuing forward, Riley’s arm rocketed ahead, propelling his body further and launching the ball towards the infield. Riley followed his throwing motion all the way through to the end, his advancing energy and the force of his throw hurling him off-balance.

The speeding ball sliced through the air like a fat, white bullet, a steadily humming buzz saw, full power and no resonance, dangerous if interrupted. It moved unswerving on its frozen-rope path toward third base, producing a faint whoo as it zipped past Sammy, the shortstop, who wisely lowered his glove, letting it pass.

The opposing team’s runner labored as he ran the ninety feet from second base to third, glancing toward his third base coach for direction on whether or not he needed to slide.

His coach’s expression, however, was disconcerting—a blend of shock, horror, and confusion. Then, noticing his player barreling toward him at full speed—too close now to turn around and sprint back without getting caught in a rundown—the coach made the hasty, downward motion to slide.

For the third base umpire, the call was easy.

“Out!”

Double play. Side retired. The supporters ringing the field roared in approval.

“Holy…”

The opposing team’s third base coach, perhaps realizing he was in the vicinity of impressionable teenagers, let the rest of his thought hang unfinished.

“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “You may want to tell your guys not to try that again.”

He then held his gloved hand up in Riley’s direction. On the pitching mound, a grateful Dylan did the same. Riley responded with a small tug of his cap before exchanging a glovebump with Chris, the two of them beginning their trot in from the outfield. From a distance, one might barely make out their grins, though their caps and sunglasses obscured the rest of their features.

“Yep! That’s it! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” a certain someone bellowed over the raucous cheering of the crowd. “Y’all are gonna learn! Don’t run on that boy! Don’t run on Riley Wolff!” ▩

Author

Brenton Washington

Brenton Washington, under the pen name Taylor Dye, is the author of four novels, including the most recent in The Intermediaries series, The Intermediaries: Saint Nicholas. He is also the creator of the Trustice Jeffries superhero series, with the first book, Fear Into Darkness, available now.

The Marsh Girl and the Sexy Men of Where the Crawdads Sing

The blockbuster book and film tapped grand Southern themes—and cashed in on a post-feminist fantasy

Graphic by Adam Strawbridge

Graphic by Adam Strawbridge

by

Alisdair Hodgson
Season Categories Published
MP610 In Review

Jan 31, 2023
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Where the Crawdads Sing | By Delia Owens | G.P. Putman’s Sons, 2018 —> Where the Crawdads Sing | Directed by Olivia Newman | Hello Sunshine, 3000 Pictures, 2022

Where the Crawdads Sing hit cinemas in summer 2022, earning a mighty $137 million at the global box office, matching the commercial success of the novel (with over 15 million copies sold to date), and proving the world has an insatiable appetite for the whodunnit-thriller-romance-drama. While Crawdads may be generically confused, book and film share the same narrative beats, and attempt to tap grand themes of prejudice and alienation in the mid-century U.S. South.

They tell the story of Kya Clark, the “marsh girl” of Barkley Cove, whose once proud, slave-rich family fell into poverty in the North Carolinian swamps. As each member of the family peels away, Kya is left to fend for herself and build a life set in defiance against society at large. Though both versions position Kya as fiercely individualistic and liberated from the norms of mainstream society, they lumber unwittingly into worn concepts of what it means to be a woman. Fascinated with nature and equipped with rudimentary survival skills, Kya claws her way into adulthood only to be torn between two archetypal men: Tate Walker, sensitive son of a local fisherman, and the brash, stud athlete Chase Andrews.

Delia Owens’ novel flits between parallel narratives. The first takes place in the “present” of 1969, when Chase, Barkley Cove’s star quarterback, has been murdered under mysterious circumstances that suggest Kya is the killer. The second takes place during Kya’s childhood and explores the pain of her mother’s abandonment, the freedom associated with the death of her abusive father, and her reliance on animals and plant-life for sustenance and concealment from the outside world. Alone in a shack far from the nearest town, Kya walks barefoot through her swamp, hides from strangers in the brush, and builds an impressive collection of specimens and drawings of local wildlife.

The novel frames its human dramas within a wild and natural milieu. Throughout, we’re treated to poetic and scientific descriptions—smoldering dawns, hunkering bullfrogs, skies swirled with sycamore leaves alongside talk of genus, bone wear, and mating rituals—all of which charge Kya’s world with charm and wonder. A self-proclaimed “tangle-haired, barefoot mussel-monger,” she barters or hunts for most of her food, and only participates in the world of laws, ownership, and capital when compelled by others. In rejecting the consumer society operating a few miles up the coast in Barkley Cove, Kya cultivates a bountiful existence on her own terms, free from the quotidian concerns of school or the 9-5 working life. And yet, eyeing the meager means and basic living conditions that bring her freedom and joy, the cove’s white inhabitants see her as less, a subordinate social Other. They indulge in prejudice for prejudice’s sake, calling her “swamp trash” and feeling justified in doing so.

Like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Crawdads operates from the perspective of a young female protagonist in the South living in an overtly racist society, and leads up to an all-deciding court case. Yet, despite clear resonance between Kya’s low social status and the civil rights struggles that characterized the time and place, the book never seriously looks at how race shapes the setting. Kya associates with the Black bait shop owner Jumpin’ and his wife Mabel out of necessity, trading fishing catch for essentials likes gas and grits. Yet the marsh girl and the Black occupants of the cove find no common cause. Whatever possibilities for racial solidarity lie latent here, Owens never draws them out to useful effect. Instead, the latter half of the novel focuses on Kya falling for and obsessing over Chase and Tate, the young white men of the cove and brood of the very people who despise her.

Olivia Newman’s film adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing bundles the entirety of the novel’s 1969 segments—in which local police investigate Chase’s murder—into the first ten minutes of screentime. The story only begins once Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is put on trial, narrating her life story in voiceover from her jail cell.

From the beginning, the film is mired in an over-polished aesthetic, its soft-toned cinematography suggesting a comfortable, rosy and unimpeachable past, scrubbed of the civil rights struggle that defined it. The aesthetic extends to the characters: note the perpetual, laundry-ad cleanliness of Kya, for example, a girl who lives alone in a swamp. With a frock for every occasion, her outfits evoke an Abercrombie summer catalogue, whitewashing her poverty and life outside of civilization, and meshing awkwardly with the novel’s lightly anti-consumerist themes.

The animals and plants that inject some measure of vitality into the book are afforded precious little screentime. Though Kya sketches the wetland wildlife around her, we sense no true listening or seeing. Instead, she lives for men—Tate and Chase (Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson), giving over to them her time, attention, and body. Rare is the shot in the middle 70 minutes of the film where Kya is not seen gazing longingly at or daydreaming about one of them. By spending less time studying the plants and animals that enrichen Kya’s world, the film reduces the story to a pairing of romance and courtroom drama clichés.

Much like the novel, the film plainly echoes aspects of To Kill A Mockingbird. But bare-faced gambits, like the visual reference to Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film adaptation when Kya’s lawyer Tom Milton (David Strathairn) grandstands in an Atticus Finch-evoking white suit, don’t land. Such allusions align Kya with Mockingbird‘s Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused and on trial for rape. While the presumption of the accused’s innocence that comes part and parcel with this parallel is a sly misdirection on Newman’s part, it nonetheless feels tasteless to use the vocabulary of popular cinema to conflate Kya’s murder trial with a touchstone civil rights tale.

To the film’s credit, Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt) transcend the characters of Owens’ novel, which depicts them as infantilised and subservient. Macer Jr’s performance in particular confers intelligence and grit, disguised but not absorbed by the deferential qualities of the character Owens wrote.

Both versions of Crawdads position their protagonist at odds with the conventions of the period setting. But the conceit is hard to take seriously. The independent female protagonist, who has grown up on the fringes of society, is beset by a regressive naïveté and all-consuming desire for young men.

This characterization parallels other contemporary female-led films and books, like the Twilight and Fifty Shades series, continuing a post-feminist trend in popular media which portrays feminism as having been “achieved” while blithely embracing dated gender stereotypes. Novel and film alike waste their shared premise, trading the potential for a story in which an outcast woman seizes control of her own existence and rallies against baseless prejudice, for a story about an obsession with young white men.

Crawdads doesn’t interrogate desire; it rolls over and accepts it. Fiercely independent, Kya has grown up away from mid-century gender stereotypes, where women are expected to be submissive, dependent, and easily influenced. Yet, for the majority of both film and novel, when not immersed in studies of plants and animals, she is crippled by an oscillating desire for Tate and Chase, succumbing to an outdated notion that single women must be consumed by the want of male attention. Somehow, free from society’s influence, Kya conforms to the aforementioned stereotypes and more, as if it’s a woman’s essential nature to crave pretty dresses and make-up, and to swoon over headstrong young men who offer them boats, picnics, and tumbles in the long grass.

The drift into Twilight and Fifty Shades territory demonstrates a cynical desire to land the same demographic, but why so many are compelled towards long-term fixations on vacuous stories is merely a matter of repetition. Audiences have been primed for these texts by a barrage of media over the past 30 years deploying seemingly feminist premises as window-dressing for retrograde stories. It’s an aesthetic of subversion, but it bolsters the status quo. ▩

Author

Alisdair Hodgson

Alisdair Hodgson lives and writes in Scotland.

Lady Luna, Lady Solstice, and the Oracles of HASBRO

Someone must go on a quest, into a place full of danger—a place with battery included

Graphic by Adam Strawbridge

by

Briana Una McGuckin
Season Categories Published
MP604 Fiction

Nov 08, 2022
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“Commence the final challenge,” cried the reigning queen, leaning forward from her throne, the better to look down upon the arena, where the two competitors for her queenship stood. “Bring forth the divining circle!”

On a ceremonial pillow, a guard carried the requested relic: a thick disc of black, in which were set bright, curved buttons of gold, ruby, emerald, and sapphire. Together they made a complete circle around a silver word: SIMON.

The guard, terrycloth robe billowing, set the relic down on a wooden plinth between the competitors.

“The batteries!” cried the reigning queen.

“The batteries!” the guard repeated, and produced from his robe pocket a hinged box. Inside were three batteries: two small and cylindrical, one much larger and squared. The guard bowed, turned the round relic over, and opened a hatch in its base. He put the batteries in its hollow places, where they fit, before turning the relic right-side-up once more. 

The reigning queen stretched her legs and hopped down from the throne, which rocked back and forth behind her. “Loyal subjects,” she said, in a voice meant to carry to the onlookers all about the stands. “Behold the divining circle, passed down from the great and ancient oracles of HASBRO, who long ago gave us the power to speak with the Gods. Now, we use this awesome gift to establish divine right to the throne. Who among you two candidates can correctly interpret and obey the Gods?”

The candidates—one brunette and the other blonde—shifted their feet on the carpet of the arena, eyes locked on one another.

“The divining circle comprises four colors,” the reigning queen continued, “each color representing the distinct voice of a God: Sage, green God of earth; Ion, yellow God of lightning; Mer, blue God of water; and Obsidian, red God of lava. The rightful queen must heed them all. Together, these Gods’ names spell SIMO—and N, for Neutrality, is the last piece, for the new queen must balance all the Gods’ wills, to bring the queendom divine glory and deflect divine wrath. It will not be an easy task, but it is the task before you nonetheless: the task … of SIMON.”

A great cheer arose from the crowd.

The reigning queen climbed back onto her throne to watch. “The ON switch!” she cried.

“The ON switch!” parroted the guard.

The reigning queen asked: “Who dares be tested first?”

 “I do,” said the brunette. Her hands hovered over the divining circle already, though they did tremble.

“Good luck, Lady Luna,” said the reigning queen. “Begin!”

The guard entered the necessary commands to start the challenge, and the diviner burst forth with the first color: red!

Lady Luna pushed the red button.

The diviner flashed red again, but then green, and Lady Luna obeyed. The Gods did express themselves. More colors did appear. On every finger of her right hand, Luna wore a shiny star ring, and flashes from these rings winked into the eyes of onlookers as she repeated the diviner’s pattern. It grew longer, faster: red, green, red again, blue, with blips of sound corresponding.

Twenty-eight signals, twenty-nine, thirty. The divining circle chirped in congratulation, but the people in the stands remained silent. Another color was added to the long tail of commands: Blue, for the God Mer.

Lady Luna began the sequence again, pressing each color in the order she remembered. But, so bent was she upon reaching the God Mer that she skipped yellow Ion, who came before.

RAZZZ the divining circle admonished.

 Lady Luna hid her eyes with her hand. The crowd groaned.

“Thirty!” cried the reigning queen.

“Thirty!” confirmed the guard.

“Can you do better, Lady Solstice?” the reigning queen demanded.

“I can try,” said the blonde candidate, and the process began anew.

From the elbow to the wrist of her left hand, Lady Solstice wore twists of golden ribbon. These whipped and flashed as she worked, never missing a signal. Yet, while for Lady Luna the commands had gotten faster, for Lady Solstice they seemed to drag.

“An unfair advantage, she’s got more time to think!” cried the guard, pointing.

“An unfair disadvantage,” the watching Lady Luna muttered without glancing at him. “She’s got more time to forget.”

But Solstice pressed buttons with a steady hand, all in correct order. She’d gotten thirty, and every onlooker waited for the divining circle to add the final color.

Green, so faint.

Lady Solstice’s fingers descended like hail, punching out the pattern. The colors responded to her touch weakly, the corresponding sounds delayed. Three to go, two … but when she pushed the red button—in honor of Obsidian—it did not flash in answer.

She tapped again. Again.

Nothing.

Lady Solstice whipped around. “The batteries have died!”

The reigning queen stood half out of her throne, ready to cheer but with no victor’s name on her tongue.  She turned to the guard, her hands in fists. “Fetch two D batteries!”

“Two D batteries!” he repeated, and fled the arena for the room beyond.

The reigning queen watched the competitors bent their heads close, excluding the very light at the windows from their whispered conversation. The reigning queen sighed and drummed her fingers on her throne.

“Your Majesty,” the guard said, skidding up close, “there are no D batteries.”

“No D batteries!” the reigning queen repeated.

They both startled at the role reversal.

The guard coughed to break the silence. “I’ve searched the royal junk drawer,” he said. “If Your Highness would stand up, I can check under the throne cushion.”

“Ridiculous!” she said, even as she rose and moved aside.

There were no D batteries there either. The candidates for the queenship were looking up at the royal viewing box now. A frantic, whispered exchange between the reigning queen and the guard commenced:

“Summon the royal driver—”

“—She is out, Your Majesty.”

“Doing what?!”

“Fetching the groceries.”

“Blast it all. Is there a place that can be reached by foot?”

“The SEARS, Highness?”

“A map to the SEARS!” cried the reigning queen.

“A map!” repeated the guard, and he scurried aside to take the magisterial markers from the royal coffee table, which had been pushed aside to make room for the arena. He found paper, and drew fast.

Meanwhile, the reigning queen looked down upon the two ladies vying for her throne. They looked up in return.

The reigning queen cleared her throat. “I suppose it makes sense that there are no battery units here,” she said, “since this palace is a place of peace. Someone must go on a quest, into a place full of danger—a place with battery included.”

The guard, still drawing, snorted.

“I’ll go, Your Highness!” said Lady Luna, her beringed hand shooting upward. “I must, for the divining circle has brought me undue glory.”

Lady Solstice stepped in front of her. “I will go, Highness,” she said, “for the divining circle has bought me undue time.”

Lady Luna stepped out, so the two stood side by side. “Suppose we both go. That would be most fair.”

Lady Solstice frowned. “Fine.”

“The map!” said the guard, bringing a sheet of paper. Taking it, Lady Solstice turned the paper left, like a landscape. Lady Luna snatched it away and turned it right, like a portrait. Lady Solstice grabbed for it back as they went together out of sight.

“I just don’t understand how the batteries could have died,” murmured the reigning queen, settling into her throne for the wait, extending the royal recliner. “It’s down in the Sacred Book that the batteries are always removed and locked away between challenges. They should last eons.”

“I may have put them in the diviner a few times, Majesty,” admitted the guard, “to test myself.”

“Julian!” cried the reigning queen. “It’s not a toy!”

“SEARS,” mused Lady Solstice, lowering the map. “What danger lies there?”

Having settled on Lady Luna’s orientation of the map, Lady Solstice had been allowed to be its keeper. The two candidates stood outside, on the royal back porch, facing the road beyond.

“Perhaps it’s SEARS like ‘sear,’” Luna said. “Then it would be the land of lava—of Obsidian.”

“That could be,” conceded Solstice. “If so, I can certainly stand the heat and retrieve the batteries. I served in the dragon wars, when all the floors turned to lava.”

Luna’s brow furrowed. “Oh, did you?”

Solstice nodded and began walking.

“Suppose SEARS means something else, though,” Luna called, hurrying to follow.

“Such as?”

“SEARS like ‘sea.’” Luna pointed to a shallow, blue pool, perfectly round, set atop the grass on a neighboring peasant’s plot. “And if we’re headed into Mer’s blue realm, I should surely take the lead. I’m more comfortable in the water than out.”

There were yet more possibilities, and they bickered about them as they walked the village. Perhaps SEARS had something to do with ears, which might be related to the God Ion—for, Solstice reasoned, he who controlled the lightning must also control the booming thunder.

Or, there were the fortune-tellers, who were in some parts called seers—and Luna said that sage was one of the herbs they burned. Perhaps it was the dominion of Sage, God of the earth.

“So we know nothing about SEARS,” sighed Solstice.

“But we know that we know nothing,” replied Luna. “That’s something!”

Solstice rolled her eyes. “Well. Whatever awaits, I’m glad of it. I welcome the danger.”

“I’m glad too,” Luna replied. “I want to beat you fairly, not because the diviner’s hesitation made you forget.”

“I wouldn’t have forgotten!” Solstice snapped.

Luna opened her mouth to make some reply, but then:

“Look! SEARS!”

Beyond, the countryside was overcome with tar. Neither tree nor bush broke through the deathly gray, and upon this desolate landscape, the shadow of a towering building stretched long.

The competitors approached, finding near the SEARS entrance all the abandoned wagons of travelers past.

Luna swallowed, hesitating, but Solstice took her hand and strode on. “We’ve said many words between us. Now it’s time to act.”

Inside, ruffians haggled. Music floated overhead from nowhere: a bard’s guitar underneath crooning lyrics of love. “Pray the song doesn’t stop before we leave,” Luna whispered. “I think it’s the only thing keeping these lowly creatures from attacking us.”

“Look,” Solstice said, heedless. “Hats.”

“Be careful!” Luna gasped, approaching the display slowly. “They’re for mind control, I bet.”

“Cool,” Solstice said, and pointed to an orange one. “Bet this one makes you angry, so you commit terrible crimes. And this purple one makes you really sad. “And the green one makes you greedy. And the white—”

“Oh, I know!” Luna shouted. “That one erases your memory!”

Solstice had scowled to be interrupted so, but hearing this she brightened. “Yeah! That’s good thinking, actually.”

Luna straightened where she stood, smiling.

Solstice turned to another display. “These scarves—for manipulating vision, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Luna admitted, shuddering. “This is a scary market. We must move fast.”

The girls went together to the hub at which the traders did their business. Over the banter of those gathered, Solstice squared her shoulders and cleared her throat.  “Where are the D batteries?”

“Oh,” said the slippery, bearded trader, from behind the counter. “We don’t carry batteries here, sweetheart.”

“How dare you!” cried Luna.

Solstice balked. “Lady Luna, what—”

“—they can’t speak so to you, you’re in line for the queenship—”

“Well, anyway,” Solstice said, pulling her arm, trying to step away, “it doesn’t matter, they don’t have—”

“What nonsense!” Luna hissed, jerking her arm free. She marched back up to the trader. “You have hats of every shape, and shirts for winter though it is spring, Yet you expect me to believe that you carry not one battery?”

“Nope,” said the trader in foreboding monotone, waving the next haggler forward. “No batteries at SEARS.”

With no other destinations on the map, the two candidates had to return to the palace  whence they came.

They were only past the villager’s pool when Lady Luna could be convinced that the SEARS trader had not deceived them. They dragged their feed on the tar. The clouds did roll in.

“Where are we to look?” Solstice moaned. “If we return with no D batteries, how will they decide the queenship?”

“I will tell the reigning queen how brave you were, leading us into SEARS, and talking to those strangers,” Luna said.

Blushing, Solstice looked away.

The two stood together, eyes fixed upon the palace—its shiny white siding, the royal mailbox with the flag turned down, the grand back porch with the royal welcome mat before the door.

“I cannot bring myself to enter the front way, I think,” Solstice muttered. “The entrance is too grand for I, who have failed the quest.”

Luna gasped. “That gives me an idea! The dungeon!”

She pulled Solstice, to a black hatchway set into the stone foundation of the palace, a floor below the main one.

“I don’t think our failures merit prison,” Solstice said.

“No, no,” Luna said, and Solstice helped her down the stone steps.

Solstice stepped further into the gloom, toward a door set further back, into an inner wall of the dungeon, but Luna put a hand out to stop her. “Careful. A nasty ogre is kept caged in that cell. Ogres are possessive of things: batteries, yes, but also snack foods, strange gadgets. They even hold onto stinky laundry, so the servants can’t throw it in the wash.” Luna pointed to the royal washing machine and royal dryer, which even now did spin.

A roar thundered from behind the cell door, and Luna and Solstice jumped with fear. “PREPARE FOR JUDGMENT DAY!” a deep voice growled, under dramatic music—some kind of transmission: “AS OBSIDIAN AND ION CLASH IN THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY!”

“Oh no,” Solstice said, “unrest among the Gods.”

“SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY,” taunted the demon voice, “WHO WILL BE VICTORIOUS?”

“That’s tomorrow,” worried Luna. “The delay of the SIMON challenge has angered them.”

“We haven’t much time,” Solstice replied, and charged forward, her blonde hair flying behind, barging through the door and into the ogre’s cell. But then she froze in place.

Over the threshold wafted a stench of sweat and filth. But there was no ogre inside.

”He’s escaped!” hissed Solstice looking back.

“No,” Luna said, and pointed to another door, with steam escaping underneath. “He’s in the bathing room of his cell.”

The gravel-throated voice on the transmission had stopped shouting, and now a whole chorus of demons sang over thrashing strings. The noise was coming from behind the same, inner door.

“What is that?” Solstice asked.

“A communication device of the occult,” asserted Luna. “Through it speaks a devil God of ogres. I believe it runs on D batteries.”

Solstice took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, and reached for the door.

“Wait,” Luna said. “Be—be so careful, Lady Solstice.”

The two shared a look, and they had no secrets from each other: fated to be sporting competitors at best and bitterest enemies at worst, they loved each other instead.

Solstice opened the bathing room door and disappeared into the steam beyond. She tiptoed past a magical chamber of perpetual rain where, obscured by a flimsy curtain, the ogre lumbered. The transmission device sat on the edge of a ceremonial sink.

Gingerly, Solstice turned the machine. Now she could see the compartment where the batteries hid. With trembling fingers she pulled a tab, catching the compartment backing in her hand and revealing two D batteries. She pried the first from its place. The device hissed. She took the second battery, and ran from the bathing chamber.

Behind her, the ogre muttered, “What the hell?”

Luna stood just outside the chamber, rooted down by fear. Solstice grabbed her hand and led her forward, out of the dungeons.

Upon their entrance to the palace arena, the reigning queen stood, overturning a checkerboard that had been set between herself and the guard, and blocking it from view.

“We’ve returned, Your Majesty,” panted Luna. She held up Solstice’s shaking hands. “We have the batteries!”

A great cheer rose.

“Let the challenge recommence!” the reigning queen cried.

“Wait, Your Majesty!” Luna said.

The reigning queen blinked. “Yes?”

“Maybe,” Luna said, lowering her voice, “we could be a team.”

This suggestion was met with silence. The two candidates shared a worried look.

“It is a wild world out there,” Luna continued, “battery included! And I’m not brave like Lady Solstice, to tell the truth.”

 “And I’m not like Lady Luna,” Solstice added. “Mightn’t two rulers be better than one, in times of adversity?”

Below, a cell door slammed.

“Do you invite adversity to our idyllic queendom, Lady Solstice?” the reigning queen asked.

Distant rumbles sounded from the dungeon, like thunder on its way.

“No,” Solstice hedged, “but I do expect some. Call it healthy realism.”“Well,” mused the reigning queen, “if you are in agreement…”

Just then, the ogre burst in, dripping, wearing nothing but a grimy rag. He roared: “WHO TOOK THE BATTERIES OUT OF MY RADIO?!”

“First decree,” Lady Solstice declared: “Disperse!”

All three queens scattered. The guard stood alone, clutching the divining circle to his chest.

“Julian!” cried the queens: “RUN!” ▩

Author

Briana Una McGuckin

Briana Una McGuckin has cerebral palsy, a concerningly large collection of perfume oils, and an MFA from Western Connecticut State University. Her debut novel, On Good Authority, is a kink-positive, below-stairs Victorian Gothic, released on October 11th , 2022.

I Am Expecting to Be Noticed

The initial bird was not an issue because it was quiet. Then the eggs hatched.

Graphic by Andrew Schwartz

by

Zary Fekete
Season Categories Published
MP513 Fiction

Aug 02, 2022
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The bird sounds were becoming more and more difficult to ignore. The apartment-building I live in is old enough now for there to be the occasional loose fitting on the outer walls, and one of these fittings had slipped, creating a hole large enough for a bird to use. A bird did use it and now there’s a nest behind the bookshelf in the guest bedroom.

The initial bird was not an issue because it was quiet. When the eggs hatched was when I realized I had a problem. When this building had been built in the late 19th century the rooms had ornate shelves built into the walls. Because of this I couldn’t just pull the bookshelf away from the wall in order to potentially free the birds or move the nest so that I wouldn’t need to hear the chirps throughout the day.

I can afford to live in an apartment building that is old enough to be considered quaint but which also has certain quirks. My friends from the suburbs rave about where I live. I like being noticed by my friends and neighbors. When I wheel my trash can out on Thursday evenings I always make sure that the can is neatly pushed up against the curb. When I order my coffee every morning, I establish eye contact with the coffee shop employees. I smile at them at all the right times. After stirring in my sugar, I fold the empty paper packets crisply and then I throw them in the appropriate recycling container. I expect the baristas have noticed this. I wouldn’t be surprised if when I enter the coffeeshop that each one of them might silently hope that they are given the chance to wait on me that day. They might even mention it to one another… like it’s a playful game. I text people on important days, to praise them for this or that. I notice them. They notice me. How I relish life’s symmetries!

The chirping always began around dawn. Because I sleep with a fan on in the background, for white noise, I didn’t notice the chirping until I woke up and turned off the fan. Then I would hear them—tiny splinters of noise—whenever I sat down with my coffee or settled myself at my desk. Suddenly I would be thinking about this unseen and disagreeable nest. I imagined the birds shaking their feathers over my clothes and my food.

Finally, I called my neighbor because I know that he does a lot of handiwork around his apartment. He has seven children, and in half an hour he knocked on my door with his two youngest kids standing behind him. He also had a tool box. He said that whenever he does any work he tries to make sure that some of his kids are around to watch, because any life experience is worth watching.

My neighbor took out a skill saw. He plugged it into an electrical outlet and then stood on a chair so that he could get a better view of the upper sections of the shelves. He tapped on the wood a few times, sort of like he was checking a melon for ripeness. He flicked the power switch on his saw and began to cut a slice of wood out of the upper shelf.

In about a minute had had an opening large enough so that he could peer behind the shelf unit. He was using a small flashlight. He said, yes, he could see the nest. He grabbed a hammer, reached through the hole in the shelf, and crushed the baby birds. When he pulled the hammer out it was covered with blood and feathers. This fascinated his kids. He then grabbed an old t-shirt and stuffed up the hole he had cut.

He told me to call him if the mother bird came back to build another nest. I didn’t suppose she would. ▩

Author

Zary Fekete

Zary Fekete has worked as a teacher in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, China, and Cambodia. They currently live and work as a writer in Minnesota. They have previously been published in Goats Milk Mag, Shady Grove Literary, Journal of Expressive Writing, Ginosko Literary Journal, SIC Journal, Reflex Fiction, Potato Soup Journal, Cholla Needles, Rabid Oak, Every Day Fiction, and WINK. They enjoy reading, podcasts, and long, slow films.

Wilding

Everything was ready to burn

Illustration by Isabelle Marshall

by

Wendy Gerlach
Season Categories Published
MP505 Fiction

Apr 12, 2022
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We were working from home. You were set up in the spare room downstairs, and I was in the laundry room with a curtain obscuring the machines behind me. My floor was your ceiling, your ceiling my floor. As we worked, I could hear the rumble of your voice through the vent at my feet.

We’d been there well over a year, since the pandemic started. Your law firm closed its office first, methodically issuing laptops and software updates, and you began working from your basement lair. Then the nonprofit where I worked shut down overnight. I watered the cactus on my desk and took my laptop home to the laundry room. Finally I went and got the cactus, too. We sweated through one summer, and then another. It was September, a Friday. We were going out to dinner.

I was clicking away on my laptop when I heard your voice rise. I listened. The sound bounced against the sheet metal, growing louder, but no more coherent. No words, just emphatic rhythm. You sounded upset. I had put a pillow over the vent to block the noise, but I pushed it aside with my foot. I bent forward, listening. I still couldn’t make sense of the sound. Then, a few clear words. “I’ll tell her,” you said. I dropped to my knees, then onto the floor, my ear on the hard grill of the HVAC. It was humiliating but I desperately needed to know. Tell her what? But your voice fell, and the words dissolved into the echo of the vent.

I leaned back on my heels, banging my head hard on the underside of my desk. The pain radiated through my head. When it faded, there I was crouched under my desk with my face in my hands, wet with tears. I listened to the hum of my laptop fan, steady above me. I’ll tell her, you had said. I wondered, what comes next?

The curtain stirred and your footsteps sounded on the stairs. I wiped the tears away, climbed up onto my chair, and clicked my screen alive. I pulled up a grant application to stare at. Your head appeared around the curtain.

“I’m going running,” you said.

“But we’re going to dinner.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’m going running first.”

“I’ll come too,” I said.

I changed into my running gear and went out through the garage. There you were, stretching on the driveway. Your shorts were too short but in an endearing way. You didn’t mind being a decade out of style. And for me, the way your thigh muscles curved out of the flare of fabric worked just fine.

You smeared the sweat out of your eye with the flat of your hand and shoved your fingers up through your hair. It stood in a spiky black fringe for a second before flopping back onto your forehead. Your eyes were on mine for a second and I smiled back, but you twisted away, reaching around to stretch your quads. Your shoulder showed through your sweat-eaten t-shirt. “Fearless,” it said across your chest. I’d been trying to get you to throw that shirt away for ages.

As we set off past the pastel look-alike houses on our loop, turned onto the main road, and hit the rise of the hill, I listened to my heartbeat. It pounded in my ears as I followed you along the row of chestnut trees and toward the park. It seemed too loud. You were disappearing uphill. I was counting the weeks.

I admit I was the cranky one that summer. We had been locked outdoors because of the virus, locked indoors because of the wildfire smoke. But I give myself some credit for calling a timeout when the thermometer hit 115. We booked a motel and packed for the coast.

The sky turned from ochre to blue as we crested the mountains and left the smoke behind. Your phone buzzed angrily from your travel bag, but you ignored it. So did I. When we turned into the gravel courtyard of the motel and dumped our bags in the room, we didn’t mind the crust along the rim of the sink or the matted rug. I slapped on sunscreen. We headed outside.

The beach was a blissful refrigerator. Cool air rolled inland from a purple-gray fogbank that hovered above the shimmer of the ocean. We sat down on the sand and took off our shoes, not minding the wet, and walked across the ripples of packed sand to the surf. The waves arched,  crashed, and then receded, leaving tiny stones rolling in their wake. The cold slurry sucked at the arches of our feet. I looked up and the flush of your face reflected the first time I met you, coming toward me with your bicycle on the law school commons, eager, fresh with expectation. “Come on,” I said, and we ran splashing through the shallows. Then, breathless, we sat down and looked past our splayed sandy toes into the ocean.

“Let’s not talk,” you said. “Not about us.”

I thought about the late nights, how you rushed past me down the stairs to your computer, the “special projects” that took you downtown even though your office was closed. Part of me wanted to twist you in the vise you’d made of our life, but when it came right down to it I didn’t want to talk then, either. I would rather ruin a different day. I shoved my heels into the sand and watched the water pool deeper around them.

“Okay,” I said. I thought of past trips to the beach, taking the ferry to the islands to jump off the hot rocks into the cold water of the sound. “Remember,” I said, “that trip we took when you first moved out here? The ferry?”

“Jumping over the gap? That was nuts,” you said.

“I didn’t know what to think,” I said. “Half of me was embarrassed, half of me was impressed. I didn’t know you well enough to be really worried about you.” I remembered waiting behind the landing barrier with our bikes. Suddenly you hopped over the rope and leapt over the churning water between the ferry and the shore. The ferrymen, standing ready to loop their ropes onto the landing posts, looked profoundly irritated. The passengers leaning over the railing above cheered. I kept my eyes on the ground as I rolled the bikes down the ramp and up the hill to meet you, but when I looked up and saw you, it was a light turning on. There you were. You were the one.

“You had to push both bikes,” you said.

I appreciated your remembering that.

The sun glinted across the wet sand when we turned to go back to the motel. The tide had shifted out over the flats. Beds of sand dollars, the same purplish color as the horizon, lay sideways-tipped, their tiny bristles glistening. A fleet of blue-sailed jellyfish sailed stranded in a puddle, trying to tack their way back to the ocean. I bent down to pick one up, but its body collapsed in my palm, and its little sail crumbled.

I followed you back through the sand dunes, the beachgrass slashing tiny stinging cuts on our saltwater legs, and into the motel. We dropped our clothes on the floor and stood together in the tepid water from the corroded showerhead and rinsed off the sand. The rays of light coming in under the curtains laid bands of warm light across the sheets. We fell into bed wet, spread eagled on the smooth sheets and then turned toward each other. Your hands on me were as rough and smooth and warm and cold as the beach. We lay afterwards and watched the sunset flicker on the curtains, my thigh across yours, your hand resting on the dip of my stomach, my breath slow and even until I was asleep. 

I woke to the click of the bathroom door. There was a faint line of light under the threshold. The shadow of your feet moved forward, the light flicked off, and you settled heavily back into bed beside me. Your breathing slowed and deepened. The wash of the sea filled the night air with quiet sound. But I couldn’t drift off to sleep. My thoughts kept catching on something. Something small, insistent. I rolled onto my side, and my hip landed on a spot of damp. And then I knew. I had forgotten my birth control. I imagined myself pushing the pill through its packet, could feel the slight sharpness of the foil on my fingertip, and the tiny weight of the pill on my tongue before I swallowed, but I couldn’t make the memory real. I stepped out of bed and shuffled over to my bag. I could feel them with my fingertips in the dark, two extra pills in the packet, untaken.

It had never been a problem when I’d missed a pill before. Odds were it would be fine. But running up the hill after you, I remembered. My legs were leaden. There was a mass of nausea rising in my gut and my head ached. I tried for one last kick up the hill, but there was no kick to be had. I slogged up to where you waited at the top.

Your arms were lifted and twisting around your head. Your expression was intense and remote at the same time, like a hawk on a telephone pole focused on something small and far away. When I caught up with you, I leaned over, hands on knees, sucking in air. Your phone buzzed. You slid it out of your pocket and glanced at it before sliding it back.

“Work problem?” I asked. You kept turning your head, hiding your expression in the flash of your cheekbones and hair.

“Nothing,” you said.

“Anyone I know?” It wasn’t an honest question. I’d seen the name before. It was a yellow flash on the kitchen countertop, a blink from the nightstand in the dark. You were too disorganized to be truly secretive.

“No.” You resumed your stretching, your back to me, pushing your palms against a tree. “It’ll work itself out.”

“You think? Without calling you all the time?” I hadn’t intended my voice to be so sharp. The fatigue from the hill had crystalized into a sharp bright point above my left eye. “Sorry,” I said. “Just short of breath.”

You pushed back from the tree and looked at me. There was a divot between your brows. “What’s your problem?” you asked.

Your concern looked fake, the raised brows and tight lips. It wasn’t helpful, the way you said “problem.”

“I’ll be better on the downhill,” I said.

Back home, as we showered and dressed, we were close in the narrow bathroom. There was a force field between us that meant that as I reached for my towel, your arm retreated, when I passed the sink, you leaned forward, angling your razor to catch the little patch of stubble at the top of the line between your nose and lip. We were used to moving around each other. We had been working and living in the same space for so long. In the bedroom, I pulled on my shirt, slightly tight against my breasts, and bent down to step into my skirt. As my head came up again, tiny flashes of light rose and sparkled in front of me as the background dimmed to black. I sat on the bed, breathing slowly until the sparkles disappeared into the white walls. In the mirror opposite, my long pale face stared listless back at me. I slipped my feet into my sandals. At dinner, I thought. We could talk then.

You drove. I looked out the window and watched the houses go by, the trees along the tilted old sidewalks, crisped ferns, the moss burnt beige by the long summer. Soft billows of air brushed my face. Your face was intent on the curves, a little over the speed limit. It felt safe to have your attention on the road, not thinking of some other person less demanding than I am, someone brisk in an air-conditioned office, her fingertips tapping lightly over the surface of her phone. I laid my hand on the curve of my stomach, then removed it. I didn’t want to be dramatic. I reached my hand out the window and watched it hover in the airstream, up and down, up and down, as we made our way downtown.

You backed into a parking space. There was a crunching sound, and a flock of crows dropped at us from the tree above. I flinched.

“It’s the walnuts,” you said, and I saw that you were right. Nuts had fallen from the trees into the street, crushed by the passing cars. The birds were huddled around us, pecking at the exposed meats.

You pressed your fist against the steering wheel. The horn blasted into the quiet, prompting a storm of noise from the crows, who rose in angry unison and settled in ragged patches in the tree above us. A splurt of white excrement splattered on the windshield, and then another. “Let’s go to dinner,” I said.

We were in the restaurant, at a window table, when the noise started. The dim pock-pock sound of tear gas canisters echoed down the streets toward us. Then, distant shouting, and the wail of sirens.

“Our apologies for the disturbance,” the waiter said, leaning his neatly parted hair over our table. He set down a wedge of terrine, two little plates with pickles, and a miniscule ramekin of mustard, its grains glistening in the light of a stubby candle. He pulled back and stiffened his shoulders, drawing his forefinger along the line of his mustache. “We don’t expect any particular trouble tonight,” he said as he turned away.

This had been our place, back before we could really afford it, when we were saving to buy our house. Our dreams of the future were fueled by the food, the wine, the promise of the night to come. We had mocked the married couples we’d see at the small dark tables along the wall, sitting in tense silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.

I looked across at you, busy with your fork. You were attempting to spear a cornichon, but it kept slipping away. It bounced off your plate and into your lap. I looked up to laugh at it with you, but you picked it up, set it on the edge of your plate, inspected it, and bit it in half. You set the other half on your plate. You reached for more wine, not offering me any, I noticed.

I poured myself another inch of wine, took a sip, and leaned back into my chair. There in the window, above the glow of the squat little candle, our reflections brightened as the dusk settled outside. Your dark, angled profile, my pale face slightly flushed with the wine, the same as always. I might not be pregnant, after all, and for that matter maybe you weren’t in too much of a mess. Maybe I could be forgiving. As I finished up my glass of wine, a habitual fondness percolated up through the rubble of the day. I slipped off my right shoe beneath the table and felt for your foot. You moved your foot beneath mine. I looked up. I was going to tell you.

“Tony,” I started. You put down your wine. You moved your foot away, but I persisted, my eyes locked on yours. “I have—.” But you had turned to face the window. There was a sudden boom, shouting, people running past the window clutching at their faces. The restaurant was silent.  We stared into the street. The waiters stood watching, frozen in place with their plates of food.

The stream of runners thickened into a dense confused mass, pushing forward, overflowing into side streets, shoving desperately at one another as they struggled for air. A group was coming toward our window, tears streaming from their eyes as they pulled scarves, sleeves, anything they could over their mouths.  

I felt my own throat tighten. They were coming straight at the glass.

You jumped up and were at the door, pulling it open. A swirl of chemical air was followed by a man and two women. They sagged onto a bench at the entrance, sucking in short, panicked breaths. You slammed the door shut as the headwaiter came rushing forward.

“Only customers are allowed in the restaurant,” he said, bristling in his stout apron. His red face glistened through a furze of reddish beard. He paused a moment, then added his customary “sir.”

You glared at him. “They’re taking shelter here,” you said. You looked around the restaurant. “Anyone here object?” No one objected. Instead, one by one the guests sat back down. The waiters resumed delivering dinners and pouring wine. You made your way back to our table.

“Five minutes,” the headwaiter boomed at the people on the bench. “Then you have to go.” He retreated to his desk and poked ostentatiously at his reservation pad. Our food sat untouched between us.

One of the women on the bench unwound the scarf that covered her mouth and looked at the headwaiter. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said. She coughed. Her eyes were streaked with mascara, or it might have been dirt or smoke. No reply. “The bathroom,” she repeated, louder.

“No,” said the headwaiter. “No public bathroom.”

You stood back up. “They’re our guests,” you said. “They can use the bathroom.” The restaurant was quiet. No one moved. You turned to me. “Get up,” you said to me. “You can go with her.”

“You can go,” you had said. Your face wasn’t challenging or inviting, but entirely complacent. It wasn’t you and me anymore. This was a scenario that you expected to direct. I did not get up.  

“I’m going anyway,” said the woman with the mascara. “I need to pee.” She pushed herself off the bench, but the headwaiter stood in her way. “Asshole,” the woman said, and shoved past him. You looked disappointed. The actors had gone off script.

You sat back down. “You didn’t help her,” you said.

“You didn’t help her either,” I said. “You just told me what to do.”

“At least I care about what happens. I tried to help. I let them in, after all. You don’t even see what’s going on here. You’re immune. You just want to go out for a nice dinner.”

“That is not true. And anyway this isn’t a nice dinner. It could be a nice dinner, if we still had anything to say to each other.” I paused, remembering to lower my voice. “But no, you spend all your spare time on the phone with some idiot at work, you never tell me anything, and now you accuse me of not caring about anybody else.”

I put down my fork and glared across the candle. It was dark, now. Outside, swirls of people continued to run past, through twists of smoke illuminated by the streetlights.

“I haven’t picked up any calls. My phone is on silent because you wanted an evening out.” You were talking slowly, the kind of slow that’s partly a warning. You held your right hand angled above the table, dropping it onto the wood for emphasis. “And not true? Tell me what you’ve ever done for someone else.” You looked across at me. 

“Good idea, turning your phone off, because you think I haven’t noticed? You are not even capable of being considerate, being a good liar, if that’s what it has to be.” I was tripping over my words. I paused, but my anger had a momentum of its own. I needed to land a blow and watch you hurt. “I can hear you talking to her,” I said. “It carries through the vents, up to the laundry room.”

Was it her you were arguing with that morning? I tried to read your face, to see if you would call my bluff. I could see you biting the inside of your cheek. Your hand had retreated to the edge of the table. Your pulse was ticking in the spot above your right eye.

“You’re creating a scene,” you said.

I looked at you over our congealing pasta. The candle wax was pooling onto the table.

I lowered my voice to a harsh whisper. “And why? Why are we having this argument now? You may not appreciate this, but I actually care about us. You need to tell me what is going on with you.” I looked down at my hands and unclenched them. “I have something I have to tell you, too. It’s important.”

That was your cue. But you didn’t ask. You who had greeted me that day above the ferry with eyes that seemed to take in everything.

You took a breath. “I can’t live with someone like you,” you said. “You and your inward-facing world, stacking privilege on privilege so you don’t need to live a real life.”

“Someone like me? How about actual me?” You were fumbling in your wallet. “Look at me,” I said. I glanced at myself in the window, my face red, eyes narrowed, hair tangled around my face. I pulled a twist of hair away from my mouth.

You stood up. “Tony?” I said. “How am I more sheltered than you?”

You ignored me, waving your credit card at a passing waiter. I looked around. The passers-by had disappeared from the bench by the door, the headwaiter was pursing his lips smugly, the other diners averted their eyes when I glanced in their direction.

“How?” I said. “How am I more sheltered?”

“I’m not talking about it,” you said. “You have no idea.”

“You have no idea, either,” I said. “No, because you are the lawyer on the 32nd floor, and you’re not even working it turns out, but—”

“We’re going,” you said, standing.  You were using your even voice, stripped of emotion, and you had on your formal face, the one that reminded everyone of how basically decent you are.

“—you have to go in for special projects, what a complete load of—,” I was too angry to continue. I fumbled with my foot under the table, feeling for my shoe. Finally, there it was. I tipped it upright and shoved my foot in. I folded my napkin, composed my face, and walked behind you toward the door.

The door swung open and we stepped outside, the light from the restaurant fanning for a moment across the pavement and then swinging shut. We turned toward the park. I had to hurry to keep up. There was an aura of smoke and teargas around each streetlight. My eyes were streaming. I blinked, and the lights contracted and then expanded again, eclipsing the darkness in front of me. The tears were comforting, like crying but without the feelings.

A group of running men overtook us, their voices ricocheting down the street. Backlit by streetlights, they turned into the park.  One of the men stumbled. He stopped, swearing, and kicked at a heaped form on the pavement. A light dropped from the man’s hand onto the heap and then rose again in a poof of light and smoke. It was not a person. It was a pile of branches, bursting into flame. Above, a statue of an elk stood silhouetted against the sky.

“We should go,” I said. “Let’s go home.” You didn’t move. Bright cinders rose from the flare of fire, catching the wind and whirling down the street. The man was still kicking at the branches, hurling curses after each shower of sparks. Others were dumping the contents of a trash can on the flames, while a figure on the side was attacking a tree and dragging more branches to the fire. Everything was brittle from the heat; everything was ready to burn.

“They are destroying everything,” I said. “What am I even trying for? Everything I care about is falling apart.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” You turned to look at me. The firelight flickered over your face, playing with the sideways twist of your mouth, the raise of your right eyebrow. “Everything you care about?”

A ribbon of smoke drifted toward us. The fire was a mass of bright flame behind the black crosshatch of branches. There were five men now, shoving and howling in the fire’s glare. They were sharing swigs from a blunt bottle. One man roared and spat a mouthful that exploded in white light.

“They’re burning down the city,” I said, looking at the fire.

“It will burn out,” you said. “It’ll be gone by morning.”

“I’m going home,” I said. I turned to you, watching your profile. “Come with me.”

“No,” you said. “I’ve had enough.”

You rummaged in your pocket, then held out the car keys, careful not to touch my hand with yours. The keys dropped into my palm.

“Where are you going?” I asked, but your shoulders were squared against me, already turned to go.

I drove up the hill, squinting through the splattered windshield as the wipers smeared the mess back and forth in front of me. I remembered waking up that morning, you next to me, the day ahead of us. Me lying on the floor with my cheek against the cold grill of the air vent. Running up the hill to meet you at the top. I should have told you. Now it feels too late.

I turned onto our street, steering between neat lines of rubbish bins. Tomorrow was garbage day. I turned into the garage and I clicked off the ignition. There in front of me were the boxes from when we moved in five years ago. Lisa. Tony. Bedroom, kitchen, office. I opened the door and put my feet on the ground and walked across the grainy cement floor to take out the trash.

I had rolled the bin down the drive and was pivoting it on the sidewalk when the explosions started again. I stood with my hand on the cool of the bin lid and listened. There was a crescendo, like fireworks, and then silence. Into that silence came a tiny prick of sound, and my heart leapt up, my stomach wrenched, but when I turned toward you there was nothing. Only the dark street. Another snap, and out of the shadows stepped a coyote, looking straight at me, his amber eyes steady and untroubled. A splutter of explosions erupted down the hill, but he didn’t flinch. I lifted the bin lid and let it bang shut. The coyote tilted his head at me and raised one paw and licked it, unimpressed. He was waiting for something else.

From the ravine there rose an eerie yodel, weaving and threading through the firs, a multitude of yippings and howlings tangled into one. The coyote lowered his paw, so close I could hear his nails click, and trotted neatly down the street, the poof of his tail flashing in the streetlights. He turned to look at me one last time, and then was gone. ▩

Author

Wendy Gerlach

Wendy Gerlach is a fledgling writer currently studying fiction with the Stanford online certificate program.

Homemaking

Maybe he was better at interior design than he thought

Photo Illustration by Tywen Kelly

by

Birgitta Gerlach
Season Categories Published
MP406 Fiction

Aug 31, 2021
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Although he must have walked past it many times before, because he walked home the same way every day, it was the first time he noticed the plant shop. It was a troubling moment that made him wonder if he was as perceptive as he considered himself. But the store was undoubtedly there, plants hanging in the windows and spilling out the front door.

As far as he could tell, plants were green and they sat in your house and sometimes you watered them. He had little time for plants.

Given that, he was surprised to notice that, while his fellow commuters continued down the sidewalk, he now stood motionless in front of the store. The crisis it had caused, by going unnoticed all this time, made him determined to be doubly observant in this moment, to observe the store completely, as a kind of retribution. It was a small store, painted a now-faded blue, with chipped white trim and large paned windows, through whose warped glass could be seen a wall of green. On the pavement rested a welcome mat, its cheery “Come in!” worn and dusty. His gaze crossed the threshold and followed white honeycomb tiles to a sturdy wooden counter at the back of the room. Behind it, a woman bent over an elaborate bouquet. Surrounding her was what he could only call a jungle. Plants hung from the ceiling above her, suspended by elaborate knotted hammocks and slings, around which leafy tendrils draped, falling toward the floor. The tiles at the counter’s base and at the room’s edge were obscured by pots and planters of every conceivable size. From each one a different plant rose, bold limbs reaching upward to the dangling foliage above. He couldn’t have named a single one.

Sliding across this lush wall of plants, his gaze suddenly landed on a pair of eyes; the woman had noticed him and was watching him through the open door. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and strode away. As he turned, he glimpsed a small green pot on the countertop cradling a cluster of leaves and a long stem embellished with a single white flower. Then it slid out of sight.

 A bright “Hello!” greeted him as he swung open the apartment door. She was sitting on the red couch with a book in her lap.

“Hey,” he responded, distracted by his key, which refused to leave the lock. “This key,” he grunted, twisting and turning the stubborn key, “is a piece of garbage.”

“I know,” she said. She put down her book and joined him at the door. “Sorry about that—that’s why it was my spare. Let me try.”

Stepping back from the door, he dropped his bag, pried off his shoes with his heels, and made his way over to the couch, where he sank into its cushions, eyelids drooping.

“There we are! Oh—would you?”

He opened his eyes; she was standing awkwardly by the door with the key in her two hands. She glanced down at his bag, slouched by the entryway.

“Oh,” he said. “Yes. Right.” He pushed himself onto his feet and walked back to what she had called the “entryway storage area, for coats and bags and hats, etc., etc., you know, that sort of thing” when she gave him what he thought was a very unnecessary tour of the place. It wasn’t like he’d never been there before, and it didn’t need to be explained that the place where all the coats were was, in fact, the place the coats were supposed to go. Nonetheless, it had been surprisingly difficult for him to remember to use it in accordance with its obvious purpose, and he still wasn’t in the habit of putting his satchel neatly on the shelf or his shoes on the shoe rack, as she did with her own things each day, before pulling on her house slippers. Most of the time, like today, he was prompted by a pointed look.

Having put his things in their proper place, he returned to the couch, where she had picked back up her book. He let his gaze wander around the room. He noted the books and old water stains on the table. The apartment wasn’t spacious, but it was cozy, and it had three windows overlooking the street, which he liked. She’d had it since they first started dating, while he was still jostling between apartments and roommates. When his lease was approaching its end, and she suggested he move in with her, the decision was easy. He’d always hated moving into a new place, the uncertainty of choosing which corner of the room to put the bed, which he could never visualize how to do correctly, only having the sense to tell, after the fact, when it looked wrong. And, of course, there was her, and the way her wide smile revealed a row of slightly crooked bottom teeth, those fuzzy socks she liked to wear on cold evenings. Two months later, he arrived at her doorstep with a single bag and a towel draped around his neck like a scarf. But sometimes, like now, when his eyes scanned through the rooms that were, ostensibly, his home, he could not find a trace of his presence.

He turned his head towards her; she looked up, smiled.

The next day he went to the gym. At the gym he always rode the stationary bike, which he thought was biking stripped down to its purest form. If someone said they liked to bike, he’d ask why, listen attentively, and then, regardless of their answer, tell them that the stationary bike was biking stripped down to its purest form. It wasn’t about where a bike could take you, he’d say, the vistas you could admire from its saddle, or the sensation of the wind whipping past—biking was about legs pumping like pistons, aching quads, the whir of the metal wheel spinning. Although the person would typically respond with something like, “I suppose that’s true,” he left each conversation with the nagging sense that they hadn’t been convinced.

In reality, the opposite was equally true: the bike reduced him to his purest, basest form. The pedal’s relentless turning rendered him thoughtless, mechanical.

But today, only minutes into his biking, something out the window caught his eye. A distant glass skyscraper loomed over its older neighbors. He could see entirely through the corner apartments—through both sides of the floor-to-ceiling windows to the flat gray sky behind. In one of these empty rooms, a silhouette paced. The dark form crisscrossed the barren space, marking a tempo against the clouds. As he watched, his legs slowed, then stopped. The figure halted, turned. Featureless air surrounded its small shape. The gym throbbed with whirring bikes and heavy panting. He perched motionless on the bike’s sparse metal frame. Abruptly, he slipped from the saddle and out of the room.

“Can I help you?” If the woman recognized him, she didn’t show it, which he appreciated. He already felt uneasy in this strange, verdant place with its damp air.

“Yes—I’d like that one.” His finger pointed to the green plastic pot by her elbow.

“Good choice,” she said, as she took his card. He felt pleased—proof of good instincts, he thought—and he signed the receipt with extra flourish.

He felt himself an odd figure as he walked home, in his athletic shoes and shorts, glancing down at the delicate flower clasped against his sweatshirt. At stoplights he tended carefully to the stake supporting the stem’s weight or prodded the soil gently with his fingers.

At home, once he had wrestled the key from the lock, he positioned the planter on the coffee table and stepped back to consider his work. After a moment’s thought, he picked up the few books spread across the table and moved them to the bookshelf in the corner. “Much better,” he thought. He sat down on the couch, admiring the long, slender stem with its single white flower. For the first time he took note of the paper label poked into the dirt. “Orchid,” it read.

Just then, the door opened.

‘Hi there,” he said, looking up from the couch with a satisfied smile as she appeared from behind the door, arms piled high with books.

“Hi!” He got up to help, taking the unsteady pile from her arms and placing it on the table.  “Thanks—oh wow! What’s that?” She had caught sight of the new addition.

He sat back down on the couch. “It’s an orchid,” he said.

She sat down next to him. They looked at the orchid. It sat demurely across from them, its white petals catching the sunlight flickering in through the windows. He wondered what she was thinking.

“I thought you didn’t like plants.”

He paused. “I like some.”

They sat for a moment in silence.

“How long will it live?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, does it have like… a life expectancy? Like a dog?”

He thought for a second. “I don’t know. It’s a plant. Don’t they just live until you cut it or something?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who got it.”

He looked at her, appalled. Could such a flimsy-looking plant outlast even them? He faced the orchid and rubbed his earlobe.

“Well,” she said, pushing herself up from the couch and interrupting his rumination. “I think it looks good. It’s a nice touch to the room—I’m a bit surprised it never occurred to me before.” She disappeared around the corner into the kitchen. “You want a beer?”

“Yes.” Reaching forward, he rubbed a stiff, green leaf between his fingers before getting up and following her.

The curved, willowy stem was drunken and ominous. From their vantage in the living room, the pale, ghostlike flowers peered into every nook, following him as he moved about the small apartment. At night, through their bedroom door, he could see the petals gleaming, their white shapes hanging in dark space. Walking home, he hurried past the plant shop, turning his head to avoid seeing the woman within. Even the bike offered little refuge. With each grueling pedal, he whittled himself away—leaving ever more space in his mind for the orchid to flourish.

He did not tell her this; she had embraced the orchid completely. She regaled him with each new thing she had learned about its care, bought orchid food, felt the soil obsessively, monitoring its dampness. Sometimes, during dinner, he felt her gaze shift past him, into the living room. When he was home alone, he often sat on the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, staring at the orchid, taking in every minute detail. As his eyes bored into the yellow pit of its center (it had some complicated anatomical name, which she had excitedly told him, but he had immediately forgotten), it seemed to mock him with the indisputable fact: he had been the one to bring it into his home.

Then, one day, he entered the apartment to find two white orchids sitting on the coffee table. He froze. Slowly, he closed the front door and walked into the room, circling the orchids with hesitating, deliberate steps. He scrutinized the jaunty figures, their lightly bobbing heads. How could they be so entitled—to his home, his water, to the very sunlight beaming through his windows? They expected and needed everything. His thoughts grew more furious with his circling. He wanted to smash their smug little faces. He wanted to see their fine, arched stems ragged and broken on the floor.

He picked up the orchids, one in each palm, and held them before him. He was clueless before his own rage. He walked over to the open window and, for a moment, paused, before extending his arms.

His eyes scoured the twin flowers’ pale, spotless faces. They returned his gaze, conceding nothing.

“Why does she love you so much?” he asked their blank expressions.

“What the FUCK.”

His head jerked toward the door—she stood there, shocked—and then back to the window, as the orchids tumbled from his hands. Desperately, he grasped after them, but was left bent over the windowsill, watching them fall. Their supple limbs bent and bowed in the rushing air. The leaves rippled; a petal was torn from the stem and swung back and forth in the empty air.

She rushed to the window and looked down. The flimsy green planters lay broken and splintered on the sidewalk below, surrounded by a halo of dirt. The thin stakes had loosened; one had snapped and rested among pieces of green plastic. The other rolled, languidly, into the street. Although the orchids must have been badly damaged, first by the tearing wind and then the crushing impact, somehow, they seemed untouched. A woman in a bucket hat examined the flowers, then looked up searchingly. Quickly, they pulled their heads inside the window.

“What the fuck,” she said again, facing him. Reluctantly, but unflinchingly, he met her gaze.

“Don’t buy any more orchids,” he said, and turned away, exhausted. 

A week later he brought home a tall lamp, which he placed in the dark corner by the bookcase. Now, when his eyes wandered, they alighted peacefully on the lamp, and he thought about what a nice lamp it was, with its muted orange lampshade and sleek metal stand, and how well it suited that corner. Maybe he was better at interior design than he thought—why was it he’d thought otherwise? Then he nodded solemnly and returned to his book.

She didn’t buy another orchid. But one weekend a loud banging woke him from his late-afternoon nap. He found her in the bathroom, carefully hanging a crisp new botanical print over the toilet. After briefly appraising her work, she turned and left, squeezing his arm as she passed. He moved in, closed the door, and lifted the toilet seat. His urine emerged at a trickle. His gaze met the orchid’s yellow jaws. ▩

Author

Birgitta Gerlach

Birgitta Gerlach is based in Tennessee.

Slipping Out

I’ll only miss my body, and it’s the one telling me to go

Star Balloon

Photo Illustration by Andrew Schwartz (Wikimedia Commons)

by

John Rhoades
Season Categories Published
MP314 Fiction

Apr 06, 2021
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The Empyrea Senior Community’s public line is to weather this pandemic like a storm. Batten the hatches. Seal the doors and windows. No visitors, no public meals, orderlies are to be our only contact. I am only let free for the sake of my dog, Charley.

Today, we wander the garden. It’s that or the parking lot. While Charley pees on the petunias I wave a merry hand to my neighbors, locked away for their own safety. Most shades are drawn, who knows what life beats beyond them. When Charley stops to sniff the irises, I pull him away and pick them. They are a deep purple, almost black, and their yellow pollen looks like stars against a gloaming sky. They will be as good a memento as any. I knock on Magda’s window. The orderlies are too busy to notice our mutiny. She cracks the window, I slip her the flowers, she pats my hand, and I steal away.

An orderly left lunch by my bedside. They moved my book, knocked over my plastic cherry blossoms, and the TV remote is on the olive-green linoleum floor. The chicken is frozen and there is no fork. I push it to the floor for Charley. He doesn’t sniff it, only harrumphs with his nose held high and waltzes to his vermillion and downy bed. My fault. I forgot that he is a dignified Frenchman. I genuflect to his preeminent poodle mien in apology. Let the chicken rot, we’re not staying long.

The book the orderly moved is one I wrote. It is about neutrinos. Carl Sagan read it and bought me a drink. The Evangelicals read it and called it a piece of Atheistic idealism. I don’t know which testimonial is dearer to my heart.

I wrote the book as a young woman. The gravity of my personhood was orders of magnitude greater then. I had an office, a desk too heavy to lift, an assistant, and a Meteor Pen. Meteor fragments were fused into its body. Each time I signed my name, always in purple, the event horizon of scientific endeavor shifted, for better or worse, slightly.

When I reread the book in my Altoid-can room, the pages talk less of neutrinos and more of little old ladies. Especially little old ladies reduced to spying on neighbors for entertainment.

I see neutrinos as cosmic voyeurs. Fired out of starry crucibles, they fly uninhibited to the universe’s edge. They are so small, with such a slight mass, that they can slip through an entire planet like an Odyssean arrow, missing every single atom. Some call them ghosts. But even a ghost can rattle the pans, slam a door, and raise goosebumps on the back of your neck. Neutrinos were invited to the cosmic ball but were never asked to dance.

I feel that way. From my thread-bare chair, I run my knotty fingers over the TV remote buttons. The faults and the fears of the world centrifuge before me on the TV. It’s a maelstrom in the elderly quietude of my Salvation Army chic refuge. Charley can ignore it. He hasn’t been political since the Kyoto Protocol floundered. Yet I reel. Sometimes, I think I can hold the world. That I might cut it, mold it, shape it with my Meteor Pen. But generally, it is beyond me. I am an old crone in duckie slippers. The world turns and I watch, pulling stuffing from my chair, just to prove that I’m still real. 

My daughter’s family brought me balloons before the quarantine began. They float haphazardly from slackened strings. They are my calendar. I measure the pandemic by how close to the ground they sink. And they are my scrapbook. Willem Dyer gave me a green one when we graduated college, a blue one on our wedding day, and filled our first house with purple ones before I ever stepped through the door. I brought a bouquet of yellow ones to his wake. My daughter’s are red. They bobble above my unused desk. If I could still wield my pen legibly, I would attach little notes to these balloons and send them out the window. Send Help, SOS, A hundred bucks and a pack of smokes to whoever gets me out.

When I watch the bumbling bumping of the balloons my mind grows unmoored. It shoots beyond the Earth’s orbit, through the Kuiper Belt, and out past the Oort Cloud. The nurses think I’m feeble-minded. I am slow to respond to their questions and rarely track what they say. But I am simply preparing.

I will become a neutrino, so I must travel as they travel. Light.

Imagine the eons of their journey. They spend millennia shooting toward distant starry pinpricks, and FM radio gets spotty past the ionosphere. Memory becomes their only in-flight entertainment. They log light-years in reminiscence.

So I pick my memories out like outfits. The smell of springtime wisteria as I receive my PhD, illicit love with Leonard in a lumpy bed, my daughter’s chubby finger tracing my palms like a star chart. And I pack them away.

There’s nothing else to take. I’ve looked around my dowdy room for anything. The armchair, with its brown Ike-shaped stain, was here when I arrived. Someone (Magda) stole my jewelry box. I’d take the scarlet poppy paintings but they’re only prints, and shoddy ones at that. Charley will miss his toys, but he sees sacrifice as divine.

I’ll only miss my body, and it’s the one telling me to go.

My back says I can’t reach Charley’s canned food on the bottom shelf. My knees are a constant crackling peanut gallery. Conversations with my family are dependent on my mind’s mercurial focus. Most are punctuated with a continuous “Mom you still there?” Simply, my body is tired. Where once there was a wellspring of vitality and energy enough to leave a phallus in the admin’s attendance chart, now there’s only a fart of get-up-and-go and my stomach is too frail for more beans.

Charley’s coming too. We both itch to leave. To wander. We once wanted our own piece of the Berlin wall. To pee in every ocean. But now our gaze drifts upward. A star was just born, and I want to see it before it dies. Magda’s naked cat says Teergarden B has life and Charley wants to sniff it. I promised Charley a visit to the dog star, and Saturn winks at me every night. For now, we entertain ourselves simply; picking fossils from the pebble path; slipping the squirrels my valium; and twirling for the mirror in moth-eaten gowns.

There’s not long to go now. We are neutrinos in everything but form and that will change as well. 

Tonight, Charley and I will wait for the dinner time orderly. She will let me use her phone to call my family. I want to hear them shout, “We love you Gran!” loud enough for me to hear. Next, I will open the windows and release the balloons, they don’t do well caged. Charley will reread his will, everything to the squirrels, can’t let Magda’s cat get the toys. We will both joyfully relieve ourselves one last time. Charley on the chicken, I on the remote. With that done I will hold Charley in my arms and we will turn into neutrinos.

The process is simple. Neutrinos are only the byproducts of decay. The potassium in our bodies creates them naturally. I think of each as an escape pod from my body. Charley and I will each hijack our own little pod and flee. We will become balloons, slipping from our bodies, passing through the ceiling, and then floating into the stars.

We will observe the dimming firelight of the universe. We will see galaxies sail into each other; accretion jets form, ignite, and fade; black holes whirl space through the cosmic washing machine; and finally, see entropy waste it all away.

We will be there for it all. Until finally, when all but the last few photons burn like fireflies around us, I will pick one as a flower for Charley. He will sniff it, I will pat his paw, and we shall turn out the midnight lights and slip away. ▩

Author

John Rhoades

John Rhoades is a writer who thinks 'alright' is the proper spelling. He might never be published. So it goes.

What Happened at the Reunion

A piece of flash fiction

Photo illustration by Andrew Schwartz

by

Jillian B. Briglia
Season Categories Published
MP306 Fiction

Dec 15, 2020
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It was the hottest day of the year. August air shimmered above the dirt like hot oil. A line of cars crawled up the road towards the house. The cats lounged in trees, tails wilting and curling like fern fronds. Silos in the distance stood silently, reflecting sun like upturned mirrors. No one noticed the grandmothers, sent to the backyard to shuck corn in a circle of thirteen chairs.

There were more of us than wheat stalks in the surrounding fields. We went on like multiplication tables, a self-generating hive of great-aunts and grandfathers and nieces swarming all the way to the shores of Lake Erie. Names buckled and disappeared under the weight of tradition for decades at a time, only to resurface with distant cousins struck by the thought they’d invented something impossibly classic and novel. Our mailboxes grew swollen with handwritten notes for baby showers, school plays, anniversaries, an endless parade of greeting card milestones until they became our currency and in person gatherings became less frequent. We could never attend all the funerals. Only the reunions remained.

The mothers wanted gin. The fathers retreated to the cool darkness of the wood-paneled basement. The babies slept on the mustard shag carpet under the clinking fan. We danced around aunt Ruth and her flat gaze, snapped the screen door shut on the back porch. We avoided cousin Peter. His laugh, loud and desperate; his shoulders, eagerly curved towards ears; the way he trailed underfoot, sticking onto our trouser legs like burdock. Our dislike percolated through the younger cousins like bags of tea in the sun, darkening the pitcher until it clouded black. The adults fanned out under the dogwood trees, eating butter corn and grilled snapper. Fat white kernels like milk teeth littered the tablecloth, drying into husks under the sun. 

Dark sky steeped down the horizon while the adults spoke of the harvest, the wolves, Beau—the boy with blue eyes in all of the photographs. The cousins from the West watched fireflies spark over the lawn with O mouths. Our mothers ignored the dishes, dipped their brown feet in the creek. They snuck back into the kitchen, raided the ice box, melted salty cubes between their breasts. In the late orange sun, the windows of the house looked like they were on fire. We stole the whiskey from behind the colony of rabbit hutches, waited for something to happen. For someone to ride the belt, climb the ladder, kiss. The wheat rustled like a long skirt. We went to the barn where Peter told us he hid the gun. We marched the perimeter between field and forest, falling over with shouts. Bang! went the barn door behind us.

It was late, late in the evening when we realized the grandmothers were missing. The grandfathers napping in recliners dreamed of rabbit screams and paper mills. The adults grabbed flashlights. Roused from the hayloft, we saw beams of light crisscrossing through the pink flesh of our eyelids. Heard the straw crunching under their feet. Tried to remember where they had last been seen. Had we ever really looked them in the eye? Where did they spend the hours of their long, unhurried days? We could remember the texture of their hands like thin-stretched dough smuggling cellophane candies into our pockets, gripping the backs of chairs they passed, fingers fluttering like moths around their collarbones. The mothers retraced their steps, frantic, searching for different women than the ones we were. While we remembered only hands and fingers, in the mothers’ minds the grandmothers’ skin smoothed, hair darkened growing thick around the crown, spines straightened as if pulled by a string from the top of their head, eyes cleared, minds unforgetting their grandchildren’s birthdays and the streets they grew up on—until the mothers’ gaze was blinded by their memories. 

Now we ran, slower than the children but faster than the adults, through the fields, along the rows, throughout the house, but it was Peter who found the grandmothers. We found him in the backyard, standing in silence, staring at a circle of thirteen birch trees, the pale green underbellies of their leaves winking at us in the cold light of our flashlight beams. ▩

Author

Jillian B. Briglia

Jillian B. Briglia is a Portland, Oregon-born writer living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the Blue Monday Review, Hooligan Magazine, Driftwood Press, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

You Are The State

A piece of short fiction

Photo illustration by Andrew Schwartz

by

Nadir Ovcina
Season Categories Published
MP303 Fiction

Nov 03, 2020
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I received an invitation for a field trip to the village where the Communist Party sent Xi Jinping, at the age of 16, to be re-educated for seven years. The opportunity came free of cost, courtesy of the “Foreign Scholars” department of the university that employed me. But several elements of the invitation stuck out.

First, the e-vite was sent out Tuesday at 11 a.m., and the deadline to accept or decline was 5 p.m. that same day. The itinerary included in the invitation was a digitally scanned PDF in handwritten Chinese. Neither I nor Google Translate could decipher any details about the journey. 

Recently, the party had also been actively targeting universities for “Extreme Displays of Hospitality.” Former teachers in my program promised elaborate buffets and gratis luxury trips, but I arrived at an auspicious time. As Chairman, Xi received acclaim for his early victories against China’s “Tigers and Flies”—tigers being oligarchs and high-level officials profiteering off their party stature, and flies the low-level cadres emulating the higher-ups by allegedly syphoning off taxpayer funds for selfish ends. In years prior, State-sponsored feasts, replete with generous portions of sorghum liquor, were the norm, but now they became synonymous with shady backroom deals. According to the Chairman, any such social situations were a key battleground in the fight for party purity. Now, banquets and the like were strictly forbidden, which made me suspicious. Was this free three day field trip, in the middle of a teaching week, not motivated by a spirit of hospitality?

I signed up for the trip. So did the Mormon couples, another teacher from the same liberal arts exchange program of our alma mater, and a Mexican Spanish-language teacher. 

Yan’an, our destination, was hideously grey and cold, yet retained a mythical aura about it—a reflection of the area’s importance during the Second World War. Mao and his reds, having survived the Long March, in tatters but still unified, settled into Yan’an, transforming the area into the party headquarters and applying Mao’s principles in the context of a micro-state. Division of land was first on the agenda, rectifying people, second. For years, the area was surrounded by the Japanese, and intermittently, by the KMT forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. But Yan’an’s mountainous geography gave the fledgling Chinese Communist Party cover, enabling the comrades to survive several difficult years of encirclement. 

This history made the city a destination for present-day party pilgrims, as immediately became clear upon our arrival. The university hosting us had become a pitstop for members striving for promotion. It provided a two-week seminar that involves logical history and logical lessons on the development of Communism with Chinese characteristics. This seminar conferred party cred. Mostly middle-aged, the ambitious apparatchiks all walked from place to place carrying pastel colored portable chairs. We watched them as they marched to dinner.

Our welcome banquet was hosted by Zach, our tour guide for the weekend. An excellent fellow, Zach was a walking encyclopedia of the area. We ate and drank in excess. Eventually, Zach started to talk about politics, prompting one Mormon gentleman to ask about the recent constitutional changes that effectively granted Xi an indefinite reign. Zach was critical of the move, and even my school representative chimed in with a dark joke.

“There was a shopkeeper who loyally kept a portrait of the chairman perfectly aligned each day in his shop,” she said. “One day, however, there was an earthquake, and the portrait fell upside down. When a soldier came to help assess the damage, he noticed the upside-down portrait, and angrily arrested the shopkeeper.” 

But as Zach ratcheted up his criticisms, the representative grew visibly concerned. For many Chinese, the abolition of term limits, intended to “preserve Xi Jinping Thought,” was the ultimate betrayal of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms after the Cultural Revolution. Whether people said it or not, many Chinese saw the spectre of a Mao-like leader, commanding reverence even as dementia set in. 

I steered the conversation towards more rosy developments. After the banquet, my school’s representative whispered in my ear, “I don’t agree with any of what he said.” 

The first morning, we went to see the caves where the party leaders lived during the siege days. While we only got a cursory tour, we watched the pilgrims pause at most stops (Mao’s first cave dwelling, Mao’s second cave dwelling, etc), chairs in tow. Children from a local school, the Young Pioneers in Yan’an, stood at each “landmark,” delivering memorized lectures to us and the pilgrims. The most awe-inducing structure was a ramshackle hall not unlike a settler’s church, pew included, where the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed into existence. In the evening we went to the hotels and drank BaiJiu, sorghum liquor—a mistake, it would turn out, as Zack woke us at 5 a.m. to begin our journey to the site of Xi’s personal reformation. (During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards causing havoc in the cities were shipped to the fields for re-education. Xi was one such Red).  Our convoy came to the security checkpoint at the village’s outskirts, where I waited as authorities cross-checked my passport along every imaginable database for subversives. After being cleared, we were escorted to the central square. 

The village museum was populated mostly with a gallery of Xi sightings, with some identical pictures mounted in multiple corners. I wondered why the curators considered empty space more embarrassing than repeat pictures. The museum also displayed a graph showing a steady rise in average income, with a massive spike in 2012, the year Xi became Chairman. 

We and the marchers were taken on a comprehensive tour through this village. Each stop on our tour featured an anecdote involving Xi. I envied the marchers’ chairs, but not their imperative to furiously take notes on how the leader ate apples under this tree in this very spot. I found the tour excruciatingly boring, half-expected the guide to highlight Xi’s preferred outhouse. But a student from my university who had accompanied us was deeply moved by the scenes. She came from a village just like this one, and seeing its development gave her hope in the future of China—and the fortunes of her family. Maybe Xi’s successor would be sent to her village for some class re-education, so that village, too, could prosper.

I was particularly moved by one story. During his re-education, Xi became well respected in the village, and so one day the locals decided to pool in their funds to buy Xi a car, the first in town. Xi, embodying the communist ideal, decided to break the car down and use the engine as the basis for a noodle-making machine, one that everyone in the village could enjoy. 

My own re-education started soon after the field trip, as I left my teaching job and returned home to Oregon. Increasingly, America resembled China. The Coronavirus had catalyzed a burgeoning State’s Rights movement to consolidate State power. Capitalizing on widespread fears of libertarian-minded anti-maskers, the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Adapted for American Circumstances Party swept the 2024 United States election on the promise of Freedom from Speech. Now, the State had successfully contained the virus in the Western Hemisphere, and with most anti-maskers converted or “isolated,” it was moving on to its next enemy. 

One day I received a text: 

Hello! We are reaching out to you to inform you that we know you were a follower of Trump. While we respect the past views of all humans, since the future demands cooperation unlike any other in our planet’s history, we must unite! If you participate in a re-education course, sponsored by the Confucius Institute, any past mistakes will be forgotten! If you don’t, we will still educate you! But we will remember your hesitation to willingly participate!

Respond: I mean, I followed @TheRealDonaldTrump, not the man himself…

My objections were no use. And I was conscripted into “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Adapted For American-Capitalist Mindsets Reeducation Class.” I complied, wrote my essays, established my daily rhythms. 

One day after class I returned to an empty house, perfect for some VR lovemaking. Strapping on the visor is a rare lux. The level of immersion means each sense, typically attuned to signs of intrusion, can focus on the sensual. Walk-in terror plagues traditional self-pleasure. Ears need to be perked, eyes ever-so peripherally vigilant for any suspicious door-handle movements. But when the visor’s strap can be whipped out, when you know no one else is gonna be coming, in or out, it’s bliss.

Booted up, I realized I still haven’t updated the software to include the Situation Creation Program. Kinda creepy, the ability to scan a photo and render your fantasy-partner into a sexy 3D puppet, a threshold I’m not willing to cross yet. 

I wonder if I’ve been made a fantasy-victim, that’d be kinda cool. 

The phone beeped.

“Congratulations! You have been noticed! As an acknowledgement of your existence, you are hereby invited to the Pan-National Information Output Bureau’s Provincial Offices. Given the sensitive nature of this announcement, you are expressly forbidden from forwarding this e-vite to any other citizens. Please reply with ‘yes!’” 

I did not generally seek to be “noticed.” Presumably someone had read my latest essay, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Brother,” having intercepted it in transit to the teacher’s inbox. But the text said “you,” not “your work,” as in me, I’m being noticed, brewing worry. 

Under rule of The Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Adapted for American Circumstances Party, the cameras were virtually everywhere, so the only real way to maintain “anonymity” was by offering your body to the State’s gaze, 24/7. Only if you weren’t “seen” by one of the million CCTV’s would the State start looking for you specifically. But being watched is different than being noticed. Soon after the Party took power, someone strolling down a city block could look up to find faces displayed on LED screens mounted on each building’s surface. The State implemented the practice to shame jaywalkers, replaying the security camera footage of the criminal in question on all surrounding screens.

But the State’s new method was more sinister.  Now the screens displayed faces, but with no context, no crime. These faces brought profound pedestrian unease. Was this person a hero or a villain? What were us law-abiders supposed to do if we saw them in real life? 

“I have questions”—send.

“Please reply with: yes!”

“Yes!”—send.

“Congratulations! You have been noticed! As an acknowledgement of your willingness to co-exist with the State, you are hereby entitled to know more details!”

I was summoned to a cubicle on The National Information Output Bureau’s fourth floor. The building was a T, each floor dedicated to its own truth. The fourth was for “Entertaining Truth.”

“So what’s the gig?”

“You’ll be part of the team for The State Is You, our new outreach platform. Our partners in Military Intelligence developed a world-wide override on all satellite feeds, and in effect this means we can interrupt any screen’s display—E-books, phones, laptops, VRs, anything—and broadcast an emergency message, in the case of jihadi nuclear apocalypse. 

“The State wants to test the override, so they’ve decided to make a mandatory program from 5:30-6:00 across all platforms. At half past five, every day, we will show an informational, educational, and entertaining set of clips all in the hopes of inspiring our citizens to continue their cooperation with the State.”

“Propaganda?”

“Exactly!”

“Cool, I’m excited, what’s my role?”

“You’ll be in charge of producing the clips of citizens in your district zone. We want dailies of average citizens, normal people, in a segment that will be titled “Who’s the State?” How are they adapting to de-nationalization? How worried are they about global jihad?”

“Quick Q: normal?”

“We are looking for interesting stories, so don’t rule out any non-conformists. We want their voices heard. And their retina’s scanned. Sound good?”

“Swell.”

I smiled and signed the contract. On my way out I passed by a beggar. He had no sign: appeals to charity could be interpreted as accusing the government of negligence. But his eyes pleaded. His message was clear. 

My first assignment began with an email from Nasty Ice agreeing to meet up. Ricky was a middle-school acquaintance who I liked for his utter ignorance of the fact that he was white, color-blind to the fullest. 

We drifted after 8’th grade, when his father got arrested, double homicide over a sour deal. It was fun to see his burgeoning rap efforts on Facebook through the years though, as he rotated through pen-names like Honky Fire and White Surprise (he woke after Ferguson), before settling on Nasty Ice. The key to objective reporting: let interviewee feel no judgement. Let them be comfortable. Lull them into speaking with no reservations. How to do that? Giggle at everything they say, smile, show you get them. What you giggle at though, whether mocking or in agreement with what’s said, that’s up to you. You could be in on a whole different joke, but who’s to know? 

“So why Nasty Ice?”

“Well, it’s two things. First, it’s like a legacy thing to the OG Vanilla. You know, I gotta pay my respects to the greats, Em, Mac, both Miller and ‘klemore, both of em, all of em! So yeah, I got the reverence shit on lock, but I also just like my Natty Ice. You know, they got their forties, I’m trying to get Natty up as our drink d’jure. I thought, I’m getting big now, pretty big, but White Surprise don’t got no product attached to it. And I’m sitting there, drinking my Natty, and I’m like, damn, Natty got no celeb sponsor. So I make myself Nasty Ice, cause my spit nasty, and I think I can get this sponsorship thing happening, you know, we gonna be on cans, commercials, everything. That’s that, that’s Nasty Ice.”

“Well, you’re already sponsored by the State. Can you explain what it means to be a state-sponsored rapper?”

“Oh yeah man, the State! They been hooking it up, all the drugs I want, everything, alls I gotta do is mention some vocab they got on a list, and bam, I get on USTV 4 every two hours. You see my new song, “Comply or Die?” Nah? They wanted some tune to promote the gun confiscation program, so you got me and all these police shooting up rednecks in the video. You know, it’s not g, but I don’t really care, long as the money there.”

“You also got a song titled ‘Sand-N-word-Killa’, do you have any reservations on that word?”

“Whats wrong with sand-nigga? I’m not using that Voldemort word, this a whole other word. This one dashed. Whole other word. Plus the State told me that these anti-Muslim lyrics help encourage the whites to join the State’s Terror War.”

“War on Terror?”

“Same shit. Look, I’m Muslim too, praise be to Allah, but fuck it, I’ll say what I want if I get money for saying it.”

“You’re cool with me quoting you, yeah?”

“I don’t give a fuck, but what’s this for anyway?” ▩

Author

Nadir Ovcina

Nadir Ovcina is a Muslim Croat who lives in Walla Walla, WA. He works for Whitman College, and is editing his book on humor. 

A Visitation

Decades after the fire, this house became the focus of his most celebrated artistic phase

by

Eli Sugerman
Season Categories Published
MP204 Fiction

Mar 17, 2020
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In the living room, the dead room, the reborn room, he found the faded denim couch. The yellow comfy chair he used to curl into like a cat after coming downstairs in the morning. Paintings that looked just like the originals—were they ever originals or just prints in the original house? This rug and that cupboard over there missing one knob. How?

A little painted cast of his face stood on the mantelpiece—crafted in fourth grade art class, said a plaque on the wall. The artist recalled the darkness inside the mask, the sensation of cool plaster strips coating his cheeks, and then a bright flash pulled him back to the lamplit living room. A nearby teenager lowered her phone and avoided his gaze, embarrassed to be caught taking his picture.

All of the visitors to his living room avoided eye contact with him. He imagined them rushing to tackle him to the ground, tearing at his flesh with their teeth and nails, picking his bones dry—for now, this museum was enough to satisfy them. Still, the question remained: How? His archivist had assured him that her research was extensive, but he had not been prepared for this.

Indelible, the day his house burned down. He was home from school for Thanksgiving and the fire was feasting, could not be extinguished until finished eating its fill. Home, outside, and Mom was crying. By morning, the house was a black hollow, burnt beams protruding out of the rubble like fossilized ribs. He sifted through debris and left with ash on his hands.

Decades after the fire, this house became the focus of the most prolific and celebrated phase in his art. On huge canvases, he painted vibrant reimaginings of the kitchen, living room and his bedroom, which, as frustrating as this was flattering, drew comparisons to Van Gogh (they turned the home of that poor one-eared painter into a museum, too). At the opening of a gallery show exhibiting the series, the artist set fire to a portrait of the house’s facade, and this stunt, though widely criticized, only raised the alleged value of the blackened canvas.

The woman working the front desk eyed the artist with suspicion as she handed over a ticket and receipt. Yes, it’s me, he thought, but only smiled and turned to follow the signs past the gift shop to the permanent exhibit, heads turning as he passed. His followers. They must have read the tweet his publicist ghost-wrote about his visit to the museum. He wondered how these people would feel if he knew as much about their lives—hobbies, romances, affairs—as they knew about his own. Perhaps he wouldn’t receive so many violent threats online.

Text on the wall summarized for the artist the story of his life: famous musician becomes famous painter, achieves famous fame. Nested in the biography was a large black and white photograph of a man much younger than him wearing a turtleneck sweater. The artist searched his two-dimensional eyes—what are you so smug about?

The first exhibit comprised a replica of the foyer from his childhood home. Entering through glass doors, the artist felt that he was stepping into a dream; red rope and stanchions composed a path forward, identifying the space as unfunctional, mere representation, but this only made it more surreal to him that the little room was so detailed and accurate. Over the rope, there was that uncomfortable wooden bench. And to his surprise, a pair of his mother’s shoes that looked legitimate—blue running sneakers, muddied and well-worn but now forbidden to be touched by hand or foot. It felt ridiculous that he should not be able to explore this place with his body. After all, it was his home, wasn’t it? Maybe not, maybe it had ceased to belong to him when he made the decision to revive and immortalize the building in his art instead of letting it rest undisturbed in those ashes.

There you are, said a familiar voice behind him. The artist turned, unsurprised to see his archivist walking through the exhibit. She always seemed to move with a clear destination in mind, which in this case, was him.

Fancy meeting you here, he said and moved to hug her but she leaned away.

Listen, I’m not happy with you—I told you to call me when you were coming. I didn’t appreciate having to find out you’d be here from a tweet.

So you finally got Twitter? Okay, I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I really was just in the neighborhood and stopped in on a whim.

Uh huh, she said with a smile. Sure you did. Come on, let’s go to the living room, I’ll show you around. She took him by the hand and led him through the open doorway—his mother had led him through museums like this.

Here, look at the curtains, see this pattern? We were able to find the original manufacturer; they don’t make them anymore but amazingly they had some left in storage.

How did you do it?

Oh, I just talked to a curtain expert who pointed me in the right direction. After that it was just, email, email, email, until I could send someone to pick them up.

Sure, but I mean, all of it, all of this, how was this even possible?

She laughed, as if he was joking.

Anything’s possible, she said.

Far from it, in fact, I’m almost suspicious. All of this from our interviews and old home videos? It’s almost real enough to fool me.

Almost? I was actually hoping you wouldn’t notice any discrepancies.

He hadn’t—though he doubted whether his own memories of the living room, soft and graying, could withstand the presence of this exhibit. If the couch had not looked like this, would he have noticed? If he had remembered it otherwise, would he have been wrong?

Of course, said the archivist, the truly impossible thing was creating one snapshot of a house that existed for decades. Like, between every photo and video we had there were discrepancies. Furniture moved, walls redecorated, so the best we could do was make something that felt like it captured the spirit of the house.

Hm, he said, and thought about her turn of phrase: the spirit of the house. It did feel spooky, this lost place made present. Or perhaps he was the hauntological presence here, out-of-time, a visitation. Soon enough, they could make his death mask to match the plaster fourth-grade face on the mantel. You’re right, he said, I couldn’t tell you what year this room represents, but I think my own memory of the house is the same way, all mixed up and patched together, like a composite character.

 So then, what exactly feels wrong to you? Don’t worry, you won’t offend me. From the very beginning you said you didn’t want to be involved in the project, so I don’t feel bad about falling short of perfection

And you shouldn’t.

And I don’t, she reiterated.

Well, honestly, the one thing that really doesn’t do it for me? It’s the smell. I can’t even remember what the living room smelled like, and even if I did, you could never recreate it, because smells are so subjective, right? I mean, it must have smelled different to me living there every day than it did to anyone who came to visit and could only smell the dog.

The archivist nodded along faster than he spoke. I know, I know, she said, but there’s nothing to be done for that, I’m afraid. It smells like a goddamn museum.

It is a museum.

She didn’t respond. They continued exploring the exhibits for a long while in silence.

The archivist and artist were in the kitchen inspecting plastic apples in a wire basket when distant screams came resounding through a window on the far wall. Perhaps from another exhibit? Every chattering visitor in the kitchen with them suddenly hushed, and looked to the artist as if he should have known what was going on. He made eye-contact with an elderly woman wearing big purple glasses who appeared particularly worried. Her dry lips parted, as if on on the verge of speaking, when he shrugged his shoulders and turned to the archivist, who herself wore a subtle pout.

Maybe you’d better stay here, she said, moving to follow the noise.

Where are you going? I thought we’d go see my bedroom?

It’s probably nothing. I just want to be sure.

I’m sure it’s nothing, honey, he said, and she snapped back to face him. Honey? Why had he said that? A word that had been so uncomplicated when they were in love but at this point only drudged up sour memories. 

Okay, stay here, honey, she said, breaking into a smile. He winked, but continued to trail the archivist, despite her protests, back to the living room as if this was a planned part of her tour. He wondered what she felt she needed to protect him from—he’d been braving a publicity storm for decades; if he could handle the paparazzi then he could handle this—whatever this was.

In the original house, the living room would have been just a few feet away, around the corner and through the dining room. But here, he found space stretched so that the replica rooms became isolated, torn from their kin—perhaps, he thought, to make room for more informational placards and the visitors vying to read them. The archivist walked at a brisk pace down the white hallway connecting the kitchen to the living room. Museum guards came rushing past them, escorting people to the nearest exit. It made the artist smile, seeing the perfect museum scramble.

They were almost at the door to the living room when a museum guard—young, buzz cut blue hair, probably an aspiring artist—came bursting out towards them. The guard looked at the artist in surprise, and then spoke in a fearful whisper: run.

The archivist hesitated, watching the door to her exhibit creep shut, glimpsing a concerning but unidentifiable scene on the other side. The artist was only more curious now what was happening in the living room, but looked to the archivist to see what she would do.

Please, can we run? said the guard, a little louder this time.

The archivist finally nodded to him and tugged the artist along. They followed the guard, jogging back through the labyrinth of mismatched rooms and hallways. Finding a secure door just past the kitchen that was painted the same color as the rest of the wall, rendering it almost invisible, they entered an employees-only area with dim lighting.

The aging artist was relieved to slow down. He sat to catch his breath on a cardboard box that bowed under his weight. The area was still under renovation, plastic sheets, white dust and paint cans lining the walls.

What’s going on? demanded the archivist.

He’s taking hostages, said the guard, nervously. I managed to slip out while he was distracted, but he says he’s got a bomb. He’s threatening to blow up the building if you don’t come to the museum and listen to him sing.

Sing? The artist laughed. Wait, you mean, he doesn’t know I’m already here?

It doesn’t seem like it, but just to be safe, we should get you out.

Let’s go to the garage, said the archivist, taking off her round glasses to clean them—multitasking as usual. She already looked more calm now that she had a plan. The artist had long been amazed by how well she had managed to organize and preserve all the messes he had made in his work and life. Come on, she said. We can take my car.

Wait, wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe I should just go in there and, you know, let the guy sing a song or two.

You can’t be serious; we don’t know what this person might do.

I’m going back.

The artist started to turn and she clasped his wrist. He was reminded for some reason of when she had cooked a steak for him, sous-vide, even though she was vegetarian. It had been his birthday, or some other occasion, and they drank red wine while she cooked. After lifting the plastic-sealed filet from its bath, she brandished a meat thermometer, and he watched as she slid its sharp point into the steak with such precision, such care—like a nurse inserting a needle to draw blood.

You can’t go in there, she said.

Water or some substance rushed through the pipes as they raised their voices, speaking over each other. The archivist was as stubborn as he was, and now that she had a plan to get him to safety, nothing would sway her. But his curiosity was gnawing at him.

The museum guard stood silent, eyeing the corners of the space. Still in shock from what he had just escaped—after all, his training prepared him for little more than preventing flash photography—he was also starstruck by the presence of one of his favorite artists. When this was all over, would the artist be grateful for his help? Perhaps even take a look at his ceramics?

Eventually, the artist gave up trying to convince the archivist and started back to the living room alone. She watched him go out into the white hallway, where he would retrace his steps through the exhibits, his home, wondering for the first time if he was making the wrong decision and consider going back to apologize. But just as he reached the door to the living room, the archivist caught up to him—the guard, who’d led them away from this precise spot, had slipped out of the museum through a back door, having decided it wasn’t worth risking his young life to impress anyone.

I know what you’re thinking, the archivist whispered. But don’t think because I’m here that I’m okay with what you’re doing, because, I am not. I mean, after everything I’ve done for you and for your art, it’s like you still don’t give a damn about my opinion, which, just so we’re clear, is that you should not go in there.

But if I did, would you come with me?

Of course, she said, exasperated.

Pulling the door open, they were astonished to discover that the living room was empty except for a handful of police officers milling around, mostly examining the furniture. A cop with a greasy moustache was looking at the plaster mask on the mantel. Fourth grade, he muttered. The air in the room was calm and stale.

All clear, said the archivist, reading a notification on her phone with relief. The museum and all of its visitors, including the artist himself, were safe. He was surprised and a little guilty to find himself disappointed.

What happened?

One heavyset officer explained with amusement how a museum guard who was in a band had realized the alleged bomb was actually just an audio amplifier. The perpetrator, some kid now on his way to jail, had probably only wanted to go viral.

Talking to the police in his old living room made the artist feel like a teenager in trouble, and he had the sudden urge to run upstairs to his bedroom to make sure there was no drug paraphernalia lying around.

Hey, wait, said one of the older cops. Aren’t you?

The bed was not very comfortable, his feet extending over its end. He remembered coming home from college and experiencing the same discomfort. The same disconnect between the comfort he remembered from his childhood and the physical reality of a hard mattress. He gazed up at the ceiling dotted by glow-in-the-dark stars. He’d painted those. He’d painted this bed, and the bookshelf over there. That acoustic guitar in its stand, and that creaky desk chair. Would this one creak? He got out of bed, careful to smooth away any evidence of his having crossed the red ropes to touch it. No guards now, and no alarms either, it seemed.

After they’d finished speaking to the police, the archivist went home to decompress. He assured her that the incident would amount to nothing but good publicity for the museum, but she was too shaken up to continue their tour. So he was visiting his bedroom alone—you can stay as long as you want, she’d said, as long as you don’t touch anything.

Stepping over another red rope, he sat down in the chair. It did creak, felt fragile. He imagined how angry the archivist would be if he broke it, how much work she must have put in to achieve just the right amount of fragility. He opened the desk drawer, and was surprised to find his little leather-bound copy of the bible inside. And his notebooks dating back to elementary school, filled with immature song lyrics and doodles. You can never forget what you don’t remember, was a line he wrote in high school. Why replicate these? He supposed they were like his many paintings locked in temperature controlled storage facilities, waiting for a special exhibition, or to be sold. Waiting in the dark, unseen. He closed the notebook, closed the drawer.

Just like you remember? said his mother from the doorway that night, long ago, when he came home from college for Thanksgiving. She was letting her hair go gray.

Guess so, he said, imagining her walking into this room, now, crossing the red ropes to organize the clothes he’d dumped from his suitcase onto the replica bed.

Hey, don’t do that, I can do that.

You won’t if I don’t.

Maybe not, but either way I’m an adult now, you don’t need to take care of me.

Is that so, you’re all grown up? Maybe I like mothering you, even now. (Is that what she said? Mother, to mother, mothering).

Okay, okay. Where’s dad?

He’s in his study, of course.

I’ll go say hello, said the artist, though they both knew that would be impossible. His father, like his mother, was dead, but more importantly, there was no replica of his father’s study—they hadn’t constructed it, because he hadn’t painted it. Why hadn’t he painted it? He’d painted the basement, and the foyer. His own bedroom, in twenty-six works. But never his father’s study.

The artist got up from the desk and went to examine the bookshelf he’d built with his father when he was twelve. Delillo, Dickens, Didion. Where’s dad? He’d alphabetized the books in high school, but many of them he never read. Carefully, he slid one from the shelf: The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This one he’d enjoyed as a child, but the volume was now unreadable—in a hollow carved out of its pages was his secret stash: incense, lighter, grinder, papers, tobacco, plastic bag of weed. That night of the fire, when he was visiting home from art school, it was all still there. And opening the book now, he found everything replicated inside just as he remembered. Black lighter, white residue of some sticker rubbed away. Grinding the spark wheel with his thumb, he clicked out a flame.

I know you did it, said his mother, beside him.

It was an accident.

He saw her now with a head of silver hair, the way it glowed in the evening light. They’d never actually had this conversation while she was alive, but he could hear her say, I told you not to burn incense in here so many times, I told you it was an old house, but you never listened.

Well, I had to hide the smell of weed somehow.

He took the book over to his desk and pulled a stick of incense from the package. Scent of patchouli. He lit the stick, and pungent smoke wisped up from its ember tip. How would the archivist feel, seeing him burn a replica, burn a memory? You only think about yourself, she’d said—well, at least the exhibit would smell like it should. How would she feel if he left it burning slowly through the night? How flammable was this museum? Probably not very. But maybe it was. Maybe all of this distressed furniture was enough to torch the whole place to the ground. Something about the idea was irresistible to him—this replica following the same course as the original.

No, order could not be preserved, no more than his aging body could. Peering into the replicated | replicating mirror on the wall, he imagined the archivist carefully fabricating his skin, eyes, lips and teeth for tourists to ogle and contemplate. A young man looking smug in his turtleneck sweater. Or a composite character, his gray hair combed over a baby-smooth forehead. The best we could do was capture the spirit of the artist, but not the smell.

With intention, he repeated his careless actions of that late autumn night, decades earlier—a quiet night, it had felt too cold for a fire—placing the lit incense stick in the mug on his desk, leaning out with all the pencils and ballpoint pens. A fluff of ash fell down to the varnished wood, inches from the pages of Sherlock Holmes. Turning to the door, he wondered how long it would take to set off a fire alarm; they would tear him apart. But as long as this remained his body, this remained his house. This would be his art. ▩

Author

Eli Sugerman

Eli Sugerman is a writer living in Chicago.

Painless for the bird

Graphic by Andrew Schwartz

by

Grace Little
Season Categories Published
MP110 Fiction

Sep 17, 2019
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(MYSTERIES OF) GRIEF

A few hours before he declared that they should stop seeing each other, in his car on the way to Petco, the girl told him about the parakeets.

Sky was blue with white wings and a white head, and Cloud was a bit of a darker blue but also with white wings and a white head. It could be difficult to tell them apart. When Sky died, the girl buried the bird in a cardboard box and held a funeral. Some of her friends had come and they had all worn black, but they were very young and could not take the occasion very seriously. They prayed to God and sang “Lord of All Hopefulness” and had lemonade and cake in the kitchen after.

Years later, her brother shared with her that the bird had not been found dead in the cage, as her mother told her. When Sky started to lose her feathers in patches and gave up on eating, her mother researched what might be wrong. It turned out to likely be something called beak and feather disease, or beak and foot disease – the girl couldn’t remember – but supposedly the bird would have died in pain and probably would have infected Cloud. 

Her mother had called the vet and been instructed to do one of two things: bring the bird in to be euthanized, which would be costly but very painless for all involved, or place the bird in a paper bag and put the bag in the freezer, which would likely also be relatively painless for the bird and would certainly be free.

Her mother chose the latter. Through the freezer door, her mother could hear the bird chirping feebly, and could hear the spaces between chirps growing wider. Her mother left the house, distraught. She went for a long walk, smoked a cigarette, listened to the robins and the crows outside.

“How awful,” the boy said, and was quiet for the rest of the drive. The darkness outside peered into the car. The cold light from the streetlamps made their faces look wet.

(MEMORIES OF) A FAVOR

Sharon was working by herself in the library on a Friday evening, small and pale under the fluorescent lights. It surprised her when a boy asked if she could watch his things while he went to pick something up from his dorm room—it was close, and he would be back soon. “Of course,” Sharon said, and continued working. She had never seen the boy before, and didn’t know his name, but they had been working near each other for a few hours and she felt a kind of camaraderie with him, amidst the busy typists. 

For some time, Sharon did not preoccupy herself with his things—a laptop, backpack, travel mug and some of the expensive kind of headphones she often thought of ordering. She worked on a paper for her Medieval Literature class, and after an hour, she was mostly done with her work, but the boy had not returned. She bit her nails and drummed her foot against the floor. No one remained near, so she could not delegate her task to another student. Instead, she waited, biding her time by checking her email and reading an article about a ferry which had recently hit a whale.

She moved on to the internet. She found herself on a page explaining the recent murder of a 13-year-old girl by two college students. The boy had been a track star and had been called “the best-kept secret in Maryland” by a former coach. The article quoted the girl’s LinkedIn page, presumably because there was no other information they could quickly gather on her. There, she wrote, “No matter what the end-goal is, I will work till I reach that goal.”

The girl had been charged with “improper disposal of a body,” the boy with the murder itself. This lead her to an article on the Leopold and Loeb murder of Bobby Franks, which related a quote in which Leopold called the murder an experiment and said, “It is just as easy to justify such a death as it is to justify an entomologist killing a beetle on a pin.” 

It had been almost two hours and the boy was not yet back.  She felt rooted to the spot. What if the boy came back and his laptop had been stolen? Even though she hadn’t recognized him, what if he knew who she was and told others about what she’d done, how she’d abandoned his possessions to the possibility of theft? Sharon felt that it was in her nature to be thoughtful and didn’t want others thinking she was inconsiderate.

She thought about napping, but realized this was just as bad as leaving. She thought about bringing his things to the front desk but this didn’t seem to solve the problem of the boy coming back and finding them gone. Perhaps she could persuade someone to come sit here near his things? 

She chewed the inside of her cheek. She got up, paced the floor for a while. Attempted a handstand against the wall. Watched some television on her laptop. Lay down on the floor. It was almost midnight.

“Sorry!” The boy called out from the stairwell, rushing towards Sharon. “I ran into some friends as I was coming back and they wanted to catch up for a while. I completely forgot I had asked you to watch all this—I’m sorry you have to be working so late, hope your work gets finished up soon! Thanks again!” He spoke with an enthusiasm that seemed irreconcilable with the quiet, dark library, and hurried to pack his things up.

Sharon opened the paper back up quickly and pretended to be working. She didn’t want him to think she had nothing better to do, and she didn’t want to admit that she’d stayed out of a loyalty to the person she thought she was, or wanted to be. Once he was gone, she packed up her things, too, and walked back to her room. Some loud beetle butted against the window, hitting the glass again, again. Sharon closed the blinds. She lay down with the light on and imagined sleep until it came.

(MYSTERIES OF) THE BEAST

You descend the gravelled path down the hill, and you see the poppies sway like many dancers. The dogs run after one another in a vast game of chase—they circle the field, they circle you, they catch the scent of fox and run. Running, too, through the yellow afternoon sun, your brother calls back—he’s caught a butterfly, and its yellow wings cramp closed in his clammy hands.

Your hands are caught between father’s and mother’s, they lift you up and you, squealing, pray again, again. The sky is the color of your blue dress with white gingham and little flowers along the collar. Hands place you on tall shoulders, where you can see it all better—look back, see the house, with its big patio and little green lawn.

In the field of poppies, your brother releases the butterfly. It flies up to your eyeline which seems impossible—you are up so high. Just before you can reach for it, you are taken down from shoulders and placed inside a forest of poppies, amidst their red feather-thin petals. Some stand almost as tall as you, and you lie down and their heads envelope you, form a new roof, from which petals rain down atop you. Your brother shouts something, excited. Mother and father walk off to inspect a piece of the fence or perhaps just to talk out of earshot. 

You sit up. You notice a shifting in the grass. It inches nearer, shifting the stalks of the poppies, which part and crumple close to dirt. The dogs? You hear them bark at the edge of the field, where your parents talk in hushed tones. Some strange beast, with breath like the ticking of a clock. The breaths get louder. You stumble backwards, eyes on the motion in the grass; you look to your brother, across the field, but when you blink he looks somehow an older version of himself—wrinkled and grown, at once familiar and unknown. Blink again. He returns to himself and the rustle of the poppies slows; you call out to him. He comes running towards you, all bowl cut and scrawn. Your parents return too. The beast runs off to the left and you watch its grassy wake exit the field.

You return to the house, trailed by the dogs, tearful but unafraid. You gaze back at the olive trees briefly, their aging limbs stretching out into the afternoon, the ground around them seeming flecked with blood. You close your eyes on a new night, you rise the next day, fresh and forgetting already.

The memory slides away, becomes stale. A cross appears on the side of the hill and beneath it, a dog lies buried, wrapped in an afghan knitted by an ex-lover of your father’s. You move from the house with its olive trees and Eucalyptus, but not before a fox gets in the chicken coop through a hole in the wire, leaves behind dreadful wreckage. The fox only eats the breast meat of each of the chickens, leaves the rest—so much lost for so little.

 You move to the city, where the streets are straight and the air is rubbery. The beast seems forgotten. 

(MYTHS OF) CONFIRMATION

In the cool of the church at High Mass, the Bishop speaks, and he wears his tall hat, though sometimes he takes it off during this mass and passes it to an altar boy, who brings the hat to the back of the church and then returns it at the appropriate time. The altar boy carries the hat very delicately in his thin hands, and moves gracefully behind the wide, marble altar.

The Bishop says God created us in his image, which informs the terms on which the girl is thinking. She cannot imagine that the God the Bishop is talking about created her to be like Him. She does not think the Bishop’s God gets acne between his shoulder blades and forgets to walk the dog, or that this God sometimes loses control of the umbrella so that it is flipped out backwards and exposes its own crablike insides. 

She does not think the Bishop’s God would have kissed Shannon Dorner once in the girl’s bathroom after their soccer team lost in the semi-finals, with sweat in their hair and on their faces. She does not think the Bishop’s God would have felt the tenderness that spread throughout the whole damp room until even the writing on the stall door (Jenny sux cock, a drawing of a flying saucer) seemed holy. 

She does not think the Bishop’s God would read young adult fiction and she does not think His heels would crack and bleed in the winter. She particularly does not think that He would have to triple-check that the doors were locked and get very anxious about driving at night and being late to events, nor would He listen to the same song on repeat over and over.

Maybe, the girl supposes, every animal thinks, like the human animal seems to, that God made them in His image.

The Bishop of the present is not a man who lies, or who is unkind. Before he joined the church, he had few rules and he himself had committed sins of the flesh and was unhappy and could not express this to his friends, because he felt he did not have the words. He awoke to God one night when he was walking back from the library and his path led him past the university’s chapel. Light leaked from the windows and outside the snow blew and the whole building looked very much like a sweet home and the Bishop wanted to enter it. It was dark and cool within, and smelled as churches must have for smelled in centuries past. 

The Bishop began attending mass regularly. He realized that, unlike God, the devil had no plan. 

The girl misses this part of the sermon, for she is otherwise occupied. Behind her eyelids emerges a whole menagerie. She sees a God who roars, who scales a rocky face and sheds a layer of skin. A God who grows pink and papery between the spines of an ancient cactus. A God who searches for a cool and still place in the stream, who tumbles the rocks till they are smooth and round and perfect. A God who coos and rustles feathers and shits on the roof of a building—maybe even this building. A God who births a litter in the hole of a thick trunk, licks them clean, hunts down sweet morsels for their mouths. A God who, filled with the lift of hollow bones, lets go of the tree branch and soars. ▩

Author

Grace Little

Grace Little is a Seattle-based writer who is thinking about what it means to be a person and the joys, devastations and obligations that accompany it.

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