Goodbye (for now)
Welcome to The Other Stories podcast. This is your host, Ilana Masad, and today I’m speaking with… well, no one but you, listeners.
Continue ReadingWelcome to The Other Stories podcast. This is your host, Ilana Masad, and today I’m speaking with… well, no one but you, listeners.
Continue ReadingThe following excerpt from Zigzags by Kamala Puligandla is published with permission from Not a Cult Press. The Obvious Combination of Beef Stew and American Cheese Richard saw himself in me since the day we met, which was something I had never been able to shake.
Continue ReadingThe below excerpt is from Daughters of Smoke and Fire: A Novel © 2020 Ava Homa. Published May 12, 2020 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS.
Continue ReadingThe following is excerpted from Brad Fox’s To Remain Nameless (Rescue Press, 2020) and is reprinted here with permission. To Remain Nameless –
Continue ReadingThe following story from How to Walk On Water and Other Stories by Rachel Swearingen is reprinted with permission from New American Press.
Continue ReadingThe story “Backburner” first appeared in Chain Linked: Stories by Michelle Blair Wilker.
My friend Michael has a theory. Guys always have several burners going at once. Sometimes you’re on high heat up front, and sometimes they move you to the back to simmer and bubble up slowly. They never focus on just one dish, cooking eggs, bacon, and spaghetti sauce at the same time. Occasionally, they stir and test the temperature, but mostly they’re saving you for later. For when the fry pan up front gets crusty and cools down.
I’m definitely on the backburner. I can feel it. I got shifted up front for a split second. It gave me enough incentive to stay engaged, but it was like the flash of a summer firefly and now I’m on low behind the large soup tureen. Besides, who wants soup on a hot summer day? It’s just an appetizer before the main course.
I try to sip my Mudslide, but the consistency is so dense that it cakes up the straw. I remove it and take a gulp of the creamy tannish liquid. Chocolate streaks line the glass, and it’s chilly and lumpy as it travels down my throat. Mandy convinced me to come to Liars. I wanted to stay home, swing on the hammock, and feel sorry for myself. But here I am listening to her drunk as hell singing Sheryl Crow.
“Tip your fucking bartender,” she chimes in after she screeches out a lyric. You would think it was a line in the song, because she yells it out every other minute.
I have been reduced to Friday-night karaoke at a dive bar in Montauk with the legendary local lesbian. We met Mandy last summer at Liars, where she insisted that we had hung out the previous year. We hadn’t. But she was just nuts enough that we went along. She told me I had great cheekbones and that Harry had a fantastic sense of fashion. She wanted to discuss the Israeli– Palestinian conflict.
“Do you follow it?” she asked.
“Yes,” Harry replied.
“Bullshit. Hey, you’re pretty handsome. High five.”
She smacked his hand, did a shot of bourbon, and went up for more Sheryl Crow.
“Tip your fucking bartender!”
It was like her anthem. The bar smelled of sea salt and beer, and the dark wood was scratched up and sticky. There were wall-to-wall people. The summer season had just begun, and all the Upper East Side douchebags had begun to arrive. Well, they don’t usually come to Liars, but still it was quite crowded. Montauk makes me miss the East Coast. It’s like the real world with genuine live people. Not shiny, blonde, tan humans with bright white teeth. There’s grit, fisherman, loud Brooklyn accents, and beer bellies. You know where you stand. It’s not like swimming in a murky sea of unknown intention and phony sentiment.
It’s nice to sit in the real world, even if it’s only for a few days. I can smell the rain too. Everything is fresh and green and I’m not thinking about my backburner status. I’m calm, I’m comfy, I’m present.
“Rach, c’mon. Let’s do some Go-Go’s. If I hear Mandy squeal out one more Sheryl Crow, I’m literally going to lose it.”
Elisa is facing away from the bar staring at Mandy and attempting to drink her Mudslide. She’s guzzling it down in thick chunks like it’s ice cream. Mandy moves her hips back and forth and jumps up and down as she screams into the microphone. Her short, blonde hair bounces, and her acid-washed jean jacket looks a tad yellowish underneath the dim lights.
“I mean she’s not in tune and making up half the lyrics.”
Elisa was right, but Mandy was having a blast. You could see it in the way she danced, and frankly she didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. She closed her eyes and smiled. The expression on her face said it all.
I visit Montauk every summer to see my old college roommate, Elisa, and her boyfriend, Harry. They live in Brooklyn but come to Montauk on weekends to escape the sweaty city and stench of rotten hot garbage. It’s different out here. It makes you forget. It’s serene and smells sweet. It reminds me of the Cape. All the cedar shake houses and lilac bushes, lobster rolls, clambakes, and families pedaling along on bicycles. It’s quaint and Norman Rockwellish. It’s certainly not Los Angeles. An ocean of traffic jams, smog, and Botoxed flakes. The sun always shines like it’s Groundhog Day. Nothing changes. Montauk makes me feel whole.
“I found ‘We Got the Beat,’” Elisa says. “I signed us up. There are a million people in front, but who cares?” She slams her glass on the bar. It skims the surface and knocks over a saltshaker. Tiny granules sprinkle across the jagged wood like delicate snowflakes.
“Cool,” I nod. Thankfully, we’ll never sing. The queue is too long and if I know Elisa and Harry, they will get sick of waiting and want to go to 7-Eleven for late-night pizza and hot wings. Mudslides always give her the munchies.
I click my phone. No messages. It’s been a week. I don’t know why I care. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve been shifted to the backburner. I got sucked in with sweet words, promises, and three months of daily messages. We were going to surf Lower Trestles and eat fish tacos, go to a Kings of Leon show at the Bowl, and wine taste in Santa Barbara. I wanted to believe it because what was the point? Why say it if you don’t mean it? Meanwhile, he likes my vacation photos on Instagram. See “backburner.”
Finally, we get a break from Sheryl. A tiny preppy redhead starts rapidly rhyming Kris Kross’s “Jump.” She’s actually pretty good. She knows every word by heart and doesn’t even glance at the monitor. The words zoom by so fast, I can’t even read them. The Liars crowd cheers and claps noisily. The French couple next to me starts to hug each other and do some weird dance where they are tangled and hopping. It looks like a potato sack race. Good thing she fixed her shoe with duct tape five minutes ago. She propped her foot on the bar and wrapped six large pieces around the tip of her sneaker.
“It fixes anything.” She lobbed the roll back to the bartender. “Merci.”
Mandy stands to the side bobbing her head, waiting patiently for her next opportunity. The little redhead’s rendition is quite catchy, and I tap my sandal against the base of the stool. How does she even know the words? It looks like she isn’t old enough to have been born when the song was top of the charts. Besides, those Kris Kross kids’ rhyming was pretty complex and dope.
“Rach, stop checking your phone. Who cares about that guy? Not even worth a second thought.”
“I wasn’t checking.” But she knows me. I dot my pinkie into several salt snowflakes, cleaning up some of the scattered flecks.
She’s right, but the worst feeling in the world is to be ignored, disposed of, replaced. I feel worthless. Hollow like a rotting tree stump. Like something’s wrong. Why didn’t I get picked? I know it’s not me, but there is that little voice deep down. That nagging nasty alter ego. The “glass half empty” me. The one that says yup, it is you. I’m not sad, I’m not heartbroken, but it stings a bit. Almost like a pesky mosquito bite.
“Hey there, hot stuff.” Mandy is now pressed up against the bar and has her arm draped around my shoulder. Her face is two inches from mine, and I can smell a combination of smoke and cream on her breath.
“Check out the cheekbones on this fox.” Mandy points above my head. “Mudslide for Mandy.” And she bangs a twenty onto the bar.
Elisa has moved on from Mudslides to Coronas and is now sitting on Harry’s lap in the corner. Her legs dangle and don’t quite reach the floor. She’s pretty drunk and flips her dark hair and giggles. Harry squeezes the back of my neck, shrugs, and then continues to watch the hockey game. He looks pretty worn out after spending all day laying Sheetrock in the laundry room. He’s still got smatterings of white dust on the cuffs of his jeans.
Elisa and Harry take care of me and treat me like family. We don’t talk all the time or see each other more than once or twice a year, but when we reunite it’s like we were never apart. We don’t skip a beat.
“Mands, tell Rachel to forget this West Coast asshole and his Real Housewife girlfriend.”
“Forget ’im. You got me. Besides, who has cheekbones like you? Who could pass that up? What an idiot. I’ll fix you up with a real man. What about that hunk in the lobster shorts?”
Mandy nods in the direction of the dock, where a tall guy with salt-and-pepper hair is chatting with friends. The boys are deeply sunburned under their eyes and wear various pastel shorts with scattered random objects. Crabs, tennis rackets, whales, and strawberries. Ray-Ban pilot glasses top their heads like shiny golden crowns.
“Thanks, but no thanks, Mands.” The last thing I needed was Sheryl Crow’s biggest fan to be my wingman.
“Suit yourself. But I got game.”
Elisa and I glance at each other and try not to laugh. I take a large gulp of my Mudslide. I mean, Mandy is the best. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
“Thanks, lady. You sure do.” I clap her on the back. Her jacket feels a bit damp. She flashes me the “hang ten” sign before heading up front to bully someone into letting her do more Sheryl.
I think I’ve come to terms with my backburner status. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be? Maybe I’m one of those people who is destined to be alone? To be the rainy-day option when it doesn’t work out with the Playboy bunny or cheerleader. Fuck that. I’m not waiting around for when he comes to the realization that the shiny new object is insane. I’m good with it, yeah. Montauk has fixed me. Reminded me of who I am. It tugged at me deep down and said, “Hey, you’re an East Coast girl at heart. Embrace it. You’re real, you’ve got spunk, you’ve got me. Remember my pinky-orange sunsets; lumpy, steep sand dunes; and pebbled rocky shores. My decadent ice cream– filled summer and daily Ditch Plains surf sessions.”
I glance at the front and see Mandy trying to convince the little redhead to do a duet. She’s selling her everything she’s got. She’s making loud gestures and flashing her best “Mandy smile.” The bar is loud, but through the muffled chatting and piercing Journey song I can hear a foghorn in the distance. The moon is a tiny golden sliver, and the sky is clear enough to see some twinkling stars. It’s almost time to drive Harry and Elisa home. I can tell she’s close to craving those hot wings.
My phone buzzes and slides across the salty surface.
Hey Girl! How are you?!?! 😉
I study the energetic text and silly emoticon and without hesitation press Delete. I take a deep breath, my shoulders relax, and that thick, twisted tummy knot loosens. I let out a chuckle.
“Hey, can I buy you a cocktail?” Lobster Shorts is standing next to me and grinning. He’s pretty cute, even with his Ray-Ban crown at 10 p.m. His eyes have tiny creases underneath, and his pink shirt is buttoned all lopsided.
“Sure.”
Mandy’s back to Sheryl again. This time she’s playing a little air guitar and has removed the acid-washed jean jacket. She stops, points at me, and winks before going back to shouting into the microphone. You would think she was playing Madison Square Garden.
“Cheers,” Lobster Shorts says.
“Tip your fucking bartender!”
**
Michelle Blair Wilker is a Los Angeles-writer and producer. Her work has appeared in Across the Margin, Whistlingfire, Unheard LA, Felix Magazine, Storgy, and The Huffington Post. She was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s November 2012 contest for new writers and shortlisted for the Fresher Writing Prize in 2015. In 2017, she attended DISQUIET: Dzanc Books International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and was featured in The New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles. Her first book, Chain Linked: Stories was published in June through Post Hill Press and Simon & Schuster. The collection was recently selected for the 2018 Montana Book Festival.
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Image: Flickr / Justin
“Freedom” was first published in Staggerwing, Alice Kaltman’s first short story collection:
Oh the burn. That searing pain squeezing his thighs like a vise grip. The supreme feeling. The most validating. Even more affirming than the heaving sensation in his gut. A smaller gut these days. But still a paunch, folded over burning thighs as Danny pedaled fast and furious through the Vermont country side.
Danny had never been a big one for physical pain. But the past few months had changed that. Now he was a glutton for punishment, as long as it came via two wheels, multiple gears and a padded seat. Biking had become his thing. It might smack of mid-life crisis, but no question, it was a healthy outlet. Much better than a trophy wife or sporty car. Not that either of those were viable options for an overweight New York City public school English teacher recently dumped by his high-power executive wife.
The super steep Vermont inclines provided pure bliss. Now another magnificent hill was coming his way. Danny shifted expertly to proper gear. Like the little engine that could, he made his way to the top. I think I can, I think I can…
********
Four months earlier, on a tepidly overcast April afternoon, Danny trudged like a tired refugee towards the subway. Meg had planted the bomb two weeks earlier. Her actual words: It’s not working Danny. Our fighting is bad for Cody. You know it and I know it. I want a divorce. The subtext: I’m having the best sex of my life with Craig Gundersen. I’m not that interested in the whole parenting thing. I’m out of here, you fat fuck.
No question who Cody should end up with as far as Danny was concerned. What the courts decided was another matter.
Before descending the subway stairs, he lifted his eyes momentarily, hoping for a glimmer of sunlight, a ray of something akin to hope. It was then Danny spotted the bike, propped in the window of Urban Cyclist, front wheel slightly elevated, as if to create the illusion of flight. The Kestrel Talon. Maybe it was the name, the implication of speed and slice. Or maybe it was how the weak sunlight reflected off the bicycle’s silver metal while it barely warmed Danny’s disappointed soul. The Kestrel Talon gleamed. It downright beckoned. Danny hadn’t ridden a bike in fifteen years. The damn thing set him back two thousand bucks.
He trained every day. Got up at five a.m., headed to Central Park and did the loop, not just once, not just twice. By mid-May it was often ten times. Danny added extra workouts in the afternoons, snuck out of MS 115 like a cat burglar, skipped the useless faculty meetings, let his perpetually delinquent students off without detention. Why waste his breath?
All rides were cathartic. His earliest ones pointedly so. Danny’s cycling was feriocious, if uncouth and energy inefficient. His pre-divorce imagination went vividly wild. Danny rounded the 110th Street hill and left a long tar-and-pebbled gash across the sloping asphalt which he fantasized was Meg’s formidible ass. The downhill at 72nd Street provided opportunity to hyper-speed along the delicate bridge of Meg’s lovely nose. Danny broke it, deviated her septum. Snap, snap, snap. Ah, but the sweetest musing of all came at the southeast corner of 59th, where Danny pumped his brakes to gouge a repeated pattern along the meat of Craig Gundersen’s overrated cock.
********
Now it was August, with only a few niggling details of shared custody to work out. Danny had arrived at this remote corner of Vermont two days earlier with the Kestrel Talon secured to the roof of his Prius. He checked in to Olaf’s Country Inn, an old farmhouse with a few musty spare rooms near the back entrance. Tomorrow uber-parenting would begin again. Danny would be sitting in the outdoor Arpeggio Lake Music Camp Amphitheatre, trying to covertly swat voracious mosquitoes while his brilliant flute prodigy of a son trilled his way through Mozart. Last year Danny and Meg had come together, sitting closer to each other than they had in years. All for Cody’s benefit. Meg would’ve rather died. She complained about the heat, the uncomfortable, backless outdoor seating, the bugs, the humidity, the other parents. But it was Danny she most abhorred. Danny with his hairy, clammy thigh pressing against her wall of impenetrable smoothness.
But this summer, Danny was in biking heaven. Meg was out at Gundersen’s East Hampton compound doing God knew what. Danny couldn’t care less. He was in stellar cycling form. There was no more need for revenge riding now that he was such a cycling beast. No decline or coasting or resting before he got to the tippy top of this hill. Just. Going. For. The. Burn.
Hill, meet Danny. Danny, meet Hill.
He crested the top and gave himself a silent cheer. No pause, just an easy coast down, taking in the sights. Danny passed beauty, he passed despair. To his left, gold flowers sprouted through the broken window of a derelict home. Vines with deep purple blossoms twisted around yellow hazard tape on a rusted, wire fence. To his right, a gorgeous green field was filled with abandoned car chassis. If Danny still wrote poetry, this contradictory Vermont landscape would provide inspiration. Better than teaching slow-witted eighth graders to churn out their own half-baked verse, that was for sure.
Danny hit a straightaway. Time to pour on the juice. He looked at the speedometer. 40 mph. Not too shabby. He couldn’t help wonder if Craig Gunderson was capable of such a feat. But why think of such things? Danny refocused. Speed was his priority.
There was minor obstacle just ahead, before another magnificent hill. A dog straining on a chain connected to a stake at the end of the straightaway. Imprisoned on a dusty patch of earth at the foot of a beautiful incline. Another countryside paradox. It looked like a mutt. But what did Danny know about dogs? He’d never owned one. His childhood had been petless. His Depression-era parents had had no extra cash floating around their Flatbush apartment to feed a mouth that wasn’t even human. Cody, of course, had always wanted a dog. But Meg was allergic, which was lucky, because Danny was a wee bit scared of dogs.
But Vermont dogs were tolerable, in large part because they were always behind fences, roped to mailboxes, leashed to barns. Or chained to posts like this one. They were shackled, while Danny was free.
The dog edged its front paws on to the asphalt. Toenails click-clacked like castenets as it lurched and howled. It was female, emaciated, but with a bunch of droopy teats.
Danny grunted as he did a clean little loopy loo around the poor, hapless beast. He moved onward and upward. The hill was mighty steep. Danny’s breath was shallow. His gut lurched. His heart pumped. And joy of joys, his thighs were killing him! Perfection, but for the continued, desperate yapping of that dog down the hill.
At the summit, Danny stopped to take a swig of Powerade. He took big gulps of the fresh Vermont air and told himself he was glad to be alive. He gazed behind himself, proud to survey where he’d come from. The dog stared up at him, quiet now. She knew her limits.
“Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, Ma’am,” he called to her with a jaunty and terrible faux-Irish accent.
The dog barked once. Then, with canine decisiveness, she bounded up the hill at quite a clip, the chain and upended stake clanging behind her like tin cans attached to a newlywed’s bumper.
Danny scrambled to reattach his cleats, his entire body quaking. He adjusted his gears and after a wobbly start, he careened down the next decline. His breath was shallow. His gut lurched. His heart pumped. But this was panic, not joy.
The dog raced closer, dragging that damn stake and chain. She was fast, for a scrawny little thing.
Danny willed himself to focus on the road ahead. The dog was gaining on him, galloping like a horse. She was so near, Danny could hear her wheezing breath. There was a gurgle and a catch to it. The dog was determined. Maybe desperate too.
The pothole was an unforeseen conclusion. While Danny flew over his handle bars he thought, who will cut the crusts off Cody’s peanut butter and banana sandwiches?
He landed with a dull thud. Bruised and scraped, but nothing severed. His extra poundage had cushioned the blow. Before he could get up, the dog was upon him, her paws pressed against his chest. She licked his cheeks, his lips. She slobbered all over his bike goggles, his helmet, his neck.
Her collar was so tight her dun colored fur puffed and swelled around it. Yellow crud coated her lower lids. Her breath was swampy and hot. The dangling teats were dried up, crusted over, spent.
Danny lay still, and let the dog kiss him. There was no need for any more fear. Eventually he reached up to unbuckle her collar. Underneath, the bare doggy skin was red and raw. She paused for a moment, registering this new sensation, breeze on flesh. She sniffed the air, considered the empty road ahead. Then she returned her gaze to Danny with eyes dark as tar, and started kissing him again.
Danny rolled out from under her. Instantly she leaned in to him, her ribs pressing against his sopping wet tunic. Olaf’s Inn was less than a quarter mile away. An easy ride. An easy run. There were no other guests. And there was that back entrance after all.
Cody had always wanted a dog.
“Do you know how to keep quiet?” Danny asked.
The dog looked up at him and blinked.
**
Alice Kaltman is the author of the story collection Staggerwing, the novel Wavehouse, and coming in Spring of 2020, the much anticipated mermaid fantasy,The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh. Her stories appear in numerous journals including Hobart, Whiskey Paper, Joyland, and BULL: Men’s Fiction, and in the anthologies The Pleasure You Suffer and Feckless Cunt. Her work has twice been selected as Longform Fiction Picks, and was selected as a semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions 2017. Alice lives, writes and surfs in Brooklyn and Montauk, New York.
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Image: Flickr / Michael Cory
“Haiku on Skin” by Len Kuntz was first published in F(r)iction #11.
She wants it to be yesterday, last year, the night of their honeymoon, with the taste of nectarines dripping on his lips, the night outside their hotel window revealing a shy, gunmetal gray moon. He had been as gentle as she’d guessed he would be, boyish almost in the furtive way his hands roamed her skin, drawing out swaths of goose flesh, making up haikus on the spot, writing the words across her ribs and belly.
The morning after, they wanted to try the French place for breakfast but once there, he realized he’d forgotten his wallet. Back at their room, he found the door cracked open and thought it might be Housekeeping. When he called out, “Hello,” the thieves rushed him from behind and after several frantic moments of scuffling, her husband was flung from the window.
Now, on their one year anniversary, she brings in a bowl of nectarine slices, their sweet scent enveloping the room.
He couldn’t remember anything prior to the fall, not the night before, not even that she’s his wife. Memories are something he can’t make now and she’s learned to work around that, to focus on the essence of him, the man she fell in love with and still loves to her core.
Getting into bed, she says, “Scoot over a little. Come closer.”
“Why?” he asks.
She bites off a chunk of nectarine and dabs it across his lips.
“What are you doing?”
Naked flat-backed on the mattress, she takes his hand and splays his fingers apart.
“Write a haiku on my skin,” she says.
“I can’t write a haiku. Poetry isn’t my thing,”
His eyes are dull gray dimes, but she’s not ready to give up.
“It’s easy, just three short lines,” she says.
“This is crazy.”
“Come on. Try,” she says, leading his fingers toward her flesh. “I’ll help.”
At the touch of her skin, his eyes widen—and in them she swears she can make out a flicker of recognition, like the moon momentarily coming out from behind a passing cloud.
**
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of four books: three story collections and one poetry collection, The Dishonesty of Certain Mirrors, recently released from Cervena Barva Press. You can find more of his work at his website.
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Image: Catherine LaPointe Vollmer. Her website can be found here and you can follow her on Twitter here.
The Blue Line rumbles along precariously as fast as it can, but it still takes two hours for Raza to get to O’Hare. Upon reaching Terminal 3, he finds a line at the security checkpoint extending all the way down to the airport entrance, making two loops. New entrants slowly merge into the line, confused, certain it can’t be for them. Sprinkled throughout the line, a coterie of TSA agents bark orders, strolling around unhelpfully.
Behind Raza, a dark-haired middle-aged white woman wearing a pantsuit and an inordinately large bag complains loudly. (She has to be a mother, Raza thinks. The pantsuit is too fancy, the bag doesn’t match, and she doesn’t seem to care). My flight’s boarding in fifteen minutes; this is ridiculous! The elderly black man behind her scoffs. Yeah, you’re definitely missing it. The lady coldly appraises her responder as if the delay were his fault. Ahead of Raza, a gaggle of girls leaves the line to accost a TSA agent.
As the line moves sluggishly, people become more and more agitated. Raza tries his best to remain calm. The idea of making a fuss would never occur to him, so he just moves on unobtrusively, trying not to let his carry-on tread on anyone’s feet. He looks ahead: the gaggle of girls has disappeared. They must have managed to jump the queue somehow.
*
After the shoes and the watch and the laptop and the belt have been removed and put back in order—efficiently and competently, for Raza can imagine nothing worse than being considered incompetent at an international airport—there is no time to buy water or go to the restroom. Once boarded, he sits patiently in the middle seat he has been assigned, contemplating his book. The book is thick and difficult, a used hardback from Powell’s filled with important political text in small, antiquated typeface on coarse, crackling pages. He had considered choosing pulpy fiction for the flight, but the truth is, not unlike his desire to exude competency, Raza also likes to appear urbane and intellectual to ward off concerns about his passport. Sometimes he wonders if he is the only person on the planet who worries about things like this.
His backpack stowed carefully under the seat in front of him, he gazes out the window. Flights make him uncomfortable and pensive; his mind beckons memories it would have been incapable of remembering just hours earlier.
On the train to O’Hare, Raza had been remembering a boy he had gone to school with back home, recalling memories of a time that felt so long ago that he had to strain to remove all embellishments, even wondered perhaps if some were made up. The boy, whose name was Noman, was tall, unwieldy, and awkward. Everybody in school knew that Noman had something “wrong” with him. For Raza, who thinks in words—every encounter he had, every situation he was in, he was writing words in his head, or imagining pictures of words writing themselves on a blank page—the inadequacy of “wrong” made him feel guilty.
Now the details flood into his mind in a torrent he cannot stanch. He remembers how bizarre Noman was: the way he had once masturbated at the back of the classroom as if no one were around, the way he lumbered across the courtyard to push an older boy out of the way impatiently, doing things unthinkingly that would get him beat-down, and did. He even remembers the way Noman towered over everyone and walked with a unique gait: stiff posture, giant, purposeful strides.
He remembers how all the boys, including himself, mimicked Noman’s walk every time he was around, and often when he wasn’t. They bullied him endlessly and it bothered them all when that only seemed to make Noman more brazen. Even when outflanked by several sneering schoolboys spoiling for a fight, he was always unbothered. It was his curious superpower, being so out of the ordinary in all ways.
Raza doesn’t like remembering this. He wants to stop and read his book but something tells him to keep digging. Fixating on the tiny window overlooking the hangar, he realizes why he cannot stop thinking: it has taken him thirteen years to remember how cruel he had been to Noman but what bothers him most is that he still doesn’t have the words to explain him. He can’t even properly remember the words for himself: was he “follower” or “ringleader”?
But as the plane prepares for departure, the crimes of his boyhood leave as soon as they had come. Raza is afraid of flying, or perhaps airports, enclosed spaces, or strangers; he doesn’t know which. He consoles himself; it’s only a two-hour flight. He probably won’t even remember it in a few weeks. Then when he gets back to Chicago, he won’t need to fly for at least a few more months.
*
As the flight attendants bustle around him, shutting the overhead bins in a satisfying sequence of clicks, Raza makes way for a tall, older gentleman to occupy the window seat. The man is balding, wearing a blue checked shirt and earth-colored trousers. He seems detached the way quietly genteel people do but not prohibitively so, for he smiles at Raza generously, noticing him but not looking at him. The threat of perfunctory conversation looms. Raza reaches for his headphones, but it is too late. The man is already talking to him.
Where are you coming from, young man? I live in Chicago, says Raza. I’m just visiting my brother for the weekend. The man introduces himself as Bob. He says he’s been visiting Chicago for work a lot nowadays. He’s a consultant for businesses, nowadays a lot of startups, so he needs to travel frequently for projects here and there. His current project is bringing him out to Chicago every other week. He doesn’t love being away from home so often but eh, that’s the job.
Bob does love Chicago for the lakeshore though. He himself lives near a lakeshore in Lazy Bend, somewhat south of Houston, northeast of Galveston. It’s great, he says, pulling out his phone to show Raza pictures. Here, I have two boats stationed at the canal next to my estate. My total estate is about twenty acres. You can see it from Google Earth if you look for the boats. I’m the only one with two boats; you should find it easily.
Raza discovers dispassionately that Bob is also very interested in landscaping. He recently finished constructing a water feature that connects to the canal, essentially a small pond. He has a video of it. Look. The video shows a pump at the corner of the landscaped pool pulling in water from the canal and into the pond. Pulleys at each corner of the roundish pond keep the water flowing up to a small waterfall over an artificial set of ridges built with limestone. You can even go fishing! One time Bob dipped a really large net into the canal and transferred it in one fell swoop to his pond. Look, here it is: you can see at least three different types of fish! In fact, Bob is so proud of his water feature that amongst the eighteen security cameras in his home, five are placed at different points around the pond. It’s convenient to keep an eye on it from anywhere in the house. For when he’s away, he’s synced an app on his phone to control the water flow and the sprinkler system. Two birds with one stone: he can control both the water flow for his precious pond, and keep a look out for trespassers while he’s away. One can never be too careful.
Twenty minutes pass with Bob plying Raza with details about his water feature. The first five minutes are particularly dreary, but once the multimedia comes in to play, Raza is strangely drawn in, feeling like he’s conducting some anthropological study just by extending the privilege of his attention.
A natural break occurs when a flight attendant stops by to ask for drink orders. Bob deliberates for a few minutes before ordering two Crown Royal Canadian whiskies served to him in two small bottles the attendant fishes out of the pockets of her apron. He pays with his credit card, pausing to ask Raza if he’d like anything. Raza declines, and wonders if that was a display of courtesy or wealth.
As Bob attends to his whisky and the seatbelt sign comes on, Raza finds his opening. He opens his book and dons his headphones. Last Friday, I took acid and mushrooms / I did not transcend, I felt like a walking piece of shit / in a stupid-looking jacket.
Soon, Raza’s eyelids begin to droop. The plane hovering over the isthmus, he feels like he’s floating, moments away from a deep sleep.
Outside the window, the sun is setting. The plane passes by an endless cumulus cloud that stretches on for minutes, distorting his sense of time, deepening his sense of displacement. Just before he gives in to sleep he thinks: at least he has his anonymity.
*
Naturally, Raza dreams of a time he does not wish to recall: when he visited Noman’s house. He tries to push out the dream, to conjure Amy and his apartment and his life here, but dreams do not work that way and the memories of home and school and regrets and childish grudges and Noman beg for deliverance, and Raza must yield.
It was during summer vacation. Noman’s sisters were throwing him a birthday party and had invited all of his classmates by calling their parents, who in turn compelled them to go. Noman’s house was a mid-sized decrepit-looking bungalow a street away from Shimla Pahari, a preposterous artificial hill smack in the middle of urban Lahore, a city of dry plains that undulate so little it made the idea of a man-made hill seem like a distress call.
The party was set up in a large backyard. They cut a cake, popped balloons, played games with Noman that they used to play in the fourth grade even though they were entering the eighth, hating every moment. Noman’s older sisters, and half a dozen of Noman’s similarly aged cousins, cheered loudly from the porch. At one point, Raza managed to sneak all the other boys away from the games behind the bushes for a smoke. Momentarily from behind the trunk of the peepal tree, he noticed Noman looking around him, wondering where everyone had gone. Raza had smirked, finished his cigarette. They made their way back to the house where Noman was cutting his cake so violently some of the boys burst into cruel laughter. Noman’s sisters glowered at them.
During a game of cricket, Raza slipped away to use the bathroom, and peeked in to each room he happened on the way. In the fourth room he peeked in, an old woman was looking out the window, an empty cup of chai beside her, a newspaper in her lap. All he could remember was wrinkles upon wrinkles, the creases substituting for a face he had forgotten. She had noticed thirteen-year-old Raza lingering shamefacedly in the hallway and beckoned him towards her. Raza could see she had been crying, but in a quiet way: the kind of crying one does habitually. What is this façade, she had asked, expecting no answer from the frozen, tongue-tied Raza. We should have sent him to a special school. He doesn’t belong with boys like you. Look at all of you out there, jeering at him. You think he doesn’t notice the things you say?
*
Over the music, the sound of Bob’s voice jolts Raza out of his slumber, forcing him to remove his headphones. Regardless, he is relieved to wake up from a dream where he feels nothing but guilt. It takes him a few seconds to switch worlds.
He’s missed something. Bob is now talking about some friend of his whose name is Dave. Dave seems to be an executive for Walmart. He works on analytics for a company that tells stores where to put their products based on the order in which customers will see them when they enter the store. The whole job involves a lot of consumer psychology. Great job. Dave’s wife works at Walmart too. They have no children.
Dave is Bob’s best friend. They’ve known each since the fourth grade. He and his wife live on a forty-acre estate not too far from Lazy Bend. Recently, Dave bought his second Dodge Viper, a red one this time. They’re going to stop making Dodge Vipers in 2017 so Dave thought he’d buy the 2016 model to go with the old one he bought in 2001. Bob shows Raza pictures, foisting the phone into his palm to peruse at his pleasure. The plate on the vehicle says XVIPERX. Dave stands by his cars proudly, two thumbs up and a goofy grin on his face. A red Texan flag above the garage door looks down at the two cars. It, too, seems happy. Raza smiles to himself: his observational study seems to be going exactly how he had predicted it would.
Bob also has pictures of Dave’s estate. The house is an enormous wooden structure surrounded by acres and acres of forest. It has six decks at different levels between the house and the forest below. One has a fire pit, another a bar, and a third a pond just like his own. There is clear tone of derision in Bob’s description: the pond is supposed to be Bob’s thing. Dave shouldn’t be trying to compete with him. Raza cannot help but be superciliously amused by the nature of Bob and Dave’s relationship.
Another thing about Dave: he’s even more of a gun enthusiast than Bob is. There he has Bob beat. In the sixth grade, Dave snuck in to school a 9mm his father had handed down to him. Now, Dave has all types of assault rifles and snipers, many displayed on the walls of his study. The forest around Dave’s estate is usually soundless, except when Dave is standing at the topmost deck shooting into the forest. It calms him down. He’s taking it more seriously as retirement approaches. Recently, he even joined the International Defensive Pistol Association.
Here’s one of Dave’s rifles. To Raza, who abhors guns but knows nothing about them, it looks exactly like he’d imagine any large gun-like object, all sticky-out parts and large unnecessary-looking add-ons. The next picture shows one of the bullets from Dave’s rifle in Bob’s hand, spanning the complete length of his palm. Bob is delighted. Raza looks from the picture to Bob, incredulous, partly because he’s genuinely never seen something like that before but more so that someone could be so gleeful about it.
Eventually, Raza cannot listen anymore. He decides: no nodding, no hmms. He has lost the energy to even be patronizingly polite so instead he decides to look ahead and say nothing. But still, Bob continues, and Raza must listen. Another high school friend of Bob’s, Alan, works for a tech firm which does something called visual business computing. Alan works on edge computing problems, offering solutions to companies looking to improve their analytics. Bob has an idea: he’s going to try to get Alan and Dave to work together to improve facial recognition on security cameras at Walmart stores. Maybe it could be a solution to preemptively recognize shady characters in the store and prevent revenue losses due to theft. Walmart loses billions of dollars a year because of theft; did you know that?
From the corner of his eye, Raza sees Bob lean back in his chair, smiling to himself like it’s his own little secret, looking away from Raza for the first time in an hour. Raza feels keenly aware that he is less a person for Bob than a stand-in for one, and tries to temper his antipathy, for soon this will all be over.
*
Finally, an announcement. We will shortly be reaching Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The temperature here is about 75 degrees. We hope you enjoyed your flight with us and we look forward to seeing you again soon.
When a flight attendant comes to collect trash, Bob disposes of his empty whisky bottles and looks at Raza like it’s the first time he’s really seeing him. What do you do, young man? Raza pauses, feeling like he has just been challenged to a sword fight. I’m a graduate student in biology.
Bob arches his eyebrows and looks impressed. Biology, ah yes. You’ll probably understand this; you must see it all the time. Last year, I thought I had some kind of giant mole under my ear, so I went to get it checked out. The doctors told me it was a melanoma. I went to MD Anderson, you know—it’s the best cancer center in the States. Didn’t have much time to decide, went in for surgery immediately.
When I woke up, Dave was there and he said man, you have to look at yourself in a mirror. I looked. There was this long, bloody gash across my ear and all along my neck. It was like a scene from a horror movie. They had to open the entire side of my face and neck. I think the melanoma had invaded that entire area. I don’t know; it’s hard to remember. I was too ashamed to show my face to anyone for weeks. In consulting you can’t just show up to meet clients with a gash along the side of your face.
Bob turns his head to show Raza the scar. The deep scar embroidered in his skin traces the outer curvature of his ear, meeting just under his earlobe before departing for the soft arc of his jaw, all the way down to the nape of his neck where it ends abruptly, the posterior extent of Bob’s melanoma cutting off arbitrarily. Raza thinks: why does the pain and suffering of biological cause always feel so ironic, so purposeful?
And then: as Bob chats away, Raza looks outside the window again, watching the heavy, prodigious dark clouds extending continuously in all dimensions as far back as the eye can see. For a moment, he allows himself to see a chair, or a tree, or a boat, or a whale. He lets both the sadness of human pain and ideological hostility wash over him and melt away. And then he snaps back to the real world, where a cloud is a cloud, his guilt an unbroken thread, and he foresees that he could be somebody else’s Bob at some point, at some other moment in his life: maybe in a plane, or a waiting room, for an hour or two when he feels so lonely that he would talk to anyone who would listen.
So where did you go to college? Did you major in biology?
Oh, yes. I went to college back home in Pakistan. I just moved to Chicago a few years ago for grad school.
Bob removes his arm from the armrest. The air between them has shifted. Bob is silent. It seems to Raza that an incomprehensible distance has descended between them. Suddenly, he feels hyperaware of his hands. How does he control his limbs to seem less threatening? How does he convince Bob that he shares his sense of awfulness about the world? What words could possibly help him understand? Racked with embarrassment and guilt, Raza realizes that at the back of his mind he had always expected it would come to this.
It’s pretty terrible there, Bob says softly, with indifference. The passionate, chatty, even warm Bob is gone. He is once again the vague genteel older man. Was there ever a difference between the two? Could Bob really have been surprised?
*
They have come to a complete stop. Passengers have begun to remove their luggage and are moving towards the exit. The people ahead of Raza remove their carry-ons frustratingly slowly. When it is Raza’s turn, he exits the airplane and politely says goodbye to the attendant standing at the exit. He reaches the terminal and stops for a moment, breathing in the rarefied air. He texts his brother that he has landed, and that as soon as he gets through baggage claim, he will take a cab to his apartment. People seem to walk slower at this airport. There is a large line at a Whataburger across from him. Everybody looks the same.
From behind him, Bob emerges with his small leather suitcase, his eyes straight ahead, brushing with purpose past Raza, whom he doesn’t notice. Raza wants to walk over, tap his shoulder, shake his hand and tell him that it was wonderful to meet him, but he stops, frozen, as he watches Bob recede, speed-walking through the throng, farther away from him.
He feels a knot in his stomach. Why does the way Bob walks remind him of Noman?
**
Kamil Ahsan is a dual-degree doctoral student in Biology and History at the University of Chicago. Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, he is also a journalist, essayist, Best of the Net-nominated fiction writer, and the Reviews Editor at Barrelhouse. His work has appeared in The Millions, Chicago Review, The Rumpus, Dissent, The American Prospect, Salon, Aeon, Jacobin, Entropy, The Stockholm Review, and Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, among others.
**
Image: Flickr / Caribb
The following story, “Rapture,” appears in Jeremy T. Wilson’s new book Adult Teeth, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.
I first saw Mary at the live nativity auditions. She was barefoot, decked out in a motherly white robe and sky blue headscarf like she’d already gotten the role, while all the other girls were tarting around in short-shorts and deep cut V-neck sweaters and beat-up canvas sneakers, popping their chewing gum and taking selfies with their elbows akimbo. The audition didn’t ask for much. I said who I wanted to be, and they asked me if I had arthritis or any lower extremity issues that would prevent me from staying on my feet for six hour shifts. Then they asked me to stand still for five minutes and stare at something in the room. I picked Mary. She was sitting down in a line of metal folding chairs, holding a baby doll in her arms and rocking it like it was the one true Messiah. I was flooded with peace and love.
“You’re a shepherd,” they told me.
“What about Joseph?”
“You’re no Joseph,” they said.
The gig was in the front yard of a mega church off I-75 south of Atlanta, a thirty minute drive from my apartment, forty-five to an hour in our notorious traffic, but I needed the work, which was why I signed on with a Christian talent agency in the first place. My sheep weren’t real, but they were three-dimensional. Ceramic. Baby Jesus wasn’t real either, but nobody seemed too bothered by this fact, probably because he was battery-operated, and his little arms and legs went around in circles as an attempt at authenticity, and if you stared at him long enough, his moves would begin to seem totally random and baby-like, almost as if he’d miraculously come alive under Mary’s tender gaze.
It took me until the 21st of December to ask her out.
“We may have breakfast at eight o’clock,” she said, like a queen granting me an audience.
***
The night before my morning date with Mary, I met Balthazar for a drink at a bar in East Atlanta. He was the first dude I’d ever seen order eggnog. It was last call. He said he was feeling adventurous.
“You reckon she’s a virgin, Mary?” Balthazar asked, a line of nog-froth riding his upper lip.
“Doesn’t make a difference to me.”
“She’s probably one of those that’ll make you marry her first.”
“I’ll start with breakfast.”
Balthazar huffed. “See,” he said. “This is why I don’t hang with the shepherds.”
“I’m not a real shepherd,” I said. “I do want a dog, though. A real smart one like shepherds have. Shepherds usually have real smart dogs.”
Balthazar took another nip from his glass of holiday cheer. “Dogs are free at the goddamn humane society.”
“Maybe I’ll go get one.”
“No, you won’t.” Balthazar made this retching sound like he was scratching the back of his throat before he hopped off the stool and ran into the bathroom.
He was in there for some time, so I went to check on him. I found him hovering over the sink, his cheeks wet and puffy, his fingertips drawing his eyelids down like he was trying to pop out a contact lens. “I think I’m allergic to eggs,” he said. I offered to drive him to the emergency room, but he said he’d be all right.
As he backed his car out of his parking spot, I saw him load up and fire a sneeze into the steering column, causing him to surge the gas and crash his rear bumper into a white van. I knocked on his window. “I’ll take you,” I said.
He moved over to the passenger’s side. “Good shepherd,” he said.
He wheezed the whole way there, but once we got inside he seemed better, so Balthazar was deemed low priority among the late night knifings and drunken hijinks gone awry. We waited for hours, and after exhausting the magazine inventory, I found a threesome of armless chairs that made for a nice place to curl up. I fell asleep, my jacket serving as a comforter.
When I woke up, Balthazar was gone. The triage nurse handed me a red envelope and told me my friend had left and didn’t want to bother me because I looked so peaceful. Inside the envelope was a Christmas card, a manger scene on the front not unlike the one we depicted every day at the mega church, minus the faithful throngs praising our life-likeness. “Unto You A Child Is Born,” it said. I opened the card and saw he’d scribbled a message for me. “No good way to deliver this news to you, bro, but I’m in love with Mary.”
It took two slow-going buses to get me back to my car at the bar, at which point dawn was already breaking. I knew if I hauled ass I could probably make it to my date in time, but when I turned the ignition, I got nothing but clicks. I checked under the hood, which was already popped without me having to pop it. Balthazar was way ahead of me. The bastard had stolen my battery.
A forty-two dollar Uber ride later, I arrived at the Waffle House just in time to see Mary wheeling out of the parking lot in her blue Mazda. I knew it was hers because I recognized her bumper sticker from work: In the Event of Rapture This Car Will Be Unoccupied. I wasn’t sold on the likelihood of the rapture or my inclusion in it, but I really hoped it didn’t happen before I could get to the humane society.
***
I didn’t see Mary again until New Year’s Eve, at a party the agency threw for all its actors. She walked up to me while I was digging my hand into a bowl of Chex mix.
“I thought you disappeared,” she said.
I’d called in sick for the rest of my live nativity contract figuring they’d be all right with just two shepherds. “Sorry,” I said. “Family emergency. I didn’t have your number.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I’m looking forward to a better year.”
Mary grabbed a sandwich triangle from a holiday plate and popped the whole thing in her mouth.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked.
“I don’t think there’s any alcohol here,” she mumbled through a mouthful of pimento cheese.
“Sure there is,” I said.
She followed me out to my car where I had a fifth of Jack smuggled in the center console.
“You seen Balthazar?” I asked.
“He’s gone. He got a part in one of those Left Behind movies.”
“The end of the world ones?”
“Correct.”
“With Kirk Cameron?”
“I’m not sure he’s in this one.”
I twisted open the bottle and dropped the cap in a cup holder. “Are you two, like, a thing?”
“Me and Kirk Cameron?”
“No. Balthazar.”
“Not that I know of.”
I swigged from the bottle. “That’s good.”
“Are you born again?” she asked.
“I’ve been baptized, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I passed her the Jack. “Every bit helps,” she said. She stared at the open mouth of the bottle, held the liquid up to the street lights eyeing its enticing hue, then plucked the cap out of the cup holder and twisted it on tight without ever taking a drink. She put the Jack back in the console, and we talked for a little while. I found out that Mary’s real name was Mary, and that she was younger than me, but not young enough as to make my desire criminal.
When it was close to midnight, we went inside for the countdown. Everyone was in good spirits, their faith renewed for the days ahead. And I knew what I would do once we counted down to one and everyone shouted, “Happy New Year!” And I knew from her smile that Mary knew what I was going to do and was saying go ahead. And when we kissed it was electric, sparklers and lightning and confetti and jet packs and Hawaii, and after we let go, we threw our arms around each other and sang that song nobody knows the words to but is all about
forgetting your old, dead friends.
“You taste like booze,” she said.
“I love you,” I said.
“You don’t even know me.”
“You are the mother of God,” I said.
***
Mary was a filthy housekeeper. Everything in her apartment was dirty—dirty dishes, dirty clothes, dirty food-smeared magazines, dirty dust bunnies carrying around other dust bunnies—and she had an entire wall full of crosses above her bed, which served to remind her of the sacrifice Christ made for her. Since she’d been born again, Mary had been tempted many times to backslide, although attentive prayer, the right social group, and the Christian talent agency had helped her keep her faith. She told me she would “prefer” not have sex again before she was married, but I convinced her there was a threat of icy road conditions, especially on bridges and overpasses, so she caved and said I could stay in her bed. We kissed and did some other things that usually lead to more things, but she stopped herself and put her head on my chest muttering her multiplication tables, “Two times one is two. Two times two is four. Two times three is six. Two times four is eight.” I fell asleep before she got to her nines.
Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up when I felt a bug scurry across my cheek. I got up and checked under the kitchen sink where most people who clean things keep their supplies. A quarter bottle of Windex lurked at the back behind a calcified shaker of Comet. First I picked up all the junk and sorted what didn’t look like trash into neat piles that I placed on an ottoman ripped to shreds from what must’ve been a former cat, because there was no cat to be found. I carried around her small plastic trash can from the kitchen and stuffed it full. Once I could see most of the surfaces, I went after them with the Windex. Before then, I had no idea a woman’s habitat could be so disgusting. I left the dishes piled in the sink because I didn’t want the noise to wake her up, but I did fill it up with hot water and suds to try to soak off all the crud.
She woke up anyway and stood against the doorframe in a T-shirt that hung off her shoulder and struggled at the hem to make it to mid-thigh, her arms folded across her chest.
“I thought you left,” she said.
I shook my head. “Just cleaning.”
“I’m a mess.”
“We’re all sinners,” I said.
“Do you give back rubs, too?”
I thought she was going to lie down on her stomach in the bed so I could massage her naked back and shoulders, hopefully with some kind of sensual lubricant, but that wasn’t the kind of back rub she was talking about. She wanted me just to hold her and run my fingers lightly up and down her back, under her T-shirt, while she rested her head on my chest. Her hair smelled like candy canes and buttermilk. Something was wrong with her spine, the knobs uneven and crooked, and every time I touched a certain spot, she shuddered. I asked her if that’s where her wings had been.
“Don’t ruin this,” she said.
***
Mary went with me to the humane society to get a dog. He was a mutt, smallish, brown and black with some white on the tips of his pointy ears. I named him Chris, because I like it when pets have people names. Chris and Mary hit it off right away. He ran to her and she bent down to greet him and he licked her face and she scratched behind his ear. She even got him to sit for a dried up piece of granola bar she found in her purse. Having a dog was a challenge, but he filled my days with a joyful purpose, made me beholden to a creature other than myself, and I began to understand the long and storied historical relationship between man and canine, best friends indeed.
I got a commercial gig for a weekend in St. Simons, where I played a counselor at a Christian youth camp. I held an earnest heart-to-heart with a young boy while we sat on a piece of driftwood near the surf. No audio. We moved our lips but didn’t say anything. Mary took care of Chris at her place while I was gone, and when I came back, he didn’t want to leave. When I tried to drag him out by his collar, he hunkered down and growled at me, something he’d never done before. When I threw a treat out the door hoping he’d fetch it, he sat on her rug and blinked his heavy dog lids at me like—you think I’m an idiot?
“He likes it here,” Mary said.
Probably because food hid under every paper towel, between the couch cushions, under the bed, in corners and closets, dog paradise. Pretty soon Chris made a full migration over to her place, which was okay because it gave me plenty of pretense to stay over. The three of us would sleep in the bed together, Chris a buffer between us. But whenever I went home and saw his empty kibble dish, his leash hanging by the door, his rubber chew bone unchewed, it was like he’d run away, or like I was some crazy person holding on to empty symbols of my dog’s life long after he’d died.
I told Mary I needed my dog back.
“Chris is our dog,” she said.
Then she told me it was time to meet her parents.
***
They lived in a modest ranch house in a small town near Macon. Their house was clean, so there was no telling where Mary’d gotten her lazy housekeeping. Her mom wore an apron that said “Goose the Cook” while she made us grilled pork chops, asparagus, and mashed potatoes. Chris tromped around the back yard, chewed on sticks, treed squirrels, having a grand time. Mary had warned me that her dad was an alcoholic, but she’d said that just meant he was in bed by eight o’clock. She had two older brothers, but neither one of them lived there anymore. After supper we sat in their family room and her parents showed me pictures of Mary when she was little.
“Mary has always been an actor,” her mom said.
“A drama queen,” her dad said.
We watched a video of Mary when she was in seventh grade. She was in a play called The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and she played this urchin named Imogene Herdman who smoked cigars and cursed in church and was the ringleader of the Herdman crew, all of them trouble. Imogene bullies her way into playing Mary in the church pageant where she undergoes a transformation and demonstrates to everyone the true meaning of Christmas. Mary had played Mary before. She was cute in this play and superior to everyone in it, and Mary in the room smiled at the compliments we were giving Mary on the TV, but as the play went on, her dad’s compliments turned bitter. He clapped at times when clapping wasn’t called for and laughed an obnoxious, knee-slapping guffaw at lines of hers that weren’t funny.
“Bravo!” he said. “Genius!” his hands slowly clapping. “A child prodigy! Steve, are you bearing witness to her gift?”
My name’s not Steve, but I kept my mouth shut.
Mary tried to get up and walk out of the room, but he jumped from his chair, sloshing his vodka across the carpet, and grabbed her by the elbow.
“Imogene and her pussy willows,” he said. “Always bullying boys with pussy willows. She get you that way, Steve?”
I didn’t fully sense what was happening, but I knew he was upsetting Mary.
“No, sir,” I said and stood up. “I think you should apologize.”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself.”
I’d never seen anything like this in real life. Behavior of this sort was not on display in my household, a generally loving and nurturing one. Probably what made me who I am today, for better or for worse. “You can say whatever you want to me, but tell Mary you’re sorry.”
Her mom stared into her drink the way she must’ve done every night of her marriage. Her dad nodded his head. Mary cried. He cupped his free hand around the back of Mary’s neck and pulled her to his face and kissed her hard on the lips before wheeling around to face me, wobbling as he spun. He smiled, took a dramatic bow, and stumbled off to his bedroom, almost knocking over a side table along the way.
He never did apologize.
We got ready for bed in a bathroom at the end of a long hallway. Mary wore nothing but that loose T-shirt and her underwear. She pushed her hair back with a headband and washed her face with some pre-moistened sheets, flossed and brushed her teeth. My pee smelled like asparagus. She closed her eyes and held her nose. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, following her lead.
“Thank you,” she said. She kissed me, and given the emotional thrust of the night, things got heated pretty quickly and were headed in a direction she’d “prefer” not to head, but she didn’t break into her multiplication tables, so the situation was allowed to escalate. I was on top of the toilet lid, shirt off, boxers still on, Mary straddling me, and I told her to wait. I said we ought to wait until we got married like she’d said she wanted to wait.
“Are we getting married?” she asked.
“You want to?”
She got off me. “All right,” she said, “but you’ll have to ask my daddy.”
“I don’t think he likes me,” I said.
“He won’t remember a thing,” she said.
Mary and I couldn’t sleep in the same bed under her parents’ roof, so I was sent to a twin bed in one of her brother’s rooms, while she and Chris went off together. My bed had a footboard that came up short. Gold trophies were all over the shelves. Medals hung off the closet knobs. This brother of hers was a runner, or at least sometimes he was a runner, other times he was a wrestler. On top of his desk, where he used to sit and do homework and dream of wrestling glory, was a globe, an electric globe plugged into the wall with a white cord and a thumb wheel switch. I got out of bed and clicked the switch to see what this was all about, and not only did it glow cool and blue from the inside, it spun slowly on its axis with a minimal hum. I watched the globe spin for a while, high from all that had happened. I watched the globe, and I noticed there were countries on there that didn’t even exist anymore, countries lost to history, places I’d never be able to take her.
I didn’t ask her dad the next morning, because I never saw him again. Her mom made us a big breakfast and told us that Mary’s dad wasn’t feeling well. Mary didn’t even tell him goodbye before we drove home. I can’t say I blame her.
We never did get married, even though I’m pretty sure I was in love with her, and I know I would’ve gone through with it had her dad been sober enough to deliver his blessing. I like to remember her at the live nativity scene. That battery-operated, fake baby Jesus coming to life before her. I’d imagined our whole future then, Christmas after Christmas after Christmas, the two of us telling our kids how God was born the night we’d met in a manger. We had two more good months before Balthazar rolled back into town and whisked Mary off to some promised stardom in California. She left Chris behind. I was glad to have him, but I could tell how much he missed her by the way he chewed up one of my throw pillows and spread the contents of my garbage all over the kitchen, leaving another mess for me to pick up.
**
Jeremy T. Wilson is a former winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in literary magazines such as The Carolina Quarterly, The Florida Review, Hobart, Sonora Review, Third Coast and other publications. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University and teaches creative writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife and daughter.
Candace’s mother, Leigh, is losing weight but Candace is getting fatter, so the kids at school call her Kansas. Leigh has struggled all her life to be thin, but now it takes no effort. “I guess that’s the only good thing about this rotten disease,” she says, as Candace watches her prepare the nasty stuff she now calls food—seaweed and miso, tofu and bancha twig tea—stuff she hopes will cure her.
Leigh’s arms look like sticks in the armholes of the shift she wears around the house. Her wig is fake-looking, a Mary Tyler Moore flip. There’s no scalp at the part. Candace thinks the wig is a lie, that it’s all a lie.
Leigh finished her final round of chemo a month ago—all the doctor could give her—and she claims her new way of eating will cleanse her system. Candace knows her mother won’t be getting better though, that this awful food won’t do any good. She needs Leigh to face the truth because she’s afraid their time together will run out and, they won’t have the chance to say goodbye properly. Candace also needs to figure out what’s going to happen to her. She doesn’t want to live with her father, but what if her grandparents don’t want to take her?
At fifteen, Candace knows she could help her mother. During the rounds of chemo, she brought Leigh cold washcloths and ice chips, just the way, after her parents’ divorce two years ago, she was the one who made snacks and tried to keep Leigh’s spirits up when she was red-nosed and puffy-eyed in her big bed.
But Candace feels shut out by Leigh’s friend, Vena. She’s rail-thin and tall, and wears her hair buzzed, as if she’s had chemo herself. Vena has Leigh psyched up about nutrition and makes her eat all kinds of food that Candace thinks must taste like pee. Candace can’t believe Leigh chokes it down and comes back for more. Until Vena came on the scene, Leigh was pretty rational about her illness, but Vena has a weird effect on her. Now Leigh has been talking about a total cure. Candace wonders why Vena had to worm her way into their lives. She thinks it’s cruel to keep building up Leigh’s hopes. Candace isn’t sure what she hates most about Vena, her influence over Leigh or her judgment of Candace, as if Candace is the cancer, and if she’d just change, Leigh would get better.
Leigh’s periods used to match up with Candace’s, and she would buy tampons, bags of potato chips, and chocolate bars at the same time every month. Now Leigh never gets her period anymore. They took out everything: her ovaries, her uterus. She’d been tired and crabby for months and thought it was early menopause, but by the time they detected it, the cancer had spread.
After the surgery last year, when Candace came to visit her mother in the hospital, she found Leigh, crying. She assumed it was because of the cancer, but Leigh said, “Now, you’ll never have a brother or sister.” Candace was surprised she ever thought about having more kids. And with whom? “I feel all scooped out inside,” she said. “I’m just old and useless.” Candace lay down on the bed and put her head next to Leigh’s, not too close for fear of hurting her. She wanted to rub her arm, but the I.V. was taped on. They lay there for a while, breathing in syncopation until Leigh fell asleep.
Candace comes home from school hungry. Vena and Leigh are in the kitchen, brewing wheatgrass tea. Candace sees Vena’s pinched lips and hears a sigh as she opens the refrigerator, which is almost completely cleaned out. She asks what happened to the milk and the cheese. Leigh tells her Vena thought they should get rid of unhealthy foods. “But that was my food,” Candace says. When Vena offers her some fruit, she says,” I don’t want any fruit. I want my food.” Leigh says Vena is trying to help, but Candace doesn’t want her help.
Vena says, “You’re going to have to start thinking of your mother and her special nutritional needs,” poking a ringed finger at Candace’s waist. “You shouldn’t be eating that poison anyway.”
Before Candace’s parents split up, they had big dinners with meat and potatoes and salad and silverware. Her Dad liked it that way. After he moved out, Leigh and Candace fixed meals where they ate all the things you aren’t supposed to, dessert first, no main course. They popped popcorn and poured on butter and salt and sat in front of the TV with the carton of Rocky Road ice cream, alternating the salty with the sweet. Leigh would say, “I’m afraid you have the Morgan hips, sweetie,” patting first hers, then Candace’s. Then they’d sing an old Peter, Paul, and Mary song about red, green, ol’ rocky road. Candace wasn’t sure what the song meant, but they’d sing in the same goofy, off-key way and would dissolve into giggles.
Lately, Leigh’s been too tired after dinner to sit up. She goes into her room and reads books on wellness and falls asleep with the lights on and her wig tipped off her head. At first, Candace was afraid to see Leigh bald. But one day, Leigh walked into Candace’s room without the wig. Her head looked like a skin-covered balloon. After the initial shock though, Candace got used to it. Now it’s the wig she notices.
Candace tries to talk to Leigh. Once last week, Candace had just finished telling her about how Bethany Tucker had been totally harsh to her friend Fern at school when Leigh looked up and said, “I’m sorry, what was that?” But Candace couldn’t repeat it. It was gone, out of her mouth, floating in the air around them. When Candace asked her to proofread her English paper the other night, Leigh said she had to meditate first.
“Can you just tell me how to spell ‘conscientious’?”
“Give me fifteen minutes, please.” But when Candace came back later, Leigh was asleep, slumped over in her chair. She picked Leigh up under the arms and walked her over to the bed. Candace could almost carry her, she was so light. After that, Candace went downstairs and fixed herself a sandwich, which she swore she wouldn’t do, but decided it was too hard to diet with all this going on. What was the point of starving yourself when you could die tomorrow, or in five years? Leigh is only thirty-nine. Her parents are in their sixties and can’t figure out why this has happened to their daughter.
Mrs. Fenton calls Candace into her office at school. There must be some guidance counselor rulebook about what to do with girls who have divorced moms with cancer. Mrs. Fenton gets Candace out of biology class, despite the fact that Candace tells her she has a test coming up and is clueless in that class.
“Candace, how are things going?”
“Fine.” She is thinking about the Milky Way she will get out of her locker on her way back to class.
“You know you can come talk to me anytime you want.” She folds her hands with the diamond eternity rings and looks at Candace, who keeps her eye on the poster behind the desk. It’s a stupid meadow scene with horses and trees. Candace fantasizes about a place she’d rather be—a beach on Cape Cod with her mother before she got sick.
As Candace is swallowing the last bite of her candy bar in front of her locker, Fern walks up. “What did Fenton want?” Fern asks.
“A reason for living. That woman should get a job.”
Then they go to lunch, which is the time of day when Candace most relies on Fern’s friendship. She hates the lunchroom scene. You can’t make the mistake of sitting with kids who are cooler than you. “Oh, that seat’s saved,” they always say and then laugh. Last week, Jessica Faber walked by their table with her friends. “I think meat is disgusting. It’s just fat and flesh. I’d never put that into my body.” There was Candace with her plate full of meatloaf and gravy.
“At least we don’t barf up what we eat,” said Fern. “Talk about disgusting.” Fern knows about eating disorders because her sister uses diuretics to purge. She and her friends suck on water bottles all day so they won’t eat.
Candace has been having nightmares. In one, a tornado is coming and she has to save Leigh. But her blanket is nailed to the mattress, and Candace can’t get her out. The winds whip debris at her head and arms as Leigh begs her to hurry. Then she wakes up and forgets the worst of it until the next dream.
Candace is upset about her biology test, which she failed after missing that class thanks to Mrs. Fenton. She really wants to talk to Leigh. As she opens the door, the shades are drawn, and her mom isn’t in the living room, but Vena is. She considers sneaking in the back way, but Vena has already seen her.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Hello to you too, Candy.” She’s sitting in Candace’s chair, reading a health magazine, her feet in Birkenstocks and thick socks.
Candace starts up the stairs. “Don’t wake your mother,” Vena says. “She’s napping. It’s been a hard day.”
“What’d you do to her?”
She closes the magazine and places it on her lap. “Can we talk a minute?” Vena pats the ottoman in front of her but Candace remains standing. Vena asks if she can speak frankly and Candace thinks Uh oh and asks if Leigh is all right.
“Your mother is being really brave about all of this, Candy, and she doesn’t always ask for what she wants.”
“My name is Candace.”
“Don’t you think it’s important to spend as much time as you can with her? She’s not as strong as she makes out to be.”
Candace wants to say she could spend more time with Leigh if Vena weren’t in the way. Instead she says, “I know.”
“It’s not really my business.”
Fucking A, Candace thinks.
“But don’t you think this is a time to show how mature you are?”
Candace wants to pull her hair, to slap Vena. She doesn’t know anything.
“I understand what it’s like to be in high school and to have lots of activities after school and dates on weekends.” Candace rolls her eyes. “Now, I don’t mean to be critical,” she continues. “But it doesn’t it make sense to think about someone else for a change? Leigh needs as much positive force around her as possible. No offense, but you have a real downer attitude.”
Candace looks at Vena as if she has sprouted antennae. “I don’t have an attitude.” Except against you, she thinks. “What are you trying to prove with all this bogus food and happy thoughts shit? What makes you such an authority on cancer?” She turns, fighting back tears, and walks toward the stairs.
“Don’t go up there. I told you your mother is sleeping.”
“You know what? You don’t live here, so I don’t think you can tell me where I can go in my own damn house.”
“Ssh! You’ll wake her. Come back here.”
“No!” She bangs her fist on the banister. “Why are you hanging around here? My mother doesn’t need you. You’re really getting on her nerves. She said so.” Candace feels a vicious pleasure in telling this lie.
“Candace!” It’s Leigh, standing at the top of the stairs, clutching her robe, her face tired and gray.
“Mom, I’m sorry.”
“Go upstairs.” Her lips are pinched tight, as if holding back what she really wants to say.
Candace runs past Leigh, her feet drumming on the stairs, making the floor shake. In her room, she drags out the bag from the closet—her own stash of Twinkies, Pringles, Ho Hos, peanut butter crackers—as she listens to the rise and fall of voices downstairs. Ripping the cellophane off of a pack of Hostess cupcakes, she stuffs one in her mouth. In three bites, it’s gone, and the familiar rush comes over her. Then she polishes off the other one—cake, cream, and frosting mixed together—smearing onto her face and hands. She has to force herself to breathe evenly so she won’t choke. Slow down, slow down, she tells herself.
At dinner, Leigh is still angry. There is lots of silent chewing and swallowing. Candace talks more than usual to lighten the mood. But the harder she tries, the worse it gets. Leigh keeps hassling Candace about her diet, telling her she looks tired. “It’s all those toxins you put in your body.”
“Mom, it’s protein,” she says, sawing at her minute steak.
“About six times what you need and filled with hormones.”
“Gross. I’m trying to eat.”
“Okay, but it’s terrible for you.” She takes a bite of rice and mung beans and starts chewing fifty times like Vena told her. It’s disgusting to watch her eat like that, and it makes Candace want to gulp down her own food. Candace asks a question and has to wait while Leigh chews and chews. Finally, she blows up. “Mom, stop! You’re making me sick! Can’t you just eat like a normal person?”
Leigh looks up, shocked.
“This doesn’t make any difference. Can’t you see that?”
Leigh seems to shrink right in front of her. Candace wants to stuff her words back into her mouth. Leigh stops chewing and tries to swallow. Then she starts to cry. Holding her napkin to her mouth, she stands up.
“Mom, I’m sorry.”
Leigh drops her napkin in the trash, turns to leave and bumps into the table. “Mom, please don’t go.” Leigh stops to rub her leg before heading out of the room.
Candace sits for a moment, stabbing her meat with a fork. After she dumps her plate in the sink, she goes upstairs and calls Fern. She tries to explain why Vena is so terrible for Leigh with her ideas about a cure. But Fern says maybe Leigh wants to hear what Vena has to tell her, even if it is a lie.
“Don’t you think your mother knows better than anyone what’s happening? So what if she needs a little lie to help her deal with this?”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. I thought you’d be on my side.”
“Candace, I am.”
“Whatever.” She hangs up and falls back onto her bed, breathing heavily. She closes her eyes and falls asleep. In her dream, she sees Leigh, in Candace’s arms, fully proportioned but tiny as a baby with a miniature wig. Through dry, chalky lips, she’s muttering something that sounds like static. Candace is pleading with her to speak clearly but wakes up before she can understand.
Suddenly hungry, she feels her way down the dark staircase and sees a light in the kitchen. She’s surprised to find Leigh sitting at the kitchen table. Candace backs away, but Leigh spots her. “Candace. Come here, please.”
Candace asks, “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Just thinking.”
“Mom, I’m sorry I was rude. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make things worse for you.”
“You don’t.” She winces as she changes her position.
“Well, sometimes I do.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Vena says I’m not being positive enough.”
“Oh, Sweetie.” She gives a sad smile. “Vena’s a bit overzealous at times, I know, but she helps me. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah, but she’s just kind of annoying.”
“I know. But listen. I’m still here. Just ignore her. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try.” Tears sting Candace’s eyes.
Leigh places her papery, dry fingers over Candace’s hand. “You know what?” Leigh says, scraping the chair as she stands. “I’m hungry. Do we have anything to eat?”
She opens the freezer door and rummages around. “Yes. Here it is.” She pulls a carton of ice cream from the back. “Rocky Road. Oh God, I used to love that, remember?”
“But you haven’t eaten anything like that for so long. Can’t I get you some tea?”
“That stuff is disgusting. Come on. Just a spoonful. What could that hurt?” Leigh opens her cracked lips to a scoop of ice cream. It smears over her lips. “You know, Vena would kill me.” Her face brightens. “Kill me,” she laughs. “Oh no! I’m so worried.”
“Mo-om,” Candace says but lets herself laugh.
Leigh’s eyes are slits as she wheezes. She dips her spoon in again. “I might as well go out with—” A cough starts deep down and rips through her chest.
Candace leans forward, pats her on the back.
After a moment, Leigh regains her breath. “I’m fine.” She takes a smaller bite, doesn’t cough and passes the carton over to Candace who digs out a spoonful. “Candace, sweetie. I know you want to be as optimistic as possible, and I really appreciate it, but I think we need to make some plans for you. For later on.”
Candace swallows. “Oh, Mom, I know.” Suddenly, she doesn’t want any more ice cream. But still, she takes one more bite and passes the carton back to her mother.
**
Jan English Leary is the author of two books: a novel, Thicker Than Blood, and a collection of short stories, Skating on the Vertical, both published by Fomite Press. Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as Pleiades, The Literary Review, The Minnesota Review, Carve Magazine, and others. She received an MFA from Vermont College in Creative Writing. She taught fiction-writing to high-school students at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago and to adults at Northwestern University in the Continuing Studies Program. Now retired from teaching, she is a reader for the Pen-City Writing Program, a three-year certificate from U. of Texas in Austin, which works with inmates in a maximum security prison for men.
**
Image: Flickr / Larry
As 2018 comes to a close, we want to celebrate the wonderful work of our interviewees, and below you’ll find amazing updates of what they’ve been up to:
Alex DiFrancesco (ep. 162) has a book forthcoming in 2019 through Civil Coping Mechanisms Press, Psychopomps. They also recently published a piece for Ploughshares blog. Find them on twitter @Difantastico.
Matthew Lansburgh (ep. 136) has stories upcoming in Shenandoah, One Story, and Epoch in the coming months.
Jacob M. Appel (ep. 26) has two books available now: The Amazing Mr. Morality and The Cynic in Extremis. His new short stories collection, Amazing Things Are Happening Here, is coming in March 2019 from Black Lawrence Press.
Julia Dixon Evans (ep. 157) founded and launched a new literary project in San Diego, Last Exit, offering reading series, workshops, and online journal. She is also hosting a group reading at Verbatim Books on December 9th and an “in conversation” event with Chaya Bhuvaneswar in San Diego on December 2nd (location TBA). She’ll also be hosting with Dzanc Books at AWP 2019 in March, on Friday night 3/29 at Erickson Gallery in Portland. Find her work in tons of places: her book, McSweeney’s, Monkey Bicycle, Hairstreak Butterfly Review, and Literary Hub. Find her on twitter @JuliaDixonEvans, or on instagram @_juliaevans_
Adam Gianforcaro (ep. 114) had two poems featured in the Minnesota Review in 2018. His poem, “I Want To Hold My Boyfriend’s Hand,” will be shared in Little Patuxent Review’s Winter 2019 issue, and he will be reading his piece as part of Little Patuxent Review’s Winter 2019 issue launch in Columbia, MD. Find him on twitter and instagram @xadamg.
L. N. Holmes (ep. 41) published two stories last October at Barren Magazine and Nice Cage. Her book is also available for purchase here. Follow him on twitter, instagram, and Goodreads.
Amber Colleen Hart (ep. 146) published her story, “Mother’s Circle,” in Gone Lawn Issue 28.
Tyler Barton (ep. 31) has a fiction chapbook, his debut, coming this winter from Split Lip Press, The Quiet Part Loud. He also has flash fiction upcoming in Collagist and The Kenyon Review. Fear No Lit recently hosted an on-the-spot writing tournament (a “Page Match”) in Lancaster, PA on Dec 7th. You can find him on twitter @goftyler and @fear_no_lit.
Frank Haberle (ep. 172) recently published his story, “The Snow Catches Up,” in the Baltimore Review. He recently led a writing workshop for the nonprofit New York Writers Coalition and the Creative Center at University Settlement.
Jason Gordy Walker (ep. 78) has work forthcoming in Schuylkill Valley Journal.
Mary J. Breen (ep. 171) was recently published in Catapult and Picturegoing.com, and work to be published in Memoir Mixtapes and Bath Flash Fiction Anthology.
Caitlin Hamilton Summie (ep. 169) will be teaching at the Rose Glen Literary Conference in February and at Clarksville Writers Conference in June. He short story collection, To Lay Rest Our Ghosts, is available now. Find her on twitter @csummie.
Jaimee Wriston Colbert (ep. 99) won a 2018 International Book Award in Fiction for his story collection, Wild Things. His new novel, Vanishing Acts, was a finalist for The American Fiction Prize in Family Saga, and an Indie Excellence Best book Award in Literary Fiction, and you can read about it here.
Eric Boyd (ep. 97) is doing a panel with AWP in March of 2019. He was also recently published in University of Melbourne’s Antithesis Journal. Follow him on Facebook here.
Shannon Lippert (ep. 9) will be working with The Deviant Readings on an open mic night (more information here). In 2018, she had two pieces published by What Rough Beast. Find her on twitter @ShannonXL and on her WordPress.
Alicia Drier (ep. 137) will soon be published by Thirty West Publishing, and in the meantime is still hard at work on her series of nonfiction essays.
Douglas W. Milliken (ep. 80) published many stories in 2018 as well as two chapbooks, The Opposite of Prayer and In the Mines. You can listen to a reading of his story, “Heart’s Last Pass,” by actor Russell Tovey here. In 2019, he will publish his short story collection, Blue of the World, and his second novel, Our Shadows Voice. Find him on instagram @douglaswmilliken.
M. Leona Godin (ep. 63) continues her monthly column at Catapult here. She was also published in Playboy in 2018, and recently participated in the RISK! Live show, which will be available in podcast form in the near future. Follow her on twitter @DrMLGodin, or follow her publication (or submit to!) Aromatica Poetica on Facebook and Twitter.
Renee S. DeCamillis (ep. 143) will have her horror novella, The Bone Cutters, published in 2019. This year, she was published in Deadman’s Tome, and was also a guest on their podcast. Find her piece about the death of Chris Cornell here. Find her on twitter @Phantom_1333, Facebook, or her website.
Laurie Stone (ep. 94) had a busy year with four different pieces in N+1 Magazine, and several reviews in The Women’s Review of Books. She also appeared on the Sick Day Podcast and in an interview with The Rumpus, and had work included in Diagram, Your Impossible Voice, Blood Orange Review, and the Collagist.
The following excerpt from A Knife in the Fog by Bradley Harper has been reprinted below with permission of the author.
Sunday, September 23, cont.
I
had no firm idea what kind of woman would willingly choose to live amid such squalor, but I envisioned a stern-faced spinster with thick pince-nez glasses; I was skeptical a lady of letters could be of any use to me in this environment. The best I could hope for was a detailed map and some history of the events surrounding the murders; I had no intention of burdening myself with the responsibility for her safety while traveling through the darkened alleyways and courtyards of Whitechapel.
There were no postal boxes or names in the entryway, so I trudged up the dark and slippery stairs to the third floor and knocked on an unassuming door that corresponded with the address 3A.
“One moment,” said a muted voice on the other side. I heard the rattle of a bolt, and an eye peered through the slit allowed by a heavy chain. “Who is it?” asked the same voice, now clearer.
“Doctor Doyle,” I replied.
The door closed, the chain rattled, and the door reopened. The back of a slender figure proceeded ahead of me into the soft light and, without pausing, instructed me to secure the portal behind me.
I fastened the door nervously, unsure of my reception or of who was receiving me, and entered a small and dimly lit sitting room. On the far side, if a room so small can have a “far” side, a woman sat quietly. She could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty-five, the marks upon her face revealing a life of hardship. She held a yellowish, stained rag over her mouth and a partially knitted sock and her needles in her lap. Beside her stood a slender young man of average height, dressed in working man’s clothing, and wearing a battered bowler hat. The woman looked at me with mild interest, but the young man’s piercing gaze apparently found the stout gentleman before him rather amusing, while I perceived him to be quite rude.
“Pardon my interruption,” I said, doing my best to appear calm, “but I understand a young woman named Margaret Harkness lives here. She was expecting me.”
“Quite so,” replied the young man. “I am she.”
My reaction must have been what she was expecting, given the smirk on her face. Nowadays a woman dressed as a man would cause others to stare, but at the time it was scandalous.
“Forgive my bit of fun, Doctor Doyle,” she began, “but my work often requires me to travel these streets at night and alone. I have found that dressed as a man, I can move about unnoticed, thus more safely. Do not be embarrassed by your reaction. I am quite accustomed to it when men first meet me ‘undressed,’ by which I mean not traditionally attired.”
My face must have been quite scarlet by this time, yet she was not the least bothered by my embarrassment. To move our conversation forward and not linger on my discomfort, I turned to the woman beside her.
“And you, madam, you h-have the advantage of me,” I managed to stammer. The woman nodded slowly, lowered the rag from her face, and grimaced a smile, revealing a festering wound on her right jaw.
“Molly,” she replied slowly, taking care to articulate each syllable.
“Miss Jones is my lodger, my touchstone, and friend,” replied Miss Harkness. “She listens to my writing and tells me if it rings true. I in turn grant her a safe place to sleep and a fair share of my meager meals. She worked in the match factories until she developed phossy jaw. We met during the Matchgirls’ Strike in July of this year.”
Miss Harkness and her lodger exchanged glances before continuing. “I cannot afford the surgery required to excise the rotting bone within her jaw, but I can give her shelter and friendship. This is the world you have entered, Doctor Doyle, and I am to be your guide within it.”
She smiled at me, and I wondered if she was having similar thoughts toward me such as I had when I imagined her as a middle-aged spinster in need of my constant protection.
“I am a writer, sir, as I understand you are,” Miss Harkness continued. Perhaps you have heard of my most recent novel, Out of Work, or my work published last year, A City Girl?”
I shook my head, still astounded to find myself casually conversing with a woman attired as a man, as though it were in no way out of the ordinary.
“You are in the majority,” she shrugged. “To expand my circle of readers, I have published my last two works under the nom de plume John Law. It seems most men feel either threatened, contemptuous, or both when confronted by a capable woman with strong opinions. For the most part, I make my living as a journalist, paid piecemeal by various newspapers for reporting on happenings here in the East End, as no ‘respectable’ journalist dares come here. Indeed, there are some streets within Whitechapel even police officers fear to tread if less than four in number, while I, in my poor attire, pass ghostlike among them.
“Be assured Doctor, despite my current attire I have no desire to be a man; the only thing I envy the male gender is the abundance of pockets your fashion allows.” She jutted her chin out as though daring me to criticize her “undress,” but I held my tongue and she continued.
“My experiences here are being stored away for future use in works of a hopefully more enduring nature. Currently I am researching the Salvation Army in preparation for my next novel.” Then she locked eyes with me and challenged me, “And what of you, sir? Are there any of your writings I may have read?”
Her impudent tone soured our initial encounter, I’m afraid. I replied that I had written a crime story, which had led to my being asked to look into the Leather Apron murders. I was unaccustomed to being so roughly cross-examined by a woman, and I felt she was taking undue liberties with a gentleman she had just met. I began to question Mr. Wilkins’s wisdom in choosing her as my navigator, but I resolved to keep the tone civil.
“Leather Apron, eh? That explains it. Mr. Wilkins said only that a gentleman, a writer from outside London, would be working a few weeks in the East End, and that he would pay me two pounds to show you around and introduce you to some of the tarts. I have become acquainted with several streetwalkers while researching my Salvation Army story, and as two pounds is nearly a fortnight’s income for me, I asked no more questions. A lady, or ladies,” she swept her arm to include Molly, “have to eat.”
I started when she mentioned Wilkins’s requirement that I meet with a streetwalker. “What purpose would that serve? I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about.”
Miss Harkness smiled at my obvious discomfort. “I can’t answer for the man, but you’d be surprised what you’d learn of life in the East End if you listened.”
She adjusted her sleeves. “Well, shall we take a stroll?”
“Now ?” I replied. “It will be getting dark soon, and I would not place you at risk unnecessarily.”
She laughed. “You, dear sir, shall be much more at risk than me. Your accent, comfortable waistline, and well-tended clothes all declare you an outsider. It is rather common for our benevolent neighbors in the West End to visit us for the pleasures of the flesh. Few prosperous gentlemen are willing to explain to their wives how they came to be robbed within our alleys, so they often refuse to report a theft.
“I shall serve as your guide and interpreter, so let me do the talking unless I prompt you. Come!” She beckoned, as though we were about to go to the theater. “The East End at night is the world you must enter if you are to understand the lair of this monster.”
I agreed with reluctance. While not wanting to place a lady into such a dangerous environment, I had to admit she most likely had the right of it as to which of us was in greater peril. Still, while serving as a young ship’s surgeon on the SS Hope during an arctic whale-and seal-hunting expedition, I had earned the respect of seasoned sailors by my ability to blacken their eyes in sparring matches. As I was still not quite thirty years old, I had confidence I could give a good accounting of myself should it become necessary. I was determined not to show any reluctance in the presence of this rather rude woman, and so would follow where she led, if only to show my nerve was equal to hers.
I soon learned what a high standard I was setting for myself.
**
Bradley Harper is a retired US Army Colonel and pathologist with a great deal of experience in autopsies and forensic investigation. A lifelong fan of Sherlock Holmes, he did intensive research for this debut novel, including a trip to London’s East End with noted Jack the Ripper historian Richard Jones. A Knife in the Fog is his first novel.
“Dangling Joe” by Darrin Doyle was first published in Scoundrels Among Us (out now with Tortoise Books) and is reprinted here with permission.
You’re a stranger now unto me Lost in the dangling conversation. And the superficial sighs In the borders of our lives. —“The Dangling Conversation”
A man appeared as a speck against the clouds one morning, high above the city. The citizens were amazed and confused. From the ground they squinted, shielding their eyes. Is that a person? they asked. He was so distant he might as well have been a bag of rocks, which would have been equally amazing and confusing, floating in the air. However when witnesses produced binoculars and telescopes, they could distinguish him as a man. He was simply dangling in the sky. They searched above and below and beside him, seeing no wires, no platforms, and no means of support.
Not one person who looked closely at this man would have described him as floating or levitating. With his head upward and his feet pointed toward earth, he was in a standing position. However, the way his legs swayed beneath him (hips swinging gently side-to-side), and the uncomfortable-looking way he held his arms akimbo, gave the distinct impression that an invisible force was holding him like a yo-yo on a string.
The man appeared to be of Asian descent. Speculations were Chinese or Korean, but nobody really knew for sure. Was this fact important? Did his ethnicity make any difference? Maybe, maybe not. People yelled at each other in social media forums about it, criticizing those who noticed or questioned his ethnicity, criticizing those who said it didn’t matter.
Nonetheless, nobody knew where he came from or what he was doing. His photo dominated all media outlets, yet no one came forth to identify him. He was dressed in an expensive-looking business suit, dark gray with subtle pinstripes. His polished loafers sparkling in the sunlight had been one of the first things that caught the attention of the folks on the ground. Chubby cheeks and a nicely combed head of conservatively parted hair rounded out his appearance. Aside from a bit of forehead perspiration sighted by an amateur astronomer, the man seemed untroubled by his bizarre and terrifying situation. His quiet smile exuded contentment and even joy as his legs rocked limply in the sky.
The city whirled into action. Emergency personnel—firefighters, police, paramedics— arrived at the area below him. Crowds gathered, shouting words of encouragement. They snapped photos, formed prayer circles, and set up hot dog carts. On rooftops of tall buildings, folks held signs that said Don’t fall! and We’re here for you! and How are you dangling like that? Even from the highest point in the city, the roof of a 47-story hi- rise apartment, the dangling man was too far to reach or hear. Not that he was talking or trying to communicate—he was just hanging there like laundry! The firefighters had no way to get to him. They needed a helicopter.
Cautiously and with great skill, the chopper pilot navigated near the man. He maneuvered until positioned thirty feet above. The rescuers unfurled a rope ladder, which flailed and flapped and whipped around until settling. Grab it! they shouted through a megaphone. Inexplicably, the man didn’t respond. He didn’t even crane his neck to look up at the chopper. His arms, though, were in a rather awkward position, which they figured made it tough to do much of anything. The poor guy!
A legendary search-and-rescuer by the name of Doc Ready hooked himself to a safety line and climbed down the ladder. In an acrobatic move, he slid his feet through the rungs and hung upside- down just above the man. Below, the crowd erupted into lusty cheers. What a hero! News reporters prepared the dramatic headlines: Gutsy Rescue Dazzles Thousands of Onlookers; Courage in the Heavens; Noble Man Saves Helpless Other Man—Taxpayers Foot the Bill.
But then an unexpected thing happened: The man simply moved, or was moved, sideways in the air, drifting like a leaf skidding along the pavement. He slowed to a stop about fifty yards from where he’d dangled originally. It looked like whatever was dangling him simply dragged him away with minimal effort.
This pissed off the rescuers, big-time. What the hell was going on? Doc Ready ascended the ladder. Carefully the pilot relocated the chopper, which took about eight minutes, since the winds were unpredictable at that altitude. They unfurled the ladder again. Doc clipped himself onto the safety line and descended, recreated his nifty little flip, extended his hand to the Asian man, listened to another burst of applause (more hesitant this time) from the ground.
The rescuers got the same result. Five more times they attempted the maneuver; five times the man slid away to a nearby location in the sky. By then the sun was setting. They were losing light.
“He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t acknowledge us. He hasn’t been identified. Is he even an American? What evidence do we have that he’s one of us?”
This was a pundit on one of the morning news shows, speaking angrily a couple of days after the man was first sighted. The pundit’s name was Hank Hardwood. He was known for his powerful chin, piercing blue eyes, and scathing commentary about anyone he deemed un-American.
“How do we know he’s not a spy for the Chinese government?” His face during this particular broadcast had lost its usual orange glow. In its place was a fiery red that practically emanated heat from people’s TV screens. “He could have cameras and recording devices stuck everywhere on his body, sending classified information to his leaders, and here we are treating him like a damn hero!”
Normally this pundit talked so much that nobody paid attention to what he said. This time, however, people conceded that he might have a point. Wasn’t this a national security issue? You couldn’t just float above a city and expect not to get in trouble. And that smug little expression on his face—what was that all about? It seemed sneaky. And why were us taxpayers paying for these rescue attempts? Where was the FAA during all of this?
The FAA felt the pressure but could do nothing. Their federal aviation regulation stipulated that “over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft—in this case, Joe—must be maintained.” Dangling Joe (as the media had dubbed him) was within these limits and therefore doing nothing illegal. He wasn’t harming anyone and didn’t appear to be in any danger. Civil liberties groups quickly rallied to protect the man’s right to dangle.
“You can get pulled over by the police for having an air freshener dangling from your rearview mirror,” scoffed Hank Hardwood, “but you can’t get in trouble for dangling from the bleep-bleep sky?”
“I think he’s being remotely controlled,” said one livid caller to Hank’s show. “We all saw how he floated away from the rescuers! Somebody explain that to me!”
“How do we know he’s not a weapon of mass destruction?” said another.
“I don’t like his face,” said another.
Society sorted into two distinct camps: 1.) Those who loved Dangling Joe, and 2.) Those who hated him. There was a third camp, too, but it was a pretty small camp. These people didn’t love or hate Joe, but they wanted everyone to please recognize that he was significant. They were pretty sure he was a metaphor for something really interesting, and that’s what they argued about, mostly at independent coffee shops.
T-shirts appeared with a picture of the man inside a red circle with a line through it: Just Say No to Dangling Joe!
Other shirts displayed Joe’s beatific smile with the simple caption: Joe Knows.
Marry me, Joe! was another popular shirt.
The arguments intensified. Throngs of demonstrators, both pro- and anti-Joe, traveled from far corners of the country. They gathered beneath him to wave their signs and chant their chants. Joe, Joe, you’ve got to go! And No Joe! No Joe! And Joe, Joe, he’s our man, from Vietnam, China, or Japan! Yaaaay, JOE! Security was overtaxed. Violence broke out. One guy chucked a rock at another guy, prompting a brawl. Hot dogs were stolen, car windows smashed. Someone was caught readying a high-powered rifle with a scope. The National Guard was deployed. The President issued a statement to Dangling Joe, delivered through a P.A. system in seven languages on a giant video screen set atop the 47- story building:
“Greetings, unknown man. This is the President of the United States. We don’t know where you are from or what your purpose is. Nor do we know how you are dangling like that, defying gravity. We don’t understand why you don’t need food or water, nor why you look so pleased. Your presence, however, has caused us as a nation to do some serious self-reflection about our identity. Are we a country who welcomes strangers, whatever their origin, whatever their dangling preferences? Or are we distrustful and fearful of those who are different? Speak to us, dangling man! Tell us what to do. Remind us who we are.”
The President broke down in tears. He was mocked for this roundly in the press. Some people liked his display of sensitivity, but most thought it showed weakness. Whether or not you were pro- or anti-Presidential tears, however, the undeniable result was that nobody talked about what the President had said. His message, his questions, his whole speech: ignored and forgotten. When his term expired, the President failed to even get his party’s nomination for re- election.
The President’s crying jag seemed to trigger the end of the mania. It’s possible that he expressed some deep-seated feelings that citizens weren’t even aware they had. Or that his tears represented the catharsis that the nation required in order to move on.
More likely, though, is the fact that even a phenomenon that breaks all known laws of physics gets boring after a while. People’s necks got sore from staring up like that. They forgot he was there. What once seemed like a monumental moment in human history shrank to a blip on the radar of recorded time. The novelty of Dangling Joe soon wore off. Hank Hardwood set his sights on an outrageous new dance craze. Doc Ready, the man who’d come closest to Dangling Joe, stopped getting interviewed on talk shows. He died a couple of years later trying to rescue a moose trapped on a wayward block of ice. At his funeral he was remembered for the many people he had saved rather than the one man he hadn’t.
I want to make it clear: Dangling Joe didn’t go anywhere. He’s still up there, if you look. But you’ve probably got more important things to do.
**
Darrin Doyle has lived in Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Cincinnati, Louisville, Osaka (Japan), and Manhattan (Kansas). He has worked as a paperboy, mover, janitor, telemarketer, pizza delivery driver, door-to-door salesman, copy consultant, porn store clerk, freelance writer, and technical writer, among other jobs. After graduating from Western Michigan University with an MFA in fiction, he taught English in Japan for a year. He then earned his PhD from the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of the novels Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story (LSU Press) and The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (St. Martin’s), and the short story collection The Dark Will End the Dark (Tortoise Books). His short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Harpur Palate, Redivider, BULL, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Currently he teaches at Central Michigan University and lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan with his wife and two sons.
Aesop Lake by Sarah Ward was published July 24th, 2018. © Green Writers Press – reprinted here with author’s permission.
“Do you think the water will be cold?” I ask.
“Should be cold enough.” He reaches over and pinches my left nipple. My cheeks burn but I don’t move away, just hold my arms in tighter to my sides as he starts laughing. I push the uncomfortable feeling away and let his smile make me feel better.
The gravel under the tires crackles as we pull into the parking lot of the reservoir. Voices are coming from the dark water, and the occasional splash echoes through the trees. Someone is probably jumping off the dam into the thirty-foot black water. I wonder again how cold it is. Probably better to just jump and get it over with, otherwise I might chicken out. The thought of being naked in the icy water makes me blush again, and then I see the other car. Damn.
“Come on, David. Let’s get out of here,” I urge. “I don’t want to take my clothes off in front of people and I didn’t bring a suit.”
“Let’s just see who it is,” he insists, parking the 4×4. David doesn’t acknowledge the silver Beetle parked under the trees, but I know it’s Ricky and Jonathan. I don’t really care that they’re gay, and for the most part it doesn’t really affect me. Ricky and I do labs together. He’s smart, pretty funny, gentle, and very, very gay. When a beautiful doe-eyed boy looks dreamily at his best friend, you can tell they’re not just friends.
“I don’t want to skinny dip with other people around, David, and I don’t have a suit. Let’s just go.” I’m begging now, but he is already out the door, closing it quietly. I climb out and sidle up, grabbing his hand, which he squeezes.
The moonlight strikes the water, lighting up the silhouette of two boys with their arms wrapped tightly around each other. They’re making out near one of the big boulders lining the shore. Ricky’s smaller physique against Jonathan’s makes him look almost feminine, but the squareness of their shoulders, the flat chests and narrow waists, gives them away.
“Let’s go, David,” I whisper. I can see his chest heaving. His anger is a python, squeezing the warmth from the air.
“What the fuck!” he snaps, shifting back and forth on his feet. “Those fucking faggots are messing up our spot! What the fuck are they doing?”
I pull David by the arm back towards the pickup.
“Come on, David, let’s go. I don’t really care if we can’t swim tonight. We can come back another time.”
He lets me drag him away, back down the path and to the truck. I’m relieved. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Before I know what’s happening, I hear him talking to MJ.
“You gotta get over to the dam, dude. We got ourselves a couple of pansies doing the nasty. . . . Yeah, no shit. Are you coming or what?”
I raise my hand to cover my shocked mouth.
He looks up at me. “What?”
“Why are you doing this?” An urge to scream out to Ricky and Jonathan rises. I know MJ only lives a mile and a half down the road. He’ll be here any minute.
“Why am I doing what? Is one of them your gay BFF?” He raises his voice high and flicks out a pinky.
I stare at David for a long moment, and he stares back, daring me to challenge him. My heart pounds in my chest, and I drop my gaze. David steps closer and places his large hand on the back of my thigh, pulling me close.
“This,” he says, pulling my body up against him, “this is what is meant to happen between a man and a woman.” He leans in, pressing me between his hips and the cold metal of his truck. I don’t move or breathe. I can’t.
I hear tires on gravel and MJ pulls up in his mother’s Suburban. He jumps out. David turns away from me as if nothing is happening. I take a step away from the truck bed, trying to act as if everything is fine. My stomach does a flip as I see what MJ is holding.
“What are you doing?” I ask. MJ looks down at his shotgun.
“This? It’s just for show.” And David starts snickering, his dark hair cutting across his beautiful eyes. David catches my expression, and suddenly he knows exactly what I’m going to do. He grabs me by the arm and digs in his fingers.
“Don’t spoil all our fun,” he whispers. “We aren’t going to hurt them, Leda. No one is going to get hurt. I promise. Get in the truck and wait for us,” he commands. “Can I trust you?” he asks. “Because if I can’t, I’m sure the cops would love to hear about your mom.”
My gut tightens into my chest. I nod, exhaling. He slowly relaxes his grip.
“Just stay here. We won’t take long, just a little scare.” His voice is steady. He and MJ move down to the water.
I back away towards the door of the truck and feel for the cool, worn handle. I clamber up to the passenger’s seat and squint into the darkness.
A shot rings out and someone’s scream breaks through the dense air of the cab. There is splashing, shouting. Then another shot and more screams. My heart is pounding. I pull my phone from my jeans. Tears slide out of the corners of my eyes. I wipe them quickly away and slide to the floor of the truck.
I hear a blast and something ricochets off the rock next to Ricky’s back. I’m so confused. I hear hollering in the distance, and then screaming in my ear. I look down. It’s coming from Ricky. Someone is yelling, something about queers, but I can’t understand it. I can’t make out any faces, just the shape of two people.
I grab Ricky’s hand and pull him out into the water, his legs moving like the tin man.
“Are you okay?” I ask. Ricky’s face is terror-stricken. His eyes are bulging and he stares straight ahead.
“Come on. We have to swim away, now.” I try to pull Ricky into the deeper water. His arms and legs will not move. The white witch has turned him to stone. He just stands there, knee-deep.
“I’m going to teach two queens a lesson,” a voice declares, moving closer.
“Jesus, Ricky, we have to get out of here. Someone is coming. We have to swim away,” I plead, but nothing snaps Ricky out of it. Hot tears run down my cheeks. Desperation clutches my heart. I have seen enough movies to know this is not going to end well.
“Leave us alone!” I shout toward the voices. I reach out and slap Ricky across the face. Maybe it will shake him into action. Another shot, and I feel sharp pain in my thigh and butt, like bee stings. My hands instinctively move over my crotch. My thigh is numb. Ricky begins to shake uncontrollably. He is the lamb waiting for the wolf. Someone stands at the edge of the reservoir and I can see the barrel of a gun pointed in our direction. Another guy moves quickly into the water towards us and reaches out. He grabs Ricky’s arm from his statue of a body.
“No!” I yell, and grab at any part of Ricky I can, trying to keep him away and safe. But I can’t hang on to his wet body, and I can’t let myself be pulled up the embankment with him. He’s being pulled out of my reach. My empty hands swipe the air where Ricky’s body should be.
I turn towards the water. I gulp air and dive deep and far. My mind is racing for an idea of what to do. I can’t fight them. Ricky isn’t here. He has disappeared. I push myself through the water as far from the shore as I can until my lungs feel as if they will explode. My head breaks the surface and I gasp for air.
“So, you’re a faggot and a pussy,” the voice hollers. Another round of pellets sprays the water to my left.
Ricky’s pale body levitates out of the water and lands on the edge of the bank like a mannequin. The shadows move closer. They kick him. He hardly reacts. It looks like they’re pulverizing a log. He doesn’t cry out, or twist away. Their boots thump against him and they laugh.
“Come on out and help your boyfriend, faggot!” a voice yells. “We already fucked him up, there’s not much left for you.” They break into laughter. I keep my legs moving, try to slow my breathing, and swallow the sobs. A light comes on in the distance and I wonder if someone has reported a disturbance.
“Come on, let’s go,” I hear one of them suggest. “If he doesn’t get the message we’ll find him alone.”
“Yeah, okay.” The other is bent over and grabs something off the shoreline. Then his arm flings back and I hear a splash to my left. God, I hope that’s not my phone.
“Did you hear that, fucker? We’ll get you next time!” the first voice yells.
I stay in the water, feeling the milfoil against my legs. Doors slam. There’s more yelling, and then the rip of tires against the gravel. I move through the cold water to the edge of the bank. My body is covered in goosebumps and my legs ache. My mind feels numb, but all my anger is hot in my gut. I know I need to get out of the water, so I find my footing and heave my body onto the grassy slope.
Ricky looks like clay, muted and misshapen. I can’t see any movement, and for a split second I believe the worst. Tears sting my eyes and snot drips from my nose. I reach out to touch his skin. I can feel his chest moving. “Thank god,” I whisper.
“Hey, Ricky. It’s me, Jonathan. Can you hear me? They’re gone.” I want to reassure him. My voice breaks and tears stream down my face. I’m afraid to touch him. I want him to know it’s going to be okay, so I wrap my arms around his shoulders and lean my head against his chest.
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” My head lifts and drops in time to Ricky’s breathing. He needed me and I didn’t help. I should have tried. I should have forced him into the water with me. Maybe I could have knocked that guy off balance. I feel like I’m going to retch.
Mom settles back into her seat, clutches her bag close to her chest, and gives me an anxious look. I just shake my head.
“What is David’s relationship with Ricky Norton?” asks Officer Templeton, redirecting the conversation back to me.
I think about this, remembering our fight. Did you study fairy dust today in chemistry, Leda? I see a fairy escaped the lab. This freakin’ school is full of fairies. A few people around us laughed, and I could see Ricky’s shoulders droop and his head tip forward. Where’s your boyfriend, guy? Did you forget your fairy queen? Red splotches formed on the back of Ricky’s neck. With my arm still looped in David’s I dragged my feet, giving him a few paces to escape. Then David took a big step forward and pulled Ricky’s book down from his arms, sending the notes we had just spent an hour working on flying through the hallway.
Leave him alone, David!
Go fuck yourself, Leda.
It took two days of text flirting to get him to forgive me. Then I got the idea to go swimming after he got off from work at his father’s garage. Even though it was a school night, I just wanted us to make up before the weekend.
I hear myself answer. “David doesn’t really have a relationship with Ricky. I don’t even know if he knows who Ricky is.”
“In a small school of only three hundred students, and seventy-five seniors, David doesn’t know him? Doesn’t know the boy who is your lab partner?”
I’m surprised she knows Ricky is my lab partner.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t know who Ricky is, but they hang out in different crowds, you know? Just because we all go to the same school doesn’t mean we’re all best friends.”
“Okay. I’ll ask in a different way. What kind of interactions have you noticed between David and Ricky in school?”
I don’t want to do this anymore. “I haven’t noticed any interactions. I don’t think they really talk to each other.” The officer is writing lots of notes and keeps flipping pages. I want to tell her to get an iPad or something. I look over to my mom, who is biting her lip. It looks like it’s about to start bleeding.
“What about between MJ and Ricky?”
“MJ?” I ask, and suck in my breath. “Why would I know anything about MJ?”
“Isn’t MJ David’s best friend?” Officer Templeton asks.
“Yeah. I mean, they’re good friends. David has other friends too,” I say, hoping this will steer them towards other possible suspects.
“Do you spend time with David and MJ together?”
“I guess. Sometimes.”
“Well, have you ever noticed any interactions between MJ and Ricky?”
“No.” Another nail in my coffin of lies. Officer Templeton looks at me for a long, silent minute. “Are we done yet? I really need to get back to class.”
She looks over her notes, and then pulls a business card out of her front left pocket. She hands the card to me and then stands to go. She shakes my mother’s hand. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Keogh, feel free to call me if your daughter has any further information to share.”
“I think about it all the time too,” I offer. I’m feeling brave after arguing with Anita.
“What do you think about?” she asks.
“That day, what happened, what I could have done differently . . .” I trail off.
Words pour from her mouth. “Do you ever think about before that day? What lead up to that day? Did you ever wonder if it was safe to be off by yourselves? When you knew Ricky was being bullied by those assholes at school?”
I’m stunned at the accusation in her voice. She thinks it’s my fault. There’s a crack of anger she’s barely holding in. Did Anita tell her about our argument?
“No. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t think…”
“That’s right,” she retorts. “You didn’t think about anything but your own libidos.” Her voice is rising and a red flush is moving up her neck. “You . . . for months, Ricky has shown up at home with bruises from being punched in the arm. Or tripped in the hallway. His notebook covers have crude drawings on them. Horrible drawings! And slurs written by idiots who think they’re funny.”
She raises her right arm in front of her and yanks her sleeve down towards her elbow. “I wondered why he was using up so many notebooks. Until I found them under his bed. I told his father months ago that we should talk with the principal about the way he was being treated, but he said Ricky needed to learn to fight his own battles. But you!” Her tone rises higher. “You knew what was happening! Why didn’t you help him? Why did you take him off to a secluded place where he could be attacked?”
She grabs her mouth to stop herself from yelling more, and the tears stream from the slits of her closed eyes. I stare at her anguished face, feeling remorse for all of it, and remember the many times I saw the bruises on Ricky’s arms, the cut on his lip after being pushed up the stairs by a group of football players who treated him worse than pigskin. Ricky didn’t fight back because he didn’t stand a chance against them. And he was afraid.
**
Sarah Ward writes young adult fiction, poetry and journal articles in the field of child welfare. Over a twenty-five-year career as a social worker, Sarah has worked with young adults and families with harrowing backgrounds. She won the 2007 Editor’s Choice Award for the New England Anthology of Poetry for her poem, “Warmer Waters”; and she has been a member of the League of Vermont Writers since 2008. In her limited spare time, Sarah enjoys a good book, a little yoga, and a cup of tea at her home in Williston, Vermont.
**
Image: Flickr / Mark Leary