Amazon best-selling author
E.H. JACOBS
AUTHOR
Is a New England-based writer and psychologist. He grew up in New York City attending public schools in Brooklyn and Queens and then attending Vassar College and attended Vassar College before moving to the Boston area to work in mental health. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia and then returned to the Boston area to train at Harvard Medical School affiliated institutions and later for work. He has had a private practice in New Hampshire for almost 40 years and has published two books and numerous papers and articles in psychology as well as being a contributing book review editor of the American Journal of Psychotherapy and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School.
About 25 years ago, E.H. began more literary pursuits, and his short stories, poetry and nonfiction pieces have appeared in the journals Libre, Glacial Hills Review, Best of Choeofpleirn Press, Streetlight Magazine 2019 and 2021 Anthologies, Abandoned Mine, Coneflower Café, Santa Fe Literary Review, Permafrost Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Storgy Magazine, Streetlight Magazine, Aji Magazine, Bryant Literary Review, The Bluebird Word, and Smoky Quartz. He has participated in fiction and poetry workshops with the Kenyon Review, Carve Magazine and Tupelo Press. He was a finalist in the Derick Burleson Poetry and the Phil Heldrich Nonfiction Contests and is a nominee for the Nina Riggs Poetry Award. Splintered River – a literary political drama - is his debut novel.
MY JOURNEY TO SPLINTERED RIVER
I imagine that I’m like many writers and many daydreamers — always thinking, “what if?” When Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, and when subsequent similar tragedies occurred throughout the country, I experienced myself and much of the nation reacting with horror and sorrow. I also witnessed how these events were responded to by people in power, for both good and ill, and how much of that response, whether well-intentioned or not, was in the service of manipulating public perception, opinion and policy. So, the “what if’s” started in my brain. What if all of these people in the public arena used the media to advance their own agendas, what if some of these people tried to manipulate public reaction to these events for their own aims (selfish or laudatory), and what if these small, individual actions had an unforeseen, cumulative effect that ran out of control? At the time, I was reading works on chaos theory, a complicated set of ideas that includes the notion that complex systems, like our society, maintain a state of homeostasis (more of less keeping the status quo) by adapting to those changes in ways that helps that system (society) maintain equilibrium — until (and here’s the rub) those changes inject too much energy into the system, and the only way the system can adapt and survive is to radically change its structure. Systems are complex, and even small actions can have wide-ranging effects. That’s where the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings in one place can affect the weather pattern at some remote location comes in: every action has an effect, and enough actions can have a cumulative effect to upset the whole apple cart, so to speak. So, I thought, what if such an event in a small town somewhere (and I chose Louisiana because I have spent some time there and am fascinated by the culture, history, cuisine and music) gets manipulated by politicians and public figures on a local and national level to cumulatively shift the entire society and result in the second American secessionist movement.
The story evolved from just a political drama to a personal kind of love story between two minor but important characters in the book: Bertha, the mother of the slain teenager, and Doree, the institutionalized wife of the vice president of the United States, for whom Bertha cares at a nursing facility. These two women grow in importance during the course of the book.
When I started thinking about this book, I started collecting all the newspaper and magazine clippings I could find on the Michael Brown killing and its aftermath. These helped me develop the skeleton of the novel, but I knew that media reports tend to simplify things into black and white terms, and I had to make my characters, at least most of them, full, human and vulnerable rather than stereotypes because they, too, were caught up in events larger than themselves with which they were trying to cope with limitations imposed by circumstance and by their human frailties.
Another influence was a powerful piece of art that I saw on a visit to the Broad Foundation in LA: a large black and white drawing by Robert Longo of police in Ferguson, MO trying to maintain the peace. The artwork is imposing, with the police silhouetted against a white background, the figures merged together and blurred with what might be smoke and fog. It is an unforgettable, viscerally moving piece. That piece of art became the inspiration of the riot scene when the National Guard lands in Splintered River.
Take all of this and place it on top of my fascination with political thrillers in my youth, and you get the cocktail that, somehow, shaken up, helped produce Splintered River. This novel, then, arose out of national headlines, unsettling trends in society, my own musings and daydreams, my mind’s associations to ideas, artwork, and youthful fascination and, of course, my own unconscious forces that I may not be aware of. I hope it created a “rich roux,” to quote the first chapter in the book, that is an engaging, thought-provoking and enjoyable read for everyone.
SHORT STORIES & POETRY
Published in Penstricken, 2024
No afternoon sun would peek through the shades and illuminate Ben’s drawings pinned to the colorless wall. Today would be overcast, gray. Boston, early spring. Mud season. Ben didn’t look out. He knew the clouds, he knew the dampness, he knew the dreary skyline absent the sun glinting off the Hancock’s glass edifice. Dreary, even from fifteen floors up. He squinted at his five drawings, trying to discern the details: the width of the midways, the precise distance between the rides, the correctness of the mechanics. If these were optimal, then the park visitors would have to be happy. But, which of the five was the most perfect?
I need more light, Ben said to himself, switching on the overhead fluorescents. The lights hesitated, then the room thrummed with intense whiteness—harsh and sterile—a low buzz, like insects in summer’s dusk. His mother, sitting in a standard hospital-stock, wood-frame chair upholstered in tight vinyl, the kind that would stick to your legs if you wore shorts, roused out of that semi-somnambulant state that chronic visitors to chronic hospital patients often lapse into, opened her eyes, looking surprised to find herself wearing her reading glasses with a book resting on her stomach. She started, suddenly realizing what had awakened her, and simply nodded. Then she looked down at her creased, cream-colored silk blouse, straightened her posture and smoothed her clothing. Noticing that her gold necklace was askew, she adjusted it so the pendant was perfectly centered.
Before returning to the table, Ben looked out into the hallway to make sure no one was watching. He heard some of the higher-pitched voices coming from the nurse’s station, floating over the beeps and hums of the monitors and machines, floating through the plasma of fluorescence and the piercingwhiteness of the hallway. How anyone could tolerate that bombardment he could not comprehend. Since there was no one to remind him of the hospital’s open-door mandate, Ben, normally conscientious of rules and procedures, closed the door to shut out what he could not control.
Ben was tall and thin, taller than a typical twelve-year-old, and his thinness gave him a stretched-out appearance, like someone had pulled on some putty without bothering to return it to its original shape. He had a medium-brown complexion - bequeathed him by his African-American mother and Caucasian father - and a way of smiling while keeping his eyes fixed and serious. He wasn’t accustomed to changing his mind—an unfortunate characteristic of his ‘condition’—as his third grade teacher had referred to it—but, on his current project, he was tormented by doubt. He couldn’t un-make a decision because he was afraid that, once he did, he would be rendered incapable of making another. He stood over the large circular table—a concession from the hospital administrator to one of his longest-staying ‘guests,’ as he liked to call Ben—where small, painted plastic figures, houses, trees and vehicles formed an imaginary village. He looked over his ‘kingdom,’ as his mother called it, and
blew off the dust that had settled on the pieces he hadn’t moved for a while. He seemed to be thinking things over when he heard a soft knock at the door, and smiled at the greeting,‘Hello, kiddo!’
‘Dr. Casey! Is it that time already?’
‘Sure is. Just making my rounds.’ She leaned her head into the doorway, never mentioning Ben’s violation of hospital policy. ‘May I?’
Dr. Casey wore a standard white coat with a stethoscope draped around her neck. Her large pockets always held things that Ben couldn’t clearly see. She had straight, brown hair tied back, giving her young face a more severe, authoritative appearance. She smiled with her entire face, the corners of her mouth pulled back by hidden strings. She approached Ben’s table. ‘
What is it today, Ben? Pirates’ Cove?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Nah. I know you like pirates, but I’m not a big fan. Everyone has this romantic idea but, after doing some research, they lost their appeal. They were actually quite mean and unsanitary. And they spent a lot of time drunk. It’s a wonder they succeeded in robbing anyone at all.’
Dr. Casey laughed, her eyes steadily on Ben, inviting him to make eye contact. ‘You’re a good researcher.’
‘I know. My teachers call me ‘Little Professor.’
‘So, if not pirates, what then?’
A nurse paused in the doorway, a bushy red beard framing a wide, toothy smile, partially obscured by an untrimmed moustache. ‘Hello, Ben. Hi Dr. Casey. Looking forward to Thursday night?’
‘I guess,’ she shrugged, looking embarrassed.
‘Well, I’ll be there!’ The nurse waved and left.
Ben said, in a slow drawl, ‘Is that your boyyyy friend?’
Dr Casey chuckled. ‘I guess you’re starting to see us as family. We’d better get you healthy and out the door faster.’
‘What is it?’ said Ben’s mother.
‘What is what?’
‘Thursday night.’
Dr. Casey made a dismissive movement with her hand. ‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Well, it was something enough for that nurse.’
Dr. Casey stood up straight, elongating her 5’11” frame. ‘Some of them make a big deal of our annual meeting.’
‘Is it a big deal?’
‘To some, it is.’ Ben’s mother would not take her eyes off Dr. Casey, so Dr. Casey cleared her throat. ‘I’m being given an award. No big deal.’
‘That’s awesome, Dr, Casey,’ said Ben, clapping his hands several times a bit too loudly and finally making eye contact.
Dr. Casey walked to the window overlooking Boston. The sky was animated, shifting. large grey clouds pushing out the blueness, flowing past the Hancock and Prudential buildings like a time-lapse film of a storm, wind whipping the flag that looked over the hospital, bursts of white lightning in the distance.
‘Have you looked outside?’ She turned to face Ben.
‘Nah, been too busy thinking about this.’ He pointed to the world on his table.
‘Well, you’ve been holed up here so long. Don’t forget there’s a world out there and we aim to get you back to it.’
Ben’s mother glanced out the window. ‘It looks like a good day not to be out there.’
‘There are many bad days out there. But we want to get Ben living in the world again. As soon as he’s medically stable.’ She looked at Ben. ‘Hopefully by your thirteenth birthday.’
Ben’s mother put down her magazine and stood next to Dr. Casey, both staring out at the
approaching storm.‘Menacing… but beautiful,’ said Dr. Casey, barely audible.
‘What was that?’ asked Ben. Dr. Casey just smiled.
‘Look, I have to finish my rounds. Ben, let me know when you decide what world you’ve decided to create this week. It’s always a surprise.’
As she headed toward the door, Ben’s mother called after her. ‘What’s the award for?’
Dr. Casey appeared flustered. ‘Just… just for my work here. And in the community.’ She smiled and exited.
The sky had brightened since the morning storm, and Ben was backlit as he leaned on the windowsill. He looked up as Dr. Casey poked her head in the door
‘Where’s your Mom?’
‘Oh, she went to get dinner with my Dad. You missed them.’
‘Well, I will catch them tomorrow. I’m heading home. A long day. Just wanted to say good night.’ She started to leave when she noticed that something had changed and walked into the room.
‘What have we here?’ she said, approaching the table.
‘Oh, I’ve done some rearranging.’ Ben put his hand on the drawing that was beside him, hiding it from view.
‘So, you had an idea?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ben. ‘But you’ll think it’s ridiculous.’
‘Hmm. Now you have me curious.’
‘But you were leav—'
‘My dinner can wait. What’s cooking in that brain of yours?’
37
Ben opened his hands and swept them over his kingdom. ‘Dr. Casey, I present to you Loofah Land!’
‘What? Did you say, “Loofah Land”?’
Ben nodded. ‘A loofah-themed amusement park.’
‘And that beat out Pirate’s Cove?’ she said, incredulously.
‘The way I see it, loofahs are flexible and strong.’
‘Ok.’
Ben hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, but, unlike pirates, loofahs are useful. And they don’t hurt anybody.’
Ben seemed to struggle with what he wanted to say next, although his tone, as usual, betrayed no emotion. ‘It’s just—’ Ben choked on his words.
Dr. Casey put her arm around him. Ben resisted but gave in to Dr. Casey’s steadfastness. ‘What is it?’
‘They don’t die.’
Dr. Casey pulled Ben closer. Ben stiffened, then leaned into her. ‘I get it now. And we are doing everything we can to make sure you don’t, either, not for a long time.’
Ben pulled away and looked at Dr. Casey. ‘Am I going to hear a version of “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”?’
‘No, I’ll spare you that this time,’ she chuckled.
‘Because what if it does?’
Dr. Casey’s face registered perplexity.
‘Kill you.’ said Ben.
After a few seconds of silence, Ben said, looking at the floor: ‘You need to get dinner.’
Dr. Casey chuckled. ‘It’s good to see that, with all that’s going on, your social skills have improved.’
Now, it was Ben’s turn for perplexity.
‘You stepped into that awkward silence and found a way to soften it. As for the bigger picture, I will not lose hope. And as for dinner, my wife’s cooking tonight, so no hurry—’ Dr. Casey looked up at the clacking of heavy footsteps on the linoleum floor. Ben’s mother greeted Dr. Casey and Ben’s father curtly nodded and looked away.
‘I will let you spend some time together and let you tend to Loofah Land—’
‘Loofah Land?’ interjected Ben’s father. ‘We have our lives turned upside down and you’re talking about Loofah Land? I… I just don’t know what to say.’
‘I’m sorry Mr. Berman. I’m just humouring Ben’s interest. I know this lengthy
hospitalisation has been difficult, and I assure you—’
‘You’re assuring me? Assuring me of what? So far, all I know is that my boy is critically ill with a rare blood disorder and might… might… be eligible for some experimental treatments that may or may not work if he can meet certain criteria which he may or may not be able to meet, and if he can get them in time before his time runs out, and you can’t tell me or my wife how long it will take to find this out or—’
‘Mr. Berman, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we advise keeping Ben here until we have run all the necessary tests, and he meets the recommended weight and strength guidelines so he does not risk contracting something on the outside that would delay his treatment even more.’
Ben’s father crossed his arms over his chest while his mother put her hand on his shoulder, either as a sign of support or a plea for restraint, it wasn’t clear. He continued: ‘And meanwhile the disease is attacking his organs. I mean, how much time do we have to fool around with here?’
Ben’s mother said, ‘I don’t think we should be discussing this around Ben.’
‘We have to grab these busy doctors when we can. After all, we are at a Harvard teaching hospital. They are very busy.’
At a loss for how to respond to the sarcasm, Dr. Casey fingered her stethoscope. Ben leaned over his kingdom and rearranged the pieces, humming to himself.
‘The protocol—’ began Dr. Casey.
‘That’s all I ever hear about, “the protocol.” Meanwhile, our son here is increasingly at risk. Our family life is in tatters.’
‘Mr. and Mrs. Berman,’ said Dr. Casey, now looking at Ben’s mother and avoiding his father’s glare, ‘I know this is impossibly difficult. I won’t pretend to know what it’s like for your family. But your frustration I can appreciate. This is where we work with people who have these rare and hard to treat illnesses. I see this despair every day. That is why we who work here do what we do. We don’t rest until we know we have done everything possible for our patients. I will tell my department chief about our conversation and see if he can stop in to talk to you tomorrow, if you will be here.’
Dr. Casey turned to Ben. ‘And I will check in again in the morning. Good night, Ben.
Morning came early for Ben. By the time Dr. Casey was making her rounds, Ben was out of bed at his table, cutting up soft pieces of balsa wood with a pair of scissors. His room luminesced with fluorescence. Dr. Casey stood for several minutes, amazed at Ben’s ability to focus so intently as to block out the rest of the world. ‘So, you managed to swindle scissors from the nursing staff?’
Ben started.
‘You are a pirate!’ she laughed. ‘What are you doing?’
Dr. Casey stood with her hands behind her back and bent over the table. Ben knelt at the table rearranging scenery, moving trees and streetlights from the middle to the left side of his kingdom. Several figures of various sizes populated the table, figures that she hadn’t seen before. They weren’t people or animals. They seemed to be vertical pieces of balsa wood, some tall, some short, with faces drawn on them. There were several figures that seemed to be riding larger versions of those objects in a cordoned off area: a loofah amusement park ride.
‘I’m building Loofah Land! Loofah families, loofah pets, loofah rides.’
Ben pointed to a circle in the middle of his model. There were two loofah figures holding small loofah sticks, as if engaged in a sword fight.
‘See this?’ Ben asked excitedly. ‘This is where people who are mad at each other can go and have a loofah sword fight. They can fight and fight and no one gets hurt. They can do it as long as they like until they’re exhausted and have to stop.’
‘Or until they realise how silly they’re being and lie down and start laughing.’
‘And this… and this,’ said Ben, almost knocking over a half dozen pieces as he pointed to a house and several loofah people gathered around it, ‘this is the medical tent. For people who have accidents or get sick.’
‘How thoughtful of you.’
‘And nothing ever hurts. All the shots, all the blood tests, they’re all with loofahs. Loofahs and loofah people can absorb anything, so there’s no need for anything sharp.’ With this, he looked up at Dr. Casey, searching for her reaction.
‘And you did all this since I checked out last night?’
‘Yeah. I remembered my aunt had given me this craft kit that had pieces of balsa wood. Do you like it?’
‘Very much.’
Ben noticed that Dr. Casey’s hands were still behind her back. ‘What’s that you got?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Behind your back. You’re hiding something.’
Dr. Casey smiled and brought her hands out in front of her.
Ben stood and grinned. ‘Is that for me?’
Dr. Casey nodded.
‘A pirate ship?’
Dr. Casey nodded again. ‘Even if your theme park isn’t Pirates’ Cove, I figured every park needs a pirate ship ride.’
Ben reached out and took the miniature plastic ship.
‘This is so cool! Look at the detail on this galleon—the gunwale, the crow’s nest! There’s the bow anchor, the portholes, cannon. Wow, this has everything! I’ve never seen anything like this.’
‘Where do you want to put it?’
Ben jumped up and down and flapped his arms. ‘I’m too excited!’
‘A little positive energy is good for a change.’
‘The kids make fun of me when I do that.’
‘What do they do when they get excited about something?’
Ben paused ‘I… I don’t know.’
‘Well, try to observe them, and then you can decide which way is best for you. But don’t let on thatyou’re observing them.’
‘I’ll get to practice this afternoon.’
Dr. Casey looked puzzled, and Ben immediately said: ‘Some of my frie… well, some kids from
school, they’re coming to visit.’‘How nice, Ben! Are these kids in your class? Friends?’
‘Kids I know from school. Some of them used to make fun of me, but that’s ok. I can’t wait to show them Loofah Land!’
Dr. Casey walked to the door singing, ‘Yo-ho-ho, a pirate’s life for me.’ She looked over her
shoulder to see Ben carefully clearing a space for the ship at the edge of the table.Without looking up, Ben said: ‘I hope you’re not thinking of singing at your award ceremony.’
‘Would you prefer Sloop John B?’
Ben looked up. ‘That’s a better song, but the song isn’t the issue.’
‘Aye, I’ll sing only here, matey, only here.’ She paused and turned to face Ben. ‘I’m off to lunch. Wanna walk me down the hallway?’
The hallway opened up to its usual humming and beeping, with the loud clack of every footstep registering on the linoleum floor, the floor which reflected the harsh overhead lighting no matter how overcast it was outside. Somehow, Ben minded the overload less when walking beside Dr. Casey.
‘So, Ben, I know you’re proud of Loofah Land, but do you think your friends will appreciate it?’
‘Well, you do, don’t you?’ ‘Of course, I do. You have a mature sense of the world. I’m wondering if the typical kid your age is up to your level.’
Ben cast his eyes downward, and his head seemed to almost droop off his neck, like an overripe sunflower. ‘You don’t like it, do you?’
‘I like it very much. It’s just that—’
‘Then why don’t you want me to show it to my friends?’
‘I’m not saying… you said these kids used to tease you. I’m just concerned—’
‘You don’t like it! I knew it!’
‘Ben, I—’ but Ben was already half-way down the hallway on his way back to his room.
Nurse Paxton stroked his red beard and peered into a patient’s chart. He thought he heard something, but any background noise was drowned out by the beeps, buzzes and hums of the ward. He leaned into a chart and paused. He peered down the corridors radiating from the nurse’s station. Walking in the direction of the sound, it grew louder, no longer background. Someone was crying, sobbing it seemed, yet no one had buzzed the nurse’s station.
Ben knelt on the floor, bent over his table. His figurines, houses, trees, trains – everything – were scattered on the table and the floor, like some natural disaster had taken the village unawares.
The next morning, Ben kept the shades closed and the lights off. He had closed off the world outside. Whether it was sunny or stormy was not an object of curiosity for him. He sat at his table, slowly standing up objects and carefully placing them. Nurse Paxton had helped him pick up everything off the floor and pile them on the table the night before, to be sorted out today. Ben breathed rapidly in distress when he couldn’t find something and he was frantically searching under his bed when Dr. Casey walked in, her smile quickly disappearing.
‘Ben, what happened?’
Ben pointed to the chaos. ‘You were right. The kids… I should’ve listened.’
Dr. Casey knelt alongside Ben. ‘It’s ok. Some things you sadly have to find out from experience. Do your parents know?’
‘I talked to them last night. My Dad says I have to learn how to relate to kids my age, that I
shouldn’t say or do dumb things.’‘Is that all he said?’
‘Yeah. I can’t stand him.’
Dr. Casey chewed the inside of her cheek. Ben’s father could be belligerent. He frequently argued with the staff about Ben’s care, about the lighting in the room, about the noise in the hallway, about the food, about there being too much stimulation, about there being not enough stimulation, about Dr. Casey’s schedule. Attempts by the nurses, and by Ben’s psychologist, to give voice to his worry and concern only elicited more defensiveness and admonitions to the staff to just do their jobs. She was well familiar with the forms that anxiety could take, and with the fruitlessness of trying to confront it or to address the underlying terror with certain people. Her father was like that. After an adolescence
spent trying to soothe him and then trying to help him understand himself, she resigned herself to tolerating him, getting out of his way, or gently but firmly standing her ground. Those were the only three options that she felt she could manage, especially after she came out and he considered her ineligible to give him advice on how he should live his life. She was beyond trying to ‘cure’ people like her father of the sublimations they developed for what, to them, was unspeakable. But she still wanted to understand them, which she supposed had led her to get board certified in psychiatry along with internal medicine. There were several times, over the past several months that Ben had been under her care, that she had to firmly put her foot down with Ben’s father. Once, she even turned away from him in the middle of one of his ‘quiet tirades,’ as the staff came to refer to them.‘He might sound harsh, but I guess he doesn’t want to see you hurt.’
Dr. Casey looked in the restroom mirror, straightened her blouse and smoothed her skirt. She smiled and cleared her throat. She had gone to check out the conference room, wanting to familiarise herself with the space in which she would be speaking and get a sense of the expected size of the audience. She was disoriented when the room that had been reserved was dark and empty. Maybe she had the wrong date. Maybe she wasn’t being given an award after all. Then she saw the sign. The meeting had been moved to a larger room to accommodate the expected crowd. It was down the hall, festooned with crepe paper streamers and a long table on the far side where there would be an overabundance of
fruits, muffins, sandwiches and coffee. She could already smell the deep complexity of the coffee that would be brewing. Always strong coffee, at all hours, in the hospital. It was still morning; still time for people to change their minds about coming.Her heart fluttered in her chest, like a hyperactive toddler. If this kept up, she wouldn’t need caffeine. Surprised at how nervous she felt, she thought of her colleagues, members of community non-profits, and her wife who would assemble downstairs to see her in just a few hours. She fumbled with her speech in her head. She wanted to say something profound, something inspiring, something about each moment being a gift, something to occasionally pop up in our minds as we go through each trying day, to remind us… but everything, when she said it, sounded hopelessly cliched. She stood up straight and looked, unblinking, into the mirror again, and cleared her throat.
‘We are only given this moment…’ She shook her head.
‘We are only given this moment…’ she said in a louder voice; and then, more softly, ‘We are only
given…’She turned away from the mirror. If I can’t even get through the first sentence, how will I get
through the speech?She heard a toilet flush and was startled to realise that she wasn’t alone. Mindy Carpenter, Vice
President of Operations, came to the sink and washed her hands. Dr. Casey watched her in the mirror, too embarrassed to speak.‘Not to worry,’ said Carpenter. ‘You’ll do great.’
Dr. Casey decided that no one would remember what she said anyway. She hoped the crowd
wouldn’t be too large. She forced a smile, willing that smile to force the confidence she didn’t yet feel. She heard herself being paged.Dr. Casey hurried to the nurse’s station to see Ben being rushed down the hallway on a gurney. She
hastened to keep up with the hospitalist racing alongside Ben and the nurses and orderlies. Ben’s
kidney functions were declining, his blood pressure was low, and his cardiac rhythm was unstable.
They were transporting him to the ICU. It was unclear if he was having an adverse reaction to his
medication cocktail or if he might have sepsis. Ben was barely conscious. Feeling helpless with the
lack of information, she let Ben proceed with the hospitalist’s promise to keep her updated.The day was a blur of patients, communication with the ICU, and phone calls with Ben’s parents.
Ben had been stabilised, then his condition deteriorated, then he stabilised again. His parents arrived early afternoon. Dr. Casey had grabbed a few moments to check in on them during the day. By the end of the day, Ben was resting, barely conscious, his state stable but uncertain. For the first time since early morning, she thought about the ceremony.Dr. Casey went to the restroom before going down to the basement. She washed her face, refreshed her makeup and rubbed water on a stain on her skirt that she did not remember getting. She exited the bathroom to see several of the nursing and therapy staff rushing to the elevator, trying to get decent seats at the last minute. Nurse Paxton caught her eye.
‘Don’t be late!’ he shouted.
Dr. Casey walked through the ward. On the nearly empty floor, the beeping of the monitors
sounded ear-piercingly loud, the highly polished floors reflecting not only the fluorescent lights but sound as well. The lone nurse left to cover looked up from her notes, started to stand, hesitated, and then quickly strode over to Dr. Casey as Dr. Casey headed to the elevator.‘I’m sorry, Dr. Casey, I don’t want to hold you up. I know everyone’s waiting for you.’
‘No need to apologise, I know you drew the shift—'
‘I just thought you should know—'
Dr. Casey stopped and turned. ‘Yes, what is it?’
‘I… I don’t want to bother you at this time. Dr. Hannigan can cover this, I know, but…’
‘What is it? Just tell me.’
‘Ben, your patient. He’s taken a turn. Heart rate is weak, kidney functions are failing.’
‘Jeez. Is Dr. Hannigan on his way?’
The nurse nodded.
‘Good, then. Thanks for le—’
‘He might not make it through the night,’ the nurse blurted.
Dr. Casey felt her eyes moisten and her lips tremble. ‘I have to get to the ICU,’ she mumbled.
‘But the ceremony…’
Dr. Casey walked quietly into the ICU where Ben lay surrounded by monitors, IVs and machines trying to keep him alive for one more minute, one more hour, one more day. Ben’s eyes were closed, his dark hair looking even darker on his pale face. She sat with Ben’s parents for a few minutes and asked, ‘Have you two eaten anything?’
They looked at her and shook their heads, silent and solemn. Ben’s mother looked worn, her face hanging like glass in an old window. Ben’s father was impassive, his eyes turned toward the floor.
‘Why don’t you grab something from the caf. I’ll sit with him until you get back.’
Ben’s parents didn’t move.
‘I’ll come get you if there’s any change.’
Ben’s mother reached out and squeezed Dr. Casey’s hand. ‘Thank you.’
Ben’s parents, with help from the staff had brought Ben’s table down to the ICU, careful not to disturb the pieces on it, hoping… well, she didn’t know what they were hoping. Maybe that its energy would somehow transfer to Ben. Maybe that Ben would waken enough to see it and then would be infused with… what? Hope? The lifeforce? On the table was an inert amusement park. Miniature rollercoasters, arcade games, food vendors, loofah people. At the head of the table were miniature steps leading to a miniature stage. On the stage: the pirate ship. And, strolling boldly along the main thoroughfare, holding an impossibly long sword, the figurines giving a wide berth: a pirate. A female pirate. With a miniature stethoscope around her neck.
Dr. Casey sat on Ben’s bed and took his hand, speaking quietly to the young boy, saying things that she would not remember the next day. She thought she felt a slight pressure from Ben’s hand, but she couldn't be sure. She heard a sound and looked up. A nurse was at the door.
‘Dr. Casey,’ she whispered. ‘Everyone’s waiting for you. Dr. Morgan called the ward and then here looking for you.’
Dr. Casey nodded and said, ‘It’s ok,’ and turned her head toward Ben, toward whatever life was left in that body, toward what the machines couldn’t be and couldn’t extinguish. She hummed softly as she held Ben’s hand, humming Amazing Grace. When Ben didn’t respond,
she whispered, ‘Ok, try this then,’ and sang: We come on the sloop John B my grandfather and me…minding Ben, not the clock on the wall.‘We are only given this moment,’ she said, maybe to Ben, maybe to herself, maybe to no one. ‘No matter how many moments we are given, we just get one at a time. And we can choose what kind of moment that is…’
The nurse, immobilised in her gaze, her mouth open in silent supplication, her hand suspended in
air, suddenly animated and quietly walked away.‘…and that has to be enough because that’s all there is.’
Published in The Writers’ Journal, 2024
You must remember, we, laughing, hungover sots, misplacing your red Honda on that rainsotted street in North Cambridge. You, goofy grin, mismatched socks, disarranged hair, singing and clapping as we roamed the streets. Later, we were a brotherhood of two, I thought, searching the damp darkness, the backroads, the alleyways, for your lost dog. And we were the mischievous duo I’d sought, slamming the table, singing shanty at that reserved repast. When our hiking trail disappeared beneath brightly blinding innocent new snow on Vancouver island, you led us out. Pines vertically bearing from snowground, sentinels keeping watch – protecting, unyielding – like brotherhood. We would always lace our snowboots, together, find the path. I thought you saw me, too, at the other end of yearning. But mere mirrors were we, mine no longer bearing your sought reflection. So you turned, not looking, not seeing my misplaced trust behind the glass, and moved on, searching for your semblance elsewhere. Yet, relentless hope drew me forward like a promise of new confidences to be kept, like wine in aging casks, to be savored together in autumn’s fall. But a promise solely held is but a deceptive beacon - placating this false believer drawn by your false humanity, your talk of the hungry, oppressed and poor, never touching a friend’s illness and want. So, the nightriver coursed by, a sewer of mephitic waste - the crushed, smoked butts of our days – and you stepped out of that river, never looking back, and I, I never searched the waters, the sodden banks, for shards of your humanity.
Published in Libre, 2024
I was reading over the transcript of a psychological report I had dictated and was amused by the diagnosis the transcriptionist had rendered to my patient: Asparagus Disorder. I had no idea if the patient - a young man who exhibited painful social awkwardness and repetitive and ritualistic behaviors – had an unusual, obsessive fondness for or aversion to a certain green vegetable favored by foodies but, in my professional opinion, he did have a condition that was then known as “Asperger’s Disorder.” This was a term that described individuals at the higher-functioning end of autism. The misunderstanding on the part of the transcriptionist (or, perhaps, my miscommunication through a failure of articulation) was quickly remedied before it was sent out into the world.
Unfortunately, individuals with autism are easily misunderstood, and not only on paper, where the error can be laughed at, and harm can be averted. Add to this that, as children, they are at the mercy of their uncomprehending peers, and you have a recipe for a lot of hurt borne on those misunderstandings.
Robert was in my Honors Social Studies class in high school. He was an affable, smart young man, with a broad, almost cartoon-like smile erupting readily from a wide mouth. His jaw almost seemed suspended on wires as it moved up and down when he laughed. He had a staccato way of speaking with a habit of repeating the beginning sounds of words, like he was pushing them out faster than he could think them -- something between a stammer and a stutter, but not quite either. He was friendly to everyone, and he was the type of kid with whom you could discuss classwork and current events in an intelligent, if concrete, manner, but with whom you would never think of discussing girls or whom you would never invite to your house just to hang out. He was nice, but...different. And being different, unfortunately, was not embedded with much social promise.
In that Social Studies class, the teacher had us elect a class president whose role it was to stand in the front and start each class off with a review of current events and class announcements. The class almost unanimously elected Robert, because we wanted to enjoy the silent amusement of watching and listening to his odd mannerisms. We were all laughing inside and smiling on the outside and, I like to believe, Robert was pleased and encouraged by the smiles and oblivious to the hidden laughter at his expense. I remember Robert going through his morning announcements and myself chuckling inside – an attempt to squeeze one more fleeting, uplifting spark of levity from the tedium of a high school day. Now, a person might read this and think that this was a cheap way for me and my peers to feel superior, but I don’t think that was true (although I am not so infused with my own feelings of superiority that I wouldn’t be open to considering a cogent argument to the contrary). I was sufficiently satisfied with my interests, my social circle and my academic achievements not to need any further bolstering of my self-worth, and sufficiently cognizant of my own family’s relatively low socio-economic status to ensure a certain healthy degree of humility in who I thought I was.
It was after embarking on a career as a clinical psychologist and meeting, evaluating and treating individuals with higher functioning autism that I came to look back on that class with Robert. The work I do has grown in me a deeply-felt fondness and respect for these individuals who face the challenges that I believe Robert faced and probably still faces in life. And now that I have decades of experience in identifying people with these traits, I believe that I count a number of them among my friends, acquaintances and colleagues, although most do not know that I “know” and may or may not know themselves. That is immaterial. What is important is that these individuals are able to form connections with others, have enduring relationships that nurture and support them and are embraced by friends and family in their individualities, including their gifts and their quirks, which is nothing less than we all deserve.
In retrospect, Robert had a challenging road ahead of him, a road maybe not smoothed over much by the group of knuckleheads in his Honors Social Studies class. But, maybe, in our own odd way, we did make him feel important and maybe we were good, polite and well-bred enough to hide how different we felt he was. Maybe it was a good experience for him. Or, maybe, he was hurt by our actions in ways he might or might not have been aware of. I have no idea which one was true. But I also figure that he might not have had many real friends, and that must have made for a painful adolescence.
My speculations can have me running around in mental circles chasing the tail of my imaginings. The real “comedy” here is not Robert’s deficit in social understanding, but our own – the bungling by those of us who supposedly had “normal” social skills. What we thought was comical was sad. What we told ourselves was amusing was insensitive at best. What we intended as harmless amusement was social exclusion. What we thought was his obliviousness was actually ours.
I can only hope that Robert was blessed with a loving, supportive, empathic and wise family, and that, as he traveled his path, and as he travels still, he met with an abundance of understanding and encouragement, as well as, simply, patience and calm, from teachers, mentors, colleagues, supervisors, supervisees and professionals, along with clerks in stores, waiters in restaurants, ushers in theaters and attendants at gas stations -- that these people, in ways large and small, formed for him a village that helped him navigate a sometimes treacherous, sometimes wonderful world with the confidence and fulfillment that he deserved. Whether or not he had a thing for asparagus.
Published in Coneflower Café, 2024
If I stopped believing in time,
I might meet your sarcasm without anger.
If I stopped believing in anger,
I would place my arm around your sorrows,
If I could stop aching with sorrow,
laughter could suspend my gravity.
But, if I untethered from this gravity,
I fear being consumed by longing.
If I escaped the binds of longing,
the void would fill with expectations.
If I could obliterate expectations,
I’d pray your illness would not progress.
And I would want to halt that progress,
but your illness would take no mind.
So I drown out my clattering mind,
and your body degrades and wastes.
When I turn my eye from your wasting,
I trip on the crag of necessity.
Then I refuse to trust in necessity,
and I am crushed by the vagaries of choice.
I deny the imperatives of choice,
and instead I anchor in me.
When faith falters in the soundness of me,
I question the value of life.
As I become unmoored in life,
I seek hope in reconciliation.
But I cannot heal in reconciliation,
as you soon will run out of time.
Published in Bryant Literary Review, 2024
We were discussing the merits of button-down collars versus point collars – me, my neighbor Ray, and this guy whose name I forgot as soon as I heard it, a guy with a face like a slab of meat that’d been hanging on a hook for a month outside the freezer compartment. Meat-face had advised his son to wear a point collar at his first post-college job interviews to give him that polished, professional appearance. I just hope that his son wasn’t trying to dress up a face like his father’s, ‘cause that would be difficult. I heartily agreed, though I really didn’t give a shit; I was just glad that the subject had changed from their golf tournament in Florida as soon as Karl left after describing in excruciating detail his missed putt on the 18th hole last Sunday that caused him to blow the lead for his team, if that’s the right term for a group of golfers. I was going to suggest that, maybe, his putter needed work, but I knew the humor would be lost on all of them before I even opened my mouth. I actually did try golf once - or was it twice? – after moving to the suburbs – my wife’s idea. You know what they say: happy wife, happy life - as if that’s all there is – but golf was so suburban, if you know what I mean, and being a Brooklyn boy, well, let’s just say that those goofy shoes clashed with my Ramones t-shirt collection.
It's two months after Christmas and the house still has the decorations up. Karl, our host, is wearing a red cardigan (Mr. Rogers, anyone?), and his wife, Marie, is topping off everyone’s glasses with punch whenever she spots one half-empty. Marie is the type who flits around the room making sure everyone is having a good time. She incessantly asks: Are you having fun? Do you have enough to drink? Isn’t this darling? How great is it to be together? with an exclamation and raised volume at the end of each sentence, turning each interrogatory into a command. With her sunny disposition and her frenetic flitting style, it would be impossible for anyone who was not having fun to be honest about it. The women in the kitchen (always in the kitchen!) are still talking about the cookies they had baked for the holidays and, oh, how lovely you look, and, of course you don’t look like you gained weight, don’t be silly! After the pre-holiday “gatherings,” cookie swaps and Yankee swaps and then, of course, the holiday parties, the season wouldn’t be complete without some post-holiday festivities, so we wouldn’t forget the reasons for the season: golf, Florida and shirt collars.
I wave to my wife. She catches my eye and smiles. I know that smile, that I know you’re bored but you can at least make an effort smile. There she is, maybe enjoying herself, maybe just making an effort, maybe some of each. Her effort to be a good neighbor. You never know when you might need them.
At this point in the party, I don’t foresee a conversation taking an unusual direction. Maybe someone will bring up an idiotic political point and I will have to decide whether to bite my tongue, leave the room, or engage, and that would be stimulating, but hardly unique, and would just invite reprobation from my wife, so I express my gratitude to my hosts, tell them I have some work I have to catch up on, nod to my wife who probably anticipated this, and exit through the garage before anyone can walk me to the front door. I know Karl keeps his golf clubs in the garage.
The white golf bag sits along the far wall, an overstuffed sock puppet bulging with clubs, balls and tees, with knitted, tasseled Scottish tartan covers for his drivers that make them look like a family of miniature bagpipe players huddled together. I poke around for his five-iron, slip it up my shirt and down my pant leg, and hit the automatic garage door button. My place is two houses down and I walk slowly, so my stiff-leggedness won’t be too obvious to anyone looking out the window. Unfortunately, it’s raining, and now I try to run the distance to my house, but the best I can do is hobble like I’m dragging a bum leg. My neighbor on the other side of me passes in his Mercedes and looks concerned. I wave cheerfully. Nothing to see here!
The metal is cold against my skin, and my wet pants press it closer. Back in my house, I slide the club out of my pants and shirt and unlock the closet in my study. Getting a lock for the closet was a stroke of genius. Honey, I have so much confidential stuff that I bring home; I wouldn’t want the kids to get access to it. I survey my stash. Jim and Doreen’s glass figurine, Rachel and Tom’s Elsa Peretti bowl, Fred and Wilma’s (yes, those are their real names) Florida! coffee mug, Monique and Boris’s soup ladle, and a bunch of other things that I have vowed (to myself) to return someday when I can do so unobtrusively. I will have to start doing that soon, so I don’t forget what belongs to whom. I remember each boring social event associated with each object. Some would think this is perverse, cementing each unpleasant experience in memory with a tangible object rather than letting it fade into oblivion. But, I believe that, if I forget each tiresome encounter with my neighbors, if I fail to account for them, if I let them lose their individuality, they will accumulate in my unconscious, accreting like barnacles on the hull of a ship, and eventually wear me down. Maybe it’s some form of revenge. I don’t take things when I have a good time – only when I’m bored, when I feel my precious time has been stolen, or lost, or frittered away for nothing. And I guess I blame them for being who they are. Or, maybe, it’s self-punishment. It’s nobody’s fault but my own that I ended up here.
Maybe I’ll return an item each time one of them hosts something stimulating, entertaining or enriching, like a reward, but I’ll probably be dead before even a fraction of the stuff is returned on those terms. And who knows how much more of my neighbors’ junk I will have accumulated by then. No, I need a better plan, as I’m running out of space and, anyway, my custody of this stuff was meant to be temporary.
Although I never get the pleasure of seeing my neighbors discover that something is missing, I imagine their conversations, like, Honey, have you seen the… or, Now, where did I put that…as they frantically search the house, turn over throw pillows or get on their hands and knees to look under their cabinets, shelves or bed. Maybe they argue about who has been careless or who was the last one to use it. I can imagine.
I’m puttering around the kitchen when I hear my wife come through the front door a few hours later. It’s starting to get dark, but it’s stopped raining.
“You left early,” she says.
I nod.
“I heard the garage door open and close. Why’d you leave through the garage?”
“I…uh…it was raining. It was a shorter walk home.”
She gives me that look. I can’t really describe that look, but it’s a look to which there is no adequate way to respond. So, I don’t.
“Karl brought some of the guys into the garage to show them his car and his new golf clubs. He seemed to be missing something from his golf bag. Would you know anything about it?”
“About what exactly?”
“What was missing.”
“What was missing?”
“I don’t know. Something having to do with golf, I suppose.”
“I don’t know anything about golf.”
She gives me that look again. “You’re just full of non-sequiturs today, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
She stares at me blankly. “Well, I’m sorry you were bored.”
“Par for the course,” I say flatly.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about golf!” she says, smiling.
I must look puzzled.
“It’s a golf metaphor. How do you not know that?”
“Idioms tend to lose their original meaning over time.”
She touches my back. “You really should try to get to know them and have a good t---”
“I know, I know. I just can’t forgive them for being so insipid.”
“Think of small talk as social glue. It holds us together, and we need that. Besides, you can’t have deep, intellectual conversations with everyone all the time.”
“With someone once in a while would be nice. Then I wouldn’t feel like I had to---” Now, I’ve gone too far. My confessional need has disrupted my instinct for safety. I’m really not good at this cloak and dagger stuff. I could never get away with anything as a kid, because my mother was so good at engaging and listening to me that I ended up telling her everything eventually. She should have been one of those police interrogators who they put into those gray, metallic rooms and watch behind one-way mirrors. They would never need the bad cop part of the act if she were there.
I hope the moment passes, but no such luck. She looks at me and, before she speaks, I blurt out: “I don’t know what I meant by that, Renee (I know that using her name communicates sincerity rather than caginess). I just feel so much resentment at my time being wasted that sometimes I fantasize about getting some sort of revenge.”
“Really?” she says with a leading tone, which reminds me of my mother. “Like what?”
“Oh, y’know, just childish stuff.”
She gives me another look. Not that look, but close.
“Like calling their house and hanging up or moving some of their deck furniture. Stupid stuff.”
“Or taking something out of Karl’s golf bag?” Jeez, she is my mother!
“You’re scaring me,” I say, though she probably doesn’t know what I meant by that.
“You’re scaring me!” She laughs and goes to change out of her post-holiday holiday party at the neighbors’ clothes.
The kids come home from their play dates and want to know if I saw Mr. Guralnick’s new sports car. I realize that I had gone through the garage without looking at anything but the golf bag. I tell them No, and they can’t believe how dense I am. That’s all Karl’s kids could talk about at the Caseys. I can hardly wait for my kids to take up golf. I feel like I’m losing them already.
I tell the kids to wash up and change for dinner, and I check the chicken in the oven and make a dinner salad. I take out the Samuelsons’ salad utensils that I removed from the closet, humming as I toss the vegetables. I know what I’m doing. Every criminal longs to get caught and always leaves clues. Or, maybe, I’m trying to outsmart my mother. Better yet, maybe I need to recreate the emotional safety of being found out by her. The suburbs are where people go to feel safe. Well, most people, anyway.
I pass the salad around the table. As she takes the bowl from my son, my wife looks at me quizzically.
“Where’d you get these?” she asks.
I’m not surprised. What better cure for boredom than flirting with danger, skating on proverbial thin ice?
“Oh, just picked them up,” true, “was in the mood.”
She picks up the utensils and examines them like they’re some interesting archaeological find. “Hm,” she says as she loads salad onto her plate and passes the bowl to my daughter.
“Well,” I say, staying on the ice, “do you like them?”
She finishes chewing and says, “I can see why you do.”
“Non-sequitur?” I say.
“What’s a nonsquitor?” asks my daughter.
“It’s when you say something that does not really mean anything,” I respond.
“Oh, like your jokes?’ says my son.
My wife laughs. The detective work passes too easily. I guess the Samuelsons’ utensils will now take up residence in the kitchen until I’m ready to return them.
Early spring in suburbia. Time for lawn care, power washing decks and planting flowers. Lucy Samuelson had this brilliant idea of having a pre-planting party to celebrate the arrival of spring after the long, cold, dark New Hampshire winter. So, she invited the neighborhood women to discuss flower selection and maybe get everyone in her cul-de-sac to coordinate their plantings to the greatest aesthetic effect. And (groan), the husbands are invited, too. Lucy’s serving finger sandwiches. I think they’re watercress and mayonnaise. What the fuck is watercress anyway? And do they have to put mayonnaise on everything? Whatever happened to mustard? Lucy’s got this feathered, curled bleached blond thing going on, the same “do” you can see in her old photos of her stint as a New England Patriots cheerleader. She has a narrow chin with a wide forehead and a stitched-on smile that makes her look like a grinning light bulb.
There’s a buzz coming from the kitchen and I hear, over some guy sitting on the couch droning on about the new country club he belongs to and how he’s required to spend some minimum amount on their mediocre dinners every month, one of my neighbors – I think it’s Emma Pistorius with her high-pitched nasal squeal that sounds like a jet engine warming up – say: “Yeah, one of my ceramic bowls is missing, you know, the ones I keep on the shelf that everyone admires, one of the ones I got at Macy’s, paid full price for them, too.”
Then I hear Lucy chime in: “I’ve been missing my salad spoon and fork. It’s the oddest thing.”
“And I dunnuh what happened to muh crystal salt and pepper shaker,” I hear someone else say, in what sounds like a Southern accent softened by too many frozen New England winters. I don’t remember a salt and pepper shaker, and that scares me. I’m losing track of this stuff. Unless there’s someone else playing this game too.
I hear Emma’s jet engine squeal again. “Hey, don’t we all have the same cleaning lady?”
Lucy says; “Yeah, I referred both of you to her.”
The conversation pauses, and I think, Shit! I didn’t count on some innocent marginal worker taking the fall for this. I’d better start returning things pronto.
I see Marie walk into the kitchen. “Karl’s golf club is missing. I don’t think our cleaning lady goes into the garage.”
The voice I couldn’t place says, “Yah nevah know.”
Renee comes out of the kitchen holding a platter that she’s drying with a dish towel. She freezes when she sees me. I give her a blank look and shrug, pointing my chin toward Mr. Country Club Complainer, and roll my eyes. Her hard look softens, and I am safe again…for now. But, I know, like poison ivy, we get only so many exposures until our immunity wears off. We just don’t know how many, and I’m afraid of pushing my luck. That’s when I start formulating my plan to start returning my pilfered items… after I figure out what to take from the Samuelsons this time around for inviting me to this agonizingly unbearable time sink. My reverie is interrupted by Tom asking Harlan Samuelson about his autographed sports memorabilia. Harlan takes this opportunity to invite all the guys to follow him up to the loft. As Harlan is complying with a request from his guest, and he is doing so in an oh-so-humble manner, he could not remotely be accused of showing off. Harlan is, indeed, the Master of Matter-of-Factness. He’s not bragging, he’s sharing. The exclamation marks are unstated, but we’re supposed to feel them. (There it is! The autographed jersey of the Patriots star quarterback! And look who’s in that signed photo! Why, it’s Harlan and the championship-winning coach together at a golf tournament!) This is how alpha males do it in the suburbs.
I’m walking with my friend Greg on my street, enjoying a mild spring day. I point out the coordinated plantings on the cul-de-sac. Greg laughs. “I guess you can go for the melting-pot look or for diversity, and I guess individualism lost out.” Greg is one of the few neighbors from whom I have not taken anything, because he usually has something interesting to say or at least asks questions that get you to reveal something interesting about yourself. He and his wife, Marla, are therapists, which might lead you to expect them to be self-consciously probing and intellectually reflective in an annoying, self-help-bestseller kind of way. But they’re not. Lucy Samuelson approaches from the opposite direction in her Lululemon athletic gear, though she is nowhere near breaking a sweat in her saunter through the neighborhood.
“Hey Lucy, what’s new?” says Greg.
To my chagrin, Lucy stops. “Well, the strangest thing. Harlan and I found our missing salad utensils!” She flicks her hair with a quick jerk of her head.
“That’s great!” I say, a little too excitedly.
“I’ll say! They were on a crowded shelf in the garage. I don’t know how they ended up there. I feel bad for suspecting my cleaning lady. She has no idea why I’ve been so cold to her.”
I say, “Glad to hear it,” and start to walk away, but Greg has stopped to chat. The conversation turns to all the neighbors’ missing items.
It is then that Lucy puts some things together and says, “That’s strange. It seems that a lot of these things went missing after some party at someone’s house.” She looks at me, but only a paranoic would read anything meaningful in her look. Greg politely shrugs and says he’s glad her salad utensils turned up and walks on with me.
“Jeez, what passes for conversation here,” he says.
I’m standing in front of my open closet, frantically making a list of all the items in there, who they belong to, and when and how I can surreptitiously return them. I asked Renee for a full run-down of all of our neighborhood social plans so far, and I’m cross-referencing that list with my inventory to effect the quickest return in the most unobtrusive way. I feel like the fugitive criminal in a police drama who’s watching TV and aware that the dragnet is closing in on him. He can’t run anymore and has to get rid of the evidence. The only problem is that, for me to get rid of the evidence, I have to return to the scene of each crime. And I can’t just leave the stuff on their doorsteps, because everyone has those damn cameras now. So, not only will it involve exposing myself - showing up at my neighbors’ homes somehow carrying yet hiding their belongings on my person and putting them in a place they won’t immediately notice but will eventually find, but also accepting more invitations than I would like, and resisting the temptation to take one more thing for each lifeless monotony I have to endure. It worked once with the Samuelsons, but that only makes me feel that I’d be pressing my luck to do it again…and again.
The next social gathering is at the Flintstones. Fred and Wilma’s real last name is Javanovich, but Flintstones is so much more fun to say. And they don’t seem to mind. It’s an obvious, mindless joke. Anything more sophisticated would probably be lost on most of these people. I’m wearing a pair of cargo pants which, although hopelessly out of style, have large pockets, into one of which I have sequestered the Florida! mug. I’m wearing a black and white Ramones t-shirt to make the retro-ness of my pants less obvious. The windows are open, and I smell their fresh-cut grass and new mulch. Fred is a bit obsessive about his lawn, and I don’t see a single weed or blade of crabgrass. And there he is, in the corner, trading lawn care tips with our neighbors. I’m on the periphery of this group, so I can get away with nodding without contributing to the discussion. They’re comparing blade sharpening services (Fred insists he knows the best), discussing which fertilizer spreaders do the most even job (Fred’s offers the most options), and debating which manure yields the maximum growth with the lowest risk of lawn burn (of course, Fred has the right formula). I see Greg and Marla walk in and am relieved that, with them here, I might be able to make this gathering interesting enough to resist the temptation to take something else after I return the mug. I lower my head and walk out of the room and pretend I’m looking for the bathroom. I nod quickly to Greg and Marla and hurry out before getting trapped in a conversation. I walk past the bathroom and, when I’m sure no one is looking, I open the door to the garage a crack, just enough for me to sidle through the door. My pant leg hits the door frame and I hear a crack. I freeze and I can feel in my pocket that the mug is now in two pieces. I look up in time to see Renee come out of the kitchen and walk past the hallway. She sees me and looks confused, but she’s carrying two trays and has to set them down somewhere, so she keeps going into the living room. I rush into the garage, find the metal shelving that every garage seems to house, and place the mug on its side with a heavy hammer on top of it, like it just fell and broke off the handle. Then I go back in the house and approach the bathroom, only it’s occupied. That’s when I notice Renee standing at the end of the hallway staring at me. I wave and smile, and she scowls. I shrug and raise my hands in a submissive pose, nonverbally signaling What? She shakes her head and walks away.
By the time I’m finished with the bathroom, everyone is in the living room listening to Rachel and Tom (the Peretti bowl people) talk about their Nantucket vacation and how pricey all the clothing stores are on the island - with everything costing at least twice what you would pay on the mainland because, of course, everything has to be shipped over, and because most of the people there are rich, so they willingly pay such high prices – and that they bought a few things anyway because, what the heck, vacation, y’know. My eyes are glazing over and I’m looking around for something I can take, but I’m saved by Greg who sits next to me and asks if I’ve seen the latest film at the arts cinema that we occasionally go to in Boston.
Renee interrupts and asks what I was doing in the garage, and I tell her that I was looking for the bathroom and got confused. She gives me that look - the one I mentioned before – when Marla taps her on the shoulder and rescues me. Fortunately, Greg is so hyped about the movie that he ignores the interruption.
By now, I’ve managed to return the Peretti bowl, the glass figurine and most of the other items without adding more than five additional items to my collection. I haven’t figured out yet what to do about Karl’s five iron, as it’s the largest thing I’ve taken and, therefore, the hardest to sneak back in. I’ve thought of volunteering to take in his trash bins when he goes away for a long weekend and, therefore, needing his garage code, but then finding his golf club in the right place would be too obvious a coincidence. Karl might be boring, but he’s not stupid. Even if I did the stiff-legged limp thing (I fell moving my deck furniture. I’ll be all right, don’t worry.) and managed to sneak the club back into the house, where would I leave it? Karl finding it exactly where it was taken from would be just too weird: he knows it hasn’t been there. And it’s not the kind of thing that you move around between different rooms like your keys or your eyeglasses. Maybe the trunk of his car? But how would I get in there? Maybe Marie’s golf bag? I don’t know if their relationship could gently absorb that. This was a big mistake. Maybe the five iron will just have to remain missing. But how much damage have I caused? I find out that a high end five iron can sell for up to $300, and I know Karl doesn’t skimp when it comes to his golf game. Maybe I should come clean and tell him. What a terrible idea! I don’t think he would react the way my mother would. Maybe Renee would have a solution to this. Another terrible idea. I’m thinking that I will have to hold onto the club and just go out to an expensive restaurant with them and pick up the tab. Yes, that’s it.
I start waking up in the middle of the night and staying awake until morning, leaving me exhausted for work. I hadn’t broached the subject of planning a dinner out with Karl and Marie. Renee might like the idea, but it would make her suspicious and then I would have to soft shoe my explanation of one more thing. In my desperation, I decide that Greg is the only one I can possibly talk to.
I meet Greg at a local coffee shop during a weekday so it won’t be too crowded. I had told him that I needed to discuss something personal, that I wanted him to treat me like I was one of his patients in that he would not judge me and that he would keep it confidential. He agreed. My leg is shaking, I start to perspire as I fumble over my words and Greg calmly eyes me over the rim of his coffee cup.
“I hope you’re drinking decaf,” he says.
I let out a slow breath, close my eyes, and unload my saga. When I open my eyes, Greg is staring at me. He puts down his cup and chuckles. “You’re like a suburban guerilla.” Then, he smiles, spreads his hands apart and says, “Look, you’ve got to return the golf club. Do you really want to suffer through a long, expensive evening with Karl and Marie?” And that’s settled.
I’m sitting in Karl and Marie’s living room talking to Marie with Karl in the kitchen pouring the alcohol. Renee is on her way home from a dentist appointment. We were invited for 2 p.m. which, to Karl, is a decent hour to start drinking. Happiest Hour, he calls it. I’m trapped. My leg is shaking involuntarily, and I am hoping that Karl and Marie will be too intoxicated to notice. This is not what I envisioned after talking to Greg. I walked into the house and headed straight to the bathroom, acting like it was urgent. The club was in my pant leg and, since the bathroom is next to the garage, I figured I would take a quick detour into the garage when no one was looking and lean Karl’s iron somewhere against the wall. Except, when I walked past the bathroom door, Marie was passing by the hallway and laughed. I turned around quickly like a thief caught in the act (though I don’t know how many thieves are caught in the act of returning what they’ve stolen). Marie said, “Did you forget where the bathroom was? How much have you had to drink?” I slinked into the bathroom and figured I would have a second chance when I came out. But, when I came out, as soon as I turned to the garage, Karl was there grinning.
“Oh…er…I was just hoping to get a look at your new car.”
“I’ll show you it later. There’s a more important matter. Rocks or straight up?”
So, now I’m trying not to sit too upright as the club is concealed on the inside of my pant leg and then up the front of my shirt. I’m wearing the baggiest clothes I could find; stuff I have left over from before I lost weight. Karl comes in with the drinks and freezes. He stares at my pants.
“What the…?”
Marie looks at him puzzled.
“Did you get an erection talking to my wife?” he says loudly.
Marie looks flustered and blushes.
“No, I…” and I don’t know what to say. I start again. “It’s not what it looks like, Karl, it’s…” and I freeze again. Next thing I know, Marie has left the room and I’m being shown the door.
I’m waiting at home for Renee, sitting on a barstool at the kitchen counter cupping the shaft of Karl’s five iron with the palm of my hand while the clubhead rests on the floor. I’m out of options. Renee registers surprise but her face quickly morphs into her What did you do now? mode. I go into a needlessly lengthy and verbose history of my idiocy, but it comes out more easily than it did with Greg, as this is my second go-round. Renee listens, but her shock and dismay register on her face. If there were such a thing as a visual bullhorn, her face would be it.
I close my eyes and I am back in fifth grade. I have taken a snow globe off my teacher’s desk and brought it home. I confess to my mother, and she asks me why, but I don’t have an answer. I just liked it, and I was mad because my teacher had called on Philip when I had the right answer. She picks up the snow globe and admires the detail in how the small New England town is rendered with the church steeple, the sleighs and the horses. We turn it over a few times and my mother smiles. “It is lovely,” she says. “I can see why you like it.” Then she gently instructs me in right and wrong, and we work out a way of getting it back to my teacher.
If only everyone were my mother.
Published in Glacial Hills Review, and The Best of Choeofpleirn Press, 2023. Finalist in the Phil Heldrich Nonfiction Contest
Brooklyn, New York, circa 1960. It was a time when parents allowed their kids to run free. On steamy summer days, mothers opened their apartment doors as soon as their young ones had finished breakfast and shoo-ed them outside. My brother and I ran through the hallways, hallways smelling of cooking, smelling of old wallpaper, smelling sometimes of roach spray, and ran down the five flights of stairs because waiting for the elevator took too long. We hit the streets, the heat rising from the concrete, and found our friends laden with balls, gloves and bats. Our days were filled with stickball, handball, bike racing, boxball and skelly. On the hottest of days, the building superintendent hooked up a hose on the side of the building and we ran under it squealing like barnyard animals. Sometimes, we just ran around the neighborhood aimlessly, finding the Good Humor man when we wanted a break and fishing in our pockets hoping we had enough change. It was a time before cars had seatbelts and before hand sanitizers were ubiquitous, when you could trust an eight-year-old boy to be safe, supervised only by his friends, and return for dinner, dirty and exhausted, not feeling hungry until he walked in the door, and wash up and change for dinner because that’s what he was supposed to do. Because we were good kids, because people were trustworthy, because everyone usually did the right thing so expected the world to do the same.
We didn’t know we were poor. Dad drove a cab, one of those yellow ones seen everywhere in New York City, and sometimes he would pick us up and give us a ride around the block. For a moment, I was royalty.
Behind our apartment building was an alley. An alley that led to patches of earth that baked into hand-sized clumps on the driest of days. Patches of earth surrounded a garden of parched flowers and desiccated leaves. The garden led to the entrance of a small what-barely-passed-as-a-house where lived an old woman who sometimes appeared in her front yard with a watering can, as if her occasional attention to her plants made up for their usual neglect. Here lived someone who seemed really poor.
Although we were good kids and not in need of supervision. we were kids, and sometimes seven- to eleven-year-old boys will, in spite of their upbringing and their agreeable nature, in some situations, hear the siren song of The Lord of the Flies.
It was one of those dry, summer days, when the air was coated with dust, the plants withered, and the dirt cracked and congealed into those clumps that we called “dirt bombs.” We were worn out from the heat, intoxicated by fatigue and sweat, and roving and jabbering, doing what we could to stay alert and squeeze one more hour out of the day before we had to answer dinner’s call. We were passing the alley as one of us pivoted and turned and walked toward the cracked-earth domain of the old woman. The rest of us followed. The woman appeared wearing a loose-fitting house dress, her hair a mouse nest of gray twigs. She stared at this mob, and I heard a soft splat as a dirt bomb pressed flat against the side of her house, giving up its brown essence like smoke rising from embers. The old woman looked to where the bomb had landed. Then I saw another aloft, and I followed its arc until it splattered a few inches from the first. The old woman just stood and stared. Then, all of my friends picked up and heaved the dirt bombs in gleeful abandon as the woman stood transfixed in bewilderment. I turned and took a half-step in the direction of the street and looked at my friends as if they could read my mind and breach the invisible force field to get me out of there. “Hey, guys, let’s---” but they had already crossed to the other side. I looked at the ground, then I looked at the old woman and picked up a dirt bomb. I cocked my arm.
Now, I’d like to think I had the sense not to chuck that dirt bomb, or, at most, that I faked
throwing it, so I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of my friends. But, as an eight-year-old
boy running in a pack of other juiced-up boys, did I have that much sense? I can’t be sure, or, at least, I like to think that I don’t know. Memory works by completing the action, by filling in gaps. It works like the laws of physics, having its own inertia, a body in motion and all that. I tend to think that the best that boy might have been capable of was to hesitate and look for a way out before joining the melee. So, if I had to put money on it, I would bet that, in the end, I let it go with all the might my skinny eight-year-old arms could muster. And that’s the memory I’ve created for myself. We all look for truth. But is there truth in memory? It would make sense that, when we remanufacture the past (which is what memory is), our minds strive to push our memories in a heroic direction. So, despite that, the fact that my memory errs on the side of me throwing the thing, and has me feeling bad about doing it, seems to tip the scale to guilty.
That woman did not call the police. She did not chase us down the street. She did not walk around the corner to see if she could call us out to our parents. Maybe she was too scared, maybe she felt she was too poor, or maybe she had more compassion and understanding - more humanity - than we were able to bestow on her. Maybe she knew that some boys could get a bit out of control occasionally, and that, in this instance, no great harm was done.
I don’t remember getting into any other trouble. The closest brush with danger that I remember was running out into the street and almost getting hit by a car. Since we played in the street all the time, I think that would count as a miracle. Oh, and those summer hose showers? One day I was running through it like a banshee, and I tripped and fell and got a piece of glass embedded in my hand. I still have the scar that testifies to that truth.
I guess Brooklyn was a good place in which to grow up after all. In that place, at that time, you could walk outside and get an instant play group, have the run of the streets with freedom from morning to sunset, and survive your idiocies with few scars and few regrets. At least, that’s what my memory told me most recently.
If I were poor now, I would know it. To be poor without aggrievement or envy, to have the luxury of your mistakes receding into the mist of the past yet have reminders, like the ghost of a scene or a scar on your hand, that gently tug at your conscience, to be free of the need to have this or that as long as you have food and shelter, to not know any better, to get away with childhood excesses without undue harm to self and others – these are the blessings, maybe the miracles, of my Brooklyn boyhood. It was a time when scarcity forced sharing, crowding taught tolerance, and self-sufficiency fostered self-control; except, possibly, for that incident with the dirt bombs.
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2023
I can’t help thinking about what I haven’t read. Every year, I try to read at least one piece of classic literature that I had overlooked, never got around to, or was not included in the curricula of whatever classes I took. The books I should have read. The books every literate person should read. I feel like the woman in that Roy Lichtenstein lithograph sadly proclaiming: “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. I FORGOT TO HAVE CHILDREN!” Except what I forgot was to read Jane Austen, and so much more. One year, I savored Homer’s Odyssey¸ another year, Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and then Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice. And this is in addition to the contemporary literature and poetry that I try to keep up with as well as non-fiction, newspapers and magazines.
Few things make me feel as ignorant as hanging around literary types. Now, to many people I know, I might be considered a literary type myself: I read a lot, I write, I participate in poetry and fiction workshops and readings, and I love discussing books as well as whatever I am working on if anyone cares to ask (rare) and, after asking, actually listens to my response (also rare); often, I will get half a sentence in and the erstwhile listener is now attending to a new conversation thread that was just injected into the group.
I do love listening to my literary friends talk about books and authors and literary styles. And friends and acquaintances are forever recommending books to me, and this has become so overwhelming because, instead of just nodding and repeating, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have to read that,” and forgetting about it, I actually write down their suggestions and now have a list that I access whenever I go into a used bookstore (another one of my obsessive rituals – I now have dozens of unread books piled on the bookshelf and the floor of my study, silently waiting for me, who often hear: “I won’t buy another until I have read all of you,” only to be betrayed…again. You’d think they’d have learned by now).
While I try to catch up with the literature of the past, the literature of the present keeps moving forward, like a massive train with an unlimited energy supply: great new novelists, short story writers and poets, scores of online and print literary magazines – mostly publishing high quality material in all genres - as well as more general publications that just print great stuff, and readings and workshops.
The great short story writer Caitlin Horrocks once addressed this issue by saying something like: You can approach reading and writing with an attitude of scarcity (I will never read enough, I will never have enough time to write all I want to write), or abundance (There is so much to read and so much to write that I will never run out of things to read or write about). I guess she was trying to tell us that the latter was the healthier option. So, I try to allow Caitlin’s words penetrate my almost-seventy-year neurosis and enjoy the process, which. I like to think, is happening more and more.
I recently purchased an audiobook of four Jane Austen novels, and I am enjoying the hell out of having Sense and Sensibility read to me in an English accent. There’s nothing like it. And the prose is exquisite. I can hardly believe that I have been deprived of this for so long (and I wish I could write like that, I really do, but I won’t let that interfere with my enjoyment).
In August, I turn seventy, and I will have something be part of me that wasn’t there before: Jane Austen. And with that will also be the knowledge that:
there will always be people who are better read than I am;
there will always be better writers than me;
I will never write my best possible work;
I will never be able to put all my ideas on paper;
I will never be able to read everything I think is important to read.
…And these are good things.
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2023
Five years ago, my wife fell in love. I’m not talking about me (we have been married 39 years, so I hope the falling in love thing happened much earlier). Through her genealogy research, my wife, Vicki, discovered a 93-year-old cousin living on her own in Montreal.
Vicki’s research started with one item that she found among her late parents’ belongings: a postcard, sent from Poland and written in Yiddish, that had been addressed to her paternal great-grandfather. This was her first inkling that she might have family that had not emigrated to the United States in the 1880’s. Vicki’s father loved talking about his extended family and their quirks, their triumphs, their heartbreaks. An ordinary family but, in his mind, worthy of treatment as saga. But he had never mentioned that part of the family had remained in Europe and had probably been eye-witnesses to the Holocaust. Vicki’s research began with finding a Yiddish speaker who could translate the postcard, researching the names of the senders, and eventually discovering that her great-grandfather was the only one of ten siblings to emigrate to the U.S. - leading her to wonder what became of her family that had remained in Europe?
Thanks to contemporary record keeping and digital archives, and to Vicki’s inability to let go of something once it piques her passion, she unearthed evidence of not a handful, not tens and not hundreds, but thousands of relatives: those who perished in or survived the Holocaust and their descendants, who now populate the diaspora in the U.S., Canada, Panama, Argentina, Israel and Sweden. It was like pricking a balloon, swollen with water, that gushed forth a flood. One relative informed her that her cousin Lucy (not her real name) in Montreal was related to Vicki’s great-grandfather and had been searching for years for any of his descendants. Isolated, and lacking a certain degree of technological proficiency, all she could do was wait.
For our first visit to Montreal to see Lucy, another cousin whom Vicki had unearthed, Artie (again, not his real name), flew up to join us. Lucy had set her modest table with her finest cut-glass serving bowls, and platters of meats, cheeses, breads, pickles, fruits and sweets. Lucy is a tiny woman who emits a bold presence. A wide smile, framed with bright orange lipstick, with short, fashionably-styled blond hair. Gregarious and loquacious. Eyes that really look at you when she speaks. Wearing a bright orange blazer over a shiny white satin blouse, she could not possibly fade into the background. To say Lucy was ebullient would be an understatement. It was like a homecoming – a “reunion” - in that it felt so familiar - but of souls who had never actually met.
Vicki, Artie and Lucy delved into their shared family history, a map of their mutual landscapes that had led to that moment. Lucy recounted her childhood in the Lodz ghetto in Poland, where Jews were forced to live - stripped of their property, freedom and dignity - before confronting their ultimate fate, the deaths of her grandmother and father at the hands of the Nazis, her survival in Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, and her displacement after the war to Sweden and Canada. She did this with no rising emotion, no tears, no flashes of rage. She was simply telling her story in the safety and warmth of her family, whom she had only recently discovered but whom she knew would provide a haven.
Psychiatrists Allan Schore (Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self) and John Bowlby (Attachment and Loss) showed us that our brains function as part of an interdependent system with other brains; our brains evolved to connect with others and these connections are essential for our emotional and cognitive functioning. The neuroscientist and philosopher Andy Clark (Mindware) further expanded this notion that our brains are not stand-alone organs; we must consider other brains, which help us know and understand the world, as parts of our own mental apparatus. We, as living beings, do not stop at the surface of our skin. Relationships change our brains and are necessary for our brains, and for us, to survive.
Vicki’s explorations continued into her genealogy, and then into the history and the literature of the Holocaust, both nonfiction, like The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn, and fiction, like The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, to experience how these stories were told - gathering information for what she hopes will be the book that she writes to honor the memories of those who perished and those who survived. This alchemist’s mix of human connection and literature has transformed Vicki. The woman who, to me, was already profoundly connected to others, has found depths within herself and others that I had not seen before.
Literature provides us a portal to relating to ourselves and others in a fuller way. Literature becomes alive and essential when it connects us with others and, thusly, with our humanity, the richness of our existence, and any superordinate plane of existence that might be out there. In this way, the interplay of literature and relationships creates emergent properties that become as much a part of us as the blood, the sinews and the neurons on the inside of what we imagine is the boundary of our skin.
That is what Vicki is exploring: that liminal space where literature, history and relationships – the aesthetic, the scholarly and the personal - coalesce, and humanity emerges.
published in Abandoned Mine, 2023
I float among the stars, eyes closed. That’s how you see the stars
and how you float, stuck inside this narrow tube,
head in a cage.
Funny, I wasn’t claustrophobic
until I had been asked ten times
if I was.
I breathe over the rat-a-tat of expanding magnetic coils, a jackhammer trying to cleave my skull,
over jazz barely heard through the headphones pressing against my ears.
The metallic taste in my mouth.
I am spinning hydrogen protons, I am space within my body,
I am space around my body.
I am stars. I am the universe.
The doctor will say, “The good news is, we found a brain,”
using the same tired joke. I only wish my father were here
to be proven wrong.
Then the doctor will say, “We also found…”
And I’m not filling in that blank today,
playing Mad Libs with my brain.
published in Bryant Literary Review, 2023
When Mr. Shaughnessy, my seventh grade social studies teacher, talked about “euthanasia,” I thought about thousands of Chinese kids who didn’t have enough to eat, crowded on the streets of Peking (that’s what they called it then), walking around with no shoes. I remember seeing a picture of a little kid with a slit in his pants so he could go to the bathroom, right there, in the street. Kate laughed when I asked Mr. Shaughnessy why he was talking about youth in Asia. She said maybe I could try paying attention and maybe not miss so much school.
My embarrassment didn’t diminish the gravitational force I felt pulling me toward Kate, like Ms. Beverly - our science teacher who always wore a long, gold chain that ended up draped around one breast by the end of class - taught us about the moon and the tides. That was one of the days when I was paying attention, because I was amazed that the moon could have such a strong effect from so far away and keep pulling without getting any closer.
Some days I would take a chance and go over Kate’s house where she was almost always doing homework – her mother in the kitchen and her five siblings doing puzzles, running around in their underwear, watching TV, and everyone loud and happy. Kate would clear a space on her floor or on her bed for me to work if I wanted to, and sometimes I did and other times I sat there and looked at her CDs and books while she hummed quietly as she leaned over her math or LA notebook, her jaw-length straight brown hair falling in front of her face and her pencil making incessant scratching sounds. I tried to impress her with whatever I was reading at the time, and she would listen and nod and tell me I might be smart, but I still had to do my homework and show up in class more often; following her around like a puppy was not going to make me succeed in life. Then, she would laugh and shake her head, perhaps to take the sting out of her words.
I hoped that, just once, we would end up with so little space between us that we would kiss. I hadn’t quite worked out how I would do that, but I figured that the gravitational force would just take over and, like other natural things in the universe, it would just happen. The boldest declaration of affection that I ever made was the time I blurted out, without any obvious reason, that I would do anything for her; whatever she needed, she just had to ask. After I said that, she smiled and looked back down at her books.
The week before Kate went off to college, her parents threw her a party and, of course, I went, and it was then that I realized what I had known all along: that the gravitational field that had drawn me into her orbit was not going to bring us any closer. I stayed in town, starting what would be a lifetime of low-earning jobs, never quite believing everyone who said I was smart and should go to college. Instead, I walked the path laid out by my father, who declared college a waste of money, a glorified camp for pampered kids afraid of hard work.
In the four years she was in college, I saw her occasionally when she was in town to visit her parents. She would smile and wave, and sometimes she would stop and ask me how I was and say how nice it was to see me. Once, around Christmas time, about three years after she left, I saw her walking into her house with a tall young man, both dressed in sweaters with snowflakes and reindeer.
So, I was surprised when I picked up the phone one Saturday at a late morning hour to hear her voice, soft and measured, unlike the vibrant tone I had associated with Kate. Despite the strange cadence and tone, I knew it was her right away, maybe by the way she said my name. I could tell from the hollow, echo-y clatter that she was far away, yet I found myself imagining her standing right there with me, as our younger selves, almost close enough to touch. She asked how I was, with no concession to the fifteen years or the miles that separated us. Then she told me that she was in China, working for a company that made ball-bearings, and asked if I had ever been, which was like asking me if I had ever been to the moon, which she must have known, because she just continued before I got a chance to respond. She said she’d like to see me, that she needed some help and thought of me. Did I remember when I told her I would do anything for her? She chuckled, at least it sounded like a chuckle coming through our tin can of a connection, and mentioned something about the things we say when we’re young. She was willing to fly me out there, if I had the time, and I could, of course, stay with her for a few days. I could see this as my “Youth in Asia” trip. I laughed with surprise that she would remember that moment, a moment I had held onto without the embarrassment I had felt at the time. I was between jobs and bored of the hamster wheel I perpetually seemed to be on, with no romantic prospects and not enough in savings for even a weekend at the beach, let alone a trip to China, so I consented and waited for the plane ticket to show up a few days later. I noticed that there was no return flight but figured that Kate would work that out since she couldn’t expect me to stay in China forever. The destination on the ticket was Beijing, so I looked that up and learned that that was what they called Peking now and wondered why the Chinese decided to change the name and why the place down the street still served Peking Duck and Peking Ravioli.
When I arrived at Beijing airport, I was overwhelmed by what looked like thousands of faces and moving bodies, strange, high pitched chatter, shouting, and the hum of unseen machines. The air smelled of grease, sweat and earth. I looked for Kate, imagining her face as through one of those time-lapse photo montages that police sketch artists use to project what a missing person would look like years later. I turned myself in a half-circle until I saw my name written in large, black Sharpie letters on a white sign held by a middle-aged Chinese man dressed in black pants and white shirt, with his hair slicked back in a pompadour, Ronald Reagan style.
Kate was waiting outside her apartment building on the outskirts of the city. The years that we had not seen each other were certainly marked on her face, and on the slowness of her gait and the restrained way she kept her arms close to her body. The glimmer of excitement in her eyes when she saw me, however briefly it burned, allayed the unease I had felt in my stomach the entire flight. She apologized for not meeting me in person and said that she had come to hate cars and avoided them whenever possible. She loved looking at pictures of the old China, of about twenty years ago, when cars were scarce and everyone traveled by foot or by bicycle. Kate’s apartment was in a concrete building painted faded green and orange, a now-stale bow toward modernization some time ago. We entered a courtyard with a stone fountain, which held several-days-old rainwater, now a muckish gray, surrounded by an overgrowth of weeds and broad-leafed plantings, mostly bromeliads and zebra plants. Kate lived on the third floor, and I was happy enough to climb those stairs after sitting for twenty hours. The apartment walls were white-painted cinder blocks and reminded me of pictures I had seen of college dorm rooms. Kate had done what she could to brighten it up, with colorful rugs, throw pillows and bedspreads, but everything still ended in those walls. I put my things where she showed me and, not knowing what else to say, I picked up what looked like a silver and ivory antique that Kate told me was an ancient pistol, about 300 years old, which was used by traders on the Silk Road to protect themselves from smugglers. She said it still worked and, if I were interested, she could teach me to shoot it. I put it down and picked up another artifact while Kate went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.
We ate at a small, square table, with our heads nearly as close as they used to get sitting on Kate’s bed doing homework. I noticed then the puffiness under her eyes and the way her eyes flitted from side to side rather than holding a steady gaze. She said she had to go to work in the morning, but she would leave me the keys and I was free to explore the area and the market nearby, just to be mindful of where I was going so I could find my way back. She helped me sort through the money I had exchanged at the airport before my departure, so I wouldn’t be too confused if I wanted to buy something. She wrote down her address in Chinese in case I lost my way. I mentioned that she had said that she needed help with something and she said she was glad I had come and that she would tell me about it later; it was complicated, and she was tired. Kate told me that she got off work at four, but she wouldn’t be home until five because she walked everywhere. She mainly asked about my life, about which there wasn’t much to say, but she pressed me with enough questions that we did not get around to talking much about hers, except that ball-bearings were useful but boring. I managed to ask her about the young man she was with the last time I had seen her, and she blushed and a far-away look clouded over her eyes. She said that was a long story that didn’t end well and that was for another day, after I had settled in.
The sun was already high in the sky when I awoke. There was a pot of tea on the stove, and the table was set with rolls, cheese and fruit. A dog was barking in the distance, and I heard the squeals of children playing in the courtyard. On the table was a note, in the neat, rounded cursive that I remembered from childhood: “I’m glad you’re here.” I walked to the market. I don’t know what I expected, but, at the sight of scores of people, from the very young to the very old, sitting in front of blankets spread out with fruits and vegetables, some unrecognizable, caged chickens, ducks and rabbits, household goods and carved statues, I stopped and stared, needing to absorb it before venturing in. I remembered that Kate liked omelets and bought some eggs, communicating with the merchant through hand gestures and smiles. When she came home, it was still light, and she said that she didn’t mind walking more, so we set out for a nearby park. A breeze had kicked up, and Kate’s loose-fitting brown pants billowed behind her, and she pulled the hood of her navy zippered sweatshirt over her head. The same intense inquisitiveness had remained with her since childhood, but I told her that there was not much else to say about my life besides it being boring and headed nowhere. She said that maybe boring and nowhere weren’t so bad and we both became silent. We sat on a bench in the park, and Kate looked at me and asked, if I could do one good thing in my life, would that one thing make my whole life worthwhile, no matter how boring or how empty of consequence my life might seem? I said that I supposed it would depend on what that thing was.
As I brushed my teeth that evening, Kate tapped me on the shoulder. “Would you like to see the factory where I work? Not that it’s really exciting, but, if you want, you could meet me there after work tomorrow.”
“How far is it?” I asked.
“Not far, if you don’t mind a little walking. It’s in the same direction as the market, just a little further. After that, we could get a late dinner at a local noodle shop close by.”
The night was warm, and I must have kicked off my blankets, as I woke suddenly, uncovered, to the sound of Kate gasping in the next room, like there wasn’t enough air to force into her lungs. I got out of bed and opened Kate’s door without knocking. She was sitting on the side of her bed inhaling deeply. She looked up and smiled and said it was just a bad dream.
When I awoke the next morning, there was another note on the table telling me that she was excited to see me later and would I pick up two medium-sized melons, of any variety, at the market on the way. She left some paper money and added not to worry about getting change.
Kate was waiting for me outside the factory. I arrived when the sun was low in the sky but generous enough to give us two more hours of light. She smiled, which made me realize that this was the first time she had done so since I had arrived. The factory was a gray, imposing building built by the Soviets in the ‘70s. It was so ugly that you would never want to look at it, and so solid that it could sit there forever. Kate brought me around the back where I saw the ever-familiar cracked concrete and weed assemblage. Scattered around the lot were rotting yellow and green melon rinds, seeds and multi-colored splatter. I noticed Kate watching me take it all in. She said, “I remember you were in Mr. Richardson’s skeet shooting club.” I stared at her blankly. “I used to sneak around the range some days and watch. You were pretty good.” Kate took one of the melons out of my hand and set it on a large, flat rock, a rock which had evidently seen its share of melons. She reached into her shoulder bag and brought out the silver and ivory pistol I had seen when I arrived in her apartment. “Like I said, this still shoots.”
“How do you get ammo for it, though?”
“The Chinese are really into preserving their culture. If something’s antique, you can usually find a craftsman to repair or service it. What it needs is gunpowder and projectiles of a certain size, both of which are available.”
“So, you come here…to shoot?”
Kate shrugged. “Not much else to do, I guess.” She wrapped cellophane around the handle and handed me the gun. “Locked and loaded. Just hold it steady, it’s not as stable as modern weapons.” She pointed to the melon and nodded. I adjusted my stance, and Kate put her hand on my shoulder and said, “A little closer,” as she applied light pressure, and I moved in a few feet. “That’s good,” she said. I fired a round and missed. I steeled myself against the recoil and fired a second round, hitting the melon near the top and shearing off some rind and some seeds.
“Not bad,” said Kate. “You need some practice.” She set up the second melon, looked at me and smiled a smile that failed to cover up the air of grim seriousness that had taken over her demeanor.
“This one’s a little bigger. It should be easier.” I looked at her and she nodded. My first round went through the center of the melon and the top flew off, scattering red gush several feet in all directions, some of it hitting me in the face and some staining my shirt and pants. “I guess you need to stand a bit further away,” she said.
By the time we walked to dinner, the air had cooled. We passed through the gray rubble around the factory and several squat houses on small lots, with chipped paint, each with a carefully tended flower bed out front. Some streets were paved, and some looked like you would surely pop a tire or bend an axle if you were foolish enough to drive a car over them. Kate walked with her hands in her pockets, not at the brisk pace with freely swinging arms that I remembered. I commented on this, and she asked me if I ever wished that I were young, not young like we are now, but young like when we knew each other. I said that I was never good at being young, but I guess it was no worse than it was now. She said she sort of envied me. I laughed. She said that I had not complicated my life too much. Sure, she knew I had adult responsibilities – work, bills and probably insurance - but most adults felt compelled to complicate things past the point that they could be controlled. I asked her if that was what it had been like for her. Kate sighed, put her hand on my arm, and led me into the restaurant. In the dim lighting, I could make out about five wooden tables covered in yellow cloth. The windows – square holes in the walls - let in the late day air and the chirping of the cicadas as dusk descended. The smell of garlic, ginger and chili oil filled the room. Kate led me to a table, then went up to a woman standing near the entrance and seemed to exchange some pleasantries.
“You know her?” I asked.
“Yeah, she owns the place. I come here fairly often. I don’t really like cooking for myself. She’s one of the few people I talk to, with the little Mandarin I know.”
“You don’t have any friends? Fellow Westerners?”
“Nah. I don’t bother. I don’t want to get into anything with anyone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Remember what I said about making my life too complicated?” Kate brushed some hair away from her face and put her hand on top of mine. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming. I didn’t know if you would. It’s been so long, and I haven’t been a good friend.”
I shifted in my seat. “Are you sick?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean to pry, but, last night, it sounded like you were struggling to breathe.”
Kate looked away. I became aware of other customers in the restaurant, men and women dressed in loose-fitting white button-down shirts, bending like reeds over their bowls, lifting noodles with chopsticks and slurping, without so much as one splatter onto their clothes.
“This is what I wanted to tell you, so all this would make sense,” she said. I started to speak, but she held her hand up to silence me.
“I have this dream, every night. Not the exact same dream, but pretty close. I’m somewhere – a car, under water, a small room, a basement – and the air, the air is gone, sucked out, and I can’t…I can’t breathe. I look around, but there’s no way out. I struggle...I try to inhale huge gobs of air, I suck and suck in, but my lungs won’t expand. My heart starts racing. That’s when I wake up, soaked, confused, not knowing where I am.”
Kate looked at me and held her gaze for the first time since I had arrived. She squeezed my hand tighter. “There’s more,” she said, and released my hand and leaned back in her chair as the owner brought over two warm bottles of cola. I took a sip while Kate ran her finger over the rim of the bottle. Then she reached over and touched my hand again.
“That young man, Seth,” she said. “We were in love. A great guy. He made me think all things were possible. I married him. A year later I was pregnant and had Michael.” Kate paused and covered her mouth. Her head turned like she was looking for something or someone in the room. She cleared her throat. “One day, one of Seth’s days to bring Michael to day care – he was three – before going to the hospital, to work, I was rushing to get to the mall to run an errand before heading off to work myself. I was in the car when Seth came rushing out. He said there was an emergency and they needed all medical staff on board immediately. He said that I would have to take Michael and bring him to day care after the mall, on my way to work. He quickly put Michael’s car seat in the back of my car and strapped Michael in. It all happened so fast. It was a hot day, early August, so hot I put the air conditioning in the car on full blast.”
The cicadas were quiet now, and a mild breeze made the lanterns hanging from the ceiling sway slowly, keeping rhythm with the diners’ delicate hand motions as they lowered their chopsticks and brought them up to their mouths. Kate lowered her head.
“I was thinking of all that I had to do – at the mall and at work that day. I forgot…I forgot that Michael was in the car…I forgot until I heard my car described over the PA system in the mall…the third time they announced it. Then…then I realized…oh God…oh God. I dropped my packages and ran out to the lot. The ambulance, the EMTs were all there. They had smashed the car window. Broken glass was all over. And I saw…I saw Michael on a stretcher…limp, pale. The EMTs looked at me. They asked me for my ID as they took Michael…took Michael to the hospital. They took me in another car but, by the time I got there…Michael…didn’t make it.”
Kate’s lips were trembling. She was choking, gasping. Her cheeks were wet with tears and mucus. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t call Seth. How do you tell someone you just killed their baby?” She was swallowing air, huge gulps of air, as her throat constricted and her words expelled themselves in sharp bursts. Kate’s shoulders shook and she squeezed my hand hard, as if trying to anchor herself to something that would pull her out of wherever she was. She bit her lower lip, trying to regain control.
“I…I,” Kate breathed in suddenly, “couldn’t stay. What do you do in that case? Everyone tried to act supportive, but how could they be? I got tired of sitting around with everyone watching me grieve, blaming me or pretending not to. So, I came here.”
Kate released my hand and scratched the side of her face. “You were always a good friend. I wasn’t deserving of your friendship. I knew how you felt about me.” Kate’s eyes met mine, then she looked away. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. You see, it would have been simple, too simple to wrap my brain around.” I wanted to tell her that we could make a new start. Together. But I knew that the idea was as hopeless as it was selfish.
“But that’s…that’s why I called you.” Kate paused and looked at the bowls of soup, which I hadn’t noticed being served, getting cold next to us.
“I…I have opium,” she said, looking past me, into the past or the future, I could not tell.
“Isn’t that illegal?”
Kate nodded. “The authorities are more concerned about their own people. They tend to leave foreigners alone. Anyway, I was doing it occasionally, and then it got to be a regular habit. It made me feel better, until it didn’t. No matter how much I did, it didn’t take away my anguish. Is that how I want to live? The same despair, every minute of every day, just at tolerable levels? Last month, I decided to do it, to take a lot, to go off and not come back. The problem is, I did come back. I must have developed a tolerance for it. So, this time…this time…I want to make sure I don’t come back.”
My mouth must have dropped open because Kate suddenly looked worried.
“You don’t have to try to talk me out of it. I just want you to help me. I knew you’d be merciful.” Kate smiled again, but it was the smile of catching something that once was, for a moment, something that had escaped and couldn’t be owned again. I had a rushing feeling in my head, like I had boarded a bus that was barreling down a highway, barreling to nowhere, a bus I couldn’t command but one I couldn’t get off of either.
“Please don’t fret. I’m at peace. It’s what I want…no, it’s what I need.”
“So, you want me…you want me to be with you, to…?”
“Hopefully, that will be all, and that will be so much. But – and here’s the hard part, the part I’d ask only of you – I want you to be there in case I do come out of it, in case I survive the massive dose I’m going to take tomorrow. I want you to make sure I don’t survive.”
“Tomorrow? I don’t know… I don’t think…Jesus, what are you asking?”
“I’ve bought your return ticket. I didn’t arrange it immediately because I didn’t know…I didn’t know, after meeting you, again, if I would just go ahead with it or if…or if I…you…needed more time. But…now…now I’m sure. Your flight leaves tomorrow night. A driver will pick you up outside. I’ll leave you the ticket, and a note with all the times. Tomorrow morning I’ll get up, take a shower, have breakfast with you. Maybe you can make me an omelet; I’d like that. I’ll take the opium. I’ll fall asleep. My breath will slow. If all goes as it should, I’ll stop breathing within a few hours, before it’s time for you to leave.”
“How can you just talk ab---”
“Please, let me finish. There’s just a little more. If I start coming to, or if I’m still breathing a half hour before you leave…the gun…the antique…I loaded it with one bullet. That time of day, there’s no one around. Just use it…on me…like the melons. Keep the cellophane on the handle so my fingerprints will be the only ones on it and just drop it on the floor next to me. You’ll be gone before anyone discovers me.”
For a long time, we didn’t say anything. Kate couldn’t bring herself to look at me, nor I at her. I stood and walked back and forth across the restaurant, rubbing my scalp, with my teeth aching from clenching them so tightly. I sat back down.
“How can you ask this of me? I…I can’t do this. Not to you…not to anybody!”
I must have been talking too loudly because Kate quickly looked around and put her hand on top of mine.
“All those feelings you had for me, the promise that you would do anything…this makes it all real, doesn’t it?”
“That was just something I said…I was a kid…in love with…” and my voice trailed off as I looked back up at Kate.
“And I am asking you this out of love. I am going to do this anyway and, if I survive it, I may suffer permanent damage to my brain and my body. Ending it will be the most merciful thing. I understand if you can’t do this. Still, you came, and that means the world to me.”
“I can help you, Kate. Come back with me and we’ll get you help. You have so much to live for. Please!” Kate shook her head and seemed to look at the wall behind me, but her eyes were focused inward at whatever images were being projected on the inside of her skull. I could have kept trying to talk her out of it, but I knew then that my words would have only been squandered to put a salve on my helplessness.
“I have to do this,” said Kate, now looking straight at me.
“I just don’t know if I can,” I replied.
The next morning was overcast; the world outside silent. The apartment had that musty smell that bleeds through damp concrete – some combination of household chemicals and wet socks. The only sound was the sizzle of the frying pan as I cooked Kate an omelet. I watched her eat as the scent of fried eggs competed with the damp concrete, and she smiled in appreciation but didn’t say much. With the knot that was in my stomach, I didn’t much care for food and, although I tried to talk, I could tell from experience that Kate was in command and that any plea to reconsider would gently, but firmly, be deflected. Kate washed her dishes and disappeared into the bathroom. She came out, handed me the gun, hugged me really hard, and told me whatever I decided was ok and that, if I was looking for one good thing that I had done in my life, it was being here for her. Then she laid down on her couch and drifted off to wherever the opium took her.
I didn’t understand the meaning of “euthanasia” until years after I had finished high school. I hadn’t really thought about it until I heard a news story about some guy helping really sick people end their lives. I guess the association with Kate, rather than any real hunger for knowledge, led me read up on it. From what I remember, I don’t think anyone had in mind firing a gun at close range at a friend as she comes out of an opium fog. So, I’m watching a woman who might have seen me as a friend she could trust, or just as someone she could use. But, I don’t feel betrayed or angry. Just an overwhelming sadness - for Kate, for me, for what never was and probably never could be. My life has been like a river flowing nowhere. And this moment is when Kate and my rivers converge. Maybe for good, maybe only to part again. I realize that I am a poor substitute for what she once had and what she once looked forward to in her life, but I did tell her that I would do anything for her, and what she needs now is someone to keep her alive. So, if she trusts me or if she’s used me, it doesn’t really matter, because this is my chance to do one good thing in my life, as Kate put it. When we left the restaurant yesterday, I told Kate to wait while I went back and thanked the owner. She spoke passable English, and I was able to get her to tell me how to contact the hospital emergency room on the pretense that I worry, and it would give me peace of mind just in case anything happened.
I hear the sirens getting closer. I just hope they’re in time.
published in The Bluebird Word, 2023
After some consideration, I decided to move from Town X, where I had dwelt for many peaceful, if uneventful, years, to Town Y, a neighboring municipality with which I had only a vague familiarity. I had been feeling for some time that my life had become stale and routine. I had many acquaintances but few, if any, friends, and social conversation always returned to the same topics, like a planet on a fixed orbit: that week’s golf game, the latest baseball trades, and who was meeting up with whom at which expensive restaurant. Nobody seemed interested in discussing, say, the audiobook of Hemingway stories I had been listening to. I heard that the citizens of Y were a livelier lot and that interesting things went on there.
I awoke the first morning in my new home after sleeping so deeply that my memory of the move seemed suspended in a hazy semi-conscious fog. I was surrounded by boxes neatly stacked with no markings to indicate their contents or the room in which each belonged. Perhaps the strangest thing of all: there were no flaps or openings. On top of the highest stacked box was a note that appeared to be in my mother’s handwriting, although my mother had been dead for some years, which simply said: “Don’t open anything you’re not sure of.”
I went outside to see if the newspaper had arrived and a gust of cold wind – quite unexpected in July - hit me in the face, freezing my nose and slamming shut the front door. In my pajamas, I hugged myself tightly to keep warm. The sky darkened and small, white objects began drifting lazily from above, like snowflakes. They soon multiplied and I was in the middle of what appeared to be a squall. As the objects got closer, it became clear that they were not snowflakes, but loose pages from a notebook. I grabbed a handful as they twisted and torqued around me. They were from stories that I had written. A dry, rustling sound, barely audible at first, rose in volume, morphing into laughter. It was the sound of my pages laughing at me. I was hit on the head by what felt like hailstones. After each hit, I saw fall to the ground a book. Each was written by an author whom I had grown to admire: Saroyan, Woolf and Styron. The books flipped themselves open and shook their pages in laughter.
Lying in the driveway was a black high heel shoe with the bottom of the heel roughly shorn off. I looked at my feet, as if the shoe were mine, and I marveled that I could be capable of switching identities so fluidly. Alongside the shoe was a book authored by my favorite workshop leader. The wind blew the book open to a page that read: “Lesson Five: Raise the Stakes.” At that moment, blood started dripping out of the shoe.
I walked into the house in some distress only to hear a knock at the door, commanding and insistent.
Standing with his back to me was a man, broad shouldered, in a gray turtleneck sweater. He turned, holding out two fishing rods and smiling broadly with a self-satisfied, I wouldn’t exactly call it a smirk, but with an expression that definitely showed that he knew who he was and was going to tell me who I was. He had a well-trimmed, salt and pepper beard framing a very familiar face. I opened the door.
I managed to squeak: “Ernest? Is that really you?”
Hemingway let out a hearty laugh. “I’ve come to teach you to fish!” He said a little too loudly, but with good cheer.
“F-fish?” I stammered.
“Well, it was either that or bullfighting, and I didn’t think you’d be up for that.”
“But why’d you--?”
“Somebody had to. Come on, you don’t want to end up like those pansies – Saroyan, Woolf and Styron. You’ve got to learn how to fish for yourself!”
I hesitated, not knowing if I should accept his invitation or invite him in for tea. After all, how often does one get to spend time with Ernest Hemingway? Hemingway looked past me into the house.
“What’s with those boxes?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to open them.”
Hemingway pushed past me. “What’s in them?” he asked, as he leaned his fishing rods against the tallest stack.
“Secrets?” I said uncertainly.
“What kind of secrets, man!”
I shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Hemingway took out a fishing knife. “Well, let’s find out then. There are stories in there! Let’s get to work.”
Before he could start cutting the boxes, I blubbered: “But my mother---”
“Your mother? Do you always listen to your mother? I’m sure she was a lovely woman, but still, you know – fish for yourself!”
I nodded and, with shaking hands, pulled down the first box.
published in Coneflower Café, and The Best of Choeofpleirn Press, 2022. Finalist in the Derick Burleson Poetry Contest 2022, nominated for the Nina Riggs Poetry Award
My wife is afraid of my writing.
She thinks I will quit my job
and become a Bohemian.
Being poor, we will be forced
to leave the suburbs,
and our kids will scramble
to go to college.
Why is my wife so fearful
that a conventional man like myself
would do something so bold,
so irresponsible?
Maybe she, too, feels the call of hidden desire
which she keeps to herself,
unlike me, who feels compelled to confess
the yearnings that will not be satisfied.
If that is so, which of us
has more to fear?
published in Santa Fe Literary Review, 2022
I’ve gotten used to reading in bed. My doctor
says it’s bad sleep hygiene.
She says I will be tired and
being tired is bad
at my age.
My doctor says bed should be only for sleep or,
and here she pauses. She
does not want to say “sex.” We
shouldn’t talk of sex
at my age.
So, she says, “intimacy” and I nod. “So, I
get two things,” and she looks
puzzled. “Two things,” I repeat.
“Sleep…intimacy.”
And she nods.
“With my husband gone, I’m down
to one.” She nods again.
“So, I get to substitute.”
She does not know how
to answer.
My doctor does not say I will stop dreaming about you.
My doctor does not say I will stop imagining I
hear you snoring softly as your sinuses congest. My
doctor does not say I won’t turn and think I see the mound
you make under the blankets.
We slept as one. We rose as one. The other day I read
the letter you’d sent me on our tenth anniversary.
It slipped through my fingers as I fell asleep. On its way
to the floor, I dreamed that I
rescued you from heaven. You said heaven was sweet, but
never as sweet as sipping tea and discussing the kids,
never as sweet as caulking the window while I read the
paper, never as sweet as correcting crossword mistakes.
That I had written in pen.
I’ve gotten used to reading in bed. Sometimes, I
read aloud so you’ll hear
over your snoring, beneath
the blankets on a
winter’s night.
Wherever you are.
published in Permafrost Magazine, 2022
The coaster approaches the drop. The cars almost vertical. I enjoy a moment’s hesitation. Screams - high-pitched squeals and screeches, sounding like little girls about to pee themselves – spew from throats male and female, child and adult. I watch the cars plunge downward, downward – fast, faster. The cars round the first curve, passengers straining to stay in their seats, then the second curve. For the twentieth time today. I pull the lever, for the twentieth time, to start the braking action as the cars complete the circuit and shudder to a stop. They laugh. They talk loudly. They lift their harnesses and walk by me. They look without seeing. There she is, again. Laughing, smiling, hands moving back and forth as she talks to her friend, like it was her first time. Always like the first time. Her hair. Long, blonde, shiny. The kind of shiny that captures the gold of the sun in each strand. Even after inching upward at a 70-degree angle, dropping at 65 mph, rounding two neck-whipping curves…perfect. She doesn’t notice. If she did, I’d have to explain that my orange cast-member golf shirt with the name of the park stenciled in bright gold lettering and my khaki shorts high above my knees aren’t my normal clothes. I hold the lever and watch her exit, knowing she will be back…today…tomorrow...two days…next week.
I’d have to explain that I won’t be making minimum wage forever. That this is just a summer job. That I’ll be going to college in another year. She’d have to know that ‘cause I can tell she’s the type that’s used to having money. I pull the lever and hear the click-click-click of the gears catching the under-carriage, pulling the cars up slowly. I look to see if she’s lined up for the next ride, or the one after that. Mom forgot to pack me lunch today. I guess I’ll have to eat that soupy chicken crap they serve at the el-cheapo restaurant at the park with my discount. It’s all boney and fatty with that mottled chicken skin coming off of it. The bones are probably the healthiest part, and you can’t eat them. I’ll be playing with my bone tonight, ha-ha. Seergaard the Princess Gladiator - starting the next level. That’s who she reminds me of. My Princess Gladiator.
This guy gets off the ride and hands me a pair of sunglasses. Aviators tinted blue, with frames of yellow-gold metal, just like her hair. He was in the seat she was sitting in on the last ride. Avery says I should put them in the Lost and Found. Otherwise, Buzz will think I’m stealing. Buzz is what we call Mr. Harrington, the supervisor. Not to his face. He’s got this buzz cut, like he thinks he’s a Marine drill sergeant. Kind of looks like Sgt. Rottweiler in Seergaard the Princess Gladiator. The guy yells at and bullies whoever gets in his way. He’ll get away with it until Seergaard destroys him. You can tell it’s coming. Maybe the next level. Maybe tonight. I hold the glasses, waiting. She’ll be back. She loves this ride.
Mr. Harrington’s standing in front of me now. Asking about the sunglasses. He looks mad. Using words like “protocol” and “responsibility.” His neck is turning red. He doesn’t know that all his power won’t do him any good because, in the end, Seergaard will be victorious. I never look him in the eye. I tell him I know whose sunglasses these are, that they belong to a friend of mine who asked me to hold them for her until she got back. He tells me I better not be lying and walks away. It looks like steam’s coming out of his ears. I laugh. To myself.
Seergaard’s going to do battle. She’ll wear her tight, black armored bodysuit, the one that hugs her breasts, but just barely. And her ass shines as she moves in that suit. She’ll wait ‘til Rottweiler and his forces are at their maximum strength, when they think they’re invincible, then she’ll surprise them and, alone, defeat them all in hand-to-hand combat. One day, I’ll be down there with my princess, after she gets to know me a little, lying on the couch in the basement. She won’t mind the dank smell – I keep asking mom to air it out, but she doesn’t; no matter, I’ve gotten used to it –– because she’ll be watching me. One level to the next, until I’ve mastered the game. And she’ll miss me when I leave for college next year. I can see her eyes tearing up.
I wipe the sweat off my brow with my sleeve. I feel the dampness on the back of my shirt and under my arms. I look at the crowd loading up for the next ride and there she is, for the second time today. I get the sunglasses and hold them out. Her friend sees me and taps her shoulder. “Hey, Marci, aren’t those your sunglasses?” She stops in front of me. I smell strawberry and vanilla. Her hair looks so soft this close. Pinkness radiates from her glossed lips. She’s wearing a blue-gray loose fitting embroidered peasant blouse hanging off one shoulder, and tight white jeans. I think about reaching out and touching her bare shoulder, reassuring her that I kept her sunglasses safe until she returned. That I knew they were hers and how pretty they looked. That I didn’t put them in the Lost and Found where somebody else might have taken them. She reaches out and, as I hand her the sunglasses, I open my mouth, but what escapes could barely be called a squeak. I swallow hard to start again, but her friend grabs her hand, laughs, and says, “C’mon, we’re gonna miss the ride!” She glances at me, smiles and opens her mouth, then gives in to her friend’s tugging. I pull the lever. I hear the gears engage the undercarriage. The cars inch up, up, up to the top of the drop. I hear the screams, I hear the cars whipping around the first curve, then the second, and then I hear the deceleration, the people laughing and yelling, the mechanical sound of the harnesses raising, the footsteps as they step onto the platform and walk past me, as she walks past me, her sunglasses perched on her head, her frames and her hair shimmering gold, moving her hands in perfect rhythm, talking to her friend, and off the platform.
Tonight, Seergaard will be patient. She will bide her time until the moment is right. Until Rottweiler’s forces are at full strength. Until Rottweiler has defeated every army on the planet. The population will cry out in desperation. No one will rise to the challenge. No one, except Seergaard. She will swoop in, pluck out their eyes, and scatter them over Greenland’s frozen tundra.
published in Hawaii Pacific Review, 2021
I don’t know when the nickname “Pelican” completely replaced my father’s given name, but that’s what he’s been called since before I was born fifty years ago in a community hospital in Brooklyn, a hospital whose name has disappeared into the chasm of memory. My mom, his second wife, the one who stuck with him long enough to procreate, called him Pelican - not honey, or dear, or even asshole, which was how I heard his third wife refer to him. The first time I remember actually hearing his name was when I accompanied him to a doctor’s appointment and the assistant called out “Earl?” - and I looked around to see who was being summoned – before she called out “Earl Roberts?” and I saw him stand.
One day, when I was about 10, Pelican and some of his hunting buddies were out on the deck grilling burgers and drinking Old Milwaukee. One of them, an 18-wheeler of a guy named Billy LaCrosse, told me that, when he and my father played football in high school, Pelican was famous for his method of forcing a fumble. Once the guy running with the ball was hit, Pelican would run over before the play was called dead, jump into the air, and come down almost vertical, diving onto the player with such force as to dislodge the ball. If you ever watched pelicans fish, said Mr. LaCrosse, you’d see. They fly low above the water and, once they see a fish near the surface, they dive straight down real fast, leading with their beaks, and catch the fish unawares.
When I was 11, Pelican took me and my mom on vacation to Key West. He said that one of the most famous fishermen had a house there. I don’t remember what Hemingway’s house looked like, except for a lot of pictures of guys on boats with big fish, and pictures of Hemingway and all his wives and, the strangest thing, more than 50 of these freaky six-toed cats, descendants of the ones that Hemingway raised. We were in a room listening to the tour guide, Pelican holding my hand, about a dozen other tourists there with us. After the guide talked about Hemingway’s four wives and his cats, Pelican chuckled and abruptly shouted, “I guess the guy really liked pussy!” The room froze. The air stalled. Tourists transformed into statues, staring with marble eyes. Pelican laughed so hard, I think he forgot I was there, but he still gripped my hand while I looked for an exit. I saw the cavern of the tour guide’s open mouth, wide and dark. Then she looked away and down at the floor, and, like someone hit the PLAY button, the statues shuffled and moved out of the room.
Wife number three had it right. He was an asshole. I don’t know why the third marriage ended because, if it was that he was an asshole at the end, well, he was the same at the beginning. It was somewhere between wives three and four that I stopped speaking to him. It wasn’t like I had a decisive moment when I cut off contact. I was a young adult then, and my visits with him had become progressively less frequent over the years since my mother divorced him, and his periods of incapacity, whether they involved his drunkenness or his arrests for DUI or disturbing the peace, or whether he just “fell off the face of the earth,” as my mother used to speculate, had become more frequent. I accepted the fact that this relationship, like so many in my life -- friends, lovers, confidantes -- seemed to just fade away, with my awareness, only in retrospect, that the last chapter had been written without my having read it.
One Saturday night, when I was weighing the possibilities of going to bed early or staying up late to watch a movie, I got a call from Lucy. I usually took an unlisted number on my caller ID as a sign to ignore the call but, I guess with my limited options for entertainment, I picked up. The woman on the phone identified herself as “Lucy, the wife of your father,” and, before I could end the call, I heard her say plaintively, “Please, don’t hang up.” There was something in her voice that, at the moment, I didn’t consciously identify, but which might have been steadiness, kindness, empathy or all of those traits, that stopped my thumb a split second before hitting the “OFF” button.
Lucy thanked me and told me that she had been married to my father for five years and that she might understand why I no longer had contact with him. She made it clear that she was not calling to ask for anything tangible, like money or help, but just to see if I might be willing to come visit him. She told me that, about a year prior, my father had suffered a stroke and, while he was still aware and able to communicate, he was physically limited and had difficulty speaking. They were bearing up all right. She had a degree in nursing and had cared for several family members over the years, so she wasn’t complaining, and financially they had enough to make do. She repeated, at least once, maybe twice, that she was not calling to ask for anything material, just if I would consider coming to see him. In spite of the grim situation, and, I assumed, the awkwardness of making that call, Lucy sounded cheerful and guileless, like the kind of person you could talk to and who would actually listen. I joked that five years was a long time with someone so difficult, and, expecting a rough silence, Lucy surprised me by laughing and indicating that she knew what I meant. Lucy, the last in a series of five wives, maybe six, if he married that woman he was with for several months when he just disappeared, described herself as “the end-of-the-line wife,” though I couldn’t tell if she really liked that moniker. She was the one stuck minding this way station between survival and death, rather than the one between drunkenness and heartache, as the previous ones had done. Still, despite his difficulties, she loved him and was dedicated to staying with him. What I wasn’t brazen enough to ask her was, “Why?”
I wasn’t sure what I was feeling as I flew west to Arizona to see Pelican. I had called my mother to tell her, and her response was a non-committal, “That’s interesting.” I tried to read on the plane, but the highlight reel of the most embarrassing and disappointing moments in my life with Pelican kept playing in my head. There was, of course, the Hemingway house fiasco. Then there was the time I brought my college girlfriend home to meet my parents, at her insistence, in spite of my repeated warnings that were so urgent as to sound exaggerated. My girlfriend was from a family in which the dinner table was set with linen and candlesticks each night, people waited their turn and spoke one at a time, and both parents were college professors. We sat at the table as my mother proudly brought in a roast she had made on a faux-silver platter. She smiled as she handed the platter to Pelican to pass around. A smirk slowly formed on Pelican’s face, as he said, “That’s a bigger piece of meat than I’ve gotten in a long time!” He looked straight at my girlfriend and winked. She sunk down in her chair and looked like she could disappear under the table. I couldn’t look her in the eye for the rest of the visit.
Still, with the distance of time, I felt a certain remove, as if I were, indeed, watching a film rather than reliving my life. It was in the taxi to their apartment that the old family force field asserted itself. I felt my stomach and shoulders tighten. A loneliness and emptiness, and underneath that, a shame that hadn’t touched me in years, seeped into me and locked itself in.
Lucy greeted me at the door. She smiled and extended her hand, though I could tell that she was the type who would want to hug. I nodded in a cordial way, my body unable to unstiffen. She had long, dry, gray hair – not at all what I had imagined on the phone, although, before that moment, I had not realized that I had imagined anything at all – and was slightly overweight, with the kind of round, open face that can make overweight people look younger than their years. Her fingernails were painted with chipped, shiny, pearl-white nail polish that looked like it hadn’t been refreshed in a while. I carried a small duffel bag, in case I decided to stay the night at some motel near the airport instead of catching the last flight back and looked for a place to put it down. Lucy took it from me and set it down against the wall in the hallway, near the credenza that was adorned by one framed picture of Lucy, wearing a below-the-knee off-white dress with her hair tied back, holding a bouquet of white and red roses, arm in arm with my father, who wore a dark suit. Both of their faces were beaming. The hallway was covered with pale yellow wallpaper with dull, red roses that looked like it had been left over from some grandmother several tenants ago. There was that faint cooking smell that seeps into plaster over time.
Lucy motioned to the kitchen and I walked in and saw Pelican sitting at the table. His eyes locked onto mine with a softness I had not remembered. I was suddenly self-conscious, like I was looking at myself standing there. He smiled with one side of his mouth and said softly, “Hello, son.” I sat across from him and greeted him with, “Hello, Pelican.” He chuckled and nodded. The kitchen was small, but neatly kept. The cabinets were an oak veneer, and the kitchen sink below them shone like it had just been cleaned, its silver, plastic knobs standing ready for action. A light brown water stain pressed against the corner where the wall met the ceiling over the cabinets. Lucy came in and asked if I had eaten lunch. I told her I hadn’t, but I could pick something up on my way back to the airport. She said that was nonsense, and she would love to have me join them. She brushed some crumbs off the table onto her hand. The plastic tablecloth smelled faintly of the ammonia that had probably wiped it clean several hours before.
Pelican leaned his elbows on the table, his face a fleshy-jowled, gray-stubbled forest. Lucy held a plate of potatoes, over-cooked carrots and soft meat, pulverized to near-pulp. She scooped up some of the vegetables, tipping off the excess and balancing the spoon, careful not to drop any onto the floor or onto Pelican. Pelican looked at the small offering hanging on Lucy’s spoon and opened his mouth. His eyes, a watery pale blue, glistened with anticipation. What Mr. LaCrosse had not told me that day on the deck, was that, after several years of diving so violently into the water, the pelicans’ retinas detach, and they are rendered helpless in their old age, no longer able to see the fish and feed themselves, and dependent on people to throw them food or on other pelicans to discard their catch.
Despite being overcooked, the food was more than palatable. I commented on how lucky Pelican was to have married such a good cook. Pelican nodded and told me, in his halting and broken speech, how he could no longer cook for himself and that, if he had to depend on anybody to feed him, he was lucky to have found Lucy. Lucy got up to get something to drink and rubbed his shoulder.
I asked Lucy how they met, and she told me that she was on a date at some cheap burger place with her boyfriend at the time and, while her boyfriend was on line to place their order, he backed up into Pelican and accidentally stepped on his foot. Pelican reacted like a rattlesnake who had suddenly found its neck in the jaws of a wild boar and, rather than backing down, her boyfriend reacted like that wild boar. They all were expelled from the restaurant. The argument to nowhere resumed outside and, after the police arrived and calmed everyone down, they all realized they were hungry and decided to get a bite to eat and a beer together. Some months after that incident, after Lucy had broken up with her boyfriend, she ran into Pelican at the same burger place. “And the rest,” she said, raising her voice an octave, and with a flourish, “is history!”
Lucy went to the sink to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. She said that she understood that, when I was growing up, Pelican wasn’t around much. From what Pelican had told her, he was a lousy person and, probably, an even worse father. I looked at Pelican as she was saying this, and he lowered his eyes and pressed his lips together.
Lucy asked me to tell her about some of the times Pelican and I had spent together, even if they were few and far between. I remembered there was a period of sobriety, when I was around eight or nine, when he actually went outside with me to practice catching and batting in my valiant attempt to stop leading my baseball team in strikeouts and errors. He even took me and my mother to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was in a good mood most of the time during that trip, with the exception of some intense arguments about his driving when I was trapped in the back seat feeling like a prisoner.
I suppose something in me rebelled against what I thought was Lucy’s attempt to create some bonding with my father that had never existed. Caretakers can have a way, hidden behind their masks of humility, of sneakily trying to be the hero. In retrospect, I was probably underestimating her, but I then asked Pelican if he had ever told Lucy about our trip to Hemingway’s house. Pelican responded, in his disembodied voice, “No,” and waved his hand dismissively. Lucy asked me to explain, and I swallowed hard, suddenly realizing what I had bitten off and was unable to swallow it. I told the story, hesitatingly, barely looking at Lucy, while Pelican kept his gaze fixed on her. During the story, Lucy finished putting the dishes in the dishwasher and turned to face me while I finished. At the end, she let out a hearty “Hah!” flicked the dish towel at Pelican’s back and said, “You rascal!” Then she asked if I would like ice cream for dessert.
Lucy sat down next to Pelican and spoon fed him some vanilla ice cream, gently wiping his chin after each small bite. She smiled each time she removed the spoon from his mouth and asked him if it was good. When Lucy got up to get another napkin, I asked her, “What happened to that rattlesnake you met the first time you saw him? Did you think you could tame him?” Lucy was opening and closing cupboards, still searching for that napkin.
“Oh, heavens, no,” she said. “You don’t tame a rattlesnake. But, sometimes, old rattlesnakes lose their venom.”
“And, without his venom?”
Lucy turned and smiled. “Oh, he still has his rattle.”
I played with my spoon and pressed the back of it into the mound of ice cream in my dish, the ice cream going soft from sitting there uneaten. Then I pressed the spoon’s edge into the ice cream, making three parallel, shallow cuts. I looked at my watch and saw the afternoon slipping by, as time usually does, unnoticed. I turned around in my seat and looked into the hallway at my duffel bag and at the door waiting at the end. I calculated that I still had time to make it back to the airport and get home at a reasonable hour. I cleared my throat, readying an excuse to leave. I looked up at Pelican. He looked back at me and smiled. I suddenly noticed that the force field had dissipated and a stranger one had replaced it. I found myself unable to stand and take my leave as I had envisioned. As my imagined self walked down the hallway and out the door, I lifted a small amount of ice cream with my spoon, leaned forward, and brought the spoon to Pelican’s lips.
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2021
Jared lies in bed, propped up by his arms folded behind his head, a two-day stubble peppering his face and neck. One foot dangles off the side of the mattress. Dark, wiry hairs spring out of his leg, exposed by pajama pants hiked up mid-calf, bunched and wrinkled like old parchment because he doesn’t believe in ironing pajamas. You’re just gonna sleep in them and wrinkle them anyway. Besides, no one’s going to see them. No one except Lisa, who’s in the bathroom brushing her teeth with the door open. He half-smiles and says to the open door: “Your grandparents ever have one of those egg slicers?” Lisa doesn’t hear him. Well, she hears him but can’t make out what he says with the water running and the electric toothbrush humming inside her head. “What?” she says into the mirror, as if her voice could reflect off the mirror and into the room behind her, as she stops brushing and turns off the faucet. She waits for Jared’s response.
“Those egg slicers,” says Jared, as if she heard what he asked her in the first place. “You
know, those gadgets that have those indentations where the egg sits so it doesn’t roll off, and then the thin wire-like things that you lower over the egg that slices it into even sections. Then you just tilt it and the egg falls onto your plate like perfect circles of sunshine.”
“I think so,” says Lisa. “I had completely forgotten about them til now.”
Jared smiles. “It always amazed me how those slicing wires disappeared into the slots at the bottom of the slicer, hiding their involvement in what had happened to the egg.”
Lisa turns the handle on the faucet and resumes her brushing. “You’re weird.”
“What’d you say?”
Lisa shouts, “Nothing.”
Jared watches Lisa come out of the bathroom in her version of dressed-for-bed. Nylon shorts alternately flounce and cling to her thighs as she moves across the bedroom. White v-neck t-shirt loosely wraps an athletic frame. Jared looks at her admiringly. “I wonder if any of them are still around.”
“Maybe Geneseo has one at the diner. His salads in the front case always have those perfectly sliced eggs.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll ask him next time I’m there.”
Jared’s been on this kick, trying to recall “lost” objects from his childhood. He was raised by his grandparents, so a lot of what he remembers is of a generation before Lisa’s. The other day he asked Lisa if she remembered whether her mother or grandmother had a metal thimble. Then he paused for a second as his eyes looked up to the left and added, “or one of those pin cushions that were shaped like a tomato, with those green felt leaves coming out of the top. I don’t know why they allowed that stuff around kids. All anyone had to do was put it in his mouth and bite down and that would be it.”
And there were the mosaic ashtrays that kids made in school or the more industrial versions that you could pick up at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the cheap metal car ashtrays that you could remove to dump out the ashes but that few people did, and side vent windows in cars while we’re on the subject, and plastic slipcovers for the couch.
“If you’re trying to recapture memories of your childhood, why don’t you just look at old photographs?” Lisa asked.
“Photos are too static and so two-dimensional. All these photos, I’ve seen them so many times that I don’t know if I actually remember the events or just remember the photo. Objects: they’re tangible, they have totemic significance!”
Lisa knows that she can always tell how much importance Jared attaches to something by the vocabulary he uses. “Totemic” definitely ascribes significance. In fact, Jared has been thinking about collecting as many of these items as he can and opening a museum, maybe at the back of the house, and calling it “As Seen in Childhood,” like those stores that sell the gadgets advertised on TV and “not available in stores,” except in stores now named, “As Seen on TV.”
“I’m not sure about the side vents, though. Would I have to get an old Chevy or could I just find the vent in a junk yard? And if it’s just the part, how to display it? I’m not sure how that would work.”
One day, on the top shelf of their closet, which is too high for Lisa to place things on, Lisa sees a large shirt slumping over the shelf, its sleeve hanging down just where she can reach it. She pulls on it and is almost hit on the head by a Cabbage Patch doll that bounces onto the carpeted floor and stares up at her with its lost, bewildered, who-do-I-belong-to? stare. Lisa gets a step-stool to place the doll back under the shirt. As she lifts the shirt, she sees a gray, furry rabbit’s foot keychain and a lightbulb sitting on an index card that says, in Jared’s scrawl, “EASY BAKE OVEN.” Jeez, he’s already started. As she lifts the shirt further, she is startled to see two eyes staring at her. She grabs the edge of the shelf to keep from falling and is relieved to find that there’s no animal looking back at her, just a Pet Rock. Jesus. Then, something else - a long box with a red and white design. She remembered how upset Jared was when he found out that his grandparents had discarded his Strat-O-Matic baseball game that he had left in their attic. Nonplussed, his grandmother had coolly said, “If it was so important to you, why didn’t you take it with you when you moved out?” Jared hadn’t counted on them moving, or needing space, or not worshipping his childhood fetishes. He must have counted on them never growing older and, maybe, himself never completely growing up. Lisa wondered where he found it. The box was like new. She didn’t dare lift the lid and look inside. But the game…where you assemble your own baseball team from the players of the era and, like in real baseball, trade what you have now for a better future. No wonder it had been America’s favorite pastime. Lisa wondered what Jared would be willing to give up for a chance at a better future.
Lisa stands in a hospital corridor of polished linoleum flooring and beige walls with endless closed doors receding to a vanishing point. She realizes that this is a poor substitute for the cushioned, earth-toned couches and soft lighting of the waiting room. At least there’d be other people in there. But she couldn’t stand the thought of sitting there for a second time so far from Jared as he lay on the movable bed of the CT scanner. So, after prevailing on the staff, they allowed her to get as close as she could, in the corridor outside the hallway, down the hall from the scanning suite. She had been planning to start the discussion about having a family and wonders what she would trade to guarantee Jared’s future. She shifts her weight from one foot to another and back again, like pacing in place, as she reads the notices and signs posted on the walls for the fifth time. She has a fingernail in her mouth and closes down with her teeth, controlling the tension so she feels something without biting down and ruining her manicure. She doesn’t nick the nail but inadvertently scratches the clear, glistening polish. She heard that, when you have kids, you relive parts of your own childhood. Maybe that’s what Jared’s trying to do with his collection. Maybe he’s given up on the future.
Lisa sits in the doctor’s office holding Jared’s hand. Dr. Cotter comes in with the radiology report. Two tumors this time, there and there, is all that she gets before her brain fogs. The doctor mentions surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, physical therapy, time off of work, support – a rhythm of words played in a minor key. Lisa asks how cleanly the tumors can be cut out.
“Like an egg slicer?” Asks Jared. The doctor looks confused and looks to Lisa for clarification.
“It’s not important,” says Lisa.
At home, Jared announces that he has a surprise. He disappears into the bedroom and comes out with Strat-O-Matic baseball. He has a big smile on his face but, when he speaks, his tone is deadly serious. “One game? Please?”
They sit down at the kitchen table and Jared disassembles the game with grim enthusiasm.
“I couldn’t get the exact set from my childhood, but this will do.” Lisa has no idea what she is doing, but Jared helps her “to make the game fair.” But it’s like Jared’s playing against himself. Jared seems pleased with his team but has some concern about Pete Rose at third base.
“One of the greatest players, but he really screwed up.” He offers Lisa a trade, assuring her that Rose would be a great asset but that he is bothered by Rose in a way that she couldn’t be, not having followed the game. She accepts the offer and gives Jared one of her third basemen, Pumpsie Green, having no idea the disadvantage under which she is placing Jared.
“I’ll make the best of it,” says Jared.
Lisa holds the egg slicer in the palm of her hand. Mostly plastic, it is almost weightless. Rather than getting an all-steel one, she went on eBay and found one from Jared’s grandparents’ era, a base of yellow plastic, pale as a winter’s sun, and thin, metal blades that disappear into the base. She wants to surprise Jared, to show him that some things can slice precisely, not making mistakes and not creating waste. Jared is beyond happy.
“Where’d you get that?!” They hard boil some eggs and put each into the slicer. Then they look around for other things to slice: an avocado, tofu, hot dogs, strawberries.
“ Maybe we should tell Dr. Cotter about this,” says Jared.
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2021
Rebecca leaned into the driver’s-side window while I let the engine idle. Her brown hair had lengthened over the summer, and some strands fluttered into the car. The constellations in the ink-black sky and two lampposts illuminated the gravel parking lot. Hugging me, she said in a voice raspy with fatigue, “Thanks for coming with me, Dad.” I waited while she crossed the lot - the pebbles crunching underfoot interrupting the rhythm of the frogs and insects on this rural New Hampshire night. As she approached the road to return to the summer camp where she worked, she took out her cell phone and started texting. I leaned my head out the window and shouted, “Don’t text while you cross the road!” She looked back, gave me her “I’ll-indulge-you-this-time” smile, and put her phone in her pocket.
I had picked her up the previous day to drive to the Manchester airport for the flight to Philadelphia - which was a half-hour from the University of Delaware - so we could attend her new student orientation. At the airport, she passed the time doing crossword puzzles, which I had no idea that she enjoyed, and she allowed me the pleasure of helping. We laughed as we consumed the airport’s Asian salad, which we both – lovers of Asian food – found wanting. On the plane, we discussed her course selection, with me doing more listening than advising for a change. When the rental car we wanted was unavailable, we upgraded to a new, fully loaded, leather outfitted, Lincoln Continental, which Rebecca enthusiastically proclaimed as “sick!” On the way to campus, we detoured to search for a place to get Rebecca some personal products she had forgotten to bring. It was dark, and I must have been nervous, so I joked that we had no idea what type of neighborhood we were getting into but, when she became anxious, I backed off rather than pushing my humor to its predictable conclusion.
The next day, we shared the excitement of being in a large auditorium filled with other accepted students and their parents, welcomed by a most enthusiastic student delegation. We then split up and reunited after Rebecca had met with her advisor to pick her courses. Strolling on campus that afternoon, Rebecca expressed doubts about the courses for which she had registered. I mentioned a course in Criminal Justice I had heard one student speak about in the parent information meeting, which I thought would interest her. She became angry at me for not telling her sooner, surprising me that she would seriously consider my recommendation. Rebecca was tired and began to display some of the emotional vulnerability and irritability that she had often found hard to control. Rather than becoming frustrated, I reassured her that we could deal with any course changes when we got back. I let the matter drop rather than forcing her to see it my way, which would have achieved, for both of us, an outwardly calm but inwardly distressing stand-off. On the drive back to the airport, Rebecca slept the sleep of the exhausted, slumped over like a doll in the passenger seat. After returning the car, we enjoyed a pleasant dinner and flight back.
It had been 18 years and seven months since her harrowing premature birth: since all four pounds, five ounces of her spent her first night towered over by blinking and beeping steel behemoths, ensuring her safe transition to her second day of life. It had been three years and six months since her grand mal seizure landed her in a hospital across the street from where she had been born, and one month since she graduated high school, a high honors student and competitive dancer with an infectious laugh and gregarious personality.
I remember holding her as she was wrapped in a doll’s dress in the special care nursery, telling her, “best friends for life.” And maybe my “friendship” spoke too much to her vulnerability, as I tried to parent a child as emotional and as headstrong as myself. There were years of emotional storms, hers and mine, as I struggled to handle her and she struggled to survive me, and years of her shutting down at the onslaught of my questions and shutting her door to preserve her independence. But, there were also moments when I got to be there as a parent and a friend, like when she called in tears after rear-ending another vehicle and totaling my car. There were no arguments that day, just holding and reassurance - offered and accepted. There were sweet moments, too, like dancing the tango to the juke box in the Martha’s Vineyard ice cream parlor when she was five, and her understated appreciation of the day I had just spent with her at the college she was to attend in the fall.
If only there was a little more time before she left home; if only a bit of her childhood remained in which I could finally get it right, now that I seemed to know what to do. The tragedy of youth is the ignorance of how limited your time is; the tragedy of adulthood is your awareness of that limitation while the swiftness of time outpaces your ability to change.
As Rebecca walked away, I wondered, How will she cope without me reminding her not to text when crossing a road? Then I wondered, How will I?
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2021
My evolution from wanting to write, to loving writing, to having to write did not proceed quietly. The more I lost myself in the craft, the more I anguished over what it meant to be “good enough” and, once good enough, then “really good.” If some of my pieces were receiving so much praise, why were they being rejected? If the editors liked them as much as they claimed to, why didn’t they publish them? I would submit a piece and then incessantly check my email for a response. My response to success wasn’t a quiet mind but rather just a search for the next mountain to climb. And the long latency between submission and response for most literary fiction venues only made the process more fraught. When I complain, I complain out loud, and my wife wondered why I didn’t take up a pastime that actually relaxed me (as a practicing clinical psychologist, my work is stressful enough) – and here she almost had me, until she added: “like golf.”
If it were only my writing that caused such disquiet, maybe it would be more tolerable, but there’s also a confederacy of regrets about things I should have done, things I should not have done and things I should have said; then there are my wonderings about how things might have turned out differently if only…, and, on top of that, the whole gaggle of murmurings about my parenting.
And what if I were calm and, as the mindfulness crowd says, “centered” about all this? I wonder if I would create anything worthwhile. Sure, you can write wonderful prose about your peaceful, harmonious inner life, as has been proven by Ekhart Tolle and Alan Watts. But could I do that? So, if I focused mindfully on the present, on what is right HERE…NOW, to paraphrase Ram Dass, what would I experience? Somehow, those old insecurities would probably still be banging around like a loose wrench floating in an abandoned spaceship. I guess I have approached quietude with the same disquiet with which I have approached most things.
I have heard the aphorism, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” though I’m not sure who coined that phrase but, without conflict, what material could I possibly have? I tried self-help books until I read that the person most likely to buy a self-help book is someone whose last purchase was a self-help book. It reminded me of the stand-up comic I saw who said that his first job was as an assistant to a psychic. One day he arrived late to work, and she asked, “Where were you?”
So, I see good writing and wish I could do that. I see my pieces rejected and wonder why. Insecurity flares up when success doesn’t rise up to greet me and quickly follows even when it does. In the film The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon plays a man whose life, like everyone else’s, is on a trajectory that is largely influenced, although not completely, by a committee of overseers who steer each life along a predetermined path. A wrench is thrown into the overseers’ plans when Damon’s character falls in love and struggles to pursue this relationship despite the overseers’ efforts to divert his path from this woman. Why do the overseers want to do this? Because Damon’s character is a politician, driven by the need to be loved by the public, to compensate for the love he never felt he received in his life, and he is on the verge of winning a high political office through which he can do a great deal of good. If he finds love and is at peace, gone will be the thing that drives him.
Freud taught us that internal conflict is universal in life, that the mind’s disquiet seeks manifestation, that the conflicts that seethe internally find expression in the relationships we form and the choices we make, and that we have to divert them - we can be controlled by them or we can find ways to express them productively or artistically. I might succeed in taming the geyser into a fountain from which I can drink, but the source, the underground spring, must continue to flow.
published in Storgy Magazine, 2020
Tara wasn’t a bad girl. Doin’ bad things don’t make you bad. If she’d been born in another place, into a proper family, she might’ve been an actress, or maybe a hostess at a fancy restaurant, or even an airline stewardess. She was pretty, her skin light and delicate like the lilies growing in front of rich folks’ homes in summer. Not like me, a big and bony girl. And that pink dress she always wore, with one side always slipping off her shoulder - teachers always telling her to fix her dress and be proper. Though the boys liked seeing that, and she didn’t seem to mind their attention, especially Timmy Burns. They was caught once behind the school – Timmy slipping the flask of Wild Turkey out of his back pocket, and them drinking and smoking, Timmy grabbing her and Tara giggling. Her daddy whupped her good and her momma kept her in the house for two days straight until she couldn’t take the arguing no more and let her go. Tara told me there was nothing between her and Timmy. Just having fun, acting crazy. He was after her, but he was just a boy and she could handle it. He was half-assed drunk most of the time anyway and could hardly see straight. She did admit that once she went farther than she had planned, but she started gagging and choking and almost threw up and that was the end of that. Last time she seen Timmy, though, after the high school graduation dance, again behind the school, she didn’t seem right when she come back in the gym. I didn’t think til then that she could be any paler, but she was. She wouldn’t talk ‘bout it, which was strange, ‘cause she talked to me ‘bout everything else.
Tara and I did almost everything together, starting back in middle school, everything, except when she was hanging out with Timmy and his buddies or going to parties. I wasn’t much for parties and boozing and all that carrying on. Tara would tell me that Timmy or Ryan or Joe was getting a keg ‘cause their parents were out of town and wouldn’t I like to have some fun for a change. Momma thought it would be good for me to get out, but I never had anything to wear – anything that looked good on me, at my size. I was the kind of girl who played volleyball or basketball, if the town had girls’ sports, which ours didn’t, but Tara would sit in my room showing me pages of fashion magazines and chattering on about how all the models were tall like me and how beautiful they were. She would tell me that I wasn’t big, I was statuesque, a word that I’m sure she got from one of them magazine articles. She made me laugh every time she used that word, ‘cause coming from her it was like she was trying to sound like royalty – with a Southern accent. Our town didn’t have no royalty, no foreigners – heck, I reckon most folks in our own state didn’t even know we existed – and not many girls as pretty as Tara, so Tara was our celebrity, our prom queen, the one everyone always expected more of and who managed to get away with disappointing everyone ‘cause we all were sure she would come around eventually.
One day they showed us that movie in school – The Lion King. The movie kept saying something ‘bout “The Circle of Life.” Tara leaned over and whispered to me, Yeah, The Circle-Jerk of Life, and I put my hand to my mouth to prevent the spit spurting out as I stuffed a laugh. Miss Hardack just glared at me as Tara flicked her long, golden hair back and let the ringlets fall around her ears, the way she did when she faked not caring about something.
Later, we were sitting on her front stoop drinking iced tea her momma had made, and Tara said she didn’t get it. The Circle of Life just means you end up in the same place you started. You go to grade school, then high school. Then you work at the hardware store, or a farm, or maybe you get away and go to state college one hour away and come back and teach in the same grade school or high school, where the kids do the same things you did, drinking, smoking, hanging out, talking ‘bout nothing, keeping away from their parents. You marry Timmy, or Ryan or Joe, or maybe, if you’re lucky, Dan – he’s the best of the lot - I caught him looking at you once or twice, Linny. He’s perfect for you, tall, handsome, hard working. Tara’s words were coming fast, but she stopped and looked at me, leaned back and giggled, before continuing on all serious. Then your kids go to the same school end up in the same jobs, and your grandkids after that. And you just end up growing old and dying in the same place you were born. Tara’s hands stopped moving and she gripped them together and just looked at me. We just get stuck, like the muck that builds up at the bottom of a drainpipe, that gets left behind and sticks, with layers and layers of more muck, each settling on top of the one before. I used to think I would leave this place, especially those times when my daddy came home smelling of whiskey and smokes and yelling at my momma and throwing things around the house. I would take my little sister and hold her under the bed and promise her that one day we would be so far out of here that we would forget how to find our way back. But, where would I go? That ain’t gonna happen and I ain’t never leaving. Then Tara just changed the subject and got all excited about the party she was going to that night and how her momma thought she was sleeping over my house, so I better not say nothing if she mentioned it.
Whenever Tara brought up us being stuck and all for life after that, she would add, at least we’ll be stuck together. I told her that I was getting out. A teacher told me that if I worked hard and got my grades up, I could go to the state university, not that rinky-dink teacher’s college in the next town that just recycled the locals and sent them back home. The university, that’s where people learned something that would take them far in life, she had told me. Tara looked upset, and then asked me how I would afford it. My parents had no money. I told her that my grades would get me a scholarship. You’ll see. My daddy was always telling me to be realistic and come down to earth. He said that I would never get into the state university. They don’t take our white trash, he would say and, You gotta be smart. How my daddy knew if I was smart, I wouldn’t know, ‘cause he was never around. Momma was always telling me that he was away working, trying to provide for us, but I wasn’t as stupid as either of them thought. I had heard the stories, about his gambling, about the trouble he was in with men who he owed money to. Some of the boys had used their fake IDs to get into a casino in Romeo and saw him there when he was away “working.”
Fourth of July was always a big deal. We had a parade down Main Street with our one fire engine leading the way followed by a red Ford pick-up with a big “Harry’s Hardware” sign propped up in the bed, then the marching band, football team, cheerleaders, Boy Scouts and church groups, all waving and yelling and throwing candy at the folks lining the street. I maybe went once or twice, but Tara was the Parade Queen, at least every other year – they wanted to give other girls a chance, too - so she got to wear a long dress and a tiara and sit in the back of a flatbed and smile and wave to everyone. The Fourth just before our senior year of high school, I was taking a bath. The house was quiet, only me and momma there, and momma was sitting on the porch after giving up trying to convince me, again, to go to the parade, and losing the argument one more time. You’re gonna grow old alone, and, No wonder you have no friends, and, You have enough strikes against you being so tall and gangly, and, You’ll never get these years back, as another year slipped off into wherever years go when they disappear. I remember filling the tub with hot water, so hot that my skin turned pink as I slowly lowered myself into the tub. I liked the water real hot, as hot as I could get it without burning myself. I think it made me feel surrounded by something and cut off from everything else. I held my breath, closed my eyes and lowered my head under the water, staying as still as I could, counting to see how long I could hold my breath. The warmth surrounded my head and I felt like it was floating above everything, detached from my body, detached from the world and life itself, peaceful-like. After the last of the air I was holding had bubbled out of me, I stayed under for a few more seconds then raised my head above the water. I opened my mouth a little to suck in some air and felt some soft, gentle pressure on my lips. I opened my eyes and there was Tara standing over me in her long dress and tiara, with her lips, cool and dry, on mine. I pushed myself up suddenly - I must’ve scared her – and she stepped back, covered her mouth with her hand, laughed, and left the room. I stayed in the tub awhile, until the water got cool and my skin felt chilly, and then got out and dried myself off. I walked to the porch with the towel around me, careful to put on my flip-flops to avoid the splinters of unpainted wood and the nail heads sticking out that daddy kept promising to fix when he had a minute. Momma was sitting there in her rocker with a big ball of gray yarn in her lap, matching the faded gray of the porch. Momma asked, Did you see Tara? She came by. Looked real pretty. Probably wondering why you didn’t come see her in the parade. I said, She left? and Momma just rocked in her chair and looked out at the road.
The next day in school, Tara looked at me and shrugged, and we never talked about it. I didn’t know how to bring it up. I didn’t know what it meant or what I wanted it to mean. So, we just went on as if life was normal, which it always is, in a way.
I think about that day sometimes, like now, when I have the house to myself - Dan’s at work and the kids are at school - and I can sit at the table and take one of Dan’s Pall Malls out of his jean pocket – he keeps asking me not to smoke in the house, bad for the kids and all that – and, for the most part, I listen, but other days I just double up on air freshener. I do feel bad about it, he works hard and all. After high school, he got a job at Mr. Drysdale’s farm just out of town, mending fences, baling hay, picking peaches, helping with the planting and harvesting. It was hard work, but Dan liked it, and was pretty shaken when, after a year of making that farm look and operate real good, Mr. Drysdale told him that the farm was just too much for him and his family to maintain, and that he was gonna sell it. Mr. Drysdale never got what he wanted for it, certainly not enough to pay for all those hours and years of back breaking work and little sleep, but he got enough to take care of his daddy and keep clothes on his back. Dan ended up working in the Toyota plant about 10 miles away in the valley. He never looked real happy after that, but it was not in his nature to complain. So, I sit here watching the ash from my cigarette fall and break apart, and the smoke float up and disappear, like it was free, except for the smell that lingers that you can’t really get rid of, no matter how much air freshener you cover it up with. I think about Tara and high school and our promise to always be with each other, no matter what.
Tara used to take me on hikes to the abandoned granite quarry just out of town, where a small paved road veers off to the right into the woods, then turns to gravel and finally to dirt. We would put on old sneakers and she would even wear jeans, and we would lift up the chain-link fence that was placed across the path that led to the quarry, now overgrown with grasses and ferns, ignoring the sign that warned us to keep out. We would tramp down the grasses that had tried to fill in the unused path, dodging small puddles where mucky-brown rainwater had gathered. Tara and I would pick up small stones and pebbles to throw into the quarry. The air was still and, as we silently made our way, we could hear some birds and, if it was the end of the day, the cicadas humming. We would climb up a cliff – Tara always in the lead – careful not to slip if the rocks were wet - and make our way to a ridge that was just wide enough and long enough for two people to stand, and stare into the gaping hole of the quarry. Tara would hold my hand and, with our free hands, we would throw the rocks into the quarry, counting the seconds until we heard them splash into the water or bounce off rocks below, trying to calculate how many feet down our rocks had fallen and who had tossed her rocks the farthest. Tara always seemed a little nervous to be standing there with me, but I never brought it up. I asked her if she ever brought her boyfriends there. She asked if I was joking and said that the place was just too special. Besides, Timmy always had too much liquor in him to trust him to stand up straight and he would probably slip and his sorry ass would fall into the quarry.
She was right about Timmy. Since I started working at Big Al’s Tavern, Timmy had been coming in at least three times a week – was doing that long before I started working there. He was usually three sheets to the wind. Still drinking Wild Turkey; never graduated to the top shelf stuff. And the other day he peed himself ‘cause he couldn’t get off the stool and make it to the bathroom. I called Dan to come get him and take him home. He begged Dan not to cause he knew he’d catch hell from Luanne. He got married to her shortly after high school once he got over the fact that he wasn’t gonna grow old and drunk with Tara, as if that was ever gonna happen anyway. The way Tara looked a few months after the dance – full, her face a little round, a little softer – I had figured that she would have to marry Timmy, but that wouldn’t last long anyway. After that, her complaints that she would never get out of here, which had become so regular that I hardly noticed it anymore – seemed more urgent and desperate.
I’d never thought about the future of me and her, but I always reckoned there would be one. To make her feel better, I told her that, if we both stayed in town, we would have babies and raise them together and it would be just as it always was, but with more of us. I didn’t know what else to say. Her words came out so fast, like there was no gap between her words and sentences, if you were reading it, that it made me nervous. I don’t want to talk about being a momma, Linny. Look at my momma, look at yours. Both married real princes, didn’t they? They stay home and cook and sweep and wipe their kids’ bottoms and mouths and their little snotty noses while the guys go out and drink and gamble and can’t stand to be home for two nights in a row. And thank god for that anyway, cause when he is home, I wake up in the middle of the night and see him standing in my doorway staring at me. He tried coming at me a coupla times, but I told him I would scream if he got any closer. She looked like she was about to cry, but she turned her face away and when she looked back at me, she was smiling.
Tara and I sat on the ledge of the quarry, our knees drawn up to our chests, leaning our backs against the hard, rough stone. I wonder, she said, what falling down there would feel like. I asked her what she thought, and she said it would probably feel like freedom.
I had delayed applying to the university, being busy getting the application materials mailed to friends’ houses so my parents wouldn’t see it, making sure they weren’t home so I could call the financial aid office, and doing my best to talk a couple of teachers who had given me more than a C to write letters of recommendation. Luckily for me, they had what they called rolling admissions where you could apply any time. I finally told them that I changed my address to my real address ‘cause I didn’t want to take a chance and miss my acceptance letter. When I knew that enough time had passed for them to look at my application, I rushed home from school every day to find the mailman before momma found him. Tara kept asking me why I didn’t hang out after school like I always did; if I didn’t like going to parties, it was the least I could do. By the look on her face, she took my absence personally, but I didn’t have the heart to explain to her what I was doing.
That day came when there were two envelopes addressed to me from the state university. With their seal on the envelopes they looked very official, like a royal messenger with one of those long trumpets should be standing there announcing it. Even though I hadn’t let Tara in on what I was waiting for, I grabbed the envelopes before my momma could see them and ran over Tara’s house. I ran up onto her porch, loose slats clacking and giving way under my steps. I rushed into her room breathless. She was sitting on her floor on her worn-out green rug, flipping through a home decorating magazine. They’re here! I said, waving the envelopes. What are those?” she asked. I sat down next to her and tore open the first envelope. I held it and read the three sentences once, then read the more slowly, then a third time, slower still. What’s it say? she asked, without enthusiasm. I’m in! I got in! I jumped up and down with Tara just watching. What’s the other one say?” I must’ve forgotten I was holding another envelope ‘cause I felt confused, then I looked at my other hand and said, Oh, yeah. I sat down on the floor again and tore open the envelope. It’s from the financial aid office. As I read the letter, I dropped the admissions letter to the floor. Tara must have known something was wrong ‘cause she leaned over to touch her shoulder to mine. What? What is it? I looked down at the floor. They gave me money…a little…but it’s not enough. Not even close. And they say I don’t qualify for no loan, with no assets and no one to co-sign for me. I put the letter in my lap and stared at the walls, with the rock and fashion posters that Tara had hung to cover up the cracked and faded paint job. There’s no way…there’s no way for me to make up the money. My parents, they won’t…can’t help me. I put the letter down and put my arms around Tara and just cried more than I thought I could. Tara took me in her arms. Now we’ll never get out of here. We sat there holding each other until Tara loosened her hold on me and leaned back to look me in the eye. There is a way, to get out, but we will have to be brave. She had a plan but, as soon as she started to explain it, I couldn’t bear to hear it and I told her I had to go.
The smoke from my cigarette floats up, seeping into the walls and the ceiling of my house. I think about my decision to go back to Tara’s two days later to hear out her plan. I guess I wasn’t feeling any better. In fact, as the days went on, and there was nobody except Tara I could talk to, I started feeling worse and worse. Tara didn’t look surprised to see me. She had thought about her plan for a long time, but was afraid to tell me, until now. We would go to the quarry with a bottle of Wild Turkey that she would steal from Timmy. We would talk and drink and, when we were ready, we would hold hands and jump into the quarry. We’ll finally feel free…together! Before I had a chance to answer, she got up and left the room, coming back with a bottle of Jack Daniels. I don’t think my daddy can keep track of how much is in the bottle. She turned on the radio and we passed the bottle, this time with me drinking more than her. She said we would meet after school on Friday and go to the quarry. I said I didn’t know. She told me she was going and she’d like me to come by anyway.
I had hoped I would feel better by then, but the harder I tried, the more I couldn’t think of a way out. My daddy was drinking more and staying home, screaming at momma and at life itself. I figured when I got to Tara’s I would talk her out of it – talk us both out of it, but I didn’t say nothing and neither did she. I just followed her to the quarry. It was a windy day and the wind pressed us back against the rock wall of the ledge. Tara had on the white dress she had worn to the Fourth of July parade and her tiara. I just had on a pair of old, ripped jeans and sneakers where the soles had started to separate. We sat and took a few swigs and then a few more. This is one hell of a last meal, I think I remember saying. Tara slurred, It’s like Thanksgiving…Turkey dinner! and then Tara threw the bottle into the quarry. We watched it hurtle down, the sun glinting off it so it became visible every few feet. Then we heard a faint sound of glass shattering. I’m ready, Tara said. I don’t know, I said softly, maybe if we gave it more time. I don’t know if Tara heard me, ‘cause she just stood up and reached for my hand, pulling me up next to her. We stood side by side like that, I don’t remember how long. I heard Tara take in a long breath. Her hand was cold and sweaty and trembled slightly. I turned to look at her and her eyes were closed. I tried to think of something to say. I looked back down into the quarry, retracing the path I had seen the bottle of whiskey take before hearing it shatter. We’ll feel free and more alive than ever. Just keep thinking that, Tara said. I saw her bend her knees. Ok, on three. And she started to count slowly. I tried to pull her upright, but she kept counting and as she got to Three! what was takin’ forever now was rushing at me at 100 miles per hour. Tara jumped, and as she lunged forward, I shouted Wait… but she was already moving away and pulling me toward her. I grabbed onto a piece of rock sticking out to anchor myself. She tried to hold onto me, but her hands were too slippery. In a split second, I saw Tara open her eyes and look at me and saw in her eyes the day we had met, the nights on her floor, the jokes whispered in school, the chidings I gave her for hanging out with the bad boys, and the pact we had made. Then, she was gone. Before I looked away, I think I saw her reach out her hand one more time.
After Tara was declared missing, the police came to interview me, and I suggested they try the quarry. I told them that Tara liked to go there when she was feeling down. They found her body in the water, broken like the shattered glass of the Wild Turkey bottle.
Some nights, when the house is still and the world is on pause, when Dan and the kids are asleep and the night seems to stretch out endlessly like a curse, I lie in bed and feel myself falling through space and time, and the terror takes over. Then I feel like I’m floating…floating above the bed, above the house, above this town. Then, I don’t know. Falling and floating…I’m not sure there’s much difference.
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2019
We put the canoe in, Sophie and I, before the sun had warmed the pond and the fog had dissipated. Enveloped by the smell of damp-draped earth, we paddled in silent synchrony, each paddle angled efficiently, barely registering sound slicing the water. When we spoke, it was of the European cities we would visit, the country house we would build and the summers we would spend on Martha’s Vineyard. As the chill and the fog lifted, we saw the blue sky, expanding like a promise that we were moving into. Sophie was silent, as the sun warmed our backs, which strained to maintain our rhythm. She pointed ahead where the pond spread left and right. I steered to the right, the better to see the lily pads, and I knew she would be happy to see the frogs. As we made the turn, I looked at the water and could not see the bottom, as we had at other times. It could have been that the silt had been stirred by the storm that had passed the previous evening, or that, this time of year, the vegetation had increased its issue. Our silence sat heavier, and I couldn’t see Sophie’s face as she commanded the front of the boat. Then we saw it, a white and pink carpet of petals spread wide across the water, leaves so thick and so dense that we felt we could walk on them. Sophie commented on how deep the roots went and wondered if these plants generated from the floor of the pond and grew upward, or from the surface and grew downward, finding a firm place to plant themselves. I laughed about the double meaning of the word plant and Sophie, her face half-turned, narrowed her eyes. A breeze rippled the surface of the pond, and we could see the lily flowers sway and the frogs bob gently. The water, stirred once again, took on a browner, murkier cast. The lily pads thickened the further we ventured. The boat slowed. Sophie’s shoulders tightened. I could no longer match her strokes. We heard a splash and turned to see a young golden retriever swimming near shore and a child standing on a rock smiling at him. Sophie’s paddle smacked the water on its flat side, spattering us with droplets. She said how much children would enjoy this pond, how they would love swimming in the early summer, when the lake was clear and cool, boating in the fall with the brilliant display of color that is New England’s pre-winter gift, skating in the winter and fishing in the spring. I nodded, though she could not see me, and I thought I heard her voice catch as she changed the subject to dinner plans. The afternoon was approaching and we had things to do, so I steered the boat around while Sophie paddled more urgently. Our paddles hit the water with greater frequency and force. With the splashing, and with our timing off, the canoe jerked forward, moving faster, but in spurts, struggling to maintain a straight line, and getting us back to shore no faster than we had paddled out. We rammed the canoe onto the shallow sand where we had put in. Sophie stepped out without looking back and I, caught unaware, quickly shifted to keep the boat from overturning. After I got myself out, we turned the boat over, emptying its contents of sand, water and twigs. And one small frog.
published in Streetlight Magazine, 2019
Morning hunkered over the house, gray and unyielding, pressing through the spaces between the drawn shade and the window frame. Wes sat on the edge of the bed in underwear and socks, next to a newly cleaned and pressed suit, still in dry-cleaner’s plastic. The only other furniture a three-drawer dresser and two night-stands of unfinished pine. His closet door stood half-open, exposing the dimly lit shelves and the t-shirts, sweaters and pants piled upon them. In searching for a belt, he had noticed a bright blue fold of fabric slumping over the shelf at the bottom of the pile of t-shirts, like a toddler peeking out from behind a chair, hoping to be seen and not seen.
Wes thumbed the fabric of the blue t-shirt, the kind of thing they make in kindergarten, he figured, so she must’ve been five. Couldn’t have been older than that. It might have been Father’s Day, maybe Christmas, he didn’t recall.
Nora had been telling him to clean out his closet, get rid of stuff he never wears. “If you haven’t worn it in three years, you’re not gonna wear it! Get rid of it!” He could still hear the exclamation marks.
He ran his thumb over the raised swirls and solid pools of shiny fabric paint. Bright, primary colors that stiffened the fabric. She had laid on the paint with all the delicacy and glee of a five-year-old wielding something irresistibly viscous - so thick that, if he folded the shirt the wrong way, the paint would crack, leaving gaps in the meandering rivulets and pools. He was careful not to; maybe that’s why he had never worn it. A big puddle of little-kids-playroom-yellow coagulated at the right breast. Below that, swirls of red, green, blue. The random drips of childhood. If you looked hard enough you could see things – parts of faces, bodies – something he had noticed long ago but had stopped looking for. He held it up to his nose and it smelled like Play-Doh, like warm pancakes, like clean socks.
About a year after he got the shirt, Wes and her mother separated, and he saw her less and less. One day, he thought it was the day he told her she was finally big enough to order the large pizza at Mike’s, she asked Wes if he ever wore the shirt. He just said that he didn’t want to ruin it, it was so special. She said, “You still have it, don’t you?” Wes nodded and gave her a quarter to put in the jukebox and play whatever song she wanted to. He had tried to make their outings fun, the little time they had together. When she was a little older, she started to ask questions, like why he left, why he was mean to her mother, and – this is the one that almost made him laugh – if his girlfriend was going to get all his money. Wes would shrug, say something like, “It’s complicated,” and try to get her mind off of what children just couldn’t understand. Until the day - she was 14, maybe – she slammed the door and yelled at him that he just didn’t understand. She never did apologize. After that, no note, no birthday card, no Father’s Day card, no Season’s Greetings with her picture. He looked at the suit. There was still time to back out.
When the invitation arrived in the mail, Wes threw it into the trash without a second thought. He and Nora never got mail with that kind of fancy envelope with that deep, black, curvy script. He assumed it was just someone else trying to scam them. But Nora said, “Wait,” and took the envelope and opened it. Nora said they were going and that was that. Nora didn’t care that she had never met her, or the guy she was marrying, for that matter. Family was family, and if they didn’t want us there, they wouldn’t have bothered to put all those pink and white and frilly and fancy pieces of paper into that thick envelope and send it to us. She said Wes would need a new suit and they would find a way to afford it.
After the move – after the fire, after the dog ran away, after salvaging what they could and storing it in a few boxes for several months – the shirt sort of got lost. Until, one day, when he was opening a box of kitchen stuff, he found it wrapped around a delicate glass vase he had taken from his mother’s apartment after she died. He didn’t know why he had taken the vase. What would a 14-year-old boy, whose mother had left him, his father and his brothers, want with a glass vase? He certainly had no use for it. It was nothing that he could show off to his friends. Maybe because there was no use to it, so it would never get used up. He tossed the shirt aside and carefully placed the vase in the china cabinet.
Wes rubbed his finger on the smooth yellow pond. He remembered taking her ice skating when she was 10. She pleaded with him to lace up a pair and, after trying to joke his way out of it, he gave in and got on the ice. She took his hand when he started to wobble and sang out loud the song blaring on the PA system. He laughed and started singing a duet with her. Then he delicately put his hand on her waist and danced with her the way his mother had taught him, when she told him to step on her shoes and she carried him around the room to a Benny Goodman tune.
Nora stood in the doorway. “You getting ready?” She looked at the shirt and then at Wes. “Better get that suit on. We got to leave in 10 minutes.” Wes nodded and stood. In his stocking feet he towered over Nora and the breadth of his shoulders looked like they could envelop Nora and hide her from the world. He, on the other hand, would have a hard time being invisible. Nora turned and walked out. “Ten minutes!”
When Wes emerged from the bedroom, Nora was in the kitchen drinking coffee. Without looking up, she began, “Can I pour you a quick…” and stopped.
“You’re wearing that!? To your daughter’s wedding?”
Wes bent his neck to look at the shirt draping the broad expanse of his chest, like an enormous billboard.
“What else should I save it for?”
published in Aji Magazine, 2017
“I was comin’ outta Dunkin’s. It was one of those weird mornings when the full moon was up in the sky with the sun. Like it was night, except it was day. I looked up to see the moon. I was carryin’ my coffee. He was in front of the door, just standin’ there, like right in my way. ‘cept I didn’t see him. Bam! I bumped into him with my coffee leadin’ the way. Spilled all over this dirty green jacket he was wearin’. I remember, it was shiny from all the dirt, like all the dirt of New York City had settled on it over the years. It looked like it usta be a nice jacket. But not anymore. And me, too. My whole arm burnin’ with the coffee, like the lid on the cup says, ‘Caution Contents Extremely Hot.’ They ain’t kiddin’. I don’t know who was madder, him or me. We just looked at each other. No ‘excuse me’ or ‘sorry.’ Just stared at each other. Then we walked off, he uptown, me downtown.”
Josie leaned forward and pulled her gristly brown hair, now slumping just below her shoulders, back behind her ears with both hands and let it go, allowing it to fall forward in front of her ears again. Her hair - appearing without thought to cut or style - accentuated her long, narrow face with its stretched-out, conical nose that resembled a bullet parked in the middle of it. She tugged on the white bedsheet, pulling it up to her chest.
“That’s it?” asked the nurse, navigating the small room with quick, efficient steps, her rubber soles squeaking against the polished linoleum floor, her blue hospital scrubs hugging tightly on her large hips. She stepped on the pedal that raised the back of the bed and moved aside the bedside tray to put a thermometer in Josie’s mouth. “It’s dark in here. Let me open up your shades and let in some sun.
”
“Yep, that’s how I met Johnnie,” said Josie, as the nurse took the thermometer out of her mouth.
“But you went your separate ways. You didn’t even speak. How did you end up… you know?”
Josie looked at the nurse and pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes, as if seeing past the nurse and past the gray room with its shiny linoleum floor and the stock, catalogue furniture, into the recesses of her own consciousness. “Oh, I never thought I’d see him again, never even thought ‘bout him. Then, about 6 months later, same Dunkin’ Donuts. He was standin’ in front again, beggin’ for money. This time I saw him. He looked at me. I don’t think he knew me. And I wouldn’t’ve known him either if it wasn’t for that coat. The same grimy, shiny coat. Yech. I looked at him. I said, and I have no idea why I even talked to him, that coat was just disgusting. I says, ‘I don’t have no money. You want this coffee?’ He just says ‘Yeah.’ And I says, ‘It’s got cream and sugar, I hope you like it sweet.’ Why I said that, I dunno’. You’d think someone beggin’ on the street wouldn’t be too picky. I guess there wasn’t anythin’ else to say. I could’ve said nothin’ I guess. I dunno’. He just looked at me, like a ‘Why’d you say that?’ kinda look. Then, he just smiled, this wide, goofy smile. And his eyes lit up, like a light went on or somethin’. He took a sip, nodded, and said, ‘It’s good.’ Then I stupidly asked, ‘You ain’t never tried Dunkin’s coffee?’”
The nurse pulled Josie’s pillow out from behind her, fluffed and patted it, and placed it back behind her. “Here ya go, hon. Lean back, be comfortable.” She wheeled the tray back in front of Josie’s chest. “That was awfully nice of you.”
“Yeah, I go to that Dunkin’s, not every day, but often enough. Sometimes I seen him, sometimes not. Sometimes when I seen him, I buy him a coffee. Not every time, mind you. But once in a while…most times, actually.”
“Why do you think you did that…for him?”
“That’s what my friend Angelina asked me. I dunno. Just bein’ nice, I guess. He seemed harmless, not like a lot of people you see on the street. Maybe I thought I owed him one, spilling my coffee on him and all that. Jeez, his coat was dirty enough; now he’s got this other stain on it that he ain’t ever gonna wash off. And the smell. It was like when kids try to cook and they throw in all these things that don’t go together – like tomatoes and apples and cheese and mustard - and they smell up the kitchen for days. Angelina’s kids did that. They were havin’ a good time, though. We pretended it taste good, just so they wouldn’t feel bad.”
“Maybe you liked the way he looked,” said the nurse, smiling with a hint of mischievousness in her eyes.
“Nah. It’s not like that. He’s really old, y’know. He wasn’t much to look at anyway. In fact, he was somethin’ not to look at. Gray and black hairs sproutin’ out of his head and his face like the weeds you see growin’ around old tires and thrown-out furniture in empty lots. Couldn’t much tell what his face looked like. I knew he had these large, brown eyes with some of the biggest, blackest pupils I ever seen. I told him one day, I says, ‘If you don’t get yourself a shave, this is the last cup of coffee you’ll get from me.’ I really said that, no kiddin’. He just looked at me and grunted. If I didn’t know better, I think he looked kinda sad. I was surprised that I could say that. It seemed kinda mean, y’know? But I guess I wanted to see what he would do. He just looked at me and walked off with my coffee.”
“Listen,” said the nurse, her voice dropping low and conspiratorial, “I know the doctor talked to you about, y’know, your chemo. Have you made a decision?” The nurse stood next to Josie and leaned her hand on the top of the raised bed.
“Been thinkin’ about it, but I dunno…I dunno what I’m gonna do.”
“She wants to start it right away, to give you the best chance.”
Josie nodded, staring blankly. “Maybe I should ask Johnnie…I haven’t talked to him about it. He’d probably say ‘I’m no doctor, do what you think’s best.’”
“Oh?” The nurse paused and looked around the room. The cardiogram showed a moderate, steady heartbeat. The oxygen level registered normal. None of the monitors betrayed any malevolent presence.
“You look like you’ve lost weight; have you been eating since your surgery?”
“I think so. Maybe.”
“What about family? Anyone you could discuss this with?”
Josie winced and held her stomach.
“Pain bad today?” the nurse asked. Josie nodded and motioned for the nurse to lower the back of the bed.
“Don’t have no family. My parents…haven’t seen them in 10 years. My father…he started coming in my room …late at night, sometimes wakin’ me up, though, after awhile I couldn’t sleep anyway. He said he wanted to comfort me. I was 12 when it started. I started failing everything in school. Couldn’t stay awake. My mom yellin’ at me every day. When I finally told her about my father… I was 16…she lost it. You coulda’ heard her in Jersey. She kicked me out. That was the last time I seen her.”
“Can the social worker reach out to anyone else to give you support?”
“There’s no one there. When I was livin’ on the street – after my friend’s parents got tired of having me around – her father started hangin’ around us more and givin’ me the creeps so I told him to fuck off – my friend didn’t like that so much and he wasn’t too happy either – so when I was livin’ on the street, I lost touch with everyone, not that there were so many to begin with.”
The nurse tucked the top sheet more tightly around Josie. She smoothed out the blankets, stroking them from each side of Josie’s body to the edges of the bed. “You’re gonna have to decide soon. Let me know if I can help.” She turned to face the door, taking a step toward it, stopping as she heard Josie’s voice.
“After he walked off with my coffee,” said Josie, looking down at her blankets and laughing, “I didn’t see Johnnie for awhile. But the next time, he was still in that coat, only it looked a lot worse. But he was shaven, well, partly at least. He looked like he had taken a broken bottle and scraped it across his face. He had patches of hair – not as long as they was before – and spots where I could see his skin, where his skin looked all red and scratchy, like he had almost cut himself or something. Yeah, and he was grinnin’ again, that dopey grin, like he wanted to say ‘Hey, look at me. Have you noticed!’ I didn’t know what to say. I mean, he did what I told him, sorta, I guess, the best he was able. I just smiled, went in and bought him a cup of coffee. This time I kept mine and drank it with him, right there on the sidewalk. I was standin’ there when someone walked by and threw a dollar at my feet. I started yelling’ at the guy, ‘Hey, what makes you think I’m beggin’? I’m just standin’ here havin’ coffee with my friend, like anybody else.’ Johnnie just looks at me and puts his hand on my shoulder, I dunno, to shut me up or maybe tell me it’s all right. He looks down at the bill and I bend down and pick it up and hand it to him. And then we both start laughin’ so hard we couldn’t stop. We joked about doing this together, quittin’ our jobs – which I had but he didn’t, not then anyway – and makin’ a livin’ just standing there lookin’ pretty.
“One day we started walkin’. I dunno who decided that, it’s not like we talked about it or anythin’. Just him and me, coffees in our hands – which I had bought, naturally. We was walkin’ up Amsterdam. I remember he said something, not the usual talk about the weather and the bums on the street. We was passin’ a group of people with their dogs. Big dogs, little dogs, dogs that hardly looked like dogs. I mean, those dogs looked so different from each other, but they was all lookin’ at each other, sniffin’ around you know where, barking at each other, ignoring all the people. So then he says, ‘Look at all those dogs,’ and I says, ‘Yeah, I’m scared of dogs.’ And he says, “Why?’ I says, ‘Don’t know. Everything scares me.’ He started pointing, like he didn’t hear what I said, or just ignored it, not like he was bein’ rude or anything, there just wasn’t nothin’ to say. ‘Take that one and that one. They don’t even look like the same kinda animal.’ And I says, ‘So?’ And he says, ‘How do they know?’ I just look at him. I dunno what he’s getting’ at. And then he says, ‘How come dogs always know that other dogs, no matter how different they look, what size or what shape or what breed, are fellow dogs? How come dogs know that about dogs and people don’t know that about people?’
“I never thought of that, y’know? We started takin’ these walks, on Amsterdam, goin’ uptown to ‘bout 87th Street. Sometimes we’d walk west, near the river. Some days we seen a group of stray dogs, maybe about five or six. Walkin’ together, stoppin’ to sniff together. Once or twice, two of them would growl at each other. Johnnie would put his arm around my shoulder, knowin’ I might be scared. He said he liked dogs and dogs were only mean if people had been mean to them. I asked him how he knew so much and he said he had a dog when he was a kid. I asked him about it, but he never wanted to talk about it.
“Those strays - we never seen them kick any of them out and leave them behind, no matter how nasty they got. When one or two stood up and started walkin’ down the street, they all would get up and follow. Not like the leaders gave them an invitation or nothin’ but everyone knew they could follow along if they wanted. He said dogs were like that. They know none of them could survive all by his self. They all knew that, if it was them, they couldn’t either.”
“He seems to know how to make you feel better.”
“I think he was scared to do it at first, y’know, put his arm around me. So was I. I never had that from my dad…or my mom. I dunno why he did that. It’s not like I told him it felt good. I didn’t want him to get no ideas. But I think he just was bein’ nice.”
“How about him? Does he have any family?”
“He doesn’t talk about it. One day I was walkin’ to Dunkin’s and I seen him looking down at his feet and there was a girl, must’ve been my age, maybe a little older, talkin’ to him real fast, like the vein was bulgin’ in her neck and her eyes looked all bug-eyed and all. Her arms were flappin’ about, wavin’ and stuff and then she walked away. He didn’t even look up when she did that. Then he looked up and seen me crossing the street and looked all embarrassed and all. His eyes were wet. He didn’t say nothin’ to me, but one time he said that he had a daughter somewhere. Didn’t tell me nothin’ else.”
**
Josie wasn’t sure if it was day or night. She had been sleeping and the room was dark. She stirred with the awareness that someone was sitting on her bed next to her.
“You know, your pain’s getting worse and your blood levels aren’t good. If you’re going to have any chance, you’ve got to start chemo right away and, at this point, it’s got to be aggressive.”
“Doc,” and Josie paused as a wave of pain started in her gut and spread through her abdomen, going deep, penetrating into the very matter of her cells. She gasped and caught her breath.
“I’ll order a pump for you. I don’t think the meds are giving you enough relief.”
Josie nodded and breathed sharply.
“I want you to discuss this one more time with the social worker. I’ve given you my opinion, and I’m happy to discuss it more if you’d like.”
“It’s ok, doc, really. You’ve all done your best. It’s not so bad. It’s not like I have a lot of people who are gonna miss me.”
“What about…”
“Oh, maybe him,” she chuckled. “Maybe him. He won’t have no one to buy him coffee no more.”
“And I won’t have no shoulder to put my arm around when my little girl is scared of stray dogs!”
Josie and the doctor looked at the door, where the entranceway was filled with a large, neatly dressed grinning man, whose size could not hide the enormous yellow-brown stuffed animal he held behind him.
“Holy shit! You get off early?”
“Yup. Warehouse was slow today. Some of the ships got delayed.”
“I don’t want you to get yourself fired, all because of me.”
“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have this job. I wouldn’t never even applied. I’d still be in the shelter.” Johnnie turned and looked at the doctor.
“How are ya, doc? How’s she doin’ today?”
“She’s in a lot of pain, I’m afraid. I’m going to order a morphine pump so she can give herself medication whenever she needs it.”
“What you got there, a teddy bear? I ain’t no child y’know!” Johnnie’s smile quickly vanished and his face drooped like it was being pulled by gravity.
“Sorry, here you come to cheer me up and I’m getting’ on your case.”
Johnnie smiled sheepishly and edged past the doctor, keeping his hands behind his back.
“I’ll leave you two alone. We’ll talk later today.” The doctor turned and walked out of the room, her heels clacking on the polished floor. In the hallway, a heart monitor beeped rhythmically at the nurse’s station where the nurses and therapists charted their notes and discussed lunch, and the wheels of a gurney squeaked as it ferried a patient down the corridor.
Johnnie reached over and flipped the light switch. Grinning, he slowly pulled out from behind him what looked like a mass of yellow-brown fur. “And this…is for you!” Josie studied the stuffed Golden Lab with calm intensity as Johnnie held it in front of him with both arms. She looked over the sheen of its soft fur reflecting the overhead fluorescents, its black button eyes and its mouth, which seemed ever so slightly upturned into a smile or, at least, a smirk.
“If you don’t like it, I can take it back,” said Johnnie shifting from one foot to another, as if his body was fighting with his legs to keep him in one place.
“No…no…put it right here,” said Josie, pointing to the foot of her bed.
Johnnie hesitated. “You sure? If you don’t li…”
“It’s ok, just put it there.” Josie looked at the dog without expression. Johnnie looked from Josie to the dog and back. The doctor,” said Josie, still looking at the dog, “she was just tellin’ me that I don’t have long to go, even if I did chemo, at this point, I might not have that long. She says I should talk to you.”
Johnnie lowered his eyes. “It’s up to you. I dunno, I just dunno.” Josie heard Johnnie sniffle and looked up.
“No, I’m not...don’t worry,” he said. “I jus…I never had to decide anything like this before. I never…”
Josie reached over toward the dog and abruptly winced and sat back.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yeah. A little.”
“Here, let me move it closer. Johnnie moved the dog to the side of the bed so it leaned against the metal side guard. Josie lifted her arm and petted the dog’s head.
**
Josie lay in bed with her head partially raised. A tube ran from a small black device which sat on her lap into her arm. An IV drip hovered above her with a tube penetrating her arm at another location. She rested her thumb on the trigger of the device, ready to pump another squirt of morphine into her arm - conditioned like a mouse in a behavior science experiment. She looked up at Johnnie.
“It’s gone too fast…too fast. Maybe I shoulda…”
“Don’t talk like that. There was nothin’ you coulda’ done. It would’ve just been longer and harder.”
“Maybe. But maybe it would’ve given us one more cup of coffee on that filthy street corner.” Josie laughed and shook her head.
“And maybe it would’ve made you too sick. Maybe we had as many cups of coffee as we were allowed. At least we had them together.” Josie slowly lifted her hand and put it on the back of the stuffed Lab.
“The lady from hospice…the other day…she said maybe I had three months, maybe three days. She said I should get in touch with whoever I needed to.” Josie laughed and shook her head again. She looked up again at Johnnie. “Well, here we are!”
Johnnie sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at his pale fingers, with their short-trimmed nails, and lightly wrapped them around Josie’s small, delicate hand and wrist, like a blanket carefully enfolding an emaciated bird.
“Did I ever tell you about Lucky, my dog?”
“Tell me.” Josie coughed, a grating, metallic cough, the liquid in her throat catching and violently expelling into her mouth. She swallowed and sucked in air, making a whistling sound.
“I must’ve been eleven. I noticed him limping. He probably was like that for a while, but it was the first I noticed it. He started comin’ in from his walks and pukin’ on the floor. Then he would lie down sometimes and just whimper. My parents never said nothin’ and I don’t know if they ever took him to the vet or anythin’ like that. One day, he was just gone. The gate in the yard was open. I put him there earlier that day. My friend from across the street – Jake – he come over to play with him and I guess he forgot to close the gate. Lucky must’ve wandered off. I walked for hours. I walked down every street and into every woods I could find callin’ his name, yellin’, cryin’. Even at night. It was fall, so my face got scratched up pretty good from the branches.” Johnnie reached up and lightly touched the faded pink streaks on his face. “It was cold. I was afraid of him bein’ alone out there. Alone and sick. I never found him. I heard that, dogs, wolves, animals like that sometimes go off to die. Alone. So they won’t be no bother to no one. They find some place in the woods, some place comfortable or somethin’, curl up and wait for it to happen.”
The moonlight penetrated the window shade, casting a yellow glow onto the white tiled floor. The gray walls, with their metallic protrusions – connections for oxygen, monitors, pumps and electrical equipment – luminesced and seemed all the more somber for it. He felt her shiver
“Need a blanket?”
“Yeah, could you?”
Johnnie leaned over her, being careful not to put any pressure on her small frame, and pulled the edge of the folded blanket that was lying next to her enough to unfold it and pull it over her.
“Thank you.”
After a few minutes, he heard her say, “Open the shade,” softly, in a voice that betrayed neither pain nor despair.
He looked at her as if being awakened out of a light sleep. “Uh, ok…sure.” He stood up and walked the ten feet to the window, moving aside the wood framed, plastic-upholstered chair which sat ready for no one at this hour. Sitting back on the bed, she put her hand in his and he heard her grunt as she struggled to sit up. “Don’t,” he said, turning to face her, but she had already completed the motion and rested her head on his arm. He turned his head to look at the window, at the moonlight now being drawn through the glass, spilling onto the floor and advancing up the wall. The stars were out in a clear, black sky. Her breathing became labored, coming in short, staccatic gasps. He felt her head shift against his shoulder and he winced at the pain that she must feel, bestowing significance on each movement, no matter how small. He felt her head tilt up to face the nighttime. Then he heard her small, but clear voice.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
published in Aji Magazine, 2017
Our lives are filled with the flow and disruptions of people entering and exiting, leaving their marks on us and carrying something of ourselves in them. Sometimes they, and we, stick around, mutually shaping each other. This emotional intimacy creates intensity and drama, which I try to capture through dialogue - much of it interrupted – action, and absurdist humor. I try to work with an understanding of the division between public and private motives and the dance we all do with each other as those forces play out intra- and interpersonally. What inspires me is the drama of everyday life, the "what if?" inherent in every situation, the larger ethical, moral and political implications of even mundane choices. I also draw inspiration from the works of William Styron, Allan Gurganus, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Isaac Asimov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Great work is defined by riveting conflict - both internal and external, bold events and moral struggle, poetry in the prose, and choices that make me question my own values and decisions. I love creating and re-shaping a world that I inhabit simultaneous with my normal life. I love personifying the struggles that I and others experience in characters who seem to live and breathe as they act out themes bigger than themselves. And there is always the thrill of creating a story that will captivate, entertain and edify.
published in Smoky Quartz, 2015
“I’ll take you out and make you the best ballplayer in the league.”
My father’s words stirred desperate hope in me, as I led my team in dropped fly balls, through-the-legs grounders and game ending strikeouts. The fact that my father never followed through on that promise was made more painful by my knowledge that he had played in the minor leagues for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Decades later, when my mother’s death lowered his wall of grandiosity, my father reminisced about how a finger injury caused him to miss the opportunity to try out for the Dodgers. Just as he had never played professional baseball, my father had never attended college, despite having talked about it. This was revealed that same week when I discovered my father’s school records in my parents’ papers, which showed that he had taken college-level classes in high school. But there was no record of attendance at an actual college. My father, I believe, had fabricated and exaggerated these events to compensate for a life that he perceived as failingly ordinary.
I should have suspected my father’s veracity by the way he talked about me to others. Listening to him, you would have thought that I was one of the most famous and wealthiest of psychologists. I rationalized his behavior by telling myself that this was his way of showing how proud he was of me. What it really was, I think, was his way of aggrandizing himself through me, or at least his fantasy of me, and, in the process, any real recognition of me was lost. Never having felt “known” by my father, how could I have felt loved?
Despite the pride he sometimes expressed in me, he often found a way to ridicule me because of my intelligence by telling me that I might be smart in school, but I had no common sense. In his conflicts with my mother, he pushed me away by aligning me with her against him. I remember constantly hearing his raised voice declaring, “You and your mother…” and then adding whatever he felt was our common belief or behavior that he objected to at the moment. I also remember being publicly embarrassed by his crude humor, looking on in disbelief as he told stories laced with profanities and scatological references, oblivious to the discomfort of those to whom he was speaking, and of his own son.
My feelings turned to more conscious anguish when it came time to name my son, my second born. It is a Jewish tradition to name a child after a deceased family member, not by giving the child the same first or middle name as that family member necessarily, but by giving the child a name with the same initial letter. In this way, the deceased lives on in spirit, with the hope that the child will acquire some of his or her laudable qualities, such as a generous spirit or a long, healthy life. By the time my first child was born, all of her grandparents had died. My wife and I thus had four parents to honor through the bestowal of names onto their grandchildren. We gave my daughter a first name after my mother and a middle name after my father-in-law. When my son was born, there were two more parents to honor. If I did not give my son a first or middle name after my father, it would be an omission conspicuous to the entire family. But I was not comfortable naming my son after a man whose characteristics I had so much difficulty accepting.
Through that struggle, it occurred to me that the man I knew as my father only represented part of a life, much of which predated my own and which encompassed much more than what I had observed. I thought about a part of my father’s life of which I had no first-hand knowledge. My father often talked about his service in the Second World War as if he were stuck there. He was an infantryman serving in Europe. Although I could not verify his claim that he fought in some of the major battles, I did have documentary and photographic evidence that he was in the Army, and even that he became separated from his unit, was close to being captured by the Germans, and was sheltered by a family in Belgium.
The realization that the scope of my father’s life was broader than the part he had shared with me also made me realize that I had also not given him credit for all that I had observed. Although my father’s incessant complaints about work created tension in the home, I knew that he worked long hours, first driving a cab and later, selling insurance. I also remembered long car rides to vacation in Lake George, New York when we could not have had much money, as we spent part of my childhood living in publicly subsidized apartments. I remembered the pleasure my father took taking his family on vacation, just as I remembered how he delighted in taking us to drive-in movies in our pajamas and out to eat for fast food burgers. I also remembered my father’s interactions with people we would meet along the way: waiters and waitresses, cab drivers, policemen, parking lot attendants. He treated everyone with respect and deference, probably never forgetting that, when he was a young father, he made his living as a taxi driver in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
So, my wife and I gave our son a middle name with my father’s first initial, and I can feel confident telling my son that his grandfather had a strong work ethic and a strong sense of duty to his country and his family, that he enjoyed pleasing his family, and that he treated everyone, no matter what their station in life, with respect: not bad qualities for his grandson to emulate.
earlier version published in Smoky Quartz, 2016
It was dark, too dark to see what he was doing. Damn Bernie had picked a night with no moon for this job. Bernie said: It’s just a convenience store. Bernie said: Piece of cake for your first job! Bernie said: All ya gotta do is take the cash and get outta there!
All right. Sam sucked in a long breath. Hit the glass above the doorknob twice so the hole is wide and you don’t cut your arm. Sam rehearsed Bernie’s instructions in that mental monotone that novices always use. Why the hell did I let him talk me into this?
His hearing magnified by the darkness and the over-caffeinated feeling that made his skin crawl, he heard the glass shatter and the metallic click of the bolt as he turned it and opened the door and, just when he expected silence, he heard this sound, this sound like a small, wounded animal. Squirrel? Rats? Inside, his flashlight illuminated the far wall, next to the back door. Just above the floor, he saw the top of a head hanging between two knees -- and shoulders heaving like waves undulating with the tide. What the fuck? Bernie said the closer would be gone by now. He shifted his weight, left foot to right, as he saw the head slowly rise and reveal two doe eyes streaked with mascara looking at him.
Sam froze. “Don’t worry, please miss, don’t be afraid, I’m just going to take the cash from the storage room and get outta here,” he said rapidly. The girl, she must have been 17…16 maybe, looked at him and shivered.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, I have a daughter your…” Sam took a step toward the storage room.
The girl moved her mouth and out came a high pitched, barely audible whimper. “I…I’m not afraid…of you. I…I…oh god, I can’t go home. My father knows…he’ll kill me!” Her shoulders began moving up and down again like the ocean at night, her face wet with new tears.
Another two steps in the direction of the storage room, and Sam stopped. “He knows…?”
“My bratty sister. Must’ve been her. I’ll kill her! My dad’s brand new convertible…he won’t let anyone drive it…I snuck out with it to see my boyfriend. His parents won’t let him see me. They want him to date Veronica, the pretty, stuck up girl in 10th grade. The one with the red hair and blue eyes. She’s like them,” and her voice lowered, “…rich.”
“I’m sure…I’m sure if you just explain it to him, he’ll under…Oh shit, it’s late, I’ve got to…” and Sam tilted his head in the direction of the storage closet. “Ok, miss…”
“Danielle…my name’s Danielle,” she said and cried fiercely, wetting her cheeks and her chin.
Sam stopped, suspended in mid-stride. “Ok, Danielle. I’ll just…” and Sam sighed. He walked over and sat against the wall next to her. He took her hand. “I’m sure your dad loves you; if you tell him why, he’ll understand.”
They sat against the wall, in silence, in the dark, listening to the sirens grow louder.
SPLINTERED RIVER
Officer Mike Hargreaves didn’t mean to kill 18-year-old Malcolm Douglas but, when Malcolm runs out of a convenience store, refuses to stop and raises his hand, Mike, blinded by the sun, shoots him, only to find out he was holding a hot dog, not a gun. Mike, a veteran white police officer in small town Louisiana, has fought against the racism in his department but, after shooting Malcolm, a young Black man, he feels forced to defend himself and his police brethren. When his cause is joined by a shadowy white nationalist organization and is manipulated for political advantage by the mayor, the governor, and a prominent pastor with grand ambitions, he gets caught up in a political firestorm, stoked by a power-hungry vice president who tries to manipulate the courts and a young, newly installed U.S. Chief Justice, with whom he previously had an affair. Mike teams up with Bree Leighton, a crusading, marginalized television reporter, to uncover the secrets behind the shadowy organization and of the vice president, who has institutionalized his wife under false pretenses to keep a scandal in his past secret. As the stakes get higher, the nation is plunged into a constitutional crisis pitting states’ rights against the federal government, and the Second Amendment against the U.S. Constitution, resulting in violent protests and the second American secessionist movement.
MY EVENTS
Local Author Fair
Saturday, March 15
11:00am - 2:00pm
Memorial Hall Library
2 North Main Street
Andover, MA 01810
978-623-8400
ANDOVER BOOKSTORE BOOK SIGNING & READING
Thursday, September 12, 2024, 7 pm
Andover Bookstore, 74 Main Street, Andover MA
TATNUCK BOOKSELLER & CAFE BOOK SIGNING
Saturday, March 8, 11 am - 2 pm
Tatnuck Bookseller & Cafe, Westborough Shopping Center, 18 Lyman St,, Westborough, MA 01581
LALA BOOKS BOOK SIGNING AND READING
Saturday, November 9. 2024, 1:15-5pm
Lala books,189 Market St. Lowell, MA
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NONFICTION BOOKS
FATHERING THE ADHD CHILD
This book is for fathers who want to do a better job raising their children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, for mothers of ADHD children who want to understand the special needs that fathers have in parenting these children, and for professionals who have the challenging task of involving the fathers of ADHD children in their treatment. This is the book for fathers who have traditionally stayed outside the treatment loop; it is also the book for mothers who have tried to get their husbands more involved; and it is the book for professionals who too often neglect the critical role the father plays in the ADHD family. -- Robert L. Weber, Ph.D., Cambridge (MA) Hospital.
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Dr. Jacobs has drawn on his own experience as well as the knowledge in the field to create a moving, useful, unique book that should be helpful to any parent and all clinicians. A comprehensive resource and a welcome addition to the literature. -- Edward Hallowell, MD, Harvard Medical School faculty, retired, and New York Times bestselling author of Driven to Distraction.
Compassionate and filled with helpful real-life examples, Dr. Jacobs' book is a superb reference for parents and professionals. -- Pamela L. Enders, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School.
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ADHD: HELPING PARENTS HELP THEIR CHILDREN
In this practical and informative book, Dr. Edward H. Jacobs demonstrates how he helps parents work effectively to acquire skills that help their children. Clinicians will find concrete exercises, forms, and techniques that deal with such issues as the use of medication, the consequences of divorce, and the child with ADHD in the school system.
This is an informative, well-written book that provides a systematic guide for families who need to manage the diverse aspects of attention deficits.
It draws on Dr. Jacobs's broad experiences as a child psychologist, integrating standard and innovative behavioral approaches with psychoanalytic insights and basic principles of family therapy. Jacobs offers exercises to expand parents' awareness of key factors and to promote their competence in dealing with their child's unique challenges. He offers astute advice on how to build the skills for managing ADHD and methods for identifying goals and progress. This is a welcome resource for treating and mastering ADHD. -- William Robiner Ph.D, A.B.P.P., University of Minnesota Medical School
Dr. Jacobs's book is a superb reference for clinicians. It is useful, insightful, and a valuable addition to the field. Health and mental health professionals will find this book enlightening and rewarding. Dr. Jacobs gives practical and concise suggestions that therapists can use to support parents of children with learning disabilities and help them meet with success. -- Teresa Allissa Citro, executive director, Learning Disabilities Association of Massachusetts
Drawing from his many years of experience in the trenches with kids with ADHD and their families, Dr. Jacobs offers welcome relief for beleaguered parents. His thoughtful, wise, and comforting voice guides the reader through the potentially exhausting maze of rearing the child with ADHD. Filled with extraordinary helpful hints, solid advice, and good humor, this book is a first-rate primer for parents and professionals. Although geared to the child with ADHD, many of Jacobs's ideas are highly relevant to raising any child in today's world. Professionals will find this book the perfect accompaniment to their own work with ADHD families, and parents will appreciate it as a handy, practical antidote to the worry and confusion of raising a child with ADHD. -- Pamela L. Enders, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School