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[img_assist|nid=6815|title=Self Portrait, Health by Janice Hayes-Cha © 2010|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=259]On Saturdays, we folded paper boats. With his sleeves rolled, he stood beside the pond creasing triangles, corner to corner, his reflection rippling in the water. He sailed his boat, forced breaths propelling it, keeping it afloat. He counted the seconds before it sank, dissolving to pulp.

On Sunday mornings he made egg sandwiches. In his old blue robe, he stood at the stove, the sizzle of butter in a frying pan. He cracked open eggshells on the rim of a bowl, never breaking the yolk. While cheese melted on a Kaiser, he sliced the pork roll thin, hot grease popping in a second pan.

After breakfast, he took us to the park, my sister and me. In cut-off jeans, he stood behind the swings pushing us both at once. Higher, we howled. He snuck drags,  and exhaled smoke between pushes. We pumped our feet, pointing soles toward the sky, leaning back, mouths wide open, catching the wind. The count of three: our two bodies, all angles and limbs, arcing through the air.

      Two

I dug tunnels and moved plastic molded army men around in piles of dirt. I conquered fortresses, soldiers surrendering in the late afternoon sun. On my bicycle, I jumped over ditches as deep as canyons and taught myself to ride with no hands. I fell chin first into a gravel pit. Don’t you cry, he said, so I taught myself to hold back tears.

I learned to throw a ball, to catch whatever came at me, to bat left-handed better than the boys. I learned how to spit, until my mother scolded me. I stockpiled crabapples in the yard and hurled them across the street at the neighbor’s fort, hitting it every time. Don’t get caught, he said, so I learned how to disappear.

I launched rockets and climbed the tallest trees. I built a slingshot and took aim at rabbits and squirrels when they got close. I caught fireflies and plucked the light organs from their bodies, smearing the bioluminescence on my face like war paint. From the window of the house on Bridge Street, he saw me.

Three

 On the day my father came home from Nazareth Hospital, at his request, I took a pair of scissors to his hair. In one hand, I held the fine-toothed comb lifting the strands of hair away from his scalp while with the other hand I opened the scissors, closing them like metal jaws, one sliding past the other, tufts of white falling onto his shoulders and the bed sheets, some drifting down to settle on my shoes.

In this same way, I trimmed the long wiry hairs of his eyebrows then reached carefully into the moist caverns of his nostrils with the tips of the twin blades. With each snip, he looked to me for comfort, searching with boyish eyes for a sign that it was almost over.

With my fingers still wrapped around the handles, I scissored the blades together, slicing them through the air, one half-grazing the other, a single silver screw allowing the simultaneous gesture of the object’s purpose and my intent.

At fifty-one, a massive stroke had left my father a hemiplegic. One arm, one leg, frozen at his side, no longer could he command either to move, to support his weight, to take him from one place to another. To bend. To wave. To hug. To hold on.

I was twenty-one when it happened. I spent my days conferring with doctors, my sleepless nights with bottomless cups of coffee and music blaring from headphones covering my ears. Springsteen screamed anthems of growing up and getting out, and here I was faced with knowing I needed to stay, to care,  to piece together some kind of future for myself in Philadelphia, my father’s city, his family tracing its roots along the narrow, shadowy streets for more than a century.

**

When I finished cutting my dad’s hair, I began dressing him, starting first with a long white pair of socks. I rolled them in my hands then unrolled them onto his feet, the left foot first.

“Aaahhh,” he screamed, the sound dragging out longer than it should, a high-pitched, impulsive wail. “You’re hurting my toes.”

They curled under like commas, rigid and deformed, the nails brittle and yellow.

I slid the left leg first into the pair of pants, then followed with the right. As he lay there, wordless and still, I pulled the zipper up, aware of the two rows of teeth dovetailing together. My father stared upward, his body a horizontal plane, now parallel to floor and ceiling.

I pulled his shirt over his head and worked to maneuver his left arm into the sleeve. Misshapen and stiff, it clung tightly to his chest. New at this, I did not know the order in which I was supposed to be dressing him. I did not want to be dressing him at all. And I sensed my dad’s frustration. With his right hand, he clutched the forearm of his left, lifting it then letting it fall hard against his body.

 ***

The phone call came in the middle of the afternoon. My father sounded child-like, pleading for help, trying, though, not to alarm me. I urged him to call 911, offered to call for him.

“Please,” he begged. “Just come over and help me up. I’ll be fine once you get me back in bed.”

Every single day, I worried that he might fall. Physical therapists had helped him to walk again, but he was far from steady. He clutched a hemi-cane in his right hand, his left arm tightly fastened in a sling against his body. He stepped with the right leg and commanded the left to follow, a sliding motion more than an actual step. He lived at home with my mother, who now needed to work full-time. My dad’s days were spent alone, the television his constant companion. I stopped by frequently, drove him to physical therapy appointments, but he quickly became cut-off from the world outside his little house.

I drove fast, arriving to find him on the floor beside his bed, his left leg pinned between the bed and the wheelchair. I moved the wheelchair out of the way. He wanted me to lift him, to put him back in bed so we could simply pretend he had not fallen.

“Hook your arms under mine,” he pleaded. “I’ll help you by pivoting my body toward the bed.”

But his leg was twisted in a way that made me know I should not move him. And even if his leg had not been twisted, there was no way I could lift my father alone. He was six-feet tall and outweighed me by at least eighty pounds. I dialed
911.

At first, he seemed angry with me. I apologized more than once, then folded myself onto the floor beside him. I lay down facing him, eye to eye. As I extended my hand toward his, he reached out and squeezed my fingers. He did not let go.

“Remember that 1980 Phillies team, Dad? Think you can name all the players?”

I turned it into a challenge.

“Mike Schmidt,” he said first. “Greg Luzinski. Tug McGraw.” He went on to name the entire line-up. The paramedics arrived just as he finished the list.

I stood out of the way as the two men in uniforms hoisted my father onto a gurney, their strong backs facing me. Sweat trickled down my dad’s temples. “Don’t drop me,” he said, more than once, his voice quivering. With his right hand, he held on tightly to one man’s arm, his fingers clenched, sinking into fabric and flesh. Both men reassured him, their kind words and respect for my father filling my eyes with tears.

I climbed up into the ambulance and listened to the wail of the siren as we sped through intersections along Cottman Avenue, watching as the two men began assessing their patient—blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation. “Caucasian male, mid-fifties,” one announced into the radio transmitter. After the final stretch on the Boulevard, we arrived at Nazareth. Once again.

From off to the side where I sat, I saw him. I saw my father folding paper boats, cooking breakfast in his blue robe, pushing my sister and me on the swings. When the ambulance stopped, the two men lifted the gurney out onto the sidewalk. The count of three: his body, a single motionless plane, arcing through the air.

Kristina Moriconi is working toward an MFA degree at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. Her work has appeared most recently in The Shine Journal, apt, Verbsap, and Opium. Her connection to Philadelphia became increasingly meaningful after her father’s death just before the Phillies won the World Series in 2008. She has begun an extensive research project tracing his family history and has decided to stay here even longer.

I can’t exactly say why I went to church on Saturday for the five o’clock mass, but that’s just what I did. I don’t know why that feels like I’m confessing to some dirty impulse–maybe it’s just that I’m still drawn to the liturgy–the music, the patterns of it–in spite of my exasperation with the Church. I hadn’t gone to church by myself since my teens, and as I walked into the sanctuary, I thought, okay, I’m home. When I’m with someone else–for Christmas Midnight Mass, or a funeral–I usually feel some tug of loss, a loss I can’t quite explain. But not this time. Maybe it helps that the church is a progressive church–many gay and lesbian parishioners, people of all ages and nationalities. Think of it as a Unitarian Church–but with communion. 

I’m usually not so big on homilies. I usually think of that as the time when the celebrant makes meaningless noises in order to fill up some space; time to look at the songbook, but this was different. He was talking about hospitality–what does it mean to welcome the people we love? I was thinking on that, my arms outstretched on the back of the pew, when a line of his jumped out at me: "The closer we get to someone, the more we must stand humbly before his freedom." Every molecule in me was turned to him. He said it once more, as if he wanted it to sink in. "The closer we get to someone, the more we must stand humbly before his freedom." What on earth could such a thing mean?

Later that night a friend told me about a white dog showing up at another friend’s house. The other friend looked at the dog’s tags–the address was three miles away, all the way on the other side of town. There were fireworks in town, extravagant fireworks, and it was likely the dog had run across woods, marshes, highways to get to the friend’s house. The friend looked out the door and saw what she thought was a white deer. But it wasn’t any white deer. It was a dog, a white fluffy dog, who walked right into her living room and dining room, muddy paws and all. The dog looked around a bit, submitted to the friend’s petting, then slumped, turned on his side and fell asleep.

The friend called the numbers on the dog’s tags. No one answered at the numbers. The friend left a message, and when she didn’t hear back after a while, she started to get suspicious. Maybe the dog was hers, the mystery beast coming up the street in the dark, out of the briars, the woods.

The next day the phone rang. A terse, gruff boy on the line, and the story comes darker, clearer. The dog’s human, his protector, his mother, drowned in the pool the night before. Did the dog see it happen? Did the dog jump in the water after her, try to rescue her? Was it a suicide, a heart attack, a slip off the side while she was heading back into the house with armful of dry clothes? The friend didn’t feel she had the right to such questions, but she did ask the boy–the woman’s daughter’s boyfriend–if he’d be willing to let the dog stay with her for a while. "He seems so comfortable here," she said. And the boy agreed to that, if reluctantly. And who could blame the friend if she started to make plans, if she thought about driving to the store for dog food. Life with the white dog, the white deer–and wasn’t she already relieved that she had a reason to keep herself from going so many places? A root in her midst. Finally, after so much running around.

I suppose I don’t need to say that the family wanted the dog back the next day. I suppose I don’t need to say that the friend was inconsolable, as the dog jumped in the back of the family’s car, so grateful to be back with his familiars. Of course his mother wouldn’t be there at the house when he jumped out of the car, but he didn’t know that yet. And all the losses of the friend rose up before her like ghosts turning to flesh, needing to be dealt with.

"The White Deer" is from a memoir-in-progress tentatively titled, I’D SURE LIKE TO SEE YOU, and first appeared in the online literary journal Sweet.

Paul Lisicky (www.paullisicky.com) is the author of Lawnboy, Famous Builder, and the forthcoming books The Burning House (2011) and Unbuilt Projects (2012). His work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, StoryQuarterly, The Seattle Review, Five Points, Subtropics, Gulf Coast, and many other anthologies and magazines.

             No wheels, no license, no ability to drive – I’m  a little hesitant, a little ashamed. I pause for a two-beat before I dial Ursula to [img_assist|nid=6462|title=Flight of the Spirit by Donald Stephens © 2010|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=303]arrange our weekend together. She’s a teacher and single mother in Pottstown, I’m a late-thirtyish man living at my Granny’s Drexel Hill Tudor-style house. During this pause, I’m sitting at my adapted computer, my finger poised over my phone’s Velcro-marked Five button. I feel like I’m the sighted adolescent again, standing at a mall payphone, arranging a pick up.

            The adult me pushes through, and dials. But I don’t get Ursula. It’s her daughter.

            "Hi, is your mom home?"

            "Stop making that funny voice," Ursula’s daughter says, right away without a "howdy-do."

            "Is your mom home?" I repeat in my higher-pitched "everything is okay kid" voice.

            "Stop that," the girl shouts. "Daddy, stop talking like that!" Then slam. Dial tone.

            My chair creaks under me as my heart becomes all inaudible bass beat. I fidget with the phone cord, then work at disentanglement. I fill the silence with a movie image.  Today it’s Big, and Tom Hanks is hoofing "Heart and Soul" on the oversized walking piano. How many takes were there? Did he break a sweat?

* * *

             It’s the weekend and Ursula gathers me from the Reading bus station. We drop off my bags at her place, then take a walk through her neighborhood. As we stroll, my ears tell me what my eyes would. Traffic is infrequent, sound is sponged up by lawns and bushes,  the stationary eloquence of a robin several stories above me hints at tree heights.

            We head uphill, past the pools, and to the pond, circle it at leisure with my hand resting on her right shoulder for guidance. I hold my white cane upright, dandy-style in my free palm. Ursula pulls me aside when we meet an oncoming couple who haven’t done the white cane and black glasses math.

            "We’re coming to a footbridge," she says. "No rails."

            I scrutinize her tone for weariness or resignation. I still can’t figure if I’m man or encumbrance to her. Her divorce is not final and I fear I am a cliche in tennis shoes — the Transitional Man.

            A brush of her long hair against my arm tells me she’s turned her head away. I Photoshop her locks day-glo apricot to contrast her picket-fence spirit. Only, I’m thinking about the steady quiet of her neighborhood, its pond, its pools, the nearby market. I could easily tap-tap-tap along the pickets, as well.

            There’s the faintest of paddling noises from the water. I’m sure there are duck feet, upended, as a Mallard goes under for a morsel.

            "Still going swimming tomorrow?" Ursula asks.

* * *

            While she’s in the kitchen drawing up a shopping list, I’m out of the way, in the bedroom, attending to medical concerns. Diabetic, I test my blood sugar, the meter counting down aloud and voicing a number I’m satisfied with. It’s time for my afternoon meds, so I take the four anti-rejection transplant pills, the pair of blood pressure, the anti-nausea pill.

            Ursula calls out, "Can you think of anything besides soda and chicken you want?"

            "Strawberry Pop Tarts. The glazed kind, please." They are my current form of emergency sugar. But still, I blush.

            Before she leaves, Ursula refreshes my memory about the stairway threshold and projecting TV shelf. She grabs her keys, says, "I have to stop at my husbands with my daughter’s schoolbag." The door closes behind her. It’s not long before the stillness conjures the creepy twin girls from The Shining.

* * *

            We wait for the senior citizen hour at the lap pool because the main pool is a mined bay of bobbing children in nosecoat and water wings ready to sink my ship.

            "Marco!"

            "Polo!"

            Ursula gives me a quick description of the layout, and then I’m swimming, first time in the dark. Splash splash, then a little bit of a crawl, and then I’m going freestyle. I bump into walls and tangle myself in lane dividers. But this isn’t good enough.

            Hand out, I trace my way to the ladder. Once I’m up, Ursula walks me around to the deep end and sets up her towel. I perch on the coping, work up nerve, then jump. I try to go coast-to-coast underwater, and put my hand up to meet wall. I fall short the first dozen tries. This game still isn’t good enough, though. I encounter my first flotation worm and get ideas.

            The Styrofoam worms are a little shorter than my white cane, but when I’m up and poolside I find I can hold them ski-pole style and make it to the diving board.

            Once up, I edge cautiously past the handrails. Tap with the left pool toy. Tap with the right, then another tap ahead to discern my placement on the board. I don’t want to pitch forward unprepared.

            I find the end and ready myself. Ursula, poolside,  and a senior couple treading in the water, wait in sparkly daylight. This is not nighttime, shades drawn, lights out. My body is exposed, on display with my shrunken eyes, my transplant scars, my insulin injection bruises. I am a Google map of doctor visits and hospitalizations, Hinting at many more unpaved miles ahead. Is Ursula up for that trip?

            I am eager to dive. But my mind conjures a dry excavation in front of me. Then, the crypt full of snakes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Next, a chamber filled with a thousand armed Chinese terra cotta soldiers.

            "Are you watching?" I ask.

            "Go ahead," Ursula says, and the words hang in the air. I picture her floating as well, Chagall-like, five feet over cement pool deck. "Just go."

            Finally, I toss the worms into the pool.  I trust there will be water, soft and buoyant, to catch me as I leap.

Sean Toner’s essays have appeared at webdelsol.com, perigee-art.com, and in Opium Magazine (where he’s twice been a finalist in their 500-word memoir contest). His CNF also appears in the Book of Worst Meals from Serving House Books. Sean is a former vice president of the Philadelphia Writers Conference and was chair of its Free Forums at Drexel University. He earned his MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2006 and lives in Bryn Mawr, PA, with the writer Robin Parks. Sean has been sightless since 1995 and is a public speaker about disability.www.seantoner.com

As I turn 38 and keep stocking drawers full of dreams and half-completed projects, I’m pushing forward with one big initiative: I’m having an imaginary baby. Why not? My friend Laura and I share imaginary cocktails via instant messenger at work. I talk to my guardian angel a lot (if shadows are angels). I sometimes comfort myself with the idea of alternate universes where I’m adored and published, or in prison, maybe all of these. 

Reasons why I want this baby: 1) I’m selfish. 2) My routine bores me. 3) Imaginary babies are less creepy than imaginary boyfriends. 4) I’m pretty sure I have really good advice to give. Unlike the dreamy-eyed hippies I got for parents, I will be candid. Here’s the set up: each family is a mini kingdom uniquely composed of demanding princesses with half-baked ideas about ruling. Every time you leave the house, you run into princesses who refuse to admit their titles, but like to pull rank. The important thing to remember when dealing with royalty is that there is protocol. Like any good tourist, you must observe the customs to the best of your ability and when committing a faux pas, remain polite. The other good bit of advice: It’s okay to go to bed drunk without brushing your teeth. I’m having this child because I’ve earned it—the search was long and arduous—because I’ve found the right child for me, and because it makes the commute to work that much more pleasant.  And finally, because my child is fun and has good ideas.

Before my plan was formulated, my baby was hard to find. I looked for the baby in the eyes of men, sometimes in the eyes of women, but I did not find my baby. I only knew its ghostly absence in my arms weighing on me. I clutched a gaping space, not in my body, but on my body. Full of the absence of the baby I didn’t have, I carried the emptiness around like an  invisible baby front pack—you’ve seen them.  They’re called Baby Björns, by the way.

I’m an accomplished singleton: I make and eat delicious food alone. I’m an expert at solo lovemaking. I’m not an imaginative daydreamer, but I am close to my heart’s desires.  My heart is full of invisible people — the friends and family I bring with me everywhere I go, inspiring authors and heroes whom I love, the half-baked crushes that add intrigue to my daily life. They are a rich society that is known only to me, part anchored in the world, and part whispering wishes.

The real world is, well, tangible, and quite demanding. Case in point, my friends’ lively offspring whose charms have matching drawbacks—like the bossiness and the tears, and the abundant curry-colored shit overflowing the diaper and dripping onto the carpet. These are drawbacks I would only dream of tackling in a team formation. Thus my baby, imaginary, and loaded with optional features tailored to my lifestyle. No curry-colored shit for me.  I won’t deny that I long for the body warmth of a real baby, but for now, I will be satisfied with this: My baby tells me stories to put me to sleep at night and holds my hand when I cross the street, but walks at my pace and I don’t pack a stroller. This is ironic because I lust for the big-wheeled strollers ambitiously fit parents run behind. Just cause they look so sporty and nurturing, simultaneously. 

My baby wasn’t born all at once. Or rather, she has been born often and dissipates back into star-stuff as needed. This process, like the singing of a song, is repetitive and allows for fine tuning or the universe’s baby-sitting, depending. She’s kind of a lease baby, but these are advantageous terms. She’s sleek and plush, and shape-shifty, like a dream car or a good pet rolled into one. But human. Making an alien would be too weird.

What’s nice about parenting is that there are no licenses and no tests, it’s your business until it becomes the state’s. You can fuck up just until the damage is so extraordinarily obvious that law obliges third parties to call in licensed professionals. Abuse notwithstanding, what scares me about parenting is that there are always plentiful bystander judgments. You’re being observed, and you are found wanting. More than usual, I mean.

Thus again, imaginary baby. Who never cries herself to sleep.

The baby doesn’t have a real name yet, but that’s her doing. She’s to pick out her name.  She likes to change them up. Today she’s Roujika, but I bet she’ll go back to something a little less interesting in a few days. Emma seemed to stick for a while. I sometimes wish I had a boy so I could call him Rafael. I’m a sucker for Italian boy names.  But I really wanted a girl. Girls are easier, and I can relate. I’m not sure what I would tell a boy. I’d cram his head full of feminist ideas, encourage him to read books– he’d be reviled by jocks.  It would be tough going.

Obviously, I haven’t fully imagined my baby yet. Most parents enjoy a minimum of nine months to accustom themselves to the notion of parenting. So I’m taking my time getting to know my baby. For example, I’m pretty sure that my baby is a good sleeper like me, not an early morning person, but a child that likes the smell of coffee. Specifically I start the day in a leisurely fashion. My child only wakes once I have drunk one full hot cup of java.  A friend suggested that I have a baby whose nostrils, when I squeezed the baby’s head, produce coffee. Now that’s monstrous. I’m not looking for a coffee maker. I have a coffee maker. 

Having my baby wasn’t so hard. There was no need to locate an inseminator, no need for a pre-baby diet, special baby vitamins, or post baby regimen. No need to think about the sad fate in store for my breasts, inflating and deflating, sucked dry. My baby is body friendly. No c-section about it.

Ponder the word delivery. Delivery is a strange, ominous word. It implies imprisonment or the arrival of packages that require a signature. Your body is to deliver the goods, the giant, multi-pound, independent mechanism that wants you to spend all your money on its education.  Luckily, I have no educational costs, I home school my baby while I work.

The day, as I said, starts with coffee. We take a shower, the baby scrubs my back, and I help her shampoo. We moisturize. I get dressed on my own. The baby draws the clothes she wants to wear that week, they materialize, she puts them on, and we have a fashion show. Sometimes I suggest alternate colors or fabrics, but, by and large, we agree.  This takes place on Sundays; I don’t have time the rest of the week.  On Mondays, the baby helps me with my commute; she holds my bags and we comment about the people on the trolley: their weird hats, their unfortunate lipsticks, their sleepy eyes. We wonder what their professions might be. My baby girl, she wants to be an archeologist or a dentist—precision instruments for cleaning either way. She doesn’t get that from me. I suck at cleaning.

Once I get to work, the baby plays with my feet while I check my email. She sings songs, and draws, and generally has a good time ripping paper all day. When I need a break, or when I feel overwhelmed, we take five minutes and she holds me close and pets my hair.  At lunch, I tell her stories, other jobs, other places I’ve been. She likes it when I talk about Hong Kong. We agree it’s a cool city. At 3 p.m., I riffle through my candy drawer and the baby gives me looks because she knows I’ll complain about my thighs eventually. Luckily the baby doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth which is convenient when I’m sneaking chocolate and don’t feel like sharing. I don’t like saying no to her, so that works out. 

I haven’t introduced her to my coworkers. They might be alarmed that she’ll distract me or lower my productivity. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I work harder when the baby’s around-it’s easier to do things for someone else. I am working hard and saving up for vacation. I can’t wait to show her the world.

After work, we walk home together and enjoy the changing seasons.  There’s no fighting at bath time, and she likes to go to sleep early in the evening. Before I make dinner. She’s easy going. If I go out for drinks after work, she’ll let herself into the apartment, eat a little something and go to sleep on her own. The universe turns out to be a generous neighbor– It’s always Saturday night, and the universe is always available, knows infant CPR, and doesn’t eat my food or make prank calls from my landline.

This leaves me with a lot of time for dating, which apparently I should put more energy into. So she tells me, the baby, not the universe. 

Sylvie Beauvais received her Master’s of Liberal Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. Her novella, Fly, Rapunzel was a finalist in Low Fidelity Press’s 2006 Novella Award Contest. She has been a writer and editor for start-ups and non-profits, but is now focused on publishing her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

My grandfather’s name was Efthimios Vasilios Patouhas, but I called him Papa.  As a toddler I could only manage to spurt out [img_assist|nid=6105|title=The Open Doors by Brian Griffiths © 2010|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=167|height=250]the first syllable of the Greek word for grandfather, pappou. The repeated pa, pa, pa eventually became Papa.  I’m nearly four years older than my next sibling and decades older than some of my cousins, so the name stuck long before any of them came along.

   Every summer, Papa went back to Greece to run his bar.  He spent the winters living with Angie, his youngest daughter, in a trailer park off of Route 70 in Pennsauken. As a kid I would sleep over there, falling asleep watching old movies with my aunt. In the morning, I’d wake up to Papa and Angie whispering, so as not to wake me, and the smell of scrambled eggs and English muffins.

   “You’re too skeeny,” Papa would say through his thick Greek accent.

   I ignored him, in order to act offended, but then got myself to the table for my breakfast.  When I was chowing down, Papa’s complaint would change.

   “They don’t cook for you at home? Eat, eat. Bravo, bravo.”

      When he died in November 2006, I couldn’t attend the funeral, because it was in Greece and I was 7000 miles away, in New Jersey, in the middle of the school year, teaching “The Odyssey” to ninth graders. Logistics, like time, money, and distance kept me from a farewell. It was all for the best though, because I wanted to remember Papa in my own way.

    A few weeks after his death, when I talked to my Aunt Angie on the phone from Greece, she said, “When you get here you can look through his jewelry box.”

   “I only want the tie,” I told her. I didn’t have to explain which one I meant.

   “Okay, it’s still hanging in his room.”

   For two more years, until I could get to it, the tie hung on a hook in his room with all the others At last, in 2008, I boarded the plane for six weeks in the Mediterranean sun with only a long narrow piece of fabric on my mind. The thirteen hour trip exhausted me. I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the lumpy bed in the house that Papa had built but my mother and her siblings now owned. But not before going into Papa’s room to retrieve the tie.

   From the cool of the dark long windowless hallway I knocked tentatively on his closed bedroom door as if he were still in there. I opened it and looked in. I wasn’t ready to study the pain of the room just yet. I only wanted my souvenir of his journey. I opened the door further and saw the hooks full of ties by the master suite bathroom door. There on top was the tie, my tie, the one I was after.  It hung so neatly and was still knotted as if Papa had loosened it from around his neck, pulled it over his head, and hung it there the night before.

   I grabbed it and pulled it over my own head and retired into the adjacent room. I slept carefully, so as not to undo his handiwork.

   Efthimios was born the fifth child of eight in a rustic mountain village in December 1938. He was an identical twin, but he was unlike any of his siblings. He had a wandering and wondering spirit that lead him at the age of fifteen, to traverse 20 miles of dirt road that wound down through evergreens and Cyprus trees to escape the andartes, the Communist rebels who were stealing children from their homes to fight civil warfare among the rocks of the motherland.  By foot, by bus, by boat, by the grace of God he made it to Wilmington, Delaware and became an American, Tom Patouhas.

   During the day, he loved everything about being an American, especially the work and the money. He worked his way up and down the country from Delaware to Tennessee to Florida to Ohio. It was while working at Libbey Owens Ford Glass Manufacturing in Toledo, Ohio that he met Simela Spirides. In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, he was a short version of Errol Flynn with a mustache, and he always wore a three-piece suit when he went out. That’s probably why Simela, on first seeing him, told her girlfriend that she was going to marry him. She did and they soon had three kids. The first was my mom.

   During the night he liked everything about being Greek. Smashing plates, dancing on tables, and drinking until he felt like smashing plates and dancing on tables. He loved his “Johnny Walker with a splash of Coke”, smoking a half pack of cigarettes in half an hour, and laughing his wheezing squeezed-lung laugh at dirty jokes. This may be why he and my grandmother divorced after five years.  She later joined a convent.

   In 1996, when I turned twenty-one, I hung out at the same bar Papa did. It was the only bar in South Jersey that played Greek music, so all the Greeks gathered there to smoke and drink and break things. I worked full time, studied at college full time, and partied full time. Weekends began on Thursday at 10 p.m., Greek Night, at the 70 West Bar and Lounge, and ended Sunday, at 4 a.m., in the adjacent diner, with pancakes and eggs for breakfast.

   Papa bought me my first legal drink.

   “What you have?” he leaned in and asked over the blaring belly dance music cut with a techno beat.

   “Ummm.” I looked at the waiting barmaid, completely lost.

   “Johnny Walker with a splash of Coke, hun,” he said to her. “You drink whisky, no bad shit,” he said to me.

   My drink was delivered right to my hand. He lifted his and we toasted Yiamas!, to health. I lifted the short stout glass to my lips and swigged a few gulps. The liquid ran through me,  marking a path like a brushfire from my tongue to my stomach. For a second, I felt faint.  I swayed enough to put the glass on the counter. in case I dropped to the floor, but I recovered almost instantly.

   “Yeah?” Papa caught my attention out of the blaze in my brain.

   I turned up a weak smile, “It’s good.” I said,  and promptly left the drink on the bar to go dance and sweat out the flames.

   The Christmas I bought him the tie, I was working as a cashier in an expensive women’s undergarment chain that used to be classy before it became campy. I worked, cascading small, medium, and large undies into panty table waterfalls and layered the sleeves of fuchsia ostrich feather robes as they hung from padded hangers. I kept myself motivated through the late winter work nights by saving every penny to buy my summer vacation in the Greek sun.

   Two weeks before Christmas, the company that owned my store gave us a 40% off discount throughout all its stores. Since the conglomerate owned three-fourths of the mall, I was set to get some decent gifts at reasonable prices.

   By then, in his sixties, Papa still wore a three-piece suit when he went out to the bar. Usually, it was a tan ensemble – jacket, pants, and vest. I figured a smart tie would be the perfect gift to go with his pressed shirts, but I struggled picking it out. The sales guy hovered over me as I touched the silk of each tie on display and scrutinized the individual designs. Finally, I chose a tan one with a design of inch-high rectangles that had binoculars, lanterns, or four tiny license plates with horizontal or vertical striped backgrounds. I chuckled about the binoculars. Papa used a pair to watch pretty girls on the beach,  from the balcony of that home he’d built in Greece, with all those American dollars he’d made. I picked out a tan pair of socks and was done for that season.

   Christmas at my parents’ house was always a big deal. We had to all get dressed and wait for my grandfather and aunts and uncles to show up before the gift exchange could begin. That year I was sure everyone would love what I’d gotten them. It was my first real job and the real  money I’d ever had to spend on gifts.  I’d gone all out, or as far out as my budget allowed. Papa strolled in with my Aunt Angie and us five kids and my parents settled around the living room close to the tree to hand out packages.

   Papa had a system to his unwrapping. He made two piles, one to keep and one to return. There was no polite pretending he would use the electric toothbrush or the back massager. He held them aside so he could give them back to you to exchange at the store yourself. I worried the tie would end up in his reject pile.

   He unwrapped the socks first.

   “Oh, these are good. These are nice,” he said showing them to everyone in the room.

“Look, they’re the kind that won’t cut off my circulation.” 

     I beamed. “I got them at the mall,” I said.  “Now open this one, too.”

   “Oh, more for me?” He tore the paper from the box and lifted its lid. He nodded more approval. “It matches the socks,” he said holding them up next to each other. Both were placed in the “keep” pile.

   I was proud that my hard work and hard earned money had garnered such a fine gift.

   Weeks later, deep into the new year, I came home from a class to find Papa drinking coffee with my mother in her kitchen.

   “You know that tie you got me for Christmas?” he asked as I walked in and unloaded my book bag.

   “Yeah,” I half-listened as I rifled through the cabinets for a snack.

   “It’s my whore tie,” he said.

   “What is it?” I asked peeking out of the cabinet.

   “My whore tie.”

   “Why?”

   “Because, when I wore it to the bar, all the whores came around me.” He wheezed out that hysterical asthmatic laugh and exposed the gold that replaced his upper right canine tooth.

   That’s the Papa I remember when I see the tie, his whore tie, now hanging on an antique hook by my own bed, knotted still, exactly as it was when he last put it around his collar and headed out to the bar.

Elaine Paliatsas-Haughey is a writer of small important things and a teacher of small important people. She is grateful for a story-rich family, Michael, and the Rowan Writing Program. “Whore Tie” is dedicated in memory of Efthemia.

As I turn 38 and keep stocking drawers full of dreams and half-completed projects, I’m pushing forward with one big initiative: I’m having an imaginary baby. Why not? My friend Laura and I share imaginary cocktails via instant messenger at work. I talk to my guardian angel a lot (if shadows are angels). I sometimes comfort myself with the idea of alternate universes where I’m adored and published, or in prison, maybe all of these. 

      Reasons why I want this baby: 1) I’m selfish. 2) My routine bores me. 3) Imaginary babies are less creepy than imaginary boyfriends. 4) I’m pretty sure I have really good advice to give. Unlike the dreamy-eyed hippies I got for parents, I will be candid. Here’s the set up: each family is a mini kingdom uniquely composed of demanding princesses with half-baked ideas about ruling. Every time you leave the house, you run into princesses who refuse to admit their titles, but like to pull rank. The important thing to remember when dealing with royalty is that there is protocol. Like any good tourist, you must observe the customs to the best of your ability and when committing a faux pas, remain polite. The other good bit of advice: It’s okay to go to bed drunk without brushing your teeth. I’m having this child because I’ve earned it—the search was long and arduous—because I’ve found the right child for me, and because it makes the commute to work that much more pleasant.  And finally, because my child is fun and has good ideas.

Before my plan was formulated, my baby was hard to find. I looked for the baby in the eyes of men, sometimes in the eyes of women, but I did not find my baby. I only knew its ghostly absence in my arms weighing on me. I clutched a gaping space, not in my body, but on my body. Full of the absence of the baby I didn’t have, I carried the emptiness around like an  invisible baby front pack—you’ve seen them.  They’re called Baby Björns, by the way.

I’m an accomplished singleton: I make and eat delicious food alone. I’m an expert at solo lovemaking. I’m not an imaginative daydreamer, but I am close to my heart’s desires.  My heart is full of invisible people — the friends and family I bring with me everywhere I go, inspiring authors and heroes whom I love, the half-baked crushes that add intrigue to my daily life. They are a rich society that is known only to me, part anchored in the world, and part whispering wishes.

The real world is, well, tangible, and quite demanding. Case in point, my friends’ lively offspring whose charms have matching drawbacks—like the bossiness and the tears, and the abundant curry-colored shit overflowing the diaper and dripping onto the carpet. These are drawbacks I would only dream of tackling in a team formation. Thus my baby, imaginary, and loaded with optional features tailored to my lifestyle. No curry-colored shit for me.  I won’t deny that I long for the body warmth of a real baby, but for now, I will be satisfied with this: My baby tells me stories to put me to sleep at night and holds my hand when I cross the street, but walks at my pace and I don’t pack a stroller. This is ironic because I lust for the big-wheeled strollers ambitiously fit parents run behind. Just cause they look so sporty and nurturing, simultaneously. 

My baby wasn’t born all at once. Or rather, she has been born often and dissipates back into star-stuff as needed. This process, like the singing of a song, is repetitive and allows for fine tuning or the universe’s baby-sitting, depending. She’s kind of a lease baby, but these are advantageous terms. She’s sleek and plush, and shape-shifty, like a dream car or a good pet rolled into one. But human. Making an alien would be too weird.

What’s nice about parenting is that there are no licenses and no tests, it’s your business until it becomes the state’s. You can fuck up just until the damage is so extraordinarily obvious that law obliges third parties to call in licensed professionals. Abuse notwithstanding, what scares me about parenting is that there are always plentiful bystander judgments. You’re being observed, and you are found wanting. More than usual, I mean.

Thus again, imaginary baby. Who never cries herself to sleep.

The baby doesn’t have a real name yet, but that’s her doing. She’s to pick out her name.  She likes to change them up. Today she’s Roujika, but I bet she’ll go back to something a little less interesting in a few days. Emma seemed to stick for a while. I sometimes wish I had a boy so I could call him Rafael. I’m a sucker for Italian boy names.  But I really wanted a girl. Girls are easier, and I can relate. I’m not sure what I would tell a boy. I’d cram his head full of feminist ideas, encourage him to read books– he’d be reviled by jocks.  It would be tough going.

Obviously, I haven’t fully imagined my baby yet. Most parents enjoy a minimum of nine months to accustom themselves to the notion of parenting. So I’m taking my time getting to know my baby. For example, I’m pretty sure that my baby is a good sleeper like me, not an early morning person, but a child that likes the smell of coffee. Specifically I start the day in a leisurely fashion. My child only wakes once I have drunk one full hot cup of java.  A friend suggested that I have a baby whose nostrils, when I squeezed the baby’s head, produce coffee. Now that’s monstrous. I’m not looking for a coffee maker. I have a coffee maker. 

Having my baby wasn’t so hard. There was no need to locate an inseminator, no need for a pre-baby diet, special baby vitamins, or post baby regimen. No need to think about the sad fate in store for my breasts, inflating and deflating, sucked dry. My baby is body friendly. No c-section about it.

Ponder the word delivery. Delivery is a strange, ominous word. It implies imprisonment or the arrival of packages that require a signature. Your body is to deliver the goods, the giant, multi-pound, independent mechanism that wants you to spend all your money on its education.  Luckily, I have no educational costs, I home school my baby while I work.

The day, as I said, starts with coffee. We take a shower, the baby scrubs my back, and I help her shampoo. We moisturize. I get dressed on my own. The baby draws the clothes she wants to wear that week, they materialize, she puts them on, and we have a fashion show. Sometimes I suggest alternate colors or fabrics, but, by and large, we agree.  This takes place on Sundays; I don’t have time the rest of the week.  On Mondays, the baby helps me with my commute; she holds my bags and we comment about the people on the trolley: their weird hats, their unfortunate lipsticks, their sleepy eyes. We wonder what their professions might be. My baby girl, she wants to be an archeologist or a dentist—precision instruments for cleaning either way. She doesn’t get that from me. I suck at cleaning.

Once I get to work, the baby plays with my feet while I check my email. She sings songs, and draws, and generally has a good time ripping paper all day. When I need a break, or when I feel overwhelmed, we take five minutes and she holds me close and pets my hair.  At lunch, I tell her stories, other jobs, other places I’ve been. She likes it when I talk about Hong Kong. We agree it’s a cool city. At 3 p.m., I riffle through my candy drawer and the baby gives me looks because she knows I’ll complain about my thighs eventually. Luckily the baby doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth which is convenient when I’m sneaking chocolate and don’t feel like sharing. I don’t like saying no to her, so that works out. 

I haven’t introduced her to my coworkers. They might be alarmed that she’ll distract me or lower my productivity. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I work harder when the baby’s around-it’s easier to do things for someone else. I am working hard and saving up for vacation. I can’t wait to show her the world.

After work, we walk home together and enjoy the changing seasons.  There’s no fighting at bath time, and she likes to go to sleep early in the evening. Before I make dinner. She’s easy going. If I go out for drinks after work, she’ll let herself into the apartment, eat a little something and go to sleep on her own. The universe turns out to be a generous neighbor– It’s always Saturday night, and the universe is always available, knows infant CPR, and doesn’t eat my food or make prank calls from my landline.

This leaves me with a lot of time for dating, which apparently I should put more energy into. So she tells me, the baby, not the universe.  

Sylvie Beauvais  received her Master’s  of  Liberal Arts in Creative  Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. Her novella, Fly, Rapunzel was a finalist in Low Fidelity Press’s  2006  Novella  Award Contest.  She has  been a writer and editor  for  start-ups and  non-profits, but  is now focused on publishing  her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.Sylvie Beauvais  received her Master’s  of  Liberal Arts in Creative  Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. Her novella, Fly, Rapunzel was a finalist in Low Fidelity Press’s  2006  Novella  Award Contest.  She has  been a writer and editor  for  start-ups and  non-profits, but  is now focused on publishing  her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Everything still worked that morning, one week into the New Year.  The automated elevator sang, "Seventh floor, good [img_assist|nid=5684|title=Portrait of a Landscape by Marc Schuster © 2009|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=188|height=251]morning!"  The keycard opened the office door.  Halogen yet buzzed like a life-support system.

Beside the copy machine sat a dumpster, old and dented, scratched with graffiti.  It would have looked at home in a refuse-swept alley running behind a row of cheap storefronts, an emblem of decay normally exorcised from any modern workspace.  Someone must have carted it in earlier that morning.  It was, as yet – I could not help but note – empty.

People were huddled in their offices, whispering.  They glanced up with intense faces, returned to private conversation.

This is it, I knew.  It’s happening today

The fax machine was warm, filled with copyright forms to be scanned, processed, filed, forgotten.  My computer turned on.  The password worked.   The inbox filled up with panicked e-mails from production editors waiting for the next issue’s line-up, authors demanding to know what had happened to their manuscripts, notes about upcoming meetings, projects which needed completing.  But all I could think about was that dumpster.

How would it come?  An e-mail?  A phone call?  A trusted friend stopping by?

Beyond the walls of my cubicle, a voice said, "Grace, may I see you in my office, please?"

Grace was a stalwart of organized chaos, surrounded by stacks of journals, calendars, catalogues of office supplies.  If the question began with, "How should I…?"  or "Who do I ask about..?"  The answer was always, "Ask Grace."

I heard Grace answer, "Sure," followed by the slow creak of her chair.

A moment later, an office door shut.

Everything that happens beyond my cubicle is faceless, without form.  Every day, there are private conversations, conference calls, inner-machinations, corporate politics.  I hear without listening.  They don’t know my name.  They don’t know I’m there.  Usually, I drown it out.  On this day, however, I find that I am hyper-aware.

“Diane, may I see you in my office, please?"

Diane, my God.  She’s the one who hired me.  She’d been in the business nearly as long as I’d been alive.  I caught a glimpse of her as she passed my cubicle, on the way to the back office.  She looked afraid, but also professional.  Professionally afraid.

The office door shut.

All morning, that was how it went.  Each time they were led past my cubicle, dead-man-walking style.

The only one who stopped was Carl.  He’d always been my favorite publisher.  He had one kid and another on the way.  He stood at my cubicle and announced, “Well, I got the e-mail!" all giddy with fear.

He told me everything he knew.  It’s not just Philadelphia, he said, it’s Baltimore.  It’s New York.  He gave me names, and the list kept going.

–

That afternoon, I got a sandwich from the Wawa down Walnut Street, and the man who took my money was in his fifties, well-groomed, well-spoken.  I could easily imagine him wearing a suit and tie, sitting in on board meetings.  Perhaps a month ago, he did.

Outside the entrance, a woman sat on the steps – no way to get around her.  The layers of jacket and sweatshirt, coat and sweater, made her twice as large.  She demanded a dollar, real indignant.

And what will I do when it’s me who has to beg? I wondered.  There’s a million end-of-the-world scenarios to choose from.  Nuclear annihilation is the big one, of course, humanity forced into underground bunkers.  I’d read all those books, watched all those movies.  But maybe we’re all just meant to slowly go mad, slowly starve, slowly horde until everything is depleted.

On the other hand, why not imagine more utopian scenarios, wherein we turn our parks into massive gardens, feeding our families with all the food we’ll grow?  We’ll use those green slips of paper – what in an earlier era had been known as “money” – to wallpaper our eco-friendly cob homes.  We’ll live in socialist collectives, contributing equally and singing Hosannas to the God who in His tender mercy allowed those corporate towers of Babel to crumble, so that a new world would rise based on love!

Either that or cannibalism, hard to say.

“Seventh floor, good morning!”

The dumpster by the copy machine was half-full.  Mounds of textbooks, folders, medical journals, pens, pencils, staplers, all thrown together in a bubbling cauldron, a button-down Oxford witch’s brew.

People were no longer huddled, no longer whispering.  They talked openly, stood around the proverbial water cooler.  For two years, I’d passed some of them in the halls and never known their names, but a demonic presence had been lifted, we could all feel it.

"It’s over, that’s what I heard," said one.

"They’re done."

"We’re safe."

Later that afternoon, Judy and I went outside to smoke a cigarette.  I hadn’t smoked in six months.  I called my wife and told her I was fine.  It was over.  For now, we were safe.  The relief in her voice made me want to cry.  Many phone calls had been made that day which had not brought relief.

My friend Saul once gave me some advice.  "You should be fine, Jon, at your level,” he said.  “Just don’t get promoted."

Blessed are we, the underachievers.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READ THE STORY.  

This one time in Tennessee, Jonathan Kemmerer-Scovner sang songs with Pete Seeger. Then, years later, found himself brushing snow from Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, MA, and thought to himself, What is this? Why am I here? This was not long after he had strolled nonchalantly into City Lights in San Francisco and the sudden sight of an aged Ferlinghetti nearly led him to void his bowels. Jonathan has this theory that everything is a story, all human expression a form of storytelling, something like that. It’s not very clear. Currently, he and his son make up stories together and tell them at the Glenside Farmer’s Market.

His  periwinkle  shoes  have  a  texture that  suggests  the  skin  of  a  reptile. His  feet  are  long,  and  it’s  a  lot  of periwinkle  to  take  in  all  at  once, even with the considerable distraction of the powder-blue suit that hangs from his lanky  frame.   Loose  is how he  looks—confident, and ready to begin.

Introductions  have  been  made,  the dancers are positioned more or less evenly on the stage, and Miss Victoria is just now quieting  the  standing-room-only  crowd. The  music  begins  and  she  waits  a  few beats. “Five, six, seven, eight,” she breathes into  the  microphone,  and  twenty-eight feet burst into a foxtrot.  The auditorium erupts with cheers, applause and  shrieks. Cameras flash from every corner .   

Up on  the  stage,  I have  the advantage  of  seeing  every  dancer  at  close range, watching footwork fancy and not-so,  and  feeling  the  full  range  of  emotions—joy  through  angst—written  on the  faces  of  fourteen  underage  foxtrotters.    I want  to know who  to  thank  for the  brilliant  musical  selection,  Frank Sinatra’s  rendition  of  The Way You  Look Tonight, which is literally and metaphorically soaring over the heads of the ten and eleven-year-old dancers, as I swipe at tears and try to give all seven couples my full attention.  

Some girls are a foot taller than their partners, requiring  the boys  to  tilt  their heads at awkward angles to maintain eye contact and avoid staring  into  the budding breasts of classmates.  While some dancers blush, others can’t stop grinning. While some glide, others shuffle.  Some audibly  count  steps,  while others hum along to the music.  The boy  in blue  is one smooth dancer; the periwinkle shoes saunter through the slow steps and sprint through the fast ones.

Chicken wings up,  toes  facing  toes, look  like  you’re  having  fun.    For  ten weeks,  twenty  sessions  in  all,  they’ve heard  this  mantra  again  and  again. They’ve practiced  their  socks off  learning meringue,  rumba,  tango,  swing and foxtrot.   Fifth-grade boys and girls who wouldn’t  have  touched  each  other  in March now comfortably coax each other around the stage, most in nearly perfect time with  the music, hands  firmly gripping shoulder blades or lightly touching bra straps.  

It’s a warm May afternoon at the J.W. Catherine  School  on  the  southwestern edge of Philadelphia.  Many students in this school—like their counterparts from the  six  other  schools  represented  here today—live  at  or  below  the  poverty level.   Still, their parents have managed to dress them neatly, modestly, proudly for  this  special  occasion—the  2009 Dancing  Classrooms  Philly  Semifinal Competition.  

Ballroom  dance  instructors  have taught the children to behave like ladies and gentlemen, at least on stage; back in their seats, they’re far more exuberant as they  cheer  on  classmates  in  the  other dances.  Each team has a color, worn in wide sashes by the young ladies, spelled out on laminated sheets safety-pinned to the  backs  of  jackets  and  shirts  for  the young men.

I  wonder  where  that  boy  found  a dress  shirt  in  exactly  the  shade  (Flyers’ orange) of his partner’s sash.  I’m drawn to a skinny girl who looks like her grandmother  just  fixed her up  for church on Easter:  a simple dress with a hint of lace at the knees, tights and shiny shoes, all topped off with  a  thick,  knit  cape  that can’t quite  camouflage her bony  shoulders.  Every stitch of her clothing is snow white,  interrupted  only  by  a  red  sash. She’s not  the best dancer on  the  stage, but she’s clearly having fun.   

The students have been coached  to put  a  lot  of  hip motion  into  the  Latin dances, and they’ve taken this instruction to heart.  Parents all but swoon over the tango and gasp as their daughters mime sexy  moves  by  pulling  splayed  fingers back across their foreheads.  The rumba (or “roooooomba,” as Miss Victoria says) teams  really  sell  it.   Hips  in  every  size and shape sway, wiggle or jerk, displaying a vast array of abilities.  

The  auditorium  was  warm  even before  the  dancing  began,  and  now someone has flung open the doors at the back and  side of  the  room.   Neighbors poke  their heads  in  to  see what  all  the commotion is, then stay to watch as the swing teams kick up their heels to Hit the Road  Jack while  the  audience  belts  out the  lyrics.    One  dimpled,  dark-haired boy in a crisp tan shirt stands just a few inches  taller  than  my  four-year-old nephew.  He’s giving it all he’s got—and he’s  got  plenty—and  when  the  music stops  I’m  tempted  to  pick  him  up  and hug him.  

But then  I remember  I’m one of the judges, and aside from the need to comport myself as an impartial observer, I’ve only  got  a  few  seconds  to  finalize my scores for this round.

It’s  so  hard  to  assign  numbers  to what’s going on here.  Each couple gets a score  from  6  to  10.    The  6s  and  10s reveal themselves within the first several seconds  of  each  dance,  but my  pencil hovers nervously over every 7, 8 and 9 before I commit to a score.   Seven couples per dance, seven numbers  to circle before the music stops, two sets of each dance,  three  busy  judges.   We  dodge dancers,  circle  numbers,  turn  in  score sheets.  Then  a  new  group  takes  the stage, and we do it all over again.  There’s no time to compare notes or remember the scores we’ve given from one round to the next.  Like everyone else in the auditorium, we’ll learn which two teams will advance  to  the  finals  at  the  end of  the program, when all 210 team scores have been tallied.

My  dance-related  qualifications  for being here  are marginal: my  dad  and  I were finalists in the jitterbug contest at a high-school  father-daughter  dance  in 1976; come to think of it, my three sisters  all were  finalists  in  the  same  event with  the  same  partner  in  subsequent years,  so  Dad  probably  deserves  the credit  there.    Also,  I’m  related  to  the McNiff Twins of Irish step-dancing fame; OK,  they’re  not  really  famous  and “McNiff”  is  just how our  last name was mispronounced one St. Patrick’s Day.    I did, however, watch my youngest sisters and  their peers perform countless  times during  their  grade-school  years,  so  I appreciate  the  hard  work  involved  in making these dances look easy and I recognize  the  joy  streaming  toward  the stage from parents and teachers.  

I’m  lucky  enough  to  be  here  as  a judge because of my  role  at  the Arts & Business  Council  of  Greater Philadelphia.   Dancing  Classrooms Philly  (modeled on  the New York City program featured in the 2005 documentary Mad Hot Ballroom) is one of a hundred or so arts organizations I’ve had the privilege  to  work  with  since  joining  the Council staff a few years ago.  I believe in the  magic  this  program  offers  to Philadelphia  schools,  which  matters more than dancing skills when it comes to being a judge.

Anyway, even an untrained eye can assess the criteria we’ve been given.  I still want to give every couple a 10.  It helps only slightly to know that each student will go home with a ribbon and that the afternoon will end with one big rainbow of a line dance that includes them all.

“I  will  feel  a  glow  just  thinking  of you…”  The second round of foxtrotting ended  fifteen minutes  ago,  but  I’ve  got Old  Blue  Eyes  and  Young  Blue  Shoes under my skin.   To  the great delight of the home team supporters, the Catherine School has advanced to the finals, along with the Spring Garden School.   

“Lovely…never,  ever  change.”      I’ll never, ever hear that song again without recalling  the eager  faces,  the periwinkle shoes and the way that little girl’s face lit up when I told her I liked her cape on my way out the door.Eileen  Cunniffe  is  a  lifelong  resident  of  the Philadelphia area.   After  a  quarter  century  of  putting words  into  other  people’ s  mouths  and  manuscripts  as  a medical writer/editor and as a  corporate  communications manager, she has at long last begun to write her own, true stories.   Her  nonfiction  has  appeared  in  Wild  River Review, ShortMemoir.com and the Travelers’ Tales anthology A Woman’ s World Again.   Eileen manages two volunteer programs at the Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia.

[img_assist|nid=4793|title=bean pie: take the seed outside by Tamsen Wojtanowski © 2009|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=175|height=262]Seven a.m. on a Monday morning and my mother is the only one awake. She pads downstairs. In the kitchen, she raises the shades, letting in weak, gray daylight, then turns to find the coffee pot. It’s where it always is—on the counter, next to a bowl of clementines—but it is filled only with hot water. It sputters happily. (Mocks her, you know?)

    “Dammit!”

Her voice, though not a shout, rings sharply through the house. I hear it in my secluded room and wonder whether something is actually wrong.

    “Dammit, Jim, did you set the coffee maker last night?”

She knows he didn’t; if he had, there would be dark brew instead of clear water in the pot. But she calls upstairs to him anyway, just to make him admit his mistake aloud.

    And now my father enters this real-life play—thickset, goateed, brown-skinned, wavy-haired, kind. Unhappy. Lying on his back in bed upstairs, while his petite white wife berates him from a floor away.

    “Jim?” Tone curls up at the end—shrill and accusatory.

    “Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” He speaks without moving anything but his lips. Lies motionless on his back in bed. A turtle, a turtle. (God, but a loveable one. Can’t he see?)

    After another hour of lying still while his wife and son whirl around him, the turtle crawls out of bed. He languishes for an hour in a room adjacent to his bedroom before getting into the shower. The wife and son have left for work and school by the time the turtle emerges from the shower (fresh, but not refreshed; clean but never cleansed). He pulls on an expensive suit, plods downstairs, skips breakfast, clambers into an expensive car, and drives off to a job that is slowly killing him. His heart is a landfill.

My father’s childhood could be the source of his current problems. People are pottery, it seems to me—if there are mistakes made early on in the crafting, and the piece is put into a hot hot kiln and fired anyway, the flaws will be there forever. 

Depression is one such defect.

If you were to skim a written summary of my father’s life thus far, you might read, near the bottom, in the second to last paragraph or so, that he was diagnosed with clinical depression. But I would argue that the seed of an adult’s unhappiness is planted early on; it is a spore that lies dormant in the head. Whether in an instant or over a long period of time, the spore eventually blooms and a dark mold spreads over the soul, weighing it down, down, down. Rotting it through.

My grandmother – a mixed-race, fair-skinned, upper-middle class woman with coarse Indian hair, and hard black eyes – gave my father all the necessary tools for developing a healthy case of depression. She made little James Archibald Amar Pabarue feel as though he, in his natural state, was worth nothing. She anglicized him, sending him to Groton boarding school in Massachusetts where he was one of two black students in his class. (He wished he were one of the white kids; doesn’t identify with black Americans and never will.) She scolded him for his untidy hair. (He brushes it now obsessively.) She beat him with a worn leather belt because he was overweight. (Tough love, tough love.)

No one cried much on that sunny day when my grandmother was burned to cinders, sealed in a black box, and buried.

So little Jimmy went through his years with that devilish, black seed of depression festering in his mind. Self-conscious, self-doubting. (But his hair was always well-combed!)

    And I know when the turning point came.

    My father was a “freak” in high school—a cross between a “straight” and a “hippy”. His true passion was and still is rock and roll music. My mother first met him as the long-haired, blue-eyeshadowed, gown-wearing, pot-smoking lead singer of a band called Dingo. (What a ladies man, and so happy singing his tunes in a silky-smooth tenor).

    After college, he started playing with a new group, Duck Soup, and with them tried to break into the music industry. They wrote and wrote and practiced and practiced and played and played and toured and toured. They were poor—macaroni for most meals, you know—but they were happy and fiery and young.

    Two years of mild success and countless empty boxes of macaroni later, it became clear that the world was not ready for Duck Soup. My father had to write off his dream. (“Sorry, Dream, I can’t chase you anymore. Maybe we can meet up later?”). He traded his lyrics sheet for a law degree, his gown for a tailored suit, his eye shadow for aftershave, his band practice for board meetings. His pot for Prozac. His microphone for a fountain pen. The laughter and music for sighs.

    He sheared his long hair and brushed it down smooth, and deep in his head a little seed sprouted.

    My mother is too pragmatic to help.

“He should just fix it,” she says. She is sitting in an armchair in soft lamplight, knitting methodically. (Is she entangling herself in that web of yarn? Is it a cocoon? There are so many strings. How does she keep track of them all?). She takes a sip of tea.

    “I mean really. It’s not a disease. It’s all just a mental thing.”

She means well, she really does. She loves him for who he is, she really does. She just doesn’t know what to do, and she comes off as callous and insensitive.

    “Why can’t he just go get some friends instead of paying a shrink to talk with? I don’t have a shrink, and I’m perfectly fine.”

    I am too much of a teenager to help him.

    “Jay-Bo-Bay, Jay-Bo-Bay” he says in the morning, smiling wearily. He reaches out to tickle me. All I have to do is say Hey, Daddy, How are you this morning?, and sit down beside him. But I can’t.

    “Not right now,” I growl. “I’m not in the mood. Are you done with the bathroom?”

    (I wish I had been nicer as soon as the words leave my mouth)
    “Yeah, it’s yours,” he mumbles, and shuffles back to his dark room.

I don’t help, I don’t help, I don’t help. I could help. Could I help? Can I help?

    I’m pretty sure that I can’t help. It’s up to him. Or perhaps it’s up to some god to chip away the concrete blocks around his feet and the lead around his eyes—up to some hammer-wielding Thor or some squat Buddha scurrying around with a sharpened chisel in hand.

    But maybe it can’t be helped at all and he’ll forever walk in place in a muddy rut on the side of the road, gradually sinking deeper and deeper. Perhaps he’ll be sucked underground and only a patch of neatly-brushed hair will peek out. I think he wouldn’t even mind much. I think.

At two or three a.m., when most employed adults in their right minds are sleeping, my father sits sunken into the couch, letting the flickering blue lights of late-night television wash over him. His salt-and-pepper hair runs laterally in uniformed waves. He blinks from time to time.

He isn’t watching the screen; rather, he’s looking past the TV set, either silently grieving over his past, or inventing a bleak, bleak future for himself and staring coldly at it. There has never been a face so wholly empty.

Off goes the TV at some ridiculous hour. He rocks to his feet and trudges upstairs, the hardwood steps creaking as he goes.

He forgets to set the coffee.James Pabarue is a resident of Philadelphia. He dabbles in both creative non-fiction and in poetry.