Fiction – Page 16 – Philadelphia Stories

I-80

She struggled out of the sleeping bag, wrestled with the nest of blankets and pulled at the door. She poured herself out into the empty lot and shuffled a few paces from the car before she buckled over a strip of grass and vomited. It slapped the ground and steam rose from it. The man got out of the car and went to her and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, to hold her. She heaved again, just water and foam.

"Get your hands off me."

"What can I do?"

"This isn’t your problem." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Drive. We shouldn’t have stopped."

They got back into the beaten silver Saturn and pushed the blankets to the back seat, which was piled with unpacked clothes, some still on hangars, some tangled at the floorboards.

"Jesus, Peter. Why don’t you just hate me?"

He started the car, which struggled in the cold. The engine knocked and shuddered. He drove.

* * *

She slapped his hand away from the radio and it stung, and when he pulled away it made him swerve over the line, into the red gravel shoulder, which probably made her hate him all the more.

"Christ. Learn how to drive."

"You hit me."

"I hit your hand."

"I was turning it off."

"I’m listening."

"There’s nothing to listen to, Annie. It’s just Jesus radio. There’s nothing there."

She folded her arms and turned to the window and was sullen for a while.

"I thought they might say something about it."

They were silent for a long time more, listening to AM static rise and fall because Peter was afraid to touch the radio and upset her again, and Annie was too proud to admit that she had been wrong and there was really nothing on the radio about this horrible thing that had happened. Just hallelujah. Just praise the Lord.

And so it was the End of Days through the long Wyoming desert.

Eventually, when the voices faded, Annie turned off the radio and there was only wind and the hiss of the road.

"This is crazy," she said.

"Yep."

"Yep? What’s that supposed to mean?"

"I was agreeing."

"Yep. Are you a fucking cowboy?"

He didn’t answer. He shifted and drove with one hand.

She didn’t look at him. "Which part?"

"What?"

"I said this was crazy and you agreed."

"Yep."

"Which part did you agree to?"

The road was empty and wide, and so he turned and stared at her. "All of it," he said.

"Keep your eyes on the road."

He turned back.

"And that isn’t an answer. Tell me what you think is crazy."

"That there are no radio stations. That we haven’t been through a town in sixty miles. There’s a storm coming and we don’t have anywhere to stay. Everything."

"What’s everything?"

"Everything that’s happened. Every goddamned thing, Annie. You and me. New York. All of it."

She nodded. That was enough.

Then it was back to the radio.

Annie hit scan and it rolled through the entire AM band without stopping. It started again and stopped on static. She switched to FM and hit a station. Christian. Like everything.

The voice was rattled. It said, What will become of the children?

There were coughs in the pause and shuffling papers.

In the final days when God’s wrath is descended over the Earth and the horsemen have strode among us. What will become of the children?

Annie drew back her hand.

Some say that children are the innocent, but God almighty, the child will pay for the sins of their fathers and death will befall them as it did the children of Pharaoh, and locusts will consume their flesh and flies will fill their eyes.

"Jesus Christ, Annie. Turn it off."

"No."

Peter flicked his finger over the volume knob and the radio went dead. He looked at her and waited for her to scream or hit him again. But she was silent. And then tears came.

"I hate you," she said.

"That’s probably true."

"This is such shitty timing."

"The worst."

"We can’t have a baby now."

He took his hand from the wheel and shifted it toward her. He put it on her leg, covered by the bloated down coat, which he loathed, and had always loathed. She put her hand on top of his and they held each other this way while the long desolation passed outside, while miles of fences flickered by and the morning sun settled on the land like ash.

"I still love you," he said. "I don’t know if that makes any difference, but I do."

"It does." She squeezed his hand. "I don’t know why, but it does."

* * *

Miles piled upon miles, and the exits were useless and barren.

"No Services," he said as another sign slipped by.

"How can there be no services? How do people live here if there are no services?"

"I think they drive a long way for services."

"Stop saying services."

"Sorry."

"Fuck this place."

"We’ll find something."

"Fuck you too."

They were quiet for a while.

"I’m hungry," she said.

"Me too."

"I mean it. I’m really hungry."

"When we get to an exit, we’ll see if we can find some services."

"Go to hell." She folded her arms and leaned against the window. "Why didn’t we bring any food with us?"

"Because we were in a hurry. And yesterday I didn’t think we’d have trouble finding some."

* * *

They did come to an exit, which wasn’t a town, just a clutter of lots and gravel to either side of the highway, two gas stations, a junkyard, and a McDonald’s.

It was a nameless settlement that had sprouted simply because one old local road rambled out of the country and crossed the interstate.

They came off the highway and crept to the top of the ramp, slick with ice and snowblown. The car slipped and then caught the pavement again.

The station at the end of the ramp had put out orange barricades and a slab of plywood that said NO GAS. They turned left and the tires slipped as they moved onto the overpass and skidded down the other side.

At the other station, a long line of pickup trucks had stacked up at the pumps.

"There’s a McDonald’s," she said.

"You never eat that shit."

"I need to eat. I don’t care what it is."

The snow on the local road had gathered in eddies and he drove slowly over black ice where the tires had no grip. He turned into the parking lot and turned off the engine.

"I don’t want to get caught in the storm," he said. "I think we can make it to Laramie before it hits. If we hurry."

She nodded. "Yeah. Alright."

They got out and the dry wind bit them. Snow blew around their ankles and packed in dusty drifts at the edge of the lot. They shuffled for the door.

Inside, it was yesterday in America. Yesterday, when nothing had happened at all.

Annie ordered breakfast, but the kid behind the counter, an Indian with long black hair and bad skin, told her that it was too late, so she muttered under her breath and walked away. Peter ordered for her.

The kid disappeared into the back and Peter waited. The place was bright. The place was warm. It was good to be warm after the bitter winter night at the side of the road.

Annie sat in a booth against the front window, staring at her open hands. She pulled off her dowdy knit hat and frazzled hair splayed out in wild directions. When Peter had met her, she had been so prim and ordered. Her hair precise, her clothes immaculate, her body angelic.

But this had changed and she had become tangled and wrecked, as they together had wheeled wildly off the rails, and whatever they’d been once, they were no longer.

At the end, they cheated on each other ferociously, for vengeance, to push the other away, to disgust the other and bring the thorny bramble of their undone love to a permanent, fiery end.

And it had worked, and they had ended, squarely and without remorse.

Then on Monday came into their lives news of the baby.

Then on Tuesday came the end of the world.

The kid came back to the counter. "Sorry it’s taking so long. A lot of people didn’t show up today."

"It’s alright."

"We don’t even got the guy that cleans the shitter."

"Damn."

"Just didn’t come in." The kid looked around to see if he was being watched. He leaned in and almost whispered. "Hey. You heard anything?"

Peter shook his head. "No."

"They don’t let us turn on the radio or nothing. So I ain’t heard. But if you heard something–"

"I haven’t. Sorry."

"Okay. Yeah. I’ll bring it out to you in a minute."

[img_assist|nid=4536|title=Untitled by Nicole Koenitzer © 2009|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=255]Peter left the counter and walked to the table by the window. He hung over Annie for a while. She looked up at him, regarded him, exhausted and confused, the same way she had looked at her hands. Perplexed by her appendages, baffled that he was still attached to her, and she to him.

He sat across from her. "I have a plan."

She stared.

"We eat. Then we find gas. We can wait in line over there. Then if we drive all day, we can make it to Omaha. If we drive hard, we could make it to Chicago by tomorrow night. We’ll be there for Christmas. Everything will be okay when we get home."

"That isn’t a plan, Peter. That’s just what we were doing anyway."

"It makes me feel better to say it."

The kid came over with a tray of Big Macs in their greasy boxes.

"Sorry it took so long. Some of ’em might be a little fucked up because the guy who knows how to put them together on Tuesdays didn’t show up today, so I just guessed from the pictures."

"It’s okay," Annie said, which was unusually kind.

He lingered, then shuffled back to the counter.

There was honking. A lot of honking and Annie craned her neck to see over Peter’s shoulder.

"What is it?" He turned.

At the gas station, two men were scuffling. One pushed the other and a clumsy swing landed them both in a pile of snow.

From the passenger side of one of the fueling pickups, a woman dropped down, drunk and morbidly obese, shouting incoherent obscenity. While she ranted, she pulled the nozzle from the tank and dragged the hose to the opposite side of the pump island, dousing the truck that was parked there.

A couple of burley men tried to stop her, but they were driven off by a spray of gasoline to the eyes. They howled and scuttered away. She grabbed at one of her breasts. She flipped her middle finger as the gas pooled around her.

Peter switched places at the table. He sat next to Annie so he could watch.

The rest of the pickups in the line started to scatter, banging into each other, honking, jamming up against the wall of the station, against the pumps and islands, steel slapping steel and glass snapping.

The woman chased a few trucks to the extent of the hose. She turned circles and wrapped her legs in it. She fell, struggling, rolling in the gas. She untangled herself and stood and held a lighter to the grill of the truck.

One of the men in the snow, all battered now and dripping with blood, stood up and yelled. He might have been trying to reason with her. She couldn’t hear or didn’t care. She sparked the lighter and lit the pickup on fire.

The flames flashed back up her arm and burned the gas that had soaked into her sweatshirt. People ran from the tangle of trucks as fire chased out over the slicks that had gathered.

The woman screamed and ran and flailed her arm, but the fire jumped to her hair and covered her body. She set fire to the ground as she ran.

The next pickup in line caught fire. The station was a roiling black cloud, a filthy billowing torch, all alight in the snowy morning.

The bloody man tried to stop the burning woman, but she was frantic and slapped at him, and some of the flame jumped across to his coat and his hair.

He tried to get away, but walls of fire rolled up from the pools on the ground. He ran through it but was consumed and collapsed into the snowbank. The fat woman fell behind him and burned.

Annie had taken a bite of the Big Mac. She put it back in the box and pushed it away.

"Why is this happening?

"Why’s what happening?"

"You know what."

"They’re fighting over gas."

"Not that. All of it."

"The usual reasons, I guess."

Annie took the Big Mac and bit it. She stuffed her mouth with it.

Peter felt the heat of the fire on his face through the glass.

He said, "If it would have happened a month ago, would we have broken up? Do you think we would have been so terrible to each other?"

She worked pieces of food around in her cheeks as she thought. "No. No, I don’t think so."

"Why not?"

"We need different things now. Things are different."

"What things?"

"We have new priorities." She looked at him and wiped her mouth with a bunched paper napkin. "It changes everything."

The glass rattled and rumbled. A broad and sucking bulge of fire rose up over the gas station.

"So what do we do?"

"We do what we have to. We make it work."

"Wait," he said. "Wait, are we talking about the bomb or the baby?"

She shook her head. "We’re talking about us."

* * *

They left the place behind. The fire department never came. As they slid by the gas station, Annie pressed her hands over her eyes. The burned bodies stuck in Peter’s periphery like shadows, black and stiff against the snow which melted around them in the heat of the soaring fire.

They crept out onto the ramp and back to the interstate.

"We can make it to Laramie," he said.

"Don’t you think we should find gas?"

"Look at the gauge."

"It’s on E."

"Exactly."

"Exactly what? That means it’s empty."

"No, it means we probably have sixty miles left on this tank."

"Sixty miles? It’s on empty, you asshole."

"We’ll be fine, Annie."

* * *

At the side of I-80, where the car had run out of gas, Annie paced along the muddy red gravel shoulder, clutching her hands and doubling over, and cursing in a way that kept her warm with hellfire.

Peter sat in the car and waited for her rage to pass.

"You stupid fuck!" She kicked the ground and a hail of gravel hit the car. She turned and walked off.

On the crests of the rocky brown hills around them, pumpjacks nodded in slow succession, draining oil from the earth, scattered across the washes and ridges.

He opened the door and called after her. She stopped and turned back.

"What are we going to do, Peter? We don’t have any gas."

"We’ll wait for somebody. We’ll wait for a car."

"There are no cars. There’s a storm coming. Nobody’s driving except us."

"We’re not driving either, actually."

She bit down hard.

"It’s warmer in here," he said. "Just get in the car."

* * *

The storm did come, and it consumed them.

They sat together in the back seat on their clothes, bundled under sleeping bags and blankets. The car rocked and shuddered in the wind.

The last pale sun came through the deepening snow on the glass, blue and icy light.

"There’ll be a plow through soon. Or maybe highway patrol. We’ll be fine."

"It’s getting dark."

"It’s just the snow on the windows."

"No. It’s late. The sun’s going down and it’ll get colder."

"We’ll be alright. We can still make it to my mom and dad’s tomorrow night. We’ll have Christmas. It’ll be normal. Everything will be O.K. when we get home."

"It isn’t fucking normal."

"I’m glad you’ll get to meet them."

"Were you ever going to introduce me?"

"Of course."

"When? We’ve been together for eight months."

"They live fourteen hundred miles away."

"You could have figured something out."

"What about you? I’ve only met your mother once, and she lives in Vegas."

"Once is enough for anyone."

"I liked her."

"That’s because you were both drunk and disgusting."

Annie shifted and brought herself closer to him. "Do you think she’s alright? Do you think she’s safe?"

"Definitely. She’s on vacation."

"So?"

"She’s out of the country. I’m sure everything’s fine in Europe."

She put her head on his shoulder, heavy and smelling of wool and sweat. The ridiculous ball on top of her hat tickled his cheek.

"What if they don’t like me?"

"They’ll like you."

"But what if they don’t? Or what if I don’t like them?"

"Annie, everybody is going to like everybody else. Everything is going to be fine."

"But that isn’t true, is it." She slid her arm behind him and held him. "Everything isn’t going to be fine."

"Things will be different, that’s all. It might get harder for a while, but it doesn’t mean it’ll be bad. It doesn’t have to be."

"Are you talking about the bomb again?"

"No. The baby. Weren’t we talking about the baby?"

"I’m cold," she said. "Do you want to make love?"

"What?"

"Do you?"

"I didn’t know that was still an option."

"Well, it is."

"Then yes. Yes, I do."

* * *

They did make love, with their clothes mostly on and swaddled in blankets. The windows gathered fog, which froze and glowed in the dusk.

When they had finished, and all of the light had gone out of the sky and the snow that covered the glass had gone dark, they sat together and thought of home.

Sound came from behind them. A slow vibration in the ground became a shudder and a quake. The growl from the highway became a torrent of raging engines and rattling steel.

"Jesus, what is it?" She sat up and scratched at the ice on the rear window.

Headlights burned through the snow and filled the car. Peter wrestled with the blankets and pushed his shoulder against the door to break the seal of ice that had formed. Clumps of snow fell over his freezing hands.

Standing in the gravel with his back to the wind, he watched the tanks pass with armored trucks and Humvees heading south. The headlights on the highway snaked back along the road for miles.

Annie climbed out, still wrapped in her blanket. They watched the convoy pass, too loud to speak over the whistling and growling and screaming of machines.

Annie waved her arms. She moved closer to the road, but none of them slowed.

Eventually, when the end of the convoy came, and the road was silent, a few military semis brought up the rear. A tanker passed, and another pulled to the shoulder and stopped behind them, flooding the place where they stood with light.

"Are you in need of assistance, ma’am?" The soldier jogged toward them with hands deep in his coat. "They called back and said you were trying to flag us down."

"We ran out of gas," she said. "What’s happening?"

"Gas? Not a problem." He turned and shouted into the light. "Diaz. Grab a gas can."

The passenger door opened and slammed and there was a shuffling in the gravel.

"What’s going on?" Peter said.

"Can’t say."

"Do you know anything about New York?"

"Really can’t say."

The other soldier hustled toward them lugging a brown plastic gas can. She was small and wore thick glasses.

Peter had to pry the frozen gas tank door with a key.

He twisted off the cap and the soldier started to pour.

"Where are you two headed?" she asked.

"Home," Peter said.

"Where’s home?"

"West of Chicago."

"How far west?"

"Suburbs."

She nodded. "Where you coming from?"

"Salt Lake."

"You picked a very bad time to take a very long road trip."

"We’re going to see his family for Christmas," Annie said.

"Have you spoken to them?"

"We couldn’t get through."

The soldier who had been driving scraped his boot in the dirt. "No one can," he said. "Are you married?"

"No," Peter said.

"You two should get married. Make it right in the eyes of the Lord."

Annie took Peter’s hand.

"So," he said, "you planning to take I-80 all the way?"

"Yeah," Peter said.

"Well, maybe when you get to Des Moines, you should quit the interstate."

"Why?" Annie squeezed harder.

"I think you might find the old U.S….uh, the old U.S. highways a more scenic way to travel."

"We’re kind of in a hurry."

"Then you better quit the interstate at Des Moines. You follow?" He stepped closer. "This thing ain’t over, brother. Do yourself a favor and stay off the highway."

He turned and headed back to the truck.

The other one finished with the gas can and put the cap back on the tank.

"I don’t know what kind of mileage you get, but that should get you to Cheyenne. You can find gas there."

"Why are you doing this?" Annie said.

"We’re just here to serve, ma’am."

"That isn’t true."

The soldier stood for a while, quiet and staring, the last of the snow falling between them.

"Sins," she said.

"What?"

"It was Jackson’s idea. To make up for the sins we gotta go do now."

"Diaz! Let’s roll."

"What sins?"

The soldier turned away and jogged back to the truck.

"What fucking sins?"

"Annie, shut up."

"Why?"

"I don’t know. Just shut up."

The engine growled and knocked and the truck rattled back onto the road, heading south.

They stood alone in the dark at the roadside, smelling ice and sage, silent for a while. Too long.

"Start the car," Annie said. "I’m cold."

"I love you," he said.

"I’m cold," she said. "I love you, too."

* * *

They sang. They were beset by the madness that comes on long ribbons of American road. They sang through the snarled and snowblown streets of Cheyenne, they sang through the last of Wyoming and six more hours into Nebraska. They told stories about their lives all the way to Omaha.

They laughed and were giddy and then fell into silence in a 24 hour Wal-Mart parking lot which bustled and hummed through the night as lines backed out of doors for generators and palettes of bottled water and Band-Aids and all of the other things that had suddenly become the stuff of life.

They slept in the white glare of mercury vapor lights and in the morning Annie was sick again before they set out at dawn.

Civilization began to coalesce along the road, exits with new frequency, populated by chain restaurants and big box stores.

The radio, which had possessed her the day before, was silent. They had decided, without saying so, that neither cared to know what new and terrible things had happened to the world in the night. All they needed to know of that came from emergency vehicles flickering past and clusters of military trucks at intervals on an otherwise vacant highway.

At the edge of Des Moines, she said, "You never asked me what I was going to do."

She fiddled with the vents and the heat controls.

"Do with what?"

"If I was going to keep it."

"I just assumed."

"How could you assume something like that?"

"I don’t know. I just did."

"You were right. I just mean that I’m curious. That’s all. Why did you think that?"

"It was the way you said it."

"How did I say it?"

"You didn’t say, I’m pregnant. You said I’m having a baby."

She shook her head. She flicked off the heat. "No, I didn’t."

"Yes you did."

"No I didn’t. I said we’re having a baby."

And that was true. She had.

* * *

They came to signs that warned of a roadblock. Not the usual orange construction fare, but olive and white military signs which were clearly not suggestions of caution, but statements of very serious intent.

They left the interstate, off onto the snowy, vacant surface streets of the suburbs. The soldier in Wyoming had told them to quit the interstate, and from an overpass, they saw why.

A tangle of trucks and flickering lights scattered across cordons. Semis were being searched, minivans turned inside out. An entire living room had been assembled on the side of the road from a moving truck that was being taken apart. Lamps and sofas and an oversized television in proper arrangement in the snow.

* * *

On old U.S. Highway 30, things were clear. The wind had kept the snow off the road, blown into drifts and culverts.

They drove all day through old America, town after tiny town forgotten when the interstate had opened and sucked away what traffic had flowed through these old veins. And surrounded by wide, white fields were main streets lined by storefronts, now vacant, and other streets that crept off to the edges, shaded by broad old oaks that covered dignified, forgotten houses.

The sun fell behind them and winter dusk came early again, and then finally they came to the Mississippi and Illinois beyond.

They stopped so that Annie could piss.

There had been no town for miles, and there wouldn’t be for miles more, and even when they found one, nothing would be open. So this place was as good as any.

She walked away from the road, crunching snow out into a field. Peter leaned against the car and looked down the road, out into the strange silver dark, which wasn’t dark at all. The light of unencumbered stars and sliver of moon on the snow which had gathered against the broken stalks of harvested corn, and in the still he heard in the air a river of traffic from the interstate, two or three miles away, a brief stretch of reprieve, unhindered by barricades after Davenport.

It was this way that he remembered home. Still and perfect in winter, the smell of snow, if there was such a thing, and the rush of traffic somewhere out in the dark.

And then a light swelled in the sky.

The sky went blue like day. Annie was forty feet away, squatting in the field in sudden noonday. She fell backward and scrambled to her knees and then the light faded. It drew back across the sky, painting stars again as it receded to the east.

He heard Annie struggle in the snow, then saw her again, jogging toward the road.

"What the fuck? Peter, what was that?"

He listened.

"Peter?"

He listened and watched the sky, but there was nothing. She moved forward and fell into him. He held her, squeezed her in his arms. She was shaking.

He had stopped counting by thousands when the sound came, a low roar a minute late, which was the end of Chicago.

* * *

They drove and said nothing.

They drove until the places they passed by and through became familiar to him, became places he had been before, roads he had driven once, roads he had crossed twice, and then places that he called home.

They stopped in front of his house, which was an average sort of American house in an average American suburb, part of the sprawl pressing fingers out into the fields.

The lights were still on. That was good. Strands of Christmas lights lined the eaves and angles. A tree glimmered in the window. The lights wouldn’t stay on forever, but tonight at least, they were bright, and they were home.

A woman came to the glass and cupped her hands over her eyes to see outside.

"Is that your mother?"

"Yep."

"Fucking yep. Honest to God."

"Don’t be nervous."

"I’m not nervous. I’m scared."

"Yeah. Me too."

They got out of the car and walked together toward the house. His mother disappeared and he could hear her yelling to his father somewhere inside.

To the east, the sky was burning red, and at its edges, orange light broke through strange clouds, all black and scattered out over the horizon.

A breeze had swelled toward them, but it would shift by morning. He was sure that it had to. He was sure of it.

"Everything’s okay now," he said. "We’re here."

"Yes," she said. "We’re here."

"We shouldn’t stay outside though."

"No. We shouldn’t."

"Come in."

She took his hand. She squeezed it. They walked together out of the cold and into the house.

DJ Kinney is the author of The End of Oranges, an unpublished collection of short stories which examines themes of love and calamity under difficult, often surreal circumstances. Stories from The End of Oranges have been published in Eureka Literary Magazine, Eclipse, Puckerbrush Review, Allegheny Review, Vincent Brothers Review and others. DJ lives and works in Portland, Oregon with his miniature dachshund John R. Crichton, Jr.

Bando

There is a homeless man living in our house.

I can’t really complain, I suppose, since we walked away from the house two months ago, and when the gavel falls at the Lancaster County Courthouse in another ten days and turns it into the property of JeffFi Mortgage, it won’t be ours anymore. But until that happens, my wife and I are still on the deed, and it’s still our house, on what was our block, where our son played in the backyard with our dog Libby and our neighbors’ kids. We used to live here, in this house, on this block, in this development across from a retention basin where frogs make froggy noises at night. Hence Jeremiah Place: our developer thought naming the development after the old Three Dog Night song was the height of cleverness.

But even though it is narrowly, technically, still our block, I’m not sure what to do about the homeless man living in our house.

That’s not entirely true. I do know what to do. I can call 911. Or I can call JeffFi, assuming I can ever get someone on the phone who isn’t from Bangalore and knows what to do when I call. Hell, I could just walk in the door. After all, I still have the key, since JeffFi was too stupid to change the lock even after I sent them two letters saying change the damn locks and winterize the damn house—it’s the middle of February, you asshats.

Just to clarify: I did not actually use the word “asshat.” It’s a word I learned from my 16-year-old son. But, given the circumstances, it seems to fit.

Eight months ago two guys in khaki colored shirts and brown pants served Gwen the foreclosure notice at 9:15 in the morning. Gwen worked for County Children and Youth, and she’d been up all night, taking an abused child into custody. She’d not quite fallen asleep, and I had told her when our financial problems first started that nobody would ever be coming to the door like this, that I’d take care of it before things reached the level of sheriffs and courthouses.

When we’d received the first notice, the one that my lawyer called an “Act 91” letter, I tried minimizing its importance. This was not easy, given the fact than an Act 91 was designed by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking to be written in a manner precisely so you will not minimize its importance. It’s meant to make you piss yourself.

But I’m good. I brushed it off. So I figured I could do it again when she came to my office.

Here’s how that conversation went:

“I almost hit a duck.”

“Gwen?”

“A duck. I almost hit a damn duck.”

“Gwen, what’s wrong?”

“You told me this wasn’t going to happen.”

I guessed this had something to do with the mortgage even before Gwen said that, but I didn’t let her know. Denial is a gas, a vapor. It seeps into everything if you let it.

“Talk to me. What’s the matter?”

I meant the exact opposite of that. Don’t talk to me. I will only have to find some other form of emotional defense.

“We’re fucked. We’re fucked. We’re going to lose the house.”

When Gwen gets angry, she mixes crying and rage into one, mashed-up, superheated emotion. She tears up, but she doesn’t cry, exactly. No sobbing lamentations, not even understated sniffling. The cry does not move one inch beyond her tear ducts. At the same time, she shows me the serrated edge of violence. Maybe she’ll throw something. Maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll just slam shit around. Like the paper in her hand, thick with legal-sized documents folded to fit the letter-sized pleadings they were attached to, making the whole of it look thicker, plumper, and all the more intimidating—like its accusatory language couldn’t be contained on mere paper but needed to spill out and beat me up.

“We are not going to lose the house. Jesus, Gwen, I work at a bank. I know how this goes. I know how this game is played.”

Which was true. I did know how the game was played. I knew we’d lose the house.

Now that we no longer live there, there’s no reason to drive past our house except anger or revenge. It’s not near any of my life’s touchstones anymore—not where I worked, not near the house we now rent, not near Jason’s school, not especially close to anything, really. Which is why I’m surprised to see anyone living there in the first place.

I drive past, slowly but not too slowly, like a stalker whose heart isn’t quite in it. I had left the basketball stuff in the driveway, thinking that the ghosts of Jason and his friends might still want to shoot a round of H-O-R-S-E, but now the only thing there is a mid-80’s Buick. So I pull up behind it and get out of my car, but then what? What do I do? What’s the protocol? I’ve been going to work earlier and earlier so Gwen won’t have to look at me, but for Squatter Guy I have no coping mechanism.

I stand by my car for maybe 45 seconds. I fiddle with my BlackBerry, looking for some newish email to distract me. Finding none and hoping it’s not because they cut my service, I put it back in my pocket and start heading towards the door, trying to walk very softly, then realizing that it’s still my house and I’m not the trespasser here.

I don’t go to the door, though. Instead, I cut across the lawn, which is just starting to look unkempt, to the window. Squatter Guy has the blinds pulled down only half the way. I walk right up to the window. Torso up, I see a vague silhouette of a man, like the blinds are keeping him in a witness protection program. Torso down, gray sweats.

I stare at the window, waiting for him to pull the shades in either one direction or another. He doesn’t. I spend about 45 seconds like this then walk back to my car.

I had seen plenty of legal captions and documents before, but never one with my name on. I’d always wondered what it would be like, but now I didn’t have to. I stared at the paperwork that Gwen had thrown on my desk moments earlier, reading that caption, over and over again:

In the court of common pleas of

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Civil Action-Mortgage Foreclosure Charlotte National Bank, As Trustee of Jefferson Financial Corporation, Asset Backed Pass Through Certificates, Series 2005-r-7 Under The Pooling And Servicing Agreement Dated As Of September 1, 2005 Without Record

vs.

You, Seth Weinstein and Gwendolyn Weinstein, Deadbeat Losers, Who Took Out Too Much Loan Than You Could Possibly Afford And You’d Have Known That If You’d Have Not Had Your Heads Up Your Ass And Actually Looked At The Adjustable Rate Which Was Going To Go Up To 9.5% On A $388,000.00 Mortgage But You Figured You’d Be Able To Refinance It Because Housing Prices Always Go Up And Ha, Ha, Ha You Sucker, Lost That Bet Didn’t You, But So Did We Because We Sold That Mortgage, Then Sold It Again, And Now Jeff Fi Is In The Crapper Along With Everybody Else, So We’re Both In This Together, Aren’t We?

Husband and Wife.

When we moved into the house in Jeremiah Place, Jason was nine, I had just jumped from residential to commercial, and Gwen was working as a sales rep for a company that sold used construction equipment. She drove to various places in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland, often wearing her trademark hard hat with a Hello Kitty decal on the front. She made more money than me, more money than any of the men who were sales reps at her company, and, with all that, we could finally afford a really great house.

Two years later, she was back at school, finally completing her Bachelors Degree at Millersville, then driving back and forth to Temple to get her Masters, all so she could work more hours for less money—way less, gaping chasms less—doing what she really wanted to do, which was to rescue kids with cigarette burns on their genitalia in the middle of the night.

I could have had a conversation with her back then. I could have pointed out that we’d purchased a whole lot of house. That we needed her money to afford it. That what she wanted to do didn’t make sense unless we sold the house, took the equity we had, and put a really big down payment on a smaller place. It’s what the lending officer in me would have done. Here’s the thing, though. The socially unacceptable secret. There aren’t many ways to randomly display testosterone when you’re a middle-aged loan officer with bad knees and a receding hairline. But they do exist. In my case, those ways involved home equity loans. And credit cards. And refinances. And credit cards again. Debt was great. Debt was wonderful. Debt allowed me to be both stoic and supportive. Debt rocked.

I leave early again. Gwen doesn’t ask why. She’s in the kitchen, pouring cranberry juice. Jason—I’m not sure where Jason is. In his room, maybe, with the boxes from the move still mostly filled with stuff. Gwen kept telling him, half-heartedly, to unpack them before she finally gave up. Only the computer and the Game Boy have seen light. The sheriff’s sale is nine days away.

I drive from this house that I rent—a house that I will not call “our house,” or “my house,” not yet, not today, not tonight—and pull to the end of this development, which doesn’t have full-grown trees. Granted, my old development didn’t have full-grown trees, either. But here I notice and resent their shortness, their lack of maturity. There’s lots to resent here, including the fact that I took this place so Jason would graduate next year in his same school district and on his same basketball team, and I thought I’d get some kind of credit for that.

I am about to confront a strange man in a familiar place. I pull up in the driveway. This time, if there are any ghosts still here, I imagine my tires rolling over them, cracking their incorporeal bones. I get out of the car. I consider honking the horn, announcing my presence, but decide against it. I don’t need to announce my presence. This is still my house.

I then notice that Squatter Guy’s car is not in the driveway. Or maybe I noticed it subliminally, as I was pulling in, and the thought that nobody would be there to confront me made me fearless. Regardless, I’m here. I pull out my key, wondering if it will work. It doesn’t. I stand in front of my door, hovering between panic and rage.

Then I turn the doorknob without thinking. It opens. I’m in my house. Again. Still.

There is furniture in my house. Not mine. A loveseat by the wall where my bookcase used to be—greenish, worn, kind of velvety. A thirteen-inch TV-VCR combo, early 90’s vintage from the looks of it, sitting on a wooden chair—also greenish, but with some sort of yellow in the paint mix. A coffee table, oddly placed closer to the TV than the loveseat. Recent copies of People and Sports Illustrated, and a not-quite-recent copy of, what, The Weekly Standard? What the fuck? Do I have a neo-con squatter here?

Into the living room. A card table, two chairs, both the same as the wooden chair the TV was sitting on. More magazines. Another People, a Rolling Stone. Against a wall, two boxes, long and narrow—one lying on its side against the molding, the other vertical, its top resting where a picture of Jason hitting a three-pointer used to hang. IKEA boxes. I look inside, trying to figure out what it’s supposed to look like when it’s assembled, but I can’t tell. It’s just a bunch of birch.

I start to look into the kitchen but stop. I am close enough to see a white refrigerator, but I don’t want to look further. I’m suddenly afraid of looking at his refrigerator magnets.

I leave my house. I try to lock the door behind me, fail, then run to my car.

I’m worthless at work. I want to lash out at someone, but I am not a lash-out kind of guy. I have a software financing package on my desk, and some lease syndication deals that need attention, and I really wish I were a lash-out kind of guy. It would help me, I think. I could do all sorts of rage. People would live in fear, trying to work around me, manage me, plan things so the rages didn’t happen, but, of course, none of those coping devices would work because I’d be as unpredictable as a tornado, a tsunami, a housing-price-fueled recession.

But none of that is true, so I settle for being useless. And if I’m going to be useless, I may as well be useless at my own house.

I get in my large, red, stupid, SUV. There is a duck—one single, loveless duck—standing in front, staring at the grille. I honk the horn. I wait for the duck to honk back. He doesn’t. He just stares. I honk again. Nothing. He is not moving. He just stands there in the parking lot, daring me to make him move. I could back out. There is no car in the adjacent parking space.

Instead, I inch closer. I think to myself I am playing chicken with a duck. I smile at that thought. It’s the most confrontation I’ve had with any creature in months, maybe years. I kind of like it. But only for a second. Then I start to feel something truly awful. I’d like to say it’s compassion for the duck, and revulsion at the thoughts I just had towards it. I know neither of those are it. I back out through the adjacent parking space, and I head to my house.

Today, I have it mapped out. I am going to confront this man. I have an outline, a plan of attack. I will grab something, something heavy and capable of causing a body to gush blood, and stick it in the back of my car. I will pull into the driveway. If Squatter Guy’s car is in that driveway, I’ll box the little fucker in. I will go inside. I will tell him he has to leave. I will not have to use the heavy object. Displaying it will be enough. That and my forceful presentation. I am a peaceful guy, but I am capable of faking menace.

He will leave. I haven’t figured out what happens after that, but he will leave.

By the way, if you’re ever thinking of getting a homeless guy out of your abandoned house by force, cars don’t have crowbars anymore. I find this out when I go to check the trunk. Nothing heavy. Nothing metallic and unforgiving. My car knows me. It knows I have a cell phone and a Triple A card. Crowbars are only for bad movies now. I shut the trunk. I open it again, thinking I might have missed some other dense object, but no, not unless I want to throw a miniature spare tire at Squatter Guy. I shut the trunk again. If it were my old house, I’d look in the garage for something, but I don’t have a garage. I look in the back seat. There’s a clipboard. On the floor is a pen with no cap and a large paper clip. I think about fashioning them into weapons, then smile, then laugh, then abruptly stop laughing.

Just me. It will have to be just me and Squatter Guy.

I am here. It is 11:30 in the morning. In two hours, the county sheriff will ask if there are any bids to my house. The only one who will bid will be the bank’s attorney. A gavel will hit a wooden plate, not too firmly, not too softly, somewhere between a click and a pound, because there are 41 houses on the list today and a guy could get carpal tunnel if he kept swinging that thing too hard.

That’s okay. I don’t need two hours for this. I will be back at my office soon. This will only be a long lunch.

I pull behind the old ’80s Buick. Right behind it. Practically grinding against its bumper. I walk away from the driveway, onto the grass, which is starting to look a little ragged.

I knock on the door

I wait. Ten, fifteen, twenty seconds.

I knock again, then hit the buzzer. I’d forgotten I had a buzzer. I never had to buzz my own door, I guess.

Seven, ten, fifteen seconds. Buzzer again.

I hear muffled sounds, speaking, footfalls. The door opens. Squatter Guy is real. He is taller than me, which, admittedly, isn’t saying much. He’s younger, but not by much, either. More hair, less fat. Round-rimmed John Lennon glasses. T-shirt with the insignia of the Iowa Hawkeyes and blue gym shorts. As a Penn State grad, I have an immediate, visceral dislike of that. He doesn’t deserve to be wearing a Big 10 t-shirt.

“This is my house,” I say, in a voice that may or may not be calm

“Come in,” he says, in a voice that’s definitely calm. I resent that even more than the t-shirt.

I look around. He has started putting together some of the IKEA stuff, but it’s only partially assembled. I think it’s a bookcase. Or maybe an entertainment center.

“How long have you been here?” I ask him.

“A while, a while,” he says. I focus on the accent. Not Central Pennsylvania, not at all. A little bit Jersey, north but not too far north. He sits down on the loveseat. “Do you want a tour?” He smiles. It’s not a nasty smile at all. That unnerves me even more

“Look, this is my house. You don’t belong here.”

“You won’t either soon.”

I start to pull one of the empty wooden chairs towards the loveseat, but stop. Instead, I take the thirteen-inch TV off the chair it’s sitting on, put the TV on the ground, and use that chair. “I want you to leave. Now.”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious what the hell I’m doing here?”

“Yeah, but I’m not going to ask.”

“Why not?” He leaned back, practically being swallowed up by the loveseat in the process.

“This is my house. For the next 90 minutes, it’s my house. I want you out of it.”

“I’m not going. And you really can’t make me.” He has the same tone of voice I used when I was denying someone a loan. No, more than that; when I was denying a customer who was already into us, who needed more money, just a little bit more to cover expenses, a little extension on a line of credit, and I’d say no. We can’t. We just can’t. It’s not personal. Though I’d never say that last part, because I was already condescending to them just by the denial itself.

I get up and walk towards the pile of IKEA wood. I grab a plank of something light colored and smooth, and begin smacking it in my hand. “Look, you’re trespassing. I want you out of here now.”

“I’m not going until the sheriff comes and changes the locks.”

Still no anger. Still no reaction.

God, I want to hit him first. I want to hit him with this goddamn Swedish wood. I want to crack his head open with Blaarg or Kräppi.

“I think you should leave,” he says in a voice that seems almost kind.

I swing the piece of wood, aiming for the television, but I have to aim low since I placed it on the floor. The mechanics of my attempt at destruction throw me off. I hit the side of the TV, not the tube. As my right knee buckles, I pitch forward, onto the top of the TV, into the coffee table, scattering books and magazines.

He grabs me while my head is spinning, and I’m still in a daze, not sure if he’s helping me up or throwing me out. I get my answer when he lifts me under my right arm, opens the door with his left and gently deposits me, standing, outside. I think I hear him say “I’m sorry,” but I could be wrong.

I crumple to the ground. I’m dizzy, and I notice blood coming out my nose. I stay on the ground a while, a long while. I want to throw up, but I can’t. I want to cry, but I don’t. I just pant and gasp and stay down, down so far I don’t even notice a township police cruiser pulling up in the driveway, and a cop walking up to me.

“Are you okay?” he says.

“What?”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I look at the kid in front of me. Can’t be more than 23, 24. Tall, about 6’3”, he’s leaning over me, trying to figure out whether I’m a victim or a perpetrator. Maybe I’m giving off the vibe of both.

“I’m alright. I just, well, tried to get into my house.”

“What do you mean?” I sense a shift in the cop’s voice. I realize I’d better pull the threads of middle class respectability together quickly. I stand up, haltingly, with some imbalance and fuzziness, but I stand.

“This is my house. I left it. I’m being foreclosed on. Today. In about 45 minutes, it won’t be my house, since it’s going to sheriff’s sale. But I just wanted to look around one last time.” I feel something in my eye. I hope it’s dirt, and not tears. I pull out my driver’s license, showing him both the old address and the little slip of paper from PennDOT showing my new address. He glances at them, hands them back to me, and stares at me.

“Is there someone in that house?”

“Why do you ask?”

“We’ve been having a problem with people moving into foreclosed houses. Bandos, they’re called. Short for abandoned.”

I didn’t realize I was part of a trend.

“Is there someone in that house?” he asks again. “Is that how you got hurt?”

I think for a moment. No, that’s not true. It’s not really thinking. It’s synapses reacting, firing madly and off-key.

“No. Nobody’s in there.”

“Then how come there’s two cars in the driveway?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But there’s nobody in there.”

“Well, if you say there’s nobody in there, and it’s not going to be your house soon, I guess I’ll leave you here.” Pause. “You sure I should go?”

“You can go. I’m okay. I just—well, I just got sick, looking at my old place, and I sort of passed out. I hit my head and passed out. I’m okay, though. You can go.”

And he does.

And I stay until he leaves. Then I get in my car and drive to the courthouse.

I walk through the metal detectors, and then over to the old, ceremonial courtroom where they hold the sheriff’s sales. I’d been here before, as my bank’s rep, telling the attorney how much to bid, how high to go. Now I just take up space in the back row, all scratched and bleeding and beat up. I wait for my house to go on the block. The bank bids its costs. Nobody else says a word. The sheriff bangs the gavel.

I don’t know what comes next.

As an attorney practicing consumer bankruptcy law in Lancaster, PA, Mitchell Sommers may be one of the few people in America to benefit from the economic policies of George Bush. Mitchell received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his law degree from Penn State Dickinson School of Law. He has had op-eds published in numerous Pennsylvania newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has had short stories published in Ellipsis and PHASE. He is currently fiction/non-fiction editor of Tatanacho, an online literary journal, and is working on a novel. He can be reached at sommersesq@aol.com.

Excerpt from the novel LOVE Park

[img_assist|nid=880|title=Love Park|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=130|height=195]On the night before I drove Daisy Diamond home, I picked up my parents at the hospital, where they'd been visiting with a parishioner whose wife was dying of cancer. As the man walked with my parents to the curb, his glistening bald head shone. He wore a wrinkled corduroy sport coat, despite the heat, and loosely tied sneakers that shuffled like slippers on the concrete. He was hunched over, less from old age, it seemed, than from grief. But when he came into the light of the streetlamp overhead, I could see that he was smiling gloriously. The man hugged my mother and took my father's hand. After my mother settled into the front seat of the truck and my father followed, the man held my father's hand through the open window. He pressed his moist lips to my father's knuckles and politely wiped them dry. "Your parents give us peace," the man said to me, "more than the doctors." I was nodding, speechless, as the man reached for my mother's hand and brought it to his lips. "I love your mother and father," he said. His eyes were brimming with liquid light. "I do too," I choked out. The man brought my parents' hands together and stepped back from the curb. My parents' fingers stayed intertwined in my mother's lap, even as the truck entered our driveway and came to rest under the basketball hoop.

Years ago, on the day my father installed that hoop, Andrew dribbled a basketball and shot at the stone wall above the garage door, announcing buzzer-beaters, while I straddled the gray metal pole in the grass, raised my worshipping fists, and cheered my big brother's heroics. The old man was bare-chested, jabbing his shovel into the stubborn earth just off the lip of the macadam, while Stavros, the always-reliable church custodian, stirred cement with a broom handle in a red, rusted wheelbarrow. The old man's shoulders rippled when he muscled the shovel's tip into the growing hole. That night, under the floodlight, the old man and Andrew played HORSE, while I caught their shots before they hit the ground. The old man sank baskets from the sidewalk and back yard, calling out swish!

Today, when I got back from Daisy Diamond's house, I wanted to chain the pole to my truck's front end and back up until I heaved it out of the ground and off the property. I wanted to take the stuffed paper bag from under the dashboard and set fire to it in the front yard.

I couldn't stay here-home. At the moment, I couldn't even get out of the truck, let alone go inside the house, this great house we lived in only because my rich grandfather had left my grandmother so he could live happily ever after with a cocktail waitress in Atlantic City. I wondered if my father, growing up, had known about his father, if he had lain awake in bed, picturing him sipping martinis and eyeing girls in fishnet stockings strutting past the blackjack table. Even before today, I'd wondered if I was the only one in the family, including Yiayia herself, who had any proper sense of justice-not that I hoped Papou was burning in Hell for what he'd done, but you'd think the woman would take down his photographs or at least stop wearing black like some widow whose husband deserved to be mourned. What used to drive me nuts was less that my grandparents had never bothered to get a divorce than that, for years, my yiayia pretended the old bastard had never left her for another woman-pretended he was coming back, until the day she got word he'd keeled over on a Carnival cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean. Yiayia's most recent self-quarantining, in fact, had been triggered by my prankish removal of Papou's large black-and-white portrait outside her bedroom, the absence of which had gone unnoticed only until I got to the kitchen, where I was too far away to make out the curses coming from the third-floor landing.

A legacy of betrayal, I thought. At least my grandfather had had the decency to be a public louse. At least his whole life wasn't a lie.

My shoulders sank, and my lungs seemed to shrink, as I realized that Daisy Diamond had dumped the secret onto me, perhaps for the same reason I wanted, now, to tell Andrew, Sophia, or anyone: to free myself from being the only one who knew.

As I skulked toward the sliding screen door, tip-toeing in the mulch, I could hear Sophia continuing a conversation that apparently had no end. I sidestepped Theo's untamed pink roses and leaned against the stone wall outside the kitchen.

"It's not just some idea, Dad. It's a real program that Veronica's totally doing, and you don't have to be a student. I told you at Christmas, and you've known this is my plan. I never said I'm not going to college-just not right away."

Sophia wasn't going to college right away because she'd spent her senior year doing God knew what with her friend Veronica, instead of meeting application deadlines. Actually, I had a good idea of what she'd been doing with Veronica, but I told myself she was going through a phase. She just wanted what everyone else wanted, she would say. Did they have to name it? They'd kissed, all right? She admitted that much to me, after swearing me to secrecy. A crush, I'd figured, until they went to the prom together. Meanwhile, Veronica's dysfunctional life, unlike Sophia's, hadn't foiled her academic success: she'd already moved out to Berkeley-Sophia's dream school.

Through the window above my head, I could hear the kitchen-sink spigot's perpetual hum, my mother making dinner or clearing up from lunch-cleaning raw chicken or rinsing sauce from plates-while reviewing in her mind Sophia's flight itinerary. I imagined my father, standing there, perplexed, wondering when, if ever, he'd actually approved his daughter's one-way trip to California. Over the sound of rushing water, Andrew made a joke about Sophia's need for the heaviest-duty suntan lotion-SPF forty-lest she make herself so dark that our mother, assuming Sophia might ever return home, would once and for all mistake her daughter for an Albanian or even African refugee from one of the church's missions, as if such racial blurring weren't precisely what Sophia had in mind. Theo blurted that she was better off not going to Berkeley after all, that she should stay home and hold out for the Ivy League.

Apparently, Sophia had rounded up everyone to hear her final complaints before her departure the next morning. Amid all the interruptions, she was trying to explain that she just wanted to explore for a year.

"Explore what?" my father said.

"Life. The world," Sophia said, as if introducing new words to her audience. "And I really don't appreciate that you think I'm going out there just because Veronica's out there. I'm the one who told her about Berkeley-"

"Nothing's been decided yet," my father said. "I don't want you flying."

"Flying? I have the ticket, Dad! It's a summer program! I'm leaving tomorrow! Where have you been?!"

"Mom's already got a care package assembled," Andrew added.

At last, with a deep breath, I shoved the screen door in its dry groove and stepped into the kitchen.

"Peter, you made it!" Theo sat in the old-fashioned schoolhouse desk next to the basement door, his string of gray worry beads twirling perpetually at his fingers. His blue eyes appeared magnified by the thick glasses he wore only when he didn't want to miss something.

"How long does it take to go to the Brew Hall?" my father asked.

"Brew Mall," Sophia corrected him.

I froze, wanting to lash out: You don't get to question me anymore! My heart was pounding. I glanced into the foyer, the sun-drenched hallway leading to the front door and beyond.

My mother stood off to my left, frozen for the moment, looking up from a white-capped blue bottle she'd just plucked from a cabinet converted for vitamin and medicine storage. They all seemed to be scowling at me, except Melanie, who stood by the refrigerator in an ocean-colored dress, smiling sweetly. Sophia and my father were in opposite corners, in standoff position, each head-to-toe in black, with a touch of silver jewelry: against the icon-littered backdrop of the kitchen wall stood my father, in black shoes, slacks, and short-sleeve shirt open to the first button, along with his silver wedding band; to my left, between my mother and me, stood my sister, in black calf-high lace-up Doc Martens, fishnet stockings, mid-thigh skirt, and tank top, along with her silver rings pierced through the brow and both ears, a virtual Slinky of bands along the forearms, and a stud through the belly button, in full view, like an evil eye aimed at the old man.

Andrew broke the silence. "Why don't you just take some classes?"

I stepped around the kitchen table toward the basement door, where Theo's worry beads clicked and smacked, vanishing in his grip and reemerging, a nervous gray blur.

"I'm not taking classes to make anybody happy. No class can make you an artist." Sophia glanced at me, to acknowledge the source of her wisdom, though I wanted no credit for the effect I'd had on her.

"You see?" my father said. "I don't believe this. Peter put this idea into your head. Theo-!" The old man glared at Theo's hands.

Theo silenced his beads, and I stopped cold.

"Don't blame Peter, Dad! You can't even give me credit for the stuff I do that pisses you off!"

"Honey," my mother said. "That word." She handed Sophia the bottle from the cabinet. "Put this with the other things."

"Pisses? Jesus, Mom, stop censoring me. You don't need school to be a poet. You just need to live life!" Sophia examined the label on the bottle. "Petroleum suppositories?"

I wanted to call out the Truth. Good News, Sophia! Dad's a fraud! We're all free! Then I remembered Daisy Diamond's words-your father's been trapped for years-and I thought, we're all trapped.

"You'll be eating different foods, honey," my mother said. "You never know how the change in diet will affect your bowels."

"Mom!" Sophia looked, horrified, at Melanie, who pretended, mercifully, to be distracted by the church calendar pinned to the refrigerator.

"If you're not going to college," my father said, "you can stay home until you're ready. Even Peter went to college."

"Look what it got him." Andrew grinned. "Just kidding, Doc."

"What does Peter have to do with anything?" Sophia said. "This is so humiliating..."

My theory was that this kind of verbal abuse had replaced the physical abuse we'd inflicted on each other as kids-and that all of it, then and now, disguised our brotherly, and sisterly, love. Andrew used to seal his mouth around my little nose and exhale his hot, wet breath, which poured through my nasal passage and back out my mouth. I would laugh and spit at the same time, in horror, then lie back on the carpet. When Sophia was old enough to endure such torture, both Andrew and I would pin her down and tickle her until her laughing turned to crying and, at least a few times, peeing-she wet her little cotton pants and ran screaming into the kitchen. Minutes later she would return in fresh pants, tears dried up, and spread herself on the carpet like an X. No more, Andrew would tell her, and eventually her giggling would once again turn to sobbing.

Sophia set the blue bottle next to a white surgical mask on the kitchen table, among the vitamins and first-aid items my mother had already collected. I recognized the red letters on the packet of iOSAT tablets-to be used only as directed by state or local public health authorities in the event of a radiation emergency. Months ago, Andrew had brought home a bag of surgical masks, along with the iOSAT tablets, from the hospital, announcing that he'd finally managed to confiscate the highly coveted antidote for anthrax poisoning. His teasing had been evident to everyone but my mother, who promptly arranged the packets in prominent locations throughout the house, but only after pleading with me to wear a mask at work and inquiring if the tablets might also protect against asbestos and lead poisoning, this in spite of the countless times I'd explained that I worked only with water-based paint.

Sophia was going on: "I want to go somewhere. And do something interesting and good for people. Help homeless people. He hasn't gone anywhere or done anything for anyone! He lives in the basement!"

As she went on, referring to me as a third-person pronoun as if I were not standing there in the room, I thought: we keep coming back for more abuse. Then I realized, it isn't so bad to be invisible, and sidestepped toward the basement door.

"Peter," Melanie said.

I looked up, my hand on the doorknob.

"Andrew and I still have our announcement."

Melanie was painfully lovely, her sandy-blond hair already, in late June, streaked with gold from the summer sun. When Andrew had first brought her home, I'd looked up from art history books and gone dumbstruck. By the end of the night she'd made her way back into the dimly lit kitchen, sat, and paged through one of my books, asking me about Ionic versus Doric, Impressionist versus Expressionist, and why I didn't have a girlfriend.

"Remember," Andrew said, "Melanie and I called everyone in here for a reason before Sophia hijacked everything with her little diatribe-"

"Fuck you, Andrew."

A dish slipped from my mother's hands, and, as she reached out to save it, another followed, each crashing on the cold tile floor.

"Enough with the language!" my father yelled.

"It's just a word!" Sophia hollered.

My mother stooped, and Melanie bent down to help.

I crouched toward the mess, but when my mother glanced up, I stepped back, curling my hair behind my ears and searching my pockets for a rubber band. I picked up a ceramic chip near my foot and set it on the table.

Theo tucked his worry beads delicately into his pants pocket.

Sophia paced in short steps by the sink, her eyes wild, her stiff, infant dreadlocks tumbling and jutting like spasmodic fingers.

Suddenly I became sad at the sight and sound of her-of this unceasing rant-and wondered if maybe she was going crazy, as she often claimed to be.

"...You don't say anything to Andrew and he completely insults me. That's so American, to care more about language than common human decency..."

Maybe this is how it happened, I thought: your brain can't keep it all together anymore; you've gotten too smart for your own good, and you snap, right here in the kitchen, eighteen years old, the people who love you witnessing the whole fitful breakdown, your brain splintering in as many directions as there are family members; or, as I imagined Theo decades ago, you're trekking through Athens in the prime of your life, knapsack filled with your next batch of books, your mind like a diamond, perfectly carved and sizzling with condensed energy, entire histories of civilizations and whole novels and epic poems you hadn't known you'd memorized firing out from your skull into your blood and muscles and nerves and into the sun-scorched world, while your sandaled feet mount the same rocks Socrates walked upon when he envisioned his fate, and you fall to your knees and scurry like a bug to a crack, crawling, in your mind, to the nearest safe place where you can rest and gather your thoughts.

Or maybe Sophia was the only sane one in the room-perhaps along with Theo-barely keeping it together while she watched everything around her falling apart.

"That's deep, Sophia." Andrew clapped.

"I hate you." She stormed off toward the stairs.

We all waited for the heavy footfalls above us to stop.

"Okay, let's hear this announcement," Theo said.

"Sophia has to be here," Melanie said.

"No she doesn't." Andrew sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"Yes she does," Melanie said. "We have to wait."

I turned for the basement again.

"Peter." My mother was still holding white ceramic triangles, like pita, in each hand.

"What took you so long?" my father said.

"Everything's in the yard," I said, opening the basement door.

"We've been worried about you," my mother said.

"Everything's fine, Mom."

"We agreed you'd wear a rubber band," my father said.

The fucking rubber band!-as if wearing it were the last thing I could do to maintain some dignity. I closed the basement door and took a single deliberate step toward my father. We didn't agree to anything, I thought, gripping my hair in a fist and then letting it fall. The shadowy grooves in the old man's forehead deepened. Andrew crossed his arms, offering his little brother a rare moment of deferential curiosity. I imagined destroying all they knew of family dignity, making my own announcement, loud enough so that even Sophia could hear me up in her bedroom: Our Father...!

"I'm twenty-six," I said instead, and I meant what being twenty-six implied: I was on my own now.

My mother placed the ceramic pieces on the counter and wiped her hands on her apron. "What is it, Peter?"

"Nothing."

Daisy Diamond, I wanted to say. Just her name, to see what the old man would do.

Sophia's silhouette-mini-skirted Medusa in combat boots-suddenly appeared in the foyer, before the Plexiglas storm door. She'd come quietly down the stairs, I realized, and now she stood staring into the front yard, perhaps envisioning her new life in California.

"I'm not your servant," I said to my father.

When Sophia turned around, hearing me, I signaled to her with a squint: Everything's cool. I'm not insane.

Just then the old man called out, "Sophia!" but she was already making her way into the kitchen.

"What?" she said.

Theo clapped and rubbed his hands together. "And now the moment we've all been waiting for!"

My father snapped, "Theo, skaseh!"-Shut up!

Sophia glanced at Theo, who was securing his glasses over his ears, and then she grinned at me: We're all crazy.

I nodded anxiously.

Melanie said, "We wanted to tell immediate family before anyone else showed up."

I slid my hands into my pockets.

My mother leaned against the kitchen counter. "I don't think I can handle any big announcements today."

"It's okay, Mom." Andrew smiled. "It's good news."

I crossed my arms. My mother folded her hands over the apron knot at her waist.

"Melanie and I wanted to announce this together," Andrew said. "We haven't even told her parents yet-"

"But we're telling them later tonight, so..." Melanie cupped her left hand with her right-hiding the evidence, I assumed.

My brother had finally done it...

"Well..." Andrew inhaled dramatically. "Melanie decided she's willing to convert."

Andrew had finally won her over to our side-not that there had ever been a real contest, not that he'd ever considered donning the yarmulke. Of course, Melanie's conversion meant marriage-a detail that, at least for Andrew, went without saying, though the look on Melanie's face suggested that the announcement had stopped short, too soon before my parents were rushing in toward the soon-to-be-converted Jew.

"Wait-" Melanie squirmed free from my mother's hug. "Mrs. Pappas, that's just the beginning..."

My mother stepped back. "Oh?" She glanced at Melanie's belly.

"Jesus, Mom." Andrew laughed through his teeth.

"Olympia-" my father gasped, as if my mother had just suggested something impossible.

"Well, I don't know," she said.

Melanie tucked her hands into her armpits. "Andrew, tell them."

My mother reached out and took Melanie's wrist gently. "Oh, Andrew," she whispered.

The diamond flickered like a Christmas light.

Melanie stared at Andrew, who gave a tiny shake of his head: Not now...

"Will the wedding be this summer?" my mother added, Melanie's hand docile in hers.

"Ma, it's almost July," Andrew said.

"Mrs. Pappas, there's something else," Melanie said.

"Melanie-" Andrew took Melanie's hand from my mother's hand.

"Don't grab me!" Melanie snapped.

"What's the matter, honey?" my mother said. "This is beautiful news."

"This is what I hate!" Sophia cried out. "Why is this such good news to everyone?"

Melanie's resistance to her conversion had secretly represented, for Sophia, humanity's, or at least this family's, last hope for salvation.

"Your brother's getting married, honey."

"Nobody's even said that! You're just glad she's converting!"

"No, Sophia," my mother said.

"It's not just that, Sophia." Melanie crossed her arms. "But apparently Andrew's having second thoughts."

"About what?" my mother said.

I had no idea. No way was she pregnant.

"All right, look," Andrew said. "We're engaged. That's what the ring means. That's it."

"I can't believe you." Melanie backed up toward the refrigerator. "You are such a coward," she huffed, and turned toward the garage.

"Let's talk about this in private," my father said. "Why don't you take a walk, Peter."

"Me?"

"With your sister."

"No!" Sophia cried out. "This isn't what God wants! Melanie shouldn't have to do this! God loves everyone!"

"Of course He does, honey," my mother said.

"Melanie, don't do it! Jesus was a Jew!" Sophia marched back into the foyer and slammed the storm door behind her. Through the Plexiglas, I could see her black boots trudging in the grass toward the driveway, her dark-brown, braceleted arms flailing.

"Don't let her spoil this," my father said, but Melanie had already gone into the garage through the door beyond the refrigerator.

"Honey..." my mother said.

"Let her go." Andrew brought his hands to his waist.

"Go talk to her," my mother said. "This is an emotional time."

"Trust me," Andrew said. "She'll be right back."

My father went into the dining room and stared out the bay window. Instead of Melanie or Sophia, four colorful figures were making their way across the front lawn. They appeared, framed in Plexiglas, as the bell rang.

In poked the pink pocked face and grinning bald head of Uncle Mike from Havertown. He extended a clear bottle of booze into the foyer. "Happy Name Days, Peters and Pauls!"

"Hey-ay!" my father boomed, entering the foyer from the dining room. He held the door and ushered them in. "Ela, ela!"-Come, come! He kissed and shooed them one by one into the kitchen, where I anticipated the roar of celebration, my mother's brothers, Uncle Mike and Uncle Joe, and their wives, Aunt Bess and Aunt Flo, forming a small mob of thick-strapped sundresses, bright green and orange handbags, white leather shoes and belts. "We've got wonderful news."

"Oh!" The aunts shuffled over to hug Andrew.

I lamented the predictability of the good news around here.

"Melanie's going to convert to Greek Orthodoxy!" My mother glowed, though her beautiful, sandy-haired daughter-in-law-to-be, who would become the mother of her grandchildren-likely her only grandchildren, if one considered how the lives of Sophia and me were taking shape-was nowhere in sight, a detail that didn't distract anyone from celebrating.

Uncle Mike raised his gift bottle of ouzo toward the ceiling like celebration champagne. "Let's have a drink! Glasses!" Glasses hung from Aunt Bess's clenched fingers. "Ice, Paul, ice!" He waved everyone toward the table. "Peter! Take this."

I took the bottle, wanting, suddenly, to be oblivious, drunk, along with Uncle Mike, in the colorful noise of his company.

Uncle Mike looked around. "Where's Sophia? Theo! Ela! Get us more ice!"

I pictured the watery plastic bags in my truck bed.

Theo was reaching out into the air before him like a blind man, his wine-colored slippers shuffling toward the freezer.

"Theo, put your glasses on!" the old man called out.

"Peter, what's the matter, honey?" Aunt Bess said. "You're quiet. You look pale. Look at your hair." She set the small glasses down on the table and took my face into her warm, damp hands.

"He's got beautiful hair," Aunt Flo said.

I gripped the ouzo bottle's neck.

"You feel hot, honey," Aunt Bess said. "Drink something. A little ouzo."

She pulled the chair out, and I sat down.

Theo set the shoebox-size ice container on the table and stooped to see his own hand plucking one cube and dropping it into a glass.

"Ice, ice!" Uncle Mike's thick fingers scraped the inside of the container. He called out, "Ice, Paul!" and swiped the bottle from my hand.

My father stared into the open freezer.

Uncle Mike plopped a filled glass into Theo's eager hand. "Okay, Theo, wait for the toast."

Theo jiggled his glass near his nose, watching the ice cube bouncing and turning the clear liquid cloudy.

My father twisted a half-empty plastic ice tray above the container.

"Ahh, bravo." Uncle Mike scooped a handful.

My father displayed the empty tray to me.

"I told you," I said. "Everything's outside."

"What good is it melting in the grass?"

"It's not in the grass," I said.

"Okay, okay," Uncle Mike said. "We have plenty of ice. Drink, Paul, c'mon."

Aunt Flo poked her arm through Andrew's, rehearsing for the aisle.

I folded my arms on the table.

My father handed me a glass.

"I took home one of your parishioners," I said.

"Everybody have a drink?" Uncle Mike called out.

"Who?" my father said.

Glasses rose, clanging amid audible smiles-"Hey-ay! Yiasou!"

"That's what took me so long." I was still sitting.

My father waited, arm raised with the rest of them.

"Daisy Diamond." I watched the old man's stony face.

"To Andrew and Melanie!" Aunt Flo called out.

My father turned his eyes to the ceiling, where clinking glasses hovered. They all awaited the priest's blessing.

"Stand up, Peter," Aunt Bess said.

For a moment I made the old man wait for his apathetic, atheist son; then I inched off my chair and reached toward the chandelier of glasses-"'Atta boy," Uncle Joe said-all our necks poised to receive the drink.

"Hronia polah!"-Many years!-Aunt Flo cheered.

I knew the toast, which was heard at every holiday. They all glanced at Andrew, who smiled back gratefully.

My father pronounced joyfully, "Keh stah thikah sou!"

I knew this one, too: And to yours! As in, your engagement-my engagement. I couldn't believe my ears-or eyes: the old man was grinning down at me, as the roomful of Greeks relished their blood-connection to Tragedy, spotlighting the poor soul whose story was most pathetic, just as they always turned their attention to the unmarried older sisters of young mothers with newborn babies, singing, "And to yours!" reminding them of their dried-up, disappointing lives, just as they were reminding me now that I was the only one in the room still unhitched, that I still hadn't found a nice Greek girl, or any girl at all.

They all sighed, "Ahhh," and displayed their hopeful smiles. With a unified tip of their glasses, they all leaned back, my father never flinching, and cooled their throats with sweet liquor.

Excerpt is from LOVE Park (Cable Publishing, May 2009). Jim Zervanos is the author of the novel LOVE Park. His fiction has appeared, most recently, in the Cimarron Review, Green Mountains Review, and Philly Fiction, a collection of short stories featuring Philadelphia writers. He is a graduate of Bucknell University and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. A teacher of English and creative writing, he lives with his wife in Philadelphia.

The Robbery

You say, “Don’t do that,” but your voice is passive and no match for his muscles. He has worked jobs that scare you, jobs where he has shoved people out of nightclubs and menaced trees with axes. He is the only wayward art school lumberjack you have ever met, and it is your life’s mission to concoct his pancake piles.
He went by “Toad” during his cover band years. Seventeen reinterpretations of the same Quiet Riot song later, here you are. Toad’s band was The John Goodman Arachnophobia Experience. Toad likes movies where insects best humans.

“Molly,” he says, “you relax.” Your name is not Molly, but that is Todd’s definition of a little baby girl name. Molly wants an ice cream cone, don’t she? Go ahead, Molly, tell the big badass manager that our man stole an orange. You are convinced he refers to himself as “our man” to let you know there are other morons like you, who let him sleep in your bed after watching him go through your purse. You are convinced that he belongs mostly to himself, while you have the submissive misfortune of being his. What happened to your feminist theory textbooks? Todd sold them. What did he do with the money? Todd bought pills. Why did he-? Don’t question our man!

So you make do:

-You stop keeping a diary after Todd sells it on EBay.
-Now at restaurants you get up to go to the bathroom before he makes a scene.
-On the occasion you find another woman in your shower, you say, “Hey there.”
-Your friends pity you and this makes you cry; that people think you are worthy of pity.
-You remember that you are alive, so you work with this fact.

You are making a plan to hit yourself out of the park, like a home run, but first you need money. He keeps taking yours, and you are afraid of him. Not just because he talks to himself in the kitchen when he thinks you’re sleeping, but also because he talks to himself while hovering over your bed when he thinks you’re sleeping.
He won’t see a doctor, any kind of doctor. The only way you’ll see a doctor is if you get pregnant with Todd Junior. Yes, you are on the pill, but what if? You keep your legs closed so tightly at night your muscles ache.

Our man is a bully. Our man is a punk. You have nowhere to go. There is a part of you that finds comfort in this: Living in the present means you have nowhere else to go. Once in a while your mind clears and you feel like a Buddhist, which is way cooler than feeling like a victim.

[img_assist|nid=844|title=Along the Canal, Manayunk by Marita McVeigh © 2008|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=122]You are not fighting back, because you are a planner. Little outbursts will have him suspecting. You don’t want to awaken his inner Toad. You pack bras and panties in small, yellow supermarket bags and toss them in the trunk of your car. Soon you will have the balls, no the breasts to pack the big-ticket items: sweaters, a pair of dress slacks.

Now he wants to get on your medical insurance. The two of you should get married. Molly, there’s nothing I wouldn’t steal for you, he says.

You thank him for his proposal, and take a deep breath. Somewhere beneath the curves of your female form, probably above the hips, is a star. It’s kind of like a soul, but a little less passive. It’s a Holy Spirit divine inner compass, and it’s telling you, get the hell out into the universe, darling! Make something of this flesh gift, this life.

Christina Delia received her BFA in Writing for Film and Television
from The University of The Arts in Philadelphia. Her work can be found in the
anthologies In One Year and Out The Other (Pocket books) and Random Acts of
Malice: The Best of Happy Woman Magazine. She also writes the satirical wedding advice column “Bride Dish with Mags & Dags” for Happy Woman Magazine. Christina currently resides in central New Jersey with her husband, Robert.

Transplant

[img_assist|nid=843|title=Mountains of the Sun by Gregory Dolnikowski © 2008|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=201]I found the two carbonless message slips on my desk after the last patient. The first was the transplant team wanting me back to consult on Carl Lawson’s fevers. The second was an email address for Bobby Schmidt. When keystrokes failed to pull up any Schmidts I’d seen in medical records, I stared at my partner’s wilting bromeliad and reread the message; some things were as simple as water. This wasn’t Bobby Schmidt, patient, this was Robert Schmidt, old boyfriend.

I pulled on my white coat for the trip to the transplant unit and stuck the message in the pocket with my prescription pad. The late afternoon sunlight made the June day feel young; I’d do the consult tonight. Carl was a frequent flyer on the transplant service with two kidneys under his belt already. My job as infectious disease consultant was straightforward: repeat all the abnormal tests the other doctors had thought to order, spot the ones they hadn’t ordered, and make sense out of it all

Rob hadn’t believed I was going to be a doctor until he had seen The Cell on my bookcase. Before I started medical school, he was cloudy and beautiful with messy black hair and a recent drunk driving acquittal. He wondered how there could be an entire book devoted to the cell. After reading different books devoted to biochemistry, physiology, and pathology, I diagnosed alcoholism.

“Hey, doc,” Carl Lawson called from his hospital bed, “how’s it going today?”

“Same old, same old,” I replied scanning the most recent the chart notes. “What’d they put you in for this time?”

Carl shrugged the same shrug he treated me to every admission. If someone asked me how much longer Carl and I would play this game, I would have shrugged too. The fluorescent lighting did nothing for his stringy hair, nicotine-stained fingers, and the yellow-grey cast of kidney failure on his skin. Carl had a genetic disease that slowly destroyed his kidneys, but his bad boy substance abuse had landed him on dialysis before he turned thirty. For two years he managed to clean up his act and pass blood and urine tests for all sorts of illicit drugs while the transplant doctors hunted for the right donor kidney. As soon as Carl felt well enough after the transplant to start raising hell again, his kidney function deteriorated. It was back to dialysis and a second kidney transplant three years ago.

More recently, Carl developed an abscess from a nasty, resistant bacterium. Despite triple antibiotics that were damaging the transplanted kidney, his fever still raged. I was running out of suggestions. If the fevers persisted, we’d get a CT scan and see if there was anything the surgeons could drain.

I wrote a brief note on Carl and moved the message from Rob to my bag before heading home. He’d been the love of my life, but that monumental memory was a place I no longer visited. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time, and the last time he’d practically crowed about an auto accident in which he’d lost consciousness and teeth. By then, I’d known a lot of patients like Rob. Sometimes they just hurt themselves, but I’d handed out enough tissues to weeping spouses, parents, and children to know that wasn’t true. After residency, I retreated to practice a specialty that examined the dark old corners of childhood vaccinations, travel, and sexual activity. I could usually blame a virus, bacteria, or maybe even a parasite. When infectious led back to anther person, no matter how close, the correct term was vector.

As contributor to his own demise, Carl should never have been given a second kidney after he burned out the first. But a commitment to a patient was a commitment, and the renal team, like forgiving parents, kept crossing their fingers and betting on Carl.

Rob, with his self-destructive habits, was no better than Carl. When we had dated, he was almost as pale and thin as Carl was now, and I could count on one hand the number of times I remembered seeing him eat. He drank in bars, at clubs, and surreptitiously on the steps of the D.C. monuments that blazed against the night sky. In my medical opinion, Rob should have been burnt out, dead, consumed by sadness, anger, and, I might once have been able to believe, by love.

On the drive home, I remembered Rob’s sweet kisses, the result of alcohol dehydrogenase metabolizing alcohol into the fruity acetaldehyde until my pager silenced the thought. The floor nurse reported that Carl had thrown his low protein/no-added salt dinner across the wall nearly hitting the woman who laid the dinner trays. I reminded the nurse that I was the consultant for Mr. Larson’s infection; she would have to call the renal service about his diet order. While she was at it, I told her she should probably call security and social services.

I ate take-out sushi with my family and checked email once more before heading to bed. Carl’s attending was scheduling a group conference to discuss the possibility of a third kidney transplant—a question of medical futility if anyone asked me. I ticked off the names of patients I knew who had died waiting for a kidney in the last five years and made a note to troll the medical literature for the rate of former addicts staying clean after transplant.

For Rob, I typed a doctor’s open question, “What’s it been, ten years?”

I found a delirious Carl on rounds in the morning. Overnight, his temperature had spiked to one-hundred-and-five. I recommended that the team request FDA permission to use an investigational antibiotic. The CT scan was scheduled for 2 o’clock. The nurse noted that Carl had been too sick to throw his breakfast tray or sneak off to the roof garden and smoke.

I didn’t get to my email until lunch. Nothing from Rob. He’d probably been drunk when he called and that would be the end of that. Carl’s transplant team conference wasn’t for another two days—if he lived that long. By dinnertime, his temperature was a little better controlled. He winked and asked why I wasn’t making quick business of this infection they way I’d cleared up “that first little problem.” I had to smile. If Carl felt well enough to bring up his gonorrhea, so be it. I warned him that even that bug was getting harder to kill with the usual antibiotics. He told me he’d keep that in mind and closed his eyes.

The face of this man with oxygen prongs in his blood-crusted nostrils and a central line in his jugular vein read pain, fatigue, anger, and hard use. The odor from his dressings was hard to ignore. Would this be how it finally ended? I’d given Carl up for gone before to spare myself work and pain. Who would be there to mourn him? I scrolled back to the social work consult in the chart that read:

Carl Lawson is a forty-two year old male well known to the transplant service with a history of polycystic kidneys, substance abuse, renal failure, dialysis and renal transplant times two. This most recent hospitalization is for a perirenal abscess with the same multi-drug resistant organism that infected his dialysis graft. Mr. Lawson lived in an apartment downtown until being readmitted. He receives disability and has limited social supports.

Over the years, I’d fleshed out a little more of the framework of Carl’s life—the long-dead disaffected mother, the two years of vocational school, and the long streak of boosting Hondas to support his drug habit. Carl had a sexual history a mile long, and I remembered a girlfriend floating around the hospital during his previous admission for fevers because we HIV tested them both. I couldn’t remember her name. On any given day, it was difficult to keep track of the medical information, let alone the personal.

What I didn’t know still drew me: why and when did Carl start using? How did he manage to stop for two years before the transplant? Where was the rest of his family?

That afternoon, the transplant surgeon who jealously guarded his patient survival data, took Carl back to the OR to open up the old dialysis graft site in his arm and the transplant site to debride infected tissue. We loaded Carl with IV dilantin to prevent seizures, and instead of talking about his third kidney transplant at the meeting the next day, the renal fellow jumped all over the medical student chosen to present Carl’s last electrolytes.

“Has Mr. Lawson died?” the renal fellow said.

The student, who couldn’t see where this was going, blustered, “No.”

“Then these are not his last labs. They are his most recent labs,” snapped the fellow. “You’d do well to make note of the distinction.”

The student sunk into his chair while we discussed Carl’s code status.

I’d had low student days too. I spent the night I got my acceptance letter for medical school drunk on the kitchen floor with Rob. I had worked so hard for so long that I only felt sadness for the mountain of work and abuse I was finally privileged to face.

Carl went on to have another forty-eight hours of lab results and fevers before there was a reply from Rob. “Sorry to call your work number,” he typed. “That’s the only information I could find for you. I saw your story on the web. Are there more? You had a gift.”

Rob was digging into that ancient time when I’d written about a teen with typhoid fever back before the lives I cared for in the hospital seemed so fictional that all fiction froze. Once I’d been as interested in the patient who had the disease as the disease that had the patient, but the last few years with my patients, the cuts from the hospital, and my family’s move, I was barely surviving from one caffeinated drink to the next.

Before any transplant, patients talked with the team psychiatrist about chronic medications and risk of rejection, but no one talked with me about the night I sat next to Rob at the top of the cold marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial and he said he wouldn’t be seeing me again. I went home and would later read medical texts that offered prognoses for risk-taking males. When the pathology professor slapped a cirrhotic liver from the five-gallon canister of formaldehyde onto the lab tray, I touched the hard-knotted tissue and practiced professional distance.

Carl was one hundred-and-three and sweating and didn’t react to my gentle greeting or more robust examination the next day. The transplant team had asked social work to locate next of kin. I changed the protocol medication dose to accommodate Carl’s dwindling kidney function, and put my hand on his unbandaged one before leaving.

“Whatever chips you’ve got, Carl,” I whispered, “it’s time to call them in.”

I skipped the noon conference, went to the office, and shut the door. Dark clouds framed the hospital across the street. A thunderstorm seemed likely. Sometimes I knew when a patient was going to die. Sometimes I didn’t know, and I would go to the floor to follow up on a consult to find the bed empty and the name removed from the census board. Once I attended a morbidity and mortality conference when the disease and the patient’s initials matched a young kid I had really liked. I had rotated off service, and no one thought to tell me he died.

At the start of my residency, I kept track of the deaths. At the hospital memorial service for patients who had died my first year, I listened for names I remembered. By the second year, I sat there wondering, as the familiar names washed over me, what was more painful: watching them die or mourning their life and our failure.

Outside my window, the lightening and raindrops reminded me that summer was flashing by while I was stuck here in the hospital. It would be easier right now with one less noncompliant chronic patient. I chastised myself for being wrong about Rob, but it wasn’t my fault he hadn’t read the textbook.

I wrote Rob that I didn’t write anymore; I was a doctor.

We finally got Carl on the experimental protocol, which meant I was now responsible for assessing him three times a day. The worksheet with his vital signs and labs spilled over the edges of the table that usually held the meal trays. By the next morning, Carl looked a shade less grey. He was down to one hundred and twenty pounds but his fever had dropped below one-hundred and two.

“I’m not leaving in a box you know,” he said.

“I never said you’d be leaving in a box.”

“But you thought it,” he said.

I scanned the flow sheet. “Looks like your temperature is down, so maybe you’re going to luck out with whatever this new wonder drug is. But overall you’re on your third kidney, and I’d say you’re behind in the count.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved his hand. “I’m going to walk out of here and find Jacelyn.”

“Who’s that?” I was thinking girl friend, drug dealer.

Carl rummaged in his bedside drawer before pulling out a banged-up photograph. “That’s me and Jace when she was two,” he said pointing to the little girl with corn silk blonde hair and brown eyes who sat on the grass in a rose pink dress. “We had a party at the park, and Sheila even baked a cake. Those were good times,” he gazed out the sunny window, closed his eyes, and dozed off. It was just as well, he needed the rest.

I studied the photo of Carl, smiling and proud with long brown hair and clear eyes, before turning it over. The photograph had been taken almost twenty years ago, well before the kidney failure. After all these years, who knew Carl had a daughter?

In a box somewhere I had a photograph of Rob looking calmly into the camera and affirming he was young and beautiful once, too. I was glad he hadn’t emailed back. I didn’t want to see his words, scars. He was as foreign to me as Washington D.C. had been when I was back there for a conference on emerging pathogens. In the humid July sun, the monuments blazed white hot, and I didn’t have time to sit on the marble and bear distant witness to the pain.

The hospital days traced the storyline of Carl and Sheila, Jace’s mom, who moved across the country with the baby to get away since he wouldn’t stop using. Sheila vanished, never asked for money, or sent photos. Ten years later, Carl got a letter from Jace, who wanted to visit. Carl wanted to see her too, but before she could come out, Carl had the first round of kidney trouble. He told her she’d have to put off their reunion a little longer. Then Jace wrote back that she was afraid of Sheila’s latest boyfriend.

“There I was high while this kid, my kid, was being bothered by some low grade pervert,” Carl said. “I was just about to go on dialysis, and I took the hospital social worker up on an offer to get subsidized housing and pull myself together. It wasn’t perfect, but with the little bit I got from disability and some car repair work on the side, I had us a little place.

“Jace came out, started school here, and we got acquainted,” he said. “She looked so much like her mother, but older than I expected. She got a job answering the phone at the garage after school. Those were two good years.” His voice trailed. The nurse had him up in a chair next to his bed, and he picked at the blanket covering his lap.

I asked what happened.

“She said I wasn’t letting her grow up,” he laughed, “after I made a place for her.” He shook his head and coughed. “She started acting up and hanging out with the wrong crowd. I didn’t want that for her. She was bringing the stuff home. It was too much. I started using and cheating on my drug testing.”

I thought of all the teens who had gotten high and stupid and into trouble. It was a kid’s job to treat their family the absolute worst, but Jace had gone up on flames and taken her father with her. I nodded my sympathies.

“You guys called me for the transplant right then. I was in the hospital for weeks. She never came to visit. When I got back home, she was gone. I called Sheila; she hadn’t seen her and blamed me for her running off. I was sick, and I tried so hard not to die because I wanted to find her again. I didn’t know what else to do. I blamed myself for being a lousy father, and then I blamed myself for caring. I was on so many medications; I figured a few more didn’t matter.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You think I wanted you all sitting around talking even more about what a loser I was?” he said. “Besides, Jace was a kid, and I figured someone would take her away.”

Another week went by and Carl was doing much better. I brought a simple wood frame for the picture and wished there was something else we could do. There was buzz from the new set of residents rotating on the service about putting him back on the transplant list. I tried to remember when I had stopped thinking ‘why not?’ with borderline cases.

Labor Day weekend came, and its festivities filled the hospital with trauma patients. I’d changed into scrubs and clogs to stay late for a heart transplant patient in the intensive care unit and logged on to look for the results of a spinal tap. There was another email from Rob.

“I sobered up just enough after the accident to get a construction job,” he wrote. The crew boss handed me a hammer since I looked so good at beating myself up. The lead carpenter gave me a chisel a few weeks later, and I never looked back.

“While I was drying out, I wore out sheets of sandpaper and covered everything in my apartment with this thin layer of dust. At first, they sent me home with bits and pieces: finials, the curled ends of banisters. Then I moved on to fretwork, the odd swag of fruit or roses. It’s better now. I leave the sanding at work. I love wood and want to try marble someday.

“We get hired to do restoration by expert types who can tell if the work is done by hand and not power tools. A lot of it is fire and water damage. Fire damaged the area around the altar at St. Joseph the Worker, and we’re restoring the 1890 woodwork. You can always smell when wood’s been through a fire. I have a wife and two kids. They’ve forced me to be closer to the man I want to be. You always said you were going to be a doctor. I never doubted you.”

I moused to the lab results and logged off to see the patient whose heart had been cut out and placed in a plastic pan before her rib cage was wired shut over the stranger’s heart that beat in her chest. The transplanted heart, severed from its original nerves, now driven by a pacemaker.

I felt enervated. Why tell me now he was alive and not drinking? My clogs clacked along the empty tile corridor. He had walked away from me. I had waited for him to stop. I had lacked faith and energy. I had given him up for dead.

There had been no books to teach hope in medical school, but we were required to attend an AA meeting. I remember a brittle old lady with soda bottle glasses who led me down the steep stairs from her apartment over the dicey market on 13th Street to the smoke-choked meeting room at the church around the corner. She talked about her powerlessness over alcohol, the moral inventory, the admission of flaws, and the desire for amends and improvement.

Did Rob hope to restore our warped past through a 12 step program? I drifted to the other end of the unit and ran my fingers over Carl’s wood frame. Some mind, body, history receptor, long blunted by brutal training, sleep deprivation, and the endless needs of patients, fired again with small hope: someone had made it. Someone I knew. They hadn’t made it with me, but medically, that was of little consequence. As I walked to my car, I felt the warm breeze through my thin scrubs and wondered if a world with Rob could hold Carl and Jacelyn. I would find her and tell her about Carl even if she didn’t care.

It took time to track her down. The phone was disconnected; the house sat in a bombed-out block. The soot from the fire that consumed the building next door still licked its bricks. A street lamp at the end of the block cast the only light. I knocked and explained. A woman pointed toward the basketball court where Jace played with the boys when they’d have her. She shut the door.

I drove. Patients lied, I reminded myself. What if Carl lied? Maybe Jace left because he’d been neglectful or abusive. I wouldn’t know until I heard her story. I parked and watched the local mischief play out on a court surrounded by a carpet of green and amber glass. Shapes flickered in and out of the street lap, I spotted Jace, adolescence burning immortal. With the assembled tough but ready acolytes smoking and drinking, the shadowy beauty from the old photograph wanted for nothing. Eventually she would need to use the ladies.

When she moved for home I called her name. She waved an angry hand. “Jace,” I shouted, “I’m not with the police, or juvenile, I’m one of your dad’s doctors. He’s dying.” I held out a card; she stepped toward the car and took it, her hand and wrist scarred with a homemade design. She ran.

I drove to the diner near home where I often sat to shake off medicine. Once again, I had arrived after closing. I’d done my best by Carl, and other than lying down on the operating table for the transplant surgeon to extract one rose pink kidney from a half moon incision in my flank, I could do no more. I mourned for Carl and the boy and the girl sitting late at night under the back portico of the Lincoln Memorial looking out across the dark Potomac toward the graves of Arlington.

Jace left a message with her number on my voice mail. “He needs another kidney, doesn’t he?” she said.

I called and told her he did.

“I’m too messed up and late to help,” she said.

“Your dad talks about seeing you when he’s well.”

“Could I be a match?”

“I wouldn’t know the answer until we run the tests.”

“Then let’s do them, I want to know.”

Carl’s fever returned along with the odor of his draining wounds. Jace sat at his side and told him she was keeping her kidney warm for him until the doctors took care of the infection.

She and I knew she wasn’t a match.

A few days later, Carl’s blood pressure became unstable and the surgeon took him back to debride the dead tissue, flush away the bacterial putrefaction. He died post-operatively.

I left messages for Jace. She didn’t call. I asked the pathologist to page me when someone came to sign for his remains to be removed after the autopsy.

Jace looked better than I expected. I wanted her to know that the tests showed she’d inherited the gene for her father’s kidney disease but wasn’t showing any signs of kidney failure yet. Get checked regularly, I told her. Carl would have wanted her to. She shrugged.

The colored slip in my department mailbox told me to claim a package in the mailroom. Inside the box I found a block of wood and a pack of sandpaper. Live oak, Rob wrote, was a very hard wood.

L. M. Asta has published fiction in Schuylkill and Lemniscate, and her essays have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Hippocrates. A native of Bucks County, she trained at Temple University School of Medicine and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. She writes and practices in northern California.

Tributary

“All art is but imitation of nature.” (Seneca)

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” (Oscar Wilde)

If you asked me ten years ago if I thought my life would be like this, of course I would have said no. Most likely, I’d have shown great disdain toward the idea of playing in what I would have then referred to as a “glorified cover band.”

Life is just a series of little decisions, though, and it goes from just trying to keep the dream alive until you get that legendary big break, to one day waking up and realizing that the only reason you’re still able to get paying gigs is that you’re playing someone else’s songs the exact same way they did three decades before.

It’d be different if the guys in the band we “tribute” were dead. Even if just the lead singer were dead, this whole endeavor would have more gravitas, and less of a cheap Chinese knock-off feel to it. A tribute band is more than just a cover band. But still, I wonder what I would have said about all this ten years ago.

Peeking out from backstage before the intro, I can see it’s a lighter crowd than usual tonight… I wonder why? Still, lots of familiar faces out there, and not just the friends and family, either. We encourage repeat ticket buyers by offering a frequent concertgoer discount. Hey, it’s a business, after all…

It’s easy to linger too long on the few new faces in the audience, those rare non-initiates who don’t already know the entire set list by heart. I always wonder how the new faces come to be here… and how long they’ll keep coming.

Tonight, there’s a lot on my mind, and it’s bleeding through my “tribute” persona.

I’m thinking about how I came to this point. And I’m wondering how much longer I’m going to do this.

Lots of people have Hollywood dreams, but I never did. I never wanted to be an actor—I wanted to be a rock star. And not “rock star” in the stupid way guys in suits use the term these days, referring to great athletes or prominent politicians or the standout salesman of the month, but the way it was in the 1970’s: real rock stars, all-out, admired for musicianship and creative credibility and yeah, maybe sometimes for the way they looked in tight jeans.

That’s what got me started—what would you call it? Envy? Jealousy? I wanted that life. I may not have seen much of the 70’s (born January 8, 1976) but I’ve got plenty of videos (bootleg and legit), plus tons of rock magazines from the era, that pretty much tell me how great it was.

My first attempts at stardom were in high school, singing and writing songs in various amateur rock bands and getting some attention from the girls, which only reinforced the dream. By graduation, I had a good band playing around me, but the Seattle scene had burned itself out and MTV seemed to play nothing but rap videos. The outlook for prospective rock stars was bleak.
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All of the guys in the band went to local colleges except Wes, who became an electrician like his dad. The band trudged on, rehearsing regularly, playing gigs when we could get them. We played in front of talent scouts and agents, some of whom said to keep at it, most of who said we were wasting our time. Then, seemingly overnight, four years had passed and it was time to make a decision.

Here’s some advice: never go into business with musicians if you can avoid it. Unfortunately, it’s a tough path to circumvent when the business you want into is making music. The guys and I made a ten-year pact after college. We said we’d stick it out that long—play anywhere, do anything, shun nine to five jobs, postpone marriage and kids, live together in a van if we had to—to be able to say we gave music our best shot. If it didn’t work out after ten years, we’d be free to move on, no hard feelings. “At least we’ll have tried,” we told ourselves.

Of course, Wes got married a year later, and even though we had specifically addressed the possibility of marriage in our pact, even though we’d all said that if any of us did get married it still wouldn’t change things, it did. It wasn’t a Yoko Ono breaking up the band thing or anything like that, Wes just started caring a lot more about buying a house and having his own car than he did about the music. Being an electrician started as his “temporary career,” then became his “backup career,” and finally just his career. He started to look at us as if we were dumb kids trying too hard to hold on to our childhoods.

Karin left me around that time, too. She wanted a “normal life,” whatever that is. I loved her, but everyone knows pursuing your dream requires sacrifices. So I marked that one down on my list of sacrifices made, having convinced myself that when the list grew long enough, the rock gods would deem me worthy of some serious good fortune to even up the scales.

Wes left the band six months later. We got another drummer, but the number of venues booking live talent was dwindling in favor of DJs and other poor man’s substitutes. At the gigs we did get, the owners would request we not play our own songs. “Nothing against you guys,” they’d say, “it’s just that people want music they know, stuff they’re comfortable with.”

I don’t remember whose idea it was to go from a band that did covers of lots of different groups’ songs, to a tribute band that focused on only one group. It wasn’t my idea, I know that. But after playing covers almost exclusively for six months, the idea of a tribute band no longer seemed repugnant. On the contrary, it seemed like sort of a higher calling. We debated which band we should focus on, based on which bands we liked, their popularity, whether they were still actively touring, who I sounded like, who we looked like, et cetera.

That’s how it started.

That was almost ten years ago.

We take the stage and the show begins, the same way it always does. My mind begins to wander, even as I’m singing. Tonight’s another small club, and normally the size of the venue, or the audience, doesn’t affect me much because it’s never really “me” on stage. Rather, it’s me as Steve Smith, lead singer for the original—some would say real—band, a man with the poise, swagger, and feathered hair of someone who knows he’s on top of the world circa 1976, touring in support of a record that had already gone gold and showed no signs of stopping there. But tonight the transformation is incomplete, and my self-confidence is flagging.

Lack of respect is the bane of a tribute band’s existence, and unless you keep your emotional armor well oiled and polished, it can lead to these occasional crises of confidence. We in the tribute biz catch flak from both sides—the high-minded classical and jazz aficionados who believe the music we play is too unsophisticated to be taken seriously, and the rock fans who feel that if you’re not writing your own stuff, you’re not being “authentic.” A tribute band is nothing if not authentic, from using vintage, precisely tuned instruments to matching just the right colors on the stage backdrop.

Here’s my question—why do people think that being one of seventy orchestra members in black suits and starched collars playing Beethoven or Bach as interpreted through the cracked perceptions of some weird-haired conductor is a noble profession, while being one of five members of a band who play popular music nearly identically to the original performances is cause for career embarrassment? Maybe our music isn’t as intricate, but pick any five members of that orchestra and let them go head to head against us in a crowded bar, and we’ll see who the people like better.

Mine is as disciplined a vocation as any—for two hours, I respond to stimuli not as I, Larry Candela, would, but as Steve Smith did. I say nothing that he did not say to his audience. Every stutter he uttered, every outfit he fit out, it’s all been corroborated, triple-checked for accuracy. Some would call this obsessive, but I call it dedication, what the fans deserve. I’ve rehearsed every move until its part of who I am. I am channeling the being of someone else. I am becoming someone else. And the audience wants me to be Steve Smith so badly that it helps me to forget I’m not really him. It’s a mutual suspension of disbelief.

This, then, is the difference between a tribute band and a band that just does covers. To quote The Who (or one of the major Who tribute bands, The What or Who’s Best or Behind Blue Eyes): “I’m a substitute for another man.”

If I remember correctly from my college philosophy classes, Plato and Aristotle both acknowledged all art as imitation. The difference is that Plato thought this was a bad thing, while Aristotle was a little more open-minded. Sometimes during our performances, I picture Aristotle in the audience, robed and sandaled, rocking out.

“Congratulations to our manager, who just tied the knot recently. In his honor, this is a song called ‘Knotty Problems.’” I hear myself make the introduction—perfectly, spot-on. The marriage in question happened almost thirty years ago, joining two people none of us knew then or now, but the reference was an integral part of that original concert, so it had to be used.

If, for the serious music listener, discovering a new band is like falling in love (and I would say that it is), then joining a tribute band is a lot like getting married. But you’re not marrying the other members of the band—you’re marrying the music. It’s a serious commitment, a decision to focus all your energies on a finite, limited body of work. And if joining a tribute band is like getting married, you could say I’m like the kid you went to school with who got married really young.

Maintaining one band as your favorite for ten, and even twenty years is a difficult thing. You have to sort of delude yourself, put blinders on so as not to fully notice new and undiscovered music that comes across your path. Repetition has to be made comforting instead of sleep inducing. You need to constantly reassess, search for new meaning in the familiar.

Both love and music start with infatuation, when you’ll want nothing but to listen to that one band or be around that one person. Then the sheen starts to fade, and you either discover new layers of interest or you break up and search for something better. Sometimes you’re still in the throes of infatuation when some other band (or woman) will steal your attention. But it’s normal to bounce around like this until, at some point, you become tired of bouncing around. You’re less interested in searching for new music (dating), and the work of staying informed on the latest bands gets crowded out in favor of more practical day-to-day demands. The stuff you’ve been listening to becomes very… comfortable. You can’t imagine anything better, or maybe you just can’t imagine continuing to look for something better. Finally, you settle down with one band designated as your favorite. Like marriage, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. There are the couples in the newspaper celebrating 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries, their photos positioned (not unintentionally) right between the wedding announcements on one side and the obituaries on the other. Then there are the ugly divorces—the ones that are rarely announced in the newspaper, even though that’s what people really want to read about. You get older and you change, but the music always sounds the same, perfectly recorded, perfectly…static. You grow apart. You split up. It happens all the time.

Ten years can pass in a happy blur, or it can just be the prelude to a bitter parting of the ways. But every person in a tribute band, like every married person, harbors some doubts. Sometimes you can’t help but wonder if you made the right decision. Should you have waited a little longer, seen what other opportunities arose, not settled down just yet—how might things have been different?

To keep the marriage alive, sometimes you have to beat down those doubts till they recede into the dark holes where they hide. But sometimes, like tonight, it seems like a giant game of whack-a- mole, and for every uncertainty you manage to beat down, two more pop up in its place.

I’m off tonight. It’s shaken me, because it’s been so long since I made a mistake, but tonight’s error was so minor it’s likely no one will notice, not even the other guys in the band. See, I told the crowd “thanks,” but Steve Smith never said “thanks,” he always said “thank you.” I wonder, is that just me being lazy? Or could it be something more?

Ten years to become a rock star. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about, the only thing I’ve ever really tried for and failed.

But what’s success or failure? Aren’t those terms subject to interpretation? Does it really have to be all or nothing? Isn’t there room for small successes and minor failures?

Is discipline a bad thing, carried to this extent? Have I stifled my creativity, or simply found a different way to embrace it? Is ten years too much time to give a dream, or not enough? Who’s to decide? What if the person who has to decide doesn’t know the answers?

The keyboard solo, “Friday Night Rondo,” ends, and as we start the next song, “Reflections,” I slip back into my role easily, like a favorite concert tee. A gesture here, a wink there. The fans are eating it up. The weird thing is I really don’t care. I’ve realized I don’t do this for the fans, despite what I said earlier. That was just bravado, false nobility to conceal the truth: I need them. I require an audience, because it’s part of the rock star package—without them, the dream dies.

This all could end at any time. More than likely, it will end soon, since the fans that come to our shows are getting too old to stand at a concert for two hours. They’d rather buy one of the DVD recordings of our shows ($15 apiece) and relax on their couch at home. There are some younger people who come—curiosity seekers, or children (and grandchildren) of fans. But eventually they’ll disappear, too.

I have to make a decision, a big decision—that’s what I’ve decided. I can’t just drift along any more. I’ll either end this now on my terms, or continue, with a new understanding of why I do it.

It’s important that I get this right… and for this, there is no script to memorize, no notes to study, no DVD to reference.

When you stop and look back like this, all of those earlier, seemingly unimportant decisions seem so natural, like this was the way it was all supposed to happen, just one moment flowing into the next, steadily moving you along like a stick in a stream.

The thing about being a stick in a narrow, twisty stream, though, is that you rarely see what’s ahead. You get knocked around, sometimes doing headers off the rocks, but you just keep moving forward. The stream could dry up a mile down the road, leaving you stuck somewhere, or it could open up to whole new, expansive body of water. You just don’t know till you get there.

“Reflections” ends. The mistake I made earlier has my head swirling, but strangely, I feel almost giddy. I grip the microphone tightly, ready to deliver the prescribed between-song banter, and I look out over the audience. No, not over the audience. At the audience.

It’s a different vibe now, a scary one, and I can feel myself tightening up. I’ve never been to an AA meeting, but I suspect this might be pretty similar. Do I really want to do this?

“My name is Larry Candela, and I play in a tribute band.”

Steve Smith never said that, but I just did. It may not be authentic, but it’s real.

I tell them everything, a briefer version of what I’ve said here. Some people in the crowd aren’t happy—I’ve broken the spell, violated the sacred trust between tribute performer and audience.

But soon there comes a connection, a kind I’ve never had before, like I’ve suddenly become transparent right there on stage. It’s terrifying, but at the same time liberating, freeing me of the restrictions I’ve placed on myself these past ten years. It’s a pretty magical experience. I wonder if rock stars ever get to feel something like this. Probably not.

You might think it sad that the major decision of my life thus far is to continue what some would call living someone else’s life. But in the end, it’s my dream. And somewhere between the truth of dreams and the delusion of fantasies, reality lies.

So the dream lives on, albeit in slightly altered form.

Peter Dabbene is a Hamilton, New Jersey-based writer. His poetry has been featured in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Zillah, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Apple Valley Review, and more. He has also published two story collections, Prime Movements and Glossolalia, as well as a novel, Mister Dreyfus’ Demons. He is currently writing a graphic novel, called Ark, which will be published in 2009.

Allison on New Year’s Day

Brrrrrrrrupt! Brrrrrrrrupt!” A muddled fanfare penetrated Allison Reed’s sleep. She rolled over, hoping she was dreaming. She was pleasantly hot under the heaped up blankets and vaguely aware that she wanted to keep sleeping. But a few moments later the sound repeated – “Brrrrrrrrupt! Brrrrrrrrupt!” – followed by a bellowed “God bless the Mummers!” in the street below and Allison was awake and knew that it was New Year’s Day.

Allison rolled onto her back and lay with her arms flat by her sides, unhappy with her mild hangover. Her head was heavy and her stomach was sour. Still, she felt a deep sense of physical satisfaction, which puzzled Allison for a moment until she remembered not only the two glasses of champagne she drank after midnight, but who she drank them with and how they laughed. She popped open her eyes to confirm what she now recalled quite clearly. She’d had sex with Jim D’Angelo and he was sleeping next to her. Allison closed her eyes and ran her hands down her body. She was naked and this made her uncomfortable. It was one thing to sleep with a man, if you could work up the necessary desire and nerve and you got to turn off the lights, and another thing, not as serious yet still intimate, to share your bed with him. But it was a different category of thing entirely to lay nude next to him all night. Naked was okay for sex, but once it was over, Allison wanted to get up, wash briefly, and dress. She expected the man to know he should do this, too, although experience had taught Allison not to take any chances. When she walked back into the bedroom wearing a nightshirt, modest yet sexy, she would announce, “I’ve brought you a fresh towel and a spare toothbrush,” in the easy tone of a thoughtful host. Only once had these been refused, back in her graduate school days when she was somehow convinced that you were missing experiences of great consequence if you weren’t rutting through a succession of over-serious, over-heated – in retrospect foolish and shallow and inept – affairs. “Nah, I’m okay,” the young academic had told her. Then Allison had cocked her head, briefly considered the enormity of her misjudgment, and invited the fellow to leave. This he did, with a look of confusion and regret that Allison accepted as an apology.

She had not offered Jim D’Angelo a towel or a toothbrush, however, and Allison was reasonably certain she had not offered these because instead she had climbed on top of Jim and encouraged him to “go again” with a hip motion that made Allison wince with embarrassment. She opened her eyes again to see if Jim had caught her wincing. He was still asleep. This was the first time Allison had been with Jim D’Angelo and now he would think she was one of those women that men of his class seemed to particularly desire: accomplished in their profession, elegant in society, but all hell in bed. Once a man got dug into this opinion of a woman, Allison found, he held on to her like she was the Holy Grail – or worse, ecstatically concluded that she thought of sex the way he did, which was pretty much all the time and as the central organizing principle of life. This led to all sorts of tiresome nonsense. Sometimes it meant that the man wanted to have sex in places (the kitchen, parked cars, spare bedrooms at house parties) and in places (her body) where Allison was not interested in having it. Other times, it made him think that she was as fascinated by his penis as he was. The result of this belief was random trouser dropping and witty dingle waving, such as around corners or from opportune angles on the staircase. The first time Allison ran into this, she thought she had entangled herself with a freak. By the third or fourth iteration Allison realized that it was an endemic pathology of the human male, though this realization brought her little comfort. It did, however, provide a friend from college with the topic for her doctoral thesis.

Allison sighed. What had she done? Where would it all lead? And what did she want from this man? It’s not that she regretted having Jim D’Angelo in her bed Eight months had passed since the last time Allison had slept with anyone and he’d delivered the goods quite competently. Jim D’Angelo was pleasant and successful, and Allison liked him. No one could say she’d made a mistake by having sex with him. But Allison had been in this position before, and before that too, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be. Many of her friends had gotten married, some had started families, but Allison wasn’t afraid of falling behind them. She didn’t worry that they had taken husbands and she hadn’t. She didn’t feel a great aching hole in her life when she held their babies, although their children were lovely. What troubled Allison was the possibility that it didn’t matter.

She was realistically, tolerably, intermittently happy. As happy, at least, as she thought it probable she could be, not possessing a genius for living, but not lacking a capacity for genuine enjoyment either. She had her job and her friends, a trinity house on a comfortable street, dinners and concerts and plays, three weeks in Italy one year, a month in Ireland the next, and all the privacy she desired. And she had men, more or less when she wanted them. This was a sufficient life. It satisfied her. She understood its limitations and endured its deficiencies, but she did so because she believed all lives had limitations and deficiencies. Would a husband and a family be more sufficient? Would they make her more happy? Or only as happy as she was now, just in a different way?

But what about love? Allison admitted the possibility of love and did not deny its attraction, but when asked about it by her friends she always turned the question back on them. Do you love your husband? Of course, they’d answer and then Allison would ask, Why “of course” and not “yes”? A small pause. They knew Allison could be sharp, but she was rarely sharp with them. What’s the distinction? “Yes” is an affirmation, Allison would say, “of course” merely a habit. You’re playing word games with us. Perhaps I am, Allison would agree. And love can’t be all excitement forever, they’d tell her. See if excitement can survive a crying baby at 3 AM. And if it could, would you want it to? I love my husband, but I don’t want to love him like I did when I was twenty-five. That takes too much time, too much energy. I want to feel more settled. I want to grow up and move on. You had a husband once, you know, until you lost your nerve.

I didn’t lose my nerve – I kept it, Allison always thought to herself when this subject was raised. Long ago, she’d learned that it was useless to argue or explain, so she didn’t try. She’d look away, let them think what they wanted about Matt, then talk about something else. Allison had loved Matt. The eight months they were together before their engagement was the happiest of Allison’s life and their engagement made Allison happy too. But sometime after they had selected the inn for the reception and agreed on the Caribbean for their honeymoon, Allison began to change her mind. At first, she didn’t understand she what was happening. She was simply puzzled by a tightness in her stomach whenever she discussed the wedding with Matt or their families. Then Allison found herself resenting Matt when he wanted to talk about how many people they should invite, how much they should spend on the food and music, or where they could find a decent minister. When the face in the mirror looked at her one morning and said, “You don’t want to marry that man,” Allison couldn’t have been more surprised than if a stranger had walked up and told her the same words.

It didn’t make sense. Allison knew her feelings hadn’t changed because she tracked the strength of her attachment to Matt with an exactness she knew wasn’t healthy (I love him less today, by maybe ten percent, but I still love him. I love him much more today!) but which she persisted in all the same. So she tried to think. Allison shaded her eyes from the brightness of her love, looked at her and Matt as they were that day and found nothing, then looked toward the future. They didn’t want the same things, they didn’t like the same things. They never cared. They said it didn’t matter. They said it was a problem other people had. But at some point, Allison considered as she pushed at the knot in her stomach, their life would become about more than love. And when it did, she didn’t see how they could make that life work or how that life would make them happy.

What to do? No one would blamed her if she married Matt – with qualms – and later realized it was a mistake and divorced him. She was young after all. The young were supposed to live by their hearts and not their heads. She might even get credit for believing in love against her better judgment. But that looked like cowardice to Allison. The waste of years, when she saw their marriage crumbling, depressed her. Most of all, Allison was afraid of losing her love for Matt. She might lose him – if that was the necessary outcome and unavoidable – but to lose the bright secret flame that Matt had kindled inside her, that seemed worse to Allison. She tried to avoid making the decision, of course. She hoped that a few weeks, and then a few more, would leave her feeling differently, but they didn’t, and the months before the wedding dwindled from six to four. Soon it would be too late to break the engagement with any decency. Plans would have been made, airline tickets purchased, hotel rooms reserved, new clothes bought, wedding presents ordered and sent. A decision that Matt could gloss over now with a shrug, a brave smile, and the words “she had second thoughts” to his family and friends would turn into an embarrassment and a humiliation with more delay. So Allison asked Matt to come to her apartment and she told him.

At first, Matt thought it was a joke–he didn’t understand. And then he got mad. He walked out of her apartment, slamming the door, but he called early the next morning to apologize and they talked it through all again until Matt understood her. Then he asked if she was sure? Because he saw the problems Allison saw, but he was confident they would solve them. Wasn’t their love enough? Wasn’t their desire to keep loving, even when it wouldn’t be as easy as it was right now, enough? No, Allison said, shaking her head, it wasn’t. They talked like this, around and around and around, for an endless week: Matt trying to coax and convince her by turns, always optimistic, usually sympathetic, sometimes impatient while every conversation left Allison – against everything she honestly wanted – more deeply convinced of her unhappy certainty. She to make herself doubt, but she couldn’t and by the end, all the talking had thrown Allison into a state of such raw animal misery that when she begged Matt to let her go – begged mercy, begged pity – he agreed. He told their families, always used the word “we”, and insisted that their reasons were private. When Allison thanked him afterwards, he nodded once, said “okay,” and walked away. This wounded Allison, but she knew it was a wound of her own making; that the wound hurt most because in it she could feel how she had hurt Matt; and that in the final circumstance, Matt had added to his pain to ease hers. She’d asked far too much of him as it was. She couldn’t expect him to say goodbye with grace. And in truth, she was thankful he hadn’t. It helped Allison feel a little less guilty for what she had done.

For several months, Allison cycled between shock and acute distress. She found the shock easier to handle because she could usually make it look like serenity to people who didn’t know her well. When the distress hit her, by contrast, Allison tended to grab her head and exclaim, “God, oh God, oh God!” regardless of where she was. This made going to work an adventure and Allison had to excuse herself from more than one meeting to seek out the reliably empty women’s room near the museum’s porcelain exhibit, lock herself in a stall, and groan through her hands for fifteen minutes. This same urge struck her on a Friday night at a restaurant where she had been taken by friends hoping to cheer her up for a few hours. Everything had been going fine. She was sitting at the bar, drinking the second cocktail they had ordered for her, and making an adequate display of emotional normality when she looked into the eyes of the bartender, exclaimed, “God, oh God, oh God!” and ran outside. After this, her friends urged her to get an anti-depressant, but Allison preferred to just stay home where she could slip into her bedroom and stick her head under her pillow until the mood passed. She did this frequently enough that the same friends, now transplanted with wine, dinner, and movies to her house, ceased to pay attention to it, particularly since she usually emerged looking refreshed.

During all this time, Allison had one comfort that she kept secret. She had wanted to preserve her love for Matt, even at the cost of their marriage, and she had succeeded. Her love was still there, like a warm coal in her breast and at night, alone in her bed, she would take it out and breathe greedy and grateful life into it again. She never told anyone about this because she could guess at their expressions of horror and disbelief if she did. They would think she was selfish and thoughtless and cruel – and perhaps she was. Allison sometimes worried that she had wrecked Matt’s heart in the service of a monstrous vanity. She didn’t always recognize herself during those hours in the dark. She was strange and dangerous and she couldn’t put the name ‘Allison’ to the person she found. But there was still the fact of her pain and it was only the love that made it bearable.

Neither lasted. Sometime between six and nine months after she broke up with Matt, Allison’s shock melted into equanimity and her distress lessened. The agony of what she had done could still attack her, sharp and sudden, but she was able to master her physical response to its assault enough to return to a public social life with little concern for embarrassment. But as she began to recover, the love grew cool then cold. She could remember it. She knew it had been real, but it was no longer alive. This was the last grief, and it would have been the hardest except that Allison had learned how to carry sorrow over the preceding months. She had become stronger, but also more remote and detached, and she wasn’t sure she liked the exchange. By thirteen or fourteen months, she began to date again, tentatively and infrequently, not because she wanted to begin seeing men again as much as because she wanted to avoid having conversations about why she wasn’t. And after a while, she began to enjoy herself, sometimes. She worried about what she would do if any of these relationships became serious, but that didn’t happen. Allison wasn’t sure she trusted the reason she found to explain why. Maybe it was that these men really weren’t interesting enough and funny enough and sexy enough to keep giving them her Saturday nights. That was true of some, certainly. But for others, perhaps it was her diffidence that ruined their chances. She knew it was there. She could feel it slamming down like a metal storefront grate, when a date was going well, and it puzzled her nearly as much as it puzzled the guy.

“I’ve wrecked myself,” Allison would think after one of the nights that went wrong. “This is my fate.” Then she would sigh and shake her head. That was too dramatic, too absolute. She was much the same as she had always been: intelligent, self-regarding, reserved, modest, over-considerate, and intense. But Allison also knew that she didn’t want love as much as she did before she met Matt. On her worst days, Allison found herself thinking that love was a trivial luxury. “What’s the point of a new boyfriend?” she asked a close friend. “He’d be like a new pair of shoes. He might look good, and he might even feel right, but I have plenty in my closet already that I never bother to wear. And one in particular.”

And yet, and yet. Here was Jim D’Angelo sleeping in her bed. So what does that mean, Allison asked herself. That I haven’t lost all hope? Or that I’ve gotten really good at kidding myself? She raised herself gently on one elbow to study Jim’s face. I’ve certainly fooled you, Allison thought. If you knew what you were getting from me, you’d probably run away. Run before I hurt you. What is it you thought you saw? Allison could have continued pushing her thoughts in this direction, but she didn’t. Instead, she gazed at Jim first with curiosity, then with an emotion that might have been affection. She had known Jim since October, and last night had been their eighth or ninth date, which was quite a lot considering all the holidays, so Allison decided she must fancy him at least. Two glasses of champagne wouldn’t have tricked her into sleeping with a man she didn’t. What was it about this one? Jim’s face was serene. He might have been sleeping in his own bed, Allison considered, for how easy he looked.

On their first date, Allison had mistook Jim’s self-possession for blandness and decided she didn’t want to see him again but he’d convinced her otherwise with a steady application that was confident not assertive. It also took Allison several weeks to realize that Jim was funny. The problem was he had a dry sense of humor, and his occasional jokes were absurd interpretations and implausible inferences, which he slipped into their conversation so unobtrusively – the way a cheat might slip an ace into a deck of cards – that for a little while Allison had thought Jim suffered from an obscure mental-health disorder imperfectly controlled by medication. Jim could still fool her.

Last night, he had made an observation that Allison had been at a complete loss to answer until a faint sparkle in his eyes told her there was no need. Allison laughed and Jim smiled, and she meant to nudge him with her elbow, but half-stumbled and bumped his body instead, and then her lips were pressed on his, Allison holding her glass out to one side and behind her so she wouldn’t spill it down the front of Jim’s suit, and suddenly the party couldn’t be over too soon. Allison raised her head and saw their clothes scattered on the floor. They had been in a hurry.

She studied Jim’s face again. All this mysterious life whirling behind his steady expressions and dependable manners. Who was he? What did he want? He looked kind, but Allison knew how simple it would be to project the feelings she wanted onto Jim and she tried to resist the temptation. “Still, it’s not impossible,” she murmured. Except I don’t know you and you don’t know me. All at once, Allison felt how lonely she had been – for years, it seemed – and how much she didn’t want to be alone anymore. Oh god oh god, what am I doing? Did I kiss you out of despair? When I laughed, I fooled you. When you smiled back, you fooled me. We’ve double-fooled ourselves and each other. It was all an accident and a trick! I don’t want…. “I’m afraid,” Allison whispered. “I was always afraid, but I’m more afraid now.”

Allison watched as Jim exhaled and his eyes blinked open. She had time to cover her breasts with the sheet, but she was caught raised on her elbow, looking down at Jim, and Allison was sure her face expressed her embarrassment. What would he say? How would he seem? Allison didn’t know what she’d do if Jim looked like he thought he had made a mistake or found some excuse to leave quickly. Her hair fell half over her face, but she didn’t have a free hand to brush it back. Jim rubbed his eyes briefly with the tips of his fingers and turned his gaze to Allison. If Jim was surprised to find her staring at him, he didn’t show it. He looked her steadily for a moment and reached up and tucked the loose hair behind her ear. Then he smiled. How Allison’s heart flew out to him! Jim’s smile was neither awkward nor overly familiar. Instead it was comfortable, reserved. She was conquered. All she had left was surrender. But Allison wouldn’t. Not today. I know love’s tricks, she thought. I know all its promises. I know how it works to fools us. I’m going to test it before I call it by name. I’m going to wait before I put our hearts at risk. She smiled at him, then she took a deep breath and said, “Hi.”

Peter McEllhenney lives with his wife and sons in the Queen Village neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Her Bear Husband

“Of course I’ve been in the woods before.”

Lucia glanced around the visitor center to reassure herself that she looked just like everyone else there, then glared back across the counter at the skeptical park ranger. Until encountering him, she’d felt impervious in her new acquisitions: stiff hiking boots with heavy Vibram soles; cargo pants of a slippery, fast-drying fabric that made soft whispering noises as she walked; a rain jacket with a thin fleece lining. In preparation for her excursion, she’d also bought a 20-ounce sleeping bag that would bob atop an unwieldy pack, itself stuffed with a tiny tent – two-and-a-half pounds – a couple of changes of socks and underwear, and foil packets of freeze-dried dinners, their desiccated contents so devoid of texture and smell as to be guaranteed not to attract bears. Alone in the house she’d sublet for her temporary teaching job at a Montana college, she spent hours researching every item, checking off each against a long list of things various guidebooks insisted were essential. Then she went looking for them. Her new town’s business district comprised a scant four blocks. An espresso shop, windows hung hopefully with cheap, root-bound houseplants. Molvar’s Ladies Fashions, chipped mannequins draped in generously cut pantsuits. A newsstand, the daily headlines indecipherable: “Biggest One-Year Drop in Board Feet in Decades.” “Heap-Leach Boom Goes Bust.” “Coyote Depredations on Rise.” The last featuring a photo of a man in a cowboy hat, gesturing angrily toward the mangled body of a sheep at his booted feet, the blood a scarlet shock in the dun-hued scene.

A couple of pawnshops, and a bar – no, two – in each block, most of them along the railroad tracks that divided the town. The Mint, The Stockman, The Gandy Dancer. Red’s. Al’s. Burr Lively’s. And, not one, but three stores offering both hunting and camping gear – heavy on the former, windows a forest of camouflage clothing, including a saucy leaf-patterned bikini dangling from the antlers of a mounted elk head. But, from looks of the little plastic kayaks leaning against the doorframe, to the tents set up along the sidewalk in front of the stores, plenty of the latter, too. She would no more have set foot inside one of those stores than she would have walked through the door of Burr Lively’s, which nightly spilled a contingent of hard-faced men into the empty lot alongside it, where some slept until morning, only to list into the coffee shop at dawn, knocking back double espressos that they dosed from flasks stowed somewhere within their voluminous camouflage jackets that probably had come from the stores just down the street.

Lucia avoided them all, ordering her backpacking gear online, gasping at the total, and endured the quizzical expression of the FedEx man who delivered the outsize boxes for several days in a row.

The park ranger looked at her the same way, eyeballing the pack’s shiny fabric, the boots’ unmarred surface. Before she could even speak, he’d put the question to her.

“First time in the backcountry?”

He was tall, his starched khaki shirt and creased green uniform pants hanging loosely on a rangy frame. His hands, long fingers tapping impatience on the countertop, looked too large for picking at a computer keyboard, and she wondered who he’d pissed off to get stuck on desk duty, dealing with the likes of her. A Smokey the Bear hat sat on his desk, and she refrained from asking him to put it on so that she could take a photo and e-mail it to her friends at home with another sardonic note about her new life. Some of those notes also went to her lover.

Whose reply was always the same: “Come home.”

Home. Her alone in her apartment, him in Westchester County with his wife.

The ranger cleared his throat, awaiting details of her “backcountry” experience. Apparently that was what it was called here. Not – she’d noted his expression at her reply – “woods.” She made a mental note. She thought of long weekends at bed-and-breakfasts in the Adirondacks, youthful summers in Connecticut, strolls through the pleasant groves of elderly oaks and maples encircling sun-dappled glades.

“It’s my first time here,” she told the ranger, intending the words to convey vast experience elsewhere.

“You’re not hiking alone,” he said, not even bothering to make it a question.

“Of course not,” she snapped. Surely, there would be others on the trail.

He took a pamphlet from the holder on the counter, spread it open before her and recited from memory. After each sentence, he glanced up and looked directly into her eyes – his were grey – as if to emphasize the point.

“This is bear country. You don’t want to surprise a bear. Make noise while you hike. Clap, bang a couple of sticks together, sing.”

“Right,” she said, and forced a laugh. “My voice is terrible.”

He waited until she apologized. He resumed:

“If you’re camping in the backcountry –” His gaze traveled to her backpack. “We have campgrounds right here, you know,” he said. He pointed through the window toward a reef of Winnebago roofs visible above low trees. She was silent.

“Hang your food at least ten feet off the ground.”

She was pretty sure that, somewhere in her pack, she had some cord. It was on the checklist. Enough to hang the pack – how high again? And, how was she supposed to get it up there in the first place? Climb a tree? She nodded, trying to look bored.

“Don’t sleep in the clothes you cook in.”

These same instructions were in her books, but she was no more enlightened now as when she’d first read them. Was she supposed to hoist her clothes up into a tree along with the pack? She pictured herself standing naked, tossing her synthetic, fast-drying turtleneck and swishing cargo pants – boots, too? – up into the branches.

She nodded again, quickly.

“Don’t,” he said, and his voice changed, “go into the backcountry if you’ve got your period. Bears…their sense of smell is so keen …”

She couldn’t meet his eyes, but could feel him looking the question at her.

“Jesus,” she muttered. “No.”

“You’ll want to register at the trailhead,” he said, speaking briskly again. “Everyone in your party” – She could look at him again, her level gaze boldly challenging the disbelief in his eyes – “and how many nights you, all of you, expect to be out. How many nights is that, by the way?”

“Three. Maybe four,” she said. She hadn’t come to Montana, she told herself, just to spend her weekends at the same sort of faculty parties that filled her time in New York. Even though they weren’t the same at all. She’d arrived at a barbecue the previous weekend with a chilled falanghina; had dressed carefully, in thin-soled mules, pale capris, and a black knitted-silk shell with a matching cardigan thrown over her shoulders, only to find herself silent and ridiculous among people in roomy cargo pants like the ones she’d since acquired, swigging beer straight from the bottles. Her narrow heels, perfectly suitable for sidewalks, dug into the lawn and she twisted an ankle. Someone steadied her, catching her elbow in a steely grip. Back home, health-club memberships were a given, but these people were lean in a way that differed from the meticulously toned forms hogging the treadmills and ellipticals at her gym. Sinewy, she thought. Muscles hardened and ropy, arms and calves nicked with small scars, tans that shamelessly bisected foreheads and arms, stopped at necklines. Lucia could only listen as they talked about rock-climbing and fly-fishing and float trips, whatever those were, shivering as the sun slipped behind the mountains, deepening the evening chill for which her flimsy sweater proved no match. She was determined to join the next such conversation. Hence, this excursion into the woods. Backcountry. Whatever.

The ranger was talking again, tracing trails on a map – “These get a lot of traffic on weekends, especially this one. You’re best off here. You can read a topo map, can’t you?”

She had such a map, its surface a spiderweb of dashed red trails superimposed atop a mass of thin black lines looping into whorls like so many fingerprints. She pointed to a trace of red somewhat apart from the rest. “What about this one?”

He shook his head.

“Too isolated,” he says. “Too high. Nobody goes up there this early in the summer. There’ll be snow. It’s for experienced hikers.” Again, his gaze swept her. She had left her hair loose that morning, and she knew the effect of the elbow-length russet waves, the luminous skin, the delicate features tiresomely described as pre-Raphaelite. She was used to men staring at her. But this man looked past that, scowling one last time at her obvious inexperience, and so she thanked him abruptly and turned her back and walked toward the door, awkward in her new boots.

He called after her.

“I’ll be heading up that way in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll check on you. What’s your name?”

She called it back over her shoulder and kept walking.

The SUV she rented for the semester had felt over-large in town, but here, when the asphalt road gave way to gravel and began to climb, she appreciated its power. She passed the trailhead he pointed out on the map and, on a whim, pulled into the crowded parking area. Just as he had told her, there was a post with a covered wooden tray containing a hikers’ log protected by a sheet of clear plastic. She added her name in large, bold letters; then, with a tight-lipped smile, that of her lover. Ex-lover, she reminded herself. She got back into the SUV, studied the map, and took a side road, amusing herself on the drive by wondering what would happen if she were to get lost. His name would be reported, too, finally linked publicly with hers. There would be newspaper stories, a brief flurry of publicity before he was revealed to be safe at home with his wife. The reverie, bitter and pleasurable as a citrus sorbet, carried her through the next thirty miles until she turned into another parking area, this one devoid of vehicles.

“Good,” she breathed. The solitude she had sought since leaving New York had eluded her as her new colleagues swarmed around her with invitations to coffee, dinner and more barbecues, trying to prevent the loneliness they insisted she must feel. “Lonely is what I need,” she wanted to say, but cringed at the Garbo-esque melodrama of the words. But it was exactly what she needed, she realized as she set off into the woods – this close to the road, did it count as backcountry? – slowly adjusting to the heavy boots, the unfamiliar weight on her back. The pines stood tall and straight, with segmented orange bark, their branches trailing skeins of dark, fringed moss. Light angled through the trees, glazing a carpet of dried needles. Slowly she found her stride, steps lengthening, arms swinging easily. She inhaled deeply, rounded a bend, and followed the trail onto a ledge that traced a granite wall. To her right, the rockface climbed up and up, nearly vertical. To her left, closer than she would have liked, the ground dropped away into a vast valley. Her gaze swept its breadth, soared to the corrugated peaks on the other side. She forced it downward with difficulty, and was rewarded with the sight of a string of lakes along the valley floor, their waters tinted jade with glacial silt. A turquoise thread of creek connected them with long, crooked stitches. When she let her breath out, she realized how long she had been holding it. She thanked someone, something. Her belief in God was provisional, but the grandeur demanded acknowledgment. Only after she traversed the ledge and followed the trail back into the trees did she realize she hadn’t thought about her lover in some time. A smile stretched her cheeks.

She camped that night by a small stream, its gurgle surprisingly loud. Her pack reposed in a fork in a tree at the far side of the clearing – not ten feet above the ground by any means, but it was the best she could do – her clothes tucked neatly inside. In the end, she had indeed stripped, foolishly looking over her shoulder as though there was anyone to see her, donning for nighttime the soft silk long-underwear pants and pullover that were among the guidebooks’ endless recommendations. It had taken her longer than she’d thought possible to set up the supposedly idiot-proof tent, to start the stove, to boil the scant cup of water necessary for her odd, freeze-dried dinner. Still, she slid into the slick sleeping bag, grateful for the lightweight pad beneath it that had seemed such an annoyance when she’d packed. Throughout the day, though, she’d marveled at the concrete-like consistency of the earth beneath her feet, and was happy for even the thin buffer offered by the pad. She lay awake for a few moments, pulling the tent flap aside to gasp at the nearness of the stars, noting the pleasant ache in her thighs and calves, smiling at her outsize sense of accomplishment for having achieved the simple tasks of the tent, the stove, the meal. She tried to slow her breathing. At home bedtime involved an elaborate ritual of a hot bath, a little cognac, earplugs, an herbal sleep mask. She rationed sleeping pills carefully, cutting them in half, and even as she wondered if she should have brought some with her into the woods, she fell asleep.

Morning brought a cottony grey light and a chill that shocked her. Her breath wreathed around her head as she dipped water from the icy creek for her breakfast. Hands stiff with cold, she repeated the previous evening’s struggles with her tiny backpacking stove, pumping its primer for what seemed like forever before the flame finally caught, too slowly warming the water for a meal that purported to be scrambled eggs, but tasted instead of colored Styrofoam. Already, she was planning for her next trip, thinking longingly how easy it would have been to pack slices of thick brown bread and packets of marmalade to squeeze upon it; maybe a frozen steak that would thaw in its baggie while she hiked, providing an evening meal with actual taste and texture. At least she had thought to bring strong coffee, and, for the evenings, little bottles of wine, and that small bit of foresight cheered her, even as the sun reappeared through the trees, burning away the fog. She felt quite pleased with herself as she fumbled with the collapsed tent and stuffed her sleeping back into its sack and set out upon the trail.

In that first hour, she rediscovered the long, easy stride of the previous day, but then the trail narrowed and began to climb, folding back on itself through a forest thick with spiky underbrush that caught repeatedly at her hair. Lucia stopped and slid the heavy pack from her shoulders, fumbling in it for a bandanna that she twisted around her hair. She tried combing through its snarls with her fingers, dislodging pine needles and bits of leaves, and finally gave up, shrugging into the pack again and stepping grimly back onto a trail quickly growing wearisome. At first, the rise was gradual, but then the switchbacks came more frequently, and Lucia’s calves and lungs competed in fiery protest. The trees grew thick overhead, blotting out the sun, a mercy, she thought, as sweat dampened her shirt. Gnats whined at her ears, fastening themselves to the corners of her eyes and mouth. She breathed noisily through her nose, suppressing the searing gasps that would only draw in the insects. Somewhere deep within the pack was the recommended repellant, but she feared that if she stopped, the bugs would set upon her even more fiercely in the time it would take to unearth it. She saw an opening in the trees and moved more quickly, shoving aside thin, supple branches. She released them too soon, and they lashed back across her face. She touched a finger to her stinging cheek, brought it away bright with a drop of blood. She smeared the back of her hand across her face, then swiped it across her eyes, damp with tears of frustration. It occurred to her that despite the ranger’s warning against hiking alone, she was glad no one was there to see her struggles, and then she barely had time to reflect upon the fact that she had not seen a single person in a day and a half when the bear ambled onto the trail in front of her and stopped.

She had stepped into a clearing, and the sun was high and strong above her. She felt it warm on her back, and a soft breeze bent the tops of the pines and dried the sweat on her shirt and she thought it was far too pretty a morning for what was about to happen. The bear didn’t move, and neither did she and so there was plenty of time for her to register the characteristics the ranger had listed for her – the dished face, the humped shoulders, the gingery fur.

“If you encounter one,” he’d said, “don’t look it in the eye. They see that as a challenge.”

But she couldn’t help it; the bear was looking directly at her, its eyes honeyed and liquid, and when it stood to peer down at her from a better vantage point, she realized it was male and that he was aroused (she would learn about the baculum only later). Oddly, the sight steadied her; she was familiar with this reaction and, unconsciously, she touched her hand to her hair, lifting it from her neck, the movement loosening the inexpertly tied bandanna so that it fell away and her hair flowed over her shoulders.

The bear made a keening noise and fell heavily back down onto his forepaws and took a step toward her. She remembered how the ranger told her to play dead, and she crouched on the ground, wrapping her arms around her head (“Protect your neck, cover those big arteries.”) the way she did in elementary school when she and her classmates bent beneath their insubstantial wooden desks against the vaporizing powers of the atomic bombs.

Through slitted eyes she saw his claws arced against the earth of the trail just inches from her nose; registered the hot breath against her face. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt his snout, cool and dry, against her elbow and she braced for the clamp of jaw, the pierce of fang, but he merely nudged her arm away from her head and put his nose to her cheek. She felt it grow moist and thought she must be crying again, but realized it was his tongue, gently cleaning her face, lapping the length of the scratch, touching carefully to the corners of her eyes and lips, flicking away an errant gnat. Then he pressed his head tightly to hers and held it there a long minute as she breathed in his musky scent, withdrawing so quietly that it was some moments before she realized he was truly gone.

She stood slowly, unfolding her limbs as though they were strange to her. The sun drenched her in warmth, but she found herself shivering, noted the chattering noise that at first she thought was a woodpecker, but turned out to be her teeth. She turned slowly, a full circle, but saw nothing. Even the wind had died, and the trees stood like sculptures against the bowl of sky. She had an impulse to wonder if she’d imagined everything, but could not yield to it; there, heading back down the trail the way she had come, were prints sunk into the crumbly earth, big as soup plates, each preceded by a row of deep holes poked by those claws. She moved her mouth experimentally, touched her tongue to a hair caught in her lips, and when she pulled it away, she found it both shorter and thicker than her own, like a strand of copper wire. So it had happened. She rolled the hair between her fingers, then shoved it deep into one of the pockets of her cargo pants. From another pocket, she withdrew her cell phone, but it told her, as it had nearly from the moment she had entered the park, that she was out of range of any signal. Her legs trembled, but when she shoved one before her, it worked, and so she shoved the other, and eventually she discovered herself walking up the trail again. It seemed insane to head more deeply into the woods, but she didn’t dare return the way she’d come for fear of seeing the bear again. The trail described a twenty-eight-mile loop and she had already hiked nearly ten of those; two more nights would bring her back to the parking area. She wondered if the bear had really gone, or if it would return to stalk her; wondered if there were more bears ahead. She walked and cried, trying to push away the regret swelling within her for choosing such a lightly traveled route. She vowed to hike farther than she had planned each day so as to spend only a single night more on the trail. The thought cheered her, and she moved more quickly, hiking on legs grown rubbery until it was nearly dark, noticing little about her surroundings.

She stopped reluctantly where a beaver dam across a creek formed a small pond and, with hands shaking anew, raised her tent in the middle of the meadow, thinking it less likely that a bear would creep out of the trees toward her. She was hungry, but feared that even the tasteless, strangely textured substances within her freeze-dried packets would prove too much of a temptation, so she crawled into her sleeping bag and listened to her stomach rumbling. Improbably, she fell asleep just as abruptly as the night before, waking to the same grey fog that heralded the previous morning.

She was ravenous, and headachey from going so long without food. She disentangled herself from the sleeping bag, and with some apprehension, unzipped the tent and tentatively put her face to the opening. The first thing she saw were the fish, three trout, water beaded upon scales whose rainbow hues still shone bright, their perfection marred only by the puncture marks of the large claws. The second thing she noticed were the footprints across the dew-glistening meadow, the outsize depressions leading into the trees. The last thing she saw was the large circle of flattened grass not eight feet away. She crawled from the tent, stood slowly, then tiptoed barefoot to its center. The grass beneath her feet was still warm. She curled her toes into it, contemplated the footprints, then turned to the trout. Her stomach lurched demandingly, and within minutes, she had inexpertly gutted them with her Swiss Army knife, scraped away their scales, and sliced them into ragged fillets. She hastily pumped the little stove into life, boiled water for coffee, then sautéed the trout fillets. It was awkward – she had neither butter nor oil and they stuck to the pan, so hot when she scraped them free that they burnt her tongue, but the flesh was moist and delicate and delicious, and she forced herself to slow down and savor it, alternating bites with gulps of coffee as the sun chased off the fog. An indignant beaver surfaced in the pond, saw her, slapped its tail against the glacier-green water and dived deep. In the trees at the edge of the clearing, a raven croaked and another flapped to join it, the pair of them clearly waiting for her scraps, and she rose and stretched and laughed aloud and told herself that she had gone crazy, truly out of her mind, if she what she imagined was happening was any kind of real at all.

Still, that night, her final one on the trail, she ostentatiously lingered overlong beside a creek, stripping off her shirt and bra and splashing icy water on her face and chest and under her arms, and she was not at all surprised to find the still-warm rabbit’s carcass beside the tent when she returned, its neck neatly broken by what appeared to be a single, decisive blow.

Skinning it took some doing, but she managed, and she simmered the pieces in some of her wine, and although she might have wished for some mushrooms, a little thyme and chervil, a quick grind of coarse pepper, and a dusting of flour just to bring the sauce together, still, it was a passable meal, better than passable, and after she ate half the rabbit, and finished most of the wine, she lay back in the grass and let the stars do their slow cartwheel overhead until she was nearly asleep. But before she crept into her tent, she took the uneaten pieces of rabbit, and put them on a rock some distance – but not a great distance – from the tent, and found a good-size stone with a hollow in it, and poured the last of the wine into the depression. Then, standing before her tent as the moon rose, she took off all of her clothes (“Don’t sleep in the clothes you cook in.”) piece by slow piece, and stood a long moment in the moonlight before dropping to her knees and easing into the tent.

Yet again, she slept deeply, but not so soundly that she was unaware of the warmth just on the other side of the tent wall, so close that she knew if she were to put her hand to the flimsy nylon shell and push just the slightest bit, she would feel a mound of muscle and the regular rise and fall of deep, yearning breaths.

In the morning, there was no trace of the wine and rabbit, but there were more trout, beside a heap of purple-black huckleberries. She ate them one by one, bursting them against her palate with her tongue, closing her eyes against the intensity of the flavor. When she opened them, he stood before her, fixing her with the same golden gaze. He waited patiently while she gathered her things, then walked beside her down the trail. At some point, she reached out and rested her hand upon his shoulder, absorbing the heat of the sun-warmed fur, pressing her fingers against him so as to sense the blood coursing just beneath the skin.

He hesitated when they approach the trailhead. But they had already come too far to turn back, and she looked at him and nodded, and so of course he came home with her, and that is how he became her bear husband.

Gwen Florio first worked in the West during the 1990s as a Denver-based national correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer. During her time at the Inquirer, she was also a member of Philadelphia?s Rittenhouse Writers Group. She has received two prose grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a residency from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Florio now lives in Missoula, MO, where she is city editor for the Missoulian newspaper. She is afraid of bears.

Broad Street (novel excerpt)

I took the subway to the party in Center City. I walked from the stop down a quiet street in the business district, where merchandise peeked out from behind thick steel gates. As I approached the address of the old brownstone, I heard the muffled sound of voices and the latest Nirvana album. I felt a wash of panic. I could be back home and under my blanket in twenty minutes; but my feet kept moving forward. I found the appropriate apartment number, rang the bell, and was buzzed in without question.

The party was a crowded gathering of hipsters. I scanned the room for familiar faces, feeling stupid. The few I recognized looked at me, then quickly turned away. Finally, I spotted Noelle.

“Hey Kit,” she smiled. Her sandy hair hung neatly around a tiny, plain face. “How are you?”

She gave me a hug. Noelle would be one of many mutual friends walking the tightrope between the fallen couple. I tried to balance her with a forced smile.

“Hi Noelle,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me. Who’s having this party, anyway?”

“Pete and his girlfriend, Margo.” She nodded toward a guy talking to a group of people. “Pete’s in that band, Smarmy.”

“And that’s Margo over there.” Noelle pointed to another corner.

My eyes followed her finger to the corner of the room. Margo was tall and curvy, her long black hair shining with streaks of midnight blue. Her full lips were accented with bright scarlet lipstick; her blue eyes painted with a swish of black eyeliner. She wore a low-cut red satin dress that hugged her figure, and held a martini and cigarette gracefully in one hand as she smiled at a chatting male guest. I felt flat-chested and plain.

“I’ll introduce you.”

My heart thudded noisily as I followed Noelle closer to this intimidating creature.

“Hey Margo,” Noelle said. “This is my friend, Kit.”

Margo moved her cool smile away from the guy to fix her eyes on me. She inhaled deeply from her cigarette; her pool-blue eyes bored through me. I felt like a frog pinned down to a board, a scalpel dangling above me.

“Don’t you go out with Dale?” she asked.

Noelle gasped.

“I used to,” I said, attempting my cheeriest tone.

“Oh. Sorry,” she said, looking over my shoulder at the rest of the crowd.

“It’s all right,” I mumbled.

Margo’s eyes continued to scan the room. I fiddled nervously with the clasp of my purse as I awaited further instructions from our hostess. After a moment, she looked back at Noelle and me.

“So,” she said in a bored tone. “Can I get you guys a drink?”

“I’m going to go grab a beer outside,” Noelle said.

Just as I was about to follow Noelle’s lead, Margo turned her piercing gaze toward me, and smiled with aloof politeness.

“How about you, Kate, would you like a martini?”

“It’s Kit, and… sure.”

I followed Margo to a table that sparkled with a liquor rainbow. She poured with expert precision, first filling a chrome shaker with ice, then using both hands to tip in a clear stream of vodka, then a splash of vermouth. She snapped on the lid, spun the shaker, then filled the triangular glass until the martini almost kissed the rim. Dropping two olives in the drink, she turned and handed it to me.

“You’ve done that before,” I said, trying to sound charming.

She laughed. “A few times.”

We both took long sips of the grown-up drink. Margo continued to smile politely, but kept her eyes moving around the room.

“What do you do, Kit?” she asked indifferently.

“I’m a proofreader.” I took another sip from the smooth glass. The vodka was already massaging my anxiety with its warm fingers. “How about you?”

Margo waved her hand as if shooing an invisible insect.

“Oh, I do PR for an insurance company. It’s selling out, I know, but it’s decent money.” She turned her gaze from the crowd back to me and leaned closer, crowding the air between us with musky perfume. “Sorry about mentioning Dale. I didn’t know.”

“That’s okay.” I took another sip. “We just had a different definition of monogamy.”

Her eyebrow lifted slightly as she smiled.

“So,” Margo began, pulling another cigarette from a silver case. “Last time I saw Dale he was playing at The Barbary with the Electric Love Muffin. I don’t remember meeting you there.”

“I don’t think I was at that show.”

“Probably a good thing.” Margo took a drag from her cigarette. “They were pretty bad that night. I stopped going to Pete’s shows. I thought it was fun for a while, but then I just got tired of being ignored.” She paused to glare in Pete’s direction, then took a sip from her martini.

“I know,” I said. “Dale was really different in college. H wasn’t in a band in college.”

“A band is just their excuse for getting drunk with their buddies. They don’t even know how to write a decent song.”

“What kind of music do you listen to?” I asked.

“Oh, I like the old stuff, like Wanda Jackson, The Collins Kids. It’s real simple, it has a hook, not like the crap these guys play.”

She lifted her glass to her lips, then realized it was empty.

“This is a problem. Looks like you could use one, too.”

She took my glass from my hand and refilled them both from the tall silver shaker she’d left on the table. I didn’t normally drink hard liquor, and could feel myself disappearing a little, but I was immensely grateful for the company. I hadn’t really talked to anyone about Dale. My parents didn’t want to upset me, so they acted like we’d never dated. My kid sister was wrapped up in her own little college clique. I wanted to tell these things to Margo, not just because we had things in common, but I really wanted her to like me. We sat on the couch and smoked cigarettes and swirled martini after martini, my intimidation dwindling with each new glass.

“I never knew what I would find when I came home from work,” I slurred slightly. “Sometimes Dale would just be sitting around smoking with guys from his band, and I’d walk in all corporate and they’d look at me like I was someone’s mother.”

Margo nodded her head sympathetically.

“I never knew where Dale was,” I continued, “and if I asked he’d say I shouldn’t be so paranoid.”

“What an ass,” Margo said. “Pete’s the same way. He’s a bartender, so he sleeps in and stays up late and listens to music when I’m trying to get to sleep so I can get up the next morning and make some decent money to pay our bills. All he cares about is ‘the band’ and his friends.”

“Exactly.”

We both stared at the tattooed people in the room.

“You know,” Margo said, “these people work in comic book stores and coffee shops and they feel so superior to people like us who have the nerve to get a 9-to-5 job.” She shook her head in disgust. “Just because they can wear an eyebrow ring to work they think they’re fucking artists. What gives them the corner on creativity?”

“Don’t forget record stores,” I said, “with their superior fucking attitude. God forbid if you pick up the wrong fucking CD and they look at you like you just voted for George Bush.”

“Please,” Margo rolled her eyes and took a long sip of her drink.

We stared at the clueless gathering, unaware of the invisible daggers we were hurling into their backs.

“I know I could write a better song than most of the people in this room,” Margo said. “I play a little guitar. It’s not that hard.”

“Really? Have you ever played with a band?”

“Nah. I just mess around on one of Pete’s acoustic guitars. How about you — do you play?”

“Actually, I kind of know how to play bass. Dale gave me one, and I took it with me when I moved because I knew he wanted it back, but felt too guilty to ask for it.”

Margo took a drag off her cigarette. “Maybe we should get together. See what happens.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

Margo glanced over at Pete. Two guys who looked just like him stood at his sides. They were passing a joint and laughing. She turned back to me.

“I can definitely get an electric guitar from Pete. He has, like, a dozen of them. I’m sure he can spare one.”

The buzz of the martinis accentuated my enthusiasm. Thoughts of parties and gigs and new friends clouded my blurry vision.

“We can play at my house,” I said. “I have plenty of room.”

“And I’ve got a ton of song ideas. Real simple stuff. I could bring some CDs over.” Margo fell back into the couch and grinned. “This is great. What better way to get back at these guys than to piss on their precious territory? Let’s do it.”

Margo lifted her martini in the air and we clinked glasses, the bond as strong as a blood oath.

Goon

Around the corner he come all panting and wobble-eyed with his little sticks kicking out to the sides, and he slipped because the grass was wet. One of his Velcro shoes flew off and knocked into the siding. He got himself together, picked up his shoe, and bounced inside the house. Willard. I told Angela he’s over-sugared.

The older one, Brian, come sprinting across the yard. “Will!” he’s hollering. “Will!” He dropped his old bat as he flew past me, and the screen door slapped shut, and then everything was quiet again.

I went over to the wall and turned the water off.

I’d moved in a couple months earlier. Angela and I talked about it for a few weeks, and I wasn’t hot on it at first, but she was ready to take a chance again, she said. She said her boys could use someone, too. Okay, I said. When this rental on Blue Ferry Road come available, I packed my stuff and their stuff and moved us all out here.

I got to know the boys pretty well pretty fast. Brian’s
happy to have anybody throw a ball at him. He’s one of those
kids that, if they don’t have a catch partner, you always
see staggering around the yard, chucking balls up in the air to
themself. He’ll do pretty much what you tell him to. Will,
he’s got more of an artistic side. He’ll sit for hours
drawing bloodied-up versions of the cartoons he watches, wearing
out felt tip markers to the point he’s got to lick them to
keep them going. His tongue, it’ll be purple or green whenever
he’s explaining his stories to you. They run for pages, and
he only ever draws on one side, which is a waste, I said, but he’d
throw a fit if you made him save on paper.

I could hear thuds. The two of them were talking in their bedroom.
The light fixture in the hall was rattling.

“Y’all quit dribbling in the house!” I called. “You
heard me now, Brian!”

When I come in, Brian looked up and give me a shrug. He didn’t
have the ball, so I looked to the other side of the room, and,
what it was was, Will was standing against the wall, knocking his
old head against the sheetrock, whump, whump, whump. Brian and
I stood between their twin beds watching him go at it. “Way
too much sugar,” I said.

Brian stared. “Geeze.”

Whump.

“Quit that now,” I said. “You’re going
to get a-“

Whump.

“Melonhead.” I took his shoulder and set him back
on the bed. He was wearing the blue shirt with the old messy looking
monster on it he liked. Brian made to go. “Hang on a minute,
Tex. Stay put.”

“Why?”

“Because I said.”

“Are you still washing the truck?”

“What?”

“Are you . . .” he said, like I was an idiot, “still
washing thetruck?”

“Just stay here,” I told him.

We looked at them. They were pretty sticky.

“What the hell you been doing? Hurry up.”

Will had pulled his knees up to his chin and was rocking back
and forth on his bedspread. He hooked his thumbs into the neck
of his shirt and wiped at his nose so he looked like a bandit.

“You’re an odd one, Mr. Will,” I said.

Brian come back in, drying his hands on his basketball shorts.
They’d been up to something.

“Alright . . .” I sat down on the bed. I had to ask.

A rusty barbed wire fence run through the woods behind the house.
It had been there a long time, and the trees had grown around the
wire in places. Parts of it were all swallowed up in bark. We picked
our way over logs and through the trees, until Brian said, “Here!” and
he ducked under the fence and began to pass through. Will lollygagged
behind us. He swerved through the leaves like his compass was loose,
and when I called his name, he bumped off a tree, made some googly
sound effect, then fell down flat, spazzing with his arms out.

“Ow, mother!” Brian pulled his jersey off a barb.
He took a step back on the other side. “Come on,” he
said. “It’s up the hill!”

“Let’s go, Willard.” I raised the middle wire. “Get
through here now.”

He didn’t want to, but I waited, and so he pushed himself
up and slipped under. The two of them run up the cowpath into the
clearing, and for a second I thought about the way all kids run.
As I come out of the trees, it was like being in the country. Where
Angela’s and I were living was kind of the outer belt of
suburbs, and a lot of folks who lived here drove across the river
and into the city for work. There were gas pumps not more than
three hundred yards away, but you couldn’t see them. You
couldn’t see any manmade stuff at all here. All you could
see was the fence running around the field, and then the hills,
and the grass, and the trees, and that’s it. No wires in
the sky. It was August, a couple weeks before school.

They run through the shadow of a cloud, and I followed them up
the empty hill. They’d told me they’d found something
dead.

[img_assist|nid=828|title=Main Street in Manayunk by Pauline Braun ©2008|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=149|height=94]
Nights, Angela would go to bed before me so she’d be asleep by when I got there, which, I was learning, was how she preferred it. For a long while, I worked only second shifts with the ovens—we’re the largest processor of canned pet food in the region—and a few of us would always go out after, and I’d be home around one or so. But then they moved me to doing a lot of thirds, emptying tankers of liquid horse meat. I’d have a drink in the kitchen before bed, and when I lay beside her, I tried to sleep, though I’d usually be too wound up with things I wanted to ask her, like where she was all day when she said she only had meetings in the morning. Traffic was always bad, she said. The sun would come up, and we’d go through it all over, and as I lay there, I knew the field mice that chewed holes in my clothes were creeping around, under the boxspring—maybe even in it—or climbing through her shoes in the closet. The traffic racing on the highway was sometimes enough to keep me from thinking too much on them. People use that road to skip the stoplights out of town. They travel too fast on it, and along the shoulder you’ll find possum and deer that didn’t get out of the way. Angela worried the kids would play too close to the ditch or skateboard too far down the asphalt drive. She told me over and over it wasn’t a good home for kids. She didn’t like it out here. She wanted to find, eventually, a better place to live, even if it would be a little smaller, like their apartment before.

The exterminator told us to get a cat, so we did, but it was
a prowler, and one night come home with a gash in its chest. Even
in the house, it took two days to catch it and take it to the vet.
I had to put the medicine on because Angela wouldn’t, it
gave her the willies. Finally one night I come in, it hopped off
the counter and out the screendoor and we never saw it again. It
bothered Will the most. He used to put paper helmets on the thing.
Hero. Hero never caught one mouse I knew of.

The headlights would set the window’s shadow crawling across
the ceiling, and I remember thinking what might have put the hole
in that cat’s chest like that? A claw, maybe. Or teeth. I
pressed my fingers on the tattoo behind her shoulder and felt her
lungs fill. I rubbed the rose like I rubbed the salve on the stitches.
Maybe a barbed wire fence had done it, or some old boy’s
rake.

It was a young red Hereford , and it was lying on its side in the grass. The boys were standing over it. The smell of animal was strong in the heat, and I slowed as I got nearer, and then my stomach just dropped to my hipbones. I felt dizzy. Sticks were poking out of the little cow’s nostrils and mouth—a whole mess of them. Its white face was all stuffed up with them and made it look like some old broom. I hadn’t ever seen anything dead that way before.

Brian studied me. He tried to laugh. “It was dead,” he said.

I pushed him over. Will fell to the ground, too, on his own, and a second later he was crying.

“What were you guys thinking? This is stupid.”

Will stopped just long enough to see how his brother would answer. When Brian didn’t, Will started crying again. He rolled in the grass.

“Do you hear me?” I said. “Knock it off, Willard. Get up.” I squatted down next to it and looked at the sticks jammed up in there. “You a part of this, too?” I asked Will. It was something else. “Both of you, get these sticks out of it, right now.” I stepped back so they could move in.

They began to pull them out of its face one at a time. They seemed
to know just how. Will, he dangled a long twig in front of his
eyes for a sec. Brian was working faster.

“Did you all think it would bite you or something? Huh?”

Will dropped the stick. “It bit Zach. On his fingers.” His
mouth hung open.

Brian glared at him vicious. He turned away.

“You mean it wasn’t dead?” I said. “Brian?”

He stayed crouched there, wiping a slimy stick in the grass.

“Was it or wasn’t it?”

“Not at first,” Will said.

Zach lived across the highway and around the corner from us.
I could hear the TV on, but no one come to the door, so I knocked
again, harder. “Zach!”

“PlayStation,” Brian said.

Their crummy dog started barking.

I poked my head in the door and called again, and the TV snapped
off, and so I went in after him. The dog was jumping all under
my feet. I pushed it away with my boot.

It was the first time I’d ever been in their place. Cereal
bowls on the kitchen table, a cracker box on the floor with crackers
all over. They were keeping the fridge closed with masking tape.
I caught fat Zach by the shirt as he tried to squeeze out the sliding
door, and I hauled him around, and we pulled the screen off its
track. I stepped on the damn dog again, and it yelped and went
flat then scurried across the dirty linoleum to I don’t know
where. I whirled Zach onto the taped-up couch. It let out a slow
hiss as he sank in it.

“You stretched out my shirt!” he said. The dog was
still yipping.

“Yeah, hell, and I broke the door, too. Will!” I
lifted the screen and got the wheels back in the groove. “Goddamn
it. Brian! Get in here.”

They come in slow.

Will raised a hand. “Hi, Zach.” He plopped down on
the couch, wiggled a sec, then pulled the black remote out from
under him. He held it in his hands like he’d never seen one
before.

“No. Put it down,” I told him.

“What?”

“Just put it down,” I said.

“Y’all get off my property,” Zach told us.

“You shut up a minute. Sit on the couch there, too, Brian.”

Three blind monkeys they looked like. They needed a leader, but
there wasn’t any.

“Somebody better start saying something,” I
said. “Now.”

Zach got nervous. Angela’s wouldn’t look at him. “Stupid
cow was eating my pop tart,” he said.

Will’s eyes lit up. “You were feeding it,
Zach. Remember?”

“Remember,” I said. “You better remember.”

“Not all of it! I wasn’t,” Zach said. “I wasn’t.
It just started-“

“So we had to stop it,” Brian explained.

“It wouldn’t stop eating Zach’s food,” Will
cried. He got to his feet, not even knowing he was doing it.

“Sit down. And stay sat down.”

“You seen it,” Zach said to the boys.

Brian was real calm. “That’s the way it happened,
Tim.” He’d get better at this as he got older.

I tried to imagine how they brought it down. Chasing after it.
The whole thing. “Regular heroes. Stopped a cow from eating
a pop tart. How’d you think to start putting the sticks in
it?”

They shrugged.

“Huh? You guys aren’t even supposed to be in that
pasture,” I said.

They tailed me like dogs to the metal shed on our lot. The backyard
was damp, and the shed was situated in its lowest spot—it
was always full of mosquitoes. I brushed a cobweb off my nose and
grabbed the old shovel.

“Ho, mother,” Brian smiled, rubbing his shoulder. “You
gonna bury it, Tim?”

I tossed the thing to him. He spun it in his hands.

“No,” I said.

I let that sink in. We went back into the woods.

None of them was very good. Will, he was about useless. Zach
was probably the best because he was the heaviest, but he wasn’t
into it. In little more than a half hour, they had this uneven
ditch about four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep.

“Shovel sucks,” Zach said.

Will showed me his palm. “I got a splinter.”

A horsefly settled just below the calf’s eye and sat there
in the sun like it was waiting for a bus. “The hole’s
not big enough yet,” I told them. “Look at it.”

Zach held his arms out to get the width of the calf, then he
tried to hold his measure as he moved his hands over the hole. “It’s
goddamn close.”

Brian snatched up the shovel. “Why we have to put it in
the ground?” he asked. “Won’t it just-“

“Because y’all killed it.” I looked around
at them. “Aren’t you even embarrassed? I’d be.
Or maybe you’d rather go over there, Brian, and tell the
farmer y’all killed his calf.”

“No.”

“Huh? And for no reason,” I added.

“It wasn’t just me.” Brian put the shovel on
his shoulder and swung for the fence.

“Get serious,” I said.

“Tim, shouldn’t we tell the farmer anyway?” Will
asked.

The barn roof showed just over the hill.

Zach wiped his nose. “Don’t forget it was eating
my food. We said the reason.”

I threw a stick at his head, but it missed.

“That’s right,” Will remembered. “It
was eating his pop tart.”

“So I heard.”

The sun was getting low. Brian was quiet. He tapped the dead
Hereford softly with the shovel.

“Dig,” I said.

“Oh mother . . .”

When we got back, Angela’s car was in the drive behind
my truck. “Aw, hell, your mom’s home,” I said.
It was a joke they never got.

Zach walked home punching a cloud of gnats like he was hacking
through some jungle, and the boys and I went inside.

“Where have you been?” she wanted to know. “No
note. No nothing.”

They escaped for their room.

“Where have you been?” I said. “We went out
on a hike. Wash up!” I called to them. She faced me, waiting
for something better. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll
tell you about it later.”

I squirted Lemon Joy on my hands and knocked the faucet on. I
wanted to say things.

She set two cans on the counter.

I shut the water off.

“You want green beans,” she said, “or baked
beans?”

I don’t know, she and I had met in this strip mall bar
I tried after work once because I was tired of the bullshit at
the regular one. It was called Sidewinders. It was next to a Chinese
take-out, and she was eating a rice thing with her cigarette going
when I come in. Rum and ginger ale. I sat down next to her, and
I asked the sleepy girl behind the counter for a Budweiser, which
took her a whole five minutes to get it, open it, and set it on
the little cardboard. The whole time I’m waiting, Angela’s
stopped eating and is just staring at the side of my face–smoking
at me–because I practically sat on her lunch when there’s
a hundred open seats in the place. That’s my style.

“I bet they call you Apeneck,” she said.

“Who does?”

“Somebody ought to.”

I bought her a drink.

Snoozin Susan brown bagged us a six, and we took it out to my
truck. We drove out to the lake, to that parking lot behind the
parking lot that had a chain up for a while, but the chain was
down and I just pulled back where the weeds grew through the gravel
and stopped beside this tall brush pile somebody cleared. The lake
glittered through the trees.

“You’re making me feel back in high school,” she
said.

“Sorry,” I said, and I cracked another can for her.
I opened the crammed glovebox to get a napkin to wrap around the
can, la-dee-dah.

“Good lord,” she said. “Half Burger King’s
stuffed in there.”

I kissed her.

“Apeneck,” she laughed, pulling at my hairs. “A-a-ape-ne-e-eck.”

I laughed, too. No one had ever called me that before.

She slid closer. “What did you do to your hands?” She
kissed them. Ducks were quacking.

“Nothing,” I said. “Some bullshit.”

When I come downstairs morning after the cow thing, Will was
cross-legged in front of the TV. The volume was turned low, and
he was sucking on a tube of Gogurt.

“Morning, Mr. Will. How’d you sleep?” I had
a headache. “You’re up early,” I tried again.

“Can we go to the grave?”

“The grave. No. I don’t want you guys in the pasture
at all for a while. Why would you want to go to the grave?” I
waggled my fingers at him.

“To put flowers on it.”

“I see. And where would you get flowers, Willard?”

“At Walgreen’s they have some. Fake kind.”

The nearest intersection was about a quarter mile down the highway,
and there was a new little plaza there, built for neighborhoods
creeping this way from town. So far, they had the gas station and
a drugstore and a little pizza place, where I took them once, and
a hair salon. Couple offices, maybe. One place had kung fu classes.
Others had lease signs in the windows.

“And what are you going to buy flowers with?” I asked.

“Money. Duh.”

I went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Duh. A fresh trail
of mouse droppings run along the counter’s splashguard. During
the night, I had come down for a drink of juice and found a mouse
scrambling in the empty sink. It couldn’t get out. It reminded
me of the kids with their boards at the skate park. I stood there
half-awake, watching it scratch its way up the steel sides only
to slide back down. Then I gripped the roll of paper towels and
set to it with soft, quiet crushes. I barely slept at all.

Will sang along with a commercial for some sort of crap.

“Hey,” I called.

He come to the doorway.

“C’mere, buddy.” I took Angela’s purse
off the chair.

Zach’s mom called and spilled the beans. Old Zach the Sack
complained I made them dig–it give him blisters–and soon it all
come out, and, presto, the bag calls Angela.

“Why didn’t you tell me?

“Why did you bury it?

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

She’s a strong arguer, Angela is. She gets energy from
it, though I’m not sure about her reasoning sometimes. She’d
gone on and on and ended her favorite way with, “End of story.” She
called Information.

The farmer was a Carlson or a Carlton , and as soon as she had
the right number she called the old boy up. “I’ve got
to go to work,” she told me. “You’re going to
take care of this.”

“Okay,” I said. “I thought I’d
taken care of it yesterday.”

“I know you do. I know you do . . . Hello,” she said. “Is
this Mr. Carlson?”

His mailbox was a half mile down the road from ours, the opposite
way from the plaza, but then I had to drive my truck another quarter
mile down his old gravel lane, which went around the foot of the
pasture, and then up to his house and barn on the far slope. I
drove slow. A new Chevy sat in the dirt drive. I got out and shut
my door. The house had a cool, settled look to it, and the whole
place, even outside, smelled like a basement. It might have been
the weather. He was waiting just inside the screendoor, and he
let me into the enclosed porch and stepped aside as the door eased
shut against my back.

In an instant, a dog was sniffing my boots. This happens regular
to us who work the floor at the plant. I tried to shake it without
overdoing it, but it growled and started sniffing and licking again.
Carlson spoke to the dog then shut it in the kitchen.

The porch was concrete and covered with a big round rug, and
a pair of stuffed chairs faced each other, and a shelf of magazines
and newspapers. A chain of pop can tabs hung from an empty birdcage,
and this feather dangled at the end of that. It was dyed blue,
like the kind you might win at a carnival or get at a gift shop.

“Where you keep your bird at?” I asked.

“It died from fumes from something I had on the stove,” Carlson
said. “On accident.” He was heavy, and moved and talked
slow, but he had this calmness and confidence about him because
of it—he might have hurried on his own account, but it was
clear you weren’t going to rush him. I never got the impression
he was dumb. He smelled like he had just shaved. “You want
to have a seat here?” He raised the birdcage by its pole
and set it aside. “I was surprised to get your call, but
I was glad you did. I hadn’t realized what happened. Go on.
Sit.”

“That was Angie who called,” I told him.

“So she said.”

“Believe me, we’d love to tell you this was all an
accident.”

He sat down, too. “I know you would. I’d prefer to
believe it.”

“We can pay you for it.”

His big hands rested in his lap. He was looking at the stripe
on my boot where his dog had licked.

“I don’t know it’s the price that worries me
so much,” he said, “though it might’ve at one
time. I can see how it might be some relief to you to pay something
for it.” He smiled sadly. “Her calling, your coming
up here says a bit. I appreciate that part.” He cleared his
throat and looked hard at me. “I just went out there after
lunch. You all buried it?”

I leaned forward, nodding.

“I suppose there’s been some pretty sharp words in
the household over all this,” he said.

“Yes sir, there sure has.”

“Imagine there could be some more yet.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant there should be, or if he was
just guessing there would. I leaned back and found myself not caring
what he meant, exactly. “You bet there will,” I told
him. “What was that calf worth?” I asked. “It’s
important those boys learn the price of things.”

“It’s not just the price.”

“Still.”

A flicker of sun caught his face through the screen. “Did
you notice it was the only one out there?”

I hadn’t. I told him so.

“I haven’t kept my own cows in ten years,” he
said, as if it were something. “That one was my granddaughter’s.”

“She had her own calf?”

“Prizewinner,” he said. “She helped raise it.”

“Then we definitely want to pay her for it.”

His mouth moved slowly as he stared at me. “She’s
moved off with her mother to we don’t know where.” The
dog started barking behind the door. “They’re not really
your boys, are they?”

“No.”

“How they manage to kill it? They got a gun?”

“No,” I said. My voice raised a little. “Sticks.
Rocks. A bat, maybe.”

He studied me, but I didn’t flinch. He looked out the window
of the old porch. “How old are they?” he asked.

I told him.

I called in sick and went and found her in the Sidewinder. She
was sitting with some smiley guy, with her stool turned to face
him, sipping her rum and ginger ale. She saw me but didn’t
say anything as I sat down on the other side of her. Susan waited
her to say yea or nay, but Angela she just kept her back to me.
Maybe she rolled her eyes.

“I went to talk to that old Carlson,” I said.

She turned half around. There was lipstick on her straw. “You
should have,” she said.

“I’m Tim.” I stretched my hand past her. He
didn’t take it. “You all talking business?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she said.

“Can’t you see I’m sick,” I said.

She lit a fresh one. “There’s no point in prolonging
this. How do you want to play it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just get it over with,” the man told her. He wasn’t
smiling anymore.

I went to my closet and threw all my clothes into my duffel bag.
I had broke my right middle finger on him when it got caught weird
in his collar. I sat going over my checkbook, one-handed, until
they come home.

They had been at their dad’s girlfriend’s place,
and Angela had picked them up, after I guess she had taken Smiley
home or to the hospital. She didn’t explain anything. I was
planning to check into a motel somewhere.

The boys were chewing candy bars and went straight past me to
the TV. Will, he was carrying a plastic package of birthday prizes.
He held it in front of my face as he went by.

“What’s those for?” I asked.

“The grave.”

“I thought you were getting flowers.”

“We didn’t like them,” Angela said. “Get
out of here. I’m serious.”

We stared across my big bag that had the outside pockets chewed
up by mice.

Will came in holding a plastic cup. “This was under the
couch,” he said.

“Well, that’s not where it belongs,” Angela
said. “Go and drop it in the dishwater. I’ll wash it
up.”

He skated to the sink in his socks, dropped it in, then went
to her, and she held him between us while she smoked. “There’s
something wrong with you,” she hissed at me. “How many
chances do you want? You’re messed up.”

“I’m messed up? You spend afternoons with Dudley
Dipshit, and I’m messed up. What, you expect me to hug him?”

“You knew it was going to happen,” she said. “You
wanted it.”

Later, I thought of more things I could have said.

In the pasture, Will opened the birthday prizes one by one. He
was fascinated by them, and I could see him struggling to keep
on task, as Angela put it. The boys insisted I come with them,
and Angela didn’t say no. All she said to me was, “You
don’t ride with us.” I followed them in my truck.

She was slowed down some, done with the insults and the hollering
and just waiting for me to shove off. I was ready to. The boys
could tell something was wrong with us. She talked quietly to them,
almost in a whisper, while to me she spoke a touch louder than
regular. It was as if there were two groups—she and I were
one, and she and the boys were another—and, to be a part
of them both, she had to run two different personalities.

“Aw, hurry up, Will,” Brian said.

Will whipped around. “Be quiet, Brian!” He pulled
a spider ring from his finger and added it to the circle in the
dirt.

Angela tapped Brian, and they walked down to the creek for a
spell, since it seemed Will might be a while. The creek run from
a dirty pond on the hilltop and curled its way to the bigger creek
below Carlson’s house. The banks were steep with switchbacks
where the dirt had caved away. As my eyes followed it, I saw Carlson’s
blue truck driving toward us. For a sec, I wondered what to do,
how we might go without him being the wiser. He pulled up beside
us.

Carlson looked at the little rubber and plastic things scattered
over the dirt. “What you doing, there?” he asked.

Will glanced up at him. “These things are to mark his grave,” he
said, standing up.

Carlson got out of his truck, and his dog waddled over to my
boot.

“You about finished, Will?” I said.

“No. Why’d they leave? They were supposed to stay
for the whole funeral.”

Angela and Brian sat beside the creek, talking. Brian bent to
the mud, pulled something out, and swished it back and forth in
the water.

“Well, I’m not sure they understood exactly what
you’re doing here, Willard. When you’re the master
of ceremonies, it’s important you explain to folks what’s
going on, so they don’t nod off during the service.”

He swept his hand. “These things are to mark its grave,” he
said again.

Carlson opened his wallet and unfolded a little green award ribbon. “You
can put that on there, too.”

“What’s it for?”

“That’s its tag,” Carlson said.

Will flattened it in his palm and tried to read the gold lettering—maybe
Smiley could teach him–then he just put it with the rest.

“They all mark his grave,” Will was saying. “Especially
this one.” He picked up a sparkwheel and pulled its trigger. “I
should keep this one, to remember.”

“I think you better leave it.”

His eyes clouded. “Goon!”

“What?”

“Mommy says you’re a goon, Daddy says you’re
a goon. Everybody thinks you’re a goon.” He
pulled the trigger and turned away to watch it spin in private.

“Aw, that’s not true, Will,” I said.

Carlson waved and went down slowly to introduce himself to Angela.

“What else she say, Will?”

“We’re moving to another place. And you’re
going somewhere else. End of story.”

Angela shook Carlson’s hand, and he walked off like he
had business to do, check his fence, maybe. Brian called out and
come running past Angela up toward Will and me. He held out his
hand when he reached us. They huddled close, like kids will when
they’ve got something new to show. Will took a step back.

“To mark the grave!” Brian grinned. He laid it with
the other things. Some blanched bone. It looked like something
washed up from the sea.

“No!” said Will. “It’s not part of it!”

“Yes,” Brian said.

“No! Mom!” Willard flew down the hill, sticks kicking.
She sat on an old stump, smoking a cigarette, keeping her distance.
He was waving his arms, trying to explain the situation before
he even got there. He clutched her belt loops. The wind blew her
hair. The ground went lighter, then darker. Then lighter.

“She said I could ride back to the house with you,” Brian
told me.

“Then what?” We stood there. “Okay, let’s
go.”

We left without waving. The dog come running down the hill. It
shot out of the weeds when we turned the bend and chased us down
the lane. When I hit the brakes it come out in front of us and
stood with its paws out flat and lowered its head. It fell in to
chasing us along the passenger side, barking wild again. Brian
watched it beneath the window. I slowed a little so it could keep
up. Once it popped up high enough where I could actually see its
ears, and Brian called it a name. I put my right arm out to hold
him as I put on the brakes. My broken finger throbbed on his chest.

There was a yelp.

The wheels skidded in the dust and gravel.

“Oh mother,” Brian said. He looked over at me. “We
hit it!” he said. “You hit it.”

I could see the highway.

He opened his door and leaned to look, then hopped out. The dog
limped off into the high weeds. He didn’t call to it. The
weeds were still. He leaned back in the door. “He be alright?” he
asked.

“He’s still walking,” I said.

Brian stepped away from the cab. He looked down the road. Angela’s
car was coming way behind us. She stopped before they got any closer.
I made out the shape of her head over the steering wheel way back
there. We were staring at each other, backwards and forwards. Just
get it over with. I could still hear the way he said it. I
said it myself.

“What?” Brian asked.

“You go with her now. Tell her about the dog.”

“But she said-“

“Go with her, I said.” I opened the glove
box, and brushed the napkins onto the floor. “Here.”

“What?”

“Here. Take these.”

“Why?”

“You give them to her.” The bundle felt stiff in
my hand. “Just like this.” I wrapped his hand around
the straws. He shut the door and backed away as I pulled onto the
highway.

Chad Willenborg’s work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Believer, CityPaper, and Fugue, and has been nominated for Best American Short Stories. He is working on a new novel set in Philadelphia.