Fiction – Page 18 – Philadelphia Stories

Anthracite

The house, so full with the heavy breath of prayer and the shifting feet of the waiting, settles another inch and the long vigil is suddenly over. Ona’s mother is dead. One after another, the women untangle their hands from their rosary beads and feel relief in knowing that now there will be more productive things to do than pray.

Ona’s young brothers are sent up the hill to wait for their father and uncles to emerge from the mine. From there the men and boys will spend the evening and next morning in a tavern near the colliery, leaving the women to their preparations. In such situations the barkeeper is made doctor and priest. He will administer boilermakers throughout the night until the Holy Ghost manifests itself, laying every man on the floor and covering each in forgetful sleep.

It is this way in a valley in Pennsylvania, between the Wyoming and Back Mountains where the land dips down a thousand feet or more to meet the mines. The Northern Coal field runs for miles underground and all of the immigrants in the patch towns along the Susquehanna River have in common the one industry of mining the hard, long burning, Anthracite coal. The people here call the mines the Shades and the carts that take the men down there are known as the devil’s train. There is a story that is told almost like a joke that goes around with many embellishments: A miner tells a priest that the mines are damp and cold and unlike any picture of hell he has ever seen in his prayer book. The priest makes the sign of the cross over the man and whispers to the miner saying, “You haven’t dug deep enough yet.”

Ona’s aunts, grandmother and the neighbor women, speak in Lithuanian and short bits of English as they move around her mother’s body. They gently remove pieces of her clothing, and begin to wash her. Her grandmother, Urszula, a woman about as wide and as tall as a coal stove, summons the girl and says, “Ona, bring me the rags from the cellar we use to tie up the tomato plants.” But Ona stands looking up at her grandmother, her mociute, wondering if she misunderstands what the old lady is saying. Urszula points to the cellar door and shouts. “Get! Now!”

Ona is afraid of the cellar, believing that the ghost of her grandfather is tucked into a corner of the coal bin. It was only two years ago, when Ona was ten, that the company men emerged from the Black Maria, the company hearse, and laid her grandfather out on the front porch as casually as the dairyman delivers the milk. His hobnailed shoes and lunch bucket still wait near the cellar door, hoping someday he will hear the breaker whistle and rise up to go back to work.

Urszula’s glower alone seems to draw the door to the cellar open. Ona runs down the stairs wasting no time and finds the strips of old flannel shirts on a shelf filled with empty canning jars. Her mother’s red apron is there too, hidden in the basement months ago to keep from tempting the young mother from getting up from her sick bed and doing the household chores. Ona wants to touch it. She wants to pick it up and smell the strange mix of the peppermint candy her mother kept in its pockets and the years of flour that no amount of washing will take from its fibers. But Ona’s fear of the cellar and her grandmother’s impatience do not let her stop to do this. She is about to fly back up the steps when the door at the top of the stairs opens again. Above her, descending the steps sideways in order to clear the narrow stairwell, are the burliest women in the patch, Mrs. Degutis and her sister-in-law. Without searching the cellar at any great length, they find a heavy wooden door that is propped against the foundation and carry it up the steps. Ona closely follows the sturdy pair back upstairs.

[img_assist|nid=679|title=Derelict Pool by Summer Edward © 2007|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=149|height=105]The women take the door and set it on two small tables in the front room and drape a clean, white sheet over it. Ona follows the women as they lift her mother from the day bed near the coal stove and carry her to the cold parlor where they lay her on top of the door. Urszula takes the rags from Ona’s hands. She lifts her daughter’s burial dress to just above the knees and ties her legs together with the soft strips of flannel. At first it is only a slight shudder Ona can see running through her grandmother’s hands and then the tremor overtakes the old woman. Ona’s grandmother, no longer able to hide her sorrow, buries her face in her handkerchief and weeps while Ona’s aunt binds her dead sister’s hands with rosary beads to keep them twined in prayer. One by one, the women go home, leaving Ona and Urszula alone in the house.

“Ona, stay here and sit with your motina.” Her grandmother orders as she slides the parlor doors shut and leaves the girl in the front room alone. “It is very important that someone sit with her now.”

Ona does as she is told and sits in a far corner of the parlor and begins to fret over what else her mother might need from her. Before her illness, her mother seemed like a child to Ona playing simple games with her children and secretly giving each the sweets she hid for them in her pockets. More like a sister than a mother, she rarely scolded Ona for her childhood indiscretions; it was always her father or grandmother who did these things. Ona studies her mother’s face now rigid and stern but still framed in soft brown hair. For the first time Ona is afraid of her. She waits for some movement. Staring at the body before her, she begins to think she can see her mother’s chest rise and fall with faint breath. A rattling of pots in the kitchen sends her running to the parlor doors. She slides them open with such force that a picture jumps from its nail and tumbles to the floor.

“Mociute! Mociute!” Ona screams, “Mama is breathing! She is breathing, I can see it!” Urszula barrels across the creaking floorboards. With a cast iron pot and dishtowel in her hands, Urszula’s concentration has shifted from her daughter to the more pressing matters at hand of cooking and housekeeping. She makes a hook of her index finger, catches hold of the girl’s collar and drags her to the kitchen. She is about to reprove the child for the disruption and her seeming disrespect, but all of a sudden, she steps back and can little recognize the motherless girl that now stands before her.

“Oh, my Ona. Come. Come here. For certain, my daughter, my dukte is dead. I know this.” And she pulls the girl to her side until Ona is nestled deep in the woman’s embrace. “Leave your motina to herself for now, before the priest gets here and her soul will be gone from us for good.”

Urszula gently runs her plump and callused hand over the girl’s face and takes a piece of flannel from her apron pocket, tying Ona’s hair back.

“Ona, you have never baked bread, have you?” asks her grandmother. Before the girl can answer, Urszula takes another strip of flannel and blindfolds Ona until she can no longer see what is in front of her.

“What are you doing, Mociute?” Ona protests and grabs at the cloth.

“Be still, Ona. We are going to bake bread. I will teach you just as I taught your mother, the way my mother taught me, the way you will teach your daughter. Tomorrow, you will see, they will come with cakes and ham but no bread. It is the simplest of things and that is why no one will think to bring it.”

“But why are you putting the rag over my eyes?”

“Because it is the best way to learn. You mustn’t take it off until I tell you.”

She leads Ona by the hand to the center of the kitchen where there is ample room for the task and puts a big porcelain bowl on a chair. She drags a can of flour over to the girl’s side and gives her a teacup. “Now, start scooping up flour into the bowl and keep scooping until I say stop.” Urszula then tells her to add varying sized pinches of yeast, sugar and salt and each granule scores its memory into her fingertips. Urszula lifts the water pitcher down from the warming cupboard in the stove and hands it to her granddaughter. Ona pours the water into the flour until her grandmother impatiently shouts, “No more!”

The old woman places her hands on top of Ona’s and rocks out the motion that is required for kneading. Soon, the heel of Ona’s hand is pushing the dough away and her fingers bring it back, and again the heel of her hand pushes the dough away and the fingers roll it back.

“Good, Ona. Very good! Now, keep doing that until your arms hurt just a little.

Then we will cover it with a blanket and wait.” Urszula wipes flour from the girl’s cheek and she checks the blindfold to make sure it is secure.

Before long Ona calls out, “Mociute, can I stop now?”

“Yes, Ona, you can stop.” Urszula says and leads the girl by the arm to a chair.

“Can I take the blindfold off now, Mociute?

“No, you must sit here and learn how long it takes for the dough to rise. I will let you know when it is time for the next thing to be done.”

She listens to her grandmother move around the kitchen, too tired to contemplate the events of the day. It is late and the rhythm of Urszula’s movements and the darkness provided by the blindfold lulls her into a deep slumber. After a time that she cannot gauge, her Grandmother begins gently to nudge her shoulders and calls out to her saying, “Ona, Ona! We need more coal for the stove. It is almost all ash.” Ona can hear the handle of the bucket rattle against its side as it is handed to her. “Go and fill it.”

“No, Mociute.” Ona pleads pushing the bucket back into her grandmother’s hands. “Please don’t make me go to the cellar.”

“I can’t go!” Urszula protests. “My legs are too swollen today. You go. The house will get cold. And the bread, it has to bake!”

“I’m scared of the cellar.”

“Ona, there is nothing in this house that you should be afraid of.”

“But I am scared. I don’t like it down there.” Ona says as she grips the seat of her chair.

“I will stand at the top of the stairs and I will wait for you. Let me take that rag off your eyes for now.” Urszula assures her and leads the girl to the cellar door.

Ona descends slowly as her hands reach out to the protruding fieldstone of the foundation for balance. She walks towards the front of the house to the coal bin, a room about the size of two large closets that is filled waist high with coal. When it is delivered, the children run to the front of the house. They stand leaning on the railing as the men insert a long chute from the truck to the hatch below the porch. Here, they can watch as the men let tumble the shiny, black coal in a jangling rush.

“Mociute!” Ona yells out when she reaches the door of the bin. “I’m scared.” But all she hears in response is her grandmother’s stomping foot on the kitchen floor.

Ona opens the door. The air is cold and sulfurous as it pours over her. She quickly scoops up a bucketful and turns to run up the stairs but feels a tug at her wrist. It is her grandfather. Ona believes she is screaming but all she can hear is the wind blowing through the opened hatch of the coal bin.

“Look, Ona, I have left that hatch open again and the snow is getting in the house,” her grandfather says shaking his head from side to side.

She tries to speak and pulls away, but his grip is firm.

“Ona, please, don’t leave so quickly.” He straightens up, still holding Ona by the wrist and pushes the small metal door of the hatch shut. Her grandfather looks weary to her and in need of a chair to sit 1n.

“Look at this snow! Ona, have you ever seen the men come out of the mines in the early morning when it has been snowing all night? Their eyelids flutter like moth’s wings in all the whiteness that is lying on the ground. The light of day is painful to them after being in the dark so long.” He pauses. “Well, there is some good and bad mixed into all things.”

Ona trembles violently and is unable to pull free of her grandfather’s grip.

“I want to tell you something,” he says. “The priest is right, you know. Hell is at the very center of this earth. It’s true.”

“Yes, Senilis. You have told me this story many times,” Ona replies trying to appease the specter before her. “And the miners are men of God who little by little steal the devil’s coal so that one day his fires will die out and there will be no Hell.”

“But Ona there is one question the priest never answered.” Her grandfather continues. “It is a child’s question really—a very simple one.”

“What question Senilis? What do you mean?” Ona asks.

“What will happen when there is no Hell? Where will all the badness of the world return to?”

Before Ona is able to take a breath, she finds herself standing in the center of the kitchen holding the coal bucket unable to recall climbing the stairs.

“Mociute, Senilis is in the basement. In the coal bin!” Ona points to the cellar steps.

Urszula begins to laugh. “Ona, please, keep your head on what needs doing.”

She takes the bucket from Ona and puts more coal on the fire. Then she leads her granddaughter to a chair.
“Ona, you are shaking so! What is the matter?”

“I told you, Senilis is in the cellar! I just saw him there.”

“Oh, Ona, I told you, there is nothing in this house to be afraid of.”

“But he is in the basement! Go to the cellar door and call to him. You’ll see.”

“Ona, I am an old woman. I do not need to do that! I know the twitch of every whisker and tail on every mouse in these walls.” Urszula takes a fist and gives the nearest wall a rattle. “This is my home. Do you believe there is anything I do not know about it? Now settle yourself. I have too much to do.” Urszula sets Ona down in the chair and ties the blindfold with a firm knot at the back of her head.

“Mociute, why are you putting that rag over my face again? You’ve already taught me how to make the bread.”

“So you have learned so much, so quickly? The bread is simply rising. Are you sure that is all that is happening?”

“I don’t know, Mociute.” Ona’s voice is shaky. She is almost crying. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ona, I told you already. I am teaching you just as my motina taught me. And haven’t you told me many times, ‘Mociute, you bake the best bread of all’? When you are older and I am no longer on this earth, you will remember everything I taught you tonight.”

“Alright Mociute, I will sit here but will you tell me something?”

“What? What is it Ona?” Urszula lays her hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder.

“Why didn’t the priest come here when Senilis died to give him the last rites? Ona can feel the floor give with each step Urszula takes as the old woman abruptly turns from her.

“Ona, please. It will be morning soon.”

“Why didn’t the priest come, Mociute?” Ona asks again.

Urszula’s chest lets go a long sigh. “Alright, alright, I will tell you, but first I’m going to ask you a question.” Urszula stops for a moment and draws in a deep breath. “Tell me, which are the biggest and most beautiful buildings in this Valley?”

“What?” Ona asks wondering what this has to do with her grandfather.

“Answer my question, Ona. Which are the biggest and most beautiful?”

Ona knows that the biggest buildings in the Valley are the coal breakers. The buildings where lumps of coal ride up a steep, roller coaster incline and then tumble down and break into small chunks that are loaded into waiting railroad cars at the tipple. These are dark, mammoth buildings whose crooked hodgepodges dwarf even the tallest church steeples. But Ona knows that the most beautiful buildings in the Valley are the churches and her mother always told her that it made her feel as if she were entering a palace every time she crossed the threshold of St. Casimir’s.

Ona finally answers. “The churches, Mociute. They are like palaces”

“And what makes them so beautiful?”

“Everything about them, the marble and the colored glass in the windows, the carvings, the statues…”

“Yes, and those things are very dear, Ona. Who do you think pays for that?”

“People put money in the baskets at every mass, Mociute!”

“Ona, look at our house.” Urszula continues almost laughing. “It is very simple. Look out the window. All the houses are the same here and everyone is poor. The miners don’t make enough money to pay for all of that marble and colored glass.”

“But, Mociute…”

“Let me finish, Ona. I’m going to tell you something that I never want you to forget. The mine owners, they give the church money. They give the church a lot of money. I know you may not understand all this, but the Pope himself has told the priests that it is wrong for the miners to ask for certain things. Many priests do not want the miners to have a better life because that would mean that the mine owners would not have as much money to give the church. Your senilis believed that this was a sin that could not be forgiven. When the miners in the Valley stopped going to mass, he was one of them. The priests gave lists of names to the Cardinal who wrote to the Pope asking that they all be banished from the Church. Do you know what that means? No last rites. No prayers of intercession. There is no resting place for that kind of soul. That is all I can say about the mice that stir in my house.” Urszula pats the top of Ona’s head. “I have no more time for this. I must see to your motina.”

“Mociute…”

“No, there is no more time for talking now. The sun will be up soon.”

The blindfold is taut around Ona’s face and she can clearly hear Urszula’s labored footfalls test the strength of each board as she slowly makes her way to the front room to pray. Ona sits next to the rising dough and the yeast begins to make the kitchen smell like a beer bucket. Her grandmother’s rosary beads start to click out familiar prayers in a circuitous path around the chain. Ona, tired and unable to do anything but sit and wait, begins to whisper the prayers she can hear her grandmother reciting in the other room. One by one each prayer rolling into the next, but Ona cannot surrender herself to those prayers. The vision of her grandfather and his questions begin to trouble her. But beyond it all is the forsaken feeling of her mother’s absence and having no one left in the world to make it a joyful place. She drops her head to her chest and wraps both arms around herself and tears begin to soak the cloth of the blindfold. Then, without warning, something is dropped into Ona’s lap.

“Mociute?” Ona calls out, but her grandmother does not reply. She can still hear her lost in prayer in the parlor at the front of the house.

“Mociute?” She says again, more insistently, but she can still hear her in the other room. She removes the blindfold and sees her mother’s red apron lying before her.

“Ona, it is not good to look yet!” Her grandmother says as she makes her way to the kitchen. Then in a lighter tone almost laughingly she adds, “Sometimes the eye wants to hear and the nose wants to see,” and she takes the piece of cloth and again blindfolds the girl.

“Who brought this apron to me?”

“It is your motina’s apron.”

“Yes, I know Mociute. But who put it in my lap?

“That doesn’t matter. You do need an apron. Isn’t it so? Now, is the bread ready to be kneaded again?”

“I don’t know, Mociute.” Ona is too tired and confused to push her grandmother for any more answers.

“Well, get up from the chair and let me tie your motina’s apron around you.” Urszula guides Ona to her feet and wraps the red apron around her waist. “Feel this.” Urszula instructs and lightly rests the girl’s hand on the blanket and through it she can feel the spongy, swollen dough pushing well beyond the rim of the bowl.

“Now you can knead the dough again.”

This time, Ona’s hands are surprisingly swift and she kneads the dough until it becomes strong enough to resist her push. Without instruction, she divides the dough and places each piece in a pan and covers them with the blanket. Again, she sits blindfolded in the kitchen and waits. Urszula returns to the parlor and resumes filling the house with prayer.

After about an hour, the kitchen is noticeably cooler. Ona pushes herself out of her chair. She reaches out in front of her and can feel the diminishing warmth of the stove as she shuffles toward it knowing that it must need tending. She is certain that by this time, the red coals must be covered in a blanket of ash. She thinks of calling out to her grandmother, but instead she removes the blindfold and makes her way to the cellar with the bucket in hand.

“It takes a lot of coal to keep the stove hot enough to bake bread,” her grandfather says.

“Yes,” she says. “Senilis, the question you asked before…I want to know. What will happen to all the badness in the world?”

“Ona, have you ever noticed that crooked old man that comes by every once in a while?”

Ona shakes her head.

“No? Well, maybe you will.” Her grandfather continues. “He knocks on this hatch with his swollen knuckles and asks for coal. I open the door and hand him a couple of pieces and then he is on his way. He goes along like this from house to house all through the valley. Every miner knows about him. Some people open their doors and others do not, but there is always a consequence for doing either.”

“A consequence?” Ona asks. “This man, do you mean he is the devil? He is tricking you, Senilis. You give him our coal to save us, but do you know that my motina died last night and is laid out in the front room upstairs? He is tricking you.”

“I did not say that that old man is the devil. There is good and bad in all things.”

“Still, whatever it is you are doing with this old man has not spared us.”

“Wait and see.” Her grandfather points a shaky finger to the ceiling. “When the priest comes today, your motina will fly from this house.”

Ona turns from her grandfather and walks back up the stairs. Urszula is waiting for her and again ties the strip of flannel around her head. She takes the coal bucket and says, “I will tend to the stove. Then you put the loaves in the oven and open the door only when they smell so sweet that you can taste them here.” She puts a finger on Ona’s throat. When that moment comes, Ona calls out to her grandmother. The old woman opens the door and is pleased to find perfectly formed loaves baked to a honey color. She removes Ona’s blindfold and tucks it in Ona’s apron pocket. Urszula takes the pans out one at a time with bare hands, showing no discomfort in their heat. She places the loaves side by side on the table and they are left there to cool.

She then takes Ona by the shoulders and leads her into the front room. Urszula, shaking her head, stands over her daughter trying to make the sign of the cross but instead grabs a hold of her daughter’s ankle and begins to speak to her.

“I could never keep your feet clean when you were a little girl. You were always off somewhere and always with no shoes. Always with no shoes! The neighbors used to laugh and say you had been walking through the mines again. Your little feet, always so dirty, so, so, dirty.” Urszula's voice trails off with a shake of her head. “Come Ona. You come and talk to your motina before the priest gets here.”

Ona tries to speak but her body curls in on itself and she begins to sob. Great droplets of tears fall from her eyes to the floor and she is unable stop them. A tapping begins beneath her feet. The floor under her is like glass and Ona can see the miners with their pickaxes spread out like ants in the veins of the Northern Mine Field below her. For one moment, the railroad cars stop loading at the tipple and everything is still. The miners look up, but there is no trouble in the mines today. They point to the church and to the sexton, and can see the crooked old man, who stokes the furnaces. The snow melts from the steep pitched roof and begins to trickle down to the thick icicles that hang from the eaves of St. Casimir’s. The priest opens the church door with a rattle that causes one icicle to fall silently and bury itself deep in the snow. The tipple roars up again and the men, one by one, slowly bend back into to their work.

When the priest arrives at the house, he is already throwing long, shallow arcs of holy water as Urszula opens the door and allows him in. He says the prayers for the dead and traces out small crosses with his thumb over the young mother’s lips and feet. He finishes quickly. The priest turns his back to them and stands waiting for one of them to open the front door to take his leave. Ona dutifully jumps forward but Urszula grabs hold of her arm and stays her granddaughter. With a jerk of her head, Urszula orders Ona to her mother’s side.

“He will see himself out. Now, give your motina a kiss,” Urszula whispers.

Ona leans over her mother and kisses her on the forehead.

A breeze starts from somewhere deep in the house and blows past Ona and Urszula filling both their aprons. The door swings open hard in front of the priest. He looks unsteady at first but leaves the house quickly and his footfalls land heavy on the front steps. The front door stays open and the house is suddenly empty and still. All the preparations are done. The neighbors will be here with their baskets of food and soon the boys will shepherd the men home in their dirty overalls. But for now, for this moment, Urszula and Ona lean into one another. Indifferent to the cold that blows through the door, they stand and listen to every swoosh and thwack of the priest’s woolen cassock as he negotiates the rutted and steep icy roads of the patch.

Marie Davis-Williams grew up in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. Currently she works in New York City’s Chinatown as a Registered Dietitian. This is her first published story.

Letters from Paris

Dear Han,

Whoopee! Junior Year in Paris. Universite de la Sorbonne, here I come.

Arrived in New York Friday, right on schedule. But let me tell you, baby sister, there’s a big difference between Birmingham trains and the trains up north. For one thing, there are no separate cars. It’s whites and coloreds all together, if you please. And no “Mornin’ ma’am.” Just hustle-bustle.

My room at the Waldorf was small but clean. One of the bell boys was awfully cute, in a Sal Mineo sort of way. (Don’t tell Billy I said that.) His name was Tony and he gave me some chewing gum, my besetting sin. I can hear Mother now: “Only cows chew cud, not young ladies.”

So, the next day, THE MOST EMBARRASSING THING HAPPENED. I took a taxi to New York Harbor to meet the rest of the students in my program before boarding the France. Turns out they’re mostly Yankees. I wore my new white cotton with the red polka dots, you know, with the wide red patent leather belt and full skirt. And I tied a red scarf around my hair and knotted it on the side, like Audrey Hepburn. I thought it would be the perfect look as I stood at the ship’s railing, wiping away a small tear.

But oh it was so awful. All the girls in my program, every one of them, showed up in a smart suit, navy blue or black twill, and there I stood in that hideous red polka dot dress and red scarf. The group picture tells the story. I look like a distress signal: dot, dot, dot.
It got much worse.

The crew was instructing us in safety up on deck, you know, what to do when you hit an ice berg. We had to don life jackets and form lines. I was having trouble fastening my straps and a crew member shouted over a megaphone “Attention s’il vous plait, will someone assist Mademoiselle, the one with the red napkin on her head?” Cringe.

From then on, what could I do but make a virtue out of necessity, as Mother would say. I played the role of serious, soulful, mature student who had no time for the others. I sat by myself during the day reading Le Deuxieme Sexe and smoking (don’t tell), while everyone else played shuffle board. They all acted like such children. I doubt those Wellesley girls ever even heard of Simone De Beauvoir. At night, after dinner, I smoked by myself at the bar until almost 10.

We arrive at Le Havre tomorrow and will travel by bus to Paris. I expect I’ll have piles of letters from Billy waiting for me, poor dear.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

Dear Mother,

I am luxuriating on the upper deck, a breeze gently fluttering the edge of my stationary, sea gulls but a distant memory, headed for the City of Lights. By the way thanks, Mother, for taking me shopping for Paris. My outfit created a sensation that first day on the ship. Tres chic. The Captain even complimented me on my red scarf. There are seventy-five students in the program. Our Director seems nice enough, but his one suit is baggy and shiny. Well, he’s from Pittsburgh, so there you are.

I’m fairly popular already, but I try not to spend too much time with my group. They’re a fast crowd (smoking). Instead, I’m preparing for my history courses at the Sorbonne.

I will write again from Paris.

Love, Claire and love to Pops

September 15, 1957. Avenue des Larmes, Paris

Dear Pops,

Thanks for that recent article on WWII. Hitler was surely the devil incarnate. Now that I’m in France, I feel I understand your experience during the Allied Invasion so much better. And thanks especially for the dough. You wouldn’t believe how tres cher everything is ici.

If you or Mother sees the Hendersons, please give them my address. I think Billy has lost it. Must go now.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

September 30, 1957. Paris

Dear Han,

Sometimes I wish I were staying at a pension by myself instead of living with a French family. Madame is a widow, always tired and cross because she has to work as a secretary in some government office. She probably finds it intolerable to put me up, but has to do it to make ends meet. She may have once been pretty but too much patisserie has taken its toll and she has a little mustache.

She has five married daughters and one son, Jacques, who still lives with her while he studies to become a doctor. Some might find him handsome. He’s tall for a Frenchman but his lips are permanently pursed. Madame smothers him like he’s an egg she’s trying to hatch.

Anyway, you would be amazed at the dinners chez nous. Madame rolls a cart full of food down the long corridor, past my room as she barks, “A table!” which means “Time to eat,” and I’m to follow her into the dining room. We use the same linen napkin all week long, which can be a hellish experience depending on what is served. Last night, for example, we had what I thought was ham. It didn’t taste bad at all. But then I realized Madame kept referring to it as ‘langue’ as in “Comment trouves-tu la TONGUE!!!!” It was only then that I saw the pink nubby taste buds on the meat and threw up into my napkin. Madame cried out, “Degoutant!” and leaped from the table like her skirt was on fire. Jacques merely smirked and said, “You don’t like tongue.” Brilliant diagnosis, doctor.

And by the way, baby sister, I found a you- know- what in your size and it is completely sheer and oo-la-la. It will be balled up inside the box containing the Colette you asked for. How appropriate.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

October 1, 1957. Paris

Dear Mother,

Paris is a dream come true. I spend my free time promenading along the Seine. I’ve bought you a small sketch of Notre Dame from one of the stands on the Quai. I hope you like it.

Even the shops in Paris are works of art. One evening as I was rushing home from the Louvre, I took a short cut down a narrow, cobblestone street that was completely dark, almost. The front window of a wedding dress shop was lit. On display was a gown, the loveliest I’ve ever seen. Hundreds of pearls sewn into the satin fabric glistened like tiny stars. I wish you could have seen it.
I’m studying very hard and must get back to it now.

Love, Claire and love to Pops

October 15, 1957. Paris

Dear Han,

Would you please find out if Billy is mad at me?

XXXXOOOO, Claire

October 31, 1957. Paris

Dear Han,

I guess you’ve heard the news about Billy. At least he had the courage to tell me himself, that is, after his mother forced him to pick up the phone. We sang several bars of “How’ve you been? How’ve you been?” before he got around to telling me about good old Mary ‘Buck Teeth’ Buchner.

Did you know about them beforehand and just not tell me? Anyway, I don’t care. If Billy had dropped dead instead of dropping me, I would have been sad, but not beyond a reasonable period of mourning. It’s not as though we were engaged or anything, although just as good as. No, it’s the fact that he preferred Mary over me that cuts to the core.

Of course I’m sure it’s because she was willing to go all the way with him, so how could I compete with that? But what if people think I’m used goods or there’s something wrong with me? I truly hate Billy Henderson.

Sometimes I wish I could come home. Ever since I called Billy, I’ve been cutting classes and spending just hours at Deux Magots, all bunched up on a tiny rattan chair, pretending to read and write letters, but really watching couples waltz arm in arm along the boulevard. Even groups of students meet and kiss on the cheek and smoke and laugh like they’re having a good time.

What’s wrong with me? I’ve looked forward to this trip since I was in high school and I know how much it cost to send me. It’s impossible to go home anyway. Birmingham was already stifling my élan. But I think if I could just come home for a week or two. Maybe you could suggest it to Pops.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

P.S. My one consolation is that Dicky Price says Mary hums when she makes out.

October 31, 1957. Paris

Dear Mother,

I am afraid that traveling to Europe and experiencing real culture was necessary before I could appreciate your warning, and you were certainly right: The Hendersons are not quite out of the top drawer. I had to deal the mortal blow and say good-bye to Billy before any more time passed. It was only fair, as I’m sure you understand, but I’m sorry to say that his family is not taking the news with grace and dignity. It’s probably best to steer clear of the Ladies Club for the foreseeable future.

Love, Claire and love to Pops

November 8, 1957. Paris

Dear Pops,

I’m writing to say how sorry I am for something I’ve done. I’m not superstitious, but I’m afraid if I don’t confess, something terrible will happen to you.

Several days ago, I guess it was the day after my birthday (and merci beaucoup for the extra argen$), I was attending history class. I had chosen the Resistance for my presentation, as you had suggested. By the way Pops, I think it was very wrong for the French to collaborate with the Germans, especially that business about shipping Jews off in sealed, stifling trains to Auschwitz and Dachau. Even children. I plan to visit the Normandy beaches in the spring. Mother says there’s good shopping in Cherbourg.

Anyway, I began to get nervous as my turn came around. My mouth dried up and I couldn’t remember what I was to say. When my name was called I suddenly thought of you, Pops. I stood up and said, “I can’t present today, mon pere vient de mourir.” I don’t know why I said you’d just died. I think I may have been studying about the war too much. And things just haven’t gone well for me lately.
I’m afraid it got worse.

The professor said how sorry he was and asked me to remain after class to discuss leave for your funeral. Oh what a tangled web we weave, as Mother would say, and I don’t think she needs to hear about this, do you? Without thinking, I blurted out that I wouldn’t need leave, that you were going to be buried here, in Paris, and your body was being shipped in ice. The other students seemed to find that funny. I didn’t understand why until I realized I hadn’t said ‘ice,’ I’d said ‘ice cream.’‘Glace’ and ‘glacee’ are quite similar. Even a Parisian could have made that error. I hope you’re not angry with me and that you’re all right.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

December 15, 1957. Paris

Dear Pops,

First, thank you for the wire. It’s gotten so they recognize me at the American Express Office at Place de L’Opera.

Now this will interest you. Jacques, Madame’s son, told a story at dinner the other night about a doctor. Her name is Rochella Schneider. She is much older than Jacques. Anyway, all the doctors had to be inoculated that day and when Rochella rolled up her sleeve, her arm bore a number etched into her skin. Pops, the number represents the order in which she was to be gassed at Buchenwald. Jacques was not surprised by the number, but by the fact that she had not gotten it removed.

She explained. Her sister, also at Buchenwald, was gassed almost immediately because of a limp, which made her unfit for forced labor. These gas chambers, Pops. They would hold the children out, then stuff all the adults in until the chamber was absolutely full, then shove the children in on top of the adults. When the Americans arrived in April 1945, Rochella was freed, but she had nothing to remind her of her sister: she keeps the number to remember to think of her sister. Jacques and Madame think she is foolish, but I don’t know.

Pops, I can’t imagine if that happened to you or Han or Mother. You know best, but I would not mention this story to the others. I wish Jacques had not told me.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

December 21, 1957. Paris

Dear Han,

It’s snowing! I’m writing at my desk near the bedroom window. French windows are actually glass double-doors. Mine lead onto a wrought iron balcony that overlooks a boulevard. There’s something old but feminine about the buildings in Paris. Right now, the snow has given them a lacy shawl for their stiff shoulders.

Of all people, I ran into Jacques at Deux Magots today. He bought me café au lait and we talked for hours. He told me how he had just lost a patient, a young woman, earlier that afternoon. Leukemia. Her last words were for her lover, he said. His eyes were teary. He grabbed my hand.

I may have misjudged Jacques. It’s not easy studying to become a doctor, the long hours, the tragedies.

Well, thar she blows. “A table!” Must go.

Can’t wait to speak with you on Christmas Day.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

January 28, 1958. Strasbourg, France

Dear Han,

As you can tell from my return address, I’m on a trip. And you’ll never guess what. I’m in love. Really, truly and everlastingly in love. Here’s how it happened.
Madame’s family has a tumble down chateau near Strasbourg. She invited me (only because she had to, I’m sure) to join her family there for several days. She had to get there one day early to air out the chateau and lay in provisions, but Jacques and I still had classes in Paris. Jacques’ sister, Sophie, was to stay with us and then the three of us would travel by train to Strasbourg the next day.

This must go no further! At the last moment, Sophie could not come. Jacques and I stayed in the apartment alone.

But it was just as well, for otherwise we would not have realized that we’re in love. He told me that I’m beautiful—‘belle.’ He told me that ‘Claire’ is French, which of course I knew, but he said it described my heart as well as my face (‘ton coeur et ton visage’). Isn’t it romantic? Then he kissed me. His lips were made for kissing. ‘Embrasser’ means to kiss. The word sounds like ‘embarrass’? And in turn that sounds like ‘a bare _ _ _’? Tra la! We toasted one another with wine again and again. As the night wore on, my French became fluent.

Of course, under the circumstances of showing up in Strasbourg without Sophie, we had to be circumspect in our behavior toward one another. Even now, Jacques is playing up to one of his cousins, Dominique, whom everyone thinks is the end all and be all. I call her Empress. But I know he’s just putting on an act and when we return to Paris, he will have to say something about us to Madame.
Gosh! It just occurred to me. If I marry Jacques I’ll live in France for the rest of my life. Will you visit me?

XXXXOOOO, Claire

February 4, 1958. Paris

Dear Mother,

Would you be horrified if I told you a Frenchman is quite taken with me? He is studying to become a doctor and though still in his internship, is reputed to be one of the most gifted diagnosticians in Paris, maybe France. He gets called in on the most baffling cases. And he comes from an unusually important family, with connections to the government. You would be quite impressed.

Love, Claire and love to Pops

February 4, 1958. Paris

Dear Han,

As for Mother, don’t let her get under your skin.

Now for something serious. I know positively that Jacques loves me. Didn’t he say it in so many words, and such beautiful ones at that? Of course, it is difficult for him to demonstrate affection at home, in front of Madame. She’s such a shrew. He says she’ll cut off his support if he so much as flirts with a woman, since all his energies must go toward becoming a doctor. And of course we can’t meet at a café or one of his friend’s apartments because he works all the time. Oh well, the life of a doctor’s wife is a lonely and frustrating one, so I should practice being patient (ha!). I content myself with gazing at him at dinner, occasionally feigning illness in the desperate hope of a bedside consultation (ha ha!).

XXXXOOOO, Claire

March 1, 1958. Paris

Dear Han,

I can’t wait for spring, although if I don’t start feeling better soon, it won’t matter. I’ve had a stomach ache for weeks, no doubt brought on by the nervous behavior of Madame. Empress Dominique is arriving soon, the cousin I met in Strasbourg when I was visiting the family chateau. This cousin demands a great deal of attention. I think she’s from money. Madame certainly acts like it. New drapes have been ordered and the back bedroom is being painted.

Much studying to be done before midwinter exams. I’d better hop to it.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

March 10, 1958. Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris

Dear Han,

I’m so low. I’ve never felt this lonely. I walk for miles, or sometimes I just sit on a bench in the Jardins du Luxembourg, like right now, and toss coins in the fountain and watch small boys sail their boats.

Do you ever feel like giving up, Han, like the future is too awful to even contemplate? Sometimes I feel that way. Mother would advise turning to prayer, but I’m really not worthy of that kind of help. I can’t tell you why. Let’s just say I’ve gotten into a terrible fix and leave it at that.

I’m reading Madame Bovary. Emma never could get it right either. The blasted old story is even drearier in French.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

March 30, 1958. American Hospital, Paris

Dear Han,

You may wonder what I’m doing at the hospital. Please don’t worry, and please tell no one, since they’re discharging me tomorrow morning anyway. I foolishly ignored my stomach ailment and got very sick. I am perfectly fine now.

The awful part about being in the hospital is the whiteness of it all. The walls, nurses’ caps, uniforms, even shoes, sheets, everything white. I thought white stood for something lovely, like purity and a wedding dress: It stands for sterility and nothingness.

No one has come to visit, of course. Who would? At least my history professor left a card at the nurses’ station, a picture of a man and woman sharing ice cream.

As for Jacques, he has left Paris for Neuilly, which is closer to the hospital where he will train next. I had not realized he was going to leave, nor did he, it seems. Several nights before I was admitted here, he quarreled with Madame. Though they mostly hissed at one another, probably to keep me from hearing, I caught my name along with that of Empress Dominique, whom Madame referred to as Jacques’ affiance.

If Madame sent Jacques away for any reason having to do with me, she needn’t have bothered. Jacques has shown so little interest in me since that one night before Strasbourg. But I should be more sympathetic. How he must have suffered that night when I began to hemorrhage and Madame was not there to help him. His respect for human life must surely have compelled him to call the ambulance rather than let me bleed to death. Then again, he probably tossed a coin.

Claire

April 7, 1958. Rue Meilleure, Paris

Dear Pops,

I apologize for not writing to you myself about my stay at the hospital. And please tell Mother not to worry. I will call you as planned so you’ll know I’m all right. I wouldn’t have even told my Program Director had I not needed to get my assignments. He should spend less time worrying parents needlessly and more time correcting his painful accent. And I’m going to absolutely throttle Han for telling you. Anyway, it was nothing serious, and had my stomach ached in this way at home, going to Birmingham General would have been the last thing I’d do, and that’s the Gospel truth. So don’t worry.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

April 7, 1958, Paris

Dear Mother,

I am certain my Program Director has distorted the nature and extent of my illness to the point that you are fearing for my life. I feel quite all right and my most acute ailment was brought on by not having a proper bed jacket during my hospital stay.

You would be surprised to learn that many American celebrities are treated at the American Hospital. There was a rumor that Grace Kelly was leaving just as I arrived.

Love, Claire and love to Pops

P.S. Madame is having work done on her apartment and while I am completely recovered, I don’t want to risk contracting something new from the workmen. Therefore, I have moved into a pension closer to my classes and the library.

April 21, 1958. Paris

Dear Han,

This damn city. Can’t it do anything but rain? And every Parisian has a small dog who makes a mess on the street. Merde.

Now here’s a sight they don’t describe in Fodor’s. Last evening I made the mistake of hopping onto an empty metro car. I was joined by a little man who decided to expose himself. With that giant fleshy rod wagging back and forth, I dubbed him Monsieur Metrognome. At least his approach was an honest one.

If I hear the screech of the metro cars once more I swear I’ll throw myself under the tracks, anything to make them stop. Sometimes I get so desperate to reach my station and daylight, but why? It’s always raining. I might dart into a café, hoping for warmth and cheer, but everything you’ve heard about the condescension of the French is cultivated to a fine art by the Parisian waiter. I used to try to curry their favor with a bright smile and nicely rolled Rs. Now I barely move my lips. I try to look featureless. It gets more respect.

I am now living in a pension near the Sorbonne. When I announced my departure plans, Madame verily jumped for joy and hoisted her sails, until I told her the Program would be seeking a rental refund. You’ve never seen a ship sink so fast.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

P.S. I’m still mad at you for telling Mother and Pops about the hospital, but apparently you had the presence of mind to have lost my letter when they asked you for it. Thank you.

May 10, 1958. Paris

Dear Pops,

I’ve met a person that you might like to meet someday. It all started back at the hospital, on my last day there. A woman doctor came to see me before my discharge. Her face was lined and her hands old with protruding veins and brown spots, but she had a gentle touch and by that time, I sure needed one. When she started to leave, I asked her name, to thank her. It was Dr. Schneider, Dr. Rochella Schneider. Yes, you guessed it, Pops. The Rochella with the number on her arm. What a coincidence. Proof that life is stranger than fiction.

After I was sure of who she was, owing to some gentle probing of my own, I told her how I knew of her. It turns out she was earning extra money by working at the American Hospital during her off hours. She seemed kind and her eyes were so sad. Well, to be honest, I needed a distraction, so I asked if she would talk with me about her experience during the war.

She finished her rounds and came back and sat with me for a long time. She wanted to talk about her sister, who must have been quite nice but naïve, I think, and sometimes foolish. She was about my age.

Just before she got up to leave, I asked if she had lived in Paris ever since the war ended. She said that right after the war, she’d had a brief stay in Germany, settling debts. Now that was an interesting thing for a recent graduate of Buchenwald to say, don’t you think [, — optional] Pops?

XXXXOOOO, Claire

May 30, 1958. Paris

Dear Han,

Does this sound strange? I’ve made a friend, maybe. She’s much older than I am and she’s a doctor, Rochella Schneider. Pops probably told everybody about the incredible coincidence of our meeting at the hospital.

I think there may be something odd about her. We go to these out of the way bistros, near Montmartre. She asks me lots of questions about what I study and what I do when I’m not studying.

What do you make of this? I asked her how she endured her life in a concentration camp, when her sister died and everything. Why didn’t she just join her? She said she’d thought of it, but in the end, there was still life. Still life. She kept saying that. I thought, “Yes, so what?”

Then she said, “‘Still life’ is such a versatile phrase. It can make you think of artwork, something inanimate, or it can make you think of something dead, like a still born infant. For some it might mean there’s still opportunity to get even. Or it can mean hope. You have to choose what it means.” That’s just like her. She turns things around, sees them from more than one angle.

Do you think she might be trying to recruit me to the Zionist cause? Ben-Gurion Youth or something? Can you see Mother’s face!

XXXXOOOO, Claire

June 30, 1958.Paris

Dear Pops,

You know I travel next month to Normandy and after that, home. Would you please discuss with Mother letting me remain in Paris, at least through the summer? You see, I’ve been recruited. Dr. Schneider says that I could be useful to her in a clinic for refugee women and children. Many of them are beggars. Down in the metro, where the stench is sometimes awful, they sit on the hard floor with their children all day long, filthy hands outstretched for a sou. It is pitiful, Pops. The Clinic is located just across from Sacre Coeur. She says I’ll get paid, though not enough to live on, but I could stay with her for a while. I’m not sure working in a clinic is my cup of tea, but I could at least give it a try. Please talk to Mother. I know she has strong feelings about religious differences, especially when it comes to Jews.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

July 15, 1958. Hotel Beau Rivage, Cherbourg, France.

Dear Pops,

Thank you for suggesting that I read up on the Allied Invasion before my trip, but no book could have prepared me for the cemetery: Row after row, thousands upon thousands of small white crosses and stars of David. Many tourists wandered among them, but there was silence, the only sounds coming from Channel winds gusting up from Omaha Beach.

Guess who’s here with my group? Dr. Schneider, whom I invited, and my history professor, who invited himself. He said he hadn’t been to Normandy since the end of the war. Pops, I’m pretty sure he was in the Resistance, the maquis.

Thanks for the extra money, which will take me on a side trip to Arromanche. There are German bunkers there, all pointing at England. I just don’t understand war.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

P.S. How are you coming with Mother and my job at the Clinic?

July 30, 1958. Paris

Dear Han,

Hallelujah! Mother said yes! I was so relieved to be able to stay, though I miss you all so. I do think it was fiendishly clever of Pops to tell Mother that the Prince of Wales would be “viewing” the Clinic this summer. After all, HRH’s tour through Paris does include a visit to the Eiffel Tower and who’s to say? He probably will view the Clinic from that height.

In answer to your question, yes, I do still sometimes feel like the future is too awful to contemplate. For one thing, I’m worried about coming home. I’m not good at fitting in anymore.

But Han, the most embarrassing thing happened. I’ve mentioned to you my history professor. Well, on the day classes ended, he asked me to stay behind to go over my final paper with him. We were alone. He cupped my chin in his hand and tried to kiss me. Of course I wanted to kiss back. His rumpled jacket and wavy black hair made me think of Sartre making a pass at De Beauvoir, probably in the exact same spot. But …I demurred. (New word, look it up.) I demurred because of all the times I’d imagined a white knight out of a standard issue jackass. Of course, the fact that my mouth was full of chewing gum also weighed heavily against it.

Write soon.

XXXXOOOO, Claire

Lee W. Doty is a lawyer practicing in Conshohocken, PA. She won first place in the 2006 MCCC Writers’ Club Annual Student Short Story Contest and the 2006 MCCC Creative Writing Achievement Award. Her work can be read in Perspectives, and the MCCC Writers’ Club newsletter, Pen & Ink Times. She holds degrees in French and History from Duke University and from Georgetown University Law Center. Currently she is an MFA candidate at Rosemont College.

Real Life Things

“It’s about our son, David,” Frank said, as if I might not recall the name of our only child.

“Wait,” I said. “Have you been drinking?” It was one in the afternoon, a Saturday.

“I got a post card from him today,” Frank said. “He’s not in college any more.”

“What?” I said. “Where is he?”

“Indiana.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. David was supposed to be in Santa Cruz. He’d picked that school to be near good surfing—and to be far from us. I didn’t think he knew anyone in the Midwest.

“You won’t believe it,” Frank said, “unless you see the card yourself.” Then he asked if we could meet.

First, I thought it was a trick, to see me again, but I realized Frank was speaking in his monotone voice—and he’d never lied to me in that voice.

I said I couldn’t meet until Monday, and only during my lunch hour. Frank said he’d pick me up and we could go to that diner off route 7, not far from the bank where I’d been working since I left him.

Monday was a very hot day, and I was sweating as I waited for him. When I opened the passenger door, Frank’s truck smelled of cigarettes, burned oil, and sweat—his sweat, which isn’t an altogether bad smell. He leaned over to hug me, but I clasped his hand instead. “Thanks for picking me up,” I said, and closed the door.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

I wanted to see the postcard right away, but I didn’t ask. I figured if we talked about it now, in the truck, what would we have to talk about at the diner? So I sat there, taking in Frank’s scent—the good, bad, and indifference of it—and when we came to a red light, I reapplied some lipstick using the visor mirror.

At the diner, we sat across from each other, in a booth covered with worn orange vinyl. Before he took the menu from the waitress’ thin white hand, Frank asked her for a Pabst on tap. Then he glanced at me with an expression that held a hundred messages, as clear as if they were telegrams pasted to the skin of his face: It’s just one beer. It goes well with lunch. It’s my first drink of the day. It’s in my nature. It’s nice to see you. I know you don’t like this. What are you going to say? You’ve never stopped judging me.

It was as if our whole twenty years together flickered in that single glance. I stared at him hard, waiting for him to look back up at me, but he squinted out the diner window at his truck.

“You left your lipstick on the dashboard,” he said. “It’s getting hot.”

“It’ll be okay,” I said.

“I suppose it’s designed not to melt,” he said. “I mean, it holds up to the heat of your lips.” He reached out his hand.

I smiled a little, to let him know I wasn’t upset by his gesture, but I wasn’t going to fall for it either. Then I opened the menu and flipped past the breakfast section to the sandwiches and light fare.

Frank seemed to understand and grinned.

[img_assist|nid=669|title=Creation by Hal Robinson © 2007|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=151|height=104]The waitress returned. She was young, barely old enough to be carrying the beer in her hand. She held the mug with nervous attention, as though it had a physics all its own, and when she set it down, it rocked a little. A splash of foamy liquid tipped over the lip of the mug.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

I could see Frank’s eyes taking in the loss, then I watched as he bent his head down and licked the side.

The waitress turned to me. “I’m sorry ma’am, did you want something to drink?”

I could have gotten upset, having been over-shadowed by my husband like that, but I knew she’d simply been taken in by the force of Frank’s will. I had to forgive her: I had let it happen to me for years.

“I’ll have iced tea,” I said.

“Iced tea?” The waitress looked as though I had spoken a foreign word.

“Yes,” I said. “Unless you only serve alcoholic drinks.” I looked at Frank.

“No, ma’am,” she said. “But our ice machine is frozen. I mean broken. We’re having some ice delivered but…” She paused. “I can get you tea, it just won’t have much ice.”

“The beer’s nice and cold,” Frank said, grinning.

He knows I never drink; a half of glass of wine at Christmas does me in.

“The keg’s in the cooler,” the waitress said to my husband. “So is the tea, now,” she said turning to me. “But the ice is something separate.”

Frank nodded at her in sympathy. I remembered then how kind he could be, and suddenly felt pleased to see him again.

“Just give me whatever ice you can,” I said.

She nodded, relieved. “And you, sir? Another beer?”

I glanced down at Frank’s mug. It was empty, except for the film that clung to the glass, marking the last circle of liquid. In less than two minutes he had drunk the whole thing. I looked at Frank, who seemed now as distant from me as the North Pole.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll have another one.”

As the waitress left, I reminded her, “And the tea.”

After we got our drinks and ordered food, Frank and I were suddenly alone, like so many nights we’d spent at our dining room table, with Frank on his way to being drunk.

“So, what’s this postcard all about?” I said, trying to sound cheery. “Where’d you say David was? Iowa?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a wrinkled card. “I thought we could, you know, experience this together.” He handed it to me.

On the picture side was a drawing of a huge white tent with dozens of brightly dressed people and animals peeping out from the center flap. “Arco’s Circus of Wonders?” I said, reading the banner over the tent. “What in the world is this?”

“ Read the back,” Frank said, taking another swallow of beer.

I flipped the card over and read David’s jagged scrawl. It said he had dropped out of UCSC last semester, learned how to swallow fire, and had joined an experimental circus. “Is this real?” I asked Frank.

“ Seems to be,” he said. “Dave was never one to play practical jokes.”

Yes, I thought. I had noticed this, too, though Frank and I had never talked about it. I wondered what else we had each come to understand on our own.

“Okay,” I said slowly, “so our son’s dropped out of school and joined a circus.” I couldn’t help but laugh. It seemed too preposterous to be true.

Frank also laughed. “You have to admit,” he said. “It’s not every day that real life things happen to us.”

Soon, we were both laughing hard. It felt like when we’d first met—but I wasn’t sure I wanted that now. I raised my glass to my face and took a sip of tea. The three pieces of ice that had been in it had already melted away.

“ Do you see why I wanted to show it to you?” Frank said. “You probably thought I was up to something.”

“ No,” I lied. “I just wasn’t sure why we would have to meet.”

“ Oh, I see,” he said and raised his mug, though it was empty.

I twirled the postcard slowly in my hands, as if it might reveal something more. Was this the last I would hear of my son? Or would there be another card a year from now, telling us he was on a fishing boat in Alaska or had married a woman in Baja? In a way, nothing would surprise me. David had been away for three years and had rarely come home. Really, he had left us long ago. He hadn’t even called after I’d left the message at his dorm about the separation.

Though I had worked on it for over twenty years, I suddenly had no family. Or if I did, it was right here in front of me—this man and his beer.

Working at the bank had taught me one thing: most people—nearly all—do not drink throughout the day. They come in and do their business sober. I’d gotten saddled with an exception—and though I’d found the strength to finally leave Frank, I knew he would never leave me—not my body, or my memory. And what else of me was there?

After five months apart, here he was, across an empty Formica table from me. And wasn’t the present the most weighty evidence the world ever offered?

The waitress came with our food. It was a relief to concentrate on something besides this man who was still my husband and this post card which was my son.

She paused before Frank and after a quick glance at me, asked, “Another beer?”

“ Why not?” he said. “Our son has joined a circus. We need to celebrate.”

She smiled politely and left.

“This is your last one,” I said to Frank, “or I’m not getting in the truck.”

He smiled. “I knew you’d eventually make some comment.”

“ It’s not about you,” I said. “It’s about my limits.”

“ Okay,” he said. “Whatever. But I know my limits, too. I’m not going to do anything foolish.” Then he looked down and concentrated on his food.

Frank was nearly done with his burger by the time the waitress came back with his third beer. He took a sip and said, “Ah.”

I’d hardly touched my BLT. I kept thinking about David. “He’s gone,” I finally said. Frank kept eating. “And it’s because of you,” I added.

Frank looked up at me then.

“It’s not my fault,” he said, without taking his eyes off me. He spoke in that familiar monotone voice.

“You believe that,” I said, “but you’re wrong.”

Frank shook his head and said, “Let’s not talk about this. I want to have a nice lunch.” Then he got up. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

I was suddenly alone at the table. I looked over at Frank’s empty, ketchup-smeared plate. He always ate so fast. I stared then at the tiny bubbles forming inside his mug. I drew it over to my side of the table, feeling the coldness of the glass handle—far colder than my plastic tea tumbler.

Then I lifted the mug to my lips—and because I needed to take something from him, I tilted it up high. The liquid at first tasted sweet and salty. Then it felt like a trip to some place unbelievably cold—the Arctic, perhaps. It burned with cold and carbon dioxide, and quenched the burning at the same time, like a river wrapped in fire. I gulped it down until there was nothing left. Then I set the mug on the table and leaned back.

As the rush of alcohol washed up over my brain, I sat there, looking around the diner, as though I had entered a new world. My body began to tingle. The waitress, far off, seemed like a figurine. And David, it seemed then, was no more than a small bundle of memories I’d been clutching on to for far too long.

I leaned back further against the booth, and let my shoulders drop. Everything felt both exciting and calm. My iced tea, which I’d barely touched, looked now surprisingly like beer. And as I poured it into Frank’s empty mug and scooted it over to his side, I began to understand how he could feel such love for this liquid, for what it could do. Nathan Long has worked in Story Quarterly, Glimmer Train, Indiana Review, and other journals. He teaches creative writing at Richard Stockton College in NJ and lives in Germantown.

The View from the Window

The yellow tape, the grim-faced police officers and the emergency vehicles contrast with the peacefully falling snow and Christmas decorations strung along the cul-de-sac. The children’s thoughts are no longer of Santa Claus as they watch the men unload a black bodybag containing Darlese Claxton. Everyone stands by their doors, staring. Even big Julio Sanchez, who rarely leaves the comfort of his couch, takes in the scene, his three-year-old son in his arms.

Vera rinses raw chicken drumsticks as she watches from her kitchen window. Earlier, she had been unloading the groceries from her car when she overheard someone say that Darlese had committed suicide. Vera’s neighbors always speculated that Darlese’s life would end this way. She had been trying for years. Ambulances and police cars were not an uncommon sight at 3214 Clayton Coventry. Darlese’s husband, a thin man known as Piggy, had managed to save her from herself over the years. The secrets of that marriage were among the tidbits Wilma Gilmore had whispered to Vera when she’d moved to the neighborhood two years ago.

Channel 7 reporter Sarah Wynn is speaking with Wilma now, as the old woman wipes away her tears. Vera can only imagine what she’s saying. All the parents along the street are acquainted with Piggy, who tried to form a neighborhood baseball league the previous summer, but Wilma has no young children and her knowledge of the Claxtons is nothing more than the rumors she spread. Wilma glances at Vera, then invites Sarah inside.

The phone rings, pulling Vera away from her view. Pat Dotson’s panicked voice pierces the phone line. “You hear about Darlese?”

“Yes, I’m watching it now,” Vera says. “It’s so sad.”

“I knew she was crazy, but…” she pauses. “ I never thought she’d go through with it.”

“I wonder where Piggy is.”

“I know the poor thing. His truck’s right outside. And did you see Wilma? She plays the part, don’t she? That woman tells nothing but lies.”

Vera wants to ask Pat what lies she’s heard, but she doesn’t. She places the chicken in the oven and sets the timer for 45 minutes.

“These kids don’t need to be watchin’ this. I told my boys to do their homework, but they’re probably watchin’ from upstairs. Where’s Lindell and Eric?” Pat asks.

“Christmas shopping with their father. Randall had better make them get me a good gift. I deserve it.”

Pat snickers. “Maybe he’ll move back home. Won’t that be the best?”

Vera says she has to get something from the oven and ends the conversation. The neighbors are all the same. One minute she and Pat argue over her son teasing Eric and now she wants to pry. The last thing Vera wants to talk about is her separation from Randall. These days, she only cries two days a week – on Fridays, when he picks up the children and Sundays, when he returns them. She manages to appear composed around Randall, who had complained to the marriage counselor about her stoicism. But Vera had seen too many broken dishes and tears in her parents’ marriage to allow that in her own.

Outside the window, Vera hears men’s voices and the slam of the ambulance door. She watches them return inside of the Claxton house. Most of the neighbors go inside their own homes, to their heat, but like Vera, they’ll watch from their windows. Her neighbors’ voyeurism disgusts her, but, unlike the rest, Vera has a history with the Claxton’s, particularly Piggy. She opens her blinds a little wider.

A month after Randall left, Vera was tired of seeing her children mope around the house. Eric was always at her side, helping wash dishes and make the beds, while Lindell was off somewhere pouting. This wasn’t a healthy way for her kids to spend their summer, so she enrolled Lindell at the nearby dance school and signed Eric up for the Coventry Cubs, the new baseball team that Piggy was coordinating.

Lindell’s attitude brightened at the sight of shiny new tap shoes, but Eric was more difficult. As much as he loved sports, he worried about any activity that would take him away from his mother’s side, even if it were only for three days a week. The more he objected, the more she knew it was the right choice.

One evening, not too long after the start of practices, Piggy showed up at her front door, his large hands clutching Eric’s shoulders. Her thoughts went from curiosity to fear when she noticed her son’s ruffled hair and bloody lip. The other boys had picked on Eric and he’d fought back, Piggy explained. Chris Dotson had said something rude and Eric pummeled him.

She rubbed his face searching for more bruises. “You know how I feel about violence. What did Chris say?”

“He called me a half breed,” Eric said. “And …”

He looked to Piggy, who cleared his throat. “He also called your husband a name.”

“I see.”

That night, she called Pat to give her a piece of her mind. Then she called Randall and told him what happened. It had been his idea to leave the suburbs and move to Detroit’s Indian Village. He wanted the kids to have a well-rounded education that combined the privilege of the suburbs and the diversity of the city, an impossible dream. He loved that there were Latino, Arab and black families on their new street and that they were within a few miles of some of the best restaurants in the area. Aside from the large, English Tudor and Victorian style houses, Vera was unimpressed. Detroit was Detroit, no matter how it was layered. She longed for the comfort of the suburbs, with the tidy parks and teachers who knew her name.

“I’ll talk to him,” Randall said. “You’re not letting him quit, are you?”

“I thought about it. Seems like he had more friends when we lived in Canton.”

Randall groaned. “Don’t start. Haven’t we done this argument to death?”

“I guess. Maybe I’ll just move and tell you about it later. How’d you like that?”

He was quiet. Vera pictured him turning red as he squeezed the phone. “You wouldn’t.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to keep my family safe. If that means leaving this urban wasteland, so be it.”

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” he snapped. “You’ve turned into my mother.”

“Whatever. I’m no snotty white woman.”

“Try remembering that.”

Vera was a regular at the baseball practices, until Piggy warned her that she was embarrassing Eric. She had noticed that no other mothers were around – only fathers – and this only made her want to come more.

“It makes him look soft when he has his Mommy hovering,” Piggy said, as he walked them back to her car. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Vera looked over at Eric, who slumped in the backseat. “I don’t want him in anymore fights.”

“That’s a part of growing up. Especially for boys ‘round here. You wouldn’t understand, but –”

Vera held up her hand. “Don’t assume that because I’m a woman that I’m naïve to the ways of boys. I grew up in Philly and I’ve seen more fights than I care to remember. I’ve even been in a few myself.”

“I thought –”

“I know,” Vera said. “You thought because I’m married to a white man that I don’t know the streets. I have one brother in the ground and another one in jail. I’ve seen what these streets do to black boys. It won’t happen to my son.”

She left him in the parking lot, speechless. The next day, a bouquet of daisies arrived for her at the bank. There was a note that read, ‘From one street brawler to another: I’m sorry. –Coach.’ She propped them up on her desk so her coworkers, particularly Connie Mirabella, could see them. She hoped word would get back to Randall, who golfed with Connie’s husband.

The Cubs won their first game and Eric hit the winning home run. The team, including Chris, carried him to the bench and cheered. They went for pizza afterward and Piggy drove them home. Eric was the last player to be dropped off and Vera invited Piggy inside for coffee.

After she sent the kids to bed, Piggy lingered behind for what became a long conversation. They had one thing in common – they were both quiet people trapped in loud marriages. Everything Randall did was noisy, from the way he proposed by screaming through her dorm window when they were in college, to how he fought, lodging his fists in the wall and banging tables. Vera had been so unresponsive to his tirades that Randall dubbed her the Ice Queen.

Piggy said Darlese was the same way, but he didn’t elaborate. He’d moved out a few years ago, then returned when he realized he couldn’t divorce her.

“I love my wife and she needs me. Her mind’s sick. If she doesn’t take her medication…. ”

Vera said she understood. She had been warned that Darlese was crazy, but didn’t know the details. Vera finished the last of her coffee and looked over at Piggy. She noticed then how long his eyelashes were and how smooth his dark skin appeared. “Why do they call you Piggy? It doesn’t fit you.”

He laughed.

“I liked to eat when I was a kid, so my grandparents called me Piggy. My Mom didn’t like it, but it stuck. Now Mom is the only one who calls me by my real name.”

“And what’s that?”

“I can’t tell you all my secrets. Just call me Piggy.”

The rumors started after that. Eric returned from practices angry and spent the evenings in his room. Wilma Mustonen and Verna Childs gathered on their front porches and lowered their voices whenever Vera approached.

A week later, Vera woke to a loud pounding on her door. She thought she had been dreaming when she saw Darlese standing on her porch barefoot. She wore white silk pajamas and her hair was tied up in a scarf. She rubbed something against her right thigh and stared at Vera with unsteady eyes.

“What’s going on?” Vera tightened her robe and turned on the kitchen light. “Do you need help?”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“My husband,” she spat. “Where he at? He in there?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

Darlese pushed past her until she was inside. Vera could see now that the object Darlese carried was a switchblade that she had sliced into her own thigh with. A bloodstain grew on her pajama bottoms. Vera’s breath caught in her throat. She needed to call for help, but she couldn’t remember where she’d put the cordless phone.

“Might as well bring him out.” Darlese leaned against the refrigerator. “Don’t make me look in the bedroom.”

“Darlese!”

Piggy walked through the front door and grabbed his wife’s arm. “I told you I was going to the store. Why you keep doin’ this?”

Darlese’s face melted and she dropped the knife. “You were with her! I know you were.”

“You know I wasn’t. Let’s go home.”

She burst into tears. Piggy wouldn’t look at Vera as he apologized. He led Darlese away, leaving the knife on the floor.

The Coventry Cubs forfeited the season. Darlese was so sick Piggy couldn’t commit to any more practices. Vera began doing her grocery shopping late at the 24-hour Kroger so she could avoid the other women from her neighborhood. One night she found Piggy in the produce aisle, staring blankly at his grocery list. They chatted briefly and he mentioned that Darlese was in the hospital. It was nothing serious, he said, but the doctors wanted to make sure she wasn’t a danger to herself.

The tension in the neighborhood broke once school started and the parents’ minds were pre-occupied with homework and parent-teacher conferences. Things worsened for Vera, who learned through Lindell that Randall moved from his brother’s home to an apartment. She realized then that they were officially separated, probably on their way to a divorce.

She went looking for Piggy that night at the Kroger. She told him about Randall and he said he was sorry. Darlese was still in the hospital and Randall was going to pick up the children for the weekend the next day. Vera asked Piggy if he would like to get together and he said that he would.

“Just so we’re clear,” Vera said. “I’m not asking for something innocent like a movie and coffee. I want, I need, something more. You understand?”

Piggy shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled sheepishly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

They planned to meet at a restaurant in Southfield and then go to the nearby Holiday Inn. Vera wore a form-fitting black dress that Randall once loved and a pair of stilettos. She filled her overnight bag with practically all her lingerie. She couldn’t decide what to bring and didn’t know what Piggy might like.

She waited for two hours, but Piggy’s pickup truck never appeared in the parking lot. She went to the hotel alone, drank a bottle of wine, and slept in her silk teddy. She got home the next morning in time to see Piggy helping Darlese from his pickup truck. Their eyes met briefly, but Vera turned away.

The timer buzzes and Vera pulls the chicken from the oven. She places the chicken on top of rice and pours cream of mushroom soup over all of it, the start of Eric and Randall’s favorite meal.

There is a knock at the door and Vera opens it. Sarah Wynn, the reporter, is standing there, shivering. She wipes her nose and introduces herself.

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s been a tragedy in your neighborhood,” Sarah says. “Did you know the Claxtons?”

“Vaguely.”

“Unfortunately, they’ve been killed. The police are saying –”

“Both of them? I thought it was only Darlese.”

Sarah flips through her notepad and shakes her head. “No, both were killed. The police said it was a murder-suicide. Mrs. Claxton shot her husband while he slept, then killed herself.”

Vera grips the side of the door as she lets the words sink in. Now she sees a second bodybag being taken from the Claxton house.

“Ma’am? We’re trying to get some neighbors to speak on camera. Can I interview you about Darlese and Kelly Claxton?”

“Who?”

Sarah smiles, but she’s growing impatient. “Darlese and Kelly Claxton. The victims. Anything you’d like to say about them?”

“Kelly,” she whispers. “His name was Kelly. And he’s gone.”

“Shall I bring my cameraman over?”

A green Tercel pulls up and parks beside Vera’s car. Eric and Lindell rush out, while Randall takes his time.

“They called him Piggy,” Vera says. “That was his nickname.”

“Anything else you’d like to share?”

Lindell wraps her arms around her waist, while Eric gives her a questioning glance. Vera wonders how she’ll explain to her son that his former coach was murdered. She bites her bottom lip and hugs Lindell tighter, then pulls Eric into their embrace. Randall sees her tears and asks Sarah to leave.

The children smother Vera with questions, but Randall sends them to their rooms. When they’re alone, he sits her on the couch and hands her a glass of water. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Vera shakes her head. “I want you to come home. That’s what I want.”

She buries her face in the cushions and sobs. He sits beside her and places her head on his lap. The fabric of his trousers is rough against her face, but somehow it feels just right. Shantee Cherese is a journalist living in the Baltimore suburbs. She was born in Pennsauken, NJ and lived in the Detroit area for several years.

The Shovel and the Rose

Herb looked at me in his brittle, self-effacing way and said, didn’t I love him?

The soap had begun in the shape of a pink mollusk shell. He had given it to me on Valentine’s Day five weeks before, and it had taken me all that time to wear it down to a nub at its center.

Herb said if I didn’t love him just to tell him right then and there so we could be done with it.

I told him of course I loved him, but if he could wait five weeks for me to find the ring, he could wait a little longer for me to say yes.

Herb stood there, blinking his eyes underneath his glasses. After a minute or two he said yes, yes, he supposed it had to be done.

By then I was thirty-one, and there were only two things after all that time I still regretted: the shovel and the rose. Twenty-four years before, I had left the rose in a classroom and the shovel under the dock, and I wanted them back.

I told my aunt Lanette that Herb had proposed, but I was leaving to find the rose first. She was running the hose in the garden at the time. She promised to make my wedding dress while I was gone. I told her to remember the lace, and to start with the sleeves short and make them longer from there, in case it took me a while to come back.

Danny and I took art lessons together in grade school. Sometimes he would sort pieces of confetti into patterns and give them to me on oaktag. That was when I fell in love with him. He had a sacred, choir-boy’s voice, and when he said in that soft way of his, did I love him, I told him yes, I thought I did.

But when he had given me the red rose I was frightened, and I had given it back. I said I was too young. I said he would have to wait a little while. Danny said, how long? and I told him I didn’t know. He waited three months but then one day he was gone, to South America with his father. Someone said he’d moved to Ecuador, but I wasn’t sure where that was.

I got in my car and drove to the last place I could remember. The school was still there, but it had older walls and more children. In the art room there were eight students; they sat at high counters, instead of the folding tables we had used. They were painting with watercolors kept in little white pots. I didn’t know what had happened to the markers, the ones that smelled like chocolate and watermelon.

Danny was sitting at the far counter with the rose, its petals fanned out to one side so that it looked top-heavy. It had died a long time ago. He stood when I came in and said, Hello Jolaine, it’s been a long time. He was taller, and I couldn’t tell if I was in love with him or not anymore. But then I saw he had a ring on his finger and a gilded little boy next to him. I had made him wait too long.

I told him, I shouldn’t have given you back the rose, Danny. I’ve thought about it all this time.

Well, that is the way of things, isn’t it, he said. But I could hear it in his voice; I had been forgiven.

I took the rose. We shook hands, and he said, I’ll be seeing you then, although we both knew it wasn’t true.

[img_assist|nid=669|title=Creation by Hal Robinson © 2007|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=151|height=104]The lake had gotten old while I was gone, and the water had turned black. It was September, and the beach was all slanted shadows and emptiness. My heels stuck in the sand like taffy. It was slow going, but I made it to the shore. The dock was far away. I had to cup my hand above my eyes to see it, because the sun was very bright.

My sister and I had played a game near the dock in August, many years before. One of us would hide a little plastic shovel in the water, and the other would dive down to find it. The idea was that eventually if it was not found the shovel would rise to the surface, and then the game would be lost.

There had been stories that once—long before we had gotten there—a man had drowned below the dock, while tying the buoys with yellow rope. When it had been my turn to find the shovel, I had thought of this story and was frightened. I couldn’t see the shovel; the water made yellow and green freckles in my eyes. I was very far down, and I could feel the seaweed putting spells on the bottoms of my feet.

I was almost out of air when I saw the glass face, deep below me in the water. I swallowed the lake in gulps. The bubbles caught inside my throat. The lifeguards blew their whistles and paddled out to get me on yellow boards with red crosses.

Afterwards I thought: it was probably a fish. But we had left the shovel underneath the water, and we never went back for it.

I had learned how to swim the crawl stroke at age eleven, and I still remembered it after all this time. My fingers split the lake into five parts in front of me.

My sister had gone back once too. She had walked dripping into my house, smelling of the lake, and she said, Jolaine, you’ll have to go back, I couldn’t find it. That was the day I told Herb about the shovel.

I saw the glass face too. But it smiled at me, and I waved as I kicked back to the surface, the water falling into blossoms below me.

When I got back Herb was sitting in a chair reading the stock quotes. My white dress was on the table. The sleeves were at three-quarters with lace around the cuffs. He looked up at me only a little surprised and said, So that’s it then?

I said yes, yes, that’s it.

I went to go try on my dress.
A 2006 U.S. Mitchell Scholar to Ireland, Victoria is currently enrolled in the M.Phil. program in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin. She received her B.A. from Harvard.

Return to Ithaca

[img_assist|nid=657|title=Still Life with Bird|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=199]February. Plowed hills of gray snow bordered Philadelphia, block after block. Clattering trains and muddy sidewalks echoed unkept promises and, each day on the busy streets near his office, Walt heard the unnerving chatter of businessmen and false camaraderie. After work, Walt bent in against cold air, crossing icy walkways under the hulking metal of the Ben Franklin Bridge. He wanted nothing more than warmth. Uncomplicated company. At the Waterfront Bar, American flags snapped and collapsed in the shifting winds, and Walt spent the better part of each night there trying not to be so angry.

April marked the rainiest spring on record. Chernobyl erupted; U.S. planes attacked Libya. Late one night, as the waters rose from river to sea, Walt’s tall teenage son took a chair and threw it into a wall covered with family pictures. He’d been aiming at Walt. As glass frames shattered, as drunk as he was, Walt was still able to wrestle Mack to the ground. Outside, the rain fell. Outside, handcuffed, Walt felt the spray of passing cars and the kick of conscience. The next day the sun returned. Walt’s wife, Diane, centered her shoulders and filed a restraining order and at 42 years old—his car trunk filled with suits still in dry cleaner’s plastic, back seat littered with coffee mugs and black three-ring binders—Walt moved in with his parents.

Summer passed. He called Diane every day; he promised her things would change. From his office window, Walt looked past the cobblestone parking lot at the blue-brown shipping lanes on the Delaware River. The Khian Sea loaded and sailed, bound for the Caribbean, carrying 14,000 tons of incinerator ash. Walt was preparing a proposal for an international cruise line and, in the process, became sidetracked by historical accounts of untimely ends: the Oceanic, wrecked off the Shetland Islands, was scrapped in 1925; the Savannah ran aground off Long Island in 1821; the Arctic collided with the French steamer Vesta and 322 passengers and crewmen died: no rescue drills, not enough lifeboats. Walt drank lukewarm coffee and shook his head to clear thoughts of disaster. His ad campaign would promise a vast blue-green ocean with sparkling waters and dancing whitecaps, brass fittings and well-heeled luxuries, carpeted grand staircases and marbled ballrooms with glittering crystal and unshifting silverware. A scene fit for Odysseus’ return to Ithaca.

Lucy, barefoot, poured red wine at her desk at 4:30 every day. “No one cares about that,” Lucy said, dropping three creamers next to his coffee and glancing at his proposal. “They want sex and a buffet.”

In October, Diane called. It was three in the morning. The police had just brought their son, Mack, home. Six feet tall now, driver’s permit in his pocket, young Mack took a bottle of scotch, Diane’s car keys, and a portrait of himself off the living room wall and drove 50 miles up the New Jersey Turnpike.

“He took the painting?” Walt repeated.

The painting was Impressionistic and garish, with harsh yellow and ochre colors on Mack’s forehead and cheeks, blues and browns splattered in his hair. Mack’s eyes looked particularly forlorn, flecked with red. Diane failed to see the horror of the image. Walt thought that whoever painted the picture should have his fingers broken. But he also knew how much Diane paid for the painting and understood that it couldn’t sit in a closet.

“His drinking wasn’t the problem,” Diane concluded. “He drove through a toll booth without paying.”

Walt had his shoes on now and car keys in his hand. “I’m coming over.”

“I just wanted to call you. I just wanted you to know.”

Walt sat back down, understanding.

She continued carefully. “I don’t want you to make things worse. He’s asleep now. Just come over tomorrow.”

Home. In the morning, Walt woke without realizing he’d slept. He dressed quickly; he had to stop at work first. Before Diane called about Mack, she’d been with Walt, out to see a play. A date—the fifth one since they’d separated. When he dropped her off, they kissed under a flickering streetlamp, Walt touching her carefully, gratefully, until a cold wind circled them. Diane shivered, smiled, then said good night, her heels clicking up the cement steps to the house. He wanted to follow the light on her hair. The streetlight flickered and leaves swirled around his feet. The house looked well-kept; Walt had painted the tan stucco himself. It had taken him three months, climbing the creaking rungs of the aluminum ladder every day after work. He’d fixed the front door light and laid thick wooden railroad ties to border the unruly pachysandra. Then, in the middle of a rain that lasted for days, he woke one morning on the couch, next to tipped chairs and broken glass. He went upstairs and saw Diane pretending to sleep. What happened? he wondered. What did I do now?

Now, Walt walked down the dark staircase of his parents’ house into the kitchen. There was Pop, dressed and ready for work in a navy blue suit and a boldly-striped tie.

“Time for me to go,” Pop said, sipping the last of his tea. “I’ll see you later.”

[img_assist|nid=658|title=Woman by Katherine Hoffman © 2007|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=199]Walt stared. Pop had worked as a salesman for Add-Tech, where he won trophies for selling adding machines. He retired six years ago. Pop’s navy suit pants were creased sharply, his tie knotted at the neck. But his shirt, tucked deep into his trousers, was unbuttoned, and his ghostly white stomach showed through his open suit jacket.

“It’s Saturday,” Walt said. “No work today.”

The toilet flushed in the next room.

“Where are you going?” Pop growled.

“Work,” Walt said. “Then home.”

Walt’s mother entered the kitchen in a gray robe and slippers. Faded cookbooks lined the shelves near the sink; the kitchen faucet was dripping. Walt’s mother tightened the belt of her robe and reached overhead for a cup and saucer. “Did you get the paper?” she asked.

“I’m on my way into work.”

“Lucy called last night,” she said, taking a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. Lucy was Diane’s sister. Walt had hired her a couple of years ago. He’d felt sorry for Lucy. Diane promised Walt he would regret it.

“What did she say?”

“I hung up.” Walt’s mother believed that Lucy was the reason for Walt’s separation. She cracked several eggs and began beating them in a bowl. She put the carton of eggs back into the refrigerator and put the frying pan on the stove. Diane would be cooking eggs in her microwave. Her eggs would rise fluffy and golden in a glass bowl, then she would cook bacon in the microwave until the strips were brittle, salty and crisp, just the way he liked.

“I don’t like her calling here,” his mother said. The frying pan sizzled and heat rose in the kitchen.

Walt and Diane had never seen eye-to-eye on Lucy. It’s okay for her to work but not me? Diane said. Walt tried to explain that Diane was nothing like Lucy. Lucy stored her brains in her quick, skinny fingers. She laughed too loud and told dirty jokes and drank like a man. He and Lucy worked late together, sipping scotch from the brown thermos next to her desk. Night after night he arrived home to Diane’s accusations, and he had to explain all over again why he would never fire Lucy: she did her job well. She had a knack for knowing what people wanted, even when they couldn’t pinpoint it themselves. Diane didn’t see Lucy like he did: her skinny body moving like a crab, her heart trailing behind her in the loose belt of her raincoat.

“I have to go,” Walt told his mother.

Diane was home, standing next to the sink. In their kitchen, water from the faucet caught sunlight from the window and a spray of reflected light danced across the walls. The back steps creaked under Walt’s feet. The yard was quiet except for the whisper of wind through dry leaves. Diane was waiting for him.

The car wouldn’t start but Walt refused to get angry. He’d promised he would keep his cool. His breath was visible inside the cold car. Change in season, he thought, turning the ignition again, no reason to get bent out of shape. Sure enough the car started on the next try and Walt thought, all those meetings just might be doing me some good.

The road to 7-Eleven was lined with garbage cans standing like sentries. In the wake of Walt’s car, yellow and orange leaves whirled into the air, scattering like spooked birds. The 7-Eleven near his parents’ house had a solid glass front surrounded by red brick, a parking lot with room to navigate, and a fresh swept apron of sidewalk. Each morning he started here. The place gave him assurance. People knew his name and his brand of cigarettes. The linoleum floors gleamed and the coffeemaker gurgled companionably. From the golden boxes of Land-O-Lakes and promises of Mountain Air-scented Tide, from the Slurpees to scratch-off lottery cards, from sea to goddamned shining sea, Walt thought happily, 7-Eleven had it all, land of the free and home of the brave. A man who stopped at this fortunate port could set for worlds unknown all across the Delaware Valley.

Walt entered and nodded at an unfamiliar teenager sitting behind the cash register, bent over the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“What’s a seven-letter word for trip?” the kid called out to the empty store. The kid wore a patch over one eye that clearly wasn’t a joke.

Donna stood up from between the aisles where she was restocking shelves. “Voyage?” she guessed.

Walt waved to her as the kid mouthed the letters over the puzzle.

“That’s only six letters,” the kid finally said.

Donna walked over to Walt. “Owner’s idiot son,” she whispered, wiping the counter around the coffee pots. Then she bent to open the cabinet beneath the counter and pulled out something wrapped in clear plastic. “Merry Christmas.”

“It’s October.” Walt took the strange package from her and tore it open. Inside was a coffee cup holder in the shape of a green plastic hand, there was a handle where the wrist should have been. Donna looked pleased with herself.

“Tell me, oh Muse,” Walt said, delighted, placing his coffee cup inside the green hand, “where is the cream?”

Donna refilled the empty half and half container. Too many summers of sun had weathered her face and frazzled her red hair, but her freckles gave the bold suggestion of a forgotten girlhood. Walt once told her she looked like a teenager. She believed him. Twenty years in advertising had taught him how to be convincing.

“Odyssey,” Walt said, bringing his coffee up to the teenager at the cash register.

The kid bent to the newspaper, mouthing letters again.

At the front counter, soft pretzels spiraled in a glass jewel case. Walt suddenly realized he’d forgotten his wallet. There wasn’t time to go back. Diane was waiting for him and he still had to stop at the office. Walt explained his problem to the kid and picked up the green hand of coffee. “Let me swing back later today with the money.”

“Sorry,” said the boy, one eye staring at Walt. “I can’t do that.”

“I’m good for it,” Walt said, putting down the coffee and trying to keep his tone even.

“No can do,” the kid repeated, bending back to the puzzle.

For six months now, Walt thought, he’d bought his coffee and cigarettes and newspaper here. He’d bought laundry detergent and ice cream, Kleenex for his mother and Swanson frozen dinners for Pop. He’d been loyal. He’d made people laugh. He was holding a green hand coffee cup holder, for God’s sake.

“My father would kill me,” the boy said, taking the coffee and placing it behind the counter. “I’ll hold it here and you come back.”

Walt couldn’t believe it. “Do you know who I am?”

They locked gazes.

Donna hurried over to the cash register and put a five-dollar bill on the counter. Walt ignored her, staring at the kid with undisguised fury. The boy took Donna’s bill and rang up the coffee. Walt saw how clearly he’d become comfortable in the wrong place. But he wasn’t going to get angry. He turned and walked away from it, the kid and the coffee and Donna and her green hand. He put the key in the ignition and the car started right away. Diane had called him for help, and he’d promised. He wouldn’t get angry.

Twenty years he’d worked in advertising, six years heading up his own firm. Three months ago Walt lost a major account, a medical testing company that overcharged Medicare 250 million dollars. Walt needed some new business, new respectability. His smaller clients ran clinical trials and hoped to help and heal the world—but they weren’t floating his business.

This week he had two meetings: one with Mendon Inc., one with Celebrity Cruise Lines. He had high hopes. The first presentation was with Mendon, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that owned over 200 hospitals. If Walt had his way, he would arrange Mendon’s advertising coast-to-coast. Diane would see it then: he’d be back on track.

Walt felt rising irritation at the slow forward movement of cars in front of him. Finally, he saw the parking lot by the waterfront office building, where the wind was whipping off the river, flags snapping sharply in the wind. Lucy might already be there, he realized. Last week she’d been working overtime to help Walt with the Mendon presentation while he’d worked on Celebrity Cruises. They worked late two weeks straight, rehearsing details. Both companies wanted hard data on customers; both wanted creative, capable strategies. It was rumored that Mendon ran background checks on all consultants. Walt hoped this wasn’t true.

Lucy recommended they pitch both clients with the same premise.

“Sex and a buffet?” Walt asked.

“Remind them of death,” Lucy said. “Everyone dies.”

Walt laughed. “Where do we begin?”

“Images of last chances. Missed opportunities. Take that red shoe in the rib cage out dancing.”

“We focus on wellness, comfort, security,” Walt said, shuffling through mockups as Lucy shook her head. “People want to be taken care of. They want to know they’re in good hands.”

Walt looked at Lucy, her skinny body slouched in an oversized chair, her skin a sunless ivory. Walt showed Lucy the storyboards for various organizations in Mendon’s group and the ad copy for the research clinics, major urban hospitals and outpatient addiction and counseling programs. In Hawaii, the Ko’olau mountains split the sky while a rosy-cheeked husband and wife hiked above the clouds, mythical and serene. In Chicago the pulse of jazz would underline mother and son in a sunlit waiting room: Father would be okay, his surgery was a success. In Philadelphia, confident physicians would sprint to the bright lights of an ambulance and tend efficiently to emergency care. Walt and Lucy had seen these all before but looked over each sketch and storyboard with a critical eye.

The Celebrity Cruise images were strikingly similar in form and format. It was as if the designer had replaced the hospital with the cruise ship. The rolling gurney and confident physician was replaced by a tuxedoed waiter wheeling a silver cart of shrimp cocktail. There was motion and deliverance. Rescue and relief.

Walt and Lucy rehearsed late into the night.

“We’re thinking of the future,” Lucy said. “Where do we stand?”

“Your business comes first,” Walt said. “I handle your account personally.”

Lucy drank alone. It was late, and the office was stacked with disheveled piles of research and mockups. Walt drank coffee, black, but felt the tug for something else. He found himself imagining Lucy’s body, bony knees, skin pulled taut between her hipbones. Suddenly Lucy leaned close, her loose shirt unbuttoned in a deep V. And then her lips were on his, chapped and dry, the sting of scotch in her mouth terrifying. His tongue dove for the taste of liquor, but her teeth on his tongue repulsed him, and he pulled away.

Lucy sat back, watching Walt carefully. “Your marriage is over. You know that.”

Walt felt a wave of fury rise inside of him. He was sick of defending Lucy to Diane, sick of defending Diane to Lucy. Sick of his parents and their goddamned ghostly lives. “Diane’s not the problem.”

Lucy shook her head. She swiveled her chair and looked out the window to the dark river behind him, her fingers tapping steadily against her cup, a small, insistent beat.

“Tell you what the problem is,” she said. “You’re a middle-aged man living with your parents.”

“Fuck off.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Lucy reached for the thermos next to her desk.

“Okay,” Walt said. He would rise to the performance. “My father recently suffered a stroke. My mother is unable to care for him.” His mother, more accurately, drove his father to unpredictable rages as she mopped up the floor around the dishwasher, calling him names until Pop threw his teacup across the room and Walt heard the shattering of the saucer on the floor.

Lucy applauded.

“You know,” she said, “if you sign either of these clients, they’ll want to go to dinner with you and your wife.”

Fear pitched through Walt with a sharpness that took his breath away. For a moment, just one goddamned moment, he wished to forget the fractures in his life.

“I’m taking care of my parents,” he said fiercely. “That’s the story. My father suffered a stroke.”

Walt called it a night.

Walt’s office was on the waterfront, an old Quaker Meeting house with cobblestone walkways surrounding it. He stalked quietly past Lucy’s office, hoping the wooden floors wouldn’t give him away. Diane was waiting for him. There’d been no mistaking Lucy’s car in the empty parking lot: headlight smashed, bumper dented. He didn’t have time to talk to Lucy now. He had to get home, and she wouldn’t understand. He’d never cared about getting home before. Late at night, Walt and Lucy used to flip through her road atlas, drinking scotch and waters out of coffee cups. They dreamed trips they would never take. They would go see the Jungle Room at Graceland, the sequoias of Yosemite, the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. They’d travel scenic interstates and buy kitschy snow globes at every gift shop along the way. The Mississippi could be followed from Minnesota’s Lake Itaska all the way to the Gulf of Mexico for crying out loud—it was all there if you wanted it: America, the land of opportunity. It was an amazing country, really. Think of all the salad dressings that a person could buy in this country alone, Walt said. Lucy thought that was a scream. Salad dressings! They made batches of stingers in the office kitchen and climbed up the fire escape to the roof, watching the drag races on Delaware Avenue through blurred binoculars, Philly kids drunk and high, car engines roaring and tires squealing alongside the Delaware River. In winter they walked to Frank Clements’s, where bartenders thought they were a couple. They drank and joked about having an affair but didn’t. They were family. At night’s end they sobered up, insisted they were sensible friends, and any trouble in their marriages, therefore, could not be blamed on them.

Sensible? Now, Walt wondered where the hell his head had been. He closed his office door. He had to admit, Lucy was a problem.

The door groaned on its hinges and opened. There she stood, wearing a red sweater that gave her pale skin color.

“Don’t call my mother,” Walt said, sifting through the piles on his credenza. He just needed one binder of Mendon research to take with him.

“Your mother, Diane—what’s the difference?” Lucy sat in Walt’s chair. “How is Diane anyway?”

He needed to get out of here.

“Things are fine.” He’d just give her a minute, get his work and go. “Diane and I went to a play last night. It was her birthday.”

“No kidding.”

He told Lucy how they had fourth row seats, center, while he gathered the budget files for the Mendon presentation and stacked them in his briefcase. Outside, the muddy water of the Delaware churned under the gray sky.

“You treat her well,” Lucy said. She swiveled back in the chair and smiled.

The air in the room changed. Walt wished things could be the way they used to. Walt once told Lucy that his mother would slice store-bought pound cake and layer in strawberry ice cream for his birthday when he was a boy. The next week, Lucy brought the ice cream cake in for Walt, just to cheer him up. They’d been friends, hadn’t they?

Walt continued talking. He told Lucy how, in one scene of the play, a man ran naked back and forth across the stage, spinning in circles. “The only thing you couldn’t see,” he said, “was the deepest part of his belly button.”

Lucy’s eyebrows rose. “What did she do?”

He knew Lucy would love the next part. “She looked like a goddamn goldfish,” he said, “her mouth opening and closing.” Diane had elbowed Walt in the ribs, as if he couldn’t see the naked man twirling across the stage.

Lucy’s hands slapped the desktop.

“That’s not all,” Walt continued. “During the curtain calls, when all 12 actors came out on stage, Diane asked me to point out ‘the one’.”

“You know why she couldn’t tell?” Lucy said. “She wasn’t looking at his face.” Lucy laughed. Walt watched her: bony jawline, dark nostrils, veined neck. She looked monstrous. He remembered the sting of scotch in her kiss. He wondered why he’d told her that story. You can’t be her friend, he suddenly realized.

Walt rose. “I have to go.”

Lucy quieted and looked closely at Walt. “We have to finish things here,” she said.

Walt packed the last file into his briefcase. He was missing one black binder. “I don’t have time to talk.” He looked at his watch. Diane and Mack. “Where’s the research binder?”

“What’s going on here?” Lucy was stonewalling. “What’s going on with us?”

“We work together,” he said, spinning to face her. “I am your employer.” It was a ridiculous thing to say. “Where the hell is the binder for Monday’s presentation?”

“Don’t do this,” Lucy said.

He stood still, staring down at his closed briefcase. “There’s no time for this. Diane asked me to come home.”

“You’re kidding,” Lucy spat.

For the day. He didn’t say that.

He turned and scanned the shelves for the binder. He wanted to be with Diane when they talked to Mack. He needed the binder. It held the final drafts of statistics and research, though Walt almost knew them by heart. Annual mortality for males due to cardiovascular related problems, 439,000.

“Where is the binder?”

“Which one?”

Walt shoved the chair out of his way. “You know goddamned well which one.” It had him now, gripped his insides.

“Christ, Walt, it’s in my car.”

“What the hell are you doing taking that home?” She had taken presentations home before, lost files and spilled things. He stepped away from her, tried to stop what was happening. He grabbed his briefcase and moved towards the door.

“Fuck you, Walt. Don’t treat me like a child.”

Leave, he told himself. Just get out of here. He left the office lights on and took the emergency stairs two at a time. Outside, he felt her watching him from the office window. It was as if she brought the sky down, and the clouds were closing in on him. He couldn’t breathe; he felt as though he’d sprinted a long distance. He reached his car and threw the briefcase inside, then slammed the door and walked over to Lucy’s car, tripping over loose cobblestones. Walt saw the binder on the front seat alongside books and stained Styrofoam coffee cups. He wasn’t going to make it home in time, he thought. This was the last time Diane would ask for help. Walt pulled at Lucy’s door handle. The car was locked.

Walt looked up. Lucy, smiling, gave him the finger.

The cold air stung his eyes and burned in his chest; the wind whipped off the gray water. Walt thought, fuck her, bent to pick up a thick gray cobblestone from the ground, and threw it at the car window. Then the world began to explode and shatter—the cold and the sky and the glass. The first thrust of the stone splintered the window; his fist did the rest. He’d hear that sound later, hand pumping, the dull thud of impact, the glass caving and splitting, the feel of his whole arm swallowed by fire. He reached through and unlocked the door, took the black binder with his good hand, and walked with the wind back to his car.

Walt had trouble putting the key into the ignition with his left hand. His right hand wouldn’t stop shaking, and he buried it deep in the front of his shirt. He was bleeding from the knuckles; his shirt cuff was damp with it. His body shuddered and the car rocked in the wind. He’d lost it. He sat inside the car and rested his head against the steering wheel. I tried, Walt thought. Did everything by the book. Drying out was hard enough—all the other things should have been so easy to handle: his mother’s overflowing dishwasher, his father’s snipped strings of sensibility, or his own flawed mockups of a sturdy teak deck and gleaming brass railings. His hand was bleeding badly but his fist in his chest was the only part of him that was warm. He had to get home. He drove with his left hand, his eyes set on the road. The hand throbbed, his heart trapped in his fist. Remind them of death, Lucy said. Everyone dies. Walt wondered about his own heart.

One late afternoon after he and Diane separated, Walt found Pop at the top of the stairs, Walt’s mother just behind him. No one else would believe or understand, but Walt saw clearly that she was about to push Pop down the stairs. Walt took his father out. They drove along West River Drive and parked across the river from the line of boathouses. There, with the roar of afternoon traffic behind them, they sat. Pop held his cardigan in his lap, his hands trembling like leaves in the breeze. The setting sun lit a warm orange halo around Pop’s head, and their shadows stole away quietly behind them. They didn’t speak. The sun dropped and the river’s surface flickered with the last daylight. One by one, the boathouse lights came on in a slow, steady procession. Across the river, two rowers dragged their boat into the warm, dry garage. The wind off the Schuylkill River suddenly snapped. It was time to take Pop home.

Pop pulled on his cardigan and cleared his throat. “When I die,” he said, “you come here.” His fingers stumbled on the buttons of his sweater; his eyes were red and milky in the day’s failing light. “This is where I’ll meet you.”

Walt reached over and buttoned his father’s sweater. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

Now the road before him seemed a vast sea, endless and dark. Walt parked across the street, watching them. Diane stood on the front lawn, dragging a heavy bag of leaves toward the curb. Mack stood with one hand on his hip, leaning against his rake and swinging a foot through a leaf pile he’d collected, saying something to his mother that made her pause and laugh.

Walt sat in the car. What would they think? They would never let him come home. He could never be the man they wanted him to be.

At the curb, Diane looked across the street at Walt’s car. There was no more hiding. Walt stepped out of the car, holding his fist to his stomach. The rake fell from Mack’s hands, toppling into the leaves, then suddenly they were at his side, touching him—his arms, his face, Diane, Mack, overwhelming him. The wind lifted and scattered Mack’s pile of yellow and orange leaves; Diane kept saying, What happened?

What world was this? What place more fragile and merciful? I’m fine, Walt said, scattered from their touch, on his back, his shoulders, their hands leading him across the yard and into the house, Mack’s soft cry, Christ, dad, holding Walt in his coarse young hands. I’m fine, Walt told them, barely audible, I’m just hurt. Christine Flanagan teaches writing and literature at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Nails

[img_assist|nid=660|title=Reunion by Elynne Rosenfeld © 2007|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=118]Your mom told me write this down, just in case. She worries. Never tells me straight out I should quit, but she thinks it all the time. I know. I see it in those looks. Those big bright eyes make you feel like you better come up with something quick and you find yourself thinking, what?

That woman can talk like anyone—you’ll be smart like her. It’s when she’s quiet you know she’s telling you something. When am I getting myself a regular job, she wants to know? She mentions your uncle can get me in maintenance down at Saint Joe’s Hospital. Now who wants to clean up after a bunch of sick people? Uncle Squeaky likes it well enough. He’s been on that mop for 20-some years. But not me, right? I’ve seen enough blood. A few times it was my own.

Been doing this since I turned 18. Tell the truth, it was really 16. Lied about my age so I could turn pro early. Figured I could get out in 10 years with my wits about me. Still hanging on to those wits, and I’m not used up just yet.

Your mom says 39’s too old. I say, yeah, but it’s too young to lie down. I don’t know anything else worth knowing. You want to get somewhere in this hustle, you got to get past me. I’m what’s known as an opponent. They put me in with bucks on the way up, some half as old as me. Most times, though, they’re not half as smart. Nobody fights me without learning something.

Everybody calls me Nails. Nails from North Philly.

My trainer, Darcy Walker, gave me that name years ago. Met him the first time I walked into Joe Frazier’s gym on North Broad. Darcy used to be a fighter himself. Won the Pennsylvania welterweight title back in the ’70s. Then Darcy’s vision got fuzzy and they made him stop. Told him he was done and that was that. If it wasn’t for the record books, most regular folks wouldn’t even know he existed. Guess they wouldn’t know much about me, either.

I had arms like pipe cleaners, but Darcy said he could make me a decent middleweight if I was to stick with it. Year or so later, I was in the gym sparring one day when he yelled, “Look at Nails! You hit so hard, boy, you could seal a man’s coffin shut for good!”

Most people been calling me Nails so long, they forgot my real name. Sometimes I even have to think about who I used to be.
I been in 46—no, 47 pro fights. Been all around the country—even far out as Arizona, California, Texas. This one time, I was in fighting a Mexican in this big hot auditorium and the people were screaming, “Kill that spic!” I didn’t pay them any mind. No one in that place would say that to his face, just like they wouldn’t call me nigger to mine.

Anyway, I hit that Mexican with everything I had and he just kept coming. I believe I broke a knuckle on his head. Those gloves and wraps don’t make a bit of difference, not when you’re trying to break stone. In the sixth, he caught me with a left uppercut and all I saw was a blank screen with white dots floating across it. Stayed on my feet four more rounds, but I don’t know how. Thought I pulled it out, but the judges saw otherwise. Lost a close decision. Wonder whatever happened to that Mexican? He was rough. Wish I could remember how much I made for that fight?

Most times, I fight here in Philly, over at the Blue Horizon. That’s my home crowd. They cheer me, win or lose. They chant, “Nails, Nails, Nails” and slap me on the back when I’m moving past. They know I leave everything I have in there, even though I don’t have much left.

When it comes to Philly fighters, everybody knows we’re the toughest. Forget Frazier. We had Bennie Briscoe, Cyclone Hart and Matthew Franklin (calls himself Saad Muhammad now). Maybe some day folks will put me up there with them.

Been on a down streak lately. Knocked out in my last two bouts. Darcy says one more KO and the athletic commission’ll suspend my license. Now how do they take a man’s living away just like that? Those KOs were just because I was lazy. Didn’t work hard enough in the gym. Caught me on a bad night, twice in a row. That’s all.

Overall, I won 30 fights and lost 17. Looks bad on paper, but I still have more Ws than Ls. A lot of those losses were wins judges took from me. Some don’t like me because I’m flashy. Stick and move, stick and move. Others, well, I couldn’t tell you what fight they were watching.
The reason I never won a championship is because there was almost two years right in my prime when I was out of the ring. This was before you were born. Got myself locked up for being stupid. Started thinking I should be making the big money right away, didn’t want to be patient, wait on my chance. I was running with these guys who decided to take down an invite-only craps game on top of a Chinese place on Girard.
I wasn’t packing that night. I just waited outside, by the fire escape. You could still see Christmas lights blinking in the windows in February. So cold my toes went numb. I wondered how I’d run if I had to.
Something went down in there, still don’t know what. I heard pop-pop-pop-pop then Ray-Ray comes busting out the front door, looking like he didn’t know if he should go left or right. He flew down the alley and I got to it just in time to see him toss his piece in a Dumpster. I knew that’s the first place the police would look, so I took off after Ray-Ray. Then I felt those headlights on me and heard a cop tell me to freeze, put my hands up or he would shoot. I was just hoping he wasn’t the kind who’d shoot either way.

Don’t know where everyone else got to that night, but none of them came to see me up in Graterford. Eighteen months just for standing outside, and trying to help a fool.

I look out the window tonight and still see them. Maybe not the same guys exactly, but the same kind. They look hard under the streetlights, but really they’re nothing but empty inside.

This morning, when it was barely light, I was out doing my roadwork on Rising Sun. I passed one of them guys, maybe just a few years younger than me. We looked eye to eye and it came to me that it would have been easy enough for me and him to switch-up. Not that much difference between us two, but we each made some choices that put us where we are.
You won’t end up like them. You’re smart, like your mom. She’s getting her college degree someday. Wants to be a nurse. Maybe she’ll get me into the hospital after all.

You don’t know it yet, but you’ll have a baby brother or sister by the end of the year. That’s why I need to keep doing this a while longer.
Got another fight coming up in two weeks at the Blue. They’re putting me in against some kid from Baltimore with a Muslim name. Darcy said he has 14 knockouts in 15 fights. They say the kid hits so hard your teeth’ll hurt even if you have dentures.

But I’ve been training extra hard, that’s why I haven’t been around much lately. I’m figuring if I can pull this off, I’ll get myself noticed for a money bout. I’m feeling like this is the one that’ll change everything. We can walk on out of here. Move someplace nicer. Someplace where I won’t have to worry about you and your little brother or sister getting hung up in something crazy.

After this fight, you might even read about me in the Inquirer or Daily News. Nails Hammers It Home. That’s what the headline will say. Tim Zatzariny Jr. is a senior staff reporter for the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J. In May, he’ll graduate with a master’s degree in Writing from Rowan University. He is at work on his first novel, set in his hometown of Vineland, N.J.

Atlantic City

Andy watched the cars around them puff vapor as his grandfather’s Cadillac slid through the Sunday church traffic on Cheltenham Ave. Pop flicked cigarette ash out the driver’s window. “Lock your doors when you drive through Olney,” he said. “You were born in Olney.”

Andy held his breath to keep the smoke out of his lungs and closed his eyes. His temples throbbed; the backs of his eyes ached. He’d had seven shots of airplane gin the night before, on a flight that landed late in Philly thanks to driving sleet. Four hours of sleep had done nothing to ease the pain.

Pop swung the Caddy through a gap in the wrought-iron fencing. The car plowed through a puddle and passed a low stone building with green landscaping trucks parked outside. A bronze crucifix stood by the door.

“Holy Sepulchre. Remember that. Lots of graveyards in Philadelphia,” Pop said, turning to Andy, eyebrows arching above his fishbowl glasses. The road branched into a network of smaller lanes marked with letters. “Lane D,” Pop said. They approached a fork and Pop pointed to a tomb with brass doors gone green from age. “Turn left at Felix Hanlon. Remember that name – left at Felix Hanlon.”

Andy knew he was only telling him all of this because Pop thought he was going to die soon. Andy had been doing the same thing since his mother died three months earlier, covering all of his bases, even though he was forty years younger than Pop. He’d even had the estate lawyer draw up his will. But Pop could have saved himself the trouble: Andy wouldn’t remember the way to his mother’s grave. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

They passed a line of limestone mausoleums strung along a side hill. A thin man stood in the middle of a plot by the side of the road, hands stretching the pockets of his jacket. Pop pulled over behind a silver Buick and parked.

“There’s Eddie,” Pop said, and Andy realized that the man standing among the graves was his great-uncle.

They slid off the leather seats and closed the doors softly. The grass was slick underfoot. When they reached Eddie, he nodded; his great-uncle was the tallest person in the family, and he looked down on everybody.

“How you been, Andy?” Eddie shook Andy’s hand.

“Still living,” Andy said, shrugging. He was surprised that Eddie had called him by the right name; most of the family confused him with his older brother, Josh.

Eddie said hello to Pop and the brothers hugged awkwardly, as if they were trying to lift each other but couldn’t find the proper hold.

“Your brother couldn’t make it?” Eddie asked Andy, frowning.

“He had to work,” Andy said. It was a lame excuse, but the one Josh had given. Andy knew his brother had stayed home in an attempt to move on; he was rejecting the family’s protracted mourning. Andy had considered doing the same, but felt obligated to see this through to the end: he wanted to watch his mother’s ashes lowered into the earth. He’d toss the dirt over her himself, if it meant it would finally be over.

Andy’s eyes drifted to the crest of the hill, where angels and crosses shared the gray skyline with apartment buildings and the parapets of Beaver College, the unfortunately named all-girls school a block over. At least the weather’s right, he thought. The storm had passed in the night, and now a dirty fog lingered at the bottom of the hill, erasing the gravestones. The December cold had already begun to stiffen his fingers. Living in Arizona hadn’t prepared him for this.

“He’s late,” Pop said, glancing at the tarnished watch on his wrist.

“The priest?” Andy asked.

Pop nodded. “He’s going to do a ceremony.” Pop spread his hands in front of him, as if to illustrate.

Eddie muttered something under his breath. He was probably still upset that the funeral hadn’t happened in Philly, where the family had lived for four generations. It was her birthplace, Andy’s birthplace, everybody’s birthplace. But Andy knew she’d moved to Arizona for a reason, raised them there, died there. He didn’t know what reason, but it had taken a crematorium and a box to get her back.

Andy tried to read the names inscribed behind the filthy windows of the family mausoleum. Pop and Eddie wandered the gravestones that lay flat and black in the grass of the family plot, like windows into the underworld. Pop began to read the names aloud. It took Andy a moment to realize that it was for his benefit. Pop pointed to the grave that held his parents. “Cancer,” he said. “Both of ’em.” He stopped at another and introduced Andy to the great-great uncle he would never meet. “Japs got him,” he said. “Sank his boat and let the sharks do the rest.” At the next stone, Pop didn’t say anything. Andy read the inscription:

BENNETT

John M., Jr.

February 15, 1938 –

Miriam A.

May 13, 1938 – December 29, 2000

Together in life, together at rest.

Pop had already had his name put on, right above his wife’s. A few years earlier, Grandma Mary had started to forget things. Then Pop woke up at midnight to an empty bed and the whine of a vacuum. He found her in the living room, dressed in an evening gown and slippers, vacuuming the drapes. She’d died soon after of a brain disease the doctors couldn’t identify. The last time Pop saw her, she didn’t know who he was. Andy had heard the story from his mother before she died. He’d never talked to Pop about anything other than Philadelphia sports.

“What’s your middle name?” Andy asked.

“Moylan.”

Andy chuckled, despite himself. “Seriously?”

Pop’s lips moved silently, then words came out. “This is where I’ll be soon, Josh.”

“Andy. I’m Andy.” It sounded angrier than he meant it to, and his grandfather looked up with hurt in his eyes. Andy felt bad for saying it, but he was sick of making arrangements, sick of spending perfectly good and vital days of his life making order out of death: who inherited what, where to have the funeral, where to bury the ashes. It struck him that he still didn’t know exactly where they were burying her – he hadn’t yet seen her grave. He asked and Pop pointed to a plot in the back corner, next to a pathway for lawnmowers, where a canvas tarp stretched across a hole in the ground. Andy felt a surge of resentment toward those strange dead relatives who had taken all the good spots.

Pop’s face flickered. “And then you can go above her,” he said, shuffling his hands in a stacking motion. Andy looked at Pop in disbelief. They stack caskets, he thought, like cars at parking lots in Newark. Pop squatted and began to rub the letters of his own name.

Brakes creaked behind him and Andy turned to see a landscaping truck pull up next to the Caddy. A priest in a black parka got out and walked toward them. He introduced himself and apologized for his lateness.

“I’ll go get her,” Pop said, and walked to the car. As Pop reached into the trunk, the priest looked to the sky, as if afraid of rain. Pop walked over holding the urn, a small pewter-colored box with an inscription Andy knew by heart:

Deborah Ann Bennett

August 10, 1957 — September 19, 2001

A loving daughter, a loving mother.

Andy had chosen the words himself, because his brother didn’t want to, and neither of them trusted anybody else. He’d agonized over how to best describe his mother; he wanted to give speeches, loud long eulogies to crowds full of everyone who’d ever known her, and everyone who hadn’t, to tell them all what she was – retired Army, a small-business owner, a single mother of two from a bad part of a bad city who got by on her smarts and her sweat instead of a welfare check. How remarkable she had been, how much better than all the useless people still breathing everywhere he went. He soon realized he couldn’t sum that up, so he went with relativity: who she was to those who loved her. A daughter, a mother. His mother.

Pop set the urn in the dirt next to the tarp. The priest pulled a prayer card from his jacket pocket and read the prayer of committal. Andy followed along in his head: We commend to Almighty God our sister Deborah… Ashes to ashes, and all that.

The priest finished. Andy waited for him to move the tarp and put her into the grave. The priest stood there for a moment, expressed his regrets, and shook hands with Pop and Eddie. He reached for Andy’s hand, and it extended mechanically, but Andy didn’t let go.

“That’s it?”

The priest nodded. “The prayers of committal have been read. Now she can be interred.” He tugged against Andy’s grip, and Andy relented. He looked to his grandfather and pointed at the tarp, then at the urn nestled in the grass.

“They take care of that later,” Eddie said. He clenched Andy’s shoulder. “It’s okay, son. You don’t want to see that, anyway.”

# # #

Andy read the Lee’s Hoagie House menu while his grandfather and Eddie ordered their usuals. Pop got a pizza steak, Eddie a cheesesteak. The man behind the counter stared at Andy from below a dirty Phillies hat. Andy ordered a turkey hoagie.

They stood by the pickup counter tapping their feet.

“You sure you ought to have a pizza steak, Pop?” He’d had a heart attack a decade ago, and he was six months removed from triple-bypass surgery. The whole family had been praying that his heart would hold up, that he could survive the death of his only child five years after the death of his wife, that they wouldn’t have to have another funeral, for him.

Pop shrugged and said he only had one every blue moon. Andy saw Eddie glaring at him and dropped the subject. They slid into a green vinyl booth.

“What was she like?” Andy asked. “As a kid, I mean.”

Pop’s jowls fell, then a wan smile creased his cheeks. He cleared his throat.

“How you like that new Cadillac?” Eddie asked. He nodded toward the parking lot, where the Caddy squatted alone among the weeds poking through the cracked asphalt.

Pop’s head turned from Andy to Eddie, then back again. “Good car,” he said. “Rides real nice. Lots of power.” He rubbed his nose where the glasses pinched his skin, then put his sandwich down and excused himself. As Pop disappeared into the bathroom, Eddie flicked onion bits from his lips and spoke directly to Andy. “Jesus, kid, don’t you know what he’s been through?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

Eddie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why don’t you two do something to take his mind off it? Go see a game.”

“You know how hard it is to get Eagles tickets, Eddie?” Andy glanced at the yellowed Yuengling signboard on the wall.

Eddie leaned across the table. “You ain’t got to tell me. I been here all my life, remember. Sixty-eight years I been watching that sorry-ass team.” That didn’t keep him from telling Andy about the old Eagle greats – Van Buren, Bednarik, Jaworski – until Pop came back to the table. They made small talk while they finished their lunch. Andy left most of his hoagie sitting on the grease-spotted wrapper.

In the parking lot, Eddie snuck a few bills into Andy’s goodbye handshake, shooting him a wink.

“You kids go have yourselves some fun,” he said, slamming the door of his new Buick. Andy watched his brake lights plunge as he drove down the steep curb. They got into the Cadillac. Andy reached into the center console for a breath mint to kill the taste of onions.

“So what do you want to do?” Pop asked. He cranked the key and the Caddy rumbled. Go home, Andy thought. I’d like to go home. But he couldn’t say that any more than he could do it. He turned on the radio:

Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty…

He’d know Springsteen anywhere; he’d heard his voice so many times, crackling on Mom’s record player, wailing through the house every time she broke up with one of her boyfriends, or one of her husbands. The harmonica came in, screaming, as if somebody were sobbing into the mouthpiece.

“ Atlantic City,” Andy said.

“Good song.” Pop reached for the volume knob.

“We should go,” Andy said, and the moment he heard his own words inside his head, he knew that it was right. He saw Pop’s face settling and knew what he would say: too far; he hadn’t been in years; it would all be different now.

“C’mon, Pop. It’s, what, an hour away? It’ll be fun. You can show me around.” They needed to do something besides sit and eat and mourn; it had been too long, three months that felt like his entire lifetime, one long learning curve of grief. They had to do something to remind themselves that they were still alive. Their luck had to change.

Pop took off his glasses and wiped them. His eyes were red around the edges.

“Okay, pal,” Pop said. “What the hell, right?”

# # #

Andy watched Pop behind the wheel. One of his grandfather’s hands held his cigarette up to the cracked window; the heel of the other rested on the steering wheel, when he wasn’t gesturing. Pop was telling jokes.

“What do you call a white man in Camden?”

Andy winced.

“Officer!” Pop chuckled.

Andy forced a grin while he wondered how it was ever normal to talk like that. It was another reminder of the generation gap between them, the one his mother used to bridge. Now it was just them, two men who shared blood and nothing else, who hardly knew each other at all. There’s still time, he thought. They were young enough: Pop was sixty-five, but he could have passed for sixty easily, and besides, Andy was twenty-three and he felt fifty and sixty and seven hundred, ancient, like he was carved in rock. Together, he thought, they could burn up the blackjack banks. They could take Atlantic City; make a memory or two that didn’t involve death or long-distance phone charges.

He was dreaming stacks of green when the car shuddered. Pop had let it drift onto the rumble strips on the side of the highway. He whipped the wheel, crossing the dotted line, nearly side-swiping a Volkswagen. Andy gripped his chest with one hand and shoved the other against the dash. He closed his eyes and considered saying a prayer.

“Don’t worry,” Pop said, slapping Andy’s hand away from the dashboard with his own, which should have been steering the car. “Safest road in America, right here. They did a survey.”

The road was the least of Andy’s worries. He had spent most of the trip envisioning the Caddy blowing a tire, them veering across the median into oncoming traffic. Their caskets lowering into the family plot, one on top of the other. Strips of rubber, lug nuts, Pop’s surgically repaired arteries: their lives relied on so many things.

Pop pointed to the horizon, where angular casinos reared above the treeline. They passed a sign announcing the end of the expressway, rounded a corner, and Andy got his first glimpse of Atlantic City. It was not what he expected: no lights or marquees or bright casino entrances beckoning. Bars covered the windows and graffiti covered everything else. Gas stations and liquor stores fought for space with fast-food restaurants and check-cashing centers. A homeless old woman in a little girl’s coat staggered down the sidewalk pushing a shopping cart half-full of clothes stained with dark blotches. They drove down the street in silence, like observers in a war, until they could see the ocean peeking out between the high-rises on the boardwalk. Their brief sense of dread dissipated in the winter breeze blowing in off the beach.

# # #

The table was hot. Pop flicked chips from the Technicolor puddle in front of his ashtray. Andy plucked his carefully from neat stacks.

“You gamble a lot back home?” Pop asked.

“Nope, not much,” Andy said. The woman dealing shot him a look; for the last hour, he’d been splitting eights and aces, doubling every eleven. There was no reason to lie. “I go to Vegas a few times a year.” Actually, there was a reason to lie – Andy wasn’t going to tell him that he’d donated most of his mother’s modest life insurance money to tip jars and chip racks.

“No kidding? We used to go, Mary and me.”

The dealer flipped her hole card, a king, then dropped a nine next to the six already showing. Bust. Easy money.

“Always stayed at the Flamingo,” Pop continued. “Ever been there? That’s a classy joint.”

“Sure is,” Andy said. It once was, judging by the pictures in the lobby. When he had gone, the bedspreads smelled like pipe tobacco and the flamingos were molting.

Pop squirmed in his seat and stretched. “How about we make things interesting before we head to the boardwalk?” he said, sliding his whole stack into the circle: four blacks and a ten-stack of green. Andy had less; a glance told him about three-fifty. He’d bought in with the three hundred Eddie had given him, taken a dive right away, then climbed back up during the hot shoe they’d just finished.

The dealer tapped a long red fingernail against the felt in front of Andy. “Bet?” she asked, in a shrill foreign accent that irritated him.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t gamble anymore. The money in his hand could delay the collection calls for a month, buy him another two weeks without an eviction notice. Now that he’d dropped out, the banks were sending letters about his student loans. He refused to ask Pop for money, because he didn’t want him to think he was after an inheritance. That wasn’t why he was there. He had come to settle things. He had come to start anew.

Andy slid his whole stack into the circle. They were still young.

The cards came quickly: an ace each. Andy’s chest stretched tight across his ribs as the deal came around to fill them up: Pop caught a seven, Andy another ace. The dealer flipped a queen.

“Jeez,” Pop said. “This ought to be good.” He winked at Andy and tapped his finger. She dealt him a ten that made his soft eighteen hard. She turned to Andy.

“Twelve,” she said, her accent butchering the word.

Andy considered for another moment. Always split aces. Always. He turned to Pop.

“How much cash you got?”

Pop pulled out his money clip and counted twenties. “ Two forty,” he said.

“Twelve,” the dealer said again. Twerve, he thought, feeling a sneer start and scolding himself. It was a ten-dollar table on a Tuesday afternoon in December, and if they lost they wouldn’t have anything left to tip her. They were being assholes, but he didn’t give a shit. The world owed them that much. More.

He looked at her name tag. “Where’s the fire, Fong?”

The woman scowled as he counted the money in his wallet: five twenties, a five, four crumpled ones. He checked his pockets: three quarters and three dimes. He had a nickel to spare.

“Split ’em,” he said, taking Pop’s offering and slapping it all down on the table. “You can keep the change.” He winked at Fong and felt his blood rising for the first time in forever.

She flipped an eight and smirked; it widened into a smile when she turned another ace. Nineteen and twelve against a face card showing. Pop had eighteen. They were going to lose everything.

She pointed her fiery fingernail at the leftmost hand, the pair of aces. “Split again, Bugsy?”

Andy leaned against the back of his chair and exhaled. He saw that a small crowd of degenerates had gathered behind them. That kind of hand didn’t happen every day. The pit boss appeared behind the dealer, arms folded. Andy doubted he’d give them a marker for three-fifty after the way he’d been acting. He had resigned himself to another loss when Pop spoke.

“ Three fifty now, I’ll pay you five or a Rolex in thirty seconds,” Pop said to the handful of onlookers. He slid his watch off his wrist and dangled it between his fingers. It had diamonds on the face and, Andy knew, an inscription on the back: Thanks for the best twenty years of my life. Love, Mary.

“Pop, what are you—.”

Pop extended a palm. His face was flushed. A tattooed man in a tank top took the watch and looked it over. The diamonds did their job; old as it was, the watch was worth a few large, easy.

“My kind of guy,” said tank top. He dug a handful of chips from his jeans. The pit boss moved toward Pop.

“You got a problem?” Pop spat. The pit boss blinked to a stop, surveyed the empty casino floor, and shook his head before stepping back. Pop was old, but he wasn’t one to back down. He swept the chips from tank top’s hand into his own and then dropped them into Andy’s cupped palms like an offering. Tank top put the watch on the table, and Andy saw Pop’s eyes linger on it.

“You don’t have to,” Andy said.

Pop shot him a smile that showed he wasn’t sure about it, either. “All I’ve got is time, pal.”

Fong’s fingernails massaged the deck as Andy counted how much was at stake. In his head, Springsteen again: I got debts no honest man can pay. He held his breath as the cards came down.

King of diamonds.

Suicide Jack.

He let it out. He was buying dinner, no matter what she had. Fong let the slot machines jingle for a long second before she showed her hand.

Deuce. Twelve, the dealer’s ace, Andy thought.

Then a Queen fell, and the table erupted. A grandmother slapped Andy’s hand. He looked over and saw tank top put his arm around Pop. They’d pay him back, keep the watch, and clear more than fifteen hundred in profit.

“Color us up,” he said to Fong, but she was watching Pop with widened eyes. Andy turned to see his grandfather clutching at his chest. Sweat beaded above his glasses.

“Pop?” Andy said. He shot out of his stool, knocking it over. He slapped tank top’s arm away from Pop’s shoulders and replaced it with his own. He felt the group crushing in around him. The stale smoked clogged his nose and the slot machines rang in his ears. Should I tell him I love him? Is this my last chance?

“I’m … okay,” Pop said, wiping his forehead. “Just … out of breath … is all.”

Andy put his fingers against Pop’s damp neck, trying to remember the CPR class he’d taken in high school. He felt a pulse pushing back against his skin and said a silent prayer of thanks, to God, to his mother, to whoever was watching over them.

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said, helping Pop out of his chair.

Two steps from the table, Pop wheezed: “The money.” Andy turned and stuffed the stack of black and gold chips into his pockets. He cleared a path for them with a glare and they walked to the door, the soft red carpet sucking at their shoes.

# # #

The waves crashed along the boardwalk and the wind cut through their clothes. Pop leaned back against the marble wall and blinked slowly.

“Scared you, didn’t I?”

Andy giggled, even though he didn’t find it funny. His head felt light and airy, and his skin prickled from the cold and the relief. He looked down the boardwalk, past the T-shirt shops and food booths, to the palatial Taj Mahal at the far end.

“You ever played a hand like that?” Pop asked.

“Nope. You?”

Pop shook his head. “Mary didn’t like to gamble. She was real classy, you know, and even back then A.C. was going to hell in a bucket.” They watched a homeless man walk by. “I used to bring your mom down here, when she was just a kid.”

At the mention of his mother, Andy blinked, then smiled, as his mind reacted in its usual way: picturing her alive, pushing brown curls behind her ear, and then picturing the urn with her name engraved on it.

“We were both kids, really.” Pop had his only child at nineteen; Andy knew that much. He imagined himself with a four-year-old child. What a disaster that would be. “She loved the water, that girl. Couldn’t get her to come out until her fingers were all shriveled up–” Pop clenched his hands “–and her skin looked like a stop sign.” He sighed. “She just wouldn’t listen.”

Andy wondered whether Pop had pulled the watch stunt so that he’d have a similar story to tell about them. I used to take him down the shore to A.C. Kid had brass balls – split aces three times once, almost cost me my watch. Or was it for Andy’s sake, to give him something to remember about his grandfather? Next thing I know Pop’s waving his watch around. He bet a Rolly on me. That’s the kind of faith he had. A funeral anecdote.

“I’m glad we came down here, Pop.”

“Me too, pal.” Pop smiled. “Haven’t been in years. Glad we got a chance to see it —

Andy sensed Pop’s “before” coming and interjected. “You could come down whenever, Pop. It’s not far.”

Pop shrugged his shoulders and looked around. “With who?”

Andy followed his grandfather’s eyes to the waves eating away at the empty beach, the trash blowing down the boardwalk, the lights chasing each other around buildings. Overhead, flags popped in the wind like the knuckles of some giant, closing hand. He realized how terrible it would feel to be here alone, and he wanted to say that they could go together, he and Pop. He could come to visit more often, they could come back to A.C. for a weekend or two. If he could get Pop to fly out, maybe they could even hit Vegas for a weekend. But he didn’t say it, because he thought it might sound too much like a promise, or too much like a dream.

“Hell of a place you picked to rest,” Pop said. Andy looked behind him for the first time. He’d thrown open the doors of the casino and led Pop to the nearest place to sit, a low marble slab that he now saw was part of some monument. A huge bronze plaque of names stretched along a marble wall, and a statue of an officer stood in the middle of the plaza. The officer held his helmet at his side and stared down his arm at a fistful of dog tags, as if he didn’t know what they were.

Pop pushed himself up with one arm, and they walked slowly over to the sign.

“New Jersey Korean War Memorial,” Andy read.

“Wonderful spot for it,” Pop said, looking from the casino entrance on one side to the pizza joint on the other.

“Eight hundred twenty two dead or missing,” Andy said. “And this is what they get.”

# # #

Andy had checked twice on the way back from A.C. to make sure his grandfather was breathing but Pop stopped snoring and stirred as they climbed the rise of the Walt Whitman Bridge. The city unrolled before them, its lights cutting through the dusk. Past twinkling Center City sat the concrete face of the Vet, and behind it lurked the long, dark arms of the cranes brought in to build the two new stadiums that would make it obsolete. Between the Whitman and the Ben Franklin, the dying light curdled the water of the Delaware, and above the swaying masts at the landing, William Penn straddled the gold-lit steeple of City Hall.

“There used to be a law that said you couldn’t build anything taller than the tip of his hat,” Pop said, pointing at the city’s founder, then at the bank buildings dwarfing him. “That was a long time ago.”

It was dark outside by the time they parked outside Pop’s condo. He had fallen asleep again, cheek pressed against the seat, his mouth trailing moisture onto the leather. Andy got out of the car, closed the door softly, and stretched. The lights of the city seemed far away now, hidden behind the buildings of Pop’s complex, so he could only see the halo they cast into the sky. Between the homes, sprinklers threw sheets of water across the grass, and Andy stood watching his breath escape into the cold air, not wanting to wake Pop. They would go inside, and Andy would sleep in his mother’s old room, where the strange metallic wallpaper kept him awake with its reflections. Pop would sleep in his recliner, next to the nightstand he’d moved out into the living room, because his bedroom reminded him of his dead wife, and the other bedroom reminded him of his dead daughter.

Andy would leave in the morning, go back to Arizona with the money that stuffed his pockets. It was enough to make rent, pay the bills for another month. He’d have to find a job, something to do with himself. Maybe he’d enroll in spring classes at the local community college.

And Pop would stay right here, Andy knew, no matter what he said or did or tried to plan to change it. He’d sleep in the same empty condo, drive the same old Caddy, until he moved across Philadelphia to join his wife and daughter. It was just a matter of time, now; the grave had already been marked with his name.

Andy thought of the family plot, where they had been that morning. He wondered if his mother’s ashes had been buried yet, whether the grass had begun to take root in the raw dirt above her. He wondered how long it would take to grow over, for the brown earth to turn green. Justin St. Germain was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Tombstone, Arizona. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona. This is his first published story.

A lifelong fan of the Eagles and Phillies, he was conceived the night the Phils won their last World Series. He’s been waiting for another title ever since.

Excerpt from One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

[img_assist|nid=629|title=Look Who’s Talking by Clara Pfefferkorn|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=150]It was Christmas, the first Christmas after Claire’s wedding, and Deirdre did not seem well. This wasn’t an easy distinction, as Claire’s mother had spent two decades complaining about this pain or that one, her migraines and fevers and swollen feet. But this time she seemed uncharacteristically quiet, weakened on the inside. Every visible feature was frantic, insistent, too bright.

Claire, now a married woman, was capitalizing on the new freedom this allowed. Being half a “we” gave her license to control her comings and goings, to claim “they” were needed elsewhere, part of a tangled, busy married life she was not obligated to divulge. She and Bob had spent Christmas Day with his family and came to Philadelphia two days later. The plan enabled Claire to sidestep the Gallagher Christmas traditions—she was no longer a Gallagher, so she could refer to them this way—like Midnight Mass at St. Cecilia’s, after which Deirdre plucked hay from the crèche to tuck inside their wallets and Father Mike clasped her thick hands in his thin ones, leaning forward to offer holiday wishes that were extra-sincere, his blue-gray eyes wide and unblinking in acknowledgment of Deirdre’s devotion to the church and long history of suffering.

Claire always felt uncomfortable around her mother’s piousness, which seemed such a contradiction to her personality at home. Two days later, Deirdre lay across the couch in one of her new Christmas presents: a silky, eggplant-colored bathrobe, the sash knotted around the bubble of her stomach and purple clashing with her hair. The pocket on the front was probably intended to be decorative but Deirdre had packed it like a purse—a rosary, a wad of Kleenex, an emergency tube of lipstick (just in case, lounging around her own home, she needed to reapply). Gene was wearing his red cable-knit sweater. His “Santa sweater,” Deirdre called it. He occupied his usual spot, in the most uncomfortable chair in the room.

Claire, Bob and Claire’s sister , Noelle , assumed the role of children, sitting on the floor among the strewn ribbons, ripped wrapping, and Deirdre’s swollen, pink-slippered feet.

“Your family celebrates Christmas, right?” Deirdre asked.

The question was directed at Bob, though it lacked its usual sharpness; like everything about Deirdre that day, the words seemed dulled.

“Of course they do,” Claire answered for him. “We were just there. Remember?” She felt a flash of panic, wondering if her mother’s memory might be slipping—“cognitive dysfunction,” it was called, common in the later stages of the disease, though Deirdre had never shown any signs of it. “We just came from there, remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Deirdre snapped. “I just thought they might be—what’s it called?”

“ Dee ,” Gene cautioned.

“Agnostic,” Bob said. “But my family’s, ah, Presbyterian.”

Deirdre made a small noise in her throat, condescending but vaguely conciliatory, the combined effect of her deep-seeded Catholic-Protestant one-upmanship and grudging approval that at least the parents weren’t agnostics too.

“My turn,” Noelle said, picking up her next gift. They were rotating, opening presents one at a time. Claire had always hated this system, all the slow pomp and performance, but it was the kind of focused attention Noelle liked, and Deirdre insisted on.

The gift was from Claire and Bob, a thick gray wool scarf Noelle seemed to not hate—or at least, think Paul would not hate. “I can totally see Paul stealing this,” she said. Noelle and Paul hadn’t seen each other since August at the Jersey shore but, to Claire’s surprise, were still going strong. They called and wrote letters; he was coming to visit for New Year’s. Noelle, it seemed, was in love, Paul occupying the front room of her brain like a filter coloring her every thought.

Gene opened next: a wool sweater, solid brown. More dignified, Claire thought, than the red one.

“Thank you, honey,” Gene said.

[img_assist|nid=628|title=Emergence by Gary Koenitzer|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=132]“Made by local craftsmen,” Claire explained. It sounded stupid, but she had taken special care with her gifts that year, chosen them to evoke her new life in New Hampshire . Wool and flannel, hand-dipped candles that smelled like pine and cedar, and all the traditional foods of New England : pancake mixes, clam chowders, maple syrup, maple candies shaped like leaves and rolled in sugar. Her family had never suggested coming to visit, but neither had she. It was just as well. The accoutrements of their life—like the moving announcements and perky, annotated cookbooks—had more charm than the life.

Bob was next. So far, his gift pile amounted to a stack of slippery gift cards: Barnes & Noble, Sam Goody, The Gap. But this last gift, from Deirdre, was large and awkward. Deirdre perked up as he started to tear it open, pushing up on her elbows to get a better look. When he saw what was inside, Bob laughed out loud, something he almost never did—the sound was abrupt, as if his lungs had been caught off-guard.

“What is it?” Noelle asked.

He held it up. It was one of those music-activated dancing salmon, probably purchased at a mall kiosk. The fish was wearing black sunglasses and mounted on a wooden plaque. Claire was suspicious: had her mother deliberately given Bob something tacky to undermine his “smart-shmartness”?

But one look at Deirdre revealed that she was genuinely enamored with the dancing fish. She laughed and laughed as it wiggled and pelvic-thrusted to a throaty Elvis impression of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Bob seemed to enjoy it as much as she did; his eyes were wet, the laughter like a dry whistle in his throat.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Deirdre kept saying. “Isn’t it funny?”

They ran through the salmon’s entire repertoire—“Rock Around the Clock” and “Blue Moon” and “Heartbreak Hotel” again—and Deirdre’s enjoyment never waned. Claire was surprised, even touched, that her mother had bought it. Maybe she was beginning to like Bob more. But as she watched her, Claire felt a sadness build in her chest like swallowed water, filling her until it was a solid, stunning ache. Her mother seemed suddenly old: one of those women who delighted in silly television commercials or moving displays in store windows, who watched other people’s puppies or babies with a joy so disproportionate it only reinforced what their own lives were not.

After the torn wrapping was shoved into garbage bags and hauled to the curb, Bob went to get their suitcases. Claire went upstairs, where she could be alone. Unlike Noelle’s room, which she had lived in off and on in college, Claire’s room had hardly been touched since high school. Her old desk still faced the window, where she’d preferred it. She’d liked being able to tilt her eyes toward the sky when she was writing in her diary, imagining herself one of those girls in the movies who crawled onto her roof to smoke cigarettes or, at the very least, gaze at the stars while thoughtfully tapping a pen against her cheek. Above the desk hung the red bulletin board that had seen all her awards; unlike athletic trophies, most academic prizes were subtle, just a piece of paper destined for a brief life under a thumbtack or a magnet on a refrigerator door. A few still remained: a faded second-place ribbon, some merit certificates, and a dead wrist corsage from her senior prom; in a certain way, a mark of achievement itself.

In the middle of the room sat her bed, mattress sagging where the springs had begun poking through the bottom. The bedside table was empty except for a chubby, spiral notebook with a lightbulb on the cover. Bright Ideas! She had bought it for herself once at a school book fair, enamored with the possibility of scribbling down half-remembered ideas that struck her in the middle of the night. Turned out, she rarely had any. Along the far wall stood her two bookcases: pale, bulging towers made of cheap, assemble-yourself wood, both of them listing slightly to the left. Her books were all still there, organized by size: soft paperbacks on the topmost shelves and heavy books along the bottom—her old sticker collection, the Children’s Illustrated Bible, Acing the SAT, the dictionary she’d received as what seemed a backhanded consolation prize for being runner-up in the spelling bee.

Claire knew the geography of this room by heart, every physical inch of it, but what struck her most every time she returned was the memory of how it felt: a combination of coziness and claustrophobia, like suffocating in a cloud. This room had been her escape, an island of order and comfort, but it was a tense comfort, made necessary by the pressure of the house on the other side of the door.

She heard Bob’s footsteps shuffling up the stairs. When he appeared in the doorway, with a suitcase in each hand and Claire’s purse slung gracelessly around his neck, the sight of him triggered a rush of—was it love? Was it gratitude?

“Hi, darling,” Bob said, and Claire’s love for him exploded in her chest.

It wasn’t fair, but wasn’t uncommon, for Claire’s feelings for Bob to be a product of context. It had been true that first afternoon on the quad; it was true when she was in Bob’s natural habitat, buffeted by his admiring colleagues. Watching him deliver a lecture, his wrinkled clothes and gangly limbs never looked more attractive, evidence of his intellect, his “ahs” no longer a nervous affectation but the necessary punctuation in a long, complicated equation. Sometimes, at home, Claire tried to conjure up those moments, and if she tried hard enough the world’s perception of her husband would infuse, briefly, her own.

Around her family, her feelings for Bob were at their most unpredictable. If he said the wrong thing she winced deeply, knowing the potential damage done. But if he elicited a laugh from her father or a smile from her mother, affection leapt inside her, as it did now, watching him disentangle the bags from his fingers and lower himself to the edge of her childhood bed. This man was the buffer between her old life and her new. Whatever sadness had filled her downstairs with her family, Claire knew her responsibility had shifted: to her own family. She was married now, and wife trumped daughter.

Bob wrapped his hands around his kneecaps. He looked like a blond giant in a dollhouse, trying to take up as little space as possible out of respect for this young girl’s room. Suddenly, Claire could picture Bob a father. How awkwardly gentle he would be holding a baby, how patiently he would explain things, how seriously he would puzzle over algebra problems, butter toast, and bandage knees. How uncomfortable he would be around his daughter’s moods and changes from ages twelve to eighteen.

Claire closed the door and locked it. She slid off Bob’s glasses, placed them on the bedside table, and pressed her finger to his lips. He smiled. This was not unfamiliar; it felt like the old days, hiding in Bob’s office or Claire’s dorm room and struggling to stay quiet. At the Institute, he was far too busy, too visible. And in their own bed, where they could be as loud as they wanted, they rarely made a sound.

Now Claire was biting her lip as Bob pulled off her sweater and unclasped her bra. It was the first time she had ever been alone in her room with a boy. She tugged off his pants, cringing a little at the sound of the belt buckle hitting the floor. When Bob started to peel back the comforter, she pushed him down on top of the covers instead. As she straddled his hips with her knees, the sound of footsteps came bouncing up the stairs. They stopped and stared at each other, with the wide, caught eyes of high school kids in a backseat.

“Dinner,” Noelle called up, sounding bored.

Claire’s response was a too sprightly: “Be right down!”

At dinner Claire felt satisfied, and self-satisfied. She felt a rush of guilty pleasure when she took in Bob’s rumpled appearance, hair still mussed in the back and neck flushed a telltale pink. When she felt his hand brush her leg under the table, she looked at him and smiled.

“Did I tell you what Paul said about Christmas in Ireland?” Noelle was saying. “When he was little it was the one day a year they got to eat American fast food.”

It was their age-old dynamic: Noelle talking, everybody listening. Tonight, though, Deirdre was not her usual captive audience. She was mumbling, the words soft and muddled, mostly indistinguishable, but the undertone was defiant; it sounded as if she was arguing with someone, though it wasn’t clear whom.

“Here we eat McDonalds every day, but over there it was like this big annual road trip,” Noelle went on, a fork piled with mashed potatoes hovering over her plate. “They drove an hour to get a Big Mac. Isn’t that so funny and, like, gross?”

Without her sidekick, Noelle’s words felt too big, too much. Finally she stopped talking and looked at Deirdre. “You feel like shit, huh, Mom?”

In the pause, a few of Deirdre’s words became discernible: hot, foot, chest.

“Your chest?” Gene said. For Deirdre to have chest pains was not unheard of; like every symptom, they flared and faded, but always sounded more ominous than the symptoms they could see. “ Dee, what about your chest?” he said.

Deirdre looked up and enunciated, quite clearly: “I have chest pains.” Then she looked at the spread on the table and with equal firmness said: “I’ll have more meat.”

Claire’s guilty pleasure was eroding, whittled down to guilt alone. It was the guilt she’d felt as a child: knowledge she’d done something she shouldn’t, been somewhere she shouldn’t, and worse, that her family had been right there, oblivious on the other side. Or tonight, in her mother’s case, oblivious and in pain. Sitting between her mother in her garish bathrobe and her husband with his warm hand and his pink neck, Claire felt like screaming, like shrugging off her skin. When Bob touched her knee again, she twitched away, wishing he were more sensitive, more attuned to her feelings—wasn’t that part of being a husband, to hone in on your wife’s foot tapping or vein bulging in her left temple and know exactly what that meant?

After dinner, Claire excused herself and went upstairs. She closed her bedroom door, covered her mouth with one hand and cried. The bedcovers were wrinkled and sliding onto the carpet. Bright Ideas! was knocked upside-down on the floor. This room didn’t belong to her anymore, but to some younger, better her. Claire caught her reflection in the long mirror, the same mirror where she used to survey her outfits and analyze her facial expressions—Exuberance, Studiousness, Thoughtfulness—trying to look at herself objectively, to see what the world saw. Now, she felt like more than an older version of herself; she felt like a separate person.She had been kinder then, she thought, happier. Inclined to love things. She had loved her room and loved her books and loved, Claire thought, herself, the realization so swollen with sadness that it only revealed, like those lonely old women with the babies and puppies, everything she was not now.

Then she heard it: from one staircase , three rooms and one closed door away, the instant her mother’s hand moved toward the kitchen window. As a child, she had memorized the sound of pills tipping from a bottle—it was deceptively gentle, like a rainstick, a sun shower—and the sound of nothingness as pills struck palm. In high school, she had learned the sound of her mother’s cane in motion: intervals of carpet and linoleum, hard tapping and soft silence. But in the mirror, as Claire watched herself listening, her expression was one she hadn’t seen before, didn’t even know she wore: Despair.

Suddenly the room felt small and close and Claire felt huge, filled with this new feeling. It seemed a terribly seasoned, knowing kind of sadness. Despair that her mother took the pills. Despair that she needed them. Despair that she pretended to be thick-skinned and impervious when really she was sick and getting sicker and despair that she made Claire want to leave—though this, at least, was a feeling Claire recognized. And unlike when she was a child, now she could.

“I’m thinking we should go tonight,” Claire said. She had returned to the living room, where everyone was sitting around the TV. Her hands were shaking, her face washed and lipstick reapplied.

Gene looked up. “What, honey?”

“I said, I think we might leave tonight after all,” she said.

“Wow,” Noelle said. “Happy to see us, huh?”

“Tonight?” Gene said. “Why?”

Claire would avoid her father’s eyes. She would pretend not to have seen the makings of tomorrow’s family breakfast in the fridge. “It’s just— .” Her eyes alighted on the TV screen: onyx earrings on a bed of puffy fake snow. “The roads at night are so much emptier. It’s just easier.” She knew how hollow it sounded, and knew they knew it, but the need to leave was almost physical. She could not stay.

Then Deirdre said, “You’re not staying over?”

Claire forced her eyes to meet her mother’s. The combination of her purples and oranges, her rash and her makeup, was at once so comic and tragic that Claire felt like breaking down in tears at her feet, hating and loving her as strongly and simultaneously as she ever had.

“We really need to,” Claire said, but her voice sounded strained. “We need to get back.”

For a moment the room was caught in her pause, waiting to see if she would change her mind. But she didn’t have to, she told herself: it was the royal, marital “we.” She would leave because she could. She wouldn’t look at her father, or her mother, or even Bob, who m she knew would be unable to disguise his confusion. She opted for Noelle, which might have been the worst choice of all: clear-eyed knowing.

“Bob has a meeting tomorrow afternoon,” Claire said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “He forgot.”

Upstairs, she apologized. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Bob was collecting their things from the guest bathroom: tiny mouthwash, tiny toothpaste, Claire’s contacts swimming in saline solution. She stood just inside the doorway. The room smelled like the green bricks of Irish Spring soap that anchored the ledges in the sink and shower.

“I just can’t stay tonight,” Claire said. “I can’t explain it. I couldn’t think of a better excuse.”

Bob sealed the toiletry bag with a brisk zip. His hair was still mussed in the back and she resisted the urge to smooth it.

“I can help with the driving,” she offered.

Bob looked up, into the mirror above the sink, and stood perfectly still. Claire stepped between her husband and his reflection. She leaned into his long chest. When she felt his arms encircle her back, she felt relieved, though the gesture could have meant anything; maybe he understood her, maybe he forgave her. Maybe he was just being polite.

When they carried the bags outside, it was windy and bitterly cold. A thin crust of snow crunched under their feet as they moved down the front walk. They made an ungainly procession, the shuffling of five pairs of shoes and dull squeaking of Deirdre’s rubber-tipped cane on the snow. At the curb, when Claire leaned in to kiss her mother, her cheek was freezing. “You shouldn’t be out in this cold,” Claire said, then climbed into the car.

From the passenger seat, she looked at the shadowy figures that were her family. Gene held one palm in the air. Noelle was already hugging her shoulders and heading back inside. Deirdre looked like some kind of suburban sorceress, leaning forward on her cane, her silky purple robe flapping behind her in the wind.

When Bob started the car, Deirdre stepped forward. She pulled a plastic spritzer from the pocket of her robe and doused the windshield with miraculous water, scooped from the ocean and blessed by the priest at the Jersey shore the previous summer. It was an extra dose, probably proportionate to the lateness of the hour and the intensity of her worry. “May the road rise to meet you!” Claire heard her shout, but faintly, the sound flattened by the tight windows and the running engine. When Deirdre stepped back to the curb, and Bob pulled away, the image of her parents looked watery and distorted. As soon as they turned the corner, Bob flicked the windshield wipers on.

“What are you doing?” Claire snapped.

“I couldn’t see,” Bob said, reasonably.

Claire fell silent, rigid. Her eyes filled with tears. When Bob glanced at her, she turned to the window. “What?” he asked.

And again, a block later: “What?”

By two in the morning, Bob was so exhausted he was veering in and out of the lanes on 84. They switched near Worcester , where Claire got a large coffee and drove the last leg herself. She felt almost maniacally alert as she sped along the empty highways, needing to prove this drive had been doable, the foam coffee cup squeaking in and out of the cup holder’s plastic claw. When she got off the highway it was four in the morning. The streets of New Hampshire were quiet, forgiving. When a rare pair of oncoming headlights—a truck usually, or tractor trailer—splashed against the windshield, the reflection of the miraculous water flashed for an instant then receded into dark.

Copyright © 2007 by Elise Juska. Printed by permission. Excerpted from the forthcoming book One for Sorrow, Two for Joy by Elise Juska to be published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Available June 5, 2007 at your local bookstore and at www.simonsays.com).

Elise Juska is the author of two previous novels and many published stories. Elise teaches fiction writing at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and the New School in New York City .

The Tangle Between

[img_assist|nid=896|title=Morgan, Charles Hosier © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=302] The theory that my life thus far has been a compilation of bad decisions occurs to me as I am darting down 10th Street, in pursuit of my boyfriend who is not actually my boyfriend but in fact a complete stranger who, like me, takes the 7:19 train into Philadelphia every morning. He looks to be all of nineteen years old and I am twenty-eight and therefore far too old to be trailing this boy through the streets of Chinatown , skulking half a block behind him and wondering if that is his girlfriend he is talking to on his cell phone.

I began stalking him three days ago, out of a combination of boredom and intrigue.

Day One: The most attractive male specimen ever to ride SEPTA boards the train with me at Woodbourne Station. Being at that tender age of not quite having grown into his looks, he cannot yet be classified as “hot.” He is on the cusp of hotness, a future hottie in possession of hotness not yet realized, and all that pent-up potential is so much sexier than actual hotness. He’s got that dark hair/blue eyes combination that I fell in love with when I was five and watched Christopher Reeve play Superman. Every expression that crosses his face passes for penetrating even though chances are he’s either pondering tits and ass or money or how to use money to get tits and ass.

I decide on Day One that I want to have his babies.

Day Two: Upon seeing him two days in a row, I realize this kid is a train-riding regular and therefore worth looking into. There is no sense in stalking a one-time-train-taker because where does that get you except late for work? So on Day Two I time it so that I can exit the train directly behind him, which allows me to be directly behind him on the escalator to street level at Market East, eye level with his perfect about-to-be-hot ass and wishing I had not skipped breakfast so that perhaps the desire to take a mammoth bite out of it would be less overwhelming. Despite my deepest carnal urge to grab him, gag him, and drag him to the nearest bathroom to play Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson, I maintain composure and avert my eyes from the appetizing ass. Which leads me to spot the ID badge on his belt and notice how very baby-faced he looks in his picture, and that is when it crosses my mind that I am probably stalking an intern. I cannot make out his name on the badge, but I am glad of that because I might find out that his name is Seymour and who wants to stalk a guy named Seymour?

On that day, rather than walk towards the exit to 12th Street , which would put me closer to my destination, I follow him to the 10th Street exit. Halfway up the stairs, it occurs to me that this is adolescent and ludicrous behavior; however, it could be argued that when stalking an adolescent, one must resort to said behavior, so I continue my ascent. And then he holds the door to the street and smiles at me with lips so full you could pop them with a pin and I think that I just might actually swoon as he heads right towards 10th Street and I head left to my original destination.

“Good morning, folks, this is the R3 to Center City Philadelphia . We will be making all local stops. Please have all tickets and passes ready. Next stop Langhorne. T-G-I-F. Langhorne next.”

Day Three: The air conditioner in the train is broken and he is sitting in front of me, wiping sweat from his brow. I wish I lived back in the days when women carried handkerchiefs so that I could offer him mine and he would return it to me all full of his sweet, young, not-yet-hot-but-damn-sexy college intern sweat. But I live in the 21 st century, where all I can offer him is a stiff pocket pack dollar store tissue, and what is sexy about that? So he sweats and I pine and at Market East I follow him again and he holds the door again and I am pushing thirty and therefore view any act of chivalry as a potential sign that I will not have to spend my life eating alone while watching “Jeopardy” and phrasing my answers in the form of a question even though no one is there to hear them and I make the right towards 10th Street behind him thinking I don’t know what – that he will smile at me again? That he will turn around and offer me his umbrella because it looks like rain and I don’t have one? That he will ask me if I’d like to have a couple of kids with him? Of course he does none of these things, and when he turns right on Arch Street I am forced to go left because I am already two blocks out of my way and it is 8:15 and I am supposed to be seven blocks away preparing for a meeting by 8:30 and it is hot and humid and the sickening stench of uncooked fish permeates Chinatown and I am sweating and regretting cutting short layers into my wavy hair without considering the implications of early August in Philly. I am sure to arrive at work looking like an ungroomed Chia Pet and not only that, but now, following this kid seems like a poor decision and thus my theory is born.

There is a note from my boss on my chair stating that the meeting has been pushed back to lunchtime. This should be good news, as I really have not prepared for it, but the truth is that I will spend the next three and a half hours not preparing for it while I shop online for a digital camera to take pictures of my cat and become aware that I have become a cliché—the sad, single girl with the cat. I start up my computer. An instant message pops up on my screen almost immediately:

EdB28: you’re late

Ed sits in the next cubicle. He chooses to point out the obvious over the instant messenger rather than walk the half a step to my desk because two months ago we got drunk at a happy hour and slept together and two weeks ago after I left a toothbrush at his apartment. He called me to tell me things were getting too serious, which I later found out meant that he could not bring the young intern in advertising back to his apartment with my toothbrush there and that Ed B. had become another bad decision, so we now restrict our correspondence to electronic media whenever possible in the interest of office civility.

MauraK2605: no shit

I sometimes have difficulty with civility.

EdB28: jeanne was looking for you…

MauraK2605: again, no shit. she left a note on my chair

EdB28: did you finish the manual for the EZWorks stuff?

I glance at the pile of pulverized trees on my desk with the title page reading, EZWorks User Manual. As a technical writer, I kill forests so that someone can purchase a digital camera online.

MauraK2605: it’s done

EdB28: any bugs i should know about?

As an engineer, Ed fixes glitches that may occur when people try to purchase digital cameras online.

MauraK2605: no. any interns i should know about?

EdB28: what happened to office courtesy?

MauraK2605: i don’t have time for this. gotta grab a smoke before jeanne finds me and asks me to make eighty changes to this manual before lunch

EdB28: you really should quit…

MauraK2605: and miss the joy of getting to come here everyday?

EdB28: i meant smoking

MauraK2605: i know what you meant. i was being ironic.

EdB28: did i leave my morrissey cd at your apartment?

MauraK2605 has signed off.

His CD is on my the speaker in my living room, but I have no intention of returning it. Relationships are only as good as the stuff left behind in your apartment.

***

“All right, folks, we’re goin’ home. All tickets and passes. We gonna speed this thing up. I feel like I’m in the movie Terminal.”

I am the only one on the train who laughs at this. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is ever paying attention. I start a gratitude journal to pass the time. Oprah swears by this, and I am fairly certain she does not spend her evenings with Alex Trebek, so I figure what the hell? Write down three things every day for which you are thankful. How difficult can it be?

8/5: 1. The Train Hottie

2. Casual Fridays

3. Cigarettes

***

Home is an apartment in Newtown Borough with a quaint exterior and an interior of eggshell white walls, unpaid bills, and an unblinking answering machine.

My mother is saying, over linguine and steamed clams, that I should seriously consider repainting.

I am saying, over lemon meringue pie and tea, that I received the invitation to my father’s wedding in the mail yesterday.

My mother is saying, as the tea grows cold at her elbow, that I should seriously consider repotting my African violet.

I am saying that I will take care of the dishes.

My mother is saying, as she hurries out the door, that no, I don’t need to take off from work to take her to chemo next week. The hospital will send a cab for her. I am thinking, and not saying, that I should add this dinner to the ever-growing list of bad decisions.

I leave the dishes in the sink.

I start a new journal:

Things That Piss Me Off

1. Advertising interns

2. Eggshell white walls

3. Talking and saying nothing

I go to bed with a glass of wine and dream of the boy on the train. In the dream, he calls me on the phone and sings Jack Johnson songs.

***

Weeks pass. Our relationship is at a standstill of stalking and door-holding. In my head, we meet for lunch in Love Park .

I begin to wear heels every day to make my legs look better, firmer, or something, despite the negative repercussions this has on my feet. I wear lipstick. I begin to grow my hair out. I wear my glasses to look intellectual. He looks intellectual. He probably reads the same books as I do, probably would go with me to see independent films at the Ritz or the County. I wear my contacts to look more attractive. He is probably shallow. Probably wears brand names and has a girlfriend who is six feet tall and weighs ninety-eight pounds. He is tall. He is broad-shouldered. He could hold me at night and make me disappear. He could stroke my hair with his large, lovely, white- collar hands and I could sleep so soundly that to awaken would be like emerging from a coma and I could learn how to live life all over again.

One morning, the week before Labor Day, he is not on the train. Or the morning after that. Or the morning after that. I decide he has gone back to college. I go back to wearing flat sandals that resemble flip-flops. I stop wearing lipstick. I put my hair in a wet ponytail every morning after my shower. I begin to wear earphones on the train to drown out the sound of middle-aged women with outdated haircuts swapping Cool Whip recipes. I listen to Tori Amos. I still dream of him.

I oversleep.

***

“Maura, could you have those revised pages on my desk right quick ? I need them before you leave tonight .”

My boss is from Missouri and uses expressions like “right quick.” I pretend this does not turn my stomach and make a mental note to add it to my journal of things that piss me off. I pretend not to notice that it is already after 5:00 and I have worked overtime every night this week, despite the fact that I am salaried and receive no compensation aside from arriving home too late to catch “Jeopardy.”

To: maura.kelly@horizon.net

From: kathleen.kirk@horizon.net

Subject: happy hour

M —

you up for it tonight? a bunch of us are going… you need to get out of this funk you’ve been in since Ed.

–K

Kathleen works two rows over in the art department. She is a graphic artist who has been doing this job “just temporarily” for the past two years.

To: kathleen.kirk@horizon.net

From: maura.kelly@horizon.net

Subject: Re: happy hour

why the fuck not? i’m gonna be stuck here for another half an hour anyway thanks to Ms. Right Quick herself… a drink will definitely be in order.

–m

p.s. don’t give ed that much credit. and it’s not a funk — it’s the new me… i’m trying righteous indignation on for size.

***

Over three dollar drafts, I confess to Kathleen that I miss Train Guy. She was the only one who knew about my obsession, partly because she is the only one at work with whom I actually converse beyond the obligatory “how was your weekend,” and partly because she is the least judgmental person I know.

“He gave you something to look forward to,” she says.

I nod. I order another beer. I light another cigarette.

“Maybe you’ll see him again. He takes the same train. You might see him in the grocery store, or at the gym.”

I shake my head.

One hour and one more beer later, my fingertips are feeling tingly while I fumble for cash in my wallet and tell Kathleen to go ahead home and I’ll pick up the tab. I feel like walking to Market East alone.

I have successfully located the money when I feel an arm slip around my waist as someone leans in and whispers, “I like your hair.” Ed. Ed is behind me. Ed is saying, “Come on, Maura, my place is only a few blocks away.” He is trying to be smooth. He is saying I can bring my toothbrush back. He is insisting on walking me to the train station. False chivalry thinly masking the desire to get laid. But I am feeling too tired and inarticulate to find a clever way to tell him to fuck off.

Outside, the traffic lights blur before my eyes as though I am looking through a camera lens that has gone out of focus. Ed is insisting on waiting for the train with me. I wish he wouldn’t. Market East is practically empty and I want to listen to the quiet. Instead, I am listening to Ed saying, “Come on baby, this thing with you and me, it’s all very When Harry Met Sally, and aren’t we better than that?”

I hear my train coming. I say exactly what I am thinking. I say I have no idea what the fuck he is talking about, and I get on the train.

The train is surprisingly crowded for 7 p.m. on a Thursday. All of the bars must have had good drink specials. I manage to find an empty seat where I can lean my head against the window and close my eyes, waiting for the rocking of the train to lull me into an alcohol-induced sleep. I feel someone sit next to me and glance over, praying it is not the man who sat next to me last night and informed me that he was wearing his Phillies underwear to bring them luck against the Marlins.

Instead, I come face to face with my non-boyfriend, in all his dark-haired, blue- eyed, white-collar glory. I blink as if trying to clear away an apparition that cannot be real, and he smiles. I realize he is real. I realize I am staring. I fumble in my purse for a piece of gum, a mint, anything to cover the traces of beer and cigarettes. I mentally add starting smoking again after my mom was diagnosed to my list of bad decisions.

[img_assist|nid=897|title=Self Portrait , Summer K. Edward © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=150]My Marlboro Lights fall out of my purse and onto the seat between us. Before I can grab them, he says, “Those things’ll kill ya.” A cliché. I momentarily hate him. He’s trying to be smooth. As I start to mentally un-have his babies, he asks, “Mind if I bum one?”

Irony. I love him again. I think we’ll have two boys and a girl, in that order.

“You smoke?” I can’t imagine it can be true. He has the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. He could be a toothpaste commercial.

“Only after a day like today. The trouble with going on vacation is coming back.”

Vacation. Not back to college. On vacation. My mind is digesting this when he asks if I’m okay. I stammer that I’m fine and start to hand him a cigarette. I ask him, “Should I card you to make sure you’re old enough to smoke this?”

He laughs. “Yeah, I get that a lot. But I’m old enough to pollute my lungs without legal backlash.”

I must look incredulous because he shifts his weight towards me and pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. The scent of him hangs between us in the heavy, stagnant air of the train – a mixture of some cologne splashed on hours ago and that musky smell of summer in the city that clings to everything in its path.

He hands me his driver’s license. He is, in fact, twenty-five. He lives six blocks from me. I say his name out loud. “Benjamin.”

“Ben,” he says, extending his hand.

“Maura,” I say, shaking it, acutely aware that my palms are sweating and surprised to find that his are too.

“That’s different. It’s pretty.” He is smiling again. I feel uncomfortable. I avert my eyes, look at him, avert my eyes. He is still smiling. I am wishing I had fixed my hair. I self-consciously tuck the strands of it that have fallen out of the ponytail behind my ears. His hair looks different than in the morning, when it is wet from the shower and slicked back. Now it is unkempt, dark curls clinging to the top of his faintly lined forehead. He is not an intern. He is not nineteen. My hair is dark, too. Our kids would have dark hair . . .

He is talking about work. About working late. He is putting the cigarette I have given him into his shirt pocket. I ask him what he does.

“I’m an actuary.”

“My mom wanted me to be an actuary. For the job security. But I thought it would be too boring.” I realize too late how insulting this sounds, but he doesn’t react. He is studying me, his eyes dancing over me like someone looking at a strange piece of art, curious and undecided, looking for some meaning hiding below the surface.

“I’m sorry,” I start —

“No, it’s okay. It is boring.” His smile is easy; he is not just being polite. “What do you do?”

“I’m a technical writer. I write computer software manuals.”

“Do you like it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s boring.” He nods. There is a slow silence. I half smile and start to turn back towards the window, unsure what to say to him, unsure why he is talking to me.

“What do you really want to do?”

I think about this for a few moments. I hear the conductor say that Elkins Park will be the next stop. I start to laugh, thinking of the conductor a few weeks ago who made the joke about being trapped in the movie Terminal.

Ben asks me what I’m laughing about and now I’m thinking this is it. This is one of those moments that proves that life is not a cheesy Meg Ryan movie, because it is impossible to tell a virtual stranger whose children you imagine you’d like to have why you just started laughing for no reason without sounding like an imbecile, and this will surely be the end of our conversation. But I am trapped in it now. I am not fast enough on my feet to think of something he will actually find funny. So I tell him the story. And he laughs. He throws his head back and laughs and I feel his hand on my knee.

“That’s so random,” he says.

I nod. I don’t know what else to do. I feel his hand still on my knee. I feel the blood pounding in my ears. I feel like I am going to wake up any second and find that I have overslept again.

“So, Maura. You never answered my question. What is it you really want to do?”

I want to tell him that what I really want to do is take him back to my empty apartment and explore every inch of him, melt into him and feel alive, feel exhilarated, feel anything, for the first time in longer than I can remember. Instead I tell him about college.

“I majored in creative writing. I fancied myself a poet, I guess. But poetry doesn’t pay the bills, so here I am.”

He has moved his hand away from my knee. I want to tell him to put it back.

“Do you still write?”

“Aside from what I scribble in the margins of notepads to avoid falling asleep in meetings with software engineers, not really, no.”

“Why not?”

I think of all the lies I tell people when they ask me this question. The distractions. The excuses. Work. Family. Friends. Life. I don’t know why I don’t want to lie to him.

“I’m uninspired.”

The lump in my throat takes me by surprise. I quickly turn away from him and stare out the window at the buildings creeping by the train. I can feel that he is still looking at me, his neck craning to see my face. A tear escapes my eye and I feel his thumb on my cheek.

I turn to look at him, my face hot with embarrassment and emotion.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why – it’s so stupid –"

But he is smiling and he leans towards me and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

“I was glad when the seat next to you was empty.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise, I would have had to sit next to that guy up there who once told me that he was wearing Phillies underwear.”

I laugh so hard that I start to cry again. He is saying nothing and letting me cry and I am not sure how it happens but I am vaguely aware that his arm is around me and I am exhausted and falling asleep on his shoulder.

“Ladies and gentleman next station stop will be Woodbourne. Woodbourne next.”

Startled awake and sober, I am horrified. There is a black smudge from my mascara on his white-collar shirt. He has fallen asleep as well. He rubs his eyes. He smiles at me. He brushes a piece of hair from my face. He stretches. I gather my things, not knowing what to say, and follow him off the train when it stops.

We are the only two people on the platform. It is nearly 8:00 . Twilight in the summer. There is a moist chill in the air—that tangle between summer and fall. We walk the length of the platform in silence and reach Woodbourne Road . He puts his hand up to stop the oncoming traffic so that we can cross to the parking lot. So easy. So confident.

He follows me to my car. I throw my bag in the backseat and close the door, turning to face him, trying to find words to explain, trying to think of some clever joke about being off my medication. I am waiting for him to say he has to get home to his girlfriend.

But he shakes his head and interrupts me. “It’s okay. Nice to meet you, Maura. Maybe I ’ll see you around?”

I want to ask him if he makes a habit of letting strange women on trains cry on his shoulder. I want to thank him. I want to tell him not to walk away, to just stay here with me in this surreal microcosm that we seem to have created for ourselves. I want to kiss him .

But I am looking up into his face in the glow of the street lamps , and I am dumbstruck. I am wondering if this is just another bad decision that I didn’t really even consciously make, if now the cosmos is making my bad decisions for me . I am wondering if he can sense my hesitation, if he can sense that at every intersection, I cringe and await impact, and I am staring at him as he is brushing the hair from my eyes again and then he is walking towards his car and I am standing, watching him pull away and wondering if this is a beginning or an end.

Colleen Baranich grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and currently resides in Riverton, NJ. She holds a B.A. in English Writing from Rider University and an M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from The College of New Jersey. She works as a speech therapist with children throughout Camden County.