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[img_assist|nid=670|title=Balloon by Sarah Barr © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=166]When my husband called the other day, I thought there was an emergency. We’d only talked once in the five months since we’d been separated.

“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.

[img_assist|nid=668|title=Bride by Sarah Barr © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=109]Everyone loves a dead body.

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.

[img_assist|nid=670|title=Balloon by Sarah Barr © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=166]After finding the ring in the bar of soap I told Herb there were two things I needed to do before I married him: get the shovel out of the lake and take the red rose from Danny.

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.

[img_assist|nid=672|title=Blue Muumuu by Martha Knox © 2007|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=272]I found the shovel caught in the seaweed. It had not come to the surface after all. Around it the water was wrinkled like an old newspaper. I thought it must not have moved in twenty-four years.

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.

[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.

[img_assist|nid=659|title=Claire by Todd Marrone © 2007|desc= |link=node|align=right|width=150|height=177]“I’ll be damned,” he said.

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.

[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.

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.

[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).

© 2006 Philadelphia Stories December, 2006

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 .

[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.

[img_assist|nid=898|title=In Your Eyes, Joe Blake © 2006|desc=To see more, please visit: josephblake.com|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=262]I can think of nothing clever, so I say, “I’m sorry. This day has just been so strange. I don’t know what—it’s not like me to…”

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.

[img_assist|nid=899|title=The New Kid, Charles Hosier © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=123]Jerome bought a jewel-encrusted scepter at the Army-Navy store. It cost eight dollars.

The scepter was in a special bin—actually; just a cardboard box with the lid cut off—located in a dim corner at the rear of the Army-Navy store, near the rack of Big & Tall Camouflage Fashions. The cardboard box had a wooden paint stirrer stapled to it and stapled to the paint stirrer was a hand-written sign: DISCONTINUED DAMAGED ONE OF A KIND.

 

2.

The scepter looked weird there, thrown in with mismatched waterproof socks, outdated hunter’s sausage, and compasses stuck on SE.

The scepter glittered. Jerome picked it up. It was surprisingly light. He turned it every which way. He didn’t fool himself. The jewels covering the surface of the scepter were luminescent crimson and gold, but they were imitation—ruby and topaz colored glass. Yet Jerome was very much taken by the way they caught the light.

 

3.

Jerome was not a sophisticated man but—and perhaps this is surprising—he knew a scepter when he saw one. The artifact he now held was a (no doubt) very cheap modern replica of a real scepter, which is basically a gaudily decorative type of stick used throughout the ages by rulers of all kinds as a symbol of royal power. Jerome remembered pictures of the British crown jewels he’d once seen in the encyclopedia at his grandfather’s house.

He remembered

an orb, and

a robe, and

a bracelet, and

spurs, and

a scepter.

 

Jerome had read that Oliver Cromwell melted down many of the originals of the British crown jewels. But the Royalists made a comeback, and so did the jewels. Jerome had turned the yellowed pages of his grandfather’s encyclopedia, looking at photographs of the gleaming baubles, mesmerized by their otherworldly quality, and by the example, the message of the uncaring waste of such spectacular wealth. Like Cromwell, he’d thought: Have they no shame? But he’d been weirdly excited by the photographs.

 

4.

The Queen of England’s scepters are three feet long. One is topped with a four-sided head containing exquisite, gilded carvings of St Stephen, asserting the Crown’s (temporal) authority over the church. The other has doves.

The Army-Navy scepter Jerome held in his hands was only—he guessed—about seventeen inches in length, topped with an oblong, three-sided knob, and ornamented with simple Celtic-looking designs. It seemed toy-like; a child seeing it might take it for a magic wand.

 

5.

Jerome hesitated. An eight-dollar scepter purchase (including tax) would require use of all the funds he’d intended for the purchase of new laces for his hiking boots, as well as the cost of carfare home. In other words, if he bought the scepter he’d have to walk the several-mile distance back to his apartment—in boots with broken laces.

But Jerome decided he would buy the scepter. Granted, it was silly, but there was, to him, something irresistibly appealing about the idea of a non-royal guy using all of his “worldly goods” to purchase a bejeweled artifact. He imagined showing it off to people at work, or better yet, just displaying it casually on a loop descending from his belt so his co-workers would be intrigued and provoked into asking him about it. He’d reply in one of these ways:

This scepter? You never noticed it before?

Or: I spent everything I had on it. Every penny in my possession.

Or, simply: Bow down, peasant.

He wouldn’t mention the eight dollar figure unless pressed.

 

6.

Alice was a woman Jerome had known. He’d seen her the first time when he was part of a large group of people all going to the movies. She was the sister of a sort-of friend of his. Jerome sat in the row behind Alice and he liked

her neck, the way she showed it when she tilted her head back to laugh, and

the flickering gray-blue light from the film which shone on the top of her hair, and

her profile, when she turned to whisper something to her neighbor, though it blocked his view of the screen.

The next time Jerome saw Alice was when he attended his sort-of friend’s wedding reception, at a neighborhood catering hall. It was dark and hot in the hall and the ceilings were low. Alice wore an emerald dress. She was drunk, and there was something on her mind. When Jerome asked her to dance she cheered up, and laughed in a theatrical way, and took his hand. Once out on the tiny dance floor, she broke away from him and gyrated wildly, lifting her knees too high and flailing her solid body around and paying, it seemed, very little attention to the music, which was romantic and slow. (Jerome had purposely waited for a slow number to come up before his approach.) Embarrassed by his partner’s display, his face hot, Jerome saw people watching, pointing, and laughing—but he stayed with Alice . He marched forward and took her hand again to keep her under control, and that worked for a while, but her hand was slippery and on one unexpected turn she broke free from his grasp and lost a shoe and spun toward the too-small table with the wedding cake on it. Alice fell without putting her hands out; there was a meaty thud. Her body rolled and jarred one of the table legs and the cake shuddered but didn’t fall. Everyone laughed once they saw the cake was all right.

Jerome picked up Alice ’s lost shoe and then he picked up Alice . Her right shoulder strap had detached itself from the back of her dress and, rooted to the front, stood half-erect, an emerald serpent wavering beckoningly in the air between them. As he raised her to her feet, Alice brought her hot-breathed mouth close to his ear and whispered: Where do you live?

She stayed with him all that night and some of the next day. They had sexual intercourse 4½ times.

Jerome called Alice on three different occasions after their night together before it became clear that she didn’t want to see him again, not even to have sex ½ times more, to even things out. Jerome gave up because he didn’t want to be a creep.

 

7.

The young dark-eyed male clerk who waited on him gave Jerome a peculiar, malevolent look when he took the gleaming scepter up to the cash register to pay for it, then rudely snatched the proffered money from his hand, saying nothing. Jerome, curious to learn why an Army-Navy store was selling scepters, was so baffled by the boy’s hostile body language that he could only meet the clerk’s silence with his own, unsure how to broach the subject of the scepter’s origins in the face of such apparent animus.

 

8.

When Jerome returned to his apartment, he sat for a minute on the sofa to catch his breath, winded from the long walk. Then he gingerly inserted his moist right hand into the softly creased brown bag in which he’d brought the scepter home, and, with two fingers, pulled it free and let it swing inverted before his face, a sparkling pendulum, trailing warm flimmering smiles of scarlet and gold, which lingered in the air before fading. Jerome’s apartment was

dim, and

drab, and

unclean.

 

But the scepter shone brilliantly, and the room was newly lit.

 

9.

Jerome carried the scepter to the bathroom, turned on the light, closed the door, and faced the full-length mirror hung on the back of it, the only mirror in the house. He posed with the scepter, adopting various postures:

clutching the scepter tightly across his chest, then

pointing it at the mirror, as if giving a command, then

naked and pointing.

Jerome expected that holding the scepter would make him look—and feel—different. Like he had felt when looking at the pictures of the crown jewels. Or during that time with Alice .

Exalted .

But Jerome did not look or feel any different. He was not exalted. In fact, he looked and felt rather silly, a glowering commoner grasping a cheap shiny stick.

 

10.

Jerome decided that a scepter was not enough. He would need a crown.

 

11.

Jerome looked up “crowns” in the phone book. There was a small entry for the word between “Crowd Control Equipment” and “Cruises,” but it only advised him to “see Dentists.”

Jerome thought about the problem for a couple of days. Where does an average guy buy a crown?

During the time he was thinking, Jerome did not take his scepter to his job with him as he had planned; he left it home, on the bureau. Each day when he returned from work, Jerome approached the bedroom and peered in at the scepter. It seemed wrong to keep it there, as if thrown down without care on the dirty scratched wooden surface, lying next to his much less-shiny keys and loose change, but trial and error had proven that the scepter didn’t look right anywhere else in the apartment, either.

 

 

12.

On the third day, a Saturday, Jerome thought: Why not see if they have a crown at the costume shop?

 

13.

The shopping trip was fruitful. Not only did Jerome obtain a crown, he also got an orb and a cape. They all came together in a cardboard box with a cellophane window. The box was called “Royal Fun Kit.”

The kit seemed intended for use by children, and that worried Jerome a little, because he thought the crown might not fit. And the mottle-faced woman behind the counter would not let him take it out of the box before purchase to try it for size; in fact, she seemed to think he was joking when he suggested it.

 

14.

Jerome took the Royal Fun Kit home. In the bathroom, he found that the crown was too small (almost comically so), but when he wore it and the cape (short and purple, with a faux ermine fringe) together while tendering both the orb (gold-colored plastic, with red paste jewels) and the scepter, he saw something new appear in the mirror.

A king.

 

 

[img_assist|nid=901|title=Wheat, Charles Hosier © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=149|height=75]15.

Now what?

 

16.

He thought:

I am my true self, and

no one can deny it, and

a king must have a queen.

 

17.

Jerome took off his regalia to eat dinner; it just seemed wrong to eat a chicken pot pie while wearing a crown. After his meal, he called his sort-of friend and endured a bit of uncomfortable chitchat before he managed to steer the subject of the conversation around to where Alice might be. The sort-of friend off-handedly remarked that Alice spent most Saturday evenings drinking with her girlfriends in a tavern called Alane’s Hole. Jerome immediately steered the conversation to another subject so his sort-of friend would not get a weird vibe from him, then hung up as soon as politeness would allow, turned off the lamp, and sat in the dark, thinking.

 

18.

After a while, Jerome went to the bedroom and got the scepter, brought it into the living room, and held it near the window. He pretended that the pale light coming in emanated not from the flickering street lamp outside but from moon glow, or the cool illumination of stars.

 

19.

Alice sat with her friends Lisa (small and dark) and Jennifer (large and red) at their regular table. The bar had gotten quieter and quieter as closing time approached.

It’s the shank of the evening, Lisa said.

Jennifer was thirty percent less intoxicated than her friends since she was the designated driver. She said: No, it’s later than the shank. It’s the rectum, the rectum of the evening.

Alice and Lisa both laughed, even though they didn’t understand. When you’ve been drinking the word “rectum” is always funny.

It was around this time on most Saturdays that Alice and her friends complained about men. They said that

all the good men know they’re good and avoid getting married, or

all the good men are already married, or

there are no good men.

 

20.

The soft murmur of conversation surrounding the three women ceased suddenly and they looked around to see what was going on.

There was a man in a crown and a cape standing in the entrance to the tavern. In one hand he held a big shiny ball and in the other a glittering stick. He began a magisterial procession in their direction.

Oh crap, said Alice .

Jerome moved with regal deliberation along the irregular aisle between tables, surveying the faces around him, searching. The patrons he passed were shocked, awed, and silent. Some of the drunker ones bobbed their heads.

The spell lasted until Jerome saw Alice and approached; the approach brought him within range of the ceiling fan, and one of its leisurely circling blades knocked his crown off. Unfazed, he stepped to one side, reached down, reacquired the crown, and perched it back on his head without breaking the eye contact he’d made with his queen. Meanwhile, the commoners in the bar erupted into laughter—even the approaching waitress, who had previously been sure she’d seen everything.

Jerome raised his scepter above his head and the bar grew quiet instantly. Tufts of fake ermine escaped the fringe of his cape, impelled by the ceiling fan. They floated in the air, orbiting him like moons.

Jerome quite dramatically dropped his arm so that the scepter pointed at Alice .

I choose you, he said, to be my queen.

21.

Alice blinked. Her friends turned to look at her, then turned back to look at Jerome. He smiled, majestically.

Alice started to stand. Jennifer grabbed her arm.

Alice , don’t, she said.

I can’t help myself, Alice said. It’s a royal command.

 

22.

Toward dawn, Jerome returned from the bathroom and noticed something glittering under the bed. He knelt down and picked it up. The scepter. He looked closely at it in the lavender light. It was missing two stones, he noticed. But it was still a lovely thing.

Jerome knelt on the edge of the bed. In his absence, Alice had imperially invaded his side of it, sprawling with covetous assurance on as much square footage as she could cover. She was naked, and quite unconscious. Jerome studied her as the sun rose.

Alice :

snored, and

drooled a little, and

was nonetheless glorious.

 

23.

Jerome placed the scepter next to Alice . There, nestled against her left breast, glimmering in the auspicious golden aurora of sunrise, it at last looked right, safely at home with one of its own kind. James (Jay) W. Morris grew up in Philadelphia and attended Central High School and LaSalle University, where he was awarded a scholarship for creative writing. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and for a time he worked as a monologue writer for Jay Leno. Recently, his first play, RUDE BABY, was produced by the City Theater Company of Wilmington, Delaware. “Regalia” is the second story of Jay’s to appear in Philadelphia Stories.

[img_assist|nid=909|title=Removed Sections, Simona Mihaela Josan © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=135]The cops were hungry. They had stopped for salads two hours earlier. Now they were hungry again, so hungry that instead of listening to radio calls or watching what streamed across their computer screen, they were daydreaming food, both of them picturing bags stuffed with burgers and onion rings, flipping the lid on a pizza box and smelling that beautiful grease and cheese.

“I want . . .” Nilda said.

“Don’t even start,” Raymond said.

“What? I can’t even talk about it?”

“I’m not into fantasy. I believe in the real thing. Talk is bogus.”

Nilda snorted.

“Do I talk? Or do I get?” Raymond said.

“Not that I am interested in your sex life. Because I am not. But do blow jobs count as actual real sex? Like in the straight world, it’s like just foreplay. You know?”

“You are too much,” Raymond said.

“What? What? I’m just saying,” Nilda said.

“Always finding fault with me.”

“You big fat baby. Stop whining.”

“Won’t be fat for long. Twenty-two pounds so far this slim-a-thon. Never fear, I will carry our team to ultimate victory, my sister,” Raymond said.

“I’m doing my part. I’m doing really good. It’s not my fault that women can’t lose as fast as men. We’re just built different. Ask anyone. Not one woman in the world can lose as fast as a man,” Nilda said.

“So? What’s the number?”

“None of your business.”

“I’m on your team, Nilda,” Raymond said. “Slim-a-thon team manager. Here to help coach you, get you up to speed.”

[img_assist|nid=910|title=Untitled (Moussio) by Neal Curley © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=100]“Speed up, asswipe,” Nilda said. “That call’s for us. Damn it. I hate domestics. I have to be the calming woman cop, take the man outside. Hate that shit. Son of a mother-fucking bitch, I hate that shit.”

“Do you have to use such foul language? I have a college degree. I didn’t become a cop to hear garbage in my ear all day long. I could report you, you know.”

“Go ahead. That would really endear you to your fellow cops, reporting that your partner used a distasteful word in your presence.” Nilda grinned, turning her head so that Raymond couldn’t see her. Men were so easy. And gay men were super easy.

“Have some consideration,” Raymond said. “Please.”

Now he’s begging me, thought Nilda. This guy is too fucking much.

They pulled up to the house. The front door was wide open. They were in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, an old part of the city where there were big trees and the houses were stately and large, with stone fronts and porches with white columns.

The woman was bleeding from her nose. She sobbed, held a fuzzy pink slipper sock to her nose and never took her eyes off the man. The man was fat, his belly hanging over his belt and his shirt gaping, buttons straining.

“Please come outside now, sir,” Nilda said her hand on her gun. The man scurried outside with her.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” the man said. “I’m just so sick of her putting me down all the time. I can’t do anything right. I lost it. I swear it was a mistake. A one-time thing. I will never, I swear on my mother’s grave, never do that again. Please don’t arrest me. I’m a CPA. I have an MBA.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Nilda said and she arrested him.

“Did you see how fat he was?” Nilda said to Raymond afterwards.

“Why are you always picking on me?”

“What? I’m talking about the man. The man.”

“I know what you’re doing. You never let up. You think I’m as fat as that man. I’m doing everything right now. I’m going to lose this weight.”

“You better. It’s not allowed, is it? To be gay and fat. Isn’t there some kind of oath you guys sign, to stay buff?” Nilda said. She was needling him deliberately. She was hungry and sex-starved and there was nothing she could do about either thing for the next few hours.

Nilda liked to fight with Raymond. They squabbled like brothers and sisters. She thought Raymond was a big faggy baby, sensitive about everything. He looked at Nilda with shiny hurt eyes when she got on his case. It made her want to fight more with him, make him out-and-out bawl. She used to make her brother Nestor cry all the time. She smiled.

“What’s with you? Happy now? Because you made me feel bad?” Raymond said.

“You talk too much,” said Nilda. “There’s something very annoying about a man who talks too much.”

“Sometimes I hate your guts, you know that? You’re a drag.”

“Is that the best you can do?” Jeez, that’s lame, Nilda thought. She wished he were more ruthless. If he really gave it to her, she would be distracted from the gnawing emptiness in her stomach.

“I’m hungry,” Nilda said.

“Do you bring your snack with you?” said Raymond.

“I don’t want a mother-fucking apple,” Nilda said. She found the apple in the glove compartment, opened her window and threw it out. “I want a cheesesteak with fries.”

Raymond took his hands off the wheel and held them over his ears.

“Please,” he said.

“Please nothing. Take me to Cheesesteak Heaven,” she said.

“I will not.”

A call came in for them to respond to a robbery in progress.

“I hate those,” Nilda said. “God, I hate those.”

“What exactly do you like? You hate domestics, you hate robberies. What do you want?”

She thought about it, turned over everything she had done on the job in the past week, month, year. Raymond sped toward the robbery. He was a good fast driver and knew all the shortcuts, so she let him drive.

“I like drunks,” she said.

“You’re kidding me. You never know what they’ll do. They vomit on you, throw punches.”

“Drunks are easy,” she said. Nilda was lazy. She mostly liked riding around in the car.

“Not to me.”

“That’s because you try to talk to them, reason with them. If they give me trouble, I just give them a crack and they lay there like babies.”

Raymond shook his head.

When they pulled up to the liquor store, there were already a bunch of other cops there and the robber was handcuffed and in the car. Nilda and Raymond hung around for a while talking. Nilda took off her hat and undid her ponytail, leaned against the car. Single, single, married, don’t know, married, she them counted off. Finally Nilda and Raymond got back in their car.

“He was cute,” Raymond said.

“Which one?”

“The one you were working it for.” Raymond imitated Nilda tossing her hair around.

Nilda wondered if she had been that obvious. She had been trying hard to open that knot she felt inside since her last husband left. Whenever she thought of his face, she made herself erase it and picture a white rose unfurling slowly inside her heart. I need sex, she thought. If I don’t have sex soon, I am going to die. Love is too much to ask for, but sex is a reasonable request.

“How do I get some?” she asked. “I don’t even know how to get it. You get it all the time. I was married for the last seven years. I forget how to get it. Before him, it used to just come automatically.”

“See how you are? Make fun of me, tease me, curse at me, then you want advice. Now you want me to help you. Why should I?”

Nilda was very hungry. Suddenly she couldn’t think about anything else.

“Pull over,” she said. “I want to drive.” Nilda never wanted to drive.

“What are you talking about?” Raymond asked.

“Take me to Cheesesteak Heaven or I’ll take myself,” Nilda said.

“Think about what you’re doing, Nilda. Is this going to solve anything? Are you going to feel bad later?” Raymond said.

“I have two hungers, Raymond. Two very bad hungers. And yes, it will solve something. It will solve my stomach hunger, Raymond.”

Raymond sighed. Just like riding with a fucking old lady, Nilda thought. She sighed back at him loudly.

He put on the blinker and turned toward Cheesesteak Heaven.

“Look, here’s the deal. If you want sex, you go get sex. If you don’t need it that bad, just wait it out,” Raymond said. “You pay a price either way. Which price do you want to pay?”

She hated him. Mr.Got-It-All-Figured-Out. Mr.Gay Man, Sex-Anytime-He-Wants. Well, plump middle-aged straight women do not have dance clubs to go to where men line up to give them satisfaction, she thought. He got a lot of action because he was a cop. Gay guys loved that cop thing, even if Raymond was fat. She bet he went to the bar in his uniform and that’s how he got so much sex. Men would run the other way if she did that.

“What price do you pay, Raymond?” Nilda could practically taste that cheesesteak now. Her mouth was full of water, waiting.

“Don’t you think it takes a bite out of my soul every time I have sex with someone I don’t love? Don’t you think a little something dies inside?”

“Mother-of-God. Let me out of this car,” Nilda said.

Cheesesteak Heaven was crowded. She stood in the back, reading the menu board over and over, breathing deep. The only choices on the board were the size of the sandwich and the toppings. Do I want hot peppers? Do I dare have a large? A large is very very big, Nilda thought. Can I handle it, after weeks on this stinking diet?

It smelled so good. Everyone was smiling in Cheesesteak Heaven, the cooks slapping the meat around on the grill, the wrapping crew as they squirted cheese stuff on top and rolled the cheesesteaks in tin foil, the cashiers handing over the bags to the customers, bags that were instantly grease-stained and dripping. The customers were the smiliest, though. The ones who just got their bags clutched them to their chests, never mind the mess. The ones perched on the stools hunched over their food, because they couldn’t wait to bring it home and eat at their own kitchen tables, eating with both hands, dripping ketchup and fried onions all over the place. They looked really happy.

“Nilda, come on,” Raymond said. “There’s a fight out in the parking lot.”

“Sure.”

“I swear to God. Come on.”

“If you are just trying to get me out of here, I am going to kick your ass so hard,” Nilda said. He’s probably serious, she thought, he’s too straight-laced to make up anything having to do with work.

They took their time getting to the fight, hoping it would be over by the time they got there. It was two men, rolling around on the concrete, hitting each other with one fist and each holding a bag in their other fist.

Raymond sprang into action, putting himself between them, using recommended moves from police academy classes. Nilda watched him think, set his position, try a move, get knocked over, get up and think, flip a page in the academy training manual and try again. He has the worst instincts in the entire fucking world, she thought.

“Police. Stop. We are the police,” Raymond said. He looked at Nilda.

“Police,” she rolled her eyes and repeated.

“Hey!” Raymond yelled louder at the men, who were rolling more than hitting now.

Nilda stuck her baton hard into one guy’s stomach, snagged the bag from his hand. He gasped, jumped up.

“Thas mine,” he said.

“And how drunk are you, my man?” she said.

“Drunk? Not me. Only had two,” he said. “Then I got hungry and came over here.”

“Two dozen drinks? That’s a lot, my man,” Nilda said.

“Did I say that? I’m tired. I meant to say I didn’t have nothing to drink tonight. Maybe one.Thaas it, one beer.” The man was having a hard time standing up. He swayed a few times, then sat down on the pavement. “Can I have my cheesesteak? I’m feeling faint. I need food.”

“Are you going to fight anymore?” Nilda held the bag over his head. She opened the lip and let out the smells.

“No, ma’am, officer. No no no.”

The other man was holding his head. He lay flat on the ground with his bag squeezed between his knees.

“And you? Are you going to keep fighting?” Nilda said.

“Don’t take my bag. Please don’t take my bag. I’ll be right up.” The other man struggled to sit up. “I’m okay. See I’m fine. I’m just going back to my room and eat my dinner. All quiet.” He clutched his bag under his arm now.

The cops got back in their car. Nilda wanted to go back in and start over, but the sight of the dirty bag between the drunk’s knees turned her stomach.

“Should we have just left them like that? What if one of them had car keys?” Raymond worried.

“Those guys haven’t owned a car for decades,” she said. “Stumblebums. Relax, RayRay.”

“Please call me Raymond.”

“Please call me Raymond,” she mocked him. She was trying to get some friction started, craving a distraction that would kill the last hour of their shift.

He clammed up then, drove without talking for a solid half hour. Be that way, Nilda thought. She laid her head back and closed her eyes. Raymond smelled so good. Say what you will about gay guys, they smell damn good, Nilda thought.

She opened her eyes. “Raymond, this is serious,” she said. “I need to find a man. Tonight. You need to help me. I mean it. This is a truly desperate situation. Do you get it? You are a gay man from birth and you are starting to smell good to me. I need some help here.”

Raymond smiled.

“I am not kidding around. I think I just crossed some kind of sex starvation threshold. When you start thinking about sleeping with a gay man, you are a woman in deep trouble.”

“Seriously? What am I supposed to do? I don’t know anything about where straight women go to get some,” Raymond said.

Nilda stared him down. Raymond got rattled.

“I’ll make some calls. I’ll call my sisters,” he said.

“Forget it. Thanks a lot, dude.”

“What? What? What did I do?” Raymond asked.

“Useless. You are useless to me,” Nilda snarled.

They drove silently back to the station. Their work shift was over. Raymond hesitated getting out of the car.

“Want a hug?” he asked.

“No, Raymond. I don’t want a hug. I want a lot of things, but I do not want a hug from you.” Nilda felt like crying. She felt so needy. “Go home, useless.”

“That’s not nice,” Raymond said. “You know I would help you out if I could.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Maybe a good dinner will cheer you up. Why don’t you go out and get a nice healthy dinner somewhere? Treat yourself.”

Nilda changed her clothes, got into her car, and drove straight back to Cheesesteak Heaven. “I’ll have a large, with hot peppers,” she ordered. She breathed deep. “It smells so good in here,” she said out loud to no one in particular.

“Isn’t it amazing?” the man next to her said. He smiled.

Nilda smiled back.

“We don’t have cheesesteaks back home in Indiana,” he said. “I can’t wait to rip into one. It smells so darn juicy.”

“I’m Nilda,” she said. “And your cheesesteak is on me. I insist.”Kathy Anderson, a South Jersey resident, was awarded a fellowship for fiction from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.