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[img_assist|nid=10053|title=Two Together #9 by Gillian Bedford © 2013|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=500|height=672]
At the end of each day and, later on, throughout the day, he made lists, hundreds of thousands of lists.  Lists of his failures (short), lists of his successes (longer), lists of other people’s failures and successes, lists of all the people other people had loved, lists of who had believed in god that day, who had forgotten, and who had stopped looking up and started looking ahead.  It didn’t really help him with work but it helped him keep track of Life, which constantly seemed harder to keep track of. 

He was not a watcher, not by any means.  He didn’t waste his time sitting on benches in the park letting his biological clock tick quickly towards sagging age-no, in fact, he liked to think of himself as a rather efficient person.  And efficient people took good notes, about everything, and this he did meticulously.  He was proud to say he had not forgotten a single note he had ever taken-he wasn’t one of those who sat down at dinner and stammered about things they had wanted to say and had wanted to share but couldn’t for the life of them remember.  Absolutely not.  He had lists-and they, as far as they reflected his ability to observe his world, were perfect reflections.  Perfect. 

He didn’t live with anybody yet.  Although only forty-two, he realized the problem of this, as his biological clock had ended up ticking quite quickly even without any bench sitting, but he would solve it soon.  This year, in fact, he had made a list of eligible women and he would begin (after August vacation) to interview them, as it were.  He would never be so blunt, of course; he would be polite, and nice, and equally eligible.  Hopefully he would not have to get to the bottom of that list; if he did and none proved eligible, or the eligible ones proved stubborn (which would imply some sort of ineligibility) he would make another list.  In one year’s time, there would be a wife in his relatively nice middle-sized house.  In two year’s time, hopefully twins.  A child, if he wasn’t that lucky, and he understood that even lists and efficiency couldn’t always hold a candle to luck.

He had eight friends.  Thirty-seven acquaintances.  One hundred and thirteen dependable business acquaintances; two hundred and four possibly dependable business acquaintances.  Ninety-three uncategorized Facebook contacts.  Twelve dependable friendly acquaintances, nineteen possibles, and one true friend.  No parents above ground.  And yes, he most certainly had a list of all his friends, except for the one true friend. 

She was not efficient.  She was untidy, and she had married an untidy man and had untidy children, the kind who smiled and laughed and played splattered with smearings of food and dog spit.  Unconscionable, but they were her children, not his.  She came to his house (he did not go very often to hers) because the multiple untidy persons he met there could easily cause him discomfort.  He usually claimed he could not remember why he and Celia had ever been friends because he knew, now, that he would never be friends with, to be precise, such a slob.  But of course he remembered, and it wasn’t just because Celia reminded him every time she saw him.  It was because, deep down in his secret self, the part that thought when he was almost asleep but still able to think, he went back to that first time and made lists of all the excuses he’d have to make so she wouldn’t know he thought of it.

They had met in high school, freshman year, in the most banal English class where they’d introduced each other to the class and she had looked like a wreck and he’d looked not bad but a little worse than he did now.  She hadn’t learned how to do her hair yet and so it was all in tangles when he’d said hi, my name is irrelevant and I like black things (he’d been just a little bit dark and negative and pessimistic back then).  She’d said hey my name is Celia and I love invisible pink unicorns.  He’d thought she was an idiot but after a few classes she came over and asked him what he believed in.  He said he went to church and believed in nothing.  She kept asking questions: what did he want to be, where had he gone to school before, did he like school, what did he like to study, did he even like to study, had he ever been arrested, did he drink, and he’d said why do you care? And she’d said because you’re the only one here with a quarter of a brain, and he’d said only a quarter? And she’d said she only had one fifth, he should be happy, though she didn’t think he was very happy very often.

They’d been friends because he’d desperately wanted someone to talk to.  He’d wanted someone to ask him questions because he had his own answers from all the years when nobody had asked him anything, and being relatively perfect back then (his perfection had admittedly decreased with age) he wasn’t going to go finding people.  And besides, she’d been interesting.  She was a failed preppy, a tangle of mismatched colors and incomplete hair, and while being neat was just as important back in those dark and pessimistic days as it was now, being neat was only enjoyable when other people weren’t.  And except for Celia, they had all been superlatively neat.

So they’d banded together and annoyed each other to high heaven but had a ball doing so, calling the other every two minutes to complain about the world and its awesomely depressing ways.  And when they went to college they still called, Celia now to ask about what was the excuse God had put in men’s heads instead of brains and he to ask the same of women.  After college came a short lull, and then an invitation to Celia’s wedding, and then she was seeing him again to talk about life, and marital love, and work, and marital fights, and book-clubs, and then the cessation of work for children, and children, and more marital fights, and dogs, and more book-clubs, and marital love, and a new novel on marital love and children and dogs, and four more new novels about marital love and children and dogs, and then books of poetry, gardening, kindergartens, life, philosophy, the world, and did he still think he fit in the world the same way he used to because he sure looked it, plodding and plodding and plodding along.  Well, he’d said, you certainly seem to enjoy my plodding well enough, you’re here more than anywhere else, and she said she’d rather be anywhere else than at his house except he was so darn stubborn.   

But it was in October when, at his still relatively nice middle-sized house (he didn’t yet have enough money for an addition), Celia drove up to his door with the slobbering dog and the two food-covered children and told him she’d lost her house and needed a place to stay.  And he’d looked at the slobbering dog for a very long time and said how, exactly, do you lose a house?  And she said a pile of men whose shirts say bank come in a truck and take it away.  He’d said where’s Owen?  And she said he’s in jail to rot until his toes turn green.  Oh, he’d said.  Well, can I come in?  she’d said.  He opened the door.

[img_assist|nid=10054|title=Moon Drawing by Karoline Wileczek © 2013|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=450|height=634]

He often wondered afterwards if she’d only turned in her own husband for fraud just so she could put a hurricane in his house called Home Redecorating the Homeless Way (Celia called it her “feminine touch”) but then he thought that was mean because he knew how long Celia was working selling cosmetics to ugly people, the only first job she’d been able to find.  What was all that college for, he’d asked her, and she said I haven’t worked in eight years, do you know what that means?

She put piles of flowers everywhere in his once neat and clean and shiny bathroom and kitchen and bedrooms, and because she didn’t have time to change the flowers the flowers got old and wilty and eventually dead, but the minute he’d throw them out she’d tell him she wanted her children to have flowers around them so they would always know happiness.  He’d wanted to say a lot of things then but she’d also said she never wanted her children to hear bad words so that they’d always have clean mouths, so he’d said nothing out loud.  So she’d put the flowers back, and when they started to wilt he started replacing them himself, trimming them and putting them in the vases with a happy little forbidden word whispered with every bouquet. 

And then the bathroom.  Women were supposed to be clean, men messy, but Celia must have thought the bathroom was a big moon bounce of towels, or something, because that’s what the bathroom became.  Except it was more of a moon slip as the towels and tiles didn’t stick, except when the towels were wet, when it all became a moon jungle, complete with a squelching monsoon floor.  And he’d hear her in there with the children, giving them a bath at ten pm, playing water games and singing water songs. 

And when she was finished and taking the naked children wrapped in towels back to the guest room where they all slept he’d go into the bathroom and not exactly scrub it clean but something very close to that, and all in a huff from cleaning other people’s mess he’d walk to the room to talk to Celia about the Guest Code of Conduct when he’d hear her humming a little song to them in the dark, and then a quiet when are we going to go home?  And an equally quiet I don’t know, and then why are we here? And then a because if you’re lucky you get to have one really good friend, and if you get one there’s a special invisible contract which says you will do anything for each other.  And this is my one friend. 

Well, what could he say after that, he sat down in his nice neat bathroom and when she asked if she could take a shower he just let her and went to his bedroom.  And as he was falling asleep he made a list of all the reasons why he had always liked Celia.  In the morning he cleaned the spilled cereal and walked the utterly stupid dog and didn’t say a word against anybody until he got home and found the children had made a fort in the middle of the living room out of his bed pillows and couch pillows and bed blankets.  It looked like some Mongolian tent, right there in the middle of his living room, and when he lifted the blanket he found the crumbs sprinkled like large dust particles all over his no-longer clean carpet and the dog in the middle of it, smiling as he put blizzards of black hair on the ivory pillows and blankets.  And when Celia came home he shouted anyway, and she shouted back that she didn’t want her children hearing shouting and he said fuck your stupid children-and then Celia cried, and he had to say sorry and wait outside the shut guest room door for three and a half hours until eleven thirty at night, when Celia said she was sorry she was so difficult and he said he was sorry he was so anal and the kids kind of looked at them both from under their blankets and weren’t sure if things were still okay or not.

All of this, of course, put him into an absolute frenzy of list-making.  If there had been many lists before, there were hundreds of neat piles of them now, everywhere.  Sometimes he’d be up late making lists, and then he’d realize there were lists all over the floor, and his floor looked like a mess, it looked like a Celia mess, and he’d jump up and carefully pin and staple and paperclip them together and then organize them into type: lists of Celia’s bad cooking skills, lists of Celia’s bad child-rearing skills, lists of the stupidities of Celia’s children, lists of the stupidities of Celia’s dog (this was the longest by far), lists of the reasons why Celia should go, lists of the reasons why Celia should stay, lists of insults for Celia’s husband (only slightly shorter than those for the dog), lists of reasons why not to kill Celia’s husband, lists of reasons why to kill Celia’s husband. 

And then, after about three months, Celia came home one night and said she would be leaving.  Well where was she going?  A hotel room, she supposed.  And the dog?  It wasn’t that nice a hotel, she said.  Well could she afford it?  No.  Well why was she leaving?  Owen’s coming home, she said, or at least he’s getting out.  How?  His sister finagled it out for him, apparently she’s got money but only for him not for me so he’s out but we’re on our own.  Let him come here, I suppose, it can’t be that much worse, he said.  I’m not going to do that, Celia said, I’m not going to ever bring him here.  He’s no longer my husband, not really.  My friend is no longer his friend.

And she said thank you and thank you and all that thanking business, which made him very uncomfortable because he hated to be thanked for things by Celia since he never really felt he had to give her anything, everything of his was sort of hers by default, and when she was done she said she was going to tell the children and he watched her walk up the stairs.  And then he looked at the slobbering dog and the fort the children had rebuilt in his living room, and they really didn’t seem so bad, and the fort was rather ingenious, and the dog had a friendly feeling and Celia was an idiot but she knew everything about him and she knew everything about everything somehow, and he needed to make a list and so he went upstairs to his bedroom and made a list of all the reasons why Celia should stay forever.  And when he finished he made a list of all the reasons why Celia should leave forever and when he was finished with that he tacked them both up and stood back and looked, and he saw that the list for Celia staying forever was longer than any of the other lists he had made before in his life. 

He looked at it for a while, because this time he knew he was fully awake and not almost asleep.  And then he thought of the interviews, and he opened his sock drawer and took out the neatly rolled list of eligibles, and he looked at it for a moment and looked back at the Celia list.  And then efficiently, carefully, he ripped both lists into a hundred little pieces and threw them in the air, letting them fall from his clothes as he walked to tell the children they could keep his living room as long as there were flowers.

 

Alessandra Davy-Falconi, originally from Boston and Pittsburgh, is currently a student at Bryn Mawr College.  She was a winner of the 2011-2012 Helen Creeley Poetry Contest, read her work at the 12^th Annual Boston National Poetry Month Festival, and has a piece soon to be online in The Hive: Apiary Digital Edition. Her writing is influenced by anything and everything; she writes purely to tell stories in as many ways as possible. 

 

[img_assist|nid=10041|title=12 Years by Lisa Tarkett Reed © 2013|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=400|height=384]

“Butter is too bold,” Caroline announced, tossing the sheet of color samples to the floor. “In fact, this entire strip is too loud.” 

“Why not buy the sofa first and paint the walls after?” Paul suggested.

“I’m waiting to find one I absolutely love-but I can’t live another minute with these tacky white walls.”

Paul wanted to say that dingy beige walls were no less tacky than white ones.  Or that he’d rather have a place to put his ass. There was a time when living without furniture seemed appropriate, if not welcomed, when an extra chair equaled an old fruit crate and his dresser was made of plastic, but now that he was nearing forty, an empty den felt like a regression to his failed twenties. Still, they were in the cautious stage of living together, when she closed the bathroom door to pee, and he waited to trim his nose hair when she wasn’t home. 

Paul handed Caroline the paint samples and kissed her forehead. “You choose the color, and I’ll paint the walls.”

“Don’t be silly, I’m hiring professionals. Instead of wasting those hours on menial labor, you could be learning techniques to improve your efficiency or just relaxing. Do you know how many dentists burn out before their prime? Really, Paul, we met at one of my “Using Your Free Time Effectively” lunch and learns, weren’t you listening?”

“I was too distracted by your legs.”

“People sign up for my lunch and learns to hear what I have to say, not gawk at my legs.”

When he opened his mouth to reply, she yanked down the hem of her skirt and headed for the large bay window.  Paul took a step towards her on the off chance she’d asked for help, but she attacked the task with same precise, quick fashion she did everything.  As she stood on her tip toes and stretched her lean arms to extend a metal tape measure to the top of the window frame, he marveled, yet again, that she was his.    

She was beautiful, more beautiful and successful than he ever thought capable of attracting, and she knew it.  With a flawless face and a few impeccably tailored suits, she had built a career as a D.C. dental sales rep with a higher paycheck than his, for the time being.  There was an imbalance between them that would steadily shrink over the years, as she aged and he built his practice. He would ask her to marry him when they were on more equal footing, when to be refused by her would leave him shaken, yet able to move on.  In the meantime, they would share a house, beige walls, and, eventually, the sofa of her dreams. Unromantic perhaps, but like everything in his life, he had learned to be more rational with his feelings. 

 

From the endless bland samples with delicious names like popcorn ball and toasted oatmeal, Caroline finally chose winter garden, a greenish beige that resembled the detritus of supple summer leaves.  She had placed the color strip on the table between them during breakfast and lauded the color’s versatility, never asking what he thought of it. As he waited for his eight o’clock patient to arrive, Paul browsed home improvement websites, searching for an alternative: a cadmium red or vermillion or alizarin crimson, a pulsing color to arrest his attention each time he entered the den.  He wanted something that forced him to stop, for just a moment, and feel the blood pounding through his veins.  

Reds always had that effect on him. Of the hundreds of paintings he created in his twenties, only three were stowed in the attic of the new house, and all were predominately red.  The rest, a decade’s work of varying success and palettes, lay rotting in the Henrico County dump beside the double mattress he had shared with his ex-wife Emily.

Emily had favored blues. Ceruleans, sevres, and cobalts featured heavily in her work, at least while they were married.  Though he hadn’t spoken to her in years, he still kept one of her paintings, a portrait of him sitting beside a barred window in their studio, examining the dust floating in the interrupted light.  She had glanced up from her easel one morning and smiled at him until he abandoned his still life to pull her onto the paint-splattered drop cloth beneath their canvases. When they finished, she had asked to paint him, and he had sat with his skin covered only in flecks of oil colors, watching the dust they had disturbed move in and out of the light.

She gave him the painting when they separated, asking him to keep a small part of her and their life together even after he threw his own work in the dumpster behind their apartment.    On the day she moved out, he watched her pull a small canvas from the trash and load it into the tiny U-Haul she had rented for her share of their meager household. It was a nude of her, abstract like all his paintings, yet he doubted any woman could walk by a dumpster display of her naked breasts unmoved, no matter her feelings for the artist or the quality of the rendering.

After she had driven away, he had descended the four flights to the ally and salvaged the remaining three nudes, leaving the rest of his work behind the sagging mattress with all his paints, brushes and canvas.  He never painted again.

The paintings remained sealed with the same bubble wrap and tape he used when moving them to Baltimore for dental school. He had carried them, unopened, to a series of progressively nicer apartments until Caroline helped him heft the four bundles up the stairs to the attic of their new house.  She never asked what lay beneath the nearly opaque layers of plastic, just as he had lifted several heavy boxes of hers to the attic without comment.   As far as she knew, his only artistic skill was matching composite shades to teeth, and he saw no reason to correct her.  Years of coaxing endless dollops of paint to blend and express the world he saw and felt had been reduced to a mere sixteen, premixed shades of beige: the yellowish As, the brilliant Bs, the gray Cs, and the reddish Ds, each with four levels of brightness to represent every tooth in the world.

He once clung to the belief that he could live an artistic life as a dentist. One of his first-year professors in dental school had likened building a posterior restoration to sculpting, saying: “You must replicate the natural shape of the molar using composite and a condenser, just as Michelangelo chiseled perfection from a slab of granite.” Granite.  Not marble. As though Il Divino installed countertops for upper-middle class Florentines.  Had Paul been a true artist, he’d have catapulted from the uncomfortable lecture hall seat, stripped, and tossed his scrubs in the trashcan by the door.  It would have been more dignified to walk across campus in his boxer shorts than remain seated as he did, choosing to embrace the professor’s poorly executed metaphor as confirmation that he was still an artist. His medium had simply changed. 

“Dr. Weston, your eight o’clock has arrived,” his assistant Megan announced from the doorway of his office. Her eyebrows rose slightly at the end, as if to add a silent finally. “He’s complaining of pain on tooth number twelve.”

She handed him the chart and stepped aside so he could walk ahead of her. Such deferential gestures always made him feel slightly uncomfortable, but every dental assistant he ever had behaved the same way. He eventually realized that their training must include a minute understanding of the doctor-assistant power dynamic. 

“Thank you, Megan,” he said. She gave him a perfunctory nod, and he hoped that in her personal life, which he knew nothing about, others stood aside for her.

As they walked to the operatory, Paul flipped through the hastily scribbled medical history and decided Andrew Brookfield may have a slight sense of the inconvenience he might cause by arriving late to his introductory appointment. He glanced up from the chart to see the patient and stopped so suddenly that Megan collided with his back.

“I mixed the color myself,” the young man said in a proud voice. He tucked a strand of electric purple hair behind his ear and stared back at Paul in mock astonishment.

“It’s nice to meet you, Andrew,” Paul said, forcing a smile. “I’m Dr. Weston.”

They shook hands briefly while Megan took her seat on the other side of the reclined dental chair, and Paul couldn’t help thinking that Andrew Brookfield had been handsome before he dyed, pierced, and tattooed himself into something else. Beneath the heavy eye makeup and facial piercings, his face was perfectly symmetrical and his irises were an arresting shade of green, nearly the same as Emily’s. Weeks or months typically went by between Paul’s thoughts of his ex-wife and yet in one morning, he seemed incapable of thinking of anyone else.  

At the realization that he was again staring, Paul fumbled with a pair of the Megan’s small, pink gloves before snapping on a pair of his large, blue ones. “Which tooth is bothering you?” he asked since most patients rarely understood the inside of their own mouths well enough to direct him to the same place as Megan.

Andrew pointed to number twelve with the tip of his tongue and banged a piercing against several non-offending teeth.          Paul wanted to tell the young man it was a wonder he had any teeth left with so much metal assaulting his enamel. Instead he used an explorer to pull at an amalgam filing on twelve and asked “Does this hurt?”

Andrew simply nodded and closed his eyes, retreating into himself from the pain.  Most people let out a little moan or jumped slightly whenever Paul found a trouble spot.  The more dramatic the reaction the more he disliked the patient. It was bad enough knowing he was hurting someone, however temporary, without the accompanying sound effects and flailing.   He decided Andrew Brookfield, despite his lateness and questionable fashion choices, might be a welcomed addition to his clientele.

“Is it a dull, achy pain or a sharp pain?” Paul asked.

“Definitely sharp and only when I chew.”    

“You probably have a slight crack.  I’ll need to replace your old filling with composite, but you could need a crown.”

“Just take the tooth out,” Andrew said, opening his eyes. “I don’t want to have to come back.”  

“That’s really a last resort,” Paul said gently, searching for fear in the usual places:  pursed lips, shifting eyes, a sudden foot jiggle.  He’d come to expect the tell-tell signs of dental fear from a certain percentage of otherwise reasonable patients, grown men and women who sat trembling in the chair as though he were a sadist about to get off on torturing them.  But Andrew’s mouth and feet were relaxed, his eyes focused directly on Paul’s face. “It might only need a new filing,” he added in a more assertive tone.  “Worst case scenario, we do a temporary crown and then a root canal, but either way, we can save this tooth.”

“Just take it out. I don’t want to have to deal with it.”

Paul pretended to read the young man’s chart and breathed deep to stave the anger he felt building.   Everything he had been taught urged him to try a filing, then a temporary crown, then a root canal, if needed, before removing the tooth. But despite Paul’s years of schooling, Andrew Brookfield had the option, however asinine, to do what he wanted with his own mouth, and Paul would comply as long as it wouldn’t lead to a lawsuit.  When he started dental school, Paul thought giving up painting would be his greatest challenge.  He never anticipated the daily torment of convincing complete strangers to let him do what he wanted with their teeth.

“Andrew, you’re only twenty-five.  If I take that tooth out, you’ll have a hole there for the rest of your life. People will see a gap when you smile.”

The young man shrugged.  “I don’t smile often.”

“Andrew, the tooth might only need a little composite to feel and look as good as new. We can even work out a payment plan if you’d like.”

“Take it out,” he said, opening his mouth wide.

Paul nodded and used the seconds it took Megan to ready the instruments to force his breathing to slow.

 

After the extraction, Paul decided red walls might be too drastic of an alternative and googled neutral interior paint.  As he searched for a color that fit Caroline’s couch plan without resembling rotting vegetation, he discovered samples to match every number and letter in his composite shade guide.  He even found an interior paint called Country Dairy identical to A2, the closest shade to Andrew Brookfield’s left premolar.

He turned off the computer screen and decided to continue the search later, forgetting Caroline’s impressive ability to get things done. The winter garden walls that greeted him on his lunch break cast a gloomy pallor throughout the spacious den that no amount of sunlight could brighten. 

“It’s so soothing,” Caroline squealed when she found him staring at the drying paint. “It really makes the whole room feel balanced.”

He examined her perfect face for a moment, hoping for some sign of sarcasm, but finding none, asked cautiously, “You don’t think it’s a little plain?”

“It’s tasteful,” she said, narrowing her indathrone blue eyes.  “I’ve decorated over nine apartments since I moved to Northern Virginia.  Trust me, Paul, I know more about paint than you.”

 

In the weeks that followed, the color of decay slowly permeated the rest of the house:  a lamp in the hallway, a throw pillow on the oversized bed they shared. Decorative ties, Caroline called them, all the color of brittle leaves. By the time Caroline found a bland sofa to complete the house, winter had settled in Northern Virginia, the outdoors muted to the same shade as the den walls. Their bodies drifted slowly to opposite sides of the bed once the novelty of sleeping entwined had worn off, and they settled into a routine that eerily mirrored Caroline’s PowerPoint slide of a sample day in the life a successful person.  

Everything had become so colorless, that Paul found himself hurrying into the operatory when, after several cancellations, Andrew Brookfield finally returned for his follow up appointment.  But the young man had stripped the dye from his hair, leaving it a pale yellow that dulled his impressive eyes to the color of moss. 

“How’s that extraction healing?” Paul asked in an overly chipper voice to hide his disappointment.  

“It’s fine,” the young man said.  He smiled, flashing the gaping hole where number twelve had been. “Actually, I want you to take out the tooth on the other side. I like the gap here,” he said, sticking his tongue between eleven and thirteen. “But I think there should be one on each side.” 

Megan pulled a surgical mask onto her face to hide whatever reaction she was having to Andrew’s request, forcing Paul to realize that his own jaw had gone completely slack. He closed his mouth and sat numbly for a moment before he felt capable of speech.

“I can’t extract a perfectly good tooth, Andrew,” he said finally. “That goes against everything I believe.”

“I want you to take out a tooth, not murder me.  Besides, it’s my mouth, and I want it to be balanced.”

“Fuck balance,” Paul said before he could stop himself.  “Life can’t all be about making everything the same.”

Megan swiveled in her rolling chair and began arranging toothpaste samples on the far end of the operatory.

“Sorry,” Paul added quickly, taking a deep breath.     

“Don’t apologize.” Andrew unclipped the paper bib from around his neck and swung his feet onto the floor.   “That’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me.  I’ll give you some time to think about it and come back later.”

As the young man left the operatory, Paul stared at sterile gloves he had reached for to begin the examination.  He let out a gasp when he realized that instead of the usual blue, they were beige.  Looking around the room, he saw that everything, the instruments, his clothing, even Megan’s anxious face, had faded to various shades of brown.   He blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes roughly with his balled fists.

“Dr. Weston?” Megan asked.

By the time he removed his hands from his eyes, she had crossed the operatory and was

leaning over him. “I need to go home,” he said.  She was apparently too startled by his behavior to remember her training, forcing him to push past her into blanched hallway.

On the short drive home, his eyes flitted to as many things as possible: Storefronts, pedestrians, stop signs, an endless sea of nearly-identical houses, all sepia-tinted.  The homes in his subdivision were so similar without different exterior paints that he had to rely on the street numbers to find his own.  In the kitchen, he opened the fridge to jars and jugs with contents all resembling mayonnaise.  He rifled through the drawers to confirm that every item had faded and accidently raked his thumb across a cheese grater. A small drop of alizarin crimson rose to the surface of his skin.

Relieved to finally see a color other than beige, he began searching for red throughout the kitchen. The panic that had begun when everything faded threatened to overtake him when he realized the red apples on the countertop still appeared a rotten brown to his eyes.   He ran up the two flights of stairs to the attic, shoved aside the boxes where Caroline had buried her own past, and tore the bubble wrap from his paintings. Each vibrant image of Emily’s supple curves ignited the wash-out world. He examined her painting last, and felt his racing heart slow as the sober mood of her work overtook him.

She had captured the moment so differently than he remembered, the blues tones making the arch of his fingers more seeking than analytical, almost nostalgic.   It was as though she had sensed, months before the fighting started, his increasing impatience to feel successful, to move beyond a life of fruit crate furniture and eviction notices, and painted him a prophetic memento of who he had been with her. He laid all four pieces carefully across the attic floor and went back downstairs.

In a drawer of seldom-used cooking gadgets, he found a basting brush similar to a crude hake.  He then pulled each knife from the wooden holder on the countertop and pressed his thumb against the blades before selecting a sharp paring knife.  He carried his tools to the den and, turning his left hand palm-side up down, made a tentative cut between his wrist and elbow. His hands shook slightly when he pressed the basting brush against the small line of blood, but the tightness in his chest began to relax with the first, imperfect stroke on the den wall.  The tremor in his fingers stopped as he made a second arch in one fluid movement.  He paused to examine his work and frowned when he realized the color had tapered near the middle of the stroke. Before making his next mark, he drew the knife directly across a vein near his elbow.  His breathing slowed with each brushstroke, and despite the pain in his arm, he felt elated, calm.  By the time Caroline arrived, he had finished painting and lay exhausted and weak on her beloved sofa.

“He isn’t answering my calls either, Megan,” she said, stepping into the den with her cell phone to her ear.  When she saw him, she backed silently out of the room as though an intruder lurked in the kitchen.  Only from the doorway did she comprehend the scene before her and began shouting orders to Megan.

“What have you done?” she asked, dropping the phone to press her hands against the deepest cuts.

He smiled at her and motioned with his chin to the wall beside the fireplace. 

“You did that?”

He nodded.

“It’s beautiful.”

The indathrone blue returned to her wide eyes as each of the colors in the room emerged, one by one, and blended to the truest black Paul had ever seen.

Before moving to the Philadelphia suburbs, Kathryn Hively Lane earned an MA from Rutgers University and an MFA from George Mason University. She has taught at Rowan University and is currently completing her first novel. Though a native of Virginia, she has settled into life in South Jersey with her husband, daughter, and an amazingly supportive clan of in-laws. This is her first published story.

[img_assist|nid=10046|title=Pineapple Landing by Karoline Wileczek © 2013|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=400|height=610]

The summer my father left us, our front yard was filled with deep, grave-sized pits. There was nothing else to look at, nothing to do but watch those cavities and the flurry of activity around them.  Grandma and I sat in white wicker rockers, watching from her side porch, which looked directly onto my parents’ property. The house my parents had built stood on four acres, a flat stretch of what was once farmland at the edge of a dense forest. 

Mom was getting less waitressing shifts at Longville Tavern and Dad was struggling to sell timeshares. Our kitchen cabinets were lined with cans of corned beef hash and Spam. My little sister and I drew the line when they tried to make us drink powdered milk.

Land was the only valuable thing we had, so my parents called a developer to discuss selling off part of the property. The first step was to see if a second well could be dug. 

The diggers came on the last day of school. They must’ve been opening up holes in front of our house while I stood on the stage with my classmates, accepting my blue and gold sixth grade certificate. When Kristine and I came home that afternoon, there in the middle of our yard were four long, deep pits. The only funeral I’d ever been to was Grandpa’s, but the image of the hole that swallowed his silver casket had been burned into my mind.

The pits had a similar look about them. They were three feet by seven and a good six feet deep. Loose dirt was piled around them. We stared. Someone banged on the picture window in the living room and when we turned, Mom scowled at us. Kristine and I trudged inside.

Mom rushed into the kitchen in her work uniform, a white collared blouse and a knee-length skirt the color of hot fudge. “Girls, I need you to stay away from those holes.” She maintained a stern expression while looking up at the ceiling, fumbling to fit her turquoise earrings into the tiny holes in her ears.  “They’re coming back to fill them in, but right now they’re too dangerous for you kids to play around, okay?”

 Kristine climbed under the table to retrieve a naked Barbie doll. “Okay, Mommy.”

“Sure,” I said, handing my mother the plastic grocery bag with her dinner in it. It smelled unmistakably of corned beef-salty, oily slop from a can. She refused to eat at the restaurant because she’d “seen too much.”

“Alright, I’ll come in and kiss you when I get home tonight. There’s leftovers in the fridge. And make sure you girls do your homework before you watch TV.”

“School’s over, Mom,” I said.

She laughed and gave me a hug. “That’s right-exciting.  I’ll see you later.  Bye, Krissy Bean!” She waved to my sister, who lay under the table, making Barbie fly over her head.

“Bye-bye!” Kristine called back.

I stuck my certificate on the brown fridge next to the electric bill. Elementary school was over, but I didn’t feel any different. The only thing I was looking forward to was finally working on the tree fort with my dad.  Otherwise, I figured it would be a typical summer: I’d play with Kristine and go to Grandma’s every day, and my parents would keep fighting and trying to make it seem like they weren’t. Nothing would really change until the fall. Or so I thought.

[img_assist|nid=10047|title=Bulbs by Helen Wortham © 2013|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=500|height=375]

 

I found out before anyone else that Dad was leaving. The day after school let out he left a note on Mom’s dresser while she was at work. When she worked Saturday brunches, I often snuck into their bedroom and played with her jewelry-silver bangles, diamond teardrop earrings, a thick yellow-gold bracelet studded with emeralds.  I’d overheard Dad trying to convince her to sell some of these, saying that unlike his father’s land, her jewelry was replaceable. Mom told him she would sooner die than give up her jewelry. Besides, she said, it wouldn’t bring in anywhere near as much money as the land.

 I stood in front of the mirror, three inches taller in my mother’s patent leather heels as I pinned a purple brooch to my T-shirt. A folded sheet of yellow paper tucked under Mom’s hairbrush caught my eye. I picked it up and opened it.

I read my father’s note over and over, until I couldn’t differentiate between yellow paper and blue ink. With unsteady hands, I refolded it and set it back on the dresser. I kicked off Mom’s pumps when I realized that Dad might hear me pacing their bedroom. He was still home, moving things, banging tools around in the garage…packing? I turned off the cartoon my sister was watching, took her by the hand, and went to Grandma’s. If Dad wasn’t going to say goodbye to Mom, then he wasn’t going to say goodbye to us either.

 Grandma’s pale blue eyes seemed to darken when I told her what was happening, but she said nothing. Since I could remember, my grandmother had told me stories from her life: surviving the Great Depression, losing several babies in childbirth, being widowed twice.  She wasn’t someone who reacted to many things.  Still, I’d hoped she would at least go yell at my dad. Instead, she tapped her thick, reptilian fingernails against the armrest of her chair while the two of us sat on the porch and watched my house. Kristine busied herself in the yard, making a fort out of the clothesline and some old paisley sheets.

Dad and I were supposed to start building the tree house any day. We’d been talking about it for years, and finally we made a plan. A month before school let out, we went to a lumberyard and bought cheap boards, full of knots. We picked out my tree, a gnarled oak behind our house with a wide trunk and thick branches. Dad said he guessed it was close to 75 years old. The two of us practiced hammering nails in the garage and he said I was a natural. 

We decided to call my tree house “Annie’s Attic.”  It was going to be the one place that was just for me. “You deserve something of your own,” my father had said.

Now I stared at my tree in the distance, the brown-gray knives of its branches stabbing at the sky, and knew that it would never be anything but a tree. I was no carpenter, despite what Dad had said. The boards would rot in the garage until one day Mom threw them away without realizing what they’d been for.

 My gaze had drifted to my bare feet, brown with dirt and the beginnings of a summer tan. For some reason my feet always darkened first. I was puzzling this over, when I glanced back up at the house. My father was on the front porch. He descended the stairs and took slow, deliberate steps in the direction of the pits. With maybe two acres between us, I couldn’t read his facial expression. He brought his hands together. It looked like they were wrestling each other.  Suddenly they leapt apart and he flung something into one of the pits.

“Lord.” Grandma pulled at a strand of silver hair that had come loose from her bun.

“What was that?” I asked.        

“His ring,” she murmured, her chair creaking back and forth.

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Anne.  Why would he want to sell his father’s land?”

After staring down into the pit, unmoving, Dad got into his car. He drove in our direction and slowed when he was almost to Grandma’s.  Had he known the whole time that we were sitting there, watching? He gazed at her, then at me. I didn’t recognize the emotion on his face.  My father was the most self-assured person I knew.  Even when he shattered a plate from Mom’s good china set, he said it was her fault because she hadn’t rinsed off all the soapsuds.

Dad shook his head, accelerated, and sped off down the driveway in a cloud of dust.

“Do you know who she is?” Grandma asked.

I bent down to scratch a bug bite on my heel. “Who who is?”

“Nevermind,” she said, and kept rocking.

 

On Monday, they came to fill in the pits.  There were no machines, just two guys with farmer’s tans and yellow hard hats, who pulled up in a white truck, each carrying shovels. I hadn’t told my mother about the ring and I doubted Grandma had either. Mom hadn’t even said anything about Dad leaving. As far as she knew, I had no idea he’d moved out.

 With every shovelful of dirt, the men buried the ring deeper and deeper.

 “Was Grandpa buried with his wedding ring on?” I asked.

Grandma drummed her fingernails on the armrest of her chair. “Men didn’t wear wedding rings when we were married. That’s new.”

“Do you think it’s bad?”

“No.” Grandma hesitated. “I think it keeps them honest. Or at least it’s supposed to.”

One of the diggers, a man whose pale gut sagged over his belt, used his foot for leverage, so he could force more dirt onto the shovel. To him, digging was just a job. He had no idea what was down there. There was no way for him to know that he was helping to erase our family.

 

We saw them at Happy Harry’s.  Mom had to fill a prescription and she told us if we came along she’d buy us candy.  My sister picked Sweet Tarts and I chose a Snickers. Mom was talking with the pharmacist at the back of the store. Her eyes were all red and veiny and her brown hair was piled up on her head like one of the twiggy birds’ nests from Grandma’s collection. I had never seen her this way.     

Behind me, a woman called out, “Eric, look, they already have a Halloween display.”

At hearing my father’s name, I turned.  She was short, not much taller than me, with waist-length red hair. As far as I could tell, she was younger than my parents but older than our last babysitter, who was about to start college.

“Eric,” the woman said again. “Come here. They’ve got pumpkin decals!”

Eric came around the corner and froze when he saw us.

“Daddy!” Kristine flung herself at our father.

He scooped her up in his arms. The woman with the red hair stared at them, her mouth a little pink Cheerio.

“Hey, Annie,” Dad said, setting my sister down. He waved at me and I frowned.

“Are these…?” the woman started.

“My daughters, Kristine and Anne.”

Kristine tugged on Dad’s hand, bare without the gold band. “Where did you go? Who’s that lady?”

“This is my friend Madelyn.”

I pretended to consult my Garfield watch. “We should go. Mom’s waiting for us.”

“Where is she?” Dad straightened, scanning the store for her face.

I ignored his question and motioned for my sister to follow me.

Do you know who she is? Grandma had asked. One of my classmates, Olivia Johnson’s mom had been caught having an affair with their family doctor, a fact Olivia made sure to broadcast.  Her soon-to-be-stepfather was a rich doctor, she’d informed us.  An affair meant you weren’t a family anymore. It meant your mom or dad loved someone else.

 I dragged Kristine through the store, yanking on her wrist until she cried out. I thought we could hold Mom off until they left, but she was already headed for us. “Hey, girls,” she said in her fake cheerful voice. “Got your candy?”

I tried to think of an item we could look for in a back corner, something to take us far away from Dad and the redhead, but all that came to mind was pantyhose and I knew Mom would just look at me like I’d lost my twelve-year-old mind.

 “We just saw Daddy.” Kristine twirled her Sweet Tarts like a baton.  “He was with this lady named Mandolin, like that thing Uncle Bill plays.”

My mother narrowed her light brown eyes.  “What?”

“Oh, he was just-” I began.

Mom swept past us down the feminine needs aisle, and it looked as though her feet never touched the ground. We followed. I knew I should probably stay behind and shield my little sister, but whatever was about to happen seemed too important to miss.

There was screaming as we approached the registers.  Mom was yanking magnets off of a spinning rack and throwing them at Dad, who stood like a castle gate in front of a cowering Madelyn.  My mother used words that I’d only heard from late night movies and boys on the playground. A bald man in a blue vest appeared and escorted her to the exit. She shook him off, charging ahead of him out the door.

She’d just disappeared from sight when she ran back inside and took my sister and me by the hand, which made my cheeks burn. “This is you taking time to think things over, Eric? You’re a sorry excuse for a man and a father. Come on, girls.”

As she pulled us out the door, I glanced over my shoulder. Dad and Madelyn had their arms wrapped around each other and he was whispering in her ear, the way he did when I had a bad dream. 

 

I went to my tree. Grabbing a low-hanging bough, I pulled myself along the trunk, until I was sitting among the fat center branches. A light breeze, carrying the sweet smell of honeysuckle and mown grass, stirred the leaves overhead. I closed my eyes and imagined being surrounded by the walls of the tree house. If we’d put them up, no one could have seen me sitting there. Without them, I was exposed.  If Mom or Kristine came around the side of the house, they’d spot my yellow tank top and jean shorts outlined against the tree.  My sister would beg to join me, while my mother would demand I get down before I broke my neck.  I wondered if my father even remembered the tree house.

After Dad and I had bought the building supplies, we got milkshakes. He asked me what he should get Mom for her birthday. I sucked too much cold, thick chocolate through my straw and got a brain freeze. If I complained, I knew Dad would just tell me that I should learn a little self control, so I forced a smile and said, “There was this green shirt we saw at JC Penney the other day.  She really liked it.  I could show you if you want.”

 “Listen to you. When did you get to be so grown up?” He ruffled my long, dark hair.  “Let’s go get the shirt on Friday then. Just you and me.”

I took a satisfactory pull on my milkshake.

 

“He wasn’t even wearing his wedding ring.” Mom slammed a pan on the stove and pulled a familiar blue and gold can of Spam from the cabinet.

“Maybe he had a reason,” I said

“Oh, I’m well aware of his reason,” Mom said, jerking metal tab on the can. “I wonder if he sold it. He was always trying to make me pawn my jewelry.”

“He didn’t sell it,” I blurted out.

She dumped pink squares of meat into the pan and as they sizzled, I thought of the egg in those commercials about “Your Brain on Drugs.”

“Don’t be stupid, Annie,” Mom said, more to herself than to me.

“He threw it in the pit,” I mumbled, resting my chin on the kitchen table.

“What?” she lurched in my direction, greasy spatula in hand. She hadn’t spanked me since I was Kristine’s age, but the wild look in her eye and the way she clutched the utensil gave me chills. “What did you say?”

I swallowed and sat up. “I said he threw it in the pit.”

“Your father may be an idiot, but I don’t think he’d be so petty.”

“I saw him do it,” I said.
The spatula clattered to the floor.

 

Grandma and I sat on her porch, cloud watching. Kristine was sprawled across the floorboards between our chairs, her tummy poking out from her pink My Little Pony T-shirt. After spotting no less than twelve clouds shaped like puppies, she’d fallen asleep.

Grandma gestured to a long, bumpy cloud. “A lilac.”

“And the one next to it, a hairbrush,” I said, pointing.

“Even flowers have their vanity,” she said with a chuckle.

A low rumbling sounded from the direction of my house as my mother raised the garage door and stepped out into the sunlight. Her disheveled hair was knotted in a low ponytail. She wore black sweatpants and the green shirt I’d helped Dad pick out for her birthday. It was short-sleeved and ruffled, with buttons down the center. She had been so surprised when he gave it to her.  I’ve never understood why he even bothered.

The shirt and all of its implications might have held my attention longer if it hadn’t been for the shovel slung over my mother’s shoulder.  Her posture erect, she strode toward the pits.

“Did you tell her which one it was?” Grandma asked.

“No. I just said…” I cocked my head.  “How’d you know I told her?”

Grandma’s blue eyes met mine. “Well, it wasn’t me, and I’d wager it wasn’t your father.”

Mom started one pit over from the one that contained the ring. Unlike the men who had filled the pits in, who seemed most interested in scratching themselves, my mother appeared to be stabbing something every time her shovel met the earth. She sifted through each shovelful with her bare hands. Mom had taught me not to stare when we passed a car crash, but now she was the accident, unfolding with terrible slowness, and I couldn’t take my eyes from her.

Her movements grew jerky, almost theatrical. After an hour, she marched to the next pit, dragging the shovel with her.  I hoped to God she would find the ring soon.

Kristine sat up, her pigtails askew.  She followed our gaze. “What’s Mommy doing?”

“Digging,” Grandma murmured.

“But she said those holes were dangerous.”

“They are,” I said.

Mom scoured the second pit, flinging dirt high overhead once she’d combed through it, not bothering with piles anymore. Still, she didn’t come up with the ring. Daylight receded, though it was only mid-afternoon. My mother moved on to the third pit.

Grandma fixed her eyes on the sky, which had turned the color of a grape freeze pop. Lightning slashed the sky like a white hot zipper. I used the trick Dad had taught me and counted the seconds between the lightening and thunder to see how close the storm was. One, one-thousand. Two, one-thousand. Three-Boom!  Thunder rattled the porch. Less than three miles.

“Mommy’s gonna get wet,” Kristine said.

On any other day, Grandma would have herded us inside at the first sign of a dark cloud, but she just sat there, gripping the armrests of her chair, her eyes glued to my mother.        

I chewed my nails.  “Should I go see if she’s okay?”

“She’d likely beat you silly if you did,” Grandma said.

The sky opened up on my mother, the water turning the dirt around her into slick piles of mud. She continued digging. After awhile, the rain came down so hard that we couldn’t see her anymore. It sounded like nails were striking the tin roof over us.

Leaning on her good hip, Grandma pulled herself to her feet. “Let’s go inside.”

Kristine was quick to follow, but I remained, staring into the wall of water, trying to see my mother, to understand what she was thinking.

 

After the rain stopped, I took my sister home. Mom was no longer at the pits.  Her bedroom door was locked when I tried to open it. She mumbled something that sounded like “go away,” and so I did.

Hours passed. Kristine and I played Chutes and Ladders, I made mac and cheese for dinner, and when my sister complained that she was bored, I put on The Little Mermaid for her. I tried Mom’s door again, and this time she said clearly, “I’m fine, Annie. I’ll be fine.”  I mimed the expression I knew she was making on the other side of the wall, the same look of fake optimism that she would need from me in the coming days.

It was dark outside now, cloudless. The stars came out, plugged into the sky like so many little nightlights.  I stood in front of the pits. Who knew where the ring was now that my mother had flung around the dirt that held it hostage. I stuck my hand into a pile of mud, as though I could find it by dumb luck. 

I decided if I ever did find the ring, I wouldn’t tell her.  Just like if she ever found it, she would probably never tell me.  But I knew we’d both continue to search. It would become our ritual: on days when his absence grew a little sharper, one of us would go out there, sometimes with a shovel, usually with just bare hands, and dig.  Neither of us would acknowledge why grass never grew back over the pits, why they were like scabs that wouldn’t heal.

Melanie Unruh received a BA in English and Spanish from Rider University and an MFA in fiction from the University of New Mexico. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Post Road, Echo Ink Review, Pear Noir!, and The Inside Mag. She lives in Albuquerque with her fiancé and their two cats. Currently she is finishing a YA novel set in her hometown, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.