Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue 112
Issue 112 May 7, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art: “Art is in the Imagination� by Sharonlee Goodhand Writer Poet Artist Photographer Gypsy Adventurer Maiden Mother Crone Matriarch...
CONTENTS Jeffrey Kingman Norma Jeane Mortenson
Maria Sebastian An Easter Epiphany
Mitchell Waldman End of the World Sale Lifetime
Timothy Riordan Looking Rembrandt in the Eye
Gabrielle Pastorek Dirty Walls
Kat Gonso Behind the Duck Pond
Roberta Harris Short The Plumber and the Odalisque
Bruce Sager Ages and Ages Hence
Jeffrey Kingman Norma Jeane Mortenson
Metal boning the extra train butterfly bow shaped with horsehair and ostrich feathers and wire. The halter neck laid flat against your chest the pink gloves the black gloves the hidden hooks $2.50 earrings sequin belt white fox stole huge silk flowers orphan clothes. if i were naked i could be like the other girls Two old friends, hat blue a feather. Of ’50 there was none around. Popcorn falling chair spring pokes.
“When will we see you?� Riding sidesaddle the weather so monotonous pomade so heavy. Half buttons for nipples skin-tight dahlia dress skirt the censors. The chiffon the single dropped jewel below the cleavage the belt the golden balls. Radiating creases and sequins spiraling in every direction.
Maria Sebastian An Easter Epiphany
"I'll Have What She's Having" -- When Harry Met Sally I found myself hoping my ankles never sag over my shoe straps some day, like hers, the egg-shaped woman near us at brunch. My hair should know better than to thin so, my back smarter than to roll forward—boy, it hurt that woman to walk to the restroom. Part bunny-hop, part wobble, she scrambled chair by chair, the way a kid follows a fence, hand over hand, balancing along a beam-like border. Shoulders, don't let me down the way hers have. (Does she catch bowling balls for a living?) Soon, she joined her girlfriends back at their table,
a compact mirror and shiny tube of lipstick reddening her plump lips into a contented smile, confidence transcending any reason to pity her. Suddenly, the dated floral pattern on her dress seemed no longer a Golden Girls estate sale find, but a sold out Betsey Johnson backorder. Large gold beads strung around her neck reflected me asking for a doggie bag big enough to cart home my over-boiled first impression.
Mitchell Waldman End of the World Sale Lifetime
That's
what the sign says: END OF THE WORLD SALE. Right on the front door of this little variety shop called "Nick's and Knacks," squeezed between a laundromat and a pharmacy on the strip at the edge of the continent, in Cocoa Beach. Jack and Dana walk in, thinking it’s a joke. But in here at least it’s cool, a reprieve from the sweltering Florida heat. The man behind the counter (Nick?) doesn't acknowledge them as the little bell rings when they open the door, but continues staring down
at the National Enquirer atop the glass display case counter in front of him. He has a buzz cut. His short sleeve shirt has a large profile of Elvis on it. The fingers of his right hand holding the newspaper have the letters M, I, M, I just below the knuckles. There’s a little black and white portable radio behind the man on a shelf, playing oldies – right now an old Yes song – and a big green parrot in a cage, hopping from fake branch to branch, clucking, and saying "Owner of the
lonely heart...krok." Around the shop are hung all kinds of items -porcelain angels are the most abundant, hanging down from the ceiling on wires, some of which you can barely see. They come in all shapes, colors, and sizes.. And there are the usual beachy things lying around, too -- shell collages, clocks, wall hangings, photos of the beach, the water, the waves, surfers, bikiniclad women, ocean sunrises, all on the walls or laid out on long white tables. Jack picks up a large
brown and white conch shell. It would look good on a shelf back home, he thinks. He brings it to the counter. "How much is this one?" he asks. "No price on it." "Gimme a buck. We'll call it even." "A buck." "Yeah." The man doesn't move. Jack doesn't either. "Is there something else?" The man has these wide brown dead pan eyes. "Yeah. The end of the world." The man doesn't bat a lash. "What about it?" "It's a joke, right?" Jack tries to work up what he
feels is a little smile to encourage the guy. The guy doesn't smile back. "Joke? No, no joke." Then he smiles, without further explanation. "Come on," Jack offers. "What? Come on, what?" "You've got to be kidding." He just stares back with those owl eyes. Jack’s waiting for his head to turn all the way around. "Is this about that Mayan calendar thing?" Jack just then sees the silver chain under the man's shirt. He sees the top of a cross hanging on it, setting on his black chest hair. "No, nothing like that."
"Oh." Jack just stares at the guy, then says, "Astrology, star positions...." (no response)..."the Bible...End Times." The man still doesn't respond. "Come on, here, you're killing me. If the world's gonna end, why keep it a secret? A guy would need to know, to prepare." Dana comes up to the counter with a shell clock, trimmed in pink. “I like it,” Jack says. “Me, too. Nice shell.” She smiles at Jack. He puts his hand on her face. The man behind the counter clears his throat.
They both look at him. “Three bucks for the clock. I’ll throw in the shell and a couple postcards.” Dana stares at the man, then says, “So what’s the deal?” He shakes his head. “Come on. The end of the world stuff. Is it because of…” “I already asked him.” Dana throws Jack a look for a moment, then turns back to the man behind the counter. “The Mayan thing, the stars…what gives?” The man smiles at Dana, his eyes trailing off of her eyes and moving down towards her Tshirt, her chest. “Up here, big guy.”
He shakes his head, looking sheepish and gives a feeble, “Sorry.” “So?” she says. He shakes his head again, smiling. “So you’re thinking the world’s gonna end so buy my crap, you’re not gonna need it where you’re going anyway?” “Something like that.” “And….” “And, what?” “You know something, but you’re not telling us. You know it’s coming.” He nods and, after a pause sighs and lets out a long “Yesssss.” “Is that your wife?” she asks, pointing to a faded black and white framed behind the counter.
“Yes, my Mimi. Died fifteen years ago.” For a moment no one says a word. The silence thickens. Then Dana says “She was beautiful.” The man turns, studies the picture. “Yes,” he says, “yes she was.” “You miss her,” Dana says. The man smile fades, his eyes turning watery. “You don’t even know.” Dana looks at Jack, rubs his arm. “I can’t even imagine….” she says. “It’s never been the same since then. Never will be again. It’s like part of you dies, too.” Dana reaches across the counter and squeezes the man’s
shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says, and then “But…the end of the world?” He shrugs, and turns toward the bird, who, almost on cue says, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, end of the world as we know it.” Jack lets out a laugh and then sighs, looking at Dana. "R.E.M.," he says quietly, raising his eyebrows. Dana smiles back at Jack and then both of them look at the man behind the counter with smaller subdued smiles. Just then they hear the sound from outside -- a steady, deep, whirring, then sputtering, of an engine -- and when they look toward the door a
small plane is wobbling, smoke pouring out of the wings, the plane coming fast, headed straight for them. They stare at it, suspended, paralyzed for a moment, as, behind them, the bird squawks: “And I feel fine.”
Timothy Riordan Looking Rembrandt in the Eye The son-of-a-bitch hanging in this room is beaming himself directly to a mirror where I stand eyeball-to-eyeball, his image etching into my brain— and I’m getting a damn good feel for what he looked like in a range of moods and whims at age 24…37…54. What guts these likenesses in confident oils – a clarity more tactile than photographs. Almost four-hundred years and the fine hairs of his beard have grown no further, the detailed caps & bling still advertise the skill of his trade.
Gabrielle Pastorek Dirty Walls
The
weekend after Valentine’s Day sort of doubled as my going away party. We had TV dinners and big slices of blueberry pie. Meredith even ditched her Weight Watchers fiber brownie for a piece—whipped cream, too. Reddi-Wip, even. I wonder if she’s thrown it out by now or if it’s still in the refrigerator door. Now, as if I don’t have anything better to do but daydream and wait around for this liver, a woman comes in and asks if I’d like to take a survey. She’s about Meredith’s age, but has this smell to her that makes her seem much older. It’s stale and almost suffocating, but it’s a little sexy too. Cheap sexy. She’s wearing a sloppy pantsuit that seems like it’s on crooked and looks hugely uncomfortable. I tell her no, I wouldn’t really like to, but I’ll see if I have time
for the survey. She hands me a couple of sheets of paper neatly stapled together and leaves a trail of musty perfume on her way out. At first it’s on my wobbly metal bedside table, under a plastic cup of water that leaves a ring on the first page. Then it’s on my lap while I flip through the four channels I get here. Then a pencil’s shoved behind my ear and I’m on page two. 17a. Please circle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 to indicate your answer: How satisfied are you with your current sexual partner? “1” is highly dissatisfied. I circle six, to be ironic.
It’s
been raining all morning and Meredith asks if I want the window shut. It’s my one portal to the outside world, and she asks if I want it shut. “Jesus, Meredith, don’t shut it!”
Her face crinkles up into that ugly crying face she does. “You know I’m just tired,” I tell her. But I’m not. “Oh, Bernie.” Her ugly crying face morphs into her overly sweet sympathy frown. “Jesus, could you just open the window?” I know she’s already seen it. The survey. I noticed her notice it when she walked in, but I think she got distracted irritating me with the window. But now, in full-blown sympathy face voice, she addresses it. “What’s this?” She steadies it in one arm and turns the pages with the other, slowly and delicately, as if turning me over to change my bedpan. “Just some survey to take up my time,” I say. She stares at me with her very serious, we’re-probably-going-toneed-to-talk face while she digs out her cheapo leopard print reading
glasses from inside her blouse. “Doll,” she starts sweetly, then seamlessly switches to, “what on earth were you thinking?” “Which question are you on?” “Well, all of them.” Then she starts reading it to me. “How often, in minutes per week, do you exercise?” She looks up at me through the space above her frames as if my answer isn’t’ already written right in front of her. “What about it?” “You have 840 written here.” “Yeah?” “Well, you don’t exercise 840 minutes a week. I wonder if your answer wouldn’t be closer to 0.” “Just sitting up in bed is exercise. I was thinking I probably shorted myself there.” “You’ve done this all wrong. Since when are you a smoker? And, God Bernie, you don’t drink!” “I used to smoke. Used to drink.”
“It doesn’t ask you if you used to. You’re giving these people false information.” “Maybe that’s what they’ve got coming. Asking sick, pent-up, middleaged men to fill out a form.” “It’s not a form, it’s a survey. You need to be honest.” “I answered to the best of my ability. That’s what she said to do.” “What’s this one? Bernie?” “What one? I don’t have the paper in front of me.” Then she read 17a: Please circle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. “You put…6?” “Best of my ability,” I say.
It’s
been raining ever since I can remember and never once do they ask if I would like to go outside. What I really want is a smoke break, but I would settle for a trip in a wheelchair to sit in the rain a while. You know, just enough to get your hair wet. What
they do ask me is if I hate the green Jell-O they’re serving all month for Saint Patrick’s Day and if that’s why I’m splattering it all over the walls. I don’t hate it, necessarily, and so that’s probably not why I do it. When the woman in the pantsuit comes back to collect the survey, her clicky shoes carefully dodge the splotches of green that no one’s cleaned up yet. “How are you today, Mr. Migdal?” she asks. “Do they have my liver yet?” “Well, no, I don’t think just yet. But you hang in there.” I watch the newest green slime pool in the crease where the wall meets the speckled tiles on the floor. “Then I’m doing horrible today,” I say. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She scrapes the guest chair across the floor to my bedside and helps herself to it. “Are you in the mood to talk today, Mr.
Migdal?” “About what?” “Your health, namely.” “No, I’m not in the mood to talk.” Her face sinks into a disappointed sigh not unlike Meredith’s. “My wife says I did it all wrong, anyway,” I tell her. “Oh, your wife? Would she be interested in doing her own caregiver survey?” “Why don’t I just have her redo mine and you can come back for that one.” “It’s important that you feel free to express your own honest answers, Mr. Migdal.” She pulls a yellow packet out of her briefcase and hands it to me. “This one’s for your wife.”
Meredith
hands me a book in exchange for the yellow packet. “What’s this?” I ask her. “As I Lay Dying,” she says. “You think I’m dying?”
“No, Bernie, that’s the title of the book.” “Why would you pick this one?” “Ellie Jamieson gave it to me. Says it got Ray through chemo. Says it’s very existential. Besides, you’ve nothing better to do.” “Why does everybody keep telling me that?” “What?” “That I have nothing good to do. I have plenty to do.” “All right.” Her eyes get real big like she thinks if she doesn’t appease me, my liver will explode right in front of her. Maybe gunk up her clothes. She flips through the yellow pages from the chair at my bedside and taps a pencil between her fingers. “What did you put for number four?” “Meredith, it’s important that my answers are my answers and yours are yours.” She tilts her chin down and looks at me above her glasses. “You didn’t
seem to care the other day.” “Well hell, this isn’t high school. We don’t have to cheat.” “Ok, that’s fine.” She starts erasing god knows what all over the first page and then scoots the chair back to the other side of the room and writes quietly. I stare at the front cover of the book and think about all the things I want to do before I die. 1. Get liver. 2. Smoke again. 3. Never read this book. Meredith is no help at any of them, but I let her think she is the archangel of helpfulness. I let her fluff my pillows even though I prefer them flat. I let her read my survey, do her own, bring me books that make me feel depressed, sit in the corner and knit, yell at me about the Jell-O. When what I want her to do is bring me a dirty magazine once in a while and tell me to go to town. Or better yet, do it
herself. She eyes me from her corner of the room and puts her pencil down. “What are you doing?” “Writing my bucket list.” “In the book I just gave you?” “Yeah. I guess so.” “How I am supposed to give Ellie her book back if it has your bucket list written in it?” “Don’t give it back to Ellie for all I care,” I said. “It’s a stupid book to give to someone.” I can tell she’s going to cry. “You have no respect, Bernie. None. Not for me, not for yourself, not for the people who take care of you, not for anything.” “It’s just a book,” I say. She tosses the survey in the air very theatrically, her stacks of bracelets jangling down her forearm, and storms out. I stare at the yellow pages open haphazardly on the floor and analyze the dirty triangle her shoe left
on the front cover. For a split second, I think about pressing the little red nurse button and have one of them chase her down the hall and scold her for upsetting the patient…but that fantasy quickly dies next to the hospital sex.
“Do
you feel psychologically prepared to receive a new liver?” “Well I’m not psychologically prepared to die, so I guess so.” “Are you afraid of death, Mr. Migdal?” “Who isn’t, right?” “Lots of people. You don’t have to be.” “Anybody who says they aren’t is lying.” “I’m not afraid to die, Mr. Migdal. You don’t have to be.” “You’re a liar.”
“You
had to be rude, didn’t you?” Meredith spits at me on our way to
my psych evaluation. “I thought I was free to express my honest answers,” I tell her. “And look where that got you.” It got me out of my room for a while, at least. The nut doctor’s room is down the elevator three floors from mine and isn’t much more comfortable. It has that same nauseatingly sterile smell that makes the air squeak when you breathe it. Meredith wheels me in and sits me right in front of the doctor’s desk. She pulls her chair up beside me. Doctor Katz is the first man I’ve seen in eons and I’m glad for it. “What concerns you, Bernardo, in general, about anything?” “Oh God, it’s Bernie,” I say. “Oh, right, okay.” He scribbles on my chart. “Your concerns, Bernie?” “My wife thinks I’m dying.” “I do not!” Meredith shouts. “Meredith,” Katz soothes. “Why do you think your wife thinks
you’re dying, Bernie?” “Oh god, it’s just a book!” Meredith interrupts again. “Meredith.” She crosses her legs. “Bernie?” “Well, it’s a book about dying,” I say. “Are you afraid of dying?” Katz asks. “Well yeah, it’ll suck.” “Suck?” “Yeah, total bummer.” “Bernie, you do realize that if you were to receive a liver, there is a 28% mortality rate within the following five years. This is something you need to be seriously prepared for.” “You want me to be prepared to die in the next five years?” “Frankly, yes.” Meredith squirms in her seat and starts with her incessant foot-tapping. “I think that’s fine for today,” she says and wheels me out.
Well, I read the book. Turns out it’s not about dying after all, but about
being dead. I was going to joke to Meredith about how maybe I was already dead, but thought better of it. She’s been pretty quiet lately. After I tell her I’ve read it she presses my hand in hers and looks at me with the same watery eyes she’s been carrying around ever since Katz. She’s on her way to the chair in the corner but I tap my mattress and she sits down. “Twenty-eight percent isn’t a lot,” I say. “It is if it’s you,” she says. I sit up and rest my chin on her shoulder. “Did you ever finish your survey?” I ask her. “No.” “Did you get to the one about circle 1-6?” “No.” “Well what would you have circled?” “Six. Like you did.”
Her answer ticks me off more than not getting to feel the rain on my head or the crappy food or that stupid book. She’d probably trade livers with me too if they’d let her just so we could be in the same boat. I hate it when she says that—in the same boat—because she’s never been in my boat, not even close. So when the survey woman gave her her own yellow packet I thought good for you, you see what living in my skin is like for a minute. Just one minute while you fill out that form. And she couldn’t even last that long. So I got mean for a minute. “Why would you circle six?” I ask her. “Same reason you circled it,” she says. “To be ironic?” I spit. “Ironic? Like funny?” “Yeah, real funny, huh?” I said. She backs away to the foot of the bed and crosses her arms. “I don’t
know why I even care so much if you die,” she says, “you don’t care about me.” “All because I circled six?” I sort of laugh at her, not really meaning to but not really able to control it, either. “Well if you can circle it, why can’t I? Maybe I was being funny, too.” “Well were you?” “No. I wasn’t. I felt sorry for you.” “Sorry for me why?” “Because I wouldn’t sleep with you even if your liver weren’t dying.” The room falls silent while we process each other’s faces from across the bed. I tilt my head sideways at her like a dumb dog. “It’s because of the Jell-O, isn’t it?” I smirk. “Oh god, Bernie, oh god oh god oh god oh god. I can’t be in this room with you for another minute.” Before she can even get her hand to the doorknob, I throw my sheets off, pull my hospital gown to the side, and
in an Austin Powers meets Elvis sort of voice I say, “Come here, baby,” accompanied by an unattractive upward thrust of my hips. She stands in the doorway for the first few seconds and just stares. For a moment, it seems like she’ll crack a smile; maybe come over and slap me on the shoulder, wag a finger at me, and the fight will be over. But instead, I still have this schoolboy grin on my face and she cups her mouth in her palm and makes this gagging noise like she’s going to puke. Her free hand creeps down the door to find the handle and she takes off. Suddenly it’s so quiet I can hear the rain hit the sidewalk three stories down. I cross my hands in my lap and contemplate the pattern on my gown. It’s snowflakes—big and little ones alternating all the way down. I think back to Meredith’s horror when she first saw me in the thing. She clicked her tongue and told me she’d have to
sew something more masculine, less generic. I don’t fault her for never getting around to it, though now I think I can finally see the appeal of wearing something a little more fashionable than these god-awful, unseasonable snowflakes. I lean my head against a fluffed pillow and catalogue ideas for manly hospital gowns. Denim, maybe.
Tomorrow
is April 1st, so I think that’ll be the last of the green Jell-O. Good thing, too, because I’m exhausted. Meredith hasn’t been around all week, not that I expected her to. The survey lady won’t stop coming in and I really wish she would. We’ve both been staring at the yellow packet that’s been sitting on Meredith’s chair ever since she left, but neither of us has touched it. Part of me’s been thinking about filling out her answers myself, make her look real bad, but the other part’s worried
she’d somehow find out and I don’t want her to be able to say we’re finished over a month’s worth of gelatin and some stupid survey. I pick it up and flip through the crinkled pages. 4. Is the transplant patient currently: alive, no longer alive, or you don’t know The box for “you don’t know” was checked, then erased out, and now the “alive” box has a dark X etched so deeply into the paper that it cuts through to the other side. This question, like the majority of the others I quickly scan through, wasn’t even on my survey, so how she planned to copy my answers I’ll never know. Question 17a wasn’t even on there, either. Instead, she got 17. How often do you worry about hospitalrelated financial burden? She’d circled “not at all,” I guess to be funny. I close the packet and am still
holding it when the survey woman walks in with Katz trailing behind. “How are you feeling, Mr. Migdal?” she asks. “Any liver yet?” “Unfortunately, no—” “—Bernie,” Katz takes over, “you’re unfortunately not a candidate for a transplant at this time.” “I’m dying, of course I’m a candidate,” I say. “Unfortunately, alcoholic hepatitis is most often considered a contraindication for liver transplantation. Our program has reviewed your specific case and cannot consider you at this time. My deepest regrets.” “If you’d like to talk—” she starts, wringing her hands. “No, thanks, I’m tired,” I tell her and they leave.
I get back to my room late by the time I’m able to convince them I’m not
going to kill myself. No time for it, really. The nurse who wheels me back barely leaves the room before the next nurse comes in with a dinner tray and a cup full of pills. I stare at it, at her, and tap the mattress with my fist. “I thought the green was for March,” I say. “We’ve got to serve all the leftovers until it’s gone,” she tells me. “How long will that be?” “I’m not sure,” she says, and then adds on her way out, “I’m sorry.”
It’s
really such a blur of paint cans that I don’t even remember if she apologized or not. “How did you get those in here?” I ask Meredith while she furiously pries the tops off of three big cans of paint. Her face is wild, like she’s just given birth to the stuff—won’t let the paint go for anything. “Lorie at the front desk comes into
the salon on Tuesdays,” she says as if I should feel stupid for even asking. And when I’m still staring at her, she adds, “she helped me.” They’re all shades of green, so similar that I can barely tell them apart. The first one is a dark green, like my Geno Smith jersey; the second, slightly lighter than my Geno Smith jersey; the third, even lighter than that. She dips her fingers knuckledeep into the darkest one and stirs it in a few quick figure-eights, her neck bent to the side and eyes focused on her fingertips. Then she stands up and smiles at me, almost coyly. I watch the paint drip from her perfectly rounded nails to the tile but she doesn’t even seem to notice. “Lorie?” I ask, but she’s already to my bedside and her three green fingertips are poised against the wall behind me. In a slow, contemplative gesture, she wipes her fingers across the plaster, leaving three messy
streaks against the white. She backs away a few steps and bites her lip, staring intently at her work. She looks at me. My neck’s twisted up straining to see and I’m half worried I need to shield my head. But then she stirs the next one and makes three more marks with it, then repeats with the third. “Which do you like?” she beams. “Meredith, what the hell?” It’s all I can think to say. “I’m painting your walls,” she says. Her hand is resting on her hip and her foot starts its tapping, like she doesn’t have time to waste giving me silly explanations for the obvious. The way she looks now—her Hulk fingers, the messy ponytail, the dirty painting overalls—is remarkably similar to how she looked barreling through that blueberry pie on Valentine’s Day. It’s raw. No black rings around her eyes, just pink. Her nostrils flare out and back in, probably still from lugging the cans
around. Now I’m almost certain she kept the rest of the Reddi-Wip in the fridge at home, just in case of a day like this one. “Well?” she prods. Her wrist is just hanging there, letting the paint drop. I reach for something profound to say to her, something grossly sentimental, maybe even tell her about the transplant. I think of jokes, of apologies. I think of insurance policies. Medical bills. Gurneys. But her green fingerprints look so perfect and natural smudged all over the clean white walls that all I can say is “I like that one,” and point to the first green smear.
Kat Gonso Behind the Duck Pond
My boyfriend was always giving me living gifts: a snail, a miniature cactus, Ernest Hemingway the Hamster. For my twenty-first birthday he bought me a betta fish that consistently leapt out of its tiny tank onto the carpet. We were always there to scoop him up and plop him back into the water. Until we weren’t there, and he died. The year after college, we decided to live together. We had both studied Communications, and were searching for jobs. Much of our time was spent scrubbing algae off the fish tanks and monitoring ferrets. I made a schedule for watering the plants. And then I’d forget about the schedule for watering the plants. And then, Alex would dramatically water the plants for me. I applied to work at a local theatre company. Alex thought it might be fun to sell pot. I brought home a brown mutt, one ear. We named him Pete. I was firm when I told Alex, no more. But, about a month later, Alex found a gray kitten nestled near the right rear tire of his 1995 Volvo. He slapped a ragged red Christmas bow on her head and handed her to me. That night, Pete chased circles around the kitten and we laughed. But, we soon realized the kitten was sick. Weak back legs. Ravenous thirst, lurking around the water bowl and kitchen faucet. On the ride to the Gateway Animal Clinic, I pointed out the sites to her: Prosperity Social Club, the intersection where I had the fender-
bender, the red house that was always for sale, Tower City on the horizon. The vet said that diabetes is a tricky and expensive disease. I held the kitten, pressing her cheek to my cheek. Mostly, I cried. Alex paced. He said we had too many animals. No more. He told me to get in the car and we drove to the Metroparks. It was October, late afternoon. I asked him to hold my hand, but he walked too fast for me to keep up. Nearby, we could hear the children’s laughter at the Duck Pond, where I’d spent my eighth birthday, tossing stale bread off a dock, watching the ducks squabble over each piece. I wondered why they hadn’t learned that there would always be more bread. We walked deep into the woods. I told myself someone would find her and take care of her. I told myself it had been Alex ’s idea. I told myself there was nothing to be done.
Roberta Harris Short The Plumber and the Odalisque
I was at step four again. Step four, and I asked myself: Does she or does she not have hair on her upper lip? I couldn’t answer. I was on the verge of abandoning the method. Step one: the meeting. Step two: sex, regardless of when achieved. Step three: attempts to shift meaning onto the encounter. Step four: remember her face when she’s not in the room. Steps five, six, and seven—likely advances toward final commitment, step eight. The method did not remove the uniqueness
of each relationship; it simply enshrouded each in a structure, permitting analysis, comparison. The problem was that I had been stuck on step four six consecutive times. The latest potential partner had just left the apartment to buy two more ancho chilies for the sauce. I purchased too few, so taken was I with her scent and the way the thin silk of her dress folded this way and that when she walked. Over the cutting board, while slitting and scraping the chilies, I thought how reliable the idea of
cooking was—just the right blend of rolled-up sleeve and masculine forearm, savoir-faire combined with charming ignorance of the kitchen. I fix the plumbing. I cook afterward. It’s a good life. This one had her soul in the kitchen. Between the tender curves of her skirt and the last two sauces, I cruised successfully through steps two and three simultaneously on the tile floor in front of the stove. Immediately thereafter, in a rush of enthusiasm, I hitched up my attention to detail
and applied the test: step four, recalling her appearance. She was gone only five minutes— a block away. I started small: the color of the flowers on her skirt. Easy. Yellow with pink centers. Furthermore, the background was light blue, and the flowers were very small. I felt selfcongratulatory, reassured. Of course, this was just the sort of detail I would remember, having buried my face in that fabric not half an hour before. I faulted myself for the choice of detail. The skirt wasn’t the girl. I moved to her person, but the move was
precipitous. I have been so eager recently to still the itch of step four. I began with the simplest of questions, the color of her eyes; and I immediately stumbled. They were blue or gray or perhaps green in contrast to the day’s outfit. I realized that I was dodging the issue. I didn’t know—may not have noticed—and this could indicate I did not care. As a sense of failure congealed to a lonely, disgusted knot under my chef’s apron, I decided on a last attempt to forestall its formation— the grossest, simplest of questions: Does she or does she not exhibit, on her upper lip, hair
sufficient to be called a moustache? I drew a blank.
The
next day I ordered the Styrofoam. The distributor was in downtown Houston, handily next door to Plumber’s Wholesale Supply. In only three days, a block of foam arrived. I scanned the loading dock to see if anyone was watching; and I casually tossed it into the back of the van, as though I were only using it to carve protective cushions for brass fittings. There on the dock, I experienced with clarity a moment of keen self-awareness. In my greasy gray shirt, my
blackened gray pants. I realized no one knew or cared what the block was for. No one but me. And the odalisque, of course. I already could feel her. The ancho chili woman left, and I resolved to avoid further contact with flesh-andblood women until I could get step four to work on a facsimile. I took her back to the garage, clocked out for the day, shut the door, and cleaned off a worktable. I must have circled that chunk of foam for an hour before I began. She was in there, and I would get her out. I would carve her and name her; and surely after such intimate
contact, her face (which could, after all, wear only one expression) would be mine to remember. I would create it. I would know the color of her eyes and if she were largely mustachioed. Sam had been out with a wrenched back for a week by the time I got this far. I carved all night; and just before he came in at seven, I realized I’d never felt like a sculptor till now. I encountered this revelation with joy and awe; but Sam, unimpressed, irritated, was ready to get to work. “Damn, Ingres, what the hell?” He pointed at the odalisque with his coffee hand and nearly
sloshed some on her foot. “Hey, asshole! Be careful!” “Have you gone quietly nuts while I’ve been laid up? Why is there a full-size Styrofoam woman with chartreuse bikini underwear lying on the workbench? And where are my goddamned Cclamps?” “That’s not underwear; it’s a bathing suit, and I put all your stuff in the box over there. Isn’t she a beaut?” “First tell me what she is, then I’ll tell you if she’s worth looking at,” he said. She was, of course, by then, the odalisque. She
was round, her limbs long, slightly raised in welcome. Generous curve of hair disappearing behind her back. In fact, her brown acrylic hair had just enough time to dry before Sam began his inquiries. Though why he had to ask and didn’t already see the plain beauty of her is a mystery. I explained the steps, my faulty memory of late, and my new plan to make it past step four. He was less than sympathetic. “I can’t believe you’re stuck in that step bullshit. You made it up over three—no—four years ago; I was in the truck with you when you
did it. I never heard so much crap. Who cares if you can’t make it past step four? You could just scootch on by and rope a woman if you wanted to.” “Easy for you to say, you’re married. How would Wendy feel if you couldn’t remember her face? What if she were cooking breakfast and just before she turned around, you hadn’t the slightest notion what she looked like?” “Inky, my friend, half the time I can’t remember Wendy in the morning, and sometimes when I can, I wish I couldn’t.” “Well, don’t inflict your low marital
standards on me.” I loaded the odalisque into the truck. Sam tossed his coffee cup in the trash. “We don’t have time to take that thing to your house. Have you checked messages? We’ve got five calls this morning.” “I know. She’s going with us.” There’s not much point going into Sam’s reaction. He lacks imagination but he’s a good plumber. He got a business degree but couldn’t stomach office work; so after two years as an apprentice loan officer at Texas Commerce Bank, he succumbed to his urge to tinker and became a
plumber. He was thirtyfive. I guess he was forty or so and married to Wendy when he hired me as a helper during my college days. The money wasn’t bad, and I worked three days a week through school. I attended Sam Houston, studied under Pebworth, and later spent a year at the San Francisco Art Institute. All along, I told myself I was an artist because I needed a reason to breathe and further needed a calling, also so staying out of the war didn’t seem so chickenshit, as though justifying my existence and avoiding gunfire could only be achieved through some lofty
artistic aspiration. Of course, I’m older now. and these inadequacies—with women, with art—now seem embarrassing. The passing of time made Sam and me contemporaries more than employer/employee; we solidified that fact into the plumbing partnership years ago. I accepted my failure in the art world and donned the mantle of pipe specialist, and most days I’m glad we’re partners. I only occasionally feel the urge to create.
The
odalisque fit neatly in the back of the van;
but when we got on the freeway, the wind kept kicking her against the back doors and the ceiling. I made Sam roll up the window, and I rolled up mine so she wouldn’t chip. We were sweating then since we had agreed not to fix the air conditioning until the month’s receivables came in. “You know, if it wasn’t for the entertainment value of half the shit you do, I’d bag this partnership.” Sam wiped his face with a rag. “Love you, too, Sam.”
At the end of the week, I drove to Sam and Wendy’s for the usual Friday-night chow, a
routine for most of the past ten years. It began in college as Wendy’s motherly way of augmenting my diet; but it had become a weekly business wrap-up, and I often brought steaks or wine. This time I brought Odie. As we entered, I scraped her foot on the doorsill; but other than that, Odie’s social debut was uneventful. I propped her politely on one of the armchairs near the sofa, where her waving arm gave a gay hi-de-ho to the gathering. All the same, Sam seemed irritated by her presence. “Ingres, why does that
overgrown pile of chemicals have to sit in the middle of my living room?” “Try to keep an open mind. I’m working really hard at this.” “I hope she doesn’t expect health coverage.” I was saved from the continuation of this heartless exchange by Wendy, who, entering from the kitchen with a tray of hors d’oeuvres, stopped humming at the sight of the odalisque. “What’s this?” “It’s an artificial representation of Ingres’ social life,” Sam said. Of course, the odalisque was a good deal more than that, and I hastened to explain her
evolution to Wendy, who seemed sympathetic, if a little confused. “Do you talk to her?” she asked. “Sometimes, but it’s not what you think,” I said. “I know she’s not real; I’m just using the power of imagination to improve my life.” Sam slapped Odie roughly on the shoulder. “Did you hear that? Who thought that one up, you or him?” he laughed. “Come on, Sam, there’s no need to be vicious.” Wendy leaned toward Odie with a plate. “Canapé?” she offered, clearly trying to be helpful. “She hasn’t had much of an appetite lately.” I
caught Wendy looking at Sam, but I played along. Sam slammed his beer down on the coffee table and stood up. “For Chrissake, give it up.” He walked toward the kitchen. “You are so fucked up. Why can’t you practice on real women?” Wendy looked with tenderness at the odalisque. “I don’t know, Sam. I think it’s kind of sweet.”
hauled off for parts; I stayed behind with her to wait for him. The cool thing was she could float, so I climbed on her belly and rode. She gazed at the pipes in the ceiling most of the time with her right arm up over her head like always, and I thought: What a totally relaxed woman. I skipped step two for practical reasons. But even without sex, to be honest, I was beginning to experience a sense of attachment.
and that meant I couldn’t get on the HOV. But if I didn’t get on the contraflow, I’d be late for my next call. So I did it. I pulled Odie toward the front of the truck and propped her between the front seats. Her upraised arm might look a little like a wave. It was certainly a friendly gesture on her part, but the officer didn’t see it that way. She was fraudulent means to illegal entry to him, and I knew better than to Odie rode with us on explain the true reason jobs nearly a month. She was a lot of fun. A good It was a Thursday when for her presence. I was swimmer, too. When the I got on the contraflow. I willing to pay the fine, underground Radisson remember because Sam but he impounded her. You can see the parking garage filled screwed his back up on with water because of a the water-heater job, and dilemma. I no longer had broken stem valve, Sam that was Wednesday; Odie, but I had an
opportunity to see if I could remember her face. If I could remember her, I would be home free and could move forward. But if I didn’t have her and couldn’t remember her face, I couldn’t learn it. And even if I thought I could remember her face, I no longer had her to verify it. I had intended to practice remembering, but by locking her in the truck at night, not this way. All Friday, between calls to the police impound, I practiced remembering. She had slightly purple toenail polish and a white daisy painted on her shoulder to cover a brown drip
from her hair paint. The hair by her raised arm was chipped, and the white Styrofoam shone through. I also knew Odie was getting a little dirty. All good details. But the truth was that though I had carved, painted, smoothed, and even caressed it, I could not remember her face. Were her eyes open all the way or partially? Were they green or had I mixed the cerulean in at the last minute? Was her expression blank? I recalled the afternoon afloat on her flanks and the comfort I felt as she rode the grimy waves in the parking lot. I could still feel that sense of comfort, but I could not
conjure the curve of her jaw or her expression. Sam was leaning back at his desk, with his feet propped up, when I returned to the garage. “God dammit, they took her!” I heard a slight screech in my voice. I was trapped in the process. Permanently stuck in step four with a dummy—or without her. “Ingres, if you don’t pull yourself the fuck together, we’re going to have to dissolve our partnership.” “I’m losing it and you’re threatening to end our partnership! You are some fucking friend, Sam, some partner!” “Hear me, buddy—
keep it up and you’re going to be out of here. This is a plumbing business, not a damn mannequin-transport service or one of your Gestalt memory-training seminars.” I understood; but without Odie to claim my attention and serve as anchor, I frankly had begun to experience anxiety. You see, my openness to Odie created in me the ability to be open. Through this opening, thoughts flew. Among them, this: Women, desire, and need drive me. Need. Desire. Hope. The dilemma with Odie was instructive. I began to understand that
the ancho chili woman was also a path to feeling. A live woman breathes, has a name, has desire, flesh, a beating heart, career choices, indigestion, a favorite pair of shoes, something red in her closet. Like me, she is a sea of desire and conflict and need; and if I enter that world—if I give it a name, give her a name— I will be swept away. Into her universe, into endless attachment, life no longer mine.
Sam was right; I was out of hand. I kept quiet after that. I also kept the court date downtown, and the judge seemed to see it my way. He said a few
words about harmless fantasies getting the upper hand, and I promised to keep myself in check. He could tell I meant it, so he let me retrieve Odie from the impound. I brought her to the garage on a Sunday while Sam was off. I dusted her off and touched up her paint. She looked almost the way she did when I first saw her though her lower lip somehow had sustained minor damage, as if, in confinement, she had bitten it. I dabbed the area gently with a complex mix of alizarin crimson brightened by a dab of the cadmium orange I had squirrelled
away before it was taken off the market. Finally, I had a sort of fit of passion and whittled her waist down to a comfortable armful. After applying paint to her midsection, I left her propped against the truck, ready for Monday morning. I went home.
Sam
was in the office lining out the call order when I got to work the next day. His jaw was working back and forth the way it does when he pays bills, so I figured the less said the better and began loading the truck. “I see you got her back,” he said. “Yes.” I kept loading.
“She’s going with us?” “Uh-huh.” “Well, let’s hit the road.” I slid behind the wheel. The traffic on the interstate was light for a Monday, and we made sixty most of the way. It was a new start, the air clean, sky blue. I felt good about the work on Odie and the quiet way I handled Sam. “I see you worked on her over the weekend.” “Good of you to notice.” I suddenly felt a powerful surge of benevolence toward Sam. I routinely ignored and underestimated him; yet here he was, taking an interest in a matter that didn’t really concern
him. “Yeah, she needed some M&R. I even shaved her waist down a bit—what do you think?” “I didn’t notice. Hang on, I’ll check it out.” Sam slung his leg over the console and crouched in the back of the van, studying Odie. “Pretty neat, huh?” “Sure is,” he said. “Better move to the left here, Ingres; we need the McKinney exit.” I was checking the side mirrors and had my head out the window, trying to cut into traffic for exit, when I saw a flicker of light in the mirror. The back door swung open, and Odie sailed into the stream of oncoming cars. My hands
shook on the wheel as I heard the pop of her body against the grilles and under the wheels of the cars. A Styrofoam blizzard rose into the air and blew into circles under the tires. I nearly hit the railing on the exit ramp and would have hurled Sam out the door with Odie if I could have reached him.
part and demonstrated a mean-spiritedness that made me look at him in a new light. Cruel what one man can do to another. I came to work, tracked leaks, and reset toilets the same as usual, but I ceased to expound on the delicacies of human contact or the intricacies of memory. Sam and I passed the days in numb silence until a blanket of ordinary days shuffled into place between us.
clear. She was a good deal softer than the odalisque; even I knew that. Her legs were warm; and when I rode her, we were both afloat, I think. Late one night in the dark, embracing her in a manner which had been utterly impossible with Odie, I asked Sylvia why she had returned. “Sam called. He said to ask you to explain about I would have understood the odalisque.” it better if Sam had At first, I suspected helped me to remember Sam’s motive. Those who Odie just to get rid of her in the end, or even if he The ancho chili woman, live the attached life had been struck dumb by whose name is Sylvia, often coerce their friends her constant good looks came back on a Saturday to join them in the and had fallen in love night some time after infinite permutations of with Odie himself. But Odie was gone. Women attachment. But, I was tossing Odie seemed like are funny like that; they suddenly glad Sylvia knew about Odie. As a selfish act on Sam’s sense when the coast is
though exorcizing the past and the experiment with the odalisque, I told her everything. The eight steps, the police impound, Odie’s freeway demise. The mere fact of the telling drove us toward intimacy; I spent time looking into Sylvia’s eyes, listening to her voice. I began to see the cleverness of Sam’s actions and possibly his generosity. All the while, memories of Odie washed over me. I shifted my attention to Sylvia, who had been speaking for some time. I watched her mouth move, her face turned to mine. She covered my eyes with her hand.
“Ingres,” she said. “It’s OK if you don’t remember my face when I’m out of the room. Just remember it when I come back in.” Sweet words hovering in the room. Sylvia’s lips, full, roseate. I thought of Odie’s mouth and the last time I had seen it with its tiny hexagonal divot, the troubling damage caused in the impound, and my attempt to tend her. Sylvia seemed to be waiting for a reply, but I had none. I closed my eyes and dozed. Odie’s image floated before me. Her graceful curves. Her openness, her complete trust in me.
Bruce Sager Ages and Ages Hence
I am writing this at 2:09 a.m. and in Japan they are either a day ahead or behind right now, I don’t know, but there are great trains running their rails in Tokyo and under the ground in London the engines are roaring while a girlish voice is thanking me for my patience and asking me to remain on the line because my call will be answered in sequence and now it has been answered in sequence, and a very pleasant woman sitting in the dead of this night somewhere in a call center just outside of Buffalo, New York has to deal with my griping and moaning just as you, turning these pages, have to deal with me. Alas.
It is the birdless quiet of the very early morning over the Mid-Atlantic and no light but the light of my monitor as I grind a few lost words out of my fingers, crapulous a tad, waiting for the very pleasant young woman to ask me her next question and nursing the last inch of my last good cigar while she checks and rechecks her records, and so we have a couple of minutes to spare, and if you care to, imagine you’re sitting with me now smoking, pecking away at these fading key tops, the stylish oils are very quiet on the walls and thousands of books surround us while the trains run and the deer run and wine is flooding a woman’s bones in California and the sea is roaring with
eels upon each year and the shore is stealing away like a goat girl and still the pleasant woman is talking, she is telling me how hard it is to reconstruct my history – and don’t I know this, can’t you see how poorly I do it myself, are these pages not filled with botches and snuffs? – but she is young and stupid with youth and the longing to get it right and I have felt with my ear and snowy sideburns the common tragedy in her voice, even as you can feel the jewelry of this screen with your fingers – just rub your knuckle on the page, you can touch my fingertips, ten small tongues, and black with death or yellow with dying by the time
this finally gets to you.
Contributors Kat Gonso Kat Gonso's flash piece, "A Pinch of Salt" was recently named the 2013 winner of theWorld’s Best Short-Short Story Contest, judged by Robert Olen Butler. In 2010 and 2012, "Escape Plan: and "Capture the Flag: were listed as finalists in this same competition and were published. Her short fiction can also be found in American Literary Review, River Styx, Pindeldyboz, Fringe, and Pamela Painter and Anne Bernay's textbook What If: Exercises: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. New Stories from the Midwest named “Something She Did Not Have to Give” a distinguished Midwestern Story. Sharonlee Goodhand Writer Poet Artist Photographer Gypsy Adventurer Maiden Mother Crone Matriarch... Jeffrey Kingman Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California. He is the winner of the 2012Revolution House Flash Fiction Contest, a semifinalist in the 2013 Frost Place Chapbook Fellowship, and a finalist in the 2012 Midwest Writing Center contest. His novel, "Moto Girl," was a semifinalist in the 2009 Dana Awards. His poetry has appeared in PANK, lo-ball, Squaw Valley Review, Off Channel and others. Jeff has a Master’s degree in Music
Composition and can be heard banging his drums in a large shed in his backyard. Gabrielle Pastorek Gabrielle Pastorek is currently an MFA student at the University of Pittsburgh. She holds a BA in English and a BA in French from Ohio University. Crack the Spine is her first major publication. Timothy Riordan Timothy Riordan’s poems have appeared in such journals as The Sewanee Review, North American Review, Envoi (UK), The Cincinnati Review, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Santa Fe Literary Review, and The New Review. He has published four collections of poems: "Red In Reykjavik" (2011), "The Urge To Migrate" (2006), "In A Fluid State" (1998), and "Lesser Bird of Paradise" (1990). His chapbooks include "simulacrum" (2008), "A Latin Vulgate" (2007), "Foreign Correspondence: Poems in the Wake of September 11, 2001" (2002), "Portfolio Breeches" (1988); "Dense Communion" (1985), winner of an Iolaire poetry competition in the UK; and "Prague Letters," based on a two-month artist residency there in 2003. In 2006, he was artist-inresidence in Reykjavik, Iceland. In addition, Mr. Riordan collaborates with visual artist Diana Duncan Holmes on both artist books and installation pieces, many contained in collections both in the U.S. and abroad. A professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Mr. Riordan was born in St. Louis, MO.
Bruce Sager Bruce Sager was recently named the winner of the 2014 William Matthews Poetry Prize, selected by Billy Collins. Past awards include the Harriss Poetry Prize, with Dick Allen serving as judge, and the Artscape Literary Arts Award in poetry, chosen by William Stafford. Maria Sebastian Singer/Songwriter Maria Sebastian has opened for dozens of national acts and has recorded with many of their members. She has earned 15 Western NY Music Awards, as well as a NISOD Master Teacher Award in 2011 through Genesee Community College, and an Adjunct of the Year award at Niagara County Community College (2013) where she teaches undergraduate English. Her poem “Still See My Father Walking” was recently published in the Buffalo News Spotlight section to promote her first poetry collaboration, "The Company We Keep," co-authored with her husband, poet and professor Perry S. Nicholas. More at her website. Roberta Harris Short Roberta Harris Short is a fiction writer and teacher living and working in Texas. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing Fiction and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing/Fiction and English Literature from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her work was nominated by the CWP for Best New American Writers; and she was awarded a Michener Fellowship for fiction for an excerpt of her first novel, "Touring with Mariana." A second novel, "Girolama, Accursia, and Caraminella," received the $20,000 Women’s
Studies Fellowship from the University of Houston. Other works have been published in Texas Review and CĂŠfiro Journal. Mitchell Waldman Mitchell Waldman's fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including, among others, The Brooklyn Voice, The Big Stupid Review, Troubadour 21, eFiction Magazine, Milk Sugar, Pulse Literary Journal, Litsnack, Red Fez, The Houston Literary Review, Wind Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Eclectic Flash, The Battered Suitcase, and HazMat Review. He is also the author of the short story collection, "Petty Offenses and Crimes of the Heart" (Wind Publications, 2011), and the novel, "A Face in the Moon" (iUniverse), and serves as Fiction Editor for Blue Lake Review. (For more info, see his website.
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