Crack the Spine
Issue Thirty-One
Crack The Spine Issue Thirty-One July 2, 2012 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2012 by Crack the Spine
Contents Betsy Brown The Oxford Hotel James Esch The Last To Set It Free Darla McBryde Night Fall Stigmata Joe Trinkle Suicide Clinic Lauren Reding Nadia Enters Orbit Tim Beverstock I Might Say Yes Heather E. Pecoraro The Original Sin & The Blasphemous Blues
Betsy Brown The Oxford Hotel In December 2001 they’re giving it away in lower Denver, the swirly walk of Wazee, black mornings when the half-lived sleep and grope up 17th. Slow trains crawl only during pre-dawn. 23 nights for me at the Oxford in one glass-frosted year. I have wanted you here. This slick lobby glows but upstairs, my dear, you see the armoires groan and open, petulant, drawers stay and flop, and showers lead their own separate lives. It’s being given away now. No one will travel, climb black four-posters; no one needs a dark ride out.
Small-town boy, I want one night to steal your drinks, dance in your dreams, unfold your coat. This is not about buckling, this is solely about fear, a way of thinking and running, avoiding the rockslides. You can’t fly there forever. The time is now. I lost the quick ironic posture that once tucked me in safely under matelasse, lamplight, down and alone. So lovesick I didn’t breathe. Now I cannot leave. Remember? The doomed tangling of the truly damaged. Watch me lose sight, grasp the scald of lost mornings. Tear your own admission ticket. Wynkoop reeks and forgets in moonlight. I thought you might need me to break your fall,
but only cold trains reach out Denver nights, so you cracked my fake heart. Everything’s free now. I will not return to the Oxford Hotel. I’m counting the rate on my fingers, in dimes.
Betsy Brown's book “Year of Morphines” (LSU Press) won the National Poetry Series. She has poems in the current issues of Antioch Review, Conduit, and H_NGM_N. She lives in Minneapolis.
James Esch The Last To Set It Free Suze stood beside a Christmas tree stand, her arms crossed. “Now what?” she barked. "It's not ours. None of this." Darnell didn't feel right. “Eff you and your Mama's conscience, Darnell. They ain't comin' back. They ARE NOT RETURNING. If they wanted it, they would have took it with them." Something sad about an empty house, thought Darnell. Broken entertainment center glass in the front room, angular puddles on the beige carpet. But for a six foot extension cord, a dampened issue of House Beautiful, a standing lamp with a bent shade, and a child's black sneaker (only one), the room was clear. Suze picked up the tree stand; it dangled from her arm like a hi-tech shield. She had wide shoulders, fleshy arms, the wide stance of a rugby player. Darnell looked at her with his puppy dog eyes, but she wasn't trading in sympathy. All business. Eyes of the lone coyote circling in for the kill. Darnell thought of the Indigo Girls song: “I’ll be the first to praise the sun, the first to praise the moon.” "At WalMart these go for 18 bucks. That's half a tank of gas,” she said. "We could have waited till tomorrow.” They had seen the routine before. Once the dump-out crews cleaned the rest of the place out, there was usually a 12-24 hour wait before the truck showed up. "And what's left of the neighbors time to pick it over?” There were people out on the web, she said, scouting these pack outs. They had connections with real estate agents. Buzzards on phone lines waiting to swoop down.
“Listen, it's December 21, and we ain’t got a tree up. What you waitin' for?" It had once been a clean house, a blend of stucco and red tile and faux marble floors, Mexican-lite for white folks. Out back was sagebrush, weeds poking up like barbecue skewers and the pool, now a putrescent green post-industrial soup of mutant algae that glowed at night. A six-foot treated lumber fence divided the property from theirs. Beyond, the incessant hum of the high tension wires, the freeway, and the distant ridges of San Jacinto. "I can feel their ghosts in here, Suze. Like shadow figures.” "Would you stop it with that? You watch too much Ghost Hunters. John and Nicole not even dead, you turn ‘em to ghosts.” To him, as presences in his life, the Andertons were already figments, and to an extent, had always been so. What had they talked about since they had moved in around 2007? The Dodgers, Kobie, some reality TV show that nobody watched anymore? What of certainty had gone down over that fence? Some of these neighbors came and went and he’d never learned their names. And worse yet, he didn’t think hard about that until now. “They have departed, though. It’s kind of like a death. They ain't coming back, fo’ sure.” "Awesome deduction, Holmes. They probably someplace sweet by now. She came from money." “Won’t be getting a Christmas card this year." "Take that footstool. We could use that." Darnell stared around the place, scanning the blank walls, glancing in closets. In high school, he had a fundamentalist white friend named Troy, who’d invited him to a youth group meeting, where they had showed a film about the rapture. Snatched away, left behind. Like that. Leaving him in hell with their 37 inch TV set not ready for high def. Except he wasn’t sure John and Nicole had gone to a better place.
Leaving this place, the family had made his neighborhood feel worse, deader, except for the traffic. Rush hour was decidedly easier to manage, lately. Always bright spots beside the shadows. "Leave the stool on the back patio. We'll come back later for it." He had seen them slink off at late at night on a Wednesday, what remained of the development quiet and dark and comatose till morning. Darnell had trouble falling asleep and was playing Gameboy by the window, the blinds open to their backyard. He enjoyed the neighborhood at night, the long ghoulish shadows of the security lamps, the howls of coyotes up in the hills. A patio light triggered on; he doused the Gameboy and watched from the darkened room while the Andertons carried their two squeaky white kids -- Ronnie and Paula -- draped in blankets, to the backseat of their Ford Escape. They moved swiftly, quietly stashing belongings in green garbage bags aside their designer luggage, carrying them from the back of the house to the front for the sake of discretion. Rushed, passion muted, the way clouds at night roll without sound. The Escape backed down the driveway and pulled away, its red taillights chasing midnight down the hill, he was certain they would not be back.
He had wondered why their yard had suffered from neglect that summer. At first he chalked it to vacation, or business travel. They were often in and out. Once the Andertons asked him and Suze to check in on the place, feed and clean up after their tabby when they went to Kings Canyon for a weekend. It was rumored that they had family in Bakersfield. Aging parents in retirement villages. Properties to be disposed of. Lots of reasons to come and go. The foreclosures had started half a year earlier, at the end of the block, at the Morales' place. When Grumman-Dietrich laid off a third of their workforce, it hit the town hard. Then the Estradas were gone. Suze figured they were illegals and the INS had finally caught up to them. They told themselves these were isolated cases. California was a nation of transients. Real estate agents were still coming by, buying and flipping houses on the side. Building contractor trucks still pulled up in front of houses. Landscapers still had work. Then, like water seeping from a kink in a hose, spreading onto the hot concrete in a broadening stain, the bank signs appeared. A man in short sleeves would pull up in a SUV, stake a sign from the bank on the
front yard. Bright yellow stickers would be hung from front door handles. Strange cars would slow ride through the neighborhood. People with cell phones and clipboards, pointing. They weren’t flippers anymore. They weren’t young couples moving up from shabbier neighborhoods like he and Suze. You’d see strangers exiting homes with copper pipes under their arms.
Darnell’s limbs felt wooden, stiff. He watched his athletic wife hurl the tree stand into the backseat of their Hyundai then head back into the house for more. “Make yourself useful! Did you check the kids bedroom?” Tomorrow she would send him out to buy the tree at the vacant lot across from the bank on Ventura. Darnell wondered where the Andertons would celebrate. They used to travel — Diamond Head, Vegas, Sedona. The ghost feeling was butting against him again. His neck was itchy, his throat tight. “I’ll make a final sweep up here,” he called out. He hoped there wasn’t any good furniture upstairs because he didn’t feel up to lugging it down. Amazing what people leave when they're in a hurry. Place mats on the dining room floor, candleholders, food boxes in the cupboards -- Lucky Charms, oatmeal, Campbells soup cans, bags of trail mix, a fully populated spice rack, a set of stemware. Upstairs he found a 13 inch color TV with built-in VCR, an ironing board, a bookshelf full of videos and Dr. Seuss books -- Hop on Pop, Green Eggs and Ham, Yertle the Turtle. A Pokemon card collection in a pink sewing box, soap bottles and towels in the bathroom, a fulllength mirror leaning against the bedroom wall. There were photo albums and framed pictures of grandparents, grand aunts and uncles, a wooden crucifix hanging from a nail in the wall, tilted ignominiously. How cheap it all looked. All this shit. Take the people away and it’s suddenly worthless. They even left a couple photo albums from their vacations. The fake Roman plaza in Vegas, the black glassy pyramid. Suze’s heavy feet trundled up the stairs. "What they got up here? There's still room in the car...." "I dunno. None of this looks worth shit. We should probably go. Maybe we're being watched."
She pointed in all directions. "Darnell, they're all gone. The Pavonis, the Morales, the Estradas, Jim Diamond. The Robinsons went bankrupt last year. Hell, there’s more gone than left.” She was right. They were safe. Of the 32 homes in their development, under ten were still occupied. And of those left, they really weren’t on speaking terms with any of them. "You want this?" he asked, holding up a VHS copy of It's a Wonderful Life. "Let me get another bag." “There’s some under the kitchen sink." While waiting for Suze to rummage through the rooms, he popped the video in to the small television and sank into a ripped bean bag chair. His crushing weight made the chair spit up a little. The film picked up from the scene where Jimmy Stewart, from the afterlife, comes back to his house. The kids, the wife, the furniture all gone. And he's freaking, staring all shocked and awed through the camera lens. The snow looked colder in black and white. He flicked off the set. Still, he couldn’t feel right about something. It was not the stealing that dogged him. That was finders keepers, and 99% of the junk was landfill fodder anyway. Who'd want that twin mattress leaning in the corner of the kids' bedroom? If somebody could use it, then go for it. Suze’s practicality had rubbed off on him. No, it was something less. Or more. These things they left behind. What had gone into the decision to abandon them? Why would you leave your photo albums of Vegas, your VHS copy of It’s a Wonderful Life? What did they keep? Why were people so confusing? And why did Suze have to scavenge like this? It was like it wasn’t a choice with her. The way raccoons can’t help but get into garbage cans. What had happened to the “alt rock” babe he had picked up at Whisky A Go Go half a decade back? He ejected the tape and threw it in a duffel bag he had found in the walk-in closet. Why did she think they needed these things? All he ever wanted was her, her toothy smile (she had large pearly teeth), he broad shoulders and straight back, the way her torso stood erect, the way her chest heaved. He wanted the way her earrings tickled her suntanned neck when she laughed. He had loved her music collection and the way she undressed in front of him. None of that had much to do with VHS tapes or tree stands. But he felt like
he owed this woman something. Loyalty was a strong force in his life. He owed no one else — fell out of touch with his father in Houston longer than he’d been with her. Had no wish to go back across that dusty, spread wide state of Texas to make good on some fiction of family duty when they’d not done squat for him. With Mama dead at 54 from weight and diabetes and Dad disappearing after Katrina — not dead like Aunt Daria supposed, more opportunistically making off, Darnell was sure, probably headed up to Chicago to start a second or third life. Those were stories he had left behind — his dreams of family brotherhood were not filled with voice mails and postcards from Dad. What remained was all the stuff. Back issues of his father’s boxing magazines, fishing poles and nets, jerry curl cream, an open box of condoms. He had to take all that out to the dump before, but still the crap found him. Around him here, strewn in the Anderton’s abode, plastic doll parts, extension cords, nails in the wall. He remembered the George Carlin bit about people’s stuff. Where do you put the stuff? When they foreclose your ass, the stuff loses relevance. Then the neighbors take the stuff into their house, and the poison spreads. In the kids closet was a small bookshelf. He hollered down below: “What about the Dr. Seuss books? You want them?" Suze’s tramping footsteps stopped suddenly. He waited against the silence. Awkward. She had wanted children more than him. He hadn’t wanted to risk it. Didn’t want to do to them what had been done to him. If there was a fatherly instinct in him, it had been suffocated and stamped out, and although he was not old, his thirty odd years had seen their share of dissipation and rancid irresponsibility. The doctor had said anyway that Suze couldn't have kids. They didn’t have the money to adopt. They weren’t even legally married. He thought she would get used to the concept. Move on with life. Even so, the spare bedroom she kept available for an eventuality that might come miraculously in some way they hadn’t imagined — a trundle bed, a portable crib she’d trash picked, stuffed animals. It wasn’t something they talked about anymore. He thought she was forgetting, but the shit remained. The Seuss book pages were little used. Against his better judgment, he called down again: “I said, you want the Seuss books?” She stood in the doorway. “What, you forgot to read?! The fuck we need that for? You mocking me? You fucking with me? Get down here and put this crap in the car.”
When she turned around, he slipped the Seuss books into the duffel bag. *** They put the tree up in its stand, and it just fit the living room, framed by the bay window. Christmas was intimate. For New Years they partied at a friend’s house in the valley. The rest of the stuff found a place in corners and closets and alcoves and shelves. It took a couple weeks for the Andertons’ stuff to become their stuff, and the memory of their neighbors soon was set aside, like the hooks and rubber bands you bury somewhere inside the things drawer. Darnel finished watching the Jimmy Stewart film; it ends with him surrounded by everyone he loves. When the VCR went into auto-rewind, the remote dangled from his fingers, as he fixed his thoughts on who in the neighborhood would be next, and what would they leave behind. The television painted him blue, as he tried to predict when the whirring before him would stop.
James Esch lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania and teaches literature and writing at Widener University. He is editor of Turk’s Head Review and a faculty advisor to Widener University’s student-run online literary magazine The Blue Route. Recently, his work has appeared in Lyre Lyre, The Sonneteer, HOUSEFIRE, Shaking Like a Mountain, and 322 Review.
Darla McBryde Night Fall Numb from booze and palindrome pills I use the moon as my map and climb to this height thinking that if I jump I’ll land in Mexico. That silly moon is fat and drunk on flamenco spinning a trail of crazy-baby spider silk I breathe out the stars shimmery exhalation makes another Milky Way. Loose and large I collide against myself torn like a hole in the sky I slip off my skin and let it fall it hitches the west wind and rides it like a ghost train thundering down down to the Rio Grande. My bare bones got rhythm clickety clack I dance like a grinning skeleton on The Day of the Dead. If there’s a man in the moon, I’ll find him. He’ll be an outlaw stealing the tide before it comes in
Darla McBryde Stigmata I turn off the television Leaving the priest and the woman bleeding crimson Stigmata tattoos on the white bedsheets With one less audience member. I have bled almost every month For 37 years and no one gave me My own television show. I still look for my mother gone over 30 years now in the dark lonely tomb of dreams that encases me nightly. I call her on my cell phone surrounded by this dream womb here the spirit link is stronger Holding the phone close to my heart I whisper,“Urgent”… Dialing over and over frantic Calling out to my mother “Urgent” She does not answer. So tomorrow night I will dream of email Mother, come back to me, Oh Virtual Mother who flies through Cyberspace
With her own agenda now. She still does not answer me. She was there for me for almost thirty years And no one gave her a television show Or a crown Or forgiveness when she needed it. What medium will bring her? How holy are the stains we leave, Holy in intent, Nailed to hearts Permanent and loud Holy in the their urgency Calling out into the bleeding night.
Darla McBryde is West Texan by birth, currently residing in Houston. She lives with the love of her life and two amazing cats, surviving the city with frequent road trips to lands of sky and earth. She considers poetry her church and salvation. Recent credits include Cenizo Journal, Dos Gatos Press 2013 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Gutter Eloquence. Two of her poems have been accepted for the 200 New Mexico Poems Anthology, an official part of New Mexico's Centennial Celebration. She is a former board member of the Austin International Poetry Festival and currently a member of Gulf Coast Poets and Austin Poetry Society. She has hosted poetry open mics and produced a series showcasing local Austin poets for Austin Access Television. She is working on the final revisions of a roots based chapbook.
Joe Trinkle Suicide Clinic When I found out the suicide clinic was open late on Fridays, I was overjoyed. So much so that I took a cab there immediately—to hell with the fare—and I was giggling and generally cracking myself up the entire way. When I arrived, the receptionist asked me what type of death method I preferred and upon what reason was I deciding to end my life. “I think it might be funny.” “Funny to whom?” “Well, to me, I guess. It’s probably the funniest idea I’ve ever had.” She proceeded to tell me that my reason was insufficient to justify the procedure and that I could receive it only if I discovered a better problem. She was holding a clipboard in her left hand. “I don’t have any problems.” “No diseases?” “No.” “Mental disorders?” “No.” “Angst?” “Nope.” “Boredom?” “No.” “Any particular fears?” “No.” “No phobias at all? Are you afraid of spiders? Or sharks?” “I don’t think so.” “You’re not afraid of sharks?” “No.” “Are you sure?” “I live on land.” “Well, you can’t have the procedure just because you think it’ll be funny. Because it isn’t. And it’s been done.”
“What do you mean?” “Last week alone, three people came in asking to be euthanized for the sake of humor. You didn’t think of it first.” “Fine,” I said, as I left the clinic, walking home and regretting the wasted cab fare. I’ve never been very original and I’ve only ever seen a few sharks, all of whom seemed to conduct themselves with complete decency.
Joe Trinkle is a fiction writer and essayist currently living in Philadelphia. He attended Kutztown University of Pennsylvania for Writing and was the co-founder of the Allentown Writers Workshop. Previously published in New Fraktur Arts Journal, WINKpinup, and Subtopian Magazine, his work is also forthcoming in several journals. Right now he’s busy making lots of words fit onto pages, but by the time you finish reading this, he’s probably checked his email at least once.
Lauren Reding Nadia Enters Orbit I was looking at my reflection in Grandma’s casket when the meteorite hit the roof. Later, I imagined watching it split the shingles and ricochet through the attic. In my head, the pink insulation parted before the alien rock like cotton candy. What I actually saw was a cascade of shredded building materials, and I heard a brain-rattling crash. The meteorite was black and the shape of a large potato. It sat, gently smoking, in the snowflake of cracks it had created in the veneered wood of the coffin. I stood, immobile, until Mother grabbed me away from the wreckage. “Are you okay?” she shrieked. “Fine,” I said. While family clustered around, making sure I was still all there and offering glasses of water, I tried to reconcile the magical shooting stars I had seen two nights ago with the small cannon ball that had just wrecked the living room. I was nine, and meteors were already linked somehow to my feeble understanding of death. *** The first time I saw a meteor shower was the night Grandma Weller died. Mother woke me from my make-shift bed on the floor of her room and helped me stand. She wrapped my blanket around me and we walked out onto the little porch. The night was so clear and dark that the sky looked like a lake inside a cave. Stars freckled the blackness and almost outshone the moon. It was December. The cold of the boards seeped through my socks, but I looked into the sky where my mother pointed. The experience was too strange to question. It might have been an extension of my dreams. Mother put her arm around my shoulders and when the first shooting star streaked the sky she squeezed me. “They're the Geminids,” she said. “They only happen once a year.” The meteors skittered through the atmosphere, white-hot and gone as soon as I focused on them. Each one left a fading print on the sky. “Remember this, Nadia,” my mother said, putting her face close to mine. “Promise me that you’ll remember this part.” It went without saying that I’d remember the meteors, but she leaned close and breathed on my face, so I nodded and shrugged her away. I wanted to concentrate on the shower of stars. They were
individual glowing creatures flying down to live on the ground. I wanted to give each one a name, but they vanished before I could. *** The next morning, when I came into the kitchen in my purple paisley nightgown, Mother sat me on her lap and told me that Grandma Weller had passed away. “She was very peaceful,” Mother said. “And she said to tell you that she loved you very much.” I habitually staggered out of bed as soon as I opened my eyes instead of waiting to become fully awake, and I was confused. I understood the news of Grandma's death--I knew what the hospice nurses had been hanging around for--but not the account of Grandma sending her love. She never had before. “Really?” I said. “Of course. She loved all of us,” Mother said, adding another wrinkle to the set that lived on her brow. “How do you feel, sweetie?” she asked, when I didn't respond. She pushed hair out of my face. I didn’t feel any different. This was the first time someone I knew had died, and I had heard that people were sad on these occasions, but I wasn’t. I didn’t dislike Grandma, but we were never friends. Besides, wasn’t this the outcome everyone had been expecting? I sensed, however, that Mother was holding her breath for a reaction from me. I wanted her to know that I was responding appropriately. I wanted to say the right thing, but what was it? “Can I see her?” I asked, finally. Grandma had barely moved for days now, except to cough, and I wanted to see if she looked different now she was dead. Mother seemed neither encouraged nor discouraged. “No, no, honey,” she said. “The men from the funeral home already came to get her.” I was neither relieved nor disappointed. I wasn’t sure I had really wanted to see her. *** The last person in the family to die had been my Grandpa Weller, but that was before I was born. Even without a precedent, there was no question that the funeral would be at our house. Mother liked— still likes—to make sure everything happens correctly. Even though they hadn’t practiced in a long time, everyone seemed to know their job. Aunt Becky and her husband showed up right away. They made phone calls and mailed papers. Uncle Harold bought tickets for this family to fly down from Boston and wired money. Mother marched around checking things off her To Do list. I, however, was never as sure about the right thing as everyone else was. For example, I wasn’t at all sure we had done the right thing when Grandma got sick. Mother and I drove three hours to her apartment. I remember trying not to brush against the dirty glasses on all
Grandma’s tables. Dregs of Carnation instant breakfast crusted all the glasses like mud. Mother helped Grandma into a clean outfit and told me to pack some extra clothes. Grandma complained that we were disturbing her routine. “It has to be this way.” Mother said sternly. I didn’t want to touch Grandma’s sagging underwear and nubby sweaters, but Mother kept saying, “It’s the only thing to do.” “We're missing The Price is Right,” Grandma bellowed as we escorted her to the car. I sat in the backseat, embarrassed because I thought we had been very rude. *** I didn’t have the right clothes for the funeral. Mother, who was washing all the Venetian blinds with soap and water, sent me with Aunt Becky to buy a black dress. “Was it hard having Grandma live with you?” Aunt Becky asked, holding a black wool jumper to my chest in the department store. “I know Grandma took a lot of your mom’s attention.” We didn't have a guest bedroom, so Mother gave Grandma my room. I was a solitary child, and before Grandma came, I spent a lot of time in my room with the door shut doing things I couldn’t explain to other people. I remember sitting on the floor, arranging my dollhouse and doll family, or later, arraying my colored pencils around myself and entering a sort of mystical state where I could shrink my consciousness down until I knew what it was like to walk the rooms of the little plastic house or talk to the people in my drawings. I would come to myself without knowing how much time had passed. My legs would be cold from sitting cross-legged, and sometimes I wouldn't even be sure if I had been speaking my imaginary conversations aloud. When Grandma came to stay, it became difficult for me to play like I used to. I had lost the privacy of my room, and I couldn't set up in another area of the house without Mother or one of the nurses wanting to talk to me or step over me. More than the lack of privacy, however, it was my interactions with Grandma that disturbed me most during those last weeks. One day after school when Mother was still at work, I walked past the door to my room—now Grandma's sick room—right as she sat up, body quaking, and vomited into her own lap. I screamed for the nurse. Grandma looked up at me and said, “Pull yourself together. God knows I dealt with worse when I was your age.” I was terrified and backed away from the door until I ran into the nurse coming down the hall. For nights after that, I imagined my Grandma as a small child—younger than me—turning up her nose at mounds of festering refuse and shrugging her shoulders as if to say, “I don’t mind.”
But even if I thought any of this was important at the time, they weren’t the kind of stories to tell Aunt Becky. I said, “Where do the Geminids come from?” “I don't know the first thing about that,” she said. Then she took me by the shoulders and looked into my face as if she wanted a clue to something. “I’m thinking about a milkshake,” she said. “Are you hungry, baby?” *** When we got home, Mother was scurrying from one room to the next, pushing the wailing vacuum and mopping everything she could touch with a damp rag. “Why don’t we have the funeral at a funeral home?” Uncle Arthur, Becky’s husband, asked when he met us at the door. “It’s so much work for Ellen. Why didn't she ask us?” “Don’t worry about her,” said Aunt Becky, quietly, when she thought I was farther behind than I was. “If she doesn’t do all the work, she won’t be in charge of everything.” Aunt Becky and Uncle Arthur went to the kitchen, and I wandered in the opposite direction. The encyclopedia collection, which was the only thing my father left when he and Mother split up, lived in the front room. I pulled out the Fl-Ha volume and flipped to the G section. The entry on the Geminids was very informative. *** “I think you should say something tomorrow at Grandma’s funeral,” Mother said as I helped her peel the shells off boiled eggs. “Would Grandma like that?” I asked, not confident Mother's idea was a sound one. I had never seen a child give a speech. “Of course she would,” Mother said. “The adults are all going to do it. You should represent the grandchildren.” “What should I say?” I asked. The shells came off in big easy sheaths for my mother, but for me they splintered into tiny pieces and stuck to the skin on the egg. Every time we picked up new eggs at the same moment, I wanted to beat her by getting mine done first, but I never could. “Just a little speech about what her life meant to you,” Mother said. Aunt Becky, who was mashing the egg yokes in a bowl, said, “How about you talk about the time Grandma took all you grandchildren to the park on Christmas when we stayed in Connecticut?” I didn't remember the Christmas Aunt Becky was talking about. What I did remember was the most recent Christmas when we were about to leave for church with Grandma. I came out of my room in my green dress and black patent leather shoes Mother had bought for the occasion. “I'm ready,” I said.
Grandma, who was sitting by the door, chuckled as if I'd made a joke. “Go back and do it right,” she said. I remembered standing, mystified, in my room until Mother found me and explained that Grandma just wanted me to brush my hair. I didn’t want to tell this story either. Having Grandma die was so confusing to me, but I didn’t want to let people down by being confused. If I was going to say something in front of everyone, I wanted to say something I was definite about. *** On the day of the funeral, Mother’s brother, Harold, arrived. He brought Aunt Janet and their three children. The first thing my cousins did when they arrived was run into my room and look for toys. I wasn’t sure about the rules in this situation. Was this still Grandma’s room or had it gone back to being my room? Who had jurisdiction? Either way, I didn’t like it that the cousins were pulling out drawers and emptying toy boxes. I went to the kitchen and asked Mother, “Are they allowed to play in Grandma and my’s room?” I thought she would support my conviction that there was something deeply wrong with their actions, but she didn't hear because the blender was running. Aunt Janet was sitting at the table drinking coffee. “You can’t expect young kids to understand about mortality,” she said. *** Later, as I sat in a corner of the kitchen, boycotting my cousins' games, I heard Aunt Becky shouting in the back of the house, “You were always mom’s favorite! You got first pick of everything. In school, your Cs counted for more than my As.” “You never talked to mom,” Uncle Harold shouted back. “She only favored me because I liked her.” “That’s bullshit,” said Aunt Becky. “A five-year-old shouldn’t be responsible for whether her mother likes her.” Mother, who was making potato salad, jumped at the word “bullshit” and raised her voice over her siblings’. “Nadia, please check the door. I think the gentlemen from the funeral home are here.” The men rolled Grandma’s casket into the living room on a table with wheels. Mother draped the gurney in a green table cloth and shooed the funeral director out of the house. “Should we open the lid before we leave?” he asked. “Don’t worry Mr. Morrison,” said Uncle Harold. “My sister Ellen has everything under control.” He smiled at
Mother and gave her a thumbs up. Mother rolled her eyes and shook her head at him. “What?” Uncle Harold asked. “How can I help?” “You can’t,” Mother said. “I’m fine.” I wasn’t used to seeing my family fight, but I knew they acted this way because of how Grandma dying made them feel. I filed their behavior away for the future, so I would know what to do next time someone died. Grandma’s casket was made of deep brown wood, and it was so shiny that I could see myself in the lid. I wore the black jumper and frilly-collared blouse Aunt Becky had picked. Mother had braided my hair in a French braid. I thought I looked like a phantom sea creature raising its smooth head out of a deep brown lake. I was standing there, making sad, million-year-old faces when the meteor hit. “What the hell is that?” Uncle Harold asked, when everything stopped falling. “I don’t know, but it almost beaned your dead mom,” Aunt Janet said. It was too late to have the funeral elsewhere. After everyone made sure I wasn’t hurt, Uncle Arthur went on the roof to cover the hole with a tarp, and Mother cleaned the debris out of the living room. She was so panicked about the guests arriving in an hour that she let Aunt Becky help by disguising the hole in the ceiling. Aunt Becky got a white sheet and hung it with a hook from the edge of the opening. She arranged the sheet in a loose drape around the back of the casket. It looked like Grandma’s coffin was a princess bed from a fairytale. Mother took five minutes after vacuuming the living room again to hold me in her lap and cry. “They were so beautiful last night,” she said. “Remember them when they were beautiful, okay, babygirl? I’m so glad you’re all right.” I was glad I was all right too, but I didn’t think it was worth crying about. The meteorite had descended a full three feet from me, not really that close, in my estimation. Sometimes it scares me to remember how nonchalant I was about my flukish near-death. By the time the first guests arrived, Mother had disposed of all the evidence of the accident except for the hole in the house and the meteorite itself. It still lay where it had fallen, like a rare specimen in museum. Mother considered throwing it out the back door, but it was still quite warm from its fiery descent, so she left it where it was. “At least people will see why there’s a huge crater in the sixteen-hundred-dollar casket,” she said. As a last effort to reclaim attention from the intruding rock, Mother got out a framed picture of Grandma and set it on the casket in front of the meteorite.
In the black-and-white picture, Grandma sat in straight-backed chair. She was young, and her hair was dark and curly. She wore a dark dress which reached to just below her knees and displayed the smooth extent of her firm calves and narrow ankles. One foot was planted firmly on the floor in its rigid, high-heeled pump. The other leg was crossed and her toe pointed coquettishly away from the camera. This was a Grandma I had never seen before. She was gorgeous. She looked like someone who walked down the sidewalk and waved at people, someone who had a real life that I didn't know anything about. *** The first guests arrived, I sat beside Mrs. Barney, Grandma’s best friend since eighth grade. “What did you and Grandma do together?” I asked. The picture had made me curious about past Grandma. “Oh honey, I’m glad you asked,” Mrs. Barney said, starting to cry. “We had loads of fun. We dressed up and went to dances. We roller-skated and had picnics and did each other’s hair.” I imagined the Grandma in the picture rollerskating with a wicker picnic basket in one hand. Her skirt flew against her legs. Mrs. Barney sniffed into a blue tissue. “I was the one who told her she should give your grandfather a chance.” I imagined young Grandma pointing her finger and saying, “You have one chance.” As more guests came in, mother led me to the front row of chairs and said, “How about you think about what you’re going to say.” I hadn’t forgotten about my task of eulogizing Grandma, but I had thought Mother would forget, or that she would, at the last minute, decide to do it herself, as she often did when she asked me to wash the dinner knives. Mrs. Barney, Mother, and the aunts and uncles knew so much more about Grandma than I did. They knew her when she looked all different ways and said all different things. I tried to remember what Grandma was like at different times, but the memory of seeing her every night when I passed her room on the way to bed kept interrupting. She wore blue sweatsuit pajamas and lay on her side, often already asleep outside the blankets. She was small and flat looking. I felt I could crawl in beside her and we would be the same size, which was weird to me. Weren’t adults supposed to be bigger than children? It couldn’t talk about that in front of these people. It made me too uncomfortable. When the guests were all seated, Uncle Harold stood at the end of the casket and said, “Ruth Harris Weller meant a lot of things to those of us gathered here. She was a friend, a mother, and a grandmother. She was also a nurturer and a caregiver to all around her.” Aunt Becky started crying, and Uncle Arthur wrapped his arm around her.
“As a child of this wonderful woman,” Uncle Harold continued, “I can tell you about her generosities and kindnesses forty years ago, but I think it would be more appropriate to start with someone a little younger. I want to ask my niece, Nadia, to come up and tell us how much her grandmother meant to this family.” “Go ahead, honey,” Mother said. I slid from my folding chair. Uncle Harold patted me on the back as I passed him on my way to stand at the head of the coffin. I faced the waiting audience and placed my hand on the meteorite. It was still warm to the touch, and the heat tingled reassuringly into my fingers. It felt as if the rock were giving me something strong and special. I had learned so much conflicting information about Grandma in the last few days that I didn’t know what she meant to the family or to me, and I didn’t know what I meant to her. So I turned to one thing I was absolutely sure about, the one thing I had thoroughly researched. “The Geminid meteor shower happens every year in mid-December,” I said. “When the Geminids were first noticed in 1862, scientists searched for a comet, but they couldn’t find one.” Mother’s face was white. Aunt Becky had stopped crying. Uncle Harold was frowning. I don't think I bothered trying to interpret any of this. However people felt about it, I knew I was doing the best I could. I said, “In 1983, NASA discovered an object orbiting with the Geminids. They named it 3200 Phaethon. To this day, scientists argue about whether or not the Geminids come from 3200 Phaethon.” I returned to my seat. There was silence and Mother gave Uncle Harold a hard stare. He shook his head at her. “It’s your show,” he whispered. Mother stood up, smoothed her dress, and said, “Let’s sing Mom’s favorite hymn, number 243, ‘Tell me the Old, Old Story.’” While we sang, I remember that I sat up straight with my legs crossed and felt proud. Later everyone wanted to know what I was thinking. “Why didn’t you say anything about Grandma?” they asked. I couldn’t justify myself then, and the reception was an awkward, tongue-tied affair, but now I know that, in my childishly academic way, I was trying to explain the thing we all eventually understand: that the mysteries of science make more sense than the one thing we all know for certain.
Lauren Reding grew up in rural Virginia. She earned her BA in English from Randolph-Macon Woman's College and her MFA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University.
Tim Beverstock I Might Say Yes Cerise was baking treats in the kitchen for me. Scooped pieces from the dough mix, rolled into balls no bigger than a half dollar on the palm of her hand. Each biscuit laced with Spanish Fly and laid out across the baking tray like pills in a blister pack. She looked down at her results. “Do you think this will work?” I looped my arms around her and started kissing ladders up her neck. “It already has.” She rotated in her prison and smacked me with a wooden spoon. “Nate, not while I'm baking.” I released her and watched the tray slide into the oven. She turned back to me, ran a slim finger around the spoon edge gathering biscuit mix into a snowball. Pushed the finger into my mouth and followed it with her lips, whispers of vanilla and clover honey on her breath. Tongue flirting with mine, probing for unspoken thoughts. I pulled her into the bedroom and fell back on the bed. Cerise’s dress rode up revealing her panty line. I grasped her waist with my hands and kissed a warm arc across the cool crimson rosebuds tattooed around her hips. She reached one hand behind and cupped me between the legs. “Well?” Frustration drove me to say yes; instead I gave into the inevitable and shook my head. Xoe exploded into the room like an avalanche. I forgot she crashed the weekend. Again. “Oh my bad, thought this was the bathroom. Still getting used to this place.” Her head disappeared and my body tensed across the duvet. “What's she doing here?” Cerise smoothed her dress back into place. “Give her a chance. It’s not like you never stayed the night.” “I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.” I held her a moment longer. Xoe called from down the hallway. “What’s that smell, guys?”
Cerise climbed off me and ran into the kitchen. I got there in time to see her and Xoe pull a scorched tray from the oven. “Shit, I set the temperature too high.” Xoe looked in the cupboard. “Make another batch there’s enough ingredients left.” “I don’t have enough time before work. Damn.” Cerise scraped the biscuits into the rubbish bin. Xoe turned the tap on and started washing dishes. “Leave it with me, I can pull something together for you. I know a trick to stop this happening.” Cerise’s eyes lit up. “Sounds good. Nate?” Cerise looked at me. “Fine with me,” I said, mind already retreating back to the bedroom. I left them to it. Early afternoon after watching Cerise leave for work, I headed for the balcony and settled into the hammock with a cold beer; Xoe was in the shower. I dozed off in the afternoon sun and tried not to think about the morning. “Nate!” I didn’t respond. “Nathyn.” I opened one eye to see Xoe’s outstretched hand holding another beer. Her other hand toyed with a cigarette packet. The visions of Cerise dissolved. Xoe took the bed, Cerise’s lighter and now my cigarettes. Not this time. As I reached to grab the packet back I flipped out of the hammock and took the bottle with me. It shattered on impact, spreading a pool of amber liquid across the balcony. Xoe got a mop from the kitchen and I watched her clean up the mess. “So anything else you want to spill before I pack this away?” she said unable to keep her face from grinning. I can’t stay angry at her so when she came back with more beer I offered her the opened packet. She removed one and lit up. “How much does Cerise know?” I asked her. Xoe sat back opposite me and took a swig of her beer. She had a sexy mouth and truthful eyes, the kind I saw when Cerise went down on me. “She asked for my help so I gave her the recipe. And I didn’t tell her we hooked up before the accident.”
“I try not to think about the party,” I said, gripping the bottle tighter. She stood up and walked to the balcony edge, her cigarette end glowing like a light filament. “It was one night, Nate. One of hundreds.” “It meant something to me.” She turned back to face me. “Did it make you pregnant?” She caught the look of horror on my face and burst out laughing. “Relax, I’m not. You need to get off the meds and lighten up.” She clambered up onto the balcony. “Don’t,” I said. “That’s how I got into this mess.” “Yeah but the difference between me and you is I’m sober.” She walked across the balcony edge, agile as a cat. I finished my beer and needed a cigarette. “Can you pass me the lighter?” “Come and get it.” “For fuck’s sake.” I was two steps away when she lost her balance; I caught her before the concrete did. Startled we both said nothing then she handed me the lighter. “I better go. I left something in the fridge for you. Don’t eat them all at once.” I didn’t reply, too caught up in the moment. “And Nate.” I turned and saw the coyness reappear. “Don’t be afraid to fall.” “You unwrap it.” “No you.” “Ladies first. I insist.” Cerise opened the box, squealed and pulled one of the biscuits out. “She even iced them.” She climbed on the bed behind me. “Lean back.” I obliged and she dangled the biscuit above my mouth like an offering.
“Wait I have a better idea.” She pulled a scarf from the dresser drawer behind her. I sat up and she tied it round my eyes. The world became warmth and darkness. She leaned closer and her voice made me shiver. “You ready?” I took a deep breath and remembered the last thing Xoe said before she left. Time to take her advice.
Tim Beverstock lives in Wellington, New Zealand where he fuels his imagination with black coffee, cafe hopping, boutique beers and people watching. His writing has appeared in Troubador 21, A Twist of Noir, Nefarious Muse and most recently Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology.
Heather E. Pecoraro The Original Sin & The Blasphemous Blues
Here is everything blue and golden and here is where morning meets afternoon and the inbetween evades, nothing for breakfast but swallowed words and guilt-free conversations beneath dripping reds and the violent crashing clanging of inner monologue and four letter words. Imagine, create. Action, reaction. Infectious dialogue pollutes the air and so I'm keeping my lips sealed, my tongue tied. All originality disappeared with the invention of the wheel and you're saying That was my idea, first, No, this just isn't fair. And I'm telling you Honestly, a liar's tongue tastes just as sweet no truthful lips could hope to compare, here is everything blue and golden, here is where morning meets afternoon.
Heather Elise Pecoraro spent much of her childhood moving from one state to another in the hands of her Air Force parents. Four cross-country moves later, she chose to finish her high school career in Gretna, Nebraska and soon enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to pursue a college degree. Her attraction towards the literary and scholastic world has led her through classes focused on Psychology, Philosophy, Theater, and the English Studies with a primary focus on the art of poetic composition. Currently she is in the depths of a Graphic Communications (Art and Design) major, and her personal work highly reflects her ability to find the beauty in even the most mundane of situations. Often her poetry is accompanied by original artwork which is somehow simultaneously poetic in nature. Her writing is chocked full of rich and affluent descriptions and often dances freely between our perceived realities and the unexplored dimensions of these realities. She compiles and presents vivid and imaginative depictions of life and its counterparts in unbelievably honest forms and abstractions. She is greatly inspired and influenced by the works of Hermann Hesse, Kurt Vonnegut, T.S. Eliot, and E.E. Cummings.
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