FreightTrain Magazine Spring 2009

FreightTrain Magazine Spring 2009

FREIGHTTRAIN MAGAZINE

Taking Back the Rock

Fiction

Spring 2009

. . . p3

by Cate Stevens-Davis

Thanksgiving for Sex

Fiction

. . . p 19

by Steven McBrear ty

Editor and Designer Justin Hoffman

MISSION FreightTrain aims to offer an outlet for new writers and for readers who want diversity in literary magazines. So, if you're looking for a something different than mainstream publications, you've come to the right place. Our intention is to fill FreightTrain with quality short fiction and one act plays, regardless of the author's previous publication experience. In a world where who you know is the key to success, FreightTrain wants to show that what you know, and the talent you possess, are equally (if not more) important.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FreightTrain is looking for quality short fiction and one act plays for our bi-weekly reader. We accept email submissions ONLY. Send your files word docs, pdfs, or open office files. Anyone can submit up to one play OR fiction piece per email. The max is 3,000 words for fiction, and plays should be less than 15 pages in standard stage format.

Please allow two months for response and do not contact the magazine for the status of your entry. No simultaneous submissions.

We look for high quality, but we do not prefer one kind, or style, over another.

FreightTrain is also looking for quality fiction and one act plays. We accept email submissions ONLY here too. The max is about 5,000 words for fiction, and plays should be less than 30 pages in standard stage format. This is a paper-styled publication so submissions can be longer. Use your discretion in deciding to submit. Please allow two months for response and do not contact the magazine for the status of your entry. No simultaneous submissions. We look for high quality, but we do not prefer one kind, or style, over another.

Âť Taking Back the Rock

TAKING BACK THE ROCK

by Cate Stevens-Davis

Cate Stevens-Davis is an MFA candidate at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, PA, and is also the editor of Fat Hound Press, a chapbook publisher fostering young, independent writers. She is at work on her first collection of short stories.

3 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « I HAD JUST TURNED TWELVE the summer we stole the rock. Things were different that year. As we drove to our cabin, the road winding as it followed the curves of the lake, Dad had to stop the car more than ever, to let kids and dogs and parents with bags full of sunscreen and snacks cross to the water. I leaned out the open window, the heat of the day washing over my skin. All up and down the shore the beaches and docks were dotted with people in brightly colored bathing suits like living, squirming confetti.

“It’s getting crowded,” Mom said, looking up from her book as we stopped again. She noticed me hanging out the window and turned to tap me on the back. “Brian. Seatbelt.”

But our cabin looked the same as we pulled into the narrow, winding driveway. The cabin never changed. I counted on it. Sometimes the woods would look different, sometimes during the winter storms trees would fall down and leave bare spots. The cabin was always red, the hummingbird feeders always dangled from the same branches outside the kitchen windows, the sun always shone down hot on the same places.

I hugged and kissed Grandma, petted her dog, but mostly I wanted to see the water. I always had to say hello to Torch Lake, right away.

Our cabin was set back from the lake, across the dirt road and hidden up the hill in the woods where you couldn't see the water except when the sun reflected off it in the evenings, and even then it was just a glitter through the pine trees. I could see Aunt Sarah’s yellow cabin through the trees where it sat across the road, close to the beach.

I was already starting to run down the path when Mom called me back to unload the car. Last summer when I was 11 they let me go, but I wasn’t a baby anymore. Now I had to help. I shuffled my feet through the dirt and kicked the car tires. Mom handed me the cooler full of soda and I dropped it in the middle of the kitchen floor with a bang that scared the dog.

“For heaven’s sake, Brian,” Mom said. “Just go.”

Spring 2009

[4

» Taking Back the Rock The Lake was the same as it had ever been, just as I always remembered it. The castle of rocks we'd built the fish last summer was still there, sitting like a black monster under the surface. Farther out, I could see the exact place where the bottom dropped off, where the water changed from green to dark, dark blue. If I squinted my eyes real hard, I thought I could see the empty milk jug bobbing on the water. A sailboat had sunk there years ago and the jug had been tied to it so the owner could bring it back up, but he never did.

I only stayed a minute before making my way back up to our cottage.

Mom would be calling me in a minute to set the table for dinner.

Walking slower past Aunt Sarah's cabin, I noticed a gap in her rock garden. The centerpiece, a huge orange-yellow boulder, was missing.

The grass wouldn't grow there, Aunt Sarah had told me once, or flowers or ferns or anything else she tried. The rocks looked better than a bare patch of dry grey dirt, I guess. It was hard to imagine her cabin without a patch of rocks, like mountains sprouted from the earth where nothing else would grow. * When I got back to the cabin, everything was already put away and Grandma was cutting tomatoes for salad. I could hear Mom in the dining room clinking silverware. She hadn’t called me to set the table after all.

“Aunt Sarah’s big rock is gone,” I said, taking a slice of tomato and popping it into my mouth.

Grandma nodded. Her white curly hair bounced around her face.

“Been gone about a week.”

“Is she redoing the rock garden?” I reached for another tomato.

“Brian, don’t eat all the tomatoes,” Mom said as she walked back into the kitchen. I swear she had a built-in sensor that buzzed every time I was about to get away with something so she’d know to come stop me. “Who’s been gone a week?”

5 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « “Not who, Mom. What. Aunt Sarah’s big rock is gone. I bet someone stole it.”

“That’s silly. Who would take a rock?”

“Maybe not so silly,” Grandma said. She didn’t look up from the bread she was slicing. “You know the games they play.”

“You think so?” Mom said with a goofy smile.

Grandma shrugged one shoulder, but she was smiling too.

“What?” I said.

“How would he even move a rock that big?”

“Who? What?”

“That’s a boulder, though. How on earth…?”

“I imagine he hired someone to help. Or she did.”

“Mom.” She turned then and handed me the bread basket with a firm nudge towards the dining room. “Help set the table, honey.” * Everybody else came the next morning, all my aunts and uncles, and my cousins Annie and Ricky. They piled out of their cars and filled up the woods around the cabin with noise. I noticed that Annie's older brother RJ was missing, but he was eighteen, the oldest grandchild, and had his own car so he didn't have to come with his mother like the rest of us. I got passed around from relative to relative before, finally, we had our chance to get away from the adults.

I ran down to the beach. Any other year, Ricky would have been right behind me, but he was just walking, not a care in the universe.

Mom said he was playing football as a freshman and he looked like a Spring 2009

[6

» Taking Back the Rock football player – all neck. I knew it was Ricky but he didn't look quite like I'd always known he looked. He looked a little like his dad, sort of short and bulky.

Annie came too, following even slower. Didn't anybody run anymore? I was already sitting down, dangling my toes over the surface of the water, and Ricky was walking out on the dock when she made it to the sandy place where Aunt Sarah’s yard stopped and the beach started. I waved to her and she lifted one hand to wave back, but she wasn't really looking at me. She looked out over the water, crossing her arms across her chest and rubbing her arms like she was cold.

“Did you see it?” I said as she came out on the dock and sat down next to us. She was barefoot and her toenails sparkled pink, girly.

Annie and Ricky both shook their heads and I had to say, “The rock!

Aunt Sarah's big rock is missing.”

Ricky leaned past me to look back the way we'd just come, but of course he couldn't see the rocks from the beach. They were on the other side of Aunt Sarah's cabin. “I didn't notice,” he said.

“Me neither,” Annie said.

“You guys are crazy,” I said. “It's the first thing I saw when I got here! How could you miss it?”

“Who would take a rock?” Annie said. She sounded just like Mom. “Jack Green,” I said. I stuck out my chin, daring either of them to argue.

“Why would Jack Green take a rock?” Annie said.

“Annie,” Ricky said, biting on the syllables of her name like a frustrated adult. “You know this is exactly what Jack Green likes to do.

He does this every summer. Don't you remember when all her flowers got run over?”

“And we got blamed for it!” I said. Ricky nodded. Annie shrugged, but 7 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « I could tell she was listening.

“And that dog he got, the one that barked all night. And that time he left his car sitting on cinder blocks in his yard for a month?”

I'd forgotten about that one.

Annie looked like she was about to say something, but Ricky cut her off. “Because he said he was waiting for the new tires to come, but we saw them sitting in his garage, still wrapped in the plastic? So really it was just to be ugly and annoy Aunt Sarah?”

Annie’s legs kicked back and forth over the water. She was two years older than Ricky and taller, so she had to work at keeping her toes from getting wet. “I remember,” she said, smiling.

The truth was, and we all knew it, that we'd been snooping around in Jack Green's garage, the three of us and RJ, looking for Aunt Sarah's antique brass watering can that had gone missing. We didn't find it, but we did find a pink flamingo with plastic wings that spun when the wind blew. The watering can never showed up, but the flamingo was still in Aunt Sarah's garage. Jack Green started locking the door after that.

“That was fun,” I said.

Annie nodded.

Ricky leaned across the water to look at her. “When's RJ coming up? Soon?”

I turned too but she didn't look back. She didn't move at all except to flex her ankle so her big toe dragged through the still surface of the lake. I watched the ripples flood out, half back to shore, half to the middle of the lake, straining for the other side. There was something funny about Annie. She used to laugh until dimples caved into her cheeks and her nose wrinkled. It was the kind of laugh you couldn't help but laugh along with. She hadn't laughed yet. It made me feel weird, scared almost, like I didn't know what to say to her.

Spring 2009

[8

» Taking Back the Rock Instead I said, “Jack Green never gets in trouble for the stuff he does. We should steal the rock back.” It fell out of my mouth before I could stop the words.

I couldn't look both ways at once, but I felt Ricky's legs move as he turned to face me. Annie turned away from the water finally, looking right at me. Her eyes were big and blue in her face, the same blue eyes we all had; Grandpa's eyes, we'd always been told, but none of us had been born before he died. I saw myself, lopsided and distorted, reflected in her slick pupils.

“Let's steal the rock.” * We snuck out of the cabin that night and made our way down to the road. During the day the path was hard to miss, but at night it was too dark to know where to put your feet. We stumbled along in a line, trying to keep close enough to not lose sight of each other. Ricky kept stomping on the back of my shoes, which made me trip into Annie. I could feel her turning to glare at me and I was glad that the darkness hid her face.

Finally we made it to the road. The packed dirt and gravel was reassuring under our feet and it was easier to move by feel, though we were still surrounded by inky blackness. I’d always thought the stars overhead would light the way like tiny flashlights, but they didn’t help at all. Instead I listened for the crunch of Annie’s feet in front of me and Ricky’s behind and bit by bit we made it down the road to Jack Green’s cabin.

We’d debated how to move the rock for a long time after dinner. I said we could get a big stick and use it like a lever – I’d learned about that in sixth grade science class – to make it do all the work for us. Ricky and Annie said that was dumb, that we should just push really hard and roll it. But it was a huge boulder, as tall as me and wide as my arms spread open, and not perfectly round.

“Don’t be stupid,” I’d said. “The three of us could never push it out of his yard, down the street and into Aunt Sarah’s garden.”

9 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « “Not with three,” Ricky said, frowning. One way or another he always came around to be my ally. “Maybe with four. When’s RJ coming up?”

“We don’t need RJ,” Annie said. Her voice rumbled, like she was speaking through clenched teeth. “We’ll go tonight. I’ll prove it. We can do it with three.”

Later, in Jack Green’s yard, we stood around the big boulder. It seemed even larger than I remembered. We’d been outside long enough that our eyes had adjusted to the dark, but the rock still loomed before me like an angry, humpbacked monster. I didn’t want to try pushing it anymore.

After an eternity of standing still, Annie stepped forward. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s see.”

Me and Ricky moved together, putting our palms on the rock. It was surprisingly cool to the touch and grainy like sandpaper.

“Ready?” Anne said.

“Ready,” Ricky said.

I nodded, forgetting that they couldn’t see me in the dark.

“Go!” I leaned my full weight against the rock. My feet slid back in the loose dirt that surrounded Jack Green’s cottage. I squeezed my teeth shut hard and pushed with everything I had, digging my toes into the ground to keep from sliding. My arms and legs burned.

And then the rock moved. Just a tiny bit, a small shift in the direction we wanted it to go. We all stopped pushing. In the dark, my eyes met Ricky’s and I could see that his were wide. I looked to Annie and she was smiling, white teeth glowing.

“I told you,” she said. “I told you!”

Spring 2009

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» Taking Back the Rock Me and Ricky whooped and high-fived, slapping each other and Annie on the back in congratulations. I jumped up and down. My legs were elastic from nervous energy.

The door of the cottage swung open, interrupting our celebration.

“Who’s out there?” Jack Green said, barking into the darkness.

We scattered, tripping over each other and the gravel in the road in our haste to get away. I could hear Ricky’s ragged breath ahead of me and I followed that sound and the crunch of sticks under his and Annie’s pounding feet. Annie got to the cabin first and launched herself through the back door. We fell inside, laughing and gasping until tears ran down our cheeks. * I woke up early the next morning, jostled awake by Ricky as he stretched in his sleep. One meaty foot caught me square in the ribs.

The sun was out already, but I wasn't ready to wake up. I shifted away from Ricky, curling up to make myself as small as possible. We'd fallen asleep on the living room floor in a nest of quilts and pillows, euphoric over our victory. Ricky, forever a restless sleeper, had churned everything up so we were both turned about.

There were voices from the dining room; Mom's I recognized, and one of the aunts, I thought, given the warm twang of the Michigan accent. I couldn't hear Grandma but I knew she was awake. She never slept in.

“It's been hard,” my aunt said. She sniffled and slurped her coffee.

“I imagine,” Mom said in that soothing mother voice, calm and steady.

I heard her sigh. “You made the right choice. He wasn’t safe alone.”

“I know,” the other woman said. “I know that, deep down.” Her voice was rough, raspy. “But you should have seen his face when we told him, Clare. The things he said to us, to Annie.”

“He doesn't mean those things. He's not himself right now.”

11 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « “I know. It's a sickness. I've read all the literature. It's just...it happened so fast. Remember him last summer?”

“I remember.”

“Smiling all the time, swimming in the morning.”

“Brian just worshipped him. He still does.”

“Hold onto him, Clare. Don't take your eyes off him. They change so quick.”

I fell asleep listening to the rise and fall of their voices. Some time later, I woke up to see my mother bent close, her hand warm on my head. She smiled down at me and I smiled back, my heavy eyes already closing again. But later, when I woke up for real, I thought I might have dreamed the whole thing. I forgot to ask Annie what they meant. * The next night we set out to get the rock. We stumbled down to Jack Green’s yard again. The blood shivered in my veins. This was it. This was the night.

When we got to the rock, I reached out and patted it fondly, like saying hello to an old friend. All of us stood there looking at it, touching it, working up the nerve for the night ahead.

Finally Ricky stepped forward. He pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt despite the chill in the air. “Let's get to work.”

I think I had pictured the rock instantly rolling away from us, giving way to our strength and rolling neatly down the road to Aunt Sarah's yard. Like maybe last night’s struggle would be the hardest part, once we got it loose it would go where we wanted. It was a real rock, all right. Real and solid and heavy. After hours of pushing we had only managed to wobble it over itself twice and now it sat in the road. I stepped back, wiping at the sweat that dripped out of my hair and down the back of my neck.

Spring 2009

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» Taking Back the Rock “This was a stupid idea,” Annie said, rubbing her dirty palms on her jeans.

I could see the shadowy outline of her body in front of me and realized that the sun was beginning to rise. We were dead. We were so dead.

“Shut up,” Ricky said. He was the only one who was still trying to move the boulder. “Are you guys going to help or not?”

I started to walk forward, but Annie put her arm across my chest, like Mom did when she had to brake all of a sudden in the car.

“This is stupid,” she said.

“Little late for that now, don't you think?” Ricky said. He was frowning at us. With his new bigger size, massive hands curled into fists, he looked like a bully.

Annie didn't move except to cross her arms over her chest.

“It's in the middle of the road,” I said. I had to clear my throat twice before I could make more than a pathetic squeak out of my voice.

“We can't just leave it there.”

I looked back and forth between the two of them. Even though Annie was tall and thin and Ricky was shorter and bigger, they had the same stubborn glimmer in their eyes. I recognized the set of their jaws, chins stuck out, rigid, as the same face my Dad made I backtalked him. Maybe we all got that from Grandpa, too.

“We'll never get it to Aunt Sarah's yard,” Annie said. “We should just push it back.”

“It wouldn’t have been so hard if RJ was here,” Ricky said, half under his breath but plenty loud enough for us both to hear.

“You don't know anything,” Annie said. She took a step towards Ricky.

“You don't have any idea what you're talking about.”

13 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « “Yeah, right,” Ricky said. He wasn't backing down from her. Even though she looked weak, the anger in her face scared me. “What's your problem, Annie? You've been a huge bitch ever since you got here. You used to be fun.”

“Guys, come on,” I said, from behind them. I put my hands on the rock. “Let's just get it out of the road.”

“Shut the hell up, Ricky!”

“No wonder RJ doesn't want to be around you. You act like you're on your period all –” In a million years I wouldn't have expected Annie to haul off and punch Ricky. And in a hundred million years I wouldn't have expected him to fall down with a bloody nose. But she did. And he did. Ricky's eyes were huge. He might have been even more shocked than I was.

But Annie wasn't done. “You want to know about RJ?” she said. I didn't. Her fists were still balled up. She loomed over Ricky. “Your precious RJ isn't here because he's in a mental hospital, because he tried to kill himself. They had to tie him to a bed.”

Ricky had his hands up and he was shaking his head back and forth fast enough to break his neck. I put my hands over my ears, I didn't want to hear anymore, but she kept going.

“He tried to kill himself three times!” she said, louder now, yelling.

We were going to wake everyone up. We were going to wake everyone up and get in so much trouble. I bit my lip to keep from crying. Dad was going to murder me.

Annie whirled around and ran back up the path, back towards our own cabin. Me and Ricky watched her go and then we looked at each other, and I saw he was crying, his face all wet with tears and bloody snot. He wiped his face on his sleeve and slowly stood up.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was small, shaky. “Okay.”

Spring 2009

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» Taking Back the Rock We fought with the rock until the sun cast light through the trees that striped the boulder gold. In the full light, a wide path of churned grass and dirt streamed out behind the big rock. Anyone with eyes would be able to see it had been moved. Ricky and I looked at the torn up lawn and then back at each other. Panic began to rise in my chest, a heavy bubble of dread that made it hard to breathe.

This was the end. * We were forced to wake up our fathers. I opened the door to my parents’ bedroom and cleared my throat. “Dad? Hey, Dad?” “What?” said the mound of blankets. “Brian?”

I kicked the door frame, knocking a chunk of half-dried mud off my sneaker. “Can you get up? I need help.”

I waited for the blankets to start to move before ducking out to join Ricky in the yard. His skin looked gray, pulled tight across the bones of his face. “Is he coming?” he said and I nodded. He nodded too.

Our dads came out almost at the same time, yawning and rubbing their faces. We didn’t say anything, just led them down the path to where the rock was blocking the road. My dad crossed his arms over his chest and my uncle looked like he wanted to smile but he coughed into his fist instead. I worried I might throw up.

“So,” Dad said. “I guess we have to put it back.”

It was good to have a dad on your side, even better to have two.

The rock rolled back to where it had been the night before in under an hour, like it knew our dads were in charge and had to listen. I felt the same way. I waited for them to start handing out punishments.

Dad brushed rock dust off his hands and walked up onto Jack Green’s porch. As I realized what he was doing, my stomach flipped over. I wanted to spin around and run away, but my uncle was standing 15 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « between me and the road. He was old but he was fast. Next to me, Ricky took a deep breath and held it. We were trapped.

Jack Green came to the door almost as soon as Dad started pounding on it. He wore a faded green bathrobe over his clothes and held a white coffee mug in one hand. I watched the steam swirl out of it, mix with the air and disappear.

My dad didn’t say anything, just turned around and waved us forward.

“Sorry about the rock,” Ricky said, mumbling at the ground.

“Eh? The rock?” Jack Green had bushy gray eyebrows that matched his puffy gray hair. They wiggled up on his forehead as he leaned out to look at his yard.

“We tried to take it,” Ricky said. He still wasn’t look up from the grass and dirt around his feet.

“We thought you took Aunt Sarah’s rock.” I regretted opening my big mouth when his beady eyes snapped to me. “Sorry,” I said to a stain on his shirt.

“Sorry,” Ricky said.

“Well. I didn’t,” he said in a voice like daggers. I flinched. “Sarah gave me that rock.”

I wanted to call him a liar, but I didn’t dare say anything else.

Everybody standing there knew Aunt Sarah would never give her big rock away. Especially not to someone like Jack Green. She didn’t even like Jack Green. None of us did. He was lying, I knew it. I hoped Dad would call him on it, but even he didn’t say a world.

We all stood, unmoving, while he took a long drink from the coffee mug. He smacked his lips and shrugged his shoulders like a boxer loosening up. “I heard you boys outside the other night, running around my yard.”

Spring 2009

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» Taking Back the Rock Dad turned around. The look on his face said I wasn’t going swimming for the rest of my life. I tried to shrink as small as I could get. Maybe if I was the size of a beetle or an ant they’d forget to be mad at me and I could scurry away.

“We’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Dad said. I felt his eyes burning hot on me but I didn’t look up.

“Sure, sure,” Jack Green said.

As our dads started to march me and Ricky back up to the cabin, Jack Green stepped off his porch and came toward us. I wondered if he meant to punch our lights out, but he just stopped in the middle of his yard and looked up at the sky like he was waiting for rain. * Ricky and I fell asleep when we got back and for the rest of the day we weren’t allowed to leave the cabin. It was a long day away from the water. I didn’t see Annie at all, didn’t see much of anyone until dinner. They were too busy down at the lake, swimming and reading and soaking heavy sunlight into their skin.

Dinner was quiet. Nobody really said anything, not the adults at the big table, not the kids at the folding table. Aunt Sarah came, sparkling in her many necklaces, and flashed a thumbs-up but it didn't make me feel better. Annie ignored us, staring down at her plate and leaving as soon as she was done.

I thought there was more to Annie that summer than just RJ, but I couldn't make sense of it. Is that what it would be like us from now on, as cousins growing up, not just kids playing together? It seemed like a bad dream. But it was true, it was real. And I didn't know how to go back to the way it was between us, between all of us.

After dinner I helped clear the dishes away without being asked. I went back and forth, back and forth, from the table to the kitchen, bringing piles of plates and glasses, armloads of salad dressing and leftover food, until everything was empty. I even wiped down the 17 ] FreightTrain Magazine

Stevens-Davis « table with a sponge and scooped the damp crumbs into the palm of my hand. It felt good to look at the table and see it clean, shining almost, ready for the next time we all sat down together.

“Thanks, Brian,” Mom said, coming up behind me. “Looks great.”

On impulse I turned and hugged her tight around her waist. Her arms came around me too and she kissed the top of my head, running her hand over my hair.

She asked me, “what's that for?” but I didn't know. I couldn't answer.

Spring 2009

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Âť Thanksgiving for Sex

THANKSGIVING FOR SEX

by Steven McBrear ty

Steven McBrearty grew up in San Antonio, Texas, in one of those large, loud, rollicking Catholic families. He moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas and has remained there ever since. Over the years, he has published more than 25 fiction and non-fiction pieces in a variety of literar y journals and served as a ghostwriter for a self-help study skills book published by Simon & Schuster. He has two grown children who also live in Austin.

19 ] FreightTrain Magazine

McBrearty « When my girlfriend Caroline Donatelli asked me to have Thanksgiving dinner with her family, I decided not to break up with her that day.

Not terribly noble, I understood even in my impaired condition of early adulthood, but I owed her that much for the sex, at least. Day to day, I was never really certain of my future with Caroline, but couldn’t seem to muster up the gumption or the willpower to tell her we were through. Each time I made up my mind that we weren’t right for each other, that we were making each other miserable, that there was no point in going on, we made love, or held hands together on some dark, dreary, romantic autumn afternoon, or she would ask me to have Thanksgiving dinner with her family, and I would conclude that breaking up could remain on hold for another week or two.

The making love part trumped the other reasons like a royal flush over a pair of twos. I was twenty-one then, an insulated, immature, dreamy twenty-one, I might add, and this was my first awkward stab at an intimate relationship. In movies, on TV, and even in books people have sex casually all the time without any apparent social or psychological repercussions. Man, it was anything but casual for me!

The fact that this female creature Caroline would open up her physical self to me seemed downright miraculous, far grander than the parting of the seas. No matter how emotionally draining it was dealing with Caroline, no matter how inconvenient or disturbing to my unfinished psyche, I didn’t want to give up all of this pleasure for the solitary, ascetic existence I had endured until meeting her.

Asceticism as a life-style I had abandoned about the same time I retired from the altar boys.

Caroline had a milky-white complexion, a skinny, sort of knock-kneed figure that looked good in shorts or skirts, and one of those shy yet very personal smiles that made you think she was enamored of nobody else but you. Both of us students, we met in an English literature class, American Lit from 1865 to the Present, and went for coffee one day on the Drag. We talked of J. D. Salinger and Wallace Stevens and injustice in the world, and how we would change Spring 2009

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» Thanksgiving for Sex everything when it was our turn to be in charge. Then another day after class we walked back to Caroline’s apartment to study, instead we fell into each other’s arms with sudden, surprising passion.

Disrobing on the go, we made love spectacularly on a plump white couch and then several times again throughout the course of the afternoon.

“I love you,” she told me at one point in the proceedings, as she lay cradled in the crook of my arm. It seemed too soon for her to say this, but perhaps she felt that she must justify her actions to herself.

“I love you,” I told her back. I considered the statement a small price to pay for an afternoon of mind-blowing fulfillment. We were together after that.

I discovered soon enough that Caroline was not the girl I pictured being with in my dreams of romantic rapture. That mythical creature was some stalwart cheerleader type with the emotional stability of a frontier woman and the soul of a British poet whose father, by the way, owned high-volume strip malls and six square blocks in central Manhattan. Caroline was instead a rather fragile person, frantic at times, sometimes dark and gloomy, filled with fears and bleak visions for the future. There was something painfully vulnerable lurking just beneath the surface, something volatile and erratic. You just knew that she could crack and crumble at the slightest word, a cross look, a sudden change in plans. Finding out about her quickly-annulled marriage at age 17 to a 25-year-old musician and a half-hearted suicide attempt shortly thereafter made me question her further.

Every day was different; it was different from one moment to the next. Sometimes she just wanted me to hold her on the couch, other times she wanted constant motion. I never knew what she was thinking. Things were never easy with Caroline. Sometimes I wanted things to be easy.

“Sometimes I think, ‘Stop the world, I want to get off,’” she told me one otherwise uneventful evening as I sat reading a magazine article 21 ] FreightTrain Magazine

McBrearty « nonchalantly, zoned out on the details of a story entitled, The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. A sharp spike of pique traveled through me, like an electric shock. I wasn’t wanting to make decisions or concentrate on significant world events.

“Why?” I said, mystified and hurt a little too, her sentiments seeming to cast doubts on my abilities as boyfriend and defender. I didn’t understand then that it can be a compliment when people disclose their fears to someone they care about.

“The news is filled with horrible events,” she said. “People are blowing each other up, whole groups of people hate one another, there are all kinds of depravities.”

I turned the magazine closed with a finger holding my place.

“Yeah, the world’s screwed up,” I said, blasé as a college prof on his M-W-F lecture routine. “But what can we really do about it?” She was angry at me, then, for being such a smug, self-satisfied jerk. I remembered then the words of idealism we had spoken when we first met. Amazing how you can go from idealist to smug, self-satisfied jerk at the speed of light.

My trepidation level was high as I trudged up the sidewalk to Caroline’s small 1950s-era bungalow that Thanksgiving morning, anticipating a day of self-denial, possibly full-blown disaster. I would spill my plate onto my lap. My wine glass would break and my Caroline’s mother would scream. Her brother and I would engage in a sword fight causing one or both of us to bleed to death on the living room floor.

A brief preamble may be in order here. I had not yet met the family, but Caroline had told me about her father’s successful career as a sales representative for a metals exporter based in Munich, Germany. In the course of his duties, he had traveled extensively Spring 2009

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» Thanksgiving for Sex throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, hobnobbing with foreign dignitaries and businessmen. The family became quite well-to-do. They lived one summer in Paris, another in Peru. Their house back home in Texas was a Mediterranean-style villa with a boat dock on a lake.

Then one day on a trip to London the father suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He could not continue to work.

To make ends meet, the mother went back to work as a nurse in a doctor’s clinic, but everyone had to tighten their belts. There were no more trips or summer homes. The family had to sell their house and move into a smaller one. Bottom line, they were all basically down on the father for going crazy and screwing up their comfortable life-styles. Their annoyance at him seemed to outweigh their sympathy for his condition.

The front porch was filled with flower pots and a miniature pagoda, an artifact of the father’s travels to the Middle East. Waiting there I paced, hands clasped behind my back. But Caroline opened the door smiling radiantly. No dark moods today, no fears and bleak visions for the future. She was instead all sleek elegance, an Italian princess in raiment of the court. She wore a white silk scoop-neck blouse with gathered sleeves and a red calf-length skirt, embroidered by someone who was obviously a working Renaissance artist. The silver clasp around her neck was simple and smart. The dash of makeup on her high, angled cheeks made her seem vivacious, vibrant, filled with high spirits and good humor. Her jet-black hair hung in loose braids suitable for an opera, perhaps, or a wedding reception, or an artist’s opening. And her eyes seemed to contain, for the moment, at least, the promise of a happy future together, the harbinger of a permanent relationship, a vision of the two of us linked together in a heaven of connubial bliss. In a condition of temporary madness, I was transformed into a happy suitor, proud to be with her, pleased by my good fortune. For a few brief, shining moments, I was perfectly content - content to be me. In my mind, I pledged to be with her forever.

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McBrearty « We embraced, kissing madly just inside the red-tiled foyer, illuminated through a skylight by a glorious autumn sun. Then she led me toward the living room, a duchess on a diplomatic mission.

“Marry me,” I murmured, spinning her around and pulling her close to me again. Her skin was warm and fabulously fragrant. “Marry me immediately!” She held the tips of my fingers and squeezed - and the top of my head damn near blew off.

“We’ll see,” she said enticingly. “Come with me.” Holding her hand as I followed behind her gliding form, my heart swelled and my mind expanded and my soul became like the soul of a poet in nirvana. My life henceforth would be one eternal moment of joy. I would never be unhappy again.

“We’re going to meet Edward first,” she said. “My brother, Edward, Jr.” “Okay!” I said.

“He’s the one who lives in Berkeley,” she said.

“Right!” I said.

We crossed through an ante room into the dark, sumptuous living room, filled with heavy furniture that looked like it was placed there in approximately 1963.

“My brother Edward,” Caroline said, extending her hand like a game show announcer. My good mood came crashing down like a cheap kite. Though connected to Caroline physically I could feel her slipping away - far, far away.

For there in all of his glory was Caroline’s brother Edward, and she seemed drawn to him like a groupie to a rock star. I seemed to recede into the background, a piece of the furniture myself.

Spring 2009

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» Thanksgiving for Sex Edward lived in Berkeley, California, Caroline had told me, on Center Street, near the University of California campus. Though not affiliated with the university in any official fashion, he audited classes while hobnobbing with professors who regarded him apparently as some sort of freelance genius. In Caroline’s mind he was writer, poet, philosopher, astral projectionist, and ace car repairman rolled into one.

Wearing a loose-fitting karate-style outfit, with a sash around the waist, Edward sat sprawled on an oval throw rug on the living room floor, performing slow-motion tai-chi exercises, or some such Eastern-style discipline. He held his left foot with his right hand and spoke from that position, looking up. Holding his foot with an arched back seemed for him a perfectly natural speaking position.

“Hello,” I said dully.

“Is this the illustrious Steven Flanagan I’ve heard tell about?” Edward said in a voice that was pure melodrama theater. His bushy black eyebrows almost met together in the center in a line that seemed sinister, foreboding.

Caroline giggled reverently while I returned a grim, grudging smile, clinging to a precarious self-respect. A blunt, ugly anger of dislike reared up inside of me, eclipsing all other emotions. Edward filled the room with the overpowering aroma of spoiled brat.

“That’s me, I guess,” I said. I felt diminished in his presence, incomplete, a clumsy, incompetent clod. I felt that I should start life all over again and learn to like classical music, and tinkling things in stores, and bubbling potpourri, and books in foreign languages that I could read in foreign languages. We stood - and lay - in uneasy, adversarial positions, like rivals in ancient Greece or gunslingers of the American West. Though I’m certain he had sized me up as a complete nonentity.

25 ] FreightTrain Magazine

McBrearty « “So what do you do, Steve?” Edward said (like, I know you probably spend your spare time reading Marvel comics and playing “Grand Theft Auto” on PlayStation 3). I wanted to say something smart and smart-ass, that I had invented the push-up bra or had a line of cosmetics named for me, but refrained.

“I go to UT,” I said simply.

“Ah, the fabled University of Texas!” Edward proclaimed, with an inflection that placed my alma mater (and his sister’s) on a par with Panola Junior College. “Proud home of the Texas Longhorn football team and the Charles Whitman shooting massacre.”

“That’s the place,” I said. What else was I going to say? Cite number of PhD candidates by major? List awards won by sitting faculty?

“I could have gone there,” Edward said.

“Why didn’t you?” I said. Edward pulled his right leg up and across his body, almost into his mouth.

“I didn’t want to do the easy thing, the expected thing,” he said. “I wanted to expand my horizons, move beyond the ordinariness of my daily existence. Wasn’t it Schopenhauer who said that the will is paramount, but that subjugation of the will creates only suffering; therefore, escape from the will provides a temporary haven, a condition of what may even be called happiness?”

I pretty much just grunted in return. I could foresee a long-term relationship in which Edward expounded on his brilliant life and mind and I grunted in return. Caroline watched him, starry-eyed.

“Hey, tell Steve about the time you took on the big-name Philosophy profs in the Berkeley Marina,” Caroline begged.

Spring 2009

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» Thanksgiving for Sex “Ah, my famous Berkeley Marina putsch?” Edward said. “I’m sure your friend Steve would just love to hear about that . . .” But then he launched in anyway, a long, dense, heavily-footnoted narrative describing Edward’s tête-à-tête with a pair of award-winning Cal faculty members while overlooking San Francisco Bay. I dug in with grim good humor. Caroline clapped.

Caroline’s mother Angela entered the room then, gliding in like a guest on a late-night talk show. Her lined face and dyed-blond hair suggested Bette Davis in her declining years. She wore a closenecked long-sleeve white blouse over a dark blue skirt, expensive and sleek, and a lot of jewelry. Yet her clothes seemed somehow ratty and frayed, a hem loose here, a button missing there. Her white nylon stockings looked medicinal. An ornate silver crucifix around her neck she fingered constantly, as if to illustrate her own suffering, her self-sacrifice, the unique circumstances of her life. My heart flew out to her briefly - but then bounced back.

“I hope all of you are doing okay,” she said. As if, obviously, she wasn’t. When her eyes fell on me, her face lit up - inordinately, it seemed, as though to compensate for her disappointment in me.

“Mother,” Caroline said. “This is Steve.”

“Steven,” she said. “How are you, dear?” She moved toward me with arms extended and we hugged, like old friends from the movie business. As she stood back, she waved her hands in the air.

“What’s wrong, Mother?” Caroline said. I stood by in a posture of staunch daughter’s-boyfriend support.

“Oh, nothing,” Caroline’s mother said. “It’s just your father. He’s being difficult again.”

Caroline sighed. I went with the program, showing by posture and by facial signal my full sympathy with the cause.

27 ] FreightTrain Magazine

McBrearty « “Tell the old man to take a chill pill,” Edward said, from the floor.

Caroline giggled. Her mother shot Edward a glance.

“You know what he’s doing now?” the mother said.

“What’s that, Mother?” Caroline said.

“He won’t get his own clothes. He wants me to dress him. He won’t pick up after himself. He waits until I get home after working all day and asks me to do it.”

“Oh, Mother,” Caroline said, taking one of her mother’s hands in both of hers and holding it tightly in hers. I pivoted to follow her position.

“You poor dear.”

“Oh, Mother,” Edward said, his voice a high-pitched parody. “You poor door. Or is it deer - as in Bambi.”

“You shut up,” the mother said to him. Then to everyone else: “I don’t know how much longer I can put up with all of this.”

“You’re a saint, Mother,” Caroline said.

“Angela, saint of the man dressers,” Edward said.

“Sometimes I wish I could just start over,” the mother said.

“I know, Mother,” Caroline said, patting her mother’s hand. “It’ll be all right.”

I heard the father’s voice booming out from some back room.

“Angela!” he called loudly. “I need a pair of clean socks.” The mother shut her eyes tightly, in prayer or meditation.

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» Thanksgiving for Sex She dropped Caroline’s hand and cupped her hands around her mouth. Her voice she projected as though through a bullhorn. “Just go in the drawer and get some, Ed!” she said. Listening for a response, she shook her head again.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Ed,” she said. “I’m talking to Caroline’s new friend.” She blew out a loud, desolate breath.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to me - and to the world at large, I believe.

Surprising everyone, the father showed up then, shuffling in like some ancient Greek statue brought to life. Pale, gray-blond hair combed in every direction, he wore a starched white dress shirt with striped tie, pin-stripe trousers, and house slippers, powder blue.

Spotting me, he spread out his arms and exclaimed: “Senator Sentorum!”

“Daddy,” Caroline said. “This isn’t Senator Sentorum. This is my boyfriend, Steve Flanagan.”

He stared biliously in my direction, eyes magnified fantastically by plastic tri-focal horn-rim glasses, and stuck out his hand. I grasped it firmly in mine. After a moment’s hesitation, he spoke enthusiastically.

“Stephen Fogerty!” he said. “I remember you now. Rome, 1967. We had an audience with the Pope together. You don’t look like you’ve aged a day.”

The mother sighed. Edward, Jr. chortled in the background.

“No, Ed,” the mother said. “Stephen Fogerty died almost twenty years ago. This is Caroline’s boyfriend, Steven Flanagan. He’s having dinner with us today.”

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McBrearty « “Wonderful!” the father said. “Let’s sit down and see if we can renegotiate the Italian steel contract. It’s high time!”

“There is no contract,” the mother said. “Nobody’s negotiating anything.” I suppose the father had a moment of clarity, then, looking surprised, then disconcerted. He looked at my hand as if he were holding a live lobster. I smiled uncertainly, fearful that as boyfriendonly I had lost my luster.

“Let’s get on with it, then!” the father said. “I’m starving!”

“Here! Here!” Edward, Jr. said. He held his left foot up over his head in a kind of derisive cheer.

Caroline grabbed my hand and we all sauntered over to a small, formal dining room for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. A uniformed maid in the adjoining kitchen, a small, pockmarked Central American woman, prepared trays of food.

“Hola, Juanita!” Edward, Jr. said.

“Hola, señor Ed,” the maid said back.

Edward, Sr. loaded up a large plate, eating with one hand even while he added items with the other. Then Edward, Jr.’s girl friend Mi Mi appeared, a tall, wide-hipped, precocious young woman who spoke with an accent so refined it sounded almost British. She stood in the doorway when she arrived, gyrating both hands in the air, and everyone rushed to greet her. She crushed against Edward, Jr. in his karate outfit, but the kiss the pair exchanged seemed oddly theatrical, chaste.

I don’t know why exactly, but I grabbed a highball off a shelf and hopped in alongside the father on a slip-covered sectional couch that sunk beneath us like a beanbag chair. I think I felt like his protector, his guardian, his confidante. I discovered myself unusually hale and Spring 2009

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» Thanksgiving for Sex hearty with him, talkative and loud. I asked him questions about his past. I volunteered information about myself. I fed him facts and opinions I had never even told Caroline, family secrets, philosophical positions, cherished beliefs. While the general line of conversation drifted in and out about Edward, Jr.’s charmed life in Berkeley, Mi Mi’s new red BMW convertible, the terrible new neighbors here, I flattered the father’s tie, queried him regarding his previous line of work, gabbed about sports, politics, current events. (Though for him this meant events chiefly from the 1960s and ’70s.) We were like a pair of old business pals, trading ideas, exchanging methods, hooting it up.

We held our wine glasses knowingly, twirling our stems. The classical sonata playing on a stereo set somewhere in the background provided a backdrop of learning and sophistication.

“When JFK came into office,” the father said, “it was a brand new day.

It was a fresh start. We all felt young again. There was renewed hope, new possibilities.”

“I bet those were great times,” I said.

“The best times,” he said.

Caroline leaned over me, whispering into my ear.

“You don’t have to humor him,” she said. “You don’t have to do that to make me feel good.”

I waved her off brusquely.

“I’m fine,” I said.

When we sat down for dinner at a cherry wood winged table, I placed myself in charge of passing the father bowls of yams, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, creamed corn, and slices of turkey and ham, and he smiled at me in a reserved yet respectful manner.

31 ] FreightTrain Magazine

McBrearty « After eating, we settled back in the living room for tumblers of cognac and a game of Cranium, the fashionable new board game combining elements of Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and Charades. I allied myself with Edward, Sr., of course, taking bivouac in a tight back corner of the room between a dusty end table and an antique armoire. He sat and I kneeled beside him, hand on his shoulder.

Caroline’s eyes followed me closely, questioning my motives. She was right to question them. She was right because I was doing this principally to annoy her, her snotty karate-garbed brother and his girl friend, her more-suffering-than-thou sainted mother, and everything else associated with them. All of my feelings about my relationship with Caroline had surfaced now in a geyser of unstoppable aggravation.

Game cards drawn from a stack determined what each team should do on a given turn. First, Mi Mi and Edward, Jr. put on a highbrow parody of a Shakespearean monologue, right up their alley. Caroline hummed “Let It Be” for her mother, who stared at her with a blank face. Then it was our turn. I drew the father aside for strategizing. As I spoke, he nodded his head in agreement. He wore a huge grin on his face as he barked like a dog, howled like a jungle cat, and mimed a performance of Sean Connery as James Bond. When he finished, the entire audience broke into applause. “Bravo!” Edward, Jr. said.

“Bravo!” I looked at Caroline, and she was staring at me dangerously.

“Why are you doing this?” I could see her thinking. “Why are you acting like such an ass?”

Caroline broke up with me just after Christmas in a between-holiday period that was gray and laden with a heavy mist. She cited as reasons that I was stifling her, cutting her off from her circle of friends, keeping her from reaching full potential.

“I never know what you’re thinking from minute to minute,” she said. “I never know where I stand with you. You never make things easy. I like things to be easy sometimes.”

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» Thanksgiving for Sex I’d like to be able to report that I was dignified and distinguished in my response, but I was anything but. I made a total fool of myself, blubbering and whimpering like a hormonal teenager. I told her I couldn’t live without her, there would never be anyone like her, I would never feel the same way again.

“You’ll be all right,” Caroline said bluntly. “You’ll find somebody. You’ll do fine.”

I spent Thanksgiving Day the following year at home with my family, watching parades and football games on TV. On an impulse I called Caroline’s number for a quick let-bygones-be-bygones hello, but her brother Edward answered and I hung up immediately. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

33 ] FreightTrain Magazine