FICTION - $10.00
Beneath the current of a mother’s love is a dangerous undertow. Jennifer Woodworth’s stories show us the obsessions that motivate her characters’ actions, and build into waves that crash upon the shoreline of our subconscious.
N ot E verything L ovely and S trange I s a D ream
Shellie Zacharia M O N K E Y P U Z Z L E P R E S S . C O M
N ot E verything L ovely and S trange I s a D ream Shellie Zacharia
Monkey Puzzle Press Harrison, Arkansas
C opyright Š 2014 S hellie Z acharia All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America.
C over A rt Roy Berkelhammer
D esign Nate Jordon
M onkey P uzzle P ress 807 S. Oak St. Unit 3 Harrison, Arkansas 72601 monkeypuzzlepress.com
For Roy
T able of C ontents She Calls It Storytelling
1
The Artist’s House
3
Metamorphosis
4
Fairy Tale, Perhaps
6
Thirteen Sentences and One Fragment
8
Two Women in Blue
9
After Your Big Sister Calls You an Immature Nuisance
11
Call Becca
12
Sid’s Music Cavern
14
Follow
16
Wind Chime
17
Two Short Pieces in Which Birds (Real and Imagined) Appear
19
Yesterday My Dog Talked
21
We Have a Bear
22
Of Course I Will Return It
24
This Is Not the Start of a Joke: A Monkey and a Banana Were Riding a Tandem Bicycle
25
Not Everything Lovely and Strange Is a Dream
T he A rtist’s H ouse On a morning walk, I stop in front of a yellow house. Inner lamplight leaks through the halfway open door. On the porch, there’s an old wooden rocker, a large pine table with a mason jar of brushes and a canvas lying flat. An empty easel stands on the lawn. A man’s bicycle leans against an oak. Perhaps the artist is inside, sipping coffee, sketching flower petals or hands, the changing skin of peach or pear. Her lover is there. He has made the coffee. He stands behind her, rubs thick, callused fingers along her bare shoulders while she stares out the kitchen window. He names the color of the sky, calls it pearlgray and honeywhite. She doesn’t disagree. He mentions the music playing on her stereo, asks if it is Schubert. She says yes. He leads her to the bedroom, lamplight left on, front door ajar. Who has time to remember such things? I want to sneak up to the door, peek inside. But that would change everything.
3
Shellie Zacharia
C all B ecca We’d been bugging him for years, like family will do. We kept telling him, you’re such a great guy – you need a great girl – and yet he kept dating stupid women with pretty hair. We kept telling him, you should find Becca. Becca was his high school sweetheart. Smart. Cute. She smiled a lot. She made him cards. She loved manatees. The day they broke up for good, the going off to college break up, our brother stood in the driveway and cried. We shouldn’t have been watching, my sister and I, but we were. It was summertime. Home from college, we spent our days as camp counselors and our nights as drunks. We had boyfriends, and we had time. I suppose I should remember the car, Becca pulling away, but I don’t, and I’ll say it was a white Honda because quite possibly it was. There was the long hug, then Becca in her white Honda, our brother in the driveway with his hands at his eyes, and minutes after that – or maybe it was longer, most likely, yes – he walked inside and we fell on him like good big sisters. We hugged him tight, our little brother, and we smothered him with our love so he’d forget how his heart hurt, how Becca was off to Boston and he was off to Atlanta and things would never be the same again.
12
Not Everything Lovely and Strange Is a Dream
When we disliked the girls he dated, some he lived with, one he almost married, we’d say: Call Becca. We loved Becca. Where is she now? He’d say: Becca’s in Philly. Becca’s in Chicago. Becca is married. Leave me the fuck alone.
And then sixteen years after the driveway parting, he brings Becca to Thanksgiving dinner. Becca! we shout. We hug her. How great to see you! But we don’t think it’s her. We think it’s her sister. Or a clone. We think it’s an actress doing Becca. A bad job of it. We think she’s been struck by lightning. We aren’t sure about this Becca. She’s too thin. She says things like precious and lovely. She wears too much makeup, and her clothes are too nice. Call me Rebecca, she says, and we think, why? We think time has not been good to her. We think she looks tweaked. She doesn’t want beer or wine, and she doesn’t laugh enough at our jokes. We ask about manatees. We stare at our brother and can’t decide if he’s happy. When she heads to the bathroom, he tells us she’s going through a bad divorce. She’s living with her mother. We think this doesn’t sound good. Later we say, Bye, Rebecca, nice to see you again, and we hug her because we’re like that. We watch as they pull out of the driveway, and we worry. Our brother lives so far away. Sometimes we can’t reach him.
13
A cknowledgments Thank you to the following journals where some of these stories first appeared: Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine: “She Calls It Storytelling” Saw Palm: “The Artist’s House” LITnIMAGE: “Metamorphosis” Journal of Compressed Creative Arts: “Fairy Tale, Perhaps” Morpheme Magazine: “Two Women in Blue” Rumble: “After Your Big Sister Calls You an Immature Nuisance” Weave: “Call Becca” Studio Review: “Sid’s Music Cavern” Used Furniture Review: “Wind Chime” Sou’wester: “Two Short Pieces in Which Birds (Real and Imagined) Appear” A cappella Zoo: “Yesterday My Dog Talked” Burrow Press Review: “We Have a Bear” Conium Review: “Of Course I Will Return It” Corium Magazine: “This Is Not the Start of a Joke: A Monkey and a Banana Were Riding a Tandem Bicycle”
F iction - $10.00
“I’m convinced these sixteen lovely and strange short pieces by Shellie Zacharia are not dreams, but incantations she has created with which to work her magic. Read, whispered or sung, however you approach this work, you will be rewarded with its uncanny truths and unforgettable beauty.”
K athy F ish, author of T ogether W e C an B ury I t “Reading Shellie Zacharia’s marvelous collection Not Everything Lovely and Strange Is a Dream is like the relief of putting on glasses after years of fuzzy vision: suddenly you can see the tiniest things. You can pause to admire the old rocking chair on the artist neighbor’s porch or your new infatuation’s unevenly rolled shirtsleeves. The reward for that kind of attention, we learn, is wonder and perhaps magic.”
N ot E verything L ovely and S trange I s a D ream
D avid E benbach, author of Into the W ilderness
Shellie Zacharia is the author of the story collection Now Playing. Her fiction has appeared in Washington Square, The Pinch, Canteen, Sou’wester, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and dog in Gainesville, Florida.
M o n k e y P u z z l e P r e s s . c o m
Shellie Zacharia