2003-Vol55 by Quarto

i f.

SPRING literary magti?inp of mlumhia

univpmty

SUBMISSIONS

Current and recent undergraduate Creative Writing students— including nondegree students and students enrolled in other divisions of Columbia University who are taking undergraduate creative writing courses—are encouraged to submit to QUARTO. We welcome poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama, including excerpts from longer works.

executive editors VlNNIE APICELLA NICOLE A. SCHAEFFER-SANCHEZ MELINDA K. STEPANSKI

MICHAEL R. DELEON SUSEL B. ORELLANA MICHELE L. STRZELCZYK JENNIFER M.VERMILLION

Manuscripts may be considered elsewhere while under consideration at Q U A R T O . Please notify us of acceptance by another publication.

senior art director WHITNEY C.JOHNSON

QUARTO

612 Lewisohn Hall 2970 Broadway Mail Code 4108 Columbia University New York, NY 10027

art committee CAITLIN CRAVEN ALYSON HOLSCLAW JENNIFER M.VERMILLION DEBORAH WILSON

For information on becoming a patron of QUARTO, please call the office of the Creative Writing Center at (212) 854-3774.

JANE ASHLEY BUTLER CAITLIN CRAVEN LAURA ELLISON ALYSON EMORY HOLSCLAW WHITNEY C.JOHNSON CHRISTOPHER PARLATO NORBERT PUSKAS RENEE A. SMITH DEBORAH WILSON

QUARTO 2003 wishes to thank the General Studies Student Council (GSSC) and the Creative Writing Center for their generous support.

Text set in Garmond 3, headings set in Bembo. Cover art by Nicole A. Schaeffer-Sanchez, DISMOUNT, 2003. Copyright © QUARTO 2003 All rights are reserved and revert to authors and artists on publication. ISSN 0735-6536

managing editors

Submissions are nonreturnable. Please include your contact information (name, address, telephone number, and email address) on your manuscript.

Address all submissions and correspondence to:

faculty ndvhnr LESLIE T. SHARPE director, creative writing renter LESLIE WOODARD

drama

Mask Play ADAM SZYMKOWICZ 34 poetry

Three Poems (Untitled) KATYAAPEKINA

Her Awful Eating Disorder ABIGAIL FRANKFURT 30

There's Highway Safety and There's Driveway Safety MATT GRICE 76

Grandfather's Blueberry "White Knuckles GABRIEL OAK RABIN

Berry-Picking DAVID SHAMOON 28

Chronology JUSTIN WHITE 56 (nnn)firtinn

Texarkana BRAIN FRANCIS C H U

The Grandma Journals GAIL M. D O T T I N

Exhuming Mildred DECLAN JOYCE 39

A Midsommar Night's Dream IONA M.UNROE 77 Still Life DUSTIN BEALL SMITH 45

o H

the 2001 Q U A R T O award for literary excellence, one* to

Iona Munroe for A MIDSOMMAR NIGHT'S DREAM

TEXARKANA

hv Brian Franris Clhn A N D — F O R I WAS OUT OF BREATH—I SLOWED TO A WALK.

The life that blossomed at the tops of the grasses hid me—I hoped. They inched back and forth in the eternal breeze. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. The skin to be seen. It amazed me that such vast expanses of darkness could exist in California, of all places. As I walked along the road, still bathed in the glow of distant lamps, I thought of nearby Escalon. All of its soft comforts, the food it cooked and beds and homes, the anonymity of those lights on Main Street—I wanted, despite the dangers that awaited me there, only to return. To return to Escalon! How could I be so desperate to return to such a small town? What could I imagine there that would fulfill me? I began to run—first at a trot and then faster at the speed of—someone who could remind me that my heart beat—the smell of garlic in the kitchen—muttering about an unknown woman named Pollybeth. Wait. Let me catch up. My breathlessness made me feel that I was not a man. There was a warm spot on my pants; was it true that one could be so frightened? Was that first instinct? A flock of seagulls flew lost, chased inland by the storm. If I died suddenly—if I was assaulted, by men or by wolves—I would not want to die in such darkness. The field of boys being shot. The roads carved into these fields were dirt roads. I had been running on and walking on for weeks or hours. Nowhere to turn but into the grasses which could hide me and make me worry that I was already dead.

U y PL,

point. But a boy stares bravely ahead when dying. Salivating trophi of their greedy hands, catching the moonlight. Carlyle blissed and happy. He swam in the light like angels in movies, Light of God shining down to green pastures. He seemed to see me: it wasn't fair that I had run so far, taken so many turns (wrongly imagining myself to be running into the sheltered center of a labyrinth), only to find myself tangled (always in the netting of fate and history) on roads through fields that the Lindsays had driven for years. I saw us all stumbling. I couldn't have been the only one who felt that power. Perhaps there were reasons that men survived. But why had I stood upon my legs? And how had I gotten to Escalon in the first place? The police arrived casually, as if herding cattle. Siren lights twirling in the night from three cruisers. A child unlocked his hands and called out,—Cops! and all of them began to run towards me. Stampede, I thought happily, until the police began shooting. —I'm not one of them! They couldn't hear me in the thunder of their blind shooting. —We'll be safe past the train tracks! I heard. Carlyle pulled even with me and angrily grabbed my shirt, pushing me running faster. I looked off—instinct finally taking again—I saw the train approach, its slowness deceiving. We made it past the tracks and so did everyone behind us. We hid anywhere we could. We dug holes beneath rocks and turned ourselves into stalks of grass. We came upon a better idea. This land as plain as Kansas but when the cops came—after the entirety of that train had left—all they saw was a bunch of boys playing an innocent game of tag.

That I had dreamed it all: the light blue truck; a bullet being shot but never coming; my lead feet not fast enough to move me out of range of the next one, always coming; never turning around because turning around would make the Lindsay brothers real. The streets that I had run across, the streets that I could not look down for fear that I would see that light blue announcement of my death—streets which I'd turned into drawings to the dirt road that led me off the edges of Escalon and into the night. And if I was struck by a car, perhaps I did not che. Perhaps I would be safe with the driver and his guilt or at least a doctor and his nurse. A gunshot slammed open the night. Billy Lindsay's pistol: unmistakable. His older brother Carlyle waving his revolver in one hand and a Coors Light in the other. Unmistakable, in the lights that farmers erected every few hundred yards, to ward off the bats that picked their fruit and frightened their children. I wanted to relieve myself against a tree, against its trunk. An oak tree. An oak tree stood some yards away from me and spired over the grasses. Eight boys stood with their fingers tangled behind their heads, their feet shoulder-width apart. Each one thinking of his mother. Waiting for the thunderstorm to come for him, as if he'd tumbled from the tree and run off a ways (naughty, naughty) before being caught by the Lindsay brothers and their friend Mike Dobbins. —You shot him in the nads! Mike chortled. Do that shit again! Carlyle toasted with his can.—And there's worse things we can do to them. There goes the moon\ Attaboom\ Attaboom\ The question is, do we wait or get them while they can still feel it? I never agreed with those who said, Aberrations of a lovely world. Sacrifices to the greater joy. They weren't standing there like me. There was an order to it all, graceful, though no one there knew it except myself and the ninth boy, lying on his face (as if he'd run so fast he tripped) and blood coming all over his legs and the grass beneath. Billy approached and straddled him. He shot again. The other boys cried.—Men don't cry! yelled Mike Dobbins. He shot one of them in the face. It blew apart. The Lindsay brothers, Mike Dobbins, their three guns: I'd never been afraid of objects in my life. There didn't seem to be a

That was the restaurant where I sat with a bottomless cup of coffee and the best Eggs Benedict (with homefries and grits) I'd ever tasted; and there was the porch outside the train station where an old man playing dominoes told me the history of the town without saying a word. Back there was where a beautiful redheaded girl in a checkered shirt played with my shirt buttons and told me she liked me, for my buttons. And up there

o c

13 551

u o UH

s K

•as

was the red Coke machine that dispensed gfess bottles I'd loved as a boy. Main Street, in that inalienable sunshine, was occupied mostly by warehouses and tractor-trailers between highways. Vast open lots where the big trucks would park, by the McDonald's and the Carl's Jr. Around the corner where Main crossed with Love Street were the stores where the locals shopped, the sidewalks where they took in community. There, too, the train station; the diner with endless cups of coffee; a restaurant with endless cups of coffee; teenage girls feeling an immense power in their bodies (which boys like the Lindsays and Mike Dobbins and myself would never know); that tall red box and sugary goodness. The last girl I saw was drinking a diet shake and disappearing while I watched. Carlyle's girl: he held her and she melted like spring ice. But man is born without pockets. I wandered through the town with my face hidden between my palms. I tried to ape the stroll of those on Love holding babies tight around them—the only sign that they were afraid, and hadn't inured themselves. They nodded at me, even smiled—but knew I was a hopeless case. Oh peace. I wanted to cry out for them but all I heard was dominoes being washed like the winds of storms that never came, never in California. When I stopped at the Coke machine I found I had no money. When I stared out to the blue horizon I found I had no legs to take me so far. When I wanted to sit and wait for my final night I found myself in the arms of a woman who had short hair and reminded me of someone I once knew. She had been sweeping her porch while waiting for her daughters to come home. She swept me into her house. It had a strategic view down Main and was only a few yards from the Coke machine. It felt like love. —You shouldn't be out here, she said inside. They won't leave you alone. There were an astonishing many things to look at in a home. There was a pale color photograph of a man in uniform, taken long ago, and many more photographs of two girls growing. In the most recent ones they looked off, lovely and distant. There were plants and herbs and windows and baubles and walls. That is to say, there was life in it.

This woman who took me in was Mrs Alpha. She stuffed me into a bathroom in the back of her house before I could think of thanking her. It was tiny but well disguised and there was barely a door. She turned on the light to get a better look at me. I wanted to ask her where and why the other mothers had been shut up. She seemed satisfied that I wasn't already dead. I looked in the mirror to see if I agreed, our brown eyes once beautiful and now tired. I was blank but breathing. What do you get when you put two mirrors facing each other? All of my possessions waited in a room near the bar called Jack's off Main on Oak. It was a matter of going out to get them. She left me alone for hours or minutes. I heard sounds of cooking. Girls' voices cooing,—Hello, Mother. Gunfuror in the distance. The pockmarked wooden walls reminded me of faces in the empty field. I put the toilet lid down and sat. Mrs Alpha's daughters were one year apart: Amelia, 17, and Suzie, 16. Amelia had lovely lips and Suzie asked me how my day was. (How was my day? How was my day? A little sad. A little happy. Just like any other day. Like any good day, really.) After a couple of weeks I decided that I'd rather live in darkness than see myself. I unscrewed the light bulb in the bathroom and lay it gently in the trash can. Mrs Alpha had a brother named Jeffrey who came in every few days, drinking from a bottle of Coke. He lived a couple of roads down, close enough to come quickly with a shotgun if the girls felt any danger. I asked Mrs Alpha if she ever felt any danger. She said,—No. But it's made Uncle Jeffrey feel better since he lost his family in the fire of '93. I didn't ask about the fire of '93. The old man at the train station had told me all about it. The next time Uncle Jeffrey came by, I asked him to bring me a bottle of Coke. He said he didn't mind. The bottle he brought me was half-whiskey. I forgot all about the Lindsay boys. I never wanted him to stay long because drunken Nature called and he made awful shits. During the daytimes, Amelia and Suzie went to school. Early in the mornings Amelia came downstairs with her long brown hair and small face with the nose of a bird, secretly. She was very pretty and all the boys liked her—including, she told

n 53

n X

o u

16 t—i

me, both of the Lindsay brothers. I understood why she wanted to look pretty before school so I stood up from my toilet-bed and hid in shadows in the living room. One morning I heard a gun shot and fell to the ground. From then on, Mrs Alpha forbade Amelia from using the downstairs bathroom and made her share the upstairs one with her sister. She had no choice. Mrs Alpha started using the bathroom herself, but she wouldn't let me leave. I sat on the counter by the sink, watching her on her morning toilet: there was nowhere else in the small room to look. There were her bared legs. The absurd penetration of her tampons. Her urine cascaded into the toilet bowl. My bed. She tried to make conversation: —You're such a nice boy. I'm glad that Amelia and Suzie can have someone like you around. —Thank you, Mrs Alpha. —Oh why don't you turn the light on so I can close the door? Please? —No thank you, Mrs Alpha. She tried to ask me of my life before I had come to Escalon. I didn't remember. She nodded and said that I may've had a bump on my head—look away! look away!—I thought, nothing, nothing could be that simple. I wanted to ask her daughters questions. I wanted to ask them if they ever felt danger. If they appreciated Uncle Jeffrey and his shotgun. Their mother didn't but she was of a different generation. A different conception of danger. If they fell in love with boys like the Lindsays. I couldn't ask Amelia so I asked Suzie.—Not really, she said. I thought of those littlest boys and girls on playgrounds where I'd grown up. Where the Alpha daughters grew up, and the Lindsay brothers, where everyone grew up—somewhere in the open a boy tortures a girl he likes. Had life come down to this? Playgrounds like even the skyscrapered cities: still every scared boy trying to say there was something special in a girl worth teasing. Her big poodle eyes. She tastes like copper. I thought of giant children playing the biggest game of Risk ever. Mistakes climbing like the walls of skyscrapers. The Lindsay boys waving their guns limply against the lips of frightened and beautiful girls. I thought, Thank you for everything you all have done for me but maybe it'd just be

better if I stopped putting us all through such trouble and gave in. Let them kill me or spare me how they want. —You know, Suzie said, Carlyle and Billy—and Mike Dobbins—aren't so much different from all the other boys. They have their limits. I listened to her patiently. I listened to all of them patiently. I had no choice. There were many moments when I sat on the toilet seat, listening to them speak and scream and cry. There was piping that stretched downward from the upstairs bathroom where Amelia and Suzie went to be women. The sound of them flowed into my ears, sensitive by the darkness. I heard them gossip on occasion and I heard them yell, and once in a while I heard one of them—Suzie, I thought—cry over a boy only her sister could have. It seemed pointless to think about why people wanted to have each other—it was a such a natural instinct—to someone like me—who had nothing, felt nothing but fear, wanted nothing. The daytimes did not belong to the Lindsay brothers, who went to the high school. I took those hours to walk outside for a bottle of Coke. Mrs Alpha began leaving me 80 cents on the kitchen table each day. She wrote me notes that lied. I built myself a collection of emptied bottles. Once, the house was empty and I sat with a cold bottle of Coke on the soft red couch still warm from where those women sat: alone, in a house of women! I stared out through the windows at life on the passing streets. The air trapped in the house was moist and quiet. I believe that when Uncle Jeffrey walked in it choked him. The day that Mrs Alpha threatened to put up a sign on the window asking for somebody, please, to take away the Lindsay boys' guns, he destroyed it. He told me that he would protect me, that nothing human could wreck the house as long as he was around. He said, quite eloquently,—No one else in this town is stupid enough to make herself a target so why you? It never got put up. Amelia continued sneaking down to the bathroom to play with the cups of her lacy white bras on mornings she believed me to be asleep—though I could never sleep, living this nightmare. Suzie wept into the phone she dragged into the upstairs bathroom, leaving her sister nowhere to go. I didn't care. As much as they wanted to go, my urge was greater.

a z o

n x c

a, 3

In the house of women I was an untoiiched flower. Petals wide open. A couple months passed and I was absorbed.

18 if

Running, I missed most the moments I'd already forgotten. There was one night (brought about by fate) when Mrs Alpha ran out of eggs. She cried out,—Oh shoot; she'd just come back from a day of work. I never asked her what she did, but I imagine she did good. I thought, To do good she must have a certain breadth of freedom. And in such a town I thought she must have had hens in,the back, dropping eggs. A whole henhouse— lots of clucking, a few foxes. She said,—I'll have to go to the supermarket. She'd already come to her slippers. —I'll go, I said. —You can't go. Besides, you'd have to drive. And I'd have to give you directions. I missed driving. I missed getting directions to the supermarket. She drew me a map. She looked tired and I told her that I could cook for her, too. She wondered aloud why her girls weren't home yet and I told her that girls will be girls. The supermarket was on Love but way out on the edge of town after Love became Allen and Allen became Second. I wondered if it was near those fields where the Lindsays took boys to die and then all were saved by the good timing of a Santa Fe. Mrs Alpha gave me money and her keys. Hers was the silver Honda parked by the post office. The supermarket was past the fields where AYSO kids played on fall weekends and Little League kids played in the spring, and where in late summer the great beer festival brought out all the men of Escalon to drink happily until the sun set. There were two major supermarket chains in California and this one was a Vons; but they all looked and sounded the same on the inside, fluorescent lamps buzzing. They sounded more lovely than I ever remembered. People stared and left. They wondered, how could she invite me into her home? I heard them whisper. By the time I walked out, the parking lot was empty. I'd bought a dozen Grade A Large white eggs, with bills I rustled in my pants pocket. I'd bought trash bags, too— the Alphas were running low. I wanted to stay for hours with

the food items—no one could have blamed me—I suddenly remembered that I'd lost my watch in a ditch before this story even began. It was the emptiness that frightened me. It was the open, open sky, black as night—quiet as emptiness—open as possibility in the black, open night. Angel on a train, carry me away. Light blue truck and carry me home. Carlyle driving, Billy laughing in the shotgun chair, Mike Dobbins shooting from the back. I started Mrs Alpha's Honda forward—over the concrete bumps in each parking spot—through the narrow streets that I turned and turned and turned until I found Love again—holding an aggressive woman's hand—holding the children in the rearview mirror with its eyes. I didn't want to lose the Lindsay brothers and their light blue truck because they coveted such darkness. Where would I run without the screaming engine behind me? They shot a stray dog on the sidewalk to reload. I left the car on Love where I could and ran home. It had become my home. I would have to make it such. Mrs Alpha was pulling out sheets from the first floor closet. There were five or six of Amelia's girlfriends. Beneath the lamp of the mantle, one of them pulled on flannel pajama bottoms. She wore a long white thong. She shrieked and pulled the last trash bag in the house against her clothed chest. I only looked for a moment. Suzie smiled to see me. Amelia whined,— Mother, must he be here right now? —Amelia, I keep telling you that Stephen is our guest and you will treat him as such ... Now, dear, where are the eggs? A shot rang out. Carlyle sang: —There goes the moonl Attaboom\ Attabooml

I swallowed the high-pitched cry (typically associated with jilted teenage lovers) coming up my throat—looking out the window, underneath the curtains, for the twinned lights of Carlyle Lindsay's light blue truck. The girls screamed and flung themselves against the floor. Trash Bag Lux covered herself with her trash bag. I found a shattered windowpane in my hand, and blood, for it cut me. I'd hit the corner of a table just below my sternum and could not breathe. Really—it was good to be in a house of

n G

5" I" 3

til

2 PQ

2O s

women, smelling of garlic and bath powder, gauze and rubbing alcohol—and other nice things. It took only a few hours or days for Amelia and her friends to gossip loudly in sleeping bags in the living room. They went upstairs to look for another mirror to remind them that nothing changed. Suzie went to get the shopping bag. She came to bring me a late dinner in the dark bathroom where I could not look at myself. She asked me if I was okay. I joked that I was shaken but not stirred. She didn't get it. She asked me to tell her about myself. I could almost see her eyes. I told her that I didn't remember anything, that I could barely remember what happened yesterday. She said,—You remember everything just fine but you're afraid to tell anyone. You're afraid that by saying it you'll make this all real. I mean, that you'll make all the reasons that you're here. I tried to explain myself: how to me, to someone for whom running had become the routine, the natural rhythm of life— how could I remember as far back as yesterday? It had all been blurred when I saw it originally. I'd killed all my memories as sacrifice for my instincts. So much happened each day that my mind was overwhelmed and flooded. I spent all my time in the bathroom. I had reason to live in fear. My only other choice was to give in. She said I was making excuses. She said,—In all my experience, with life and books, it seems like that's how life is for everyone. I counted back. Memory is part of that. —Oh please. You might change your mind in a couple years when you get where I am, I said. A couple years? It would be nice to have someone like her around in a couple years. A couple years was short enough of a time. It became the routine that Suzie brought me dinner in the bathroom. Soon she began eating with me. One night she snuck a candle in. I caught a glimpse in the mirror of the tired face of an ogre; I did not look again. She brought in another candle, and soon another. The bathroom became full of them. They were like a family. I asked her not to graduate to the ceiling light. We

made love. Not with our bodies but through eating. We ate in silence and occasionally asked how the other was doing. We listened to the vacant sound of the television in the other room. She was beautiful. She had a smile. I would have kissed her but our mouths were full. She went back to finish her homework. I blew out the candles. I played elegies in my mind. I had no idea how many more boys went dead by the three guns. I heard them fire but could not count. Not enough boys in a small American town. I played elegies in my mind, for them. Suzie brought me a little cornish hen. All for me. My mouth watered. She asked me how I liked it. She didn't have her own plate.—Tastes like ptarmigan, I said. I was trying to win her over. —Mother had wanted you to eat it out on the kitchen table with everyone else but then she thought you might rather spend this moment here. —Everyone else? I asked. —Well, Uncle Jeffrey and me and her and Amelia. —This moment? —No one's heard a peep from the Lindsays in a week. A full week! she said. She led me out into the house. It was difficult to balance my plate and stare at the light at the same time, but I would not let her take the plate for me. My mouth watered again, looking at it. Uncle Jeffrey poured me a glass of wine and gave me a big bear hug. They were eating porkchops, mashed potatoes and buttery peas. I didn't ask them why they weren't suspicious. Had the Lindsays been found? Did they get in an accident, the light blue truck veering off the road one night and drowning them in leaves and blood and glass against the side of a tree? Had they turned their guns on each other one boring Friday night? I remembered my third-grade teacher Mrs Hebgen telling me not to ask a question that might be answered if I had a little more patience. I waited for them to explain. Uncle Jeffrey poured me another glass of wine. I was drunk. Uncle Jeffrey gave me another bearhug and a noogie. —I tell you, boy, I hate to see you go. —Go? Go where?

2 z n O

u u PL,

Mrs Alpha said she was emotional; she* got very drunk off the wine, and Uncle Jeffrey's breath reeked of the whiskey in his Cokes. Amelia and Suzie began pouring themselves glasses of wine, and we were all drunk and all happy, though I didn't understand why. The most I could grasp was that Mike Dobbins had not been seen for days. That didn't seem to me to be a good reason to be happy, since he was the worst shot. The Lindsays kept him around to add chance when their pleasure was rigged. We stayed happy for days. It was already summer and the sun did not set until after seven. Amelia and Suzie did not have school and Mrs Alpha stopped going to work so she could spend time with us. We sat in the living room with the air-conditioning on high, drinking red wine sent down from Napa until we passed out on the soft couch and wicker rocking chairs. We huddled against each other with our laughter. Uncle Jeffrey suggested that the Mayor wanted to hold a celebration of the quieting of the Lindsay boys—with me as honored guest and adopted son—and that was the day before the evening (we were sitting comfortably around the television) that Mike Dobbins with his bloody head cracked apart fell onto the porch and asked me to forgive him. He whispered. He'd fallen onto his stomach and held his mind from falling out. —We gotta spare him, Uncle Jeffrey said. He held out a long knife blade to me. But this was their town that these boys held hostage, cracked apart by a bullet from Carlyle Lindsay's pistol that came long ago. I wouldn't take it. No one would take it. Uncle Jeffrey held it to the knifed space that formed between all of us. He gripped it tightly. We had no choice but to carry out Mike Dobbins' weight into the street for the dogs and rats and vultures. I'm sure that it was just a nightmare we were all having, listening to Mike Dobbins being eaten on the street. But it did prove that whatever lightheartedness had ever been in Carlyle was now being replaced by something even darker. The next day two little slips of paper came out, one in the Alphas' mailbox. Mike's name and Suzie's and the name of someone I didn't know named Christian Stephens, one of only two so far to be spared.

Preparations were made. Suzie went to the room that I'd rented but it had been so long since I'd left that I was sure my possessions were gone. The landlady told Suzie that she'd been about to throw everything out, every morning she awoke, three months!—but no one else came, and she forgot. A miracle. Suzie carried out my heavy backpack on her shoulders. These Alpha women were strong, in their way. Amelia too, with her mother and sister, packing food into my backpack. Everything I needed. I wouldn't fit. They wanted to leave me in it on the side of a road. Preparations were made. Uncle Jeffrey fixed the window with one hand. The other hand on his shotgun. Suzie and I blew closed the diaphanous glow of the candlelight in our bathroom. Mrs Alpha said for me a prayer. I stopped eating and did exercises to fit me in small places. Mrs Alpha wanted me in the backpack. I did breathing exercises. I reminded myself, All my narrow senses submit to my breathing. My whole body is breathing, it will submit. My love is the breathing of my heart. Love is an avenue. Love is breathing through the cavity that the heart vacated to move up long ago. If I breathed I could blink and leave this rending of consciousness in my heart. I knew I was leaving and I was scared. I said,—Suzie, maybe I should just give in. Let them kill me or spare me how they want. I thought, maybe if the two of us fell in love together they would leave us alone. You are spared and you will spare me. I wondered, if these thoughts aren't finite—into me—I will learn to protect you. She said: —You can't give in. You have to keep running. They stuffed little snacks in the backpack: jerky and Oreos, all the boxed and bagged things in their pantry. They wrote me cards and took pictures of the four of us huddled in the bathroom. And I wondered if they would miss me. Mrs Alpha suddenly realized that my backpack with all those foods would slow me down. She went out back and burned it where the henhouse was supposed to be. I had forgotten to take out a fresh set of clothes. If I ever made it back—when I made it back, I reminded myself—I'd be wearing the same clothes I had on when I left. They'd smell of Amelia's perfume, Mrs Alpha's coffee, and Suzie's candles. They'd smell of the fire that burned

u U

3 eq

everything else. No one who smelled thtose clothes would believe me. Amelia was happy and lent all of herself to the efforts to save me. She followed the Lindsays around. Billy was in summer school and Carlyle planting cherry tomatoes with a gang of Girl Scouts. She came home daily with reports. Carlyle's tomatoes were sweet and he gave her a handful and boxes of Thin Mints. Billy got a B- on his essay about Grant taking the Mississippi. Amelia came straight to my bathroom one night. She sat down on the counter and began to cry. She left the door open. The sun was still holding up. She gave a slip of paper to her mother. It looked like the one Suzie had gotten days or' weeks ago: a narrow slip of white paper with three names neatly typed like possible answers to a test; and above them, in bold:

fired in the air. He wanted to be menacing but, half-naked boy that he was, even I thought he looked absurd. A dead seagull spiraled to the ground. It felt like a vacation. No one had noticed it while it was there but the heaviness in the town then left. I walked outside and said hello to the girl in the checkered shirt. Noisy bigrigs started up for the highway. I heard a man outside the train station say that this reminded him of his parents' Escalon. I looked down Love and down Main as if I'd never seen them before. I'm not sure I ever did. There was sun and warmth and beauty and quiet. There was a lovely town where nothing changed. There was a wind that once in a while blew dust in the air. I half-expected a horsedrawn carriage to come down the road from the dewy grass fields outside. I was no longer such bad news. I stretched.

The three of you were chosen randomly. One of you will die within the next five days. This is also random. The choice has already been made.

Suzie ran to me. I wanted her to jump into my arms. She looked at me as if expecting me to move but I was frozen, staring at her eyes like the sun that shone behind her. All I could do or say was hold out my feeble hand and offer to split with her a cold bottle of Coke. —Run, she said. I started counting through the change and found that I could not count. I stuffed nickels and dimes in, hoping the machine would give me a drink when I'd made enough. Suzie put a hand onto my shoulder and I couldn't even finger a coin. They fell on the ground—ding\ clingl—and bounced. I couldn't tell her I'd gotten all this change from beneath the cushions of her soft red couch, —Stephen, she repeated, you have to run. She put something in my hand that felt like a quarter. I looked—it was a New York City subway token—I could see it by the pentagon hole in the middle. I tried stuffing it into the Coke machine but she grabbed my hand and closed my fingers around it. She pushed me away. She pushed me away down Love. My legs ran though my torso strolled. My legs ran and wouldn't let me turn for one last look at her but I tried. She must have looked like her mother at that particular moment: her mother when I first saw her, sweeping up dust on her porch. I picked up my speed and took crazy detours. I ran through a

The grammar seemed correct. Mrs Alpha read the list carefully. She thought that Amelia stood a better chance—than Chris MacGregor, for example, because Chris was black. I knew better: that the Lindsay brothers were at least honest. Carlyle liked Amelia—I mean, he liked her liked her—and so did Billy, but Billy would never have the guts to stop him. Their game had grown beyond them. Mrs Alpha led me away from the bathroom. The jilted sobs grew louder.—I've tried so hard! I've tried so hard to be good! She must have felt so vulnerable with me there on the toilet. I imagined her falling against the wooden floor. Feeling even more vulnerable now. Amelia: thin, live, pretty. My bathroom. From my perch by the window I saw the Lindsays packing up the light blue truck in the light blue sky for a beach trip. The town so was happy to see them leave for a day—breathlessly— like heroes coming home, on parade. Two surfboards and two beach chairs in the bed and towels draped over one skinny shoulder of each boy. A cooler of beers and sodas was stuffed beneath the surfboards. Carlyle paused as if he'd forgotten something. He took his pistol out from the waistband of his board shorts and

n on

n c

a a E

u V)

26 3

-I

family restaurant where families waved together as I flew by. I went up stairs and burst onto a sunny roof and jumped onto another. I ran down stairs, vacant stairs onto an alley. There was nowhere to run from a vacant alley and I went back to Main looking for where it ran into the highway. Where it ran into the highway there were many cars stuck in traffic heading towards the beaches out on the coast. Or were they headed back from the beaches on the coast?—was it morning or afternoon?—the sun was out forever—I had lost my watch in a ditch before this story even began^^and when I would see the light blue truck— It would be too late. What would Suzie do? She'd say, Take the small streets— and so I took them. I didn't stop running until I hit the highway. I didn't stop running until I could no longer see Escalon, behind me or in front of me. I thought to myself, Don't stop to think how long you can run. She's right. And suddenly I achieved clarity: that no one could be free, cognizant only of his own joy. There could have been a running motorcycle waiting for me on the roadside, and a case of six thousand sweet and bubbly Cokes at the end. There could have been a million homes in America like the Alphas', and I could have lost the plot, but it wouldn't have mattered. The Lindsays would be waiting at every red light, with sand between their toes. On the hypothetical motorcycle the wind will blow me off—gravity will tip me groundward—stop me to smell the roses, if you love me—what will we wear in the morning, dear?—when I see your eyes—and where are my keys! Carlyle didn't recognize me at first among the stalled and busy life on the highway, bending right onto Love. No: life bends love. Clarity was the final breath. No such proof how those things we put our passions into ended. We left traces in the spots we went to. Lazily, Carlyle turned his truck after me. There were no helicopters filming our chase for the evening news, only an unmarked car and a police cruiser following us to another roadside diner. It was silvery with memorabilia from the 50s and smelled of toasted french fries. There were no other exits besides the front door, and there never would be. I was hidden in a large freezer with a thousand ham-

burger patties. It has never made sense to me why so many people have cared about my life: the cook staff, the Alphas and their lessers, the Lindsays, the three cops (two men in uniform and a woman in a beige suit) who drew them back outside until they pointed five guns at each other. Those of us who make it through: we must be the strong ones. Everyone else branded; if not branded then dead. To a man who is running everything must look so slow. But how could I be a man, running these roads alone? As I ran out of the diner I saw them fall like dominoes. Carlyle and Billy shot the two men, the woman shot Carlyle, Billy shot her. Billy panicked. He ran east, he ran south, running. Looking back I saw him running. Looking back, he followed me.

5 on

BERRY-PICKING

by David Sh^tnoon WHEN DAYS, STILL LONG AND WARM, BEGIN THEIR WANE,

Crisp brown along their sides, and flutter down To rest, as leaves grown weak from windy joy, When dusk alight with melting sun burns bright To die, to sleep and wait for Spring's return, When shade's a •welcome shelter from noon sun But brisk September breezes chill the night. I skidded down a wooded trail and stopped. Worn down to stony clay a pace behind, The path, less deep here, came to final rest. The clearing, hemmed by trees, marked end to most, But out to gather berries as I was, I knew behind the stoutest tree lay more— A thinner, less trod path that led to fruit. I crept with pointed feet around the tree, My arms and front pressed hard against the bark, Unsure of where to lay my shaky steps Lest I succumb to slippery roots and fall. I passed unharmed, and skipping down a mound Of earth, jogged past a stretch of chirping grass And leapt a trickling brook to reach the plants. My quick young hands reached through the thorny stems And filled my eager bucket full of red. Then panting as I climbed a pebbly hill, I peered into the trees to find a spot At which to sit and eat my merry feast. The place I chose looked down upon the creek, And back against a trunk, I tossed off stones,

Which bounced and rolled and stumbled to the wet. In time I stopped my noisiness and sat; And smiling and content among the leaves My empty pail beside my outstretched legs, I listened to the quiet of the woods. But, lo, I could not bear to sit for long. The rustling of the forest pressed on me, And in the warmth I shivered. Glancing left And right with darting eyes, I turned around. Again I shuddered, rising to my feet, And walked at first, but each skipped step bred more, And glancing towards the sky my pace increased, Till bright and fast as sunset's burn I ran. The burst from 'round the trunk of that first tree, The crunch of that first step on well-known soil— It felt like breaking through from under water. I slowed my step, but did not cease to trot Until I saw the warm light of my home.

HER AWFUL EATING DISORDER

by Abigail Frankfurt biting at the foot choking on every toe gagging on heel and sole

the belly button by then had collected enough sweat to serve as a side dish for each and every finger

the holy ball of ankle bone was trouble to break down

we watched her wipe her mouth with the folds that hold a breast

but by the better half of her left calf she chewed and swallowed strategically envisioning the crunch as that of a carrot

and a grin crossed her face when she noticed she wouldn't waste even the weakest fib which she used as chopsticks wedging them under both armpits leaving no skin untouched

BUT OF COURSE SHE BEGAN

eating with some ease to the hinge of her knee gnawing the fat that enveloped both thighs by the time her teeth grabbed the groin the going had gotten good its hairy flesh became food fit for the best occasion

as the audience sighed in disgust at what was eerily impressive. What sort of digestive system could eat so much meat? (having begun the feast the strictest of vegetarians)

UNTITLED I,

2003

UNTITLED

II, 2003

hy Nicole A. Schaeflfer-Sanrhe?

JOHN:

Nothing's wrong.

ELENNA:

JOHN:

Wife?

ELENNA: JOHN:

MASK PLAY

JOHN:

Originally performed by John Bogar and Elenna Stuaffer at Columbia University as part of Anne Bogart's Collaboration class. Directed by Genevieve Bennett with a bare bones set.

Husband?

I think you're having an affair.

ELENNA:

hy Adam S7.ym1cnwir7

That can't be. Something is very wrong. (Transition.)

I would never have an affair.

I think you're having an affair.

ELENNA:

Not me. You must be mistaken. (Pause. Transition.)

ELENNA:

Doctor?

The transitions mark a change in character for at least one of the two performers and a change in location. It may be punctuated by a gong or triangle being struck. They may change masks or alter them in some way.

JOHN: Yes?

(At rise, J O H N and E L E N N A stand, look at their neutral masks and then put the masks on in unison.)

JOHN:

JOHN: EXCUSE ME. EXCUSE ME. ELENNA: JOHN:

They told me you could help me. Can you help me?

E L E N N A : YOU must be mistaken.

(Transition.)

ELENNA: Doctor? JOHN: Yes? ELENNA:

Have the tests come back?

JOHN: Yes. ELENNA:

What's wrong with me?

Never mind. (Transition.)

Excuse me.

ELENNA: JOHN:

But my husband ... He ...

What?

ELENNA:

JOHN:

They said you could help me.

Have the tests come back?

There's nothing wrong.

ELENNA: JOHN:

Huh?

ELENNA: Me? JOHN:

ELENNA:

Yes?

Can you help me?

ELENNA: NO, not me. JOHN:

But my wife ... she said ...

ELENNA: JOHN:

Are you talking to me?

I don't know what to do. Is it me?

ELENNA: YOU JOHN:

should talk to someone else.

I've come to talk to you. I don't know where else to

n N

N O

turn. Is there something I can do?

ELENNA:

JOHN:

Doctor?

ELENNA: JOHN:

I don't have time.

Yes?

My wife ... she ...

ELENNA: Yes. JOHN:

I don't think she loves me.

ELENNA: DO

JOHN:

What do you want?

ELENNA:

If it's too much ...

JOHN: NO,

Good day.

I'll get it. {Transition.)

She opened herself to me once. It was May. We were outside popping the heads off dandelions. I think she loved me then though it's hard to say for sure. That was many years ago. I hadn't asked her to do anything yet. I think she was happy.

JOHN:

37 I t

ELENNA: JOHN:

JOHN:

I want to end my life.

I don't do that.

ELENNA: J0HN:

Doctor?

Yes?

ELENNA: ( J O H N removes his mask.)

1 n

you want me to prescribe something?

That won't be necessary.

ELENNA:

If it's too much trouble ...

JOHN: NO. ELENNA:

GO N

JOHN: Oh.

-Si

JOHN:

Some juice.

Who does?

You could change your mind. I could prescribe somthing.

ELENNA:

Never mind. {Transition.)

(JOHNputs his mask on. ELENNA removes her mask.)

He could be kind, though. I don't know how long ago he stopped doing those kind little things. Gradually, they just stopped. He won't even take the garbage out unless you ask a couple of times. He thinks it's all my fault, but it isn't. He changed. I just stopped responding when he stopped being himself. ELENNA:

JOHN:

Excuse me?

ELENNA: JOHN:

Would you go to bed with me?

ELENNA: JOHN:

Yes?

You're married.

I know. Would you go to bed with me?

(ELENNAputs her mask back on.) ELENNA: JOHN:

Can I get you something?

ELENNA:

JOHN:

Good-bye. Wait. I could pay you. {Transition.)

Like what? ELENNA:

JOHN:

What do you want? JOHN:

ELENNA:

Nothing.

I don't think so. Good day.

Doctor?

Yes?

ELENNA:

I want to end my life. I !

N U

s N C/3

JOHN: I don't do that. ELENNA:

I could pay you. {Transition.)

J O H N : Wife? ELENNA: Husband?

JOHN:

I want to go to bed with you. EXHUMING MILDRED

ELENNA:

I know.

hy Dedan Joyre

J O H N : I could pay you. ELENNA:

I don't know. Husband?

JOHN: Wife? ELENNA:

Will you kill me?

JOHN: I don't know. ELENNA:

I could pay you. {Transition.)

J O H N : Doctor? ELENNA: JOHN:

Yes? Doctor?

Yes?

ELENNA

and J O H N : I feel alone.

(ELENNA andJ O H N

{End ofplay.)

take off their masks in unison and look at them.)

EARLY ON A SUNDAY MORNING IN LATE NOVEMBER 1966 MY

father came into the bedroom I shared with my older brother and sister and announced, matter-of-factly but with an unaccustomed softness in his voice, "Now, a terrible thing has happened. Your mother has died." I was five years of age, and this was news to me. All three siblings remember the event slightly differently, but, I am fairly certain that mine is the definitive version. What was beyond dispute, however, was that Mildred, my mother, had died of cancer the previous evening. I had been aware that my rnother was not well, had visited her once or twice in the hospital and could still recall the evening, several weeks previously, when she was carried out of our house on a stretcher by two uniformed men. But I didn't make too much of this. She was sick, she'd get well. That was the way it went, according to my fiveyear-old experience. In actuality, she'd had terminal cancer and her chances of survival, especially given the nature of the Irish public health system in the 1960s, were about nil. Back then, however, it was figured that the best way to protect children from this type of thing was to isolate them from what was going on. This system worked fine, of course, until someone died. It's only been in recent years that it has occurred to me how strange it is that I should have not a single memory of the months that followed. I have no recollection of grieving for my mother, no crying in bed at night. This vacancy is suspicious, of course, and in my more self-indulgent moments I am inclined to think that the wound inflicted on my quaking five-year-old soul was so grievous that I had to block it all out. When I try to plumb the depths of

6 u Q w Q

s -5

this ocean of despair via some self-administered gestalt or scream therapy, however, I still come up empty. Maybe I was just such a noisome little wanker that I didn't care. I don't think so, though. I have quite a few memories of Mildred, almost all of them good, and even the bad ones mostly involve not the arbitrary parental crap I was to deal with by the truckload later on but merited displeasure at my crossing of some clearly demarcated line. For example, I pee'd in a can once instead of going to the bathroom. Don't ask my why. It made sense at the time. I also acted up at Mass, which was a definite no-no. (To the best of my knowledge, though, I never pee'd in a can at Mass. That, I believe, is grounds for excommunication, even for five-year-olds. I did, however, via the mysteries of transubstantiation, once drop the body of Jesus out of my mouth. But that's another story.)

expected her to do, but she did it anyway. In the event, it backfired, because school always seemed so easy to me as a result that I soon got out of the habit of making any effort. But that's another story. Anyway, she was dead, and life went on. My Dad hired a housekeeper to take care of us while he was at work in a bank in the city centre, the same organization he worked for his entire working life, forty-three years to the day. Mrs. McGarry was a working-class lady from one of the small backstreet houses in nearby Dun Laoghaire. She was kind and generous and I loved her. She had a daughter named Teresa who was, as I recall, a 60s swinger, her hair in a beehive, forever checking her makeup and dreaming of Paul McCartney. For school lunches my older brother and I would go to a local lady who used an extra front room to serve heavy, meat-and-potatoes lunches to local workingmen. I remember brawny, tattooed arms, kind concern for the little bollix who had lost his poor mother God rest her and Mary between us and all harm, and endless bantering back and forth of that Dublin wit which is, I still believe, the sharpest there is.

I remember her broad smile, the unaffected cry of delight and the open arms to run into when I arrived down for breakfast each morning. I must have been about two, because I was old enough to navigate the stairs on my own. I remember "helping" her with the housework and the invariable ritual of stopping for "elevenses," a mid-morning snack that always seemed to consist of tea and fig rolls (think fig newtons that don't taste like landfill). I remember the look of delight on her face as I counted up to a hundred for her and Mrs. Drummond, our neighbor from two doors down who, about twenty years later, would have her oldest son Michael stabbed to death by his wife, later committed to an institution.

^fildred faded by degrees from memory. But I missed her, I knoy. As late as age twelve or thirteen, I used to fantasize that a wpfnan from across the street that bore a passing resemblance to my mother was in fact my mother, that Mildred's death had been faked or that she'd had to disappear for a while to join the witness protection program or that it had all been one big misunderstanding and that she was going to come back and rescue me from the hellacious, straight-out-of-the-Brothers-Grimm-stepmother that I'd landed up with when my Dad remarried out of what he later admitted was "paralyzing loneliness." I realize now, I guess, why Elvis keeps turning up in convenience stores or launderettes.

Most of all, I remember the home-schooling. I started kindergarten at age five, like most kids, but for a couple of years prior to that Mildred used to teach me at home. She taught me the alphabet. I remember how long it took me to sort out the difference between "b" and "d." (When my own five-year-old daughter Emma was learning the alphabet, I was tickled to see that she had exactly the same trouble.) Mildred also taught me some words in Gaelic. She would draw what I recall as very accurate little pictures of a sweater and underneath write the word "geansai," or a shoe with the word "brog." This homeschooling, which was more or less unheard of at time, has always seemed to me the strongest evidence of her devotion. It was completely elective, something no one would ever have

Anyway, rescue never came and so I did what most kids of similar background do: dropped out of college, took drugs, overdosed, went to hospital, laughed it off, obsessed about rock music, dissolved to ectoplasm in the company of attractive women, moved to London, dissolved to ectoplasm in the company of attractive English women, moved back to Dublin, series of miserable jobs, moved to New York, went back to school, wrote essays about my experiences, and so on. My psychiatrist

w n

x S

B u w

a -a X tq

tells me that most people of my emotional background end up becoming criminals, but that something in me propelled me along a different route. I would say that was the fear of being sodomized in prison. On one of my rare visits to Dublin, my wife happened to ask my father if we had any family photos. My Dad said we did, which was news to me. He left the room with something like eagerness and came back a few minutes later with a shoebox filled with those postage-stamp-sized black-and-white polaroids that were common in the 50s. You can learn pretty much all you need to know about my immediate family from the fact that our family photos are stored away in a shoebox in an upstairs closet. Most of the photos were of Mildred and my father during the early years of their marriage and ended abruptly, and I fancy significantly, around the time my mother died. Looking at them was a rare and more than slightly surreal view of a part of my life and history that had hitherto been a complete mystery to me, never discussed, never spoken of. (In classic fairytale fashion, the evil stepmother had evidently taken pains to see that all memories of family life before her were kept hidden from view.) Mildred and my father, to my surprise, had evidently had a life prior to my birth. They had a regular circle of friends, they got dressed up for dinner parties. They held each other and smiled for a photo taken on their engagement day. They even dabbled in amateur theatricals, for God's sakes! One might almost have taken them for normal people.

pain so excruciating that, as Mildred's sister Margaret told me a few years ago, just brushing lightly against the bed she was lying in was an almost insupportable agony for her. My taciturn, bad-tempered, emotionally remote father, then, was not thus simply because he was thus. We have begun to reach adulthood, perhaps, when we realize that our parents experience life in as many dimensions as ourselves, that they have a purpose other than the withholding of privileges, and that they screw up our lives, mostly but not only, because they don't know any better.

0 tfl

n n

The photo, and the general picture of pre-Declan life that the photos revealed, have awoken in me a desire to know Mildred better, to try and bridge a gap of better than three decades. If I were to come to understand her better, I hoped, I would gain insight into the confounding mysteries of my own nature. What had she been like? What interested her? Annoyed her? D e lighted her? The only thing I own that belonged to her is a blue, hardcover edition of Dickens' David Copperfield, which was one of a complete set of Dickens that she owned. On the flyleaf is a "This book belongs to ..." inscription written in my mother's careful hand and dated January 1942. From this I deduced that I inherited my love of books from her. My brother, sister and I are all avid readers, whereas my Dad rarely cracks anything other than the Irish Times. I enlisted my aunt Margaret's help. She is one of Mildred's three sisters, and the only one to live past her 30s. (She's in her 70s now, and could pass for 55. Fate, perhaps, is trying to make some sort of amends.) Margaret wrote me a 24-page memoir that dealt in large part with her memories of Mildred, and that included the following revelations: as a young woman my mother worked at a greyhound track, pretty risque for a woman at the time, and got on well with all the men because of her quick wit. She suffered from insomnia, as do I. She loved true crime stories and lurid detective magazines from the US. She would stay up half the night reading poetry and be bleary-eyed the next day. She was nervous, afraid of the dark, and always wanted company when she went upstairs alone. She was a poor traveler, and got motion sickness easily. She hated to sew, loved to knit, and was very generous, especially with her clothes, gold dust in post-war

I was especially taken by one photo of my Dad, clowning around and pulling a goofy face with a secretary at his job. He looked about 25 or so, younger than I was when I saw the photo. What was remarkable about it is that it indicated that my Dad had a sense of humor, something that he has managed, in my experience, to keep completely hidden except for those rare occasions when he has had more than a couple of belts of whiskey. And it began to dawn on me, for the first time in my self-obsessed life, what a mortally cruel blow Mildred's death must have been to him, how much of him she had taken to the grave with her, including, apparently, his sense of humor. I'm around the age now that my Dad was when he lost her, and losing Nancy is unthinkable, much less losing her after months of

RILIJ

O w

44 s 3

Europe. She gave birth to a stillborn boy in 1964. He would have been my baby brother but he had hydrocephalus and my parents weren't even allowed to see him. When diagnosed with cancer, she turned down an operation that might have saved her life but also stood a good chance of leaving her in a wheelchair. She couldn't face the wheelchair, according to Margaret. When Mildred's mother (my granny) died in 1975, she said "Hello, Mildred" moments before her death. All of the above were fascinating to read, but at some point I have had to accept that there are limits to how close I am going to be able to come to Mildred. She's essentially beyond reach,, I guess. I lost her before having a chance to know her, and what's left are my own patchy memories and someone else's reminiscences. I can't tell you what it would mean to me to be able to sit and talk with her for an hour. A couple of years ago I watched the French movie Ponette, which is about a five-year-old girl who loses her mother. Towards the end, when her mother reappears in ghostly form, I had a fifteen-minute, hopelessly blubbering crying jag that told me that Mildred was still very much a part of my life, her absence notwithstanding.

STILL LIFE

Iry Dnstin Reaii Smith M Y FATHER DIED IN T H E DINING ROOMâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;BY HIS OWN DESIGN.

When it became clear that he could no longer negotiate the stairs to his bedroom, he chose the dining room, the smallest of the downstairs rooms, for his final stand. It was closest to the kitchen and not too far from a toilet. My younger brother and I dismantled and removed the oval-shaped mahogany dining table, around which our family had sat for as long as any of us could ijemember, and in its place we installed a hospital bed. We left the armoire where it stood, shifted the highboy to the left, and rearranged my father's oil paintings on the wall. My sister rented a standby oxygen system and set up a makeshift riursing station consisting of a large box of Kleenex, a mercury thermometer, a tiny blue bottle of morphine, and a crystal vase fdled with fresh dahlias. My mother, who was in the early stages of dementia, gazed in wonderment and confusion at the transformation. "Oh, my!" she said. When my father got into bed that first night, dressed in a bright red sweat suit (hood and all), I turned to my sister and whispered, "Here we go."

She is present, too, in the way I raise my daughter. Not a day goes by that I don't tell Emma at least a dozen times how much I love her and love to be with her and how smart and funny she is. This, I suppose, is a kind of storing-up mechanism on my part, insurance against the possibility of my own sudden departure. That's about all I can do, I suppose. Apart from praying that I don't get cancer. And if I should get smitten, I can at least write Emma a long letter for her to keep and open on her eighteenth birthday, a letter which would detail all my hopes and dreams for her. Something Mildred, for reasons that I have yet to deduce, never got around to doing.

liLLL

To die at home, at age 86, with your family around you, is storybook stuff. Timing is key, as my father was aware. He did not want to exhaust everyone with anticipation. "You have your own lives to worry about," he said. He and my mother lived in Cross River, New York. My younger sister Leslie lived three hours away, in Boston; my brother Lochlin five hours north, in Vermont; and I, two hours west, in Connecticut. I also kept an apartment in New York City, an hour away. The three of us were free to leave our work at a moment's notice, and we wouldn't have

00 h-l

missed his dying for all the world, but Dad had got it right: we didn't want to be repeatedly gearing up for the big event. My father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer at age seventy. Sixteen years later, in the late summer of 1995, the cancer spread to the bone. Complications set in about a month later, just before he died. At the beginning of that final month, October, I was on leave from my work as a key grip in the film business, and was finishing up a writing fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Leslie called and said she'd just taken Dad to the hospital with congestive heart failure. I told her to put him on the phone. "What the hell is congestive heart failure?" I asked him. He explained, between gasps for air, that it had something to do with water in the lungs. "If it isn't one thing it's another," he said. "Stay where you are, I'll wait till you get back." When I arrived at the hospital three nights later, his young doctor, a family friend, was giving him a foot massage. He responded to her gentle strokes with appreciative "oooohs" and "aaahs." Clearly he was still having trouble breathing. I leaned over him, kissed his bald pate, and took hold of his gnarly hand. "Well, it looks like we're coming to the end here," he said. "Really?" I said. The old man's grip seemed pretty strong. I glanced at the doctor. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Yep," said my father, "looks like the time has come." "How does that feel to you—coming to the end?" I asked. "To tell you the truth," he said, pausing to catch his breath, "I'm kind of looking forward to it." Looking forward to it? Probably no one looked forward to death less than Lawrence Beall Smith. He talked about his dying easily enough, but in fact "being in the world" was the only perspective he ever allowed himself. His own father, an ardent mid-western Baptist, had ruined him for religion and thus for the promise (and perspective) of an afterlife. "Life lives on in art," my father would say, "and in the memory of others." With this conviction he managed, until the last month of his life, to forestall the deeper considerations: How would he know if his art lived on? And, how, exactly, might he be remembered? Even I, at the tender age

of 55 and with no artistic track record, had been seized with fear by such considerations. So, I kept a sharp eye on my father for any fissures that might develop in his stoic veneer. His propensity to ignore or delay the serious stuff permeated his being, and presented to those around him the portrait of an upbeat and singular man who had carved out for himself a nearly picture-perfect artist's life: working at home, raising a family, being his own boss. For me, as a teenager during the 50s, his carefully carved world felt claustrophobic—the antithesis of being "on the road." His stoic refusal to give vent to misery, anger or complaint (the Zeitgeist of the time), or to respond directly to my own venting, seemed to me like weakness, not strength. He was of a mind to let unpleasant things blow over, which meant that his response to emotional outbursts was often silent and thus open to interpretation. Rather than try to interpret my father's unsaid words, I gravitated toward my more forthcoming mother, Winn. A visual artist herself, and a big fan of Carl G. Jung, she appreciated metaphor and provided psychological substance to complex emotions. She saw shadows where my father saw light. Predictably, the silent tension between my father and me ballooned quite early, and it carried well into my adult life. It mellowed only after I quit drinking and got married for the second time and bought a house and land, as he had done. And by the time I got around to investigating my own inadequacies as a father to my daughter, I'd long since forgiven—and perhaps had even grown to admire—his stoicism. When it came time for him to die, however, it seemed critical to me not just to honor his life and his art, but also to discover what he had meant by his life and art. This necessitated invading the very space that stoicism protects: the raw vulnerability from which the artistic impulse is born. With the help of potassium pills, the water left his lungs and after a few days, I drove my father home from the hospital. Instead of stopping at the house, where the dining room was all set up for him, I pulled the car up to his painting studio, a converted barn that stood several hundred feet from the main house. "You probably want to get back to work," I said.

1 47

S 00

H p-j fc £ Q Q ^4-O ^q1 =3 ^

I helped him out of the car and steadied him across a patch of gravel and eased him through the studio door. Once inside, he just stood there, stock-still. He looked at the cavernous space where for fifty years he'd painted book illustrations and portraits, and churned out lithographs and etchings. A cold northern light washed over the easel, on which rested an upside-down painting of a single daffodil. The west wall of the studio was covered with thumb-tacked photos of his children and grandchildren, all of whom he'd painted or sculpted at one time or another^One of these, a faded black-and-white 8 x 10 of my daughter and me, had been on that wall for twenty years. The place smelled of turpentine, linseed oil, and, though my father hadn't smoked a pipe since the 70s, tobacco. He frowned at his surroundings, as if they constituted another man's space, then shook his head and turned back toward the door. When he failed to check the thermostat or even look at the pile of gallery announcements, I understood that it was over for him—the performance of art. His life's occupation (he'd never had a normal job) no longer stood between him and the end of life itself. My heart sank, looking at him. "It's okay," he said, on our slow walk toward the house. "Don't you think it's okay?" "It's up to you. The studio's not going anywhere." "Who's going to win the World Series?" "Cleveland's my guess," I said. "I don't know," he said, "Atlanta's got that pitcher, Tom Glavine." Leslie took over the following morning, and I returned to my house in Connecticut. My second marriage was unraveling. We had no children together, my wife and I, and our work was taking us in different directions. I'd decided to pursue writing rather than return full-time to the film business—a decision that would require lifestyle sacrifices my wife had no intention of making. While she was away, I supervised the final week of roof shingling. I put the vegetable andflowergardens to bed for the winter, painted the south side of the garage, raked up the last of the leaves and winterized the pickup truck, the tractor,

and the riding mower. Then I packed a couple of bags and moved into our apartment in New York City, by myself. A few days later, I visited my father and found Leslie read-

o H

z a

ing to him from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal

Rinpoche. "The painful bardo of dying falls between the moment we contract a terminal illness or condition that will end in death, and the ceasing of the 'inner respiration.'" In deference to my arrival, she closed the book, patted my father's hand, and left the room to help Hilda the housekeeper make some lunch. "How about that!" my father said. "I'm in the bardo of dying!" I pulled up a chair beside his bed. He seemed as feisty as ever, though noticeably thinner in the face. We entered into an obligatory ritual of small talk. He asked about the weather in Connecticut, and I asked about the status of their house and grounds. Did the storm windows need washing? Has anyone cleaned the roof gutters? Were there any Brussels sprouts left in the garden? I knew, of course, that I was talking to a man for whonl these were no longer pressing concerns, but I didn't krrow how else to talk to him. As we bantered back and forth about the fine art of window caulking, it dawned on me that I, too, was now a man for whom these topics of male domesticity were of no concern. I'd left all that behind. Then, by some unspoken agreement, we dropped the subject. A silence ensued. I stared past my father, out the window at the dried-up reservoir bed across the road. The reservoir, normally a large body of water, had been drained months earlier to facilitate repairs to the dam, four miles away. Brown swamp grass waved in the breeze where once the water had been. I turned to a small oil painting hanging over the bed. Three yellowish-green Bartlett pears lay on an orange-pink cloth, set against a dove-gray background. A perfectly shaped pear on the right sat squarely on its bottom, which beautifully resembled a woman's buttocks. A fat pear on the left tilted a little to the left—on one cheek, as it were. A tall, skinny pear stood in the middle, favoring its right cheek. You could feel the hardness at the surface of the pears, and sense the softness With-

on FQ

in, at the points where the skin dimpled and turned brown. It was not a still life so much as a dance. "All three pears have stems," I said. My father gave me a puzzled look. "How long did it take you to paint that?" "Days," he said. "Why three?" I asked. "I didn't say it took three days," he said. "I mean pears—why three pears? The Trinity comes to mind, no?" I smiled. My father frowned. "What are you talking about?" Again, I studied the painting. "Seriously," I said. "Why not four pears? Or five? Why Bartlett and not Bosc?" "Because," he said, "that's what was lying around." "But why did you paint them?" He shrugged. "Maybe the pears are your kids," I suggested. Again, he shrugged, this time with a flash of annoyance in his eyes. I noticed him looking at my left hand, at the lack of a wedding band. "Like it or not," I said, "art has a kind of iconography— produced by the artist, or perceived by the viewer." He nodded, guarded and suspicious. "So those pears could be anything. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ... or your own children ... or the third season of life ..." "Or just pears," he said. "No," I said, "not just pears. We bring something else to the experience of looking at pears, don't we?" Silence. My father appeared as annoyed with me then as he'd ever been and I, in turn, as frustrated. "Listen, I know what those pears mean to me," I said. "But, why did you paint them—instead of turning on a ball game or taking a walk or having a martini?" I felt like a wolf circling a weakened sheep. I couldn't control myself. Hilda, the Ecuadoran housekeeper, came in through the swinging door holding a tray with four bowls of chicken soup. My sister followed with a plate of toasted English muffins. My

mother passed out cloth napkins, and we sat in dining room chairs around the bed, while Hilda served my father and then put bowls on our laps. "Gracias, Hilda," I said. "Es la mejor sopa de polio en todo el mundo. La propia vida de mi padre. Gracias." Hilda looked at my father and put her arm around my shoulders. "He speak such good Spanish!" My father ignored her compliment. Though I visited twice more that week, I didn't really get to engage my father again until the day he died. I'd driven out the night before, November 1st, and found him dancing in the living room with Hilda. My mother sat on the sofa laughing gaily at the scene. I stood in the vestibule, looking in, listening: Mozart's violin sonata number 6, in G. My brother and sister watched from the shadows at the far end of the living room. As a youpg man, my father had looked a bit like Fred Astaire and had shared a similar lightness of step. He moved stiffly now, with pain, but the allegro dance momentarily unveiled his ytiuthful self—just long enough to evoke and emphasize the kind of spirit that was about to pass. The next morning, Hilda, after making me bacon, eggs, and pancakes, told me that my father didn't want breakfast. This was a first. I went to his bedside. "You don't want to eat?" He shook his head, avoiding my eyes "Eat," I said. Again he shook his head. I touched his forehead with the palm of my hand and felt the rude hardness of his skull. He didn't have a fever. "It's a beautiful day," I said. "How about a little walk to work up an appetite?" He eased himself out of bed. I tied his red sweat pants and helped him put on his socks and sneakers. I wrapped a blue scarf around his neck and got him into a green nylon jacket and a purple wool cap. Then I walked him out through the kitchen and onto the back patio. The morning sun was bright and warm. "Let's sit," he said, stopping beside one of the steel patio chairs.

on H

z td

H X

C/3

on PQ

I sat next to him. We shared a view'of the backyard and the pasture beyond it. The maples and oaks and honey locusts were bare, and the leaves on the ground had turned a uniform brown. A tall, dead pine tree rose in the middle of the pasture, its straggly crown of limbs a perch for raptors. "So, Dusty," he said, "how do you think I've done?" "What do you mean?" I said. He indicated the property, the house, the barn, my mother's studio across the driveway. "All this, and you kids. Did I do okay?" / "You did great," I said. "You know, when I got out of college, I had an offer to study with Hans Hoffman, in Provincetown. Uncle Harold gave me the money." "And?" I said. I'd heard this story before. "I met your mother. All it took was one look. We used that money for our honeymoon in Europe." "How might things have worked out, if you'd studied with Hoffman?" "Oh, I don't know," he said. "Your paintings might be more abstract." "Never cared for abstract," he said. And then he said, "Did I do the right thing?" "You tell me." "I have no regrets," he said. "You wouldn't hurt my feelings if you did," I said. "Ambition and family is a hard mix." "I never expected to be famous. We've had sixty wonderful years together, your mother and I." It wasn't lost on me that none of us kids had been able to sustain our first marriages—or me, now, my second. "It's different for everyone," said my father, as if he had read my mind. "The timing, and how it all turns out. We can't really know. We have an idea, but we can't really know." A small squadron of crows landed on the lawn and began making a huge racket. My father frowned at the intrusion. "Thieves!" he said. I watched the large black birds strutting about, pecking at autumn remains. "Five crows," I said.

"Look at that over there." My father pulled himself forward in his seat. "What is that bush? I prune it every spring. It's always the last bit of color every year—always in November." The bush, a small euonymus, or spindle tree, as I later learned, stood in a little clearing just beyond my mother's studio. "Let's go see it," he said, trying to stand up. I took hold of his arm and walked him slowly across the driveway. We stood next to the spindle tree, staring at its flameshaped crimson leaves. He reached out a shaky hand and pointed his index finger—not at a colorful leaf but at one of the branches. Round, and covered with a light gray bark, the branch had four sharp ridges running the length of it. If you were to view the branch in cross section it would look like a circle with four equally spaced spikes on its circumference, suggesting the corners of an imaginary square. Suddenly, I remerfibered reading that, in medieval alchemy, the attainment of truk knowledge required learning how to "square the circle." The problem of squaring the circle—constructing a square eqyal in area to a given circle—was famously incapable of a purely geometric solution. Which is why the alchemists (those who would transform lead into gold) chose the metaphor to describe the nearly impossible task of bringing together, and holding as one, the worldly domain and the domain of the spirit. For the artist or writer, I now thought, that would mean the task of combining the literal and figurative elements of imagery. It would require being able to see the symbolic as real, and the real as symbolic. I touched the branch my father pointed to, then closed my hand around it, pressing its four sharp ridges into my palm. Our eyes met. "Thanks," I said, "I'd never noticed this before." "Think nothing of it," he answered. I took a long walk before lunch, and when I returned, my brother, sister, and mother were sitting at the kitchen table eating soup with Hilda. They spoke in hushed tones. A place was set for me. "Dad's not hungry," Lochlin told me. "I just read to him about the essences," whispered Leslie. She was talking about Sogyal Rinpoche's "seven thought states

a c

H X

53 h

resulting from ignorance and delusion" that are brought to an end at the moment of death. "Your reading seems to be helping him," I said, sitting down. But as I started to eat with my family, I imagined my father lying alone in his bed in the next room, and then I imagined him imagining us. Without saying anything, I stood up and took my soup into the dining room, letting the swinging door shut behind me. My father was reclining at a forty-five-degree angle, staring at the ceiling. I pulled up a chair and sat at the foot of his bed. I dunked my English muffin in the soup and took a bite. He looked at me. I offered him.a taste. He neither nodded nor shook his head but stared straight at me. For just a moment, I felt I had made a terrible mistake. My brother and sister, after all, had remained respectfully in the kitchen. Here I sat, demonstrating my appetite for life. It must have seemed to my father that I was rubbing it inâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that I could eat and he could not, that I was going on with life and he was not. A look of pained betrayal overtook his face. It was all I could do to swallow. But I kept staring at him and slurping my soup, until finally, after about a minute, he turned to gaze out the window at the bare-limbed maples. Shards of sunlight struck his face. He shut his eyes and began to nap. What brought us together at the end was Hilda's urging. "Mira," she said. "Es importante. The time is close." At six o'clock, we converged in the dining room and took up positions around the bed. In spite of sharp back pain, my father had refused morphine all day. "It makes me feel fuzzy," he said. My brother cranked the bed up, slowly, so Dad could see us all clearly. "Well, Winnie," he said to my mother, "this is it." He took her hand and kissed it. Then he turned to me. "Is it okay to go now?" He was smiling. "Yes," I said. "Are you sure? You'll all be okay?" We said that we would, and we each touched him, in our turn. He signaled us to lower the bed. Then he closed his eyes, and within the hour, died.

THREE POEMS (UNTITLED)

hy Katya Apekina SOMETIMES SHE WOULD ACCIDENTALLY UGHT HERSELF ON FIRE.

Her clothes would blaze and the children would think it was Christmas And climb under her skirt looking for presents.

A MA^V WITH NO ARM

saj/at the bar, snapping his metal claw and waiting for someone to put a quarter in his ear.

THE PIANO TEACHER SAT ON THE BENCH,

clinking the keys absent-mindedly with her left hand. The notes on the stand looked like a black and white postcard Tom had sent her, of little sailboats floating on a white bay. He had not written much on the backâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; just a couple chopped-up sentences about his new job. What had upset her the most was the crooked stamp.

z H W

CHRONOLOGY

fry Jnsfin White THEY WERE A CHILD'S EYES

Growing wide, then closing tight. The end of something; The end of many things. The start of sadness welling, A lump rising, Tears flowing. An introduction to separation, An end of something. The years clicked by, And memories faded. Only ten years old, And already jaded Contention with intention, New beginnings best left un-begun. Despised and despising; To the cold, from the sun. Yet, soon enough, Even this winter ends; The way it began, Alone just like ten. The years clicked by, Memories faded. Seventeen years old The pain's unabated.

The kiss, the One; That started the\ flood. Bound and then drowned In an ocean of love. Down the spiral, To a canyon7 so deepâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; You can't see the bottom, And no one saw me. The years clicked by, Memories faded. Nineteen now, Not much is changing. Scratched the abyss, And found it went deeper, But bored with the scenery I moved on and grew bigger. And that leads to now, And now is much better. Faster, wiser, And in every way stronger. Many lessons ahead, But a big one behind, Nothing's so bad, It all fades with time.

BONE STRUCTURE,

2003

BELLY,

hy Aiyson Emory Holsdaw

2003

hy Tan Cohen

THE GRANDMA JOURNALS

hy Hail M Porrin MAY 26, 1995 "NEXT YEAR, IF I'M NOT DEAD, I'M GONNA BUY A COKE."

This is what Grandma says to me now. She pulls me in tight like she's got some conspiratorial, heirloom lore to bestow upon her grandchild before it's too late. She's losing her mind. She lives in that blissful space of unconscious senile insanity. Nothing that she says makes sense. She wants to lift her heavy, stiff body to her walker to visit people who aren't there. She laughs at jokes untold. She sits, sleeps, then speaks. Sleeps then speaks. Nothing makes sense. She's incontinent. Has to wear one of those adult diapers with the commercials by that brightfaced aged movie star who talks about living an active life, not letting a silly old little thing like peeing on yourself when you're 70 hold you back from rollerblading with your grandkids. That's not what she says, but it's what she means. Grandma is afraid of her apartment, doesn't live there now. Thinks someone is trying to get her there. Won't sleep in her bedroom. She'd sit up on the foldout sofa in her dark living room watching the security camera images wired to her television, watching who's coming in and going out of the building. Started running up and down the halls, banging on her neighbors' doors, begging them to save her from some motorcycle-riding phantom attacker. Now she's living with Mom and Dad in my old room, where she still won't sleep. Mom struggles to put her to bed like Grandma's the stubborn child who just wants one more glass of water, one more bedtime story, just a little more TV. She sits up in my old twin bed putting the covers over her head. That's how she wants to sleep. Then she gets up at three in the morning to take a

shower and wake Dad and Mom. Tells Dad to take her back to her home now. Unravels at his ardent pleas to go back to bed. Disrupts the house. Screams and hollers in that intimidating West Indian accent, "ME NO STAY HERE! ME GOIN' TO ME

HOUSE NOW!"

Mom is overwhelmed. My mother is overwhelmed by her mother and doesn't know what to do with her own emotions, because she never has known. Doesn't believe in being emotional even if no one would blame her for dropping to the floor and bawling right now. I wouldn't blame her. I'd rock her in my arms on the floor and bawl along with her. She believes in doing and moving on. So she's coping because it's what she does. I wish she would let me in. Gj-andma is one of my favorite people. Wasn't always. I remember when I was very young she scared shy me. This 200-pound woman who spoke a strange language that I didn't understand. She used to hit me with, her heavy hand when I didn't do something she asked in that thick accent. Called me "fresh" when Mom and I would have discussions. Grandma was from the old school. In her mind, there were no discussions with children. They did what they were told. Then something changed; my ear understood her speech. Her other grandkids ignored her or, by failing to comply with her strict and mercurial thinking, did her wrong. Couldn't act right, do right. I was a good girl. I think that made her like me more. Something with us smoothed out so we could see each other better. Can't really explain what happened. Wasn't a conscious thing. Somehow I realized that there was never going to be any changing her, that her sharpness was just who she was, where she came from. I knew she loved me. She made me laugh. Now she has Alzheimer's. I expected worse. I went to see her at my parents' house last Tuesday. I needed to see her and Mom. I expected Grandma to be this shriveling, crazy woman who wouldn't come out of the bedroom or something like that. It wasn't that easy. She still looked the same. Still sounded the same, same accent. The Grandma I know was still there from appearances: the large, big-faced, mahogany-skinned woman with pressing curls. The one who used to let me comb and braid her short, silvery hair

61 o

s 62

when I was a kid and slept over. The one who would cook for me after I told my parents that I'm gay and moved out of their house to Brooklyn, like her. Kept telling me that I should live back with themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;"Dat's where you belong." Didn't understand why I, unmarried, would want to live by myself. Thought I needed to live with people who would take care of me. Didn't understand those people and I weren't on the best terms because they had recently found out that the person I would eventually marry, whether or not they chose to acknowledge the union, would be theip daughter-in-law. Didn't understand how much it meant to have her making me curried chicken, rice and peas, and sweet plantains and letting me drink from the six packs of soda she bought only for her children and grandkids. How much I needed someone in my family to accept me even if Grandma didn't know the whole story. So she still looked like the Grandma I adore. It's just that she didn't completely realize I was there. When I arrived, she was so excited: "So good to see you, good to see you! God bless you. You grow up so nice." Then ten minutes later she started talking about me like I wasn't there. About how nice it would be to see Gail, as I was standing across the room from her. DECEMBER 23,

1996

It's the first Christmas with no fruitcake and no Grandma. Mom is not up to it. She doesn't know how much I need this. Every year, practically since my conception, I have baked West Indian rum fruitcake with Grandma and Mom the Saturday before Christmas. Very Cosby Christmas Moment baking cakes with Mom and Grandma for those in the family Grandma deemed deserving. I remember when I was little and Grandma was still working, cleaning NYU hospital, Dad and I would get up before the sun to go pick her up from work on Baking Saturday. I fell asleep in the car every time. I think a couple times I went in my p.j.'s. Little brown me with the big head of Chaka Khan "good" hair twisted into thick braids, a half inch scar on my face under my left eye from the time I fell and hit my face on the coffee table when I was three, small gold filigree G's hanging from my ears, a gift from a relative's trip to Panama. Dad'd shake me

awake when we got there. I'd peel my little eyes open to see the wanna-be-dawn light and see Grandma, through the frosty window, in all her girth, waiting at the door with her shopping bag of rum and mince meat, and vanilla. '"Ello Miss Gailee! Come kiss you' Granmottha." We'd drive back through the Midtown Tunnel and she'd grill me, made sure I took care of business to make the cake come out right. Made sure I got her butter softened and with all the sugar from the night before. She'd come in the house, change from her uniform, eat a little fried bluefish or porgies, white bread and mint tea that Mom had waiting for breakfast. Then we'd get to work. When the sugar and butter were all mixed together, we'd blend them in with the rest of the ingredients for the batter in the huge washtub Grandma bought only for baking fruitcake, stirring with that big, big wooden spoon. We'd be baking through dinnertime when Dad bought Chinese food: wonton soup and pork fried rice, her favorites. Every single year of my life. Nearly every year of my Mom and Grandma's life in Panama and the States, too. It's the only part of Christmas I like anymore, especially since I came out. I see Mom and Dad only at holidays, and they only call me to find out if I'm coming over for dinners on Christmas and Thanksgiving. With Grandma around, though, everything is cool with all of us. I know it's mostly for appearances for Grandma. She still doesn't know that I'm gay and treats me like her little Gailee. She will never know. If I told her she wouldn't understand. I'm sure that even before her illness, she didn't know what gay or lesbian or homosexual meant. Sure it's not even in her universe of possibility that two "girls" could be in love like husband and wife. I'd have to explain it to her in pieces, make sure she comprehended what all of it meant ("There are men and there are women ...") It'd be part plea for absolution having sinned in the eyes of Grandma, part instructional, like explaining death to a child. If I could finally drag us both through, my reward would not have been compassion and an international coffees moment. I'd be cast out of her heart. Period. She's from the old school. I told Mom I'd do the cake. I'd buy all the ingredients and do all the work. Still no. Doesn't want it in her house, not the

63 o sj

s 64 3

s 3

sound of mixers or clanging of pans; not the smell of the yearlong rum-soaked fruits bought at the Waldbaum's across from her building and Jamaican markets in Brooklyn (stored in those huge jars Grandma kept on the kitchen counter in her apartment) baking into batter of brown sugar, butter, over-proof rum and West Indian vanilla; not my younger brother, Howard, and Dad, "manhandling," taking their turn mixing the batter, grabbing the big spoon with both hands until it stood up straight in the stiff batter; not the melodies of Nat King Cole and Barbra Streisand singing "O Tannenbaum" while I mix and stir; not me commenting to Mom how ironic it is that a Jewish woman could make a classic Christmas album. None of it. I understand but I need it anyway. Mom's soul finally collapsed. Got sick after she and Dad put Grandma in the home. Had the flu for nearly a month. Kept going back to doctors who couldn't explain it but I knew: God put her to bed to grieve. Mom was too stubborn, too afraid to pay attention to the torrent roiling around in her wellguarded heart. So God laid her down with nothing but time and no choice but to deal. Her body and soul mercifully unbound. I tried to take care of her, but she wouldn't let me. Howard and Dad bought take-out and dealt with their own lives. I know my Dad and my bro aren't completely insensitive, just oblivious. Besides, Mom is Mom. I talked to her on the phone and she told me how she was still going grocery shopping and running errands with a high fever and flip-floppy Stomach. Told me how she almost didn't get finished shopping because she nearly had to run out of Pathmark to vomit in the parking lot. She couldn't possibly have thought of asking Dad to go because he wouldn't buy the right things. Can't let go. Gotta keep moving. Soul healed enough to set her free to go on the cruise to the Bahamas they'd been planning for six months. The thing she was thankful for at the Thanksgiving table was that cruise.

Mom to tell her about Saturday night. Even though I know it was just for show, I miss that when she was around my folks acted like nothing was wrong, no stress or tension in the Dottin fam. No yelling and screaming about how they sacrificed to send me to Sarah Lawrence and it turned me into one of those people. I loved them and they loved me. Just like when I was a kid. And for the hours we may have spent with her I could suspend reality and things really were cool with us. It was nice for a while. My heart misses her. So I'm trying to give Mom space. Be a big girl about not baking. But I need what I need. I fucking hate Christmas.

All I can think is that I want my Grandma back: the one who bought me my first television when I was seven against my parents' objections. They thought I was too young. She wanted her favorite granddaughter to have it. The one who loved food. Had Sunday dinner cooked by 11 AM. Huge feasts she'd call

A bright room with lots of big windows, mismatched chairs of naugahyde or metal and long folding tables with that fake wood grain. Humans in various states of dysfunction and hysteria and outrageousness and ossification, cursing streams or silent or almost normal. Tongues hanging like deli meat, limbs flailing

NOVEMBER 14,

1997

I hate going there I hate going there I hate going there. I wake up and that thing, that feeling, that voice is there, talking to me: "You know you haven't visited your grandmother in a while. If she dies today you'll have to kill yourself for not going." I

bargain with myself, try to put it off, create some rationalization that I can live with for not going today. What could that possibly be? It doesn't work. I start bracing myself for the subway and bus ride in the cold, to what feels like the end of nowhere but is really Canarsie, Brooklyn to fulfill my granddaughterly duties, to honor what my father taught me about taking care of your own. I wish I felt more humble and honorable about it, but most of the time, while I'm going, it's like some heavy, onerous chore I just want to get over with. I will never get used to that smell: pissy diapers, industrial cleaners, and stagnant people, washed in medicinal soap. I always have to brace myself on the elevator before I get to her floor. Then when the door opens the stank knocks me over. I always worry that it will be glommed on to me when I leave, my long wavy hair, my jeans. I hate it. I hate visiting her there. Day room is the worst. Slices of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

n 2

at unseen demons or limp or petrified. Wearing Salvation Army throwaways crusted with today's breakfast, yesterday's lunch. No longer grasp that food is supposed to go in that hole between their chin and nose (What's a chin? What's a nose?). Or maybe they do but can't seem to hit it. Constant cacophonous chatter making sense only to the chattering. A drooling, lumpy white man with skin hanging, somebody's grandfather, sits with a cigarette and an inch of ash precariously hanging. The TV is always on. TV is always on. Blaring Xena or some infomercial or something. Sometimes that therapist with Jersey hair and cowboy boots tries to entice them to sing simple songs and remember what season it is. "To-daaay iis?... THURRRZDAY!" Upbeat but kind of desperate, she waits for responses but mostly gets grunts and slobber. Answers her own perky questions. "The sea-zoN iis? ... FAAAL! THE NEXT HOL-I-OAY iis? ... THANXS-GIVING!"

By the end she always looks pained and frustrated. I love the nurses, though! Caribbean nurses in fresh whites always saying to Grandma, "How you doin', Miss Wilson-Momma ?!" "All right, baby. This is my granddaughter!" "She's beautiful!" in tones one would use for a child, like I'm not there. I know their accents are familiar to Grandma. Hope they're a comfort. I know they are taking good care of her. I usually bring her Jamaican beef patties and ginger beer, food from her life outside that she doesn't even remember. But this time there was that one nurse! Here I am slowly walking with Grandma who hasn't been out of the home since Mom had her placed there last year Thanksgiving. I'm walking with her on my arm, back to her room, having this quiet visit. I'm only 5'6" but she seems so small now. I'm thinking of the oddness of this moment; how odd it is that she feels shrunken next to me, this woman who was enormous in all the ways one can be enormous. She feels fragile. Fragile? My bigmouthed grandmother? I think about how my brother and I used to be embarrassed by her mass. Now she has the shape of a bottle of salad dressing, narrow on top with wide hips but her skin and

the caftans she wears droop off of her. Odd. How odd it feels to be the one living on my own while she lives with babysitters. How odd it is to look at her and see part of myself and be uncertain of what or who she sees when she looks back at me. But we walk and I smile at the nurses sitting at their desk as we are passing. This knuckleheaded nurse, without compassionate eyes for the situation, shouts to me in my Grandmother's presence, "So has there been any talk in the family about taking her home for the holiday?" I hold my breath. Just shake my head no, put my hand up to indicate to her to hold on. I'll come back to talk to her in a minute. Please, not in front of Grandma. Walk. Lightly. Hope Grandma doesn't catch on. Watch her carefully from the corner of my eye. "Not even for a mealV." She's hit me again. Lose a step from shock. I just wonder. I just wonder if she purchased this special brand of stupidity or was this a family trait. She just doesn't know. She just doesn't know. She doesn't know what it was like before, the twisting we endured, especially Mom. She doesn't know that Grandma, my sweet, fogged, unclear Grandmother, used to be violent when Mom took care of her. That's why Grandma is in the home now and on medication. I remember when Mom was taking care of her at the house and she hired an aide for Grandma on the weekends. When Mom would take Grandma back to her apartment to give herself a break, Grandma would assault the aide. Whenever I called Mom she sounded weary and lost. Sometimes she could barely speak above a whisper. Always had some new war story about Grandma and these patient workersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;"She did it again!" It seemed that practically every other month Mom would have to call the service to request a different person to look after Grandma. They just could not handle her, especially since Grandma was in her own house. Some strange woman gonna try to tell her what she couldn't do in her own house?! Were they mad?! Swung that cane at the aide's head and cursed her like a crazy person on the subway when the skinny woman wouldn't let her eat what she wanted or did some slight thing to rile her in her domain. Started screaming

a o 3

67 I*

s <! O

and having tantrums. My parents would get phone calls from another fatigued, apologetic, suffering woman saying she had to call EMS to take Grandma to the hospital and sedate her. After a couple months, Mom couldn't really find any more sacrificial saints willing to be thrown to Grandma. So she stayed at the house all the time. Then Grandma started swinging at Dad and Mom. That was it. Mom admitted defeat. So now I'm stunned and stuck between impulses and questions: Stabbing guilt. Going Brooklyn on this nurse and cursing her out. Did Grandma hear? Will it set her off? It did. THEN Grandma did the slow build, manic pacing thing, which I had never seen but only heard about from Dad'. THEN, after the knuckleheaded nurse opened her reckless mouth, Grandma thinks I came to take her home with me. I get her to her room okay but she won't sit but for a few seconds as I try to have this visit. She, of the legendary 16-White-Castlehamburgers-upon-arrival-to-U.S.-soil, only eats part of the beef patty I brought her. She's got no teeth and either loses or won't wear her dentures. Still she chews with her mouth open leaving masticated orange crust for the viewing, indifferently dropping flakes on her lap, which I clean up. I wipe her mouth and open the bottle for her. She only takes a few sips. Tells me, "I'm ready to go." / "Go where?" ,, "I'm ready to go." "You want to go back, back to the day room?" "Yes." Heaves her bottom-heavy body up and I walk with her slowly, her arm in mine, guiding her to keep her hand on the wall railing, so she won't fall like she's done before. When she does, Mom and Dad get more phone calls. Ludicrous, early morning, sleep-ending phone calls from the nursing staff saying our 79-year-old muddled matriarch fell again but they "shouldn't worry." I thought we were going to sit in the Cuckoo's Nest for the visit. She sits for a moment, paces. "Mommy coming?" "My Mom's at home, Grandma." "Unh." Goes back to her thoughts.

The vicious old lady with the pink floral K-Mart housecoat is sitting next to Grandma's usual spot by the window. That window that looks out on to the homes for mentally disabled adults across the street and the crabgrass dumping lot. Vicious Old K-Mart Lady was cursing at me as usual, "I'll beat the shit out of you! I'll beat the shit out of you! Fuck you! Get the fuck out of here!" I know this woman is out of her head. Her medication is fading. "Get the fuck out of here!" Not bothering me, nope, not bothering "You stupid idiot! Fuck" me. I know she's not well, "you! Dumb dick" It's sad, "I'm gonna get somebody to kick your ass!" really. Grandma comes to my defense. "You shut ya Dyamn mout'!" "It's okay, Grandma, it's okay." "Fuck you! I'm gonna beat yur ass!" "You shut ya Dyamn mout'! She's just a young girl!" "I'll kick yur ass, too!" "Come now! I'll slap ya mout'! Ya too Dyamn fresh!" "It's okay, Grandma, it's okay." Sitting in the Cuckoo's Nest between geriatric ids with not enough sense left to rise above. Besides, Grandma never could hold her tongue. Was always talking about how someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;family, friend, or foe was "vexing me and I gon' to box her one if she don' act right." Grandma, pissed at Vicious K-Mart Lady, decides she wants to move again. We walk the obstacle course of smelly people in wheelchairs, past bedrooms with hospital beds holding her moaning and incontinent neighbors. She stands by her closet, stone still, not opening it, like she wants something, is waiting for it to pop out. Then when I gingerly ask her if she wants something, quickly turns, snapped from her trance, and walks back to the Nest. By this time, I've been here an hour. My good girl limit is up. Every time we move she gets a little more irritated. I get a little more nervous. I'm waiting for her to start swinging at me. Good luck, medication, and being a favorite grandchild can only last for so long.

70 â&#x20AC;˘a, X 5C

We walk the course again, back to her room. "You take me home now!" "You are home!" Not true and you know if. My brain is on fire with guilt. Her home is a pleasant one-bedroom apartment 15 blocks from here that she was very proud of. It smells like curry, has a white crushed velvet couch and two red velvet armchairs covered in plastic slipcovers. It's where she slept in that big, big bed she's had as long as you've known her with the painting of a beatific white Jesus at her bedside. It's where you spent a lot of Christmases eating good food, with your cousins and uncles and aunts and watching Uncle Papito get drunk and pee in the bathroom with the door open. Where Grandma used to go to the Waldbaum's in the shopping center across the street and sit in the courtyard with her friends afterwards on sunny days. Then she'd tell Mom about what was on sale when Mom called. Where you spent practically every Sunday of your childhood, visiting her after going to church with Mom, drinking sodas Mom wouldn't let you have otherwise. This is not her home.

"Take me home wit' you." I know she means my parents' house. The Alzheimer's has taken her remembrance of the fact that I don't live with them anymore. It's one of those things that has slipped from her. Like the fact that I'm not in school anymore, graduated from college eight years ago. She was at my graduation, the only graduation she has ever been to. Still, every once in a while she'll ask me how's school like I'm still a freshman trying to get used to the dorms and life away from home. I say nothing. I am dying. As we walk out again, me too drained to guide her, she stops by the elevators at the top of the hall that leads to the Nest, like she's the visitor waiting patiently to get on. Like she was just here to look in on a friend and bring her some stew. But she's not even allowed to leave the floor like some residents. Might get lost and not know it. I remember in the Staten Island nursing home she was in briefly before she was placed here, she used to wander the building, causing the panic-stricken nurses to stop what they were doing to search for her.

"Mrs. Willlson! Mrs. Willlson!" That happened the first time I went with Mom, Aunt Carmen, and Beverly to visit her there. The nurses found Grandma in the corner of somebody's room sleeping, conked out from a night of fighting the nurse and refusing to go to bed. So now Mom got her a name registration bracelet from the Alzheimer's Foundation, like those construction paper nametags I used to have to wear on kindergarten field trips. I pull her away from the elevator and lead her down the hall. She questions me like an impatient child. Back to the Nest. Back down the hall. "Where's Mommy?" Stop by the elevator. "She getting' de car?" Back to her room. "We go home soon?" Stop by the elevator. "Where's Mommy?" Back to the Nest. "She getting' de car?" Stop by the elevator. "Where's Mommy?" Back to her room. Keep walking past nurses, including the knucklehead who ignited the Great Panamanian Grandma Hallway Tour. She keeps looking at me like I am so very evil. The others must think I'm nuts or maybe they're used to it working here. Anyway, they already think I'm weird because of my eyebrow ring. Like I said, my good girl limit is up. There is no honor or comfort in this visit. I am fucking tired and depressed and I want to go home. On the edge of my own delirium, my defense field starts cracking and I can't stop the toxin of affliction from seeping through again. "Your Grandmother was what they would call abusive in this country." "Grandma never said I love you, always found fault."

Q > O o

s Q

72 3

^ « 3

a 2

"She hit me with a broom stick. Waited for me at the door." The voice of my Mother from a Sunday dinner a while ago, while Grandma was living with her and Dad. I hear it as I watch Grandma pacing, spinning, searching, waiting, wanting out. Wanting to go home, to my parents' house to be cared for by the daughter who told me this. I try to wrap my brain around it: this fuzzy, bottom-heavy prune with loose skin and a gray buzz cut abused my mother. I've heard Mom's voice a lot since that day, the purging. I hear it every time I wrestle with my conscience to get out of bed and come to this place to visit the woman who abused my mother and loves us both. I hear it all the time. See Mom's face as we sat at the kitchen table that night after dinner. Feel the click that sank my chest and said we have crossed over. Don't know where we are. Just know how I see Mom will never be the same. Feel achingly guilty all the time. All the time. Am I wrong for loving Grandma still?

detritus of lives lived, next to Vicious Cursing K-Mart Lady. It ends like every visit does: "I love you, Grandma." I kiss her very soft cheek. "I love you, too, Baby." She smiles that smile that twists and warms my tired heart. I run down the hallway looking over my shoulder. Feeling like a fugitive, I pace as I wait for the elevator. Get on before some bit of her former brash-mouthed self swipes away a chunk of her haze. Before she catches on that I'm not going to get Mom or the car. Walk quickly down the street talking to myself as always: "I wish I could take her home I wish I could take her home I wish I could take her home! God, I wish I were rich." And I understand why Mom brought her to our house to care for her. It's almost five. The sun is waning. I wait, near tears, in the cold for the bus that will take me to the train to the house in which I live without her.

"I WANT TO GO HOME NOW!"

Her confusion has worn her patience. Even with Alzheimer's, even at half the heft she used to be, Grandma still scares me sometimes. So I'm a little shaken. In the midst of this moment of terror and the Grandma Tour, I am back in the body of the terrified little girl not understanding the strangeness of Grandma, afraid of her heavy hands. For a moment, not seeing another way free, I actually contemplate the impossible notion of taking her to my house in Park Slope, a house in which even I don't want to live. I hate my three nosy housemates and there are way too many stairs for her. Grandma and I are frustrated with each other. Finally, with purpose and a plan, before I really do bawl on the floor in front of these nurses and my confused grandmother, I grab my coat off her bed, walk her back down the hall— "Mommy comin?"—through the course, past the bedridden moaners, past the nurses both sweet and knuckleheaded, to the Nest, holding a little tighter, tugging a little when we get to the elevator. Sit her firmly back in her chair amid the smell of vomit, by the window that looks out on the acre of chunky

(This piece has been excerpted from a work-in-progress.)

o a o

73 5

o 5 2 w

o Z

GRANDFATHER'S BLUEBERRY WHITE KNUCKLES

by Gabriel Oak Rabin GRANDFATHER'S BLUEBERRY WHITE KNUCKLES

grow strong in the snow, shoveling neat the walkway spaces. His breath-wet kneads icicles under his beard in the morning. Grandfather's blueberry white knuckles hang daintily, like insect legs, from his mahogany pipe. Soft smoke pillows in the still golden air of the evening and morning. Grandfather's blueberry white knuckles flash as he strolls through the tall wispy cicada grass. His jack-in-the-box grin is infectious, like good mood on Christmas morning. Grandfather's blueberry white knuckles grasp firmly his small progeny as they giggle and squirm, "so gentle with the little ones" they said at the time of his mourning. Grandfather's blueberry white knuckles hide behind his tanned trouser pockets in old photographs from the war. He killed those terrible Nazis who caused all that mourning.

Grandfather's blueberry white knuckles reach out in mellow flex, glimpsing, tasting the spaces of the curious infant's world, oblivious in the time of mourning.

ÂŁÂŁ

THERE'S HIGHWAY SAFETY AND THERE'S DRIVEWAY SAFETY

A MIDSOMMAR NIGHT'S DREAM

try M a t t G H c e

try Tona M n n r o e

ALWAYS LOCK THE CAR,

TIM CAME OUT OF HOLLY CRYING INCONSOLABLY. H E WAS A

My father drilled, Crimes are perpetrated everywhere, Even the garage. My mother, not a cop, Was thoughtless of the locks; Unless outside the car The people were black.

latecomer, two weeks past Holly's due date. He was forced out by oxytocin and the doctor had to give him baby Valium, to calm him down. As a reminder of his birth condition, Tim had a very unusual birthmark on his left cheek, two little moles forming a tear about one inch below his eye. Mostly, Tim's childhood was a blur, both to his family and to Tim himself. Only a small number of poignant memories carried enough weight to remain with him through his growing pains. Tim's earliest recollection was from the age of six. Unable to fall asleep one night, the sad little man walked around the house to see what everyone else was doing. Finding his younger sister Sara and his older brother Michael both asleep in their respective rooms, he stopped in front of his parents' double mahogany doors. He peeked through the crack; they were leaning against each other, half-sitting and half-lying in bed, watching something. The screen was hidden from his view, but he heard a baby shrieking in utter terror.

I was never scared of thugs, Not biking home from school, Hide-and-seeking in the woods. But I felt a chill Despite my blankets When Mother was in Boston And, tucking me in, Father Was wearing strange perfume.

"It's as if he didn't want to be born, isn't it? Or he didn't want to be here" Frank said more to himself than to his wife. "Do you think he feels differently now?" Holly asked, she too speaking mostly to herself. Frank didn't know and he sounded as utterly clueless now as whenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his second son's cries having diverted him from the task of filmingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he'd asked the doctor if it was really okay to give babies drugs to calm them down. Tim started sobbing behind the cracked doors but his boy tears were completely drowned out by the baby's. Only when the

sedatives ended the cries of the newborn did Holly and Frank become aware of their son's presence. Little feet scurried away and parental feet came thumping after. They tried to tell him that it had been the baby of one of Holly's patients, and that the baby was okay now. Tim didn't argue with them; he knew whose cries he'd just heard. He'd recognized his own desperation, the feeling of not belonging, of being suffocated by Michael's wits and Sara's charms. Holly and Frank never reprimanded Tim for not being on par with his siblings. Neither did they ever tell him they were prpud of him, nor look at him appreciatively, the way they looked at Michael when he'd win a science competition or at Sara after one of her vocal performances. The next clue Tim had of his own origin came from around the age of eight. From behind the curtains, during one of his parents' dinner parties, Tim once heard a friend of his father's recite a poem about a soldier who dreamt that he was a butterfly, floating over fields of flowers. Upon awakening, the soldier wondered if he wasn't perhaps really a butterfly, dreaming he was a soldier. Something about the poem didn't sit right with little Tim; an overwhelming fear overtook him and he was unable to listen to the rest of the poem. He ran into his parents' bedroom and sat down, legs crossed, in front of the large mirror that was the sliding door to their closet. He stared at himself and wondered if the other stared at him in the same way. If the he in the mirror too thought he was real. Then suddenly a realization paralyzed him: what if he was the one inside the mirror. That night, Tim dreamt he was still in front of his parents' large mirror. On the other side was another him, playing with a wooden red horse that Tim couldn't remember ever owning. The other him was boisterous and alive, lifting the toy in the air, making train and car sounds, and talking gibberish in a loud, confident voice. The door opened behind the Tim in the mirror. Tim turned around. His door was still closed. He turned his attention back to the mirror. Tim's mom had come in. Except it wasn't Holly. She addressed the Tim in the mirror, and to Tim's surprise, she too spoke gibberish. The other Tim ignored her and continued playing, with even more fury than before. When his mom left, he finally put the toy down andâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; with a smirk Tim had never seen on his own face

beforeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;looked up at the mirror. Their eyes met, one pair leering, the other displaying the wide-open gaze of a robbed child. Before awakening from the horrible nightmare, Tim noticed one physical difference between himself and the one in the mirror: the other lacked the two little moles on the left cheek. Aside from the few vivid memories of his own childhood, Tim remembered snapshots demonstrating his complete inconsequentiality in the family. Michael and Sara were tutored at home. Piano lessons, voice coaching, microscopes and telescopes, and there was always a nice Finnish or Russian au pair, who loved to spend time with Michael and Sara because they were such good, wonderful children, but didn't quite know what to do about Tim, who wasn't rowdy or anything, but just a bit strange, the way he rarely played with other children, the way he'd rather stare at things than touch them. Every now and then Holly and Frank asked Tim what he liked to do. They seemed sincere in their quest to engage his interest. They were careful, however, not to offer suggestions, as it was their firm belief that a child's individuality could only flourish if he or she was allowed to think independently. Except for the occasional time when Holly would run her fingers through his hair, Tim felt completely removed from his own childhood, as removed as the countless pictures he took starting on his twelfth birthday, when he received his first meaningful gift, a vintage Canon. Holly had finally set aside her own psychiatric beliefs and talked to a colleague of hers that specialized in abnormal child behavior. Her colleague had insisted on seeing Tim, but upon Holly's categorical refusal had finally said: "Buy him a camera. Let him observe the world all he wants." It proved to be great advice. Tim loved being behind the camera. He was especially fond of portraits and relished in surprising "his victims." The camera put a filter between him and the world; things that seeped though the filter were censored, preapproved, and therefore safe. Although his academic record left something to be desired by his family, Tim did grow into both a respectful and a respectable young man. He maintained a respectable B- average and was perfectly respectful of the teachers who gave him those

G Z

Â§

t o

•1

grades. He was an average player on a slightly below-average tennis team, and a photographer for the yearbook. As a high school graduation present—and what Tim interpreted as a "thank-you-for-not-embarrassing-the-family" gift—Holly and Frank bought their son a trip to Sweden, including complimentary tickets for Billy and Birch, Tim's two closest friends. The trip served the double purpose of graduation present and birthday present. Frank thought the gift especially clever since Tim's birthday was to fall on the same day as Midsommar that year, a major holiday in Sweden. "Dude, that's awesome!" Birch had exclaimed upon finding out about the trip. Both Billy and Birch came from middle-class families and could never expect to travel outside of the country on their own budgets. "I heard Switzerland is pretty cool." "Sweden," Tim corrected him. "Sweden. Whatever. I heard it's pretty cool, dude." "Oh yeah, Birch, what'd'ya hear?" "Blondes with big tits and wet pussies," Birch replied, his tongue sticking out, a virgin grin overtaking his face. "Cool enough for me," Billy said. Billy was the only one to have already gotten laid. In fact, he got laid quite regularly. He'd lost his virginity during the fall of their sophomore year, to a girl that was so far below most standards that she couldn't refuse the opportunity. Since then, Billy had had a steady stream of girlfriends. He wasn't all that good-looking, nor was he a popular guy per se, but he had honed in on a flawless tactic: to always go for the less than perfect girls, the ones that are kinda cute but definitely nerdish enough for no one to really notice them. Once he'd decide on a girl he'd focus all his attention on her, asking her about her tests, pets, and poetry ("Every girl writes poetry," Billy always told his friends). And since the girl wouldn't be used to the attention, she'd inevitably fall for it, convinced not only of his sincerity, but also of Billy's status of being part of the "cool" crowd, the way he acted, self-confident and commanding. Birch, on the other hand, was too cool for the opposite sex. The "I'm-too-sexy-for-my-car" kind of cool. He had natural dreads—as in: he didn't wash his hair for over a month until the dreads naturally appeared; he smoked a ton of dope, sold even

more of it, and his pants never quite reached over his ass crack. Yet in spite of all these apparent flaws, Birch was sincerely surprised over the fact that he had graduated from high school while still a virgin. Thus it happened that a couple of weeks before Midsommar, three eighteen-year-olds embarked on their first international journey with only one goal in mind: to get laid. Luckily, Holly and Frank had chosen the perfect destination for them. The locals spoke impeccable English—albeit with an unmistakable accent, knew all the American movies, listened to the same pop as them, and were about three centuries ahead in their sexual revolution. It took the boys four hours to claim Birch's wallet stolen, to deal with Billy's inexplicable allergic reaction to an unknown agent in the impeccably clean Swedish air, and to find the hotel. It took them only half an hour at the bar across the street from their hotel for three blondes to appear and squeeze their tightly jeans-fitted asses into their booth. Anna, Asa, and Rebecca talked and smiled excessively. Where were the guys from, what were they doing here, and a few beers later, what drugs did they do? And did they bring any with them? Rebecca, who was sitting diagonally across from Tim, next to Asa, let her head fall to the table. Birch, who always carried one drug or other on him, put his arms around Anna's shoulder and whispered something into her ear. She leaned back to look at him, her blue eyes rolling in their sockets. Could she try it? Of course, that was, after all, what he'd smuggled it over for. How'd he smuggled it? Taped to his balls. That's the best way. Anna's eyes widened and even momentarily stopped swimming around while she grabbed Birch's dick. He didn't object. Anna decided she needed a closer look. Her tiny hand slipped into Birch's pants and he let out a deep sigh. Only when her fingers, in search of the hash, got too close to his anus did he finally pull her hand out and told his friends they should all go back to the room. Billy, his tongue held hostage by Asa, didn't answer. "There's beer left, dude!" mumbled Tim, examining the third girl, who lay motionless. He'd only glanced at her while she was awake, and now that she was asleep he couldn't see her since her face was covered by hair. He looked at the other two

z >

81 o

82 s

s 5

girls, searching for a clue as to what the third 'one might look like. Couldn't his parents have gotten them separate rooms? The receptionist watched the group of five drunken teenagers drag a sixth, unconscious teenager across the lobby. She politely asked if everything was okay, if they needed anything, but to the boys' surprise didn't try to take charge of the situation. Once upstairs, Asa and Anna decided Rebecca should be left in the tub. No, she didn't need to be splashed with water. She just needed a place were she could puke to her heart's content. No more drugs were necessary that night. The still (albeit marginally) conscious girls were willing, and the boysâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;well, they were eighteen-year-old males on a mission to get laid. Seeking to escape the moans and groans, Tim snuck into the bathroom, almost tripping over Birch's legs. At least his friend had been polite enough to lose his virginity on the floor. Rebecca hadn't moved. Her head hung over the edge of the tub and her shoulder-length hair clung to her face. Tim lifted her face and brushed away the sticky hair. Unlike the other two, she was platinum blond, what Tim had imagined all girls to be in Sweden. She was pretty, by far the prettiest of the three; her mouth was well defined, and her nose was tiny and slightly lifted at the tip. Her head hung limp in his hands. He let her chin rest on the tips of his thumbs and formed a frame around her face with the rest of his fingers. He thought of a Sleeping Beauty shot. He considered carrying her to his bed, undressing her, and taking a few pictures of her. Then perhaps holding her through the night. He decided against it. He'd never be able to do that much explaining. The next morning, the girls barely said a word. No apologies, no seeming regrets; did they even remember what had happened? Rebecca, who'd made it through the night in the tub, walked hunched over, leaning slightly to the left and wobbling every time she changed direction. Asa and Anna said they'd see them later. Thanks for letting them sleep over. Or whatever. You know, for not having to go home to their parents drunk in the middle of the night. It took the girls two days to return, boisterous and alive again, each carrying a one and a half liter bottle of Coke, which in reality was actually only about one liter Coke and half a liter

Absolut. They passed their bottles around. Birch made a pipe out of the aluminum foil he'd brought with him. He placed a small ball of hash in it and passed that around too. Only Tim abstained. "The first thing he did when he came out of his mother was some serious dope and now he pretends to be a fucking arrow!" Birch explained. Rebecca giggled and handed him her bottle. The pipe made its way around the room and for every round, Tim felt himself growing more alien from the group. He decided to go down to the lobby in search of an alcohol-free soda. Back upstairs, he walked into a deja-vu. Billy and Asa on one of the beds, Birch and Anna on the floor, Rebecca out of view. Tim knocked on the bathroom door. There was no answer. He tried the knob. It was locked. A few minutes later, he knocked again: "Are you okay in there?" No answer, but the locked stirred and the next time he tried the door it was unlocked. Rebecca was wedged in between the toilet and the tub, hugging her knees, her face buried in her arms. "You okay?" Tim asked again. "I don't know. I should probably not smoked up," she said in a low voice. Tim went over and sat on the toilet. He put his left palm on her back, hesitant, barely touching her. They sat like that for a long time until Rebecca started sobbing softly. She crawled into his lap, put her head on his shoulder and cried herself to sleep. 'There are two kinds of men," Billy lectured Tim the next day when the boys were alone again. "Those that do and those that think. I'm sure your mind was reeling." "His dick must have been so hard that she was probably hovering in midair, dude!" added Birch. Over the next couple of weeks, Tim tried his hardest to become a man that does. His leg touched Rebecca's in the movie theater; they went for walks in the woods and he asked if he could take pictures of her. She offered to take her bra off, and lay on the soft moss. She had the most beautiful breasts. Patches of sunlight and shadow danced over her milky skin, making her nipples alternate between erect and soft. For the first time, Tim viewed his camera as an obstacle rather than as a trusted chaperone.

O >

w O

One afternoon, while lying on a blankef by the ocean, Rebecca got tired of waiting for Tim to become a doer and decided to take charge of the situation herself. It wasn't a passionate kiss; it was more like a "let's-get-it-over-with" kind of kiss. Then she pulled away and looking very serious, asked him: "Are you virgin?" Tim knew that to be a trick question, but was clueless as to what the trick to answering it might be. "Yes," he admitted. Rebecca sat up and looked over the dark ocean, her back to Tim. There were things she hadn't told him either. She wasn't exactly free. She loved someone. Someone that didn't love her. She would have slept with Tim, had he not been a virgin. But she couldn't be his first. He needed his first to be someone special. Not an overseas fling with someone who loved another. "She wants you to take charge, man," Billy advised him. "Dude, if you don't lose your virginity in this country, where the fuck else would you do it?" asked Birch, and Tim was forced to admit he had a point. By Midsommar, Birch had moved on to Karin while Billy had moved on to Louise via Katerina. Tim, however, had maintained a steady and painfully platonic relationship with Rebecca. "Why is Midsommar such a big deal?" Tim asked her while they were lying on their bellies in the grass, watching Rebecca's friends and family build a Midsommar Stand. "For celebrating the year's shortest night." She rolled over on her back and traced the two little moles on Tim's cheek with a strand of grass. "Actually, for celebrating you." Tim pulled the grass strand out of her hand. "I hate celebrating my birthday," he said a bit harshly, then, tickling her nose with the confiscated strand, added in a lighter tone: "But if a whole nation would celebrate me . . . I might grow to like that." "You're cute," she said and kissed his cheek. There was a custom for Swedish girls on Midsommar. Between sunset and sunrise they had to pick seven different kinds of flowers and place them under their pillow. They would then dream about their one true love.

"If I dream you, we make love tomorrow morning, okay?" Rebecca said. Tim didn't know to what extent she meant it, but he clung to her words as if they were his lifeline. "Nyponros, humbleblomster, midsommarblomster, makros, farmors glasogon, smorblooma, och somntuta," she said, pointing to each bloom in a picture of a flower crown. Her Swedish words, rolling over her full lips brought shivers to Tim's lower back. Later, during the picking, she was quiet, performing the task with solemn concentration, her round little butt pointing to the graying sky. When she finished picking a handful of each kind, they returned to the now-standing Midsommar Stand. People were singing and dancing around it. "I'm going to make a Midsommar krans for you. For your birthday," she said, and started to weave a crown out of the flowers. "Will I be dreaming of my future lover too?" Tim asked. "Sorry, only girls pick and dream." But he should stay and sleep over. That way she'd definitely dream of him. No, her parents wouldn't object. Her last boyfriend slept over all the time. Squeezed in on half of the smallest bed he'd ever seen, unable to sleep, Tim decided to put the krans under his pillow. And, as things would have it, he did dream that night. A voluptuous woman with black hair down to her waist and haunted green eyes. She was being chased and asked for help. He told her he'd help her if she was "the one." She was. She didn't need to tell him. There was something so familiar about her; her smile, her dreamy yet defiant stare; her willingnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; no, her needâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to make him understand and believe her. People were suddenly running after them and he grabbed her hand. They weren't moving, though. He looked back; a man was holding her from behind, his arm over her shoulder, his hand between her breasts. The woman's eyes stared at him in terror. Tim dreamt himself awake. It turned out that Rebecca too dreamt that night. She dreamt of Tim and he awoke in her arms. She kissed his neck. She wanted to be his first. Wouldn't that make a nice birthday present?

z > G

I 85 S 3

s s

w O

g o

But the memory of a woman being pulled'out of his arms paralyzed Tim. He was no longer a boy needing to loose his virginity. He'd become a man with a dream. A man in a hurry. No, thank you, he didn't want any breakfast. "So you finally banged her, dude?" Birch asked Tim upon his return to the hotel. "By the look on his face, I'd say he either didn'tâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or she had a really stank pussy!" said Billy, examining his friend. Neither, God damn it. It was a fucking dream! "A nightmare?/' Birch and Billy asked in unison. They glanced at each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;two experienced men feeling sorry for their virgin friend. No, not a nightmare. A very vivid dream. A vision from the past. Or a projection of the future. Or something. Some kind of... something. Billy and Birch exchanged meaningful looks again. Damn, sexual frustration could play some serious tricks on a man's mind. "Where were you?" Billy asked. Rebecca's, of course. "Her parents okay with that?" Nothing to do with her parents. They didn't care. They're more like Rebecca's buddies. Probably happy if she gets laidâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Except she didn't get laid?" Billy interrupted. Listen, this is serious. It wasn't just a dream. It was more. It was fucking vivid. Real. There was this woman ... "You left Rebecca for a woman in a fucking nightmare?" said Birch confused. Not a fucking nightmare, for fuck's sake. It was almost like a love story. No, not like a love story, cause there was no beginning, middle, or end. Like continuous love. Yeah, continuous. Or something. Tim never saw Rebecca again, although he received a postcard from her a few months later. It was a picture of a Midsommar krans, like the one she'd made for him. / am in Uppsala with my grandmother. She tells to me that there is one kind boy who dreams on Midsommar. He is virgin in body and spirit and he cries uncolsolable when he loses a piece of himself.

Tim never bothered to find out what that meant. Neither did he see Billy or Birch after they returned home.

The trip had served as a highlighter for all the things Tim did not have in common with his friends. For years, he was obsessed with finding the woman in his Midsommar night's dream, carrying his camera everywhere, ready to shoot. His drawers filled up with pictures of voluptuous brunettes. He asked his parents for loans and traveled around the world in search of his "one," his Canon as his only companion. Eventually, the torment began to fade away, ever-so-slowly. Enough for him to take a couple of junior college courses in photography. Enough for him to get a job as a photographer for a local newspaper. And eventually, after years of never being sick or ever using his vacation time, enough for him to be promoted to the foreign section. Unfortunately, though, not enough for him to lose his virginity. And then one day, having just returned from his first job in Europe, a student strike in Budapest, sorting through the photographs he'd taken at the demonstration, Tim found a still frame of his dream. Her defiant green eyes stared right into the camera, her back against her peers, away from the university she was there to defy; defying him; defying his reality. Tim had never feared his own sanity before. He'd cursed the unlucky star that had placed him in the same family as Michael and Sara, he'd sighed at his mother's relentless psychiatric evaluations, and thought it a bit odd to still be a virgin at the age of thirty. Yet never in his life had he felt anything less than normal. Sure, things were bad sometimes. And sometimes they were good. Good and bad is how things are supposed to be. So in the midst of his life's first crisis, Tim did the unthinkable: he asked his mother for help. There had been this girl in Sweden. No, his last job had been in Budapest. This girl was in Stockholm. No, he hadn't been there since he was eighteen; that was when he'd met her and she'd made him a flower crown. But the girl was not important. Well, not the girl in Stockholm. The one from Budapest was the important one. And the flowers under the pillow ... Holly's instinct was to prescribe something for Tim's nerves, but she tried her best to act like a mother and not default into her role of psychiatrist. She searched for her words for a long time, then finally forced out a little speech about the

z > b HI

87 3S

S g O <

little things that made life worth living, the strange moments that are so very precious because they can offer a glimpse into the secret of life. Tim went home, grabbed his still unpacked backpack and headed for the airport. He stopped by the newsroom to drop off his photographs. All but one, which he placed in his jacket's inner pocket. On his way out, he told his boss he needed a few days off. No problem. A week if he wants. Just, next time, a little more advance notice please. For days he walked around Budapest, clutching his camera once more, as if it held the promise of capturing the essence of his reality. Walking and dreaming. Until, on the fifth day, he suddenly walked into his dream's arms, her pulling him by the hand from behind, onto a narrow side street, half a dozen steps up, to a little bedroom overlooking a back alley with flowery sheets hanging out to dry, and there, her eyes diving into his, her fingers ripping his shirt off, and him coming before she had time to undress, and her laughing like a little girl and licking it all up while looking into his eyes, and his dick remaining hard and entering her and coming once more, before he'd fully penetrated her, but still hard, thrusting himself into her, deeper and deeper, again and again ... He awoke. The shower was on and the girl was singing a foreign song. He felt dehydrated but couldn't find anything to drink. From the little window, through the fluttering sheets, he saw a little corner store in the distance. Tim dressed, listening to the sound of her crystal-clear yet incomprehensive voice. Should he tell—had she said her name? Had he? He couldn't remember any verbal exchange and the lack of liquids was starting to give him a headache. They could talk when he got back. He headed out. At the door, he hesitated for a moment, then turned and grabbed his Canon. On his way to the store, Tim mentally thanked his mother for her words of advice. On the way back, he thought of Billy and Birch and wondered if they'd be interested in hearing from a long-lost friend: "Yo dudes, guess what? I finally lost my virginity. And you wouldn't believe to whom ..." Probably not.

And then Tim lost the last of it. He remembered that he indeed had confronted his parents when he accidentally overheard the tape of his cries as a baby: "No, I didn't want to come here. I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be in a different house." And Holly and Frank had indeed run after him. They'd consoled and caressed him. At least until Michael had won his next science award. Then Sara had been interviewed for a cover story on young talent in the Times. Who could blame them for forgetting to return to Tim? In the window, through the sheets flapping in the wind, her body glistened, still wet from the shower, her shoulders broad and strong, her back curved, her head slightly leaning to the left, an arm around her waist. He followed the arm to the shoulder and then to the neck and face where he found himself staring at himself. He noticed himself but the other didn't notice him and continued to passionately bite into the girl's— his girl's-—neck. His left cheek grazed against her right one, as if trying to wipe off a tear; then he pulled back his head, revealing that he indeed had succeeded, as there were no visible moles on his cheek. With a quick jerk he spun her around until she faced the window; he pushed her head forward. She grabbed the windowsill so as not to fall out. His left hand intertwined with hers, revealing matching wedding bands. As he thrust himself into her she opened her eyes and saw the him in the alley and screamed. She screamed and tried to turn around to look at the him inside her, but he held her firmly in place, one arm around her neck. He talked into her ear and she knew who it was and stopped fighting him. She looked out onto the alley again, her haunted eyes landing right into a zoomed frame of the life he could finally steal back. His finger was glued to the trigger. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

O >

2 G

1 89

about, the 2001

QUARTO

artist* and writers

KATYA APEKINA is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in film, and a student in the Creative Writing Program. This is her first time publishing her writing. Thanks, M.G.

graduated with honors from the Columbia University Creative Writing Program. He is a recipient of the Cornell Woolrich Fellowship in Creative Writing. He writes to find a way through his utter confusion over the universe we live in. Brian is currently abandoning work on his first second novel. He lives in Brooklyn. BRIAN FRANCIS CHU

graduated from General Studies May 2003 as an English major. He has worked in still and motion picture photography for over eight years, loves thundershowers, pierogies, and is the father of one cat. IAN COHEN

CHRISTOPHER WILLIAM CONNOLLY

made the quart of

QUARTO.

M. D O T T I N graduated from the Columbia University MFA Writing Program in 2O02, where she was a Dean's Fellow in Creative Nonfiction. She is currently working on her first book, Where There Is Pride in Belonging, a memoir about her Barbadian Grandfather's work on the Panama Canal, her father's childhood in the Canal Zone, and his life as a new American.

GAIL

conducts ne'uroscience research at Columbia University by day and actively pursues her writing at night. This fall, she plans to enter the sevenyear MD/phD program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Ideally, Dani would like to combine a career in medical research with creative writing. DANI DUMITRIU (IONA MUNROE)

NICOLE A. SCHAEFFER-SANCHEZ is delighted to be debuting

her photographic work in QUARTO. She has been working in documentary film for the better part of eight years, but is now completing her BA in Writing/Literature at Columbia.

DAVID SHAMOON

graduated from General Studies in 2001. She is currently living in Brooklyn, working as a freelance writer, while waitressing and completing a book of short stories.

is the sneeze of a lion.

ABIGAIL FRANKFURT

MATT GRICE is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in English and studying in the Creative Writing Program. He hopes to teach high school English and continue writing after graduation.

worked for 27 years as a key grip in the film business and has just completed the Columbia University MFA Writing Program. His essays, some prize-winning, have appeared in the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Backstage, The Gettysburg Review, QUARTO, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.

DUSTIN BEALL SMITH

ADAM SZYMKOWICZ is a MFA playwriting student at

will graduate from General Studies with a BA in English. She works in film as a production designer. She also likes grapefruit and lizards. ALYSON EMORY HOLSCLAW

DECLAN JOYCE was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1961 and moved to New York in 1986, where he lives with Nancy, his wife of twelve years, and Emma, his six-year-old daughter. He graduated from General Studies in May 2003 and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in journalism.

GABRIEL OAK RABIN, Columbia College '02, lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He likes to read poetry and write about himself in the third person. His work has appeared in QUARTO and Poetry Motel.

Columbia. This is his second piece to appear in QUARTO. His work has also been featured in Collages and Bricolages, Stage Press Weekly, Siren, Temper, and The Writing Process, among others. He is a playwright in residence at Relentless Theatre Company.

was raised by a foul-mouthed family of drunken Irish peasants. He was first introduced to poetry when his grandfather hosted a dirty limerick competition. Ever since, Justin has taken pride in crafting bad poetry and fake autobiographies.

JUSTIN W H I T E

o O 3

Produced at The Print Center, Inc., 225 Varick St., New York, NY 10014, a non-profit facility for literary and arts-related publications. (212) 206-8465