Foxhead Books Portland | Tipp City | Palo Alto | Chicago
Š 2012 by Julie Innis. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author, with the exception of brief exerpts for inclusion in scholarly works or inclusion in reviews. For permissions or further information, post Potemkin Media Omnibus, Ltd. at 8 S. 3rd St., Tipp City, O. 45371. Innis, Julie, Three Squares A Day With Occasional Torture / by Julie Innis 201p. 102cm. ISBN-13 978-0-9847486-4-8 1. Fiction. 2. Fiction—Short Stories. I. Three Squares A Day With Occasional Torture. Cover Design by Logan Rogers
Contents My First Serial Killer
1
The House Sitter
10
Habitat for Humility
15
Blubber Boy
30
Me, Myself and My Sister Eileen
40
Metallurgy
45
Heller
52
Do
76
Gilly the Goat-Girl
87
A Room with a Partial Ocean View
98
Corrective 113 The Next Man
116
My Tumor, My Lover
121
Big Angel
127
Little Marvels
143
Monkey 152 The Natural Order of Things
166
Fairground 176 Fly 180
for Matt
Three Squares A Day With Occasonal Torture Stories
Three Squares A Day With Occasional Torture
Gilly the Goat Girl I’ve never had much success with men. I’m sure it all goes back to my parent’s divorce. At least, I assume that’s what a therapist would tell me. Temping provides me with very basic health insurance, so mental health services aren’t covered. Grease burns, broken limbs, venereal diseases—check, check, and check. Ennui, angst, and depression—better just keep a mattress out under your window because no one’s going to be there to talk you in from the ledge. It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve always been a little boy-crazy, ever since my elementary school days when I’d chase after them during recess. This was back in the ‘70s and our playground was a candy-colored deathtrap that opened right out onto the road. No rubber mats, no fence to contain us. More than once, I managed to run some little boy straight out into oncoming traffic, a tactic that served me well all the way through college. 109
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In retrospect, I’d have been better off sticking with the goats that lived in the field behind my house growing up. Unlike the boys, the goats were a literally captive audience. Oh how I loved the goats. Their little shaggy chin-beards, their dainty cloven hooves, the coy horizontal slit of their pupils. After school, I’d fill my pockets with cut-up chunks of carrots and apples and mosey on out to the back fence where my goat-pals waited for me. In my mind, I was a regular Anne of Green Gables. In my Dad’s mind, I was one step away from becoming Satan’s minion. According to Dad, my friendship with the goats was further proof of my susceptibility towards demonic possession. The goats are my friends, I tried to explain. I was eleven, impressionable. I’d grown up with one of those PlayMobil Farmer in the Dell sets. I didn’t have good barnyard boundaries. “Exactly my point,” Dad said and added “#4: Goats as Friends” to the list he’d been keeping on the refrigerator. We’d long argued the merits of Numbers One through Three. Bad Handwriting, Inability to Keep Room Clean, and Using Fingers as Utensils. Satan loves the sloppy, Dad said. “How many eleven-year-olds do you know?” I demanded. “We’re all like this,” I claimed, though based on a cursory study of my teen-girl magazines, I worried my Dad might be onto something, harlots and tarts the lot of them. “How many Satanists do you know?” Dad would counter. He always got me with this one. Dad was a police detective assigned to the Satanic Cults desk and knew everything you could ever want to know about the Devil, Charles Manson, Moonies, heavy-metal rock bands, and, for good measure, the airport Krishnas. As the 110
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leading expert in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area on Demonic Possession, he definitely knew more Satanists than I. He kept a map on the wall of our den with push-pins, red of course, marking each instance of the Devil in our midst. In the ‘70s, Cincinnati was awash in a sea of red. I knew it wasn’t Satan who’d taken control of my pre-teen-soul, but I also knew I could never tell Dad that it was all Swiss Miss’s fault. She was definitely no Satanist, but if there was such a thing as Alpine voodooery, she had it in spades. There was no way that Dad was going to be able to help me with this problem. His work was strictly Bible-based. End Times. The Rapture. Zero experience in the realm of the Cartoon Spokesmodel. ••• She told me to call her Annie. “Swiss is where I’m from and Miss is what I am.” I was enjoying a balmy October afternoon with the kitchen windows open while I made myself a refreshing cup of instant cocoa, the Swiss Miss box out next to me on the counter when suddenly, from the front of the box, Annie leaned forward, her dainty little nose crinkled up. “Eww,” she said. “What is that awful smell?” I sniffed at the air between us. There, beneath the delicious scent of chocolately cocoa was a musky odor I knew well. “Goat,” I said, trying to seem nonchalant about it. I mean, I liked my goat pals, but they were decidedly pungent. “Alpine?” she asked, hopeful, her tiny ink eyebrows raised. “I think they’re just plain old Ohio goats,” I told her. She sighed. “They’ll have to do,” she said. 111
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••• Of course, as an adult, I recognize now in my friendship with Annie the yearning of my younger self for a maternal figure, someone to take me under her wing and teach me the ways of womanhood. After my parent’s divorce, Mom took a job on a cruise ship as a lounge singer. She liked to joke that I was her favorite port of call. I didn’t find this joke all that funny. I mean, besides the Ohio River, Cincinnati is pretty much land-locked and port-less. Except for hurricane season, Mom was rarely dock-side. So instead, I had Annie who was all too willing to take me under her cardboard flap with her seductive ways and that heady chocolate aroma. After school, I’d microwave a cup of water under her watchful eye. “Careful, careful,” she chided. “Don’t stand so close. The microwaves will destroy your ovaries. Your future babies will have heads the shape of Pac-mans.” I appreciated her warning. I’d just entered the seventh grade and though we hadn’t yet gotten to the Reproductive System in Biology class, I was a diligent student and had flipped ahead. I didn’t know what an ovary was, but I knew what they looked like—angry little monkey fists. I’d seen King Kong and the last thing I wanted to do was to tempt my reproductive fate with radioactive waves. So, at Annie’s urging, I devised a system in which I used a long wooden spoon to push the microwave key pad as I stood safely to the side. “That’s my smart, pretty girl,” Annie cooed. Most days I took my cocoa straight, but on special occasions, I’d add a sprinkling of mini-marshmallows. Those marshmallows were a real bone of contention between us. Annie was a firm believer in verisimilitude and marshmallows were strictly verboten 112
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in the Alps. “Good thing this is Ohio,” I’d say, letting a marshmallow mustache crust across my upper lip. “Mmm, mmm.” “You are such a child,” she’d reply with a tsk of her sharp Swiss tongue. ••• Annie’s disappointment in me took a turn for the worse after I brought home a box of the Mint-Chocolate variety, complete with a Swiss Miss dressed in a mint-green velvet vest and matching cloche. “Harlot!’ Annie screamed when I placed Minty Miss next to her in the cupboard. Minty-Miss responded by flipping my Annie the bird. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Annie cried as I shut the cupboard doors and headed off to the Rec room for an afternoon of The Facts of Life. At this point, I was inured to adult melodrama, having listened in to far too many phone calls between my estranged and angry parents. “Take a chill pill, dude,” I wanted to tell Annie, but she hated American slang with a passion and I figured, as with most things in my life, it was best just to leave it alone. But the next morning, true to her word, Annie had gotten her sweet revenge. There, submerged in a sink full of soapy dishwater was Minty-Miss’s box, water-logged beyond all recognition. Reader, to this day I am ashamed to admit this, but I failed to give Minty a proper burial. I was already late for school so into the trash my drowned Minty went. “I’ll deal with you later,” I told Annie, shoving her box to the back of the cupboard behind my dad’s breakfast cereal as a preventative measure. His cereal was iron-fortified and of the generic variety with no cartoon spokesmodel to shill it. Behind Dad’s cereal, 113
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the rest of the food in the cupboard would be safe from Annie’s murderous wrath, I figured. When I got home that day, Annie was contrite and even offered up an extra package of cocoa as an apology. What was I to do? I was a pudgy preteen, still girded with baby fat, and while I knew Annie’s motives were far from pure, I was powerless to resist. “Let me make it up to you,” Annie purred as I sipped my double-cocoa. “I want to give you a make-over, like in those magazines you love.” I licked my marshmallow mustache from my lip as I narrowed my eyes at her. “What’s the dealio?” I asked. Annie laughed, her trilling little laugh. “Silly girl,” she said. “You can’t wear Garanimals forever you know. Besides, you’re becoming a young woman. You want the boys to notice you, don’t you?” I shrugged, but inside my heart beat wildly. ••• It started with white puffy-sleeved shirts with high ruffled collars, then tight velvet vests that laced up the front with satin ribbons and itchy woolen tights under wide woolen skirts, and for Casual Fridays, forest-green lederhosen, stiff through the legs with a rear built for storage. As promised, I was transformed. I stood in front of the hallway mirror, admiring the results, and couldn’t help but notice the fresh Alpine flush in my cheeks and that certain Swiss je ne sais quoi twinkle I now had in my eyes. Good to her word, Annie had turned me into a real life Swiss Miss. “The boys are going to love you,” she gushed. Day after day, I trotted off to school dressed in my new garb, 114
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waiting patiently for the results Annie had promised, the stolen glances, the wild-eyed lust of my male classmates, the professions of their undying love. Instead, the boys, and girls, taunted me, teased me, pulled my alpine locks, snapped my suspenders. “Leder what? More like leder loser,” they laughed when I tried to explain. “All attention is good attention,” Annie argued when I complained. “They will learn to love you, you’ll see.” The weeks passed slowly as I trudged off to school dressed in my Alpine finery. Every morning my father asked anxiously, “Are you sure you want to wear that?” “Why, what’s the problem?” I’d snap back and he’d just shrug, his mouth gaping. My outfits were far from suggestive, but I knew the suede lederhosen worried him. A little too close to leather hot pants for comfort, he explained on more than one occasion. “And all those ruffles. Is that the fashion now?” he asked, nervously. I knew from my hours of afternoon television that it was hard to be a single parent, especially the father of a daughter. Honestly, I felt a little sorry for my dad. But when I tried explaining this to Annie, she pleaded with me to be reasonable. “You’ve come so far. What does your father know anyway? Clearly not much, according to your mother.” She knew how to twist the knife, my Annie did. ••• Finally, after weeks of my Alpinery, my homeroom teacher asked to see my father for a “little talk.” That night, when my father came home, he cleared my closet of all my Swiss garb, every last 115
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cosset and frock. “Here,” he said, pushing a bag at me from Sears. “You need to try to blend in more, make yourself less of a target. The salesgirl says these are very trendy.” In the bag were a couple pairs of jeans, an assortment of velour tops, a training bra. In front of Annie, I pretended to hate my new look. Secretly though, I was relieved. But true to form, Annie refused to admit defeat. Every day with the nagging and the insults. “That velour adds ten pounds. You look like a big squishy turd in that top. Who’s going to want you now, Turdy?” After school, I started going straight up to my room to change out of my new clothes and into my lederhosen just to keep the peace between me and Annie. “See how much better you look? So much prettier. I’m sure all the boys agree,” she’d coo. “Yeah right, sure,” I said, standing directly in front of the microwave as I punched in the minutes to boil my water. Nuke my little angry monkey fists, what did I care? At this rate, I’d never know the pleasures of reproduction anyway. “What’s that, dear? You know I hate it when you mumble,” Annie said, her Swiss lilt grating. ••• Looking back, I’m surprised I lasted as long as I did, though it does reveal a certain pattern I’ve followed throughout my life of putting up with bad treatment from others, whether from men or alpine spokesmodels. But finally, I snapped. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?” I said, grabbing Annie’s box as I headed out to the back fence. As soon as they saw me, the goats came running, Billy, 116
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Bobby, Bucky, Benson, and Steve, their velvet noses a quiver, their hot breath soft against my outstretched palm. “Step away from the goats,” Annie pleaded. “You’re hormonal. You’re not thinking clearly. You will regret this for the rest of your life.” I thought about this, what the rest of my life would be like, life without the lederhosen and Annie’s alpine admonishments. Would I ever see the Alps? Would I ever know the icy heights and the swimmy depths of this world? Would I ever be kissed by a boy? In this Swiss get-up, not likely. I took a package of cocoa mix from the box and tossed it over the fence. “No! That’s like chum to sharks. Blood in the water,” Annie cried. “Who are you,” I wanted to ask, “with all your worldly wisdom?” Instead, I tossed another packet and Steve leapt neatly off his little cloven feet, catching the packet between his buck teeth. “Good boy,” I cheered. Then I hauled my arm back and, with a flick of my wrist, threw the entire box over the fence and the goats closed in around it in a tight circle, ripping and tearing and shredding, until all of it, every last bit of cardboard and chocolate dust, was gone. ••• A week later I let Pete, a boy from down the street, feel me up under my velour top while we watched Scooby-Doo in his basement after school. In exchange, he let me call him my boyfriend. He was my first love, sort of. It didn’t feel right, but at least it was something. I still think of Annie and those goats from time to time. How nice it would be if all problems could be dealt with so easily. But it was the era of Tough Love, and I just sort of assumed dating 117
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would always be like this.
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About The Author Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Julie Innis has lived in Houston, Baltimore, Japan, and now, since 1999, New York. She received her Master’s in English Literature from Ohio University in 1994. For many years after, she worked as an English teacher in a wide range of institutions, including two male correctional facilities in Chillicothe, Ohio. Her stories and essays have appeared in Post Road, Pindeldyboz, Gargoyle, Blip, and The Brooklyner, among others. Her story “The Bee King” was selected as a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers in 2009 and in 2010, her story “Sanctuary” won the Glass Woman Prize
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for Fiction. Most recently, her story “Fairground” was nominated for The Best of the Net Anthology 2011 by Blue Fifth Review. Innis has been featured in Media Bistro’s Digital Writer Spotlight, at Connotations Press Magazine as a Writer of the Month, on WUWM’s Lake Effect: Flash Fiction Friday radio show as a National Writer of the Month, and on Fictionaut. She has worked as an editor at Metazen magazine and is now on staff at One Story as a reader.
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