The Madison Review Fall 2023

The Madison Review the madison review

volume 51, no. 1

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fall 2023

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We would like to thank Ron Kuka for his continued time, patience, and support.

Funding this issue was provided by the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Creative Writing Fund through the UW Foundation.

The Madison Review is published semiannually.

Spring print issues available for cost of shipping and handling.

Email madisonrevw@gmail.com themadisonreview.wisc.edu The Madison Review accepts unsolicited fiction and poetry. Please visit our website to submit and for submission guidelines.

The Madison Review is indexed in The American Humanities Index.

Copyright © 2023 by The Madison Review the madison review University of Wisconsin Department of English 6193 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park Street Madison, WI 53706

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POETRY

FICTION

Editors Madeline Mitchell Ev Poehlman

Editors Jackson Baldus Natalie Koepp Morgan McCormack

Associate Editor Jordyn Ginestra Staff Brett Dunn Jasper Huegerich Lauren Goulette Vincent Kim Nyla Sharma

Staff Alex Gershman Dorie Palmer Jackson Wyatt

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Editor’s Note

Dear Reader, We are beyond excited to share with you our Fall 2023 edition of The Madison Review. This issue features captivating works of poetry, fiction, and visual art. We have had the joyous opportunity to read and discuss work that is vulnerable, striking, funny, and ultimately moving.

We have curated a collection of distinctive voices that discuss themes of connection, growth, loss, and healing. We would like to thank our contributors for trusting us to give their work a home at The Madison Review. This issue would not be possible without the care, time, and love you have put into these pieces.

This issue would also not have been possible without the work and dedication of our incredible staff. We are so thankful for you. We would also like to thank Ron Kuka, our program advisor, for his unyielding support, as well as the UW-Madison English Department and Program in Creative Writing.

Thank you as well, reader, for your continued interest and support of our magazine. We hope these pieces move you as they have moved us.

Warmly, The Editors

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Table of Contents Fiction Bess Vanrenen | Telephone Wires Kaleigh Dixson | Gretta and Gray Wilson McBee | Something for the Pain Laurel Sharon | Ready Eddy Meg Kenagy | Still Life with Woman

4 18 36 52 74

Poetry Beth Oast Williams | Un-rooted Elisa Madina | Midsummer Death Elisa Madina | woman; confessional Linda Malnack | The House Dreams Again Its Telenovela Sarah Aziz | A Daughter-Mother-Daughter’s Dua Sam Kaspar | blood diary Therí A. Pickens | I took the trip to england Andrew Vogel | All Saints Sam Kaspar | it’s just that Kevin Grauke | Xylocopa Virginica Richard Ryal | Rising, Landing

2 14 16 30 34 46 50 70 72 78 80

Art Ernest Williamson III | We Stand Before The Council Of Reason Richard Hanus | ORH5321 Jeffrey S. Hartnett | tiny equestrians Roger Camp | Blue Dockline Reflection, Fethiye, Turkey Roger Camp | Blue Tile Fountain Akra Brut, Antalya, Turkey Richard Hanus | 413A6062

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Un-rooted

Beth Oast Williams If there are twenty words for sin how do I narrow my thoughts, choose a verse worth singing?

I’m sensitive to bending, afraid the morning will find me on my knees, off key.

Just last night the ceiling entertained my dreams with the geometry of trees.

Believers might say the oaks were dancing, but my book defines movement as leaving. Like when I woke in December and you were gone.

It’s easy to confuse an arm reaching out with one waving.

How to know the absolute weight of good-bye? An ounce is heavy enough. I Google your name hoping to learn of intention. I rake leaves with a steady hum, the exposed gnarl all that keeps what’s left of my yard from grieving.

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Telephone Wires Bess Vanrenen

Okie wasn’t supposed to dawdle on the way home from school. Every afternoon, her mom called home from Lowe’s and if she didn’t pick up, her mom got mad.

Okie, whose real name was Susan, shortened to Sookie, and then just Okie, turned the corner onto Kickapoo, her second favorite street in Shawnee. Her favorite street, Sycamore, was near school and had big houses with trees and fences in the yards. Kickapoo wasn’t as pretty, but there were lots of interesting things to look at. First you passed the mechanic’s, where there were never any people but there were lots of old cars. Then the sidewalk went away and you walked along the railroad tracks. Then you went by the place where the old tractors were. Then it was her block, just off Kickapoo.

Okie passed the mechanic’s and started walking along the railroad tracks. Her mom told her not to cross the tracks, and so she never did.

But she walked in the field between them and the road. If she looked at her feet, it was like being in the wilderness. If she kept walking along the tracks for a long time, it really was the wilderness. But she had only done that once, with her older cousin, who didn’t even live in Shawnee.

Something pink came into Okie’s field of vision. She picked her way through the grasses and rocks and bent over to look at it. It was a flamingo lawn ornament nestled among the tall grasses. The black paint of the beak and eyes were faded to white, but the pink was still as bright and shiny as a princess’s dress. This close up, the flamingo made her think of a faraway ocean, where tall, S-shaped birds stood in the water, squawking. There wouldn’t be any people around either, only other animals and the blue ocean and the tall, green grasses of the shore.

Then Okie remembered her mom and the phone call and not dawdling. She bolted up and started fast-walking home. She walked fast along the railroad tracks. She walked fast past the tractors. She walked fast across the street. She walked fast past Mrs. Mullis’s house with her shiny red car in the driveway. Mrs. Mullis was in the yard and waved at her, but Okie didn’t even wave back. She walked fast past her other neighbors’ houses, short and squat like molars. Soon Okie 4

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reached her house, painted white but not bright white like the houses on her favorite street.

She hurried across the dusty front yard, patchy with weeds, not even tapping the mailbox. Two steps past the opened gate and two steps on the low porch and then she was at the door.

Okie peeled off the string necklace with her key on it. In the mornings, her mom always made sure she was wearing it, even if her mom was sleeping and had to get up to do it. Her mom also told her never to take it off, and so she never did.

As Okie unlocked the door, she listened for the sound of the phone.

She kicked off her shoes and even remembered to lock the door behind her.

In the afternoons, Okie liked to watch TV and eat her snack with the cordless phone beside her, but today it wasn’t on the base. In her belly, fear flickered. Sometimes her mom got a little mad over stuff like this, like not picking up the phone when she called. But other times, she got a lot mad, and lately her mom seemed tired and quick to get angry.

When her mom got really mad, she would shut her mouth and purse her lips, her blue eyes cold like faucet water in winter. She would stare and stare like she was waiting for something. Her face would turn purple. Then she’d snap like a branch heavy with snow.

Okie looked for the phone under the couch cushions and under the couch. She looked behind the curtains and on top of the TV. She turned on the TV and saw that her favorite show was coming on, a show about aliens that pretended to be human. She settled onto the couch, which was also her bed, and watched.

After her favorite show was over, the next show came on, and she couldn’t help watching that one, too.

As the credits rolled, Okie remembered the phone. Then she thought of something else. Her mom usually called by now. Fear flickered, then flamed. She pushed herself off the couch to search for the phone.

It wasn’t in the living room, and it wasn’t in the kitchen. It wasn’t under her mom’s bed or on her nightstand, but she saw a piece of paper with a phone number on it there.

She pulled back her mom’s comforter, and there she found the phone, tricky and mean, and clutched it against her chest.

Now she needed to make sure she wouldn’t lose it again. She thought of the key her mom made her wear around her neck. Maybe she could do that with the phone. Maybe she could wear it.

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She found a pair of tennis shoes in her mom’s closet and loosened the laces. She wrapped the shoelace around the phone, but when she lifted over her head, the phone slipped out. She wrapped the lace around the antenna, but it slipped out that way, too. But when she looped the lace around the antenna and looped it around the numbers and then looped it some more, it stayed. There wasn’t enough lace left to tie it in a bow like on shoes, so she tied it in a knot instead.

When she stood up, she felt better. As she walked back down the hallway, the phone bumped against her chest—thump, thump, thump. So she swung the phone-necklace around to her back. It still thumped but it didn’t hurt as much.

Then the phone rang. Okie swung it around to answer it and only paused an instant before saying hello. But it was just one of the department store people calling for her mom.

Okie had never liked answering the phone. She always forgot what she was supposed to say to the adults on the line. Then, if it was her mom, her mom would say, “Say something, for God’s sake. Don’t just sit there breathing like a pervert.” But if she missed the call, it was worse.

Okie found out what a pervert was this year. They had to run laps around the schoolyard and afterwards, she was panting tired and she said to her teacher, Miss Leanne, “I’m breathing like a pervert.” Miss Leanne said that was a funny thing to say. Then she asked if Okie knew what it meant. She didn’t, but after Miss Leanne shook her head and walked away, the other kids in her second grade class told her.

Okie didn’t want to sound like a pervert. She hated that perverts even existed.

When Okie got to the living room, she realized it was getting dark outside. Then she realized something else. Her mom was usually home by now. Another flame in her belly.

She walked to the couch and kneeled over the back to look out at the street, which was getting darker and darker. The one streetlight on the block hadn’t turned on yet, but the sky was the color of dark blue paint like the kind they had at school and it even looked wet like paint.

The branches on the trees were swaying. Okie couldn’t tell if they were waving hello or trying to scare her. Telephone wires, big and gray and ugly, cut in front of everything.

When the streetlight came on, Okie decided to call Lowe’s. She dialed the number written on the card above the phone stand. A woman answered and said, really fast, “Thank you for calling Lowe’s.

How can I help you?” But she didn’t know Okie’s mom, and when she 6

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put her through to someone who might, no one came on for a really long time. A song Okie recognized from the country station came on.

It ended and another one started playing, but no one picked up. Okie hung up. She decided to call Grandma Lynn, who was a cashier at Pratt’s and a member of the Lions Club and wasn’t always home. The phone rang six times and then the answering machine picked up. Okie coughed and said, “This is Okie,” and hung up the phone.

Okie’s stomach felt sick, like she’d eaten too much candy. Why hadn’t her mom called? Why wasn’t she coming home?

After she flipped on all the lights in the house, she walked back to the couch and kneeled down again. She looked out the window and watched as the sky turned from blue paint to black paint and the stars came out, dim, like far away spaceships. She couldn’t make out the tree branches anymore except as black fingers against a dark sky. They definitely didn’t look friendly.

Okie knew she was panting, probably like a pervert. Then she remembered that if she was scared, her doll Samantha would be scared, too. She leaned over the side of the couch to where she kept Samantha during the day. Okie liked to pretend that Samantha was a real baby. The doll even looked like her with blond hair and blue eyes, except Samantha was plump and Okie was skinny.

“It’s okay, Samantha,” she said, smoothing her hair and patting her hard back.

There were other times that scary things happened having to do with her mom. The worst time, when they lived in an apartment in another part of town, Okie couldn’t wake her mom up in the morning.

Before that, her mom had been acting funny. Sometimes she brought loud friends over. One of them, a guy named Danny, slept on the floor of the living room for a while. Sometimes her mom forgot to make dinner. Sometimes she laughed a lot or cleaned a lot late, late into the night until Okie couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Okie had wished she could laugh, too, but nothing ever seemed funny.

That day, Okie got up when the sunlight was slanting down through bent blinds, pushy and mad. She got up off the couch and padded to her mom’s room. Her mom was sleeping on the floor with her arms splayed out. Okie had seen her mom sleeping on the floor before, so she didn’t worry. She ate a bowl of cereal and watched cartoons, but when she went back to her mom’s room, her mom hadn’t moved. That was when Okie started shaking her. Every time Okie tried to roll her mom over, her mom rolled back onto her stomach, heavy. Okie gave her a hard push and asked her loudly to Get up! Then Okie saw the 7

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throw-up in her mom’s mouth.

Okie didn’t know what to do. She was crying and yelling at her mom, but her mom still didn’t wake up. So she ran outside where a neighbor heard her, and then the sirens came and took her mom away to the hospital and a lady came and took Okie, too. Okie thought she was going to the hospital to see her mom, but the lady took her to an office. The lady was tall like a tree with a singsong voice and a big, pink smile. They played in a room filled with toys and then they talked. When Okie asked if her mom was okay, the lady said yes. But when Okie asked if she could see her mom, the lady said no, not until she was better. Then Okie’s grandma came and picked her up.

Okie lived with her grandma for a while. She met her mom in the room with the lady, but she always went back to Grandma Lynn’s.

Grandma Lynn didn’t laugh or play as much as her mom did when her mom was happy. She would smoke on the back porch and stare at Okie through the window. Afterwards, she washed her hands with scented soap and smelled like cigarettes and roses.

One day, her mom came and got her. When she saw her mom, Okie’s insides melted like butter on toast. But her mom acted serious, so Okie acted serious, too. That was when they moved into the white house, which was nicer than the apartment but not as nice as the houses on Okie’s favorite street. After that, her mom didn’t play or laugh as much as she used to, but that was okay because she also didn’t have loud friends over and she didn’t stay up all night and sleep all day.

By now it was dark outside and definitely night. Okie closed her eyes and smoothed Samantha’s hair and wished for her mom to come home. Then she remembered the phone number on her mom’s nightstand. Maybe that person knew where her mom was.

“What’s up?” a man’s voice said after a few rings.

One second. Two seconds. “Can I talk to Shelly? Shelly Brundin?” she asked.

The man was silent for a moment and then asked, “Who’s this?”

Okie went to hang up the phone, but he said, “Squirt?” He laughed big. “I haven’t heard your voice in forever.”

It was Danny, who used to stay in their apartment. She didn’t know her mom was still friends with him. Danny was okay. He’d mostly hung around her mom, like a boyfriend would, but her mom used to tease him like he was a little kid. On the phone, Danny asked her how she was and she said fine.

“Do you know where my mom is?” she asked as she left her mom’s 8

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room.

He said no. Then he asked, “You home alone?”

Okie thought for a second. “Yeah.”

“No babysitter, no neighbor, no nothing?”

“Un-uh.”

He harrumphed. “How old are you now?”

“Seven. And three-quarters. My birthday’s in December.” Out the living room window, the black fingers of the tree beckoned her.

Then Okie thought of something. What if her mom tried to call when she was on the phone? “I got to go,” she said, and hung up.

Okie’s stomach rumbled. It was well past dinnertime. Maybe she could make dinner on her own.

Not wanting to put Samantha down, Okie picked up a sheet and folded it around her body with shaking hands. She held the two ends in place as best she could, fastened them with a hair tie, and placed Samantha in the nook. Then she set out to make dinner. Spaghetti.

With Samantha hanging from her front and the phone hanging from her back, Okie filled a pot with water and put it on the stove. She turned on the stove like she’d seen her mom do and watched the water until little bubbles forced their way up from the bottom of the pot.

She put the spaghetti in the water. It didn’t fit in the pot so she forced it down with a wooden spoon. She got a hotdog from the refrigerator and dropped that in the water, too. She watched the water until it almost boiled over and then carried the pot to the sink, poured the water out, steam rising, and dumped the noodles and the hotdog into a bowl.

She watched TV while she ate. She watched a whole singing contest and then a whole other TV show about an angry cook, and she only got scared at commercials, when she’d look from the window to the door for her mom. After the second show, she turned off the TV because it was really late now and she needed to concentrate.

If only her mom would just come home. But her mom wasn’t coming home. More and more minutes passed and she still wasn’t home, and Okie didn’t know what to do.

She rocked on the couch. She told herself not to cry and then she told Samantha the same thing. But it didn’t work, not right away. Big wet tears ran down her face and dampened the top of her shirt.

Then the phone rang. Okie swung it around front and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Squirt. It’s Danny.”

Okie’s shoulders slumped. “Hi.” 9

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“Is your mom home yet?”

“No. Actually.” She tried not to sound sad or scared.

“I don’t know, Squirt. It’s pretty late. I mean, you’re just a little girl.”

He was talking really fast. Okie didn’t like it.

She didn’t want to get her mom in trouble, so she said, “I know how to get ready for bed on my own.”

“Is that right? That’s good, Squirt. That’s good.” Then he asked, “There anyone you can call to come over? Anyone?”

Okie lifted Samantha and held her close with one arm. “I called my grandma,” she said.

“She coming over then?”

“Un-uh,” she said.

“Hey, listen. Why don’t you tell me your address? Just in case? You know?”

After she told him, she thought of how they were tying up the line, and then she thought of something else. She held the phone as far away from her as the shoelace allowed. Her mom had told her never to talk to strangers. Was Danny a stranger? He’d slept in the living room with her, but that was a long time ago. Her mom had said some strangers were okay and some were bad and you never knew the difference. What if Danny was one of the bad ones? A pervert? He didn’t seem like it before, but she how could she know?

She started to hang up the phone, but then she heard Danny say all right and goodnight and hang up.

There was nothing left but to get ready for bed. She put Samantha down and took off the sheet and the phone. She found her nightgown balled up on the floor. After putting it on, she put the phone, the carrier, and Samantha back on, too.

In the bathroom, she turned on the water and leaned over to splash her face. Strands of her hair fell into the stream. Samantha’s carrier and the phone fell forward, too, and knocked against the counter. She reached for her toothbrush, her hands trembling again.

Soon it was time for bed. She spread a sheet over the couch cushions. She lifted out Samantha, told her that it was time for bed, and placed her in the crook of the couch so she wouldn’t fall. It was the spot where, if the couch got hungry, it would eat little things, like wrappers and coins. But it didn’t usually swallow up big things, like dolls.

Okie kissed Samantha on the top of her cool, waxy head.

“Goodnight, baby girl,” she said, waving her hand over the doll’s face and closing her eyes.

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Samantha went right to sleep. Okie lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The white ceiling was made up of tiny, sharp ridges. They rose up and dropped steeply and made her think of snow-covered mountains in a fairytale world. It was a good place where an ice queen reigned. The queen was as pretty as Okie’s mom, and her kingdom was as big as the whole universe. In between each peak was a grassy meadow. Unicorns and other magical beasts roamed the land, and horses and bearded goats and other animals, too. But the edges of the kingdom were shadowy, and terrible creatures lived there. Okie didn’t like to travel to the dark places, but sometimes they pulled her in.

Tonight they pulled her in.

Okie sat up and stared out the window, willing and willing her mom to come home. The longer she stared out the window, the more she could make out familiar shapes outside the illumination of the streetlight—trees and cars and other neighbor’s homes. They looked like themselves but also didn’t: They were mean twins of themselves.

She followed the telephone wires from one end of the block to the other. Sometimes they dipped down low and sometimes they were tight like circus wire.

Soon a powerful light turned the inside of her eyes yellow and red.

Her eyelids fluttered and opened. She’d fallen asleep against the back of the couch.

A black car was parked in front of her house. Its headlights shone over part of their brown lawn and the dead-gray street. The car door swung open and heavy boots followed by thick pant legs and a big, solid body appeared. Okie rubbed her eyes, wondering if this was a dream. But when she opened her eyes again, two men were there, mouthing to each other at the edge of the lawn. One of them was small, like Danny.

The men thudded up the cement path to her house, a solid black mass. Neither one smiled.

Then it all descended on Okie—the phone call, the empty house, Danny. Throw-up in her mom’s mouth. It flooded her from the inside like a cold white light.

One of the men rang the doorbell, but Okie closed her eyes and ignored him, ignored everything. She thought of a story a school friend had told her about a little girl who had turned into a bird to escape danger. She closed her eyes even tighter and felt her body morph into the S-shape of a flamingo. Then the S of her neck and body became a straight line and she soared, pink feathers glorious and gliding over air. The heaviness inside her lifted and was replaced 11

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by something else. Something lighter than air—something easier, but scarier, than fear.

Another flash of powerful light. She heard tapping on the window and opened her eyes. She could see the men now. They were in uniform, holding a badge and a flashlight up to the window.

“Okie?” the smaller one said. “Your friend Danny called us. We’re here to help.” *** When Okie opened her eyes, she felt hot, stifled. Thick blankets smothered her. She pushed them down. It took her several minutes to remember she was at Grandma Lynn’s.

“You up?” Grandma Lynn asked. Okie blinked.

Grandma Lynn was leaning against the doorway of the guest bedroom. Her arms were crossed over her chest. Her dry blond hair fell over her shoulders. She was waiting for something.

Okie could see her mom in her grandma’s face, but her grandma’s face was droopy and lined.

She turned away from her grandma to look out the window on the opposite wall. The sky through the white curtains was gray. She heard birds chirping.

She closed her eyes tight, yearning to be outside, free, like the birds.

But hard as she tried, she couldn’t get back that feeling of flight from the night before. Besides, the only flamingo she’d ever seen had posts that pinned it to the ground.

Grandma Lynn uncrossed her arms and pushed off the doorframe.

Before walking away, she said, “She’s going to be okay.”

In a way, Okie understood what her grandma meant, but in another way she didn’t. If it was like last time, she’d be with her grandma for a while. But if it was like last time, her mom would come for her, in the end.

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Midsummer Death Elisa Madina

Die, winds, don’t blow here where indolence sits no change for the stopped clouds of hot air waiting around city corners that people walk into like children.

Stay figs, peaches, running down hands five open passionflowers, stay gaping at the fat slowdown of time the other seasons worked to all year.

Stay thickets of dry lavender cracking as I walk through you with long shadows around.

Heat from the stone to my feet stay proof of the day’s past, stay sounds of crickets and tumbling ice, the smell of orange.

Fall into the night and stay by the bar where a small crowd talking drips from the curb to the road and die, anyone trying to move this along.

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woman; confessional Elisa Madina

You drew blood from me what can I say with words and glass?

I see your name everywhere still for a second like after bright shapes.

But now I carry golden bowls of water and have new secrets in my hands, some so beautiful I have to turn my face.

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Gretta and Gray Kaleigh Dixson

With my ear pressed to the hollow wood of my bedroom door, I listen to my mother on the phone with her sister and learn two things: first, God has finally given her the man she’s been praying for and second, she’s moving us out of my grandmother’s house in town and onto his ranch as soon as she can manage it. *** It’s on a sun-soaked Sunday afternoon, the day before sixth grade begins, that she fills up the bed of our cherry-red pickup truck. She looks beautiful with her butter blonde hair fixed in fluffy waves and those dimples pressed in her cheeks like raisins in rising dough. After just ten minutes on the smooth asphalt of highway, she veers onto the craggy gravel of country road and rolls down the windows. She draws a long breath in. “This is a fresh start for you and me, Talia. Can’t you just smell it?” I’m not sure what she’s breathing in, because all I can smell is cow manure and it doesn’t smell very fresh to me. *** During supper that night, I learn two more things: first, Gray is a noisy eater and second, he has a daughter named Gretta, a sophomore in high school.

“The two of you can walk to and from the bus stop every morning and afternoon,” my mother says. “It’s quite a long way down the driveway, you know?”

“And Gretta’ll show you around the ranch. You hear?” Gray asks, turning our attention to Gretta.

Gretta nods but doesn’t look at me. “Good. Well then, let’s eat.

It’s time we put some meat on them bones,” Gray says, pinching the skin on my mother’s ribs, and she yelps with joy. I wince. I’m not sure what my mother sees in this doughy, hog-necked man. Half his face is covered by the shadows of his cowboy hat and the other by a dark, wiry beard. All supper long he chomps harshly on the overly salted rendition of my grandmother’s meatloaf, the ketchup clinging to his mustache and the muscles in his jaw writhing like worms. My mother takes birdlike bites, so as not to smudge her lipstick, and smiles too wide. *** 18

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This house is a brittle wisp of wood and chipped paint. I think one wayward wind might cause its collapse. It moans as though it’s painful to stand upright, like it longs to curl into itself. On the inside, it seems it’s in the process of digesting itself: the linoleum floor is warped, the windows pierced with hairline cracks, and outdated wallpaper crisped and yellowed with age. I stay outside as much as I can, going in only for meals and bedtime. *** Gretta and I walk together every morning and afternoon, as my mother said, though together is a strong word. Gretta keeps a couple paces ahead of me and doesn’t look back, no matter how hard I drill my eyes into the back of her skull. I want to ask her why Gray chews so loud and what she thinks of my mother’s food and what perfume she wears that’s so strong it can slice through the dank must of the ranch, but she doesn’t give me the chance. It seems she’s decided to hate me, so I decide to hate her back. *** In the mornings, when Gray is already out choring and Gretta is still in her room, I am given a rare moment of alone time with my mother.

As she does most mornings, my mother scurries uneasily from room to room, getting ready for work in a pinch. I’ve given her a stack of notecards to help me prepare for today’s biology quiz over a bowl of cereal.

“What makes an animal cell different from a plant cell?” she calls from the bathroom.

She sits at the table and pulls her flats on. “What does the mitochondria do?”

“What about the ribosome?” she asks, now rifling through the loose papers and bills on the counter as she hunts for her keys.

She rattles off questions back-to-back, though she never stops to check if I’ve answered correctly.

“Are you and Gretta getting along?” she asks in the same tone as the questions from the flashcards, and I hesitate.

“Uh, well, I don’t know. She’s quiet. I don’t think she likes me much,” I say.

“That’s great, baby,” my mother says before planting a sticky kiss on my cheek and rushing out the door. *** It’s been a week since we’ve moved in and I’ve not received the tour from Gretta, who spends the afternoons on the patio steps sucking down cans of strawberry soda and reading chunky horror novels 19

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She’s always flanked by a colony of dusty, coin-colored ranch cats. I try to pet a cat and it hisses, sticking out its scratchy, pink tongue and crooking its bony back. I scrunch up my face, bare my teeth, and hiss back. *** It’s strange seeing my mother in the kitchen every night, stirring and chopping and flipping and mashing, all the while swaying her hips to twangy country music she never used to listen to and sipping from a short glass of something that I know is alcohol, although I don’t know what kind. All I know is it makes her breath reek of pepper and wood.

When Gray finishes his work on the ranch, his skin a broth of sweat and dust and dirt, he pours himself a glass of the stuff and gives my mother a kiss that lasts too long. I wipe off my lips at the thought of it. *** Gretta spends most of the weekends with her friends and when she is home, she busies herself sunning her freckled shoulders and reading her books. I still haven’t received the grand tour from Gretta and Gray hasn’t mentioned it, either. He doesn’t talk much to me. Or to Gretta, come to think of it. So, I wander the ranch myself. I walk alongside the buzzing fence, eyeing the huffing cows and kicking fluffed dandelions in my path. On the horizon teeters Gray in his green tractor. The ranch is big enough that I don’t see him working out here often, but the occasional spotting reminds me that he’s always around, lurking somewhere. *** I’ve decided that one day I will touch a cow. Almost every day I approach the fence but stop short at the solid stomps of their hooves and the flare of their nostrils: a clear warning to stay back. So, I watch from afar, taken by their huge, glassy eyes and those tongues that look like slimy, purple slugs.

“They ain’t gonna bite,” booms a voice behind me. Startled, I jump.

Gray snorts. “And I ain’t either.”

Heat blooms on my cheeks. “Yeah, I know. I just like to look at them,” I say.

“Suit yourself. Long as you don’t touch this here wire,” he says, pointing to a wire that looks different than the rest. It’s bright silver and coiled tightly; it hasn’t the spikes that the other wires have, but its low hum is just as menacing. “It’s got a mean shock,” he says. He sits at a wooden post and pulls a tool out of his holster, starts messing with the wires.

“What are you doing?” I ask, realizing this is the first conversation 20

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we’ve had without speaking through my mother.

“Fencing. Pretty much all a rancher does anyways. Ain’t nothing getting out on my watch,” he says with his gaze fixed on the wires. *** Every morning on the bus, Gretta transforms before my eyes. With her friends she sings and stomps and tosses back her head and lets loose a peal of laughter so bright and jagged I think it might break one of her brittle ribs. Once I could have sworn I saw smoke crawl from the corner her mouth like a cat’s tail. She says bad words, the kinds of words my mother says when we’re stuck in traffic on a trip to the city to see my aunt. On the afternoon bus, before our stop, Gretta sprays on that sugar-scented perfume, wipes the gloss off her lips, and pulls her lemon lit hair back in a clean braid. *** “It’s creepy to stare at people,” Gretta says to me one morning on our walk up the driveway, shattering her month-long unspoken rule of silence.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Why do you always stare at me?”

I pause, think. “I know bad words, too.”

She crosses her arms and puffs an amused air out of her nose, slowing her pace to walk alongside me. “Oh yeah? Say them,” she says.

I take in a deep breath and dig all the words from my memory, letting them unfurl and flutter from my mouth until I’m nearly breathless and have surely repeated each word three times.

She raises her palm for me to stop, and there’s that laugh, a sweet sound that rips through the air like electricity. “Alright, alright. I believe you,” she says. “Don’t say those things in front of our parents though, alright?”

I smile and my mouth fizzes from the flurry of curse words, or perhaps it is from the thrill of our first secret. *** My mother and Gray go out most nights after dinner, bowling or meeting up with friends in town. After dinner, my mother gets ready while Gray waits outside, smoking cigarettes and sipping on his glass of whiskey that never seems to dry out. I sit on my mother’s bed while she readies herself. It’s a simple room, a little bigger than mine. There are two clunky nightstands on either side of the bed, the carpet is stained, and there’s an overhead fan that casts a yellow lightas dark as egg yolks. On my mother’s nightstand there lays a small but thick book 21

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with a shirtless man behind a woman wrapped in a thin silk dress, their heads cut from the shot. There’s a bible, too, and an assortment of gold jewelry and coins and an empty glass with the pink print of her lips on the rim. There’s nothing on Gray’s side, save for an alarm clock.

Like Gretta on the bus, my mother, too, transforms before my eyes.

She wears the same stiff navy dress and a pair of sheers tights every day for the dusty boutique she works at in town, and when she peels the outfit off, it releases the faint, private smell of tangy sweat. I watch as it deflates on the carpeted floor. She puts on something casual, just faded jeans and a flannel, though she touches up her curls and lipstick and sprays perfume on her throat and wrists. It’s a routine I’ve seen before.

“I’ll miss you,” I say.

“I’ll be back in no time, and I’ll be sure to give you a smooch even if you’re already asleep,” she says, touching my cheek. Her perfume is so strong it makes my eyes water. “Why are you crying? I’m finally focusing on me. You’re twelve now, Talia, you don’t need me around all the time, do you?” she asks, the smooth coo of her voice quickly curdling.

“No,” I say. She smiles and grabs her purse. I watch through the window until the rearview lights of her cherry-red pickup truck are swallowed by darkness. *** My mother and Gray’s arrival home is always punctuated by the sudden snap of the screen door against the wall, pulling me from the warmth of my dreams. Their murky jumble of words is usually too slippery to grasp, especially with the pillow pressed over my ears, though even the waterlogged sounds have a funny way of revealing their moods.

Usually, I hear happy sounds: the fizz of beer bottles opening, cards flicking, their voices flitting giddy as butterflies and their footsteps sporadic, as though they’re dancing. And when I hear them push through their bedroom door, giggling and whispering too excitedly, I’ll wrap the pillow so tight around my head I nearly suffocate myself into sleep.

Tonight, though, their voices are sharp enough to cut through the feathers of my pillow, their footsteps decisive. Something is different.

“Look at yourself,” Gray’s voice thunders. “You’re piss drunk. You seem to be making a nasty habit of getting yourself and all your friends drunk on my dime.”

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“Oh, please, Gray. And look at you––wasted and angry, once again.

The pitchers hardly costed a thing. You’re just upset I wasn’t by your side all night, keeping you entertained.”

“I don’t like the people you call friends. Don’t expect me to spend another penny on them.”

“Well, they don’t like you either. You’re cold and quiet and unlikeable.” Though my mother’s words are slurred, each is laced with spite.

“If I’m so unlikeable, what are you doing with me? What are you doing in my house? Using me for my money and to get out of your mom’s place, that’s what.”

My mother laughs for a long time, a startling sound. When she speaks again, her voice is airy, overly sweet. “Oh, give it up. If I wanted money and nice things, I wouldn’t be with a farmer.” Any hint of sweetness quickly sours in those final words––with a farmer. It rages on like that for over an hour, my pillow a useless buffer.

More than ever, I miss my grandmother’s little brick house in town.

I miss her apple-scented candles and the tree swing out front and her cooking, never too salty or burnt. I miss her funny collection of frog themed things: plates and figurines and paintings and pillows. I miss her tight but soft hugs that smell like warm cinnamon. I miss the quiet nights, the uninterrupted dreams.

Here, Gray’s meaty fists rain down on the walls and my mother’s voice swells with poison. Surely, this flimsy house can only handle so much. I fear someday it will finally come down on us all. *** Every day the bus fills with the screeches and cackles of Gretta and her friends. Though desire tugs inside of me, luring my head to turn and see what the noise is all about, I keep my eyes forward. I watch the rows and rows of corn slip by, each blurring into the next. I squint, trying to train my eye to distinguish each row from the sea of the field.

I count: one, two, three; then lose track and start over. I count again, lose track, and start over. It goes on like this until all I can see is a haze of green husks and blue sky.

“Talia, wake up,” floats a voice. Through purple blur I see Gretta sitting next to me. “You’ve fallen asleep again,” she says. She squints, the bleach-white sun at a perfect angle to singe your eyeballs at this time of day. “Are they keeping you awake at night?” she asks.

Before I can speak, the bus halts suddenly, flinging my body, still weak with sleep, into the gummy, brown vinyl back of the seat ahead of us. She grabs my shoulders with her strong, bony fingers, and pulls 23

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me back in place. For such slight, snappable arms, her strength comes as a surprise.

“What do you think of it here, anyway?” she asks as we walk down the gravel driveway.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“Bullshit. Be honest! You’ve been here two months and you’ve hardly spoken a word. I thought you were mute or something.”

“You never speak to me,” I say.

“Alright, alright, you don’t have to get emotional on me,” she says.

“Well, I guess I like it. Out here, I mean. I don’t like it so much inside. Gray is––” I hesitate, flicking through words in my mind though none of them seem subtle enough.

“An asshole? Dick-wad? Pig?” “Loud,” I say.

“He’s something,” she says.

“Why don’t you two speak to each other much?” I ask. I recall what few words I’ve heard them exchange over supper, though it’s never about anything really. Grades and permission slips. Gretta asks for a few bucks for the movie theater or bowling alley. Gray tells her it’s about time she gets a job.

“When we talk, we fight,” she says. “Anyways. Will you help me with something?” *** Gretta says she’s been feeling Penny’s pregnant stomach getting stiffer each day, and now she’s vanished, meaning she’s hiding away with the kittens somewhere, so we search for them. She leads us around the ranch to the spots she’s found batches of kittens before––window wells and between hay bales and underneath the abandoned cars––and I crawl and reach in spaces that Gretta’s too big to fit in.

Finally, we find Penny and her newborn babies tucked away in one of the sheds in the wooded area. “Good choice, Penny,” says Gretta, scratching Penny’s chin to disarm her while I silently beg her to forget about the whole hissing incident. “It’s starting to get colder, but the shed should stay warm enough.” She explains that the ranch isn’t exactly a nurturing place for the defenseless and fragile-boned. Kittens must face the fearsome grip of winter and disease, and even if they make it through that, they could still get snatched between the claws and jaws of hawks and coyotes and even wild tom cats.

“The fathers will eat their own babies?” I ask in disbelief.

“Fucked up, I know. It’s eat or be eaten on the ranch,” she says. *** 24

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With the deepening chill in the air outside, our parents go out less, filling the house with their noise. Sometimes their howls and shouts brim with ecstasy, though it often morphs into something sour now.

I catch only shards of speech––slut, scum, trust, money, mistake.

There’s silence, too, but the kind that feels heavy in your lungs. Gretta and I stay outside as long as possible, sitting in the shed with the kittens curled like cashews in our laps. They feel so fragile, like their bones are made of eggshells and I worry that one wrong movement will turn them to dust. Gretta tells me how to talk to bullies and how to flirt, warns me of the horrors of high school. She says I’m lucky to have her and I agree. *** On the surface, Christmas seems like a reprieve from the stuffy tension building in the house. “You sure have outdone yourself this time, Margaret,” Gray says to my mother. The kitchen table creaks under the weight of our Christmas dinner: a ham with a glaze so shiny it looks like plastic, a saucer of cloudy gravy, charred vegetables, and a cranberry sauce so sweet it twists my mouth into an asterisk. “Well, ladies?” he says, an edge creeping in his tone.

“Thank you, mom,” I say quickly.

Gretta stays silent, her eyes as shallow and unreachable as the day I met her. It is the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.

Gray slaps a hand on the table. Gretta murmurs a thank you and it is good enough, for now at least. My mother smiles too wide.

Gray and my mother talk about how the ranch’s holding up and their bowling league and their plans to meet some friends that night.

It’s a strange thing watching two adults play Pretend.

Something is burning. “Shit,” my mother says, rising from her chair, “The apple pie.” *** Gray is gone for a weekend hunting trip and my mother left to stay with her sister, so it’s just me and Gretta in the house. She has a group of friends over on Saturday night and tells me to stay in my room and I do, though when the singing and screeching bleeds past midnight, I go downstairs and, to my surprise, Gretta waves me into the circle they’ve formed on the floor. There’s a beer can in the middle surrounded by a ring of cards, some of them squeezed under the beer tab.

Gretta puts her arm around me, sloppy with drink. “This is Talia, everyone. She’s like a sister to me,” she says, her voice a sing-song slur.

Her perfumed breath wets my face like morning dew on grass, but 25

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bitter. “Talia and her mom moved in just a year after my own mom was put in the ground.” Her voice is suddenly steady and drained of joy. I sit in a stunned silence, not a single word coming to mind.

“Leave,” she says coldly, and I do. *** On Monday morning, I tell my mother about Gretta’s party. It burns on my tongue, and I try to swallow it, but it just slips out. I can’t explain why, but Gretta hurt me, and a part of me wants to hurt her back. *** That night Gray tells Gretta she won’t be joining us for dinner and tells her to go to her room. After a silent dinner without her, I lay in my bed with my pillow pressed over my face yet again, Gray’s boiling voice filling the house. He’s in her room, telling her she’s irresponsible and stupid. He says he can smell cigarette smoke, asks if there’s anything else she’s hiding. She says she has to hide things. That she could only ever tell her mother the truth and now she’s gone. Hardly even cold in her grave, she says. *** In March, the whisper of winter still lingers in the air, though the spring sun has broken through the winterlong wall of clouds, a blue sky finally oozing through. For as long as I’ve been here, I realize, I’ve not touched a cow. I decide to try my luck. Gretta and I aren’t talking much these days, and she doesn’t look back when I walk off the gravel and onto the grass, which squishes under my feet and reeks with the must of recently melted snow. I pull a tuft of switchgrass from the ground, shake the clumped mud off the roots, and thrust the fistful between a gap in the fence. To my surprise, a cow approaches. It’s hesitant at first, but eagerly accepts my gift, wrapping its filmy, purple tongue around the grass. I see my own reflection in her watery eyes, and I lean in closer so that I can comb my fingers through the scruff on top of her head, and without thinking I grab a wire to steady myself. Immediately a shock seizes my body and I know I’ve grabbed the electric wire.

It is a piercing feeling that courses as fast as lightning through my body. The electricity spreads in an instant––to my toes, my belly button, along my spine, inside my teeth. I fall to the ground in a violet daze and Gretta runs towards me.

Though the pain fades as quick as it came, my body still quivers in its wake and fear heavies my chest. I know I was electrocuted, but I don’t know what’s to come from it. “Am––am I going to die?” I muster, 26

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my senses all tangled.

Gretta crouches down, puts my head in her lap, and looks real close.

Slowly, she nods. “Yes,” she says.

My throat clenches and tears spring to my eyes. I begin to cry; it is a raw, animal-like howl of a cry. Then I hear a bright roar of laughter and I see tears in Gretta’s eyes, too.

“You’re not going to die, Talia,” she says. She rolls me off her lap and lays next to me, still convulsing with laughter. I try to stop myself, but I begin to laugh, too, until my face is hot with tears and snot and my belly burns.

“Do you hate me?” I ask.

“Why would I?” “Telling my mom about your party and well,” I pause, consider my next words. “Being here. After your mom died.”

She’s silent for a moment. Then, she says, “I tried. I wished I could.

But you made it hard. You’re too weird to hate, I guess.” She pulls a necklace from a pocket in her bag and opens a locket. The woman in the picture sits on porch steps. Through the fingers of the woman’s raised palm, you can see her wild, lemon lit hair and glimpses of her big smile, toothy and beautiful.

“You look like her,” I say.

“Yeah,” Gretta says, snapping the locket shut. “Where’s your dad, anyway?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Gone before I was born,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” says Gretta.

A welcomed silence settles around us, thick as honey, and we stare up at the yawning sky until my mother calls us in for supper. *** My mother and Gray are in one of their “rough patches” though I’ve not seen it this rough before. My mother cares less about cooking these days. She makes an old classic she used to make on the few occasions my grandmother took a night off cooking––shit on a shingle, she calls it. White bread with canned gravy and dried beef on top, a fiveminute meal. She smokes inside during supper and Gray pours himself drinks that grow more and more generous with each day’s passing.

Their exchanges are brief and spiked with venom. *** Late one night, I crack my window and listen to my mother on the phone with her sister. She’s sitting on the porch, a cigarette burning between her fingers. She pushes the smoke out of her lips in one silky, bitter stream that I can smell from here. She speaks in a hushed tone.

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I learn two things: first, my mother can’t stand to be with Gray anymore, and second, she’s moving us out as soon as she can manage it. *** I don’t tell Gretta at first. With only a month left of school, I let the memory dissolve into a formless echo for a while. When we walk up the gravel driveway in the mornings, she tells me about how she’ll drive me to school next year when she gets her license, and she promises to bring me to the pool with her friends over the summer. I tell her I can’t wait, and I mean it. *** On the weekend of my birthday, Gretta stays home. I once told her I always wanted to go camping, so she borrows a tent from a friend, and we pitch it in the woods. Gretta reads from her scary book with a flashlight pointed beneath her chin, the light carving inky shadows on her face. She gifts me the same sparkly perfume she uses, and we eat store bought birthday cake with plastic forks until the sugar stretches uncomfortably in my stomach. My sleeping bag is thin, and the ground is cold and spiked with stones that jab my ribs, but in this tent, I am enveloped in an easy silence I’ve grown unfamiliar with. I sleep more soundly than ever. *** I tell Gretta my mother and I are moving out when I can’t stand it any longer. I tell her I don’t know when.

“I know,” she says, closing her book in her lap. “I always knew those two had an expiration date.”

She opens her book again and I reach for a sleek, tortoiseshell cat.

She bats a paw, etching a thin ribbon of blood on my wrist, then rubs her soft cheek on my knuckles.

We spend our afternoons petting the cows until our fingertips are thick with silt, looking for kittens, and sitting on the porch steps. She sips from her strawberry soda, suns her shoulders, and reads her horror novels, sometimes reciting an extra gory passage or two aloud, while I try my luck at befriending the scrawny cats.

I know how horrible my mother and Gray are together, how the air inside that house is always so inflated with tension it presses against the walls, threatening collapse. But for the first time, I pray for a change in heart. I pray my mother and Gray will make it work. *** Like the rows and rows of corn I watch out the window of the bus, the next few weeks slip by in a blur. I wish I could take handfuls of 28

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memories, both sour and sweet, and plunk them in a jar of vinegar, pickle and preserve them forever. *** It is on a lukewarm Saturday morning, the first day of summer break, that my mother packs our belongings into the bed of her cherry red pickup truck. The weather hasn’t made up its mind; the sky is salt-white, a thin froth of clouds obscures the sun, and the still air is neither warm nor cool. It doesn’t take long to load our things into the truck, and all the while Gray isn’t to be found. He’s choring, I’m sure.

To my relief, my mother doesn’t wait for his return.

In a drained, strange sort of way, my mother looks beautiful: her hair is gathered in a severe knot at the nape of her neck, pulling the skin of her face taut. The watery pink of her eyes makes the blue irises glow with brilliance and her clenched jaw pronounces the striking contour of her face.

I wave through the window and Gretta, who sits on the porch steps surrounded by her army of coin-colored cats, waves back.

“I’m sorry for bringing you out here, baby,” my mother says as her truck bobs on the gravel driveway. I watch out the rearview mirror and at the bend of the driveway, Gretta vanishes.

When the gravel road flattens to the smooth asphalt of highway, I finally turn to my mother. “It’s okay,” I say. And I mean it.

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The House Dreams Again Its Telenovela Linda Malnack

Credits roll, a genealogy of the human race.

Spanish with English subtitles.

Stars rift like piano keys into the basement.

The left hand plays half a rhapsody.

Writing is under everything.

Asteroids as big as houses brush the ionosphere and catapult into space.

When the protagonist laughs, the right hand joins in.

Our basement fills with black water.

When war is declared my sons waken.

The news takes them hostage and threatens to cut off their heads.

In the distance someone plays a chainsaw in the key of E. The sky’s double stands in for the sky.

Subplots begin their layered a cappella.

One son closes a door, one opens a window.

The house fills with oboes, the score still playing as we leave one by one.

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A Daughter-Mother-Daughter’s Dua Sarah Aziz

tell me how you lost your only postage stamp, unspooling like the fireflies’ wings you used to tell me were fairies’ rides. crusting like frost over sweet pineapple pickle, the barbed serpent wrinkling silently your dream of Coleridge wrapped in my grandmother’s betel leaves. tell me how you traced your jagged nail over Pizarnik, praying to forget the lonely voice that breathed outside the isle. Like Eric, Claire and Zoe— the beautiful children running around and out of my pencil at nine when you had said, Don’t write about America unless you want to be smothered by American writers who actually know America and my tear-hearted face, screaming, But I want to be American! not knowing I had been running, running from you and writing on you and wanting to be like you and not wanting to be anything like you.

My skin blooming over, the colour of the only earth I will ever truly know. Tell me. I will be waiting.

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Something for the Pain Wilson McBee

The sky hung low and gray over a strip mall in Skokie, Illinois.

Slotted among the big-box stores and furniture outlets and chain restaurants was High Time, an indoor trampoline park. In addition to five thousand square feet of spring-activated surfaces, High Time boasted two swimming pool-sized pits of foam cubes, a climbing wall, a row of arcade games, and a snack counter. Since the grand opening the previous fall, parents had been driving over from Chicago and from other suburbs to submit their children to the park’s aerobic cornucopia. Word had spread of how the place turned your kid into a pooped, sweaty teddy bear in under an hour.

It was midmorning on a Saturday in February. A fortyish mother and her five-year-old son entered through High Time’s double doors.

Removing their hats and scarves, they began to digest the room. It was a lot to take in. The main jumping floor was divided into an extensive checkerboard of trampoline pads, connected by alleys of rubber matting. A garish color scheme of orange, black, and purple predominated. Hanging on the walls were giant propagandistic images of leaping figures, their faces stretched by smiles of joy and abandonment. Overhead speakers pumped out pop hits from the 1990s at a brain-rattling volume.

“I don’t like this place,” said the boy, whose name was Louis. He had wispy blonde hair and dark green eyes that were like the color of a lake on a cloudy day.

“It’s okay to be nervous, Chicken,” said his mother, Gilda, who had the same feathery curls and distant expression. “I’ll be watching you the whole time.”

Louis straightened his eyebrows and settled into a pouty silence.

“I’m not nervous.”

“Okay. But can you at least try, for me?”

Gilda had known this outing would call upon all her motherly skills in persuasion, patience, and reassurance—but she already felt herself straining to confront her son’s premature attitude of defeat.

“Why?” Louis whined. “Why do I have to try?”

After taking a deep breath, she was able to channel the voice of someone sweeter and softer than she was.

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“You know, Chicken, when I was your age, I used to love jumping on trampolines. My friends and I would do it for hours on end.”

Louis perked up.

“Are you going to jump, too?”

“Well, no, Chicken. It’s not really for grown-ups.”

“But I see some grown-ups who are jumping.”

Louis wasn’t wrong. Although the vast majority of those on the trampolines were children, a few ambitious adults had joined them.

“I guess it’s not really for me. You know about my slipped disc.”

Louis nodded. Of course he knew about her slipped disc. The result of an ill-considered rock-climbing expedition with the man Gilda had dated immediately after Louis’s father left, the slipped disc was the reason she hadn’t been able to pick Louis up in two years; why she couldn’t play chase with him at the park, why she couldn’t even sit on the floor with him and build things out of LEGOs. Gilda and Louis had come to High Time on a prearranged playdate, and the mother and son they planned to meet had yet to arrive. They sat on a bench near the front door to wait.

After a few seconds Louis asked if he could watch Finding Nemo on Gilda’s phone.

Gilda grimaced. “Not, now, Chicken. We just got here. It won’t be long. How about we play ‘I spy with my little eye’? Hmm . . . I spy with my little eye . . . something . . . orange!”

Louis shook his head and groaned. “Please, Mommy, just let me watch it.”

Aware that she was conceding at most a few minutes to the seductions of three-dimensional animation, Gilda handed over the coveted digital fetish.

While Louis stared at the tiny screen, and the puny voices of Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres struggled in vain against the booming, mellifluous drone of the Backstreet Boys, Gilda reached into her purse for a stick of gum. Her hand came out with a tube of chapstick, a crumpled drugstore receipt, a few Cheerios, the pack of gum, and her nine-month sobriety token. She let everything but the gum and the token fall back into the cluttered abyss of the purse.

Gilda chewed the gum and fondled the token, which was purple and had the diameter of a silver dollar. The Narcotics Anonymous people explained that the sobriety tokens were supposed to help you move forward by providing a visual reminder of what had been accomplished so far. The token was like a map, a lodestar, a talisman, a shield—God, the way they mixed metaphors! Right now, though, 37

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as Gilda found herself struggling to breathe inside this abrasively cheerful indoor amusement park, she could only think about how much better she would have felt if the token had not been a token at all but a 5mg tab of Percocet instead.

“Hello, friends!” A voice rang out behind them.

The mother-and-son pair Gilda and Louis had been waiting for hustled through the double doors. Helen was a good bit younger than Gilda, and her son, Mason, was a good bit taller than Louis. And yet, because the boys were in the same kindergarten class, they had become two sets of peers.

“What’s he doing here?” With his faux hawk, track pants, and generally menacing air, Mason was a miniaturized version of the guys Gilda had once bought mace to protect herself from, back when she lived in Lakeview during her twenties.

“Why, it’s Louis, from school, and his mom! What a cool surprise!”

Helen sold the lie of a chance encounter with gusto. A short, bouncy blonde, with an eager smile and a naturally amplified voice, Helen was ideally suited to hosting a reality competition on TV or selling smallbatch maple syrup from a farmer’s market stall. It was a shame, then, that she had to waste this talent for making things seem better than they were on a toxic little package like Mason.

“But I don’t want to jump with him!” Mason folded his arms and glowered at Louis.

“Hey, Mister, that’s not very nice,” Helen said, and she swept Mason into a corner by the door, where she whispered what seemed more like a pep talk than a reprimand.

“Why were they surprised?” Louis asked Gilda. “Didn’t they know it was a playdate?”

“I don’t know, Chicken,” said Gilda, lying herself now. “Maybe they forgot we were going to be here.”

She couldn’t decide which was the more wounding insult—that Mason had been so disappointed to see Louis, or that Helen had foreseen this response and thus hidden the fact that Louis would be at High Time in order to get Mason to come in the first place.

Gilda knelt so that she could address Louis at eye level.

“Remember what we talked about on the way here,” she said.

“You’re smart, you’re cool, you’re fun. Mason just hasn’t had the opportunity to get to know you yet.”

Louis nodded, unconvinced.

Helen and Mason returned. After a nudge from Helen, Mason offered a deadpan apology that was like something out of a Soviet 38

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show trial. “I’m sorry I said what I said. I’m excited to play with you.”

The foursome proceeded to queue up so that they could sign the extensive liability waivers before buying their jumping passes and the specially branded gripper socks that were required on the trampoline floor. When Helen had first suggested they meet at High Time, Gilda had scoffed to herself. Whatever happened to simply playing outside?

Couldn’t the boys build a snowman? Sometimes it seemed to her that twenty-first-century childhood was little more than a regimented progression from one organized physical activity to another, with heavy doses of screen time in between. And so High Time seemed like another cop-out to parents who were afraid of giving their kids too much independence, a human hamster wheel. But her cynicism had begun to wilt in the face of High Time’s contagious jubilation. The kids were clearly having the time of their lives. All you had to do was close your eyes and listen to the laughter and yelps of excitement. You could also sense a sense of release, if perhaps more tentative, on the faces of the adult jumpers as well.

When Gilda tried to tell the cashier that she wanted to buy a single pass and pair of socks, Helen intervened. It turned out that Helen would be one of those ambitious grown-ups.

“You should jump, too, Gilda! You’d be surprised at how much it is.

It’s just like you remember.”

Gilda felt the heat of Louis’s gaze on her as she replied.

“I would love to. I’m sure you’re right. But it’s not physically possible.”

“Mommy has a slipped disc,” Louis said proudly.

“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry, Gilda. I feel like such a jerk dragging you all the way out to Skokie when you can’t even join in on the fun.” Now she set her hands on her hips and effected a transition reminiscent of a news anchor moving on to sports after reporting a double homicide.

“But the three of us can still have fun, isn’t that right, boys?”

Mason didn’t react to Helen’s friendly elbow, and Louis kept quiet as well.

After they had stored their winter layers and shoes in quarteractivated lockers, and Helen and the boys had changed into their special socks, Helen asked if everyone was ready to “get their jump on,” parroting a phrase depicted repeatedly on High Time’s signage.

But Mason said he wanted to play one of the video games first.

“Don’t you want to jump? That is what we came here to do.” For the first time, Gilda noted a hint of desperation in Helen’s delivery.

“I want to play the video game first,” Mason said, as if explaining 39

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such simple requests to his mother was the most common frustration of his limited existence.

“Oh, alright,” Helen said, regaining her chirpiness. “But not for too long. I’m ready to jump with you, Mister!” She attempted to pat Mason on the top of his head as he ran away but managed only to graze him with her fingertips.

Louis watched Mason go without moving himself. After a moment he tugged Gilda’s shirt.

“Mommy, can I?” “Sure, sure.”

Mason had found a Jurassic Park–themed game in which the object was to mow down as many dinosaurs as possible using plastic submachine guns that were attached to the console by coiled tethers.

Louis stood silently by and watched while Mason shot at the screen and whooped with excitement.

“Hey, Gilda,” Helen said, with rehearsed seriousness. “I wanted to thank you again for agreeing to do this with us—after what happened last week. I’m just so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. They’re kids. It happens.”

“I just can’t tolerate the idea of my son punching another kid unprovoked.”

“I doubt it was unprovoked. Believe me, Louis can be a real pill sometimes.”

As Helen trained her eyes on Mason, a series of worry lines like a musical stave appeared on her forehead.

“This violence,” she said. “I just don’t know where it comes from.”

After a few minutes of watching Mason play, Louis picked up the other sub machine gun attached to the console. He looked at Gilda, who nodded for him to go ahead. Then he joined Mason in the firefight.

“Look, they’re playing together,” Helen said. “How sweet is that?”

After a few minutes the boys tired of reextinguishing the dinosaur.

Mason, with Louis following behind him like a shadow, ran over to Helen and told her he was ready to jump.

“Finally!” Helen said.

Helen and Mason had started toward the trampoline floor when Helen stopped and noticed that Louis had remained by Gilda.

“Come on, Louis,” Helen said. “Let’s get our jump on!”

“I don’t think I want to jump after all,” he said, lifting his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. He couched his refusal in a light-heartedly ambivalent tone, as if the choice were no more consequential than 40

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opting for a lemonade instead of a milkshake. “I guess I’m not in the mood.”

Gilda didn’t know what to say or do. She could practically see Louis’s heart thudding away inside his chest. Fear and anxiety had set their shackles on him. And all she had were words—useless, ineffectual words.

“I really think you’d love it if you tried,” she said.

“That’s right,” Helen chimed in. “It’s ok to be a little scared at first.”

Louis averred that he was not scared.

“He’s scared,” said Mason.

“Am not!”

“Are, too!”

“Mason, enough!” Helen caught Mason’s shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze.

Louis looked up at Gilda. “Are you sure you can’t jump with me?”

“Oh, Chicken,” Gilda said. “I wish I could. But it’s not possible.”

“The chicken is scared,” Mason crowed. “Buck buck buck, fraidy chicken, buck buck buck.”

“You shut up!” Louis cried.

“Louis, language!” Gilda folded Louis, sobbing now, against her side.

She told Helen that she and Mason should go ahead.

“Are you sure?” Helen appeared to be split between two emotions— she didn’t want to give up on Louis so soon, but she was also eager to remove herself and her son from this dispiriting scene.

“We’ll be fine.”

Helen and Mason bounded off to join the throngs of happy jumpers.

Gilda and Louis sat down on one of the benches. After about a minute Louis asked if he could watch Nemo. Gilda obliged wordlessly.

We’ll be fine, she had said. It was one of her catchphrases. But would they, really, be fine? All one had to do was look at all these carefree, hyperactive, silly, sweaty, normal children, bouncing around and having the time of their lives, to see that Louis was far from fine.

What kind of six-year-old rejected the abundant physical delights of a place like High Time? Could there be any surprise in learning that the same pathologically avoidant child had become the go-to victim of schoolyard bullying and ostracism? And what kind of mother, for that matter, allowed her son to fall into such a role unless she herself regularly encouraged—regularly rewarded!—these leg-hugging tendencies? If only Gilda, like Helen, hadn’t been denied, thanks to the accident and its resulting pharmaceutical malady, the free use of her own body, she would have gone out on the trampolines 41

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and showed them how much fun she could really be. After all, she had once been a spry, vivacious mother herself, but Louis couldn’t remember those days. The only mother he knew was one who was frail, withdrawn, and perennially incapacitated. Mommy has a slipped disc. Mommy’s sick again. Mommy, do you need your medicine? Mommy, wake up!

Then Gilda arrived at a sudden, terrifying realization: she had brought herself to the brink of a relapse. It was like the feeling one gets when, walking happily through the city at night, you stumble upon a street that is quieter and darker than it should be. Except this was a bad neighborhood of the mind. She found herself struggling to break free from a gang of imposing rationalizations. What was more important to her than Louis’s happiness and self-confidence? Didn’t she deserve to have fun with her son, to show him what it meant to be brave, curious, and open-minded? Wasn’t the vision of Louis actually enjoying himself, and neutralizing Mason’s taunts in the process, worth sacrificing a silly little plastic token? Wasn’t it worth courting the remote possibility of a bender leading into an overdose?

If someone had offered her a pill at that moment—just one pill—she would have accepted it without hesitation. Thankfully, however, all the tempting justifications were neutered by undeniable circumstances. A trampoline park in Skokie was about the last place on the planet where she could score.

It was almost funny. She imagined the conversation with her sponsor.

“Sandy, it’s Gilda. I’m in trouble. I’m thinking about going back out.”

“It’s okay, honey. You did the right thing by calling me. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you. Are you at a club, on the street, at a house party?”

“I’m at the High Time trampoline park in Skokie.”

“You’re at the what?”

During the early days of her sobriety, Gilda used to play a trick on herself by imagining that she had the power to make the people around her high on the stuff she was craving. It was like her secret superpower: poof, here’s a taste for you, and you, and you, and you. All she had to do was look at one of these unwitting test subjects—strangers on the bus, co-workers, even her friends, even Louis—and vicariously feed off the sensation she envisioned warming them from their toes to their ears. This was Gilda’s way out of the destructive wish to be on something herself. What if everyone else was experiencing that fullbody tingle that was like wearing an astronaut’s uniform made from brushed velvet? What if everyone else had just been gifted that sudden mental awareness that was like someone opening a window inside your brain? She looked out at the jumpers on the trampoline floor 42

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and began to touch them with her wizard’s wand: a sweet little girl in paisley leggings, a dad with a Civil War beard and a Zelda t-shirt, a High Time employee with a shaved head and neck tattoo visible at his collar.

Just like that, she bestowed them the gift of chemically enhanced consciousness. They would never look at the orange-and-purple hellscape of High Time the same way again.

Wait a minute, Gilda thought to herself, coming back to the employee with the shaved head and the tattoo. There’s no reason to pretend that guy is blitzed. He was doing all the work for her. He was long gone already: dilated pupils, itchy fingers, a droopy posture that made him look like a marionette held aloft by a distracted puppeteer.

So much for the hope that High Time was a drug dessert. Gilda’s addiction began to rev up like a motorcycle’s engine. Her jaw throbbed. She salivated. The region of her spine housing the slipped disc, three quarters of the way between her neck and her ass, suddenly caught fire. Pain was like that—hurting the most at the mere threat of being snuffed out.

She stood up and strode in the direction of the suspiciously relaxed High Time employee. Louis, engrossed in the underwater world onscreen, didn’t even notice her moving away from him.

“Do I know you?” she asked the employee, whose name tag identified him as Felix.

The unlucky Felix blanched and swallowed slowly.

“I don’t think so,” he said, in the manner of someone who didn’t entirely trust his own memory.

“Oh yeah,” Gilda said confidently. “I have definitely seen you before, and now I remember where it was.”

Felix shook his head in hopeful denial.

“I really don’t think you do.”

“It was at the market.”

“The market?”

“Yep. You were selling blueberries and bananas.”

Felix’s heavy eyes roused themselves into a state of flickering panic.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied.

“Does your boss know you came to work loaded today?”

She knew it was cruel to exploit Felix like this: after all, they were members of the same troubled tribe. But she had committed to the scheme now and wouldn’t be deterred.

“What’s wrong with you?” Felix whispered.

“I need you to help me out.”

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Felix exhaled. “What do you need?”

Ten minutes later Gilda led Louis into the Petco located next door to High Time. The store was practically empty but hardly quiet, abuzz with the chirping parakeets, the thrum of water filters, and the rustling of caged rodents. It had the same vet’s office smell that was the result of powerful disinfectant doing battle with the natural funk of domesticated animals.

“Why are we here?” Louis groaned.

“Don’t worry. It won’t take long.”

They entered the fish-tank aisle. The shelves of glass boxes rose higher than Gilda on either side. It was an aquarium in miniature: red tail shark, green tiger barb, blue gourami, angelfish, guppies.

“Mommy, look! It’s Nemo!” Louis rushed over to peer into a tank of clownfish. Of course, Gilda realized in this moment, the plot of the Disney movie hinged on an inconceivable premise. These pet-store creatures had never known the freedom of open water. They were bred to love the mirrored walls and plastic castles of their own private oceans. They wouldn’t have dreamed of escaping.

Felix waited for Gilda by a tank of nervously darting koi.

As Louis continued to gawk and coo at the clownfish, Gilda approached her accomplice.

Felix had covered his orange High Time tee with a gray hooded sweatshirt, as if, like a gang member in enemy territory, he was required by the code of the strip mall to conceal his origins when entering a rival establishment.

“You brought your kid?”

“What else was I supposed to do? Leave him under the supervision of someone like you?”

Gilda reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. Naturally, the sobriety token came, too. She cupped the token and the wallet in her left hand while extracting a wad of cash with her right.

She held out the money.

“I don’t feel so good about this,” said Felix.

“Well, that makes two of us. Come on, hurry up.”

Desirous that Louis not witness his mother conducting a drug deal in the fish aisle of Petco, Gilda was eager to return to High Time.

Yet still Felix dithered. He eyed the sobriety token.

“What’s that?

“Do you want it? Here.” Gilda transferred the token into the hand with the money. “Please.”

Felix turned the token over in his hand, examining it, feeling the 44

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weight of the plastic—wondering what it would have felt like if the token were his own.

“And you’re just going to give it up?”

“Yes, I am.” Gilda snarled through clenched teeth. It was pure torture whenever a score was interrupted or delayed like this. She could barely stand up. Her slipped disc was screaming. Her whole body was like someone waiting for you in a car out front and impatiently sitting on the horn.

“I don’t feel so good about this,” Felix said again, but he took the money anyway.

Back at High Time, after buying a pass for herself and her own set of gripper socks, Gilda led Louis onto the trampoline floor.

Helen cheered when she saw them. Gilda and Louis began to jump together—ever so carefully, with their feet barely leaving the leathery surface of the trampoline pad. After a few bounces Louis began to get the hang of it. He let go of Gilda’s hand as a pleased smile spread across his face. It should have been so gratifying to Gilda—the height of motherly satisfaction—to see Louis bravely trying something new and having a blast in the process. But all Gilda could think about was another pill and how quickly she could get her hands on one.

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blood diary Sam Kaspar

worrying turned bitter, too much thinking since last the sweetness touched your fading blood’s value, time ticked, then second hands tabbed the moments on a clock, time was trickling down liquidity on windowed still december flowers, each in drying sun as naturally sheltered, straightened outspread limbs, stretched outpaced, dying of a droughted flood, that taught some hard truths, they judge you on the bias, struck, midnight’s paradoxic swing of just too much time was not enough as time ticks, you grew, but roughly they withered perhaps morally but kept power, lived through sickly ’wrong’ blood pumps they decree, into syringes, who judges that attack, but stabbed into lab tubes tested against pierced skin, the veil: microbially fine and sticky details, supposedly today portrayed as if diseased, you’re the ’wrong’ kind of person, sickly: “something about you that I just can’t put my finger on,” bad news brings bitter tears on attractive faces forbidden misery, re: viewed the way it pleases some, who study your aesthetics, declare who 46

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you really are according to them , supposedly today portrayed – admissible as some disease the reasoning years of bad news brings immiscible night, its pitter-patter, anguish-flatter tears with its imbalance, manufacturing admission into young eyes as bricks, laid neat, re: viewed the way it pleases some, aesthetically, and then until more decades passed your nature habitually withered, suddenly realize chronically unaccepted strong-armed information handling slow-handed inflammation: finger on the hemorrhage not a tamponade but for venous access their nails dip into flesh rips open conduits blood line flows and won’t congeal to see your nature, habitually withered fast when they declared you gone from the group because of how you looked I’d hold a grudge too if they belittled me like that, but if your worry is so tangible, some of what you’ve lost, your reasons, all your seasoning, through time (you’ve kept notes) when growth subsides, slight chill is maybe some imperceptible beauty or danger of passive, and uneasy wrath, in summer’s furnace and temperate autumn Her passive warnings almost ambivalent, arrival leaves, disobeyed metronome, kept time shielded from erosive disuse lent you what support I could walk you through 47

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translucent clocks racing, but I never knew the way either through Midnight’s dark heart pumps, some residual (what they called hot blood) isn’t yet extinguished, subtle, palpable and lacking time with quantitative easemeant, you’re remaining measured when you don’t strike anything, anyone, you’d not have the power.

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I took the trip to england Therí A. Pickens

partly for work, partly to see the slave museum in Liverpool: some understanding of the magnitude of the magnitude of slavery’s reach. Portside. Starboard.

Carrying people with faces stern like my own, maybe my own blood.

I called on the Brookes, number 258, my friend Penny and her husband, Rodney, American from Bristol, Maine. Rodney bowed gallantly when he served dinner. Like any good host, he asked about my work connected to the ships: shipping up, shaping up, shipping out, and the vastness of them, the enormity of transporting so many souls.

I do not know how we got to literature.

Perhaps I brought it up over steaming broccoli, saltless on the stalks, still waxy and bright, their emerald not singed after roasting, florets full and bushy like, well… cotton, the speckled chicken, not quite golden, but made special for me and Penny, since as Penny says Rodney eats nothing with a face.

I don’t know how we got to literature like I said, but I must have mentioned teaching literature without letters, moving leeward against what students know.

What they think they know anyway.

Yeah, Rodney says, since Blacks chose not to write at that time.

And, I sit drier than the chicken and I ask which Blacks chose 50

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or what Blacks chose.

So, Rodney says, Blacks during slavery chose.

So, I ask, in the Americas?

And, Penny looks rather agog but I can’t tell if it’s because of his tasteless, quite possibly, dangerous chicken.

And, I remind him, I mean, I think I am reminding him that slaves were slaves and not allowed to read or write.

He looks surprised.

And, I want to blame Bristol but I am jibing right now.

How will I eat this broccoli and this chicken? And Penny is silent.

Rodney offers second helpings.

I refuse my portion.

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Ready Eddy Laurel Sharon

By the time I arrived, the annual block party had begun. I saw a few of my neighbors standing tightly together, talking and smiling, their teeth looking particularly shiny in the late afternoon sun. I was on my mobility scooter which was the only way I could get from my house to the party. I hadn’t done any real walking in years. The rheumatoid arthritis had taken my joints.

A block party is like a sunny day – participation is expected whether you feel like it or not. To ward off any social demands, I parked myself on the periphery where I surveyed my neighbors. I saw Mrs. Grey and waved. As always, she had brought Italian food, which was attractively displayed in disposable chafing dishes purchased at a party store.

Once she had confided in me how her husband, Joe, had made clear early in their marriage the only food he would eat was Italian food.

Excited to show off her culinary abilities, one evening she cooked beef bourguignon. The next morning the Dutch oven with two pounds of cubed beef and mushrooms was on their front lawn. “When I speak, I expect you to listen,” her husband said. After Mrs. Grey finished telling me her story, I saw she was staring at my sneakers with their Velcro closures.

“I can’t tie my shoes,” I said. “The joints in my hands are too hot and stiff.”

My neighbors confided in me. I was emotional Tupperware, a container to hold their pain, although I couldn’t contain my own.

Every day was a struggle, still when Mrs. Bouchard stood at my front door sobbing, I let her in. “I was going to leave my husband. He didn’t know but I was – for Alan, my college boyfriend,” she said. “He was living alone in Chile teaching English as a second language. After his third wife left him, he found my phone number on the internet and begged me to join him. Oh Mrs. Fish, I’ve always loved Alan. I mean the amount of semen he could produce was truly amazing.” As she talked, my knuckles began to burn. I laid back against the couch and closed my eyes. Mrs. Bouchard stopped talking. When I opened my eyes, she began talking again. “He was crushed to death by a bookcase, during an earthquake in Santiago. He was always such an intellectual. Bring him back, Mrs. Fish. Bring him back.” She grabbed 52

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my hand. There was nothing I could say.

The Martins had brought a slow cooker packed with hot dogs to the block party. They had the largest house in the neighborhood and a backyard swimming pool. If you passed by, you could hear the shouts and laughter of their family and guests, a noisy reminder you weren’t invited. They didn’t bring buns. Maybe with all the money they’d spent on their pool, they couldn’t afford anything other than the hot dogs.

The Schlossbergs stood awkward and quiet by one of the folding tables. They were German and didn’t speak English well. Every year they brought a Black Forest cake.

The Ericksons walked by and smiled as they toted several oversized bags of chips with a homemade guacamole dip. Bob Erickson had been blind and dependent on a Seeing Eye dog. His vision was restored through surgery. Whenever he walked, he pretended to be blind and continued to let his dog guide him. He couldn’t take away the animal’s sense of purpose. He was a compassionate man.

Bobby, who everyone called Mr. Bobby, stood on the periphery at the other end of the block party. He was a car mechanic and owned the local auto body shop. He filled out his jumpsuit nicely. His wife died last year. No one expected him to bring anything.

Mr. and Mrs. Reisman brought the vodka punch for which Mrs. Reisman was famous. Her husband carried the gallon beverage dispenser by its handle. He previously worked for the federal government as a meat inspector. He told me how he would stand for long hours on an assembly line examining slabs of beef. He had developed varicose veins in his feet and ankles. He went to night school to become a physical therapist and opened a home office with a whirlpool. Despite Mr. Reisman’s efforts, the Martins thought he and his wife were beneath them. “Blue collar,” Mr. Martin had said to Mr. Erickson at the last block party. He didn’t even try to whisper. Mr. Erickson looked away and rubbed his dog’s ears.

Renee, who claimed her hair never grew, showed up. She always wore it in the same curly ball. She brought mosquito repellant.

The Fletchers came to the block party, sad-faced, with pulledpork sandwiches. Their son, Roman, had enlisted in the Marines.

They were concerned about his safety. “Conflict is everywhere,” Mr. Fletcher said.

“Only the strong survive,” Mr. Martin responded.

Mrs. Bouchard wasn’t there. She never came to the block parties.

“Depression is a cruel disease,” her husband once said to me. He never 53

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left her side.

Carol who was always late, arrived when the party was almost over.

The young people congregated together at the end of the block.

Most everyone, after high school, had gone on to college except for William and Roman. William went to a Railroad Academy and became a train conductor. Trains fascinated him since he was a child.

I’m sure the Martins thought William was beneath them too. Kit, who wasn’t at the party, went to college, some place remote. She returned home several months ago – not finishing out the school year. A rumor was circulating that she had slit her wrists.

I had two sons of my own, but they were long gone. My oldest, Aaron, had graduated from MIT and gone on to become a college professor with his own web page on mathematical modeling. Though he was brilliant, his social skills had always been poor. As a youngster, while the other boys yelled back and forth as they played soccer, Aaron stood alone studying the net. He didn’t talk much, and I rarely heard from him, although he did pay for my home health aide. I always felt I should have done more for him – given him conversational tips or helped him with making eye contact. I remember I was surprised when he had a date for the prom. I heard the girl flirt with him. “My dress is too tight and my tummy hurts,” she said in a high-pitched breathy voice, ending in a giggle. She sounded like Marilyn Monroe, although I’m sure she wouldn’t have known who that was. He laughed in response – flat and emotionless. I never saw the girl again. Neither did he.

After college, I saw my youngest son, Danny, often. He would stop by and tell me about his job as an economist for the World Bank or his selection into the astronaut program or some other highly successful venture until one day I realized it was all a lie. No one could be that talented, not even my own son. I guess he felt he had to keep up with his brother. After I confronted him, I never saw him again. I guess I had to learn the hard way that sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut.

Mrs. Martin filled a red solo cup with vodka punch for a third time.

She hadn’t eaten any food including her own hot dogs. “I was in the supermarket pushing my shopping cart,” she said, “when the woman in front of me stopped short in the bread aisle. She turned around and said, ‘Your cart hit me.’ Can you believe she had the gall to blame me?

I mean she was the one who stopped short. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ I said to her. ‘Fuck you,’ she yelled back. By the time I got to the Ethnic Food aisle, I felt so ashamed about how I’d behaved. So, I walked back to 54

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the bread aisle and told her I was sorry. Out of nowhere, she throws herself on me sobbing. Her husband had left her. That explained her cart full of single serve frozen dinners. I shoved her off me. When I left the supermarket, the front of my silk blouse was wet. It looked like I was breastfeeding.”

“Nobody thought you were breastfeeding,” said Mr. Martin.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve spent the last twenty years tanning yourself by the pool,” Mr. Martin said.

Everyone was gathering at the folding tables, grabbing for the plastic plates, and filling them with food – except for Mr. Martin who seemed to be nursing a single potato chip. He nibbled carefully at the top of the chip and then stopped. He turned his wrist back and forth to examine its sides. When done, he went back to the top of the chip which he gently sucked. At the last block party somebody had accused him of being anorexic which he dismissed. “That’s a woman’s disease,” he said. He played young but wasn’t and wore a cotton t-shirt with a casual blazer and fitted shorts. As for me, my medication had made me fat and my face moon shaped and puffy. I was ashamed of my appearance but solved the problem by no longer looking in the mirror.

“My doctor said to me, ‘Joe, you’ve got high cholesterol and high blood pressure. And you’re overweight. Worse than that, you have visceral fat that wraps around your organs. You need to watch your diet. Otherwise, you’re headed for CVD,” said Mr. Grey with his mouth full.

“What’s that?” said Mr. Fletcher.

“Cardiovascular disease. But I don’t care what he says,” Mr. Grey continued, “I love my cheese and sausage. No one is taking away my red sauce and meatballs or my stuffed shells.” He looked around and bellowed at his wife, “Where’s the Tiramisu?”

“The doctor said if you continue to eat this way, you’re going to kill yourself,” said Mrs. Grey softly.

“Since when are you allowed to speak?” said Mr. Grey to his wife.

There was silence until Mr. Reisman said, “Going back to school and getting a degree in Physical Therapy was the best decision I’ve ever made.”

“And I’ve become a Reiki Master,” said Mr. Grey. “Mrs. Fish, you want me to move your energy?”

Soon after Kit arrived home, she sat in my kitchen while I prepared lunch for the two of us.

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“Mrs. Fish,” she said. “Something happened while I was at school.”

“You slit your wrists?”

“Of course not. That would be crazy.”

“Yes, crazy,” I agreed.

“No, Mrs. Fish, I developed a special ability. I can see through life’s thin veil of safety and see the menace and danger with which we’re surrounded. I have a special Agency within my mind,” she said tapping her temple, “just for this purpose.”

As I stood making the sandwiches, I took the small stool I kept by the counter and sat down. I was feeling fatigued and feverish as the disease continued its assault. That afternoon, the lunch meat and several slices of bread defeated me.

“A moral obligation requires me to use my unique talent to provide safety for others. And Mrs. Fish, rest. I’m not hungry.”

Through her special Agency, Kit quickly became aware that Mrs. Wagner was in danger. An older woman, Mrs. Wagner lived alone in a house set back from the street and surrounded by shrubbery.

“Rhododendron,” she’d say if you asked her the name of the plant.

Kit would go looking for Mrs. Wagner to warn her. “Mrs. Wagner you’re in danger. Cut back your shrubbery. Install security lights around your home.”

“I have a light,” Mrs. Wagner said pointing to a small bulb above the front door.

Kit persisted. “At night your backyard is only darkness. No one can see what’s happening on your property.”

Mrs. Wagner hummed to herself as she covered the base of her plants with mulch.

“Mrs. Wagner you’re in danger. You need security cameras on night and day, motion detectors and a floodlight shining out onto your front yard. Please listen.”

Mrs. Wagner assured Kit she would follow up on her suggestions, but never did. The rhododendrons continued to grow.

At 10:00 pm on a Sunday night when everyone in the neighborhood was watching the Grammy Awards, Mrs. Wagner went into her dark backyard to throw out the trash. As she walked back into the house, a young man in hiding overpowered her quickly, pinning her down. He raped Mrs. Wagner and tied her up with her own pantyhose. Then gagged her. He went through her drawers and took whatever cash and jewelry he could find. He moved on to the medicine chest where he took the Tylenol with codeine. When done, he used an app to call for a car. He was eager to get home and see who won best new artist of the 56

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year. He waited for the car, seated next to Mrs. Wagner. He tried to engage her in conversation, but her words were garbled – owing to the gag, of course.

After he left, Mrs. Wagner was able to free herself and call for help.

When the police went to hunt down her assailant, he was easy to find.

While tied up and lying on the floor Mrs. Wagner had heard him complain, “Uber is taking too long. I should have used Lyft.” The police only needed to check the company’s records to find his home address. Remarkably, he lived close by in a small ranch house with his wife. They had run out of beer while watching the show. He went out to buy more at the local convenience store. When asked why he committed the crime he said, “A dark house is an opportunity.” After he was in prison, his wife came to apologize to Mrs. Wagner.

I went through flare-ups and brief remissions, but the rheumatoid arthritis continued its inexorable progression. My knuckles were becoming twisted and deformed. Kit covered my hand with her own.

She wasn’t afraid of my disease. She wasn’t like the others in the neighborhood who usually kept their distance – except when they needed me. “They think it’s contagious,” I said to her. “There is no danger,” said Kit. It had been a long time since anyone touched me.

The neighbors moved from the folding tables out into the center of the street and formed a circle with lawn chairs they had brought from home. Everyone lived on the same cul de sac. “We’re a community,” Renee said at the last block party or the one before or the one before that. The young people had drifted off.

“I was at home sitting in Roman’s room when there was a knock at the door,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “I’m thinking it’s UPS or Amazon or a food delivery that I’d ordered earlier in the day. I open the door and there’s Kit. ‘Mrs. Fletcher, you’re in danger,’ she says. “I’m in danger?” I say to her. “My son is in danger. He’s in a bootcamp, probably homesick banging his head against a wall at night and during the day, learning how to shoot a gun. Ever hear of friendly fire?”

‘Mrs. Fletcher,’ she says, ‘please listen. The tree on your property has no leaves and its limbs are dead.’ I’m like ‘so?’ Then she said some mumbo jumbo about high winds and soggy soil and the tree falling and taking down the power line, and something about the gas line and my house exploding.”

“Was that it?” asked Mr. Reisman.

“No. I told her to have a nice day,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “And when she came back yesterday, I pretended not to be home.”

“Ignore Kit at your own risk,” said Renee. “She can predict danger.”

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“No one can predict danger,” said Mr. Fletcher.

“She predicted Mrs. Wagner’s rape.”

“Kit, she’s ‘other’,” said Mrs. Martin.

“What’s an ‘other?’” said Renee.

“Other than me, other than you, other than us.”

“People with special gifts are often very lonely,” said Mr. Erickson looking into his dog’s eyes.

Mrs. Martin’s remark about an “other” made me think about my rheumatologist who suggested a dog for me – a Barkley, a Zeus, a Chloe. “In a basket at the front of your scooter,” she had said. “That way, people will find you so much more approachable.”

“She knows the signs,” said Renee.

“Don’t you have a dream catcher hanging from your rear-view mirror?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“I hang air freshener,” said Mr. Fletcher.

“If you’re afraid of evil spirits coming into your car, Renee, why not just close the windows,” said Mrs. Martin laughing, “… or are you worried about having a nightmare if you fall asleep at the wheel?”

“Now that’s danger,” said Mr. Fletcher.

“Money isn’t license to be cruel or stupid Marilyn. You should show more respect for indigenous cultures – and ideas that are different from your own.”

“Kaboom,” said Mr. Grey.

As they were talking, I thought about watching Kit from my kitchen window the day her best friend Flora moved away. Flora with her one-handed cartwheels. I can see the girls laughing on my front lawn.

Flora’s father had been promoted to partner in an architecture firm.

With the promotion, Flora’s mother wanted to move the family to a more affluent neighborhood. As their car drove down the street, Kit, who was eight at the time, ran alongside yelling, “Good-bye, good-bye” and waving to Flora with more “good-byes” until she could no longer keep up. When the car was gone, Kit stood in the middle of the empty street, alone. I could still walk then and came out of my house to join her. I knew a child didn’t need a lot of friends – but they needed one.

We stood together in silence for a long time. She told me when she returned home after saying good-bye to Flora, her mother got on her knees, so they were eye level and said, ‘In life, always remember to wear a smile.’ If Kit’s mother could sing, she’d always be off tune.

“Where’s Kit?” said Mrs. Reisman.

“Not here,” said Renee. “She knows danger.”

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about Kit’s return – I knew the whole slit wrist rumor was nonsense – when I saw her leave her house and cross the street towards me. My heart sank when I saw what she was wearing – a white hard hat with a brim. “Good morning, Mrs. Fish,” Kit said.

“Good morning,” I replied hoping no one had seen her. The child was already so misunderstood. “Why are you wearing a hard hat?” I asked.

“To cover my skull,” she said. “I suddenly realized to recognize danger isn’t enough. I must also be prepared for danger because Mrs. Fish, I can’t protect myself – only others. I’m oblivious when it comes to recognizing those things in the world that might compromise my own safety.” I was quiet for a while, looking to choose my words carefully.

“My dear,” I said, “You are a very pretty young woman. Perhaps we can find you a hat that’s a tad more feminine. In that way you can fit into a crowd and continue your mission undisturbed.”

“My skull?” Kit asked.

“Covered,” I responded. Kitty thought about my proposition for a moment.

“But what else can I wear?”

“Well, I have a lovely pillbox hat that I’ve saved, and we can line it with a molded plastic shell,” I said. “I used to wear it in the 60’s with a pageboy haircut – of course, at that time, without the shell.

Those were the days when I was attractive. I had a plain open face, but make-up could do wonders. The hat is just like the ones Jackie Kennedy wore. You know, they were designed for her by Halston.” I couldn’t help myself and added, “That nasty Onassis, he ruined her.”

The nightmares were returning. “The assault is coming from within,” Kit told me. “It’s always the same. A boy takes a cat and swings it by its tail over his head like a lasso. The cat is crying. The boy won’t stop.”

I didn’t know what to say so I said, “I don’t know what to say,” and that seemed good enough. Kit put her head on my shoulder. “I miss Flora,” she said.

I remember the summer Kit turned ten. She was excited not only about turning ten, (“double digits Mrs. Fish!”) but about an upcoming family vacation.

She said to me, “We’re going on a family vacation, my mother, father, and brother, the first ever. We’re going to the beach. My father said he’d even go into the water with me. That means he won’t be sleeping! There will be an ocean, a motel room and shuffleboard,” she 59

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added.

When she returned a week later, she had a tan and the hair on her arms was golden. She never said a word about the vacation. I didn’t say anything either, except one day I mentioned shuffleboard, how much fun I used to have playing it.

“When I could still walk and push a stick,” I said.

Kit leapt from her seat in the kitchen and hollered, “A big fish has a big mouth. Never mention shuffleboard again.” It was the only disagreement we ever had.

Later that same summer, I watched Kit and Jeffrey, Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher’s youngest son play together. Jeffrey was eight with a crew cut, except for the front where his hair was a little longer and brushed straight up. She and Jeffrey were playing with water pistols that they made believe were real guns. Kit became bored with the water pistols.

They moved on to tag, which soon turned into a wrestling match on the side lawn. Kit was bigger than Jeffrey. She tackled and straddled him. Ripping out handfuls of grass she tried to push them into Jeffrey’s mouth.

“Eat grass,” she yelled, laughing, “Eat grass.” Jeffrey held his mouth tightly shut. As she became tired, Jeffrey made his move and tossed her to her back. This time it was his turn to straddle her. He tore grass from the lawn and thrust it towards her closed mouth.

“Eat grass,” he hollered, laughing.

Jeffrey was good-natured. But the tone of the game suddenly changed.

Kit started screaming, “Get off me.” Emboldened by his success, Jeffrey thrust more grass towards Kit’s mouth. “Get off me,” she bellowed and flipped him over on his back. With a knee hard into his belly she went for his throat and started choking him. Jeffrey’s gagging sound and desperate flailing caught his mother’s attention.

“I came running,” said Mrs. Fletcher to the neighbors, one of her pulled pork sandwiches in her hand “and started pulling Kit off of Jeffrey by her collar. She was crazed. And I mean crazed. I was yanking on her shirt as hard as I could – I think I dislocated my shoulder, but she didn’t even seem to notice. She just kept on screaming she was going to kill Jeffrey over and over again. Mr. Schlossberg came running to help and he was screaming too, ‘Oh mein Gott.’ I finally managed to pull her off but not before she kicked Jeffrey in the eye. He spent the rest of the summer wearing an eye patch.”

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Schlossberg asked holding cake plates.

I could see Mrs. Fletcher was still clearly upset by the memory.

“When I took her home, she was like a dog, mouth open and panting.”

“I didn’t see anything. I was involved in some pool repair,” said Mr. Martin.

No one spoke for a moment.

“Skal,” said Mr. Martin picking up a cup of vodka punch, smiling.

“Cheers,” said Mrs. Martin.

“Salute,” said Mr. Fletcher.

“Bow wow,” said Mr. Gray, smoking a cigar.

After that summer, Kit kept to herself. Whenever I saw her coming home from school, she was alone, her schoolbooks pressed to her chest. That’s also the time she started her list of “Dangerous Things.”

1. Big Hands.

As the vodka punch continued to flow, now followed by beer chasers, people talked louder and with slurred speech. There was an occasional shriek and I heard Mr. Fletcher laughing uncontrollably with Mr. Reisman repeating, “It’s not funny. It’s not funny, Greg.” I moved my scooter and sat behind the lawn chairs. Mr. Bobby stood next to me. Mr. Grey looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Don’t drink and drive, Mrs. Fish.” He made the same bad joke every year. I disliked Mr. Grey. He trafficked in humiliation.

“Kit makes me uncomfortable,” said Mrs. Martin “Of course, and you always have to be comfortable,” said Renee.

“I’m sorry you’re so unhappy with your life, Renee and the choices you’ve made – living alone in that little house without a husband or children must be very painful, but that’s not my fault,” said Mrs. Martin.

“Has anyone noticed that the mail has been coming later and later?” said Mr. Martin. “Government employees are so lazy.”

“I was a government employee,” said Mr. Reisman.

“Kit’s your employee isn’t she Mr. Bobby?” said Mrs. Reisman.

“What kind of danger does she predict for you – salmonella in your egg salad sandwich?” said Mrs. Fletcher.

Mr. Bobby left the block party. He whispered to me he had a stomachache. “The acid keeps on coming up into my throat.” I wondered if all the talk about Kit upset him and made him think about his late wife who had also been poorly treated. He’d met her at a bar. Wide-eyed and eager to please, she silently let herself be passed around from man to man, each one having sex with her in a back room. One man pushed her away. He was afraid of contracting 61

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a disease. When it was Bobby’s turn, he didn’t take her into the back room. He saw her as human and holy and asked her to marry him. “A saint,” he told me, “is a woman who never complains.”

“Hallelujah,” I replied.

After he took her home, she didn’t go out much and spent most of her time baking cakes. Angel food was her specialty. Later she became a Home Economics teacher. I remember her at the block parties, holding Bobby’s arm. They seemed a happy couple. Once I bumped into Bobby on the street. He confided in me his wife couldn’t have children. “Some things,” he said, “can’t be fixed.”

Several days after I gave her the pillbox hat, Kit was at my front door banging hard. It took me some time to get to the door. As I walked, I had to touch the edges of the furniture and door jambs to keep me stable.

“I had a sleepless night,” Kit said.

“Was it the same bad dream?”

“No Mrs. Fish. Last night I received an alert from my Agency and knew I had to warn you. Mr. Bobby needs to service your scooter immediately. It could be very dangerous for you if it broke down.

You could be alone, perhaps surrounded by hooligans and with your disease helpless to fight back. You could be trapped in the house, fire all around you, unable to get out or stranded for hours somewhere with no shade. Your immune system could be compromised by the stress of any of these situations, which would leave you susceptible to other diseases. You could develop shingles. You could have excruciating pain on one side of your head and your cornea could be compromised leaving you blind in that eye. I’ve read the nerve pain can last for months maybe years, and don’t you have enough pain?”

After Kit left, I placed a call to Mr. Bobby. Even though I was usually the giver, not the taker, I knew Kit’s warning needed to be taken seriously. When I reached Mr. Bobby I said, “My scooter needs servicing immediately.”

“Recharge the batteries, Mrs. Fish? Rotate the tires?” he asked.

“Would you like a thorough cleaning of the exterior with a soft cloth?

Removal of any kind of dirt and debris?”

“The works,” I answered.

Kit often confided in me about what her days were like at the auto body shop. “Mr. Bobby told me to call him Bobby,” she said. “He also commented on the pillbox hat you gave me.”

“What did he say?” “’You look lovely in that hat, Kitten.’”

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“Mrs. Fish,” Kit continued “I noticed he was standing with his hands in his pockets, so I told him, ‘Thank you, the hat isn’t about fashion but function. You see, Bobby,’ I said, ‘I have to keep mt head covered to be shielded from any potential attack.’ He agreed and said, ‘Danger is often afoot.’

“We talked some more, and he told me a story about how he had been a jazz musician – alto sax and that a lot of the guys he played with did drugs. He never touched the stuff and his best friend in the band would harass him. He would say, ‘What’s the matter Bobby, you too clean to do drugs?’ He would tell the other guys in the band ‘Bobby’s clean.’ Bobby said his best friend was envious of his riffs.

“One day, Bobby and his friend were walking together. With no warning, his friend shoves Bobby as hard as he can into a tree. The doctor later told Bobby he suffered a spontaneous pneumothorax. Mrs. Fish, his best friend had punctured his lung, and his chest was filling up with air. He couldn’t breathe so he put his hands over his head hoping to remedy the problem. A woman walking by thought he was the subject of a hold-up, although no criminal was in sight and called the police. She saved his life. Recovering in the hospital, none of the guys from the band came to visit him.

“After Bobby told me his story, I felt we were kindred spirits, we both having been treated cruelly, and took him into my confidence. I told him I protected the people in our community from danger. ‘I don’t use a computer or any outside sources for this sacred mission,’ I said. ‘The assessment of threat is done within my own mind through a mental Agency. I am a Ready Eddy always on alert. This is my calling.’”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Weakness is never rewarded.’”

2. Bathtubs.

3. Sharp Pencils.

Mr. Martin had gone to get his portable fire pit. “Bring some marshmallows,” said Mr. Reisman.” “To hell with the marshmallows,” said Mr. Grey, “bring your hot tub.”

Mr. Fletcher stood to get another beer – although he didn’t need one. He had ten discarded cans by the side of his chair. I quickly became apprehensive as he headed in the wrong direction which was towards me. There was nothing I could do as he tripped over my back wheel and lost his balance. His arms flailing in the air, he fell onto my lap, almost poking my eye out with his index finger. As he lay there, I prayed he wouldn’t vomit and honked my scooter’s horn. “You still have your dignity,” said Mr. Erickson as he pulled Mr. Fletcher off of me.

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4. Flip Flops.

I thought of my “assistive devices;” knives with special grips on the handles, a milk carton holder, zipper pulls, a book stand for hands free reading, large easy-to-hold playing cards and an electric shuffler to help me with my solitaire games. Then there were the nylon panties.

Not technically an assistive device but easier to pull up than those made of cotton.

“Kit told me I was in danger,” said Mr. Fletcher, clutching Mr. Erickson’s shoulders as he helped him back into his chair. “‘You’re too full of despair,’ she said.”’

“Does anyone need me to examine them?” said Mr. Reisman.

“I drove Roman away. When he was little, I harangued him over his peanut allergy. If he gave me any trouble, I would tell him I had a peanut in my desk drawer and if I had to – I would use it. His allergy made him different, which I didn’t want, so I was cruel. Roz hates me for it.”

“If I had any courage,” said Mrs. Fletcher,” I’d shove one of my pulled pork sandwiches down your throat.”

“The roll is brioche, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Martin “Roman needed to prove how tough he was because of you. Do you understand the Marines can move him to anywhere in the world? Like Iraq or the Ukraine.

“The good news is that he clearly outgrew the peanut allergy,” said Mr. Reisman.

“I’d like to move,” said Mrs. Grey in a small voice.

Everyone looked at her, startled that she was speaking. “… to Austin maybe or Denver or a cabin in some canyon where no one could find me.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Mr. Grey.

No one said a word as Mr. Martin appeared, pulling the fire pit on a dolly.

I was wondering if anyone other than me recognized that what Mrs. Grey said was really a cry for help. Maybe they did and were too scared to say anything. Then again, maybe they didn’t care.

5.

Tennis Balls.

“Who are you talking about” said Carol who had finally shown up and grabbed herself a beer.

There was more silence. No one wanted to mention Mrs. Grey by name. Mrs. Erickson pointed at her.

“Oh. Got it. Well, I had a disturbing experience.”

“Kit,” said Mr. Martin.

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“How did you know? Anyway, she said to me…”

“You’re in danger,” said Mrs. Martin rolling her eyes.

“Exactly. And then she said…”

“Your house is going to explode?” said Mrs. Fletcher.

“No. ‘Your life is at stake.’ She said I needed to see a doctor because of the lump on my neck. I have no idea why she’s making such a big deal over a swollen lymph node. It’s from stress,” said Carol.

“I handle stress by taking a long swim,” said Mr. Martin.

“How did the cat get in the pool?” asked Mrs. Reisman.

“I told her to ‘Shut it’ when she came up to me,” said Mr. Grey.

“Later I found a piece of paper in my pocket with… Tell them what was written on it. You can speak now Tina.”

“Electrocardiogram,” whispered Mrs. Grey.

“I’ve had enough of Kit,” said Mr. Martin. “Bobby can have her. He likes them crazy.”

I hadn’t eaten a thing, but I was full.

“I’m being bit all over,” said Carol.

Renee hadn’t handed out the mosquito repellant. I knew it was on purpose.

6. Bushes.

7. Basements.

8. Outdoor Plastic Trash Cans with Locking Lids.

Several weeks after the block party, Kit said, “Mrs. Fish, I told Bobby I hated the beach and ocean. He said, ‘We’ll only travel to the mountains.’ I told him I hated motels. He said, ‘Only five-star hotels for my Kitten.’ I told him I hated Shuffleboard. ‘Croquet,’ he answered.

“Then Bobby took my hand and kissed it. ‘I’ll buy you pillbox hats galore,’ he said, ‘in any color. I’ll give you a balmoral with a pom pom, a bucket hat to keep the sun out of your face, a derby, cowboy hat even a fez and form fitting plastic shells for all of them. I’ll give you a large walk-in closet and the walk-in closet will be part of a master bedroom with a bathroom that will have two sinks. The master bedroom will be part of a large brick house that will stand up to any storm. The house will have a backyard with motion detector lights, spotlights and a camera that records 24-hours-a-day. The backyard will also have cherry trees, apple trees and peach trees that will flower and a lovely Japanese Maple. The trees will never grow tall yet will be nicely pruned. I’ll give you a German Shepherd that will protect you and bark if any intruder should appear. In the evenings, when we are alone, I’ll play my alto sax in tones so low, only you will be able to 65

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hear.’ Kneeling on one knee he said, ‘I want to give you the world.’”

That evening when Kit told me about the proposal, she brought her stone collection with her. It was in a frayed cardboard box and consisted largely of nondescript pebbles except for Fool’s Gold, a piece of tar and petrified wood. “Amazing,” she said when she showed me the petrified wood, “that something so dead, can look so good.” She had recently acquired a large clear crystal that she placed in front of me.

“This stone will strengthen all of your body systems. I want you to have it.” She closed and crushed the box and stuffed it into my garbage can, leaving the top of the can slightly ajar. “This is the past.

I don’t need it anymore,” she said. “Bobby and I are getting married.

Other than you, I think he is the only person that is glad I came home all those months ago.”

At that moment, the pain in my joints stopped. I don’t think it was from the crystal.

“Bobby says we’ll move to another town, so we can get a fresh start.

There is one thing that worries me,” said Kit. “Mrs. Fish, if I move to another town, will the Agency close? Will I lose my power and no longer be a watchdog for danger?”

I was quiet for some time thinking and even considered taking over the Agency myself but knew I didn’t have the strength. Instead, I said, “No dear, you won’t lose your power. I just don’t think you’ll need to use it as much.”

“I think that’ll be okay – because you’ll still have your power.”

“My power?”

“Yes Mrs. Fish – holding other people’s pain. You’re not afraid.”

After Kit left town with Mr. Bobby, Carol confided in me that the tumor in her neck was cancerous. “My breath was so foul, I had to see a doctor,” she said.

As for Mr. Grey, he was found by his wife slumped over the bathtub unresponsive. He died from what was later thought to be “a catastrophic cardiovascular event.” Mrs. Grey handled her loss she told me, by choosing to remember only the good times, from the early days of their marriage. She thought about how she would sit on her knees by her husband’s armchair reading a book to him. White Fang was his favorite. She was planning on moving to Austin.

When I told Kit what had happened to Carol and Mr. Grey she said, “Danger is never to be taken lightly.”

9. Arrogance.

10.

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All Saints

Andrew Vogel Unholy pumpkins collapse black on the stoop.

Daylight savings shows up drunk and unwelcome,

profligate with the darkness in its pockets.

Seedy bastard.

Sloughing off a body nap, we ride a bubble of dream-thought to the surface of Saturday evening, float in foregone twilight, burst on the rim of common obligation, no prismatic star shine, no clouds of flake or frost, just dry leaves and walkers rattling past our bright-blind windows busy with their own business.

Playlists whisk our kitchen welter.

Costumes haunt the laundry.

Elections already next week and our accounts are still not balanced.

The state of our spice rack would embarrass our parents.

We chop garlic into sharp pepper on a warped and wobbling board for a whole syncopated mess of bean soup that will carry us through the dark 70

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sprawl of the weeks after Samhain.

Altogether late for a party, we haven’t a thing to bring, so we pray in our way for upheaval, an ancient incantation, polyphony, erratic dance.

We expiate, ozone tingling on the taut spiral of dilated attentions.

We stir the whole place fragrant, bottle beer, onions whispering in iron.

The holidays have made the horizon.

A church bell drones over our sorrows.

Somewhere menace and tragedy piece together maps and calendars, but for all signs and miracles we can let the debts pile, leave the chores lie, muster for occasions arriving despite us, chafe for any little thing that will rouse the pagans and heretics inside us, shake them from their circumspect ways, and go join the crowd in a house lit against winter and bustling with all the chatty friends.

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it’s just that Sam Kaspar

It’s just that God sending his Son Flesh of his flesh, to die sounded cruel You know it was really Himself And we are Him It’s just that justice is served by the powerful deciding who was right, so I left or got tossed, who cares It’s just that when my uncle died Titled blood relation, but loved on his own merit - I still miss him.

Silence echoes in my head.

It’s just that when his dog chewed shoes Grieving his chief walker, his best friend He accepted us for an outing.

And he knew what’s still sinking in for us.

It’s just that my cousin “passed away” That’s what they say when you’re young And the cause of death?

It’s just that death has this mystique though we all do it, and the plan’s unknown how could they not know if it was drugs or heat stroke?

It’s just that when my feet take the steps I leave and I see sky When I’m seated and cruising An open highway, I think adventurous road trip You were thinking our short drive to pay for prescriptions And making change.

And yeah, I believed.

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It’s just that coming to terms with death and that Flesh of your flesh is addicted You know he is really ourselves It’s just that I don’t have answers right now.

And I’m not the lost one but am still a little lost.

And that’s okay and not okay.

It’s just that.

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Still Life with Woman Meg Kenagy

They leave home suddenly, like dominos falling—a clickety-clack of motion, then silence. I am surprised—not by the fact that they leave, but by the silence. My friends tell me to join a gym, take up a hobby, and get out more. The psychologist tells me the empty nest is not a diagnosis, it is a transition. Feelings of loss are to be expected. He tells me to find a hobby, join a gym, and get out more.

None of this helps. I am unable to process advice that prescribes a hobby. I am no longer a woman with a solid connection to the world.

I am a 52-year-old single mother who has come untethered. Yes, I am happy for them. Yes, go forward. It is my holiest wish. Ridiculous, that I didn’t realize how much I would miss them and our busy life. The front door bangs shut, the phone rings, random cats roam underfoot, bikes flop in the driveway, cars run at the curb, radios blare, laundry churns, casseroles bake, tents rise, homework is done, we come, we go, basketball, dance, soccer.

Feelings of loss are to be expected.

Guilt walks in. No one mentioned that. What do you have to feel bad about, I say to myself. People are suffering. Truly suffering. You are only lonely. Lonely for a past that was always moving forward.

Maybe it has just come at a bad time, I think. There is work, always work, so I work more. I sign a two-year contract with a company that will keep me busier, send me to distant locations. This heightens my sense of dislocation. On one of these trips, from an airplane window, I remember being fifteen and, during a time of distress and indefinable longing, taking the bus to the next town just to watch the world stream past the window.

Come winter, dark and cold as it is, I sign up for a watercolor class that is advertised in the free community paper that comes to my door.

It is a class, I tell myself. It is not a hobby.

In the first class, we paint oranges, apples and a lemon. We are encouraged to squint to see the highlights and to look for color in the shadows. Then, after some discussion about paint and water, the teacher gives us homework: paint a still life, something in your house.

On Saturday morning, I look around for something I think I can paint. Vases and flowers, bookends and baskets all seem too hard. In 74

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the end, I settle on two mugs. They are tea mugs. I drink coffee from them, but they are tea mugs, because they have lids that double as teabag holders. They are green and brown, and it seems they will be simple enough to render.

They are not simple. Mugs, I see, have a handle that attaches inexplicably to the side of a cup and a bottom that actually curves as it sits flat on a counter. How that is, I don’t know, but I do the painting, and have something to take to class.

“Tell me about this,” the teacher says, during the show-and-tell portion of class.

“Well,” I say, “I don’t know. I couldn’t get the cups to look round.”

“Well,” she says. “Why don’t you paint them again this week?”

So I paint them again and, at her request, again the next week. It seems important to her that I do this; she encourages the whole class to make a study of one object. I am the only one who does. They all have bigger ideas, and more skill, than I do.

When I finish the fifth painting, I realize I should have been saving them to see if I am getting any better. I find three of them, or bits of them—I have torn them up to use for scrap paper. After that, I keep all the paintings in a pile on the counter.

As the class progresses, there are lessons in design, how to capture light, how to draw. Part of every lesson is given to supplies. The lesson that changes my relationship to watercolor is about paper. I discover my cheap paper that puckers at the first brush of water is not serving me well, so I invest in something better and although my technique is still not good, I am much happier.

During the next year, I paint dozens of pictures of the mugs. The class ends, but I persist. I still travel for work, so I pack a mug—I’ve become partial to the green one—wrap it in clothes and tuck it between shoes. While I worry each painting, overworking it and scrubbing out perceived mistakes, unsure if I am getting better or worse, my life takes shape. I sort of get used to living alone. I visit my children. I send mail to their new addresses. I see more of my mother who is in her 80s. The trip to visit her involves a train, a plane, a ferry and several payphones: I’m leaving, I’m here, I’ll be on the five o’clock ferry. Along comes the green mug, in a backpack or a suitcase.

I stop painting when I finish fifty paintings. Fifty is a good end, a final sort of number. It is the year 2000 but, despite fears, the worse does not happen—computer systems do not crash, banks remain operational, planes do not fall out of the sky, the world does not end.

My two-year job contract does, however, come to an end.

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I find freelance work. I put the green mug in the kitchen cabinet. A first grandchild is born and my world quakes; he is a new world. I find a new job—a wonderful job that opens up new things to write about, frogs, snakes and birds. My easel goes to a thrift shop. The oversized watercolor paper is laid to rest under the bed. *** There is a wealth of grandchildren then: a decade of babies, toddlers, school-goers, soccer players. So much to do, so many holidays and birthdays and trips to the beach. I join a gym and a walking group. My back starts to hurt, maybe I’m overdoing it I say to my doctor, who says, “Sounds like a compressed disk.” I go to physical therapy, I do water aerobics and, with no improvement, I get an MRI. The radiologist finds compressed discs, some lesions on my spine, and a cancerous tumor in my kidney.

Aggressive, says the surgeon who cuts it out in what is believed to be the nick of time. My pragmatic doctor says the accidental discovery of this hostile tumor is the work of my guardian angel and to get on with my life. I am not sure what that means. I decide to retire, because I am more than old enough and I think getting on with my life does not include sitting at a desk for eight hours and a long commute.

I move to a small condo, jettisoning more and more of the past— dishes, books, and dresses that I admit I will never wear again. I ask my kids what they want, then I realize they don’t want anything. It is the age of plenty—even in new households there is plenty.

The watercolor paintings that I did of the mugs so many years ago are still with me in a large plastic tub that I don’t really have room to store. I always thought I would do something with the paintings someday. I realize that someday, in the new world order of “getting on with my life,” is now.

I look through them. It has been more than twenty years since I stopped painting the mugs. Several of my grandchildren are in college, one is in high school, one is in middle school. All of my children are over fifty. One of my younger sisters is dead. Several of my friends are dead. Life has raced on.

I remember each of the paintings. What I didn’t realize at the time was how they gained momentum, took flight, started moving around.

The first four paintings were made in my kitchen, the next in a hotel room, then home to the dining room. They go to the beach, to my sister’s house. They go upstairs. They hold tea and coffee and flowers and seeds.

When I look at the painting I did in Las Vegas, I wonder at it, that 76

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it exists at all. That twenty-one years ago, I carried a pad of paper, a few tubes of paint in a sandwich bag, and a paintbrush on a business trip to Las Vegas, and that in between events, I sat in a hotel room and painted the green mug on a room service breakfast tray—coffee, yogurt, berries. I remember the hard dry sun, the neon nights, the trade shows, my coworkers. They are all right there in that painting.

The one I did at my mother’s kitchen table stops me. Have I ever really looked at it since I finished it? Here is my childhood: a vase of lilacs, a white statue of the Virgin Mary, fruit in the wooden bowl, the napkin basket, papers, and at the edge of the painting on a pile of books, the green mug. I remember my mother is reading a letter to me from her Irish cousin. She is drinking tea. As I study the painting, I can hear the wall telephone ring. I feel one of my sisters come into the room and sit down at the end of the table with her homework; someone has the TV on in the next room; someone is washing her hair in the kitchen sink. I hear the screen door creak. My mother and I are home alone, but the painting remembers.

Here is the painting of two pears and the mug floating among the clouds on a rainy day. I remember now how the rain and wind blew in across the fields and hit the side of the house with the sound of a sonic boom, rain slashing sideways.

A painting made in the Victorian hotel in San Diego shows the mug sitting on a window ledge, fronting the sea. My tiny room is on the top floor—I imagine it is the attic—and, as I remember, it is accessed via a narrow passage next to the stairs that one must turn sideways to navigate. It is 1999 in the painting, and I wonder if the tiny room with the big view is still there. The hotel is allegedly haunted, but I can report no mysterious events. The painting does tell me that, on this trip, I have a strong sense of being separate from—separate from the couples and tourists and sun worshipers. And although there are surely many people around, there are none in my memory. I seem to inhabit this floor by myself.

I see that in these paintings and landscapes, I grew. The paintings gave me a place to be alone. They gave me a place to look closely at what was present in the every day. To wonder: what shade of yellow rises in the sky with the sun, and why is there color in shadow? They made me paint things I had no idea how to paint—a cat, a statue, a letter, a white orchid, a cloud.

And in the midst of all those things, there I am, sitting in the loss and in the fullness, sitting in the shifting light.

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Xylocopa Virginica Kevin Grauke

Carpenter bees as thick as my thumb thump dumbly against the windows, like the knuckles of plump drunk uncles or maybe tiny lost dirigibles searching for an empty hangar or a mooring mast.

It’s weathered wood they’ve come after, especially the soft sort, like cedar or pine, to bore with tunnels: shelter for the eggs they’ll deposit before dying. For me to find, they’ll leave nothing but sawdust hummocks.

Late in summer, a new crop will emerge to nuzzle roses, grow fat on garden pollen, and hover about my head on the noisy whirr of their wings, never to know who dug their cozy nests, or how they came to be.

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Rising, Landing Richard Ryal

Memory is the only gravity I pretend to control.

I think about our last night away from everyone else in a cabin that held no history of us.

The first great gift came when I couldn’t sleep and stepped out on the porch to inhale winter into my bones.

An owl blew across the new snow curving the land, a blur passing a smudge of a branch.

The owl grabbed the next limb without shaking off any powder, suddenly not moving, a shine in the half-white, a candle near freezing.

I went to bed, my blood shaking.

Amora slept in profile beside me, too sad to leave me.

Time was hard to bear.

That night I rose from my body.

My flesh fell asleep and the me that is not flesh floated halfway to the ceiling, aware.

Rolling to my right with a seal’s watery grace, I saw a dark lamp on a shelf where no light had stood.

I shivered though I had no body. Immediately my flesh woke. My eyes jerked open and swung toward the shelf to see the shadow of a table lamp cast on the wall by the splash of a streetlight.

I close my eyes and listen.

The dead keep speaking and the dead aren’t the only ones listening.

Remember them how you want but we’re probably shadows to the dead and they’re markers on the path that brought us here, reminders that beyond time is a realm without margins but meanwhile, they’re moorings in our weary harbors, reminders the present isn’t over.

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The owl named the moon I couldn’t see.

I imagined a down stroke of wings toward a branch, the owl rounding to swing talons forward.

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Contributors Beth Oast Williams is the author of the chapbook Riding Horses in the Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Nimrod, Salamander, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM, One Art, Dialogist, Invisible City and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others, and nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

Bess Vanrenen has an MA degree in English from the University of Colorado Boulder and an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her short stories have been published in Tampa Review, Sand Hill Review, The Magnolia Review, and KYSO Flash, and her personal essays have been published in a variety of print and digital publications. A writer, editor, and (mostly armchair) traveler, she lives in Denver with her family.

Elisa Madina is a writer living in Berlin. Her work has been published in Feminist Review and West Trestle Review, and is forthcoming in Rise Up Review.

Kaleigh Dixson is a high school English teacher and an emerging writer. She is an MFA graduate from American University, where she served as the fiction editor for FOLIO magazine. Her short stories have appeared in Salmon Creek Journal and Midsummer Magazine, and she was shortlisted for the 2023 Best in Rural Writing Contest by Milkhouse.

Linda Malnack is the author of two poetry chapbooks, 21 Boxes (dancing girl press) and Bone Beads (Paper Boat Press). Her poetry has recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cloudbank, The Ilanot Review, Fairy Tale Review, Camas Magazine, and elsewhere. Linda is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Crab Creek Review.

Sarah Aziz is a poet, translator and illustrator based in Kolkata, India.

She is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Literature at Loreto College, University of Calcutta. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Mantis (a Journal of Poetry, Criticism & Translation housed at Stanford University), The Good Life Review and Foglifter Journal, among others.

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Wilson McBee lives in Highland Park, Illinois. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a BA from Davidson College. His stories have been published in Juked and Monkeybicycle, and his criticism appears regularly in Southwest Review. He is currently an adjunct lecturer at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois.

Sam Kaspar was born in Canada, and lives in the US as a retired physician & part-time writer. He enjoys rowing, hiking, tennis, amateur photography, jeeps, reading, writing, travel, Oxford commas, and especially family. He’s had over 50 publications so far of his poetry & short prose, plus several scientific articles. Preferred topics include nature, existence, social justice, emotion, heritage... He’s been a finalist in writing contests from Vallum, Iron Horse, Sand Hills, Cairde Sligo Arts Festival, and others. Facebook readings: Sam Kaspar the writer @MightySamster.

Therí A. Pickens wrote New Body Politics (2014), and Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (2019). She edited a collection of essays, Arab American Aesthetics, and special issues on Blackness and disability for two academic journals: African American Review and College Language Association Journal. Her debut collection of poetry, What Had Happened Was, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.

Laurel Sharon was a finalist for the Marguerite McGlinn Fiction Contest. Her short stories have been published in Portrait of New England, Carte Blanche, Santa Ana River Review and other literary magazines. She has a Certificate in Creative Writing from Fairfield University.

Andrew Vogel listens, walks the hills, and teaches in rural eastern Pennsylvania, original homelands of the Lenape peoples. His poems have appeared most recently in Poetry East, Hunger Mountain, Crab Creek Review, The Briar Cliff Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Cider Press Review.

Meg Kenagy, a freelance writer and essayist, is the author of The House on School Street, Eight Generations. Two Hundred and Four Years. One Family. She lives in Oregon.

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Kevin Grauke has published work in such places as The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Ninth Letter, and Cimarron Review.

He’s the author of the short story collection Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He lives in Philadelphia.

A poet, professor, and editor, Richard Ryal has worked in marketing and higher education. The beauty of his world still outmuscles his gloom but he stops sometimes for no obvious reason. His recent publications include Notre Dame Review, Slipstream, and The South Florida Poetry Journal.

Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published creative work in over 600 journals. Williamson has published poetry in over 200 journals, including The Oklahoma Review, The Roanoke Review, Pamplemousse, formerly known as The Gihon River Review, The Copperfield Review, The Penwood Review, and Wilderness House Literary Review. Some of his visual artwork has appeared in journals such as Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The William & Mary Review, New England Review, The Tulane Review and The Wisconsin Review. Williamson has an M.A. from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. from Seton Hall University. He lives in Tennessee.

Jeffrey S. Hartnett is a retired professor of architecture from Boston and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. After earning degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin, he taught at various universities, from coast-to-coast, including two years in China. He has an art-and-photography website — jeffhartnett.weebly.com. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Roger Camp is the author of three photography books including the award winning Butterflies in Flight, Thames & Hudson, 2002 and Heat, Charta, Milano, 2008. His work has been awarded the prestigious Leica Medal of Excellence for European photography. His images have appeared in numerous journals including The New England Review, Paris Review and The New York Quarterly. Represented by the Robin Rice Gallery, NYC, more of his work may be seen on Luminous-Lint.com.

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Beth Oast Williams Bess Vanrenen Elisa Madina Kaleigh Dixson Linda Malnack Sarah Aziz Wilson McBee Sam Kaspar Therí A. Pickens Laurel Sharon Andrew Vogel Meg Kenagy Kevin Grauke Richard Ryal

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