THE WELLESLEY REVIEW NO.SIX, SPRING 2011
The Wellesley Review
no. six, spring 2011
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Bootless // Hayley C. Merrill Rhino and His Friends // Hamster The Way We Say These Things // Galen Danskin Cement Wall // Esther Y. Kim December Dogs // Jaya Stenquist The Distance to the Origin // Margaret Zwiebach The Train // Emilie C. Menzel
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After I Stopped Trying to Orgasm // Galen Danskin Comrade // Lena Smoot While in Brooklyn // Diamond Sharp RTE 128 // Samantha Kulok The Will // Eileen Cham H3 Ward // Jesse Austin Sandals // Esther Y. Kim
Lifted // Jess Dill
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Bootless Hayley C. Merrill
They took away your belt, your shoes: shoelaces could kill you. Psych. Ward, locked doors. They search the bag I bring you (clothes, two books), blue-gloved hands inserting themselves into our small world. Your room is bare: I’m not allowed inside. Superbowl Sunday. The patients cluster around the small TV, watching America. Like a child, you show me your crayon drawings (a tree, a man, a home). I run out of words so I read to you: Infinite Jest. My time is up I stand to leave. Stay you whisper... All cries bootless. The door slams shut, locks. Outside, I am a child again, looking up at the night sky. No moon: stars. No shoes: socks.
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Hamster // [Rhino and His Friends]
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My father reminds me of a hard frost. An icy ground that clenches and pulls, expanding across and snapping under its own weight. His mouth curves down in one corner, elongated by a shaving scar that hooks cruelly over the side of his lip. When I was little, he had a shaving set that he would use every morning with a craftsman’s precision. Swirling a thick brush in the sink water and then over a round of shaving soap, he would whisk it into tufts of foam that he would lather across his chin. With sharp strokes from a metal razor, he would quickly scrape the foam. Rinse. Repeat. Again. But it’s been years since he’s used that kit or cared about shaving with such intensity. On Saturday, he even refuses to shave and by Sunday morning he attacks a graying forest with dulled bic razors and not enough time. As my mother piles too many kids into a breaking mini-van, he sticks wads of toilet paper onto fast-bleeding nicks and scrambles in pursuit of the car keys. Sometimes, he’ll forget to brush the paper off and my mom will punch his arm as his slides into our pew. Scraping his hand across his face, he’ll dislodge a flurry of red-dotted flakes, which he’ll hurriedly collect and shove into his jacket pocket. Usually, a large piece will cling to his neck and while driving home after mass he’ll swear into the rear-view mirror and angrily toss it out the window. Once, before he switched to bic razors and his shaving still held a deliciously magical type of fascination, my brother and I sat on
the bathroom floor and tried to shave. We poured water into the small plastic dish and spun the horse-hair brush around the soap. With clumsy hands we coated our faces in thick beards of foam. We laughed. We laughed again. My brother held up the razor and smiled. With the back of the razor, we scraped our faces, wincing at the cold metal. We did it again. Again. When my father found us, he showed my brother how to properly use the razor. The blade fitting neatly into the heavy head. The sharp side curving against the jaw. Slicking neatly around the upper lip. Rinse. Repeat. Again. I remember my father’s shaving most clearly in the winter of my early teens. His drying skin cracking in the cold of a New England morning, I could hear the scraping of bic against bristles through the crunching of my Cheerios. I would look up, a dribble of milk hanging from my lip, and his still-wet cheek would press against my face, the unshaven edge of chin scratching painfully against my forehead. “Drink your orange juice. Do you want a prune in that cereal?” “No.” I would pull away angrily. “I’m fine.” But he would drop something into my food. A handful of frozen cranberries. A fistful of moist and sticky prunes. A multi-colored vitamin to sink under the milk and dissolve in violent plumes. Sometimes I would eat it. Other times I would leave it in the bowl or surreptitiously throw it into the trash. Once, I pretended to eat a prune, but instead of swallowing, I spit it out on the breakfast table. He almost hit me he was so angry. Sometimes he would walk me to the bus stop, wheeling his bicycle slowly around patches of ice and salt. When I reached the top of the street, he would wave, swing his leg over the bike seat, and with a smooth push he’d be gone. Recently, my brother and I met for coffee. I paid for his latte and felt old. We sat and said things. It was the longest amount of time I had spent home in two years. I hardly recognized him under the full beard that he’d cultivated. “How’s mom? And dad?” I pressed my lips against the edge of
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The Way We Say These Things Galen Danskin
the cup. I hate coffee, but it’s awkward to meet for coffee and drink water. “Fine. Dad’s dad. Mom’s worried about Jill and John.” He shrugged. Our disabled siblings, sandwiching us in a highly pressured middle, rarely change. “I’m ready to get out. The beginning of school can’t come soon enough. Dad’s driving me crazy.” He pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes. “It’s how he shows that he cares.” “Telling me that I need to get a girlfriend, a job and a life, but every hour I spend away from home is a fight? I can’t win. He hates everything that I do. It’s never good enough.” “I’m sure he doesn’t mean that.” “Oh fuck you. You’re never home. You don’t know what it’s like anymore. He hasn’t talked to me in weeks- all he does is yell.” “Aunt Kathy emailed. She said Dad might be depressed.” “She’s always full of shit. Remember the book of dating advice she gave me?” He laughs. I laugh. The tension is broken. Sometimes, I feel as though we don’t need to talk and that it’s better when we don’t. Then I notice his beard, his college sweater, and his deepened voice. I take a breath and I’m glad when he breaks the silence again. “Ignore her. Dad’s fine. He’s always fine. He’s been working in Washington and traveling too much. Him and mom fight. But they always fight. Dad’s noble. He’s like somesome- some “Knight. Like chivalry.” “Yeah.” My brother smiles. We know each other. It’s OK. “He’s from another place.” “The south?” “Yeah.” He laughs from his deep stomach. “I don’t think he’s ever recovered from it.” “I don’t think we’ll ever recover from him.” I begin the laugh and this time it goes on for a few minutes. When it stops, I ask him if he wants a biscotti or a slice of carrot cake. “My treat.” I say, and he smiles.
Purchasing food has always been a guilty pleasure for both of us. My family only eats out six times a year- one time for each of our birthdays. For my father, the two-dollar coffee and three-dollar slice of carrot cake is a waste of money that should be plugged into the stock market. For my father, nearly every purchase is a waste that should have been invested into digits on the newspaper and quarterly reports. New clothes, family vacations, house renovationseverything is pushed aside into Pfizer, General Dynamics, or IBM. In the fall and winter, he obsesses over the thermostat and inches it down a few costly degrees every time my mother turns her back. In order to heat the house, my dad recruits the kids into chopping and hauling wood for our pot-bellied wood stove. My brother used to have calluses, thick ridges where fingers meet palm, to boast quietly of his weekend work. But he’s lost them since going to college as nights of beer pong replace lifting that too heavy axe again and again against a stubborn tree trunk.
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Physical fitness was always important to my father. The fall reminds me of tightly pulled cleats and shin-guards that stick their imprints into my sweaty calves. My dad coached my soccer team and called us ‘The Wolf-Pack.’ Before every game, we would howl and bark at the other team, snarling up at an imaginary moon. He said the howling terrified the spectators and now, when I try to imagine fifteen kindergarteners frothing at the mouth and wildly barking, I’m sure he was right. In the winter, I played basketball and my toes would press against the too-small hand-me-down shoes from my sister. My poor vision, a trait inherited from my father’s side, forced me to wear thick sports goggles that left bright pink welts around my nose and ears. Once I was hit square in the face with a basketball and, instead of protecting me like my father said they should, the goggles bent and cracked awfully into my face. I remember bruises around my eyes like raccoon rings and my father patting my back and telling me that I was lucky I didn’t lose an eye. I also learned how to skate in the winter, sobbing by the edge of the ice-rink as my father pulled too tightly on my laces
and taped the long ends around the ankles. My feet would come out of skating practice clenched and cold, twisted like I imagined young Chinese girl’s feet to be after they were bound by similarly determined fathers. My father would pull my skates off and rub my feet briskly with his hands. “Shut up and stop wiggling. You can feel your toes. Now?” “I can’t feel anything. Stop it. Stop it!” “You’re going to be fine. Feel them now?” And a fierce burning would steal around my toes and the hurting would almost be worse than the numbness. I would push my feet into clunking boots and lower my head between my knees, sobbing from the ache.
“I can’t. I can’t. I want mom. I can’t. I am going to die. I hate- I hate- I hate-” Eventually my father would haul him from the ice and drag him around the lake. Suspending his limp body by the armpits, he would grimly drag John around to every fishing hole until sobs turned to snot-filled hiccups and a fascination with the fish under his feet replaced the pain of too-tight skates.
We lived next to a lake that was, like my father, best in the winter. In the summer it filled with weeds and spiny sunfish. Once a family down the street caught a snapping turtle. I tried to pet it and the man told me he would be eating the turtle later. If it bit off my finger and ate it, he’d be eating my finger as well. I was horrified. In the winter, the lake would freeze quickly and stay in a solid slumber for long months. If we had a burst of cold overnight, when the wind was low, the lake would transform into a cracked glass masterpiece. Smoothing in long sheets of thick ice with pressure lines across the middle. I think freezing could pull the beauty out of anything. After a deep-cold snap, the kids would haul our skates down to the lake and sit awkwardly on stones. Four kids in a row with skates half-on jabbering and screaming for their father to tighten the laces. “But not too tight! Dad! Not too tight!” “You did it wrong. Take it off. I hate you. I hate you.” But we would soon calm down, dry our running noses on our sweater sleeves, and push ourselves onto the lake. Sometimes, my youngest brother would remain hysterical and the entire lake could hear his screams as he fell as he fell as he fell again, beating against the lake with gloved palms and tearing at the too-tight skates with helpless fingers.
The rest of us made our way on our own terms. My older sister, Jill, would fall a few times and then scream by the side until my mother came to save her and undo the skates. I remember her mouth like a red hole. Blue edges around her lips and a violently vivid tongue as she would tilt her head back and shriek. My middle brother and I would generally ignore her while we played tag. Weaving around small snowdrifts, we’d race and tumble and fall and carve our names in the ice with long backwards strokes of our blades. Moving my legs in and out like bubbles, I would carve helixes into the soft ice and pretend that they were chains of eights or party decorations swirling across the cold. Occasionally, we would try to save John from my father’s harsh skating exercises, but usually it was easiest and fastest to go just with each other. Sometimes, the screaming would burrow inside of our skin. John’s moaning hiccups by the fishing holes and Jillian’s bird-wails on the edge pressed so tightly we felt the lake was a snow-globe of a dystopian Christmas carol. That was when we would hit each other with gloved fists and slide-kick into the other’s skates. Whenever we drew blood, we would always stop- terrified. It wasn’t meant to hurt in that way. Once, I fell into the water. This wasn’t at my lake, but at a cabin in New Hampshire, borrowed from a friend for the weekend. I was seven and thought it would be funny if I skated to the middle of a purplish-black bruise and began poking at the center. A hole broke through, widened, and my left leg fell in. I screamed and my father ran. Dropping flat onto his stomach, he pulled me out with a swift force that left my shoulder aching for days. He never said anything
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except, “Are you OK? Can you still feel your toes? How about now? Now? Can you feel that?” In high school, my father finally allowed me to tighten my own laces and I began to enjoy moon skating. You could only do this late at night when the moon was full enough to illuminate treacherous fishing holes. I’d wrap myself into four layers of clothing, but the wind would still whip through to bone. I didn’t care. It was worth it to be alone on the ice and to feel the burn of thighs and calves. One night, my dad noticed that I was going out to skate. “I don’t want company.” I said. He shrugged and rummaged in his coat pockets, bringing out two screwdrivers with long pieces of thin rope tied around them. “Hold out your hands.” He tied one to each wrist and tucked the screwdrivers back into my sleeves. “Careful to not poke yourself with this.” “I don’t get it.” I pulled them out and flipped them in my palms. “If you fall. Since you’re alone. Hold them like this.” He demonstrated, his hands in fists. “Smash them into the ice and pull. Don’t focus your weight in any one area.” “Have you ever needed to use these?” At my question, my father grinned and punched my arm. He took a breath and his smile faded. “Just be careful.” That night, I imagined my father’s body cold and white, floating under the lake. His unshaven skin scraping against the thick ice and his rough hands pressing against the layers above him. Absorbing into the thick sheets of ice. Like something frozen and beautiful with hard lines and cruel edges.
Esther Y. Kim // [Cement Wall] {13}
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December Dogs Jaya Stenquist
2. So cold, the birds are going crazy with thirst.
1. At night, the sky turns pink as the skin of a dog. A strange effect of light caught between earth and sky. Lately, I have become convinced that you will die suddenly while away.
There was once an egret here, standing on one leg like a dancer in white. Now, there are only very large bass swimming in circles beneath the ice.
I send messages when I hang up the phone,
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I love you. And, Be safe!
In front of the house with the Dalmatian statue, the spaniel finds a rabbit in the snow bank.
It’s dark when I get home. I take the spaniel for a walk.
I pull it from her biting jaws,
She growls at the Dalmatian statue across the street, afraid of such a strange dog, immobile, scentless.
dead rabbit. Dead for some time, or perhaps, only a moment. In the cold, it is difficult to tell.
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4. You lay in this bed, I remember your hands in my hair, your voice was quiet when you spoke about the way everything looked gold in this light, as if it were spun from honey.
5. The dogs of December wrestle in the streets, untamed, unkempt. Some day, they will run away to be hit by cars, or locked in impounds. As if they never bit our heels on these strange pink nights. Once, I caught the trees bare naked beneath the corner streetlight, snow falling slowly, as if a little drunk. Margaret Zwiebach // [The Distance to the Origin] {17}
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The Train Emilie C. Menzel
There is a lady on this train—ticket number five, car twelve, coach class. She orders her martinis dry, thank you, and she likes to count, so speak in prime numbers and curt sentences. Her hands are crossed, and now you’re looking at her from behind because you have a fear of not knowing where you are headed. The train starts, she starts, and you are swallowed by your seat as you fall back into the movement. Don’t lose sight of her, because now you’re moving, and she’s moving, and she’ll keep moving in a sphere of time separate from yours by about ten seconds until this train stops at wherever it’s headed. And that’s four hours from now, for you. Ten seconds, one heartbeat, one turn of her knitting magazine less for her. How un-gentleman like to have sat behind her. But if you were to slip out of your seat, and stumble up the aisle, could you regain that time? Could you catch it and slip the reclaimed moments into your penny jar back home? Or perhaps it is too late and the lady’s time is disappearing into a stream of red imaginary numbers like the stock market. You don’t know, but you slip out of your seat, and stumble up the aisle, and pass her red cardigan to the opposite chair so you can sit beside her. And you’re not sure what to make of her, because now you notice that she’s not so young, that her face is narrow and crowded with the roots of wrinkles. She clutches her hands and turns to the window and you swing your legs back into the aisle. No words pass, no side ways glances, you’re looking straight ahead into the next train car where the bus boy is sleeping. {19}
You wonder what time sunsets tend to begin and if they happen faster when you yourself are traveling at a higher velocity. You would certainly like to see, to know, but she’s sitting between you and the window like a tin soldier, stiff and rosy cheeked. And that means you might have to move your hand across hers (God forbid) in a questioning way as if to ask if she would mind tugging open the curtain for you. And you certainly hope she doesn’t mind, because you can see that in the next train car over, the golden wisps of sunlight are beginning to seep into a pomegranate red glow, and you know that means you don’t have much time. You try to remember whether sunsets are worth this act of asking. Kentucky 1954, you waited five hours for a sunset by a lake. (Your friend made a joke about watercolors; you were determined and stubborn and set to watch one.) In 1960, you spent the night in a tent by a Serengeti watering hole. In neither instance did you see the sun nor, for that matter, watch it set. These were all rather fanciful notions, you realize. Youth was filled with color but not the color of sunsets, and now you understand that that just will not do. Now, and quite suddenly, you want to turn to the lady beside you and drill her for answers that you know she cannot give because she is focused on reminding herself that you aren’t there, that this train ride will end. You must shake her, scream insults, whisper moans into her ear so that she will, wide-eyed, turn and address you. But your efforts are too timid; the train could have rolled into station with you still needing conflict, climax, response. But the fault becomes hers. She slips up. She turns, and you’re looking because you forgot to turn politely away when she turned, and now you are caught and she is caught and you remember Serengeti and the frightened animals and wide-eyed owls, but the important thing is that now you’re staring, and she’s about to speak, and the train is moving you together.
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After I Stopped Trying to Orgasm Galen Danskin
It was easier. Standing behind her by the shore, I could feel the whispering edges our bodies without commitment or need. I could easily hate her for asking me to leave before the sun rose. So we ground against the limits of daylight, she, hoping for a type of frictional warmth and, me, hating her and wishing to stay. I wanted to forget my want. I wanted to feel sad about this. Now, when the sun lifts through the blinders and my skin against your skin glows, I am nothing but tender. Pulsing inside-out. But sometimes, in the aching months when dark grows earlier and earlier like a clock gone bad, I want to repent and rewrite her as a love story. I want to be baptized in an ocean of languishing mornings, so many that I can close my eyes and let you slip by, instead of gripping this hour with desperate hands and pressing your body into mine with a hard and heavy wanting.
Jess Dill // [Lifted]
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The Inspector looked at me from across my kitchen table. He was far younger than I’d expected him to be and had arrived far sooner than I thought he would. All of his movements were easy and fluid—when he sat down, checked his watch, or put his hands in his pockets. It had been decades since I had been able to move that way. “How do you take your tea?” I asked. “Milk and sugar?” “Just sugar,” he said. I gave him the jar, and he put cube after cube into his cup, stirring almost peacefully, never letting the spoon hit the side. “They told me to expect you, but I didn’t think you’d come so soon,” I said after I sipped my tea. “I thought tardiness was to be expected with all you young people.” The Inspector smiled. “We tend to take these matters very seriously.” “Well I am here to help in any way I can,” I lied. It was surprising to me how naturally it came. “I think we should just jump right in don’t you?” The Inspector took out a notepad and pen from the inside pocket of his worn leather jacket. “Dr. Puchta, when was the last time you saw your comrade, Mr. Habarta?” I laughed a little. “’Comrade?’ I think that word is a little dated, Inspector.” “What word would you use to describe someone who you worked closely with to bring down the government?” He spoke
slowly as if he was really asking me a question. I smiled and sipped my tea again. “That was a long time ago, Inspector. We were very young.” “You still haven’t answered my question, Doctor. When did you last see Francis Habarta?” “Thirty years ago. Around the last elections.” The Inspector glanced down and brushed dirt only visible to him from the patch embroidered on his right shoulder. The patch showed our country’s motto floating around an image of Parliament Tower on a day when a large circular sun burst through the clouds with rectangular rays. Persistence. Dedication. Loyalty. “And you are sure that you have not seen him since? He hasn’t contacted you?” “I hardly think he would after what happened. Why exactly are you looking for Frank after all this time?” I asked as I traced the outline of the chipped porcelain handle of my cooled teacup. The Inspector looked down at his notepad. “His name has come up in some recent… chatter around Parliament.” “Well, Frankie has never been too fond of what goes on in Parliament.” “I remember a time when you weren’t too fond of the government either.” “I doubt that, Inspector. You’re far too young.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I read about you in school,” he said calmly. “What you and your people got up to in those days.” “Then you know Frank and I did not keep in touch while we were in prison. I’m sure your employers make it a priority to keep tabs on us former revolutionaries.” “Thank you for your time and the tea.” The Inspector stood up and shook my hand. Just before he left my apartment, he turned and smiled at me, a wide, pitying, condescending smile. “You know, Doctor, one needs to have a revolution to be considered a revolutionary. You and Mr. Habarta picked the losing party while
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Comrade Lena Smoot
mine won, and as you can see, we’re all still here.” “I’m sure you’re right, Inspector.” He left then, out into the street. He walked away with the confidence that only the young have, not even bothering to zip up his jacket in the cold. I went back into the kitchen and picked up the newspaper on the table. There it was on the front page—the story about the “commotion.” The journalists had so few choices of words when it came to this sort of thing. “Terrorism” was a western problem and “disruption” made it seem like the government was disruptable. So, all the major newspapers had settled upon the word “commotion.” I shook my head and scoffed. “He’s gone,” I called. Frank peeked out from the back room. “Are you sure?” “I’m sure. Come sit with me and finish your breakfast.” He came into the kitchen, careful to stay away from the windows, which was very amusing to me: for the first time in his life, Francis Habarta did not want to be seen. He’d always had a sick talent for causing a commotion. During our university days, he’d started pulling pranks on our roommates, then our housemates and eventually the professors. After our sophomoric college tricks on each other, Frank had advanced to something more. Once the protests started, Frank became “political.” He didn’t have a historical or ethnic allegiance to our party like the rest of us, but the plight of the oppressed minority appealed to his mischievous side. During our rallies, Frank would have some trick up his sleeve for the other party. From dismantling the opposition speaker’s podium so it would collapse during his signature “We keep the nation from collapsing!” speech to dressing a herd of donkeys as guards and letting them loose in the town square to replacing the prime minister’s coffers of aged wine with cheap vinegar, Frank eventually earned a place at the head of the resistance movement. He convinced us all that his pranks were a
necessary part of our movement. He convinced all of us with his ideas and his confidence. And as tensions in my country rose, Frank’s hoaxes became more violent. He somehow managed to disable all the brakes on the incumbent’s motorcade and set off fireworks outside of Parliament—part of it caught on fire, but was quickly put out. None of us knew how he would strike at our enemy next, but we could always tell when he had something up his sleeve. There was a kind of malice behind his actions and a sinister gleam in his eye when he performed them. On the day before the elections (if such a sham could even be called an election!), Frank had convinced me and four others of our group to break into the largest polling station. He was certain that the government had rigged the voting machines to yield only the incumbent’s name. We were to “fix” the machines so they would only show our man’s name. After the job was done and we had left the building, we congratulated ourselves for a job well done only to be met with the soldiers who patrolled the streets around the government buildings at night. Just as they were questioning us about our reasons for being out so late, the building exploded behind us in an ugly, uneven blast. The building which had stood there since our nation’s founding was demolished in less than two minutes. After I regained my footing wiped the rubble and dust from my coat, I looked over at Frank, standing sure footed with his hands in his pockets. The fires were reflected in his dark eyes, and the bits of debris darkened his face and hair. His smile became wicked as the fire grew. Frank looked like a complete version of himself—a man with all of his edges filled in by dirt, smoke and sure willpower. Apparently, one of our four comrades, an angry young man from the outer provinces, had brought a bomb. The government had taken away his family’s land, which they had owned for over a hundred years and with it, took their right to vote. Frank had
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known about the bomb. It was in fact the real reason for breaking in. What he and the young man didn’t know was that three soldiers had been stationed inside the building at the time. The explosives expert at the trial told us that they had been killed instantly. All six of us were sentenced to twenty years in separate prisons. While incarcerated, I continued my medical studies, and I was eventually let out early to pursue a degree. Two of my compatriots died in jail, and the young bomber ended up killing another man in prison and was executed twelve years ago. The fourth was released around the same time I was, gathered up his few belongings and left the country for good. Frank, however, laid low, staying with friends in the outer provinces. I heard that he tried to live without the movement and his pranks for a while, tried to live like the rest of us with a job, a flat and bookcases, but that ended. He began to do small pranks around government property—the fireworks, clipping hedges into phallic shapes, just the classics. He was building up, gathering troops, reconnecting with old allies. But news of his activities hadn’t reached just me. The government began to keep tabs on his movements again. “Are you going to eat this, or shall I feed it to the dog?” I asked him. From a safe distance he peered cautiously out of the window. He was still tall with a full head of hair, but he seemed thinner. He lacked the calmness of most men our age; his intensity reminded me of the young Inspector. Frank sat down and shoveled eggs and porridge into his mouth eagerly. I could tell he had not eaten this well in a very long time. “It’s been thirty years,” I said while he chewed. He looked up at me. “So your mind hasn’t gone completely soft.” “Not yet.” He put down the spoon and wiped the bits of food off of his mouth with the corner of the tablecloth. “I’m planning something new.” “I know.” I finished the rest of my tea even though it was cold. I have never been one to not finish my tea.
“I want you to help me.” “I thought I was helping you. Harboring a fugitive is still a crime these days.” “Tomas.” “I heard that you had organized a group of young intellectuals. You don’t need an old man like me. I’d slow you down.” I picked up his bowl, the Inspector’s cup and my own and placed them in the sink to clean later. “You’re worth an army of young intellectuals.” “I want you.” “Frank,” I asked as I looked out the window, “do you know why I agreed to this? To let you stay here?” He shook his head. “I suppose I hoped that you were ready to join with me again.” “You know that can’t happen. Not after what we did.” I tried to hold his gaze, to somehow communicate with him how serious I was. The last time I gave him this look was the day we were sent to prison. “Is this what this is about?” he asked incredulously. “You want me to apologize for not telling you about the bomb? Or for having it in the first place? Tomas, it’s been thirty years, and we both paid the price. Some of us are still paying the price. They take away our land so we protest. They take away our liberty so we revolt. They take away our livelihoods so we kill three of them and still nothing changes. They still take.” “It’s not that bad anymore,” I tried to reason with him. “We’ve made progress, especially with education for the young and the new work programs for the poor.” “Are you blind?” he cried. “You were just interrogated in your own home by a state officer half your age. It’s been this way for centuries—their officers, their government and their order. But there is no justice in their order.” I was silent for a few minutes after he spoke. I picked up his bowl and began to wash off the remaining bits of food. “You’re
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proselytizing me with my own words, Frank. I wrote that speech for our candidate thirty one years ago.” As I looked over to him, I realized we had moved to opposite sides of the room, me by the kitchen sink and Frank by the door. The shadows of my small house hid the lines on his face and made him look taller, stronger. For a moment he looked just like he did in those instants just after the building blew up. After a minute passed, he smiled again. “Fine,” he said. “I know when to give up with you. You get a certain look in your eyes when you’ve made your mind up.” “So do you.” We were both quiet for a moment, remembering how well we’d known each other. When you march with someone, kill with someone, you learn how far they can go, and how far you can convince them to go. I knew how much Frank was capable of, and he knew what he could convince me to do. “I should leave,” he said. “I have a feeling that Inspector will be back.” We both left our corners and came back to the table. “Frank,” I started as we walked to the back door together, “do you really know what you’re doing?” Frank looked at me and smiled his wicked smile. “My old friend, not even Mr. Carroll knew what would happen to Alice once he sent her down the rabbit hole.” I helped him put on his coat and hat and watched to make sure the coast was clear. And when he left, I did not shake his hand and I did not wish him well.
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While in Brooklyn Diamond Sharp
On the corner there is a woman singing about nightmares you’ve never had In another time, she would be a griot speaking of dawns that make up for the nights before Today Brooklyn is hot. Each body moves past never hearing her. The heat is sticky like molasses between the crevices of your fingers. Children are playing in the yard where the flowers have begun to grow again. Music is flowing from a stoop just far enough to miss. On the corner there is a woman singing about nightmares you’ve never had. But everything is here, everything is beautiful.
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The Will Eileen Cham
“Sir… Are you sure about this?” Ehrenborg’s voice quivered. His hands were clenched and white. Strehlenert and Hwass were engaged in conversation near the fireplace, and from the little I gathered from the occasionally raised voices (advise, will, money, sane, advise), I could surmise what their response to this affair would be. How absurd it was for the matter to arrive at such a state. To have to call for my old friends in the middle of the night to the club – I regret to have to be such a nuisance to these kind gentlemen. But the task of validating this will should not be put off any longer; a decent paroxysm might finish me off as soon as tomorrow. I could have called for my lawyer, but he would never approve of my wishes. I have composed this will on my own over the course of two months. Truthfully, writing this has been an invigorating exercise. When I first began, the dysfunctions of my body had not crept up to my head, and I was still capable of thought and control. By the third paragraph the tremors of my hand miraculously stopped, and the haze before my eyes dissolved, my mind taking on a clarity – and I was transported back through years and decades with my imagination, and what was left of an old man’s memory – I was once again thirty in Stockholm, eleven in Saint Petersburg, eighteen in the States, forty in Paris… All the people in my life, they came forth to me from behind that hazy veil as I wrote. They came to me, one after another,
Samantha Kulok // [RTE 128] {31}
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noiseless and fluid as ink, glistening on the smooth surface of the parchment, and then…fixed into eternality. My nieces and nephews, my servants and secretaries and lab-assistants – they would each receive a piece of my wealth in, depending what they need, crowns, francs, florins, marcs, dollars. It was surprising how I ruled these calculations with so little difficulty, how readily the words came to my disposal. My hold of the pen, however, wavered when I had come to Bertha – How close I was to proposing to her twenty years ago. I remember the graceful, loopy B of her script in her first correspondence with me, the scent of summer when I took her out to the Parisian streets on the wagon I had designed myself. I remember her sure, unhesitant gaze as she made her departure from my office to Caucasus, to meet von Suttner. That Saturday I waved goodbye to her at the door with one hand, and the other clasping the ring I had meant for her. I returned the ring to the jeweler only after a few weeks later, when she wrote to me as Bertha von Suttner. She kept the same script in her letters to me for the next twenty years; but how much she would change! The words I read would become wiser, the voice I imagine louder and more passionate and unwavering; and what was left for her in my heart could only grow stronger over the years. In many of her letters she pleaded for my support for the Austrian Pacifist Organization. She wrote of her visions for a longlasting Peace, in Europe and beyond. She asked for advice, how she should deliver her speeches to convince the most cynical of men. Of course, the irony of her writing about such ambitions to the owner of the richest dynamite empire in the world escaped her grudgeless soul. Sometimes she would write about von Suttner and their travels together, and an envy would rise in me; I had but no one to write about in return. “My friend…” Ehronborg began, and I was brought back to the urgency of the present. Under Ehronborg’s heavy gaze I fumbled for my fountain pen in my breast pocket. I gave him what I hoped
was a reassuring nod. I have thought this over, months before, maybe years. There was a proverb that I’d heard from a teacher as a child, one that I’d lately taken to turning over in my head over and over again: Das letzte Hemd hat keine Taschen – “the last shirt has no pockets”. I handed the will to Ehronborg. Strehlenert and Hwass ceased talking, and in the silence I hear the frantic unruliness my pulse. Ehronborg cleared his throat – “The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” His voice reverberated in the study. I stayed still in my armchair, feeling the light touch of its last echoes. This new paragraph will set this will apart from its previous versions, and also set me apart from the dozens of other tycoons who, after their deaths, would fade away into the unforgiving depths of history. They would talk about me for years. The prizes would be an extension of my investments, and would survive long after my death. There would be one for Medicine, one for Physics, one for Chemistry, one for Literature, and one for Peace – this, a tribute to Bertha. Strehnelert fidgeted, “My friend, are you really sure about this?” I questioned my motivations daily. Like most men, I feared death; but I feared infamy more. They called me the Merchant of Death, for how I had earned my wealth – by bringing to this world an invention that would kill people faster than anything else in the world. Would this Will salvage what little was left of my name? I wanted to do something for Bertha, who has for so long occupied my thoughts; would this Will be enough? For now there is only this – the piece of parchment solemnly reflecting, in the dull glow of the chandelier overhead, my hopes and resolve. The three gentlemen drew their breath as I positioned my pen below Paris, 27 November, 1895, and signed - Alfred Bernhard Nobel
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H3 Ward Jesse Austin
They check my pulse twice, every day-This morning, I’m textbook perfect. This morning, my heart is on fire. The woman who shares her food understands. BOOM, she says, grabbing her bosom, BOOM like the lights in the sky, she tilts her head back and grins, you know. We know. We sit around the t.v. and a girl tells me my horoscope. She says I’m lucky. She can see things this girl-says the earth is spinning and evolving, we will all be better some day. And she says I’m lucky. I spoke to my father on the phone. I’ll come get you he says, I don’t want you I say, I am fine. {35}
Esther Y. Kim // [Sandals] {36}
Wellesley Review Staff: Megan Cunniff | Galen Danskin [Editors-in-Chief] Charlene Lee | Cicia Lee [Layout Editors] April M. Crehan [Poetry Editor] Lesley Thulin [Assistant Poetry Editor] Faye Bates
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Claire Grossman [Prose Editors]
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Julie Daurio
Jennifer Lin [Assistant Prose Editor] [ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]
Jess Dill, Cover Artist Sumita Chakraborty, Founding Editor