YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE Fall 1996 Vol. 8, No. 2
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YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE Established 1836 Vol. 8, No.2 Fall 1996 Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque YALENSES cantabunt SOBOLES,unanimique PATRES.'
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THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE, FALL 1996
Editors-in-Chief: Vanessa M. Gezari Stephen Weiss Managing Editors: Jonathan Gottfried Behi Rabbani Art Editors: Beth M. Bernhardt Aliza Eisdorfer Sara Gilbert Design: Timothy McCormick Design Assistant: Prem Krishnamurthy Staff: Jennie Chu, Susan Gualtier, David Gordon, Dana Goodyear, Chauthuy Hoang, Kamran Javadizadeh, Israel Justiniano, Dan Kellum, Monica Kim, Jungdae Lee, Jennifer Ludwig, Chris Mooney, Rebecca Onion, Karen Rosenberg, Casson Rosenblatt, Eric Rosenthal, Sarah Rubinstein, Lanie Rutkow, Darby Saxbe, Ravindra Shaw, John Siciliano, Chandra Speeth, Caroline Smith, Greg Tigani, Tania Valdemoro, Benjamin Wei, Nia Rain Williams Thanks to: Paul Mellon Philip Greene and the Yale College Dean's Office Walter Hyder and Yale Printing Service Harvey Goldblatt and Kathline Hartch Pierson College The Sudler Fund Susan Bianconi and J. D. McClatchy at The Yale Review Yale Reprographics and Imaging Services (RIS) Nancy Keramas Danielle Spencer
The Yale Literary Magazine is a non-profit, registered undergraduate organization at Yale University. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or staff members. Yale University is not responsible for the contents of the magazine. The contents of The Yale Literary Magazine are Š 1996. Copyrights remain the property ofindividual contributors. No portion of the contents may be reprinted without permission. All rights are reserved. Subscriptions to The Yale Literary Magazine are available at a price of$15 for individuals and $35 for institutions. Please make checks payable to the YLM Publishing Fund and send to: The Yale Literary Magazine P.O. Box 209087 New Haven, CT 06520 View the magazine online at http://www.yale.edu/ylit Library of Congress catalog number 7-19863-4 This issue of The Yale Literary Magazine was produced with QuarkXPress 3.32 software, and printed by Phoenix Press, New Haven, on Finch Opaque White 7olb text paper and Warren LOE Dull White 8.01b cover stock. Printing was supervised by Walter Hyder of Yale Printing Service. The typefaces used are Gill Sans, designed in 1931 by Eric Gill; Scala, designed in 1991 by Martin Majoor; and Minion Italic, designed in 1991 by Robert Slimbach.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTWORK:
COVER:
color print by Gabriel Brandt
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silver gelatin print Jennifer Ludwig
Attentions Paid Dana Goodyear
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linoleum print Karen Strelioff
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Peanut Brittle Peter Morris
io silver gelatin print Laura Burns
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My Father's Forecast Sonya B. Posmen tier
14 collograph
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Quaya-Bird fiction by Emily Raboteau
16 acrylic on paper Matt Brackett
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Visitation Leigh Sara Bardugo
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The Toad and His Mother fiction by Tara Bayton
POETRY AND FICTION:
17 The Adoration Meghan E. O'Rourke 19 Alphabet Chandra Speeth 20
Anything That Works fiction by Jess Row
31 After Reading Leigh Sara Bardugo 32 Griffin Sonya B. Posmentier 35 Antioch College Lovesong Peter Morris
Ellen Martin
18 charcoal Roger White 22, 25, 29
ink washes Tamar Miller
30 silver gelatin print Aitana de la Jara 33 silver gelatin print Hans Soderquist 34 charcoal Cat Bako 36 watercolor Nicole Lindt
Attentions Paid Dana Goodyear
She plucked her eyebrows to a wisp in hopes their narrow lines would speak for her: I myselfam too reduced to comfort you in loss. The wind pared leaves to fractions, projectiles willing not to meet again, catching in the drainpipes and in the neighbors' eaves. The rasping stir ofthe leaves' last gasp insisted: This death is not a part ofme. She practiced arching eyebrows in the faucet's convex snout, her own nose mottled under water stain. In the bathtub—with a book face down,unread, going green and puckering from steam and Clorox grit— she smoked,and did not wash it from her hair.
Her eyebrow's penmanship is beautiful, he thinks. The wrist-flip tenacity of line to italicize the skin—how Stravinsky would have written her,in three densities ofink—no,better yet the score a pattern oftopography white fields wide with possibility, steep turns about the eyes. She's there at the October funeral, presenting him with one-third of her face to ask the fast way back to the innerbelt. And he:"I burnt the wooden spoons because of you. I let the laundry bleed. I locked the cats outside all night. My mother's garden died, you know,since I chose not to weed."
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Jennifer Ludwig silver gelatin print— 10 1/2"x 10 1/2"
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Peanut Brittle Peter Morris
The music is still vamping: someone else, not us, but at a table near our own, points out that the cocoon has split, the flame within gone who-knows-where. The constant prickle building your way slowly up, the way of a practiced yukster builds a joke ("Two guys from Cleveland, right? are taking turns fucking an owl—")to find at last his memory is faulty... Punchlines, when they land, should be inevitable, thunder clap—instead expectancy like ozone crackles blue between the two.("You don't like bird jokes, huh.") All rhythms are the same,save that of being dissatisfied—the friendly hand that grasps the throat and, spasmic, stops the blood-tattoo. So stalwart Dutchmen land on Indonesia as coffee-breakers, only to be lured by gamelan chords, unpredictable and bodily-romantic as the natives... So enterprises end. You knew they say day-laborers at Babel found (their hands were tickling Heaven's asymptote) below foundation-bricks, once clay, had flown like words.
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My Father's Forecast Sonya B. Posmen tier
We have braced ourselves so well for the cold, we feel it already,feel our lips freeze and crack; we know how the months will pass: a mackerel sky, the ground also scaly, like one fall years ago when the smell offish was so strong, my mother sent my father from the house, his hands full oftrout heads and bones. That autumn he was healthy, followed the gilled patterns ofclouds, returned home clean, empty-handed, and smelling of river (the water still warm on him, his eyes forecasting only a most distant chill). This, before the freezing over, when all ofus learned to read the sky for disaster; when he still ate crayfish culled from a lake bottom, without breaking into hives and lying breathless on the kitchen floor—the shock I mistook for illness, but later recognized as lungs and heart collapsing upon their rise from water to polluted air. Later he told me that the air was too cold; there were explanations for rashes, nausea, shortness of breath. He said "You have your internal weather to predict." It is true, I have only the freezing ofwords to attend, while he must forecast the condensation of heavens. But when I first saw my father's breath become ice in the air beside my mother's ear, I knew how a season looked as it passed. Now (late fall) I travel home under a sky white and opaque as human skin, to tell them winter has come and will hurt us. My father's eyes, upon greeting this sky, turn to deadened coals, surprised when they open to find the sun still hot, and the heart, liquid.
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Karen Strelioff linoleum print— 11 1/4" x 16" 5
Quaya-Bird Emily Raboteau
Laquaya T. Byrd, drifting an air current between dream and sense knows four things to be true: her butt, her legs, her womb and her head hurt. This Quaya-bird, her menstrual blood tide m00000n-drawn down from a secret place, sits squared tightly between Grandma Vy's massive thighs, getting her wild naps hot combed tame, crisped flat and vertically just-so. Shifts her cramped legs some inches. Quaya-bird is thinking on the color red—eyes closed,feeling the sizzle, sizzle tug on her thirteen year-old head. "Close your LEGS Laquaya,"(grunt),"you is too old,"(huff),"a be flashin' yer poonani to the woe," snaps Grandma Vy, yanking and wheezing and eyeballs glued to Oprah (thin again) on the TV set fresh out ofhock (for the second time). At her mother's bark, Aunt Karima wakes from her half nod on the stuff-spilling armchair in the corner. Rubs the crust from an eye and stops wilting in the envelope of her nurse threads. Plucks little June June from her nipple. "All right now,little-man. Almos' drunk enough milk to turn you-self white!" she laughs. June June's searching mouth and fingers journey to the disappointment ofstarch and a button holing itself under the closure ofa pat. His mama tilts him over her elbow to tickle chin and belly 'til he shrieks joy and leg-kicks to right-side himself. Then Aunt Karima rises to tune up,tune in Oprah's world. Quaya-bird takes it all in: Oprah's braceletclad arm gracefully extending the mike to let the audience voice its problems with other people's problems,flailing baby boy and his mama crooncradling him and herself back into the overstuffed armchair, the night-purple nipple now tucked
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behind white, the heavy rhythm of Grandma Vy's breathing, Kitty-boo, tabby gray, stretching his striped back into a bow on the windowsill,the unforgivable smell of burnt hair, also some hiss bubbles boiling sweet potatoes in the kitchen stovetop pot, the tender-headed ache ofroots tugged to the limit in their pores, pre-algebra closed stiff and strange among spray paint cans in the school bag, and the timeless drip drip of blood between her legs. She closes them. She closes her eyes again. Shuts the sights, sounds, smells behind dark eyelids cross-locked with too-long lashes. Colors these things red and drops her head in almostdream. Comb yank, sizzle smell, and scalp ache jerk her back:"KEEP your head up chile," (huff), "Hard-headed thing,"(grunt). Grandma Vy parts. her granddaughter's hair on the right side. Then she says more softly,"Almos'finish, Quaya-bird," (sigh). Oprah's panelists are faithful women, been waiting years for their precious boyfriends and husbands to get out ofjail. The one talking is holding up a picture of her honey from prom night and is crying so hard she has the hiccups. Quaya-bird thinks suddenly of her father and his twenty year time. In this moment,she feels much too old to have her head in her Grandmother's hands and is disgusted by the dreariness ofthe living room and the familiar odor of her own fried hair offending the air. Still, she has the sense not to pull away from those hands,from in between those formidable thighs until her grandmother has laid down the comb. "I could leave now?" she asks, standing.
Grandma Vy stares her granddaughter up and down. Stares at the touch of defiance in the hand on hip, stares at the burning eyes until they drop respectfully and the hand falls at rest. She waits another beat for the effect of a period at the end ofa triumphant sentence. Then she says, "Yes, you may. I'm a give you a five." Grandma Vy fishes out a limp bill from her yellowed bra."Bring back a stick of butter and some Newports. Anything else, Karima?" "We outta tin-foil." "Tin-foil. Here, I better give you another dollar. Fifty cents for you, rest of change comes back to me,hear?" "Yes ma'am." "And, Laquaya. I know it don't take no— Karima, you ain't holdin' him right—it don't take no three hours to get to the store an back like lastime. Home before the streetlights come on or I'm a whoop your tail." Pause."You ain't grown yet, so don't act like you is." "Yes ma'am." "What I ax you to get?" "Tinfoil, pack a Nevvports, butter." "Mmmhmm.Go on now." Quaya-bird bends to grab her school bag. "Bye Karima." Karima adjusts her blankettired face to a sort-ofsmile and winks her niece a soft good-bye. June June traces his mother's smile lines with a fat finger, gurgling in the folds of her weariness. Before Quaya-bird leaves she glances at the pokes of gray hair sticking from Grandma Vy's head and feels a little something like love in realizing that this woman has just spent an angry hour and a halfjust to put her own head "right." The elevator is stuck halfway between floors so Quaya-bird flies down eleven flights of urine spotted stairways. On the fourth floor landing, she almost steps on six-year-old Lemon,the black albino girl. "Oops! Sorry, Lemon. I didn't see you." Lemon has made a circle with her jacks and is sitting in the middle ofit, wearing her mother's gold silk robe and holding an empty box of Uncle Ben's minute rice. "That's 'cause I'm invisible," says Lemon in a throaty whisper. She scratches at a scalp scab under a blond afro-puffand peers into the rice box.
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"I guess so, hunh?" laughs Quaya-bird. "What you got in the box?" "It's a secret," whispers Lemon,"but if you gimme a quarter, you could maybe peek?" Her milky eyes blink behind the thick lenses of pink plastic framed glasses. She smiles to reveal a mouthful ofteeth like rotting pearls. "Na, I don't think so, Lemon. I know what you buy with my quarter, and you got enough cabidies already. Keep your secret, sugar." She tugs Lemon's afro puffs and flies down the last stairs, out the metal door and into the closing day, hoping for release but sensing the same old, same old doom. In the parking lot outside her building, Marcus the bully, Sailor Jr. and Angel are preparing to light a cherry bomb when Angel spots a dead alley-cat near the dumpster.The boys cluster around the mangy thing, caught there by its maggot-eaten eyeholes, hairless patches of gray skin, and skeletal protuberances. Quaya-bird,from a bit ofa distance, similarly enthralled by death, watches Marcus crouch and poke a stick into the cat's blank eye socket, rotating it slowly. Angel moves a stiff hind leg with his sneaker. "It's a girl," he says. Quaya-bird thinks on Kitty-boo on the windowsill stretching offthe sunlight, holding death at bay with young whiskers for a little while, a little while. Sailor Jr. says "My sister told me if you touch something dead, then you gonna die the same way." Marcus sneers at the little boy's reverence. "You believe that, you sissy mother fucker? You need to go home and tell your sister she's full of shit." He leans the cherry bomb against the cat's bumpy spine and lights it with a kitchen match. The boys run behind the hood ofa car. Sailor Jr. is wide-eyed, holding his ears closed and laughing a crazy-loud laugh that sounds like it belongs to someone else. Quaya-bird turns her head and almost retches, starts running in the direction of the store with her mouth open to feel the air rush to fill lungs and leave them clean, to feel heartbeat boom and feet pound steady. She stops when sheet lightning strikes her abdomen. "God-damn period," she mutters and walks the rest ofthe way to the store, sucking at the sky for breath and try-
ing desperately to remember the third thing she was supposed to buy for Grandma Vy. She spots them as soon as she rounds the corner, pouring libations for their deadfolks from the bottle mouths oftheir forties and playing Silo with red dice against where storefront meets sidewalk. One ofthem,the one they call Big Lex, eyeballs her smooth-like as she comes close. "''sup Babybird?" "Nothin'." "Tha'so? Yo,Turtle, do it look like nothin's up wit this sweet thing? How come you pantin' over me,then?" Turtle laughs. "I ain't pantin'over nobody. My grandma tol' me run to the store." "Babybird, you growin' up. Look at that body. MMmm.You look almos' as good as your mama." He 's coming at her now,smacking his lips and reaching to squeeze her butt. "I'd give some for a taste a your jelly." His boys are laughing so hard they're spilling malt liquor and Turtle is slapping his thigh. Quaya-bird knows that they won't let her into the store at the same time she knows she might cry ifshe sticks around, but she tries to give Big Lex a Grandma Vy stare to kill off some of her shame and some of his attitude before she turns to leave. For the first time in her thirteen years, she feels her face-skin stretch hard into a mask,the same one her own mama used to wear to meet catcalls every time she led her little Quaya-bird out. But retracing her steps back down the Ave., derision and lust still ringing in her ears, Quayabird doesn't think on her mother so much as her father. How if he was around to show up Big Lex... no. Rage swells up in the old scar. Her daddy is not so different from Big Lex. Not really. And Big Lex will end up just like her daddy and she,"almos' grown" now, most probably will end up tired like Karima,fat like Grandma Vy. She sees this clear as words on a white page and the dread ofit, of Marcus and the cat, of baby June June, Lemon,spiraling headlong into danger brings panic ringing through her stomach and ache thrumming through her womb. She thinks on boys smashing forties in cement gardens and counting time wasting away some unfulfilled
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promise; girls, endlessly waiting for them to come home,frying their hair and watching talk shows in dark rooms. She has never felt so minute. Of course she cannot go back empty-handed. Instead, as she had wanted to do from the beginning, she makes her way to the train-yard. There are people scattered at distances from her cracked-open manhole, which is unusual. She wonders if she should wait for the area to empty out. Then she realizes that they, contemplating their own panic attacks, or food, or God,or Love, or their chemical equivalents, couldn't care less about a girl climbing into a hole. The tunnel is badly lit with hanging naked bulbs of varying wattage,for workmen. And for two blocks, under the earth, Quaya-bird walks, knowing that the industrial tubes and wires and circuits lining the tunnel are parts ofthe City's extensive bloodline. She wonders where its heart is. "Mos' definitely not in Harlem," she laughs. She laughs too at the people on the streets, in the crumbling buildings, stacked on top ofeach other for dozens offloors, dying, crying, dancing, watching TV, making love. Laughs because she knows what they are doing, but nobody knows where she is in this moment. At the end ofthe tunnel is a crawl space, which is unlit, but which Quaya-bird knows will carry her directly under and past the platform of the subway station, closed for repairs. The trains don't stop here, but go roaring past, barreling under strange buildings to spit people out in faraway squares and streets and stations. Quaya-bird stops crawling when she hits the metal door which can be slid open right onto the tracks. Stops behind the metal door and presses against it because it is cool and she is hot. Somewhere a rat runs, a spider creeps. After a time,there is no time, perhaps because she falls asleep, perhaps because this warm underworld dark is the same as sleep and her stillness and silence in this place,(her place) rock her, soothe her far and away. Then,a low trembling. A shaking, and a rumble. A rattle. The train is coming through. Shrieking, singing now, on the metal tracks, so close to death, Quaya-bird thinks, hands pressed against the door. It is the sensation, the thrill ofbeing pulled along with the train. She screams with the train and the two
sounds in her head are the same and lights like fireworks on the Fourth jump behind her eyes and her insides surge as in the descent ofa rollercoaster ride, only this ride is much better. And then, it is gone,swallowed up in silence, leaving in its blank wake Quaya-bird trembling, drenched in her own sweat as though with water. Her heart beats wild, like a sounding drum. Maybe (maybe?)she thinks, she is the heart ofthe City? And there will be enough time before the next train comes through to write what she came to write. Her eyes adjust to the dim light cast from the naked bulbs on the track tunnel walls. Watching the third rail, she walks a little ways until she spots a big enough patch of wall that isn't oozing wet or cracking flakes. She starts with red. Red for blood. The ball against the paint-can metal sounds like train-track-tick-tack on the ties. Q. She makes the letter's tail flourish with flames. U. Squeezed against the Q like June June to Karima's breast. A. Y. Dipping and rising and dripping with feathers. A. B. Stretching to the sky, with more feathers. I. Straight like a tree-trunk. Prideful. R. Curved like the hip ofa woman. D. Balancing the Q by closing the other letters offfrom flying away. Next is yellow. Yellow for Lemon's hair, kitchen curtains and Kitty-boo's eyes. And sunshine. Yellow behind the red, making it redder. Then comes black. Black for her hair, for silence. Black outlines the letters, makes them bold, distinct. Blue. Blue for the flames at their hot tips. Blue to fill the spaces between the letters, same as the sky falls down to color in between the buildings. Blue for wings on either side. Black again to separate, distill the feathers. Black for texture. Boom. Quayabird."That's MY name," she yells, and nods her head for the effect ofa period at the end ofa triumphant sentence. She knows that the blank faces in the train windows to come will see her colors, her tag. The train will carry her name uptown, downtown. She smiles because, well, it looks good. When she emerges,the streetlights are buzzing on, the sun is long gone,the moon in its place like a shameless thumbprint. Sink-heart plummets in the pitfall.(Thud)."Uh-oh." She realizes she will be going home without
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Newports, butter, and whatever the third thing was, her clothes and hair looking a mess, dead give-away spray paint on her skin. Turtle is outside her building, kicking his pit-bull to make her tough enough to win dogfights. "Bitch!" he utters each time his boot meets her snarling body. "Bitch!" he yells at Quaya-bird as she opens the door. Grandma Vy is waiting with Leatherman,the whipping belt held still between fists like roadblocks. When Quaya-bird comes in, her Grandma says nothing with her mouth, but a whole lot with eyes that take in the dirty clothes, the mussed hair, the empty hands. She gestures at the overstuffed armchair. Quaya-bird leans over its arm in her customary position,face turning fast and hard into its new mask. As the strap lashes down on her backside, snapping in syncopation across her skin, June June starts to cry in the next room. She makes sure to keep her legs closed tight, and thinks, with might, on the color red.
Visitation Leigh Sara Bardugo
While you spoke, I saw a house of giants where dark-eyed selkies walked the creaking boards. Over the floor, they moaned like glaciers and felt the way with their enormous toes. Your mother is awake in the kitchen. This morning,she has walked miles in the snow, heaving her white foam monster body over the banks, to return with blue lips, ham and a chicken she will force to lay fat egg after fat egg for your omelet. You have a plan for the cold weather months: you and your brothers will swing mighty axes and raise a twenty-six foot Christmas tree. And you will slip little cups ofeggnog to the girl you've smuggled into your bed, then roll, tight-lipped with her, after carols. Awake, I watch the crack beneath your door and mark your sister's passage down the hall. To the bathroom and back again, she goes. Twice, her deep-sea fish glow surges brightly, two weak waves on the hardwood shore. I listened as you spoke of winter plans and wondered if a plant or frame would serve or maybe bath salts to say thanks so much, wondered who will hold my hair as I bend double by the twenty-six foot tree stump to vomit eggnog between the still pines.
XI
The Toad and His Mother Tara Bayton
A mother, worried by her son's increasingly obvigush it out of her. And she bought size thirteen ous romantic sensitivities to the beauty of young jeans and wore awkward red lipstick and tried not men,decides one day that a talk about love is in to wear her glasses. And she had a snapshot taken order. She chooses a Tuesday morning before of herself sitting on a German man's lap in a park school as he contemplates his nose and the blink- somewhere in Berlin. She looks at it every now ing gleam of his eyes in the car window."Devon," and then and thinks that she was pretty once, at she says, "I have something to say to you least for the split second when the shutter opened about love." and the light flashed and the picture was shot. Devon looks at her. He has been an awkward "I was riding on this train with some other child all his life, since long before puberty. His students and I knew not a word of German," she knobby,thick-lidded eyes are the same now as says."Stop touching your skin," she says. "I knew they were four years ago. The rest ofhis face has not a word of German,and no one spoke English, begun to sprout up in direct conflict. His mother and I was on a train in East Germany, before the worries. The window has a pleasant way of mutwall was taken down." ing all of his faults and he looks back at his In eighth period English Devon sits at his reflection and thinks about Tom B. Linear in desk behind Tom B. Linear, watching him fluster eighth period English. and charm the teacher by turns with his warped "Devon," she says,"Stop looking at the wininterpretations of Shakespeare. Tom B. Linear has dow,look at me," she says,"I have something to a neatly trimmed bob and a neck that will burn a say to you about love and I want you to hear it and fierce pink if it is summertime or if he is passionate about something or if he has farted. Devon I want you to look at me." loves him. But then all the students do,forgiving A mother is not supposed to think that her him for his arrogance, his occasional flatulence. child is ugly. Ifshe is homely herself, ifshe sees Tom B. Linear is one ofthose milky American herselfin him when she looks at him,then she Cheese boys who has been sliced extra lean, white knows from experience that no one will ever love him except her. But ifthis mother is halfway pret- and yellow, with the perfect combination of adoty, she will look at her homely boy and she will see lescent male oils and artificial flavorings. "There was this one student on the train with nothing of herselfin him. Then she will hope that me," his mother says,"A real Harvard type, handsomeone else will love him, because she can not. some, JFK type. We were all riding to Berlin "I was riding on a train once,in East together. We were all drunk. I had the hiccups Germany," this mother begins. She has been fat and he smiled at me and said congratulations and unattractive all her life, with the exception of one fleeting summer in Europe during her senior whenever I gulped. He had these intense blue eyes. One of my earrings slipped off—Look at me year in college when she felt almost acceptablelooking. She had learned from a girlfriend how to Devon,I'm almost done—one of my earrings slipped off while he talked to me and I didn't even summon her strength over a bathroom sink and
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notice until we had reached our stop, and then I was too afraid to ask him to bother himself with helping me look for it. Look at me Devon,I'm almost done." She is not a bad mother,she thinks. She thinks she is quite a clever one actually, having graduated from Swarthmore twenty years ago with a degree in philosophy, having spent the last fourteen years of her life raising her sad little tadpole ofa boy with the Socratic method. The night before, Devon had announced his intention to kill himself at age twenty if he hadn't found one requited love. He told her that he planned to overdose on pills on the day ofthis twentieth birthday, and he hoped that this ultimatum with God would make the next five years of his life more romantically eventful."Why not just take them now?" She did not know what she was doing exactly, but something about the pitiful, infantile way Devon had ofsucking the snot back into his nostrils and blowing therapeutic spit-bubbles in the aftermath of his tears compelled her to get the jumbo-sized bottle of no-frills aspirin from the bathroom medicine cabinet and thrust it in his face. "Now it's important that you listen to me, Devon. I know this story might seem pointless, but it's going somewhere. Just bear with me," she says to him now."The train stopped,and because I took that moment as everyone was getting up to fish around under my seat for my earring, the doors closed before I could leave. They only kept the doors open for two minutes it seemed, and everyone else, that Harvard guy too, had run out as fast as they could and left me there, and I didn't get out on time. I found my earring but by then the doors were closed, and he had left me." His mother pauses. The first period bell has rung. He can hear it through the window ofthe car and can tell by the way that the flock ofstudents feeding themselves into the heavy double doors has diminished that he is going to be late, again. They call him "the toad," in there. He knows this only because he heard a girl mutter it the other day(she said it discreetly in French, assuming that he only took Spanish) to another girl as he seated himself beside her at lunch. Regarde le
13 THE TOAD AND HIS MOTHER -TARA BAYTON
crapaud. And he had heard her murmur it again as he meandered through laughter to bus his tray, which, it seemed, was all he ever did in that place. "Why not take them now?" The safety cap had been removed,five pills had tumbled out onto her open palm."Why not take them now then," his mother said. She did not know what she was doing exactly. For a moment perhaps,she had wanted him to take them, had wanted to relieve him offive more years ofsexual frustration and disappointment, had wanted to make him pay for wanting only five more years. There is a time when things change before they go back to their former selves. This moment is as fast as the opening ofa shutter, the click ofa flash. For one moment she was not his mother. "So I was twenty-two years old, all alone on this train in East Germany,and I did not speak one word of German,and Devon will you please listen to me,and try not to touch it honey,leave your forehead alone if you can, I'm almost done." Regarde le crapaud. When he left the cafeteria, Tom B. Linear stood in the corridor indulging himself with a pretty Asian Twinkle ofa girl ("yellow on the outside," her rivals on the cheerleading team muttered disdainfully in blatant English when they saw her flipping her long hair in the paths oftheir boyfriends,"white on the inside," they sneered) and he darted past them as fast as he could and regretted it later, for he had wanted Tom to know of his love as much as he had dreaded the boy knowing, and if he were to persist, he must, above all things, be tender and consistent in his love ofTom. "I know you are wondering, Devon, what all ofthis has to do with love, and I will get there in a moment. But I was on that train, Devon, and I was lost, completely. All I could do was stay where I was and hope that the train would stop eventually. The train ended up going to West Germany, I think. I stayed on it for the whole ride. Then the conductor pointed me to the train that would take me back, without saying a word, and I followed where he pointed me to and I got back to Berlin sometime the next day. I saw the conductor again in the city. He was with a friend who spoke both German and English. He said I was pretty, that's what he said. Somehow he knew what had hap-
pened to me without knowing one word of English." His mother giggles. Eighth period English is over. When Devon gets home he will cry and tell his mother that he intends to kill himself at the age oftwenty, and she will forget for a moment that she is his mother. She will offer him death and then laugh and pull it away from him,catching herself. Then cry with him,calling him baby, kissing his hair, holding him tight to her chest. While she sleeps that night, however, he will slip into the bathroom and swallow all the pills he can until his throat stings and tightens beyond his forcing. He will not be able to swallow enough. He will awaken in the morning to the roar of his mother running the faucet in the next room, his spit thick and chalky in his mouth. For a moment he will wish that he was a character in a story, where things change perceptibly and irrevocably, where his mother would have found his cold corpse lying in the bed in the morning and he would not have to go to school ever again, watching the kids rush into the doors at 9:oo on a Tuesday morning as he does now,looking at the reflection of his irredeemable toad-eyes in the window,and listening to his mother, who is talking to him supposedly about love. But at the moment,eighth period English is over and Tom B. Linear is at his locker and the beautiful cheerleader, May Nguyen,is nowhere in sight. And Tom is in his cross country gear— a loose, low tank-top and shorts, his long,lean muscles tensing as he twists the combination lock. He turns it deftly, as iftweaking a nipple."Tom," Devon says in a small, breath-filled voice. He walks up behind him."Tom," he says again. "So what I mean to say when I tell you all this, honey, is that you have to wait for love, it will happen. I know it hurts a lot, and you were really
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hurt yesterday, I could see that. But if you sit tight and hold on— Devon,look at me. Don't look out the window,look at me, please." Tom turns and looks at him. Devon's hand is on Tom B. Linear's bare shoulder and he removes it when he sees Tom's eyes, as flat and hard as hammered stone."What? What is it?" Tom says. The word "freak" darts to Tom's eyes in a hundred different tongues, but he is discrete enough not to say it. He is on his knees, bent forward in the act oftugging open his bottom lock— a bad
position to be in, he realizes, with a bulbous-eyed homo like Devon poised directly behind him. He freezes. His face hardens, the look ofinterest that first broke into his eyes when he realized that someone was calling his name clenching into repulsion. "Oh nothing," Devon says, with a smile as wide and sour as a watermelon rind."I just wanted to tell you that I really liked what you said in English today." "Huh?"
ment ofthe school where he touched Tom B. Linear's shoulder by Tom B. Linear's locker just three minutes ago. He feels, at the moment,that he will never be able to find it again. It pleases him to think that he has changed forever. When he gets home,ofcourse, he will realize that he hasn't changed. He will find his love for Tom B. Linear as one finds a cheap earring that has been dismissed under the sofa as lost. It will almost kill him, realizing this. But then again, it won't, ofcourse. But today it is tomorrow. It is Tuesday, and his mother is saying something to him desperately in the car. She has abandoned now her adventures in East Germany and has decided finally to be a mother. And love him. And lie to him,if she must. She is saying again and again how he has a great capacity for love. How people can see it, they can see it in his eyes, the way he talks to people awkwardly, warmly, earnestly. She is telling him that he is good. She says how some guys,they will see your heart and they will see your eyes and they will see your heart in your eyes and they will try to hurt it, ignore it, avoid it, take advantage ofit. She says that the right guy wouldn't do those things. He would see your eyes and your heart and he would want nothing else but them. No one else could love him as awkwardly and as warmly as earnestly as you could. The and Ellen Martin collograph - 13 3/4" x 5 3/4" right guy would never want to hurt The cheerleaders are warming up in the park- your heart, or ignore it, avoid it or take advantage ofit. He would want only to see as much of your ing lot as he leaves the building. There is May eyes and be as close to your heart as he could Nguyen,shrieking through air with her taffy-colbefore he died. • ored legs, the thrill of having made out with Tom B. Linear after lunch earlier that day still racing through her veins. And there is the girl who called him a crapaud and May a twinkie,flouncing loftily with her red pompoms, pony-tail bobbing. And he has the feeling that a piece ofhim has fallen away from him forever, lost somewhere in the base-
"About Ophelia, about—" Devon stops himself. About her secret lust for Hamlet, he was going to say. "Oh," says Tom,turning back, cautiously, to his locker."Uh-huh." Devon stands behind him for a while longer hiding his dismay behind a hideous, involuntary cower ofa smile. Tom B. Linear's neck is as red as Polish sausage."Oh well, b-bye Tom. See you in class tomorrow," he says to it, knowing that there will be no response.
15 THE TOAD AND HIS MOTHER - TARA BATTON
Matt Brackett acrylic on paper — II" x 14" 16
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The Adoration Meghan E. O'Rourke
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Today something delirious Settled over the city like a divine drought: Prophetic directives come my way All too easily, manna falling Stray as unexpected adoration For one not yet made a magus. I assemble facts, I do not want fate To spy me staring blindly into the distant Line ofsky meeting sea. As ifthere were something to find. When I woke I had a sudden,illuminated sense Ofinevitability: father, you spoke Ofturning toward darkness In order to see. I have nowhere to contain The light leaching into this room, No pen to map the flat sprawl ofjourney From here to the far reaches. Any day The brink ofthe earth might shift, And the labored expanse ofthe known realm, So carefully inked here with pen and brush, Might drift into an indistinct wash. Satan's face was not full of hate Or deviltry when he fell, it wasn't A call to arms for those disillusioned With the charmed life, no, Surprise lay beneath the mask he bore: The first epistle from heaven Said the angels have split, Some have torn their wings and some, Sailingfurther, die beneath the heat oftheir desire.
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As for me,these are the letters I'd send from the farthest reaches before sailing further, My answer to the people Who approach me after absent time To ask me how I am,to quietly accuse (Where were you during Those long, those silent years?) As if betrayal itself were something to be measured —Shapeless postcards, they would be, Briefly inscribed— Still here after all this time, still here.
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Alphabet Speeth A living room where squares oflight prime the reams ofdrying plaster: Your fingers wrote across my back, whose nerves numbed the scratch— line to mine and move to love.
Anything That Works Jess Row
Joe Vicale died with no warning. For the first time in the two years Lewis and Kate had lived downstairs from him, his battered Civic was gone from the parking lot overnight, then for a few days, then a week. Lewis wondered if he had gone on a trip somewhere,and where that might be; he was a Vietnam vet who lived on disability, alone, who spoke to no one and never had visitors, as far as they knew. After ten days their landlady told him that Vicale had checked himselfinto the VA hospital, leaving only his own address, no next of kin. The cancer had spread from his lungs to his spine and liver. There had been no one with him but nurses. "I don't know what they expect me to do," the landlady said. She had caught Lewis just outside the front door ofthe building with a bag of groceries in each hand. She was holding the manila envelope from the hospital in front of her as if it were a dirty magazine."I just don't have the time," she said. "It's not my god-given duty to do this kind ofthing. I mean, I'm not a caretaker." "It's a terrible thing," Lewis said. It sounded silly and awkward, but he meant it. In the spring and summer and early fall Vicale had spent much of his time sitting on a bench in the park across the street from the building, facing Baltimore Harbor,and Lewis had always looked at him there with a feeling of vague concern, as ifchecking up on him. He had never imagined that something like this would happen. The groceries felt like weights dragging on his arms. "I should have known." The landlady sighed and folded her arms. Lewis remembered her telling him,when they first moved in, that upstairs was a charity case, rented out at the
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request ofa social worker."You stick your neck out for somebody, boy, it always costs something in the end," she said. "Isn't that sad?" "Why don't I take care ofit?" Lewis said. The landlady looked at him as if he had just spoken in Chinese. It was somehow the thing he had always wanted to do for Vicale, he realized: to give him a funeral. Somehow the feeling and the words had come at the same time. It was so uncanny he nearly laughed out loud. He looked at the landlady's bloated, jowly face, put down his bags, and reached out for the envelope of Vicale's papers as if he were taking her hand. When he told Kate that evening, her eyebrows lifted, and for a moment she seemed to be listening to some strange sound in the distance, without looking away."Well," she said."Do you know what's involved?" "I don't." "Good." She sat on the stool at her drafting table and pushed pieces ofcalligraphy paper around with a finger. "It's wonderful of you,of course. But it makes me tired just thinking about it." "I don't think it should be any big deal," he said."A couple of phone calls, that's all. What else do I do all day?" She leaned over on her elbows and looked down at the street. The lights hadn't come on yet, and the shrubs and paths ofthe park were vague shapes in the reddening autumn dusk. "I used to see him every day from here," she said."He bothered me. I thought you hardly knew who he was." "You're right," Lewis said. Kate looked at
him,and he shrugged. "It's something I can do," he said. "It just came to me. I'm an events organizer. This is an event." Her lips parted, as ifshe were about to say something, then came together. She smiled slightly, tilting her head."You are amazing," she said. "I forget that sometimes." Lewis laughed."Why," he said,"this isn't so crazy, is it? To help somebody out, some stranger, if you can? Even ifthere's no connection?" "Not crazy," she said. "It's just so clear to you: you do what you can. I mean, I would look out every day, and here there's someone who's obviously in trouble, some kind of mental problem, somebody who needs help. But who would know where to begin? And now it's too late. Look at me," she said,"I've been lettering invitations for three years, sitting right here. And now this." Kate had been certain that Vicale was "disturbed," Lewis remembered,and she had been on the verge ofcalling somebody several times. But, she had always reasoned,in an age ofcutbacks and government layoffs, it would be no use. Since he had first known her,leading sit-ins against apartheid at Johns Hopkins,she had always found it easy to assume the worst about the System,in any ofits forms. As she admitted,it was a kind of outrage that quickly gave way to despair. He remembered her squinting out the window at the brown dot of Vicale's head at his bench. What does he think about all day, she had wondered aloud. Or is it just a kind ofwhite noise, all the time? "I guess I was just thinking of what I would want," Lewis said. "If I were alone like that." He thought he saw a tiny shiver in her shoulders,like a bird shifting its feathers. She came over to him and slipped her arms around his waist. She brushed her lips against his neck, rested her chin on his shoulder. "Such a dark life," she said. "It's brave of you. Most people wouldn't even think of doing something like that." "What the hell," Lewis said. In the warmth rising from her touch he felt quietly elated. "Anything is better than nothing, right? Anything that works."
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He never thought it would be difficult. In three years as special events coordinator for the Baltimore City Paper he had learned to smile over the phone, and persist until people saw it made more sense to go along with him than not. When people asked if he missed being a staff writer, he told them that in a way it was the same work as writing—making an order out ofthings, a sequence, an understanding, working for a real and unavoidable conclusion. He had taken the job for the raise, and the constant work, but in it he had found a strange joy that he could never explain, to Kate or to anyone. When he got offthe phone with a white soundman from Essex, who had been convinced he would never rent his sound system to a concert downtown, he clenched his fists, feeling as if he had lifted some great weight and shifted it into place. After going through the landlady's envelope, he made a file and a list of numbers,took out a legal pad, and made a flow chart, beginning with Vicale's death, ending with the heading "day of burial" and a question mark. In reality it's the simplest thing, he thought,looking it over: a series of phone calls, requests filed and followed up, and one service to attend. He remembered what Kate had said, her hands fluttering across her table. He smiled, his lips tight, and shook his head. Two days later he was sitting on a folding chair in the coroner's office in the dim basement ofa city government building, trying not to look too irritated as a balding man across the desk paged slowly through the forms he had filled out. Couldn't it be done over the phone? he had wanted to know.The room was warm and smelled of dust and yellowing paper. Lewis felt sweat prickling under his arms. On the desk was a leather portfolio with the Boy Scout fleur-de-lis and Scoutmaster printed in gold letters. He searched his mind but could think of nothing to say. "And why did you want to extend storage of the body again?" "We haven't found a place," Lewis said."The Catholic Church needs a few days to make sure their program can take him." "After three days we have automatic internment by the city," the man said. Lewis couldn't
tell whether he was trying to be hostile or merely informative. His face showed no movement: all his wrinkles curved downwards, so that the skin looked like it was sliding off. "Look," he said, trying his most comradely voice,"I don't know anything about this system, I'm just a guy trying to take care ofthings for my neighbor. Could I get a break—" "Have you thought about hiring a funeral director?" "You don't understand," Lewis said."He isn't family." "I'm sorry, but these procedures exist for a reason," the man said, tapping the desk with a pen."We don't keep bodies in storage because we can't afford to, and we don't just give them out without some certification, if that's what you're asking. You'd never believe what people want to do with dead bodies." Lewis caught his breath. For a moment he felt as if he was floating over the scene, looking down on the man's shiny head, the coffeestained desk blotter. The man's voice was as flat and dead as a recording. It wasn't personal, obviously. Hard to say whether the man had paid any attention to what he was asking. He could no more persuade him to make an exception than talk his car into getting better gas mileage. "I know the guys at Mercy Services," the man said gruffly, as if Lewis had pushed him to admit it. "They'll probably come through." He was my best friend, Lewis was tempted to say. He was my brother. My brother-in-law. He felt a temptation to kick a leg ofthe man's desk, to rattle his vision. It was hard to say whether he felt more insulted personally or for Vicale. It didn't matter. It was the principle ofthe thing.
"So what comes next?" Kate asked that night. He was washing the dishes and she was drying them,sitting crosslegged on the countertop with the towel in her lap. "Out of my hands now," Lewis said. "Ifthe Mercy people get him out, we're in business. The
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guy I talked to said they have special funeral masses for destitute people. If not, he goes to wherever they bury them." "And after the mass?" "Ifthere is a mass," he said,"the rest is easy. They have special low burial costs at the St. Mary's cemetery, and the VA will pay for that, it turns out. I took care ofthat already." "I was going to ask if there was anything I
could do," she said. "I should have known better." "I wish I knew more people at the mayor's office," he said."Someone ought to do something about that guy. He's got no business working with people's dead relatives." "Listen to you," she laughed."You should complain to his supervisor. Make trouble for him." "I still need him on my side." "Think about all the other cases he's shoved
under the table." She held a glass up to the light to check for smudges."He's got it easy. Three days and they get dumped in Potter's Field." "Exactly my point," Lewis said."The only chance I've got is playing his game." "You make it sound so impersonal," she said. "Ifit wasn't impersonal, I wouldn't be doing it," he said. "Shouldn't pity be impersonal? Applying to people you don't know?" "Pity?" A bitter note in her voice made Lewis look up."A mentally ill man,left alone like that, with no counseling, no help—and then he dies and gets lost in the city morgue. I would have taken it personally," she said. "I would have wanted to punch that clerk in the face. Or at least get him fired." Lewis dried his hand on his shirt and reached over to stroke her foot."My answer to him is to use him," he said. "There's no point in thinking about him except to get him to do what you want. You have to press the right buttons, that's all." She looked at him with a queer smile."You believe in that." "Things happen that way," Lewis said. "So I've found." "No," she said,"you believe in it. You always have." He traced veins across the top of her foot with his finger, wondering vaguely what she meant. "But ofall the things to do," she said,"I never imagined you putting on a funeral for poor Joe whatshisname." "Joe Vicale," he said,looking up at her face. "I think it sounds better that way, don't you?" She reached out and brushed the damp hair from his forehead, her mouth wrinkling into a frown."It's never impersonal, really," she said. "You have to be careful, Lew." "It's what anyone would have wanted," Lewis said. "Isn't it?" The landlady left a note and a key taped to his door. Mr. Wills could you please go upstairs to Mr. Vicale's (52). I need to know how much stuff the garbage men need to haul away. Thank you for helping. Mrs. Kowalski. He stood on the landing for a moment,trying to imagine what he would find. There was no use
in it—no need to be distracted by the sordid details, whatever they might be. I would want somebody to throw it all away without looking, he thought. I would want them to keep their distance. He thought about giving the key back, but couldn't think ofan excuse. By evening it was hidden under a stack of papers on his desk. A man from the Catholic diocese came to see him the next day. They stood outside the building, at the man's request, so he could smoke. Lewis thought he looked like a high-school history teacher, in tight khakis, a checked shirt, and a knit tie. He smoked cigarettes without stopping, and his eyes skipped from building to tree, never landing on Lewis. When Lewis asked what he did for the church, he inhaled faster. "A bunch ofthings," he said. "Administrative support. Unusual cases, things that need personal evaluation." "This is unusual?" "Not especially," the man said."We do a lot of masses for people without families. But usually they're members,or were members,ofour churches. Mr. Vicale," he said,"was not a registered member ofany Catholic organization. We know he went to a parochial high school in Brooklyn, but apparently he left the church after that. Officially, in any case." Lewis felt himselftense slightly at the mention ofthe high school. Again he felt there was no need to know,that it was about to make his job harder. "Not that this is atypical," said the man. Lewis thought he savored the last word."But we usually like to check with friends ofthe deceased to— well, to make sure that it's what they would have wanted." He looked unhappy, suddenly."You're not Catholic yourself." "No." "Well," he said,"the funeral mass is kind ofa big deal. Even—especially—for someone without immediate family. It takes the time ofthe father and also we have a staffof volunteers who attend these things. So we like to make sure we're affirming the wishes ofthe deceased. You see?" "Mr. Vicale went to mass every Sunday,"
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....../.
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Lewis said. "I always passed him when I went jogging." He kept his eyes away from the man's face. "He asked me personally to insure that there would be a service." "I see." "I didn't know him all that well," Lewis said, "but we had him over to dinner a few times. Had him for Thanksgiving once. We felt bad, you know,that he was all alone. He seemed to me like what I would call a religious person," he said. The man stubbed out a cigarette on the walkway, leaving a black streak. "I remember once he said that he felt bad that he wasn't more involved in the church," Lewis said,"but he said he didn't agree with some ofthe politics, and he wasn't comfortable contributing. Something like that." The man put one hand on his hip and squinted into the late afternoon sun at the harbor."You know,it's a pity," he said. "People like that, we want to bring them into the church, know what I mean? Their gifts," he said, nodding, as if they both understood perfectly. Lewis found himself nodding along. "He was quite a guy," Lewis said. "Always a kind word. A good man." "You saw him while you were jogging?" Kate laughed."I'm surprised he believed it." He flicked soapy water at her."What else did you say? That he didn't agree with church politics?" "That's why he wasn't comfortable contributing," Lewis said. "I think I get points for improvisation for that one." "You should have said he was a radical pro. choicer." "I didn't want to offend him," Lewis said. "That's the whole point." "Oh, I don't know," she said. "It sounds like he's obligated to go through with it as long as you say Joe was a practicing Catholic. You might as well get a few digs in at the Pope while you're at it. Tell him he had a 'Piss Christ' poster on his wall." "I don't think so," Lewis said, turning back to the dishes. He had recounted the episode carefully, leaving out the parts that he couldn't account for, and he had been so surprised and relieved that she found it funny that it was easy to play along. But the rancor in her voice still bothered
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him. "You know,this is a great story," she said. She sounded relieved as well, he realized."Maybe you could write it up for the paper. How to Bury Your Dead Catholic Neighbor." She poured the last cup ofcoffee and put the pot back on the burner. In one accustomed motion, he reached past her, snapped offthe coffeemaker, and plunged the pot into the dishwater. "I thought about something like that," he said. "About the resources that are out there if you have to take charge, you know,for everybody, not just strangers. How to talk to the coroner, that kind ofthing." "I meant more ofa humor thing," Kate said. "I know." "You used to be so good at that." He could see her friends standing around the kitchen with glasses of wine, bending over with laughter, as she imitated the gestures of a man she had never spoken three words to. He rinsed his hands in the searing water and picked up his sponge again. Two days before the mass, after considering it, rejecting it, and considering it again, he called the Sun and entered an obituary. He thought of preparing a written statement, but he could think of nothing to write. The woman on the phone unhappily agreed to take down a list ofstandard information and write one up. After taking name, date, and place ofservices, she asked for names of survivors. He hesitated. "Family deceased." "Occupation?" "Veteran," he said. "Distinguished service, two tours in Vietnam, 1970 and 71." Everyone gets distinguished service, right? he thought. "We usually just say 'served in Vietnam.' Anything more recent?" "Since retired." She waited for him to say more. He imagined her fingers drumming on her desk, and felt his face flush."Worked privately in investments," he said."He had some real estate here in Baltimore." Oh hell, hell, he thought, now you've gone and done it. "Who do I put down as submitting the obituary?"
obituary here." "But this is where they were from?" "Yes. Yes, but I don't lcnow...none ofthe family lived here then...I'm sorry, I have to go, I have a meeting." He pressed down the receiver. It wasn't the kind ofthing you could call up and change, he thought, after a minute staring out the window of his office with the phone still in his hand. He thought ofthe ridiculous lie filtering through computers to the presses and out into the streets, stacked up in boxes on every corner. Ifit was printed, it was real; it would last. Vicale existed, he thought. He touched things, he moved, he had a voice. He was young in Brooklyn and died in Baltimore and was a real soldier in a real war. You have to cut it off, he thought, you have to stop.
"James Turner," Lewis heard himself say. "I'm a family friend." "I'm sorry," she said,"didn't you say 'family deceased'?" "Mr. Vicale's father and brother were business partners of mine," Lewis said. The phone trembled in his hand."They were killed in a plane crash three years ago. Mr. Vicale's mother died when he was very young. There were no other children." "What were the father and brother's names?" the woman asked."We file obituaries by family for reference purposes." "Oh,the accident was in California," Lewis said quickly."I'm not sure ifthere was ever an
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Like Lewis and Kate's, just below, Vicale's apartment had one long living room,with the door to the bedroom at the far end, the bathroom and kitchen off to the left side. The main room was divided neatly in half. Towards the door, a worn-looking brown armchair, a blue sofa with a slipcover,lamps and a TV set were arranged in a perfect square on a gray rug. Behind the sofa, a weightlifting bench and rack stood on a blue gymnastics mat. Everything seemed set in a place it belonged. The air had a curious smell: floor polish, Lewis thought,some sort of deodorizer spray, and,faintly, cigarettes. He stood in the middle ofthe room,turning around slowly. The creak ofthe floorboards made him wince. He flipped on the light in the kitchen and looked around. There were plates and silverware arranged neatly on a drying rack, a coffeemaker
with a stained pot. On the refrigerator door, a special," Lewis said. His chest felt strangely holnutrition plan for weightlifters, and a few yellow; he kept thinking ofthe woman's face, the lowed magnets encouraging him to quit smoking. photograph and papers he had placed in a drawer He closed his eyes and tried to see Vicale's in his desk."I shouldn't have had such a hard face, and could not. He remembered the back of time." his head,as he used to see him from his car, and a Kate laughed softly above him."I remember blur ofa moustache and a gold tooth, glimpsed in school, at the El Salvador rallies," she said,"you while passing him on the stairs. The images would hook up the PA system and put up all the would not fix; he could see no eyes, no expression. folding tables and make copies ofthe literature In the bedroom, a large bookcase stood along and then stand at the back and hand out signs the the wall to the right; a battered office desk, next to whole time. And ifanyone ever said 'let's have a the one window;a twin bed, neatly made up, hand for Lew'they could never find you to come against the left wall. Nothing out of place, again, up to the mike." She curled her fingers around his he thought: even the pad of paper and pens and shoulders and rubbed the muscles at the base of telephone on the desk were arranged at right his neck."That was how I first got to be alone angles. He passed a hand across the smooth surwith you," she said,"I knew you would be the only face ofthe bed. He opened the top bureau drawer one there cleaning up afterwards, so I stayed to and stared at stacks ofneatly folded t-shirts. help." Through the window,in a corner ofthe buildLewis smiled and reached back to touch her ing parking lot, he could see the blue Honda he leg."Sneaky," he said."Somebody had to do it, had bought three months before, the dark windanyway. No one else was going to." shield reflecting the glare ofthe streetlamp over"I thought it was so charming," she said. "I head. This is how he saw it, he thought. For a remember once I was saying something about the moment he felt the silence ofthe rooms dosing situation ofthe FM LN and you listened for a around him,like a piece of heavy doth dropped while and then said,'do you think this building around his shoulders. He turned his head away has another circuit I could plug into?" He felt her from the window,and noticed a photograph ofa weight shift as she leaned back and laughed. "It woman's face lying on the desk. was like you were fighting the war, one extension A personal ad from the paper, carefully cord at a time." clipped out and taped to the pad. A written note "Well," Lewis said, distractedly, "that's not on a piece ofstationery with a blue terrier at the what I thought." top. She was about forty, with dark, wavy hair with "No,ofcourse not." Kate slipped off his back grey streaks, and a tentative smile. Next to the and slid under the sheet next to him,throwing photograph, the name Linda on a slip of paper, one leg across his."You didn't need a rationale, and a number. that was the beauty ofit. All the simple, obvious, "My God," Lewis said. necessary things窶馬o one else ever noticed them, because you had done them already." The next night, the night before the funeral, Across the room, her jogging tights and bra he had a knot in the muscle between his shoulder were draped over the radiator to dry. When they blades that spread a dull ache across his shoulders had first moved in, he had warned her a few times and down his spine. about the danger offire, but she always forgot, "Thank God it's tomorrow," Kate said, workand he had grown used to tossing her things onto ing her fingers along his back. He was lying face a chair whenever he noticed them. For a while, he down,his chin propped on a pillow."You ought to remembered, he had felt a vague excitement seeget an award or something," she said. "Shameless ing them there, thinking of her shape. manipulation ofthe bureaucracy for good ends." "I thought, this is someone to be loved by," "It's not like I was trying to do something Kate said softly. "All my life I felt like I had been
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surrounded by this haze ofconversations, hypotheses—so much bullshit it all seemed after awhile. You moved intuitively, not looking for the flip side to everything—not having to make up reasons. I felt completely cared for," she said. "It was a revelation." "And now?" Lewis whispered."How do you feel now?" She smiled, her chin resting on his chest. "I wonder if I'll ever do the same for you," she said. "I mean,listen to me, I still want to think everything out loud." "Maybe you should ask more questions," Lewis said. He remembered the watchfulness in the woman's eyes, perhaps allowing herselfa measure of hope. A cold wave passed over him. Kate raised an eyebrow."Why," she asked, her smile twisting,"is there something you don't understand?" "You've reached Linda," the voice on the answering machine said,"and Sam—"a dog barked in the background."Messages for Linda can be left here, but Sam requests that if you want to talk to him you should come see him,eleven Kensington Way,the blue dog house in the back yard." He closed his eyes, and saw her reading the newspaper at a table in a restaurant, her eyes moving down and stopping, the pages falling from her hands. At the beep he hung up the phone. Saint Phillip and Saint James was an old church that Lewis passed every day on his way to work, a domed gray block set far back from the street. He pushed open the heavy door and stood in the darkened lobby, letting his eyes adjust. "Are you here for the funeral?" A bearded man in a white robe stood at the head of stairs leading down to his right. "You must be Mr. Wills," the priest said, as Lewis came toward him."Am I right? That was the name on the services form." "That's me." Hearing the unfamiliar name made his heart jump. In the car he had been thinking about everything the diocese might have
27 ANYTHING THAT WORKS - JESS ROW
found out. "Father Ellis." They shook hands."We're in the chapel," he said, retreating down the stairs. Lewis followed, grasping the handrail in the gloom. "Were you a friend of Mr. Vicale's?" "Just a neighbor," Lewis said. He remembered what he said to the man from the diocese. "We knew each other, not very well." The priest had a deep, easy laugh."These forms they have," he said, "it always seemed a little ridiculous to me. It's all fine to save work, but what relationship you had,that kind ofthing, I don't know how it helps." "I agree." He thought he sounded unnaturally loud in the dose corridor, but Father Ellis didn't look up. They went up another flight of stairs. "Here's the chapel," Ellis said. They stopped and looked at one another. "I'll be around afterwards," he said."We can talk, if you'd like." "Thanks," Lewis said. He felt his shoulders drooping in relief. The chapel was small, lit by high windows above plain white walls. Lewis slid into a pew near the entrance, next to an old man sitting in a gray raincoat, staring straight ahead. He did not look up as Lewis sat down. Looking around, Lewis saw that the chapel was perhaps a quarter filled with people sitting two or three seats away from one another, rigid, dark figures who did not stir when the organ began, when Ellis mounted the altar and spoke. At first he tried to follow the service, but the priest's voice gradually dropped to a low murmur, and when he checked his watch he realized his thoughts had drifted through most ofthe mass. There was a sales reception coming up in a week, and he had been laying out the plans in his head, savoring the thought ofseeing the familiar florist and caterer again. The sky outside the windows was clear, and squares of yellow afternoon sun lay against one wall. The young priest had stepped down from the altar and stood with hands folded. "This service," he said,"was made possible by the generous work of Mr. Wills, who is with us today. I wonder if he might say a few words."
Later he would only remember walking behind buildings across the street."Reminds me soundlessly up the carpeted aisle, blinking his ofhome," he said, after a moment."New Mexico." eyes to shake offsleep. Somehow there was no "You must miss it." question in his mind. He stopped next to the "I do," Ellis said. "I forget that there's a sky. I priest, mimicking his stance. have to remind myselfto look up." "Thank you all very much for coming." His "We're lucky to have a good view," Lewis said. voice was much louder than the priest's, and there "In the winter, especially, when the leaves are off was some movement in the pews. He could see the trees. You can see out to where the sun rises most ofthe faces dearly. There was a round-faced over the Bay." man whose hair almost covered his eyes, a "That sounds wonderful," Ellis said quietly. woman with square dark glasses who stared at He sounded perfectly sincere. Lewis felt his legs him, biting her lower lip. A fat man with his chin shaking slightly. sunk into his neck. All ofthem sleepy-eyed, slack"Mr. Vicale—Joe—loved the morning light," jawed, utterly still. Linda was not there. he said."He often talked about how he wished he "Father Ellis mentioned that Joe served in could buy out the people above him and convert Vietnam," Lewis said, not lowering his voice."In his apartment into a loft with cathedral ceilings. fact he was a prisoner ofwar there, for a little He wanted to learn to paint." more than a year. He didn't talk about it much. It was always the same feeling, he realized: But he did tell me,once, that when he was over the words stringing themselves together with no there one ofthe things that kept him going was conscious effort, only a faint pushing feeling that he promised himselfthat he wouldn't die on against the expectant silence ofthe listener. By Vietnamese soil, you know,and be buried in the itselfit will never end, he thought. mud. He promised himself he would die in "I would like to paint this sky," Ellis said. America and have a proper American funeral." "He loved light, and color," Lewis said,"and movement,he was fascinated by that, and he In the corner of his eye he saw Ellis' head bowed,his eyes closed. The woman in the dark wanted to paint landscapes and scenes of people talking, cityscapes, and then he also wanted to do glasses looked at her nails. interpretive works about his experiences in the "It wasn't easy for me to do this," he said. war, multi-media collaborative pieces—Excuse "I'm busy like everyone else. But whatever I had me, please," he said."I'm sorry." He walked to do,it was nothing,compared to what Joe did. quickly down the steps, toward his car. To get here." There was an absurd wetness in his eyes. He When he crossed through their apartment breathed in deeply. "So, here we are," he said. Kate was sitting at the kitchen table with the "Welcome home, Joe. Thanks again for your newspaper open in front of her. She rested her time." chin on an upraised palm,staring at the wall. As he passed the woman took off her glasses "I read your obituary," Kate said. She did not and looked him up and down with what he could she turn around. only guess was hostility and pity at once. Then "I wanted to tell you," Lewis said, after a settled back, satisfied, evidently, that she had seen moment."I couldn't describe it. I couldn't find a enough. way." Her head swiveled to the side and she looked The worshippers filed out immediately when at him out ofthe corner ofone eye. "I told you to the service ended. Lewis walked with Father Ellis to the main doors, so Ellis could lock up behind be careful," she said. "I told you. I knew something would—" him.They shook hands on the steps. "I wanted to make it happen," Lewis said. "I "Beautiful evening," Ellis said. Long strips of wanted it to work." clouds extended outward from the horizon, their Her whole body seemed to lift, though she ends turning orange in the glow ofsunset hidden
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remained seated; she dropped her hands to her lap, and raised them to cover her mouth. He saw her chest fill and sink. "I can't manage it," he said. "I can't see a way out, Kate." "Did you think it was going to help him?" Her voice trembled."You thought they wouldn't print it, and then you had to say something." "I didn't have to, Kate." Standing in the doorway ofthe bedroom, he took hold ofthe frame for support. "It was only what came to mind," he said. "It was the efficient thing." She turned in her chair and faced him."It's over now," she said."You have to forget about it now." "I've forgotten too much already," he said. "I feel like I'm disappearing. I'm afraid, Kate." "Touch me," she said. "Give me your hands." He stepped back and closed the door. From the bedroom windows he could see lights coming on all across the harbor,from the blinking warning buoys at Sparrow's Point to the glittering mass ofskyscrapers downtown. The clouds had turned a dusky pink from the city glow. He stood with his face close to the windowpane, and crossed his arms, hugging them to his chest; he could remain there, he thought, until he was filled by light and reflections oflight, the black water and black glass. He felt as if a valve had opened and all the pressure was slowly being released from his body. He found himselfreaching for the phone, without taking his eyes from the window. He found he remembered her number. As he dialed, he could hear a voice in another room calling out to its own echo, offering an explanation to her, giving him another name. He breathed in, and silence washed over him. Try not to move, he told himself. He brought the phone to his ear and listened. •
Tamar Miller ink wash —4 1/2" x 6 3/4"
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IN=L.
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Aitana de la Jara silver gelatin print — 9 7/8" x 9 7/8"
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After Reading Leigh Sara Bardugo
Spread on the back seat a map. One finger jabs at one freckle burned cancer black, traces the blue shoot to Los Angeles where the roads splinter like burst capillaries. Here, Josh, we're in a hollow. It took us years of pushing our thumbs through eye-holes and scooping out skulls like pumpkins to know just where to go. But I am ready to use scissors on the compass rose. Two white feet in the air I don't care about North. One black-handle rabbit-ear snip— we'll be mysterious axes plotless and perfect. Burn the report. Drown the log. Let's be dumb and lost like when I was a half-moon, opal-eyed seftorita and all we had was clear-starred navigation.
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I know you have begun to die when you are sculpting the head ofa griffin to cover an urn, like one you saw
Griffin Sonya B. Posmen tier
in the museum—Roman copper turned green. But I do not believe this is the shape death takes: stringy, apocryphal mane eluding your hands as you drift asleep, forgetting you have legs and are alive, refusing to answer when we speak. Because you've nothing to say? Or is your mouth a full kiln: tongue dry in the afternoon (having slept all morning lips open to the sun)like flat bread baking on Egyptian rocks. Grandfather, I know your idiot-smile hides its heart in the clay, hemorrhaging under green glaze. But we will not let you go. Our ancestors saw the shape in dunes, sunspots plaguing their eyes, begged relieffrom a sea that parted to reveal more desert. Here, I close the shades to keep cool, shrouding windows overlooking the Harlem river and the Hudson train, a more humid view than we have seen in years. Here, we have found your hands too strong in the clay. Grandmother slaps you alive every day, brushing the flaked clay from your lips to kiss them. "Wake up!" she yells, unclasping your hands, as you dream they are molding a sharp beak and wings; unfolding your legs as you feel them, moaning, "My feet. My feet."
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Hans Soderquist silver gelatin print — 9 7/8" x 7 3/8"
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Cat Balco charcoal drawing — 21" x 18"
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.ANIMEN
Antioch College Lovesong Peter Morris
—And you have such a shapely breast. —A shapely breast? I do have two... But yes, they have a shape, it's true, Which changes slightly when it's pressed. There is a truth in old cliches. —I'll verify that, if! may? —You may. Do you have more to say? —I want you...—Please complete that phrase: You want me...to do something, now? —Oh,nothing you don't want to do. No, nothing. Nothing. I want you. Yes, I want you.—You want me how? As some unkind metonymy? As if! were a thing to want? A thing: a wife, a whore, a cunt? —No,no. I want you to want me. —You'll want much more,if I recall, And so will!. And if we kiss We will not have to talk like this. We will not have to talk at all. And silence is more eloquent Than all the swerving, desperate, dull Evasions ofthefigural, But never may imply consent.
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Nicole Lindt watercolor —8" x 8"
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