First
Flash Fiction Magazine/September 2023
I am the second Mrs. Roberts.
I don’t ever, ever want to meet the first Mrs. Roberts. The first Mrs. Roberts put a glass on the mantel in our living room thirty years ago and left a persistent ring. The first Mrs. Roberts colors her hair a fake imitation of the deep red she supposedly had twenty years ago. The first Mrs. Roberts gets boob jobs and Botox between her eyes. The first Mrs. Roberts looks down at me—a younger, natural beauty with sandy hair and dark brown eyes.
Free Write
Longlist, Funny Pearls Short Story Competition, 2021
Little Old Lady Comedy/June 2023
Confetti Magazine, October 2023
The regular ladies attending Nora’s writing workshop immediately suspected no-good from Sandy McCaffery. Mid-fifties, she wore a bright pink Mexican style top with jeans and clogs and a deep red lipstick. Her grey/blonde hair hung in a braid down her back. Nora thought she looked quite cool, comfortable in her own skin.
“Where’d you get that top?” said Rosalind, eyeing her closely.
“I just picked it up somewhere-a thrift store,” responded Sandy.
“Aren’t you worried about bugs?”
“Bugs?”
“Bed bugs. In the thrift clothes?”
Nora jumped in. “Tonight let’s just do a completely free write. No prompts, just write whatever you want.”
Sandy straightened up in her chair and poised a pen above her notebook.
“Sandy needs a debrief on my Civil War saga,” Cheryl added.
Nora set the timer, smoothed her skirt under her notebook, took a breath.
More to the Story
Birdy/September 2023
He'd never seen it, but Ken Colby heard about the house his entire life. In the early 1920s, his grandparents, Patrick and Lucy Colby, traveled upstate to create a summer home for their soon-to-be family. Patrick was tall, strong, a successful banker, a self-made man with an eye for architecture. Lucy was known for her calm demeanor, charitable works, and green thumb. Their turreted, gabled house, surrounded by Lucy’s vegetable and flower gardens, boasted a wide porch overlooking Loon Lake. They had two babies and hired a maid/nanny, and a caretaker. The place seethed with bourgeoning life.
The year Ken’s father was born, the sister drowned and the Colbys closed up the house, sold the property, never returned.
More Than This
Shift/August 2023
His mother did not approve of peeing near the house, so he made sure to do it with the dilapidated structure out of sight. Flashes of the night before poked into his thoughts as he relaxed into the steady stream of piss. Finished, he approached the shack, startled and saddened by its smokeless chimney. In the yard, the wood pile, the picnic table, the sittin’ chairs as his mother called them, all appeared as they had always been. Their clothes hung on the line, flapped in the breeze like pinned birds desperate to break free.
He held his back tight against the wall outside her first floor bedroom. He inhaled to gather the necessary courage, turned to peer inside. There she was - as he had left her - on her side, mouth and eyes half open. Dead.
“George, start the fire. George sweep the floors. George, get the water.” Her voice, always commanding him, telling him what was next. “The cold is setting in, we must stock up,” she’d say. “The harvest time is here, we must pick everything!” Dutifully, unrelentingly, he did as her voice instructed.
Inside, he froze at her work table. His soft weeping eclipsed by torrents of tears, great gulps and sobs. His shoulders caved, his arms locked, crossed before his stomach as he bent, wailed into the silence of the house.
Finally, he approached the settled body, snipped a lock of grey hair, slipped it in his pocket. He closed his eyes, placed both hands on the corpse, pushed it onto a blanket spread on the floor. He dragged the body out, rolled it into a hole dug by the water pump. Shovel by shovel, he covered the body, his mother. He knew no prayers, so he said none.
***
The schedule. He must get back on it.
Midday. His mother would be disgusted by his laziness. He must make lunch. He hadn’t had much besides berries and water for days. A powerful hunger churned in his gut.
There was still enough meat from the smoke house, still the tea mixtures they made from their own herbs. He checked the half-full sugar jar, the bread box with its two stale loaves. He still had some of the bread his mother baked, now rock hard, but edible. He’d have to look for her recipes. He’d seen her make bread, but wasn’t sure how she made sugar. Had she told him it had something to do with sand? She’d spun it out of sand? She added honey to sand? He’d read books about the sea with sand beaches. There was no ocean here, no sand. Is sand edible? The memories and questions blurred in his dull mind. If his mother were alive she’d explain it, like she had before, and it would make sense. He was certain of this. He believed she was some kind of witch, a powerful sorceress, like Merlin in the King Arthur stories.
He boiled water on the fire, made his tea. He set the table, resisted the habit of setting her place.
“These things matter, they do. Civilized living.”
It occurred to him that his mother spoke to him almost entirely in adages, words of advice, words to live by. Although, she’d forgotten something important, maybe the most important thing: how he’d live alone, without her. He pushed back the onslaught of tears. He sat down, stared at the utensil poised above the sugar bowl. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the window, shimmered on the silver spoon. One of his many chores was to polish the silver. The thought broke through, a log busting through a dam. Once the hole was opened, he tried in vain to push the question back, but it flooded his mind, overtook: Where’d we get this spoon?
***
By the end of summer, he grew tired of the schedule, of everything. He missed his mother. The loneliness ached relentlessly, starting at his feet and rising to his head.
“I’m all you need!”
“Well, I ain’t got you, Ma!” he shouted, throwing a glass canning jar against the wall.
“Wasteful!”
Self-consciously, he tried speaking to the squirrels, but it felt wrong befriending creatures he killed and ate. He began seeing shadows lurking behind the trees, inside the barn, even in his bedroom at night. First, he burned extra candles to keep his room lit, then he decided to sleep beside the front door sitting up, holding his knife. He revisited a long dead question: Where did he come from? Where did his mother come from? Did they have any other family? He read and reread Robinson Crusoe-his mother’s favorite book. He longed to see a footprint in the dirt of the yard, dreamed of a Friday coming to save him. No such luck. He held a jagged piece of glass in a shaking hand to his neck. He begged his mother’s spirit to give him the courage to dig into his flesh, allow his troubled insides to pour out on the kitchen floor, but she did not comply. He heard only silence, and the steady thump of her beliefs playing in his head.
“Who’s going to clean up the mess, George, when you’ve gone and killed yourself?”
What if she wasn’t really dead? he thought. He went to the spot marked by the round stone he’d placed. He pushed it away and dug with urgency. The weather grew colder and colder. He needed to find her before the ground hardened. He dug, sweat seeping through his shirt. Finally her rotting corpse appeared in front of him. Joy and relief bubbled up from his core. He jumped into the hole and picked her up. She broke into pieces in his arms, dissolved back into the dirt. He swept the specks of her off his neck, his chest. The anger he’d been holding in for months came out in shouting. He retched beside the open hole. He thought of all the questions that had come to the surface of his mind, all the questions with no answers.
“You. Are. Nothin’. But. A. Liar,” he said. He threw the compost heap on top of the body-moldy onion skins and apple cores. He tossed the stone marker in the hole too, smashing his mother’s skull.
***
The next day, he rose up out of bed, ignored his breakfast, left the house an untidy mess, and walked with purpose to the edge of the Okay Places and passed deliberately into the Off Limits. He brought only his knife and some smoked meat, stuffed in the pocket of his winter coat. He marched forward across the frosty leaves and made his way deep into the forest. He followed the stream, walking for what seemed like hours. He grew tired and cold and hungry. He stopped to piss and take a drink of icy water, gnaw on some of the meat. He continued with only the slightest regret for embarking on such a pointless journey. Part of him hoped it’d quench his desire for death. He half expected to collapse onto the cold ground, fall asleep, freeze to death, melt into the dirt. So far, he saw nothing out of the ordinary in the Off Limits, the same squirrels and chipmunks and trees and leaves that inhabited the Okay Places.
Summoning his last bits of energy, he stalked the edges of a house, noting a wide dirt path leading up to one side. Pushing the door open without effort, he stepped inside the shadowy space. Crate-filled shelves surrounded him. He climbed a ladder and began prying them open, finding supplies of every kind - sugar and flour and clothing and even the little lemon birthday candies his mother gifted him each year. He couldn’t open his eyes wide enough to absorb it all. He turned around in wonder. Reaching for a lantern on the shelf he jostled a protruding side lever. He gasped as it flickered and lit, without a flame. George stood in the brightened room, gaping.
***
For years afterward, George spoke of a sister he never met. He told strangers encountered on the streets or the camp where he lived, “I’ve got a sister. I’ve got a likeness of her on paper. She’ll be here soon,” his voice echoing in the darkness, the smell of dead fish rising up from littered water. He searched in the river’s current for a glimpse of her brown curls, welcoming eyes. Most of the time, he only caught reflections of his own rippling beard and long tendrils of hair. On bad days, his mother’s stern expression emerged, her watery mouth moving, forming orders, rules he could no longer hear. Again and again, George turned away from the river that led to the woods of his first home, the one he had with his mother. Again and again, George walked up the bank to the safety of the home he found later, the tent under the bridge.
Transients
Heavy Feather Review/August 17. 2023
I tossed garbage bags full of last items into my Honda. Wire hangers, rolls of wrapping paper, a comforter. The orange tabby cat appeared, jumped into the back.
“Damn you!” I shouted. The cat arched and skittered to the ground, running behind the (no longer) rented bungalow. I expedited to the driver’s seat, my foot hovering above the gas pedal. The cat’s green-eyed stare taunted. She stood stock still awaiting my next move. I gripped the steering wheel as the car revved and exited the driveway. From the rearview mirror I saw the cat holding its stance, then shooting into the shrubs. I turned out of my former street with a racing heart.
I regretted not killing the cat, then regretted feeling that way. Typical.
Locally Famous
Atlantic Northeast/Summer 2023
Dedicated to my late great parents,
Lorraine and Warren Nerz,
and to all our happy times together.
We open the Guller’s door, allowing a gush of icy air that surely freezes every other diner. The restaurant is dark with a blur of yellow-y lights, full of mostly older looking cold people. The bar is built entirely of dark wood and cloudy with cigarette smoke. We do not smoke though. My mother still breaks up straws and rips up napkins. She says she still doesn't know what to do with her hands since she quit smoking thirty years ago.
"Gloria!" my father yells, as though he has not seen Gloria Guller, the adult daughter of the bar's owner, in twenty years. My father is an impossible, predictable flirt. Although he is a perfectly loyal and loving husband, he has a particular obsession with bartenders, waitresses, and women in shiny clothing.
"He's like a crow," my mother says.
There are only two barstools open and my father gestures to my mother and I to move into them. We do. He orders himself and my mother a Canadian Club on the rocks, me a glass of the house merlot.
"Now that's a Guller's drink," he remarks as he surveys his and my mother's glasses. They like them nice and big.
"Harry put our name on the list," my mother demands, and he goes.
I watch as he talks to Linda, the hostess. I can see her laughing, her straight, white teeth showing through the crowd. I know exactly what he’s saying to her. He’s telling her he wants a hot turkey sandwich to go. He's been telling her this almost my entire life, way before Linda started hostessing, when she was just a waitress. My mother and I stop watching him and turn back toward the bar, knowing that after he talks to Linda, he'll work the room, looking for people we know.
That's fine because my mother and I like to talk to each other. We always talk about books, my job, the neighborhood, and my mentally ill Aunt Deebie, usually in that order.
She asks me about Daniel, the interlibrary loan librarian at the library where I work. She wants to hear about all the other characters there, too. I launch into my usual string of stories.
My father comes over and dumps the dregs of his drink and all its ice into my mother's half empty glass and orders himself another. My parents have an elaborate and mysterious drink ritual that I have never understood.
"You OK, Red?" he asks me.
"Yup. Thanks. So who'd you see, Dad?"
"Mostly Ralph Dohn. He's still shook up."
"Oh," my mother looks concerned, "Myrt said he's still not himself." We are talking about our neighbor right across the street, whose twin brother died of a heart attack last summer.
I sit up on my stool and crane my neck around my father's body in an attempt to see Ralph.
"How long a wait?" my mother asks.
My father doesn’t answer, says instead, "Monsignor Colvson is here. What's he eating?"
"Looked like the fried haddock sandwich," I report.
We are all three great observers of details like what people are eating and what they are buying at the supermarket. My father keeps a steady mental record of what he calls "soundbites," little representative comments he hears on his rounds at the mall or the post office, or here, Guller’s. It's like we are taking an informal poll that has no purpose and no end.
"Good choice," my mother affirms in regards to Monsignor's dinner, while I nod and take a sip of wine.
"Indeed," my father says, eyeing a young couple at the end of the bar. I reach into the popcorn bowl and watch my father spring into action.
I know he identified the young couple as out-of-towners or just- moved-iners. He’s going to get them to talk about Herman's, the grocery store, one of our favorite topics. I watch him as he picks up his drink and moves closer to the young couple. They look extra cold and way too young-younger than me-to be at Guller's. These two can't be from around here. My mother and I go back to talking neighborhood gossip, pleased that Dad found someone to talk to about Herman's. I can’t hear him, but I know he is saying things like, Produce like nothing you've ever seen! and The service is out of this world! and, the big finale, The bakery has an oven built in France shipped all the way here to our Herman's! I take another glance at the couple laughing, enjoying my father's enthusiasm. It’s hard not to.
Soon, I can actually hear my father's voice above the crowd,
A half hour later, the couple exits in a burst of freezing air. My father gives us the goods:
"She’s a teacher-kindergarten."
"That's sweet," my mother yawns.
"Yeah, he's a lawyer-"
"Who with?" my mother instantly interrupts. She's a pro.
"Some firm in Syracuse. Melbourne, somebody, and somebody."
"Where from?" I ask.
"Philadelphia-met at Penn."
"Did you tell them about Papa?"
My grandfather grew up in Philadelphia. The son of a wheelwright.
"Oh yes," my father says, "I got it all in," he winks at me.
My mother sips her drink, "Well I hope they know about the white-outs, commuting into Syracuse like that."
"Ma! How could someone not know about the white-outs? That's what we're famous for!"
"No-well-we're famous for Herman's!" she offers proudly in defense.
"No. No, Nora-that's locally famous. The white-outs are famous-famous. World famous," my father says, he looks at his watch, "It's nine o'clock!"
"So late. What happened to Linda?" My mother is a little tipsy, her face is as rosy as mine feels.
Unselfconsciously, my father calls out, "Linda! Our table?"
"Hot Turkey!?" she screams back, "I called you already! Where were you?"
"We were right-uh-here," my father is laughing at the end of his sentence.
“I’m all full," says Linda, "You want to eat at the bar?" She looks at my mother, instinctively knowing it’s her decision.
I survey the packed restaurant. I am not the least bit hungry anymore.
"Ok," my mother announces, "let's roll down the hill, Harry. Em, we'll have grilled cheese at home." She stands to confirm her statement.
My father gets our coats and holds them crookedly at our backs while my mother and I push searching arms down sleeves. We say our goodbyes and venture into the dark night, snow crunching beneath our feet as we march single file down the sidewalk lining the road that winds through our town. The air instantly sharpens our dulled senses. Removed from the festive lights and noise of the bar, we’ve entered a seemingly foreign world of silence. We push our hands deep inside our coat pockets. My father's long scarf swings, hanging down his back as he leads our little parade.
"Let's go see who's where," he suggests. We agree by following him past our house into the circle of houses beyond, responding as he calls out each neighbor's name.
"Redbo's?" he asks.
"Club," we say, continuing to move along briskly.
"Brown's?"
"Florida," my mother says.
"Dohn's?"
"Guller's!" my mother and I shout in fake exasperation.
We enter our driveway. I see my car, already covered in a thick frost.
"Em, you gotta sleep over! It's too cold and dark to go home to your apartment!" my mother begs.
An image of my apartment without me flashes through my mind. The refrigerator hums, the clock ticks, the bed is made, the unpaid bills sit on the desk. The objects don’t miss me or need me for completion. In another flash I envision my room here at my parents’ house, with all my dolls and Norton Anthologies lining the shelves. My ceramic bank that looks like a cat asleep atop a ball of string sits quietly on my dresser. Do these miss me when I am gone? I am not sure either place needs me the way I want it to. My room at my parents' with its flannel sheets, the mismatched sounds of my mother's antique clock collection pulls me in every time.
"Oh yeah, I'm staying, Ma," I say.
"Good, put on Glenn Miller, won't you Harry?"
"Sure, sure," he says, throwing his keys into a large bowl in the hall as he makes his way to the kitchen. He sort of limps in his older age, but it is a quick, agile limp, a little dance step. I am busy kicking off my boots off as I listen for the sounds of him filling the kettle and the tick tick tick before the gas pilot light bursts forth from the burner.
"Supposed to snow tonight. A big one," he calls out to no one in particular. My mother answers him from some deeper recess of our house, an indecipherable remark.
Later, in bed, I am comforted and relaxed by the hot water heater’s creaks and groans, spreading warmth through the pipes, radiating through the house. Despite the potentially harmful number of blankets covering me, for now I am the perfect temperature. I turn in bed on my side to face the window, watching the snow fall softly, steadily, as my father said it would.
The Surprise
Westwind Journal of the Arts/Spring 2023
Rebecca had not thought of surprises when she packed her bag. Her splayed-open suitcase lay hungry on the bed, accepting her most comfortable clothes: brown leather sandals, tee shirts, flowy floral skirts. She envisioned vacation Rebecca to be opposite of Pennsylvania Rebecca. Vacation Rebecca would be relaxed, unworried.
At work, she daydreamed of Will’s hand on her waist or at the back of her slightly sweaty neck. She pictured him tugging off her clothes, carrying her naked to bed. She would often lose her place while reading at story hour, stare at bookshelves instead of searching for the specific title she needed, and frequently retreat to the bathroom to splash cold water on her flushed face.
This was Will’s idea, a trip to celebrate their one year dating anniversary. Rebecca had never been anywhere, besides Philadelphia, the Jersey shore. Her parents withheld, she knew, their resistance. She’d only told them the bad things about Will, none of the good things. It was her fault that her parents did not like Will.
“It’s okay if he’s cheap, but not mean cheap,” her mother said after Rebecca shared a slight concern about Will’s stinginess.
“No, he’s never mean,” Rebecca lied.
***
Once at the airport, on the plane, in the taxi, things were not as smooth as Rebecca fantasized. Will had a migraine, a problem which could cause any number of altercations. He snapped at the luggage carousel, angry that Rebecca had missed his bag. He criticized her for over-tipping the bellhop at the hotel.
“I was a waitress once,” Rebecca said.
“That’s irrelevant,” he countered.
While Will slept off his headache, Rebecca went to the bar, scribbled a pro and con list on a napkin. She padded the pros with small things he did in the beginning, like when he spontaneously bought a bouquet of carnations at the supermarket when they stopped in for a six pack. That gesture withered at the other memories, like when he refused to pay for dinner, knowing she’d forgotten her wallet. Or when he left her in the train station alone at midnight. What about the time he asked her if she was embarrassed by her morning bed head? But each time he would apologize, tell her how much he loved her, beg her to forgive him, and each time she would acquiesce. Rebecca put down her pen, covering her eyes with both hands.
“Becca?” Will appeared beside her, stunning in a suit and tie. “Why are you crying?”
“I-I-I’m just so happy to be here,” she said.
“Good, because I’m about to make you happier,” he said, kneeling down on one knee. The other customers in the bar immediately shifted, creating a space around the couple. Rebecca, perched on her barstool, her heart pounding in her chest, beheld Will, whose upturned face shone in the manufactured light.
***
Rebecca rose from bed, this time leaving Will sleeping off his hangover. She thought of calling her parents to tell them their news, but decided later would be better, maybe at dinner, after a few drinks. She approached the closet, unenthusiastically surveyed the skirts lined up on the rack.
The ring Will gave her the night before sat unwieldy, out of proportion on her slender finger. The band constricted, grasped. She attempted to twist it off, but it refused her tugs and pulls.
Half-dressed, Rebecca sat on the bed. She told herself how beautiful, how special it was for Will to propose in this way, without giving the slightest hint, a total surprise. She imagined the story she would repeat to all her friends, coworkers, her parents. The band was too tight, but she knew it could easily be fixed, and nothing was ever perfect, anyway. She closed the door gently, leaving Will asleep.
The elevator descended to the breakfast bar. Rebecca leaned into the wall, closed her eyes, imagined Will waking, missing, searching, finding her. His smiling face would emerge from all the plain, boring ones. He’d approach her transformed, a shining presence, her life partner, her fiance.
Return to Mills Island
Birdy Magazine/July 2023
Our island, Mills Island, sits in a spot where currents collide, ships crash and sink.
We’re surrounded by old bones, death. We’re used to it. We remember our grandfather, the lighthouse keeper, telling us stories of bodies washing up on the beach in multitudes, victims of shipwreck. The storms have only worsened over time, we’ve seen to that. With a gathering of eyebrows, the clenching of fists, and the whispering of words collected in our book, we keep people away from here, away from our boy…
Beatrice Bakes, in 13-Not-So-Easy-Steps
Corvus Review/Spring/Summer 2023
1. Beatrice joins a gym.
Beatrice can’t remember when she first stopped wanting to get up in the morning, when every day felt slow moving and pointless, when the sun started hurting her eyes. The therapist says Beatrice needs endorphins, STAT.
2. Beatrice notes hypocrisy.
The gym juice bar sells nuts, dried fruit, and smoothies but also full-fat double chocolate muffins. Beatrice googles lite muffin recipes, stops at the grocery store on the way home, begins testing. She works all night, whisks egg whites with apple sauce into foamy lather. She brings the best batch to the gym. They’re a hit.
3. Beatrice sells.
Beatrice completes her day job quickly. Her muffins crest, crisp at their edges. She loads her car with boxes, delivers to gyms and cafes before dawn. She smiles more, her steps quicken. She relishes the orange sky at sunrise.
4. Beatrice quits things.
Both her boyfriend (Doug) and Beatrice’s engineering job loom, cast shadows, threaten her bourgeoning light.
5. Beatrice meets Larry, a café customer, on one of her deliveries. “Wow, you’re something else,” he says.
He’s bald, rotund, a freelance computer programmer.
“I work when I want, charge by the hour, then I can travel, take breaks whenever,” he says. “You’re smart not to let yourself get tied down. I just got out of that.”
“We’ll make a good team,” he says, winking.
Beatrice floats from the café feeling strong, graceful, beautiful.
6. Beatrice locks it down.
The day Beatrice buys the bakery space, Larry proposes on a hot air balloon over a wide Pennsylvania field. The ring is from a gumball machine. She laughs and kisses him. Larry does not believe in material things. Larry believes in experiences.
Beatrice calls her parents in Vermont.
“We haven’t met him,” says Dad.
“It seems like a lot of change,” says Mom.
“Trust me. I’m over the moon,” Beatrice tells them.
7. Beatrice returns to Earth.
Larry yells at their neighbors. Larry disappears for the entire night. Larry adopts an Irish wolf hound and insists it must stay in the bakery, for protection. Larry installs cameras inside the bakery, even though only he and Beatrice work there. Larry tells Beatrice’s parents not to call.
8. Beatrice works double time.
Beatrice pulls her back muscle while dragging a bag of flour up the basement stairs in the bakery while Larry sits playing computer games. Beatrice finds it hard to breathe, leaves for home early, does not fill her orders that day, or the next.
9. Beatrice needs help.
Beatrice does not tell Larry about the ad she places in the local newspaper. A young woman named Selma calls, says she has no experience baking, but is writing a novel about a bakery. Beatrice hires her sight unseen.
Selma’s clear face and quick smile brighten the dingy space.
Larry says, “Who the hell is this?”
Larry informs Selma she is under surveillance; all the cameras are watching. He storms out, jumps on his bike. (Larry has a head injury and cannot drive.) The dog growls from its crate.
10. Beatrice breaks.
Beatrice cries while she measures, when she pours, when she whisks and mixes, when she spoons batter into the tins. She cries at the beginning of the day and at the end. She cries as she drives home and to deliveries. She longs to cry to her parents, her mother, but she cannot. She is stuck again.
11. Beatrice achieves clarity.
One day, when Selma is washing out the batter buckets, she suddenly asks Beatrice if Larry is helping or hindering. Beatrice knows there is only one answer, just one word, that second word, the latter one: hindering.
12. Beatrice burns.
Beatrice receives a call from the police. She stumbles through the mess of Larry’s thrift store finds still cluttering her space, out of her apartment. She stands before the bakery. Smoke occludes, flames leap. Beatrice glows in fearful fascination. A fireman yells at her, “Step away. This isn’t safe.”
13. Beatrice bakes.
The fire out, Beatrice returns home, assembles a fresh batch of lighter-than-lite muffins. She piles Larry’s stuff on the sidewalk, ambles to the gym. Afterwards, she calls her parents, tells them about the flames, the ash. She sits for a time in silence, enjoys the sun streaming across the scratched floor. A strong breeze blows through the windows. It rustles the curtains, shifts papers on the desk, lifts Beatrice’s hair from her face.
Byrne 1982
Overtly Lit/June 2023
The Blessed Mother statue in front of our school received a blow when I was in seventh grade. Her head, knocked to the ground, was left sitting in a puddle of rubble. Principal Parisi sent a letter home, decrying the horror of the act and the broken-hearted feelings of the old priests at the rectory, but no one did anything. Every day, I observed from my classroom window Mary’s chipped head abandoned on the ground, her eyes staring off into the garden.
***
Our math teacher, Miss Byrne (we reduced her name to just Byrne) was awful, or so we thought. I once heard Mr. Cope, the religion teacher, saying as much to another teacher on the playground. He said, “Theresa is awful.” Mr. Cope, a layman, not a priest, led the folk group with his guitar and taught us fun songs - The Lord said to Noah, we’re gonna build an arky arky…- and about the birds and the bees. Mr. Cope, a gentle soul, a free spirit, was not awful. His opinion seemed valid.
Why was Byrne so awful? Something just seemed missing -half there- with her. Even when she forced herself to be nice, we kind of got the feeling that she wished she were somewhere else. She inhaled deeply when we didn’t understand something. She slammed the text book with her hand right before forcing a fake sweet voice through clenched teeth, “OK, let’s do some quiet desk work.” On top of all of that, her explosive anger over miniscule occurrences was legendary. If we, say, didn’t return her scissors, her tiny coral-colored lipsticked mouth, the mouth with the wrinkles all around the outside like Gran’s, would expand in epic proportions and she’d just let it rip. Byrne could blow up into a terrifying teacher blob monster very quickly.
***
I already mentioned the Mary statue, the one that got vandalized. Before that, she was so beautiful, her white head crowned with stars, her dainty feet stamping out a snake. The whole school used to gather around her for the May crowning, a common event at Catholic schools and churches, where a junior May Queen places a floral wreath on the head of a Mary statue. I loved those years when we stood and sang out in the sunlight commemorating spring and the Blessed Mother. Mr. Cope strummed his guitar as we shouted out the lyrics to Immaculate Mary and Hail Holy Queen.
By the time I got to seventh grade, the school’s neighborhood - the place my father grew up - had deteriorated. Industry had been replaced by drugs and poverty. Lewd drawings and swear words sprayed on the side of our building caused us to poke each other in the side, smile and look down, perhaps giggle a little in embarrassment.
***
One day, I stood on the playground waiting for my bus when I saw Byrne walking to her car. A light rain sprinkled down. A plastic hat covered her greying hair and her khaki raincoat hung wrinkled and limp on her boney frame. She held her leather briefcase in one hand as she limped and slouched through the parking lot. I watched as she fumbled with her keys and opened the door of a dented Chevrolet Caprice Classic, surprising myself with a slap of pity. Where did Byrne live? I never thought of the details of her life before.
From that point, I began to look for Byrne at the end of each day as she slumped out to her car. Eventually, I caught her back walking in a different direction, carrying stuff. I kept my distance, following her slow tracks as she made the way around the school to the front garden.
I hid behind a brick protrusion, watching her put down her things and place her hands on her hips. She stared at the broken Mary statue, contemplating it, her eyes squinting up. She crouched and pulled weeds, moving on her hands and knees right and left, her head low and focused on her work. She swept up some of the crumbly stones around the statue, struggled to lift Mary’s head, moving it to a place behind the statue, hiding it from view.
She continued working, removing her rumply jacket, her knees stained with dirt. I noticed she shed her sensible, low-heeled pumps and wore a pair of discolored Keds. When she glanced up again at the statue, I thought I saw something different on her face, not quite a smile, something else. I never saw Byrne look happy before. I smiled, too.
“Ms. Patton’s List of (More) Appropriate Words
Peripheral (adj., relating to or situated on the edge, the periphery of something)
In just one year I went from the center of my family to the edges. The other mother was put in charge of the food and gifts. The sister took the coats. The cousin fetched drinks. There I sat, small and hunched, perched on an ottoman, an ordinary guest expected to sip lemonade and nibble sandwiches and chat pleasantly with random, vaguely familiar people.
“Elinor, your hair is so short!”
“Elinor, this is just what you need!”
The first comment came from an old aunt of my daughter-in-law. The last from a younger aunt, referencing my recent divorce from the new baby’s grandfather.
I didn’t want to be peripheral. I wanted to be integral. I wanted to stand at the front of the room and say, “No, no, my barely out of college son impregnating someone and getting married soon after is not what I need!”
What I needed was for my husband to not have said, “I feel you lack imagination.”
What I needed was for my husband to not have chosen his (apparently very imaginative) trainer, Lucy, over me.
I needed to go home, even though my home would soon no longer be mine. The closing was that Wednesday and all of my pretty things were already packed up, given away or in storage.
What I needed was to leave this shower. Right. Now.
“You’re leaving before the gender reveal cake?” some woman with a wide split between her teeth practically screamed at me.
“Yes, I am,” I said. And then I did.
Three Lessons from Study Abroad
1. Book shopping can be boy shopping.
I spotted him right away, after the door jingled behind me and I stepped into the darkened and musty bookstore. The young man, let’s call him the shopkeeper (Graeme), had closely-cropped blonde hair, a round head perched on top of a reed-like body, a threadbare cardigan, black jeans (Hole in knee), John Lennon glasses, Doc Marten boots. He paid no attention to me. He kept his legs crossed, seated at his wobbly little desk, read his book whose thin pages and fine print I noted from across the room. (I had perfect vision then.)
“Excuse me,” I said.
His eyes widened, presumably from my American accent.
(This was 1990 and there weren’t many of us around Glasgow, Scotland.)
“I want a collection of Shakespeare plays. Like in one book.”
He smirked, moved from his corner, rubbed his hands together.
At that moment I observed the mug of tea on a plate, its pruny bag laying exhausted, prone on its side.
He found what I needed, easy to do in this small bookshop holding only a certain number of used books. There was no need for or possibility of computers answering the young shopkeeper’s questions about stock or placement. He had to use the old noggin, as a grandfather might say.
Pulling a thick tome from a shelf, he opened it, squinted, pushed his glasses up his nose as he surveyed a page. (Table of contents, I guessed.)
“Comedies, tragedies, histories, this should do it.”
He stole a glance at my face, placed the book in my hands.
I held it, charmed by its flaking pages and stained cover, certain I would not read much of this book. (I came to Scotland to drink legally, meet new people, escape.) I followed the shopkeeper back to his table, behind which he repositioned himself.
“Two pounds,” he said, his Scottish accent so adorable, sounding sort of like pundes. (Sort of.)
I reached in my Banana Republic Israeli paratrooper bag and pulled out my wallet, handed him the cash, attempting to hide my unease with the foreign bills.
“Is that right?” I asked every time money was exchanged.
“Do you have something smaller?”
I’d handed him a twenty. Flustered, I found a five pound note. (My hand shook a little.)
“Where are you from?” he asked.
I told him New York, achieving the usual awe-filled response.
“New York. Wow,” he smiled. (Crooked teeth) I’m sure I said a few things, asked him questions. At some point I would know where he was from (Bathgate), a place whose name meant nothing to me.
I took my brown paper book bag and headed out into the steady mist, glancing at the shop’s hours, noting the day and time of the week. I climbed the hill back to my residence, plotting my next move. I would return to the book shop at closing the same day next week, act as though it was a coincidence, help the shopkeeper close, perhaps carry in the boxes of books displayed under the shop’s front awnings. On that day, I would linger there, fixed on the cold slab of sidewalk, my Converse sneakers edging toward his Doc Martens. I hoped he’d succumb to my presence and ask me for a coffee, or better yet, a drink. I went back to my student housing, feeling a sense of purpose.
2. Sometimes we want people for no good reason.
The shopkeeper took me to see When Harry Met Sally, though I had already seen it the summer before at the Jersey shore. (Back then, movies came about six months faster in the U.S.) After that initial drink when I bombarded him at the end of his book shop shift (Say that three times fast) he was besotted with me for all of about a week, maybe two. The movie fell in that time frame. He took me to Wimpy Burger, Scotland’s answer to McDonalds, and then to the theater. He wrote our initials and the date on the paper ticket stub, a gesture even I found contrived, as though he was forcing a cliched romance on the whole thing.
The not-romantic truth: we didn’t have a chance to know anything about each other, to like or dislike each other, let alone fall in love with each other. Foolishly, I cherished that ticket stub from that one date, but I knew nothing about the shopkeeper’s life, family, interests, even his studies at the university. Back home, my brother was gravely ill with cancer, receiving a bone marrow transplant. My family was in a state of crisis, but I am sure I never shared this. (Much more fun sliding down in a movie theater seat, holding hands with a stranger.)
I was devastated when he stopped calling. Late at night, post-pub tipsy, I wandered into the echoey stairwell of my building and dialed his number at the payphone which smelled like beer even before I beer-breathed into the receiver.
“Is Graeme home?” I slurred. Of course his roommate knew it was me, the American. The (Insert adjective) American. I’d done this a few times before.
“Graemes gone to bed, they said, or “Graemes not in.”
“Goodbye, Maggie, goodbye. Cheers.”
(Please stop calling, or go back to America, or something.)
3. Walking drunk through a park, alone at night in the rain, is always a bad choice.
Tonight was the night, I decided. I’d storm the shopkeeper’s flat. Who cared if it was midnight on a raining Tuesday? Who cared if I was drunk, that I had to walk across town, across an empty park alone? Who cared that he was obviously done with me, hadn’t called in weeks?
The multiple pints sloshing around my bodily system fueled the brazen knock.
Bam Bam Bam. No answer, another knock. After that I stood listening to the tense silence (Was that breathing on the other side of the door?) I was intrigued, enraged.
Oh come on!
I kicked the door. I pressed a cold ear to a colder door deducing whispers and a clear, “No, you do it!” Finally the girl roommate, quivering voice, said, “Who’s there?”
I hadn’t meant to be scary. (Me? Scary? No way. Not possible.)
Frigid shame flattened that bravado I’d carried with me like a shield across the Kelvingrove Park, step by step in the darkness, in the goddam endless rain. Too late to turn away, I said my name. The door opened to the shopkeeper himself standing before me wearing a set of old man striped pajamas.
“I guess you expect something, to stay?”
I nodded, swiftly lowering my expectations. His face remained blank.
(I hate you, crazy American.)
I stepped into the flat, felt the gaze of the flatmates follow me as I followed him, my beloved. (Not really.)
He entered his room. When I followed he turned and gave me the internationally accepted look of “Don’t push it.” He chucked a pair of pajamas at me and pointed at the bathroom and couch, closed his bedroom door behind him. I woke up early to a pounding head, and as soon as morning light overtook the interminable Glasgow grayness, I dressed in my damp clothes and scurried out, practically running to my own flat, where I could disappear into my unmade bed.
Offline
Birdy/May 2023
Her body wavered with each bump and brake of the lumbering bus. Without her lost device she’d never before noticed the glowing faces lined up, lit by an army of screens. Normally she was one of those faces, but not tonight. Ahead at the front of the bus, lights blinked as the route screen computed and configured. She remembered her mother telling her once about the days when there were living drivers. Sometimes, if the driver was pleasant, which wasn’t always the case, he said good morning when you got on and good day when you got off. She thought the best thing about automation was you didn’t have to deal with anyone’s mood. Although without her device, her own had soured. She had no one to talk to, nothing to read, no games to play. She stood there, hanging on, lurching inside the darkened bus.
The Last Summer on the Island
The Lit Nerds/May 2023
This was the part she loved the most, when the island’s impressive mass shifted into view. On the ferry deck, she tuned out the screaming child clinging to her mother’s legs and the green-at-the-gills teen boy gripping the garbage can. She tilted her face to the sunshine and leaned into the winds as she balanced herself on the rocking sea. Finally, Block Island, Rhode Island, with its old hotels and line of shops in the distance, inching closer every second. Of course, her own house was not visible here, perched on the other side of the island on Dory’s Cove. Her thoughts stalled and clenched at the idea of the house—her house, her family’s house. A familiar anger and bitterness cropped up. But this was her favorite view in the world. She willed herself to enjoy the sight of this place she’d loved since birth. Every crevice, building, and beach etched in her soul. A brown lab nipped at her legs, snapping her out of her reverie. The cold air inspired thoughts of a sweater. At last, the ferry pulled into the dock and Caroline Masters joined the throng of day-trippers exiting the boat.
Mr. Baxter’s Post-Probation Resolutions
Ellipsis Zine, #13
1. I will not drink on Sunday night.
I pile the empty cans in the recycling bin. Melissa hated cans beside the door. Melissa’s gone. Tomorrow’s my first day back. I need the booze to sleep, take the edge off.
2. I’ll quit smoking.
John from custodial services is smoking on the loading dock when I arrive.
“Hey, Baxter, where you been?” he says.
I fist bump him.
“A conference,” I say, shivering in February air.
“Wow, some long ass conference.”
I apply my boot to the butt in dirty snow, head in.
3. I will learn my students’ names.
“Yo! Baxter’s back!” A tall, vaguely familiar kid suggests a high five in the crowded hallway. My weak hand meets his. A vomitorious wave rises, recedes.
4. I will not overshare with students.
“The sub made us memorize poetry,” Susie says.
Susie, what’s her last name? Chapsworth? Chapstick?
“When I was in seventh grade,” I say, “I memorized Poe’s ‘Raven.’ It still haunts me. I’ve been to therapy about it. “Nevermore! Nevermore!” I squawk.
Susie flaps her wings, takes flight.
5. I will control my emotions.
During the introduction to Hamlet, Fifth period Gabe has an elongated bit of tissue hanging from his nose. I pace to tamp down the rising storm. The walls close in.
6. I will get off double secret probation.
In eighth and final period, paper airplanes fly above a sea of necks bent in texting pose. I’m an actor on the stage, awaiting an unwilling audience.
“To die, to sleep, No more,” I say.
The room grows quiet, really quiet. I realize I am shouting.
7. I will achieve tenure.
I am told to clean out my desk. I sit alone in my classroom and free that unstoppable giggle, the one that got me here in the first place.
8. I will show them I am competent, intelligent, well-versed in my subject area.
“The rest is silence,” I quote Hamlet one last time to Steve the guidance counselor as he returns me to my car.
“Okay, man. Sounds good,” he says, slamming the door, leaving me shivering again, alone, laughing.
Former
Pressing his black trousers again, the steam hisses and sputters. I smooth out the faint lines, push in a crease. The children, who watch me from their framed faces lining the walls, are at school. In another frame- our holiday group shot-the five of us standing beneath looping words: Merry Christmas from the Phillips Family, the children are decked out in holiday greens and reds. My husband and I wear off tones. He dons a purple sweater with his black slacks, “Because it’s technically Advent,” he said at the time. For no good reason, I wear a butter yellow turtleneck. I fade into background, like an unlit candle.
Changed
Wrong Turn Lit/March 31, 2023
Leaving my Ron was not a hasty decision. It took me years to get to that point. Years of talking, my words hanging in space with no one to catch them. Years of sitting at the table surrounded by three bent heads, not in prayer, but in fixation on little screens cradled in their hands. Complaining and making rules to ban them did not work. My family considered me a malcontent, a party-pooper, a luddite.
Ron,
I’m leaving. I accept that I cannot hold your attention. You are free to focus on your more powerful distraction. I give up. I’m going to live at my parents’ house.
-Joanna
The Seagull
The Medley/Issue 8: Mosaic/March 2023
Once upon a time there was the darkest, deepest blue. A blue like no other blue. A bottomless blue. An if only, a heartbreak blue. Charlie couldn’t see his father’s eyes but thought of their color that snowy day, when he entered the house, hung his woolen coat on the hook, and walked heavy-footed to the kitchen. Charlie sat at the curtain, kept his own eyes on the street. His mother’s voice drifted from the kitchen, where she stirred nothing soup - water with some bones and an odd potato or whatever of nothing was left in their pantry. Through the window, Charlie identified another boy, around his own age,walking hand in hand with a woman. Their backs bent, they pushed into the steady snowfall.
