Slim Differences
Muleskinner Journal/April 2024
I noted the decrepit state of Mr. Talbot’s shoes before stepping over his legs, a motion I’d performed for over a year. He slept in my shop’s doorway, as he did every night, mostly because I no longer tried to stop him.
“Mr. Talbot,” I said, always very respectful, “It’s time to get up.” I tugged at his arm.
It’s not like I was afraid to touch a homeless man. I made a point of it.
Not very long ago, after engaging him in several conversations, I learned that Mr. Talbot and I were not very different. We were only two years apart in age, divorced, college graduates. We’d both lived in Newburgh our entire lives. Talbot said his mother bought their entire family shoes at Fogarty’s. She knew my father. And we were both recovered addicts, although different addictions, and he was not totally recovered, like me.
No, we were not as different as I originally hoped.
Going South
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters/April 2024
They planned on driving north, all the way to Long Island. They’d stay overnight, attend Theresa’s father’s funeral the following day. Todd drove, his right hand pressing on Patti’s thigh.
“Almost to Maryland,” he said.
She watched miles of trees swoosh past, dreading the decreasing November temperatures that awaited them.
“Theresa hated country music,” he said, new information delivered as he changed the radio station.
The Meltdown
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters/April 2024
At 4 AM, just as the grandfather clock chimed in the hall, Mrs. Starch shrieked from her room. “No! No! Noooooooo!”
One of her nightmares.
Mr. Starch’s painted eyes followed me, his stern brow and navy suit imposing as I stood listening and watching at the door.
Mrs. Starch’s little white head poked from the covers. She thrashed in the shadowed bed, screaming, yelling.
I honestly felt sorry for her, but I would not enter.
Rule #1 at Mrs. Starch’s house: never ever go into her room at night.
Papa Hemingway, Help Me
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters/April 6, 2024
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
I arrived early because I didn’t want to see anyone, even old Phil, the janitor. The hall stretched, long and daunting, the walls surveyed me with hundreds of eyes. Bad knees creaking, I pressed on, struggled to find my own classroom door, almost unrecognizable, decorated with Shakespearean insults: How now, you gleeking, flapmouthed, footlicker.
Alphabetic Disorder
E is for Elizabeth, me, dark eyes matching curly hair contrasting with white white skin, lover of coloring books, tin doll houses, solitaire.
M is for Mom and Dad, whose love was at best like an umbrella, at worst, a harness.
H is for home, both safe and stifling.
Three Holiday Horrors
Litmora Literary Magazine/January 2024
Tradition
We arrived by carriage late afternoon Christmas Eve. I followed Beatrice to the living room where her parents and younger sister sat before the fire.
“Hughe!” They all stood at once, bestowing a torrent of warm greetings, pats on the back, and offers of food and drink.
That night, Bea and her father sang in duet, “Good King Wenceslas,” their voices smooth and delicious, like the toffee candies her mother had made.
“Next year you can sing my part!” Bea’s father winked.
Christmas day passed dreamily, as I sipped on the many drinks they offered, and I fell in and out of sleep while enjoying the scent and presence of the woman I loved.
Late in the day, Bea’s father pulled me aside and said, “It’s time for men’s work.”
I obediently followed him out the back door where he pointed to a horse-drawn sleigh. He cracked a whip and we glided through the snowy acres of their farm to a clearing in the woods.
“Now you’ll slaughter the pig.”
A pig meandered into view, nosing along the pristine patch of snow.
I started to run but he grabbed me from the back, put the knife in my hands.
“You will do this now. You must.”
I returned to the house covered in pig’s blood, disoriented and crying.
The women encircled me, held me.
“You’ve slayed the pig! You’ve slayed the pig!” they sang softly.
Bea led me upstairs, undressed and bathed me, caressing my shuddering body.
She performed this impropriety without flinching.
“I want to go home,” I said wearily.
“You are home,” she said, drying my tears. “You’re part of this now, forever.”
She held my wet head to her bosom and did not let go.
There’s Really No Need
Crayon Magazine/December 2023
Illustrated Worlds Magazine/December 2024
There’s this feeling like we’re leaving Earth for a place far away, and literature feels like looking back through the window of the spaceship, waving goodbye.(Elle Magazine)
I stumbled onto the street and there she was, darkened but decipherable through my UV400s : a bun-headed woman wearing some super weird clothes standing on the sidewalk. The violent sun, white and hot streaking from the east, pressed its nasty fingers into my leathery skin. The street was, as usual, empty. I’d gotten used to that, but this anachronism lady brought out the loneliness of it all. That day it was me and her, but it was usually just me. A while back, I found I could walk out here before anyone checked their cameras. People like me were supposed to stay in their place, but I found my morning walks to be worth the risk. I needed to shake myself out, sort of like pacing. There was so much time in those aimless days.
The woman’s jacket had like fifty buttons, a railroad track trailing up to her throat. I mean, she was wearing decent, like full leather shoes on top of pantyhose. I haven’t seen pantyhose since the early 1960s. My granny wore panty hose.
Her presence heightened my disheveled look and not-so-fresh fragrance. Without one whiff I knew she smelled of old scents, soap or moth balls or both. So, I smoothed back my hair and hiked my shorts from their usual half-ass state.
The shock of seeing an old lady with a buttoned coat, bunned hair, skirt (I forgot to mention that), panty hose, and shined leather shoes diminished compared to the shock of her voice, directed at me.
“Young man,” she said, “Can you help me hail a cab?”
“A cab?”
“I have a reading to attend at the public library at 1 PM sharp and I need a cab. I’d like to arrive early.”
She spoke with – what would you call it – like every word was a little jewel rolling around in her mouth or something.
I hadn’t been spoken to by real live person in about six months, since my sister Ruby came looking for me, found me, and then promptly returned to her cool tower.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alive. I couldn’t find your phone anymore.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
I gave up the whole phone (the irony of that old fashioned name for those things!) some time ago, mostly because I couldn’t afford one but also because I didn’t give two craps anymore. They used to call it off the grid. That’s me, off the grid.
“You don’t do anything anyone else does,” Ruby said, right before rushing off.
She didn’t invite me to come with her. And I would have in a heartbeat.
Anyhow. Digression.
I still couldn’t get over the amount of clothing the bun lady wore. I mean this was like some broadloom woolen shit. This was not the high-functioning fabrics people, rich people, wore these days. I assumed she was rich. I wore old clothes, my father’s clothes, threadbare denim, cotton. I nervously ran my fingers through my lucky charms inside my jeans pocket, feeling for the smooth soothe of my guitar pic.
“I think I shall walk. Would you escort me, sir?” she said.
Escort? To a reading? What the hell did she mean by that? Why would she need to go somewhere to read? Who would she be reading to? Sir?
“I. I. Guess,” was all I could manage.
“Excellent. What a fine young man you are,” she said.
Fine young man. I looked at my filthy flip-flops, my horny toenails. I’d let my greying beard grow long, hiding the wrinkled remnants of my face. My mouth tasted foul. I was not a young man. I wasn’t even sure I was a man, a hu-man. I was some kind of messed up Rip Van Winkle, denied the privilege of a long, peaceful slumber.
Then, get this, she tucked her hand into my arm. She touched me. I nearly sunk to the concrete.
“It’s a good day to go to the library, nice and cool in there,” I said. The library was one of the few places people still went.
“Shall we?” she said.
“We shall.”
Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Mother with Dementia
Literally Stories/November 2023
“I’ve just told you that.”
When things became worse, I brought my mother to our abandoned-since-Dad-died beach house for the summer. A sabbatical and a newly west coasted daughter freed me to lug Mom like a bag of silent, bewildered groceries into the passenger’s seat of my car. We sped along the highway from the city to the coast, chasing the rickety car of Mom’s memory, lumbering just ahead. I savored the hopeful sensation of control and the encroaching smell of sulfury sea air.
The house, high on a hill overlooking the sea, was left to my father by my grandparents, and was really just a shack, by modern standards. Mcmansions threatened from all sides.
The first night I awoke to find my mother flying on the green sky lawn, face down, her nightgown hitched up the back.
I turned her mud-smeared body on its side, used both my hands to direct her gaze towards mine.
“Home?” she said.
“This is your home.”
“Home?”
“You always loved it here.”
“Home?”
“I’ve just told you,” I said, jaw clenched.
The Rising
Poor Ezra’s Almanac/Volume 2/November 2023
Karma Comes Before/Issue 3/March 2024
She has left for the school where she works, so I turn to face her side of the bed. The pillow is shadowed, a circle of peach makeup. She doesn’t wash before sleep. I rise, remove the case to toss in the basket. Later, I will apply a special mixture learned long ago: vinegar, baking soda, lemon. I straighten the bedroom, lining up her tiny shoes, dead mice, returning her cast off clothes to boney hangers. (She is a snake, constantly shedding.) I avoid my own spare closet, the black chalice box-a gift from my dead parents-tucked high on a shelf.
A moment of peace. I kneel down beside the bed to pray.
The baby’s room is another planet, an alternate atmosphere. I am weightless here. I float. Here, I can breathe, enjoy the scents of Vaseline and powder. The light is a pink haze, puffy stars dangle overhead. The baby is beautiful, curled brown hair at her temples, pursed rosebud lips. Her body rises and falls in sleep. Behold! My daughter. My. Daughter. I rest a hand on her back to feel warmth, life, joy.
***
By 10 AM the house is sufficiently neat. The baby plays on the floor with her blocks and books while yeast proofs in a bowl of warm water. At noon, the dough rises in the oven. We eat lunch together at the kitchen table. With a steady hand I spoon pureed vegetable soup into her o-shaped mouth. Later, we stroll in the spring air. Cracked sidewalks lead to more cracked sidewalks, a palm outstretched, lines revealing mistakes, broken promises. Still, we amble under budding trees, pass small sad houses similar to ours. A stray dog follows, sniffing our trail. I resist annoyance, hold out a hand for a sniff. At the deserted playground, we glide on a rusty swing, scuff marks on sand.
On the way back, it sneaks in, a burglar through a back window: the dread of late afternoon. I attempt to untangle, smooth the jumble of dark thoughts emerging. Hail Mary, full of grace. I can’t sustain the prayer. I repeat different, well known words: Seconds lead to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, months to…
The baby naps. I sit hunched at the screen, bathed in computer glow. I examine a nearly empty inbox, my failed search for employment. Not so long ago I led a large parish, fielded untold questions and needs. I spent my days stretched thin between the living and the dying, an adept trapeze artist, balancing, flying, falling.
***
She arrives home at 3:30 PM, begins unravelling the peace I built throughout the day. The boy, eyes covered in bangs, follows close at her heals. He doesn’t greet me, darts to his room, a chipmunk running under a bush. I will not make him a snack, help him with homework. His mother will feed him. His father will collect him for baseball practice. The boy will leave and return in silence, never once meeting my eyes.
She stands at the counter, a dividing line between us. She boils water, crackles open a package of ramen, empties it into a pot. She holds a bowl from beneath, her tongue contorting to catch noodles in her open mouth. At the table I feed little bits of bread to our daughter.
On the counter, her phone repeatedly lights. Some unknown person insists on her attention.
“Must be nice,” she snipes without prompting, “to stay home.”
“You know I’m looking,” I say.
“Look harder,” she says, mouth full.
The thought comes without any warning, becomes words. I turn away from my daughter and say them carefully, as though practiced.
“What if I take her, just go?” I prepare for the roof to crack, collapse, plaster raining down, to shield the baby with my body.
She pauses, says, “When?”
She continues to slurp strands of noodles into her mouth, worms disappearing into an unknowable tunnel. The fork seems bigger than her hand. She is a tiny, bird like person. No, she is a giant who stomps on villages, shattering everything to tiny bits. She is a storm, a hurricane. Or am I these things?
“As soon as possible?”
“Fine. Perfect.”
She finishes, abandons the bowl in a clean sink.
***
Even this last night, we share a bed. Our backs face each other, untouching. She snores. I lay awake in the darkness, my mind flashing, memory’s lightning strike, my failures shocking in the flare, diminishing into waning thunder rumbles. My daughter sleeps in the next room, the calm after the storm, an expected surprise. I watch the window for the slightest glimpse of light. Its gentle fingers reach through the blinds, striping the bed. I whisper words to myself, a mantra, a prayer: I am a father still, her father. I will always be her father.
The House on Crook Road
Trembling with Fear/Horror Tree/Halloween Special, 2023
If he was honest, he’d have said he felt her presence on that first day. The house was cold, as it had always been during his childhood, and the grey November day made it seem more so. The emotions-joy and freedom-felt at the closing were replaced by a nagging uneasiness, like a thin scratchy sweater he couldn’t shed. He hoped his daughter would call. He willed his phone to light, a small-screen firework exploding in his palm. Hey, Dad, she might say, hope everything went well. Can’t wait to see the place. No such luck. The house creaked and groaned with all its familiar sounds. Clark slapped a peanut butter sandwich together. Chewing slowly, he stood at the window over the sink. A reflection, a shape of a person, a woman, formed and then disintegrated in the glass. He held the half-chewed food in his mouth, a dense cud. Outside, the trees distracted, wrestled with the wind, branches scraping along the sides of the sagging house.
***
Morning light stretched across the kitchen, revealing stained linoleum floors, pealing wallpaper. Repeating his last evening’s pose, he sipped coffee, examining the backyard out the window. The barn challenged like a sunburned child, red and pealing, hands on its hips, as if to say, Get on with it, Clark. Fix this place. Get to work. His father famously painted that entire barn with a six-inch brush in one month. Clark mowed the lawns. His mother and his sister Vera weeded the flower beds. They were all long gone now, dying one by one for different reasons, no rhyme or reason to it, everyone but him. Settled at the table he scribbled lists and sketched punctilious plans on a legal pad. He was handy, more than capable of rehabilitating the house. Showering, he imagined pounding feet up stairs. He shut off the water, stood naked and wet in the slow drip silence, listening. He would begin his work outside.
***
He started in the barn, chock full of rusted gardening tools, bicycles, lawn mowers, pieces of wood. Dragged into the light of the yard, the discarded stuff sat awkwardly, reminding him of old people in a nursing home, faded, hunched, lost. He fantasized about turning the place into an Airbnb. I could convert this barn to bedrooms. People might like it here. Energized by inspiration, he continued, resisting a familiar intruding voice, telling him to quit. Always the romantic! it scoffed. He thought of his ex’s negativity. Nothing he did was ever right, ever good enough. Everything he attempted was somehow foolish. He pushed her out of his head, cleaned all morning, stopping only for a second cup of coffee and sandwich.
In the lean-to behind the barn his father once kept a John Deer tractor. Clark stood tentatively for a moment at the doorway of the empty space. The dim light cascaded in slight slivers from the windows. A human form fell across the space before him. He turned in fear. A tiny figure loomed from a corner. Clark approached slowly, stooped to pick up the ragged bunny with a plastic face. Vera’s Baby Bunny. He remembered teasing her about the doll, hiding it. She cried for weeks.
You’re a dirty fighter, Clark, his ex had said, You’re a child. A stupid, dirty fighter.
He threw the doll on the heap for the junk collectors.
***
He managed to work out a daily schedule of breakfast, house work, lunch, nap, reading, a long walk, dinner, bed. He tossed up the noises and images emerging from the corners and crevices of the old house to the effects of change. So much had changed. Moving back here was meant to steady the ship, fix what was broken, heal. God, grant me the courage to change the things I can…
Christmas came. Clark put the tree up in its old place in the living room near the fire. The family Mitch Miller record turned, churning out the favorite tunes. His parents’ wedding photo, with his mother’s red nails contrasting with white lace and his father’s set jaw, asserted itself from the bookshelf. He wondered if he should keep it there, keep it at all. Too many mixed feelings.
How he missed his daughter, Abby! She’d chosen to spend the holiday with her mother.
“I need time, Dad,” she’d said.
He yearned for a drink, called his sponsor, nibbling at a cuticle as he spoke into the phone.
“The holidays are tough. You want to meet somewhere?” his sponsor said.
“No, no. I don’t want to bother you. I got this.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Clark ended the call, unplugged the tree, snapped on the television.
***
Well into spring Clark cleaned, cleared, hauled, stripped, painted, papered, polished, yet the house insisted on its original haggard expression. Fresh paint bubbled, new wallpaper lifted from the wall. In frustration he abandoned his many projects, stalked the ubiquitous antique stores and estate sales in town, searching for fresh furniture to fill the emptied house. Just the right things, that’s what the place needs, he assured himself. He walked along the road, picking up garbage tossed from cars, something he didn’t remember from before. Back in the day, this road was pristine.
He passed a threadbare, grey-faced woman sitting in a shadow. It was almost like she was the shadow, like a charcoal rubbing. He imagined himself blowing his breath toward her, her body breaking up, scattering into the wind.
“You move in down the road?” she said.
“I grew up here,” Clark said, smiling, faking vitality, enthusiasm.
“Nothing can be done there, no sirree. You’d better head back! Head back, that’s right!”
“Take care!” he dismissed, carrying on his false brightness, making his way to the graveyard where his entire family lay buried. The stern Methodist church sat beside it, new (at least to Clark) graffiti scribbled across its side.
***
At night, no matter the season, the wind kicked up and the trees banged into the windows. When it was particularly bad, he’d rise to study the backyard. The trees’ long dark fingers reached up and out like a woman’s graceful but strong hands. Vera playing the piano. He marveled at the trees’ strength and perseverance, hoped they were protecting him, feared they might reach out, suffocate him in their clutches. Sometimes he silently wished they would crash through, remove him, save him.
***
His father’s vegetable garden remained on the east side of the house, needing to be reframed and retilled and replanted. His mother, overburdened by its proliferation of squash, tomatoes, everything, hated the garden. Always the naysayer. Clark remembered believing in his father’s agricultural aspirations, helping plant, water, harvest. He loved picking and eating the sweet strawberries in June.
Exuberant in the early morning sun, he dug and planted and patted. He especially anticipated the pumpkins. He remembered the gourds of his childhood, the pale orange spheres nestled in giant green leaves. I’ll even have a vegetable stand, he speculated, picturing himself sitting on the back step husking armloads of corn.
Finally, Abby will come for a meal.
Summer passed. Each seed, plant, even the weeds, produced only withering, death.
Hands in pockets, he paced between the lines of plants, head drooping. Something shiny caught his eye. He squatted and pulled on the glittering speck, extending to reveal a gold necklace. Something long repressed emerged in his mind, his father snapping the same necklace from his mother’s neck. Clark knelt in the dirt. Rain fell. The dirt turned to mud. He sank further still.
***
At Halloween Clark bought three pumpkins and a packet of cigarettes at the grocery store in town. Settled on the porch, he carved, newspapers spread out beneath him, cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He stabbed out chunks of triangular eyes and toothy grins, gathered and trashed the soggy newspaper, set battery operated tea lights in each stringy hollow. He arranged his feet on the porch railing - the same way his father propped his legs after a long day - draining a cigarette of nicotine.
His mother’s antique clock ticked and tocked while he hunched over a bowl of tomato soup at the kitchen table. A slight smell of her Estee Lauder Cinnabon perfume tugged on his nostrils, made him slightly queasy. The doorbell stayed ominously silent. A stillness replaced the expected footsteps and voices gathering on the front step. The candy bowl on the side server remained full. The pumpkins’ frozen grins blazed into the night. The wind was kicking up. Clark decided to go out.
At Foxies, the bartender wore hilariously terrifying vampire teeth and a powdered white face. Clark blocked him out to focus on the thirty-something woman sitting at a corner table. Abby? He almost shouted his daughter’s name with joy. The woman’s foreign profile shifted into view.
“Lager,” Clark said, snapping back to reality, telling himself a lite beer would be fine. He really needed this. Just this once.
He sat on a barstool, glanced up at a blaring television.
A warmth came across him. He turned. A woman in dark clothes, wearing a cape, sipped a margarita by his side.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Clark replied, taking in her round, ageless face. She had the hooked nose of his mother, the china white skin of his ex, the strong brows of his sister, and Abby’s tiny spray of freckles across her cheeks.
“Aren’t you the guy who bought the house he grew up in?” she said.
“It’s not working out. I can’t fix anything,” he confessed.
She stared at him for what felt like a long time, forever actually. Her eyes were unique-green, bottomless ponds.
“Trust me, you can’t fix it. What’s done is done,” she said.
The bartender set the beer on the bar.
A tear escaped, rolling down Clark’s cheek. He resisted the urge to fall into the woman’s shoulder, collapse into her body, like a tree chopped through its trunk.
“You’re not the worst thing you’ve ever done. You’re not,” she said.
Clark followed her flowing cape out the door.
They drove through town, crossing the railroad tracks, headlights shining into the night. Clark’s cigarette’s tip burned red, tilted slightly out the window. He leaned his head back and dozed, enjoying the pleasing movement of the car, the woman’s scent, her confident control, the steady silence. They continued on this way, leaving the past, he hoped, behind, following the well-worn road into a fortress of trees.
In Which My Own Costumes Betray Me
Cream Scene Carnival, October 2023
I dropped the candy sack by the door. The makeup itched my skin. I stumbled into the darkened kitchen, grabbed a towel, wetted it, wiped off some of the fake blood. I didn’t want to look in the mirror.
Why’s that?
Embarrassed. Parker and Nora and everyone else went to Matt’s. I insisted on trick-or-treating. We used to have such a ball. I love-loved Halloween. Everything about it. The candy corn and the decorations. The- everything.
Keep going.
All the kids were in for the night. I should have headed over to Matt’s, or texted someone. The house was so dark. There was just that light over the stove. I couldn’t remember where Mom went- no note on the counter or anything. I felt very, very-
It’s okay to cry.
I know that.
Veneration
Literaria Magazine/October 2023
Miranda thought her robed and hooded classmates lumbered like eggplants, hauling themselves in purple robes around the cloisters, carefully protecting flimsy candlelight. A few freshwomen wept, rain streaked window faces. She remembered the giddy fear of her first time, not knowing what would come next. Katelyn’s delicately clumsy hands shook for days afterwards.
The bell tower tolled and the procession stopped.
President Flowers entered, identified by her long strides.
“Let there be light in darkness!” she exclaimed. A plaintive soprano soared from the crowd, singing the College anthem.
Miranda’s feet throbbed, rammed into those damned thrift store black loafers, but the togetherness of this final Candle Night teased normally blocked emotions. Where would she be next year? Med school? Research? God forbid she ended up back in Pittshead working at Good Prices. She wished she could stay right here, held within Sandstone College’s dank stone walls. When the songs ended, President Flowers praised the students.
“Well done, scholars! Now, as is tradition, I ask our newest faculty member, Splendid Marchmant, Chemistry, to lead you in the recitation of our college poem, “Out of Darkened Cloisters Come.”
The crowd hushed. Miranda focused her busy mind, searching in the darkness for the figure of
Splendid Marchmant. Bingo! Miranda fell into instant fascination with the pale owlish face,
trembling voice, the golden dog laying at the professor’s feet.
A roar of shouts and hoots followed the reading.
“Thank you, Dr. Marchmant,” President Flowers said, “That concludes our opening Rite.
Remember to conduct your own Rites with the grace and dignity of our institution. Good
night, my shining stars.”
“Good night!” the students shouted joyfully, thundering out of the cloisters, like a pack
of dopey elephants, Miranda thought.
***
Splendid had a rough Monday morning with Stanley padding a crime scene of mud across the kitchen floor. She wasn’t a tidy person, but couldn’t leave that mess all day. She entered the science building late, harried and breathless, tugged forward by Stanly nosing his way inside. She almost missed her office door, unrecognizable from an over-abundance of adorning paper flowers. A slender note dangled from the knob.
36
An Ode to Splendid
You came from the north to grace us with charm
Your intelligence beams from your fingertips, powerful light
Your soft smile and voice
An echo we long for in a silent cave
We adore you from afar
Rites Week. She pulled the note from the knob, tucked it away, leaving the decorations. She glanced up and down the hall before heading to her lab, her happy place. Today, infrared spectroscopy.
***
The very next morning, Miranda and Katelyn were delighted by Dr. Splendid’s acceptance of their invitation to lunch at the Carlton Dining Center. They found a table in the back, covered it with a cloth borrowed from dining services, adding napkins, silverware, and a little vase of supermarket daisies.
“Can I pour you some tea, Dr. Splendid?” Katelyn asked, hovering.
“Yes, please. Boy, you two really went all out! And you’re both so busy! Miranda, you said
you’re an RA, and Katelyn on the equestrian team!” she said.
Miranda’s face heated in embarrassment, enjoying the weight of her loaded dorm key ring in her pocket.
“We have a wonderful vegetarian meal planned for you, Dr. Splendid” she said.
“Please, call me Dr. Marchmant.”
Miranda noted the teacher’s drifting eyes, vacant expression.
“How’d you get your first name?” Katelyn blurted while Miranda placed bowls of soup from a tray.
“It was my grandmother’s,” she said, providing no other details, no inspiring story.
The three buttered their rolls.
“Why the dog?” Miranda asked. She’d thought of this question in the middle of the night, jotting it down in a journal.
“Stanley’s a service dog,” she said, again not very illuminating.
When she wasn’t eating, Dr. Splendid’s mouth clamped shut in a tight line.
“We’d love to come to your house for dinner!” Katelyn practically shouted above the cafeteria din.
They had not discussed this earlier.
“Oh no. My place is a mess. No visitors!”
Miranda eyed Dr. Splendid, watching her gulp the tea, noting she barely touched the chocolate cake bought especially for here at the expensive bakery in town.
***
The unwarranted attention imposed by Miranda and Katelyn felt confusing, dangerous. Splendid wished the so-called Veneration Rite would end.
On the third day of Rites Week, the girls were waiting at her office, like the Queen’s guards.
The decorations sagged, drooped, some had detached and lay stepped-on in the hallway. The girls wanted to take Splendid on a nature walk through the Pierce Gardens.
“Have you been there yet? They’re lovely!” the scarier one, Miranda, said.
Splendid noted the vine tattoo creeping from Miranda’s sleeve.
“I have seen it. I run there. Look, ladies, I need to catch up today.” She twisted Stanly’s leash. The dog stood alert, panting at her side.
“How do you know we’re ladies?” Miranda smirked. “We’re women, but we might not be ladies.” Katelyn reached out a hand to pet Stanly. Splendid reflexively jerked the leash.
“My apologies. As I said, I’ve got-” A familiar tidal wave of panic rose in her chest to her throat. These are the kind of conversations she needed to avoid, she told herself. She had to be careful, very careful.
“The cohorts and their hosts must participate in all Rites Week activities. Willingly. It’s a rule,” Miranda said, Katelyn bobble-heading behind her.
Splendid peered into her office, longing to enter, her bag full of paperwork dug into her shoulder. She had an appointment with her new therapist later. She breathed in deeply, tamping down the growing fire of fear and rage.
“Of course, if you’re too busy. Of course we’ll leave you be,” Miranda said.
“Thanks. Yes. I think I’d like to take a break today.” Dampness grew under Splendid’s arms. “We understand,” Miranda said.
***
That night, they donned their Candle Night capes and met at the cloisters. Miranda unfolded a paper slipped from her pocket- a Prayer for Those Who Resist.
Oh Holy Athena, come to our aid!
Open closed minds and hearts
They lit their candles, cold breath visible between bent, hooded heads. They sang the college song:
Sandstone, Sandstone
Our hearts rise up to
Sandstone!
Katelyn wept at the end, her big body shaking.
“She. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It,” she choked, “The honor of our Veneration!”
Miranda chewed on a ragged cuticle. As much as she pitied Katelyn, her tears brought a rip of anger. Who did this Dr. Splendid this she was?
“No, she doesn’t get it,” Miranda said.
***
“No signs of forced entry. Wouldn’t your dog have heard them?” the sharp-nosed police woman said, glancing at Stanley asleep on the floor.
“My dog! I think they drugged him. He’s been sleeping for hours. And my dirty dishes I’d left are washed, stacked in a different place-over here! My shoes-look!-all lined up in that weird
way. Everything is neat. My sock drawer. My desk. I’m not neat.” “Maybe you cleaned while sleep walking?”
Splendid stood there silent, blinking. This did not compute. “You really think it’s these two students of yours?”
“They’re not my students but they’re Sandstone students. They’re venerating me for Rites Week.”
“So you want me to go wake these kids up on a Saturday morning. You want to get the college administration involved? The parents?”
Splendid closed her eyes, tried to breathe.
“No, no, I don’t want that. Forget it,” she said.
“That’s a good choice, mam,” the officer said, “Let me know if I can be of any more help. I hope your dog wakes up.”
***
The last day, Saturday, they left Dr. Splendid alone. Miranda told Katelyn to stay in her room.
“Do a workout or something,” she said, drumming her fingers on her desk. Every piece of laundry was folded, her bedspread as tight as a drum. She didn’t know what to do with herself other than stew. She could put the finishing touches on Katelyn’s philosophy paper, but lacked
the inspiration.
If everything had gone correctly, Dr. Splendid would be seated here, in the middle of Miranda’s restrained, orderly room, eating a hot Indian take out. Afterwards, they planned to take her up to
the roof to stargaze. It was supposed to be a perfect clear night, too. Such a pity to waste it.
Katelyn’s Grandma Edith’s china remained inside Miranda’s closet, wrapped in plastic,
breakable as bird bones. Beside it sat the bottle of fancy champagne Katelyn snuck from her
father’s wine cellar over Christmas break, just for Veneration. Now, everything was cancelled
because Dr. Splendid, Dr. Marchmant, ruined it.
***
Splendid found the silence of that Saturday unsettling. The house constricted, like tight clothes
after a big meal. She paced around the first floor, plopped down in her office chair where she dashed off an early morning email, trying to make amends with the girls. After that she tried to work, grading and planning the week’s labs, distracted by the constant urge to check for a reply in her in box. She called Charity, considered sharing her woes, but found only voicemail. Splendid imagined her sister’s voice. “Remember how lucky you were last time? Those - what did they call them?- Microaggressions? Your Chair was very generous giving you the reference for Sandstone. And with your history, your diagnosis, you do not want to lose this job, right?” “But I thought I was being supportive! It was just an emoji!” Splendid imagined her defense. She had no appetite. Her hands shook as she held a glass of water to her lips. Running in the Pierce Gardens she half expected one or both of the girls to pop out, trip her.
Perhaps if she told them she had autism, maybe they’d forgive her? Before bed, she
began another message, clicking away on her keyboard, but she pressed the delete button, gobbling up the stream of words. Too desperate. She couldn’t hand over all her power, all the strength she’d worked so hard to build. Instead, in another message, she took on a new, robotic tone, adopting Miranda’s formal speech.
I regret not accompanying you on our walk. I have prepared for the final night of your
Veneration. I am so grateful for your attention. You have made my first year at Sandstone so, so
special.
Tossing and turning, clutching her sheets, fearing every shadow, every house settling sound, Splendid held onto Stanley, sinking her face into his fur. “Things will be better in the morning,” she whispered, all night long.
***
That same night, Miranda posted on Instagram a different email from Dr. Splendid, one in which
she called the girls parasites, stalkers, pathetic children.
“How can I politely say this?” the email read, “Fuck off.”
“That should do the trick,” Miranda said, whispering to herself as she made final evening rounds
of her dorm’s floor.
Everyone keeps secrets at Sandstone. Katelyn keeps my secret that I’m poor and smart and that I
went to a Christian school. I keep Katelyn’s secret that she’s filthy rich, but very stupid.
Together we will keep the secret that we know how and why Dr. Splendid will lose her job at
Sandstone. That we caused it. And Dr. Splendid will keep our secret that she knows what we did.
These are the rules to be followed.
She chanted this like a prayer, walking in quick steps back to her own room.
The next grey morning they headed to Marsh farm, the final stop in Dr. Splendid’s Veneration
Week, and where Katelyn boarded her horse Sprinkles. They planned to crown Dr. Splendid and have her ride around the barnyard, cape flowing, regal, a queen. Instead, Miranda
and Katelyn sat shivering at an old wooden picnic table eating peanut butter sandwiches. They
took turns wearing the royal wardrobe. Katelyn, crown askew atop her curly head, rode
Sprinkles in circles like an overgrown child. Miranda, not-into-animals, did not. Then they
drank the champagne in plastic flutes and drunkenly threw the roses they’d bought for Dr.
Splendid at each other. One of the thorns scratched Katelyn’s face, a red tear of blood trickled
down her cheek. Miranda laughed, but Katelyn didn’t seem to mind.
***
Splendid finished her probation and sensitivity training by May and followed her chair’s instructions to attend graduation. As she processed with faculty through campus to the outdoor stage, she banished the worry of Miranda and Katelyn’s trailing eyes. She stood straight, gripped Stanly’s leash, forced a proud smile on her lips, happy to disappear into a sea of regalia. When each of the girls crossed the stage to receive their diplomas, she straightened her shoulders and clapped enthusiastically, just in case someone was watching.
Afterwards, she leaned into a pillow of relief. Now, she could begin yet again, start fresh. She and Stanly ambled along the shaded path under the century old oaks, his leash slack, loose in her hand. They exited campus, reveling in dappled light.
At the college’s main gate, they saw her, Miranda. A low growl formed in Stanly’s throat. Splendid stopped, locking breath in her chest. Miranda appeared like a bent branch, small
beside the imposing stone arches, a few boxes and suitcases at her feet. A puttering sedan approached. Miranda loaded her things in its trunk, opened the passenger door, got in. The engine gunned and peeled away. Splendid watched Miranda and the car disappear in a cloud of rumbling exhaust, a bad witch melting, soon forgotten, soon replaced.
Bruce Tuesdays
Muleskinner Journal/Fall 2023
She watched the line stretch down the block from the front windows. Cars passed in a stream, unrelenting. Business people, regular people, those who did not need a free meal, crossed the street to avoid the crowd. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d seen them, the poor, the hungry. On a trip into the city with her grandmother for the Christmas show all she remembered afterwards was the homeless man shivering on a steaming grate, the elderly woman with smeared lipstick poking through the garbage, a dirty sleeping bag unrolled under a tree in the park. Before sleep each night, those images lingered. She worried and wondered about them all. She dreamed about the poor.
“C’mon in, everybody!” She propped open the front door and waved, welcoming the line. “Starting to rain. Dinner’s almost ready! Get a cup of joe and a seat!”
“Hey, Bethie, how’re ya?” John took her hand.
“I’m good, very good, glad to see you!”
She glanced once more out the door before closing it. Horns honked, someone gave someone else the finger. Life continued in the outside world of oblivion. Inside, she enjoyed a better view: her team of volunteers preparing a meal for the poor, all for free.
This was Beth’s dream come true, her nonprofit soup kitchen, “The Table.” The dream that mystified and disappointed her parents, repulsed her older sister, and destroyed her social and sex lives. How many people are living their dream? she often asked herself. Not many, she answered, not many at all.
Just Another Good Samaritan
Heimat Review/Issue 5/October 15, 2023
All the lawns on Mentone Avenue are mowed on Wednesdays. Not this Wednesday, though, Andrew thought. Not today. Andrew observed the week’s worth of summer growth from his window. Where’ s Dwight? Andrew moved away from the window to the kitchen. He dialed the faded numbers scrawled on the scrap of paper. Andrew stared into the spare room while Dwight’s phone rang without answer. A tightening gripped his chest.
Not the Time or the Place
The Bad Day Book/October 2023
Witcraft/February 2024
I drew the short straw and ended up leaning on the encyclopedia case in the reference section collecting raffle tickets, right outside the glass doors of the rare book room where the annual Holiday Gathering was coalescing. As each of the mostly elderly Friends of the Library entered, I handed them a small slip of paper and pencil, repeating directions: “You have to write your name. On the slip of paper. The slip of paper. Yes, that’s right.”
Shifting from foot to foot, staring into space, a bad idea crept into my consciousness. Perhaps writing some fun words on the raffle tickets would relieve my intense boredom?
In prior years, there was just one raffle winner, so what were the chances of my fake names getting called? Zero. Zilch. Hohoho, I scribbled, smiling, feeling brave. Falalalalala I wrote next, those first silly words loosening something tight inside me. Recklessly, a little hysterically, I started a series of names: Mike Rowave. Mag Azine. Jim Nasium. I allowed a small, insane giggle to escape my lips. I added another hohoho just to seal the deal.
Any good reference librarian would have asked the pertinent questions. What are you hoping to achieve by this? Is this actually funny? Is this respectful to the Friends of the Library? What will you do if one of your fake names gets called? How do you know for sure there is only one prize? Oh, that last question was one I should have pondered. But that end of the workday malaise, the presence of the very old, the ticking grandfather clock peering over my shoulder, the musty smell of books taunted, Write another phony name, who cares?
As it turned out, there were five prizes that year. When I approached my colleague, the tech guru who was in charge, to rescind my erroneous entries, her expression contorted. Her hold on the ticket bowl stiffened. We began this back-and-forth thing that went on a touch too long.
“What is your problem?” she asked, yanking one last time.
I let go, realizing I needed to stand back and watch how this thing was going to play out. Sweating slightly, I gnawed on a piece of candied grapefruit peel, bitter stuff we made fun of every year. I took my penance orally and leaned against the back display case, the one holding part of the Dead Sea Scrolls or something.
It was the old art librarian, wearing a mid-length black dress and pearls, an alumna and thirty plus year employee, who threw her hand in the bowl to pick the first name. I held my breath as she swished around. I repeated a newly formed mantra: There is no way. No way. There is no. Way. The intrusive grandfather clock ticked off the seconds. I sipped my punch, the sweet ginger-ale taste lingering in the back of my mouth. When her face screwed up in annoyance, I knew. I knew. She looked at the tech lady and said bitterly, “Someone. Is. Trying. To. Be. Smart.” Her hand crumpled the raffle ticket in, if not anger, deep annoyance. I looked around. The Friends of the Library shrugged, looking around themselves. Some didn’t hear. One man, head back, snored in deep snooze.
Then, my extremely elegant boss, the head of public services, took over, sliding her well-manicured hand into the bowl. Would she sit me down and lecture me after this? I deserved it, for sure. She landed on a ticket, removed, unfolded it. She then said, with her best annunciation, Mike Ro-Wahv, fancily pronouncing my joke name. No one flinched. She called it again. I shrunk, realizing how I should have told someone, just to have an ally, but it was too late, impossible. It was that day I learned that having a joke by yourself isn’t fun, not at all. The pain continued, like plantar fasciitis or a throbbing sciatic nerve. . She shook her head and reached in again. “Jim Nahsium?” calling the over- pronounced version of the name. She called out several times, looking for this Jim Nahsium fellow in the crowd. How could Mike and Jim not be here after entering the raffle? No one caught on. Nonplussed, she laughed slightly and returned her hand to the bowl for another name. Finally I shot forward, unable to withstand anymore.
“Those. Those were joke names. I put them in! Mike Rowave. Get it? Microwave. And Jim Nasium, like gymnasium?”
It all sounded so stupid, so infantile. One lady’s mouth dropped in horror. Others laughed uncomfortably. My face heated, beaded in sweat. The sweets I’d imbibed earlier curdled in my tightening throat.
“Well,” the tech lady said, “You will NOT receive your pack of greeting cards!”
My punishment, more embarrassing, more ridiculous than the crime.
Loss, Love
Pile Press, October 2023
This is a story about a friendship that flourished during a difficult season of life. This is a story about a connection formed long ago that still thrives, still sustains, thirty years later. This is a story about a time when I first learned that life’s darkness is inevitable, but that love stubbornly asserts itself, poking through in little slivers of light.
The summer of 1989 I was 19, living the dream working as a chamber maid at the Jersey shore. Every day, the maids gathered in an uncleaned room for lunch. One day, three young women from Scotland were introduced as new co-workers. Two had brown hair and one red. We immediately fell in together, discussing whether or not the RC brand of the cola I sipped stood for Roman Catholic. I knew nothing of Scotland or its people and lacked the Internet to expedite my knowledge base. I soon learned my new friends were friendly, fun, and hardworking. They hand washed their clothes and hung them on a line outside their boarding house to dry. They went to church every Sunday and drank copious cups of tea, even on the hottest summer days.
Out of the three Scottish girls, I formed the deepest connection with bright -blue- eyed Jen. We were both third year college students with summer birthdays. Stretching sheets across wide mattresses, we told each other about family, friends, our lives back home. We turned on the telly while we dusted nightstands, dancing around the room to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
There was a fateful quality to my connection with Jen. The previous December, my father came to Manhattan College to take me home to Syracuse, NY for Christmas break. On the way we heard that a plane exploded over Great Britain with a number of Syracuse University students on board, dropping from the sky over a place called Lockerbie, Scotland. We struggled to process the concept that young people, as young as me, could be snatched from their family, friends, their futures, in one instant. Jen’s hometown, Dumfries, was adjacent to Lockerbie. Her policeman father helped clean up the disaster. He returned home each night from the site, silent, traumatized. The cleanup went on half a year. A few months later, the spring before meeting Jen, my brother was diagnosed with a kind of cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When I travelled to the Jersey shore to work that summer, I carried my first load of major pain and grief, weighted by the fear of life’s fragility and unpredictability that has stalked me my entire life.
Coincidentally, Jen shared the uncanny information that her boyfriend Jim’s brother had also recently been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Just a few months before, I didn’t know any young person who had cancer, now I knew two.
So, the following January I went off to Scotland to study abroad. In Glasgow, I skipped all of my classes, haunted the bars, crushed on a nerdy guy at a bookstore, ate buttered toast every day and not one fruit or vegetable, served Guinness to old people at a bridge club, and bought pounds of clothes at the many charity shops. Conversely, my brother was at the University of Nebraska receiving a bone marrow transplant. Most mornings I stood at the mail table in the hall of my student house skimming my parents’ and siblings’ letters, trying to speed through them, skipping the bad parts. I wanted to block out the image of my brother’s young ravaged body, stripped of bone marrow, beaten with extreme chemotherapy, then radiation. I wanted to forget, so I headed out to Byers Road, where the charity clothing, chip shops, and flowing beer awaited.
Every week or so I’d show up at Jen’s flat despairing. She knew how to cook-something I didn’t do yet - offered me creamy mushroom soup, a hot slice of lasagna. I’d sleep beside her overnight, gathering strength before returning to my own wild existence across town.
Like a bad penny, I just kept coming back. Her three flat mates never seemed to mind my spontaneous arrivals at their front door or the fifth person queuing for the shower in the morning. Jen, Jim, and I often went out for nights at the student union, partying until wee hours under a sparkling disco ball to the beats of Depeche Mode and Erasure.
During spring break, I went home with Jen to Dumfries where I finally met her parents, sisters, dog, and pretty much every other relative in town. At the time I wore socks as gloves, a fashion choice that intrigued and amused my hosts. We went for walks in the forest, shopped in the town center, ordered Indian takeaway, and visited a pub frequented by Scotland’s poet, Robbie Burns. This was the first of a lifetime of visits to this place, this family.
At the end of the semester, the night before my departure for home, Jen, Jim, and I drank a lot, stayed up very late. The alarm clock shocked us awake and we staggered out of bed to gather ourselves and my luggage into Jim’s car. The photo of the three of us standing at the airport’s check-in still peeks from under the crinkly cellophane of my photo album. I stand between my friends, holding the plane ticket like a prize. We smile through exhausted young faces. Eventually, I pulled myself from Jen’s unyielding hug, walked to the gate without her. I cried the whole way back to New York. It felt like an ending, but it was really just the start. Jen has been with me through every loss and joy of my life. I don’t like saying things are meant to be, but that year I met Jen my universe shifted. Bad things happened too, but somehow she fell into my world and brightened and lightened my load. Was it magic or fate? I don’t know. Anyway, It’s much more than coincidence. It’s a lifelong friendship. It’s love.
