{For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Kurt gave me this prompt: "When you cut into the present, the future leaks out." -William S. Burroughs. I gave Chelle this prompt: "If you have to decide, then the answer is don't do it. If you have a choice, then the answer is no." -Bruce Springsteen}
[Trigger warning: I have seen other blogs do this, and I think it's a non terrible idea. This story involves some pretty intense stuff. So if you're of a delicate constitution, you may want to look away.]
One of my earliest memories was of riding the subway with my mother. I think we were going to a museum. I remember how noisy the trains were, the squealing brakes, the mild electrical smell, the way the lights would flash off and on again as the train went around a curve, the enormous additional roar of a train passing going in the other direction, the constant rattling and groaning of the metal as it was pushed along. I remember all the people- men in suits, women in skirts and jackets with sneakers, students slouching in dirty jeans, all the adults looming around me, towering and enormous, as I held my mother's hand. I remember watching her engaging in a halting conversation with an huge woman in a patterned dress with a scarf on her head. They were talking, but I couldn't understand them. I remember thinking, with all the train noise and these nonsense words passing between them, that I might be dreaming, or maybe something was wrong with my ears.
I was crying by the time we emerged into the sun, my mother stopping and sitting me down and asking me what was wrong. I told her that I didn't understand what she was saying to the woman on the train, and I remember her explaining that she was speaking French, and that French was just another way for people to talk. I remember her telling me that little girls in France had kittens just like I did, only they called them a different word. It was such a shock to me, that the world that I knew was so malleable. I must have seen those Sesame Street sequences with Spanish in them, but for some reason this was the encounter that brought the idea home to me that my view of the world was not necessarily the only one. I spent the rest of the day, I was told later, torturing my mother with translation questions, learning about le chat and la voiture and la bibliotheque.
I think the horror of that idea, my experience being subjective and not objective, never really left me. I understood the idea soon enough, that a truth uttered in innocence can turn to ashes upon hearing, that my thought never made its way into another's head without being mangled beyond recognition. I knew especially that boys, those mysterious, rough, dirty creatures that so stirred my blood, would not respond to my urgent pleas, their thinking not aligning with mine no matter how urgently I wished it. . At least, the right ones wouldn't. And later, after my body betrayed me, I had the opposite issue, lecherous peers and pathetic, lusty old men receiving messages I was not sending. I understood this, but I never really accepted it.
As a miserable, mopey young adult, bumping along, failing at school and in life, my parents tried the usual attacks on the problem, calling specialists, asking friends, engaging in long, drawn out talks as I wailed and moaned, essentially asking, in so many words, "What IS it? What do you need? What do you want? What can we do to help you out of this misery and into a life that suits our need to brag at cocktail parties?" Drinking didn't help. The drugs didn't help, they just made everything foggy and distant, and the talk therapy was so many words, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I kept thinking of Eliza Dolittle- "Words words words/I'm so sick of words!"
I could never communicate it, because the dread, the marrow deep fear that tomorrow is going to come, and that it is going to be just as meaningless and as gray and as flat as today, was somehow beyond my capacity to explain. It was too large for my mind to contain it, never mind try to convey it. I could say it is "like" this, or it is "as if" that, but in the old phrase sometimes attributed to John Lennon, talking about it is like dancing about architecture. If you have felt it, you know. If you haven't, I couldn't possibly show you.
So my latest therapist, Dr. Fox, asked me to make a collage, to explain how I was feeling in pictorial form instead of trying to use words. It felt stupid and childish, but to humor her, a pleasant little woman with graying hair who wore long Western skirts, I went up to my room with scissors and an Exacto knife, a glue stick, and a pile of magazines from the recycling pile. I started cutting out pictures, whatever caught my eye, ridiculous high heels on starlets, desserts dripping with fat and sugar, mansions behind white pillars, airplane seats reclined on transatlantic flights.
I was trying to excise an image of a comically large artificial breast from a picture, some glossy mess from Vogue or some such, when the craft knife's yellow plastic handle slipped on the slick page and, to my shock, I buried it in the base of the thumb on my other hand. I guess I have the average tolerance for pain- not having any basis for comparison, I wouldn't know. I certainly didn't relish discomfort, but at first, it was really the surprise of the blade entering my skin more than the pain of its entry. I watched, horrified, as blood rose swiftly to the surface on either side of the hard angled metal, quickly beginning to drip onto the open magazine page below. An ad for maxi pads, I noted with amusement.
I got the idea all at once, like one of those movies where the frame dissolves and you can see what the character was thinking. I remembered seeing a painting, David's "The Death of Marat," the main character murdered, dead in the bathtub, stabbed by a conspirator, and suddenly I could picture myself, naked, my skin loose and flabby, the water tinged pink as my blood leaks away into it, my arms hacked open with my own fury. Like any depressive, I had considered self slaughter, but had never summoned the will. As sudden as a flash going off, I could see it as if it had already happened.
There was a comedian I saw once, really late at night on HBO, who said that suicide, in an adult, was like someone walking out of a movie halfway through. It was possible that the movie would suddenly get better, but if you have hated the first 45 minutes, what are the odds that the second 45 are going to be a lot better? I had given life a quarter century, and it had disappointed me at every single turn. I couldn't go on, and as my thumb started to throb, I looked at the silver blade, vibrating as my hand trembled, and I smiled.
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
SS: "Cold Turkey"
I was thinking about John Lennon's "Cold Turkey". Supposedly he had been through withdrawal before, and that was what made him write the song. Nothing is like withdrawal, exactly- it's like women who say that nothing can be compared to childbirth. I suppose nothing could. But withdrawal wasn't just pain, it was a terrible restlessness, pain along with itching and nausea and diarrhea and a general sense of your body not belonging to you. You started to understand why people would kill, or abandon children, or walk away from careers, in order to avoid the feeling. It is as close as I ever felt to wanting to die.
I stared at the inside of the closet, the mops and cleaning solutions all around me, the precious box clutched to my chest. I fumbled with the flap, and then screwed the needle on top. I flipped up my scrub, feeling around for a bare patch of skin. I sucked in a breath when the needle pierced my skin, pushing the plunger down, feeling the sting and picking up the gauze I had dropped on the cement floor.
I felt relief, even though I knew that the drug hadn't taken effect yet. My breathing slowed, and I felt the tension release in my shoulders. I knew I was going to get caught, and I knew I was going to be fired again, but for that moment, for those few minutes as it eased its way into my blood, unknotting my guts, slowing the sweat on my brow, relieving the rush of my thoughts, I was an addict, I knew that, but as much shame as that engendered, the relief of knowing that the awful suffering was almost over, made me feel like I was flying.
SPE: "Eyes Of A Stranger"
[For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Jester Queen gave me this prompt: "When it grew cold, I shut the door. But I left the window open, hoping possibilities might pour in with the night air." I gave SAM this prompt: "People say they love a lot of things, but they really don't. It's just a word that's been overused." -Bob Dylan]
She piles her hair up every morning, an enormous cantilevered bun secured by pins and stays and clips, only releasing it when she was home with me and ready for bed. It seemed like an enormous amount of effort, but I certainly enjoyed the effect it had. It was like she saved a version of herself, a Jen only I got to see, a long haired, raven goddess with locks unkempt and matted with sweat and smoke and hairspray and whatever other smells she had encountered. If I sat on the bed while she brushed it out, it was like a summary of her day- the grease of the subway, the hickory of the steak place where they went to lunch, the tobacco of the group of outcasts outside the back door through which she dashes to catch her train.
I came in and stood beside her as she sat there, fluffing and combing through her mane, releasing the codes of her day.
"Shut the door," she said. I listened for the "please" that never came, then turned and closed the door. She was always cold, anywhere up to nearly 90 degrees causing her flesh to pimple and the fine hair on her arms to stand on end. It was a warm night, but not really a hot one, and I would have been comfortable to lay on the bed and let the occasional breeze dry our skin. But I didn't even ask.
"What are you doing tomorrow?," she asked, getting up to wash her face. I watched her strip off her nightgown, to avoid getting it wet. I watched her bend over the sink, her breasts small and sad under her thin back as she cleansed and dried and moisturized.
"I have some research to do," I said. "Some microfilm that isn't digitized." My historical novel was coming together, but I felt like I needed more period detail, which would require a few hours in the library.
She sighed. "We haven't gone anywhere in a long time. Can't we go to the beach or something?"
I watched her straighten up, settling her nightgown over herself, tugging and adjusting, focusing her brown eyes on her reflection. I thought about the deadlines bearing down on me, the rewriting and the polishing, the days that were slipping away. I felt the yawning maw of failure behind me, one push and what passed for my career would slip away into nothing. I thought about the hard shoes she wore, the tight slimming pencil skirts, the two hundred dollar blouses, the late night phone calls and arguments that left her dinner congealing on the plate while I listened to half a conversation I couldn't understand. I thought about the power imbalance that I said never bothered me, her salary paying the bills, my occasional checks from articles and short stories sometimes buying dinner.
"Sure, if you want," I said softly. I didn't feel like I could refuse her. I never did. She came across the room and climbed into her side of the bed. She yawned and stretched.
"I'm exhausted," she said. She pulled the sheets up and pulled her hair together, then let it go, the flood of darkness blanketing the middle of the bed. I slid my arm around her trim waist, and brought my lips to her ear.
I was about to say something, when she said sleepily, "Not tonight. I have an early meeting."
"Good night," I said, and kissed her ear. I wasn't asking for sex. I was offended that she assumed I was. We used to click on every imaginable thing. More recently, I couldn't understand anything that was happening: it was like living with a stranger.
I turned away from her, staring at the closed window. I heard her slipping into sleep, her breath slackening and deepening. I felt hot already, but if I opened the window, she'd be awake in seconds. I thought about Paul Simon's lyric, "I like to sleep with the window open, and you keep the window closed, so goodbye, goodbye, goodbye."
She piles her hair up every morning, an enormous cantilevered bun secured by pins and stays and clips, only releasing it when she was home with me and ready for bed. It seemed like an enormous amount of effort, but I certainly enjoyed the effect it had. It was like she saved a version of herself, a Jen only I got to see, a long haired, raven goddess with locks unkempt and matted with sweat and smoke and hairspray and whatever other smells she had encountered. If I sat on the bed while she brushed it out, it was like a summary of her day- the grease of the subway, the hickory of the steak place where they went to lunch, the tobacco of the group of outcasts outside the back door through which she dashes to catch her train.
I came in and stood beside her as she sat there, fluffing and combing through her mane, releasing the codes of her day.
"Shut the door," she said. I listened for the "please" that never came, then turned and closed the door. She was always cold, anywhere up to nearly 90 degrees causing her flesh to pimple and the fine hair on her arms to stand on end. It was a warm night, but not really a hot one, and I would have been comfortable to lay on the bed and let the occasional breeze dry our skin. But I didn't even ask.
"What are you doing tomorrow?," she asked, getting up to wash her face. I watched her strip off her nightgown, to avoid getting it wet. I watched her bend over the sink, her breasts small and sad under her thin back as she cleansed and dried and moisturized.
"I have some research to do," I said. "Some microfilm that isn't digitized." My historical novel was coming together, but I felt like I needed more period detail, which would require a few hours in the library.
She sighed. "We haven't gone anywhere in a long time. Can't we go to the beach or something?"
I watched her straighten up, settling her nightgown over herself, tugging and adjusting, focusing her brown eyes on her reflection. I thought about the deadlines bearing down on me, the rewriting and the polishing, the days that were slipping away. I felt the yawning maw of failure behind me, one push and what passed for my career would slip away into nothing. I thought about the hard shoes she wore, the tight slimming pencil skirts, the two hundred dollar blouses, the late night phone calls and arguments that left her dinner congealing on the plate while I listened to half a conversation I couldn't understand. I thought about the power imbalance that I said never bothered me, her salary paying the bills, my occasional checks from articles and short stories sometimes buying dinner.
"Sure, if you want," I said softly. I didn't feel like I could refuse her. I never did. She came across the room and climbed into her side of the bed. She yawned and stretched.
"I'm exhausted," she said. She pulled the sheets up and pulled her hair together, then let it go, the flood of darkness blanketing the middle of the bed. I slid my arm around her trim waist, and brought my lips to her ear.
I was about to say something, when she said sleepily, "Not tonight. I have an early meeting."
"Good night," I said, and kissed her ear. I wasn't asking for sex. I was offended that she assumed I was. We used to click on every imaginable thing. More recently, I couldn't understand anything that was happening: it was like living with a stranger.
I turned away from her, staring at the closed window. I heard her slipping into sleep, her breath slackening and deepening. I felt hot already, but if I opened the window, she'd be awake in seconds. I thought about Paul Simon's lyric, "I like to sleep with the window open, and you keep the window closed, so goodbye, goodbye, goodbye."
Monday, January 21, 2013
100 Word Song: "Lunch Date"
(My friend Lance, who is really a friend to all, issues a 100 Word Song challenge this week from a group I had never heard of, Tame Impala, and a song, "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards", of which I was equally unaware but which recalls solo John Lennon for me, a description about which I can only say me gusta.)
She was eating a salad, while I had a sandwich. The cafe was half full with couples like us, pretty women with glasses and men who didn't deserve them. I sipped my beer, trying to make it last, not wishing to fight about ordering a second one.
"Are you happy?," she said.
"Yes," I said. I was.
"You don't think we are growing apart? It feels like we're stagnating. It feels like we only go backwards."
I didn't mind going backwards, I thought. I liked the past. I understood it.
"I don't think so. Do you?"
She didn't say anything.
She was eating a salad, while I had a sandwich. The cafe was half full with couples like us, pretty women with glasses and men who didn't deserve them. I sipped my beer, trying to make it last, not wishing to fight about ordering a second one.
"Are you happy?," she said.
"Yes," I said. I was.
"You don't think we are growing apart? It feels like we're stagnating. It feels like we only go backwards."
I didn't mind going backwards, I thought. I liked the past. I understood it.
"I don't think so. Do you?"
She didn't say anything.
Trifecta Writing Challenge: "Brake Job"
(My friends at the Trifecta Writing Challenge, who agree with Gary Cherone that there are Three Sides To Every Story, issued their usual challenge with a multipurpose word, "Bitch".)
She always smiled when she handed us the keys. She was a pert little blonde, with wide blue eyes and a trusting mouth. Everyone had a crush on her, I think, and fights nearly broke out to volunteer to drive her back to the huge house behind the iron gates. It wasn't her sporty little car this time, but instead his, the big muscular Audi, which needed new brakes.
I drove her home this time, taking her up the hill in a Chrysler that was nice enough, but looked out of place in front of her magnificent home. She frowned as she got closer to the front door, as if the house scared her. She never said it directly, but she certainly gave the impression she was unhappily married.
"You'll call when it's done?," she asked.
"Of course," I said. "And I'll come back and get you."
"I'd like that," she said, flashing some thigh as she got out of the car.
I drove back down the hill, wondering why someone so beautiful would stay in a bad relationship, musing about what a bitch brake jobs were and how easy it would be to do the job imperfectly.
SPE: "Electron Blue"
(For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Andrea gave me this prompt: Write something inspired by this quote by Marguerite Duras: "It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.". I gave Kurt this prompt: "I don't think anger gets anything done." -Jeffrey Tambor)
He had a Chicago Blackhawks shirt on. I thought that was stupid, because he wasn't from Chicago and didn't even like hockey all that much. But it had become abundantly clear he didn't care what I thought any more. I didn't intend for it to end this way. I didn't intend for it to end at all, but I certainly didn't intend for it to end like this. He opened the bathroom door with my bag in his hands. He had yellow foil packets in his hands. "I knocked your purse off the table," he said grimly. "What are these?"
"Jesus!," he said. His face got red when he exerted himself, and his forehead was looking rosy and pink. He was standing inside the bathroom door, which was something that he hated when I did it. I was in the position one assumes in that room, looking up at him, a mixture of guilt, fear, and revulsion gnawing at my guts. Well, I thought ruefully, if I'm going to throw up, at least I'm in the right room.
"Do you even know what the truth is, Sherry? I mean, if that's even your name! Jesus! " He stormed out of the room again. He wasn't an angry person, generally. He had never blown up at anything like this before. I knew I had blown it, lost it forever like your keys falling into a storm drain. But I didn't see any good reason to get up, so I just stayed there. I had been caught in little white lies before, but I could tell this one had broken him. There wasnt any good reason for me to have those little packets from Planned Parenthood unless I wasn't what I had told him I was.
We met three months ago. I was genuinely in desperate straits at the time- that part was true. I was standing under an awning, an enormous red duffle bag at my feet. I didn't know where to go, so I was just standing there, staring at the rain that poured down all around, a hard, judgmental rain. I had three books, two REM CDs, and maybe 5 changes of clothes. That, plus what I was wearing and $37.21, was the sum total of what I had to my name. Stephen had changed the locks, throwing everything that he said was mine into the duffle bag and leaving it outside the door, and not answering no matter how much I pounded on the door.
So I wrestled the bag down to the street, and just decided to stand there until something occurred to me. I could call Maureen again, but I could tell she was getting tired of me. I didn't feel like listening to Jeff's lecturing, and Mom was, for lack of a better word, impossible. So I stood there. I guess I looked pretty pathetic, because Allan stopped dead in front of me about 10 minutes later.
He wasn't bad looking. Kind of dorky, with dark scruffy hair that curled, an uneven mass of facial hair. He was tall, with the kind of pot belly and pallor that writers and gamers get from spending too much time inside and inactive. It's not like I had anything to speak about as far as bodies go, but it's true- Allan was pasty and weak and sad, but very kind. I knew him in that way you know people in your neighborhood. I would see him at the pizza place, at the coffee shop, waiting in line at the post office. I knew he lived somewhere nearby- he had to, the amount I saw him. I never saw him with anyone, so I assumed he was single. Or gay.
Allan stopped and stared at me. I had a white band t shirt on, along with a purple bra that you could see when the shirt got wet, and some tan pants, and a pair of old sneakers that used to be pure white. Allan was dressed much more sensibly, a light jacket, some thick shoes that looked waterproof and warm, a black t shirt with the beginning of pi spelled out on it, and jeans. He stared at me for a moment.
"Hi," was all he could muster. "You look sad."
I probably did. That wasn't a lie either. "Yes."
"Waiting for someone?"
"Not really," I said. "No one is coming for me."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know," I said, and I started crying. The ability to cry almost instantly had served to short circuit awkward conversations with men before, but this was at least half genuine. I managed to sputter something about Stephen throwing me out and another woman and how I didn't know where to go, which was mostly the truth, and he gallantly offered his couch. I honestly didn't intend to work that angle, but once I saw that it was open, my instincts kicked in, and before I knew it, I was stripping inside his bathroom, taking a very hot shower while he washed and dried my clothes that I decorously handed out through the door.
The lies had accumulated gradually, little untruths that seemed harmless piling up like the stuff in a junk drawer you never clean out. A brother who died, a father in the Army, an abortion at 14, all little things that I slid into conversation to measure their impact in his soft blue eyes. I knew from the first moment I walked into his place that we were going to be lovers, but I let him do the work, pulling me out of my shell, establishing trust. I knew men like him needed a quest, a project they could work on and obsess over. Every time I lied, my stomach clenched, but I said it anyway, forgetting about the shame when his face softened and he embraced me.
I'm sure he probably thinks I don't love him any more. I would, if someone had done to me what I just did. But the thing was, I did. I cared about him. He was sweet, and so gentle, and his body wasn't perfect, but I had gotten used to it, the way it felt when he held me. I just couldn't stand my good fortune. I couldn't see how anyone could find me appealing, so I inflated and exaggerated and simply lied to make myself into the person I saw in his eyes. It was never a thoughtful matter- I didn't think about it, it just came out in a reflex like any other bodily function. I neverr had a plan, just a grifter's confidence that something would present itself to get me out of it.
When I heard him crying in the other room, I reassembled my pants and conspicuously washed my hands and face, staring into my reflection, drawn and thin with pain, wondering if I knew who was looking back. "Jesus," he kept saying. I came out of the bathroom, ringlets of hair near my face still holding droplets of water that refracted the light in the room. He was staring at the floor, his head in his hands, muttering "Jesus," to himself, over and over again. I was thinking about an REM song, the one on the CD that was going to end up in my bag again, the one where Michael Stipe sings, "you, you know where to run/you run electron blue."
I didn't know where to run.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
SPE: "Sliced Carrots"
[For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Dara gave me this prompt: "The heart has its reason which reason knows nothing of." -- Blaise Pascal. I gave SAM this prompt: "If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you're still in the [expletive] tunnel." -John Oates]
She was cutting carrots to put into a salad. I hated carrots, but I never told her that, a first stupid little betrayal, as it turned out. I could see the salad ingredients in the glass bowl on the counter, the bottle of oil she was about to dress them with, the expensive salad tongs sticking out of the pile of greens and reds and whites and yellows. I could smell the bread baking, and marinara sauce simmering away. The smell of the oregano made my mouth water, and I felt a pang of hunger. I kicked myself mentally, for the thousandth time, for taking something that was perfect and precise and lovely and shattering it on the sidewalk like a spoiled child.
I was behind her, coming from the living room into the kitchen. I liked to watch her when she didn't know she was being watched. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, her shirt still dark with sweat. Yoga, I thought, or the gym. She alternated, trying to keep her body as schoolgirl hard as when we met. I appreciated the effort, just like the way she always presented herself fully dressed at dinner. I was about to destroy her conception of the world, toss it aside like a subscription card for a magazine you'll never read, and I was noticing that she was chopping carrots on a dark black wood cutting board that I had bought her because some TV chef used it. It's funny, the things you notice.
I had lucked out, because Mozart was pouring from the Bose radio in the kitchen. I had prayed all the way home that she wasn't tuned in to NPR or one of those happy talk local news shows with the overdressed anchors. When I had confessed to the gaggle of reporters, sitting around my office, staring at me with mixed horror and fascination like I had just lost the World Series, I had begged them for a one hour embargo, which they mercifully agreed to, so I could be the one to tell her. I trusted them, but I knew how these things worked, too. Some bright intern puts two and two together, and puts it on Twitter, and before you know it, they are camped outside my door. That was coming, but I wanted to tell her first.
It was stupid, really. There wasn't anything I could do to cushion the news at all. It was what it was, and no amount of pretty speechifying would make it something else. Telling her first would allow her to have her meltdown here, in private, before facing the world. She could put herself back together, decide what her story was, figure out what to tell her friends, away from the eyes of the world. I had seen it happen before, to colleagues near and far, and what happened was the opposite of that. You were an instant punch line, subject to jabs everywhere from the talk show circuit to morning radio to the line at Starbucks. I had decided, since I had taken everything else, I could at least give her that small gift, a few moments to collect herself before I make her a spectacle.
I had been reading a book about the fall Imperial Japan, and how much they talked about saving face. Perhaps you had to be there, or maybe it is a peculiarity of that culture. But I never really understood the focus, the obsession, the single minded pursuit of appearance over reality. It was as if they believed that it appeared that they hadn't lost, then maybe they hadn't really lost? That seemed myopic to me. If you've lost, no amount of appearance mending will change the fact that you have been defeated.
I must have stepped on a creaky board, because she jumped and turned to face me. "Oh God! You're home. What are you doing home? I have to go shower! But you had that meeting today, didn't you? With the money guys from upstate?," she said, her words tumbling out like overeager puppies.
I did have that meeting, up until 3 hours ago. Robert, my chief of staff, had smartly stepped in and cancelled it the moment I told him of the firestorm that was coming. He looked at me, his eyes black and cool, and said calmly, "Did you love her?" I didn't know how to answer him. I stammered something, talked my way out of my other commitments, and was headed home in mid afternoon, 2 hours early.
I looked at her, her hand still on the knife, the pile of carrots ready to be scraped into the bowl. She was beautiful, I had to admit that. 30 years and four children left their marks, but she could still fill out an evening dress, talking the talk and walking the walk, that plastic smile now part of the outfit as surely as the understated pearls and the high heeled shoes. I had tossed it all away, everything that I knew, to chase a half remembered dream of a man I used to be. I looked at her face, a single strand of hair come loose and hanging in front of her eye, and I wanted to be anyplace else than where I was.
"Not that I'm not happy you're home," she continued gaily. "What happened?"
"It was cancelled," I said, my mouth dry.
"Oh," she said. She picked up the cutting board and scraped the carrots into the bowl. "Toss this, will you, while I grab a shower?"
"Sure," I said.
She left the room without another word. I set my attache case down and walked over to the salad. I picked up the tongs and began to mix the ingredients. There was too much, as usual- I would wind up taking a container full of it back to work, and throwing it out and buying a steak or a cheeseburger instead. I tried to form the words to tell her, to explain, to make sense of the haze of allegations and threats and innuendo and a young woman in a short dress that was about to sink its claws into my respectable little life. I tried to form the words, but instead I just jumbled the ingredients, carrots and cucumbers and lettuce and tomato and croutons, until they lay there, mixed and vulnerable and dry, under expensive lights in a home that suddenly felt very strange.
She was cutting carrots to put into a salad. I hated carrots, but I never told her that, a first stupid little betrayal, as it turned out. I could see the salad ingredients in the glass bowl on the counter, the bottle of oil she was about to dress them with, the expensive salad tongs sticking out of the pile of greens and reds and whites and yellows. I could smell the bread baking, and marinara sauce simmering away. The smell of the oregano made my mouth water, and I felt a pang of hunger. I kicked myself mentally, for the thousandth time, for taking something that was perfect and precise and lovely and shattering it on the sidewalk like a spoiled child.
I was behind her, coming from the living room into the kitchen. I liked to watch her when she didn't know she was being watched. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, her shirt still dark with sweat. Yoga, I thought, or the gym. She alternated, trying to keep her body as schoolgirl hard as when we met. I appreciated the effort, just like the way she always presented herself fully dressed at dinner. I was about to destroy her conception of the world, toss it aside like a subscription card for a magazine you'll never read, and I was noticing that she was chopping carrots on a dark black wood cutting board that I had bought her because some TV chef used it. It's funny, the things you notice.
I had lucked out, because Mozart was pouring from the Bose radio in the kitchen. I had prayed all the way home that she wasn't tuned in to NPR or one of those happy talk local news shows with the overdressed anchors. When I had confessed to the gaggle of reporters, sitting around my office, staring at me with mixed horror and fascination like I had just lost the World Series, I had begged them for a one hour embargo, which they mercifully agreed to, so I could be the one to tell her. I trusted them, but I knew how these things worked, too. Some bright intern puts two and two together, and puts it on Twitter, and before you know it, they are camped outside my door. That was coming, but I wanted to tell her first.
It was stupid, really. There wasn't anything I could do to cushion the news at all. It was what it was, and no amount of pretty speechifying would make it something else. Telling her first would allow her to have her meltdown here, in private, before facing the world. She could put herself back together, decide what her story was, figure out what to tell her friends, away from the eyes of the world. I had seen it happen before, to colleagues near and far, and what happened was the opposite of that. You were an instant punch line, subject to jabs everywhere from the talk show circuit to morning radio to the line at Starbucks. I had decided, since I had taken everything else, I could at least give her that small gift, a few moments to collect herself before I make her a spectacle.
I had been reading a book about the fall Imperial Japan, and how much they talked about saving face. Perhaps you had to be there, or maybe it is a peculiarity of that culture. But I never really understood the focus, the obsession, the single minded pursuit of appearance over reality. It was as if they believed that it appeared that they hadn't lost, then maybe they hadn't really lost? That seemed myopic to me. If you've lost, no amount of appearance mending will change the fact that you have been defeated.
I must have stepped on a creaky board, because she jumped and turned to face me. "Oh God! You're home. What are you doing home? I have to go shower! But you had that meeting today, didn't you? With the money guys from upstate?," she said, her words tumbling out like overeager puppies.
I did have that meeting, up until 3 hours ago. Robert, my chief of staff, had smartly stepped in and cancelled it the moment I told him of the firestorm that was coming. He looked at me, his eyes black and cool, and said calmly, "Did you love her?" I didn't know how to answer him. I stammered something, talked my way out of my other commitments, and was headed home in mid afternoon, 2 hours early.
I looked at her, her hand still on the knife, the pile of carrots ready to be scraped into the bowl. She was beautiful, I had to admit that. 30 years and four children left their marks, but she could still fill out an evening dress, talking the talk and walking the walk, that plastic smile now part of the outfit as surely as the understated pearls and the high heeled shoes. I had tossed it all away, everything that I knew, to chase a half remembered dream of a man I used to be. I looked at her face, a single strand of hair come loose and hanging in front of her eye, and I wanted to be anyplace else than where I was.
"Not that I'm not happy you're home," she continued gaily. "What happened?"
"It was cancelled," I said, my mouth dry.
"Oh," she said. She picked up the cutting board and scraped the carrots into the bowl. "Toss this, will you, while I grab a shower?"
"Sure," I said.
She left the room without another word. I set my attache case down and walked over to the salad. I picked up the tongs and began to mix the ingredients. There was too much, as usual- I would wind up taking a container full of it back to work, and throwing it out and buying a steak or a cheeseburger instead. I tried to form the words to tell her, to explain, to make sense of the haze of allegations and threats and innuendo and a young woman in a short dress that was about to sink its claws into my respectable little life. I tried to form the words, but instead I just jumbled the ingredients, carrots and cucumbers and lettuce and tomato and croutons, until they lay there, mixed and vulnerable and dry, under expensive lights in a home that suddenly felt very strange.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
100 WS: "Prom Night"
{The busy ministrations of Leeroy and his human novelist pal Lance produce another 100 Word Song this week, the Afghan Whigs' "Debonair". This is called "Prom Night".}
"You're going to be careful?," she said for the seventh time.
"Yes, Mom," I said. She knew we would be careful, but she said it anyway. I was obsessively smoothing the front of the black jacket. Wendy was standing in front of me, her legs primly together, her eyes shining with promise.
"You look good. Handsome. Debonair," she said. "You both look perfect. Like you belong on a cake." Wendy smiled.
"Thanks, Mom," I said. I wasn't the sort of man the tuxedo would suggest.
We stepped outside, heading for my car, ready for some things, but not for this.
"You're going to be careful?," she said for the seventh time.
"Yes, Mom," I said. She knew we would be careful, but she said it anyway. I was obsessively smoothing the front of the black jacket. Wendy was standing in front of me, her legs primly together, her eyes shining with promise.
"You look good. Handsome. Debonair," she said. "You both look perfect. Like you belong on a cake." Wendy smiled.
"Thanks, Mom," I said. I wasn't the sort of man the tuxedo would suggest.
We stepped outside, heading for my car, ready for some things, but not for this.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Master Class: "Stuck"
{The magical Eric Storch offers yet another Fiction Challenge, this one called the Master Class, which gives you a starter sentence and lets you go where you wilt. His sentence this week is from Dodie Smith's "I Capture The Castle", and the sentence is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."}
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I wasn't planning to do this- it is an uncomfortable place to sit. It's not designed for that. My life feels like that- like it was ill designed, poorly planned, intended for another. Living in a trailer was not part of the plan, having a baby in high school wasn't part of the plan, and having them take the baby because you couldn't take care of it wasn't part of the plan. None of this was as I intended.
"Failing to plan," my history teacher said, "is planning to fail." He said it so much he bought a frame and hung it on the classroom wall. Or maybe somebody got it for him. I don't know. I had stopped listening to anyone but myself and my hormones at that point. I had thought about him, Mr. Archibald, a lot recently. One day he stopped me as I was leaving class and said to me in a very solemn voice that some day, I was going to regret the path I had chosen.
I was thinking about him because, as much as I laughed at him that long ago afternoon, the old man was right. I did regret the choices I made. Or the choices i failed to make. All the lies I swallowed, the things I believed not because I thought they were true, but because I was too stubborn to admit that I could be wrong about him. Too stubborn to admit I didn't know everything.
He was lying on the floor in front of the sink. The blood was pooling on the floor, a giant purple mass that was already starting to make everything smell bad. I thought about running, of course. I guess everyone does. When your on again off again boyfriend insults your cooking and pushes you as your fat ass crosses in front of him to wash the dirty dish he made and you turn and bury the steak knife you had in your hand into the center of his beer belly, you think about running.
I couldn't think of any place to run to, no place that would take me in and let me explain, so eventually I just climbed up on the counter as the blood spread, inch after sickening inch, after he finally stopped moving and collapsed. Now I was trapped up here, in my nightgown and underwear, unwilling to step down into the blood that was soaking everything in its path. I hadn't planned to do any of this, but as surely as night follows day, I had, so I sit here in the sink, waiting.
I guess I can take out my phone and call the police. It seems unfair to make them chase me down, and I'm too tired to run. I look down at John, his head turned to the side, his eyes staring at nothing. I've known him longer than I've known anyone except my parents, and I've alternated loving and hating him for all that time. Sitting in the sink, looking at my lover, my tormentor, my batterer, my only friend, I tried to think of a reason to get down. But I just couldn't.
Saturday, January 05, 2013
SPE: "OK"
For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Tara Roberts gave me this prompt: "Like it never even happened." I gave Melissa this prompt: "So much of how we live consists of making meaning out of a bewildering jumble of images, of attempting to move as seamlessly as we can from one stage of life to the next." -Nick Hornby
"Do you want to stay in the car?," my mother said. Ever since I had told her, her features had been covered with this mask. No matter what she said or did, I could see the disappointment etched there, as clear as the nose she had passed on to me alongside my pasty features and large thighs. She denied it, tried to pass it off as no big deal, but the more I looked at her, the more I saw it. Something had happened, I had incurred a debt I could never pay back.
"Sure," I said. She turned the key long enough to roll down the passenger side window and then got out. The air was warm, slightly humid but with a gentle breeze. It felt pleasant, the reality of the outside air flooding in to replace the artificial cool of the air conditioning. I was actually chilly as we drove, but I didn't feel entitled to complain.
She disappeared from beside the window without another word. I could hear her shoes tap as she walked, echoing weirdly as she got farther from me. It was nice to finally be alone. Mom had picked me up in school, and since then she had been disturbingly close, hovering like I was a toddler again.
I understood why- she had always given me my space, understanding that I need privacy at times, which I appreciated. Since I had told her, there was none of that. She would open my door when I had closed it, quiz me about every phone call, and insist I account for every moment. I wasn't sure I would trust me, either, but it was stifling. It felt like I couldn't breathe without her there, silent, judging, watching.
I saw a girl and a guy walking by in front of the car. She was long and shapely, tossing long black hair away from her face as she laughed. He had tattoos on his shoulder and looked rough and a little mean. I could catch fragments of what they were saying, but I couldn't pick up the words. They seemed happy with each other, walking close enough that they seemed to be a couple. Or they wanted to be.
I watched her listen as he mumbled something only she could hear, and then she laughed again, too loud this time. I knew that laugh. It was a love me laugh, a pay attention to me laugh, a don't you think I'm so charming laugh. It was a laugh of want, a flirtatious laugh. "No," I wanted to yell to her. "Don't listen to him! It's all lies!"
I didn't know that. i didn't know him, and I didn't know her. He could be a sweet, gentle guy despite the scowl. He could be her cousin from out of town, or her brother's best friend. As many books as I read, as many things as I tried to understand, I had to remind myself that I didn't know everything. My experience wasn't universal, even though it felt that way to me.
My phone buzzed, and I took it out of my purse and looked at it. It was him. I stared at his name, the four simple letters. I didn't put a picture there, even though my phone lets you do that. The more I looked at him, the less I wanted to say no. And right now, although it's far too late to do any good, I'm going to learn to start saying no. His face was kind, thin and soft with a tiny cleft in his chin, and his eyes entranced me. I was pleased that he wanted to call, to check on me, but the thought of actually talking to him revolted me slightly.
He was sweet, but when I told him, it was like he was paralyzed. He seemed to have no feelings at all, just saying "OK," and "I agree", and "whatever you want". Which you would think would be fine, except you wanted some feeling. Some emotion, some fire, some energy of some sort that seemed appropriate for the event. Something had happened, and now it was over, and I felt strongly that it should be commemorated with something important. But nobody talked about it. But he, even he, the only other person who could possibly understand, he didn't give me that. He just kept saying, "OK."
It wasn't OK. I was glad he wasn't opposing me on this. But it wasn't OK.
My mother got back into the car, handing me a paper bag, stapled at the top.
"All the instructions are inside. Do you remember what the doctor said?"
"Yes," I said softly.
"Good," my mother said, sliding her bare foot out of her shoe and onto the brake pedal as she started the engine. "Are you in any pain?"
"Some," I said. It wasn't that bad, just sort of a gnawing discomfort. I knew to expect it, and it certainly wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't anything I had never experienced before. "Not that bad."
"OK," she said. "Pretty soon this will all be over, honey, and it will be like it never happened."
No, I thought. No it won't.
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
SPE: "Tumbling Dice"
(For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Eric Storch gave me this prompt: "Cindy said that Mike was really a vampire, but I didn't believe her. Mike didn't sparkle.." I gave Julia Mae this prompt: "I'm on the edge".)
[Author's Note: I appear to be writing again. I guess art is the only defense against madness. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to know better.]
"I'm serious." Cindy said that a lot. It was dulled by her repeated usage, to the point where I nearly forgot what the words meant. She was looking at me now, her dark brown eyes wide and lined with glittering eyeshadow. I wasn't following her. It was a bad habit, not listening, but I couldn't help myself. She would repeat herself, she always did.
Cindy answered our phones, and she didn't even do that very well. Her main qualification seemed to be wearing tight clothes. Her blouse glowed faintly purple in the half light of the bar. Nick's was the closest place to work to get a drink or something that approximated food. It was a hole, but it felt like home. She talks, and I half listen, until she finds the part of the conversation I really need to hear, and she doubles back to it. I had known her for years, and it was always the same routine.
"He's a vampire," she said. That's what I thought she had said, but I assumed I hadn't heard her correctly. That was a strange sentence, even by her relaxed standards. Cindy was always certain, but rarely correct. Somewhere in the background, I could hear a Rolling Stones song.
"You're not serious," I said. "Vampires aren't real, Cin."
"I am serious," she insisted. "He's a vampire. My boyfriend Jake said he is."
I sighed, watching her earnest face. She was sweet, always meant well, but she wasn't the brightest person. She swore, as I prepared to leave for the day, standing by her desk, trying to sneak a peek at her cleavage, that she had something very important to tell me, something she couldn't say in the office, so we adjourned to Nick's to discuss it. I needed a drink anyway, and she had the sort of body you didn't mind spending extra time in the vicinity of.
The bartender slid a pair of beer bottles in front of us. The barkeep was a redhead, tiny and mean in tight pants and a half unbuttoned blouse. I watched her walk away, somehow displaying disdain in her stride.
"What makes you...what makes Jake think so?" I could hear Charlie Watts, holding down the center of the song. Quiet, unassuming, absolutely essential. Subtle. It floated at the edge of my awareness, barely audible. "Tumbling Dice," I thought.
"He always comes in late and leaves early."
"That's when he is scheduled," I said. I was fighting a chuckle.
"He's always pale," she added. She looked at me, her eyes full of life.
"He doesn't get sun, working at night." Something caught her eye, and she half turned, like she expected him to jump her from behind.
"He never eats."
"He's a private person. Some people don't like eating in front of other people," I said.
"He talks with that accent." I nearly choked on my beer.
"He's Rumanian. You'd talk with an accent too if you learned English as an adult."
"He sparkles." She took a long, lingering drink.
"He what?," I asked. She had said a lot of things, and that was pretty close to the top.
"He sparkles," she insisted. "Yesterday, he walked by my desk and he sparkled."
"He sparkled."
"Yeah," she said. "On his arm."
"On his arm," I said flatly. "The arm that was resting on your desk? Next to the birthday card with the glitter on it? Is it impossible that had something to do with it?"
I knew as soon as I said it she wouldn't follow that sentence.
"Yes!," she said, exasperated. "Why won't anyone believe me?"
"Well," I said, "because it's nonsense, that's why. Vampires aren't real." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation with an adult human.
"Why would Jake say that, then?," she asked.
"I think Jake was having a little fun at your expense, Cindy." I couldn't say that I blamed him.
"I hate that," she said, her face hardening into a frown. "I hate it when people think I'm dumb."
"I don't think you're dumb," I said. That turned her head. It was a lie, but I let it sit, like the piece of bread nobody wants.
"You do," she said, but there was a hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth.
"I don't. Just because you know about different things, that doesn't make you smarter or dumber. Just different." I felt the click of something in her eyes. I had to watch carefully, but the odds were in my favor.
"Thanks," she said. Her eyes shone at me a little. Our beers were empty.
"Do you want another?," I asked.
"No, I better not," she said. I paid for the drinks, and we walked through the maze of tables to Nick's front door. She still had her work clothes on, a trim, clingy knee length skirt and black tights with knee length leather boots. It was cold outside as we walked to our cars. I watched her walk carefully.
We were parked two cars apart. I wondered what was going to happen. She was as dumb as a box of hair, but I didn't plan on asking her about Proust. There was hesitation in her walk, like she was waiting for me to ask.
"Where are you going?," she asked.
"Home," I said.
"Me too," she said. "Jake has to stay late tonight."
She stared at me for a long moment. I held her gaze. I had rules about pens and company ink, and rules about women who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I had rules, and the wind blew. Her skirt flapped once when a breeze hit it. I looked at her face, open and honest, with her lips the color of ripe plums. I couldn't, and I shouldn't, but it had been a long time since any voice but my own was heard in my apartment.
"See you tomorrow?," she said, half a statement and half a question.
"Sure," I agreed, and she got into her car.
"Damn rules," I said to myself, my breath fogging in front of my face.
[Author's Note: I appear to be writing again. I guess art is the only defense against madness. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to know better.]
"I'm serious." Cindy said that a lot. It was dulled by her repeated usage, to the point where I nearly forgot what the words meant. She was looking at me now, her dark brown eyes wide and lined with glittering eyeshadow. I wasn't following her. It was a bad habit, not listening, but I couldn't help myself. She would repeat herself, she always did.
Cindy answered our phones, and she didn't even do that very well. Her main qualification seemed to be wearing tight clothes. Her blouse glowed faintly purple in the half light of the bar. Nick's was the closest place to work to get a drink or something that approximated food. It was a hole, but it felt like home. She talks, and I half listen, until she finds the part of the conversation I really need to hear, and she doubles back to it. I had known her for years, and it was always the same routine.
"He's a vampire," she said. That's what I thought she had said, but I assumed I hadn't heard her correctly. That was a strange sentence, even by her relaxed standards. Cindy was always certain, but rarely correct. Somewhere in the background, I could hear a Rolling Stones song.
"You're not serious," I said. "Vampires aren't real, Cin."
"I am serious," she insisted. "He's a vampire. My boyfriend Jake said he is."
I sighed, watching her earnest face. She was sweet, always meant well, but she wasn't the brightest person. She swore, as I prepared to leave for the day, standing by her desk, trying to sneak a peek at her cleavage, that she had something very important to tell me, something she couldn't say in the office, so we adjourned to Nick's to discuss it. I needed a drink anyway, and she had the sort of body you didn't mind spending extra time in the vicinity of.
The bartender slid a pair of beer bottles in front of us. The barkeep was a redhead, tiny and mean in tight pants and a half unbuttoned blouse. I watched her walk away, somehow displaying disdain in her stride.
"What makes you...what makes Jake think so?" I could hear Charlie Watts, holding down the center of the song. Quiet, unassuming, absolutely essential. Subtle. It floated at the edge of my awareness, barely audible. "Tumbling Dice," I thought.
"He always comes in late and leaves early."
"That's when he is scheduled," I said. I was fighting a chuckle.
"He's always pale," she added. She looked at me, her eyes full of life.
"He doesn't get sun, working at night." Something caught her eye, and she half turned, like she expected him to jump her from behind.
"He never eats."
"He's a private person. Some people don't like eating in front of other people," I said.
"He talks with that accent." I nearly choked on my beer.
"He's Rumanian. You'd talk with an accent too if you learned English as an adult."
"He sparkles." She took a long, lingering drink.
"He what?," I asked. She had said a lot of things, and that was pretty close to the top.
"He sparkles," she insisted. "Yesterday, he walked by my desk and he sparkled."
"He sparkled."
"Yeah," she said. "On his arm."
"On his arm," I said flatly. "The arm that was resting on your desk? Next to the birthday card with the glitter on it? Is it impossible that had something to do with it?"
I knew as soon as I said it she wouldn't follow that sentence.
"Yes!," she said, exasperated. "Why won't anyone believe me?"
"Well," I said, "because it's nonsense, that's why. Vampires aren't real." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation with an adult human.
"Why would Jake say that, then?," she asked.
"I think Jake was having a little fun at your expense, Cindy." I couldn't say that I blamed him.
"I hate that," she said, her face hardening into a frown. "I hate it when people think I'm dumb."
"I don't think you're dumb," I said. That turned her head. It was a lie, but I let it sit, like the piece of bread nobody wants.
"You do," she said, but there was a hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth.
"I don't. Just because you know about different things, that doesn't make you smarter or dumber. Just different." I felt the click of something in her eyes. I had to watch carefully, but the odds were in my favor.
"Thanks," she said. Her eyes shone at me a little. Our beers were empty.
"Do you want another?," I asked.
"No, I better not," she said. I paid for the drinks, and we walked through the maze of tables to Nick's front door. She still had her work clothes on, a trim, clingy knee length skirt and black tights with knee length leather boots. It was cold outside as we walked to our cars. I watched her walk carefully.
We were parked two cars apart. I wondered what was going to happen. She was as dumb as a box of hair, but I didn't plan on asking her about Proust. There was hesitation in her walk, like she was waiting for me to ask.
"Where are you going?," she asked.
"Home," I said.
"Me too," she said. "Jake has to stay late tonight."
She stared at me for a long moment. I held her gaze. I had rules about pens and company ink, and rules about women who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I had rules, and the wind blew. Her skirt flapped once when a breeze hit it. I looked at her face, open and honest, with her lips the color of ripe plums. I couldn't, and I shouldn't, but it had been a long time since any voice but my own was heard in my apartment.
"See you tomorrow?," she said, half a statement and half a question.
"Sure," I agreed, and she got into her car.
"Damn rules," I said to myself, my breath fogging in front of my face.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Gorging One's Self
Matt Potter, who should not be confused with his twin brother Glossy Potter, has announced that "Gorge," a novel in stories, is available for purchase here. It contains a story by yours truly, as does a previous compilation, "Slut". I need not add that these books make outstanding holiday gifts, assuming you can rent the Millennium Falcon in order to get them to your house in time. I also assume you can divine the fact that these are grownup books written by grownup people that talk about grownup themes. (The fact that one of them is called "Slut" was a clue.) There are also other books that do not include me, along with a forthcoming one that will, "Obit."
{On a personal note, I have not written any new fiction to post here since my last post. I'm starting to think that I may start again soon. You'll be the first (well, the second) to know.}
{On a personal note, I have not written any new fiction to post here since my last post. I'm starting to think that I may start again soon. You'll be the first (well, the second) to know.}
Sunday, December 16, 2012
SPE: Empty Chairs At Empty Tables
{For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Tara Roberts gave me this prompt: "(Character name)'s contribution to the holiday cookie exchange shocked all of us." I gave Julia Mae this prompt: " 'Critics can say horrible things. It only hurts when I agree with them.' -Jon Cryer" }
[The following post is written about the fact I can't write a post about this. Besides being meta, this is a little bit unfair, because the SPE game involves composing prompts on Thursday and early Friday morning to be distributed on Saturday. Obviously, the events on Friday have changed my point of view. I don't mean to imply anything is wrong with Tara, whom I respect to the point of abject worship, or the quality of her prompt. Her prompt was written and intended for a different headspace than the one I occupy at the moment. This is not her fault.]
(To steal an idea from Charlie Pierce, optional soundtrack for this post is available here.)
I can't write about Christmas cookies today.
I learned about the events in Connecticut on Friday through a text message from a friend, which seems to be a very au courant way to get news. Perhaps it isn't. I don't know. I went onto Twitter, which was, of course, full of bulletins and news stories and rumors, name calling and accusations and jokes in poor taste. Calls for fewer guns, calls for more guns, calls for mental health care, calls for more God in schools, calls for bans on video games or television or movies- nearly everyone knows the answer and feels compelled to share. This is as it usually is. You don't expect table manners in a saloon, and you don't expect reasoned discussion on Twitter. Among the cacophany, my friend Erik Fisher advised that he was dropping off the grid for a while- he couldn't take it. I didn't listen. I didn't follow his example. I should have.
I have tried not to watch any television coverage, or read much about it, although in the way things do in the modern age, phrases and images and facts find their way to me, from the TV in the next room, or on the car radio before I shut it off in favor of music from my iPhone. My pal Leah Peterson pointed out that one of the most chilling sentences she encountered was "An entire kindergarten class is unaccounted for." I quickly found partners for that, overhearing "the state does not have enough medical examiners for all the dead" and "one of our nation's leading authorities on mass murder". (We have authorities on mass murder? And there is more than one of them?) Like everyone, I am hurt, shocked, saddened, and furiously angry. It's one of those odd angers, the kind where you know you're angry, but you can't find anything adequate to the rage. (If you haven't seen it before, please watch this, the scene where Martin Sheen on the "West Wing", playing the President, tries to voice this sort of inchoate rage against senseless loss.) Among the many thoughts I have entertained, I wonder why it is this slaughter that stirs my blood, as opposed to so many others?
As my wife correctly points out, more people died in Philadelphia, the city closest to me, this year due to gun violence, only they did it one or two at a time. There have been slaughters since Cain and Abel, and probably way before that. Even slaughters in school are nothing new, sadly. Gun slaughter itself predates me by centuries, and even mass slaughter can be traced back to the University of Texas shootings in the 1960s, if not farther than that. Fort Pillow. Cold Harbor. Borodino. Lynching and race riots. World War I. World War II. Vietnam. Korea. Iraq and Afghanistan. As soon as we had guns, we started using them to kill each other, and as the guns got better, so did the killing. (It would be unfair, but not totally wrong, to note that a slaughter in a so called "white" community evokes my rage, but not the slower genocide against poor children that happens worldwide every single day. I don't have anything to say to that except that I am human, and I can't control what provokes me.)
I don't have any particular connection to this event. The most convenient way to get from my in law's house to my mother's house is Route 84, which essentially cuts the state into two triangles, giving me a knowledge of the state's rest stops, if nothing else. My brother lives there. I raised a kindergartener once, long ago. (My son was in kindergarten on 9/11, the last event that I can compare to this, at least in terms of my own emotional response to it.) I have friends with kindergarteners, and my dear nephew is a kindergartener, and his little brother soon will be. I also have a niece who was in kindergarten not too long ago, and two more nieces who will be.
When my son was a kindergartener, I used to advise him, when a video game or school assignment or some other complex task was frustrating him, to try and channel his anger into something useful. Instead of getting mad, try to step back and think. Ask for advice. Attack the problem another way. Or even stop and get a glass of water and let your brain rest for a moment. Just getting mad doesn't help. This advice doesn't apply here. No advice does. There isn't anything to be done. Or, more properly, there are a dozen things to be done, all advocated loudly and vigorously, on and on, from all angles. And if previous slaughters are any guide, we, as a society, won't do any of them, or the ones we do won't work, and this will happen again. There's no place to put this rage against an uncaring universe that created all this sorrow. (With all due respect, if God is your thing, I won't belittle that. It just doesn't work for me. Not right now, anyway.)
I have opinions about what could and should be done. So do a lot of people. If you want to know them, and I can't imagine why you would, you can email me or follow me on Twitter- just look at the boxes on the right. But I feel like this isn't a place for it, exactly, and I don't feel up to it, frankly. I'm just tired of all the talking, and I don't have the energy to engage in debate right now. A blog, you might say, is exactly the place for that- it is one's own personal web space, to be filled with whatever one desires. And that is true. When this blog began, it was much more of a personal blog. It got very political for a while, and then it talked about sports, and right now it is a host for my short fiction. I don't know if I don't want to interrupt the flow, or confuse my readers (either one of you), or what, but I don't feel like I can go off on a rant about guns or mental health or anything like that. Not now. I can't write. I can only ache.
I understand the argument that art, at best, may be the only possible response to heartbreak and madness. "Guernica." Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's "Ohio". Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising". "A Farewell to Arms". I keep thinking about wrapped presents in closets or attics or car trunks that 20 little kids are never going to open, and everything tastes like ashes, and I can't tell made up stories about people who don't exist. Not today.
An author named Thomas Larson calls this the saddest piece of music ever written, and I'm inclined to believe him. I'm going to go visit my nephews tomorrow, listening to sad music as I drive, and I'm going to hug them both, which is not a bit out of the ordinary. I may tear up some, which is quite unusual. They won't know why, and I'm not going to tell them.
I will work, and sleep, and then drive, and hug, and pray that the world they grow up in will not know this particular kind of heartbreak.
But right now, I can't create anything.
I can't write about Christmas cookies today.
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
SPE: Time To Go
{For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Jordan gave me this prompt: The crowd had seemed so friendly a moment ago, but now they took on a meaner cast, and seemed to swell with a bit of menace. I gave Julia Mae this prompt: "My philosophy is that if you don't feel like what you're creating is the best work you've ever done, it's time to throw in the towel." -Bernie Taupin}
She was the kind of person who would tell you it was not raining, even as the water poured down in buckets. She wasn't exactly delusional, but she was very sure of herself, and when reality conflicted with her beliefs, she would often insist that the real world was in error, often to the extreme. I was guiding/tugging her across the mall parking lot, to her increasing displeasure. She knew as well as I did that it was time to go.
The parking lot wasn't crowded, but there were people coming and going, couples headed into the movies, older people who look determined to go for a walk, formless groups of teens intent on hanging out and posing for one another. Everyone seemed happy to be outside in the bright sun, but also pleased that they would soon be in air conditioned cool.
"Come on, babe," I said gently. "We have to go." I put my palm on her bare upper arm, as if I were guiding a recalcitrant toddler.
"Get your HANDS off ME," she insisted loudly. She jerked her arm away, and then folded her arms over her chest. She said it too loudly for what was really a fit of pique on her part. Or at least, I thought so.
A couple was walking along the opposite line of cars, a man and a woman with a 5 year old skipping between them. The moment her voice rang out, I froze, jerking my hand away from her as if she were electrified. The threesome also froze, and I watched the man bristle. He turned and looked at me, and then at her. She was frozen, her eyes angry and glaring, looking at him and at me in turn.
"Is there a problem?," he said from across the aisle. He was older than me, and fat, but he looked hard, like he lifted and carried things for a living. I didn't lift anything heavier than a paperclip.
I looked at her, her proud nose, her fiery blue eyes, the tiny gap where her striped top ended and a quarter moon of brown, flat belly showed above the waist of her dark, tight jeans. I was waiting for her to explain. She looked at him, and then at me.
"Is there a problem?," he said louder. He was coming closer, while the woman and the child stayed by the cars on the other side. To my right, a boy and girl my age were walking straight towards me. I shifted backwards, trying to keep everyone in view. The boy had a baseball cap on backwards, and I could see muscles bunched in his upper arms. Using that sixth sense some men have, he sensed trouble and was putting himself between his girl, a cute, thin Asian, and whatever was to come.
My thighs hit the bumper of a truck. I stopped, looking at the two men. Their faces were set, not unfriendly, but even and blank, not sure if there would be a fight, but ready in case there were. My heart pounded in my chest. I clenched both fists, working my keys into my palm. I remembered a self defense book I had read once that suggested using keys as a flail. My palms began to sweat.
The fat guy had a brown shirt on, stretched over a beer gut. "Torricelli Lawn and Garden Centers," it said. The teen had a concert shirt from a recent AC/DC show. I calculated quickly that if the balloon went up, I would hit the fat guy as hard as I could and hope I could turn before the teenager was on me. She stood there, 2 feet from my elbow, but she could have been a million miles away. Her beautiful eyes flicked from me, to the two men, and then back to me.
The fat guy gestured with his right arm, looking above my head. I heard a car engine excitedly revving behind me. "Are you OK, sweetheart?," he said to her, not looking at me, but tracking me carefully, like I was about to steal second base. "You can come with us if he's hurting you. We'll call the cops on him. Don't worry." The teen had caught up to us, his own eyes dancing, his girlfriend several steps back, eyeing him with a mixture of pride and disgust.
I looked at my girlfriend briefly. Her eyes were very wide, her pupils very small in the sunlight. The word "miosis" swam into my awareness from my physiology lessons. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back. I spread my legs apart slightly, getting my weight forward. Around the corner whipped a squat white SUV with "Mall Security" painted on the side. A woman got out with blonde short hair with a blue shirt and gray pants, carrying a walkie talkie in one hand. She gave me a hard edged look. I hadn't done anything to her. I wanted to shake my girlfriend, scream in her beautiful, open face. "Tell them!," I wanted to say, "Tell them I don't hit you! Tell them that!"
"What's up?," the mall cop said evenly.
"I'm not sure," the fat guy said. "I heard her yell for him to take his hands off of her, so I came over to see if something was wrong." The teen came a little closer on my right. The mall cop was standing right in front of me. She looked paunchy, but rough, like she had done more than pinch shoplifters. The fat guy took another small step forward, pinning me in. Everyone was staring at me with menace, daring me to say something, to hit her, to try and escape, to earn the enmity that they all had for me.
"Do you need the police, ma'am?," the mall cop said, her walkie talkie coming to her lips. She was looking right at my girlfriend, her own thighs parted slightly, her other fist balled. She knew how to fight, I was sure of it. I could smell the hate coming off them. I got ready.
With the mention of the word "police", it was as if the spell had been broken. "Oh no!," my girlfriend said excitedly. "No, no. No. I'm fine. No. This is my boyfriend. I was just mad at him because I don't want to go home. That's all."
"Really?," the mall cop said. "You can tell us the truth, honey. I can have the police here in less than 5 minutes. You don't have to put up with being hit. " The fat guy folded his arms over his chest. His arms looked like hams.
"No," she said with a small giggle. "Oh, no. He would never hit me. Not ever." She unfolded her arms and crossed one leg primly in front of the other. The decorative gold chain on her shoe glinted in the sun.
"You're sure?," the fat man said. The teen seemed to be backing away.
"Positive," my girlfriend said calmly. She was half smiling.
The mall cop stepped back towards her vehicle. "You don't want to come with me?," she asked my girlfriend.
"Nope," my girlfriend said. "I'm fine."
The fat man backed away, his wife staring daggers at me over his shoulder. The teen went back and collected his girl, giving me a wide berth, his face still even and hard. I breathed deep, trying to get enough air, trying to bring my blood pressure back down. I looked at my girlfriend, her perfect pointed toe, the way her jeans followed her long, womanly curves. I didn't hit her, and I never would, but just for a half second, I pictured doing so. I shook my head to clear the image.
"We better go," I said.
"Yup," she said, and I watched her infuriating, manipulative, perfect little ass walk in front of me as we returned to my car.
She was the kind of person who would tell you it was not raining, even as the water poured down in buckets. She wasn't exactly delusional, but she was very sure of herself, and when reality conflicted with her beliefs, she would often insist that the real world was in error, often to the extreme. I was guiding/tugging her across the mall parking lot, to her increasing displeasure. She knew as well as I did that it was time to go.
The parking lot wasn't crowded, but there were people coming and going, couples headed into the movies, older people who look determined to go for a walk, formless groups of teens intent on hanging out and posing for one another. Everyone seemed happy to be outside in the bright sun, but also pleased that they would soon be in air conditioned cool.
"Come on, babe," I said gently. "We have to go." I put my palm on her bare upper arm, as if I were guiding a recalcitrant toddler.
"Get your HANDS off ME," she insisted loudly. She jerked her arm away, and then folded her arms over her chest. She said it too loudly for what was really a fit of pique on her part. Or at least, I thought so.
A couple was walking along the opposite line of cars, a man and a woman with a 5 year old skipping between them. The moment her voice rang out, I froze, jerking my hand away from her as if she were electrified. The threesome also froze, and I watched the man bristle. He turned and looked at me, and then at her. She was frozen, her eyes angry and glaring, looking at him and at me in turn.
"Is there a problem?," he said from across the aisle. He was older than me, and fat, but he looked hard, like he lifted and carried things for a living. I didn't lift anything heavier than a paperclip.
I looked at her, her proud nose, her fiery blue eyes, the tiny gap where her striped top ended and a quarter moon of brown, flat belly showed above the waist of her dark, tight jeans. I was waiting for her to explain. She looked at him, and then at me.
"Is there a problem?," he said louder. He was coming closer, while the woman and the child stayed by the cars on the other side. To my right, a boy and girl my age were walking straight towards me. I shifted backwards, trying to keep everyone in view. The boy had a baseball cap on backwards, and I could see muscles bunched in his upper arms. Using that sixth sense some men have, he sensed trouble and was putting himself between his girl, a cute, thin Asian, and whatever was to come.
My thighs hit the bumper of a truck. I stopped, looking at the two men. Their faces were set, not unfriendly, but even and blank, not sure if there would be a fight, but ready in case there were. My heart pounded in my chest. I clenched both fists, working my keys into my palm. I remembered a self defense book I had read once that suggested using keys as a flail. My palms began to sweat.
The fat guy had a brown shirt on, stretched over a beer gut. "Torricelli Lawn and Garden Centers," it said. The teen had a concert shirt from a recent AC/DC show. I calculated quickly that if the balloon went up, I would hit the fat guy as hard as I could and hope I could turn before the teenager was on me. She stood there, 2 feet from my elbow, but she could have been a million miles away. Her beautiful eyes flicked from me, to the two men, and then back to me.
The fat guy gestured with his right arm, looking above my head. I heard a car engine excitedly revving behind me. "Are you OK, sweetheart?," he said to her, not looking at me, but tracking me carefully, like I was about to steal second base. "You can come with us if he's hurting you. We'll call the cops on him. Don't worry." The teen had caught up to us, his own eyes dancing, his girlfriend several steps back, eyeing him with a mixture of pride and disgust.
I looked at my girlfriend briefly. Her eyes were very wide, her pupils very small in the sunlight. The word "miosis" swam into my awareness from my physiology lessons. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back. I spread my legs apart slightly, getting my weight forward. Around the corner whipped a squat white SUV with "Mall Security" painted on the side. A woman got out with blonde short hair with a blue shirt and gray pants, carrying a walkie talkie in one hand. She gave me a hard edged look. I hadn't done anything to her. I wanted to shake my girlfriend, scream in her beautiful, open face. "Tell them!," I wanted to say, "Tell them I don't hit you! Tell them that!"
"What's up?," the mall cop said evenly.
"I'm not sure," the fat guy said. "I heard her yell for him to take his hands off of her, so I came over to see if something was wrong." The teen came a little closer on my right. The mall cop was standing right in front of me. She looked paunchy, but rough, like she had done more than pinch shoplifters. The fat guy took another small step forward, pinning me in. Everyone was staring at me with menace, daring me to say something, to hit her, to try and escape, to earn the enmity that they all had for me.
"Do you need the police, ma'am?," the mall cop said, her walkie talkie coming to her lips. She was looking right at my girlfriend, her own thighs parted slightly, her other fist balled. She knew how to fight, I was sure of it. I could smell the hate coming off them. I got ready.
With the mention of the word "police", it was as if the spell had been broken. "Oh no!," my girlfriend said excitedly. "No, no. No. I'm fine. No. This is my boyfriend. I was just mad at him because I don't want to go home. That's all."
"Really?," the mall cop said. "You can tell us the truth, honey. I can have the police here in less than 5 minutes. You don't have to put up with being hit. " The fat guy folded his arms over his chest. His arms looked like hams.
"No," she said with a small giggle. "Oh, no. He would never hit me. Not ever." She unfolded her arms and crossed one leg primly in front of the other. The decorative gold chain on her shoe glinted in the sun.
"You're sure?," the fat man said. The teen seemed to be backing away.
"Positive," my girlfriend said calmly. She was half smiling.
The mall cop stepped back towards her vehicle. "You don't want to come with me?," she asked my girlfriend.
"Nope," my girlfriend said. "I'm fine."
The fat man backed away, his wife staring daggers at me over his shoulder. The teen went back and collected his girl, giving me a wide berth, his face still even and hard. I breathed deep, trying to get enough air, trying to bring my blood pressure back down. I looked at my girlfriend, her perfect pointed toe, the way her jeans followed her long, womanly curves. I didn't hit her, and I never would, but just for a half second, I pictured doing so. I shook my head to clear the image.
"We better go," I said.
"Yup," she said, and I watched her infuriating, manipulative, perfect little ass walk in front of me as we returned to my car.
Saturday, December 01, 2012
FFF: "Walking After Midnight"
(Annnnnnnnnd we're back. NaNo consumed me, as it usually does, but I won (see sidebar!), and while it was a worthy journey, I'm also glad it's over. Normal (ish) posting should resume anon.)
(This week's Flash Fiction Friday is about milestones, and this story is called "Walking After Midnight".)
They said on the TV that the blizzard was coming, but for now, it was just another cold December night. She struggled to hold her black wool coat closed against the wind as she walked. It didn't fit her anymore, and only two of the buttons were left, but it was the coat closest to the door, so she shrugged it on and left. At that moment, speed trumped warmth, but the farther she got down the road, the more that equation tilted the other way. She had to leave, so she left. She wondered if they would look for her, but she also didn't care.
The cold seemed cruel, as if it meant her ill will personally. She knew weather wasn't like that- it didn't care about her at all. But she felt the wind attack her, knifing under the thin coat, chapping and burning her face and hands. She felt persecuted, assaulted by the cold, but she just kept walking, her thin Uggs making tiny incremental gains along the long, straight street. There was a tiny space reserved for pedestrians, due to the absence of a sidewalk, and she looked down at it carefully, trying hard to keep her footsteps inside it.
But the cars kept driving by, driving harder than seemed necessary, the moving headlights casting evil, sharp shadows over the ground. The disrupted air as they moved past her hit her like a wall each time, making her stumble and almost fall. The air was bitter and cold, and it smelled like gasoline. She felt the buffeting winds, and wondered how much more she could take. The smell made her nauseous and sad, but she wasn't sure if that was entirely the smell.
She kept walking, hunched against the wind, her head down to try to protect her face. She saw Bozo Donuts, glowing like a lighthouse amid the closed stores on either side of it. She looked at the giant clown in front, the hedges that surrounded the building, and the red and white decor inside. There was a long counter, with red stools empty in front of it, behind which were gleaming racks of donuts and coffee rolls and danishes behind glass. She steered herself down the driveway without thinking. She wasn't hungry, but her feet, seemingly of their own accord, wanted to be out of the wind.
A bell tinkled gently when she came in through the door. She closed her eyes with pleasure as the dry, stuffy heat started to thaw her skinny jeans and the quarter moon of bare skin at her belly that her sweater revealed when she stood up straight. Her hands and cheeks began to burn with a diffuse, tingling pain as she felt the blood returning to the damaged tissue. There was an Indian woman behind the counter, mopping at the already clean surface with a dirty rag. She was older, perhaps in her 50s, but looked kindly and small, with a tendril of perfectly white hair hanging over one eye. She had a red dot on her forehead, and she was wrapped in a giant turquoise sari with plastic beads and bangles on it.
"Coffee?," she said in accented English.
The cold girl didn't say anything for a moment, then finally opened her eyes and looked at the woman.
"Yes," the visitor said. "Decaf. With cream and sugar." She didn't like coffee, but it would be hot, and she could add enough sugar to make it taste decent.
"Donut?," the woman behind the counter said.
The visitor patted her pockets swiftly, then dug into one, leaning to one side to get her fingers deep enough to reach it, coming out with a tattered five that had seen better days. She looked at the prices on display and appeared to make a calculation. "Yes," she said. "Glazed."
"I give you two for one," the woman said. "So I don't have to throw out."
"Oh," the girl said with surprise. "OK. Thank you." The girl didn't really want the donuts, but it was food, and it might mean she could stay in the glorious heat a little longer.
The woman behind the counter produced a steaming china cup of coffee, a spoon, and a glass sugar dispenser with a silver top, and a three small plastic cups of non dairy creamer. She placed a pair of donuts on a tan plate, along with a silver and black napkin dispenser. "$4.50," the handwritten bill said.
"You don't have car," the woman said.
"No," the girl said, pouring sugar into the steaming black liquid. "I walked."
"Too cold to walk," she said. "Why you walk?"
The girl took a bite of the donut while she thought of something to say, letting the sugar melt on her tongue. She settled on taking another bite.
"Men problems? You have a secret? You look like you have a secret," the woman said.
The girl stirred her coffee and took a sip, wincing at the heat and acidity, then added more sugar.
"Girl walk by herself, freezing cold night, no purse, no phone, no gloves, men involved," the woman said.
The girl took another bite of donut.
"Men always cause problems. Like my mother always say, 'Men always want one thing, women only want one thing. Trouble is, not same thing!,' " the woman said, laughing politely at her own joke.
The girl smiled, and took another bite, finishing the first one, followed by a sip of stinging, still bitter, coffee.
"I no let you walk home," the older woman said. "I get phone for you."
She went behind the donut case and emerged with a silver portable phone.
"Here," she said to the girl. "You call home. Tell him you sorry. He come pick you up. It too cold for little girl to walk."
The girl looked at the phone, and up at the woman's creased, aged face, the misadventures of sons and daughters and grandchildren etched there. The girl wanted to explain, to amplify, to show how she was right and he was wrong. But it was cold, and it didn't seem as important now.
"Women always have to say sorry," the woman said. "Even when we right. Especially when we right."
The girl swallowed, tried to say something, and then swallowed again. She picked up the phone and dialed.
"Daddy?," she said. "It's Jenny......Yeah....I'm sorry, Daddy......No, I am, really........I'm at Bozo Donuts, on Madison.......yeah, I walked here.......I know.........Yeah, I know we have to talk when we get home.....OK, Daddy.....Yeah........I know......I'm sorry, too........Bye."
She set the phone back on the counter. She finished the second donut in one bite, folding it into her mouth. She left the five dollar bill on top of the bill, and used one of the napkins to wipe her mouth.
"Thanks," she said.
"Thank you," the woman replied, watching the girl stand inside the front window. The two stayed where they were, without speaking, until a pair of headlights jerked their way into the driveway and stopped. The girl went out the front door and climbed into the passenger's side of a Ford truck. The woman watched the truck leave, then sadly turned out the lights and locked up for the evening.
The woman knew of the many cruelties men can inflict on women, and parents on children. She had experienced most of them. She didn't know if it was right to send the girl back where she came from, but she didn't know what else to do, and it was cold. Sometimes, the woman thought, that's all you can know.
(This week's Flash Fiction Friday is about milestones, and this story is called "Walking After Midnight".)
They said on the TV that the blizzard was coming, but for now, it was just another cold December night. She struggled to hold her black wool coat closed against the wind as she walked. It didn't fit her anymore, and only two of the buttons were left, but it was the coat closest to the door, so she shrugged it on and left. At that moment, speed trumped warmth, but the farther she got down the road, the more that equation tilted the other way. She had to leave, so she left. She wondered if they would look for her, but she also didn't care.
The cold seemed cruel, as if it meant her ill will personally. She knew weather wasn't like that- it didn't care about her at all. But she felt the wind attack her, knifing under the thin coat, chapping and burning her face and hands. She felt persecuted, assaulted by the cold, but she just kept walking, her thin Uggs making tiny incremental gains along the long, straight street. There was a tiny space reserved for pedestrians, due to the absence of a sidewalk, and she looked down at it carefully, trying hard to keep her footsteps inside it.
But the cars kept driving by, driving harder than seemed necessary, the moving headlights casting evil, sharp shadows over the ground. The disrupted air as they moved past her hit her like a wall each time, making her stumble and almost fall. The air was bitter and cold, and it smelled like gasoline. She felt the buffeting winds, and wondered how much more she could take. The smell made her nauseous and sad, but she wasn't sure if that was entirely the smell.
She kept walking, hunched against the wind, her head down to try to protect her face. She saw Bozo Donuts, glowing like a lighthouse amid the closed stores on either side of it. She looked at the giant clown in front, the hedges that surrounded the building, and the red and white decor inside. There was a long counter, with red stools empty in front of it, behind which were gleaming racks of donuts and coffee rolls and danishes behind glass. She steered herself down the driveway without thinking. She wasn't hungry, but her feet, seemingly of their own accord, wanted to be out of the wind.
A bell tinkled gently when she came in through the door. She closed her eyes with pleasure as the dry, stuffy heat started to thaw her skinny jeans and the quarter moon of bare skin at her belly that her sweater revealed when she stood up straight. Her hands and cheeks began to burn with a diffuse, tingling pain as she felt the blood returning to the damaged tissue. There was an Indian woman behind the counter, mopping at the already clean surface with a dirty rag. She was older, perhaps in her 50s, but looked kindly and small, with a tendril of perfectly white hair hanging over one eye. She had a red dot on her forehead, and she was wrapped in a giant turquoise sari with plastic beads and bangles on it.
"Coffee?," she said in accented English.
The cold girl didn't say anything for a moment, then finally opened her eyes and looked at the woman.
"Yes," the visitor said. "Decaf. With cream and sugar." She didn't like coffee, but it would be hot, and she could add enough sugar to make it taste decent.
"Donut?," the woman behind the counter said.
The visitor patted her pockets swiftly, then dug into one, leaning to one side to get her fingers deep enough to reach it, coming out with a tattered five that had seen better days. She looked at the prices on display and appeared to make a calculation. "Yes," she said. "Glazed."
"I give you two for one," the woman said. "So I don't have to throw out."
"Oh," the girl said with surprise. "OK. Thank you." The girl didn't really want the donuts, but it was food, and it might mean she could stay in the glorious heat a little longer.
The woman behind the counter produced a steaming china cup of coffee, a spoon, and a glass sugar dispenser with a silver top, and a three small plastic cups of non dairy creamer. She placed a pair of donuts on a tan plate, along with a silver and black napkin dispenser. "$4.50," the handwritten bill said.
"You don't have car," the woman said.
"No," the girl said, pouring sugar into the steaming black liquid. "I walked."
"Too cold to walk," she said. "Why you walk?"
The girl took a bite of the donut while she thought of something to say, letting the sugar melt on her tongue. She settled on taking another bite.
"Men problems? You have a secret? You look like you have a secret," the woman said.
The girl stirred her coffee and took a sip, wincing at the heat and acidity, then added more sugar.
"Girl walk by herself, freezing cold night, no purse, no phone, no gloves, men involved," the woman said.
The girl took another bite of donut.
"Men always cause problems. Like my mother always say, 'Men always want one thing, women only want one thing. Trouble is, not same thing!,' " the woman said, laughing politely at her own joke.
The girl smiled, and took another bite, finishing the first one, followed by a sip of stinging, still bitter, coffee.
"I no let you walk home," the older woman said. "I get phone for you."
She went behind the donut case and emerged with a silver portable phone.
"Here," she said to the girl. "You call home. Tell him you sorry. He come pick you up. It too cold for little girl to walk."
The girl looked at the phone, and up at the woman's creased, aged face, the misadventures of sons and daughters and grandchildren etched there. The girl wanted to explain, to amplify, to show how she was right and he was wrong. But it was cold, and it didn't seem as important now.
"Women always have to say sorry," the woman said. "Even when we right. Especially when we right."
The girl swallowed, tried to say something, and then swallowed again. She picked up the phone and dialed.
"Daddy?," she said. "It's Jenny......Yeah....I'm sorry, Daddy......No, I am, really........I'm at Bozo Donuts, on Madison.......yeah, I walked here.......I know.........Yeah, I know we have to talk when we get home.....OK, Daddy.....Yeah........I know......I'm sorry, too........Bye."
She set the phone back on the counter. She finished the second donut in one bite, folding it into her mouth. She left the five dollar bill on top of the bill, and used one of the napkins to wipe her mouth.
"Thanks," she said.
"Thank you," the woman replied, watching the girl stand inside the front window. The two stayed where they were, without speaking, until a pair of headlights jerked their way into the driveway and stopped. The girl went out the front door and climbed into the passenger's side of a Ford truck. The woman watched the truck leave, then sadly turned out the lights and locked up for the evening.
The woman knew of the many cruelties men can inflict on women, and parents on children. She had experienced most of them. She didn't know if it was right to send the girl back where she came from, but she didn't know what else to do, and it was cold. Sometimes, the woman thought, that's all you can know.
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