Like Running But Not Exactly
By Erica Schwanke
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By Erica Schwanke
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by Kari Volkmann-Carlsen
The Tuesday ladies, so named because they meet every Tuesday of the month, are two sixty-something friends who sit facing so that their graying bobs of hair seem to reflect each other. They always sit by the window alongside the flower bed, perhaps so that their view is a little more like an English garden and a little less like the urban Starbucks I am sitting in. I know that the woman with the British accent is called Gwyneth because she has a tendency to insert her own name into anecdotes: “And I said to myself, ‘Gwyneth, I simply don’t understand how you’ve developed such a green thumb!’ � Rarely a minute goes by in which neither of them speaks, though it is really Gwyneth who ensures the constant flow of words, her friend listening attentively. Her friend has become fairly adept at properly inserting laughter and, when it seems fitting, wrinkling her eyebrow in a furrow of disbelief. Gwyneth appreciates this silent input, and it encourages her to push on, full steam, with another equally mundane story.
Most days I watch Gwyneth because she demands attention in a way that is almost exhausting. Today, I am more interested in the listener who never seems to tire of her friend. It’s clear the listener is a lover of purple, for she is clad in it every Tuesday from head to toe. Trying to hide the fact that I am watching her, I avert my gaze every so often to the artwork behind the British lady—a garish digital print of a large-eyed youth—but it is difficult to pull my eyes away from the listener’s violets and amethysts and plums. She is wearing no other color, aside from the white rubber soles of her purple Keds. I have never met anyone so fond of this color, besides myself aged six and, of course, my almost-step-sister of the same age; but society doesn’t scorn monochromatic attire if you still pick your nose in public and eat popsicles so fast that your brain freezes for a week.
Our invested interest in purple, which included clothing, lunchboxes, backpacks, winter coats, and whatever else we could manage to color purple with the help of Crayola, was not all that unlike other Barbie-crazed girls of our age. Nevertheless, in the same way the body purges excess vitamin C, so had my body discovered a clever way to rid itself of purple. The year we were six, my almost-step-sister and I celebrated the only Christmas we would have together. We were given the same t-shirts by our parents, which, through some miraculous chemistry, changed colors in the sun. Inside the kindergarten classroom the shirt was pink, but at recess it turned into a bright and lovely violet. At least that is what her shirt did. I had been given one that changed from orange to yellow and everyone agreed that it was significantly less cool. I decided that the proper way to save face was to boycott pink and purple. And I stuck to it until I got home, where my mom stomped out any ideas of reform. With only the enemy colors in my wardrobe, there was little I could wear besides a hand-me-down Hooters t-shirt, and that would not be accompanying me to school the next day.
I didn’t have that sister long, because shortly after Christmas, my mom kicked her dad out. He took my almost-step-sister with him, back to Florida. For a while I got letters from her telling me things that made me jealous. She said she threw away her winter coat because it was so warm down there, and that her new friend was from Texas and taught her how to do “hook-‘em-horns.� I didn’t know what this was, but I wished that I did. The snow melted in Minnesota, and with it, it seemed, so had Danielle’s desire to write to me. That spring, my mom and I moved in with a man she had met, and by the time I started first grade in the new town, I had nearly forgotten about my almost-step-sister. I wore a purple dress for the first day of school, and I rode the bus alone.
It wasn’t until third grade that I dug the memory of her out of the cobwebbed portions of my brain. Her grandmother had sent a letter to my mom inviting us to visit them. For whatever reason, my mom thought she would take up the invitation, and we found ourselves in Florida the winter I turned nine. We spent only four days there, in a hotel down the street from Danielle and her grandma. She didn’t live with her dad anymore because her grandma wouldn’t allow it. Nobody told me why, but I didn’t wonder too much because I didn’t live with my dad either.
I was timid when I met Danielle again; I no longer considered her my almost-step-sister. My mom and her grandma left us alone to play while they talked, and Danielle taught me how to do “hook-‘em-horns.� She folded down her three middle fingers, leaving the thumb and pinky sticking straight out, and shook her hand back and forth. I thought it wasn’t as cool as she made it sound in her letter, but I didn’t say that. She gave me her school picture and when my mom and I returned to Minnesota I taped it on my binder at school, along with the rows of other classmates’ pictures. All of my friends wondered who she was. I told them she was my sister, and the boys’ eyes stared unblinkingly at the tiny squared-in face.
A single human being really doesn’t take up that much space. I imagine circles drawn on the floor of the coffee shop, representing the area around each person. All circles considered, relatively little room is actually occupied. Yet many people are looking around for empty seats, wondering whether it is okay to sit at a table with someone they don’t know. The circles are moving precariously, and one is taking small steps closer to me where there is an empty seat. I smile to let the young, suited man with a laptop know that he is welcome to sit with me. I know that he will not expect conversation, as he seems to be here for business, so I turn my attention back to the Tuesday ladies. Their circles almost overlap. They seem as comfortable with each other as two would-be sisters once were.
I haven’t seen Danielle since I was nine, and the last I heard of her was in a letter her grandma sent when I was 16. Danielle was pregnant, and her grandma was asking my mom for advice in dealing with it. I guess she felt that my mom would know what to do because she was raising a young girl of the same age. I try to imagine Danielle with a baby, but I know that her child is now five and too large to cradle in her arms. I don’t even know if she had a boy or a girl. All that my imagination will allow is a little pig-tailed kindergartener with a purple dress, anxiously holding her mother’s hand as she waits for the school bus. I see their two circles side by side, one much smaller than the other, creating the image of a short snowman. I feel bad, almost judgmental, but I cannot conjure the image of a third and larger circle.
Once, I asked my mother why she didn’t have any more kids. She said I was already enough trouble for her. As she laughed at her joke, her eyes searched for that which was irrecoverable. It didn’t occur to me until I was older that when I lost my almost-step-sister, my mom lost her almost-step-daughter.
My memory shoots back to being six, walking off the bus to where my mom sits waiting, me carrying my backpack on one shoulder like I saw the older kids at school doing. Through the mist of my breath, I can see her strained smile. Years later, when I leave home, she will smile like this again: it is an upward twist of the right side, lips stretched to capacity without showing teeth, eyes squinting with the weight of the tears she is holding back. Now, in the bitter cold of winter, she greets me from the bus with a tender hug, a warm kiss on the cheek, and up close I glimpse the bluish-purple outlines of a hand upon her skin. Even at six I know that isn’t supposed to happen.
We, the one-time almost-step-sisters, know nothing of each other—who we have become, or how we got here. Perhaps, had we not so easily adapted to our separate lives, as children can so quickly do—had we not forgotten we were sisters—we might now be as the Tuesday ladies are, circles overlapping, conversations delightfully commonplace.
I lift my coffee to take a drink. It is cold from the lengthy memories between each sip, from trying to imagine what my memories might have been—me greeting a smiling Danielle, a proud mother holding her child’s hand. Where my cup sat is a coffee stain, a watercolor ring encircling marginal scribbles: “I am a forgotten aunt.�
By Sarah Boden
Forty-five miles west of the Indiana-Kentucky border, right before the exit for Uniontown on I-64, my father’s red Ford Taurus sat stuck in the snow. Stuck in the abysmally unexceptional midwestern landscape that spans flat, punctuated only by an occasional patch of trees, farm house, or gas station. Stuck with the ground slowly rising to the falling white sky.
Just my twin brother Andy and I, and our father sat in the Ford Taurus on the way to Louisville. Our uncle and his family lived there, and this was the first Christmas we were coming to them.
My stepmother Sue wasn’t with us. She was in Rockford, Illinois with her parents. Sue was an only child, most of her aunts and uncles populated cemeteries on the east coast, and her cousins long estranged. I hadn’t seen my father’s wife in three weeks and wouldn’t for another fifteen.
It was a freak snow storm, the kind Kentuckyanna hadn’t seen in decades; perhaps the weather had taken a wrong turn on its way to Manitoba. I felt an urge to apologize to my fellow motorists, for I secretly suspected that our family caused the blizzard.
Sue had beaten my father earlier that December, the climax of seven miserable years. Sue, in classic midwestern stoicism, drank herself stupid and indifferent daily while devouring pain pills, making meals out of them. Making meals out of vicodin, pork roast, and cheap red wine.
We did not talk about these things while we sat in the Ford Taurus, nor did we listen to the radio, because during a recent fight with my father Sue snapped the antenna from the hood of the car. Andy listened to Eminem—another disenfranchised midwestern male—on his portable CD player loud enough for us to hear and loud enough for him to pretend not to hear us.
My father and I sat silently in the front seats of the car for six hours and said nothing.
As trip navigator, the map lay upon my lap. If we’d taken the previous exit at Corners, we could have driven back roads the rest of the way to the Travel Lodge on the outskirts of Louisville, avoiding this gridlock. We would later discover that the standstill was due to a colossal accident involving several vehicles about twenty miles ahead from where we sat.
I suppose this was our fault too.
I wanted to say many things, sitting there in the cold. In fact, I wanted to yell in an atypical midwestern fashion. Yell at my father for his stupidity and selfishness. Yell at him for being a coward and not leaving his ridiculous wife though he had wanted to for years.
He did not leave Sue when she called me, his daughter, a bitch and liar, falsely accusing me of stealing her jewelry. My father did not leave Sue when she demanded that he drive my then twelve-year-old brother, his son, to a secluded, unfamiliar road and leave him there as an arbitrary punishment. He did not leave Sue when she was rude to his mother, scolding Grandma in front of her sons and grandchildren. And he was not leaving her now, though she beat him. He would not leave Sue, though he did not love her, because ending his marriage was contrary to the midwestern morals which were his ten commandments, for my father had no faith.
I felt we had made the snow fall because we’d neglected to visit my father’s brother all those years, and this was karmic retribution for our reluctance; we had not loved them enough to drive the eight hours across three state borders. Only now we chose to come, damaged and angry. I thought about how we were going to ruin my uncle’s Christmas. I wondered if the snow was building a barrier, keeping us away from his marriage and daughters who weren’t broken and angry and hateful. I feared we would contaminate their family and knew we shouldn’t have come.
The white fell clean, first in inches then feet, covering the long, contrite, double single-file lanes of automobiles—twin snakes, stretching halfway to Illinois perhaps. Drivers were turning off their engines to maintain the batteries in hopes that one day they would move again. As protection from the cold, we passengers layered our bodies in hats, coats, and gloves, waiting for the right moment to uncover and resume a steady, cautious pace along the narrow highway to our final destinations.
Midwesterners are not hasty.
It is difficult to start conversations sometimes because you don’t know if they will stop, or how. I was afraid to tell my father to end yet another marriage because I did not want that responsibility. Once my father asked me if he should divorce Sue—that was back in May, seven months ago, right around the time he was fired from his job. I told him, “No…don’t do it,� and now I regretted it.
I secretly feared I had ruined my father’s first marriage to my mother by being an unplanned birth. Only meaning to have one child, my parents got twins instead, and I was the second infant to appear. I suspected that the stress of my existence ultimately caused my mother to leave her husband. If I had told my father to divorce Sue back in May I would have destroyed his life yet again.
I was afraid if I started talking angry words would fall like snow from our mouths. And these mad, mad words would cover us, until we wouldn’t be able to move—just as we couldn’t move now. My family was not unique but we did not realize this; just like we could not see the other red Ford Tauruses on the road, though there must have been more.
My father was ashamed, I think, because he was the battered spouse. Some people might have thought him a weak degenerate for not hitting his wife back. Midwestern men are strong and do not cry, though they might make it snow.
By Marisa Tam
Leonard Lowenstein was a simple man. At least, that was how his mother described him. The state of California insisted on using terms like mentally retarded, or, when required to be politically correct, mentally handicapped, mentally impaired, or, most frustrating to Mrs. Lowenstein, mentally challenged. Mentally challenged—as though Leonard’s difficulties would go away if he only tried a little harder.
Chris MacDougal didn’t know Mrs. Lowenstein personally, but he heard her yelling on the phone through the too-thin walls that separated his cheap apartment from the Lowensteins’ cheaper one. When the formidable matriarch died of a brain aneurysm (“She broke her brain with all that screaming,� insisted Polly Quince from number 24), Leonard was sent to a state-sponsored mental institution, and Chris found himself helping his neighbor pack up his things.
Leonard had accumulated a startling amount of detritus in his thirty-eight years; Chris sifted through brown grocery bags full of broken toys and dirty hubcaps, trying to ignore the occasional whiff of dumpster-rot that accompanied Leonard’s treasures. True, he had seen Leonard’s round form poking around the garbage area on occasion, the sun gleaming off a perfectly round bald spot on the back of his head, but Chris had never given it much thought. Now, however, he realized that his neighbor had been unearthing these pieces of crap from the other residents’ refuse. One man’s trash—well, you know.
If Chris was intrigued by Leonard’s selections, the collector himself was perfectly disinterested. Leonard was very quietly folding his few items of clothing and carefully placing them in his old suitcase. He arranged them by type—pants first, then underwear, shirts, and socks on top—and then by color, according to the spectrum. This made Leonard’s suitcase very tidy, the way Mother always said it should be. Leonard tried very hard not to think about her, preferring to place all his white Gold Toes on the left and the black ones on the right. It was calming for Leonard, and he even smiled a little to himself as he examined his handiwork.
Chris left Leonard alone for the most part, turning every now and then to ask if he wanted to keep a particular bag of junk, to which Leonard always responded, “No, thank you.� None of the castoffs were particularly interesting—worn-out flip-flops, a broken remote control, some old popping corn—and Chris took the bags out to the trash four at a time. He paused and sighed when he came across a cracked mirror in a black plastic frame and saw his own skewed reflection gazing back dully, a sad reminder that he didn’t have the life he’d hoped for when he drove across the country to chase his California dream. He pushed the mirror back into the bag and moved it to the “discard� side of the apartment.
Chris was officially out of his early twenties, approaching his twenty-sixth birthday with little to show for it. He’d lived in the same apartment since moving to Los Angeles from a nondescript midwestern suburb three years ago, had worked the same dead-end, minimum-wage job, sorting mail at a local radio station and keeping himself afloat by working as a janitor on the weekends. Every morning, except Sunday, he folded his lanky frame into a dark gray 1989 Ford Taurus with rust over the wheel wells (the same car he drove from Minnesota to California) and drove to the station, took the employee entrance to the mailroom, and fired up the ancient IBM to check for delivery notices. Gladys, the building receptionist who was both menopausal and overweight, would come down to see him on her lunch break, fanning herself with a manila folder and gushing about his blue eyes and dark hair, straight nose and strong jaw, and altogether making Chris extremely uncomfortable.
As he dragged more bags of trash outside, he contemplated, for the billionth time, leaving his job. “But where would I go? I have no skills and a degree in philosophy that I don’t deserve,� he muttered, tromping back up the steps to the walkway running the length of the building. No, Chris reasoned, it’s too late. Better to just stay with the familiar. Old dogs and new tricks, et cetera.
Leonard was sitting on the plastic-covered sofa in the empty apartment when Chris returned for the last three bags of discarded collections. He was slowly paging through a battered photo album.
“What’re you looking at, Len?�
“Pictures.� Leonard turned another page.
“What are the pictures of?�
“Sophia.�
“Sophia?� Intrigued, Chris sat beside Leonard, the sofa cover crunching under his weight. Leonard let the album fall across their knees.
Every photo was of the same subject, and every caption identified her as “S.� She was a young woman and a striking model. Chris turned a few pages to see her smiling, laughing, looking away or gazing seriously into the lens.
“Who’s Sophia, Leonard?� Chris asked.
“I dunno. I found that book outside my cousin’s building. I called her Sophia because of the letter ‘S’ under the pictures,� Leonard answered proudly.
Chris was silent for a minute or two, looking through the pictures. “I guess you want to take this with you, huh?� he asked finally, closing the album and holding it out for the other man to take.
“Nuh-uh,� Leonard pronounced, shaking his head with finality. “I’m giving it to you for a present.�
“To me? But why? They’re your pictures.�
“I think that you need them more than I do,� Leonard intoned matter-of-factly.
Chris looked at the large, worn faux-leather-bound book in his hand for a moment before thanking Leonard, who picked at some lint on his shirt.
“You’re welcome.�
He drove Leonard to the institution later that afternoon, saying goodbye as long rays of orange-tinted light angled through the lobby’s plate-glass façade. Leonard cast a long shadow as he shuffled down a hallway into the facility that would serve as his home until he eventually followed Mrs. Lowenstein into the Great Unknown. (However, before that time, Leonard would meet the great love of his life in the form of a nurse named Bethany Riggs, and they would live very happily ever after every day at three o’clock, when she brought the checkerboard in and they played until dinner.)
The photo album was waiting on the passenger seat of Chris’s old Taurus when he climbed back into the car.. He felt a strange sense of gratitude as he looked at the pictures, almost as though something he’d lost had been returned to him intact—which was absurd. He didn’t even know Sophia. In fact, her name probably wasn’t even Sophia. He closed the album and ran his finger over a jagged slash across one corner of the cover. He couldn’t help but think he had somehow opened a particularly squirmy can of worms.
Over the next few days, Chris spent most of his free time studying the album. The woman Leonard called “Sophia� was pretty, though not without flaws. The shape of her jaw was somewhat ambiguous, and her mouth was a bit small. She had a tendency to slouch and seemed to be fond of a particular ill-fitting plaid flannel shirt. In a few pictures, she had cut her unruly light brown hair into an unflattering bob. She looked like she could be a waitress, a cowgirl, or a hooker. The pictures never gave any hints—just the same woman at home, on vacation, at tourist attractions around L.A., surrounded by strangers who didn’t seem to notice the camera or the woman.
The more Chris looked at Sophia’s likeness, the more he wished he could meet her. While he sorted mail at work, he thought about what he would ask her. He wanted to know what year she went skiing in the mountains—was she there when he was, in 2005? Who took all these pictures—a whole album’s worth—and did she love him? Or her? How old was she really? How did she break her arm on page twelve? What was that cat’s name? What was her name? What does the “S� really stand for? What does she love? What does she hate? Where can I find you?
It was this last question that kept Chris awake one warm May night. Superficiality made him uncomfortable, and having realized he had fallen in love with a woman based solely on her image, Chris was distressed by what he considered a serious transgression of his own moral code. Moreover, each time he thought about Sophia, he couldn’t help but think about the sorry state of his sex life. Chris hadn’t been laid in nearly three years, and at this point, an imaginary affair was about as exciting as his life was going to get, short of winning the lottery, which he tried once a month with a ticket for the Super Lotto. He knew exactly what he would do with the money if he won, but he never put it on paper or told anyone about it. Unhatched chickens, and so forth. In any case, it was probably best if he threw out the album. Sophia couldn’t help him with his woes, wherever she was. Not unless he went out and found her.
Chris sat up. Why couldn’t he just find Sophia? All he had to do was ask Leonard where his cousin’s apartment building was—where the book came from—and then he could start asking questions. Millions of people live in Los Angeles, and at least one had to know who “Sophia� really was. Someone had to have seen her, employed her, talked to her, slept with her. Someone had to have taken the pictures and thrown them out. It was just a matter of finding the right people.
In Los Angeles, everybody knows somebody.
Well, everybody except Chris, who only knew Leonard, Polly Quince from number 24, menopausal Gladys, and Tomás, the Mexican immigrant with whom Chris worked his janitorial hours.
But, safe in the knowledge that he had a plan, Chris laid his head back onto the pillow and closed his eyes, a smile on his lips and Sophia on his mind. He slept soundly that night.
By Nora Powers
With the finesse of a true surgeon, Syri pushed the broomstick down the throat into the innards of the decapitated human being lying on her metal table. She had been careful to sand the old janitor’s broom so that it would not catch or snag on any delicate tissues on the journey through. Then, with as much gentleness as possible, she steadily forced the heavy, lifeless head onto the part of the handle that was left protruding above the rigid neck. They didn’t quite meet. There was still a small, dark jagged canal between the head and its body. Standing behind with both hands on the head, she drove it further down the rod using small, quick bursts.
She had never performed a procedure like this, but she had felt compelled to accept the grieving soul in front of her. None of the other funeral parlors had dared. They had looked at the old widow with repulsion when she explained her wishes. She insisted upon an open casket service for her late son, though his head had been completely removed from his body in the crash. No one had known how to respond. They attempted to persuade her otherwise, but only disjointed sounds stumbled off their tongues and onto the woman’s crinkled old ears. Her eyes remained big placid pools of muddy water. “Perhaps a turtleneck,� was all she had said in response.
“Is that comfortable enough for you, sir?�
The dead man, of course, did not respond. Syri had been prepared for this. She had been taught that a medical professional should always ask about the comfort level of one’s patient. Even if there was nothing to be done about the discomfort, it made patients feel better to have the opportunity to express it. “Don’t let the title fool you,� she remembered Doctor Godfrey saying. “You are first and foremost a social worker.� Though the man on the table did not confess any pain, she carefully slipped a white clinical pillow under his head before she began threading fishing line onto a surgical needle.
Syri felt a deep sigh rising from the bottom of her chest. She let it go, allowing her breath to swirl with the cold and the chemicals of the basement air. There was no way Mr. Svellick had imagined himself here now either. Years ago, when he was planning his future life, he surely didn’t see himself dead on a table having his eyelids glued shut so as not to stare up at the funeral guests when they looked down into his casket. The glue came undone, and Syri let her gaze sit in Mr. Svellick’s mellow brown eyes. She fixed the glue and put him to bed in the refrigerator. She clicked the lights off and picked up her bag.
The door to her one-bedroom apartment no longer fit right in its frame and had to be shoved open and shoved closed. The apartment itself had little sign of personality, although it did appear lived in. There were dirty dishes in the sink, trash in the trash can, and sheets that lay pushed aside on the bed. But all items personal to her, books and photos mostly, still sat packed away in their cardboard box against the wall. Gray-green linoleum started right inside the door and stretched a few feet before turning into gray-green carpet. Both the carpet and the linoleum had that kind of dirty look that can’t be cleaned out. It looked this same way when it was brand new, like the designer realized the flooring was going into a dirty world anyway, so there wasn’t much point in making it look clean. There was a fading blue couch along the left wall, opposite her bedroom door. A brass lamp and an empty water glass stood on her pine bedside table. Above the dresser hung an unframed mirror.
The mortuary was the big business in town. People traveled long distances to have their loved one’s service at Williamson’s. The traffic was good for the rest of the town as well. The women often had their hair done at Loretta’s, and out-of-towners commonly stayed the night at the Sleep Easy to avoid stuffing too much driving into one day. The mortuary kept business bubbling. Economy of the dead.
Syri’s favorite quality of the town was that it was miles away from any major city, settled off in a nook of the planet where few urban crawlers bothered to go. No one in town knew her. No one had any idea about her life before the Williamson mortuary except that she used to live in Chicago. She was an outsider, good only for being a target for their rich scandalous stories.
Syri awoke at six-thirty the next morning and was in the basement with Mr. Svellick by seven. The sheet ruffled his dense chestnut hair as she pulled it away from his head and neck. She rubbed her gloved hands together quickly and placed one on his right cheek. Petting it softly, she let some of the warmth from her fingers absorb into his pale, graying skin. He was still too cold to work with. She pulled up a stool and sat next to him while he adjusted to the warm air. As she waited she began molding the putty to raise his sunken cheeks.
“Something soft, gunky, but not sticky,� Mr. O’Connor had advised. “Sculptor’s clay, carpenter’s putty, hell, use Play Doh if you have to, but never use cotton. It never looks natural. Makes the mouth look full. You don’t want a son looking into his mother’s casket with her looking like she just took a big bite of chuck roast.�
Mr. O’Connor had worked zealously with the dead nearly every day of his adult life, but even he was not above the fear of death. He didn’t fear the end of his own mortal life: he was terrified of the idea of his precious mortuary dying when he was no longer there to operate it. He had put his heart into his business and its clients, perfecting his own unconventional yet very successful techniques for preparing the dead. Strangely, he did not put his own name on his cherished establishment. “Williamson, real noble sounding, but at the same time down to earth,� he had said. Syri had turned out to be the saving grace of his operation. She had a flawless knowledge of anatomy, unyielding patience with detail, a solemn politeness, and no idea how typical mortuary procedures should be done. He was buried with a smile on his face, as according to his own mandate.
The shaped putty was slipped inside Mr. Svellick’s right cheek, but the left cheek would be more of a project, along with the nose, forehead, and left ear. They had all been shredded by the freeway asphalt. Luckily, the other major head trauma had been to the lower back of the skull, which would be hidden by the maroon satin pillow. His injuries, along with the rest of his face, had been washed and sterilized. His face had the appearance of a raspberry pie with pieces of the top crust ripped out, revealing the dark purple, nearly black fruit filling inside. He needed patching.
She removed another ball of the carpentry putty from its bucket. The color, traditionally used for patching unstained, lighter woods such as maple or holly, matched his fair skin well. She took a large chunk and patted it to make it smooth. She placed it in the hole in his cheek, pressing hard enough to avoid air bubbles between the putty and his tissue. Then she used a plastic half circle to match it to the arch of his cheek, starting at his chin and going up to his temple, running it lightly along the curve of his face. To finish, she painted over her creation with a thin layer of silicone gel to prepare his putty skin for its final treatment. She treated the rest of his facial injuries similarly.
Makeup had always been a challenge for Syri. She found it hard to balance between doing the person up like a clown and leaving too much of the ghostly paleness. The dark circles and spots of blood under unbroken skin were touched up using a heavy homemade paste. She spread a thick coat of light beauty store foundation over his face, ears, neck, and hands, then carefully outlined his features with darker powders, a mix of cosmetic and art store materials, blending in the dust by making small bouncing circles with her brush. Finally she added a little blush to his cheeks and ears to give him a more lively color. In the end, his face did not look human as much as it did angelic. He looked too pale to be living, but had a glow that anyone would have agreed seemed undeniably alive. The next morning she planned to dress him and move him to his coffin.
The funeral was held on a blustery Saturday morning. The Midwest wind had been running across hundreds of miles with nothing but a few swaying stalks of corn and wheat to slow it down, so when it hit the guests’ cheeks, they glowed red. These guests—a few friends, but mostly relatives—paraded solemnly through the heavy wooden front doors, across the lobby, and into the reception room of the funeral home. A few tables with appetizers and desserts were set up in a room off to the right of the lobby. The chapel was directly opposite the front doors.
The chapel doors were closed, allowing Syri a few more minutes to make sure everything was properly set up. Heavy maroon curtains hung over the tall windows that looked out onto faded pink and gold prairie grasses. Cushioned metal chairs were set up in eight rows of fourteen, split down the middle to form an aisle up to the coffin at the front. The oak casket was open, displaying Mr. Svellick as one piece in a brown tweed suit coat over a thick cream turtleneck. Syri went to find his mother.
The widow Svellick was sitting on one of the overstuffed couches in the reception room. Her wrinkled old face stared at the woman chattering at her. Occasionally she smiled with half of her mouth and said something like, “I think Tim would really like these gooseberry tarts.� What other folks might have taken as senility, the guests accepted as strength. They muttered their praise of her in between nibbles of cheese and fruit. Syri approached her and asked if she cared to have some time alone with her son before the ceremony began. She helped the widow get up from her chair and led her into the chapel.
The old woman looked down at her son. His chestnut hair was parted and pushed to the side. There appeared to be a healthy glow in his cheeks. She sighed and concentrated her forehead wrinkles into a deep crease between her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but let it relax a little. Then starting again, without breaking her gaze on her son, she said, “Well, doesn’t he look peaceful. You know, I just couldn’t have him going into the ground like he was. I knew he would heal all up. I just needed to see it for myself.�
The widow had Mr. Svellick’s mellow brown eyes. Syri watched as his eyes bubbled with tears in his mother’s face. Her lips quivered, but stretched into a smile. She sighed once more, asked Syri to close the casket before the rest of the guests came in, and took her seat in the first row.
By Marisa Tam
I follow him against my better judgment, knowing that I should go home, forget him and this city I could never love, the sailors and the fish blood on the street. Yet I follow. We walk along a pier of rocks, a strip of rough land laid into the sea, for what purpose I do not know. We walk for hours, it seems, the rocks prodding my feet through my shoes, before he stops and tells me to look up. I do.
"What do you think?� he asks.
“C’est... c’est...� The language fails me, and I simply breathe: “It’s beautiful.�
Azure blue waves stretch from our feet to the horizon, white caps tumbling in the distance, the clear water lapping at the rocks on which I stand. His fingers brush mine, moving to settle between them, linking us together in this moment.
The word epiphany forms in my mind, and I wonder what the French would call it. Here, we are two tiny, insignificant breaths in the great gale of wind. We are fleeting heartbeats and violent opposites connected by the tenuous union of hands, the small caress of simple human contact in the face of the unrelenting sea. This moment is the closest I have ever come to God. I am Eve, holding on to Adam, wondering what the brave new world has in store for us.
I feel his heartbeat in his fingers. It races, trips over itself in its haste to meet my own, which is quickening in response. How is it that we can fight and tear each other to shreds, and yet our unspilled blood still burns, passion confused between hatred and love?
This must be the temptation. Perhaps I stand not with Adam, but with the serpent at my side. He has led me here, shown me what it is to know the world, and now am I to taste the apple? I consult the ancient, impassive sea, and beg her for answers. I miss the response in the wind, so I look at him instead. I hate him. I love him. I want him, beyond all reason or counsel. In his eyes I see the earth of France, deep, rich brown in which to settle my roots, to find my place in this strange land. A corona of blue surrounds him, dark hair and dark eyes against the sea and sky, the earthly against the heavenly. I brush his lips—a kiss, but not a consent. I cannot stay in Marseille. I cannot go to Paris. I hate him, I love him, I want him.
The wind that whips my hair carries in its breath the sounds of the port. The ships, the sailors, fishmongers and seafarers, the cries of a city drowning in the sea, reveling in the shade. I cannot stay where the ground seems to move underfoot with the swells of the sea, where humanity stands against the power of the water.
“Viens,� he is saying. “Viens.�
The rocks prod my feet through my shoes. The clear water laps at the rocks on which I stand. There is no serpent, no apple, no sin.
There is only the sea.
By Marlene Moxness
At 7:57, Jamison’s alarm goes off. He never sleeps in because he might accidentally wake on an even number, and that is a risk he cannot accept. At 8:39, Jamison reaches the corner of Cumberland and Congress, where he waits for his bus. He would prefer arriving at 8:37, of course, but realistically he needs the extra two minutes to count the 737 fence posts between his apartment and the bus stop. There used to be 738; he uprooted one under cover of darkness. The property owners still have not replaced it. This suits Jamison just fine.
While he waits, Jamison lights a cigarette. He’s read the surgeon general’s warning and seen all the PSAs. The way he sees it, he can either end it all now, by walking out in front of the bus, or later, by smoking while he waits. It’s a dicey decision—prolonging his banal existence and attracting vagrants looking to bum a smoke. If the bus is late enough, he can smoke two. The benefits of this second cigarette must be weighed with the risk of the bus arriving before he finishes. If he’s not done, Jamison will have to let it pass him by. A fortune cookie once told him that he should finish what he starts, and who is he to argue with fortune? In a world fraught with danger—not just from numbers, but from dirty doorknobs and matricidal sidewalks—this semblance of control offsets the fact that two is an even number.
Today, he decides to live a little, take a chance. Jamison lights his second cigarette and squints up the hill to watch for the lumbering descent of his bus, sure to have been prematurely provoked by his recklessness. It is a glorious cigarette, the kind of cigarette of which dreams and Tex Williams songs are made. As he hums to himself and crushes the butt beneath his toe, a metallic screech interrupts his nicotine reverie. The bus is seven minutes late. Jamison counts this as a sign and hops on.
By Derek Swart
The cold water lapped steadily at the shores of the lake that had once been a hill. Rich, dark earth had once stood where fish now swim. The roots of the trees reached deep, below the point where the bottom of the lake lies now, and the water’s green hue recalled the grass and leaves that had once covered the landscape. The proud hill had stood for hundreds of years as the tallest point on the horizon, a beacon for the Ojibwe who had traveled these forests for generations.
Mining companies discovered the pastoral landscape and soon stripped the minerals from the earth, leaving the hill a hole in the forest. Decades passed. Water collected to form a pond and the pond became a lake. Every year the lake grew in size, encroaching more and more on the shoreline until it spanned the width of what had once been the base of the hill. The water ran deep and cold as resentment built towards the beings who had taken its pride away. It stoked its fury like a wounded veteran, hiding it in the back of its consciousness, never forgetting the feeling of axes and fire, machines and saws.
A father watched his son fish the shores of the cold lake and felt nothing of this, but he enjoyed the shimmer of the October wind running through the glossy cottonwood leaves. He had nestled himself in the roots of one of the great trees with a book and his own fishing pole, though he was paying little attention to either. He gazed proudly at Daniel. Daniel had a shock of blond hair that reminded his father of the wheat farms he had grown up on: somehow smooth and coarse at the same time and best seen in the brassy autumn sunlight. The boy looked up from his casting, acknowledged his dad with a brief jerk of his head, then returned to patrolling the shallows with his lure.
The old man returned his attention to the water in time to see his red and white bobber casually drifting against the wind, then submerging an inch or so beneath the waves. He stood up quickly, rod in hand, and dropped the paperback he had been leafing through so that it fell on the dirt.
The father ran a quick checklist through his head, and his mind’s voice sounded a lot like his son: Feel him on there, don’t be too aggressive. In these waters it’s probably just a crappie. Don’t tear the lips. Give him a minute to commit, then set the hook. He waited, slowly reeling in the slack line until he could feel the flutter of fins against his hands. The line went taut in his grip, and he gave a strong but gentle pull to embed the hook.
It was a good fish, and he laid it on the grass next to the others after removing the hook. Let Daniel worry about catching the big fish, he thought, I have enough for supper tonight. He bent down to wash the scent of fish from his hands in the chilly water and shivered as he rose to return to his tree. The days were getting shorter, and he knew time like this was limited. The weekend trip would soon be over and he would go back to his classroom to teach, Daniel would return to his college life, and everything else would be the same as it always had been. These weekends were so few and far between, the father knew, and it would likely be springtime again before they could return.
He shook his head. That’s not the way to think, he told himself. He needed to learn to live in the present, but it was hard to not think about the future. Something always made him think about work, or money, when he really just wanted to enjoy his time away.
“These are good fish,� he said to clear his head, “but they must be cleaned or they are useless.� He began to collect his things. The sun was not more than three hours from the horizon, and that would make it about an hour to supper time for the pair of fishermen. The man forced his stiff legs to rise from their comfortable roost against the tree trunk and winced in pain. There had been a time when it hadn't hurt him to stand up, but that time had passed long ago. Everything ends, he told himself, shaking one leg and holding himself against the tree with his free hand.
He tossed the dead and dying fish into a plastic bag, adding them to the jumble of clothing and tackle boxes in his backpack. He looked up just in time to watch his son lean towards the water, feet spread like a boxer, carefully feeling the tension of the line that circled about in the water as if it had a spirit of its own. Daniel slowly reeled in the excess line, his green eyes locked on the tiny spot where it met the water in a circle of ripples. His father smiled and leaned against the tree again to watch.
Daniel moved quickly, and pulled against the fish in the water. The rod tip bent under the pressure and slackened as the fish jumped in the air, its mouth gaping open as only a largemouth bass can do. The boy brought the animal in, and lifted it out of the water for his father to see. It opened and closed its mouth sullenly.
“Nice fish you got there.�
Daniel turned his green eyes on his dad—eyes that were an odd accompaniment to his otherwise soft demeanor, eyes that gave his youthful face an aware, hawkish finish. They’re old, the man thought. They’re old eyes. He saw them soften as Daniel smiled.
“Yeah, I get by, I guess, “ he said.
“Like hell you do,� the old man said grinning. “How many you got on the end of that stringer?� He pointed to a blue line that dangled in the water.
“A few,� the boy said.
“A few?� The old man snorted. “Alright, a few. Me too. I caught a couple.�
“Yeah? A couple, huh. Must have been a hell of a day for you.�
The old man smirked at the kid.
“You’re kind of a smart ass, you know that?�
The boy grinned back at him and scoffed, “You’re an English teacher, and all you’ve got for me is ‘smart ass’?�
“I’m just calling it as I see it, kid. Listen, I’m heading back to camp to cook these things. You want to come with or stay here?�
Daniel shrugged. “I think I’ll probably stay here for a little while longer. Although,� he said, squinting off into the lowering sun, “if that cloud keeps heading this way, I’ll probably head back a little sooner than later.�
The dad held a hand over his eyes and stared off into the west, and sure enough there was a dark cloud on the horizon.
“How the hell you see stuff like that, I’ll never know,� the old man said, rubbing his eyes from the sun. “Just don’t stay out too long if it does start to dump on you, alright? It’s kind of a hike back to camp, and you know, hell if it’s wet out.�
“I know, don’t worry about me. Just don’t fall yourself. I don’t know what I’d do if you threw your back out or something crossing those rocks. There’s no cell phone service out here, and I’ll be damned if I’m putting up with you complaining all the way back to civilization.�
The rocks, the father thought, were the worst part of the trip back to camp. A part of the trail narrowed so that only one person could cross, and even then, only if he did it sideways.
“Yeah, sure. Just be careful is all, alright?�
“I’ll be either careful or good. How about one of that?�
The dad rolled his eyes. “Try for both, but go with careful if you can’t. Anyways, I’m heading back there. See you in about an hour I guess?� Smart ass, he added to himself.
Daniel stared off into the sun again and the light caught his hair; for a moment, his father couldn’t tell where his hair ended and the low sun began. The father had to lower his eyes from the light. When he looked back up, his son was casting his lure back into the weeds, looking for another bass to round out the day.
“Yeah, about an hour or so,� he said. “See you then.�
The trek back to the campsite left Daniel’s father sticky from sweat. That he would still break a sweat from an easy hike like this one made him wonder if he was still young enough to go on these little adventures. The rocks on the way back were hell, he thought, so that was part of it. To get it out of his head, he thought about the next day of fishing that he had to look forward to before going back to work. No, that was the wrong way again. He had another day of time with Daniel, he told himself. Never mind fishing, never mind working, never mind grading papers, he needed to look at things as they came.
He busied himself around the campsite to move his mind onto something new. The fish needed to be cleaned, so he did that while watching the dark cloud in the distance lumber its way eastward. It didn’t worry him; Daniel had been the one to see it, after all. He would know to get back before there was any danger to himself, or more importantly, his dad thought smiling, to his fish.
One of the fish flopped suddenly in his hand, causing him to nick his finger with his filet knife. The cut wasn’t bad, but it reminded him to focus on what he was doing. Again he imagined his son’s voice: Keep your mind on what’s in front of you, old man. There might be a later to worry about, and there might not, but there sure as hell won’t be if there isn’t a now to take care of first.
“Yeah,� the old man said, “I know.�
He started a fire and greased a pan to fry the fish. They sizzled satisfyingly, and he poured a cup of coffee and leaned back against a tree trunk. It had been a good day. He closed his eyes and might have drifted off if he had not heard a low gurgle in the distance. Thunder, he thought. That’ll bring him back any time now.
But the time passed, and it did not bring Daniel back to camp. The old man told himself that there was no point in getting bent out of shape; Daniel would be back to tell him he was worrying about nothing, just letting the fish burn. A few rain drops splashed on his arms and sizzled next to the browning strips of fish fillets, and that did it for him. He took the fish off the fire and scattered the wood in the dirt circle he had dug the night before. It hissed angrily as he strode off into the forest.
He did not run, not yet. He would meet Daniel on the next bend of the pass. The rain hadn’t even begun to gather in the empty puddle holes on the path. There was nothing to worry about.
The old man looked up, and a large drop of water landed on his forehead. The sky had turned an oily, charcoal color, and the wind whistled through the treetops. He tried to hear his son’s voice telling him to forget about it, that if he could get into college, he could probably navigate a rocky pass that the animals managed just fine. But they didn’t do it in this weather, the old man thought, and they weren’t carrying a flopping rope full of bass.
His pace quickened as the rain came down more and more heavily. His boots made a slapping sound against the thick earth beneath him. The muddy ground clung to his feet, as if it were grasping at him to slow him down. The pass wasn’t far ahead. He began to wonder whether Daniel had known of another way, one that would not lead him across such a dangerous and precarious path. Perhaps he decided to wait by the lake, opting to chance lightning instead of the wet rocks. That could be true, the old man thought. Running raggedly, he rounded the final corner and scanned the cliffs, but there was nothing for him to see. A stream of water had washed out the middle of the path, and the rain coursed down the hill now. Daniel was nowhere in sight. The old man started to breathe again. He must have stayed at the lake.
The old man was about to turn around and head back to the camp to wait when he saw a movement. It flickered in the center of the rocks, and it was gone a moment later. He almost dismissed the thing as something in his mind, but he saw it again. His heart fell. There was movement, he was sure. But what was it? It couldn’t be Daniel.
The father dashed up the craggy hill, fear for his son overcoming his fear of the sodden rocks. Shapes formed in front of him in the darkness and fled just as quickly. Finally he got close enough to see the mouth opening and closing, gasping for breath on the dull, rocky terrain.
It was a bass, the largemouth that Daniel had caught about an hour ago. His father couldn’t tell if it now struggled against death, or if its nerves were firing randomly. If the fish were here, he thought, his son must have come by. He wouldn’t have left this here if something weren’t wrong. Maybe he almost slipped and dropped the fish, and then thought to go back to the lake to wait out the storm. But why didn’t he wait at the other side of the pass if he decided not to cross? Why would he have to go all the way back to the lake? The old man was getting scared now. Earlier the fear had been something irrational, but now it was real, and it howled in unison with the wind. He should be there. He should be waving like an idiot at you right now, shrugging that he lost all the damn fish he caught earlier. But he isn’t.
The old man looked around the pass, then looked down. He had been avoiding looking down the slope, because he knew awfully well what he might find there. The cliff wall was stained with mud, and there was a rock dislodged from its resting place, but his vision tapered off before the bottom could be seen. The old man paced back and forth, knowing that he had to go down there. Even if there was nothing waiting for him, he had to be sure. At last he saw that there was an incline off to the side of the slope that made for the most passable way to the forest floor, and he decided that he would have to risk slipping and navigate the wet, grassy trail.
It was a thin trail that must have been made by deer on their way to the lake. The father wished that he had known about it before, but that was in the past and could do him no good now. Only make it down, he told himself, make it down and find that there is nothing there. You’re just being the same worrying parent that you’ve always been.
When he reached the bottom, his jeans were soaked with mud and grime and rain from sliding most of the way. His hands were cut from holding onto roots and grasses, but he paid no attention. A smash of lightning and thunder made him cringe, but it illuminated the ground in front of him and he saw something dancing in the wind. The light was gone as soon as it had arrived, so he couldn’t be sure. But yes, there it was, something limp, something torn to and fro in the wind. Something blond.
The lightning struck again, and a green glint caught some of the light. It was Daniel, lying broken at the bottom of the slope, the dislodged rock from above resting on his stomach. His eyes were open. For a moment, the old man thought he was dead.
“Daniel! Daniel, Danny, Danny, Danny, what happened?�
Consciousness surged forward in his son’s green eyes. At first, only a sharp, ragged inhale, and then his eyes squeezed shut again.
“There was this rock,� he finally said. “Even I slip sometimes, old man. I guess I picked a bad time to do it though.�
“Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. I’m going to go get help. Just don’t move, you’re going to be fine, Danny.�
The thunder rumbled, faintly now. Moonlight through the cloud cover offered just enough light for the old man to register the fear in his son's eyes.
“What are you doing, Dad? Don’t leave me. You aren’t going to get any help, there’s none to get. Remember where we are? Just stay with me.�
“What do you mean stay with you?� the old man choked out, his voice catching in his throat. “I’m going to get you help, son.�
“There’s not any help for twenty miles. God, I just don’t want to do this alone, Dad.�
The old man bit back tears for a moment, then lost the fight and started to sob.
“It’s all a goddamn mess, isn’t it, son?�
“Yeah, it is. A goddamn mess.�
“I,� he started, “I can’t outlive you. God dammit, you’re only eighteen.� He reached out for Daniel’s hand and clasped it gently. The boy squeezed back, still strong, but the effort showed in his face.
“Doesn’t matter. What else do you think is going to happen? That’s what I was thinking about as I was laying here. Everyone dies, Dad. Everyone. Some people do it in five years, some in a hundred, but everyone does.�
The old man cried quietly, and Daniel stared out at the sky. It was clearing, and he thought he could see a star. There was only one, but it was bright, and he focused on it.
“I’m glad I got to spend today doing what I wanted. That’s really the point, I think. Those people who live to be a hundred aren’t any more happy than me. They just have more time to find it.�
The old man nodded and squeezed his hand again. Daniel squeezed back, more softly this time, still gazing up at the sky. The forest was quiet as the storm prowled its way farther east, and the wind was gentle now. It tousled Daniel’s hair like his father used to do when he was a kid, and Daniel smiled a little bit. It wasn’t the usual smirk that his father had come to love, but it was a peaceful smile. The father squeezed his boy’s hand a third time, and this time there was no response. The green eyes were still.
In the distance, the waters of the lake still ground against the earth“I,� he started, “I can’t outlive you. God dammit, you’re only eighteen.� He reached out for Daniel’s hand and clasped it gently. The boy squeezed back, still strong, but the effort showed in his face.
“Doesn’t matter. What else do you think is going to happen? That’s what I was thinking about as I was laying here. Everyone dies, Dad. Everyone. Some people do it in five years, some in a hundred, but everyone does.�
The old man cried quietly, and Daniel stared out at the sky. It was clearing, and he thought he could see a star. There was only one, but it was bright, and he focused on it.
“I’m glad I got to spend today doing what I wanted. That’s really the point, I think. Those people who live to be a hundred aren’t any more happy than me. They just have more time to find it.�
The old man nodded and squeezed the hand again; Daniel squeezed back, more softly this time, still gazing up at the sky. The forest was quiet as the storm prowled its way farther east, and the wind was gentle now. It tousled Daniel’s hair like his father used to do when he was a kid, and Daniel smiled a little bit. It wasn’t the usual smirk that his father had come to love, but it was a peaceful smile. The father squeezed his boy’s hand again, and this time there was no response. The green eyes were still.
In the distance, the waters of the lake still ground against the earth.