LOVERS IN VAGUE STATES OF MILD DISTRESS A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts by Ryan D. Lind April 2017 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Thesis written by Ryan Lind B.A., Kent State University, 2014 M.F.A., Kent State University, 2017 Approved by _________________________________________, Advisor Varley O'Connor _________________________________________, Interim Chair, Department of English Dr. Patricia Dunmire _________________________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Dr. James L. Blank TABLE OF CONTENTS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv STORIES FOUR FOX ACHE..........................................................................................................................1 APPROXIMATING ODDS.............................................................................................................6 IN CASE OF FISH WASH GLASS..............................................................................................38 BIRD BONES................................................................................................................................45 CICADA........................................................................................................................................55 LOVERS SEATED QUIETLY ON A BENCH.............................................................................64 VAGUE STATES OF NEAR-UNDERSTANDING......................................................................94 MILD DISTRESS........................................................................................................................115 I-35 SOUTH................................................................................................................................130 JOY IS A LIQUID........................................................................................................................145 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My gratitude to the fine instructors in the NEOMFA program, especially Professors Wasserman, Wing, and O'Connor: Wass for reading with tremendous scrutiny and a zen-like commitment to positivity, C-Dub for being my second-favorite (but best) teacher of all time, and Varley for providing tireless critique, a reading list par excellence, and facilitating craft discussions that have left me both exhausted and eager. iv Four Fox Ache Sister used to come slowly down the stairs in stocking feet, usually she was singing. Pulling on the banister, hanging from the handrail. Letting her heels slide over the nose of each step, landing flat-footed on the next tread: Bang. A pause as she slid her heels into position, a couple nasal bars of Madonna with vibrato, “it's like a little prayer.” Bang. “Down on my knees.” Bang. That was her way. She tumbled down the stairs what seemed like once a week. Our father would tell her, “That's what you get for coming down them steps that way. There is no good- goddam reason to come down stairs like that. Why do you continue to walk down the stairs like that?” Sis would bawl, but the man refused to pick her up. He conversed with her, reasoning and explaining until her sobs became sniffles, and then he muttered a phrase under his breath. “Oh Four fox ache.” I'd spill a glass of soda on the counter top, dribbling down the face of the cabinetry onto the floor. He would deliver a demonstration: this is how you pour yourself a glass of soda. This is where you put your glass in relation to your plate. Then, after his reasoning, his demonstrations, and his lessons, he reminded us that life is hard. He'd turn his head and whisper the same phrase, “Four Fox Ache,” indicating to Sis and me that he had been conducting serious business. It didn't make sense to me as a child, the pain of the four foxes. I pictured them in their 1 hole, in their den, dug out below the bedrock in the wooded land behind our house. The entrance to the den below some great root excavated from the clay by diligent animals who had been evicted by the foxes. I didn't really know where or how foxes lived, but you used to be able to pick things up from cartoons. Adult things and sometimes fox things, too. These four agonizing foxes were hunkered down in their lamp-lit den. The first had a bandaged tail, an unspecified inJury. Another had a blackberry bramble stuck in her paw. The third fox had one of those cartoon headscarves worn to ease tooth pain, or to stop the character experiencing tooth pain from verbalizing their tooth pain. The fourth was the most morbid of the foxes; his hind leg had been caught in a trap. What's a fox to do? In order to survive he had chewed his leg clean off above his tiny fox kneecap. This fourth fox was the most self-absorbed, and why not? Licking and whining, and "Oh, my aching leg." The first fox, Bandaged Tail, would ask, "What leg?" And the fox with the mouth tied shut to cope with tooth decay would try to laugh but would reconsider because in the wisdom of old cartoons: it only hurts when a character laughs. Meanwhile, the poor female fox with the thorn whimpers. None of the foxes come to her aid, their paws just as useless to remove a thorn as her own. So, the foxes commiserate in the darkness of their den. Sometimes my father's words would crawl out through the crack under their bedroom door. "Oh, four fox ache, Jennifer." These were lesser pains, I presumed. They happened in the dark and were not accompanied by rectifying instructions. No soda to sop from the table and floor; no child in need of a lesson in logic. A spoken expression while Sis slept and I tried to 2 sleep. If my bedroom door was cracked I could see him pass in the hallway. On these trips to the living room, I remember how his face looked less like leather and more like cloth, hair piled on top of his head. His feet would plod from their shared bedroom, and in the morning a retired comforter laid on the couch in a wad next to his pillow. I lay in bed and imagined the foxes in their convalescent den. The nighttime entrance was spookier—greens became gray, black, impossibly black and endless. I assigned the four foxes new roles. The candlelight cast longer shadows. The foxes spoke in whispers like my parents did, heaping up the day's sadnesses. One got a "C" on a spelling test. Another had divorcing parents. The third still had a toothache. The image of a fox in a headscarf is difficult to replace with mere melodrama. The fourth fox was odd to me. She was sad for no good reason. Tears in her eyes. In this second scenario, she had things far better than the other three foxes. His red eyes woke me in the morning. He poured my cereal and milk. My father's voice crackled in the early hours, and he lilted the ends of his sentences in the morning like everything was a question. “I have to run out and bring in more firewood?” Or “The geese are heading South?” as if perhaps they were going elsewhere for the cold season this year. Maybe this was his attempt at creating a tolerable day: to speak like happiness was spreading from his throat, clearing like a fog. Maybe I am giving the man too much credit. Maybe not enough. Sis and I were older when they divorced. I was a Junior in college, she was a Freshman half a state away. Our mother delivered the news to us separately, over the phone. Mother didn't share details. Sis and I went home over the same weekend a couple weeks later, after an early snowfall. Our mother looked at us and smiled through tears. She said that it was nice to have us 3 all together. All together she said, and I don't think she meant our father any ill by saying that we were all together without him. In the silly math of adulthood, four minus one can equal all together. Our father drifted away. He neither defended himself, nor belittled our mother. He and I speak on the phone occasionally, now, but I make my own breakfast, and I've earned my own pair of red eyes in the mornings. We don't have much to say when we do speak. I ask about his cholesterol and he in turn asks about mine, says that these things are genetic, and that I should watch my diet. “Don't eat too much fruit either. That's my problem, I like fruit too much; all that fructose isn't good for the heart,” he says. Usually I say, “Really. Huh?” like I'm hearing his dietary advice for the first time. He asks about work. Fine, I tell him, because he wouldn't understand and probably doesn't want details beyond the continuation of my breath. This, I think, is underrated. Sis, I'll bet, doesn't slide her heels off the nose of stair steps any more. I don't know this with certainty. We also rarely speak, but I am trying to do a better job of phoning her. And she is obviously much older, now. And she has a nice practice. People ask her how they should live. How they should cope. She tells them, I suppose. Yet, we could never figure out how to talk about that odd thing that happened while we were away learning our trades. Time passed and we forgot to try. She didn't come home for Christmas last year. She told my mother she was setting some boundaries for her family. It was nice, for a change, to spend Christmas without having to hear our mother pining about how we were all together. My sister's absence made it feel like we almost like we included the old man again. 4 I sit on the bed in my old room, now my mother's guestroom. My sister and her family will arrive sometime this evening, and I am trying to stay awake for their arrival. My wife sleeps in a ball around her swollen belly. A light in the bathroom brightens the hallway where I used to catch a glimpse of my father retreating to the living room. You understand someone best in absentia, maybe. I look out the crack in the door for a few minutes, remembering his disheveled hair and the slump of his shoulders passing by.