THE LONG ROAD HOME:

AN UNTUCKED, UNBUTTONED, ALMOST TRUE STORY

A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree 3(r

E N (a £[<] Master of Arts

’ In

English: Creative Writing

by

Riley Harkins Rant

San Francisco, California

May 2015 Copyright by Riley Harkins Rant 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read The Long Road Home by Riley Harkins Rant, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Creative Writing at San

Francisco State University.

Nona^aspers Professor of Creative Writing THE LONG ROAD HOME:

AN UNTUCKED, UNBUTTONED, ALMOST TRUE STORY

Riley Harkins Rant San Francisco, California 2015

This novella explores the experience of loneliness across three different characters, the dysfunction of addiction in families, and whether or not anyone actually knows what happiness looks or feels like—for themselves or for others. The main narrator and protagonist, Riley, recognizes her father Jon’s flaws, but wants to understand him in order to help him find love again after a painful divorce. After years of judgment and rejection, Jon only wants to be accepted for who he is. Maria, an abused addict who survived years on the streets, wants nothing more than to have a home. Each of these characters gets what they want in relation to one another, but does anyone win in the end? What and who are we willing to sacrifice to get what we want?

I certify that the abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative

Date PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For my old man. And Maria.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

We Are Blind...... 1

Small Red Pills...... 4

Got to Get Out Fast...... 7

King in Exile...... 10

Open All N ight...... 14

You Like It...... 21

Loaded Guns...... 24

Santa Doesn’t Come Here...... 30

Watch Out for the Undertow...... 34

Missing Person...... 40

Black Eyes Black Hair...... 48

Fireworks...... 58

Running with the Thoroughbreds...... 62

Filling in the Hollow...... 67

Sit Back Down ...... 69

We Were an Institution...... 72

Do Not Pass Go...... 76

The Inside...... 81

The Long Road Home...... 84 1

We Are Blind, September 2006

I come-to with a tongue in my mouth and a dick in my hand. Like his boner’s a crutch, the rail by the stairs, the gutter that snags me as I roll off the roof and my whole life depends on it. He groans or growls. I forget to kiss back.

The sun barely bums through the blinds. I’m on a scratchy rug in a room full of people—four passed out in one double bed, three slouched in chairs, a few propped against walls, empty cans in every corner. Smells like beer and feet. If we weren’t so goddamn good-looking, well-dressed, and fat-cheeked someone would think we were squatters or runaways, drug addicts, or dirt bags. Sometimes we’re all of these things.

We’re 20 years old and we’re alright, but somehow it always feels like we’re moving underwater.

Someone is shrieking and stomping above us. The shrieking gets louder. Down the stairs. Outside the door we didn’t lock last night.

“OUT!” a woman bursts into the room. “Get OUT!”

She’s a French woman, older.

“Outoutoutoutout!”

It’s my friend’s mom, her black dress much too tight.

“Stupid girls!” She chucks an empty can against a wall, which ricochets and hits my head.

“Abort!” I yell. “Abort!” I laugh.

It’s 6am. And I am drunk. 2

I chugged from a bottle of vodka at 5 that morning. Friends chanting, cheering, laughing, grabbing.

“Shit girl, save some for us!” Snatching, like children, straining for love.

The sun roars behind this woman, this mother, blasting the room in a fiery white.

She’s cursing in French, in a pitch saved for rape, and she’s waving her arms, and there have to be six of them—hurling pieces of clothes she’s found on the floor so fast and furious, we try to catch them but can’t.

We throw on our shirts and stuff our sweaters in bags. Scurry like rats, barefoot through the door. The sunlight cuts through the early morning fog, and we are blind.

I shove on my heels. Fall down the driveway toward my dusty grey car. I’m an old dog trying to keep up with the kids, feet barely catching each step.

“Unlock it.” My friends jerk at the doors. “Riley—the doors.”

“I can’t driiiive.” The keys are a jumble of metal. I’m scratching the paint.

They’re kicking the tires. I see how easy it is to wreck the world if you want to.

“We can’t stay here,” they look back up the driveway. Ashley’s got an essay for summer school. Lauren has to walk her dog. Sarah’s talking some kinda shit and I swear to God, if it’s not one pushing, it’s the other. They don’t want the boys to see them like this. They don’t want to wake up the neighbors. They don’t want the French mom to call the police, or even worse, our parents. I laugh. What parents? Look down for the curb.

Best to give up now. 3

Ashley grabs the keys and the locks pop. They’re in with their seatbelts, blowing their hands like bums, saying go go go now now now. And I’m strapped in my seat, but

I’m not moving. The leather is cold on my thighs from the night air. Smells like dampness and cigarettes, french fries left in the paper bag too long.

I look in the mirror. Wipe off last night’s mascara. No wonder dad never liked me much—I’m my mom, but thinner, blonder, louder, drunker. Same big eyes, hers green, mine blue. Same small face, weak chins, high cheekbones. She’s ruddy, I’m white. I never called her last night.

“Go!”

I turn the key in the ignition, but I’m mad cause I know better.

“I can’t drive,” I mumble.

“Riley, we can’t stay here!”

I put the gear in reverse, can’t gauge the weight of my foot. I step on the pedal and the car flies back. I ram the parked car behind me and we all jolt forward. Fuck! They choke the back of my chair with their hands, shaking the headrest. Go. Drive. Run.

They’re screaming to scare me, pushing cause they know I’ll break. They’re trying to make me feel small, drowning me out with their voices, piling higher and higher. My friends are bad people, and I’m just their way out. They’re always there for the party, but never there for me. 4

“FINE!” I scream, and put it in drive. But watch what I can do, bitches. I gas hard and grasp the wheel, take control, might slip outside it. But that’s ok, I boost the speed and blow the stop sign—cause that’s how I like it.

Small Red Pills, May 1979

“Maria’s not a bad girl,” her father said, watching her skip across the front lawn in her cropped white top and ripped jean shorts, hopping into Bob Taylee’s fast black car without looking back.

“Well she’s not good either,” her mother shook her head, drying the plates with an old green cloth. “You spoil her, Carl.”

“She’s the baby,” he sang, taking her by the hips, trying to sway.

“She’s not a baby anymore,” she knocked him from her neck with her shoulder.

“She’s 15 years old, staying out til God knows when. And what’s he?” She turned to face him. “20?”

“She’ll always be my baby girl,” he said.

“She’s your only girl.” She tucked the rag into the oven bar and left him standing in the kitchen, watching Bob Taylee’s car blow the stop sign, wheels squealing to the right. 5

Maria had been awake for months.

She’d get the speed from the fat girls at school for a buck a pop and stay up for a whole week straight stealing and drinking and smoking and fucking. She’d meet Maura at the mall and they’d swipe bras and lip gloss from Penny’s, nail polish and Kodak cameras from Woolsworth, busting through the doors and hurling into Bobby Taylee’s fast black car revving in the parking lot, cackling “You can’t touch us!” always with the windows down and the radio up, rushing down the highway, fast and wicked and high as hell. They’d grab a slice with their red-hot lips, gulping down more pills with their brown-bagged beers, talking trash and sucking their lollipops, Bobby smoking cigarettes so cool.

They’d drop Maura off by supper, her ma’s head outside the screen door screaming “About time!” Maria and Bobby dining and ditching around Patchogue, speeding past the nice houses on the north side.

“One day I’m gonna get you a place like that, Maria. And we’ll keep the grass even greener.” And she’d rub his chubby through his tight blue jeans from the passenger’s seat til it got hard and her body would go into auto drive and she didn’t even think about thinking then.

They’d meet their friends in the woods to smoke some dope, “the strong stuff man, like you’re flyin,” they said. And Maria got so high off just two hits she forgot how to walk and ended up crawling, the whole crew saying, “Maria, you’re crazy! Look at her!” pointing, “What’s she doin down there in the dirt?” 6

But the ground was cool and firm, the dirt as fine as sand in her nails. Her head was hot: the smoke steaming from her nose, her mouth, her ears, she swears. The ground was damp beneath the night sky, and she pressed her head against the earth, which wasn’t going anywhere. She wouldn’t lose her balance here, wouldn’t be passed or pushed around, wouldn’t slip through any cracks, or God forbid, be left behind. She could rest on top of the steady ground, her heart fluttering against the earth, which told her yeah,

Maria, you’re high, but you’re still alive, still here.

“Maria, get up!” Bobby barked. “Let’s go!”

They ran to the beach and screwed in the dunes, behind the tall grass, rinsed the sand from their hair and their thighs and their butts in the cold black waves. Uaaahhhhh!

They built castles beneath the stars when the tide was low and the crabs were out, just to watch them smashed by swells minutes, hours, weeks later.

“What day is it Bobby?” She reached into her big bright bag and placed a small red pill on the tip of her tongue, worked up some spit, and threw her head back, and before she even knew it hit her, she crashed into another day.

The speed made Maria feel alive—heart racing, mind soaring, everything a thrill.

But the world got weirder and weirder, and Maria couldn’t tell if she destroyed that artwork awake or dreaming, if the road was made of glass or diamonds, if she was really strapped in this tight white jacket, or if it was just another bad trip, the drugs dragging on. 7

Got To Get Out Fast, March 2004

Jon’s long black car was packed with golf clubs and all his clothes. Three decades of his life stuffed into a few beat-up suitcases. My God.

The Oakland house was his alone now. Everyone had left cause it was hard for them to see him go. They had no idea how hard it was for him to leave, locking the door from the inside, no need for a key.

So this was it.

He walked through the living room to the sliding glass doors. The doors that opened to the balcony, perched above the deck he’d built with his father’s tools. The deck that housed their kids’ birthday parties, high school parties, their 25th anniversary party.

The fog rolled in above the San Francisco Bay, obscuring the view of the bridge, of the ballpark, of the high rises and traffic lights he admired for the last 15 years. Every day at 5 he sat on that balcony—a martini glass in hand, his joint and bic on the table, a pack of cigarettes under the chair—while the kids watched TV inside. Rose would take her seat next to him, sipping her martini. Sometimes she took a hit, reached over for his hand.

His hands were stuffed into his pockets this grey March morning, as he took in the view for the very last time. It was sad sky that said it all—at that point in time when the world begins to close in on itself, and if you ever want to live again, you’ve got to get out. Fast. 8

The light was not the light that brought him from Long Island so many years ago.

Not the clear, crisp sun he saw slanting across Chavez Ravine way out in California on his parent’s black and white TV, watching the Jints play the Dodgers back in ’62. It was not the warm, golden west he wanted to one day feel for himself, while he sat atop the mountain of pillows he’d made, waiting for Willie Mays to knock one out, his father smoking his Viceroys behind him, laughing with tears streaming down his cheeks as he screamed with joy after the black Jesus had done it again, done it like he always did.

He didn’t feel the heat anymore that baked the rolling brown hills of Stanford in

1971, when he met her at 20 years old, and her, just 19. Her thick sienna hair framed her thin freckled face, high cheekbones, big green eyes with flecks of gold. So warm, so

Irish, so nervous, so alive.

They studied abroad in the English countryside.

“Let’s go on a midnight hike,” she jumped up, as their friends lay stoned on the floor, bodies warm, reclining on pillows, no one wanting to move.

But she had a way about her. An energy that coursed through her body, buzzing from her core. A force. They got up and made their way outside, skipping and screaming til they collapsed into a pile of legs and arms, staring at the stars.

In her flowing skirts and scarves and bangles, she did cartwheels in the grass. She made a mess in the kitchen whipping up feasts. She swung a baseball bat like she meant it. Christ, he loved her before she even knew his name. 9

Their fate was sealed on a sunny day in May when she dropped acid for the first time. Everyone was running around the manor, climbing trees, rolling down the grassy hills. But the weather turned quickly, and she sought shelter beneath a tree with the gardeners from the estate. He watched her chatting with them, kneeling down, showing them the lines in her hands, telling them she’d lost her scarf in the wind. The men looked confused and she stood, suddenly frightened, suddenly alone, the jagged realization that she was on drugs; that they weren’t. That they felt uncomfortable speaking with guests, yet she couldn’t stop blithering, her tongue unfamiliar in her mouth. That it was dry beneath the tree and wet out there. That in that moment nowhere felt safe.

He ran to her, sharing shelter beneath the leaves. He joked with the men, and they laughed, relaxing as the rain fell. And when he put his arms around her, she sank into him, breathing slowly and evenly, finding for the first time she didn’t have to run the show. She could lose control. He would keep her warm.

After the rains, the sun shone on the saturated fields. The colors were brilliant, the gardens in bloom, dew sparkled on every petal. He lay in her lap as she played with the bumps on his head, dictated his strengths and weaknesses in divots and lumps. “You’re sensitive,” she said. “You’re selfish.”

As she cradled his head, he looked up in the trees, her scarf blowing in the branches above them. And when he jumped up and gave it to her, she received it like a gift, took his hands, lost her need for words, and decided she would love him back. 10

Thirty-two years and three children later, he didn’t think they’d ever change. But staring at the fog before him, it stared back as blank and unforgiving as her. The silence that used to be their solace went on so long he’d forgotten the sound of her laugh. He hadn’t seen the sparkle in her eyes for years now, how long her neck looked when she threw it back in joy.

Goddammit, how did they find themselves here? And was their love really gone?

Or was it only lost, like her scarf in the wind?

King in Exile, December 2003

Jon Rant was more myth than man, or we considered him to be. It didn’t help that growing up his parents had called their only son “Baby Jesus” and that they’d labeled his childhood home “The Shrine.” At six foot three with a shaved head and grey goatee, it was strange to think that once he’d been a squishy infant, dependent on someone else to feed him, to put him down to bed, to wipe his little ass. But I’d seen the pictures, seen the proof. And at one point he’d been small and round, a wordless canvas, his ice-blue eyes punched in a baby-bald head, staring through the world, seeing something past the focus.

“Your Liege,” he called himself before his three children. “Your King!” he yelled horizontally from the couch. “Cookies! Fetch him cookies and milk!”

We took our turns fetching, as he grumbled “thank you,” growled “mmmm” crunch-crunch-crunch, the crumbs catching in his goatee. And when it was time for bed 11

he lifted his head off the pillow, each of us kissing the glistening dome, goodnight dad, goodnight dad, goodnight.

We played the roles so well. Dad the king, his lovely wife, their three great kids: sweetheart, buddy, and doll. But over the months, dad drank his martinis alone on the deck. She stopped calling him honey, he stopped calling her dove. Instead of lively dinner banter, silverware screeched against the plates. When mom and dad changed, we didn’t know who to be. So we went to our rooms, talked on the phone, got really good grades, looked busy.

He called us downstairs to the old family room, where he had recently been living. He never asked us to visit before. Maybe he thought it was temporary. Maybe he was embarrassed. Maybe he didn’t want us to see our king in exile.

We raced down the steps then stopped in our tracks. How do we enter this space?

We filed into the small damp room, filled with a mish-mash of old stuff from storage: the oak dresser with heavy metal handles that clinked with every step, Grandpa’s black leather chair, weathered and faded and coated in smoke, the frayed mustard couch with the wonky zippers.

Mom sat on it. A surprise.

In the same room years before, we wrote a letter listing all the ways we wanted him to change.

Dear Dad,

We love you, but we don’t love when you yell. 12

When you lose your temper we want to hide.

We hate when our friends ask us why the house smells weird.

Smoking is bad for you. Quit!

Mom had been the scribe, and I remember thinking it wasn’t our idea, it felt icky, sneaky, a little bit mean. But once we started, the list kept growing.

Sometimes you ’re in a bad mood for no reason.

Sometimes it’s like you ’re not listening.

I f you don’t like our messy rooms, keep the doors closed!

After we signed the letter, we slid it under his home-office door. First he spanked our little bums red, but then he walked with his shoulders slumped. Started smoking outside.

Mom sat on the couch like a statue, not blinking. She didn’t look like herself She was dressed for business: a button-up shirt, nice pants, hair curled, orange lipstick. She didn’t look like the woman who baked monster cakes, spilling flour everywhere, who let us bang pots and pans to the Rolling Stones when we were young. She looked like

someone else. Someone I didn’t recognize.

Dad wore his blue terry-cloth robe, damn near gray. He’d been in it for days. He

sat on the footrest of the black leather chair. It must’ve been cold on his naked legs. It was always so cold down here.

We sat on the ground in the middle, so conscious now of taking sides.

He took deep breaths. Mom sat upright. Everyone waited for someone to speak. 13

“Kids,” he took a breath, “Your mother doesn’t love me anymore,” his voice split down the middle, his fingers pinched his eyes to stuff back the tears. His face reddened like a baby sucking for air, puckering beneath the whiskers. I’d never seen my old man cry, and I didn’t recognize the feeling I had inside—a mix of wincing pity, which made me want to look away, heartbreak, which made me want to rub his back, and shame.

I looked back at my mom who was staring right through him. Her lips punched together in a too-straight line. Her slow breaths came in 1-2-3, out 1-2-3, a little too evenly, like a respirator or some machine was doing it for her.

Dad wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand, inhaled big and blew out from his mouth. “So,” he straightened up on the stool, trying to sit taller, pull it together, become dad again, “I’m moving back to Long Island.” He looked at the three of us huddled down by his toes. “Like an elephant to die,” he forced a laugh. “No but seriously, Grandma’s getting older,” he shifted a bit, “and I’ve always sort of wanted to go back, and—”

And he must not have felt it, but right then his dick fell from his robe, three feet from our faces as we cradled ourselves cross-legged on the floor.

My eyes shot to his closet while his penis dangled in front of us, unconsciously hanging like an elephant’s trunk.

“It just makes sense for me to be there at this point,” he continued.

He had about a dozen dress shirts, a collection of seldom-worn ties, sweatshirts stacked neatly on the shelf. 14

“Your mother doesn’t want to fight for us to be a family anymore.” I wanted to cry more as he crumbled, as he struggled to sit up straight. “And I don’t know what to tell you.” I wanted to look him in the eye as he choked for air, to show some goddamn respect. “I love you kids,” he fell forward, and I thought get up and hug him, tell him you love him. “There’s just nothing else I can do.” He sobbed. But caught in this moment, everything so unglued, all I could think was that my old man had very few shoes.

Open All Night, October 1981

The loudest places were the loneliest.

Maria sucked on her cigarette and waited til the sky faded to the heavy shade of purple, when the lights for the rides switched on and the signs on the liquor stores screamed OPEN ALL NIGHT and the stars tried to punch light through the indigo blanket, but the dirty air pushed them back where they belonged. In the untouchable there.

That’s when she got up and started walking—during the sliver of time between day and night when she could almost disappear.

She was always surprised that in just three cigarettes the sun could sink to the bottom of the world like that: like a bowling ball dropped off a boat. That it hung around all day like a bum, and then just fell off the horizon, right off the edge.

It was faster than the Luminal took to hit her system back at the ward. When the nurses would force the girls to swallow sedatives, having them stick out their tongues, 15

thank you Maria, thank you Joan, thank you Marlowe, they nodded, collecting their paper cups, one stacked inside the other. And as soon as they left the room to keep their pill books straight, she and the girls would lean against the wall to see how long they’d last before their legs became wet noodles and they’d slide down the wall of the world, just like the sun, laughing as they dropped til they were caught by the ground. Before falling right through it.

Maybe the sun just wanted to get some rest like the rest of us. But Maria knew better than anyone: the sun never rises or sets; the world just spins.

A group of teenage boys tumbled by, arms draped over each other like monkeys.

Two of them whistled over their shoulders. “How much?” they boomed, laughing. The young ones never stopped her though. Everything they did was for show, for each other.

But that was better than real men, who did it all for themselves.

Coney Island made you feel like maybe you were a mistake. Like you got off the wrong stop, were bom in the wrong time, were so small next to all of those strangers, getting swept up in every step, swallowed by each word, and you were right there in the thick of it, the world tearing by, right smack in the middle, but always outside, looking in.

When she was young she loved sunset cause that’s when her dad came home.

She’d watch the ball of fire fall down the sky from the living room window, peeking through the curtains for the first sight of his dark blue station wagon. And as soon as he turned off the headlights, she’d run to the door, eyes on the doorknob, waiting to see it 16

twist. She’d have one hand out to take his coat, and the other hand pinching his slippers between her fingers, ready to give, ready to take, ready to react to whatever he wanted.

She didn’t love sunset so much anymore.

Mike was watching her from across the street in his tight blue jeans and sweat- stained undershirt. From there he could track her every move, every step, make sure she didn’t go with black guys, who he said always tried to get it free. Make sure she got the money upfront, and tap the roof of the car twice to signal she had it. The light from the streetlamp shone down on his scar, which slashed his left cheek right down the middle.

Mike found her in front of Penn Station, fifteen minutes after she got off the Long

Island Rail Road, after escaping St. John’s. Coming off the meds and shocks her mouth was dry, her palms were sweaty. A steady hum of lights and teeth and horns crashed her senses. She sat hugging her knees against a chain-linked fence in front of buildings big as

God, not knowing where to put her focus til Mike walked up with that slashed-up cheek, leaned down, said “Hey honey, you hungry?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Starved.”

They slept in Central Park her first night there, under the Sycamore Maples.

Maria plucked a couple of dark green leaves off the branches, leathery between her fingertips, asked if it was poison ivy. Mike called her a bumpkin, and laughed as he rolled a joint on the stones. He picked up each scrap of weed that fell off the paper, and dropped it back in the center, pinching and rolling and licking and sticking, lighting the 17

lighter to admire his work. He let the joint dangle out of his mouth like a movie star, or a gangster, like someone who was bigger or badder and could fuck you up if he wanted to.

“Here, Maria,” he said, offering her the joint. And she liked that he called her by name, that it made her feel like a person and not just a hospital patient. She didn’t realize how much she needed that.

She got high fast and started yelling hello hello hellooo to hear the city yell back, to have her voice boomerang. She waited for an echo. Hellooooo.

“Shhh Maria, quiet, siddown,” Mike said. “Can’t we just be with each other?”

So she settled down next to him, her body open to his, letting his fingers trace her forehead, and brush her hair off her cheek.

“Do you know how beautiful you are, Maria?” The cars were so far off in the distance, the park was their own. “Your skin and your chin and your hair.”

The air burned in the space between their bodies as he touched her, and Maria did what all men want when they get close like this and kissed him. He tasted like garlic and street meat and weed, but the night was cold and he was warm. She kissed him faster and he kissed her right back and she wasn’t sure how long to wait and decided not at all and pounced like an animal, like a cat that hadn’t been touched or held in ages and didn’t know the way you’re supposed to touch someone, softly, without nails, without teeth, without grinding on top of them as fast as a hummingbird. 18

She felt this man with the scar get hard beneath her, which only made her grind harder and deeper. Her hands moved down his body, feeling for his button on his jeans, but something else felt hard.

Keep going, he said. So she pulled down his zipper, pulled him out and slipped him in and didn’t stop til he came, his back arching off the rocks, saying oh my god and then flattening out like a rag doll, limp on the rocks, looking up at the moon through the

Sycamore leaves.

“You like fuckin strangers, Maria?” he asked her.

“I guess so,” she laughed, reaching over for the joint.

But he dropped the joint and grabbed her hand instead.

She hadn’t held hands with anyone for a long time, except her dad in the hospital.

And even though Mike’s hand was rough like sandpaper, it was nice to hold onto someone on the hard round rock, in the dark empty park, in this big strange city where she ran all alone.

His other hand went down to his pocket. And when it came back up he was holding a knife.

Maria snapped up and away, pulling her hand back, her stomach tightening, wondering where she would run to now. She didn’t want to upset him, to say something wrong. So she sat in silence, muscles frozen, waiting for Mike to make his move. 19

“Check this out,” he said and rolled onto his stomach. Maria breathed quietly as

Mike’s arms shook, as he started knifing the rock, etching lines deeper and deeper into the boulder.

“Look,” he said, so she peered over his shoulder.

MIKE + MARIA

He smiled back at her.

“It’ll be here in Central Park for everyone to see,” he said. “Forever.”

And forever had been fun at first when they’d just been pan-handling, or stealing purses in grocery stores. But after she started hooking, it just felt like the same day without a break, without an escape. Same old shit, just a different man.

Mike didn’t like her sitting on the sidewalk, or leaning against the wall, or looking drugged out, so Maria moved around her comer, her black spandex skirt extra short, her white shirt hanging off her shoulder, her toes jammed forward, the new red heels rubbing her feet all wrong. They were high and pointy and shiny catching light off the signs, and they made her legs look long and tan, Mike said. They’d only been five bucks and after just a few minutes of working, it felt like they were slashing the skin off her heel with every step. She pretended like she was throwing something away in the trash and put her weight against the can.

A black four-door pulled up. She pushed herself off the garbage, and bent down to look through the window.

“Hi there, mister,” she smiled. “Can I help you?” she winked. 20

“Get in the car,” he said and flashed his badge, staring straight ahead, his baseball cap pulled low, his hand on the wheel, his foot on the break, the car still in drive.

“Oh, I’m sorry officer,” she took two steps away from the car, one heel feeling its way behind the other, as the shoes cut deeper into her ankles. “You got the same car as a friend I’m waiting for,” she started to turn.

“Waiting for a friend in a skirt like that,” he scoffed. “You’re soliciting,” he looked up for the first time with piggish brown eyes. He looked like her brother Vito, who used to watch her change from outside her window, hiding behind a bush. And when she told her mom about Vito peeping, all she said was “Turn the other way then.”

“I’m gonna need you to get in the car.”

Mike was watching from across the boardwalk, against the streetlight, smoking a cigarette. She didn’t want to catch his eye and give them both up, so she thought about running toward the water. But in those heels and on this street he’d catch her. And if she went toward the boardwalk, he’d just call it in, and they’d check her record, and see she’d gone missing. And they’d take her back to that hole of a hospital, where they’d stick a towel in her mouth and try to shock her into someone new. Where her head would stay fogged up all day, every second dragging into the same slow song, each moment dull and grey. All she wanted was color, for the world to light up again. For Bobby to swoop her up on this comer, pick her up off these heels, kiss her smack on the lips, sing “Honey,

I’m taking you back home.” But Bobby went with Maura now. And the hospital would want her back. And she couldn’t live like that again, with doctors shoving pills down her 21

mouth and girls fighting over radio stations, fighting with hairbrushes, fighting over nothing and everything as their brains were fried like eggs. And this time, after losing her once, they’d be paying attention.

“I’m not gonna book you,” he said, his low voice softening around the edges.

“Just get in,” he coaxed her with the twenty folded in his palm. “We’ll take a ride.”

He didn’t look like the type who needed to pay.

“You pay upfront,” Maria said, looking side to side. She always made them pay first now, cause Mike went nuts the first time she came back cashless. After she blew the john she asked for the fifteen bucks and he socked her square in the eye. And when she jumped out of the car and ran to Mike crying, instead of hugging her back, punched her other eye, called her a dumb guinea, even though he was dumb guinea too.

Since that night, she crumpled the money tight in her fist and held the ball of paper til it was limp and wet, making it easy for Mike to straighten out the soft bills when she got back to the boardwalk.

“Not until you get in the car,” he waived the twenty. So she opened the door and strapped on her belt. He was a cop after all. She’d follow one law tonight.

You Like It, February 2004

I lay on my back in Brian’s bed, wearing his boxers. I counted how many squares were on the ceiling with one eye closed. 22

“I’d made this private volleyball team, The California Condors—I know—there aren’t condors in California.” Brian breathed in that quick breath, when you’re about to talk but catch yourself and don’t. I heard him close his mouth and let his breath out of his nostrils as quietly as he could, watching his chest barely recede back toward the bed. “It was one of those rich travel leagues where all the mom’s wear the same designer jeans their daughters wear, and the girls—we were like 12 or 13—some of them were already giving hand-jobs behind the portables, and they were definitely getting their tits sucked.”

Brian readjusted his shoulders, digging them deeper into the pillows. “I remember because I was thirteen and had no tits to speak of. But their fathers didn’t have a clue cause all of them did that weird Daddy thing, you know, when girls call their dads

‘Daddy’?”

“Cause they actually want to be banging their dads?” He was doing that deep horny breathing he did when he wanted to get it on.

“Gross! Keep it in your pants, Bri. They were just creepy and wealthy and suburban is all.”

Brian dragged his fingers across my stomach and laughed. “For a second there I thought this was gonna get interesting,” he said. I called him a creep. “You like it,” he laughed.

“My dad was pissed this club cost five grand or something obscene, and my mom was insisting we register that night, because of some waitlist or deadline or whatever.” 23

Brian hummed his listening hum, and moved his fingers from my stomach to my thigh, walking them inward. Was he trying to go again? I paused for a second. His fingers stood still.

“I could hear them yelling from my room, so I snuck down the hall and saw them there on the couch, in the living room, facing each other. And my mom was showing him this paper, where she needed both signatures, cause it was expensive, right?”

“Right.”

“And then he just lost it, I guess, and punched her, on the leg.”

“Wait, what?” He shifted to his side, his arm propping up his head.

“Well, it was more of a bop, like how you’d bop a hungry hippo. It was vertical.”

He fist was a ball, like a child ready to throw a tantrum. And before I knew it he blasted her leg, like an ice pick shattering ice. He shattered right through it, and Mom was across the room in seconds.

I put my arm up, let it hang in the air as the blood fell from my fingertips. It was a game I mostly played in my bed alone, thinking about Brian, wondering if he was in his bed alone too.

“Shit!” he said, while I stayed still, staring at the ceiling, my arm dangling in the air.

“So she gathered up the kids, and took us down to get burritos for dinner.” I didn’t want to pause too long while I remembered. I didn’t want to come off like it was more dramatic than it really was. “We didn’t talk about it at all while we ate—I mean, my 24

brother and sister hadn’t seen. But after, my mom sent them into Safeway to get ice cream. And I remember I sat with her in the car, in the parking lot, in our quaint little town. And she wasn’t crying, but she was sad, you know? Serious. And she asked me if she should divorce my dad.”

“And you were thirteen?” He took his other hand back. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said yes.” I let my arm fall straight down like tiiiiiiiimber, picking up speed as it cut the space between our bodies, landing with a heavy thump, not even Brian, or the comforter, could soften or ignore.

Loaded Guns, March 2004

Driving cross-country was like driving across the moon. Jon made his way over the barren stretches of Nevada and Western Utah, the roads flat, wide, empty, endless.

His foot pressed the gas ten hours day. 80 miles per hour. 90 miles per hour. Full tank.

Quarter tank. He told the time by miles to create some sense of pace, of progress.

The truth was: California was too big. There was too much space, too much freedom, too much rope to hang yourself with. Its expanse, once liberating, had become vastness, and he didn’t know where he’d gone off course til it was too late, til he was too far down another road, and he couldn’t turn back to find his way home. 25

One by one his mix-tapes played all the way through. And song by song, he played back their lives, trying to figure out where they went wrong.

He wasn’t a bad guy, he reasoned. He never cheated on her, didn’t beat her. So what did she want from him? To talk more? Drink less? Stay on the goddamn Zoloft?

Those pills that made him shit himself?

He was too impatient, she said. Very intense, their counselor agreed. When he tried to tell his side at therapy—that Rose loved the kids unconditionally but not him— they accused him of being jealous, of being angry.

“Of course I love the kids unconditionally,” she said. “I’m their mother! But I’m not your mother, Jon.”

“No, you’re my wife!” Yeah, she nodded. “And that means you can’t love me unconditionally?” He was confused. Wasn’t that part of the deal?

“Romantic love is conditional, Jon,” she said. “You have to work at it, or it falls apart. You have to do certain things, make concessions, compromises, changes.”

“But I’m not asking you to change! Why is it all on me?” And after he stormed out, Rose took a cab home, told him later that he’d acted like a child. “But the shrink’s already taken your side!”

“Side? It’s like you’re six years old.”

He was incapable of change, she said. That everyone else had grown up and he’d stayed the same age. Yeah, the same man she’d loved back then. Now punished for not changing. 26

“Who wants to grow up?” he asked her.

“I do,” she said, making their bed.

“Life’s too short to take so fucking seriously.”

“It can’t always be a party, Jon. I mean, really, do you have to smoke pot all day?”

But he wasn’t hurting anyone by getting high!

“You’re never h e r e she said moving her arms in the space between their bodies.

“I’m always here!” he yelled. “I live here! I work here! I never leaver

“That’s not what I mean,” she threw the pillows on the bed. “How can we have a relationship when you’re constantly stoned?”

“I like being high!” he said. “Why’s that so terrible?”

Rose shook her head. “It’s like you’d rather be living in a fog than with your family.”

It wasn’t just about the two of them. She said she wanted to be a better role model for the kids. But the kids were fine! They were good kids, smart kids, and the world would hurt them but they hadn’t—until now.

So she stopped drinking, stopped smoking. She practically became a nun with a wall of cement between her legs. And each time he tried to get close to her she rolled over, til everything he did and said got the same icy response. He couldn’t make a joke without it being racist or gross. He couldn’t even make pasta right! 27

She just stopped loving him, he thought, lighting a joint over the great flat pool table of Kansas. And you can’t fix that. Miles of fields surrounded him, a wasteland on all sides. Or had she been shrinking away from him for years—decades maybe—leaving no trace until he turned around one day and she wasn’t there behind him?

He looked in the rearview mirror. Nothing in sight.

If he was really being honest, he and Rose had ended long before therapy even began.

They were always invited to dinner parties because they were the lively guests, the boozy ones that brought the joints and conversation. But one party, she took it too far—flirting with every woman’s husband, rubbing their arms, laughing her laugh, sipping their drinks, standing too close. He didn’t mind that she flirted, but he didn’t like when she embarrassed herself, when she embarrassed him.

“We’re going to the observatory,” she announced to the group after dessert, holding the host’s hand.

“No we’re not, Rose,” he said, standing up. “In fact, I think it’s about that time we call it a night.” He nodded to the group, straightening his pants.

“No! We’re going!” she ran out the door, driving off in a car with a married man.

Everyone made light of it. Oh, Rose. She’s so wild. But one by one each couple left, until he and the hostess finished the dishes and she told him she was heading to bed. 28

He drove home humiliated. And when she came back at lam, giggly and drunk and high, he was so mad he shoved her onto their bed so hard that she fell off, and when he pulled her up by her hair he said, “Did you suck his dick too?”

And she did the strangest thing, he remembered. She smiled.

“I’m so happy you did that,” she rubbed her jaw, her hair caught in her mouth.

“Now I can finally leave you,” her eyes glaring like snakes. “And I won’t have to feel bad.”

It stunned him, this controlled hate. Was it hate? Or was it worse? Was it apathy?

Had she patiently been biding her time til he blew it?

She slept in the guest room that night. And when he apologized the next morning, let’s go out to dinner dove, let’s go to a movie, she said the kids were having a sleepover, someone should be home. From that point on, every act was more measured. They no longer had conversations; they just exchanged information. Rose only told him what he needed to know.

“I think you should move downstairs,” she said a few days later.

So he did that too. And he stayed there for nine whole months, up until four days ago anyway. And in three short days, he’d be back in Long Island. One mile away from his mother, from the house he grew up in. Like an elephant to die.

It was a bright, sunny day, so he rolled down the window to get the pot smell out, and cranked up the rock and roll. 29

When he was a kid, his mother liked to stare out at her big green yard, a little gray head in the window above her kitchen sink. Her round face surrounded by her cobwebs for hair, stiff from the big can of Suave spray—even in the wind. In the evenings, she’d sit out on the porch, staring into the blackness, listening to the cicadas in the warm summer nights. Always in a tank top and shorts, her white ked shoes crossed over her varicose veins, a Budweiser close by. She liked the coldness in her hand on a hot night.

She liked the way a cigarette tasted after mint chip ice cream.

She was a pain in the ass, but he loved his ma. He’d take care of her now. It was the right thing to do. He wondered how long he could tolerate her conversations about the different pills she took, and her sister not calling her back. But this was life. This was the cycle. A whole different world was ahead of him, and he was racing toward it at 90 miles per hour.

He looked in the rear view mirror and saw a Kansas state trooper with his lights flashing, coming up hard. Of course, he thought, pulling over to the side of the highway, the world flat and brown outside of him, the cop looking down into his open window.

“Hello officer! How are you?” he said in an upbeat tune, his little blue eyes red on the whites.

“What brings you racing through Kansas, sir?” the officer asked, noting his

California plates.

“Had to get away from the old lady,” he laughed. “No, I’m,” he paused, “I’m coming off a divorce. I’m moving to New York,” he waited. “How fast was I going?” 30

“92,” he said. “Open up the trunk, please.”

He popped the trunk from the driver’s seat. All the jocks and bullies from his high school ended up as cops. Assholes above the law now. Power trippers with a badge.

“Where’s the rest of your stuff?” he yelled from under the trunk.

“I hired a moving company.”

“What’s the company’s name?” he quizzed.

“Uhh, Two Guys and a Truck.” The officer walked back to his window, staring at him through impenetrable sunglasses. He handed him a ticket for $140. “We all good here?” The cop and leaned in the window, staring Jon face-to-face.

“Do you have any drugs in this car?"

"No sir, absolutely not." Even though his left hand was resting on the pouch in the door, which contained half an ounce of pot.

"Do you have any open containers of alcohol in this car?"

"Oh no sir, absolutely not." Even though there was an opened handle of vodka in his suitcase in the back.

"Do you have any loaded weapons in this car?"

Only the one between my legs, officer.

"Oh, no sir. Absolutely not." Only this time, he was telling the truth.

Santa Doesn’t Come Here, October 1981

“No need to be shy,” the officer said, handing Maria the twenty. 31

“OK,” Maria pushed out a laugh, smoothing her skirt and fiddling with her hands.

They drove down Mermaid Ave looking for a side street to park. “You want to pull over up there?” she pointed ahead, under a light that had gone out. She hated going too far cause they never drove her back to the boardwalk. And with these cheap heels, she’d have to walk barefoot, and there was always so much broken glass.

“I’ll pull over where I want to pull over.” The further west they went, the more the roar of rollercoasters and the Wheel of Wonder and the carnival music faded.

She only came to Coney Island once as a kid. Her father had left her brothers at home and Maria rode the boardwalks on his shoulders like a princess on high.

“Hello, how do you do?” she waved her little hand like a flag side to side, no air between her fingers, like she saw the Queen of England wave on TV. Her father bounced beneath her on the boardwalk, laughing the whole day. She was too scared to go on the rollercoasters, so they just ate ice cream cones and shot targets for teddy bears. And after her dad won one, he told her to hide it under her bed so her mother wouldn’t know.

The sky was inky now, a dark backdrop of a vacant street with blackened buildings, shattered windows, graffiti on the wall—a big hand giving them the bird. He turned off the headlights, stared straight ahead.

Most guys wanted to get right to it. Their wives were waiting at home, or they had some place to be. But he was so silent and the car was so quiet she could hear his breath whistling from his nose. 32

“So for twenty,” she started, “you get a blowjob. Anything else is gonna be extra.”

“It’s gonna be free this time,” he said.

“Sorry,” she clung to the money tighter, “but I don’t do this for fun.”

“Gimme that,” he grabbed her wrist, opening the sweaty fingers of her palm.

Maria turned for the door, but the pressure of the metal pushed against her head made her freeze.

“Please, officer, please.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m an officer. And you’re a whore.” The gun was buried in her mass of black hair. “And you’re gonna blow me now. Free.”

Maria rotated toward him, careful not to make any sudden moves. Her heel was caught in a fold of the carpet on the floor, and her blistered flesh dug into the shoe but she didn’t want to adjust and suprise him. So she let it dig deeper.

“Hurry up,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror. She leaned over, reached across his lap and fumbled with his button and the zipper of his pants. And when she pulled out his soft brown dick the whole car stunk up like fish. Maria’s head shot the other way instinctively and she choked down a gag. He cocked the gun.

“If you don’t make me come I’ll kill you.”

She took his limp dick like a slinky between two fingers, opened her mouth and stuck it inside. Tasted like dirty skin and old sweat and she jerked it between her fingers from the base, his balls crushed up against the seat and against her chin. 33

“No hands. Do it with your mouth.”

Maria placed her hands on the seat and used her tongue to stroke it. He held her head down, black hair all around her face, so hot and humid and dirty down there she thought she might pass out. She felt his dick getting harder and he shoved her head so far down his cock hit the back of her throat. She made a vacuum of her mouth, swallowing all the extra spit so she wouldn’t soak her face, his balls, his seat.

She didn’t want to die here. She’d barely made it out alive.

The officer’s hips started moving up, his dick forced so far back it felt like he was fucking her skull. She breathed through her nose so she wouldn’t choke on him. Her neck burned bobbing up and down, sucking his dick like a sausage, the suction making him moan.

“I’m gonna come on your face, in your hair,” he whispered.

She knew Mike would be waiting for her back at the boardwalk, and she hoped after all this, with no money, he’d still give her a shot to the vein. A shot that would make her nod so far forward, she’d peer over the cliff of the world, this close to falling off, but he’d never let her go all the way. If she could just make this guy come tonight she could forget about these men and these streets and Mike always railing on her to make more, more, more. She could fold in on herself, the heroine rushing through her veins like a warm mellow wave. Her mind would stop racing and slow to a steady buzz and for just a few minutes she could feel whole, in the home of herself, where all her heart had to do was keep on beating. 34

She felt the gun come off her head, the barrel slouched down between her shoulder blades, no pressure, just weight. And when he came he cried like a dog, a yelp so short and high and fast she thought she snapped something.

She waited between his legs for a signal to move.

“Get out,” he said.

Maria jerked up and to the right, and without even looking at him got out of the car. She didn’t want to know his face, didn’t want to see if his eyes changed. His gas ch- ch-ch-chooed and the wheels shoved against the road, and she wiped off her mouth with the side of her arm. She faced the graffiti-covered wall, adjusted her shirt and pulled down her skirt and read the spray paint saying santa doesn’t come here over and over til his engine was so far away that the night air went silent, and she couldn’t hear her thoughts anymore, just her stomach growling.

Watch Out for the Undertow, August 2004

Dad was a beached walrus at 5pm, fat and whiskered on the beat-up mustard couch he’d lugged back east from California. He sipped his shot of vodka—a thimble in those sausage fingers—halfway watching the TV, halfway watching me take inventory of the house as bald as his head, beside the pictures he tacked up on the walls.

“Nice place, huh?” He looked around the little house made of wood, letting the vodka rest in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed. His eyes found me by the picture taken on the old deck he’d built, all five of us with our heads stacked, the 35

different hair colors separating each face from the other. So cookie cutter. Like there could have been a pitcher of lemonade beyond the frame. “A good house for a bachelor, I think,” he said, looking at mom on the wall.

We were a mile off the main road, tucked so deeply in the Long Island woods that if you were judging from the outside we didn’t exist. He needed a dog, I thought.

Something that barked.

“Martini time?” I offered, grabbing the handle of Stolichnaya at the bottom of the freezer nestled between stacks of frozen pizza. “Do you not make ice anymore?”

His focus had shifted off of me and back to ESPN.

“Ice? You don’t have any?” I held up two empty trays. I settled for cold vodka in short glasses, filling them up past the brim, splashing onto the floor as I made my way toward him.

He leaned over toward the table and opened his wooden box, pulling out a bud, stuffing it into his old wooden pipe.

“Where’s the pipe I bought you last Christmas?”

“Oh, it’s somewhere. Probably in the drawers over there,” directing with a thrust of his chin. He packed the bud down in the pipe, broke off a chunk of hash and sprinkled it on top, lighting it with his bic.

“It doesn’t have a carb,” I told him.

“So what?” He lowered his head for a puff. “I like this one better,” he sucked. 36

I bought him pipes from everywhere I went. The way people buy spoons for people from different countries—that’s how I bought him pipes. The one from Mexico looked like a totem poll, the one from Honduras was sleek and twisted. The glass one from Berkeley was blown wild with colors. I’d spent a lot of money on a lot of pipes he never used.

The Lincoln Town Car snored on the gravel path outside the window. The light through the trees showed the sunspots of age, the particles of dust floating on the long black hood, the scratch on the passenger door. The last time I’d seen that Lincoln had been in California, in front of the garage, hovering beneath the orange basketball rim where we used to play Horse.

“I can’t believe the Lincoln made it this far,” I said, imagining him driving through the Rockies, then the deserts, then the plains. I wondered a hundred times what he’d thought about coasting from one town to the next, stopping at diners for runny omelets, sleeping in motels with itchy floral bedspreads and no mini-bars. I hoped it hadn’t only been about mom. I hoped there was some sense of future, of him working out introductions to his new neighbors, shaking invisible hands, making sure his grip stayed strong. Mostly I imagined him turning up the stereo, and Bruce Springsteen blasting, his hands drumming against the wheel or his thigh, biting his lower lip, letting his head groove.

“I can’t believe / made it this far,” he said. 37

The day he left had been a shitty day, I remembered. A good day to leave, he’d said, as he took a seat in our old living room, looking out at the view of the fog, and the

San Francisco Bay. It was a Wednesday.

“By tonight I’ll be in Co-lor-ado,” he said, making it sound like a road trip with friends. He grabbed the remote from the table and flipped to the weather channel, though he’d seen the report a thousand times: a snowstorm in Denver. High winds.

“Wow,” I said. It would clear by the weekend.

“Yeah,” he hummed. He’d be in Kansas by then.

Neither of us was sure how long the goodbye should last so we watched the blue screen with white symbols in silence, listening to the rain pour steadily outside.

“Dad?” I said, working up the courage. He took his hand off his chin, rested it on the arm of his chair, his wrist and stubby fingers dangled off the edge. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Well,” he exhaled, and the two of us stood up, walking each other toward the front door. “I guess this is it.”

Opening his arms, I went to his chest, to his baby blue crew neck I always made fun of. I hugged him like when I was little, around the stomach, burrowing my head near his armpit, eyes closed. He smelled like himself: like cigarettes and pot and laundry detergent. He said I love you sweetheart, and his voice broke, so he kissed the top of my head and I felt his whiskers scratch my scalp and his uneven breaths come short and

shallow and fast. He patted my back like a baseball coach would. It made a hollow sound. 38

“Riley,” he snapped, always snapping when I took too long. “Pay attention!” He shook the pipe in front of me.

“Nah, I’m gonna make another drink. Want one?”

“Why not?” he laughed, holding his cup out as I poured the vodka straight from the bottle. No need for vermouth after one, he taught me. Once you’re at that point you can’t tell the difference!

“You know, it’s funny,” he said. I sat back down and took another hit. “I used to sit on the balcony back in California. And I remember being there with my martini and that incredible view, and one day asking myself, ‘So this is it?”’ He laughed a little bit.

“So this is my life?” He felt the fold of fat on the back of his oily neck, and stared up toward the ceiling. “And don’t get me wrong, 1 felt lucky, having our life, and mom, and security and my health. But at the same time, it was a little unsettling, unsatisfying, thinking that all I had to look forward to was my death.”

I wanted to challenge him, to say “You have graduations to look forward to, weddings to look forward to, grandkids. You have us!” But instead in times like these I listened. It was a rare peek inside, a moment of openness, and I knew not to push too far cause he’d pull back. I knew not to prod too deeply because he’d turn inward, chewing on experiences I didn’t know, playing back a reality I never could understand. He wouldn’t let the silence linger long anyway. Sometimes the silence is pushy enough.

He closed his eyes, rubbing the fatigue from his temples with his thumb and his middle finger, his head greasy in the sunlight. He opened his eyelids and focused. “It was 39

just sort of anti-climactic. Like, so now what? What do I do next? And now look at me!”

His voice got hoarse as he brought it higher. “Never in a million years if anyone asked me what I’d be doing at 54 would I tell them I’d be back in New York, living a mile away from my mother’s house, separated from Rose.” He began to laugh. “It just goes to show you that life is totally weird, and totally unpredictable.” He put on his rock star persona and clenched his free fist. “You gotta watch out for the undertow, baby.”

I choked when I hit the pipe, but played it off, settling deeper into the pillows, pulling my knees to my chest and trying to blow smoke rings in the wet air.

“Close!” he smiled, taking the piece back. “Watch this!” He exhaled out of his nose like a dragon, forgetting he’d shown me that trick when I was 8 .1 acted impressed.

The Town Car was on its very last legs now. Was he?

I’d wanted to leave before him the day he drove back east, because I didn’t want him to leave me. I scheduled a haircut to have somewhere to be. I blabbed to the stylist about tattoos and boys, laughing at the right time to laugh, the whole time thinking I didn’t want to turn his office into a study. That I didn’t want to paint it green or add new books to the library. I didn’t want to toss his abalone ashtrays, hear silence when it should be the Giants on the radio.

Maybe mom had called him, I told myself driving up that long road home. The ground was flooded, the mud sliding down the mountain. Maybe she caught him before 40

he left, said she changed her mind, that they should go out as a family tonight, Mexican food, their favorite.

I climbed up and up the snaky roads beneath pregnant clouds, winding around every turn. I prayed he’d still be there, his head shining through the window, held my breath as I pulled up to our house. I squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them slowly hoping to see the dusty black Town Car still parked in our driveway, sleeping on the silvery stones, under the limping net, below the orange rim, where we used to play Horse.

Missing Person, November 1983

Mike loaned Maria out to his friend, Chucky, but she didn’t really mind. She kinda liked the way Chucky’s long hair fell over his eyes. How he tried to blow it up with his lower lip stuck out, but it always fell back. How it made him look soft even though he did a lot of coke and stole a lot of purses.

They went up the flight of stairs in the flophouse, with rusty-colored carpet, long hairs stomped into the fibers. But under the sheets they were two warm bodies, her legs wrapped around him as they collided like waves, their bodies an ocean, when the air is hot and the water’s calm and you can float right on the surface of it. She was on her back and the sun was on her stomach. The sand was white and fine beneath her feet and she was sweaty enough to sprint right in. There were no shells or rocks—just pure, clean sand and the water, his sweat, all over her body.

“Let me on top,” she whispered. 41

He sat up, and she fell back a little, still on top of him, her knees coming off the bed and pointing higher. His stomach rubbed against her and she was pressing into it. Her arms around his neck, and she was pushing against his shoulders. She was climbing up him and falling back down.

“I’m gonna come,” he said. Her hands made ripples on the sheets, and under the waves her hair flowed everywhere, a mermaid’s. It was slower down there and she kept her eyes closed feeling the calm of the water and not the sting of the salt. And when she

came up for air she saw him lying there, still. A body buried under the blankets, under the

sand, smiling up at her.

Knock knock knock. Three beats on the door. Chucky jumped up to look through the hole.

“Chucky, lemme inside, man.” It was Mike.

Chucky unlocked the chain, and Mike squeezed through the crack. Chucky was

cupping his dick asking what was wrong. And when Mike said nothing and got up in his neck, Maria pulled up the sheets and moved back on the bed.

She didn’t know Mike liked men. He’d been drinking Night Train, so maybe he

was drunk. Or maybe he liked it both ways.

He bent Chucky over on the bed, whose hands were spread wide. He caught his breath as Mike shoved himself inside.

They looked like animals. Their faces all dark and twisted up, open eyes, but

nothing behind them. Was that what she looked like with strangers? Blank? She pulled 42

the sheets up higher and higher til they came past her chin. It was like she wasn’t there.

Not to them, or to the whole world. No one knew she was behind this closed door, in this motel without towels, fucking to survive. Maria was invisible. A missing person right in front of the only two people who even knew she existed.

When Mike was done, he pushed Chucky on the bed, told Maria to put on her clothes, that he had Night Train back at the warehouse, it was time to say goodnight.

He hoisted her through the warehouse’s broken window, and she unlocked the front door from inside. Lots of people came through the warehouse during the day. The dope fiends would nod off in the morning, and the Wall Street guys came during lunch, using their ties to tie off. But at night it was just the two of them. Maria and Mike waited across the street til the Puerto Ricans who ran the heroine locked up and left.

Mike pulled out the bum wine from his too-big coat and asked if she made him money that day. If she had, he’d shoot her up. And if she hadn’t, he’d just dangle the little bag in front of her, slugging the bottle, and laughing as she grabbed for it. She handed him $100.

“You shouldn’t have fucked Chucky,” he said.

“You told me to!” she said reaching for the bag, which he pulled away like a pinata on a string. She swatted for the Night Train, which he stuck back in his mouth.

“You’re not allowed to fuck my friends,” he said, sucking from the bottle.

“But apparently you are,” she said. Her heart dipped into the pit of her stomach with instant regret. He took a step toward her. 43

“You want to say that again?”

“I didn’t mean it,” she said, watching his scar turn purple and his eyes go black.

“I’m no faggot, Maria.”

“No, I know you’re not. Of course you’re not,” Maria went toward him, her hands getting ready to smooth out his shirt. “I don’t know why I said that,” she moved forward, but his fist blew right through her, deep in her gut, and she crumpled to the ground, choking for air.

“I just fucked him cause he fucked YOU,” he yelled, kicking her over and over until she thought she would break. She hugged herself into a ball covering her head with her arms. “Because you’re mine, Maria.” He stumbled over to the corner, tripping over his feet, falling to the floor.

Maria stayed wrapped in her ball while he muttered to himself til the muttering stopped. She watched his chest for an hour, counting the length of his breathes til they got longer and slower in this big empty warehouse, and she knew he’d passed out.

She slipped on some shoes and out through the door. Under the streetlamp, the white rain fell from the purple-bruised sky, slapping the garbage cans and sidewalks and the day’s old newspaper. Drops came from space, landing on her cheeks, falling with her tears. She stood in a puddle by the gutter for a long time, the water flooding her shoes.

She didn’t know what she was doing here. She leaned her head back looking for God, but only saw black, an upside down ocean, the full moon a far-away pearl. 44

“I don’t want to die here,” she said aloud, in case anyone was listening, in case

God was real. “I don’t want to die in this city!” she said again, yelling this time. A couple holding hands walked past her, giggling to each other. Maria stood soaking wet, her hair heavy with rain, her toes turning to raisins.

She wanted to go home.

She started walking toward the trains. All she wanted was a shower, a real shower, with soap and shampoo and body oil after. She wanted to see her father. Her mother even, yes. Wanted her to cook a big meal for the whole family. Everybody’s invited.

She found a payphone and stepped inside the box. She dialed collect, held her breath as it rang. And when her mother actually answered, Maria couldn’t stop herself from crying.

“I’m in the city, ma,” she said, trying to catch her breath, looking over her shoulders, knowing Mike could be anywhere. He was always watching.

“Maria!” her mother screamed. “Oh my god, honey, it’s Maria,” she could hear her mother crying as she handed her father the phone. She could practically see the phone transfer across their yellow sheets, their white eyelet quilt her grandma had sewn, all the stitches forming a heart out of holes.

“Maria? Baby?” She hadn’t heard her father’s voice in two years and he sounded older, more fragile.

“Hi, Dad.” 45

“Come home,” he said calmly, but she could hear he was shaking. “Can you take the next train?”

“Maria, are you still there?”

“Did you lose her?” she heard her mother ask.

“Yes, no, I’m still here, dad. I’m coming,” Maria said. “I’m coming right now.”

Maria hung up the phone and ran to the station. Her feet were soaking wet, the water knocking the sides like a boat about to turn over, but she ran through it, past it, til the water flew out from the tops of her shoes and squirted through the holes made for laces. She ran like she was gonna bust through the arms of Red Rover, Red Rover, Let

Maria Come Over and she was running to knock the whole fence down. She sprinted to make the last train to leave the station that night, and when she flew down the stairs, praying the train was still there, she saw it hovering on the platform, with two minutes to spare. She didn’t know the last time she felt so light, and realized relief is better than happiness, cause it’s a weight lifted, something bad gone.

“Maria.” She froze. “You can’t run from me.”

Mike grabbed her wet arm, stumbling as he wrestled her away from her train. She struggled as he dragged her further and further from the open doors.

“You’re not going nowhere,” he said, his hand wrapped tight around her slippery wrist, as she fought to wriggle loose. She heard another train coming on the other side, and snapped her hand back, busting through the space where his thumb met his fingers.

He lost his balance, falling back, falling further. And Maria darted across the platform 46

slipping through the crack of the doors before they closed. And as she looked out the window, Mike was falling onto the tracks.

* * *

She took a bath in her mother’s spotless bathroom and ate leftover pasta and slept in clean white sheets the whole night through. She didn’t know where she was when she woke up, and looked to see if Mike was still sleeping.

But Mike was dead in Manhattan. And Maria was finally home.

She stretched in her own bed and fell back asleep, til her mother yelled breakfast time and Maria walked into the kitchen, her toes all warm and clean in fresh pink socks.

She drenched a stack of pancakes in syrup from her grandmother’s old gravy boat.

She cut into them with her fork as her father read the paper. It was all so familiar. Sitting in her mother’s kitchen, all the pictures exactly where they’d always been, her mother’s hair pinned just so. Her parents looked a little older but that was just time. She probably looked older too, she thought, watching her mom wipe down the counter at every sight of a crumb, a drip, anything out of place.

“Thank you, mom,” she said as her mother cleared off her plate.

“We should go soon, Maria,” her mother said, folding the rag.

“Go where?”

“The home,” she said, tucking it into the ring above the sink.

“But I am home,” she said looking at her mother, then at her father, who held up the paper to hide his face all broken up with lines. 47

“Maria, have you not seen the flyers? The news? You’re a missing person!”

But news from Long Island never made it to Manhattan. Anything from the outside got swallowed up, and spit back out as something different, some part missing, but still surviving, still somehow alive.

“But don’t you miss me?” she asked. “Don’t you want me here?”

“Miss you? Maria, we thought you were dead!” she said. “The hospital can’t have an escaped mental patient running around, and neither can we.” Her father’s eyes were locked toward the bottom of the newspaper. “You have to go back, Maria. We’re taking you back.”

But Maria knew the system, knew they’d just tack on more time. So much time she might never get out. And she’d have to fight the girls for her own lunch again. Watch them cut themselves and wash their hands raw. She’d have to eat those pills that made her slide down walls. She wouldn’t do that again. She’d rather die in the city with a guy like Mike than be trapped between those bare walls on those gray floors, behind all those windows, stuck looking out.

“Ok,” she said. “But one more bath before I go?” Her mother looked at her father, who pleaded with his eyes.

“Go ahead,” her mother said. “We’ll go after.”

There weren’t any doors from the kitchen down the hall, just old family pictures, still images trapped in time. Their world stayed the same without her. But she wasn’t the same. Maria closed the bathroom door, and locked it behind her. She looked in the 48

mirror, black eyes, black hair, bruises everywhere. Where do you go when you can’t go home? She turned on the bathtub faucet, opened the window, and climbed out to her backyard, where she used to jump rope.

Black Eyes Black Hair, August 2004

My old man told me to sit at the bar so that’s what I did. He slipped me a twenty and said don’t get too crazy in a low tone cause he never learned to whisper. With only a twenty, I told him, I couldn’t afford to. But thanks.

It was 6 o’clock, maybe 7 .1 don’t know Long Island all that hot, but I could see through the door flying open and closed that the late August sun was barely hanging on to the bottom branches of the maple trees.

I took a sip of my screwdriver, the vodka floating on top. The place was a real shithole. A sticky little place kept dark so you couldn’t see the dried spills on the tabletops. Empty stools, the brown leather ripped and the white padding busting from the slits. A haggard old lady behind the bar with jet-black hair but wasn’t fooling anyone.

They had a jukebox that still took coins.

I liked it.

It was called The Chowder House, but most people called it The Powder House, cause all the cocaine being blown in the bathroom by the college kids home for summer, and the middle-aged townies who looked like they’d been put away wet. 49

It was exactly the kind of place where you’d find a bunch of fat, old guys sweating and swearing and grunting every time they parked an amp onstage or stood up from untangling their cords, plugging the red one in this one Kevin and the yellow one in that one Al, a hint of irritation in every word, cause they were too goddamn old for this kind of thing.

“We need roadies,” they bitched, in and out of the swinging doors, carrying snares and kick stands, shaking their heads and breathing out big each time the door smacked

‘em on the ass, never picking up their pace to adjust to its swing.

“We need groupies,” my old man said, plugging in his guitar, his loyal band of apes laughing behind him. “Sweet young things,” they joked and grabbed each others’ asses, pushing up their man-tits to form a sad excuse for cleavage. “The sweetest thang,” my dad answered in his rock star voice, striking a chord that was way out of tune.

They were plopping their gear down with big thumps, wiping their juicy faces with the back of their juicy arms, resting their hands on their hips, clicking their tongues, trying to figure out what next, what next, what next. “Well, time to get high?” Always with the jokes, these fucking guys.

“Jimmy, hand me the beer on that stool.” Kevin pointed at his Budweiser just behind Jimmy, who swung his big gut around and knocked it right over.

“Christ Jimmy! It’s gonna hit the speakers!” My dad’s voice was up there already, always on edge before a gig. Even at a dump like this. “Come on!” he snapped his fingers. “Get a rag!” 50

“Isn’t that what your daughter’s for, Jon?” Jimmy winked at me, as he hopped off the stage. The bartender threw me a towel, which I tossed to Jimmy, letting it fall just a few feet short.

“Thanks doll,” he said, grunting as he grabbed it, plumber’s butt creeping out of his shorts.

I toyed with the straw in my drink and looked around for someone to buy me another. I’d discovered that men liked it when girls played with the straws between their fingers and their lips. They got all kinds of sick ideas from a piece of plastic. Imagine if the bar had a banana.

I tried to catch eyes with someone, but caught a lady in leather, and got a dirty look instead. I examined my ice. What was I supposed to do? Pretend like I’m day­ dreaming? And do my hands go on the bar? Should they rest on my knee? All I wanted was to look like I’ve done this before. So I put my elbows on the bar and leaned forward, chin in one hand, drink in the other. But I only looked bored. I needed someone else to talk to. When someone else is around I can forget that I’m me.

Oily hair, body odor, wet paint. I didn’t even have to turn to smell the man sit down next to me. I swiveled in toward him, his white shirt splattered with gray drips of drying paint, and smiled my hello.

“What’s your name, honey?” he said.

His nose was bulbous and red. His eyes were muddy green, a brownish hue you could see your wheels getting stuck in, and spinning. He was good and pickled. His name 51

was Sam and he put out his hand for a shake with a slow smile and booze-chapped lips. I squeezed his callused hand, letting his rough skin scrape my palm. He settled into the bar, putting both elbows on the counter and stuck his pointer finger up.

“Shot of tequila.” He looked over at my empty glass. “Make it two,” he said, staring at my thighs on the stool, which I knew to keep crossed.

We clinked glasses and I licked the crystallized rim most of the way around before I threw it back. I sucked on the lime and watched him watching me. It’s fun playing men; they have the good fortune of believing they’re fuckable. I liked places like this cause I could be as trashy as I want and never be the whore. I took the wedge from my mouth, put the glass on the bar, and nodded toward the stage.

“You know the Renegades?” They were banging around for sound-check. My dad turned the speakers way up for his guitar.

“Garbage.” He snickered and tapped the bar for a beer.

“Oh yeah?” I swallowed the extra saliva my tongue had created and looked at him for an answer. The tequila had been hot going down, and was hot coming back up. I burped and let it out of my nostrils, wondered if he could smell the sausage and mustard

I’d had earlier for dinner.

“They try to play original songs.” My dad’s originals. He was drinking with his head down, shoulders hunched, long, stringy hair with a bald spot on the crown. “Come on!” he yelled over his shoulder toward them, “We want the stuff we KNOW!” He 52

twisted back toward the bar, the corner of his eye traced my figure up. “You want another, honey?”

Whatever he was having, thanks.

The door swung open, the last of the sunlight streaming in. I could make out a woman’s figure, but the sun hung behind her, creating shadows of her face, a mountain of frazzled hair, thigh-high boots and a black mini skirt. Before my eyes could adjust to her features, she threw back her head and gave us a laugh. Like a child that had screamed out her voice riding roller coasters all day and could eek out just the thinnest pitch.

“Ma-ri-aaaaaa!” The lady in leather yelled, pushing her pelvis forward, arms open wide.

“Sha-ronn!” It was the sound of charred vocal chords. Deep for a woman and dry for a bar. They were all hair and hugs and vodka on the rocks. Wide eyes and mouths and hot air pulsing everywhere.

Maria slid into the first open space at the bar. “How ya doin?” her wild black hair flying from her head like snakes mid-strike. “How ah you?” She worked a drink and moved sideways to the next. “Say hey, it’s been foreva!” Her arms were strong, her shoulders square. She was tan and smiling as she tossed back shot after shot, every one of them free. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, and no one could keep a hold on her, darting in and out of every space, the artful dodger, Maria. 53

“So you’re a painter?” I kept one eye on Sam next to me, hunched over his beer, and one on Maria, the bar’s middle-aged mascot, who was good at this, damn, better than me.

“Yea.” He bought me another screwdriver and himself another beer. The bartender poured a drink for Maria, who smiled and drank it, and looking for her next buyer, caught eyes with me.

They were black, disarmingly black.

“Well I’m gonna sing a song with the band tonight,” I told him, waiting for him to make sense of my words. “And I’m nervous so you’ve gotta dance for me when I’m on.”

I felt Maria watching me from a few feet over with her two big pupils, no light.

“You have to drop it.”

“Drop what?”

I jumped off the stool and squatted close to the ground. Looking up at him, I slapped the floor with my right hand and stuck my butt in the air, rolling up and arching my back til I was standing up straight again.

“I can’t do that!” He spit a bit, and mopped it up from his chin with the back of his hand.

“Yeah you can! And you will. And after that you’re gonna throw your shirt up on stage.” Maria appeared, scratching Sam’s damp back. He looked up at her with his stupid smile, called her honey too.

“Hey,” she said to me as I reclaimed my seat by the bar. 54

“Hi,” I said back, acting like she was new to me, nonchalant, don’t care.

“How old ah you?” she asked with a thick New York accent, never learning how to say her r’s, every vowel long, sing-songy, a Long Island lullaby.

I wasn’t gonna sell myself out this early, and tell her underage. “How old do I look?” I distracted my face with my drink.

“I don’t know how old you are,” she nodded at the back of Sam’s head. “But you’re handling him like you’re thirty.” She dipped her head and talked out of the side of her mouth, “And I know you’re not thirty.” She knew better. She knew something.

“Heya Sam,” she got sweet, her lace bra creeping out of her zebra top. “How bout one for me?” He nodded. He felt for his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans, while she dug around in her purse for what could only be smokes.

A gut pressed against my back. “I gotta hit the head,” my dad said, “but get me a drink.” I rubbed my fingers together and extended my palm. “Jesus Christ!” He smacked another twenty in my hand. “Vodka,” he said, walking down the hall like a duck, feet splayed, no calves.

I turned back toward Sam, who was talking to Maria, who was watching my old man.

“Is Jon Rant your father?” she asked, black eyes, black hair, voice low and secretive.

Was this his scene? Did he know her? I nodded yes, trying to piece it together. 55

She threw her hands up and I saw a shock of white in her eyes, looking around for someone to high five, or ten, or touch, but they were all busy drinking, or out of reach, or looked that way at least. So she took her hands back down and centered on me, her black eyes like a raccoon in the night, or a shark half asleep, like she wasn’t all human, but she was still dangerous.

“Your father,” she paused, “is such, an attractive, man.” I sort of giggled, as girls do when they don’t know what to say. “Seriously, I just wanna touch his shiny, bald head,” she said. “I wanna kiss it!”

And again with that laugh.

Sam lined up three shots on the bar. “I’m Riley,” I said as I picked up the shot.

“Maria.” We nodded heads and let the drinks slide back. I slapped the glass down on the bar, and breathed slowly out my mouth.

“One more vodka,” I said to the bartender. “Stoli. On the rocks.”

By now the Chowder House was full of college boys in polos, middle-aged men like steaks in tank tops, women with short hair and long shorts, big voices, soft nipples. I kept drinking what Sam was buying, and watching Maria work the room.

“Riley!” My head snapped over my shoulder to meet my dad’s translucent eyes.

“Get UP here! This is your SONG!”

I jumped off the stool and onto the sweaty stage, squeezed behind the mic that was standing in the middle. I snatched the lyrics from the pile of papers next to my feet 56

and looked out at all those ruddy faces staring up at us. There was something unintelligent-looking about a Long Island face. But that didn’t make me feel any better up there in the center.

“Hey!” We yelled in unison to start ‘Gimme Some Lovin.’ Well I ’m confident baby, got my feet on the floor. Crazy people walkin ’ in and out the door. I was trying to play the part, the confident part, but I knew it didn’t look right. I wasn’t shaking it. I never could shake it when people expected me to. I sang the verses and shared the mic with my dad for the chorus. He’d get his mouth right on it as I hung to other side, lyrics still in hand, nodding my head, his yellow teeth in my periphery, open to the gaping hole that led to his brain.

I needed someone to connect with, someone to engage with so that I forget where

I end and where they begin. But they were all far away, the men against the wall, watching the room over the rims of their glasses. Their wives dancing and clapping and taking each others’ hands how older women do. Running their fingers through their hair, fanning they’re faces, faking like they’re out of breath.

Fuck it. I can fake this too. I waived Sam off the barstool.

He looked over at Maria with a paralyzed grin, and she presented the floor like the whole thing was his. As the organ part continued to build, Sam lifted himself off the seat with his tanned arms, his belly wobbling over his chicken legs toward the center of the dance floor. 57

I couldn’t believe it. That sweet, stupid sonofabitch squatted those toothpicks for legs toward the ground, stuck his ass in the air, slapped the floor, and tried to stand up, his mouth hanging open to help catch his balance. My dad motioned toward him as he played his guitar. I nodded and started singing the next verse, took the mic off the stand, I knew the words. I plucked the strap of my bra on my shoulder and let it snap against my skin and Sam crossed his arms across his stomach and grabbed the bottom of his paint- stained shirt.

As he tried to pull it over his body, I grabbed the tambourine on the floor next to me, and banged on my thigh. His head was stuck in the trunk of his shirt, and Maria spun the poor bastard around in the dark. She was twisting him, twirling him, but kept a hold on his shoulders so he wouldn’t go down. The band got into a groove, into the pocket, and when we all came together like that it was better than sex. We kept it going til Sam managed the shirt over his head, his belly hanging over his shorts, his posture like evolution’s missing link. Maria snatched his shirt from his hands and tossed it up to me on stage. My old man was howling, and Maria was dancing and wooing, and I spun that sweaty shirt around my head like a helicopter, and for the first time in a long time dad actually looked happy. For the first time in a long time, I thought things might be alright.

Fireworks, August 2004

Maria pulled two smokes from her pack outside and handed one to me. “Damn mosquitoes,” she said, smacking one dead below her skirt. The red smeared like a cherry 58

blossom on her bronze thigh, the way watercolor looks when it’s blown through a straw.

She flicked off the crumpled bug and lit us both up. “How come I’ve never seen you here before? You live close? Or are you on the north shore?”

“Oh no, the north shore would be close.” I was at that point of drunk when I thought I was fast, snappy, clever. “I came to see my dad’s new place.” The kind of drunk when you talk too much. “His new life.” The kind of drunk when you get yourself in trouble.

“And?” She inhaled. “Is he really starting over? Is he just like the rest of us— running?”

“The house is nice,” I laughed, though his life was a dump-truck of questions.

Why’d your mother end it? What did I do that was so wrong? How did I end up back here? “Nice and quiet.” A big empty house with no one to blame.

“Is he happy?” I didn’t think so, but that’s why I came back east. And as the seconds passed and the cigarettes burned, and the air lay still and thick and hot I cut through it.

“He’s lonely,” I said.

“I’ll keep him company!” She laughed and slapped her knee. There was something childlike about her, something bold but bashful, like a kid when she screws up the punch line. “But honestly, Riley,” she said looking down, “cause I’m lonely too.” We heard a deep bang in the distance, and traced a pink light rise til it shattered the sky. 59

“FIREWORKS!” My dad boomed from. I’d forgotten there was a world through those doors. “Everyone outside!” I took a deep breath in and blew out, preparing for the rush of drunks, my old man leading the pack down the steps, forgetting to look back.

“They look like orgasms,” I said, leaning against the wall.

“They do, don’t they!” Maria followed my lead, an orange and pink popper exploding from the center. “You get orgasms?” she asked.

I couldn’t tell if she was treating me like an adult or just pretending to. People don’t know what to do when you’re eighteen and smart.

“Some women don’t,” she said. “Not me though. I started masturbating real young.” Her cigarette dangled from her lips. “I remember sitting in the backseat of our old station wagon on the way to church. And I didn’t wanna go, cause my motha was making me talk to a nun.” I nodded like I knew what that was like, though I’d never talked to a nun, never been to confession. “I watched her reflection in the mirror as she put on her pink lipstick right in the lines.” Maria drew the shape on her own lips. “Funny, the details you remember from childhood. Like my thighs were stuck to the leather seats and my palms were sweatin.” She looked at the inside of her hands. “It was July outside, it was fuckin’ hot. And the church was crowded—cause people get more religious in the summertime, Riley,” she laughed.

She recalled that she had worn black Mary Jane’s, and how they clicked down the aisles past the heads lined in pews. Her mother had kept her hand on the back of her neck until they reached a door that read Sister Mary Katherine - Church Psychologist. 60

‘“Open the door,’ my mother said, pushing me forward from the back of the neck.

‘Open the door.’ I just stared at that mahogony wood, til she said ‘I’m not gonna ask you again.’ And now she was hissin.”

She walked inside to see Sister Mary Katherine grinning at her, with teeth that looked softer and greyer than bones should. She told her to sit down with a wrinkly, blue- veined hand. Maria crossed her legs tightly in the chair. Sister Mary Katherine sat down again and laced her bony fingers around a pen.

“‘Why are you here?’ she asked me. And I guessed, ‘Cause my mom thinks I’m bad?’ I was a kid, you know? And here was this scary old lady takin’ notes.”

Maria shook her head. “Then I told her ‘My mom says I touch myself too much.”’

I choked on my smoke.

“You told the nun you masturbate?” I turned toward her on the bench.

“Well, I didn’t know it was wrong.”

“I know, but you must have known a nun-”

“No! I didn’t!” Maria started yelling. “So I keep going. I says ‘I touch my nipples.

And I touch right here,”’ Maria grabbed her crotch.

“No! No!” I heard my voice rising above hers, the way women squawk like angry birds trying to be heard.

“And the nun starts yelling ‘Maria! Stop that! Stop that!”’ She was screaming, the shadow of her frizzy hair jumping off of the walls. “And then the nun asks me if I’m promiscuous. And I’m 9 years old, I got no fuckin’ idea what promiscuous means. So she 61

says, ‘Do other people touch you there?’ And I’m shakin my head no. I’m scared, I’m nervous I’m gonna get in more trouble. So I says to her, I says, ‘I’m just promiscuous with myself.’”

She keeled forward laughing as I listened to the phlegm catch in the back of her throat. The fireworks reaching their climax, my dad yelling “Oh! Oh! Oh!” with each pop of the rockets, his voice growing bigger and bigger til I thought he would burst.

“And I remember she called it ‘self-abuse,’ when my mother came back in,”

Maria’s voice was low and calm now, and she was back to breathing easy, “which I thought was odd.” She took a drag and let it come out slow, her cloud of smoke wrapping around us in a strange new world. “Cause that abuse don’t hurt.”

She was a risky choice. But so is he, so am I, so is anyone. And he wasn’t gonna end up with another rmom-type, he wasn’t gonna make the same mistake twice. But

Maria was a different kind of mistake. A mosquito landed on her thigh, and before I could think to stop myself, I slapped the little fuck dead.

Running with the Thoroughbreds, August 2005

Maria sways belly out, like there’s a bun in the oven, but it’s just the years of bum wine and bad beer. She’s come a long way, dad says. But some things you can’t shake, can’t take back. Some things always stay with you.

Her hair has cooked too long, frazzled coals, fried spaghetti. And it’s graying these days, a little wiser up top, ashing around the house, consuming the smoke and the 62

garlic from her mother’s secret sauce she swears I’ll die for. From the couch I watch her stocky legs dance behind the counter, bronze and smooth and glistening with oil. There’s nothing crinkly about her. No fat to nestle beneath her arms, as she mixes some mystery with one hand, and sparks a cigarette with the other.

“Oh dat’s good man,” she laughs, and her head stiffs back, nailed to her neck from surgery a few years back. Though that’s probably best, dad says, cause she’d forget it if it wasn’t.

She stirs her sauce and Dad glugs his booze, and laughs when she yells, “Where’s the canine peppa?”

“Cayenne pepperrr, knucklehead,” he corrects. “You must pro-nounce your rr’s,

Ma-ria! I’ve told you a thousand times, you sound uneducated.”

And Dad lay belly out on his beat-up couch, a retired Sherlock Holmes, toying his wooden pipe. Packing the willow down he tells me, “I’d never ask a woman to cook and clean.” He inhales and holds with iron lungs, shakes his head, says, “I married your mother for Christ sake!” coughing out a cloud of smoke that settles above his head. “But

she wants to do it!” His eyes catch the light as they grow in surprise. “It’s unreal!” He bursts from beneath the cloak of smoke. “Italian women,” his finger drills, “are worth their weight in gold,” to the rhythm.

She pecks him on his shining head and hands him a “cuppa caw-fee, honey.” He

looks at me like “See?” reaches back to pet her arm—and he wants to be soft and he tries 63

to be sweet, but he’s jerky, clumsy, always an awkward dancer—patting her as you would a dog.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” Two pats. Good girl. He turns back to me. “Unlike

Italian men, you see, who live with their mothers til they’re what? Twenty-nine?” His voice climbs an octave. “Thirty?” His chords are stretched too thin and break. I find when he forgets to breathe that I breathe extra for him.

He passes me the glowing piece as clouds slink toward the windowpanes. The room’s so thick and grey with smoke our bodies leave trails as we cut through it.

We breathe different air out here—in another world where there’s not a lot of food in the fridge, and no such thing as bedtime. There’s no reason we can’t start

smoking weed and sucking down vodka right when we wake up. No rules! No mom! Out here we do what we want. And most importantly, dad says, we never do what we don’t want.

It all looks so normal: the books in cases, pans tucked in cabinets, the pictures in their frames. But normal unravels fast here. Normal doesn’t last five minutes. Normal drags its suitcase through the wall of trees, down the long driveway, up the two steps and

into the door, heaving and haggard, barely outrunning the world at its heels. Normal takes a drink, that’s better, takes a toke, why not, and holds it in til normal’s face gets kinda hot, and normal starts cackle-laughing, waving her hands around her head telling stories, getting louder, breaking through the fogged-up room for one split second before the

smoke fills the space, like normal wasn’t here. Normal ends up with a lampshade on her 64

head, drinking straight vodka out of shot glasses, water cups, coffee mugs, dancing to

Led Zepellin turned up too loud too late with these two lunatics. Normal loses her goddamn mind cause that’s what happens in these deep woods, with no one to here judge you, but no one there to catch you fall.

Maria takes a hit and hands the weed to me. And I’ve had plenty. Yet still I spark this pipe, that joint, this pipe, that joint. I know my role: I’m the guest in his home, cause we don’t have our own anymore. I’m the young buck, but I’ve been training for this my whole life.

“Not everyone can run with the thoroughbreds,” dad raises his eyebrows and brings a shot to his lips. He thinks he’s so cool. He’s pretty cool. I want to go tit for tat with him, two punches from the right and a quick left jab, though I don’t always make the cut.

“Try this,” Maria holds a wooden spoon to my mouth. I swallow my drink and slurp up her sauce. Oh my God, I praise. Yeah? Her eyes grow wide. “Better than ya mom’s?”

“Maria,” I say, “there’s just no comparison.”

“You got that right,” he laughs, and I feel smart. Like he’s proud I’m his, and I puff up a little. My old man likes me and that’s a big deal. That’s a point for Riley, baby!

I’m not so bad, see, I’m alright!

I pass my pops the burning bowl and hope he’ll remember this tomorrow. Hope we don’t have to start again—that we can build from here—and everyday won’t have to 65

be another day of me thinking up stories, hands dancing as I tell them, always on my toes to hit the comebacks fast, to prove I’m worth his time, worth listening to, engaging with, being present for.

I tell him about Daniel getting arrested for dropping E at an A’s game. He squeezes his eyes and laughs behind them.

“I always liked Daniel,” he says.

Of course. That’s why I told him.

I tell him about Lauren getting knocked up and keeping it, moving back in with her mom.

“What a shame,” he clicks his tongue and thinks on that.

I tell him about what my tattoo means for the tenth fucking time. “Roots, dad. It means don’t forget your family, where you came from, your home.”

“At least it’s not a dick,” he laughs. What if it was? Would he remember it then?

If he’s Holmes, then I play Watson, ending every sentence with a question mark, hoping he’ll respond with something unconsciously profound. I remind myself not to look like I’m expecting, not to lean forward for answers, to stop waiting for his big bald brain to outshine mine.

But he’s past talking now. He’s retreated to the caverns of his mind. And I don’t like when he goes cause it’s hard to get him back here—with me. But he’s happier there,

I can see, as he smiles to himself with his coffee on his belly, warming his hands.

Hmm, he thinks and hums. 66

What’s in there? Where I can’t go? Where I’m not invited?

I kick my foot to catch his eye, but his gaze lands on TV. Helmets are crashing, bones are breaking.

“You doing fantasy league this year?” I know he is. He always does. “Dad?”

I sit in our symphony of echoes as men in tights collide. I smell the herbs in the kitchen, and in Maria’s hair, and if Italian men live home til thirty, I wonder how long they breastfeed.

Filling in the Hollow, November 2005

Maria was a little bigger than Rose, but Jon liked seeing her squeeze into his ex- wife’s lingerie, how her tits burst out of her bras, how her thicker thighs looked stuffed into her stockings, shoving her body into his Rose’s old clothes.

“Put these on instead, dovelet” he said, dangling some crotchless panties on the tips of his fingers then flicking them from his hands, letting them fall to the floor.

Maria bent over in her six-inch stilettos. Rose stopped doing this years ago. She grew cold, hard, heady—thought talking about sex was more interesting than having it.

But not Maria.

Maria had recently begun unearthing Jon’s kinks. He kept had all kinds of weird shit in the bottoms of drawers and the backs of closets: dildos, blindfolds, handcuffs, wigs. She didn’t know where he bought it, or how long he’d had it. She’d been with a lot 67

of men, but none quite like him, none who wanted to escape reality so much, who needed her to dress up, to become another person.

Jon looked at the mirror above their bed, examined the lacking angles of his baby face, his body bloated, pink, hairless. Maria didn’t know what to make of his sleek body at first. He told her it made him look bigger, and she nodded, smiling, wanting to please him, reaching out to touch him. In truth he’d never grown any pubic hair at all. Jon picked up a nipple clamp and pulled on his left breast and futzed with the contraption. He wore the ugly face of concentration, his brow crinkled, his bottom lip over his top, his chin, defined as a frog’s. It squeezed harder and faster than he anticipated, “Ow!” he yelped, unhinging the clamp, his salami-sized areola already red. He rubbed it better.

Maria put a David Bowie album in the cd player. Fame came on. He locked into his own eyes and saw a light flash within them. He smiled.

She was sipping vodka from a straw, and did a little twist in Rose’s patent leather high-heeled boots. “Makes a man take things over,” she mouthed, shaking her hips. She picked up the leather flog and gave the back of her thigh a little tap.

“Puts you there where things are hollow,” he sang along.

She bit her finger, forced a giggle, caught her reflection in the mirror. She felt ridiculous in this too-small leopard lingerie. But she swayed toward him to fame, fame, fame, fame him in these impossible heels, toward this soft man whose face was wet with sweat. Jon pushed his big body up, and she danced with her hands to push him back against the bed. But she was stuck. She was caught. Her heel. 68

“Whoa!” the rug wrapped around all six inches, her arms spinning to keep her upright, flailing as she fell toward the floor. She sprawled on the ground, wriggling around in these tight clothes, like a poorly encased sausage.

“Jesus!” Jon leaned over the bed and started laughing.

“It’s not funny!”

He crawled over the edge of the bed and onto the ground.

“Are you ok?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said, starting to sit up. But his shadow loomed over her body as he came toward her slowly, silently, and before she could even untwist her foot, he struck the way most men strike: suddenly.

Sit Back Down, November 2005

“My Riley!” Maria yells as she hobbles toward the door in a medical boot, arms open wide.

“Mariaaaa!” I yell back, my face already buried in her hair, washed in cigarette shampoo. “What happened to your foot?”

“Ugh, tripped on the rug,” she says, palming her head, silly me.

“I threw a hammer at her!” Dad says, dragging in my suitcase behind me, rolling it into the spare room. “She was down on the ground, gnawing her foot like a dog,” he comes back out, holding up an invisible sandwich and chewing air, “I was going for her head—” 69

“But he got my ankle instead!” Maria finishes, all of us laughing.

They had their bits like that. “It’s like dating a 13-year old with ADD,” he liked to say, waiting a beat. “On acid,” they punched the line together. Jokes that were so well- timed, they must have been rehearsed, repeated again and again the way older people do—not cause they forget, but because they know what works, what’s good, so they just keep pounding it til it’s been pounded to death, but they don’t know the joke’s over yet.

“Cocktail hour?” Dad says. I look at the clock on the microwave, only 3 o’clock.

“5 o’clock somewhere,” the two of them say.

“Uh-huh! Yeah, baby!” Maria dances with her hands.

“Yeah, we know you want some,” he rolls his eyes, and pulls the vodka from the freezer. “If you told her she could get high from the rust on the exhaust pipe, she’d want to mainline it,” he laughs and looks at her, entertained. “Maria’s never said no a day in her life,” Dad pours vodka glug glug glug in glasses.

“Didn’t say no to you, either!” she says back.

“You’re right about that,” he winks at me as she goes for the stereo to turn up Led

Zepellin.

“Here you go,” he pushes the drink toward me on the counter, filled past the brim, always past the brim. “Sip first so you don’t spill.” I lean over and take a slurp, see

Maria’s black mane nodding to the rhythm as she dances toward her drink. “We should start the lasagna,” he says to Maria, as he leads me toward the couch, and leaves her standing in the kitchen. 70

We start slow like always. Catch up about golf, about college, about mom.

“She’s good,” I say as I hit a joint. “Still not dating anyone.” I always mention this, like he’s irreplaceable, like the split wasn’t his fault, that she just likes being alone.

“Mom never really needed a man,” he says, taking a puff. “She always had a good job, made money,” he exhales. “Sometimes I think she just used me for my sperm,” he jokes. Maria bangs around in the kitchen, opening drawers and shutting them, never finding what she’s looking for. She lights a cigarette over the stove, puts a fork in the sink. “Ma-ri-a! What are you do-ing?” He yells with a hint of irritation. “She just wonders around, Christ!”

“Ok, dad, now let’s be nice.”

“Oh, it’s fine. She knows I love her. Don’t you, dovelet?” Dovelet, I thought. Not quite dove, not quite mom.

“I love you too, honey” she says in auto response. His little black dog.

“Mom was always fast in the kitchen though, wadn’t she? She knew how to serve it, boy: hot, wet, and a lot.”

“I like it hot!” Maria yells into the living room, ten feet away.

“Would you pipe down over deh?” he flirts, mocks, shuts her up. “Yeah, mom was together, man. So together it was almost scary. But Maria,” she shakes his head says

“you think she’s ever changed the oil in her car? No! She can barely keep her cell phone charged.”

“I got my phone charger right here,” she bites back. 71

“Yeah, but have you started boiling the water yet?” he yells over his shoulder without looking back. “It’s unbelievable! I have to tell her four or five times before she ever does anything.”

What did he want me to say? You’re right dad, she’s not mom. She’s nothing like mom, and that’s why they work. Maria would never cut him loose. Maria would never duck out. She wouldn’t be the life of the party Saturday, and then sober Sunday, staring at his second martini on Monday night, not judging no, not saying anything at all. Maria would always be the party.

“You know she didn’t open her mail for six years?” he asked. “Flat out didn’t pay her bills, which meant she lost her apartment, lost her car, and needed someone to save her ass.”

Yeah, Maria needed my old man. And my old man needed that. He held up his glass and looked directly at me. “Will you bring over the vodka, sweetheart?”

I start to stand up. “Sure,” she said from the kitchen.

I take a sip of my drink and sit back down.

We Were An Institution, June 2006

"Well, you know, I'm not going to California for Christmas this year." Dad sort of laughed like it was an obvious statement. I smiled at Maria, sitting in the booth next to him, offered her lemon to squeeze on the calamari and forked a few fried ringlets onto my plate. 72

"But I want you to know that you're welcome to come out here anytime you want.

I mean, by all means—Thanksgiving, Christmas, summers for sure.”

“Whenever you want, Riley. We love havin you out-”

“Maria, would you let me finish?” he snapped. “You always come in over the top,

and I’m trying to make a point.” Maria shut up. Sorry, she said. “But I don't want to do

the Duignan family thing again." His head slumped forward like he was tired of the

familial chore. I asked the waitress for another double by tapping my empty glass. "It's just too much."

Maria and I nodded in unison. I wanted to tell him I understood, but I didn't fully

understand, cause I was still a part of it, and it wouldn't have sounded right. I was still

careful of taking sides.

"I mean, who knows? They probably have some big family trip planned to Italy or

something." He scoffed. "And I'm sure I'm not invited." He looked across the table at me,

as Maria swallowed a sip of her vodka to the left of him in the booth, eyes down.

"They're thinking about France," I said stupidly, my fork suspended above my

polenta as I waited for the explosion that was sure to follow.

"Oh, you poor thing!" he mocked. "You know, when I was a kid I didn't even

have birthday parties. And here you are, taking cruises to Alaska, renting houses in Spain,

going on Roman holidays!" He shook his head. "So privileged." Resentment was

swallowing his pride. "So who's paying for it anyway? Uncle Mike?" he asked, mouth

full. 73

“It's not even a real thing yet." I pulled my bottom lip over my top and shrugged.

"Someone just brought it up like, last week, so I'm not investing too much into-"

His knife ripped his swordfish apart. “You know, I made more money than anyone in that family for years, and not once, not once did I get any credit for it," he sputtered, choking on his words, forgetting to breath. I inhaled through my nose and saw

Maria pat his leg to calm him down. He swatted her away.

"And because Papa was a professor, they all hold academia with this delusional esteem. I mean, your grandfather has no concept of reality. He lived in his office on campus for fifty years, in this secluded world and researched colonialism in Africa.”

"What are you even talking about?” His attacks could go anywhere. “Like education isn’t important?"

"No—that’s not the point, Riley. He never learned to stand on his own two feet.

He never had to work for anything." He slammed his drink and ordered another as we mulled over our plates.

"I just don't think the family is doing you kids any favors by handing you everything like this."

"It's not our fault that they want to pay for us, Dad."

"It's not your fault," he pointed his fork like an extension of his fingers. "But I don't think it's right either. And frankly, it pisses me off that I was a part of that family for thirty-two years, and then the marriage ends and it's like I never existed. They just threw me away." His hand flew into the aisle, almost knocking a waitress into another table. 74

"Jesus!” I yelled. I was fucking sick of it. The same blow-ups, the same sad story.

“Are you always gonna be this pissed?"

"You know, I don’t know!” He threw his hands up. “I'm bothered that I'm still bothered about our break-up. I don’t want to be this angry, I don’t. I want to play golf and music and be happy. But I can't help but feel your mother betrayed me, tossed me out, and that they all wronged me in the end.” People were looking. I brought my hand eye level and lowered it to bring his voice down. “When you choose to love someone,

Riley—fuck, sometimes it’s not even a choice!” he nodded over to Maria. “But when you love someone, you trust them with your life. And mom and I built something so much bigger than ourselves—we built a family.” Maria scooted closer to the wall. “And it wasn’t just a family, it was a home. Not just a home, an estate! Not just an estate, goddammit, we were an institution. And then one day she decides that her needs were bigger than ours. No more need for dad, for loyalty, for friendship, no.”

I wanted him to shut up, to remember he had a new woman now, to let mom go, there was nothing he could do. But Maria and I both knew we had no choice but to let him continue, to let him ride out his diatribe until he felt wrong for telling us too much.

He couldn’t see that in these rages he hurt people, broke things, said stuff you can’t take back.

“You know after it all went south, I called your grandparents and said 'Fran, I really need to talk to you guys.' And when I got to their place Papa wouldn't even look at me. The coward wouldn't even shake my hand good-bye. And that was a slap in the face. 75

Thirty-two years! My God! And part of the family came out here last summer and didn't even call me?" It was hard to watch his pride fall, but he wouldn't stop until he had finished. "They were ten miles away and couldn't even call." He shook his head.

"It's upsetting. And I don't know if that's going to change for me. It doesn't just go away." He looked at both of us and waited for a sign of sympathy. I felt trapped in this booth. Maria hadn't moved in two minutes.

"So that’s why I don't want to hear about the family anymore. I don't want to hear about their trips to France that I wasn't invited to. I don't want to think about everyone having dinner together and I'm the only man out." He slammed his fist on the table to his words. "I don't want to see your mother again." Maria watched her calamari jump on the plate, trying not to cry. "Unless I have to, because of you kids, you know? I'm out!" His voice was shrill as he threw his fork on the plate of bones. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm out."

Do Not Pass Go, September 2006

Maria refilled his drinks without him even asking. He’d start at 5 and keep going til he found himself crawling up the steps, blurry and groggy and grabbing for bed.

“My life’s great,” he told all his friends. “I’ve got an ex-wife who doesn’t hate me, and my concubine, Maria.” He gurgled and laughed, lifted his arm, held up his glass. 76

“Here you go, honey.” She tilted the bottle. “Can I get anything for anyone else?

She put the bottle in the freezer and wiped down the counters. Jon wanted a clean house, and she did what he wanted.

“She’s like a cockroach!” he said to his guests. “Look at her!” Maria was scrubbing the sauce between the tiles, a sponge in one hand, vodka in the other. “She used to shoot heroine and cocaine together—a speedball they called it. Totally insane!”

People shifted on cushions, opened their eyes wide politely, smiled toward Maria with closed mouths, slow nods. “She’s been raped, had knives held to her throat, guns to her head. She smokes a pack a day, and when I met her at 45 years old she was still doing cocaine. Unbelievable!” he ran out of breath. “You can’t kill Maria.” He sparked a joint.

Jon blew out a big cloud. “I swear, when there’s a nuclear apocalypse, people will come out of their bunkers and find her clinging to the bottom of a car,” he clung to invisible ladders from his old man’s black chair. He held his lit joint between his index and middle finger. “Probably smoking a cigarette!” He took a drag.

“Heyyy, lemme hit dat,” Maria yelled from the kitchen. And everyone laughed.

Maria stared out the window in silence, over the back of Jon’s old bald head. The moon was full and the night was cold and everyone always went home. She was sick of feeling like this—like the punch line to every joke, and always compared to Rose. She walked over to him, passed out in his father’s beat-up black chair, and poked his chest.

“Am I not good enough for you?” 77

He opened his eyes. “It’s too late for this, Maria,” his mouth crackled with dryness, his voice low from half-sleep. “Go to bed.”

“No.” She stood above him, her hands on her hips. “You always make fun of me in front of people. Like you want me to look dumb.” Her black eyes were big but focused. “You never talk that way about Rose!” Her hair exploded from her head.

“Oh Christ, would you quit it with the jealous Sicilian shit? I’m with you now,” he pushed himself up, grunting out of his chair. “Let it go.”

“No, you let it go!” Maria stepped in front of his face, blocking his path. “You talk about her all the time! How’s that supposed to make me feel?”

“I was with Rose for 30 years, and she pulled the rug out from under me!” he yelled back. “How’s that supposed to make ME feel?” He threw his hands up. “I had a life out west. And now look at me.” She was looking at him; it was inside she could never see. “I’m living at the end of the world where no one comes, and no one leaves—do not pass go—and I came back.”

“Yeah, you came back and met me!”

“Yeah, you.” His nose scrunched like a taunting child. He pointed his finger in his face “A townie, a loser.” His lips snarled to bare his yellow teeth, crammed up against each other, fighting for space.

“I’m not a loser!”

“Yeah you are, cause you don’t try to be better. Always with the cigarettes, the drinking, on and on about getting high.” 78

“Look at yourself, Jon!”

“You don’t make me better!”

“Don’t put that shit on me. I give you what you want, what you ask for. I accept you for you, but you won’t accept me for me.” She pulled out her fake teeth and chucked them at him.

“I’m gonna die living like this—like you,” he pushed her in the chest with his pointer finger.

“Then go back to your ex-wife!” she charged forward, her mouth a gaping black hole. “I see the emails! I know you write her. And she never writes back! You know why?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Cause she don’t want you. She don’t care to explain herself. She don’t give a fuck if you understand why she left you because she likes her life better without you in it.”

“Shut up!” He shoved Maria down to the ground.

“And I get it. I know why,” she kept going as he pinned her down. “Cause you can’t see outside yourself. You don’t even try. You don’t care about anyone except for

Jon Rant.” He pulled his fist back. “Oh, good! G’head! You gonna hit me like everyone else now?”

“You gonna leave me now too?” She stared up at him, his big bald head blocking the light of moon. “I took you in when you had nowhere to go,” his voice broke, his face puckered in the shadows. “I gave you my home.” 79

“I pay you RENT,” she yelled. It was his turn to feel bad. “You’re not my boyfriend. You’re my landlord.”

“Fuck this,” he said, pushing himself up. They were too sad for violence, too drunk to pick up the pieces.

“Yeah, go cry yourself to sleep, ya big baby.”

“Fuck you,” he stumbled toward the stairs.

“Or even better, go write another email to your ex-wife.” She pulled out a cigarette and threw the pack across the room.

Maria woke to the sound of a rattle, the way a tongue sounds as it slips down a throat. “Jon?” She rolled over. “Jon?” She sat up.

Vomit dribbled down his cheek in the moonlight. Should she shake him awake?

Get him upright? Roll him over to spit out the puke?

She could do that, she thought. She could.

“Christ, Maria! How long does it take to pour me a drink?” His fingers snapped in her head. “Gimme the money,” she saw Mike in her mind, snatching the cash right out of her hand. “You’ve got to do better tomorrow,” that’s what they all said. She could never just be. So she cleaned for them, cooked for them, hooked for them, fetched for them, dressed up for them, did everything for them. But Maria didn’t need a man to suck up to anymore, to serve to survive. She had a home now, was young enough. She could still have a life. 80

She sparked a cigarette, saw Jon’s body convulse beneath the flame.

She got up, leaned over the ledge of this loft. She could decorate the place her own way now, with beach wood and seashells and colored lights, year-round. She’d put her own photos on the wall, take the pictures of Rose down. She was done playing the dumb guinea girlfriend, the lesser woman, the joke.

She flicked the ash and turned around, watched his heaving chest wheeze for air, and his bloated face turn blue.

The Inside, October 2006

Maria heard the nurse’s heels clicking down the hall of cages. No one offered any beverages, no soda, no water, no tea.

Same cold floor she sat on once before, same incessant drip of water echoing down the narrow corridor. Everyone was lined up side by side, but they felt far away as she sat alone, the stench of dirty hair and dirty feet. Some were holding their knees, rocking back and forth, some were pacing, and some stood still. She couldn't quite make out their faces though. She tried to squint them clear.

A cat pressed against her spiky calves. “Heyyy Kitty, kitty, kitty.” She reached out to pet her and she rolled over like a dog, opened her belly for her scratch. She rubbed her like she rubbed her old jade Buddha, the one her uncle brought her back from

Chinatown. 81

“How’d a cat get in here?” she asked her neighbor two feet to her left as he slid down the wall. She forced a laugh in response to his silence. Eyed the trail of hair creeping up his sallow stomach. He hovered a little taller than her: his hair greasy, black, in straggles. She couldn’t un-smudge his face, but the open, bloody sores on his legs, she could see those, and he kept scratching them, pulling his flesh further from his bones. It fell away, hung there. And she realized this man looked rotten all over. But it was coming from the inside.

She focused on the grey linoleum to blur him out, the slate color of Jon’s basement. His legs became a Monet up close, and the tiles were a crisp print, a Warhol, apathetic.

"What are you doing here?" She heard her mother ask as she hid in the dark, between the boxes of Christmas ornaments, old twin bed-frames, baseball uniforms, her father's box of dirty magazines, love letters she never gave to anyone. She was reading interviews with Andy Warhol.

"I don't have strong feelings on anything," Warhol said. "I just use whatever happens around me for my material. Someone said my life has dominated me; I like that idea." Water leaks from the pipes, dripping.

Her mother's shadow is in the door. Her hand is on her hip.

"I don't want tomato soup," Maria said.

She put her hand out for Maria to hold. "Come on, we’re going upstairs." 82

But she doesn't want another grilled cheese. She doesn’t want to brush her hair.

She doesn’t want to practice the goddamn flute.

“You watch your mouth, young lady.” Her eyes catch some light somehow, flash green, like the calico's, the one that's watching her, waiting for she doesn’t know what.

She steals her hand back and feeds the cat some smoke, chasing it away.

“Stay hungry then.” Her mother’s silhouette exits the doorframe.

There’s no clock in here. No windows. Nothing on the wall. But brusque whispers secrete from somewhere. They come quickly: I hugged her till she stopped screaming.

No, stop doing that. Hurry up, Maria. He's upstairs.

She listened to them, tried to place the words to mouths. But as she looked down the fathomless hall, she couldn't discern any mouths, no lips, no teeth, no tongues.

"How long have we been here?" Her head snapped towards her neighbor. She tried to focus on the eyes, the color, no color, no eyes.

She ticked her wrist and looked at the smear of his face.

She reached over to grab him then, to shake him, but she couldn't get hold of his skin. He reached his arm straight ahead too, perpendicular to hers. Her wrist went limp.

His wrist went limp. Her fingers dripped. His fingers dripped. That incessant drip. Drip.

Drip.

The pipe was always leaking in Jon’s basement. The puddle growing bigger and deeper. Her head, a cannon, nods forward, falls back. She felt the water dripping from her hands. But she couldn't see her hands. She tried scream but no one turned. They were 83

holding their knees, rocking back and forth, some were pacing, some stood still. No one had a face, just a haze. And her legs were decaying beneath her, her toes melting into ground. She was rotting alone in the cold, dark cell. And it was coming from the inside.

The Long Road Home, September 2006

I head up the mountain I’ve been climbing my whole life. Every turn is just the same, like you’re never getting anywhere, just pulling your wheel. I hug the curves then come in hard, shoving the breaks. That’s how everyone drives this mountain, whether it’s your first time or your last. You never know you’re coming in too fast til it’s too late, like you’re not reading the signs right, or you weren’t born with foresight. Just you against the mountain, 2,000 feet high.

There’s a painted rock in the hill, purple letters on a thick white base. Happy 40th

Anniversary Martin! I Love You. Very sweet. It’ll only last another day til someone comes along spraying Happy Birthday Sarah Bear! Congratulations Michael - You Made

It! The rock getting thicker and bigger every year, coats of paint slapped on top of the weeks, months, memories, families.

I only wanted to help him find a life again. I press the gas to make the trees whip by. Tried to mend his heart and make things right. Splatters of brown and green against the thick wet grey, the fog still heavy as the world wakes up. But look what I did. My old man’s dead. Their leaves are frail and thinning, barely holding on, but not falling. Not yet. 84

“Slow down, Riley!” everyone warns, but my car is a bullet cutting right through them.

“Pull over!” they beg. But I’m not bothered by hard brakes or long honks. I’m skating on top of these slick roads. I’m an ice skater over the ice.

“OHMYGODDD,” they scream. I’ve got no lanes or limits or rules or anything.

I’m above myself, beyond this place, floating higher and higher into these rain-soaked clouds. We fly so fast I smash another car, and we watch it soar through the fog right into that tree.

So this is the other side—all control released. My mind’s gone black, and I’m riding life from the backseat. Maybe that’s the way to be.