ARTIFACTS

By

Lesley Ward

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

In

Creative Writing

Chair:

(XkJAL jJL tu * c - Denise Orenstein

Kermit Moyer

Dean of the College

Date

2007

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1445572

INFORMATION TO USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

® UMI

UMI Microform 1445572 Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ARTIFACTS

BY

Lesley Ward

ABSTRACT

Artifacts is an original collection of short stories that examines what occurs when

a group of ordinary people are forced to reconcile their past lives with the present. The

characters must excavate the past, whether it is motivated by the discovery of an

estranged wife’s silk scarf or the hush of a calm lake. The diverse settings range from a

Los Angeles film set to a small island in the middle of Lake Erie. These geographical

shifts allow the material to be explored through a variety of perspectives. The stories also

seek to show how the characters interact with their environs, often letting the influence of

the land shape their decisions as they are haunted by longing, heartbreak, and loneliness.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

Stories

UNDER THE LEMON TREE...... 1

SADIE...... 18

RESOLUTE...... 36

ARTIFACTS...... 54

THE UNTITLED CHAD REX PROJECT...... 72

PARTING THE CUYAHOGA...... 92

DROWN...... 122

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNDER THE LEMON TREE

I think of my husband on the quiet morning drives to the set of a new movie

Em producing. My husband who left me one month ago for another woman. I

always take the route that goes through the run down parts of Santa Monica. The

wide alleys are vacant, except for dumpsters overflowing with cardboard boxes and

trash waiting to bake in the sun. I started driving the more desolate roads after the old

woman, who sells flowers and roadside souvenirs on the comer of 23rd and Pico, saw

me stopped at a green light, buried in my own grief. She had handed me a wilted

carnation.

I pass the Daisy Cafe with its uneven wooden tables that make me spill

coffee all over my film scripts. I see the yellow flowers on the sign and think of

yarrows. A tall patch had stood between us in the park where we met. Pollen would

cascade onto my brown leather sandals each time he would articulate his reasons of

why I should have dinner with him. I normally didn’t cave in so easily to such

attractive men in the business, knowing that I was either a pursuit out of boredom or

fleeting interest. Quick and easy attachments were part of the profession that had us

shooting in L.A. one week, Vancouver the next, a quick move to a soundstage, and

then wrap, never to see most of the other crew again. We went back to our lives

looking for the next job, spending our days on the phone and taking lunches with

associates.

1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2

How I wanted to rub the flowers all over his face and watch his skin light up

into a mustard glow. I would’ve liked to have made a clown out of a man like him.

He was too self-assured with that smile and expensive camera slung diagonally

across his chest. He was too perfect, and he only wanted me in small budding

increments. I felt a blush of shame spread over my face when I said, yes; I will eat

with you, knowing I would lose myself.

We had married quickly and then I was a story to him. He used to speak of

me in the third person while working in his dark room off of our kitchen. “The wife

is home from work and she probably has mangoes in her straw bag.” Then he was

gone after three years of marriage. I couldn’t say exactly where he is. Sometimes I

think I may have accidentally killed him, only I don’t know where I put the body.

It’s 5:00 in the morning and my eyes are burning like they do on days with

early call times. Having dressed in the dimness of my bedroom, I’m not sure what

clothes I’ve put on, but I can tell I’m wearing something that once belonged to my

husband. I can still smell the bitter orange peels he left in his pocket the night before

he left me. I’d found them while sorting the laundry. Still thinking he would return,

I turned his olive work pants right-side-out and sniffed the collars of his button-down

shirts before putting them in the wash. His scent has not faded yet but is closing in

on its last days like the air between summer and fall. The orange peels are now

drying under my bed on a crystal plate his sister gave us. Maybe I’m wearing his

sock because I can feel the excess fabric crowding my toes at the top of my shoe.

He got that orange off a tree in our back yard as the sun was starting to go

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3

down. I watched him reach his long arm through the crisscross of branches and

gently twist it off, just like he did when he opened ajar of olives. Like it was nothing

at all. I bet he did it in the dark, thinking I couldn’t see him. They weren’t ripe yet.

He didn’t know how I watched everything he did to the point that I was him,

speaking in the same intonation, ordering water with no ice, brushing my teeth

vigorously at first, then gently. Sometimes I did it in reverse just to see if he would

notice. Notice how much I loved him.

After I had yelled at him for picking the unripe orange, he sat down on the

stone walkway that runs in between the blue hydrangeas and peeled that small,

wrinkly orange, slipping the rind into his pockets. I had walked out into the cool

evening, toes just painted, and stepped on a slug, drunk from the beer trap I laid the

night before to stop them from eating my tomatoes. The tomatoes I was going to

feed him sprinkled with sea salt. I felt a small pang of delight as I bore my foot

down harder into the slug. I cast a long shadow over my husband’s hunched body,

engulfing every bit of the light. He turned around and looked up at me. This was a

time when he wanted me in a forgotten sort of way, barelegged, my hair down, like I

just woke up. He wanted me most when I was caught off guard.

I finally pull into the parking lot of the film’s base camp still gnawing on the

reasons of why he left. I will need aspirin to soothe the tension in the crease of my

brow by the time the cameras go up. My mouth is dry, my eyes are red, and I feel as

if I’ve just emerged from the ocean in Huntington Beach where we used to swim on

our days off.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4

My assistant, Amy, hands me a bitter cup of coffee with milk as soon as I

round the comer of the prop truck. I see our shady looking weaponographer with his

gun case, displaying the firearms like he’s a dealer. “Lock it up,” I yell. I drink the

coffee quickly knowing it will bum the roof of my mouth. I will push on the sore all

day as I order people around on set, so I can remember who I am, that I have a job,

and a life not dependent upon him. She is carrying a clipboard and has two cell

phones fastened to her belt. Amy looks calm as always, shiny hair combed into a low

ponytail, her smart tortoiseshell glasses flipped up on top of her head. I wonder if

she even needs them.

“Morning.”

“Let’s hear it,” I say, hoping that nothing too problematic will happen before

the first shot. On tired days my husband used to sneak into the cook’s honey wagon

and pour shots of expresso for me. He said he knew how strong to make them if he

could see the crow’s feet around my eyes. I run my tongue over the sore ridges of

the roof of my mouth.

“Victoria won’t come out of her trailer,” Amy says.

“Don’t forget to tell the chef to make her that protein drink.” I keep walking

towards the set with Amy close by my side. She bumps my shoulder with each step,

and I think people in this business look for any reason to be close to one another.

“So why’s she not coming out?”

“I don’t know. She just ran into the trailer after make-up finished with her.”

“Has anyone tried to talk to her yet,” I say, hoping Grey, our executive

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5

producer will smooth this one over.

Victoria, our lead, who had a production assistant in tears for not being able

to find sugarless cranberry juice the week before is a child star turned B movie

actress. The most expensive we could afford. But no one cries on my set unless

they’re supposed to. I had swiftly told her that the only way the juice would be

sugarless was if I stomped the cranberries myself. This film is her first leading role.

Grey had convinced her over breakfast at Hugo’s in West Hollywood to sign. I told

him to take her there because it’s bright inside and she’ll feel like she’s on display.

Not that anyone would know who Victoria was. Just pay attention to her and she’ll

take the part, I had told him. Attention is all they wanted. It’s all anyone wanted.

As I start to think about how much I don’t want to mother Victoria out of the

trailer, I watch the crew set up a shot in front of an old storefront. Their heart beats

up as they rush around measuring and taking notes; changing the store’s name from

Lee’s Fabrics to Zeke’s Pawnshop. They listen to orders and light accordingly to

create thirty seconds of a story. I think this is true about life. The work I put in to

my marriage. The fighting and making-up, worrying, laughing, negotiating, cooking

those chickens until they were succulent, and then it was gone in a matter of minutes.

He really did leave me I think. Got up and walked that slow padded saunter after

drawing a hot bath with lavender. For me.

He must have made the plan quickly. I know he pulled on his work pants,

grabbed the Pentax, and an orange from the ceramic bowl in the kitchen before going

on his morning walk. What was he going to photograph? Why wasn’t it me?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6

I see Grey sitting down in a tall director’s chair with Victoria spelled in white

script on the back. I hated spending money for the extra embroidery but we had to.

It was worth more than an hour of overtime we paid a sore union electrician. I made

sure we finished on time each day - a clean twelve-hour day - even cut the shoot by

half a week, doubling up locations. Our pawnshop would be transformed into a

beauty salon in the afternoon. All so we could afford the talent. So some twenty

something kid, who remembered Victoria as the hot teenager in her sitcom, would

buy a ticket to watch her take her shirt off.

A camera assistant with invoices interrupts me before I make it to Grey. He’s

young and smells of sweat and alcohol from the previous night of drinking. I look at

the first invoice and cross off the extra lens filter the department is requesting. The

DP will just let it sit in the box for the entire shoot. It’s a little security for him in

case the director gets artsy and wants to monotone the film into a shade of green. If

this was a larger show, I’d do it, but our cinematographer is still filming corporate

videos to make the rent. The assistant leaves me with the order that I will

intentionally misplace. I think I hear him call me a bitch as he walks away,

something I never heard my husband say to me, because I was not this stern with

him. Most times I felt like I floated above my body, unable to control what I said or

did when near him but not here. They can make do.

I walk over to Grey and sit down next to him. He’s watching the playback

from the scene where the boxer-turned-lawyer is walking down the street after

having been arrested.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7

“At least the dolly shot is smooth,” I tell him as I watch our lead contort his

face into a painful concerned expression. Grey takes off the headphones and kisses

me on the cheek.

“Don’t be such an ass. You’re late and you’ve got coffee down the front of

you.”

I think to myself: I know I’m late, but you didn’t know what I was going

through this morning, twisting in my bed, the heat from the sun making me sweat,

and those orange peels underneath, bringing him to me again.

“Give me a break. Vicki won’t come out of her trailer,” I say. Grey’s

interested now and he sits up straighter, his black and blue windbreaker crinkling.

“I’m not going to get her. Last time she started crying.” Grey likes to think he

has an affect on women, but hasn’t realized it’s all due to the misperception he can

start a career. He leans closer and whispers in my ear, “I think she may like me. Just

a little. I played her Stravinsky’sRite o f Spring after the last table read and she was

moved by those driving timpani.” Grey and his classical music. He probably bored

the girl to death. He’s able to recite composers and periods like baseball statistics and

can’t help but force it upon anyone who will listen.

“She wanted you to rehearse. You can read can’t you?”

“Come on, play nice. Just go in and talk to her. I’ll buy you dinner tonight.

We’ll talk about the dailies, talk about the next project. I’ve got some people

interested in the Rex script.” Grey is a softie for eating in a dark room with a

woman. He rubs the back of his tan neck. His hands are dry, cuticles peeling just

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8

like my husband’s after a trip we made to Las Vegas. The car had overheated along

the side of the road. I remember him taking his shirt off, showing his sculpted chest

and arms that he never had to work. He popped open the hood. I got out and

watched him carefully twist off a few caps, emerging with grease-covered hands.

Need any help, I had asked. He shook his head and gave me his lopsided smile. I

got it. I got you. We got the heat. Go sit down and show me those pretty legs. Give

me something to look at while I work.

A production assistant runs over to us. “Victoria won’t come out of her

trailer.” I know how important she feels to be delivering this information. She barely

looks out of high school, all done up in make-up, already affected with her Gucci

sunglasses, and so thin her silver watch nearly falls off her wrist.

“Fabulous,” I say. I’m not waiting for my money man to make a decision.

Grey ignores both of us, not worried about the situation anymore. Before we

walk away he tells me, “You know what Vicki says. It’s nice to be important but

important to be nice. Go easy on her.” I know he’s thinking we shouldn’t have hired

Vicki. I watch him swish over to the director to talk. The check-ins I tell him.

They’re important for everyone above-the-line. See how they ’re doing. Ask what

they need but more importantly ask your self if they ’re doing the job we hired them

to do. I f they ’re not then we have to do it for them, but make them believe they are

powerful and talented. But only to a point. Never let them see Greyweakness. may

be able to get money, but he has no idea how to make a film.

Someone clicks on a large globe light, and I can feel the heat from it

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9

immediately. I briefly think about staying, letting it lull me into sleep in one of the

directors chairs. Sometimes I wish I could de-program myself, wipe out my mind so

I wouldn’t have to be me anymore. I would have been the one to shake loose his

stare at the ceiling in the morning. I would leave his lanky body, cold in the white

sheets of our bed. I would be like the elusive composition he searched for each day.

His frustration at not being able to capture me would only make him want me more,

like the time the production office lost a roll of his black and white. He had said

those shots were going to elevate his career. They were underwater stills of a lithe

starlet who reminded me of seaweed and who I’m sure he slept with. He never got

rid of his negatives.

I let the girl lead me to Victoria’s trailer. I want to tell her to leave this place,

don’t stay in the business. Take off the glasses, wear running shoes to work, not

those designer sneakers, be someone original. She’s pretty in a corn-fed way, and I

guess she wants to be an actress, or one of those black-suited development girls at a

studio who gets to go to premieres and have drinks with screenwriters.

I’m knocking on Victoria’s trailer that we’ve divided in half for her to share

with another actress. My knuckles start to hurt from pounding on the metal, but I

just go harder. I’m beginning to like the pain, reminded of a feeling other than

sadness.

“Vicki, its Elena. Cameras go up soon.” I continue knocking feeling the

winter sun beating down onto my back. I imagine it piercing the skin, burning

through my spine making my heart wrap around itself until it suffocates.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10

“Blocking’s almost done.” Turning around I see the production assistant talking on

her cell phone, walking towards the caterers, thankful someone else is dealing with

the problem. She will also forget me, the bitch who hired her months ago. I realize I

don’t know her name.

There’s no answer. I’m hoping the door will be unlocked. As I reach for the

handle Victoria’s assistant barrels out. She’s a large woman who looks like she

belongs in Silverlake. Her long silver hair is pushed back with a headband and her

gold jewelry is rattling so much, the perfume so acidic I feel hyper aware of who I

am.

“Won’t do her lines. I tried.” She throws the script at me, then clanks down

the aluminum steps in her clogs.

“We hired you to deal with this.” But she keeps walking, arms pumping

hard. I’ll fire her later while she sits at the craft service table eating those delectable

wafers they serve in the evenings. She’ll be drinking tea out of her recycled thermos,

smiling so the round flesh of her cheeks reach up and almost close her eyes. Then I’ll

do it. Knock the wind right out of her.

I walk into what feels like the inside of a box. Light peaks in from the

crevices giving me just enough to see that Victoria is sitting on the floor in her

underwear, hair still in rollers. Her pouty little mouth is slicked with an iridescent

pink gloss. Thank god her make-up is still on and she’s not crying. I sit next to her,

and it feels good to rest. The last time she refused to come out of her trailer it was

over a camera assistant she said had made her nervous on set. Supposedly, he was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11

staring at too much, which I told her is exactly what she wanted.It’s a sign that

you ’re magnetic. People can’t take their eyes off Theof you. poor guy. I just have

him go shoot B-roll when Vicki is on set now.

It’s so stuffy inside the room. She’s turned off the air conditioning or it’s

broken. The air is thick like it is in the Valley. Once I followed my husband to a

restaurant there where he stepped out of his car with a woman who kind of looked

like Vicki. A bit shorter, black hair that was dyed blacker. The woman actually had

hips and a strange way of flexing her wrists up towards the sky when she walked.

Definitely not one of his models, maybe an actress or another photographer. I

confronted him as they sat near a window that looked out into the parking lot. He

had looked right through me and said, a colleague, Elena, why don’t you join usl

She was awkward; he was not, watching how we interacted with one another.

His eyes framing each moment to hold on to. The way the light blinded me when I

tried to look at her, or the pesto I dribbled onto my white t-shirt. At home that night

he did not lie about the affair, but I did, telling myself it was insignificant. He had

cast something powerful over me.

“I need to rehearse. Did you hear me?” Vicki is standing now, bangs

hanging thickly across her forehead. She starts to unpin the rollers making sure not

to pull her hair. I start to worry the “do” will be screwed up by the time we get to

set, and we will be delayed another ten minutes.

“What was wrong with her?” I say, jangling my keys and pointing outside.

Though, I don’t really care knowing that by the end of this exercise, we will be on

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12

set, Vicki at her mark. Nothing ever really stops on a film, it just becomes perverted.

“I need to practice with someone who doesn’t give advice. This is my work.

You saddled me with mother earth. I don’t need thinking. I need reading. She’s as

bad as Grey.”

“One time through,” I tell her going over to pull open the blinds, let some

light into the place. The blind pulls unevenly. I don’t bother to fix it, letting it hang

diagonally across the window, casting a single triangle of sunlight into the room.

Vicki walks in the dust filled space as if to warm herself handing me the pages.

I see a few textbooks on tax law and a card from the office of Lawrence

Barton, Esq. She sees me looking at her stuff and tells me its research and that Larry

has just asked her out. Vicki is playing a young law student who has fallen in love

with her professor, the former boxer-tumed-lawyer-adjunct. Only he is the wrong

man, caught up in an illegal gambling ring. He fixes fights on the old boxing circuit.

She’s been studying the textbooks on her lunch break, choosing a table far away

from the other actors; only the script doesn’t call for her to utter one word of legal

jargon. I look at Larry’s card, an old acquaintance of Grey’s we hooked her up with

so she could shadow an attorney. I wonder if this man, twenty years older, has a

wife, a family? Vicki cracks her neck. She clears her throat producing a disgusting

guttural sound. I cringe.

“Where have you been?” she says. I realize she’s begun and try to find my

place. As I fumble through the pages, I seem to have forgotten how to read.

Forgotten who I am. I want to be Sindy, the young, ravishing law student, not the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13

stupid boyfriend, the stupid, sad, producer.

I see in bold: TONY: “Hey babe. What are you doing here?”

“I know what you’re up to. You can’t hide it any longer,” she says holding

the script pages behind her back. Vicki pulls her thin wire framed glasses from her

robe pocket and puts them on. “But I want to hear it from you.”

I pause as the script tells me to. Vicki screams, “Tell me.” She grabs a vase

of white lilies sitting on the desk, and she throws them against the wall, shaking the

trailer. I look down at the broken glass and petals floating in the watery mess. Some

of the stamens have produced their own tears; large dew drops mixing with the

orange pollen. My husband comes up again. His face has begun to fade, so I recreate

him quickly in my mind; tall, but not that tall, jagged cheekbones that I liked to tap,

and glasses? Yes, glasses that were never clean. They were like foggy cataracts and

that’s why he couldn’t see me. Like one day I just disappeared from him.

“Elena, come on you have to get into this.” I look at the mess on the floor

and just feel part of it. “Do something god damnit.” She shoves me just a little. I

feel irritated she’s come into my space, touched me, uninvited. I find my place

again. The script tells me to grab her. I brace both her shoulders and raise my voice.

“I was going to tell you, but I’m doing it for us. The money’s good.”

“This is really horrible,” Vicki says. “I need to feel your fear, something.

Tony is ashamed. He’s scared of losing me.”

She paces around the room. This is where I should stand up to her. Tell her

to just read the lines and finish this nonsense, but I’m paralyzed and in this state I

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14

recoil into someone foreign being and listen. I take off my jean jacket and feel the

warm air against my perspiring arms. Vicki’s bangs have begun to stick to her

forehead from the sweat. “Let’s do it again,” I say.

“Tell me,” she says, quiet and desperate. Her upper lip quivering, one side of

her chin dimpling.

“I was going to, but I’m almost done. This one last fight and we’re done.”

She rushes at me flailing her arms. I hold her back, stronger than this wisp of

a girl and it feels good. “Is that why your men paid me a visit? Gave me this.” Vicki

disrobes and I see a large football size bruise painted onto her thigh. “They said

there'd be more if you don’t stop playing both sides. I’m going to the police.”

In plot A, my character is supposed to feel shock, horrified, break down and

change, the viewer hoping it’s not too late, but no, we have gone with plot B. I look

at her slyly and chuckle. “Is that all they did. I was hoping for more.” Vicki hands

me the prop kitchen knife she has hidden under the bed. She looks at me, nodding,

and whispers do it. This is where Tony takes her at knifepoint into the pawn shop.

I throw my pages down to the floor and trample them. I get behind her, reach

my arm around her throat, smell the scent of ginger on her neck, and push the dull tip

of the knife into her bone-ridden side.

Vicki begins to whimper. “But I love you Tony,” and I think bullshit. I wish

for a moment I could feel what it would be like to inflict pain on someone. She

begins to weep and I relish in those large tears that aren’t mine, dropping onto my

hands. She begins to wail and I tighten my grip. We are making so much noise

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15

someone yells in to see if we are okay. “We’re fine,” I call back and they leave. I’m

so tired now, but I hold on waiting for the scene to go on. She pushes my arm away.

“Let me go,” she screams. Oh I don’t want to let go of this sweet girl and I

have lost my lines, lost the script. I want to hold on until she begs me to release her.

“We’re not done,” I say, deepening my voice so the words come out scratchy.

Vicki wrestles free and pushes me onto the couch. I bang my head against the wall. I

am not done I think. I want to run out, go cry into the arms of someone, tell them

how horrible my husband is, how he ran off with someone younger, prettier. But

Vicki’s panting in the corner, her twenty-four year old body and luminous skin

looking bruised is beckoning. I walk over to this shaking girl. I turn her towards me,

positioning both hands on her shoulders, take one away and slap her as hard as I can.

She stands motionless. Immediately, I backhand this time, my wedding ring digging

into the flesh of her cheek. It’s left a nice pebble sized mark, so subtle until it turns

pink and starts to bleed.

Vicki reaches a hand to the wound and looks at the blood.

“Why?” She’s shocked and my mind clears, unable to comprehend what has

just happened.

“I don’t know why,” I tell her and I don’t. I don’t know why I hit her or why

my husband left me. What did I do? He fell in love all the time when he was with

me. Time and time again with one woman after another.

“I’m so sorry,” I say and mean it. I throw the knife down, pick up the

crumpled pages of dialogue on the floor and begin to smooth them out. My world is

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16

coming back so clearly and now I see the broken glass, sunlit floor, and a young

woman who I am responsible for with a wound on her sculpted cheek. I pretend for

a moment that it was all part of the job. “We have to get to set. Cameras go up in

twenty. I’ll take you to the nurse on the way so we can fix that.”

Vicki stands motionless. “I mean I know we were into it, but I can’t believe

you hit me.”

“I’m really sorry, Vicki. Does it hurt?”

“You should be. Someone will hear about this.”

She turns her back to me and begins to throw the text books off the bed and

checks her face in the thin mirror hanging on the wall. She grabs a small bottle of

concealer and dabs at the redness. “This sucks,” she mumbles to herself, acting like

I’m invisible, asserting her power.

Only the invisible sometimes do reign. My husband, the silent photographer

on set, observing things the rest of us couldn’t. I remembered looking at outtakes

together in bed after his film had been developed. You see how he’s looking at he her

would say, pointing to the prop master’s arms braced on either side of a young

production assistant. Her gaze pointed at the floor. I knew the moment that would

come after the camera had clicked. When she finally looked up, her face illuminated

by a male gaze, he would have already turned around to re-light another cigarette

needed in the next take.

Vicki takes off her robe and I can see just how thin she is except for a little

spot of cellulite on the back of her thighs, which is something she probably knows

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17

about. “What is make-up going to do with this?” she says scowling at me. She

changes into her pants, jumping to pull them over her hips. She sucks her stomach in

further to zip them up, making her ribs more pronounced. Braless, she starts to run

around the trailer looking for the red silk top the director wants her in. It must be

something to feel so free in front of others. Abandoning the fight, moving onto the

next task, feeling nothing.

My husband used to dress me like we dress Vicki. He would bring home

clothes from photos shoots that no one wanted. Italian silk skirts in fuchsia and

orange; scarves, fine leather sandals and high, pointy heels. Hats with black veils

and feathers that covered my eyes, tickled my forehead. One time it was a crisp

white shirt with cuffs that hung over my fingers. He had inserted stems of lilac as

cufflinks and photographed me by the lemon tree out back, positioning my face in

the shadow of the fruit, so my neck would catch all the light. He kissed the hollow

between my collarbones to let me know that we were finished. The pressure from

his mouth made me feel like I couldn’t breathe but only for a second.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SADIE

My mother and I moved to a trailer park a week after she left her boyfriend.

One fall morning in the fall we just picked up and left. The park was on the auto

mile, which was this road filled with car dealerships. It was plopped right in the

middle of all those cars. There were no trees, only small patches of dead grass in the

front yards. Concrete sidewalks connected us to our neighbors in perfect right angles.

One end of the road contained strip clubs. At the other end were large, everything

stores where you could buy eggs and motor oil in one trip. My mother liked our

home because she was close to the new boyfriend who lived just a few minutes away

in a nice suburb. I hated living there. The busy road was so close to our home that

the walls would shake when semis passed. Every night I listened to the trucks

carrying crap to the factories, so loud, they’d set off the car alarms. I decided it was

time to start counting the beeps like sheep. But then I felt like I was a pinball, so

instead I thought about how much I hated living in the tin box.

We used to live in a two-story house with busted-out screens and in some

serious need of fresh paint. That was with the old boyfriend, Jerry, who I liked okay.

He was quiet, more like an old sleeping cat than someone mom would date. She’s so

loud and jangles all the time with those gold bracelets that go on forever. A treasure

chest on her wrists. The neighborhood wasn’t as clean as the park, and the cars

weren’t so new. Trash would blow along the tree lawns. When the weekend came I

was sent to the curb with a plastic bag to pick up ice cream wrappers, fast food

18

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19

cups, and shards of lighters to make our place a little more presentable for the parties

Jerry threw. They were filled with people that happened to stumble upon the loud

music and smoke. I never recognized but a handful of them. Dressed in their best

jeans they’d walk on up our driveway and wouldn’t leave until dawn, some sleeping

in the grass.

Looked like a mess to me. Twisted bodies blowing smoke out of their nostrils

like dragons, dancing closely, and drinking beer. Men and women in the corners

tangled up until they turned into amoebae-like figures my science teacher showed us

on the overhead projector. I always got to join in with the drinking and the smoking.

Mom didn’t seem to mind because she’s got a life of her own.

Now we had just moved into the trailer when the spirals appeared. They were

flat like the design of a pinwheel or in one of those colorful round suckers they sell at

candy stores. I was sitting on my bed, looking at some photos 1 had taken of the new

place when I spotted them. I had begged mom to let me take photography my senior

year. She didn’t want to pay all the extra fees, so I told her 1 would get a job and I

did. Been working since I was sixteen just to pay for the camera. My best friend,

Loralee, was going to take the class with me but she went ahead and finished high

school a year early. Pretty smart girl. She’s gone now at college so I take photos of

everything. I want to show her my new life when she comes home in the spring.

I was real excited when I found the pattern. It was kind of like a shadow

floating over top the glossy 4x6’s. Maybe the Foto-Mat didn’t do it right, but on the

next roll; they were there again, only inside of things. It was pattern in the curtain so

faint I had to strain my eyes to see it, then in a lampshade, and embossed into some

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20

underwear. It was a design I saw everywhere. Maybe it was just a trend like when

the boys started wearing their jeans so low they might as well not have been wearing

them at all. My mom told me it’s just when we’re thinking about things a lot we

notice them more. Like when she wanted a new Cavalier and that’s all she saw on

the road for weeks until she bought one. Well, I told her it wasn’t that easy to

explain, but she didn’t want to hear any of it.

I forgot about the spirals for a while. School got busy, and my photography

teacher started giving us specific assignments like taking the same photo of

something on different apertures and shutter speeds. Boring. Then one night after

my shift at the gas station I went to a diner to grab some dinner. Mom was supposed

to meet me there but never made it so I started looking at my prints. Ninety-four

images of a necklace I own. It’s a thin gold chain with an emerald pendant and two

little fake diamonds on either side, but you can’t tell their fake. Mom gave it to me

last year for Christmas. Some photos were blurry, others were real sharp, but the

more I looked I started to see some of the spiral.

The waitress came over to take my order. She wasn’t too much older than

me but looked more sophisticated with her hair pushed back by a brown leather

headband. Her nails weren’t like mine at all, so plain, but pretty painted pale pink. I

like to get the acrylics, sometimes a French manicure, but most of the time I paint

them fire engine red. When she served my Cobb salad I noticed she wore a delicate

silver necklace with a spiral charm that sat in the hollow of her neck. I wanted to ask

so badly where she got it, but something about her made me feel shy.

The spiral returning made me feel safe when I shut my eyes. That night I

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21

kicked the blankets, producing static sparks. It was something I’d been doing since I

was a kid. The sky under the tent of fabric crackled and sparkled. Loralee always

told me to stop doing that when we had sleepovers because I was going to start a fire.

I just told her for someone who got straight A’s in science she didn’t know anything

about electricity. I shut my eyes again and imagined myself in a place equal to all

others when I slept. At the moment sleep takes over we are all the same. In the

blackness lying on my bed in the tiny trailer bedroom I could be in an enormous

mansion or a dorm room with a new boyfriend like Loralee. I could be anyone with

my eyes shut tight.

I squeezed them tighter, puckering my entire face and a spiral floated behind

my eyes. A perfect snail patterned white spiral. It floated in successions. One more,

another, and then another. “Sadie.” The voice jerked me back into consciousness. It

was a woman’s voice, deep and joking. It called for me again, “Sadie.” I heard it

laugh and switched on the overhead light. About then my mom opened the door, and

I was glad it was her. Her hair was coming undone from the twist she had it up in

and when she crawled into bed with me I felt one of the bobby pins poke me in the

neck.

“How’s my baby doing?” She wrapped her arms around me tight nuzzling

her face into my shoulder.

“I was asleep.” I shut my eyes because sometimes I have to ignore her to get

my point across. I could smell something fried on her breath.

“Where’d you eat?” I asked her, my eyes still shut.

“Ken called late and he had to see me. His wife went out with her friends.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22

Ken was the new boyfriend and manager of sales for the local newspaper

where my mom worked in telemarketing.

“He’s not leaving her.” My mother let go of me and sat up. Started fiddling

with her big gold rings and I could see it coming.

“What did I tell ya about this? It’s between me and him and if you wanna

come along, keep your damn mouth shut. You should be asleep.”

“I was just fine until you got here.” She tried to slam the door, but it was too

flimsy. Home makes for some quiet fighting.

I lay back down in bed with the light on and stared at the ceiling. I knew

exactly where I was now. Mom put on some music, something from before I was

bom, and started thumping around the room. I imagined her dancing with Ken that

night, twirling round and round. He’d be smiling all toothy and mom would be

taking it in like she needs it to live. Before I shut the lights off and quieted my head

I started thinking about the spiral. Where they could be hiding. Trying to find as

many spirals as possible in one day would be tough but more importantly it was

about trying to figure out what they meant. Because everything has got to mean

something like Loralee always said.

*

I had been making progress but still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of any

meaning. I figured once I did I would tell Loralee everything. She was going to be

real impressed at how smart I was and then maybe I would get into the same school

she did and it would be like it was. When she was around we shared everything; our

clothes although she had smaller hips so really just our tops, make-up, CDs, we even

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23

tried to date the same guys, but that rarely worked. I remember one time trying to

pull a pair of her jeans over my butt and it just wasn’t going to happen, and we

laughed so hard even my mom couldn’t help but drag herself upstairs to my room to

see what was going on. Sometimes I think she kind of got jealous of Loralee.

Bravery was really what it was all about. Diving into the unknown. It’s scary.

Sometimes when I’m trying to photograph people on the bus they don’t want me to.

But I have to do it anyways like when Loralee made me jump off the high dive when

I was eight. She made me do it, following me up the steps so close then standing on

that wobbly green board until I stepped off, screaming the whole way down. I was

all the better for it.

So what I do is hide behind a seat and lift my camera above my head to take

the photo. One time an older guy let me snap away for about ten minutes. He offered

to let me take photos whenever I wanted at his house, but I said no. I can’t believe

he thought I was that stupid, although I figured I’d ask him what he knew about

spirals because I didn’t care what he thought of me. Unfortunately, he said he had to

get off at the next stop.

*

At Jerry’s parties the adults were always saying more things than they should

so I decided to investigate one of the clubs down the street. I got all dressed up like

my mother. Stole a black skirt out of her closet that was a lot tighter on me and

pulled on a red tank top of my own. My hair looks good brushed so I did that and

put on some lipstick. Mom was on the couch a little drunk. I could tell by the way

her face was red and droopy. Her eyes were lined with excessive black smudges and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24

in the dim light of the living room after having a couple of beers myself, I could

hardly see her. She was an image I’m sure I could’ve stuck my hand through. I told

her bye and she continued watching her cop show.

The club was dark and lit by small candles on the tables. The only thing I

was able to see was the stage, filled with bright spotlights and a big woman swinging

in silver high heels around a pole. At the tables sat potbellied old men and young

men who looked like they were already old. I sat down in the back and I suddenly

didn’t know what to do with my hands. I felt mom’s skirt, tight around my waist as I

crossed my legs. I think it was cutting off the blood flow to my upper half.

If Loralee were there with me she would have held her head with confidence

and told me to do the same. I would’ve been the only one who knew she was nervous

because of that small blue vein that twitches in her neck when she gets

uncomfortable. A waitress in a skirt tighter than mine that made her belly fold over

the sequined waistband asked me what I wanted. I ordered a beer. She didn’t ask

any questions. As I sat there I didn’t know if I was supposed to look or throw dollars

at the dancers, but I really wanted to talk to someone. I was feeling kind of stupid

now because none of the men were going to talk to me unless I took my clothes off,

and I’m not sure that would’ve worked. I’d go to the bathroom and try to find some

women in there. It was empty so I went into a stall and sat down, staring at the piss-

covered floor.

Then something great happened. It’s always when you’re least expecting it. I

looked at the metal door and saw it was covered with black spirals. All of them were

the size of pennies just moving around the door like cells in a Petri dish. Something

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25

told me to touch them. I did. Directly in the center and the metal was cool. I felt

strong tracing the spiral to its outer end. I kissed it. After a while I went back to the

table and left five dollars for the waitress before slipping the bottle of beer into my

coat pocket.

I was really missing Loralee on the walk home. I hadn’t talked to anyone

because I had spent so much time in the stall with those spirals. When I was with

them I couldn’t leave them. I had tried but I kept running back into the bathroom to

see that they were really there. There were twenty-seven of them. Counting I’ve

found is important in searching for their meaning. Over the past few months, I’ve

counted at least 583 occurrences of the spiral. Only 192.5 of those have been what I

like to call live occurrences. This is when they move or tend to appear in nature. The

half was from a time when I was eating dinner and had arranged the spaghetti into a

spiral. I had gone away for a moment. I think mom called to tell me she’d be late,

and I forgot I’d made the pattern! I felt pretty silly when I saw the fake discovery

because this is serious work. Later that evening I called Loralee at college, but she

wasn’t around.

*

It was a cold winter. Coldest on record. There were so many days I went

outside to wait for the #63 bus that my fingers froze despite wearing two pairs of

gloves. I ended up spending a lot of time indoors, which was good because it gave

me time to hypothesize about the spirals. Thinking so much about one thing made

my head ache. At one point I even got a little bored with them like I do with

Calculus problems because I would just stare at the numbers forever, moving them

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26

around with no end in sight. But then one day something just popped into my head.

How else to best understand something then to become it? My mom wants to marry

someone to take care of her so she became a whore. Loralee wants to understand

genomes so what does she do, but goes off to college and works in a lab. In high

school she used to run tests on my hair soaking strands in oils and then examining

them under a microscope. Living the science she would say.

Mom surprised me one morning when she came home early. I had started a

ritual. What I would do is walk in four circles every eight minutes between 6 and

6:30. Right in the middle of our living room she saw me doing this.

“This again,” she said throwing her keys and bag onto the kitchen table. She

was looking ragged, her eye make-up smeared.

“Exercise. Too cold to be outside.” This was a good cover-up since she was

always telling me to walk more.

“Sit down we need to talk.”

I just kept going. Sometimes I couldn’t break the walk. It was like the

strength of the design’s inward-outward curl was never ending. Infinity. That closed

lazy eight on its side, a sister to my spiral. She kept trying to get my attention.

Glasses were being put away, bread in the toaster popped, a cigarette was lit, and

then she went to her room. I kept going for another half hour until I became dizzy.

*

I started to get very discouraged about not having a lot of money because I

couldn’t buy all the things I saw that had spirals on them. I stole a couple of items

from the gas station like a key chain and a can of pop. The newspaper helped me out

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27

a great deal as I continued my search through articles, sports statistics, birth and

engagement announcements, and especially the obituaries. Tracking the deaths in

the area, I found that more and more people were dying at ages that contained a 9, 6,

or 8. Those numbers were derivations of the spiral. The base of the 6 rolled

upwards and the top of 9 curved towards its center connecting to its stem. An 8 was a

spiral gone terribly wrong.

After reading about a woman who died at age 66 of a sudden heart attack, I

showed up at the calling hours to see what I could find out. The funeral parlor was

filled with puffy eyed people. A bunch of girls with black roots in their blond hair -

looking like skunks- stood on the porch smoking. No one standing outside seemed

particularly sad. I walked in and everyone stepped out of my way to let me up to the

woman’s casket. I was becoming stronger each day so I acted like I belonged. The

woman's skin looked chalky dusted with pink blush and blue eye shadow. I

whispered to her, “Tell me what you know.” I leaned so close I lost my balance and

grabbed onto the handle of the casket. Looking down to see what I stumbled over I

saw my hand gripping a spiral handle. Everyone must of thought I was terribly close

to her because a nice looking man came up and helped me to the back of the room.

I’m sure he told me as I excused myself to the bathroom, “You’ll see. Watch and

you’ll see. Good luck.”

That night I had problems sleeping. This was the first time I felt like I was

really on to something because that dead woman and nice young man knew about the

spiral. Even though I’d been working so hard to try and become one; losing about

ten pounds already (I was going to elongate my body until I could sleep coiled) that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28

dead woman knew something I didn’t. I wanted it more than ever. We’re always

wanting things we can’t have and this was no different from mom wanting Ken or

me wanting to go away to college. My thoughts were alive with the curviness and

swells of a new pulsating being.

I started to breathe heavily, one thought turning into another more frightening

than the last. I thought about Mom and Ken, Jerry, Loralee and how she hadn’t been

returning my phone calls. Where had she been? Who was the last one to talk to her?

Did we talk? I had been having some problems remembering things lately but could

not recall the last thing we did together before she left for school. I broke out in a

sweat. A thought came to me so clearly out of nowhere. I thought I might have hurt

her. I couldn’t remember exactly where this next idea came, but I got the feeling she

was doing bad things to me. She was talking about me at her college. Told everyone

I was freakish because I liked to cut the tongues from the fetal pigs we dissected in

the 11th grade. I imagined slicing her neck with a large knife. My throat felt like it

was closing and I became lightheaded like I was going to pass out. I started to cry.

No I must stop this muckity-muck thinking. The brave show no fear. I’ll just wait

and if someone calls me about Loralee, I’ll know I did it. Otherwise I will wait. I

will stay on track with my work. I curled in the comer of my bed, trying to coil,

eventually falling into a dark unmemorable sleep.

Now this thought about killing Loralee didn’t just up and disappear, it stuck

hard. I thought about writing her a letter. Maybe if it got sent back, I would know

for sure she wasn’t at school. I pulled at my hair for an hour before I jotted a few

lines onto the page asking how she was. I wanted to desperately write about the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29

spirals without worries of what she would say in response, but I couldn’t stand the

thought of Loralee laughing at me. I was starting to suspect she laughed at me more

than I knew. She laughed at my tiny home and the way I confused myself with

directions. I know secretly she laughed when I tried to fit into her jeans, pulling and

sucking, until my flesh exploded out of them. I drew a spiral in the center of the

page in blue ink, and all my thoughts settled. The uneven wave of lines floated. The

red hairs I had pulled out rode on top. I took my notepads containing much of the

research and dumped them in a box. Then I put the box in a trash bag and took it out

back to the blue dumpster. I had to keep the spiral a secret. Mom was home more

for some reason, and she asked me when I came back in what was so damn

interesting outside, but I kept my mouth shut. The spiral was mine, and when the

time was right it would let me know everything. She handed me a peanut butter

sandwich that I smushed into a ball. I rolled it right under my bed.

*

I decided Loralee wasn’t dead about late winter. My letter didn’t come back,

but she still wasn’t returning my phone calls. No one had come to talk to me, and

they would’ve because we’re best friends. I decided I was worried about nothing.

Mom had grown more distant. I think she was finally feeling sorry for the way she

had been treating me because she would come and sit on my bed as I coiled. We

talked about the weather and school, but I was staying home more often. Sacrifices

must be made for our goals in life. Sometimes she wouldn’t talk to me about

anything saying she had said enough already. Mom was a slug, moping around the

trailer after work. Ken didn’t come around anymore. She often told me to slow

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30

down or not to lift such heavy things when I exercised. I was so strong I could lift

one end of the couch twenty-three times. But I had to rush. I never knew when a

spiral would show up, and they could put up a fight.

*

“Come on tell me what’s wrong,” mom said during a long silence on our trip

to buy me some clothes that fit. She had dark circles around her eyes. She hesitated

before pushing the cart through the junior’s section, picking up a pair of blue cargo

pants and a t-shirt that said Rockstar.

“We’re going to see someone if you don’t tell me.” I knew that wouldn’t

happen because the last time we tried to go see someone they’d insisted mom sit in

the room and talk with me. That had lasted about ten minutes.

I couldn’t tell her or the someone about my secret. I was so close to

understanding and with Loralee coming back in the spring; I knew she would be able

to help me really find out why the spirals were everywhere. Why there had been so

many deaths in the spiraled numbers. And the local paper had just run an article

about Cleveland’s population dropping below 500,000. People were dying. This was

larger than life.

I told her, “Let’s go see someone. Maybe you’re right.”Ah ha. I am brilliant,

I thought. She hugged me. I even asked her if we could go get pizza later.

*

I learned the best at night. The information I received could not, would not

reveal where it came from but left me to decipher the message on my own. So ideas

were running through my head faster than I could keep up.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31

I tallied what I knew now:

1) People were dying

2) Spirals were everywhere

3) Loralee was alive and she would help me find the answers

4) I did not like my mother

5) I would go see someone and pretend to get help

I designed a glorious purple spiral on my bedroom wall with some paint I

stole from the school’s art department. A perfectly spaced line that curled outward,

starting at the center, growing until it stopped, the endpoint floating connected to

nothing. A true spiral is one that is not connected. The real thing is contained within

itself with the ability to draw you in and to be everywhere at every moment.

*

The someone I went to see wasn’t who I expected. She was a young doctor

who made me take off my clothes and put on a thin paper gown. I was led to a room

where I was weighed and my thighs, arms and waist measured. She made me answer

a bunch of questions about food and my thoughts. A nurse drew some blood. Sitting

in a group of girls, all way too thin for no reason, we traced one another’s bodies on

large pieces of white paper. This went on for about a month until I decided it was

taking way too much time away from the digging I had been doing out in the back

yard. Mom had scoured my room for things after she found the taped spiral on the

floor under the carpeting I had ripped up. I buried my evidence now and started

eating.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32

*

When spring arrived the ground became muddy and the sky, permanently

gray. Green grass started to make its way through the cold earth and glistened from

the nonstop rain. Loralee would be home in a few weeks and I planned on telling

her. I knew she would understand and I felt I was so close to finding the real spiral

that would answer everything. Why I was starting to feel so huge again, why no one

really talked to me any more, and why they were everywhere, spinning and crawling

out of every crevice of dirt and concrete.

*

Loralee should’ve been home by late May, but I hadn’t heard from her yet.

The effort of keeping my secret was starting to tire me out. I listened to Mom chatter

on the phone to some new guy about plans for the weekend. I was so thankful I

didn’t go on about nothing the way she did. There’s no way I could tell them about

the spiral and how you can find it everywhere if you know where to look and more

importantly how to look. Oh, what thoughts and visions had filled my head over the

past few months and ran through my head now as they talked about what they were

going to eat for dinner. I have glimpsed the soul of a dead person. I have

transformed my body, stretching nightly to turn myself into the tightest spiral

possible, redistributing my body mass. Even the beautiful S of my name has been

trying to form a spiral. I’m close to finding the real one and once I do; my life will

become part of that unending shape.

“Is it all right if I borrow the car?” Mom waved me on. She was doing much

better now having found a new guy to hunt and since I had put on a few pounds. I

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33

had also told her I had given up the spirals. They were just a phase I said, and she

bought it because she believes what she wants.

I drove to Loralee’s house that was in a nice little neighborhood not too far

from where we lived. A bunch of brick bungalows were lined up on cut lawns.

They all looked the same. I was feeling a little sad she hadn’t called me since she

got back. There was so much to tell so I was going to surprise her. I went up to 3029

Cordoy and rang the bell. It was hot and the bees were crazy by her mother’s rose

bushes. I waited for a while and just when I was about to turn around, her mother

came to the door. She was always so put together, wearing a nice tan skirt and

yellow t-shirt, her dark hair was cropped close to her head. She opened the door and

looked surprised to see me, probably because she hadn’t in almost a year.

“Sadie. How are you?” I was getting kind of nervous because Loralee’s

family always made me feel like I was different.

“I’m doing well. I just wanted to stop by and check in. You know see if

everything’s okay?” Her mother stepped outside and she was smiling so sorry like.

“When’s Loralee getting home?” She opened her mouth for minute then

closed it. Must’ve forgotten what she was going to say.

“Well she is coming home from college?” The oddest thing happened. Her

eyes got kind of glassy and she started to shake her head a little but wouldn’t tell me

a thing. Just looking all confused. I was starting to get pretty angry because I had

waited too long and worked too hard to be dealing with yet another stubborn mother.

“Oh, Sadie,” she said holding her arms out to me. I went to her because

that’s what I had always done. “Baby, she’s not coming home this summer.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34

Working up at the school. First summer away ever. Her father and I just miss her

horribly. But do come in and chat. I haven’t seen you in so long.”

I had had enough of the deception by this point. If Loralee wasn’t going to

see me, if her mother wasn’t going to tell me where she really was, I would reign by

myself over the spiral. Would use it to unlock what it meant and save the damn city.

I pushed her sad body away from mine and said I would love to chat but had some

pretty important business to get to.

I drove as fast as I could, squealing my tires like the boys do in the parking

lot of the school. Listening to my inner voice, letting it guide me, I ran into the

trailer. I went directly to my room to examine the charts I had crafted from the

obituaries and funerals I had attended, counting more deaths in the past three months

with people’s ages containing the spiral numbers. We were dying, all of us who

lived in this city were dying, and we couldn’t help it, but maybe I would be saved

because I had connected to the spiral. I became so excited by my discovery and

began pacing back and forth. I lifted the carpeting and followed the spiral I had to

lay down again but with duct tape this time. Round and round for an hour until a

large pain swept over my head. A breeze blew through the tiny window.

The hot air was mixing with the cool, and I felt them fighting with one

another as the wind began to pour into the room. I sat in the middle of my spiral

with the charts and pictures, wanting to carve open my head and dig around to see if

that would help me understand. The curtains grazed the back of my head with each

gust, and the sky started to grow dark. The rain began. The pounding of drops on

the roof muted my ideas. Staring out the window, I realized I needed to learn how to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35

control them. I needed them to be quiet so I could rest. The sirens began. Slowly,

growing louder and higher until they hit the level of a drone. A storm was coming.

The showers were refreshing when I walked outside. The thick black clouds

were beginning to creep over the lit sky. I went to the center of the trailer park to the

playground and climbed to the top of the aluminum slide, watching the clouds take

over. I began to slide down the kiddy-sized ramp, my legs practically touching the

ground from the top of the slide. I slid over and over while the rain grew stronger.

The lightening was erupting in the distance, but a small patch of sunlit sky remained

strong, just like me. My clothes were drenched and clinging to my body. The hail

came next. Small round pebbles, then large round stones pummeled my body so I

covered my face.

Suddenly the sky went dark. It was like I had been cast into a dark green

sewer. Everything went silent. The stillness paused and took a breath. I saw on the

horizon, the twirling cone of a funnel cloud bouncing on the ground. It was speaking

in train roars as it made its way toward the park. The hissing obliterated the blaring

sirens warning people of its arrival. I saw a few neighbors run out of their homes to

find ditches. I remained motionless, watching for it, the spiraling wondrous bomb

ready to pick me up into its center. It was so close, so near. I could feel it coming

for me and I felt joy. Happy that I had finally understood everything.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. RESOLUTE

Given her father’s determination to be a bastard for as long as he could, Ava

worried he’d be around for some time. There was no family left to help her through

his final days. Her mother had died from pancreatic cancer, while her father had sat

in a deck chair by the lake drinking whiskey and smoking until the last ferry had left

for the mainland. Those deep horns sent them off to bed with hope they would have

one more day with her. Ava had come home for that period of illness too but felt

devastation watching the only person who had ever cared for her, die. The wind had

sliced through the old house making it settle the morning her mother passed, trying

to shake the three of them to recognize one another.

After the funeral she had promptly left the island, coming home for holidays,

and then making only phone calls. Her mother had been the one person who had

kept her tied to the land and safe from her father when he drank. She would run the

two of them up to the attic, feet thumping against the stairs when he had too many

beers after a day spent fishing. Turning it into a play world with old mattresses and

gauzy white curtains hung from the rafters, they had tea parties and made up plays to

pass the time. Once he passed out, Ava would take a feather from an old hat and run

it under his nose to see if he was really asleep. One time he woke, making her take a

few steps back, afraid of what he would do, but he only grumbled and turned over to

his side. Now she watched him occasionally as he drifted in and out of sleep, and no

longer felt in danger; as if he were to awake and roar, she could break him.

36

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ava could hear her father coughing in the next room as she stood in the

kitchen stirring the chowder in the same aluminum pot her mother used to cook in.

She had found it just two weeks after coming home to care for her father during one

of her cleaning sprees. It had been buried in the back of a kitchen cabinet where the

plastic grocery bags were stored.

Her father was in the den, which had been rigged with silver bars and

medicine drips. His room looked like the front porch with its melting icicles hanging

from the awnings. She heard him shake the sidebars of his bed, supporting his cough

that became muted from the clogged mucus. The breathing tube needed to be

cleaned out. So stirring the soup one last time, as if not to be pressured to come to his

aid, she gently lifted the spoon from the liquid and placed it on the counter. The

afternoon light was just beginning to dim, and the kitchen had turned a golden

brown.

The first time she had tried to clean out the tube she did it quickly. Her hands

trembling, fearful that after she cut off the oxygen, he would act like the perch she

had watched him throw onto the deck of their boat while fishing. He’d let them flop

so he could size them up. The poor fish would flip and suck at the air, trying to find

comfort. Ava would scream, throw them back, throw them back. If they were worthy

of keeping, they went into a bag that was slung over the side of the boat. If not, he

would return them to the lake where they would swim away like silver ribbons

threading the water.

After a dozen or so cleanings, she knew how long her father could go

37

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38

withouta clear breathing path. She could tell when the threshold was about to be

reached because his eyes would widen, his expression turning to anger. Then his

mouth would form a perfect oval and hang open.

He tried to turn his head toward the door when she walked into the room,

which made him cough louder. The breathing tube, as wide as a drinking straw, had

detached from the oxygen tank. Embedded into his windpipe, he was lucky it was

small enough to let him speak. His eyes were watering and he probably couldn’t see

her. Ava wondered if in his oxygen deprived state she looked like her mother to him.

The long dark hair and quick walk everyone said they shared. Phlegm clung to the

plastic. She pushed the skinny swab of cotton into the tube and pulled out the mucus

that had been clogging his airway. She reattached the tube to the tank and watched

as the redness of his face faded into the color of the sandstones she skipped into the

lake on her morning walk. He regained his composure, refusing to look at her. Ava

began to wipe the sweat from his forehead with a wet towel, and he grabbed her

wrist.

“What took you so long?”

The sound of his voice still startled her. It was a delicate screech of words

escaping from the hole in his trachea. She knew she should’ve come quicker, but as

soon as the guilt started to knot her stomach, she reminded herself that he had made

himself sick with the smoking and drinking.

“I was in the kitchen cooking. For you. Sorry.”

Her father rolled his eyes like he did when he knew he was being lied to or

when he refused to hear the truth.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39

“Why don’t you turn on the television? Stay here with me.”

He was too frail for her to resist. The sick, no matter how bad they were in

health, got what they wanted. She felt his urgency, and she felt compassion, like the

time he fell down drunk on the steps that led to their dock, and she had to clean the

tiny pebbles out of his forehead. But she was seven then and still loved him.

Ava went into the kitchen and ladled soup into two bowls and got his evening

pills. “Don’t spill,” he said as she carried the food on a metal tray, placing it roughly

onto his bedside table. She sat with her father into the evening wondering when he

would die. Sometimes she wished he would do so soon so she could continue with

her life in Boston as a photographer, living in a brownstone apartment, washed with

light. Ava walked a route to work she knew so well that she felt part of a lovely

streetscape painting; dogs and their owners, children in plaid uniforms on their way

to school, and sharply dressed men in pressed shirts and trench coats. No one knew

of the tiny island she was from in northern Ohio. She never corrected them when

they assumed it was off the Cape or Nantucket.

*

The next morning Ava’s father woke up in a good mood having slept through

the night. She, however, had fallen asleep at the kitchen table while reading. Her

face was pressed against the straw placemat when the sound of her father wheeling

his oxygen tank over the tile woke her. He had put on the fleece robe she had bought

him at Filenes before she left, wrestling it from the dry and cracked hands of a large

woman. His hair, still thick, was matted on one side of his head. He looked like he

might fall over if it wasn’t for the support of the oxygen tank, and she rose to help

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40

him into a chair.

“The spring ice has just broke,” he said as Ava eased him into the captain’s

chair, his diminished body misplaced at the head of the table.

She sat down feeling the soreness in the back of her neck from sleeping on

the table. There was a sour smell that came from his pores caused by the medicine

he was taking, and she immediately wanted him to bathe.

“How do you know? You’ve been out of it for at least a month.”

“Didn’t you hear? The boats are dragging through what’s left. No more damn

planes. Have you really been gone so long you’ve forgotten what the ice sounds

like? Come on kid.”

The ice had been too thick for the boats to make the twenty-minute trip back

and forth to the mainland. Since she had been home, she had been paying the pilots

to buy groceries and her father’s medicine. Each time she gave them the envelope of

money, she felt like a drug trafficker in a movie. She would nod her head and say

something like, I t ’s all there. Call me when you get back. But the pilot, who knew

her as the child who used put her sticky fingers all over the windows of his Cessna,

would just smile and pinch her cheek.

“I guess I have been gone,” she said.

The bells of St. Michael’s around the corner from their house began to ring. It

was 8:00 am and Ava went to the counter to get her father’s pillbox and a glass of

water. He sat obediently as she dumped out six pills of different colors and shapes.

One by one he placed them in his mouth then swallowed, without hesitation or a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41

fight. Ava wished he would’ve done the same when she tried to give him coffee so

he would be on time to work at the restaurant their family owned.

“You’re feeling good today?” she asked.

“The ice has broken. Who wouldn’t?” For islanders the clear water meant

they could finally get away from one another, crossing over to the mainland, but they

always came back.

Her father turned the dial up on his oxygen tank, tired from the swallowing.

“You should get out. I’ll be all right for a while. Just give me one of the

muscle relaxers and I won’t know you’re gone.”

“You can’t have one just because you want to. You have to have a reason.”

“Bullshit. I’m dying. I can do what I want.”

Ava thought that he always had done what he wanted, and so she gave him

not one but two small pills after helping him back into bed. She arranged the tubes

around his body making sure he wouldn’t become tangled in them during his sleep.

Then she put on her coat and boots and went to town.

*

The main street, Division, was quiet. A woman swept the porch of the

grocery store, and a couple of men from the quarry walked inside the local cafe, Bag

the Moon, probably just off third shift. The trees were starting to bud again and Ava

could hear a woodpecker somewhere high above her, echoing through the cool

breezes coming off the lake. She walked down the middle of the street to avoid the

loosened earth that had turned to mud. Ava noticed the bike-rental shop was open

and thought about how quickly the landscape would change. In a few weeks, the sun

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42

out, leaves having their way with the trees, tourists would be biking all over the

island, just scraping the surface of its life.

On the sidewalk in front of the bike shop, a toe-headed child sat on a bike and

twisted the handlebars back and forth, pretending to go somewhere. Ava walked up

to the boy and tried to talk to him. She had never been able to click with children,

asking questions that were too abstract. After a pause, they would say something

like: Do you want to see my band-aid, or I like pancakes.

She crouched down and said, “Where you going?” The boy stopped his

twisting and looked up at her.

“I’m Spiderman,” he said.

Ava nodded, gave him a little smile, and walked inside, longing to talk to

someone other than her father. A thin woman, maybe a few years older, stood

behind the counter sorting paperwork. Ava knew she had heard her come in, the bells

above the door still ringing, but the woman didn’t stop what she was doing.

“See you’re getting ready for the season,” Ava said knowing she sounded like

a tourist. When the woman looked up, recognition spread across her face, and she

shook her head.

“I wondered how long it would take you to get down here to see me.” Ava

stared a little longer. She was comforted by the way the woman was smiling and

quickly realized it was Jules Mauzer, an old friend from high school, who had

married Bobby Sheppard, five years older than her. The marriage had become good

island scandal when it happened so quickly after graduation, all the old women

sniffing around Jules, just able to smell she was pregnant. They would’ve been

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43

right, but she had miscarried a week after they were married.

“My god, how’ve you been? I’m so, so sorry about your dad. We all are.”

Ava went to her and stayed in Jules’s arms for a while. She rested her head on

Jules’s shoulder, letting her entire body go limp and be comforted. Ava suddenly

felt like she was in the arms of a stranger and gently pulled away. She hadn’t seen

her since her mother’s funeral nearly ten years ago. She and Jules had sat in the back

of Bobby’s pick-up that smelled of concrete and dead fish, sharing a bottle of cheap

red wine after the wake. Ava crying and Jules telling her for the first time about how

bad Bobby’s drinking had become. It was then she realized she had to leave for

good, that the island was full of people on their way to self-destructing.

“He’s not good, but I’m here now.” Jules nodded, her eyes welling up with

tears that made Ava angry. No one really knew what went on in the house after her

father had left the bar.

“Please stop. I’m okay. And when did he come along?” Ava asked pointing

outside to the boy she had tried to speak to earlier.

“Kind of a surprise. I got pregnant not too long after you left.”

“He’s a beautiful child. That would make him what, eight or nine?

“Joey’s seven. Second grade,” Jules answered authoritatively.

How does he like school?”

“You know about as good as I did.”

“You did all right.”

“Did not,” she said tapping her nails against the counter. “You were the smart

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44

one, but your people always were. Went off to Boston like that on a fancy

scholarship. Heard you do something in photography now.”

“Did do something. I was taking pictures for the Globe and freelancing,

mainly weddings. I had to quit to come home and take care of Dad.”

“Right thing to do,” Jules said looking outside at Joey who carefully

zigzagged through the bikes ringing all the bells. “I hope Joey would do the same

for us. You’re not married I see.” Jules glanced down at her left hand.

“No. Not yet,” Ava said acting like she did hope for it one day. An unmarried

woman in her early thirties was an anomaly to the Island’s natives, and she at least

wanted to try and fit in while she was at home.

“How’s Bobby?”

“He’s ‘bout the same. Working at the quarry, still drinking, but who doesn’t

up here? Damn, it really is good to see you, Ava. Why don’t you come over for

dinner this weekend? We’re having the first clambake of the season. Getcha out of

that house.

“Maybe,” Ava answered.

How’s your dad moving? You should bring him too if he’s able. It may do

him some good.”

Ava thought about dragging her father and his walker and oxygen tank across

the mud. He would curse the whole way to Jules’s house. Tell Ava what a horrible

daughter she was and once there, he’d be fine, enjoying himself the best he could.

“ft just may,” she said.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45

*

It was a bad morning for her father the day of the clambake. Whether it was

the increase of pollen or the fluid accumulating in his lungs, he coughed for hours.

The lung probably needed to be tapped again. Ava dreaded taking him to the doctor

and having them stick the long needle into his back to draw out the fluid, her father

bent over while she covers her eyes with splayed fingers. Once finished, the nurses

had set the plastic canister of fluid, nearly a pint, on a table in front of him like they

wanted him to repent.

Before Ava went in to clean the house, she had propped him up in a chair on

the back porch so he could feel the breeze off the lake and watch the fisherman in

their boats. The wind chimes from her parent’s wedding, now covered in rust, hung

low in the big maple tree. They sounded like a lullaby. The wind would be calm for

the evening.

Inside she started on the living room, untouched since her arrival. The dirt

had accumulated in the house to the point she could not stand to sit still, wanting to

scrub every surface and wipe clean the dust on top of the mantle and in the

bookshelves. She started to vacuum the royal blue carpet with woven pink and

yellow flowers. It was a family treasure, brought back from China by her great

grandfather. As a child she would lay in the middle of it pretending to be in a royal

flower garden, tickled by the petals. She ran the vacuum while it sucked up every

now and then something larger than dirt. The crackling made her feel good.

Ava moved onto the shelves and pictures, taking a soft piece of a t-shirt she

had ripped up, dipping it in some olive oil and lemon, a trick her mother had taught

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46

her, and smoothed the mixture across the wooden frames. Removing each book she

swept over the shelves, making them shine. She remembered her mother cleaning

like this after a fight with her father about how much he drank or why he had come

home so late from the restaurant. Soon, after he had lost the business, her mother no

longer raised her voice, but found solace in the great old house handed down from

her parents. She tried to wipe out the best she could the scent of tobacco and perch,

but it always came back. Reorganizing the linen closet, scrubbing the grout in-

between the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, and re-packing the winter clothes with

mothballs when spring arrived, Ava soon had trouble finding things. The house was

in a constant state of alteration, growing and shrinking, never fully recognizable.

As Ava began to place the books back in the shelves, she heard her father

coughing. She pushed open the torn screen door that led to the porch to find him still

attached to his oxygen tank, but the mucus had started to ooze out of the tube. She

took a tissue and wiped his neck before cleaning the fluid.

“Better?”

“I would be if I could smoke,” he said staring up at the ceiling.

“You still want to go tonight? We won’t stay long.”

“What, so all those people can stare and make fun of me.”

“Yes, so all of those people can stare and make fun of you all night. I’m

looking forward to it.”

“What the hell,” he said as he picked up the local paper, all three pages of it.

His breathing was heavy. The color gone from his once brilliant skin that was tan in

the summer and had a rosy flush in the winter. Ava wondered at what point he had

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47

lost his vibrancy.

“I’ll be in here soon,” he said reading the obituaries. “Better go trim that

grass around your mother’s grave.”

Ava remembered the double-headed marker with her father’s name and date

of birth already engraved into the smooth granite in capital letters. She hadn't been

back to the plot since the burial.

“Don’t talk like that,” she said wanting to hear the truth and at the same time

not wanting his death to happen. If he were gone a larger world would open up, one

she couldn’t think about just yet. A parentless adult child. Who would she be angry

at? But how easy her life could be again without him to care for and the old house to

clean each week, despite how much she enjoyed it. If he were gone, nothing would

change just the monthly phone call. He didn’t deserve this attention right now. She

had given him enough throughout her childhood, coming home from band practice,

looking in the fridge to see how many beers were gone, checking the level of the

mouthwash, begging him not to have another drink.

“Right, you never want to hear the truth. Thought I was lying about

everything. Your mother was sick, I told you for months before you decided to come

home. Did the same with me, probably hoping I would kick the bucket before you

made it here.”

Ava felt the heat of shock run through her, wanting at that moment to pull the

breathing tube right out of his neck and run with it. Her father just waited. Waited for

her to react like she used to as a teenager, screaming back, telling him how much she

hated him. Her body was shaking, transported to a different time, but she calmly

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48

said, “We’re leaving at four” and went back to her cleaning.

*

Jules and Bobby’s small A-frame sat on the southern edge of the island that

looked onto the mainland. An expansive front yard ran down in a slow sloping

manner to a sandy beach. Large cedars framed the house and two blue canvas tarps

had been set up next them. The sky was overcast and a chill had set in for the

evening. Two young men were trying to start a bonfire near the lake while children

taunted them, throwing sticks into the weak flames. The steaming pots of clams and

ears of corn, set up on cinder blocks, filled the air with the smell of fresh fish and

lemons.

After situating her father at a picnic table, Ava went to find him some food.

She stuck a large pair of tongs into the water and pulled out a good sized clam. She

pried open its gray shell and smothered it in butter. An off-white mass was inside. It

reminded her of the dead jellyfish that rose to the surface after a rain in Boston

Harbor, their translucent bodies shining like mystical beings when the sun hit at the

right angle. That exact picture of Ava’s had made the front page of the Globe’s

metro section one Tuesday. She the clam into her mouth. It was too soft, like an

uncooked yolk and she spat it out. A group of children would later play with it on the

ground for hours.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Jules said, laughing. “Your dad is actually

talking to people. You know he kind of stopped that after your mother passed.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49

Ava glanced over to her father who had managed to balance himself on the

edge of the table with his walker. A group of haggard old men sat around him,

smoking and drinking.

“Make sure they don’t give him cigarettes,” she said.

“He’s walking okay. I didn’t expect him to.”

“He’s not quite dead. Even the doctors can’t believe he’s alive. Valve

replacement, bypasses. He wasn’t even off the respirator when they stopped his

heart.”

Jules caught site of Joey walking toward the water and yelled, “Get your

behind away from there mister.” Ava watched the child sprint up the small hill,

another boy close behind. Both tripped, falling onto the wet grass, laughing until

Bobby screamed at them to shape up. The lake was calm and gray. It looked like it

couldn’t hurt anyone, but Bobby, a thin but strong man picked up Joey by the arm.

He dragged him to a bench and made him sit. After he finished yelling at the boy he

turned to his friend and laughed, taking his ball cap off and running his hand through

his limp blonde hair.

Ava noticed Jules had put on a brownish red lipstick that made her teeth look

whiter. She was wearing a red sweatshirt that seemed to light up the freckles across

her nose. Jules looked like she used to before going to basketball games on the

mainland.

“Look at you. The same as when we were in high school,” Ava said. The two

women stepped back to admire one another.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50

“Oh no. You do. So fancy.” Ava felt her feet sinking into the ground and

wished she hadn’t worn her new boots. They would soon be scuffed, the leather

worn down to nothing from island living.

So how long you back for?”

“Not sure. We’ll see how he does. I’m going to have to hire someone part-

time. I need to work. The insurance money’s running out.”

“Heard there’s a job down at the Galley. Bartending. Ever done it?” Ava

didn’t like the thought of serving watered down beer and shots to the locals in the

winter and fancy drinks to the tourists in the summer.

“No, I haven’t. I was thinking of trying to do some freelance photography.

People seem to love those shots of sunsets and seagulls. The old Marblehead

lighthouse.”

“I love those pictures,” Jules said. “There’s some new artist now painting

those scenes you’re talking about and making a ton of money. People are up in arms

about it. I think it’s just jealous. Never want to rise too far above someone. Either

way, you’ll figure out something.” She handed her a clam and a boiled ear of com

from the bottom of the pot and seeing the men had left, Ava went to check on her

father.

He had a paper napkin tied around his neck and butter was dripping down his

chin. She sat down next to him and wiped the grease from his face. He was still

having problems feeding himself and was uncoordinated, like his arms had become

too short to reach his mouth.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51

“You know your mother never liked clams. Said she couldn’t eat them,

especially when she was pregnant with you. Just an excuse, something about

shellfish contaminating her body. She just didn’t like em, but she wouldn’t tell me

that. Woman never said what she did and didn’t like.”

“You couldn’t tell?” Ava asked.

“How the hell was I supposed to know? Damn women kept everything from

me. “Right. We tried to keep everything from you,” Ava said. She just wondered if

he knew how her mother and she played while he was drunk.

“That’s right. You think I don’t know things but I do. I notice. I know you

don’t want to be here.”

“There’s no one to take care of you. You’d be dead in a week.”

“Damn right I would. Why the hell didn’t they just let em kill me in that

hospital? Don’t you know I was trying to die?"

Ava knew he meant it. To face a life without alcohol and cigarettes would be

like a death. He’d been smoking right up to the point he had the heart attack. To not

have died was her father’s unbearable loss.

“I’m here for the time being.” Ava couldn’t let him be alone, not now. Her

mother wouldn’t approve. It was her job, her duty, and she would treat it like that.

She didn’t take care of her mother, never really believing she would die, and so she

would do it for her father.

“So tell me, you got a boyfriend or something? You never brought anyone

home.”

“I never came home.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52

“You are impossible, aren’t you kid? Cut me a break.” Ava thought about

telling him he didn’t deserve one when a man, about her father’s age, came towards

them and sat down. He sighed heavily and looked over at the two of them, taking his

knit hat off, which revealed a mess of long white hair sticking up in a salute.

“God damn, Bernard. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be

dead?” Ava’s father looked over at him and let out a grunt.

“No more than you.” The two men shook hands.

“I guess you can’t have any of these?” The white-haired man lit up a cigarette

and Ava’s stomach dropped. If her father had one it probably wouldn’t do anything,

but it would lead to two and then more and more until the bypasses would come

loose, as the doctor warned, her father’s death expedited. Then again, maybe it

wouldn’t be so bad to leave him on his own. No one would stop her.

Ava didn’t recognize the man, but her father began talking to him like they

had just seen each other yesterday. There were no introductions. The man had

briefly looked Ava over, his face wrenched, trying to place her. She walked away

leaving them to talk. “Get me another can of that pop. No diet,” he called after her.

“No smoking,” she yelled back pointing her finger at the man’s cigarette “Got

yourself a drill sergeant,” she heard the man say when she turned her back.

Ava walked onto the front porch of the house where a large blue and white

cooler sat overflowing with cans of beer, pop, and bottled water. A child’s sipee cup

of juice was nestled on top. As she rustled around in the ice she heard a soft type of

fighting from inside. The voices started to grow louder as they reached the door.

Bobby came flying out of the house; his red ball cap fell off in front of Ava and she

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53

picked it up. He tried to slam the door that was caught by Jules, who screamed “Not

when we have company. You’ve had enough.” Ava stood motionless holding his

cap. “Welcome home,” he said before ripping it out of her hands. Jules walked onto

the porch, her face moist, arms crossed in front of her.

“I just don’t know anymore. It’s like I don’t exist. Nothing I need matters to

him.” She opened the cooler and began rearranging the drinks in the ice, burying

them deeper.

“It’s like that with men like him. They’re only capable of caring about

themselves,” Jules said. She stood up and leaned against the banister.

“They’re the only ones who exist,” Ava said grabbing her hand.

“I just don’t know anymore.” Jules sniffed and smiled at her.

The two women stood on the front porch and watched Bobby’s friend hand

him another beer as the men made their way to the bonfire. Bits of ash, burned paper

and wood floated up into the darkening sky. They would bum out slowly as the

wind made them drift like fireflies over the party.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ARTIFACTS

Harold felt Lucinda stir under the covers. She ran her hand up and down the

length of his arm, and she squeezed his bicep. No matter how early or late in the

morning, or the temperature outside, Lucinda’s feet were the first to touch the floor.

There was a bright blue sky. Clouds passed in front of the sun, dimming and lighting

the bedroom, taunting them out of bed. So when Lucinda sprung from the mattress

Harold did not think much of it. As he lay cradled in the down comforter, he

imagined reaching for his slippers and following her into the kitchen as he had done

for the past five years of their marriage. He listened to her feet pad along the

wooden floors. The cat ran into the bedroom. Her meow sounded more like a crow’s

caw, whining and steady. She pounced onto his legs. Harold ignored Raphaela’s

playful teases until she unleashed her claws, piercing the down and stinging his skin.

He yelled out and reached for the cat who leapt from his reach.

Harold walked into the kitchen and looked at the cold coffeepot.

“Lucinda,” he called. There was no answer.

The house was still, and he thought she might be trying to play a game. She

loved games, especially when Harold was half-awake, but on this morning he knew

it was not a game and cried out for her. “Lucinda,” he called once, then again with

more urgency. It was like the silence he heard once as a young child, coming home

after school to find a note left by his mother. She had taken a neighbor to a doctor’s

appointment. She was supposed to be home at that time, standing in the kitchen with

54

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55

a cigarette in one hand, a plate of saltines and cheddar cheese in the other but was

not. Lucinda should have been crouched behind the leather ottoman or out on the

front stoop.

She had disappeared before. Harold did not feel the first pangs of worry that

initially made him short of breath that day she left with a small suitcase and her

passport. He had called Eleanor, her mother, immediately when Lucinda did not

arrive for their dinner reservation. Harold had ordered her a glass of Sancerre as he

waited, legs crossed at his ankles, looking at his watch then asking the waiter if she

had called for him.

“Don’t worry,” her mother had said over the phone. “She’s been doing this

for ages. Well not as extravagant as needing a passport.” Harold could hear the ice

cubes in her whiskey rattling. She continued to speak like she had just settled into the

velvet chaise for the evening cocktail hour. “She slept in the stables for a week when

she was eight at the country house. Truth be told we found her within hours but let

her be. The girl will come when she’s ready. Sit tight my dear. Don’t do a thing.

She’ll be able to feel you not reaching out, and it will drive her mad.” And her

mother was right. Lucinda reappeared four days later at the front door with the taxi

driver waiting for his fare.

Harold resigned himself as her family had done years before that prolonged

absences would be common. But this morning, the grayish blue light in the kitchen

was undisturbed. Harold never thought of himself as an intuitive man, rather dense,

he thought when it came to love, but felt this absence would be different. Maybe it

was the way she did not jump out of a closet or that her slippers were left by the bed,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56

the front porch light left on. Even the unstable have some level of predictability as a

way of grounding themselves.

The front door ajar, Harold pushed it opened and walked onto the stoop. The

morning rush hour had dissipated and a lone bike courier flew in front of him. He

turned his head down the street just in time to see a curtain of light blue silk turn the

corner onto Lexington, headed downtown. “Lucinda, wait,” he called again, but she

did not stop. He ran after her, his feet cold against the cement, and watched as her

figure popped up among the morning pulse on the crowded sidewalk. He thought of

how chilled she would be in her nightclothes, feeling it to be true now that she was

gone.

*

It had been four months since Lucinda had disappeared. They perhaps waited

too long to file a missing persons report, but her mother had finally hired a private

investigator and leaked it to the press. Harold became accustomed in the beginning

to seeing a photo of his wife run on the evening news. It was of Lucinda in the

backyard of her parent’s home. She was wearing a long cream skirt and standing in

the brick path that ran in-between the rose bushes. The sun backlit the outline of her

legs. Hands were on her hips, her head turned to the camera, Lucinda smiled as if to

say hello. Her dark hair hung over her bare shoulder and every time he saw her

image, Harold thought of what it felt like when she would nestle her head against his

neck at night. It was a few days after the picture stopped running that he had

received a phone call from Lucinda. He listened carefully trying to make out the

background noise. Was it a beach or hotel room? The only clue was Lucinda’s voice

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57

coming through clearly. All he remembers distinctly were the words, “I’m not

coming home sweet. Tell everyone.”

Five days a week at the Barrows Foundation had been whittled down to two

spent at home in his study on the garden level of their brownstone. It was once

Lucinda’s parents’ home and still held the remnants of photos from their wedding

day and family trips. One was a fading black and white of Lucinda holding a plump

catfish she had snagged when she was eight. He always wondered how the slip of a

girl could have caught a fish so big, its body being wider than her arm.

Harold read two and a half proposals a day from nonprofits requesting

money. Half of a proposal gave him something to think about for the remainder of

the afternoon as he wandered around the house, digging through drawers and shelves

that only Lucinda knew the contents of. As the foundation’s executive officer, he had

final approval, a responsibility he took seriously, but now with Lucinda gone he felt

disconnected from the work, his identity shifting away from being part of the

Barrows family.

The proposals contained requests for after school programs, balanced

lunches, new pencils, and computers. The first request he looked at was for funds to

purchase fifty-eight violins.Such an odd number he thought. Why not round it up to

sixty? Surely one would break being handled by a group of third-graders. As he

read, he envisioned the instruments being played in a cacophonous riot. He

remembered how Lucinda would watch over his shoulder as he worked. She would

have picked this proposal out of the pile and perhaps drawn an ant playing a violin

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58

on the front page. After defacing the document she would laugh herself out of the

room, blowing kisses to Harold and playing an air violin.

After the morning’s work was completed, he walked up the roof top garden

still wearing his pajamas and robe. The last of the ripe tomatoes from a humid

summer clung to the vines. He squashed one of the rotting fruits with his foot that

sat in the entrance to the greenhouse. Harold walked inside the small glass box with

frosted windows and slowly started to pluck the cherry tomatoes from their vines

with his mouth. After filling a rusted watering can he fed each of the plants, bits of

metal spilling into the soil. He checked the thermometer and recorded their growth

patterns. Harold walked outside to survey the small herb garden. It consisted of two

large terra cotta pots of basil and oregano perched on the ledge of the brick wall. He

picked up a tin box sitting next to the plants and opened it. Inside he examined the

package of dill seeds rotting; their white spindles wrapped around one another trying

to climb out. Lucinda had told him she believed the herb could grow without soil

and through the incantations she delivered, the plant would flourish. Who was he to

disrupt it now?

After Harold spent time in the garden he got dressed and thought of her. Not

Lucinda, exactly, but Katrine, a homeless woman in Central Park he was going to go

visit. He had met her accidentally on a day when the absence of Lucinda was so

painful, living felt like treading through mud. He wondered if she would be at the

bench this afternoon. It had become difficult to walk out the door until Katrine had

sat down next to him.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59

Harold had been pondering a proposal for art supplies needed at PS 128. Her

dark hair, untouched like a child’s, framed her face to accentuate the divots in her

cheeks. Up close she had a plain, unassuming face, but from a distance she was tall

and moved with a confidence that made him feel as if she knew something he didn’t.

Her long swinging arms tossed an apple in the air, catching it each time as she made

her way towards his bench. He had waited for her to drop it, but she did not. She sat

down next to him, and he side-glanced her. The tan pants she wore were wrinkled

and her bulky sweater made her look like she had a hunched back. Her canvas

sneakers were so worn they fit like socks. Katrine’s clothing seemed to be dripping

from her body.

When Harold walked outside his front door he felt the cool air sneak up his

pant leg and wondered if Katrine would be wearing warmer clothes. Maybe he

should pull one of Lucinda’s wool sweaters from the closet. The first day Katrine

had sat down with him they did not speak. Harold had so carefully chosen the bench

positioned under a maple, far from the walking path. He had crossed his long legs

and shifted his weight away from her, but she did not seem to notice. He had

regretted not bringing anything to read for situations like this; people whom one

would want to politely ignore. Harold had thought about getting up but could not

resist looking at her, the woman with the elegant gait. Becoming tense that a look

may invite some conversation he felt foolish when she did not notice him. She had

dug out of her pocket what looked to be one of those after dinner mints served at

restaurants, tearing the wrapper with her teeth. Harold had relaxed, and they sat for

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60

an hour or so together in silence, he barely able to concentrate on his proposal and

Katrine softly humming a tune.

*

Harold carried a wrapped marzipan bar for Katrine and clip clopped down the

sidewalk. Each time he visited her he brought a gift. She always ate half of whatever

treat he gave her with voraciousness and put the remainder in her pocket. He had

begun to wrap them in Lucinda’s clothing after he found one of her silk scarves

mixed in with his socks. It had been wadded up in a ball and pushed to the back of

the drawer. The shine of the fabric stood out suddenly one day like it had been there

forever. After that he excavated the closets, tearing long pieces of silk, chiffon, and

tightly woven cottons from Lucinda’s gowns and tailored shirts, weaving them into

small tapestries of history and vibrant colors for Katrine.

Once Harold arrived at the park and settled into his bench he waited

patiently. He grew anxious, then calmed, feeling like he had when he first started

dating Lucinda. Katrine never arrived head-on, which made him feel like someone’s

prey and added to his self-consciousness about hanging out with a homeless person.

The sun moved behind the clouds and Katrine appeared, tapping him on the shoulder

lightly.

“What do you have today? “ she asked. Her slight frame slammed so hard

onto the bench, he thought two people had sat down.

“Open it and you’ll see.” Harold hoped she would like it. He watched her

eat half of the marzipan. She held up a piece of the magenta silk and examined it.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61

“Why don’t you bring me one of those pretty dresses next time?” she said.

Harold looked down at his shoes, uneasy that she felt so comfortable to ask for

something larger than food. When he didn’t respond, Katrine grew annoyed.

“She’s gone. Why don’t you get it?”

Harold suddenly regretted giving her a few dollars at the end of that first

meeting. She had thanked him. The next week he appeared again in the park at

roughly the same time, and she had found him. Katrine had spoken clearly about the

weather and left with a dollar. Soon, he knew her name, age, and how she felt

invisible. He mostly talked about Lucinda. His regret over Katrine’s request lasted

for a moment until she looked up at him, vacant steel gray eyes, and he realized she

could not help but be so bold.

“How’s your foot? Does it still hurt?” he asked.

“Not anymore. It’s a little swollen.” Harold watched her lift the bottom of

her pant leg to show him the ankle she had twisted after tripping over a tennis ball.

A purple bruise sat on top of her pallid skin and he winced.

“Let me take you to the clinic,” he said.

“No, you know the routine. I’ve told you. Urine. Blood. Wait. I hate

waiting.” Katrine’s pale skin started to flush.

“Because you have a packed schedule and don’t have the time to wait? It’s

free.” Harold had started to grow sick of how she refused to care for herself when it

could’ve been so easy. He was there, offering to take her, a respectable looking man

who would hold her arm and march right up to the front desk, demanding immediate

care. Only she didn’t want it or him. The break came in the conversation when the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62

silence either meant vehemence or tears. Katrine’s eyes filled with anger as he

watched her think. “No thank you. I’m fine on my own. I don’t need you and I have

plenty to do. There’s begging and selling newspapers, scaring people like you.

Don’t tell me it’s any different than what you do all holed up in the apartment, giving

money to people that isn’t even yours.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You made it mine.”

*

On Harold’s walk home he thought he saw Lucinda. Out of the comer of his

eye he caught an image of blue, tall and fast, and watched it move into a bookstore.

From behind the woman looked like Lucinda, and she moved quickly, long legs

knocking together at the knees like an old man with rickety canes. Harold often felt

like Lucinda was hunting him. At every turn, her willowy, wild figure might appear,

still sheathed in the blue silk nightgown she wore when she ran out into Manhattan’s

bustling streets. She was probably impervious to the gazes of people who must have

been stricken by her form as she made her way down Lexington. When she finally

sees him, she will consume him. Awe inspired by her luminous skin and blue

marbled eyes, he will submit and walk quietly off with her. No questions asked.

*

Harold had met Lucinda on his second day of work at the Barrows’s

Foundation. A brilliant streak of black hair had walked through the doors. Noticing

the new face, she had immediately gone up to him and stroked the side of his cheek.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63

“My mother has done well this time,” she had said. He had never been so

boldly confronted by a woman and blushed. She exited as quickly as she entered like

she was showing off a new pair of shoes or simply that she was Lucinda Barrows.

Eleanor came out of a comer office.

“Was that my daughter?” she said to Harold and he nodded still a bit stunned.

“I think she may like you. I told her all about you. She’s quite pretty don’t

you think?”

Eleanor continued her comments for weeks, until Harold finally found the

courage to ask Lucinda for a date. He learned from one of the foundation’s board

members that her mother was desperate to marry the slightly older and eccentric

daughter off. She had gone through all the suitable men in Manhattan and at sixty-

five grown tired of watching after Lucinda. Harold realized that he was a last choice

being from a middle class family in Cranston, but with at least a pedigreed education

was acceptable. Eleanor had assumed correctly in thinking it would be easy to

beguile him into marrying Lucinda, but the couple surprised her in that they fell in

love.

Taking Harold’s hand on their wedding day and shaking it vigorously, one

Barrows after another whispered, “Oh thank you. Thank you.” He thought maybe

he imagined the Thank yous in between the Congratulations and You 11 be very

happy wishes, but the whirlwind Lucinda was; in white tulle surrounded by florid

place settings, and champagne numbed his concerns.

Harold couldn’t deny that he also fell in love with the Barrows, finding

serenity in his ready-made identity. His mother had died the year after he graduated

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64

from college and his father was somewhere in Tallahassee. Alone then he had

wandered around New York, working seventy hours a week for consulting firms

until he realized he was burned out and wanted to do something good for others. He

had become enchanted by the Barrows’ confidence, flawless skin and the way

Lucinda would run into her mother’s arms when she saw her crying, “Mumsy

Eleanor!” “Dear we’re not British, stop it,” she would say.

He had found it easy in fact to enter their world being swallowed up by never

having to make decisions. He did not have to worry about the dry cleaning or

grocery shopping, although Lucinda liked to do this task by herself, once taking him

along to Zahar’s shortly after they married. She carried a red plastic basket, loading

it with fresh pomegranates.

“I’m going to use juice as paint.” Harold pretended to ignore her and took the

basket hanging from her arm, which had left an indentation in her skin. He smiled,

put his arm around her, and she pressed her body into his. “Is this why you finally let

me go with you? Needed a mule to carry your basket?” Lucinda had stopped in the

aisle between the red pepper pastes and olive oils, plucking some crackers from the

top shelf.

“No, I just missed you today,” she had said. It’s one of those days when I

wanted you near me all the time.”

*

After Harold’s visit with Katrine he sat in his study with Raphaela. Flecks of

purple remained in her coat from the time Lucinda decided it would be interesting to

dye the cat’s hair. He stared at the shelves of dusty books and manuals and watched

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65

the light in the room gradually dim. The night brought on an acute sense of

loneliness when the neighbors across the street switched on their lights. He watched

their silhouettes pass in front of the windows. This was not unlike the railcar

apartment he had at W. 146th and Broadway. He would sit and stare across the river

to Jersey and thought about the people in their homes, eating and cooking together,

laughing and talking. Lucinda’s first trip to the apartment had been after a date at

Amsterdam Billiards where she beat him in five games of pool. “Another Sapphire

martini for luck. Five for five,” she yelled to no one in particular. In any other

situation with someone so boisterous he would have felt embarrassed. But with

Lucinda he felt empowered. Who wouldn’t want to look at her in the silk blouse with

one too many buttons undone? She inhabited her space so fiercely Harold felt like

he owned the place.

She had laughed as he grew nervous trying to unlock the deadbolt. He

choked on the odor from the trash wafting in through the window from the street

below. He felt more motivated then ever to find a new apartment with Lucinda

watching over his shoulders. He had been living in the place since graduating from

Columbia and never bothered to move despite the increased salaries over the years.

The place had given him a type of security and allowed him to pay off all his student

loans. Her long fingers moved in over his and she took the key, turned it once to the

left and popped the door open.

Lucinda looked tall in the room, standing a couple of inches above the

bookshelves that were lined up awkwardly in the hallway. He wondered if she had

ever known anyone who lived in an apartment with thrift store furniture and wilting

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66

philodendrons. She inspected the small one bedroom space in silence, picking up a

photo of Harold with his parents as a child, examining his books, even opening a

closet door. When she was finished she plopped onto the couch and crossed her

arms.

“This isn’t so bad. I could live here,” she said.

“Oh you think so? No doorman or housekeeper. There’s not even a washer

and dryer in the building. I have to go to a laundromat.” Lucinda gasped.

“The laundry I could wash in the sink and hang across the street to that

building where a man is leaning out the window. See him, smoking. A string of

clothing over 146.” She pirouetted across the dull wooden floor.

Lucinda ran to the window ledge and stuck half of her body through the

screen less opening, balancing on her stomach. She stretched her arms out and

teetered back and forth. Harold envisioned her dead on the pavement, covered in

trash and at that moment he couldn’t imagine living without her.

“Lucinda. Come inside now,” he yelled. He ran to the window and pulled at

her shoulder. She listened, slowly removing herself from the horizontal position.

“So you do care about me,” she said and drew her arms around him. “I

thought so. But you do know mother would’ve have surely fired you had I fallen.”

*

Harold found Katrine eating a hot dog wrapped in silver foil at the next visit.

She had lived another week, he thought. Ketchup was leaking onto the foil and she

let it drip onto her fingers. He watched as her soiled hands moved around as she

talked without concern of getting any of it on him.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67

“So Sal told me the other day he thought he saw Lucinda,” she said with her

mouth full. Harold loved it when they played theI saw Lucinda the other game. day

“Really and who is Sal?”

“The keeper. He keeps our stuff. Watches it when we have to go out.”

“Do you pay him?”

“With what? We mostly bring him food. He doesn’t usually ask for

anything.”

Harold noticed Katrine’s toenails had turned black, and he watched as her

slender feet wiggled in her beat up sandals.

“So where did he see her and how does Sal know about Lucinda?”

“In the park. Running. Sal knows things, he just knows like the all-knowing

god you worship every Sunday with your mother-in-law.”

“You know Lucinda never ran. She didn’t even exercise except when she

was running away from me.”

He noticed how young Katrine’s hands looked as she finished the hot dog.

They were smooth and translucent despite the amount of time she spent outdoors.

Like her face, somehow they remained untouched by the way she lived, but he could

see disease and injury creeping over her body and under her clothes. Her cough

would shoot up through her chest making her double over for a few minutes. Her

walk was askew.

“Come on, let’s go meet Sal. You can ask him for yourself.” Harold got up

to follow her; apprehensive since this was the first time they had actually moved

from the bench after a month of meetings. Katrine kept a few paces in front of him.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68

They walked for a long time into the center of the park, and Harold thought about

letting her lean on him as the distance between their bodies closed. She walked

around a comer of trees and opened a few of the branches revealing a path. Harold

walked inside. “Is this safe?” He continued to follow her but became slightly

concerned that she had derailed the game.

The path led to a small clearing. There were pine trees and maples

surrounding them, so dense they blocked the sky. He looked up into the trees and

saw wooden platforms covered in cloth, secured between stripped branches. Some

were off by themselves and others were grouped together. The platforms occupied

seven pines that formed a semi-circle. Faces slowly appeared. The platforms were

adorned with shiny pieces of foil, pans, old concert passes on lanyards, chains,

umbrellas, and ribbons, marking each compartment with both individuality and

membership in a group.

“Sal. Sal, where are you?” Katrine began to scream and Harold wondered if

she should be drawing so much attention to them with the faces watching from

above. He felt self conscious in his suit and looked down at his shoes, filthy from

the walk across the park upon terrain they were not made for. Behind them he heard

someone grunt. A crooked old man walked toward them.

“I’m here now. Whaddaya want?” he said.

“You should be here not out and about. Watching our stuff, like we pay you

to do. I’ve got some nice things.” Katrine did not bother to introduce Harold but

continued to berate Sal with questions about the woman in blue silk. She interrogated

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69

him about where he had been when he saw her, what time of day, and what she was

wearing.

“You’re one crazy girl. I don’t know what you’re talk’n bout,” said Sal.

Katrine was dumbfounded, staring at him like she truly believed he would tell

her where Lucinda was. No one bothered to ask who the nicely dressed man in the

tan suit was. Katrine turned to Harold and led him out of the fort.

“Well, I tried,” she said. She looked so devastated; Harold tried to pull her

close to him as they walked back to the bench, grasping for her hand. Katrine shook

loose and ran off into the pines.

*

More than two weeks had passed since Harold had last seen Katrine. She

worried him. There was a faint smell of stale urine emanating from her clothing. He

tried to ignore it. He didn’t like when small details, such as the holes in her pants, or

the thinness of her shirts reminded him she lived in a tree. She had been quieter than

usual, less interested in Lucinda and him. She used to ask about what he ate for

breakfast and if he had made a decision on his proposals for the week. How was

Eleanor? He had handed her ten dollars and told her to be careful. She hadn’t even

touched the chocolates wrapped in emerald chiffon.

Harold had also stopped calling into the office, staying in bed for hours trying

to sleep. He wondered as he picked up the phone if he would remember how to

speak. His voice was scratchy.

“Yes, Mr. Barrows. I’ll schedule it for 10:00 a.m.,” the voice on the other

line said.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70

“Wilkins you mean. Barrows is my wife’s name.”

*

Harold had begun to consume and then destroy Lucinda’s possessions after

they began appearing rapidly here and there. A ring hidden in the cupboard behind

the coffee mugs, a pair of gloves under the couch. It was if Lucinda had planted

them, knowing she would be gone one day, wanting him never to forget.

He had decided he would try again at the park after finding the straw hat

Lucinda had given him on his 30th birthday. To celebrate your life, she had said as

she placed it on his head. Her blue eyes lit from behind were wide and penetrating.

Lucinda had a way of looking at him so intently he thought she might explode or

possibly incinerate him. He never looked too long, averting his gaze.

He immediately began thinking about how he would end the hat’s life. Each

day he would wear an article of clothing Lucinda had given him or that belonged to

her, like a Hermes scarf or a pearl bracelet. Then he would throw it down the trash

chute, not even bothering to put in a bag. Sometimes he would shred the fabric or

give the clothing intact to Katrine. The possessions no longer carried Lucinda’s

scent and were becoming unidentified objects. He couldn’t tell if the bracelet was a

book or the scarf was a boot.

*

Harold sat on the cold bench and waited for Katrine. He hoped that she

would soon sit down. He needed to talk to her. A crisp breeze blew his hat off and

his nose started to run. His eyes started to water. Harold waited. He thought about

the bruise on her ankle and how each week it had become larger and how she kept

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71

protesting his offers to take her to the doctor. How can you be so stubborn, he had

asked her. His eyes continued to fill with wetness and he ran out of tissue to wipe

his nose so he let the mucus coat his face. Patches of resplendent blue parted the

dark gray sky. He headed down the path towards home, thinking about Katrine and

where she could be. He pledged he would return each week with a small gift for her

regardless of whether or not she would meet him.

On his way home he passed Sal pushing a metal cart filled with blankets and

bags of aluminum cans. Harold grew excited that he saw someone who knew

Katrine and smiled, ready to talk. Sal glared at him and continued on his way.

Harold ran after him and handed him a crimson silk bag full of pretzels. Sal took

them without hesitation and nodded. He began to push the rusted cart but before he

got too far, he turned and said, “Your wife’s not coming back.”

Harold grabbed the sleeve of Sal’s trench coat.

“What do you mean? How do you know? I need to speak with Katrine.”

“You mean Lucinda, don’t you? She’s gone, but you never had her to begin

with, son.”

“It was an understanding, you see?” Harold said.

Sal turned and made his way down the path, only stopping to put a bowl back

in his cart that had fallen to the ground. Harold watched him pushing his cart slowly,

balancing the precarious mound of junk with his arm, guarding his possessions as if

it was the only thing left in the world to do.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE UNTITLED CHAD REX PROJECT

First things first. Rebecca began by cutting the fabric, still catching a small

thrill in the way the shears moved with ease through cotton. It only took a slight

incision, which allowed the blade to pull the cloth apart cleanly. The machine, it

chugged so quietly, lulling her into a meditation as she stitched the hem. The office

lights were dim, her work brightened by a single desk lamp. The dress will fall just

above Caroline’s knee. She had come up with one rule when she got into the movie

business and that would be to always think about the person who would be wearing

the clothes. It was a requirement; the ability to impart a life into cloth. Rebecca

thought about Caroline as a sketched figure, silhouetted in beige delivering her lines

in putters of sound that no one would listen to. But they will notice the dress, how it

wraps tightly around her waist, plunges at the neckline, set’s off her pale skin. She is

like a piece of putty shaped by the clothes Rebecca has designed. Caroline will

arrive tomorrow at her fitting like an excited schoolgirl, exuberant from a morning

run. She will recite her lines and talk about her next film in which she plays a violin

prodigy. Rebecca lifted her foot off the pedal and slowed the machine to a stop. She

hung the dress on a silver hook outside the changing room before heading to the bar

to grab a drink with the rest of the crew.

The production office was busy the next morning. Someone had left the

windows open and the winter breeze blew loose call sheets and invoices into teasing

72

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73

swirls. A small herd of assistants ran around grabbing the paper and closing the

windows with small thuds. Rebecca walked through the main room and down the

hallway to her office, stepping around the litter on the floor. A short young man with

pimples along his hairline handed her a cup of black coffee and she mumbled thanks,

flipping her sunglasses on top of her head that was still throbbing from too many gin

martinis. As the costume designer, her office was never private, but she had hung

white curtains around the massive wooden desk, which made her feel like a child in a

tent, able to seal off the chaos. She turned them back for meetings, shrouding the

group in the diaphanous cloth. But this morning they had begun without their

huddle. She had missed having her staff gathered around waiting to hear who would

get the best assignment of the day. As they listened, one in a swivel chair, another

wrapped in a piece of fabric, she would feed them work, playing to their strengths,

sometimes their weaknesses just to make a point.

The dirty white walls, marked with holes and tape scars from past

productions were covered with Polaroids of the main characters dressed in costume.

Fabric swatches were piled on top of a worktable, three feet high, ready to collapse,

and the humming of the sewing machine had already begun. Soft murmurs of

talking filled the room. Rebecca did not allow boisterousness in her office. Greg the

assistant costumer, who she had gotten hired on the project, sat in the back hemming

pants for the lead, a green bandana wrapped around his head. A tuft of sun-streaked

blonde curls erupted from the hood of the cloth. Rebecca mandated when possible

that she work with Greg. Usually she was able to negotiate his employment in her

deal memo with the promise of a more efficient department. He was faithful but

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74

stern, a little caddy, but he would cover her when needed, like now since she had

failed to see the scene changes on the schedule, forgetting the pants that Greg had

remembered. She dropped her leather bag onto the floor and tied up her long hair

that would slowly come loose from its elastic as the day wore on.

“We’ve got thirty minutes before they come for those pants.”

“Really. You think?” Rebecca snapped.

“You’re late,” he said not looking up from his work at the black Singer. “And

Bill’s looking for you.”

Bill, the line producer, who watched every cent she spent. They had gotten

into a fight a few weeks earlier over thirty yards of 1,000 thread count cotton needed

for Caroline’s dress in a dream sequence. She had placed the order despite his

protests and then had been unable to return it once the scene was cut from the script.

He was going to love reminding her about the schedule change, and she ruminated

on the idea he had switched things around on purpose.

“His car isn’t out front.”

Greg looked up with a needle in his mouth. “Prepping the second location

downtown.”

“Second location? We were supposed to be on the stage all day. I don’t feel

like moving.” Rebecca had developed a full headache that had reached into the back

of her eyes and extended through her forehead.

“He thinks we can get the walk-and-talk in with the leads during magic hour.

Didn’t you see the schedule changes last night?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75

She knew Greg had seen her at the bar with the young producer. The man’s

unshaven face had been at just the right length to feel like a brillo pad. All she could

think about on the drive in were the broken capillaries and what sort of laser

treatment her facialist would use to remove them. The producer was a nephew of

someone important, grandfathered into his first film. He was smug but attentive, and

that was all that really mattered when the crew was happy and everybody was in love

with one another, eager to praise past work. He would probably disappear in a few

weeks after he screwed up a talent deal.

“Of course I did. I’m just going to have to squeeze Caroline in for a fitting

sometime today.”

“You’re slipping.”

Rebecca ignored him and started to think about the word gamine as she

turned to work on a skirt needed later in the week. Gamine is what Caroline will be

in the movie as the director, Chad Rex had described. “A kind of Mia Farrow meets

Audrey Hepburn. Quirky and neurotic, slight but tough.” Caroline is still a tiny idea

Rebecca will cut fabric for, irritatingly so, wishing she could be inside the clothes,

know what they felt like around her body. It is not want of another, but to be another,

she thinks as she starts to move the shears up a crinoline that will be the lining of a

taffeta skirt. Caroline will have to raise that skirt while ascending the marble stairs of

the concert hall in scene 7a. The horrid numbers and letters Rebecca assigns to each

moment. They are the moving pieces that add color, accentuate a woman’s breast, a

man’s forearm, or a fly away hat that rings through the picture signaling departure or

loss. Trite, she thinks. No one will remember these symbols, buried in the viewer’s

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76

subconscious, but this temporary make-believe assigns her some relief to working on

another bad movie. Rebecca tightened her belt, pressed a cold bottle of water against

her cheek, and looked at the clock’s hands quickly moving to 7am.

*

Once the crew completed the first scene and Rebecca had properly brushed

the lint off of the talent, told them they were beautiful, smiling grotesquely the entire

time, she headed back to the office, leaving Greg and the assistants to watch for

continuity. “No loose threads. Wrinkles, collars, cuffs, and shoes,” she had said

before walking away. Caroline was scheduled to arrive in an hour for her fitting so

Rebecca could alter the dress needed that afternoon, the one she had so patiently

hemmed the night before, thinking she was ahead of the schedule. She should’ve

known better.

She walked slowly between two large white soundstages wrapping the nylon

measuring tape around her neck, pulling it tight until it hurt. The sun beat down on

her skin until she felt like she had a fever. She saw Bill walking towards her and

sped up to look busy. Once he had become in charge of the money, the gait he had

when he was younger had turned into a saunter over the years. He had thick silver

hair that always looked in need of a hair cut. A cigarette dangled from his right hand

that he kept hiding behind his leg. His voice was scratchy from yelling and not

enough sleep, but his eyes were opened wide, surveying everything around him. As

he got closer she saw him turn the volume down on the walkie hooked to his belt.

He was too tan for a Los Angeles winter. She thought that maybe his shoot in Malta

away from the wife and kid had actually done him some good.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77

“You okay with the changes?” he said throwing an arm around her. Rebecca

smelled the smoke on his hands, the orange juice on his breath.

“Do I have a choice?” Removing his arm she gave him a small kick in the

shin. He moved back quickly.

“Quit it.”

She had known him when he would stutter in front of people, spill coffee,

and didn’t know what a C-stand was. Now he was just a grown up version of that

22-year-old kid who thought he would marry a movie star after he had produced his

first blockbuster. Instead he was controlling the budget of a television movie with B-

list talent.

“Caroline starts filming in Vancouver the day that scene was scheduled for. I

had to move it. No choice.” Bill took one last inhale from his cigarette and threw it

on the ground. Rebecca ground the butt into the cement.

“Walk with me to get some coffee.”

“Can’t, Caroline will be here soon,” she said turning the volume up on her

walkie releasing a bevy of voices.

“I’m ordering that silk from downtown for the concert scene. A lot of it. You

better dump some money into my budget this afternoon,” she yelled walking away.

The balding prop master rode by on his bike balancing a few empty Jack

Daniel’s bottles in his enormous hands and whistled at her. “Go to hell,” she said

almost colliding into a tired grip carrying two halogen lights. He grunted and kept

moving.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78

Back in the office, Rebecca lay down underneath her desk. The carpeting

was stained with coffee and after work beer. It smelled like the kitchen of an old

house she had shared with two guys when she first moved to LA in a seedy section

of North Hollywood. But she liked the office’s grittiness. It reminded her of how

rough her hands would get on the shoot from the constant needle pricks and handling

of fabrics and belts, manipulating her clothes on the actors so their bodies would feel

comfortable. Her headache hadn’t gone away so she took a sip of vodka from the

stash she kept in the mini-fridge. Staring at the feet that passed by her doorway,

Rebecca felt like a caged animal. Like she just got dropped off along the way and

needed to figure out who to kill or trick to get out.

Lying on her back, she stuck her legs straight into the air and kicked them

furiously up and down. Maybe she could go back to school and finish her degree in

fashion design, but she felt too old, nearly forty with a mortgage, and on the cusp of

getting a job on a good film. She had gotten derailed after interning on an epic

feature one summer. Rebecca had spent the majority of time in a warehouse tagging

and sizing clothing for hundreds of Viking extras, only getting to set when someone

needed something important, like secret documents in manila envelopes that gave

her paper cuts.

But on a set people took her job seriously despite she was paid less than what

she made working retail at Saks. Even the talent became crew and when she found

herself unmoved, standing next to one of the most attractive leading men while she

measured his waist for a pair of trousers, she knew it had become a job. He had

looked down at her smiling while she read the tape measure, placing his hand on her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79

shoulder. “Have a drink tonight?” he had asked. “Thirty-four inches,” she replied

tired going into her sixteenth hour on set.

Rebecca had always loved the way the flirtation unraveled on a shoot. They

rarely had the same personality in bed, and it was a thorough game. For the most

part she held them off as along as possible, which wasn’t difficult with the

distractions of the actual work. She would gather clues: the strength of their

cologne, clean or dirty clothes, the grip of their hand when they would playfully pull

her towards them, and how often they sat next to her at meals. What they had talked

about had little to do with the truth. All of the men had a combination of children,

ex-wives, girlfriends, and pets at home. The affairs were like her because they had

been hijacked from their artistic intentions and settled into the career because it paid

well and living like a nomad was addictive. They learned to speak in between their

relationships left at home and got to know each other fast. Only while shooting in

L.A. would she feel fidgety because her home and work life collided. She would

have to go back to her bedroom this evening and see the drool stain from the young

producer on the pillow. There would be no hotel housekeeping to clean up her

indiscretions. But once it was over and she had seen them naked, her skin left raw

from the franticness of it all, she remembered them like a cut scene.

Caroline would be arriving in a few minutes and Rebecca hoped the

alterations wouldn’t require too much work. She stood up, readjusted the elastic in

her hair again and headed to the back room where a curtain hung in the corner for

costume changes and racks of clothing were stored. Caroline’s dress was one of the

few pieces Rebecca was actually allowed to design, and she had happily increased

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80

her rate to include original works. It was a short tan wrap dress that hugged

Caroline’s waist in a way that accentuated her hipbones. The fabric was slightly

shiny and neutral enough to blend in with the office towers. Geometrical patterns of

blue sky, patched in between the space that separated the buildings was the only

color Chad Rex wanted. She began to sift through the rows of Caroline’s clothes,

her hangnails snagging the more vulnerable fabrics. Rebecca noticed a tiny comer of

her nail had started to bleed, and she began shaking her hand and blowing on her

finger, the sting working its way up her arm. She stopped what she was doing and

began to pace around the room, sucking her finger.

“I hope this isn’t going to hurt,” said Caroline from the doorway.

She was wearing tortoiseshell glasses and carrying a slouchy cotton bag,

which made her look more like a student than talent. She walked over and gave

Rebecca a kiss on the cheek. As always Caroline was on time and excited. They had

spent the initial wardrobe fitting drinking a bottle of wine and comparing notes on

different actors’ self-enhancement techniques.

“Greg isn’t here, so you won’t feel a thing,” said Rebecca. Caroline laughed

showing her newly bleached teeth.Moving up, she thought. The producers had paid

for the procedure.

Caroline wore no make-up, lashes almost disappearing. Her long blond hair

was tied in a knot, unwashed, and hanging low against her neck. Rebecca handed

her the dress and watched as she took it to the back. As she turned to enter the room,

her profile caught the glow of the sateen, casting her in a beautiful solitude.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81

Rebecca watched the bottom of the curtain move as Caroline changed. She

saw her shove off her running shoes and step out of her jeans. Then she reached

down to take off the white socks revealing bright red toes. Rebecca thought about

her own unpolished toenails and calloused heels and how they would look next to

Caroline’s. The thinness of the actress’s ankles and calves, sinewy and glistening as

she changed underneath made Rebecca look away. She wished she were Caroline at

that moment, so unaware of how her raggedness was lovely. “What shoes should

she wear with the dress?” she asked herself.

“Everything going okay?” Rebecca called to Caroline as she walked around

the room picking up stilettos, organizing them by size and color.

“Fine,” she answered, her voice muffled as she removed probably a

sweatshirt. Rebecca suddenly felt a little unsteady and worried the vodka was

having the opposite effect. She went to get her measuring tape and pin cushion in

the front room. When Rebecca walked back, Caroline had just finished changing and

had stepped out of the dressing room. She was tugging at the wrap around her waist

trying to minimize the low neckline. Giving up, she started to smooth the fabric

down around her small hips.

“It needs to be taken in, right?” Caroline asked.

“Just a little.” Rebecca walked towards her without making eye contact, still

thinking about her toes from the bottom of the dressing room, and started to pin the

fabric.

“Good. I was worried about this dress in the light. You can see everything in

it. Every piece of fat on my body. Not that I really care, but I should, right?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82

“Don’t worry, the producers won’t let you go on screen looking fat and yes,

you should care. That’s what this is all about.”My clothes can't be worn by a fat

person, Rebecca thought.

Caroline stared straight ahead, arms at her sides as Rebecca worked on the

dress. All she could hear were the phones ringing in the main office and the sound

of Caroline’s breath. Rebecca held on to most of Caroline’s hip with her hand as she

placed the pins in the fabric. The girl was so small. As she inserted the last pin

through the dress a production assistant entered the room.

“Can I get either of you anything,” he said.

Startled, Rebecca lost her grip on the pin and stuck her linger. She watched

as Caroline’s dress became stained with a light trace of blood.

“Shit.”

“What?” Caroline asked, both of them ignoring the assistant waiting to take

their drink order.

“I’m bleeding. It’s going to stain.”

Caroline untied the dress, slipped out of it, and stood in her white cotton

underwear. She handed the dress to Rebecca in a crumpled ball.

Caroline was tall and angular. The fluorescent light bounced off her

collarbone. Her shoulders softly gave way to toned arms that she had crossed in

front of her freckled stomach. Rebecca moved her eyes to Caroline’s mouth whose

lips were large enough to be crinkled by the dry winter air. The assistant snuck out

and Rebecca felt a haze come over her and couldn’t feel her feet as she thought about

where the stain remover could be. After fumbling through spools of thread, she

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83

found it on the floor next to the dressing room. She rubbed it into the fabric, her

hands shaking a little while Caroline made a call on her cell phone. The assistant

returned with water and word the scene had been cut. There would be no move

today after all.

=1=

That evening after the fitting with Caroline when the sight of her feet had

made Rebecca weak, she did not eat but went straight to the cellar. She picked a

bottle of her deepest red, opening it quickly, leaving bits of cork in her glass. She

drank them all, and she reminded herself that crushes on her talent were normal,

almost required in order to make clothes for the characters she had to adore. But she

had felt a dizziness around the girl similar to the men she had affairs with on set,

only it was less controllable.

Rebecca slipped into a black dress that she wore sometimes when she was

alone. She watched the lights out by the pool as they created shimmers on top of the

dark water. The rings of light reminded her of the heat she felt she could generate in

the dress. Black, she thought. It’s modest but yet the straps are thin and the fabric is

silk, not blended with the fibers of those polyester satin camisoles she used to wear

when she had no money. It skimmed her hips slightly to show she had some curves,

and the neck scooped low into a smile, revealing the slightest bit of cleavage. Her

chest bones like small waves rippled up into the deepest spot where her collar bones

met. “I’m almost Caroline’s size,” she whispered.

The dress left her wishing she had been born in another time when there were

no expectations of women other than to dress well and wear a scarlet lipstick. She

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84

didn’t think about being satisfied by her work or independence, now established in a

sprawling ranch in the hills, where the bamboo growing outside her bedroom

scratched the window to wake her in the morning. Those candied stick branches

were like ghosts of a time when some famous actress and her cinematographer

husband lived in the house, dancing to the same Bill Broonzy blues record that she

has chosen to twirl to, letting the wine run down her arm from a spill.

Under the spell of the wine, she wanted more than ever to be taken care of by

someone who would understand the ache in her bones, which ran up her spine to the

top of her head, and back down from standing all day, praising all day, just wanting

to lie down all day. She didn’t want to like Caroline so much but she did.

*

The small house the producers had rented for Caroline during the course of

the production was not what Rebecca expected. She was beckoned on her day off to

fit another dress. Whiteness surrounded her when she walked into the foyer. The

cream leather couches blended into the white walls. Bookshelves were empty except

for a few romance novels and a game of scrabble, reminding her more of the condos

she had rented during Sundance, not a place where the talent lived. Collaged

artwork in geometrical bright shapes hung on the walls. Caroline was lying on one

of the couches sipping a pink drink, swirling her ice cubes. Legs draped over one

side she raised her head and called for Rebecca to come inside.

Caroline’s eyes were peering over the edge of the glass balanced on her

chest. She jumped up to greet her.

“I thought they were going to send Greg. I’m so glad it’s you.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 85

Rebecca placed her index finger to her lips and shushed her. Greg came

bounding in with a duffel bag of supplies draped over one shoulder and a dress in the

other. She had asked him to accompany her, feeling too unsettled to be alone with

Caroline. Another person in the room allowed her to be more herself. She wouldn’t

have to try so hard to not flirt or blush like her normal courting ritual went.

Pretending to not like someone when she really did. How juvenile, she had thought to

herself.

“Nice place you have here,” he said immediately going to the glass kitchen

table and setting up shop.

Caroline smiled weakly at Rebecca and led her to the couch where she had

sheet music fanned out over the cushions. She adjusted her glasses that had slipped

down her nose.

“Major scales for now,” she said clearing space for Rebecca to sit.

“I want to hear you play.”

“Me too,” Greg said. He came over holding a spool of thread kind of shifting

from foot to foot in his baggy linen pants.

“What is wrong with you?” Rebecca asked. “Calm down.”

“No you don’t,” Caroline said laying her hand on top of Rebecca’s knee.

“I’ve only been practicing for a month.”

Rebecca knew she must insist and build the girl up. If Caroline felt close to

her she would wear her clothes in a way that made her confident on screen.

“Come on. Just a little. I can defend you when your critics say you didn’t

really play.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86

Caroline skipped over to the case and gently lifted the violin to her shoulder,

awkwardly shifting it into place. She hesitantly set the white hair of the bow on the

string and pulled. A screech evened out into a smooth tone, one that was deep, but

hollow. Rebecca watched as Caroline moved up the scale, repeating each screech

until half way through the notes broke free from the heavy pressure she applied to

each string. She was not an actress now, her nose crinkling at each out of tune tone,

nervously shifting between a smile then hardened concentration while her cheeks

reddened. One shoulder of her loose t-shirt had slipped off exposing her bare skin.

Rebecca noticed Greg staring at Caroline like she was an object and she felt disgust.

She walked over and stood at Caroline’s side as she descended the scale,

blocking Greg’s view. Caroline’s feet, positioned like a dancer’s, stuck to the wood

floor.

“I just want to see what’s making that sound.”

Caroline laughed removing the violin from her chin.

“Not so good yet.”

“Oh, it’s great. Don’t listen to this hard ass,” Greg said winking at her.

Rebecca hated being in the middle of his flirting.

“But you will be. Everything will be dubbed; you just need to look like you

can play.”

“You’re wrong. I will learn to play. You don’t think I can?” Caroline said

setting the violin on top of the glass coffee table.

Rebecca watched the girl, looking hurt and wanted to take it away from her.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87

“I’m sorry. Of course you will. I’ve been around these people for so long. I

just know what they want.”

Greg walked over and handed Caroline the dress. Not knowing what to say to

the disappointment she had inflicted upon one of her actors, she told her to go ahead

and try it on. “It’s beautiful,” Caroline said before going into the bathroom to

change. Greg said, “It will look better once you’re in it.” Caroline just stared him

down before he turned to go back into the kitchen like a scolded child.

“Nice. I’m going to leave you to do the rest.”

“Really?”

“Really? It’s just the hem. Tell Caroline I got an important call and had to go.

Tell her it was Chad Rex. Don’t make her uncomfortable.”

“I won’t,” Greg said snapping his gum, his loose hair bobbing up and down.

Rebecca left the room feeling some relief, filling up with anticipation for the next

time she would see Caroline.

*

The air started to loosen as Rebecca dressed her each day. Inside the trailer

the walls were lined with drawers that held spools of thread, buttons and hook. The

washer and dryer ran methodically in the background as Rebecca adjusted the collar

of Caroline’s shirt, her hands running inside brushing against her tepid skin. Caroline

was steady, chewing mint gum, arms hung patiently at her side. She was a head

taller than Rebecca, making Caroline feel more majestic, as if she knew more of life.

But she was younger, not yet capable o f knowing she so thought. much, “We’re

done.” Caroline and Rebecca were escorted to set by an assistant, Rebecca trailing

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88

behind, her arms draped with extra clothes, carrying a bag of pins and brushes,

thread and tape. Caroline will glide through the crew, all trying hard not to look at

her, pretend not to notice, as she will have not noticed Rebecca’s lingering.

The weather was as vapid as the sound of Chad Rex’s shrill call of “action”,

and Rebecca had settled deep into herself finding a spot off to the side of the set in

the shade. I want to live, she thought. Caroline walked out as graceful as a dancer to

a strip of white tape on the pavement laid down next to the leading man. He was

bronzed. He was beautiful in a detached sort of way, like a mannequin she used to

dress. Rebecca imagined running her hands over his forehead and his cheekbones,

and they would feel like stone. She wouldn’t be able to feel a thing.

*

The scene that had been cut earlier in the shoot was finally scheduled the last

week of filming. Caroline was in the trailer’s dressing room changing into the wrap

dress. Rebecca quickly combed her long hair and applied some lipstick she had

stolen from the make-up department.

Greg squeezed by, ruffling her hair.

“Who you trying to impress?” he said.

Caroline stepped out wearing the dress that hung perfectly on her body.

“Wonderful,” Rebecca said. They walked outside while Rebecca watched Caroline’s

long legs carefully move down the aluminum stairs in her high heels. She supported

herself by placing a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder.

The sun was just starting to go down. Once on set Rebecca went to her

immediately. She started to fix the collar and straighten the fabric around her hips,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89

brushing the lint from her shoulders. Rebecca felt her face flush and knew it was

from this woman standing in the dress that hid the naked hips she had seen earlier in

her office. The hips that would move down the street several times speaking for a

camera in front of an impatient crew. She would be the only one watching.

“You’re ready,” she said and Caroline, already fixed in concentration said

nothing, walking to Chad Rex, his arms open.

*

The clapboard’s snap refocused Rebecca as she watched the last take, which

was Caroline’s close-up. Only the stiff collar of the dress showed in the frame, the

rest of Caroline was useless. The camera only cared about her face. Rebecca

thought about the freckle that sat on her upper lip. The bulky lens was placed just a

few feet away from her face as if it any moment it would shoot a large laser beam,

killing her on the spot. Hopefully she wouldn’t forget her lines this time. The sun

had slipped into the magic hour, the crew was in good spirits, and a nice 12-hour day

was about to be finished. The golden light backlit Caroline’s hair and set it afire

when the wind blew. She delivered her lines, eyes tearing and then drying on cue.

Rebecca listened to her speak the stiff words of the script. A few of the

electricians stifled laughs. She imagined instead hearing Caroline tell her things

about herself that she did not know. She would see the wrinkles around her eyes

only the make-up artists knew of, learn of her habits of talking with her mouth full at

breakfast, and laughing at the most inappropriate times. Maybe she would become

just a good friend. Maybe more or perhaps just another affair. In Rebecca’s mind

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90

she covered Caroline up again with the tan dress, made her new, so she could wonder

some more as the light slowly drained from the set.

*

Caroline was sitting alone at a table during the wrap party. She had arrived

with an attractive male companion; nice hair cut, tan skin, solid bone structure. He

had become distracted by the lone woman in the camera department who had a

tendency to wear her jeans low on her hips. Rebecca saw Caroline walk towards the

terrace of the restaurant that overlooked the marina. The boats bobbed from the

gentle current in the water. She leaned over the railing that looked down onto the lit

boardwalk where people strolled after dinner. Caroline was not dressed up like so

many of the others, but wore what looked to be yoga pants and a tight black tank top.

Her face had been scrubbed clean except for a clear gloss on her lips.

“I haven’t seen you all night,” Rebecca said. “These things can be awful

can’t they?” The grips had congregated at the bar and started to slam down shots.

The young women had gotten rid of their jeans and vintage t-shirts for tighter jeans

and blouses with plunging necklines. They wobbled around on heels while the men

looked the same as they did on set, only cleaner.

“The first one was fun but now it just seems tiresome. These people.”

Rebecca thought to herself,exactly.

“They think I’m horrible, don’t they. The crew.”

“Maybe but someone always will. You’ve just got to get a good script. None

of us wanted this job; you’re just the most visible one to make fun of.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91

Caroline sat down on the brick floor, and her hair fell around her shoulders.

Rebecca followed, entwining their arms. Telling her a rambling story of the first

time she tried to fit a very uptight actress for a blouse and stuck her so much the

woman refused to work with her, she heard the stark sound of her voice stumbling

over words, giggling nervously. Rebecca brushed Caroline’s hair away from her

face and told her she would get used to the criticism.

“I hope so otherwise I’m going back to.” She paused. “Can you believe I

don’t even know what?”

As they watched a group on the dance floor, sweating, pairing up, they made

bets on who would go home together. Rebecca noticed Caroline had become

distracted, sipping her drink, her skin starting to warm and flush from the alcohol.

She took her small hand and kissed it. Caroline turned to her and smiled. Feeling

none of the restraint she had before, Rebecca kissed her. She felt Caroline’s soft

mouth, but it remained still.

“No. Rebecca. I’m so sorry,” Caroline said moving back slowly. “I’m sorry.”

She got up and quickly walked through the dancing crowd. One of the men grabbed

her waist and pulled him towards her. She wrestled free and moved on.

Rebecca watched her go feeling embarrassed, unclear of what remained

between the two of them. Who would learn of this? Would Caroline speak to her

again? Would Rebecca slowly forget about her? She slumped against the wall, as a

figure emerged from the darkness. It was Bill holding two tumblers of scotch,

shaking his hips, pulling her to her feet to dance.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PARTING THE CUYAHOGA

Erica discovered a peculiar man named Paul around six on a Wednesday

evening in October. He had come into the Starkweather, a bar she loved and visited

nearly every evening after work. The bartender, Jim, who was old enough to be her

father, had just made a joke about her ass looking like a shelf and would she mind

holding a few bottles of Cuervo for him? Erica had caught the heel of her boot on the

bottom rungs of her stool and fell to the ground. On the way back up to her perch

she caught sight of Paul sitting near the dartboards. He had a notebook spread out

before him, which he kept gesturing over like he was trying to conjure up a snake.

His face reminded her of photos she had seen in history books of handsomely

composed generals from the Civil War. There was a crease at the top of his nose

between his eyebrows and the wild activity above the notebook seemed to knot is

face. Abruptly, as if he forgot something outside, perhaps a dog chained up too long

or his laundry left at the Wash n’ Dry next door, he stood up and walked quickly

toward the front. Hands in his jean jacket pockets, he had zipped by her without so

much as a nod.

When he had opened the door, the same rotten egg smell from the steel mill

Erica tried to wash off her skin nightly blew in, making her dread the next day of

filing until her cuticles bled and tallying invoices. She watched him walk past the

front window like a dark phantom, pausing for a moment to make a few marks in

the notebook. Erica hadn’t seen him before but then again thought maybe she had

92

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93

seen him everywhere. He was tall and fit like the young guys at the mill, but he

didn’t have that vacant look in his eyes. His shoes were made of nice brown leather,

and his hair was just a little too long on top. All the men at the mill had it shorn

tightly. Erica guessed he was an artist. They had been moving into the

neighborhood recently, once reserved for the Ukrainian and Polish immigrants who

worked at the steel mill. Strange ones like Paul never looked people in the eye, but

he looked like relief to Erica, much like Jim did at the end of the day when he

handed her a drink.

She went home that evening and took the last beer out of her fridge. A little

drunk, she caught her bulky cardigan in the door and slipped out of it, leaving the

sleeve stuck inside and the door ajar. She knew her milk would be sour in the

morning, her eggs useless. Shuffling into the bathroom she turned on the moldy

faucet and began to fill the tub with water that was too hot and would make her skin

turn red. After Erica removed her clothes and piled them on top of the dirty white

bath mat, she tied her hair into a messy ponytail. The clothes would stay there until

morning. Her favorite wool pants with the loose hems and fabric pills would be

wrinkled for work. Submerging her head she stared up at the ceiling. Underneath

she could hear the movement and muted conversation of her neighbors in the bottom

half of the house reverberating through the ceramic tub.What a great way to spy,

she thought.I should become a spy. If she were to ever get out of Cleveland she

would do something great with her life, like work for the FBI, although she hadn’t

the slightest idea how to go about it. But great things must be done away from home.

A small town she thought provided comfort. You aren’t expected to challenge the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94

world, only live in it. A few years spent at the local community college studying

business classes hadn’t left her with a lot of opportunities. She was barely over thirty

and still at the same job she had taken right after graduation in the accounting

department of the mill. Erica pushed out of her mind ideas of leaving her hometown

and thought about the attractive man she had seen at the bar and what she might hear

if she lived above him.

*

Erica kicked the toe of her boot into the bar producing a staccato of thuds.

She leaned over the bar. “Jim. Jimmy.” He was mixing martinis for a group of

stylish young women clumped together like barnacles at the other end, waiting

quietly. They wore paint suits and high pointy heels that made Erica’s toes ache at

the thought of walking in them.

“One minute E. Mr. Rockefeller could hear you all the way over at Lakeview

the way you’re screaming. I got you covered.”

Erica smiled devilishly and slouched back in her stool. Jim loved to expound

his knowledge of the Rockefeller years in Cleveland, seeming to take the fact John

D. was buried in Lakeview cemetery on the East side as a personal compliment. Her

father had used to try and convince her mother, a native Pole, about the significance

of Rockefeller in Cleveland but it never translated. All she did was argue that the

musician, Robert Lockwood, Jr., should be heralded, not a wealthy tycoon who left

in pursuit of more money. “Nie rozumiem. That Robert play until I cry, no?” What

has these Rockefeller done? Leave us without job.” Erica’s father had held one of

the few foremen’s positions until he unexpectedly passed from a burst aneurysm in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95

his aorta. He had woken with a stomach ache in the middle of the night and left the

house still dressed in his pajamas. Though it had been almost fifteen years, Erica

often found herself missing him horribly.

Wrapping her black trench around her shoulders she watched Jim shake the

martinis in a red metal tumbler. The thick gold cross he wore around his neck shook

right along with him.

“Why don’t you pour some Goldschlager in there,” she yelled down the bar

again. A couple of younger guys who looked at bit like dust rags to Erica looked

over at her expressionless and went back to their beers and serious conversation.

“The Golden Steel martini. That should be on the menu. You’ve got Purple Passion

- bad choice. You name that one Jim? Sky Steel, Tanqueray Steel, Steely Sassafras.

Get it? Steel. The steel s-t-e-e-1 of Cleveland and s-t-e-a-1 gold”

The group of women looked over at Erica counting on her fingers as she

listed the drink suggestions, her slight shoulders tilted back, head high. She saluted

them as they headed to a booth at the front window. Jim walked towards her wiping

his hands on a white towel he had slung over his shoulder. Sternly, he opened a beer

and placed it in front of her.

“You don’t go putting Goldschlager in a martini,” he said.

“I bet they don’t know that.” Erica grabbed the bottle and took a large drink.

“Be nice. These people are here to stay in the neighborhood and they pay.”

“I paid you what I owed you from last month.”

“I know you did but you’re different. I let your tab slide because of those

dimples.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96

She still didn’t know what he was talking about. The first time Jim had told

her she had dimples she spent the night staring at herself in the bathroom mirror

trying to find them, but all she saw was an oval shaped face without much bone

structure, except for the pointy nose like her mother’s.

Jim took a long inhale from the cigarette he was smoking. Erica uncrossed

her legs and leaned forward again over the bar, speaking quietly this time. She could

feel the heat coming off his face.

“So does the new guy pay?”

“What new guy?”

“The black haired, tall, strange looking guy. You know him. I pointed him

out the other night.”

“That one you fell off your barstool over? You interested?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“He’ll be in again. Don’t worry.” Jim gently pushed her back into the stool.

He went to the kitchen to place an order, and Erica applied some red lip

gloss, wiping the excess from the corners of her mouth wondering why she cared.

What in the world would she say to him?

*

It was about a month later when she saw Paul at the Starkweather again. The

evenings had started to arrive earlier. Lake Erie had cooled off and raged with a

fierceness she like to watch from her bedroom window in the morning. It reminded

her of those cold dawns in high school when she rode her bike to swim practice. Her

mother shoving peanut butter toast into her gloved hands on her way out the door.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97

She loved the way the light in the bar changed when it was dark outside covering up

all its blemishes: the unpolished wood, the rips in the black and white linoleum, and

holes in the walls that were too big to be disguised by illustrations of Guinness.

Even the worn out faces of the regulars looked more alive.

Small candles were placed on the tables. The mantle above the fireplace held

faded photos of the mill’s opening day that seemed to become animated as she drank

more. All the workers lined up in their newspaper boy caps, smiling wide and proud,

while a tight-lipped owner cut the rope to the entrance of the plant. Erica swore they

flipped him off behind his back. As the fire dwindled the patrons at the bar, who at

one time were lined up evenly, would become a wavy mess of hunched backs.

Jim had listened to Erica’s talk of Paul for a month. When he walked in that

evening, Jim saw Erica watch him place his order, so he let her take the potato soup

and pint to his table.

“Go on, get this over with and don’t come back unless you’re knocked up or

wearing a wedding ring.”

“No. I can’t. He’ll see right through it.”

“Come on. Who wouldn’t want to talk to a cute lady with a free beer?”

Erica felt nervous walking over to his table, wondering if her mother ever felt

this way when she started dating after her father died. A guy hadn’t made her this

anxious in years. She was conscious of the way the pleats of her pants bulged, which

she knew made her look heavier than she was. She tried to smooth the fabric down

and stood up straight. Not nearly enough alcohol to be doing she thought. this,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98

Erica tucked her hair behind her ears and gave Jim a little smile, who then gestured

for her to keep walking.

Paul held a newspaper in front of his face. She sat down at the table next to

him, sliding the beer glass into his line of sight. His hair was not black but a deep

brown with strands of gray in his sideburns. He had a strong jaw and a vein that ran

vertically along the left side of his neck. Paul finally glanced up at her and nodded

hello. She imagined his skin in the summer, which looked like it would turn a golden

brown. To Erica he was the type of man who could work on a car and then pick

tomatoes out of the garden.

“For new customers,” she said, not recognizing her voice, which had come

out much weaker than usual. He looked at her and nodded again holding his gaze.

“Thanks, but I’m not really new.” Erica desperately searched for some reply.

Usually starting a conversation wasn’t so hard, but he kept scanning his eyes over

her like he was plotting the points of a constellation. She couldn’t tell if it was bad

or good, but she liked the attention.

“I’ve seen you only once and believe me I know the regulars. Spend probably

too much time at this place, but I grew up here. Around the corner.”

“I’ve been here before. I’m just a quiet drinker.” Erica noticed how he kept

touching the back of his neck as if to adjust the collar of his shirt. She wondered if

he had any idea just how good looking he was.

Erica thought that maybe he was trying to politely send her away through his

short replies, but she decided to push it a little further. She just reminded herself that

she had grown up a few blocks over in an old row house, that this was her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 99

hometown, and if it didn’t go well she could always sidle back up to the bar and Jim

would take care of her.

“Alone is good too. But with me you can drink cheaply. I’m a local. In good

with the keep.”

Paul smiled, loosening a bit like the lake’s spring ice. She noticed a freckle

on his upper lip that grew with his smile. His eyes weren’t so dark. It was just

enough of an invitation. He had a smile she had seen on the faces of men before that

made her comfortable whether it was when she walked onto the factory floor to pick

up timesheets or trotted past the wealthy men in the neighborhood, wearing a skirt

that was too short and too much eyeliner. Realizing she was welcome, she put her

index finger into the air and ordered another round.

*

That evening Erica would learn the notebook Paul had written in the first day

she saw him was a composition book. He wrote down lyrics or guitar riffs when the

mood struck. Having recently left his job at one of the banks, he was now an

aspiring guitarist in a local Irish band called Twisted River that played every

Wednesday night until the lead singer had trouble standing. He had always loved

music having played the oboe in high school. It’s not a very manly instrument he

had told her, but Erica thought differently having listened to those oboes in a Mozart

concerto growing up. After her parents would fight over money her mother would

play an old eight track she had of the piece, turning it up so loud the neighbors would

complain. Erica used to imagine the music as her father’s apology since it made her

mother happy again to the point she would wrap her arms around him and feed him

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100

strawberries with milk and sugar. He would push her hair back from her face and

mutter in broken Polish how much he loved her.

Paul had just moved into the neighborhood having found cheap warehouse

space near the projects and a few streets over from the house Erica rented. Now he

spent his days giving guitar lessons to people and writing music instead of figuring

out ways to make more money as a banker, something she couldn’t quite understand.

Erica told him about her family, her glamorous mother from Poland who owned a

stand at the West Side Market, and her father who had recently passed. She

impressed him with her proficiency in Polish and impressions of her mother. She

talked about growing up on the West side of the river, the wrong side according to

the east siders like Paul, but she had said that the Cuyahoga was crooked for a

reason, confusing everybody the way it wound itself to the east and to the west.

“We’re all from Cleveland,” she said and “That’s all that matters.”

Later in the week Paul invited her to lunch. He had called late one night as

she was crawling into her unmade bed after running through the various scenarios

with Jim of why Paul hadn’t called yet or if he was even interested in her. Jim had

told her the whole interaction might have been a product of her drunk imagination.

He finally slammed beer number five down in front of her and said “He’ll call. If he

doesn’t you drink free for a week.” When she picked up the phone Paul had so

formally asked to speak with Erica Thornhill that she thought he may have been a

bill collector. Scanning her memory for what credit cards hadn’t been paid she was

getting ready to hang up until he said her name again. “Erica, it’s me, Paul. From the

bar. The cool band geek.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101

On her lunch break she walked to the park that sat at the top of the hill of the

neighborhood. It was a square plot of land where centuries old oaks and maples

continued to grow. A small community pool sat on one end near the old bathhouses

and a playground on the other. Cement paths in need of repaving met at the center of

the park where a gazebo stood to the side. It was a late fall day, the last of the leaves

clinging to the trees against a blue sky that drew out the sternness of the zinnias of

smoke drifting up from the mill.

Paul and Erica had arranged to meet each other at the gazebo at 12:30. That

morning she had ironed a white shirt and tucked it into her long black skirt instead of

letting it hang over her hips. It was cold outside and she had been hesitant to say yes

to a picnic in early November, but she didn’t want to disagree, scared that he could

be with anyone he wanted and it was a fluke he had asked for her number. She could

hear her mother telling her he was a good one. Dobrze wydana za mqz.To be well

disposed of in marriage she would say.

Erica found a pair of low-heeled taupe pleather boots in the back of her closet

and dusted them off. The professional women who sometimes came into the bar had

worn a slightly nicer version of the same outfit and so she thought Paul would like it.

Only she didn’t own one of those brightly colored pashminas everyone seemed to be

wearing. Out of necessity, she grabbed an old Brown’s scarf and turned the side with

the tiny football helmets inward so their imprint was faint through the orange acrylic.

As she sat on the steps of the gazebo tapping her feet it crossed her mind that

Paul may not show up. He was already ten minutes late, and the park was vacant

except for an old man walking his dog. The neighborhood was so quiet and the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102

occasional passing car would slow to see who was sitting in the gazebo alone on

such a cold day. Shoving her hands deeper into her coat pockets, she started to feel

the same way she did sitting out in the waiting room the night her father went to the

hospital, like things were taking too long, the situation worsening. Now she felt like

an imposter in the skirt and pressed shirt she never wore because it had a coffee stain

on the sleeve. The tightness of her ponytail made the nerve endings of her scalp

tingle and she wanted to leave. She felt certain he would not show and here she was

all done up for a guy she had nothing in common other than a similar taste in wheat

beers.

Erica brushed off the leaves that the wind had blown onto her skirt and wiped

her watery eyes. When her sight came back into focus she saw Paul walking towards

her carrying a grocery bag. He was wearing a knit hat coming dangerous close to

covering his eyes and big ski gloves. Smiling. Paul was smiling and that had to be

good. Suddenly she felt so silly for her self-loathing, and the tightness in her throat

loosened.

“I’m here,” he said holding out his arms, the bag dangling from his enormous

gloved hand.

“Good. I just got here too.” Erica kicked some stones on the ground.

They picked a table under a large maple tree that still had a few of its auburn

leaves. Paul had packed a picnic of turkey sandwiches, chips, and pop. He was quiet

while they ate, stumbling over his words a bit when he asked how she liked the food.

These fumbles only made Erica like him more. She could barely concentrate on the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103

lunch, her mind racing to think of something interesting to say. Twice, he startled her

by wiping a corner of her mouth with his thumb after she took a bite.

“Where’d you get those gloves?” she asked. “They’re so damn big.” Paul

laughed a little.

“Skiing. They’re the warmest I have,” and he waved them in her face

making monster sounds. Erica pushed his hands away. “Get them off me,” she said

in a higher pitched voice. Their laughter lingered until a crisp breeze quieted them

again.

“Where’d you come from?” he asked taking his gloves off and handing them

to her. “See they’re not so scary.”

“The mill. I thought I told you I work down at the mill.” Paul continued

talking like he didn’t hear what she had said. He seemed as if he were to pause and

listen, his words would disappear.

“I didn’t realize you were here. So close.”

“Right around the corner in fact,” Erica said, amused. He had a clean way of

speaking, being sure to hit all of the consonants, unlike the way most people in the

neighborhood spoke. They rolled their words together. We got’em or whaddya want?

“No, I mean. Well, that’s just it. Just a few weeks ago we probably passed in

the street, not even acknowledging each other and now, here we are, eating lunch.”

“In the cold.” Erica hit the D hard. She remembered reading an article once

on how people who have just met will tend to imitate each other’s speech patterns

and wondered if Paul would try hers: ending every sentence like a question, the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104

nasally vowels, her occasional slippage into a Polish accent when she was angry or

very happy.

“Put the gloves on,” he said and forced her hands into them, tightening the

little straps around her wrists.

He started to go on about how beautiful she was, but she got lost in the

shadow he cast over her, feeling her hands begin to sweat inside the insulated gloves.

But he seemed to be still connecting all those points plotted the other night, so she

didn’t stop him.

“You’re fun but you know that don’t you?”

“Sometimes I can be,” she said not wanting to entertain anyone at the

moment. She grabbed her knees and shrugged her shoulders.

“The other night was fun. You don’t care what people think, do you? The

way you talk so loudly. Talk to anyone. I’ve never been able to do that, even on

stage.”

“I’ve lived here my entire life. Those old guys that were at the bar when I met

you probably know who I lost my virginity to." Paul laughed, his eyes widening

with interest. Erica was beginning to feel like a zoo animal. The attention was

making her uneasy, but she also loved it. Maybe if she had a more substantial job;

one that necessitated the need to wear the clothes she had on, Paul wouldn’t have

found her so intriguing.

“I’ve got to go.” She felt as if she should end things right now. It wouldn’t go

anywhere. Paul was so different from her in a way that made her feel the same way

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105

she did on picture day, standing in between Becky Thomas and Crystal Thorton in

their jordache jeans, just smelling rich.

“Don’t go. You have an hour, right? Come on you’re like all those dates I

had in business school that ended right after the entree. Just stay.”

She tried to leave, but she couldn’t walk away. He pulled her towards him

and onto his lap. If she left, it meant walking back to the filing, then to her apartment

after a night at the bar where the stale smell of living alone would greet her. As she

talked to him a little longer, her life diverged for a moment, and she stayed well past

her lunch hour.

*

The first time Erica spent the night at Paul’s loft she didn’t go to work the

next morning because of a hangover. She was amazed how easily he got out of bed

given he had won their unspoken drink contest. Both had passed out after a round of

sloppy kisses, half undressed. She woke with her pants undone, wearing her bra and

one sock. It was the first time she had seen his apartment after a month together. At

first Erica thought maybe he was just being polite. Letting the first, second, and

third times they made love be on her turf. Maybe it was so she would feel

comfortable rising in her own sheets, knowing where the bathroom was, not having

to ask for an old sweatshirt or a glass of water. She had initially felt in control, but

as time wore on she felt like he was keeping something from her.

When she woke up that morning she took the sights in, seeing parts of Paul

he would never be able to explain in words. A framed black and white photo of

Muddy Waters hung by the cinderblock bookshelf. Scanning the shelves she found

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106

beaten up accounting text books, poetry by Yeats, and science fiction novels. There

were small photos of older people she assumed were his parents. Sticking out in-

between a pile of sheet music, she saw a photo of a pretty blonde woman in a

sundress sitting on a park bench. She posed looking over her shoulder and smiled

perfectly. A wilting pothos in a white plastic hanger hung from one of the rafters. It

was getting too much light,she thought.

She spent the day in Paul’s bed that sat on top of a three-foot wooden

platform, listening to his students in the adjacent room strumming out-of-tune

chords. Curled under his flannel sheets with only half of her face exposed she heard

Paul saying patiently, “Again. Try again but make sure you apply pressure to all of

the strings.” In between lessons he brought her coffee, setting it down on a stack of

wine crates next to the bed. On each visit he kissed the tip of her nose turned red

from the drafty windows.

“You’re quite lovely,” he told her running his hand, fingertips hardened from

the metal strings, through her hair. “It’s good you’re not at work. I just like knowing

you’re here.”

*

Jim stood behind the bar, toweling it off, staring at Erica as she walked

through the door like he had been waiting on her forever.

“Where you been?”

She noticed he had cut his hair and hadn’t put as much gel in it, which

usually made him look a little greasy.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107

“Neighborhood really is changing when I don’t see you in here as much. It’s

either the boy or you finally have gone bankrupt.”

She slung her bag over the barstool and sat down. Jim placed a bottle of beer

in front of her.

“Boy.”

“I knew it. It’s that guy you were all worried about. What did I tell ya?”

Erica knew Jim had talked her up that night but hadn’t believed Paul would

call. Even he looked a little surprised or maybe disheartened.

“He’s nice in a kind of different way. Not like the guys at the mill who hold

the door for you on a first date but not a second, or say you look pretty only when

you get mad at them.”

“Oh, so the mill guys aren’t good enough for you anymore.” Jim tucked the

towel into the side of his pants and crossed his arms. She hated the feeling that she

was upsetting him. She felt like it was a betrayal to observe the differences in their

world.

“No. Just different. He cooks and notices things like my hair. It has copper

flecks of light in it. Did you know that? Or that my eyes aren’t brown they’re

caramel.”

Jim rolled his eyes not angry anymore.

“I get it now. Saw him in here the other night.”

Erica tried to seem disinterested so she lit a cigarette. After taking a few puffs

she asked when. She and Paul didn’t see or talk to each other every day but when

they did it was as if Paul couldn’t get enough of her. He would wrap his arm around

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108

her shoulder when they shopped for dinner at the West Side Market on Saturdays.

Maneuvering through the crowd, plucking bunches of radicchio and cilantro; he

would let Erica decide if they were acceptable. She would wave at the vendors she

had known since a child and they would give her discounts. She spoke her bad

Polish to Ewa, the young woman her mother had recently sold the family’s stand to,

while Paul stood silently by her side. At night after drinking bottles of red wine that

made her mouth feel metallic, Paul would let her read the lyrics of his songs and then

make her read them out loud. She felt permanently on stage with him.

“Yeah. Did you say hi?”

“What do you think?”

“You should’ve said hi. He’s a friend of mine now. More than a friend.”

“Oh you’re just like old Rockefeller. Going to the other side of the river

now.”

Erica glared at him and took her beer to a booth in the back of the bar where

a fire had been lit in the hearth. The cold beer and the heat from the flames soothed

her as a few locals played darts.

As she watched the men she imagined their wives and kids at home getting

dinner ready. They took their turns at the board laughing and giving each other high-

fives. The overhead lights shone done on the younger one illuminating his buck

teeth. They ignored her even though she sat just a few feet away from them. Didn’t

even glance. She became angry watching the mundanity of their life and wondered

how she could’ve lived the way she had before. Working, drinking, sleeping, not

many friends except for Jim. Most were either married with children or had moved

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109

to the outer suburbs like Parma and Broadview Heights. Visits to her mother’s house

with her new husband in Rocky River came only on Sundays.Paul had started to

open her up, she thought. There were new ideas, ones she appreciated, and in return

she began to adopt and modify them.

Erica started to sweat and took off the cable knit sweater she had borrowed

from him the week before. The warmth of the fire began to feel unbearable and

made the cinnamon scent of his cologne stronger. Her arms began to itch. She

pushed up the sleeves of her thermal shirt and scratched. When she looked down she

saw that hives had broken out. Dime-sized pink welts covered both of her forearms.

Erica grabbed her coat and bag. She threw five dollars down onto the bar and ran

outside into the frigid air about to welcome the snow.

Later that evening she walked to Paul’s house. She had never stopped in

uninvited but she wanted to see him. More than ever, she needed to know he was

there for her. She walked up the cobblestone path to the large metal door. She rang

the buzzer and shivered. There was no answer. She pushed the gold buzzer again,

holding it down a few more seconds. The longer Erica stood under the yellow light

of the streetlamp she realized she was the only person on the sidewalk. Moving into

the street to get a better view of the upstairs windows she saw there were no lights

on. She couldn’t imagine where he could be. After several months of dating she had

a vague idea of his schedule. The band didn’t have any shows, he didn’t practice on

Thursdays. Maybe he was with a friend though she had never been introduced to a

friend. Standing alone, late at night, she realized she knew so little about Paul and

went home.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110

*

Erica didn’t ask where he was that night. Part of her didn’t want to know as

the evenings he could not be located became as regular as the way the two of them

made coffee in the morning. He would grind the beans and she would pour the water

to the twelve-cup mark. It is just the way of couples she thought: to get used to one

another’s patterns. The first weeks had been glorious. She would call him on her cell

during her walk home or he would reach her first. They would make plans quickly

spending most of their time in bed or on walks as Erica explained the history of the

neighborhood. She showed him the places Rockefeller had planned to build a

university before he got in fight with the mayor. “Would’ve been quite a different

place,” he said staring into the empty playground. Erica would have to tell Paul to

slow down on the walks. His gait always a step ahead of hers, he would sometimes

pull her hand to speed up.

Soon, the calls became less frequent, and she ended up being the only one

who would initiate plans. About the time she started to wonder if she would get any

response after not calling him for a few days she phoned her mother, desperate to

just hear her voice. Erica hoped her new husband, Calvin, wouldn’t pick up. A

slightly overweight man with a smug look who imported metal fasteners to the Ford

factory had always held what Erica considered contempt for her. She was often

being compared to his daughter, the one who went to college, joined a sorority, and

had recently become engaged. Whenever she came for dinner on Sundays, he would

not ask her questions or inquire as to how she was doing. He would only make

guttural sounds as she spoke to her mother, sometimes in broken Polish, which

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I l l

infuriated him more. Her mother, still holding on to her beauty, hair dyed brown and

swept back into a tame bouffant, would flash him a look and wave a finger at him.

“Nie,” she would say and then take Erica’s head in her hands and kiss her all over.

She would tell her to eat and then spoon a dumpling onto her plate. Calvin was

constantly trying to take the place of her mother’s two great loves: Erica and her

father.

She sat at her kitchen table that looked out into the back yard blanketed with

fresh snow and dialed her mother’s number, hating that she still hadn’t memorized it.

For years she had dialed the seven digits of her home without even thinking. The

phone rang until the voicemail clicked on and she heard her stepfather’s husky voice.

“You’ve reached the Bernard residence. Please leave a message.” Erica paused

before speaking, never knowing how to greet them. Before when it was just her

mother it was easy. “Hey, it’s me. Call me back.” Now she stumbled. “Oh hi, mom.

And Calvin. Ma, call me when you have a second. Okay, then. Well, see you. Love

you, Ma.”

Unexpectedly, Paul came over later in the evening after Erica had spent the

day rolling dough for mince meat pies. He had shown up, three days of a beard

grown in, wearing a big navy coat with toggle buttons. “Delivery, “he said holding a

six-pack. Erica tended to bake when she felt uneasy and had started early. She came

to the door in an apron, flour smeared across her cheek. “Want a break,” he asked?

“No, thank you,” she said letting him in. “But you can watch me bake.”

She had cleared space on the counters and table, flouring them down. Paul

watched her as she finished layering the crusts with wax paper and inserting them

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112

into large plastic bags. He sat on the counter drinking a beer. Erica wiped her

forehead with her arm, sweating from the overload of heat from the radiators and

oven. She had cracked a window in the kitchen to cool herself off. She had let him

sit there in silence not wanting to ask why he hadn’t called. Refusing to speak first,

she went ahead earnestly with her baking.

“What’s mince meat any way? I’ve never had the stuff.”

“Raisins, cloves, apples, walnuts.”

“What’s the meat?” Paul asked again.

“I’m not telling,” Erica said. Paul jumped off the counter and grabbed her

waist. “Baby, you better tell me or it’s the end of you.” He picked her up and threw

her over his shoulder. “This is the end for you my friend,” he said ominously. Erica

squealed and began to hit him on his ass with a dishtowel. Paul gripped her tighter.

“Tell me your secret my friend,” he continued to chant as Erica shrieked all the way

to her bedroom. Paul tripped over a book and they fell onto the bed, laughing.

“So this is the end of me. The end of your friend?” Paul turned on his side

and undid one button on her shirt, moving in to kiss her neck.

“What’s the meat?” he whispered into her ear.

“I’ll never tell.” Paul began to lightly kiss her temples. Erica relaxed at his

touch. It felt the same as it did when they first met; no absence of desire, so she let

him continue.

“So I’m your friend?” she asked.

“Of course you are, baby.”

“Really, a friend? Just a friend?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113

“Do you want to be an enemy?” Paul stopped for a moment and looked at

her. Erica hoped he would say something to rest her fears about him dating other

women. Why shouldn ’t shehe, thought? They hadn’t talked about it before.

“No, but am I just a friend?” Paul turned over on his back.

“Women. I see where this is going.” He took her hand in his.

“You aren’t just a friend, but let’s not label this.”

“So not labeling means we don’t talk every day.”

“Right.”

“And not labeling means I don’t get to meet your friends.” Erica buttoned

her shirt and sat up against the wrought iron head board.

“Erica. Please, I’m just not ready for anything too serious.” Paul moved

closer and pulled her towards him. “I care about you,” he said and Erica did the only

thing she wanted to at the moment, which was believe him.

*

The next morning her mother called. Paul was asleep on his stomach. Erica

put on her robe and ran into the kitchen to grab the phone.

“I wake you. You call the other day. What is it? You don’t sound so good.”

Erica imagined her mother sitting in the sun porch with a cup of black coffee, her

make-up already on with the Sunday circular of coupons waiting to be clipped.

“I can’t talk about it now.”

“Why. You have someone there?”

“Not exactly. It’s just; I don’t feel like it right now. You know how I am in

the mornings.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114

“You drink last night? You lie to me, Erica.” Erica began to fill the

coffeepot with water.

“Co to jest,” said her mother.

“It’s just a guy. A guy who’s driving me a crazy. I don’t know how he feels

about me. He’s hot and then cold.” She could hear her mother laughing just a little.

“I think you call for money but no. It’s a guy. Milosc wisi w powietrzu. Ewa

told me she saw you with some man at the market. He looked uptight.”

“Of course she did. No, it’s not love, believe me. Well, maybe I love him,

just a little.” Erica spoke softly, afraid Paul would wake up and wander out into the

kitchen, tickle her side and make her shriek. Her mother would not approve.

“There is no such thing as loving someone a little. You come visit soon.

Leave the boy alone for ahwile. Let him wait. Then he tell you how he feels. Okay?”

“Okay,” Erica said tearing up at the sound of her mother’s voice. How strong

and straight forward it told her to be.

“We talk soon. I let you go back to your morning. Kocham ci§.”

“Kocham ci?.”

Erica hung up the phone and finished making the coffee. Her mother could

say things like that.Let him wait, she thought, but for what? She sat at the coffee

table for a long time watching a new layer of snow fall onto the backyard.

*

One evening in the winter, Paul took Erica out to one of the trendy new

restaurants after they had gotten into another fight over why they didn’t go out

anymore, and why she hadn’t met even one of his friends. “I deserve to know you,”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115

she had yelled at him. The tread from her boots, worn off, made the polished

concrete floors slick. The walls were painted a sage color except for the one of

exposed brick. Black and white photos of flowers and herbs hung on the walls. Her

mother would’ve scoffed at the pretentiousness.

Erica remembered the old building from twenty years ago when it used to be

a hardware store. The owner, Mr. Solkowoski had given her a job one summer. She

made deliveries for him on her pink ten-speed taking bags of nails, calking, and

birdseed to people. The old sales counter, now the bar, still held the antique cash

register a pretty young waitress used to ring out customers. Paul led Erica to the bar

where he ordered them dirty martinis.

“Baby, how do you like it?” he said after she took a sip.

“It’s good.” She felt the thick olive juice slip down her throat. Paul had

started drumming the countertop to some internal rhythm, a habit that had come to

annoy Erica, striking her as showy.

“I knew this place before it was a restaurant.”

“What?” Paul kept drumming having turned his attention to a waitress with

bright red lips.

“I used to work here.”

“Waiting tables?”

“No. It used to be a hardware store. I ran errands for the owner.”

“No way E. That’s so great.” He ruffled her hair. “Can we get some

menus?” The bartender handed him two menus that were printed in calligraphy and

tacked onto small pieces of plywood. “The food’s great here. Eat here all the time.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116

Erica noticed he kept looking around constantly as if he was trying to find someone

he knew.

She stopped telling her story and read the menu that had dishes on it like

pierogies stuffed with goat cheese and heirloom tomatoes and kielbasa on a bed of

polenta. Variations of the meals her mother had made only more expensive. After

they ordered Paul refocused his attention to her. He was happy, consuming all of her

energy, clouding her own day spent worrying over why he didn’t seem to love her

the way she wanted to be loved.

The food arrived and Paul raised his glass. “Smacznego,” he said one of the

few Polish expressions Erica had taught him. He dug into a thick sausage not waiting

for her to take the first bite, just one of the gentlemanly traits he had seemed to

forget. The staff came over in perfect intervals, clearing the plates not too quickly,

filling water glasses without a splash, scraping the bread crumbs from the table with

a fine silver blade.

“Thank you for dinner,” Erica told him as they waited for their desserts; both

had ordered apple strudel with fresh whipped cream. She had softened by his gesture

of taking her out, and the way they sat in the dimly lit restaurant, they could be as

perfect as the couple sitting at the next table. Erica smiled to herself, warming all

over.

“Paul, is that you, buddy? Erica looked up and saw a sharply dressed man

with neatly combed hair. Paul recognized him immediately and stood to shake his

hand.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117

“So good to see you. We’ve missed you at the office. How’s the music

going?” The man kept diverting his eyes to Erica, who sat at a half-turn in her seat,

waiting to be introduced.

“It’s good, going well. You and Melissa should get down to see us sometime.

Regular gig on Tuesday nights.”

“We will. We will,” the man said as a woman, Erica assumed was Melissa,

pulled at his arm. “Hi Paul,” she said placing a hand on his shoulder. Their

familiarity with Paul made Erica uneasy. “The babysitter,” Melissa said tapping her

watch.

“Well, take care. Call me. I’ve got to get out more,” he said in a hushed tone

as he followed his wife out the door.

Paul sat down in his stool, pausing for a moment. “Damn, Erica. I’m sorry. I

should’ve introduced you.”

“But you didn’t.”

*

A couple months later a late winter blizzard hit Cleveland hard. It was also

the sixth morning Erica woke not in Paul’s arms and clinging the edge of the

mattress. But on this morning a drastic shift had occurred overnight that had no

warning like a tornado that rises from the lake. In the quiet of the falling snow she

felt her relationship with Paul slipping away. He had risen that morning without a

kiss to her forehead. Stumbling out of bed complaining about how cold it was, he

pulled on his bathrobe and began grinding the beans not waiting for Erica to wake up

and follow him and wrap her arms around his waist as he moved about the kitchen.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118

That ritual had left months ago. She was cold, the kind that chilled her to the bone.

Pulling on a pair of Paul’s old pajama pants and college sweatshirt she dutifully

walked into the kitchen and tried to hold onto him. He untangled himself from her

grasp, silently moving towards the coffee pot with a full canister of water.

“I’m not feeling well this morning.”

“What’s wrong? I’ll make the coffee. Get back into bed.”

“I’ve got it,” he said and he lightly kissed her cheek. Silently, he went about

his job. Erica didn’t know what to do. Should she should sit at the table or go back

to the bed that did not feel so welcoming?

“It’s freezing in here,” she said putting a hat on.

“Really. I didn’t notice,” he said sarcastically.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I told you I don’t feel good. Just go relax.”

Erica went down the steps to see if a paper had been delivered. She tried to

open the door, but a four-foot snowdrift had made it impossible. She ran back up the

stairs and sat down at the kitchen table. Paul stood in front of his giant metallic

refrigerator reading an article he had clipped on tips to selling music online.

“Snow’s got us barricaded.”

“You know Rockefeller intended for this neighborhood to be what is now the

University of Chicago,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked, confused because she had told him the

story months ago. She wondered if he had listened to anything she had said.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119

She could feel Paul was about to launch into another subject he would

present, explain, and then conclude without much of her input. He seemed now to

only want to sleep with her, coming over late in the middle of the night, or after $ 1

tacos at the Starkweather where she tried to avoid Jim.

“Come on. Tell me you get it. It’s so obvious,” he said. He stopped looking

at the article and faced her.

“No, I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never heard that before. You’re

making it up,” she said playing along. Erica was mystified as to why he didn’t

understand her. Did he really think she was so dense a person that her interior

feelings could not be accounted for?

“The streets, god damnit. The streets. Literary, Professor, Emerson,

Thoreau. It was supposed to be a university, but Rockefeller had a fight with the

mayor and pulled all his money out of Cleveland. Built it in Chicago. No one cared

if this steel neighborhood became anything. Populism will be the death of this

place.”

He had never talked down to her. Still she couldn’t help but think about what

she had done to deserve it.

“Why’s that so obvious? Why’s that so important? Does it make a difference

if I know this or not?”

Paul left the room.

Erica poured two cups of coffee and went to him where he was sitting

propped up in bed hogging all the pillows and reading. She handed him a cup. He

took her hand and kissed it.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120

“I’m just not feeling well.”

“It’s a myth. The Rockefeller thing,” she said. “I told you the story wasn’t

true.”

“You did? Must have forgotten where I heard it. It’s not real? Sounds

familiar like I heard it growing up.”

“No it’s not. Everyone knows that.”

“Not where I’m from,” he said smugly.

“And where I’m from. That is the place that was supposedly going to be the

college knows it’s a story the eastsiders like to tell themselves.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Rockefeller never crossed the Cuyahoga to this side of town unless he was

visiting the mill. The university did start, but it was done by the mayor at the time

and some preacher. The people started it but it failed. Guess you just can’t educate

immigrants.”

“Stop reading into it.” He barely moved and Erica longed for him to say he

was sorry, to hold her and be kind again. Only she was so tired from trying to figure

out his motivations that hers suddenly became clear.

“I should go.”

“I think maybe you should.”

He didn’t stop her when she reemerged from the bathroom dressed, still

wearing his hat. He didn’t help her as she tried to pry the front door open. Grabbing

a shovel from the downstairs closet she began lifting heavy wet piles of snow from

the door to clear a path. Feeling the sharp pangs of snow pelt her face she begged it

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121

to leave marks. Desperately, she moved enough snow to finally make her way to the

sidewalk. The plows had not come down the streets, and her jeans were completely

wet, her skin frozen. Everything was covered in a blanket of white. She resisted the

urge to turn back and go to him. He would let her, she knew, but only be there for a

few breaths. The wind was blowing the flakes diagonally across the neighborhood,

slowly burying it. As she dragged her legs through two feet of snow towards home,

she cut across the park where they first had lunch together. The memory stung a bit,

but she tried to reclaim the gazebo as she tread past it. Drifts had created new paths,

erasing the old ones. She could hear her mother telling her over tea next Sunday, ”

slepa uliczka, that one was a blind alley, no.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DROWN

I stood on top of a soft white rug as my mother, Kiah, circled me and draped

an orange scarf around my shoulders. She grasped my head on both sides with her

warm palms, moistened in almond oil and began to massage my temples gently.

Running her fingers through my hair, she took sections and rubbed the oil from the

roots to the tips of my curls.

“Breathe in and breathe out,” she said, her voice withering at the end of each

phrase, making me want to tell her to speak up. Kiah’s commands were the last

things in the world that would help me breathe after my scare in the bay this

afternoon.

She took my hand and led me to a plush red pillow in the comer of the

bedroom and told me to sit. I did, falling to the ground in an exhausted heap.

“Finally,” I said taking off the ridiculous orange scarf that had moth holes in

it. Kiah’s wedding attire from the seventies. A sandalwood candle was burning next

to me on the floor atop a square black ceramic plate, and I laughed at the chic display

she had set out. Kneeling in front of me, she sighed. I could never tell if Kiah really

believed what she said, but I went along with it.

“Are you feeling better?” she asked.

“I’m just embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. You’re just not used to the rough water yet.”

She said “yet” like there was permanence to my visit. I watched her face as

122

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123

she stared at me like I was a stray cat she had let in from the cold. Kiah had grown

visibly older. The last time I saw her was three years ago after my

graduation from law school. She had left the party early due to a headache, though I

knew she was bored by the conversation of law firm placements and engagements

over cheap cocktails in my run-down house. Everything probably seemed too

practical and predictable. Like a child raised in the church and then set free, I had

come to reject Kiah’s free thinking way of life. Her dark hair had gone completely

gray, and I couldn’t tell if she still wore it long because she had had it pulled up and

held in place by a chopstick for most of the visit. She turned me around and began to

brush my hair, something I hated when I was younger because it would make my

curls frizz. I felt powerless at how quickly I had fallen back into my child-like

patterns with her, but she had always been difficult to resist.

“I can’t believe I missed the dinner,” I told her while she tugged at my hair

pulling hard through a tangle.

“Oh, this hair. Still. Everyone missed you, especially Michael, but the dinner

was lovely.” I was told my fiancee had spent most of the evening with me while I

slept. I remembered seeing him in a chair the one time I woke up from the valium

Kiah had given me. You swam out too far, but I got you, he had told me. He had

whispered my name. Annie, he called me; I love you, he said before leaving me

alone with my mother.

“He’s a good person,” Kiah said like she had known him for years. Who is

this woman I thought as she ripped through another knot of hair? I felt her nail

scrape the back of my head. This woman who smells of oranges and lavender, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124

can still fit into the pants she wore twenty years ago and makes glazed pots so

perfectly symmetrical, I want to break them.

“I know he is. Can you make some tea?” I watched my mother stand up onto

her pedicured feet and glide into the kitchen. The old floorboards in the house didn’t

squeak when she walked as if she had perfected her steps to control even the house.

It wasn’t in the water but outside on the grass where I passed out, exhausted

from fighting an undertow. I thought at the time I could’ve drowned. So I guess I

had swam too far out. My intentions weren’t to die. I just wanted to feel alone, away

from the land I would be married on. It was a perfectly healthy feeling to have before

my wedding day. That is, needing a break, from all of them, especially Kiah.

The swim had begun cautiously, creeping into the water at first. I never did

like to get the pain of the cold over with quick. As I warmed to the water I went

under, my eyes shut and moved through it slowly, feeling its light resistance against

my arms and chest. I rose to the top and remember watching Michael on the shore

through the light dancing off the gentle waves. He yelled something but I couldn’t

hear him. I went further towards the island across the bay because I swear it was

calling my name. About the time I felt invincible, the water started to pull me down

in uneven pulses, my body being carried. My breathing had become shallow, my

arm shot up to get Michael’s attention. Growing tired, I relaxed at one point to see if

the water would let me go, but it only appeased my resignation and so I began to

fight even more. It felt like a week had passed before Michael, a swimmer in

college, threw a preserver and began pulling me towards him. I thought of no one but

myself under that water, which scared me more than the marriage.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125

The wedding already felt like it had more of her in it than me. Cortes Island

in Vancouver is a small pit among the other islands, surrounded by mountains and

evergreens. Mossgreen is the resort-commune on the island where guests meet over

organic meals of salmon and take their tea on the porch overlooking the bay. A

corked message board hangs in the main room where listings of ride shares back to

Vancouver are posted. I cannot seem to escape this world.

I could feel myself coming apart as she wandered around the island on

walks, coming back to the house with collections of leaves and tiny pinecones she

was going to make art out of. I threw out most of the leaves left out to dry on the

banister of the porch. I loved it when Kiah couldn’t find things. She’d grow

indignant demanding that someone tell her if they had seen the ring, the book, the

dead beetle, then pout entertaining me for hours once I had grown older and realized

it wasn’t really my fault she had misplaced something.

My mother had insisted I have a women’s circle the morning of my wedding.

The decision to have the ceremony so far away from Michael’s family in Ohio had

been difficult but necessary because my father, who wandered around the West coast

selling rugs, lived closed enough in California that we knew he would probably show

up. But the circle would be torturous. When my mother insisted upon anything it of

course had to be severely majestic, which is part of the reason why I left her in the

first place. Calculated freeness is what she is about. After being traipsed across three

continents I had grown tired of moving and enjoyed the quietness of a Columbus

suburb where migration was rare.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126

I had participated in many circles growing up in India and then on the

commune in Washington. I could only imagine what my future in-laws would think,

sitting in a circle like we were going to play duck, duck, goose at the crack of dawn,

but instead they would have to articulate what I meant to them. The women would

suppress laughs while singing that ridiculouslove all-embracing life- friends-peace

song as I stripped before walking into the cold saltwater. There’s never been

modesty in my mother’s world. I had met Roger, my soon to be stepfather, after

coming home too early from school one day to find him wandering around the house

naked after a shower. He had become embarrassed and Kiah scolded him. She told

me there was nothing to be ashamed of in seeing a man naked. Maybe that’s when

the rift began, as I stood there feeling uncomfortable but not allowed to say so.

The diamond earrings she now wore, a carat just big enough to show her

prosperity, reminded me again how things had changed since I left. She had married

Roger after we left the commune for a truer life with vision. Really, we left so we

didn’t get caught in the tax evasion scheme the leaders had crafted but to Kiah, as

she had renamed herself, years before I was bom, I guess it could be called vision. It

was something that would have never happened at Varanasi, where we lived before

coming to the U.S. She enjoyed comfort now, this big house on Cortes, and her

painting studio in the back yard thanks to Roger’s flourishing dentistry practice. It

was a life so far removed from the ashram. But India never felt like home and

increasingly I remember it like I remember my dreams. I think I played on

sidewalks where people, including us, either washed their hair or their rice,

sometimes both. I may have splashed through puddles in the streets leftover from the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127

rainy season or worn a blue and white school uniform to the first grade. I do

remember that Kiah never asked where I had been or what I had eaten when I stayed

out all day. She didn’t have to because the families at the ashram took care of one

another. She was absolved from her motherly duties. Every night I made up a story

about my day and told it to her as she drifted off to sleep.

Kiah came back to my room carrying a wooden tray with tea poured into her

hand-made mugs. Two glasses of scotch accompanied. She moved righteously

through the world, concentrating hard on every action. Her skin was still brown from

the summer and smooth, except for those wrinkles that always tightened around her

eyes before she spoke.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said before taking a sip of the tea. The peppery steam made

my eyes water.

“What do you mean? You’re not ready for a life with just one man?”

“I am right now, but maybe not tomorrow or next year or maybe never.”

“I’ve raised you right. This is only a moment of your life.” Kiah looked

satisfied leaning back into a pillow she had propped against the wall. “To be

celebrated of course.”

“In the water I imagined floating around like that for the rest of my life, but I

got lonely looking up at the sky like I do when I’m away from Michael too long.”

“You won’t miss him that much forever. We bring people into our world for

a reason. Some just stick around longer. Don’t be upset if some day you wake up

one morning and something has changed.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128

“That’s comforting. You know I really don’t feel great about going into the

same water I almost died in today.” A chill went up my spine as I remembered the

water pulling me under and then the round white preserver I clutched as Michael

reigned me in.

“You didn’t almost die. Stop being dramatic. Just don’t go out so far.” Of

course the attention couldn’t be diverted from her, I thought, the mother of the bride.

“I don’t have to do this. You can’t make me do anything, really.” Kiah set

her tea down and took a deep breath. The breathing made me want to scream.

“This one thing, Aahna. That’s all I’ve asked of you.” I couldn’t tell her it

wasn’t this one thing; it had been a lifetime of requests.

We sat quietly together until midnight, Kiah drinking the scotch like water.

Before she left she tucked me into the bed, securing the white sheets tightly under

the mattress.

“I’ll wake you at six.”

She finally released her hair from the chopstick as she walked out the door.

From the back she still looked like a young girl.

Before falling asleep, I remembered the day we arrived at the commune in

Washington. It had been a long trip from India of which I had spent most of curled

up in my mother’s lap. I was shown to the communal girls’ room. Thirty of us,

ranging in ages from five to sixteen, occupied the space. The room was crowded

with bunk beds so close, we could touch hands. Jute rugs were placed sparingly on

the rough wooden floors that gave us splinters. The walls were painted with murals

of rainbows and flowers with our names beside our handprints.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129

During our first dinner of rice and lentils, Kiah had explained to me how I

would only see her on the weekends and occasionally during the month, when her

caretaking time was scheduled. The parents took shifts with the children, which

meant I would no longer share a home with my mother, but I would gain a lot of new

parents who loved me just as much. After dinner we walked along a gravel path that

led to the girls’ dorm, Kiah carried me, my arms tightly secured around her neck,

legs squeezing her waist. Wet strands of hair from my tears stuck to my face.

The room was lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. An uneven row

of smiling girls waited to greet me. They took my brown duffel bag that had been

stuffed beneath a bottom bunk and spilled the contents out onto the floor. I screamed

as I watched my clothes being divided into categories: pants, shirts, shoes,

underwear, and placed in the appropriated yellow bin.

“We share everything now,” Kiah said as she hugged me goodnight.

*

The morning broke through quietly leaving the sky gray. The sun took longer

to rise in the mountains. I experienced the first few moments of wakefulness alone,

until I realized it was not Michael curled around my body but Kiah.

“Morning sweet girl.” She wrapped her self around me tighter.

“I can’t breathe,” I said prying myself loose from her arms, which only made

her hug me tighter. After a kiss on the cheek she jumped out of the bed and yelled

for Hannah, my best friend from law school.

Hannah emerged from the bathroom carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and

a bag of candles in the other swinging them like a fancy new evening bag. She

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130

looked in control of the situation, and I began to relax feeling like she would protect

me from Kiah. Hannah, my shield, I called her.

“Well here we are,” she said throwing the bag at Kiah. “All ready to have a

rite of passage?” Kiah ignored her, letting the bag drop to the floor, and walked

outside where I could the others had started to congregate on the front porch. I got

out of bed and walked over to Hannah. She took me in her arms like she had done so

many times after visits Kiah had made during our first year of law school. Horrified

after a dinner had been spent harassing the wait staff over where their fish came

from, Hannah had talked me out of shutting Kiah out of my life entirely. She

reminded me that the staff did receive goodbye kisses from Kiah and

recommendations of where to eat while in Vancouver. She just tests people. She’s

harmless Hannah had said. But to me Kiah continued to threaten who I was, stifled

my voice to the point I was sure she no longer knew me.

“We’ll get through this.”

“I don’t want to go in that water again. I can’t imagine going under and she’s

making me do this.”

“She’s such a bitch,” Hannah said throwing a pillow against the window.

“I just don’t know this time. She’s out there right now ordering them around

like children.

The song began and Hannah looked at me, eyes wide. “Singing?” She

looked as dismayed as when she found out she had graduated only second in our

class.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131

We are here today

Dear child, dear girl

We surround you with love

Wrapped in our arms

Go forward this day with love

“Who wrote that? You, when you were a kid? Did she find it in one of your

old journals? Broke the lock I bet.”

“Probably Jenna’s creation,” I said wrapping the cotton robe around me that

Kiah had left on the bed. I was going to freeze. Jenna was Kiah’s best friend from

the commune days. A tall blonde who was a life coach offering guidance to lost

people. Leading women’s circles as some sort of super shaman was a side business

of hers. Jenna was the woman who felt me up when I first started to grow breasts.

“32A” she had told Kiah one day over lunch in our backyard.

I did not feel happiness as I listened to the lyrics but embarrassment. The

kind that made me feel like Michael’s mother and sister would see right through my

composure and try to stop the wedding. As the singing grew louder some of the

voices became more off-key, some couldn’t remember the words. Hannah was

crouched in the corner now. She had her hands over her face trying hard to conceal

her laughter. She kind of looked like she was crying, which would’ve been more

appropriate.

“Aahna, I’m not going to make it through this. I love you but.”

The door opened and Kiah led the group inside singing a full forte harmony.

Milley, my friend from college, took long steps like she was walking down the aisle.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132

Her hair was a blonde tangled mess, nose ring glowing from the light of the candle.

Michael’s mother followed, the largest of all the women with Lynn, her daughter,

close behind. They were wearing matching windbreakers bought after they

misjudged how cold August in Vancouver could be. Jenna shut the door. With a

sweep of her arm, she brought the song to a close.

I sat on the bed and looked at the five women circled around me holding thin

white candles at dawn. Kiah and Jenna had cast a solemn mood upon the group.

Even Hannah had taken her spot in the circle, eyes still watering. I felt like I was

about to be abducted. I was led to the floor and placed in between Jenna and Kiah.

Milley had stretched out on her stomach and began to play with the wax of her

candle.

I looked over at Jenna who was leading the ceremony. She had combed her

hair and pulled it into a loose hanging ponytail. Her skin had the glossy appearance

of freshly applied make-up, and I wondered what time she got up to do all this. The

dangly turquoise earrings she wore brushed my shoulder as she leaned in towards me

and whispered, “Welcome,” before speaking to the group.

“Aahna, I have known you since you were a child. A bright, inquisitive,

child grown now into a woman about to move into another phase of her life. A

passing into marriage, one that will be joyous, as long as you enter with an open

heart and honesty to see all its trials and beauties.” Kiah sat on my other side,

gripping my arm like she was in mourning not joy. I could not for the life of me

recognize the grip. I kept my head down, eyes shut so I wouldn’t be tempted to look

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133

at Hannah or Milley who had started to cry. Jenna went on long enough for us to all

glaze over.

I finally looked up at the women surrounding me. Michael’s mother was

positioned awkwardly, sitting on her side, hair not set the night before, her eyes

swollen. It was the way I bet she looked while driving Michael to all those early

morning swim practices. Lynn was yawning. I knew she had no idea what was

going on having been removed from my family life until now. She was trying not to

fidget in her cheap jacket that made crinkling noises, which then made Kiah look on

with judgment. Kiah, who at one time was so poor made us hitchhike to the grocery

store, sat there and scorned them, I knew. It made me want to run to Michael’s

mother and loose myself in her embrace, feel those large doughy arms around me.

The room was so silent until Milley scrambled across the floor and grabbed

me. This was not an uncommon gesture for her. I at one time reciprocated. Both of

us bounding into each other’s arms at the most inappropriate times: leftovers of

curried cauliflower in the co-op, a moon that was shining too brightly, listening to

the late night organ pumps at the chapel, stoned, our bodies laid flat against the

wooden pews.

“I just love you,” she said hanging onto my neck. “And I want you to know

that this means nothing. Nothing in the sense of who we are. The marriage it means

nothing, nothing really changes.” I glanced briefly at Kiah who was rolling her eyes.

She and Milley had never quite hit it off. Too similar I assumed only Milley was a

less sophisticated version of Kiah, rougher, and more sincere.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134

“Back to your spot. There will be time in a moment for everyone to offer

gifts and blessings,” Kiah said arching her back like she probably does in her yoga

class.

“Why don’t we do it now?” Hannah offered from the side, trying to facilitate

the ceremony like it was a deposition. She grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil.

“Everyone loves gifts, don’t they Kiah?” Kiah smirked at her but didn’t move.

“I so love presents,” Lynn said, the first words I heard from her. Michael’s

mother nodded, relaxing at the idea of a more traditional event.

Jenna grew tense, the ritual moving from her control. “Fine, let’s recenter.

Everyone put down your candles first.” The women obeyed placing their votives on

the berber covered floor, and pulled out their gifts from behind them; some in bags,

others in envelopes.

“This is like a fire hazard,” Lynn said, as she got up, tiptoeing over the

candles. She went to get her gift that she had left outside on the porch.

“Fine,” said Kiah. “Place your candles on the windowsill.”

I thought about burning the place down, fire reaching up into the curtains.

Local Girl Dies in Fire after Pagan Ritual, a headline would read back home.

Once the group settled again, Milley sat with her legs shooting straight into

the circle. She started to move them up and down like a restless child.

“Damn it Kiah. Let me speak now.”

“Fine dear. Jenna what do you think?” Kiah sat holding a small box wrapped

in gold paper. Our leader had gone into the bathroom. She emerged with a glass of

water and no present. “Go. We’ll do things a little out of order.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135

“Thank you. I want to say that Aahna, we’ve been through a lot together.

There have been times when we have had to take a break from one another. It’s been

too intense. You remember that time we stayed in the group house over winter break

and took that drug I made?

“Those would be mushrooms,” Hannah interrupted having little tolerance for

imprecision.

“Right, and well we stayed in bed, naked all night just talking and crying and

after that we didn’t speak for a year.”

I kept smiling but inside I went numb, horrified. It would be the last thing I

thought Milley would bring up, thinking her professional life as a labor rights activist

who lobbied politicians, would have dulled these outbursts. I did remember. A past

life coming back to me.

“Why were you girls naked?” Michael’s mother asked.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Hannah said.

“Our family prefers to sleep in the nude,” Kiah said, even now trying to cover

up the fact that Milley and I had been a couple in college, something she never

objected to at least verbally. One of the many times I had misread Kiah’s

overwhelming acceptance of all people incorrectly.

“Oh, I see,” said Michael’s mother nodding her head to be polite, but I had

been ratted out. Michael knew. We had met in the co-op of a liberal Midwest

college after having been assigned to bake bread together for god sakes. He on a

swimming scholarship, me feeling at home with my hair dreaded and not knowing

any better. What kind of girl did his mother think he would meet? Actually, she was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136

more accepting of me and of people than Kiah. Suddenly, Lynn came in with a large

pink paper bag, knocking a candle off the window ledge that luckily extinguished on

its way to the floor.

“I’m back,” she sang.

“Wrap it up,” Hannah said patting Milley on the head who shrugged her off.

Jenna had refused to sit, leaning up against the wall now, sipping her water.

“No. And then the connection was just too much. We are bound like sisters

and I carry you with me every day. I wrote you a poem, but it’s not here. It’s just not

d one. I don’t know if it will ever be.”

Milley started to cry again, and I loved her at that moment, but also wanted to

bury her in the vegetable garden of Mossgreen.

“Thanks,” I told her conjuring up some tears.

“Who’s next, “ Jenna said like a teacher listening to school reports on what

we did for the summer.

“Well why don’t I go next. Normally the mother goes last, but I think it’s

time.” Kiah turned to me and held my hands.

Her words were the ones I had dreaded the most. There was a time when we

were whole, when we were bound together as mother and daughter. Her stare didn’t

confuse but provided comfort. I hoped she would tell the story I always asked her to

tell when I was scared or feeling alone as a child. She would look dreamy before she

began: I went home to England, to an old stone house our family had let run down

until you could see through the little holes in the walls into other rooms. In the

corner o f the living room I sat upon layers ofpillows and soft wool blankets as the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137

midwife comforted me while we waited for you to arrive. Your father, so calm, sat

next to me holding my hand. Once you were born, the midwife laid you across my

stomach, and I told you, “We are everything. But I try ” to forget this story when I’m

feeling angry towards Kiah.

“Aahna, I welcomed you into this world unexpectedly as you know. You

have brought me on a journey that I never thought I would have. Once I realized I

was not responsible for only myself I engulfed you. I look forward to a new life with

you and Michael and his family and beyond. Inside this box is a gift of the

generations.”

I opened the box to find a pair of yellow diamond earrings the size of

teardrops.

“They came from your grandmother. She gave them to me when I left home

for India, and she would’ve wanted you to have them.”

I never knew my mother’s mother except for a brief visit from an old woman

with a pointy nose like Kiah’s, who had knocked on our green door for an hour

before Kiah had finally opened it. The old woman peeked inside and gave me the

kindest smile I had ever seen. One that made me want to run to her. Kiah had quickly

stepped outside, catching the hem of her robe in the door as she closed it and began

speaking to the woman. I watched the blue fabric flip back and forth as Kiah’s voice

began to grow louder, and I never saw the old woman again. Kiah never spoke of

why she left home, only that there were several disagreements with her mother over

her lifestyle, and she needed to be free.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138

The sun was just starting to rise while Kiah spoke. I looked out the large

windows and felt relieved to see the green mountaintops emerge with a streaked

orange sky. The water was quiet. I could see down onto the beach, covered in large

rocks that gradually became smaller pebbles giving way to rocky sand and calcified

wood, and I hoped they would let me keep my shoes on when I went into the water.

As the sun rose, slivers of pale yellow light cut across the women’s faces. I saw all

their imperfections and raw beauty. Kiah took over the circle as Jenna had slumped

herself into a wicker chair by the door.

“Aahna, how do you feel?” she asked rubbing my back.

I looked down at the earrings and realized they meant nothing to me because

I did not know what they meant to Kiah, but she beamed as if she had done

something profound.

“Take your time. Take in this moment. This is one of the most important

times in your life, surrounded by the women that love you the most. Especially me.”

I could feel the heat of Kiah’s body, her arm now around my shoulder. I

could hear her soft breath and smell the sweet tea Robert had made her that morning.

The smells of being cared for by her made me nauseous. Hannah reached across the

circle and rubbed my knee, instinctually knowing what I needed.

“Sweetie. I know it’s overwhelming,” said Jenna who had clearly not been

drinking water. I knew she was thinking she was going to be part of one more

spiritual journey she could put on her resume, so I nodded.

Michael’s mother looked uncomfortable and began fidgeting with the cuff of

her Ohio State sweatshirt. Lynn held on to her pink bag that probably contained

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139

some sort of tacky lingerie, her mouth now half-open waiting for absolutely nothing.

I felt so sorry for all of them.

“You may speak when you are ready,” Kiah said.

I dreaded talking to this group that I had worked so hard to keep separate

from one another. They sat before me like strangers. Milley had even calmed down.

Kiah pulled the elastic from my long braid and shook my hair free. She took my

hand and held it firmly in hers as she tied an orange and purple braided rope around

my wrist.

“Wedding colors from your first home. Speak when you are ready,” she said.

“It won’t be today.” I was paralyzed, unable to pretend that this circle was

okay any longer.

“Fine.” She squeezed my hand and did not protest.

Kiah walked over to the comer of the room and picked up a burlap sack of

rocks. She dumped them into the middle of the circle. Michael’s mother probably

thought there was going to be a stoning as she scooted back a few feet.

“Aahna, hold each rock and name your fears. Place them in the bag. When

you enter the water you will dump the rocks, letting them sink to where they will rest

forever.”

Kiah explained this to me as if she were telling me a secret she had wanted to

tell her entire life. I suppose that for her getting rid of your demons was as easy as

skipping pebbles into a lake.

I held each rock, large and cool, and named them.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140

“Michael dying, not being a good enough friend, not being a good enough

person, the food is bad at dinner tonight, being a bad mother.” Before I shut the bag

I added one more rock, silently naming it Kiah.

It was time now. I knew the next part. I would be led to the water,

undressed, and sent forth with my bag of rocks. The serious turn the ceremony had

taken made me feel like these lovely women were going to let me sink but seeing the

way they began to look for my shoes and gather the fluffiest towels from the closet, I

knew they wouldn’t. Kiah and I walked in front, our arms interlocked, taking long

steps in sync down the hill that led to the bay. The decline forcing us to slow our

steps. I could hear the others whispering and giggling and the sound of Kiah

breathing. This isn’t me, I thought. I don’t want to be here right now. She felt my

resistance as I began to slow down, her bony fingers pressing into my skin. I looked

at the edge of the water and the jagged rocks I would have to walk over before

entering. Kiah began to pull me, walking ahead a few steps. The group started to

fall behind, but we continued down the path. The morning breeze was cool and I

could hear the waves rolling up to the shore. The sky was beginning to turn that

cerulean shade of blue it sometimes does, and the clouds stretched out above the

mountains, where I could finally make out the pines that sat on top of them.

“Kiah, please,” I said, but she pretended not to hear me.

We stopped at the edge of the water and waited for the group to arrive. They

gathered around me tightly. There was no way I could escape. Kiah started to

undress me. I jerked back from her icy touch, but then slowly her hands warmed. I

had never felt anything so deliberately perfect in my life as I lifted my arms up for

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141

her to slip the white cotton nightgown over my head. Peeling my underwear off

delicately, one leg at a time, I leaned on her for balance and briefly rested my cheek

on her shoulder. I could feel her hair that smelled like lavender against my face.

Had I ever been cared for by my mother like this? Shivering, I felt a chill run

through my body, and my skin turn to goose flesh. I stood facing the group,

completely naked, waiting to be turned around and gently pushed towards the water.

The last woman I looked at was Hannah who mouthed be careful, and she put her

arm around Michael’s mother. Kiah pointed me in the direction of the water and

handed me the sack filled with my rocks.

It was so heavy the weight of the bag made my arm muscles twitch. I

stepped carefully over the limestones, cold and so naked in front of these women, but

no longer cared what they thought. My anxiety over the event had transported me

into a solitude where I felt more alone than ever. Kiah was probably wondering how

I grew up so quickly, and how my body had changed, morphed into hips and stretch

marks from weight gain and loss, tattoos, moles that had darkened, skin blemished.

Would she be proud of the story my body told, or would she even notice?

As I entered the shallow edge of the bay, the water rushed between my toes,

and I sank into the sand. My heart beat quickened as I thought about how dangerous

the water could become, not far enough away from the feeling of drowning. I

couldn’t turn around now, and what had been a fight became caution pulling me in.

The stinging cold subsided as my body got used to the temperature, and I walked

slowly out into the clear water. My bag of rocks became lighter as the water rose

around my body, and I quickly dove under hearing a cheer from the shore. I dumped

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142

the bag of rocks after swimming as deep as I could, being sure to not swim out too

far, imagining myself slicing through the undertows. Going deep but not too far

made me feel safe. I never reached the bottom but stopped and considered how long

I could stay under, as if to tempt the water again. I felt the seaweed gently wrap

around my legs. Maybe I could cover myself in the greenery just to get warm?

When I would come up all of the women would cheer again. Their faces

would welcome me in screams and yells I wouldn’t be able to decipher. They would

wrap me in soft white towels and give me hugs. Michael’s mother would look

pleasantly uncomfortable in that Midwest way, and Hannah would give me bourbon

when I got back to the room. Milley would wash my hair. When I finally did rise to

the top I saw the faces of the women whose love and understanding would grow with

me in the future, except for Kiah’s, which stopped where the water met the shore.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.