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

A COLLECTION OF THINGS

by

P. Michael Mastroffancesco

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: fooy Kermit Moyer

Barbara Esstman ______

Hehig^ TaVlor

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences / 6 Date 1996 7t4u> The American University

Washington. D.C. 20016

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1381756

Copyright 1996 by Mastrofrancesco, P. Michael All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 1381756 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103

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

by

P. Michael Mastrofrancesco

1996

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For my father

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

A COLLECTION OF THINGS

by

P. Michael Mastrofrancesco

ABSTRACT

This collection of short stories and poems focuses on the complexities of

relationships, primarily family relationships, which are loaded with false expectations.

Although these off-beat, unpredictable characters live in towns on the borderline of the

American landscape, they somehow manage to hold their place in the world, a world a bit

off-center. Anything and nothing happens here. Seconds become hours and days repeat

themselves. Yet life continues.

ii

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

ABSTRACT...... ii

SELF-SERVICE...... 1

BACKWASH...... 6

A QUARTER TURN...... 10

CHRYSANTHEMUM...... 16

EYEGLASS...... 17

STREET SMART...... 24

FIFTEEN MINUTES...... 25

TEASE...... 32

PEARL DIVE...... 33

CAMPFIRE GIRL...... 35

STILL LIFE...... 43

WHIP-SMART...... 51

OPENED DOORS...... 52

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SELF-SERVICE

Wingless, wearing pink underwear and a yellow umbrella hat, a guardian angel

appears before me. The outfit's fabric is a cross-stitch pattern: tone on tone. No bright

light or thunderclap sounds her entrance; she just materializes, as always. Everything

about her is oversized: the flame of the blue birthday candle she holds in her hand, the

loose white skin hanging from the bone, the long ringlets of orange hair framing her

body, and the mosaic brooch clipped to a bra strap — a portrait of a Byzantine Madonna

with a hickey on her neck, holding castanets. She stands a few feet from my bed, rubbing

her bloodshot eyes with the back of her hand. I try to apologize for waking her, but no

words, no sound, comes out. Her eyebrow arcs as she reads my mind. She knows why I

have done what I have done, why I have taken this plunge, and why I want to her to

preoccupied, to keep me from drifting.

"What weather," she squeaks, “this two-day rain.” My thoughts exactly.

She goes into an odd dance, a little jig, twisting her body, flailing her arms as if she

were trying to rip free from her own skin. I try to mimic her movement, to follow along,

but my arms are dead asleep. A raindrop falls from the ceiling and sprinkles my face,

coats my eyes. Everything glistens. I stare at her awash in vibrant colors, mesmerized,

unable to blink. Through this pool of water she floats as effortlessly as a

1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mermaid but without a cumbersome tail, that scaly thing that can cut your skin if rubbed

against the grain.

"Did you think this through?" she asks, her question open-ended, as if I have a second

chance, a return route back to this hand-me-down room.

She looks around in a half-daze at the posters, leftovers from my brother, which cover

the faded wallpaper and draw the room in closer: blown-up mouths with large gaps in the

teeth, demolished cars, cans of pesticide in mid spray. With her finger, she spins my

open journal lying on top of the desk, the last entry penned within the margins, no

smudges, no misspelled words, no words of wisdom, just thoughts, feelings.

"To whom it may concern," she reads as I replay it from memory. "This is all I have.

This is all I leave: my handwriting that bends and curves around and over a straight blue

line, the flat line that will soon mark my pulse; and you. I’ve often dreamed of this

moment: lying in wait, waiting to see you crack.”

Angel taps a pumpkin-head Pez dispenser across the page and drops it in the empty

prescription bottle: a gift from a family friend who no longer had the need and now the

vacant home to hot-pink capsules that were a little bitter on the way down.

"Well done," she remarks.

This time I try hissing with my tongue, my mouth already open, but no sound, no

breath, comes out. And I wonder how much longer before everything goes black.

Timing is everything.

"Soon," she says, nodding.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The water drains from my eyes and the crystal coating, the one that made everything

look so new, is gone.

Angel is again on land, grounded as when she first appeared. A rap on the door, three

distinct beats, brings a smile to her face.

"John," my mother calls from the other side of the door. "Are you up? I didn't hear

your alarm. John?"

"Don't you think you should get that?" Angel laughs like a spent hyena. Her

abdominal muscles grow firm and quake around her navel, a California tremor moments

before the earthquake. I hope my mother can hear her laugh.

"No," Angel answers. "I doubt it."

My mother walks down the hall, cursing me in familiar words, pet names I could spell

from birth and which all the neighbors know. Bastard. Fucker. Little Nothing.

"She'll be back," Angel says.

We listen to the rain hit the slatted roof. Each drop maps out the dimensions of the

room, reminding us that we are under something, surrounded by something.

Angel hears rustling behind the door and starts the countdown: "One-one-thousand,

two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand." Her switchblade fingers pop from her fist in

sequence.

A screwdriver, driven by Mother’s fist, rattles the knob, jimmies the latch loose, no

quicker than usual. Mother's face is out of view as she barrels into my room, yet I sense

her glare directed toward my face, my skin. I focus on Angel yawning in front of me.

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"Get the hell up!" Mother yells. "I'm not calling work again."

Angel crosses her eyes and sways her hips from side to side, humming the theme

song to The Brady Bunch, trying to stay alert. Mother cuts around the comer, knocking

into the bed with her knee. I watch my arm slide off my hip, and my hand land on the

other hand in accidental prayer. I say a quick word, asking for a bit more time. Wearing

her quilted housecoat, a single curler rolled in her bangs, Mother looks overdressed next

to near-naked Angel.

"Let's go!" mother yells. Her eyes meet my dry stare.

Angel, stepping behind mother, springs into jumping jacks; her hair bouncing off of

her shoulders, her arms. I count in my head how many she does this.

"What are you staring at?" Mother asks. The vein bulges on her forehead, the blue

one in the center that cuts her head in two. With her hand, she jabs my shoulder, a

linebacker's straight-arm, making contact with the usual spot. My body, angled like a

lightening bolt, like the grooved scar from a tire's tread, twists at the shoulder, my head

tilting to a forty-five degree angle.

"Quit playing games! John! John!"

Her hand slaps my face, dead center, a bull's-eye. Gleaming a Vaseline smile, Angel

does a light tap routine in her sandals, soft shoe, her eyes half open. Hands move on my

face, in front of my face, mouth and eyes, over my nose. Mother puts her face into mine.

No resemblance, no family crest, no markings.

"Oh," she whimpers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. She tilts my head toward the ceiling and zooms in, placing her lips on mine. After

fumbling for a tight seal, she puffs away, her cheeks swelling like a blowfish. an

overzealous saxophonist at her debut. A clumsy kiss, one a long time coming. Her

breath enter and leave my lungs in quick succession, nothing to hold it down, to keep it

in.

On the periphery, I see the flame undulate on the candle's wick in Angel’s hand. She

shuffles back, fades into the backdrop, the tired pink and yellow wallpaper adhered to the

wall, leaving the burning candle behind. Mother's hair brushes over my face as she puffs

away, and I lose myself in the light's darkness.

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

"I'm a writer and poet, too," shouts Alexa to the reader.

She stands at the bottom of the stairs, tapping her foot on the first step, awaiting his

descent from the podium. My shoes butt-up against hers, and my toes separate beneath

the canvas to grip the outline of her spiked heels (she has sandals on later). The audience

forms a line behind us, all looking eager to praise his religious reading from this, his

second, semi-autobiographical work that has been loosely translated in over three

hundred languages. Alexa hands him a borrowed third-edition copy of the first book for

an autograph. Her toes, balancing en pointe, elevate her, temporarily, a head above the

congregation. They corral around themselves in a cluster, like herded Brahman cattle,

look curious but cautious as she speaks of kaleidoscopes and synergy. The skin on her

face, red from an earlier hour spent in a tanning booth, gives her a modest glow,

schoolgirl-like. She blurts into fits of spastic laughter, her jugular jutting from her neck,

giving her an eccentric, manic flair. Her voice echoes in the cathedral's nave and hangs

on my skin like a wet sweater. A few mixed laughs come from the crowd's nucleus, no

doubt intoxicated by her drama. She grabs the book back before the writer is finished,

transforming his signature into a wrap-around mess, a modem hieroglyph. She walks

into the crowd and I follow.

6

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"I already have his signature," she beams. Her smile is all caps, crowns and bonding,

perfectly manicured.

"I don't..." I begin to reply, cutting myself off at the second syllable out of habit.

I hook my arm through hers, stopping her from walking away, a little do-si-do that is

all too familiar. She purses her lips and drops an eyebrow as if on cue. It's a recurring

look of anticipation: of needing to go home and listen to her answering machine, to match

the numbers of continuous hang-ups on her Caller ID to those in her black book, then to

fumble through the pages to get the names, the identification of the mysterious callers,

the ex-boyfriends, new admirers and crank callers who keep her fingers busy and my

head spinning. She notices that all eyes on the reader as if he were a trapeze artist

working without a net.

"I should get another one," she says, returning to the front of the line.

I walk behind her, almost piggyback, my head over her left shoulder, giving her the

benefit of two heads and myself the thrill of being a showpiece. The audience forms a

semicircle around the reader as if choosing sides, seeming to wish her book signed so she

will move on, ready to snap her back slingshot-style. She does her best Audrey Hepburn

pose --hip forward, shoulder down— and flicks her hair back like Sophia Loren. A lethal

combination; a cobra's kiss.

"What's your name?" the reader asks.

"P'peter," I stutter.

"You're a fascinating storyteller," Alexa interrupts.

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The reader replies with a slight smile, a gracious grin wrapped around clenched

yellow dentures. He begins to tell the story of a prophet who descended into the

courtyard of a Byzantine chapel: the spectators pelted him with pomegranates upon

landing, fearing this grand display an act of trickery, the devil's doing, too good to be

true. The audience bob their heads in unison, acknowledging the parable. Defeated,

Alexa saunters down the aisle and out the entrance, leaving me standing there, exposed. I

remember Alexa's furious clapping during a pause in the reading~an obvious page break,

a transition in time, place—and us in the front row, separate from the group for everyone

to see. I run after her, closing my book on the fresh signature. I open it to see the

inscription's wet ink mirrored on the inside cover: "Peace be with you."

"Crap," blurts Alexa. "What a bunch of crap. Peace. Their loss."

"But...," I reply, my tongue crashing hard on the tip of the T.

"He wasn't talking to you. Anyway, I need to get home. It's getting dark and I'm

walking. Isn't it beautiful out? Things are happening for us. I'm excited!"

"I'll give you a ride."

"No, I have stuff to do. People to meet. Call me tomorrow."

She rubs her cheek against mine, a kinetic kiss, skin on skin but void of friction. I

watch her walk the long way, up the hill. She disappears behind a plump evergreen. The

frenzied click of her sandals resonates in my ear, the cackle of a locust before it buries

itself in the ground. I listen until I hear it fizz out like a lit match smothered between two

wet fingers.

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The traffic roars past the sidewalk that pads my feet and parallels the road. Reflecting

off the windows of each passing car, in frame after frame, I see myself looking out from

the passenger seat, being carried off by car after car. I turn toward the cathedral and the

people leaving in groups of twos and threes. I walk onto the grass and hide behind a

granite slab that announces times and dates.

Twenty minutes pass and it has been ten minutes since a soul exited through the door

of wrought-iron clasped hands. I force myself from behind this shield to the door. I peer

inside to see rows of empty pews littered with fluorescent flyers announcing the reading.

My leather jacket, draped over a chair, forgotten, looks plastic in front of the plush

tapestries that cover every inch of wall space; people with gaunt, cocked faces emerge

from the tight weave with the look of sudden joy, the same expression worn by the

congregation. I look closely at a tapestry and pull it away from the wall and wrap myself

behind it. With the ribbed edge of a key, I cut a few loose threads and drop them in my

pocket: a souvenir.

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

Madeleine has done it. She has saved the children. Flora and Miles are both safe

now, free from the grasp of those apparitions who were trying to kidnap them. Madeleine

has won. Their uncle will surely offer her a raise, maybe even give her a small pin: a

purple heart or a winged angel with her lips pressed to a trumpet, something in 16- or 18-

carat gold, with eyes made of semiprecious stones. She has rushed from Bly to tell him

her astonishing news while it is still fresh, earth-shattering.

In the carriage, driven by some anonymous driver, she sits cocksure, her derriere

absorbing every jolt the rutted road has to offer. The scenic view from her window, the

bare ground rippling like choppy water, holds her attention, hypnotizes her. When the

carriage turns onto Harley Street, her employer’s house appears in the comer of the

window. The house is smaller than she remembers, much smaller. She rehearses her

speech for the fifth and final time. As the carriage draws closer, the house just fills the

dimensions of her window; it does not pour in and overtake the cabin as it did on her first

visit months earlier. She is looking at the house from a different perspective now. The

microscope through which she was scrutinized has turned upside down and now she is the

one peering through the lens.

10

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The driver springs from his perch and opens her door, expanding her view of the

outside. She pops her foot through the cabin's doorway, then her slender leg all the way

up to the knee. What would her father think of this display? The humidity glistens on

her skin: her aura. Dogs yelp from the side yard in and out of sync, an orchestra

announcing her arrival. She steps from the carriage. The air catches her, carries her to

the ground. A giggle passes through her lips. She looks over to the driver, at his eyes

angled down, not meeting her glance.

"Thank you," she says.

The door to the uncle's house opens as if by accident or by some miracle. No one is

in the doorway to welcome her, so she parades into the foyer, she and her aura. The

driver carries her bags inside and dumps them next to a full-length portrait of someone's

father or son, which hangs near the front door. He walks back out the door and closes it

behind him, saying nothing, no goodbye, no good-day. Madeleine stands alone in the

foyer with nothing but the air her lungs have carried in from outside. Her gaze searches

through the interior, the open doors, into empty rooms and along the banister to the

second-floor balcony. The house is lifeless, a skeleton of what she remembers. She

wonders how long she should stand here, if she should call out for someone.

In fear of forgetting all that she has remembered, she walks through the sitting room,

looking for someone, anyone. Sunlight, beaming through the windows, dissects the room

into segments, rectangular spotlights that chart her course. She stops in the room at the

rear of the house where she first met the uncle. It appears empty except for the wood: the

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mahogany, mahogany, and more mahogany that cover the walls, floor and desktop. She

clears her throat, a half-cough, half-whisper, but no reply. A leather chair where their

uncle once sat in an authorial way stands unoccupied in front of a picture window.

Although the window stretches the length of the back wall, it lets in no direct light.

"Hello," she calls out, waiting for someone to emerge from the dark wood. But

nothing, no reply.

She walks over to the chair and falls into it. She sits up straight in the high back

chair, as straight as her father had always told her to sit. If the cushion were not so hard it

would be a perfect fit. On the desk in front of her, papers lie in uneven piles and she

imagines the words, the numbers on each sheet. She tries leaning back, but the chair's

springs are too tight. The air is thick and hard. A child's giggle enters the room,

attracting Madeleine's attention. She looks around. It sounds familiar, like Flora's, but it

is too faint to tell. She swivels around in the chair to face the window, in search of the

voice's body.

The window looks onto the backyard, at thick grass a deep green. In the middle sits a

tree that reaches to the sky, its trunk like the ground's suntanned arm that branches to a

fist and clutches vermilion leaves in a tight ball. A little girl runs across the lawn. Flora.

Madeleine recognizes the white jumper. She has restitched it over and over. She sees

Mrs. Grose following Flora, her hands grabbing at Flora's arms, body, hair, whatever she

seems able to get hold of to keep the girl near. The woman was always clingy, Madeleine

thinks. Flora bends over and pulls a fallen leaf from the grass. Mrs. Grose kneels beside

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her. They stare at the leaf, smiling. Flora twirls it in her fingertips. Madeleine watches it

spin. A southeast wind sweeps over the backyard, pulling at their clothing and setting

more leaves free from the tree's grasp: bats in flight. Madeleine sits forward in her chair,

watching the leaves whirl around Flora and Mrs. Grose, consuming them except for faint

white traces of Flora's jumper.

Once the wind dies down and the leaves settle, Madeleine notices Miss Jessel

standing on the grass in a black trench coat, her manicured hair undisturbed by the wind.

Madeleine leaps to the window. This reminds her of the time she watched Flora and

Miles playing in the yard, and her inside unable to protect them. She pounds on the glass,

causing cracks to form on the edges along the molding. Her racket stirs the dogs. She

had not heard them since she entered the house. Flora and Mrs. Grose continue their

dance across the lawn to the melody of barking dogs; they do not seem to notice Miss

Jessel standing beside them, nearly on top of them. Madeleine wonders how she got here.

Did she follow her on horseback? Hide on the coach? Or just will herself here? All

Madeleine knows is that she has been followed.

"What have you done?"

The voice is empty, shattered. Madeleine peels herself from the window, the one she

wishes were a looking glass so she could jump through and wrap her arms around Flora,

protect her. The uncle stands in the doorway. He is wearing a suit but no tie or tweed

vest, his usual attire. His body appears to have no skeleton. He is barefoot and childlike,

nothing like she remembers, or admired.

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"What have you done," he repeats.

"I'm trying to get their attention. They're right next to her."

Her hand hits the window. She finally locks eyes with Mrs. Grose and places her

warning in her expression, communicates through her eyes, her pupils. Mrs. Grose

whisks Flora up in her arms and carries her in the direction of the barking dogs. The

leaves fly behind them, forming a train. What has gotten into her? Madeleine wonders.

Miss Jessel stands erect in the middle of the yard, the axis on which the world seems to

revolve. What is she doing? Madeleine ignores the uncle. He is babbling something

about Miles and sounds angry, not at all envious. He could have saved Miles, had he not

been too busy playing polo or entertaining. It was she who held him in her arms and

dreamed for that moment. Her precious Miles. He grew so light in her arms, so

dispossessed.

"Go away!" she yells.

Miss Jessel just stands there. The uncle walks up behind Madeleine. She feels him

looking over her shoulder, feels his breath seep through her heavy cardigan.

"Who are you yelling at?" he asks. His breath is hot on her skin and his voice is

restrained to a whisper. "Is it Miss Jessel? Peter Quint?" Madeleine wonders what Mrs.

Grose has told him, how has she twisted everything around.

"Oh, yes, I see them,” he said. “Why are they just standing there? Or are they

running around? No, they are dancing, waltzing in fancy dress. They have blow-ticklers

and are dancing. What fun they are having. It’s New Year's Eve. Or is it a Christmas

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celebration? Miles birthday was in four days. Maybe they’re having a party for him. Is

he with them? Darling little Miles."

His words meld together, create a rhythm that leaves her weak-kneed and unfocused.

She cannot find the words she painstakingly remembered, her story, her plan. Why won't

he stop? The speech she prepared, the one she recited over and over has mixed itself up

in her head. The words are jumbled. Lost. Her moment lost. He is still close behind

her. Breathing. She watches as parts of Miss Jessel, her arms, shoulders, and hips, melt

to a black strand that narrows, then disappears. She wonders where she has gone. Where

they have all gone.

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

The precocious flower- erupting from its green stem like some party favor— is chalk white brilliance: the petal's fine-line creases mirror one another from point to point, fold and unfold between fingers simply.

But I notice a black fleck— a piece of dillweed or rosemary, something windswept from somewhere— blemishes the sugar blossom and holds my glance captive.

A mild breeze or finger twitch can send this scar skyward but I stare and do nothing, recall none of its former beauty— what attracted me to it— because this is easier, safer.

16

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

I lean against the door, my eye flush with the peephole. The gold light, coming in

from the hall, warms my pupil. I stand here for hours, waiting for someone on the other

side, someone to walk past or break the line of this frame. Looking through this dot

makes everything out there appear small, different: the bannister, the staircase, and the

closed doors, which fill the hall, can now fit onto the ball of my eye. It reminds me of the

viewfinders I used to win on the boardwalk, the ones with little pictures of people and

places that were unfamiliar and for no one else to see.

The scene from this door is always the same. Nothing changes. The carpet is still

beet-red and it has had the same ripple by the staircase for five years. When I go out, I

make sure to walk around it to avoid tripping and falling down the endless stairs and

parquet landings. Every once in a while, new tenants hang dehydrated flowers on their

doors, arrange and rearrange these adornments just right so they fan out and add a new

dimension to a flat surface, something new for my eye to see. But the resident manager

comes around and pulls them off within the hour. He must have a sixth sense, a sense for

dead things. He is never at home when I call to complain, to question why he does this,

why he takes these dead things. His line rings and rings.

17

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An interior light shines through the crack under the door of 8D. No shadows from

dancing feet or the paws of skittering animals break the strip of light that I imagine there:

it is only a straight yellow line.

My face is comfortable against the wood. It no longer feels grainy or hard. Directly

across from my door is the open staircase. I can see when people come and go. see the

tops of heads and the soles of shoes. I time how long it takes me to name who is

approaching. I have it down to a matter of seconds, except when someone has a new

hairdo or is wearing a different pair of shoes, but that rarely happens. I have made up

names for them all: Dorothy, Moon-man, Flan. Sometimes they look over at my door as

they pass by and my heart pounds, but they usually keep their eyes to the ground.

The clicking of heels echoes through the hallway and into my apartment. I lean

further into the door. The acoustics in this building are bad. I can't tell if it is one person

or five, or whether to look up or down, which makes my heart beat a little faster. The

shoes must be hitting the runner now. I ready myself to start the countdown. But which

floor? Up? Down?

A tip of a heel lowers from the opening in the ceiling to a step below. Dorothy. Dot

in her ruby heels. She walks past my door every so often. I wonder how she balances her

angular body on such fragile heels. She must walk on her toes. I know I have been up

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too long when I see her skip past. She keeps late hours. I watch as the last few strands of

her hair disappear from sight...

Dot takes a seat on the gray chair in the furthest comer of my room. I follow her in,

my feet barely grazing the floor. I cannot feel my legs moving. She makes herself at

home, propping her leg on the arm rest, something I never do. Her parted thighs pull the

miniskirt she is wearing into a thin strip around her hips, turning it into a waisted band.

Her black hole, a third eye that stares at me. The line that cuts through the oblong patch

warns, "Do Not Enter." I shake my head to wake from dreaming. These feet of mine are

firmly planted. The seat cushion sticks out from between her legs like a large tongue

wagging, mocking me, as her hips gyrate. I drop the sweating glass in my hand. I have

no idea where it came from. Have I taken a sip? Her eyes follow its descent, watch it

bounce by my feet and toss ice cubes into the air. I stare into the translucent void of her

off-white eyes. The glass shatters into diamonds on the second bounce, dropping hail

into the puddle of tonic and broken glass. Her eyes look up, catching my stare.

"Good trick," she purrs. "I need a smoke."

She leans to the side of the chair opposite the floor lamp and grabs her purse. The

vertical line tilts, smirking at me. After rummaging through a bag bigger than her skirt,

she pulls out a gem-plated case and opens it to reveal two cigarettes. I decline, pointing

at my chest, the jacket for my lungs. She clamps one in the crease of her lips and ignites

it. Odd animal shapes, aardvarks and lizards, form in the smoke and appear to graze on

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her tongue. Although it resembles a cigarette, it smells like a cigar, an old musty one lost

at the bottom of her purse. The manager uses the same brand. The smoke mixes with the

scent of her perfume, making me queasy, lightheaded. The room seems to shrink,

drawing the chair closer to me.

My body sways on legs that no longer have the strength to support me. My left foot

steps forward onto a three-carat chip o f glass, which tears through my shoe's sole, slices

some flesh, and stops at the bone. An unfamiliar sound shoots from my mouth and

lingers in front of my face. I flinch at the sound of my voice. Dot lunges from the chair

to my side, her skirt still up around her waist; brunette follicles extend from a widow’s

peak. A stream of smoke, from the cigarette adhered to her lip, creeps up my nostril, and

the rush of nicotine increases my rapid heart rate. My body quivers to the point of

paralysis as her fingers wrap around my arm and my bent leg.

"Come on," she says. "Sit down."

She clutches me in the crook of her side and maneuvers me to the chair. The seat

feels warm, even a bit hot, and my fidgeting ricochets off the sides. Her arms feel like

narrow bars on either side of me and seem to go on forever, up to the ceiling and the

apartment above. The perspiration on my scalp simmers under the lamp's bulb. She

twirls me around like a spinning bottle and elevates my legs on one of the arm rests,

locking me in place.

"I'm going to pull the glass out," she warns after a quick surveillance. I imagine her

in a white coat.

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

Her breath is moist against my cheek, a mist smelling of cigars and peppermint. I

close my eyes but still see the glow of the yellow bulb. Fingers two-step on my ankle and

shin. They squeeze the sides of the shoe and ease the shard out. The heel of my loafer

slips off of my foot, that persistent flat tire. My foot feels cool when the air hits my damp

sock.

"Do you have any bandages?" she asks.

I point toward the bathroom, never opening my eyes, afraid to see the gash, her hands,

her face.

"Where?" she asks.

I open my eyes and follow my pointing finger to the opposite wall. I am not familiar

with the angles from here.

"Oh, sorry, over there," I stutter.

She laughs her way into the bathroom. The glare of the bathroom light on the white

walls transforms her into a stick figure, a praying mantis; her arms are bent toward the

medicine cabinet. Although the pressure is gone, the gash throbs every third heart beat; it

calls me to look but I stare away. A light goes out in the bathroom, darkening the north

wing.

The outline of her frame emerges from the black, her cupped hands holding strips of

white gauze like a bridal bouquet. Under the yellow light, my skin looks jaundiced

instead of just pale. I rest my arm on my forehead to shade my eyes. I feel her breath on

the ball on my foot and sense her scrutinizing the wound.

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"Is it bad?" I ask.

"No," she giggles as she wraps the gauze around it.

Her laugh exposes a set of oversized teeth, and all but a rebellious front tooth tilt to

the left. I feel a quick tug then a pull.

"There!" she trumpets. "Finished!"

I look at my foot, at the hands on either side of the bandage presenting their

masterpiece. Tail ends of gauze poke through the entwined strand like the wrapping of a

disheveled mummy.

"Walk on it."

I lift my leg off the arm rest and, without the slightest pressure, place my foot on the

carpet. The wrap fells odd, snug. Her arms grab mine, and she yanks me to my feet. A

stabbing pain shoots up my leg and I fall back in the chair.

"What's wrong?" she cries.

"Wait...wait," I say, trying to catch my breath.

I cross my leg and twist my ankle inward. The knot that holds the gauze together digs

into the cut; she has tied the knot on the sole of my foot. A dab of blood has been

absorbed by the bandage.

"Whoops."

I stare at her overlapping front teeth and make a wish. She guides me around the

room, square-dance-style, arm in arm. On the second go-round, I pick up her purse and

wrap the strap around my arm like a tourniquet, cutting off the circulation. We enter the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. foyer and I steer her toward the front door, the gold light coming through the peephole,

this guiding star of Bethlehem. With both hands, I turn the knob and pull the door toward

me, trapping myself between it and the wall.

She unwinds the leather band that has tattooed stripes into my skin and walks through

the doorway, her skirt hanging below her hips, the way it was when she came in.

"I'll see ya," she says with a slight wink.

I close the door with my forehead and peer through the peephole. I lean into it. My

body fills-in my grease-mark outline on the wood, becoming part of the grain

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

To my left, standing crooked on the sidewalk, is a narrow teenage boy with a bowl cut, his brown glance skating the lines in the pavement at a tempo no metronome, nor I, could imitate.

His limber arms, bent legs and s-shaped torso— a wagging finger that tsks the wind— arc, bend and dive in an odd street way, wind and unwind a clear plastic rope coiled around him: the pavement's tail that snakes his length, a pliable second skin I watch him manipulate wildly.

24

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

At this “Going Out Of Business” sale, shoppers rush from one counter to the next,

grabbing and pulling red-ticket merchandise. The store is packed: more shoppers than

goods. Charmaine positions herself by a display case in the middle of the store and

watches everyone and everything. She is standing there in her favorite powder-blue

pantsuit, a polyester blend she bought because it holds a crease through several washings.

Her weight shifts from the left to the right, and she clutches her purse close to her body.

People zip past. Her tubercular cough, one she has practiced for some time, fails to

summon a single sales associate: they are busy handing-off credit cards and merchandise

to cashiers who are doing their own little mind-warp thing, a trick of the trade.

Charmaine has no credit cards and no cash, only direct-deposit receipts, some tissues, and

some hard candy. She remembers what it is like to be busy.

The flow of customers sucks her in its undertow and shoots her toward the empty

clothes racks at the front of the store where there is nothing. Twisted and turned, she

finds herself facing the store's revolving door. She hesitates before this spinning glass

chamber: the door’s rubber edging claps against the brass entrance. A centrifugal force

sucks her into an empty mobile compartment. It is large and virtually soundproof. Some

customers behind her push against the door, quickening the pace.

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This always happens to her, getting swept off her feet, getting pushed into another

time zone, another era. She tries to plant herself or scrape her shoes against the ground to

stop this sudden motion, but two women from behind keep her moving. She falls to her

knees to make a wish and to feel at one with gravity, to feel joined to something, a part of

something. Although she makes a connection, the rear partition continues to inch her

across the marble surface. Her eyes search for something to grab hold of, something to

stop this thing from moving: a fissure, a slight relief. She manages to flip around and free

her left leg and foot, and she slides the tip of her shoe into a groove between the brass

frame and the door's glass enclosure. Arcing her neck, and bending her head back, she

sees the women behind her staring elsewhere, looking out and away. She listens to her

shoe’s rubber sole skid across the glass, until she manages to hook her toe and stop the

door. The women smack, face first, into it: their lips and teeth kiss the stenciled glass.

The glass bows behind her from the weight of their bodies as they try to press forward,

but the door is jammed.

Inside the store, Lili, the owner, wonders how to get into the glass cylinder to pull the

woman out. This is an old building, not up to fire code, and the revolving door is the

only way out. The side entrance has been blocked off for some time. Money trouble.

She had to cut her store in half and lease the other part to a couple who opened a dry

cleaners. She kept the revolving door, instead of replacing it with something more

modem, figuring it gave her store character. Her business picked up because the cleaners

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never had the clothes back on time, so their customers came in to buy clean ones. But

that did not last too long. Eventually the fumes drove everyone away. A month ago she

had to seal off the adjoining door. Lili remembers that smell but quickly thinks of

something else. Idaho.

The customers are swaying around her and it is getting stuffy in the store. She

imagines ways to get the woman out: talking to her, using whatever tools she can find

behind the counter, breaking the glass with her bare hands. Should she call the police?

Scream for help? Set the whole place on fire?

A customer is still pressing against the door, sucking on a swollen lip, and the others

are crowding Lili, talking in her ear.

"She's drunk.”

"I heard she has cancer."

"Look at those shoes, that wig."

"My grandmother has that same pantsuit."

"Can she get up?"

"She doesn't want to."

"She's crazy."

"Someone dial 9-1-1."

Charmaine peers through the glass on glass on glass, this prism of light and colors:

orange and yellow. She imagines herself in a tube at a Go-Go bar, dancing. Pedestrians

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walk past her private suite, this world within a world. A few stop or do a slight skip

before picking up speed and widening their stride. Charmaine stares at one glass panel

that reflects the scene behind her. Everyone in the store is staring at her and a woman

mouths some exaggerated words. Little exterior noise penetrates the glass: Charmaine

mainly hears the sound of her own breathing. She watches her chest rise and fall, draws a

breath until her lungs are full then releases it. She takes another breath, and another, and

grows lightheaded, exhilarated.

An army of squad cars, an ambulance and a fire-rescue truck drive up to the curb in

front of the store. They park in interlocking slots, a kind of herringbone pattern, a

favorite of Charmaine's. Doors open and officers get out. A tall man with black boots

and a white helmet leads the men toward the store. He has a handlebar mustache. The

drugstore where she works sells a special wax to groom it~the display is on the counter

by her register. She will tell him about it after her rescue.

He must be the chief, she thinks. She names him Chief. The woman with the big

mouth waves him over. Chief and the woman talk with their hands, facial gestures and a

series of head nods. They are talking about her, she is sure. No one else. Two fireman

play rock-paper-scissors behind his back, whacking each other’s wrists with wetted

fingers. Charmaine laughs.

Lili is short of breath from yelling instructions through the glass, from being in

charge, being responsible. What she wants is to get out, to get away from the sea of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. customers that rocks her back and forth, to sell this business, what is left of it. and move

to Idaho, to start a mail-order house. Paper is easier to deal with than people. The cool

glass makes her believe she is breathing in fresh air, that she is in Idaho on a small farm

growing purple cabbage, a plant perfect for a winter garden. She likes the winter, the

snow and everything else.

"Get up!" yells someone from the crowd.

Lili has forgotten about her sales staff. They have blended in with the customers and

the naked mannequins, which seem to nudge one another for window space. They all

want a peek. They all want her to do something.

Charmaine watches the men in uniform rush around her. One guy is carrying a

crowbar and a sledgehammer, another the jaws of life, and they are all taking directions

from Chief. The two rookies are still at their game and appear to be oblivious to what is

going on around them. Charmaine remembers the fun she used to have at her job. She

would laugh with the pharmacist, flirt in her own way, and they would toss a nerf ball

back and forth across their counters. Every once-in-a-while, she would drop it on

purpose in order to hide behind the counter to catch her breath and let out her little girl

sigh. But then they built bulletproof windows and put in an intercom system. Now she

calls him for price checks and to tell him when she is leaving.

With a hand from one of the dummies, Lili claws at the putty line surrounding the

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drywall, the wall that covers the adjoining door, trying to break through to the cleaners on

the other side. The ceramic fingers are too thick so she uses her own. But her fingers are

no better. They begin to hurt, but she keeps at it. She imagines her hands tilling the soil

of her little garden, of digging to the nutrient-rich loam a few inches below, where she

will plant her seeds and wait for them to sprout.

The rescue team, working to get Charmaine out, maneuver themselves into place.

She realizes she has no feeling in her toe. It is asleep. Her whole leg is falling asleep.

Chief assesses the door in front of her and studies the position of the tools before they

begin to ply their way through. He mouths something to her, all teeth, lips and wiry hair,

and points to the door. She tries piecing it all together, connecting his thoughts with hers,

and she smiles back.

After a moment, he rests his hand against the door, adding a slight pressure

Charmaine can feel on her foot. He has firm hands, she thinks, masculine hands. To

release her shoe, this self-made door stopper, she contorts her foot and draws her leg into

her chest. The door moves and Chiefs body tilts slightly off center. One of the rescue

men enters the doorway and pushes it until Charmaine's compartment reaches the outside

opening. Chief lowers his hand and helps Charmaine to her feet.

Although she has been scrunched between plates of glass and crouched on the floor,

her pantsuit has held up well. From close up, she notices his mustache is in desperate

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. need of waxing. She fights the urge to reach out and touch it, to comb it down, to smooth

it with her fingers.

"I...," she stutters.

The customers explode from the store and hurry Charmaine into the crowded street.

She is out, and Lili sighs. They are all out. Lili folds her bloody fingers and slips her

hands in her pockets. She hears the sales associates behind the counter tallying their

receipts. How will she let them go when she moves to Idaho? Littered with tom-up bags

and bent wire hangers, the store looks as it did when she first bought it, only smaller.

Who would want this place? she wonders. The floors are scuffed and the mannequins are

losing their hair.

Charmaine is in the thick of it, being sifted through the crowd into the next block.

She manages to look back, to turn her head and have a rearview of Chief talking with the

woman from the store. They are the perfect date height, she thinks: the woman coming

up to his chin. It is a scene right out of a movie, one she has seen many times before.

And they are closer in age. Charmaine thinks about sending him some wax, that and a

little grooming comb. But for now she will go home and wait for tomorrow, set her work

close over her chair and remember her dream.

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

Perhaps it was your eyes, green, a pure sea foam green and those long lashes waving their signal, a subliminal Morse code that carried a message deep inside of me where shadows could not linger or grow:

it was some sort of mind control, which caught me in midblink, wasting no time in finding an opening to infect my gray matter, the way I think and keep control. And I let this happen, let you in to open this ethereal world, a world of nothing to hold.

Because I could not hold you, not even your gaze for more than that moment; it slipped off and away, looked everywhere else, and I am left alone to remember this feeling, to sleep with it, and dream with it, always.

32

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

Nearly ten feet away and I can still smell the scent of Jason's cologne. The musk-

scented fragrance mixes with his own body oils, producing Technicolor. He walks

twenty, thirty, fifty feet from me, the smell lingering. The bouquet filters through

whatever clothes I wear--satin, cotton, woel~and clings to my skin and hair like the spray

from the insecticide truck, the one all the neighborhood kids ran behind to escape the

mosquitoes; its fog called us with cloud music— an ice-cream truck's jingle; its sweet tang

coated our tongues like liquid candy and turned my ovaries the consistency of pearls.

"Hard pearls," the doctor said. I would not let her say cancer.

Jason's cologne had killed a different kind of insect: a mite, the kind that nest on

eyelashes. My eyelashes, which I pulled and pulled out every time he had told me "it

didn't matter," to stop the prick from this idle bug, which happened every night he had

the need to satisfy the urge, to follow the instinct to dive for pearls. His smell that used to

make me swoon started making me seasick. My fingers would trail to my eyebrows and

scalp. He laughed and called this my nervous habit. The shower was my only sanctuary,

a place to temporarily drown the smell; but that too took on the scent, the tiles and rug he

had paced impatiently on.

Now he walks down the sidewalk, the duffel bag I packed over his shoulder, not

33

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looking back or side to side. I watch until his shadow drifts out of sight. We used to

walk that stretch together, to the Chinese carryout and video store, so close our hips

touched, our strides in sync: Siamese twins. We would stand in the store, nibble on fried

wantons, and laugh at old videos we had watched together, repeating the dialogue word

for word: he the female lead, I the male. The video cases are marked with our grease

prints; tagged.

That was before the doctor exhumed the frozen eggs from their shrine, this tomb.

After surgery my legs were back in stirrups, draped over the doctor's shoulders. Her head

appeared to levitate above my pelvis. I hoped for such a separation of the body during

my recovery. But Jason and his smell would sit on the edge of the bed, his hand

massaging my belly, the fresh bikini-line scar, making it bum. I felt the nerve endings

trail through my body, sped along by the fragrant air that mixed with the blood in my

lungs. (I wanted it to stop.)

He walks around the comer, disappears in the shoes I gave him for Christmas, the

tags probably still on the soles. But his scent still surrounds me in Dolby stereo, reminds

me of the ring and buzz of calcified tissue hitting a metal tray. I pull the contaminated

sweater over my head and hand it to a stranger. She looks down at what she suddenly

holds in her hands. I turn and break away from my reflected image on a storefront

window, placing an equal distance between it and myself. The mosquitoes will come

now, attracted by my stagnant water, no longer repelled by Jason's cologne. No matter,

one taste and they will die.

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

Uncle T sits in the kitchen, drinking whiskey and smoking a cigarette, his two

favorite foods that have yet to give him cancer. "Good Momin' Fayetteville" blasts like a

crowing rooster from the portable TV and fills every crack and crevice of the room, the

spaces where insects hide, those that can fit. The reception is bad, the screen mostly

static, but Uncle T is more concerned with the announcer's voice, which keeps fading in

and out, giving it the sound of an emotional choke hold. Something new, something

different. Uncle T jiggles the antennae and wraps and rewraps the same piece of

aluminum foil on its ends: doing his one bit for the environment. But the sound still

flickers. Going Once, his daredevil parakeet, flies from his perch and lands on an antenna

with his beak open.

When Uncle T sticks a metal teaspoon in the bird's mouth, the screen lights up. Uncle

T sits back down to his whiskey and cigarette, listening and waiting, two things he rarely

does simultaneously. He has another cigarette and another shot of whiskey: the

cancerous particles are rinsed from his body, through his pores and hair follicles, in beads

of sweat. Still no news. The Green Grocer’s skit is on, live and in color. He is on

location at a fast-food restaurant and speaking in his Cajun way, talking of beef s

nutritional value, while a human gourd, bouncing around in the foreground,

35

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36

whistles the restaurant’s jingle. Uncle T bats a bag of peanuts around the table with a

plastic banana, praying to his fairy-tale God, the one with no memory and no motive.

Dottie West, the station's ingenue weather girl, lights up the screen with her satiny

glam rags. She is standing beside her premonition board (made of construction paper,

cotton balls, nail polish and purple glitter) when Herb, the sportscaster, a retired boxer

and once heavyweight champion of the world, walks in front of the camera, holding a

picture, upside down. Uncle T turns the volume up.

"Carrie Wright!" Herb reports. "A sixteen-year-old local girl with all the right moves

was found in the woods this morning!" He speaks in his game-day voice, one pre­

packaged, available through mail-order or infomercial, one of little craft, and one Uncle T

rarely took an interest in, until today. Uncle T hand-signals Going Once to hold still, to

not disturb the picture, the news.

"After three days of a community-wide search! A hunter who had just shot a seven-

point buck! The biggest of the season! Found her lying by the carcass! Two big catches

in one day! Everybody should run out and buy a Wildcat Deluxe Crossbow like

Gunther's! It just so happens to be on sale at Arthur's!”

Uncle T sits staring at the screen, wondering, waiting.

“Like the buck, Carrie’s time ran out!"

The color drains from Uncle T’s face like a Mood Ring, a ring he once wore that

stayed black.

"She was such a bright, sunny girl," Dottie says, trying to maneuver herself in front of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37

the camera, in front of Herb. "She had a crisp fifty-eight-degree disposition," she

continues, pointing over at today’s weather which is calibrated in graphs and numbers.

"Her soul will have no trouble making it to heaven on this clear day.”

Uncle T moves closer to the screen and cocks his head to the side, getting a better

view of Carrie’s upside-down photograph. This is an old picture, at least three years old.

taken when she had braces. She is dressed in her campfire uniform and campfire hat.

Blue was her color. It matched the blue flecks in her eyes, the eyes staring through the

screen, staring at Uncle T as he sits in his kitchen with drawn curtains. She keeps him

there for a moment, holds him until the his eye begins to twitch. Hers remain frozen.

Without diverting his gaze, he lifts his pre-formed fist and places it on the screen,

covering her big-toothed smile. He does not remember her like that. His last image is of

her fog-white skin running through the woods, her screams like giggles, her breasts bare.

He throws the banana at the TV, sending Going Once back to his perch. The screen

returns to snow.

Uncle T opens the front door and Going Once flies out into the afternoon air. Fem is

watching him from across the way, from her screened carport that sits out from the rest of

the carbon copy houses on the street. Everyone’s yard is exposed to her.

"Hi, Uncle Tom," a kid calls from his front yard. He and his friends are two houses

down from Fern's, twisting balloons into giraffes and deformed genitalia.

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"Heylittlecritters," he replies with lightning speed, the speed that has made him

famous.

The kids giggle; one so hard he inhales his balloon.

"Knock it off, you infertile chimps!" Fern yells. “You're gonna give me vagina!"

She sips her iced tea, pinky extended like the ladies in her Town & Country

Magazine. The women make it look so natural, as if their fingers were formed that way.

but for Fern it takes a conscious effort, especially when her leg hurts. She sucks up an ice

cube and rubs it on the fresh dog bite on her calf. The kids let out a few sparse cries as

they thrash one another with their balloons. Fem flips them the bird. Her husband, Ed,

walks across the front yard in his bathrobe and slippers, across her line of vision, his thin

frame casting no shadow. He has her midday dinner on a TV tray.

"They found that girl in the woods," he tells Fem.

"I knew he left her there," she says. "He had that woodsy look about him last night."

Ed just nods his head and walks off as he always does, leaving Fern's curses of him

unanswered, like all the doctor's visits and fertility tests. But that never stops her, the

tests or her ranting.

She sits in the Naugahyde chair that faces the street, the only piece of furniture in her

sanctuary, and pulls the food tray closer. Their chihuahua, Chi Chi, sitting over in the

comer, squats on the cement floor, making another puddle.

"Damn bitch," growls Fem.

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Chi Chi shows Fem her eye-teeth, which glisten with saliva. Fem throws some steak

already cut into bite-size pieces at her, and they both sit back and inhale their dinner.

Uncle T pulls his truck out of the driveway and toots his hom at the kids running

crazy in the street. Fem gives him the Italian salute, as she always does whenever his car

rides past, night or day. She is left sitting there staring at her empty egg-shaped plate that

reflects her profile. Her face looks swollen. She stretches her legs under the TV tray and

lifts her arms from her sides like a mechanical doll whose strings are being pulled. The

buzz of the mosquitoes clinging to the screen's tight mesh drowns out the noise of the

neighborhood kids and passing cars, and she falls asleep.

With Going Once, like a little Saint Christopher planted on the dashboard, Uncle T

maneuvers his truck down the center of the highway, aligning the hood’s ornament with

the yellow divider line. Gold is on either side of the road, stalks of wheat that cover the

expansive fields. Those closest to the road bend as the truck speeds by, wave him on his

way. Up on the right is a billboard freshly painted. Carrie’s picture, the one seen on TV,

is plastered across it, that and a toll-free number. Her eyes seem to follow his car as it

travels down the road, moves it a bit off course, veers it to the left until it shoots past. A

mile up the highway is another sign, then another and another. Four miles down, he turns

into the entrance of the Farmer's Market. He is working on autopilot, weaving through

hoards of people and parked cars. His hands, twelve o'clock high, jerk on the steering

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40

wheel as he listens to the radio announcer giving the details of Carrie's death, the

description of the marks on her body. The truck wobbles.

"Macrame scratches....broken bones." Going Once echoes in stereo.

Children wave at Uncle T as he cruises past in his 4x4 with mudflaps clicking. He

nods to a little girl chewing her pigtail. The front gate to the reserved lot opens with a

wave of his hand, and he parks his car in his regular spot near the side entrance. Before

closing the door, he whistles to Going Once who flies out and lands on his shoulder.

Cow manure litters the open arena, and he manages to step in one mound after another.

The crowd roars as he walks to the podium, which magnifies the broadcaster’s words that

replay over and over in his head. An attendant parades the first cow around the arena, to

the jeers of the crowd. The cow is mostly bone with a distended utter, an old dairy cow

with blue eyes. Nothing much. But Uncle T knows that if anyone can sell this cow, this

has-been, he can. The rush is the chemo to his cancer, a vaporous drug he breathes, one

he can not OD on no matter how often he uses it. He steps behind the mike and hushes

the crowd.

"OK! Who'll-start-me-off-with-200-for -this-ol'-gal?" he asks.

To the roar of the crowd, the bid cards wave throughout the arena.

"I-got-200," he says, pointing his finger like a loaded revolver.

"Who'll-give-me-250-250-250?"

Again, another bull's-eye. The kids mimic his quick draw.

"300-300-300?"

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The cow moos half-heartedly to a crowd out of control.

A spotlight from a cruising squad car shines in the carport, startling Fem from her

dream of earthworms and cream cakes. She jumps out of the chair where she has been

waiting for Uncle T to return home. In the spotlight, she can see the mosquitoes zeroing

in on her. She swats them away, and Chi Chi grabs hold of the hem of her dress, keeping

her weighted. The squad car steers into her driveway and parks. She recognizes the

driver, the young lieutenant, the rookie. He gets out of the car, leaving the headlights on

Fem and aiming the spotlight's white sphere at the wood fence in the side yard, beside

Chi Chi's empty doghouse.

"Have you come for him, young buck?" Fem asks with a constipated grin, a failed

come-hither look she has tried over and over with little success.

"Who?" asks the lieutenant.

"Killerboy across the street. Motor mouth."

"The auctioneer?"

"Never trust a man that talks that fast," she says. "Besides, he has an eye for young

girls. I've seen them hanging around his house. You need to lock up that cancer."

Fem spies Uncle T's car rolling down the street to his driveway as she talks to the

lieutenant.

"The neighbors tell me you used to throw stones at her," says the lieutenant.

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"That little campfire girl? Prancing around here in that skimpy uniform. The boys

sniffing behind her. Her and her ovaries. The little bitch in heat. She got what was

coming to her, but what about him? Goin' off to work as if nothing happened."

The lieutenant steps back, and she hears him call for backup, hears him telling them

her address. She watches lights go on and off down the block, a symphony of white that

flicker like a swarm fireflies buzzing over and around Uncle T's darkened house with the

shades drawn tight.

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

"Mama says I'm getting a sex change," Gene begins, spitting words into the receiver.

"I'm gonna be a hermaphrodite. She says it'll make me more attractive, more salable.

She read about some showgirl on the strip who had it done. I saw her picture. You can

hardly tell. She had on a bathing suit and white hair. Mama says she's got a headlining

act and a Mafia guy to prove it. She looked real nice, too. Mama read the words under

the picture to me: 'Having it all.' Money's all we need, Mama says. Tonight, when she

services the slots, she's gonna pick the lock on the money box. I told you they won't give

her the key. Someone follows her around to empty it. She thinks it's because she has a

prison record. Says she's gonna sue them for hearsay, for eavesdropping when she told a

friend about her record. That's if my cut doesn't work. Mama's sure it will, though. Just

one cut and BAM! We're going to the doctor tomorrow. She says it won't hurt much. So

I won't be over tomorrow. Frances? Are you there? I can't hear you breathing."

Frances hangs up the phone and grabs her macrame bag, the only one she has, the one

with her favorite picture in it. She likes Gene but hates talking on the telephone: the

receiver hurts her ear and his bodiless voice scares her. The smoke detector goes off in

the kitchen where her mother is baking her another birthday cake, lemon-lime,

43

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the second one this year. Decorations still hang in the dining room from yesterday's

part>r: paper streamers and deflated balloons. The balloons are puckered and sun

bleached, but her mother, as always, will untie the knots and reinflate them. She has

given Frances twice as many birthday parties as her eighteen years warrant, confusing

her. And what of the other things, Frances wonders, the twin cakes stacked high, a

Leaning Tower over in the comer, and the matching gift boxes, trinkets still unopened?

Frances has a clear shot at the open front door and goes for it, running hard and flat-

footed onto the cement landing. In the sunlight, she feels the heat ignite her red hair and

bring her freckles to life, feels them form into one brown blotch across her nose and

under her eyes. She stops and looks both ways before descending the front stoop. When

she gets to the mailbox at the end of the drive, she taps the blacktop with her foot, the

same way she tests her bath water, and looks off into the distance. Seeing no trace of an

oncoming car, she run-walks across the street, catty-comer, to Gene's house. Gene is

sitting in the bay window behind a TV tray covered with soda cans and half-empty bags

of cheese puffs. He waves at Frances to come in, but she has another plan, something

more exciting than watching TV.

Cutting the comer to his side yard, she casts her eyes at the 7-Eleven just down the

embankment. Rocks and sticker bushes obstruct parts of the man-made trail that leads to

the rear of the store, so she aligns and realigns herself carefully.

"Frances!" Gene yells from his back porch, which rests on only three legs. "Frances!"

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But her concentration is unyielding. Leaving his shouts unanswered, she slides her

sandaled feet down the path cross-country style, but without poles, her eyes locked on the

flickering store sign. Out of the comer of her eye, she sees the tail end of a blue sedan

pull out of the now-vacant lot. She stops in mid-slide, like the Muybridge model in her

mother's art book, and begins to hyperventilate, fearing the store has closed. But she

notices a red ten-speed bike propped against the building and leaps from the foot-high

mound at the end of the path to the parking lot below. Her huaraches chatter on the

blacktop as she rims to the entrance.

Inside, a clerk watches blue ice spin in the clear window of the Slurpee machine, its

deep hum making the store's silence more noticeable.

"Cigarettes," Frances says.

The clerk jumps, faces her and sighs.

"Cigarettes," Frances repeats with a blank stare, her body and jaw feeling as stiff as a

ventriloquist's puppet. All of this running.

The clerk picks up the phone and presses the second button on the automatic dial

panel.

"Frances is here," the clerk says into the receiver. "OK."

Frances can hear the faint whisper of her mother's voice coming through the phone.

"Your mom says to go home," says the clerk in a wobbly voice. "Go home, Frances."

In the examining room, Gene sits, spins, and rolls around on a stool with the heart of

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a traveler as his mother sits perched on the examining table. She has her wrists crossed

on her lap, an expired Medicaid card with the date rubbed off in one hand and a plastic

bag filled with coins, two hundred or so, in the other. Gene plays bumper cars with the

wall and desk, his long, bent legs absorbing the impact. A swat to the back of the head

with her bag of money leaves his ears ringing. The doctor enters in mid-whack, glancing

at his chart, at the squiggles Gene saw the receptionist make with her pen as his mother

spelled hermaphrodite.

"Which one of you am I seeing today?" he asks.

"The boy," replies Gene's mother. "He wants to be a hermaphrodite."

"Oh, I see," the doctor says.

Gene is all spidery on the stool with those long limbs that have been growing for

fifteen years.

"This is news,” the doctor says to Gene’s mother. “I'm a GP. I don't do surgery. But

we can certainly talk."

"What do you mean?" asks Gene's mother.

"You'll need to see a specialist, someone in South Dakota or Tennessee."

"He just needs a cut. Can't you cut him?"

"I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than that."

"I’d do it myself, but I want it done right. It has to work."

"I understand your concern, but I strongly warn against such actions. Son, why do

you want this operation?"

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"Mama said it's gonna make us rich. I like money, quarters mostly. Money and

Frances."

"Shut up. Gene! What did I tell you about that Frances?"

"She’s dead weight," he replies with his fingers crossed.

"I'm going to recommend that you see a clinical friend of mine," the doctor says.

Frances stands in front of the medicine cabinet, staring at her reflection in the mirror.

Her pupils disintegrate into yellow irises under what feels like a 200-watt bulb. She

steadies her hand close to her eye, holding the right half of her eyeglasses by the frame-

the left half has been missing for some time. Her eyes, four in number, the two she sees

and her own pair, continue their blank stare. The reflected image pulls away from its

two-dimensional surface, breaks through and levitates before her in 3-D: a joyous out-of-

body experience that leaves her expressionless. She stares without blinking at this twin,

this soul sister, this female friend she never had, one with cheekbones, chin, and pug

nose, a face that no longer looks like the flat impression on a coin but one with contour

and shadows, someone who will open the old gifts and eat the dried-up birthday cakes.

She can hear her mother on the other side of the bathroom door blowing air, no doubt

tainted with peppermint schnapps, into balloons: the rubber creaks as it grows taut. She

sends telepathic brain waves to her reflected counterpart, telling it to pop the balloons and

look for Gene. This image reminds her of someone, someone other than herself but very

much her, someone who has been missing for eighteen years but has always been a part

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of her. Not God but someone even better. The person whose name is always on the other

cake.

"Come out of there, Frances," yells her mother between puffs. "We're almost ready to

start your party, me and Kitty."

"Sit still!" Gene's mother yells.

Gene lies on the kitchen table, his pants around his ankles, his mother standing over

him. Her hand is shaking, and he watches the fragments of light reflect off the knife and

dance on his bare skin. His torso lifts and falls with each rushed breath as his mother

pulls one leg free from his pants the way she did when he was a baby. Half naked, he

sees his father but with less body hair. She spreads his legs.

"I'll buy you tons of cheese puffs," she says. "As soon as the check comes in."

She moves his penis to one side. Only a little slit, just big enough to make a hole, he

hears her say under her breath.

"No!" Gene yells, covering his slight erection with his hands, kicking his mother

away.

With his pants wrapped around his ankle and his mother screaming behind him, he

runs for the door, the same way he saw his father leave five years ago. But there is no

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mystery woman running out after him, chasing him as if her life depended on it, away

from his mother and a kitchen knife.

"Cigarettes," Frances says.

The store is always empty when Frances walks in.

"No," the clerk says.

"Cigarettes," she repeats in her sleepwalking way.

The clerk reaches for the phone, and she sees him push the second button.

"Cigarettes," she repeats, hearing the distinct buzz of a busy signal through the

receiver.

The clerk hangs up and tries again.

Then, as if suddenly not caring, he hands her a box of Marlboros. She opens her bag,

empty except for the wrinkled magazine ad, and drops the box inside.

Gene sits in a tree behind Frances' house, his long legs dangling over a tree branch

like a wish bone. He is watching her mother through a kitchen window. She is standing

by the dining room table with a glass raised in a toast. He saw his mother do this after his

father had been missing for three years, but her mouth was not open and her lips were not

moving like Frances' mother; in fact, she wouldn't speak to Gene for days no matter what

face he tried. Frances' mother is swinging her arms around now, like the guy on

Lawrence Welk, spilling mint-green liquid and dousing the candles on the cake.

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Gene likes to watch her do this, it makes him laugh, especially when she bends over,

wraps her arms around thin air, and fakes a kiss. Frances tugs on his leg and he falls from

the tree.

Behind the 7-Eleven, Gene and Frances crouch near a dumpster. Frances pulls the ad

from her macrame bag and they both stare at it. They position themselves on the grass

the same way the couple does in the crumpled ad they have memorized. Frances rolls the

pack of cigarettes in her hand. The plastic wrapper crackles under her fingers, and she

dumps the cigarettes on the ground. Gene picks one from the pile and hands it to her.

She clenches it between her teeth. They embrace and hold their pose, lying with their

bodies facing each other, arms draped over each other's shoulders and their legs entwined.

Frances holds her breath, assuming the models were doing the same in the picture. She

tilts her head toward the sky, and they lie frozen in time, bodies joined in the afternoon

sun.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WHIP-SMART

Clasping me by the throat, he spun me around the room for hours, so fast the air grew thin. My legs, outstretched and locked at the knees, tried to lasso the chair, the counter top. Sometimes my toes grazed the floor, touched down to trace and retrace Olympic rings in the carpet, and I forever wished my nails razor sharp to open the floor.

As day skidded into night I focused on my mother’s head nodding methodically, keeping time with my winded note, off-key, at peak crescendo.

51

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The family room was empty. All the furniture had been removed except for the couch

my father was sitting on. Although he sat alone, then and always, he never sat in the

middle cushion: his spot was on the end closest to the TV with his feet up on the coffee

table. He was sitting in that spot when the paramedics walked into the room and stood

around him.

I did not recognize them. They were not the ones who had come the last time or the

time before that. They were wearing the customary navy blue uniform, though. My

father did not seem to notice them there, or anything else. His olive-colored skin was a

darker hue; it had the look of having been dipped in formaldehyde. His violent side, the

only one I knew, was undetectable, etherized.

My brother Eric and I were on the porch, watching everything through the open

French doors. It was our private puppet show, except this time the paramedics were

stand-ins for my father's Punch and my mother's Judy. We were supposed to have gone

outside. We were always supposed to go outside when the paramedics came, and we

usually did. Not this time, though. Something was different in the way he looked, the

blank expression on his face, the way he replied to the questions slowly if at all. His

mind seemed to wander, his edge gone.

52

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I could hear the gang calling us from the driveway. They probably wanted to finish

the basketball game, the one the ambulance had interrupted. I heard them dribbling the

ball; it had made a funny rattling sound ever since the pin from the air hose broke inside

of it.

Eric ran out the porch door, leaving me alone to stare at my father. He always ran off.

He could always sense my distractions, when my mind was on things other than him. and

he would take off, getting me in trouble for not watching him. I hated him for that, that

and everything else. The paramedics were on either side of my father, bookends that kept

him from slumping. They moved at half-speed, lifting his arms, unbuttoning his shirt,

and loosening the belt around his waist. He sat there with that bewildered look on his

face. My mother walked into the doorway and shooed me away.

Somehow, as always, Eric and I managed to get into a fight as soon as I got outside.

Our friends called us The Fight Brothers. We would fight over anything, over nothing. It

was not odd that we had each other in headlocks when the stretcher was wheeled onto the

driveway. My father didn't seem to notice anyway. He looked like he had fallen asleep

with his eyes open. I unlocked Eric's head to wave goodbye: "Bye Dad." We all waved.

All of us said goodbye.

I do not remember much after that. Not until our neighbor, Mrs. Morrisey, came

down the street to get us. It never occurred to me that she had never done that before:

come looking for us. She must have had training as an actress. She showed no emotion,

no hint of the news ahead. Maybe she hated my father, many people did. We were all

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. afraid of him. The gang would hide when he pulled his mint-green Thunderbird into our

neighborhood every evening at 5:15. It was easily detected from anywhere. No one in

our neighborhood had a car like that. They only produced twenty in the entire country

before it was discontinued.

Mrs. Morrisey had to pry us away from our football game. We refused to go home

unless our friend came with us. With him there nothing would happen. My mother did

not let people see her hit us, that was something she did in private. She would wait until

we got in the house or in the car: she thought it disgusting that some parents disciplined

their children in public. As we headed home, Eric and I began to race. I kept looking

over my shoulder at Mrs. Morrisey and our friend who were falling further and further

behind; they appeared to have stopped. But Eric never gave up, even though I was two

years older and two years faster. Of course I won.

We got home to find everyone seated at the kitchen table: mother, sister, and

grandmother. It was our first family meeting. Otherwise, we never sat at the table,

except during meals. My mother came right out with it: "Your father's dead." She was

not one to hold back, to cushion. Or perhaps the moment overpowered her good sense-

three teenagers staring from all angles could intimidate anyone. The tears rushed out. I

had cried before, mostly after night-terrors, but this was different. No sense of panic

preceded it. They just flowed. Funny, I had not thought about my father in days. I used

to visit him—well, was made to visit him-while he was in the hospital, to see him hooked

up to all kinds of machines, with tubes up his nose and needles stuck in his bruised arms.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But not his last stay. His doctor had him transported up north to Kennelworth Hospital,

three hours away. He wanted him close. My mother had to go solo.

My brother, sister and I cried over the news but not my mother and grandmother.

Maybe my mother had cried on her way home. His heart had convulsed and stopped

while she was in transit, on her way to see him after he was transported. She arrived at

the hospital, heard the news, then turned around and drove back home. Perhaps fatigue

played a small part in her cool exterior. And my grandmother, she was always too

indifferent to cry, until she developed glaucoma years later.

We only sat there for a few minutes. Strangely enough, I had taken my father’s seat at

the head of the table. I could sense what a stretch it must have been for him to reach over

and punch me, to smack the back of my head over a whisper loud enough for him to hear;

it had appeared easy. I guessed this was the proper place for me, considering I was the

eldest son of a deceased Italian man. But my arms were not long enough or meaty

enough to keep everyone in order.

My sister was the first to run off, not just from the table but from the family: two

weeks later she left to live in the woods with her boyfriend, the guy my father had

slammed the door on. After my sister went, Eric left the table to cry to our friend, the one

who had followed us home. But I sat with my mother and grandmother. Time dragged.

They started mumbling something to each other, something about a viewing and not

bringing us kids. I sat at the end of the table, invisible, as invisible as my now-dead

father. To think I had raced home to learn he had died, to sit there, invisible. I had the

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urge to run out the back door like my brother, to get away from the table and leave the

news behind me. But when I got to the backdoor I got stuck. I could not figure out how

to open the glass door, that clear force field, and stop crying. I held the tears back for a

split second, but lost control again. I tried this four times without success. Finally, I held

them back. I focused and forced them back, made them withdraw to somewhere inside of

me.

This was a trick that came in handy—keeping the tears hidden, absorbed by my

internal organs and their connective tissue—and one I was to use over and over again

through the years: when I was evicted during finals, when my daughter was bom. It was

as if I managed to divert them, channel them elsewhere.

I decided to teach my daughter, Clover, the same thing, how not to cry-it not only

had to be out of me but away from me. She used to cry over everything: when the video

tape ended, when a leaf fell from a tree, when I parted her hair too far to the right. These

were not just tears but movements. She would put her whole body behind them, drooping

her head and heaving from her pelvis, accentuating every drop.

"No, honey," I would whisper. "You'll wake the butterflies."

Clover hated butterflies, how they flew toward her, how they flittered near her face.

Whenever I sensed her tears were on their way, whether we were in the grocery store, the

bathroom or in the car, I would remind her of the butterflies.

“No, Sweetie. You’ll wake the butterflies.”

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As soon as Clover would hear this, her blue eyes would widen, take up most of her

round face, and she would look all around, the tears stopping in midstream.

"Where?" she would ask.

I had tried bribing her with lollipops, the same trick I used on some of my younger,

less experienced patients. But it only stopped her the first few times. After that, she

would suck the lollipop and continue to cry. I think it made the tears taste better: sweet

and sour.

I worried over the butterfly thing, I worried it would end when she got old enough to

understand that they did not nest behind cans of tomato puree or emerge from lukewarm

bath water. So I told her stories, stories of yellow pigs who played the piano and of

ponies who built their own houses, for her to keep in the back of her mind that maybe,

maybe butterflies were everywhere.

The stories started out with ordinary animals, the ones from her barnyard play set:

cows, chickens, horses, pigs. We would sit on the floor and I would draw them on her

Etch-a-Sketch. At first I had trouble making them look like anything other than black

smears, but I got better with practice. Eventually, I could draw things with her head

blocking my view. She liked to sit close to the screen, so close I could feel her breath on

my hands while they twisted the knobs.

As she grew a little older, I had to venture into the wild for more unusual animals.

We were on aardvarks who designed and sculpted their own pottery, and koala bears who

knitted afghans from palm leaves when I stopped, when I let her go back to crying.

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John, a kid from down the street, had dropped by one day. I had known him for about

three months, but not very well; he would come over a couple times a month, usually at

night after his shift at a convenience store, and only if Clover's shades were drawn and

my wife's parking space was empty. He only liked to talk with me when I was alone. I

guess there were less distractions then. We usually talked about his job search and its

lack of success.

“Why don’t these people call?” he would ask.

“Maybe they have rotary dial phones,” I would reply. "It takes longer to get through."

He would tell me how things were at home or about the boredom he suffered at work,

but nothing specific. Surface stuff in no particular sequence. Whatever he talked about,

he had a hard time getting comfortable in his chair. He never sat still. He was either

leaning forward, leaning back, slouching over or hanging off the side, all within seconds

of one another. And if he was not tapping the table with his fingers he was kicking the

floor with his foot. He fidgeted so much that the carpet under his chair became spotted

and worn.

“Have some sugar,” I would say, sliding the sugar bowl across the table.

"A little extra sucrose."

We would both laugh and sit somewhat easier. But he was never truly at ease. When

he talked, even if his body stopped moving, his eyes were preoccupied; he would look

around the room or stare at something on the table. Our eyes rarely met. I wanted him to

look at me while he stirred, to look into my eyes so he would relax, but as soon as he

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looked at me I wanted him to look away, to look somewhere else like I had wanted

Clover not to cry.

But his last visit was not like the others. There was no wrapping on the door with his

key, no static in his step. He seemed calm. I wondered if he was on something. He

walked in and sat at the far end of the rectangular table, one seat down from his usual

spot and two seats away from me. He was in another meridian. I moved from my seat at

the head of the table to the one next to him and scooted it in close. He was still; only his

hands moved to tug at his pant legs. His glance never left the ground, but I sensed that he

saw me in his periphery, that he needed to look at me but could not.

“What’s wrong,” I asked.

I saw the outline of his jaw clench and release, clench and release under his paper-thin

skin, his hole frame seethe from the pressure of whatever was buried under there; it

slipped out in the little coughs and grunts he made to keep from exploding.

"What?" I found myself saying over and over. I held my breath every once and a

while to break the rhythm of my own voice.

Moving in close and closer still, almost falling onto his lap, I hoped to bend into his

gaze. I stooped down to Clover's height and looked up at his face.

"What?" I asked.

His glance met mine and we held each other's stare. One look into him and I knew;

he was using all the strength he possessed to keep closed, to hold the tears inside no

matter how much it hurt. The room seemed to orbit outside these blue spheres, and their

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gravitational pull stopped me from looking away. I wanted to close my eyes, to imagine

butterflies but could not. I felt like I was in a film that had been taped at super speed but

was playing back in slow motion: I was back at the glass door staring at my reflection.

Something tore inside of me. My eyes grew hot. I fumbled for his hand, found his

fingers, entwined them in mine and held on.

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