Hamilton Stone Review #20
Fiction
Jack Dowling
Curtain Time
Tagging along behind a large disorganized group fussing about for their tickets, Cherlyn wiggled past and into the Joyce Theater where, slipping swiftly down the aisle, she took an empty seat in a row near the stage. She had the manner and look of familiarity. If she glanced toward you, you wondered if you'd met her before...was she, perhaps, a friend of a friend? She appeared to be nicely dressed; a dark, gray dress and bright, creative costume jewelry. She easily seemed to be part of the fashionable, New York, contemporary dance audience. Even more so with the fringed turquoise shawl studded with tiny, silver mirrors that she wore as a wrap over her shoulders.
As she leafed through the program, a nice looking young man excused himself in order to get to the seat on her right. She pulled her knees aside and after he settled himself, she turned toward him and said softly, "I was afraid you'd be late."
Those sitting nearby, who overheard, smiled at one another and looked with approval at the handsome young couple. But, the fellow to whom she'd spoken was dumbfounded. He looked around to see if she could possibly have been addressing someone else. But no one responded. Uneasy, he sat back, convinced now that he must have misunderstood what the woman had said. He glanced toward her, forced a small tentative smile then opened his program, wondering at the same time who on earth she could be. He noticed from the corner of his eye that her skirt hem was a bit frayed. Her shoes, Cuban heeled, were scuffed at the front edges and the shawl had an odd odor, a musty smell like that of a laundry basket. He re-focused on the playbill and sat as low and small as he possibly could without losing sightline to the stage.
Cherlyn too continued to examine her playbill reading the dancers biographies and the titles of the dances to be performed.
After a soft sounding gong, and just before the lights dimmed, an usher came swiftly down the aisle with a well dressed older woman. They were hurrying her to her seat before the performance began. They stopped and the usher again checked the woman's ticket. He then leaned in the row toward Cherlyn, and, whispering politely asked to see Cherlyn's ticket stub. Cherlyn ignored him. He asked again a little more firmly. Cherlyn again ignored him. He asked the people in the aisle seats to allow him into the row and they shifted about giving him room. Bending down toward Cherlyn, almost face to face, he politely asked to see her ticket stub, his manner suggesting that Cherlyn had not heard him in the low buzz of theatre conversation.
With the usher standing in the row and those around listening intently, Cherlyn turned to the young man on her right, smiled and said, "Show him the stubs."
The startled fellow stared at Cherlyn a moment then looked up at the waiting usher. "We're not together. I have my own ticket. I'm here by myself."
The usher continued to lean in toward them indicating that he needed an explanation. "We're not together," the young man repeated. "I don't know this woman,” nodding at Cherlyn with a sharpened glance. "I don't know her at all."
"May I see your stub then, sir?”
"This is ridiculous. I just arrived. This woman was already sitting here." And turning to Cherlyn as he rummaged through his pockets, he raised his normally quiet voice, “I have never seen you before...please leave me out of this."
Cherlyn continued looking down at her program in silence.
By now the house manager had come down the aisle concerned about this delay. Those sitting in nearby rows murmured to one another, confused about what was going on...did the theatre overbook? Had she misplaced her stub? What kind of fellow was she with? How could he let things get out of hand like this?
The woman waiting in the aisle was becoming impatient.
Finding his stub the young man stretched his arm out behind the heads of those in the row in front of him, never letting it out of his grasp, and presented it to the usher.
"Thank you sir, the usher said as he returned it. Then addressing Cherlyn the usher said more firmly, “I need to see a stub for your seat too, ma'am."
Meanwhile, the manager had escorted the waiting woman to a house seat further down the aisle and then rushed back. After a brief exchange with the usher, the usher left and, as the lights began to dim, the manager leaned in and whispered to Cherlyn, "I am sorry, but if you do not give up the seat, I have no choice but to call the police." Cherlyn turned toward him, smiling and said. "If that's what you want to do, do it…make a fuss." He stiffened then walked back up the aisle.
The theatre darkened, the curtain rose and the performance began. After a few moments Cherlyn bent her head toward the young man, now rigid in his seat, staring straight ahead, his nerves obviously on edge. "It's going to be a wonderful evening. I've read that the company is exceptional. We are in for a real treat."
Then she reached for his hand.
Sybil Kollar
Stalkers
The classroom window was open and a pigeon lay twitching on the floor in front of the backboard. Iris's tallest student was hunched over its tiny body. He pulled the red bandana from his head, wrapped it around his hand and held it over the pigeon's beak until the body stilled. Iris quickly walked to the window and slammed it shut before more pigeons decided to do away with themselves in her English class. This mercy killing was the highlight of Iris's school year so far. The bell rang and after the room emptied, she noticed that someone had drawn an outline in chalk around the pigeon.
Jason was nodding and chewing in concentration as if absorbing Iris's story along his digestive tract. She knew he thought teaching in an urban high school where a teacher had been set on fire was depressing. His favorite blue striped tie was thrown over his shoulder where the roast lamb couldn't get at it, his school ring glinting in the restaurant's candlelight. Iris watched his mouth, a mouth she had always thought beautiful. It was the anniversary of their first meeting, and with some anxiety Jason gave up his night of Tuesday food-shopping to celebrate. When the check would arrive, Jason would pay in cash ridding himself of the worn bills first. On the way to Jason's apartment, Iris wondered if that was going to happen to her replacement.
The bedroom smelled of shoe-polish and the air-conditioner made a soft sputtering sound. Jason's cameras were arranged on a table in size order, it seemed.
In the dark they looked like little Buddhas. Iris stroked Jason's arm that rested on her stomach and thought of the first time he had undressed her on his thirty-sixth birthday. He had told her that his father owned a horse and that his mother sleepwalked. Sleepwalking intrigued and frightened Iris and left her alert to Jason's sleep patterns. She had been relieved that he wasn't still living at home-a dark and brooding place with a view of Greenwood cemetery filled with the famously dead. His childhood room now housed his mother's three looms.
Iris listened to Jason's breathing and was tempted to place a finger on the pulse of his right hand. She worried that every time he walked into work, his blood pressure would soar and wondered if the little white pill he swallowed every day was enough to stem the weight of his blood. Jason had the Nikon account. Thrilled with their underwater camera, he became skilled at scuba diving finding relief in weightlessness and solace in its eerie silence. He had found a home beneath the earth, and here Iris was-right next to him as he slept his lips parted as if about to speak.
She had met Jason she named the Day of the Dragonfly where a student had broken off part of a chair and threatened to kill a dragonfly that had wandered into the classroom.
She had warned him he would fail the class, but he thwacked it dead anyway. Iris couldn't make good on her threat-failing a student for killing a bug. Weeks later, when she told Jason about this his lips parted in the same way as in sleep, and in both modes he remained mute. They had met that night on the Staten Island Ferry where Jason was taking photographs of the water and Iris had been riding out her usual insomnia. At first, when she saw his body bent over the railing she had thought that the figure in the baggy jeans and dark shirt was going to throw himself overboard. She moved closer to grab him by his belt when he suddenly turned toward her his camera clicking. When he had lifted his face above the camera, Iris had noticed his mouth first-a slight overbite, the lips full. He had snapped her picture-her features she imagined flattened out into one dimension. That was seven years ago, and Jason was still wrapped in silence.
Iris sat watching his brownstone from the park bench across the street under cover of low-hanging trees. It would be humiliating if Jason were to spot her waiting for him when every day of his week was accounted for except Thursday. The light on the second floor front room was always on but, so far, she had never seen him enter or leave the house. She imagined him working in his darkroom but that was Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. When she glanced at her hands, they were like her mother's and perhaps there was a gene for what she was doing. She was afraid of the word stalking but that is what her mother had done to a man she had lived with for two years. Her mother had seemed pleased when he got an order of protection against her as if this gave her power she could not get any other way.
Iris knew how it felt to be followed and watched-the nights with no sleep. It had started when a strangely quiet near-sighted student in her class had followed her into the women's bathroom waving what he said was a book report-a book report that turned out to be a pornographic long poem that on one level frightened Iris and on another had impressed her with its originality. But he had started calling her at all hours of the night and showing up everywhere on a beat-up bicycle. It took a lawyer threatening a lawsuit against the school to have him expelled. Iris had moved to an apartment near the Staten Island Ferry but still found sleeping difficult.
She dreaded Thursdays and each week was determined to stop herself from even walking in Jason's neighborhood. But here she was again on a warm spring night and the benches near her seemed to have some of the same people each week, and she wondered how many of them were there to watch or wait for someone. The week before, she spotted the head of the science department with his arm around either his daughter or one of his students. The girl had reminded Iris of the Road of the Sad Dog-a path she used to walk with her brother during their childhood summers in the country. Their other choice had been the Road of the Bad Dog-a nasty hound that bared his teeth at them that her brother had found exciting. Toward the end of that summer, he was to pick up a big stick and send the Bad Dog sailing through the air his shrill yelp ringing in their ears.
At the end of her vigil, Iris imagined herself climbing the brownstone steps, silently standing in front of his apartment and banging on the door with her brother's big stick.
The darkroom glowed red and Iris watched as Jason arranged the gleaming metal trays like Buddhas. He carefully filled them from plastic jugs marked Hypo and Developer. As he held the third tray under running water, Iris thought she was going to gag from the rancid odor that filled the small room--a room that for him was a sanctuary and to her--a place of bad air. While he worked, she knew he would forget that she was there, and now she couldn't leave because it would flood the room with light and ruin his negatives. And yet the reddish glow was somehow soothing like a child's nightlight. Her memory of a nightlight in the shape of an elephant was when it was no longer there, and somehow she thought her father had taken it the day he disappeared. So he would remember her.
The tiny room was lined with shelves arranged with clearly marked chemicals and stacked with color-coded paper and boxes of varying sizes like large children's blocks. Tucked in a corner of the highest shelf was the stuffed ferret she had won at a shooting gallery. Jason had accepted it reluctantly because he had felt it was her trophy, but she knew it would remind him of her taste for shooting, and it was something he probably found mildly disturbing. Jason housed the ferret in cellophane to keep it either dust-free or at bay. Iris remembered the hours he had spent setting up the darkroom and now that everything was in place, he could lose himself in the work-something she envied. She imagined that for him it was a little like being under water but with the added comfort of controlled darkness.
Iris watched as his fingers gently touched the paper as it floated in the trays and waited for something to surface. The first image was a coral reef with masses of fish swarming upward and Iris thought the fish menacing and wondered if Jason had felt that as he filmed them. She hesitated to ask because it would somehow violate the unspoken code of silence. She wondered how long Jason had waited underwater for the right school of fish to go by before getting the shot.
She was beginning to feel claustrophobic and stepped back toward the door as if she needed air that was not his but neutral. Sometimes she felt that this was territory she wasn't sure was friendly or hostile. She leaned against the door and watched the outline of Jason's back. He was working on a second sheet while the photo of the fish was hanging overhead to dry. Iris had seen hundreds of his underwater scenes and was beginning to find them repetitious. It was close to midnight and Iris had a long way to go before a few hours of fitful sleep would come. When she looked up, he was holding a dripping photograph of a woman, and when he lifted her up it was like a drown victim being saved. She stepped closer and saw herself in a photograph she didn't remember-her hair in braids like a child's.
The sweltering day started when the new teacher brushed up against her breast as they clocked in and ended when he once again stood outside her last class of the day watching her through the open door. He had the unlikely name of Ian Flemming. She had mild anxiety that this might be another case of stalking, but he seemed shy and Iris had the vague feeling that he didn't like her. He looked a little like her brother-nine years older who had tied her to a chair while he read a book. The bell rang, and as the students filed out Iris went to the door and beckoned to him. She thought he was going to sprint away, but as he stepped closer she took him by the arm and pulled him into the room.
“ Are you stalking me?”
“No, no. I…no…” He lifted what seemed like a deck of cards out of his shirt pocket.
“You do card tricks?”
He had Jason's small ears and wide mouth.
“No…these…these are lesson plans. Little ones.” He handed her the cards and watched as she looked them over.
“Wow…I could've used these ten years ago,” she said as she read through the miniature printed cards.
When Iris looked up his face was flushed and his hand held on to his tie that had little green boats riding upward. She handed back the cards.
“You really like them?” he said.
“Well they're complete lesson plans and they're not bad. But the print is so tiny.” His eyes had little gold flecks that reminded her of a neighbor's cat named Edward.
“ Students seem to hate my class,” he said.” I was told to watch you teach and…”
“See how the burned out do it?”
“Well…I thought…”
“Instead of hovering outside my door, starting next week why don't you come in, sit.”
He was fondling the cards in such a way that Iris had to look away, and she was beginning to have second thoughts about inviting him into her classroom. Maybe he was a maniac like the Spanish teacher who wanted students to take off their socks.
In the middle of his profuse gratitude, Iris grabbed her briefcase and held it in front of her breasts. As she scuttled past him, her muttered “good night” came out sounding like “good grief.” She ran down the four flights of stairs, and the last words Iris heard from a student as she left the building were “kiss my ass.”
Iris listened to her mother's voice on the phone, halting and tense. Her new boyfriend has too many guns…her next-door neighbors are tired of Brooklyn…moving to New Jersey. Who is she going to talk to? Iris was relieved to hear the rapid fire monologue in place of the usual slow drone of information about her mother's relationships with men. She looked in the mirror, and if she moved her mouth, she would look like her mother and feared she had the same level of neediness and insecurity. As the voice went on, Iris felt herself swimming, the water obliterating her from moment to moment and Jason catching it all on film. When she'd resurface with a deep breath, Jason and his camera would be gone.
Iris felt a reprieve when Jason left for a six-day shoot in California. It was another commercial for Nikon-models swimming with dolphins. She was relieved to realize she wouldn't be sitting on the bench on Thursday. When she kissed Jason goodbye at the airport his mouth felt dry and there was the faint smell of old clothing. If she closed her eyes, she could be kissing an old man. She watched him disappear through a gate his camera equipment hung from his body like a packhorse. She waved to his receding back. On the way out of the airport, she stopped for a hot dog and then ate another two.
Iris stepped into the English Department office to pick up the crumpled notices that were probably days old. She smiled when she noticed that the recruiter with medals covering his chest had stuffed Army calendars into all the teachers' mail- boxes except hers.
Ian, the ex-Stalker, had sat in the back of her first period class taking notes and had looked confused as he watched Iris walk to the door, open it slightly barring the way of the army recruiter with her arm. He stepped back only after she had pushed the door against his shoe. She explained to the class that students who enlisted had returned describing broken promises-instead of an education they were shipped out to dangerous places with not much beyond basic training. Keep that in mind, she had said, when recruiters come into your classrooms.
Ricardo, who had a lisp he seemed not to notice, accused Iris of being unpatriotic. Someone called him a Spanish word Iris had never heard before, and a girl said her brother was shot in Haiti by a twelve-year-old. Iris sat down at her desk while the shouting continued. It was her kind of lesson-where passion ruled and she could rest. She doubted if Ian had a card in his pocket for this.
Iris watched her mother as she cleaned her eyeglasses, a cigarette hanging from her lower lip. The little dining alcove smelled of smoke and coffee. Iris was surprised that her mother didn't tear open the box of Godiva chocolates she bought for her birthday and wondered if chocolate was the one passion they shared. Iris wondered about the framed photographs of men in her mother's bedroom--which ones had she stalked and why and if her father was included in the mix?
“Of course you should go,” her mother said.
“But we work together-he's a new teacher and…”
“has a nice boat,” her mother said snuffing out her cigarette.
Iris was watching her mother's mouth, the words floating out as if she was singing.
“I think I feel guilty.”
“About taking a boat ride?”
“Well, he's young.”
Her mother held her glasses up to the light and squinted.
“That photographer of yours… a little creepy for my taste.”
“Jason. His name is Jason.”
Iris thought of Diane Arbus' quote that all families are creepy and looking at her mother the quote hit home. As she got up to leave, her mother handed her the box of chocolates saying she couldn't eat sweets anymore, and lighting another cigarette mentioned that she had become diabetic. What would Iris think of treating her to a spa instead-they could both go. That night Iris dreamed of a banquet of all her favorite foods with an entire room filled with chocolate, but she decided to wait to eat. She went off somewhere she couldn't describe, and when she returned all that was left was a dried out turkey sandwich.
The next day she wore black to school because it required no thought or energy. At the time clock she had to control herself from shoving an administrator wearing enormous earrings who was yelling at Ian because he hadn't signed his time card. After her last class, Iris went to the library to look up “diabetes” on the internet.
Jason's telephone message seemed whispered as if he was telling her a secret except it had to do with bad weather and problems. One dolphin got sick and another dolphin seemed to want to have sex with the swimmers. Would Iris send his father a birthday card (no reference to age on it), he would appreciate it and could she look around to see if he had left a light meter in her apartment; if she finds it could she FedEx it ASAP. It was the most words she'd heard him speak in the last month. He'll call her again on Thursday. Thursday was Veteran's Day and she was going on Ian's boat.
Iris had rowed or canoed long distances on Eagle Lake in the Adirondacks, she had sailed on sunfishes, sailfishes and the Staten Island Ferry. Ian's boat was a 32-foot sloop and Long Island Sound felt like the center of the North Sea where whales were hunted down and killed. By the end of the day, Iris had thrown up twice and Ian's little white pill had been offered too late. She had no idea that she would get seasick and wondered what else she didn't know about herself. Maybe she'd find out that she has claustrophobia-the kind where you panic if you can't get up and run if you have to. Or will develop a penchant for knife-throwers or…Ian looked miserable as if he was the one who had turned green and would gag each time the boat keeled. As he helped Iris off the boat she glanced back and saw the box of Godiva chocolates sitting on top of the deck.
First period, Ian was writing the assignment as if he was a member of the class. Iris had asked the students to bring in a photograph. She wanted them to remember the day it was taken and write about it. Felicia Montalvo was seated near Ian and kept glancing at him first the top of his bent head then to his hands and back to her blank paper her pencil swinging between her slender fingers. Iris had seen the photograph of Felicia's room-it reminded her of Jason's darkroom but with everything thrown off the shelves and piled high in the middle of the room. Ian stopped writing as the bell rang, and when Iris walked by he slipped the photograph under the sheet of paper.
When Jason phoned, Iris wanted to tell him to say I've been thinking about you.
She didn't understand why she still needed to hear this-it seemed such a modest fantasy and one that would never be realized unless she gave him the line. He wanted to know if she sent his father a birthday card-he knows how busy she gets with marking papers and lesson plans. Iris thought that he also knows that she's up half the night. She inquired about the dolphin situation and thunder. Mentioned that she had gone sailing for the first time. Jason said he wanted to take pictures in the Yucatan when he finished this job and would probably not be home until the following week. Just before she hung up she said, I'll be thinking about you.
Iris sat on the ferry with over seventy compositions in an open folder on her lap. She had asked students not to include their photos when they handed in their work, but there was Joey Palma's photo of himself in what seemed like his underwear sitting on top of a car holding a rifle. His two paragraphs described his uncle's cabin in the Catskills and his Aunt Ebba's chili. Iris envisioned the photographs her father took of her posing with her arms outstretched toward a tree. Then sitting on a rock beneath the tree, then standing with her mother on either side of the tree. She was about to read Ian's composition for the fifth time but put it aside and looked out at the modest Staten Island lights. She was trying to remember when Ian could have taken a picture of her on the boat without her noticing; she hoped it wasn't when she was throwing up. It was a stark contrast to the shock of Jason's flashbulb seven years ago not far from where she was sitting. She picked up Ian's composition, folded it and slipped it into her bag. Her mother would probably say both guys were a little creepy.
Jocelyn Lieu
From the Fire (novel excerpt)
When she understands what she’s seeing she says, voice low, thrilled, “Come here. Now.”
Drawn by her waving hand Al and Emma wander over to the fire-escape window.
“Quiet, though,” she whispers. “Be still as a little mouse.”
Dawn lays a sheen over the dusty glass. It’s like looking at the world through a burning veil. Ruby wonders if her lover and her child can see through it to the thing she’s summoned them for. But then, almost at the same time, they freeze, and she knows they do.
The hawk sits on the fire escape’s metal slats. A breeze ripples its feathers. The striped bands on the tail wings are just starting to darken, which means this red tail is an adolescent, likely a male. The miracle is that he’s come so close, within an inch of their lives.
She’s seen this hawk before. He arrived in the neighborhood just before the cold spell started. He perches in the ailanthus trees, in the highest branches that can bear his weight. Last Saturday he sat there for hours, stone still except for his neck, which swiveled as he scanned for prey.
Ruby’s guess is he’s the same hawk she saw with Karen at Tompkins Square Park the other day. Dropping out of the clear blue nowhere, he swooped down over the playground.
Some parents gave demonstrative little gasps, training their fingers on the path he slashed above the tenement roofs.
“Look at those pigeons, will you?” Karen murmured. “That’s what I call evasive action.”
Gripped by the hawk’s drama, Ruby hadn’t noticed them before she mentioned them. The pigeons wheeled. Fear or instinct had sharpened their lines. They looked almost beautiful.
The hawk made a second pass over the winter playground. The parents still determined to catch their kids’ attention cried out again. She and Karen weren’t among them. Any effort on their part to instill a sense of wonder at nature would have been wasted. Emma and Nellie sat cross-legged under a jungle gym sharing secrets. Whenever they let her, Ruby liked listening in. You couldn’t call their talk conversation, exactly. Each girl riffed on the same theme, almost but not quite in sync, like parallel universes touching at the edges.
Kneeling, Ruby draws Emma into her arms. She does this to hold her daughter still so she won’t startle the hawk on the fire escape, but also so she can nuzzle the warm neck under uncombed hair. She needs to soothe the shallow wound from the night alone in her and Al’s bed. After Emma fell asleep they’d fought in whispers. The fight was about solitude again, the solitude Al said he needed to write. He had hit another patch of dead water.
Dead water? she’d asked the first time he’d used the phrase on her.
Dead water, he said. Buddhists call it dead water. The dead water you have to cross before the wind pushes your back again.
Dead water meant he signed out of their lives. It meant that for a while he spent more nights than not in his basement studio across the street. There was a toilet down the cinderblock hall from his room but no real bathroom. Sometimes, while Ruby was at work and Emma was at school, he came in to shower. Ruby knew he’d been there by the damp towel and water beaded in the plastic curtain’s folds.
The first patch of dead water after they started living together had been fine. Somehow she trusted that Al wasn’t seeing anyone else. Besides, she needed time away from him, too, so she could get used to the soft weight of their new life together. She was unused to living with a man. She was used to being alone with Emma. At first it felt strange to live with both a man and her daughter. In the years since Justin left, Ruby wasn’t exactly celibate, but on nights she had a date she’d always come home. After she paid then shut the door on the babysitter, she’d showered away all evidence of sex. In the morning she was as if untouched, unfucked. Running a comb through Emma’s pale hair, it was easy for her to forget that a few short hours before she had made love.
But she didn’t need dead water now, not with the rumors flying around at work. Acquisition, some whispered. Merger, said others. Carl admitted the rumors were true. At this point we underlings are in the dark, he’d said. One thing’s sure, though, and that’s that we’ll be seeing some food chain action soon.
So she needed Al now more than ever. She needed his attention, which when he bestowed it felt absolute. The brown eyes taking her in, really seeing her.
His questions got right to the soul of the point.
Why do you think about letters so much? he’d asked not her but Emma, then four years old, in her shiny red raincoat on Avenue A.
Al wasn’t Al yet. He was still the mailman with the silver hair tied back in a bright ponytail, the sexy one with muscled legs summer bare from mid-thigh down.
Emma, shy Emma, had wanted to stop in the June drizzle so she could ask him what those mailboxes without the slots were for, the big green mailboxes like the one he was in the act of opening.
He had paused, turned, seen the solemn blond child and the woman who could only be the mother standing behind her. The woman was trying to hold an open umbrella over them both. It was one of those dollar-store numbers that come to you already broken.
This is a relay box, he said. It’s where you can put letters and other pieces of mail when there are too many for you to carry.
So you can come back and get them?
That’s right, ladybug. So you can come back and get them.
He was, Ruby intuited—correctly, as it turned out—a man who wasn’t afraid of kids but didn’t have any of his own.
You think about letters a lot, he was saying to her daughter. Why do you think about letters?
Because they have stickers and hearts and things in them. And because they come from people who live far, far away.
Like magic?
And like Grandma. And like Daddy, too.
That’s enough, honey girl, Ruby said.
Sorry, said Al.
Don’t be.
Now he’s kneeling behind her, wrapping his arms around her and Emma. Ruby senses an apology coming. This scares her because if he gives up trying to cross dead water for her sake it means he may leave. He has let go of his own apartment on East Second to move in with them, in these high-rent times as final a relinquishment as marriage, but he still may leave. He doesn’t ask a lot of the place where he lives, only that it contain a bubble of privacy he can dream in.
Rue, Al murmurs. It’s okay, I don’t really need…
But you do.
The sharpness of her insistence surprises even her. I mean it, she says.
Shh, Mom!
Al tightens his arms around her. He has mysteriously settled on her and her child. She should just relax and accept this. She tries to still herself into watching the wild bird.
A breeze ripples the feathers on his back. For a few more seconds the hawk doesn’t move. When he finally does, he dips his head so low between wing blades that his head seems to disappear. He raises it again, dips. That’s when Ruby realizes he’s not looking for prey but is pecking something he’s already captured. Breakfast. And she hopes the dead or dying thing isn’t a mouse or a rat, not because she doesn’t want to see the local rodent population reduced by one but because her daughter’s pet, Fluff, is a rodent, too. That’s a cousin of Mr. Fluff’s! Emma would yell, and has yelled about the mice flashing across the kitchen floor. There are more and more mice these days, more rice-grain turds on the counter and shelves. Weird Judy and Mrs. Slivka upstairs aren’t the only cause. Construction has pounded them out of hiding. New hotels and condos are rising all around them, pushing up through the Lower East Side’s low tenement skyline like volcanic mountains boiling to life. The new buildings jut and curve at weird angles, an architect’s steel-and-glass dream of a city. A nightmare kind of dream, says Al. Caligari’s Cabinet. Rem Uncool-haas. Frank Lloyd Wrong.
Okay, bee, she tells Emma. I think we’ve seen enough. Time to get ready for school.
The hawk twists his head so that the yellow eyes aim their way. Then, in a blast of wings, he’s gone.
White feathers swirl in the breeze. Some are stuck to the fire escape’s green bars with a dark glue that can only be blood.
A dove, Al is saying. A dove in the past tense.
Emma leans closer to the window. Is it dead, Neo? she asks, Neo Dad her name for him.
‘Fraid so, bug.
Now would be the time for Ruby to hold forth about the food chain, to explain how slaughters that may look cruel in fact aren’t. There’s no real cruelty in nature, she should say. It’s all about protein and survival.
But she can’t summon the will. Instead she says, That’s the way things go sometimes, sweet bee.
Doves are dumb, Al adds. Nice to look at but real birdbrains.
When Emma fails to laugh Ruby says, Honey, I mean it. Observe the big hand and the little hand. Let’s get our morning act together.
She rises out of her squat. As if pulled by her upmoving body, Emma rises, too. They’re all standing now, and Ruby knows if she can just take her daughter through the paces of their routine, she can abrade the shock before it has a chance to set in. By admitting then moving on, she can nod to what’s real but save Emma from death’s awful weight. This dance comes hard to Ruby. It’s hard because she never learned how to admit and move on. She wasn’t taught. Her own mother, impatient with pain, believed in only moving on. The bruise doesn’t hurt. You can’t cry if it doesn’t hurt. The broken bone doesn’t throb. The abrasion. The incision. The heart. The ache in the heart, the ache in the groin.
Today she tried to show her daughter and her lover a miracle. She’d hoped to give them a glimpse that could carry them over the dead water they’re floating in. Instead she gave them blood and horror, ordinary horror you can’t even call by that name because it is, after all, about protein and survival.
Al spins her around so that she’s facing him, then kisses her.
I love you, he’s saying. Sometimes I think you don’t know it.
But I do.
Another sharp insistence, though this time because she wants to deflect Al so she can take care of Emma.
That was the morning before the fire.
Miguel Antonio Ortiz
The Cisco Kid in the Bronx
In the Bronx there is a valley along the bottom of which runs a street called Rogers Place. A segment of that street is bordered on one side by Westchester Avenue and the elevated IRT that runs up to White Plains Road. On a slope at the other end, Horseshoe Park descends, the curve of the horseshoe a downward incline. The park interrupts 163rd Street; steps lead down the hill, then 163rd Street resumes. Rogers Place ends at the park. A pathway through the park, leads to another street, the way to Public School 99. On Rogers Place, the street that runs through the valley and ends at Horseshoe Park, lived for some years the Cisco Kid.
He spoke English just like the gringos, and he could shoot his six-shooter over his shoulder so that the bullet would ricochet on the front pillars of 957 Rogers Place and hit the bad guy right between the eyes or in the stomach or just hit him on the hand to knock his weapon to the ground. The Kid came down in the morning from his fifth-floor apartment. He unhitched his black horse, Diablo, that had been standing all night by the iron railing in front of the building. As the Kid put his spurred black boot in the stirrup and pulled himself up, swinging one leg over the croup of his horse, the round silver medallions that ran down the side of his trousers caught the sunlight and for a split second reflected every which way. The people of the valley had entrusted the Kid with a job that nobody else wanted. They expected him to live up to it and he took it seriously.
The Kid rode up to Horseshoe Park. Diablo, an agile horse, leaped up the steps. From the top of the hill the Kid saw every movement in the park. Strangers were unwelcome. The people of the valley, especially Don Justino, the grocer, had enough of strangers. Strangers might be undercover cops investigating the numbers. Don Alfonso, who lived on the first floor of 759 Rogers Place, the very same building the kid made his home, was involved with the numbers also. The Kid had placed a number with him once. Not a gambler at heart, he did it out of sheer impulse.
He had been standing on the stoop of the building, a silver coin burning a hole in his pocket. The world seemed dull to the Kid that day. He felt trapped in the valley. He would have liked to jump on Diablo and ride away, never to come back, but that was impossible. He had a responsibility—he had to stay. He put his hand in his pocket and held the coin tightly in the palm of his hand. He wasn’t wearing his black silver-trimmed outfit that day. He moved about incognito. In his everyday clothes no one could tell him apart from an ordinary citizen. The Kid often pondered why people did not recognize him when he was dressed in his regular clothes. He concluded that that was the nature of humanity. He was not the only hero who was unrecognizable without his costume, and there was not much point in ruminating about such things.
There he was with a silver coin in his pocket and a dull world staring him in the face. Maybe if he hit a number he would feel better, a novel thought for the Kid. He was not sure that it was proper for someone in his position to gamble. But after all, everyone did. It was part of life—la vida, as they say in those parts. The Kid turned from the sun-bathed stoop and walked into the gaping vestibule of the building. The churning of his stomach, an unusual sensation for him, troubled him as he knocked on the door of Don Alfonso’s apartment.
Don Alfonso appeared wearing his usual white shirt, but at home he didn’t sport the jacket of his pin-stripe suit. His hair slicked back on a head that seemed too small for his body, he overshadowed the Kid.
“I want to put a dime on 456,” the Kid said extending his hand toward the big man.
Don Alfonso took the coin, placed it in his own pocket, and closed door in the Kid’s face.
The Kid stood there knowing something had happened, but not quite understanding what, the feeling similar to discovering oneself still on the sidewalk after having the definite impression of having climbed into the bus. He had expected Don Alfonso to put the dime in some special place. Perhaps Don Alfonso should have invited him in, shaken his hand, offered him some refreshment, talked about the weather, perhaps. After all, the Kid had made an overture of friendship and trust; surely, recognition of that was in order.
However, since it was not forthcoming, the Kid took it philosophically. Perhaps Don Alfonso had a photographic memory. Maybe he didn’t need to note down his customers, but more likely the dime was gone forever into the fathomless darkness of Don Alfonso’s pocket. There would be no memory of the transaction in Don Alfonso’s mind, because he did not look at faces and the Kid had not been wearing his black silver-trimmed clothes, which would have made him immediately identifiable.
The Kid knew that it was his own fault that Don Alfonso did not recognize him, and so he let it go. He walked back outside into the sunlight and continued about his business incognito.
Beverly Gologorsky
Imaginary Friends (novel excerpt)
Just the way he likes it! Occupied booths, a cacophony of voices, clanking dishes, the sizzling grill, the breakfast smells, wonderful. Any time of day Murray knows what’s cooking. He hangs up the wet coat, takes off his boots. Yet everything has a tradeoff; he learned that from his father. Even marrying Sylvie?
She appeared at the diner needing Triple A for a tow. And waited at the counter for a good hour till the truck arrived. He was intrigued by how she explained things, so energetically. Her light-brown hair shot through with golden strands swept around her face whenever she moved. He remembers being amazed that she wasn’t married--and then wondering: How come?
He glances outside; snowflakes fall rapidly. Still, he worries: A man of fifty-two has his habits, and marrying late has its inconveniences. It’s not like he never dated. He enjoys women; they’re good listeners, natural nurses for whatever ails you, and a man needs caring. Until Sylvie, though, the women he met … well … too soon the cream dissolved….
He deposits several rolls of quarters in the register. Counts the bills, jots down the amount and the time. Okay, he’s not thrilled with her theatrical past—the looseness of actors. Her appearance …that’s something else. Those wild, green eyes and the woman needs no makeup. She adds to his presence. Five-seven the last time he checked, with shamefully small hands and feet, although it’d take a boulder to fell him.
Of course they’re still in the honeymoon phase. Beginnings are like that filled with talk and a little mystery, but everything becomes routine, and how she’ll behave when it does, he’s not sure.
He notes the regulars are here despite the storm. A good sign.
Never a generous man—who did he have to spend it on? He’s closed on a home in East Hampton, a mansion by anyone’s standards.
Black watermarks pool near the diner’s entrance. Anyone slips it’s a legal problem. He hands the mop to Ray, young enough to be his son. Too late for children of his own—and he does regret that—though he’s devoted to his Dobermans.
He sorts and arranges the bread in several bins, then heads for the kitchen. The dishes stacked properly; sponges lined up on the lip of the sink, surfaces clean. A good cook and kitchen person is the heart and soul of a restaurant. And Nick’s the best. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
Nick talks to him the least. Mila says he believes bosses are the enemy. Well, this is America; he can believe what he wants as long as he keeps it to himself. He hands Nick the empty paper bread sack, watches him discard it. He could’ve done it himself but the order of things is important, and Nick’s in charge of the kitchen.
***
“Sumptuous” is the word Sylvie comes up with because labeling a thing is as important to her as a handle on a teacup. Still, what’s she doing in a house with cathedral ceilings? A velour couch—gray like an impending storm—stretches ridiculously long across one living room wall, green club chairs protect each side of a teak coffee table; the lamps have silk shades. It’s all too fresh, too precious. Paintings waiting to be hung, prints she could never have afforded. Was it wrong to leave her job when there’s nothing more for her to do but walk the spacious floors and marvel at the strangeness of the architecture?
One windowed wall faces the beach. But how long can you watch wheeling gulls? She eyes the dogs near her feet. Wherever she goes, they tail her; it’s oppressive. She dislikes their names as well as their menacing snouts.
She told Murray she isn’t fond of animals. They’re like children, he responded, give them love and food and they’ll offer unqualified devotion. Is that true of her marriage too?
She may not be totally honest with her husband but she is with herself. A woman of forty-two, still single, no savings, moving through life at a decent but unremarkable pace meets a man who wants to give her everything. How could she not?
The dogs follow her to the kitchen, a room crammed with devices she has no use for. The trash disposal makes a loud sucking sound that upsets her and the dishwasher fills so quickly she’s sure it’ll flood. Where she grew up, clothing was washed in the bathtub and the scruffy field next door was where she spent her time with imaginary friends, who unlike her dreamy, alcoholic mother, attended to her every wish.
Taking a bowl from the cabinet she begins kneading chopped beef. Some spatters on the floor. The dogs lap it up, then one licks her hand. That’s a first. She tosses each a meat patty, watches the food disappear, feels their heavy warm bodies sidle past her the way cats would. Raw meat, she thinks, the key to their miserable hearts.
Actually, she’s not in the mood to cook and shoves the bowl in the fridge. Wrapped in a scarf, she slips on boots and grabs her fur mittens, ready to brave the weather. The dogs wait at the door. Murray warned her not to leave them home alone. She has a vision of them wading into the ocean and being carried away.
Together they trek the wet beach, snow-blown wind in her face, gulls screaming into the roaring of the waves. In the snow-veiled distance she can just make out a figure. Curiosity or plain boredom keeps her moving toward what turns out to be a man dressed in a long coat and fur hat. A backpack is slung over one shoulder.
“Hi!” she calls into the wind. And the dogs begin barking. Damn! She shouts at them to stop but they don’t listen. Undaunted, the man lets the dogs sniff his fingers, offers them crackers from his pocket, which quiets them. A youthful handsomeness is apparent in his craggy, ancient face. He’s tall and lanky, white hair streaming from under his hat.
“Can’t hold a conversation here!” he shouts. “I have a lean-to up the beach!” Without another word, he leads her to a tarp barely held aloft by shivering poles and battened down with bricks. An unzipped sleeping bag covers the sand; an easel is set up nearby. In a fire pit, coals smolder.
“My winter lair. Have a seat.” And to her amazement she does. He tucks the edges of the sleeping bag around her. It’s ridiculously cozy. After tossing the dogs more crackers, he seats himself in front of her as if to block the wind with his delicate body.
“Liam, here, I live on Joseph Road.” Outside the howling wind is but a breath. His voice is soft, courtly, so unlike Murray’s rough-edged tones.
“Sylvie. We’re new here and I haven’t gotten my bearings yet.”
“Yes, “ he muses, “bearings, very important… I must admit it took me years.”
“So you’ve been here a while?”
“Since I retired from business and … well, so many other things …” Something confessional lurks here and she finds herself unexpectedly embarrassed. She points to his backpack.
“Can I see?”
He hands her a bunch of paintings as easily as if they were sandwiches at a picnic. Winter beach scenes. White, gray, silver, not a drop of color, yet they shimmer. Could these be the landscape she finds so forbidding, so cold, and untouchable? She catches him staring at her.
“Too bleak for you,” he asks.
“No. The opposite. Is that how you really see what you see out there?”
“There’s no metaphor for the ocean, only how I feel when I try to capture it.”
“In this one the waves are ferocious, filled with warning…”
“Because my fingers were stiff, knees hurting, the waves spoke to me of what’s impending.”
“Was that depressing?” Is she probing?
“At my age death is a comrade, a way of leaving, an exit.”
“I don’t believe everyone your age feels like that.” Nothing about him seems tired or worn, yet he must be near eighty.
“Perhaps not. But there isn’t much I’ll miss. I love the beach, but I’m alone now. Do you have children?”
“No. ”
“I had a son killed in 1970, in that dirty war.”
The sea, the sky, his death, his son’s. He says it all in the same matter of fact way.
“How awful,” she finally says.
“Worse than that.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re born, you die. Between much is illusion. Still there are sins. The avoidable deaths of young people is one.” He gathers up the canvasses and slides them into the worn backpack. “It’s no mystery how the dinosaurs disappeared. War kills the young and is the beginning of extinction.”
“You sound quite certain.” She’s thinking of Murray who believes war is a way to keep what you have.
“I did go on, didn’t I?”
“Not at all. Not in the least.”
***
For the third time Murray punches in the number, his eyes on the snow mounting in the empty parking lot. She’s supposed to drive in. Not a good idea. He’ll take the train home. Buy some flowers from the guy on the platform. He enjoys bringing her presents; it’s a new sensation. So is knowing she’ll be waiting for him. Sharing space is easier than he thought. Each night her chatter and that creamy body? What could be finer? He adjusts the thermostat. The windows are steaming up, the snowy world vanishing. He does what he can but the weather is beyond him. He punches the number yet again.
“Hi?” She sounds breathless.
He imagines her anxious to get to the phone.
“The wind is something else.”
Does the woman lack sense? Yesterday, too, she was out walking. “Where’d you go?”
“Along the sand’s edge near the water. I can’t always tell where I am until I look back and see our house.”
“The dogs must be frozen.” The coffee urn, he notices, is low, the floor beneath the corner stool gummy.
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised how delicate they are.” He wiggles a few fingers at Rosalyn, who’s stamping her boots on the rubber mat. Her dark, piercing eyes beneath heavy brows take in the scene.
“Okay, I’ll monitor them.”
“So pick me up at the station at eight, it’s too dangerous to drive in.” He hangs up and draws water for the urn. Who gets turned on from a walk? It’s not like anything out there changes.
“Work half-day,” he says to Rosalyn, without looking at her. “It’s going to be slow.” Paying hourly help to sit around irritates him.
“Murray, I drove here in a storm. I’m doing full day.” Rosalyn enjoys combat more than a Marine.
“Well, don’t blame me if you’re bored.” He wonders if she’ll mop the gummy floor without being asked.
“I won’t. So how’s Sylvie?”
“You should see how beautifully she set up the house, a real show.”
“Nice of her to pick you up every night. I wouldn’t.”
He laughs. “Me or anyone?”
“Any man who could drive himself, to be exact.”
“Can you take care of that spot on the floor?”
***
The train station looks quaint beneath a mist of falling snow. He spots the dogs in the backseat, kisses Sylvie’s cheek, cold and smooth. The promise of a warm house and dinner excites him. “How’s it going,” he asks, taking over the wheel, not really wanting an answer. It’s been a long trip.
“Murray, you told me you were never drafted. Why not?”
She surprises him constantly. “What brought that up?” Cars are pulling out of the station at a slow, careful pace. He waits his turn impatiently.
“Reading about Iraq, Afghanistan…”
“Yeah, I wanted to go… badly, but they found a TB spot on my lung.
“TB?”
“I caught the bug somewhere but it never infected me. Happens I’m told.” Actually it was flat feet that did him in.
“How strange. TB may have saved your life.”
“It was frustrating. My father thought I was some kind of misfit.” He waits for a word of sympathy.
“You must’ve been relieved. I mean who wants to go to…”
“Sylvie, war’s a man’s sport like hunting, no more no less.” He maneuvers the car onto the road. The snowplow ahead forces him to reduce his speed to a crawl. Hell.
“So it has nothing to do with patriotism.”
What’s she nattering on about? Something challenging in her tone annoys him. “It has everything to do with it, everything to do with this great country of ours. And what’s all this about anyway? Why are you so interested in stuff that happened a million years ago?”
“Listening to the news…”
“Well, read a book.”
Just as he expected, the house is warm and cozy.
“Sylvie,” he calls from the bedroom, “let’s eat where we can watch the storm.” She doesn’t respond. “Sylvie,” he calls even louder.
“Please don’t shout.” She appears in the doorway, startling him.
“Let’s eat …”
“I heard, okay, we’ll do that.” She turns to leave.
“Wait.” He grabs her arm, nuzzles her ear, sniffs vanilla or maybe something else, he can’t tell. He wishes the flower guy had been at the station. “You smell delicious.”
“Must be the cooking oil.”
Watching her walk out, he pats the bed and both dogs jump on; after wrestling with them awhile, he says, “Okay boys, down. Now!” They obey, which makes him stupidly happy.
He changes into his sweats, ready for the evening.
She’s uncorking the wine, her silvery kimono iridescent in the lamplight. He inhales the luxurious surroundings, nothing like the faded furniture and cracked plaster of his old apartment.
Two dishes of pasta with vegetables steam on the low coffee table. He was hoping for fish or meat, real food.
“Great, baby,” he fills their glasses. The wine is so tasty; she knows what to buy. He refuses to ponder how many intimate dinners she had before this one. He leans back, his fingers caressing the velour nap.
“So how was your day,” she asks.
“Rosalyn pisses me off by the minute, a dyke if ever I saw one.”
“Please don’t use that word.”
“Don’t be so sensitive, Sylvie. People are people. I know that. I run a damn restaurant, don’t I? All kinds.” It’s not the first time she’s called him on language. Reminds him of his stiff-assed second grade teacher warning him to talk right or no one would respect him. He pours another glass for himself. Sylvie’s hardly touched hers. “So you went into town today?”
“I signed a petition against the war, first one ever. There were hundreds of names on it.“
“Jesus,” he mumbles, bad move.”
“Murray, I’ve a right to express my beliefs.”
“Men are dying over there for your rights.”
“That’s ridiculous. I want them home alive.”
“Sylvie, you don’t understand….”
“Of course I do.”
She’s hell-bent on ruining the evening. “Let’s not argue, please baby?” For her, he’s willing to forget the whole deal. “What else did you do today?” “Walked, cleaned, read, talked on the phone with Jenny, who’s gotten a part in an out-of-town play.”
“Oh yeah, where’s that?” Jenny is one friend he wishes she’d forget. He’d have to stand on his head to get a smile from her and even then….
“Kentucky. Real pretty place. We should visit.”
“Oh you’ve been?”
“A play in Louisville eons ago.”
“No kidding? That’s impressive.”
“Murray, I’ve told you about that episode. How the agent saw me in a little commercial and invited me to audition …”
“… And you got the part, yeah I remember.” But actually he doesn’t like remembering. God knows the people she slept with... “On my day off we should hang those paintings. Three in the living room, two in the bedroom, one in the vestibule. You pick.”
“Okay, Tuesday?”
“Not sure. I’m still teaching Ava to do some of the ordering. The woman’s lonely, I can tell. She ought to marry again. Marriage is good, right.” He can hear himself slurring a bit, but so what, they’re home. Before long they’ll be in bed and her sweet body will be his.
***
As they’ve done for the past week, she and the dogs go straight to the lean-to. Armed with Baggies of raw meat, she keeps them content. Liam pours two cups of sweetened coffee from a thermos. The afternoon’s chill demands heat of a sort. With Liam beside her she watches the ocean swallow the snowflakes.
“If anyone had told me I’d enjoy sitting outdoors in this weather, I’d have said they were loony… I mean it wouldn’t be something I could do with Murray. He likes his comforts. He’s very ritualized. Thing is, when I imagined a husband it was someone more … audacious.”
“My wife always knew disaster awaited her outdoors. She was terrified of slipping on ice, wouldn’t consider getting on a plane, kept her distance from tall buildings. After our son was killed, her fears vanished, which scared me silly. You never know what’ll provoke change in a marriage.”
Is that what she’s waiting for? “It’s not that Murray isn’t loving…he is, and giving to me, but he doesn’t spread goodness easily…the people who work for him… ” Why does that bother her?
His voice drops falling on a dark memory. “My son’s death refocused my work life.“
“I’m sure it did,” she murmurs, staring at the horizon. Her father’s death upended everything.
“What is it?” He touches her arm.
What indeed, she wonders. Was she happier in her studio apartment coming and going with no one to care where or when?
Plowing home through the wet sand, snow dampens her hair. Liam’s concern warms her. How she wonders does he see her. Daughter, neighbor, intelligent woman? In the theater she would analyze each role: Who is she before she walks on stage? Who now? What’s to become of her? The dogs begin barking, then dash into the curtain of white and disappear. Murray must be there, but why so early? An urge to run back down the beach sweeps over her. The front door swings open. “Hi baby! When it began snowing, I decided to leave work.”
“Want something to eat?”
“Yeah,” he says, but he’s already unwinding her scarf, removing her coat, embracing her waist, and she knows just what he wants.
Oh lord, not now, she prays. But refusing is as beyond her as an excuse that would convince. Maybe just get it over with?
He undresses quickly, perhaps sensing resistance. He’s spread-eagle on the bed, his cock stiff; his arms reach for her.
“Haven’t I said a hundred times I don’t want the dogs in the bedroom with us?”
“Rummy, Cheney, out, now,” he orders.
She slams the door. Wishing to sustain the anger but having no reason to, she slips off her sweater, her sweat pants.
“Hey baby,” he whispers, “come here, speak to me. But it isn’t words he wants; she knows that. Slides in beside him, his leg capturing her thigh, his head pinning her chest. Her fingers bite into his shoulders; the need to push him away is so strong. But she can’t bear the thought that he’ll be furious, that he’ll sulk all night, or worse, demand to know how come, what’s wrong, where she’s been. And what’ll she say then?
“Something the matter,” his tone soft, far away.
“No,” she offers in that breathy voice of hers having just walked on stage, wondering: who is she now? And now, as she draws him closer. And now as she strokes his back. And now as she closes her eyes on a memory: Seventeen, in rehearsal, the director pulling her into an empty room, and his first kisses and her thought that rebuffing him will extract a price and—as any good actress would—that last thought: what’s a little kiss or two.
***
When she and the dogs arrive at the lean-to, he isn’t there. She tucks the sleeping bag around her to wait. If Murray discovered her sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Liam he’d be a lot more than unhappy.
The purple-tinged sky promises more snow. The forces of the universe are sending a message: inclement weather as punishment. An idea Liam would appreciate. Usually he arrives before her; morning light is what he’s after. Could he have been and gone? He did say, see you tomorrow. She searches the beach for his figure; wind blown sand impedes her view; seagulls glide overhead, the endless waves.
She drops the dogs at home and begins the trek over the opalescent sand toward the dunes where an exit leads to his road. The tiny A-shaped house squats on a postage-stamp lawn obliterated by snow. The blinds are drawn on the few small windows. She might regret this, it’s none of her business. They’ve only known each other two weeks; he must have other friends who look in on him, but she’s already rapping on the door with an insane urgency and shouting his name into the swirling wind. Trudging through the snow she finds no back entrance, no porch, just two small windows, also with shades. Apprehension fills her. She flashes on her father hanging from the barn rafter. The chair beneath kicked halfway across the floor, sunlight in a cracked mirror flooding the area.
Even if she phoned the police, what would she say? Liam didn’t show up at the beach on a blustery day? Liam’s not at home? What’s strange about that? She pounds on the door once more and nearly stumbles forward when he opens it; shoeless, his open shirt revealing a mat of white hair.
She can’t tell if he’s sad or glad to see her. “Are you okay?”
“I didn’t sleep well. Not at all actually.” He ushers her into a small living room: bare walls, couch, rocking chair, easel, TV.
“Does something hurt?” she asks because his face is pale, his eyes bloodshot. Strands of hair fall untidily across his wide forehead.
“At my age, things hurt.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“I can’t explain.” And he sighs.
“Of course you can.” Jesus, she sounds manic. She takes a breath. “I expected to see your paintings everywhere.”
“They’re in the closet. Choose a few if you want.”
“I will, thank you.” And wonders what exactly she’ll tell Murray?
“There’s coffee in the thermos on the counter.”
It’s a closet of a kitchen; hardly room to turn around. She’s about to offer Liam a cup, but he’s leaning against the wall as if standing were too difficult. Without a coat he looks thin, fragile. “Liam, why don’t you take a nap now?”
“Will you stay?”
“Yes.” It comes out before she can think and when she does, she knows this is where she wants to be. She wonders, is he afraid to be alone the way she is? When he’s alone does he wonder: Who is he? The way she wonders about herself as if she had just wandered on stage, a seventh character in search of an author? But she knows he has no such thoughts. He doesn’t seem frightened, only weak.
She follows him to the bedroom and seats herself on a folding chair, while he stretches out that matchstick frame on the full size bed. “I am exhausted,” he admits. For a few minutes, he stares at the ceiling while she gazes at the photograph of the boy in uniform residing on the small chest of drawers, the only photo in the room. He’s the one to break the silence. “Would you lie next to me,” he asks, his gentle tone almost apologetic.
Can she do that? He’s fully dressed; so is she—and who’s to know? She slips in beside him, inhales the scent of lavender soap. She almost holds her breath, listening for his to even out. She’ll leave once he’s asleep. He takes her hand, his fingertips icy. His breathing has a raspy edge now. Should she call 911? If she’d been home with her father that morning, what then?
“I’m being visited by the end,” he whispers as if reading her thoughts.
“It’s your imagination.”
“No, death sends a message before he arrives.”
“What message?”
“A calming one,” he says with quiet assurance. “All weariness to be erased along with pain, regret, ambition, and a thousand other burdens.”
Is that what her father felt? She slides her arm around his waist. His words are strangely comforting.
***
The train crowded with commuters is so raucous he can barely think. He’s tried phoning her all afternoon and where the hell was she? Walking in this weather? He left his message: Pick him up at six. What if she’s not at the station?
The man next to him reading a newspaper closes his eyes. He closes his but it’s no use. She did seem distant this morning. He probed, but her responses were vague. If she ever left him…God, her soft, creamy body erased from his life? Can a person die of a broken heart? If this is love it’s getting difficult. Is he panicking? Worry isn’t new to him. But Sylvie gone, that would be something else.
The man awake now has resumed reading the paper.
“Some weather,” he says because he’d rather talk than think.
“It’s going to get worse.”
He looks at his watch, another ten minutes. What’s the matter with him? Of course she’ll be at the station. He peers out the dirt-streaked window; it’s snowing heavily.
***
It must be nearly six, the darkness ashy; a flashlight would help. Gusts of cold wind burn her face; a veil of snow obscures her view, the unplowed road is hard to navigate. But she’s not bothered, her body energized, a reprieve offered. Her arm around Liam went numb but she didn’t remove it until he woke. It was as if she were hanging on to him instead of holding him.
She picks her way carefully along the shoulder of the road. Snow-laden trees and bushes hide vacant summerhouses. If she shouts no one will hear but the aloneness rejuvenates. A neighbor, an elderly gentleman she met on the beach was ill and she helped him, the paintings a thank-you for her ministrations. None of it a lie.
Glancing at the darkened house, she sees her car beneath a cape of snow. Wet flakes hit her face. She’s reluctant to call it a day. The dogs bark, and she fishes in her bag for the keys.
Switching on the living room light, she freezes. Chewed couch, torn chairs, gnawed tables, toppled lamps, ripped shades, clawed paintings, scratched walls, splintered floor, ruined, all of it ruined. “Bad, bad dogs,” she cries. They look at her dolefully.
Murray will have a fit; he’ll curse her and the universe, maybe worse. Better pack a few things; be gone before he arrives. Lord knows what he’ll do to the dogs; still, she can’t take them with her. What motel will let her in with them in tow? “Bad dogs,” she mutters, and peers out the window. It’ll be treacherous driving, no visibility at all.
Ignoring the phone’s pulsing message button she hurries into the kitchen, pristine, untouched, appliances gleaming. And quickly fills the dogs’ bowls with food and water; they sidle past her; she doesn’t want their affection; they could be dead tomorrow.
Lights sweep the window, dim. Christ! A headline flashes: man in temper kills dogs; wife.
She takes a last look at the animals, meets him at the door. He throws his arms around her. He’s mumbling something she can’t make out.
Her words, though, are precise. “I left the dogs home alone.”
He strides into the living room. He runs his hand along the damaged couch, studies the ravaged coffee table, stares at the paintings, traces the scarred wall with his fingers. “Rummy, Cheney, you bastards,” his voice breaks.
“It’s my fault,” she offers.
“God,” he says, “God…”
“Leave,” she stage whispers; the dogs sit.
“Miserable, stupid curs,” he grabs the back of a chair.
“Murray…” she begins.
“Everything’s wrecked, everything.”
“Murray?”
“How could you?”
Is he talking to her? “Murray… look at me.”
He turns; eyes wide, astonished, wet, skin blue-white and taut, mouth slack. She’s never seen him this way, it’s scary, a whipped man resigned to the next lash. He’s no youngster, a seizure, stroke, anything’s possible. Prying his hands from the chair, she walks him to the bedroom, lies down beside him.
“Murray,” she whispers, “they’re things. They can be replaced… the couch reupholstered… chairs too. The paintings, okay, they’re destroyed... Are you listening? …” She looks into his nearly unblinking eyes. “It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, not important…” But he’s not responding.
“Say something, please, you’re frightening me.”
“I never lived this grandly…”
“I know.” But does she? Anger’s what she expected not collapse.
“You can’t imagine what this house, the furniture, means to me,” his voice a whimper.
Her eyes slide to the mahogany dresser, the floor to ceiling mirror, wicker rocker, all of it inanimate. How can he be so emotional; no one’s died.
Suddenly, he grabs her arm. “We’ll make it beautiful. We did it once we can do it again.” The volume loud, he could be screaming.
She sees herself in one of the large suburban shops, salesmen circling her every move, furniture arranged by room, pillows galore, tables set for eight, peering at materials until her head aches. Even the first time it was a chore, yellow, green, did it matter?
“Money’s not a problem. We can spend,” his voice revelatory, gleeful, which should reassure her. Except her energy’s gone, a pricked balloon the air seeping away. She takes a deep breath, but really it doesn’t help.
“I’ll get rid of the dogs. Everything has a tradeoff.”
“A trainer can teach them to behave.” Does she care?
“Are you sure,” his tone child-like, high-pitched.
“Yes.”
“It’ll all be the same as before, I promise.” He’s breathing heavily.
Once she watched an actor playing King Lear suffer a heart attack during his last scene. The audience applauded.
“You believe me, don’t you?” His voice shaky, he takes her hand. “Are you okay with me?”
She looks past him at the darkness and visualizes the moon’s tangerine light above the storm.
“Yes,” she replies, because the truth now would do him in.