Stalemate

I hear you rumbling in the kitchen drawer, looking for a spoon I suppose.  It is 5:47 a.m., and you will eat cereal and drink coffee.  Like you have done for the past twenty-three years.

I shuffle out of the room in the bathrobe your mom gave me two Christmases ago.  I watch you, but you are blind to me.  It’s against routine for me to be out here.  I should be in the shower, I should be putting makeup on. 

Instead, I long to see you.  I want you to look at me, smile, and pull me onto your lap.  I want to taste the coffee where your lips have touched, I want to look into your eyes and see the man I love.  He disappeared, like coins that slip between the couch cushions. 

I take a cup out of the cupboard and pour some coffee, no cream.  You don’t notice me until I sit across the table from you and you have to move your feet off the bottom rung of my chair.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, and your amber eyes float over the Times.  You don’t mean it in the way I mean it.  You suppose our daughter has a fever or the tire has gone flat.  I shake my head ever so slightly and you go back to your paper.

I sip.  The coffee is warm and comforting, unlike our conversation.  The table between us feels like a continent.  No matter how far I stretch, I can’t reach you.  I sit across from you, feeling so much.  But when I put my emotions to words, the sentiment is lost in translation. 

The window above the sink is open, and a September breeze ruffles the hair on my arms.  I clear my throat, trying to get the courage to speak.  I won these tickets, I want to say, to Florida. Miami actually. 

My tongue hangs limp in my mouth and I feel its weight against my teeth.  I cannot speak and you cannot listen, so I guess we are at an impasse.

I leave the kitchen and do what I am supposed to do, take my shower and put my makeup on.  I hear you calling goodbye to me before the door closes and I refuse to cry.  It will ruin my mascara. 

I look stunning in a tailored shirt, the color of our pool lit up at night.  I’m not beautiful, I know; but somehow I manage to be stunning.  My face is seasoned with freckles and my lips are always on the verge of opening.  My eyes are a color the crayon companies haven’t created yet, somewhere between Outer Space and Midnight Blue.

I pick up my phone and send a text.  Next thing I know, I’m on a plane.  First class, direct flight to Miami.  I smile at the man sitting next to me.  He’s married, I know.  He proudly sports his ring and I have seen their wedding picture next to the bed.  He reaches over and takes my hand and I snuggle into the crook of his arm.  When I close my eyes, I can pretend this is my husband, my lover, the man my husband can never be.  As I doze, I wonder.  When exactly did he slip through the cushions?

The Possibilities

“She dove into the ocean for them.”   That’s what I said when they asked for an explanation.  The cop looked at me like I was fresh. 

“You kidding, kid?” he asked.  I just shook my head, waiting for him to speak again so I could watch his upper lip shiver under his moustache.  

Instead, he just licked his front teeth, top first, then the bottom.  I imagined his tongue probing the cracks and crevices, just like him.  Searching for forgotten details, for relics of what had been there earlier.  It would be rough and brusque, like him, coarse like the sand we stood on and slippery like the ocean behind us.

He turned and moved along the beach without so much as a good-bye or thank-you.  I couldn’t help staring at his feet as the sand filtered beneath his shoes, slowing his progress. 

In the end, the ocean lured me back.  Salty fingers gripped my face and the waves sighed in my ears.  I longed to see my shadow lengthen into the water, piercing the foam but always above the darkness that frightened me.

I stood at the brim, just close enough to tempt the water to caress my toes, and raised my hands above my head.  Palms together, I stretched my arms toward heaven, a profane promise that I never intended to fulfill. 

I would never dive in.  I couldn’t lose myself out there in the deep, like she did.  Maybe it was my fear that cemented me to sanity.  Maybe I was rooted too firmly to the ground to let go and drift freely on the whim of the waves. 

Sometimes, when I stand at the edge of the water, I see her face reflected in the ocean.  I hear her laugh drift along the coast and she whispers to me.  “Let go,” she says.  But her voice is hollow and I don’t trust it any more. 

I can still clearly remember her right before she disappeared forever.  The breeze behind her lifted her hair toward the water and toward the sky.  “I have to go,” she said so softly, I wasn’t sure if she had really spoken at all.  But when I looked in her eyes, I knew.  They were the color of the ocean already.  Her heart was already a thousand miles on the waves; she was only still standing there to say good-bye to me. 

“Wait!”  I called out.

She turned and her liquid eyes almost melted me.  She was the moon and she was pulling me with her, so I had to look away. 

“What’s out there?”  I asked.  It was more like a wail, a distraction, something to keep her there for just a moment longer.

She raised her hands into a point like a prism over her head and her voice rang clear across the water.  “My dreams,” she said.  And she dove into the ocean for them.

Preventive Justice

Jaclyn stood there hating herself for a long time.  Fresh, pink skin was growing like tiger stripes on her wrists and baby soft roots pushed through her scalp beneath crispy locks stained Black Licorice.  Even her eyebrow ring was slowly being rejected, as if her body wanted to flip itself inside-out and start all over again. 

She held a fillet knife in her hand, compliments of the kitchen drawer, and it sneered at her as she contemplated the feathers that still floated in the air.  She had been practicing.

Now maybe that particular knife wasn’t ideal, she admitted. The metal was flexible and the point wobbled a little bit if you really tried to stick it in something stiff, like a headboard, but no matter.  She was going to use that knife because she wanted to say she had “filleted the perv” when she told her story to the press and to the other inmates. 

She hid the knife under the only pillow she hadn’t shredded.  He would “visit” her that night, for sure.  Just like he did every time her mom was gone.  He would stumble in with his bottle of Crown, set it on the stand next to her bed, and berate her for all the things she did wrong, for being a teenage burden. 

The feathers and the scarred bed-frame would really tick him off.  He would tell her to pay penance for her bad behavior.  But tonight, she decided she would be the one playing God.  The knife in her hand sent a surge of power through her every time she held it.  And, she had been practicing.

Night came and she curled up onto her bed, never shutting her eyes.  Cars passed on the street below, their headlights dancing like strobes through her curtainless window as they came and went.  A little after 2:00 a.m., he arrived.  He was definitely drunk, because it took him forever to insert the key into the front door and succeed in unlocking it.

She listened with rapt attention as he shut the door and trudged up the stairs.  Her heart beat uber-fast and her breathing came in hard, short spurts.  Fight or flight, she knew it was referred to.  She could taste the adrenaline fill her mouth—a taste like rusted metal.

When he came near her door, she stopped breathing all together.  She was waiting for him to turn the knob, and when he didn’t, confusion immobilized her.  She heard his huge feet shuffling down the hall away from her room.  Then, they stopped and she imagined him turning a knob she couldn’t hear.  Then, it hit her.  “Jamie!” she whispered.

She placed the pads of her feet on the ground and grabbed the knife.  Silently, she crept out of her room and down the hall to her brother’s room.  Her father had left the door open and didn’t hear a sound as she edged up behind him. 

He sat at the foot of Jamie’s bed, watching the little boy sleep.  Jaclyn’s eyes narrowed.  Her grip on the knife tightened, as did her resolve.  The guilty would die before the innocent would suffer.  After all, tonight she was playing God and she would make the rules fair the way she saw them. 

In one swift motion, she carved a smile into his neck.  A thin, red line that vomited life.  He hit the floor hard, and his head thunked like a bowling ball. 

She cradled Jamie and jumped over the pool of blood that slicked the ground.  He never woke up or opened his eyes, even when she buckled him in the back seat of the car.  She drove straight to the police station and carried him in.

“This child is needs to be in protective custody,” she announced as she walked in, laying him on the sofa.  “My name is Jaclyn Spencer.  I’m sixteen years old.”  As she said this, she knelt on the ground before a speechless office and tucked her arms behind her back wrists together. 

She smiled.  “My name is Jaclyn Spencer, and I filleted the perv.” 

The Stakes

I wind the phone cord around my pinkie finger and count seven rungs before unwinding it again.  I sit, and I listen.  If I had to pick between my mother-in-law’s rants about bingo at the Senior Center and this time-share crap that is currently taking my time, I honestly don’t know that I would have a preference.

You see, my wife and I went to Vegas last year.  Stayed in one of those fancy hotels with expensive names that cost as much as the electric bill in July.  My wife bought shoes she couldn’t afford and I gambled all the overtime for the year that I haven’t even worked yet.  I mean, we really lived it up.

So now, if we want to go back to Vegas and see a show and eat the seafood buffet, my wife informs me we have to listen to Reginaldo talk about Jamaica and the Virgin Islands and price tags that are more than my yearly salary.  I’m sitting here, winding the cord around my pinkie again, thinking, Really, Re-he-nal-do?  If I could afford this vacation home, would I be listening to you for an hour so I could get a Vegas voucher?

Linda breezes by my desk, smelling like a tropical vacation herself.  I shiver just a little bit when she drops a letter on my desk because her fingernails are this poppin’ blood-orange and I can almost feel them on my neck.  While I’m looking at Linda’s gorgeous hands, I happen to see my own and suddenly the sixteenth ounce of gold I wear on my left hand feels really tight and heavy. 

Reginaldo is still talking when I give myself a paper cut on the letter I open.  “Dear Santa,” says the first line and I drop the phone.  Only one person has ever called me that and it’s been ages.

“I know I’ve caused you a lot of grief, but there’s something I need that only you can get for me.  For all that we ever had, for all you ever felt for me, please don’t tell anyone about this.”

It isn’t even signed, but I have no doubts.  My mouth goes dry as I realize the implications of the letter.  Veronica is in prison and I doubt she is there for breaking hearts. 

I honestly have no idea what it is that she wants me to do, but when she says only I can get it for her I’m pretty sure I know where to look.  We had this secret, see, when we were in high school.  We graduated with the class of ’95, wore matching green and white shirts that said Go Pandas, and there wasn’t a whole lot we wouldn’t do for each other.  Until Veronica killed her sister.  Things just weren’t the same after that.

Fifteen years later and she comes back to haunt me, the ghost of a woman not dead.  I hang up on Reginaldo and grab my jacket, headed for the door.   She left something in that vent duct at the high school, I just know it.  Something that is going to ruin me and I have to get to it first.  Because you see, Veronica didn’t exactly kill her sister by herself. 

Job Security

Get the party started on a Saturday night,

Everybody’s waiting for me to arrive,

Sendin’ out the message to all of my friends,

We’ll be lookin’ flashy in my Mercedes Benz.

Some people can’t appreciate the hits of ‘back in the day,’ but I had always been a big fan of Pink, and these beats wafting out my sunroof matched my mood this 4^th of July.  I pulled up in front of Brian’s house and cut the engine. 

I always loved going to these parties and seeing the mix of people that we managed to get together at WD. Artists who looked like normal people, normal people that looked like artists, prospective writers who wanted to make a good impression on anyone that would talk with them about what they were working on, and people like me who just wanted to enjoy the show that was bound to take place.

I cat-walked it down the sidewalk, unsure if the pauses in conversation and jaw-dropping stares were a result of me in my bikini and shadow wrap or of the gigantic cheesecake I was holding that was decked out in an American flag made of plump blueberries and juicy strawberries. I smirked to myself and made sure that anyone who hadn’t already noticed my arrival noticed it now.  I flashed a perfect smile and made an attempt to greet everyone I already knew by name, smiling and dropping polite “hellos” to the newbees.

Brian glanced up at me from where he was involved in a deep conversation about page layouts and I decided to rescue him.  He met me halfway, and an innocent bystander would have seen the special spark in his eye, assuming an undercover office relationship.  “You look beautiful!” he whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you way too long.” 

What the viewer then saw would have made him blush at his own ridiculousness and have sent him straight back to the ice chest to cool his outlandish thoughts.  Brian’s loving gaze wasn’t for me; he was all about the cheesecake.  I had teased him once, saying he had only hired me on because I was a good cook, but the joke seemed too close to the truth.  After that, I kept my mouth shut and my desserts top notch.

“Hello to you too,” I said, craning my neck to catch his eyes that were caressing the creamy cake.  He looked up, and with all the due composure of the Editor gracefully motioned with his hand and led me to where I could lay the crown jewel.

Some poor new kid on the block saw Brian and thought it was his chance.  He nervously straightened his shirt and bound into our path, so focused on Brian that he didn’t see me and incidentally barged into me and the cake.  “Noo-oo-o!” Brian shouted and everything seemed to move in slow motion. 

I sat up seeing only stars—the ones on the cheesecake, that is.  I had landed face-first in my own vice.  The young writer obviously didn’t realize his mistake or he would have apologized to Brian, not to me.  Well, I’m the only one who got to try my cheesecake this holiday, and I guess that means I have job security until Thanksgiving at least!

'Til Death Do Us Part

Slender fingers traced the delicate lace and foamy chiffon of the wedding gown, peeking out of the folds like hot chocolate beneath whipped cream.  She sat cross-legged on a heap of clothes that covered the closet floor—clothes that she had ripped off their hangers and tossed out of drawers in their last argument. 

His jeans mingled curiously with her snakeskin peeptoes and his crisp dress shirts swallowed up her crumpled cotton tops.  The shimmering wedding dress was the only thing still hanging in that closet, casting golden shadows as the light danced a waltz on its luxurious silk.

A sample invitation floated its way down from the top shelf like a black jet and settled itself perfectly on the textile mound.   She picked it up and mindlessly traced their names in the embossed gold ink. 

It was presently three o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, August 4^th in the year of our Lord two-thousand twelve, as announced in the invitation.  But she was not gliding down the aisle to “Here Comes the Bride.”  Instead, “Amazing Grace” was wafting through the speaker system in the newly purchased house where they had planned to build a home together. 

The closet was as far as they got, plus a few sparse odds and ends and two bowls and spoons that had been dug out for an initial bowl of ice cream.  Oddly enough, that half-full carton of ice cream bothered her more than the unworn wedding gown.  She would have those simple quiet memories more deeply engraved in her heart than any bustle of the wedding celebration that should have taken place.

She picked up a simple white undershirt that was peeping out of the mess and wrapped it around her wrists and through her fingers and nuzzled it next to her face, breathing in his scent.  Uncontrollable tears flooded her eyes.  As much as she tried not to blame herself, she couldn’t seem to make her heart believe what her mind told her. 

I’m sorry, ma’am.  There is nothing more I can do, the doctor apologized as she stood trembling before him in disbelief.  I’m sorry, miss. It was a crazy coincidence.  He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, the officer said as she knelt before the twisted metal that had once been his motorcycle.  I’m so sorry, sweetie, her mom said as she drove her home from the hospital.  But through it all, her own mind was drowning them out: I’m sorry too. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

A tear trickled down her cheek and off her chin and splashed onto the platinum band housing a single small black diamond.  She sniffled and lovingly grasped the ring that hung around her neck—the ring she should have been making her promise with right now. 

She gave a faint smile as she remembered that she had it engraved with the date of their wedding. Because now we have an anniversary, babe, and one of us has to remember, she told him, eyes twinkling. 

He laughed at her and teased her about her choice of jeweler.  Baby, you better make sure the diamond in my ring is the same one.  She could still hear Jeremy's voice emanating from behind glittering perfectly white teeth, imitating the jeweler: You gonna be bery bery happy you get message done here. I do it real nice for you.  Bery special ‘cause you beautiful couple.  

Yes, there was something strange about the old man with his black mustache and pale skin.  His yellow-rimmed eyes glinted at them as they walked out the door and he murmured something under his breath.

She wiped the tear off of the inscription with her finger and felt an indescribable burn.  She let out a faint cry right before everything went black. 

The smell of burnt flesh woke her up and made her want to vomit.  She raised her arm to her nose to shield herself from the smell and her eyes fluttered open.  She was lying on the floor of the closet, and all the clothes were in their proper places.  She reached for her cell phone and looked at the time.  5:00 p.m., August 1^st.  “Jeremy’s accident!” she breathed.

Urgency socked her in the stomach like a pro-pitched baseball and she leapt off the floor and tore down the stairs screaming at the top of her lungs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry she belted.  She threw open the door and tackled him in a hug just as he was picking up his helmet.  “Marry me on Saturday, love,” she said.  “The cake doesn’t matter.”

One Word

To describe your eyes in one word is: Ocean.

The way I feel around you, one word is: Emotion.

One word to describe my love: Immense.

The passion between us, I’ll call it: Intense.

The most beautiful thing is you make me feel: Free.

The thing you like best about me is: Me.

If the world were on fire, and I could get through,

I’d come back for one thing, and that would be: You.

I am the Earth, you are my: Sun.

Out of millions of words, I only need: One.

I think someone sent me a gift from above,

When I opened it up, you were there.  Call it: Love. 

A Normal Life

I glanced down at my planner as I shoved another bite of toaster-waffle into my mouth, careful not to let any sticky syrup drip onto my freshly pressed button-up.

“Honey, did you say you could pick up Rachel from practice?”  No response.

“Zed?”

I stomped up the stairs in my heels and pencil skirt, balancing my briefcase under my arm, gripping my coffee mug and lip liner in one hand and dragging the dog by the collar with the other. 

“Nathaniel James Briggens, I swear that if I have to take your dog outside one more time in the morning, I’m getting rid of him,” I said in passing to my sleepy-eyed, mussy-headed 12 year-old, thrusting the dog at him on my way to the bathroom.

“Zed?” I shouted, bursting into the bathroom. 

He jumped back, startled, and his flailing arms knocked into my coffee mug, painting a streak of coffee on my shirt.  I put my hand up to my forehead in defeat and sighed. 

I unbuttoned my soggy shirt and stepped up to the mirror next to my husband. 

“Rachel gets done at 6:00,” I said through stiff lips, outlining my mouth. “Are you gonna be able to get her?  I have a meeting until 5:45 or later.” 

“Ya, I was planning on it,” he said, looking at his watch. “Babe you gotta go. You’re late already.”

“As if I didn’t know that,” I grumbled, rushing to the room to toss on another shirt. 

“Everybody in the car by the time I come out of this room or you’re gonna wish you had Britney Spears for a mom!” I shouted to my kids as I shut the bedroom door. 

I finished taking off my soiled top and threw on another button-up and suit jacket.  I snatched the keys and cell phone off the end table, thrust them into my briefcase and rushed down the stairs and out to the car.

“Nathan, turn your music down.  We already have a stereo system in here.  Rachel, please make sure Louis is buckled,” I said as I strapped on my seat belt and put the car in reverse. 

The phone rang in my briefcase just as I had reached back to snatch a sucker out of Louis’ chubby fingers.

“You’ll be all sticky by the time I drop you off at school,” I said as I flipped open the phone to by greeted by an accusing, raspy voice—“Why me?” I quickly hung up, disturbed by the call, realizing that I must have picked up Zed’s phone off the end table on accident. 

No sooner had I dropped off the kids at school when it rang again.  Shaking and wondering what Zed had gotten into, I opened it, saying nothing. 

“You made a mistake,” the voice accused me before it hung up.  Suddenly, I felt myself being snatched out of the car by strong hands, struggling and kicking, grabbing for the phone that hung limp from its cord on the car charger where I had plugged it in only minutes before.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Lies

My husband and I had taken a vacation—a little trip to, you know get the fire burning again.  We had talked about divorce on and off for a few years, went to counseling, had another baby…well, the list goes on and this was a last chance for our family. 

I was equal parts nervous and excited as I glanced through shy eyelashes at my husband of fifteen years.  I wondered how I could share a home, a family, a bed with this man that I barely knew.  I had known him once, loved him once, wanted to build a life with him.  That was before three kids and job transfers, among other things, had crept in and separated us.

Now, here I was alone with him, and I had nothing to say.  It was like the first date from hell…uncomfortable, awkward and the drinks hadn’t even shown up yet…no wait, it was worse because at the end of the night, he was still my husband who I had made “for better or for worse, ‘til death do us part” vows with.

He brought my worries to a close when I realized he wasn’t looking for conversation.  I sighed and we settled into routine.  He picked up the newspaper he had tucked into his briefcase (yes, that was coming on vacation) and absorbed himself in it before the second class even got on the plane.  I pulled out my book I had snuck in (oh, how I loved those mysteries full of the passion that didn’t exist in my life of soccer games and sack lunches), and realized how we had made it through the years—peacefully not dealing with each other. 

That should tell you what the vacation accomplished.  We divorced amazingly soon after Cabo, both contentedly ignoring the issues.  I went to his wedding and took the kids home afterwards. 

Now I’m just going through some old things and I came across a Nike box, stuffed with old photos.  It was these pictures of Cabo that made me remember.  I gingerly picked one up, thinking of how that vacation might have been.  We were at dinner, glasses raised in a toast behind a crisp linen cloth, the sun setting over the water in the background. 

Suddenly, I saw what I hadn’t seen in my fifteen-plus years of marriage.  Adrenaline shot through my body, making my hands shake uncontrollably and I gasped, dropping the box and scattering pictures everywhere.  I raised a hand to my hot face, unsure where to plunk myself.  I turned in a circle and finally flopped onto the floor cross-legged.  The camera had captured a moment in time that was supposed to be a forever secret.  I ransacked the shoebox and rifled through the years of pictures, wondering just how long his new wife had been sharing in our private, family functions.  

The Disappearing Line

I am the disappearing line.

Every dream that expires takes a part of me that I can't get back.  Every shattered hope, every unfulfilled wish, every unattempted endeavor bleeds me.

There is no cure for what I have.  The doctor tells me living is a terminal disease.   Every experience takes some of my life, some energy, some perspective, some innocence until one day there is nothing left but the box.

They put the box in the ground, but I am not in the box.  I am the disappearing line.  I was already long gone.

Monsters on Vacation

The warm Mexico sun poured down on me from overhead, warming my bare arms and legs with a delicious tingling heat that only comes from the tropical sun.  I lay on my stomach, propped up like a little seal on my elbows, meticulously brushing sand out of the novel I was reading.  

I was engrossed in the sumptuous unimportance of the first book I had picked up to read for “just for fun” in two years.  Allowing myself to drown completely in the story and the sun, I was deaf to the rest of the world.

Jennifer was there with me, a co-survivor of our MA program and fellow shoe-loving travel-aholic.  I was awakened from my mental lethargy by a blast of sand being kicked up by Jennifer’s flailing legs. 

“Aahhh!” she squeaked as she bounded down towards the warm salty ocean waters.

I glanced up, startled, and adrenaline consumed me as I felt sharp claws stuck in my tousled, salty hair.  I followed Jen’s example and took off in no particular direction other than away. 

I finally got up the courage to pause my flight and turn back around cautiously to where I had been relaxing.  There he was.  The biggest, nastiest, grayest iguana I had ever seen.  He was glaring at me from just below my bright turquoise towel and didn’t plan to leave any time soon.

He held my gaze and slowly picked his way backwards a few feet up the sandy beach to just above my towel where a pack of chips I had been munching on lay.  This is too much! I thought.  I’m not going to stand here and let some lizard eat my Doritos that I smuggled with me on my vacation. I happen to be a huge fan of Cool Ranch.  I slowly began to approach my spot, hoping to intimidate this hungry beast before he stuck his slimy tongue in and drooled all over my precious junk food.  The instant I was far enough out of the water, the little devil charged at me, strategically maintaining his huge corpus between me and my chips. 

I had no choice but to retreat back into the salty water.  We repeated this sequence so many times that it felt like we were rehearsing for the tango.  Everything was there, the heat, the argument, the passion, the steps…

Eventually I had to watch in horror as his dirty hole greedily swallowed up my chips, staring at me in diabolic defiance.   I stomped my foot in the salty sand and felt tears come to my eyes.  Not because my chips were gone, but that I had lost a stare down to an iguana.  Now he sniffs me out every day and I have had to move to the other side of the hotel.  This unwanted pet is almost as bad as my ex-boyfriend who also happens to be on the other side of the hotel.

Inspired by True Events

Their hope incited him like a screaming crowd spurs on a tri-athlete.  Their unwavering faith moved him.  The belief that he was going to make them right with a couple of pills or an injection was painted on their dirty faces, and people took him by the arm on his way to the sickroom.  Flattering, but dangerous.  Especially when he knew he couldn’t fix them.

He raised a weathered hand and wiped little pearls of sweat off of his strong brow and carefully began to pick his way down the rocky slope to the hospital tent.  He felt the nausea of helplessness hit his stomach although this wasn’t his first rodeo.  Seeing their faces, glowing with hope and staring at him with pain poorly concealed behind anxious eyes gave him the adrenaline to work around the clock.  He understood enough Spanish to know that some of them had traveled from Honduras and El Salvador—and he understood enough about medicine to know that many of them didn’t stand a chance.  He was haunted by the smells of rancid flesh that hung over brittle skeletons, haunted by the image of tumors so extreme they seemed to be digitally mastered. 

His first trip to Guatemala as a college student had changed his life.  The sounds of muffled screams seemed to echo to him off the library walls at night and the feel of the hand saw beneath his trembling fingers kept him awake during his studying like a rumble strip on the freeway.  And every year, he came back to them with more knowledge to offer as he poured himself out surgery after surgery, slowly making a dent in the incessant lines so long they seemed to fade into the golden horizon.  He had worked night after night by the dim light produced by the generator with the rickety tools that were often improvised.

He remembered the pained looks and the brave nods as he watched understanding fall over their prematurely aged faces like a curtain.  “The chances aren’t good,” he would say, then wait for it to be translated from English to Spanish and oftentimes from Spanish to Quiche, Cakchiquel, Mam, or Tzutujil.  “There is a great likelihood that she will die in surgery,” pause for translation.  “The tumor is lodged too deep in her spine…she might survive but she will never walk again.”  Emotions are a universal language.  He didn’t need anyone to translate their reactions.  So many problems, so little time. 

He swept aside the bug net at the entrance to the tent, an attempt to keep a sterile environment.  He put on his white coat, took the handsanitizer the plucky student pumped into his hands and strapped on his mask.  “Ready?” he asked her.  She gave him a brave smile and nodded her head, strapping on her mask.  They walked in together and her steady hand held his tools, nothing more than saintly compassion keeping them rooted to the bed from which the putrid smell tried to drive them. 

Long-suffering

Margaret closed her eyes and rested her head against the cool vinyl of the booth. 

“I loved you the first time I saw you; I’ve never stopped loving you.”  It was the first time he said it, even though she had known for twenty years.  The problem was she loved him back.  Wilson’s voice bounced dangerously around the confines of her mind.  It was so clear, so overpowering that she felt everyone could hear it.

She had been in love with her husband when she met Wilson.  She was admiring her reflection in the hall when she first saw him.  His image invaded the mirror as he entered the corridor behind her.  He was tall and serene, handsome and strong.  Her pale eyes glowed like blue flames as she met his gaze through the glass.  Her heart skipped a beat.  She turned, pressing a sweaty palm to her royal blue gown.

He smiled out of the corner of his mouth and extended a bronzed hand.  “Wilson,” was all he said in introduction.  A million words couldn’t have made the impression that lone word did.  His voice had resonated in her mind ever since, an eternal vibration. 

For Margaret, everyplace was an opportunity.  She hoped to smell his cologne when she entered a room, hear his voice from her husband’s pool parlor, clear his empty glass from the cigar room.  She glanced at her husband, Jack, then finally at Wilson as he entered the lounge and joined the company.  Twenty years of torture.  She tried not to contrast the two men she loved the way a child tries not to have nightmares—in vain.

They were everything the other was not.  Jack’s extroversion and ready laugh had won her love, but they didn’t intoxicate her like Wilson’s half-smirk.  Nothing about Jack set her on fire; everything about Wilson made her crazy.

They had gathered that night to celebrate life—and a close call at that.  Wilson came and sat with the group.  The party was for him.  A silence swept over the table as their eyes perused the lengthy scar that ran from below his nose and down his neck, stopping just above his collar.   

Jack took control of the situation.  “Here’s to the lion,” he said, raising his glass in a toast.  The people laughed a little and the tension broke.   “I can’t ever thank you for what you did,” he said on a more serious note, directing himself to his friend.

Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to Wilson.  “Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.  Wilson looked at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.  His eyes burned into hers with the same message he had just whispered to her on the veranda.  She willed herself to tear her eyes away from his gaze and accepted Jack’s hand that was nuzzling into hers beneath the table, swallowing her feelings down with her Malibu and Diet Coke.

Balance

Click-clack, click-clack. The heels of her boots slapped tiredly up the cement sidewalk.  She paused, heaving her purse farther over her shoulder, careful not to crush the eggs that were wedged into one of several plastic grocery bags dangling from her arms.  Click-clack, click-clack; the metal grate stairs were the last obstacle and they were covered in ice.  When she scaled them without falling, she felt like she had won. 

Warmth burst out of the little apartment like a welcoming embrace as she turned the key in the lock and shoved the sticky door open.  She grimaced and made a face as she stepped in, dropping the bags, except the one with the eggs, onto the floor.

“It smells like something has died in the walls,” she called out.

“Well, do something about it,” a voice responded frigidly from the bedroom. 

“I always do,” she retorted.

The tension in the formerly welcoming house grew like bacteria.  She took a can of beans out of one of the bags and slammed them onto the counter.  She crumpled the plastic bag noisily and shoved it under the sink.  She glared at him through lowered eyelids as he walked out of the bedroom with his slippers on and turned on the TV, settling comfortably on the couch. 

“Uhh…” she started, “I thought you were cooking tonight.”

“I can check the score and still cook,” he shot back at her. 

Hot, angry tears filled her eyes.  Women’s rights did nothing more than make women work twice as hard, she thought, emptying another bag and stacking the pancake mix and rice on the pantry shelf.

After a few more minutes of pained silence (except the pointedly loud unpacking of groceries), she began to angrily pick through some chicken she had laid out on the cutting board. 

He smirked from his throne on the hand-me-down couch, dying to ask for a beer, but preferring to make her wonder when he was going to ask for one.

“Blasted neighbors!” she spat.  She washed her hands in the kitchen sink and stormed to the bathroom to return with a can of air freshener.  She pressed the top and held it, marching through the house in protest of the smells of old fish and curry that wafted through the wafer-thin walls.    She took extra care to linger in the living room, spraying more than necessary.

Her husband covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve and glared at her.  “You don’t have to use the whole can,” were the muffled words that came out. 

“If I didn’t always have to deal with everything…” 


He tuned her out.  It was the same argument, different night.  He remembered what happened last time, and the sun sagged low.

The Generational Implications of Weak Wills

                                           The Generational Implications of Weak Wills

           She managed to keep the tears that were welling up inside her from racing down her cheeks until she heard the car door shut and the roar of the engine.  She fell back against the door and sank to the floor, wrapping her thin arms around her body in a cold embrace.  Sobs shook her bony figure as she heard over again the words that had been whispered only moments before. I love you too, Mom.  Her daughter’s voice had cracked as if it pained her to say those words these days.  Her beautiful daughter, broken and bruised, yet trying to hide it under icy eyes and bright but frigid laughter.

            Looking at Veronica was like seeing herself years earlier, lies and all.  She wiped her sticky cheeks with shaking fingers and closed her eyes, remembering the happy bells of Veronica’s childhood laughter and seeing her blonde curls bounce as she bounded through the grass like a little fawn.  She had been thin then with bony knees and features that were too harsh for her delicate little frame.  But with age, and with the mysteries of cosmetic surgery, that skinny little girl had grown into a thin but curvy young woman.

            She glanced through the living room and into the kitchen and could almost smell the homemade pizza she used to cook when her children were young, see their faces smudged from playing outside and hear their pleas for popsicles to soothe them from the summer sun.  This door that now supported her fragile weight had seen so many things, shut in so many secrets.  And it was still here for her to do what she was not strong enough to do, what she had never been strong enough to do.  A hot ball of poisonous guilt seared itself deeper into her stomach and she imagined it seeping out of her pores, another clue to the outside world of the horrors that had taken place in that once-happy house haunted by secrets too terrible to tell.

            A coo coo bird popped out of the old wooden clock to announce the hour and turned to make his own retreat behind his little square wooden door.  With resolve, she raised up her body, weary with sadness and laden with shame, shuffling through the silent house which failed to muffle the echoes of remorse that ping-ponged .

            She needed to finish the wash and mop the dog prints off the floor before he came home.  She half smiled, half grimaced as she remembered her former expectancy and nervousness for his nightly arrival.  Sometimes the king of this little castle used to come home with cupcakes and flowers, pleased with everything she had prepared and proud of his children’s sports and school successes; other times he would crash in, bringing the tempests of the day to the dinner table and to anyone or anything in his way.

She paused on her way to the laundry room and let her fingers caress the smooth rail that led up the stairs where her children used to sleep.  She closed her eyes and caught her breath as she momentarily imagined the crumpled body of Veronica lying at the base.  The blood that had once stained this wooden banister and some of the stairs was gone now, trampled in after years of use and now forgotten—but not to her, and not to Veronica.

            She knew that her daughter had her own stairs now, soaking up blood and soaking up fears.  She knew that Veronica’s heavy wooden door was also her faithful friend, muffling the arguments and drowning out the whimpers of a mistreated wife.  Her daughter never spoke of such things—Veronica learned more than great cooking from her mother, Rosaline thought ironically.  But she could see it in the tight lines of her face, in the nervous glances her beautiful eyes cast around the room.

            Rosaline turned from the stairwell and continued to where the swishing of the dryer had just stopped, shrieking out a dull buzz that brought her back to the present.  And she wondered, as she took the steamy fresh clothes out in a pile, what would he have done, had he come home one day to no dinner and to the chores undone.  What would he have done if she had taken her children, and her fears along with her—if she had left?  And she couldn’t help but wonder, would her daughter have learned that from her too?

7/7/2009

EJ

So many faces, so much diversity, depth, intelligence and meaning.  I see the sculpted marble of a beautiful piece of art, perfectly molded and held together by poise and confidence.  Grace is bound up in the very fibers of your soul, weaving in and out of your many facets and bonding them into an aura that feels like sunshine when you laugh, which is often.  

When you are quiet, your silence is like dew in the morning, calm and refreshing with no pressure to speak and break the spell of deep, wordless understanding between true friends.  Your mind is a jewel that bursts forth rays of enlightenment that pour from your lips like a fountain of honey, sweet to those who recognize its value and intriguing to those who chance into the atmosphere of its perfume.  

Your will is like forged iron that has stood the test of time and come out unscathed.  You hold justice in one hand and drops of pure mercy cradled in the other.  You have a balance in which “judge not” outweighs your priceless opinions that are painted by an underground artist who someday will be known throughout the world.  Your back is strong like Atlas as you carry the pain of the world in your heart yet your body does not flinch and your knees do not falter as you wake up each day to trudge through the slimy quicksand of the world that would like to see you crumble.  

You have come out of the valley and to the top of the mountains where nothing can cast a shadow on you and you have silently rejoiced, basking in the light of the future.   

7/21/2011

Two chairs, a table, and a thousand bottles of wine.  Tea light candles give life to dancing shadows that hover and twirl in beat with the jazz that floats in from the terrace.  Friends and lovers gather in the extended cellar and their voices blend together, seeping into the brick to be guarded in silence by the pursed lips of mortar and stone.  I glance over the table and beyond your chair at the iron nameplates above the cluster of glass bottles—Spain, France, Italy, the Northwest.

But your chair is empty.  

You ought to be across this table from me, your dark eyes caressed by the heavy shadow of your lashes on your beautiful cheekbones.  There ought to be two crystal glasses side by side on the little round table and your knees should brush against mine as you rest your foot on the bar of my chair.  

But your chair is empty, cold and stark and your silence screams at me across the little table.  

I don´t know what to do with my hands since they can´t reach out and find yours.  I wish you were here with me.  Glancing again around the long room, everything reminds me of you.  You are the art, the décor, the cold metal and the warm light; you are a bottle of rare wine that cannot be classified by origin or color, taste or complexity.  The voices and the music and the wine on my tongue fade into vagueness as thoughts of you consume me.

Your place is on the ledge, on the two bricks that stand out from the others where a single bottle stands alone, proud and unique.  

6/05/10