From the Editor

Welcome back,

I drove to Burlington, Vermont a few weeks ago to enjoy a long weekend. It was raining when I left Maine. The ground was muddy green and evidently, deep into the beginnings of spring. As I crossed from New Hampshire into Vermont, the rain turned to sleet and then snow. Soon, I couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in any direction. The asphalt itself disappeared. For the next four hours I drove with white blindness, tires carefully in line with the deep ruts in the drifted snow. Every few minutes my hands would wobble, and for a terrifying second or two, the truck would fishtail before returning again to the safety of the ruts. I passed signs that listed the minimum speed as forty-five. I was doing twenty-nine. Luckily, I wasn’t arrested for my negligence.

The following Monday I returned to Maine, and sure enough, there wasn’t a flake of snow about. It seemed the region hadn’t agreed upon the season, so there’d been a compromise. Maine and half of New Hampshire continued on towards summer, while the other half of the granite state joined Vermont in total white-out.

Sometimes I worry that Rock Salt’s New England focus is too narrow, too restrained, a journal about a collection of identical rocky cold states, but I’m reminded now of New England’s largeness. Largeness in land area, yes, but also weather, and scenery, and characters. That weekend, Vermonters were surely living different lives than Bostonians. No one had to shovel out the stalls of Quincy Market or wedge themselves into the front seat of a salt truck and trail a plow up 95.

There aren’t many snowstorms in the following stories, but there are plenty of New England characters, each as different from the next as Burlington and York on March 12th, 2022. I hope you stick around and meet every one. Thank you for reading and see you in October.

J.B. Marlow

 Contributors 

Fiction

Martheaus Perkins (he/him) (“Close Your Eyes and Count the Chickens”) is a second-year undergraduate student at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. Currently, he is pursuing his BFA in Creative Writing. During his freshman year of high school, he wrote for “The Unsolicited Opinion,” a comedic newspaper column, and has work published in the anthology Depths of Summer (Wingless Dreamer) and HUMID 15 (SFASU). As an African-American writer, Perkins’s heroes include Maya Angelou, Billy Collins, and Langston Hughes.

R.W. Hartshorn (they/them) (“Medley”) is a nonbinary fiction writer and educator.

Meredith Craig (“The Favorite”) is a writer living in Brooklyn. She has published a short story in Variety Pack and has one forthcoming in an anthology by Run Amok Books. Additionally, her non-fiction travel pieces have appeared in Lonely Planet, Delta Sky, Times Union and many others. She is co-founder of Word!, a self-organized writing workshop for women, and is a reader for Uncharted Magazine. Recently, she was a participant in the Marin Better Books writer's workshop.

Steve Carr, (“Graveyard of the Puffins”) from Richmond, Virginia, has had over 580 short stories – new and reprints – published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. He has had seven collections of his short stories published. A Map of Humanity, his eighth collection, being published by Hear Our Voice LLC Publishers, is due out in January, 2022.

D. Dina Friedman (“Infiltrators”) has published widely in literary journals and received two Pushcart Prize nominations. She's the author of two young adult novels: Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) and one chapbook of Poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press). She has an MFA from Lesley University and taught for many years at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Visit her website at www.ddinafriedman.com.

Clyde Liffey (“NB”) lives near the water.

Joe Taylor (“Moral”) has had several story collections published--most recently, Ghostly Demarcations. He's also had several novels published--most recently The Theoretics of Love. He's been the director of Livingston Press . . . forever.

Nonfiction

Hunter Liguore’s (“A Night in Edwin Way Teale’s Study”) work has appeared in Spirituality & Health Magazine, Orion Magazine, Irish Pages, and more. Her nature writing is part of the Beinecke Library exhibit at Yale University called, “Preserving Land and Legacy: Writers and Artists Connecting to Nature at Edwin Way Teale’s Trail Wood.” Her book, The Whole World in Nan's Soup, is now available from Yeehoo Press. www.hunterliguore.org; @skytale_writer.

Twain Braden (“Pirate Hockey”) lives on Peaks Island, Maine. He practices admiralty law at the Portland firm Thompson Bowie & Hatch, LLP, and is nonfiction editor of Rock Salt Journal.

Visual

Abigail Annis (Cover) studied printmaking and art history at the University of Maine and graduated in 2019. Since then, she has switched to a nursing career with the intention of becoming a nurse-midwife. Her art is inspired by Maine flora and fauna.

Ann Calandro (Fresh Start) is a writer, mixed media collage artist and photographer, and classical piano student. She worked as a medical editor for many years.

Ava Lambert (Hocus Pocus) is a visual artist specializing in acrylic and oil painting. She has significant experience in a variety of other mediums including pencil, ink, watercolor, and sculpture. In addition to frequent commission work, Ava acquires inspiration from a variety of sources. Her detailed works include landscapes and elements of nature as well as figures, structures, and everyday objects. While the subjects of her paintings are often diverse, all reflect a fleeting moment in time. The photo-like representation of the subject prompts the viewer to admire the attention to detail within the artistic process and the subject itself.

Leah Day (Water’s Edge) lives on a small island off the coast of Maine. She loves adventuring, gardening, and making art—when she has time.

Close Your Eyes and Count the Chickens

Mark Perkins

Charles — September 17, 2020

Hello family,

I feel a bit self-conscious about this, but I’ll get over it. Nora says it’ll be good for me to write it out, and I’ve learned that arguing with a therapist about what’s good for me is impossible. So, you’ll be able to catch up with my cancer story every time you log in to check whose birthday it is.

I’m lucky we caught things quickly. I have one more appointment next Tuesday, and the care team will set the treatment plan. My primary doctor says we will start in the next 10 days. I’m figuring September 28th. I appreciate how many of you have reached out with your well wishes and offers to help. Just please, don't be upset if I "accidentally" catch gamma rays and turn into Hulk.

chuck

Nora — September 22, 2020

Hi everyone!

Chuck has a visit with the radiation oncologist today (luckily in Tomball, apparently Houston is under water). The MD Anderson team is fantabulous; he’s getting the best care possible. Dr. Fincher said the diagnosis is Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Chuck has two sites in his throat/neck area. His start date is October 12th. Prior to that, he must have a contraption developed that holds his tongue down during radiation. I’m pretty sure it’s a Medieval torture device. The side effects of radiation therapy in the throat and neck do not sound fun. He may temporarily lose his sense of taste, which means eating will not be as enjoyable, but the doctor said he may just have to focus on eating things he really likes. He’s totally pumped at the idea of milkshakes three meals a day. On the upside, he may never have to shave the left side of his face, again.

-Nora

Charles — September 30, 2020

Good evening from H-town,

What up dogs? That sounded pretty hip, didn't it? We’re back in Houston for a long day. It's six appointments. The highlights include fine-tuning my "tongue depressing stent" and getting fitted for my "body mask." Sounds pretty fly, huh? I’ll have some nasty souvenirs from all this. Although, I’m told this won’t help the claustrophobia, which is wiggity wack.

I was approved by Blue Cross to get Proton Beam radiation. Since it is a tighter beam, there will be less damage to surrounding structures. Dr. Fincher said the side effects shouldn't be as bad now. Nora started calling me Professor Proton, which isn't as cool Hulk.

chuck

Charles — October 1, 2020

OHMYGOSH, what a long day. It started with my COVID screening check at 7:30, said "no" to a bunch of questions. Off to get my wax tongue fitted. It wasn't quite right, but Caroline, my nurse friend, adjusted it. Then, it was off to get the "shove up your nose" test. Caroline counts down from five once she gets it in place. She says counting helps. It doesn't. Just makes me want to show her how to count faster.

Then, it was off to make the mask. So strange. They strap you down, take plastic mesh that has been in a tank of warm water, and stretch it over your head and shoulders with the stent in your mouth. They take it off, unstrap you. Yay, all done. That's a negatory, Ghost Rider. They put you back in and attach it to the mask’s back portion. They keep you busy around here.

Ok, enough expository material, on with the panic attacks. I get there and it's time for the worst ride in Astro World: The Claustrophobic Carousel of Cruelty. Well, it's not a carousel, it's an MRI machine. Despite the two happy pills, I was still wound up from the earlier session. I sat in the waiting area staring at my lime green mask and red wax stent, tapping my foot as fast as Buddy Rich. Seriously, if you would have snuck up behind me and popped a balloon, I would have soiled myself, jumped out of my skin, and my eyeballs would’ve exploded.

The techs were patient. After three false starts, they got me strapped down and ready. I didn't ask how long the sessions were. I didn't want to know. I'm not certain if the happy pills ever did anything, but I spent my time trying to count seconds while screaming "DON’T THINK" in my head. Stop laughing, I really did that. I wanted to kiss them both after they disconnected the mask, but they were wearing face shields and I still had the stent in my mouth. They seemed to appreciate the gesture. Nora was so proud she bought me a chocolate milkshake.

I appreciate the people at MDA. They give me confidence. If I only had a heart.

C'mon Toto, time for bed.

chuck

Nora — October 11, 2020

We moved into the Airbnb home, yesterday. Chuck is painting with the window open—you know what he’s like. We have all day to acclimate before the adventure begins in earnest tomorrow.

-Nora

Charles — October 13, 2020

Day Two went as smooth as jazz. The techs that torture me are so upbeat. They asked for my music preferences, and I told them Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. They were surprised to see me shimmy like a June bug when they turned it on.

“Mr. Keller, you got some moves on you.”

“You should’ve seen me before the hip replacement.”

Nora wasn’t nearly as appreciative of my moves when we got home—[Wife’s note: It was nothing to be proud of, trust me.]—but she’s always been the better dancer.

I was in no hurry, baby, I don’t want to go home.

Charles — October 16, 2020

I realized I hadn't updated things since Tuesday and, honestly, I didn't want to. After my post, it went south. I had my first chemo Monday evening. Three hours of lying quietly, eating a turkey sandwich in a comfy bed. How tough is this? Got up Tuesday for radiation—not even a full panic attack. But the happy chemo drugs began to wear off, and the Hell Hiccups started. They began around my ankles and twisted me like a dreidel. I didn’t get much sleep, and Nora got hiccup alarms throughout the night.

It’s here, gentle readers, that I must be honest: I ignored Caroline’s advice. She told me not to wait until I was sick to take the nausea medicine, but did I listen?  I’ll spare the gruesome details, but Nora turned the TV up to 80 and still heard me yacking.

She’s doing a wonderful job taking care of me: tolerating my whining, complaining, and occasional barfing. I doubt I could do half of what she does, but I won’t have to. She may be a better dancer, but I trounce her in the Big Baby Department.

chuck

Charles — October 20, 2020

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 64 years, it’s that everyone wants to befriend the donut holes guy. This morning, I wanted to get Team Hulk a dozen: my golden tickets of delicious dough. I’m in and out of the lab in 20 minutes. Down to the first floor, and ready to begin my march to the dungeon. I stopped and helped a young woman find her way. I’ve been around enough to know the secret of finding the big blue doors. It’s easy to spot rookies: bug eyed with the scent of confusion. The woman said something about picking up her meds, and it hit me! There was no happy pill swimming in my stomach acid. I’ll spare Nora from reading the cussing I gave myself.

I was in a death grip with the Panic Panther. I sat next to an older couple and prayed the delicious dough holes would calm me. Radiation screws your taste buds. I tossed the first one in the air and tried to catch it. I thought doing my infamous dolphin routine would lighten the mood. Instead, I wasted a perfectly good donut hole. I popped the second one in my mouth and tightened my face like a fist. Must have been the black sheep of the donut hole family. I could barely swallow it. I pushed the third one further in my mouth, away from the bad juju tastebuds upfront. Before I could force it down, the hillbilly tastebuds came out of the bayou to terrorize my mouth. My “golden tickets” tasted like copper. I thought the couple would want some. 

The gentleman was in a wheelchair. His treatments must be hell because he only spoke in whispers through his wife. I’d assumed it was his wife but—by the look of him—it could have been his daughter. I didn’t want to assume. Mr. Whisper spoke something in his wife’s ear, and she replied, “You know it’s in my purse, go ahead—get it.”

I laughed. "Oh, never go into a woman's purse. I learned that from mom decades ago."

"It's ok to go in a woman's purse when she says so." We laughed together.

“Oh, no, I can’t. I bring it to my wife and ask her to get it.”

The laughter continued; they were an easy crowd.

You would be surprised with how pleasant Mr. Whisper’s laugh was. It was the loudest he got. He whispered in her ear, and she told me he said I was right to fear my wife.

Charles — October 26, 2020

Mr. Whisper came in with his wife's pink purse perched on his lap. That was his wife, by the way. As she picked it off his lap, I told him, "I saw you looking in there." He and his wife started laughing. Everyone else in the waiting room laughed too, perhaps they thought I was bullying the guy in the wheelchair and didn't want to be next. But the three of us knew.

"Mr. Keller, you ready?" It was Caroline.

“No, but you’re going to take me anyway.”

“Great. We moved your proton therapy up, so you can just go in right after your simulation.”

I wanted to throw a chair. It was the second time that week I forgot my happy pills. This time, it was Nora’s fault.—[Wife’s note: It wasn’t]—She said I could drive back and get it after simulation. But Overlord Nora didn’t account that they would run early? Here comes the Panic Panther again, grinning at me with those sharp teeth. I didn’t want to appear wimpy and admit that I needed to go home to get another happy pill. I tried to cover my heinie by telling Caroline, “They moved my time up, so I won’t be able to take the car back to Nora and she needs to go to HEB.”

She giggled. "Oh, HEB doesn't care. I've picked up groceries an hour late before—they just keep them there for you. They’re good about that." She pointed to a room with a curtain and said that I can sit in there until my therapy starts.

I found myself in the proton radiation therapy room, no second happy pill in sight. It’s not even 3:00 for gosh sakes! Things are supposed to run late! Not horrifyingly early! I caved and told Caroline that I’m claustrophobic, and I’ve only had one happy pill.

She gave me a billboard smile and said, “It’ll be ok. Close your eyes and count the chickens.” I don't think she heard a word I said.

Charles — October 31, 2020

It’s been a while; I’m sorry. I lost a friend, yesterday. For the life of me, I don’t know why I never introduced myself. I noticed that I hadn't seen Mr. Whisper in days. The new ladies and EMTs from another hospital were coming in with a gurney. It was the first time I’ve seen Caroline without her teethy smile. She was holding on to the gurney bar tight like a rollercoaster harness. I kept my distance, but I was positive it was Mr. Whisper. I couldn’t be sure because I didn’t see his wife. I never got his name. I took the waiting room seat where we always had our morning conversations and cried like a baby.

I’m trying to distract myself with painting. I know; I haven’t changed a bit. I check the email to see if my students need anything. But Art isn’t exactly Pre-Cal, so they don’t ask many questions. Today, a few sent some of their projects and that just made me cry more. I miss making fun of them in person.

I still can’t get over not getting his name. We chatted about the staff, how damn chipper they were that early. A little baseball or football. Nothing deep. His cancer was on his tongue. They had to remove a part of it and replaced it with tissue from his leg. His biggest concern was not being able to see the granddaughter in Mississippi.

Nora told me she was going to try to find Mrs. Whisper on Facebook. Part of me hopes she doesn’t. It doesn’t take long to get attached around here.

Love you, thanks for reading.

chuck

Charles — November 2, 2020

Today was my last day in radiation. I had a lot more zip. I went to radiation and every tech had on matching witch socks and Halloween shirts. A little late in the season, but I like to think they were celebrating my birthday. I wish I’d thought to get a selfie with them. Nora made the traditional Italian Creme Cake that I couldn't find a taste for other than “yuck” which made me sad. I heard "Happy Birthday" from all of them and they were delighted to see Nora’s cake.

Radiation goes off without a hitch. Afterward, I told them how much I’ve appreciated them, that their compassion got me through this. It wasn't my intention, but they started crying and said they’d miss my bad jokes. It was about that time Mr. Whisper rolled in. Because of my mask, he couldn't see my big grin when I realized it wasn't him on the gurney. He was with Mrs. Whisper and Caroline. They were busy, but I barged in to ask for a group selfie and tell them it was my last day. He whispered congratulations through his wife, and I told him to keep his manners and stay out of his wife’s purse. Their names are really Mr and Mrs. Moore. It was good to hear them laugh one more time. Caroline walked me to the door, and we hugged. "If they don't treat you right over there, we will take you back, Chuck."

“Back here? With you and the chickens? They’d have to drag me back.”

Later that day, I had my chat with the chemo doctor. All my blood work looked good; I just can’t lose too much more weight.

“If you drop more than 20%, we will have to put you on a feeding tube.” He almost made it sound fun.

I got home worn out. I lied down for a nap. Nora came in about 7:00 and asked if I wanted dinner. “Not right now.” I rolled over.

"You need to get up and take your meds and take care of your teeth." She poked my empty gut.

I crawled out of bed, had a muscle milk, took my meds. Everything was fine until the fluoride treatment. Something about it causes gag reflex. I was still over the sink when the nausea took over and emptied everything in my stomach. Luckily, it wasn’t much. I cleaned myself up, shrugged, and went back to bed. This is not a problem. I know people with problems. Life goes on.

Charles — November 21, 2020

"Mr. Keller?"
"Yes, here."
"How are you?"
"I’m well," I lied, "Yourself?"
"I'm well. We aren't quite through, so if you would—"
"Have a seat in the VIP lounge?" I finished for her, and we chuckled at the long-standing joke.

It's just a dressing room for patients who must be in a gown. A few minutes later, I’m finished disrobing.

"You ready?"
"No, but it doesn't matter. You're going to make me do this anyway."

In goes the mouthpiece, down comes the mask, the eyes close, darkness surrounds, and the count begins:

One clucking chicken, two clucking chickens, three clucking chickens …the beginning is always tough because of the adjustments …twelve clucking chickens, thirteen clucking chickens ...sorry if all these chickens are making you hungry …58 clucking chickens, 59 clucking chickens, 60 …one minute down, 19 to go; I always tell myself it will take 20 minutes even though it has only taken that long once ...five clucking chickens, six clucking chickens ... “Ok, everything looks good, we are ready to start," then the weird noises like fabric tearing start... 34 clucking chickens …marbles rolling around a barrel …51 clucking chickens …Why am I doing this? Caroline said counting chickens makes you happier than counting Mississippis ...three clucking chickens, four clucking chickens ...the beam alarm. "Good job" the voice says, "We are setting up for the second phase." I lie still. I am in position, and don't want to screw anything up …twelve clucking chickens, thirteen clucking chickens.

This one has sat uncompleted for a few days. There were some rough days I’ll tell you about later.

Nora — November 30, 2020

Hi everyone,

Chuck finished treatment on the 24th. We stayed in Houston for Thanksgiving and got home Friday. He's been asleep in his recliner ever since. The last 10 days have been tough for him. His throat is in extreme pain, and he's pretty much been on a liquid diet.

The good news is that there is every indication that the treatment was successful, although, we won't know for sure until he heals, and they reassess.

I wanted to post the painting he’s been working on, but he won’t let me. Don’t worry, my wordsmith will post again, soon.

-Nora

Charles — December 7, 2020

Sorry, I haven't written sooner.

It’s interesting, looking back to my early conversations with Dr. Fincher. I asked her about going back to work.

"Probably January or February."

January or February! I was thinking that we’d finish in October, recover Thanksgiving week, be back for school early December. I know extra precautions are needed because of COVID. My immune system will be compromised, but do you not know who I am? I’m Chuck Keller. I laugh at such things. I've had three hip replacements.

"You need to make sure you give yourself plenty of time to heal, Mr. Keller."

Did you not listen to the voices in my head? I’m Chuck Keller, dammit. I am a legend in my own mind. Time to heal? After my last hip replacement, I was back on my feet three hours after surgery. People marvel at my strength and stamina. I should have my own carnival tent!

"This isn't something you hurry back from."

Are your ears clogged? I made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!

I went to the kitchen today and got down a very small bowl,—[Wife’s note: He wrote "bowel" the first time and I caught it on the read through. I think he was trying to get back to you on the constipation question, but I am not a psychiatrist. Oh wait, I am.]—poured myself a very small portion of Rice Krispies, covered them with milk, a bit of sugar. Nora has the unenviable job of trying to keep spirits up, taking care of me, putting up Christmas decorations. She came down the hall to see what I was doing and began in a very congratulatory and upbeat way, "Oh, good! You're eating." I cut her off with a growl, "No. Go away." I waited until she left the house before trying to eat green beans. As she turned quietly and went back down the hallway, it occurred to me what the real problem was. I’m Chuck Keller, dammit. I didn't want her to see me struggling to swallow soggy Rice Krispies or witness my battle with green beans. I’m ashamed of what this disease and treatment has reduced me to.

I love you, honey. I’ve noticed you read these.

chuck

Charles — February 1, 2021

[Wife’s note: I told him, if he didn't finish this, there would be no more chocolate cake. Look at those fingers fly!]

Here it is: good news and bad news. No one picks bad news first, so let's start there. It may not be over. The surgeon told me there are two nodes on the left side of my neck that he "isn't happy with." Sugarcoating isn't what this man does. He says what he thinks. He described the surgery as "no big deal." Seriously, as far as bad news goes, this is mild. I feel good about it. The good news is that the throat cancer appears to be gone. So, they won't be crawling into my mouth and tiptoeing down my throat.

Charles — March 3, 2021

As I stare at the ceiling tiles, I keep wondering about myself. You ever notice time rarely goes in real time? Sometimes it speeds by—a student turns 30 that just finished high school last week. Maybe there’s a pattern in these little holes, a picture of something. On other occasions, time crawls by. Usually, it’s a meeting you didn't enjoy or a bad play you can't walk out of. I can't find any kind of picture or pattern, and the clock has barely moved.

The man had his hand on my head, jabbing the needle inside my neck, searching for cells. He is thorough at his craft. I didn't recall it being this rough the first time, but then again, the first time he knew where the cancer was.

As I stare at the ceiling, I give a little snort. During the PET scan, I’m as still as a scared baby deer, distracting myself by counting. The voice in the back of my head suddenly has volume. I hear it over my counting. "Open your eyes, chicken—bwuack, bwuack! Go ahead, open them." I keep my eyes closed, counting seconds; time slowed down. Is that damn clock ever going to move? How long can 30 minutes take?

"Sir, hold this gauze on your neck with some pressure. I will take this down to pathology and get the preliminary results."

"Ok," I tell him, "I’ll just wait here." He gives me a chuckle. You think he’s heard that joke before?

The patterns make sense, now. I’m easily one of the luckiest people in the universe. I’m surrounded by people that care more about me than I deserve. Here I lie, deciding if I need to send cancer a thank you note: 35 pounds lost, a clearer understanding of what’s important as I hurl through space. There is a light tap at the door. He’s back to tell me that the preliminary pathology is negative. He tells me that he was using the biggest needle they had and he, "biopsied the hell out of it." Then, he says, “We’ll look at it again in a month, but everything looks good.”

When I started telling people I had cancer, I felt like the Phantom taking off his mask for Christine. No one screamed quite like Sarah Brightman, but I could see how horrified they were. I didn’t want to lose myself in the blur of cancer.

Maybe I’m still in shock because of the needle that was just in my neck, but I swear there’s a pattern to it all. Hidden definitions in the ceiling, supporting each other: Caroline’s smile, Mrs. Moore’s purse, her husband’s laugh, the lost woman who was only a corner away from the blue doors, my students’ shy brushstrokes, the comments under these posts, and my wife’s chin—heavy over my shoulder while I paint. I love you, honey.

To all my little clucking chickens,

thanks for letting me count on you.

chuck

Back to Contributors

Medley

R.W. Hartshorn

Sugar Sand​

My sixth-grade science teacher has us studying mollusks in little plastic cups half-filled with sand. I am pigeon-toed and tingly at the thought of touching something from the sea for the first time. While the teacher explains how the mussel's “foot” pulls it across the ocean floor, I run my fingertip along its purplish shell, looking for its face, careful about the expression I'm making. I want the mussel to know I'm friendly, that I can be trusted.

At the end of the day, my teacher says to return the mussels if we don't want them. My classmates put their cups on the counter and sling their backpacks over their shoulders. I stare down through the blurry water. I ask to go to the office.

My parents are at work, so I phone my grandmother, who is boiling maple sap on the stove, the last of the steam sweetening the kitchen. When she says my name, I hear my grandfather in the background. He shifts away from his news program and asks what's wrong.

“I have an animal,” I say, and something catches in my throat when my grandmother asks for details. All I can tell her is that I need her to come get me so I can save it.

I hear my grandfather say, “It better not be a high-class rat.”

She asks what would have happened if I'd given the animal back. I actually don't know. I picture the mussel being tossed into the icy bay of the local grocery store's seafood counter.

​

The air in the car is sugary and warm. During the ride, I clutch the cup in my palms. The mussel sits in the bottom like a smooth stone.

My grandmother tells me to look in the back pocket of the passenger seat. A small jar filled with brown powder is tucked there.

I ask if she overcooked the maple syrup. She says yes, but on purpose, and she added some cream, and I'll like it.

​

Later, I trot down to the communal lake behind my parents' house, with the cup in one hand and the jar in the other. I kick off my sandals and step onto our dock's hot, red planks. I look at the mussel, unsure whether it can survive in fresh water, whether something's waiting to eat it.

I set the cup and the jar on the dock's edge. I remove the rubber band and lace doily from the jar, put them aside, and scoop a fingertip-full of the crumbly maple sand. When I sprinkle it into my open mouth, its sweetness dissolves on my tongue.

I'd planned on dumping the mussel into the lake and then watching Punk Rock Chicks from Outer Space until my mom got home, but now, I am soaring over the water with the cup gripped to my chest, and then my feet break through the surface, then the rest of me follows, and my hair fans out, and as I rush to the bottom, the sand and the mussel burst free from the cup.

The mussel floats, then settles, and I want to stay, but I'm being pulled to the top. I plant my soles in the lake-bottom muck, and I take root. A school of yellow bullheads whirls under my raised arms. The mussel opens. I hear my own laugh, feel my hair expand into a beautiful mane, become aware of my eyelashes, my skin, the splashes of color painted all over me. Under the water, I bloom.

​

Sprig o' Parsley, Sprig o' Mint ​

My high school is dripping in pink and white paper hearts, and Millie stands near her locker, wearing a glittery, blood-colored dress. I've worn the same skirt every day for the past week. It's been a year since anyone has called me a “boy.”

As I pass, squished in a cloud of peers, Millie says to someone, “I have no flowers in my hand. Why don't I have fucking flowers in my hand?”

After class, I take my new driver's license on a trip to my grandparents' house, ensconced between emerald hedges two blocks from a noisy overpass. My grandmother is cross-legged on a hemlock stump in the yard, blowing a tune on a tin whistle.

“I played this one the day you were born,” she says as I unlock the garden gate, as if continuing a conversation we've been having all day.

My grandfather is near the hedge with his hands on his hips, looking over black five-gallon buckets spilling with plants. I remember him showing me his hot peppers when I was a child, his crowning achievement.

Those are too hot to eat, he told me.

​Then why grow them? I asked.

​Because they're good, he said.

​I tell my grandparents I need a bouquet for someone. Besides the occasional dandelion, though, there's no color in this garden. Everything that grows here is for nourishment, not show. My grandmother looks at me as if I should have known this, but she sees the desperation welling in my eyes.

​“Here,” my grandfather says. He grunts as he bends at the waist and reaches into the mass of green. My grandmother puts the whistle back to her lips, and flits out the final notes of “Follow Me up to Carlow.”

When my grandfather turns around, his hands are caked in soil, and he's clutching a clump of different green things from the garden: stringy, leafy plants that shoot the smell of dish soap up my nose.

“Take it,” he says. “And tell her these are worth more than carnations.”

​

I wiggle out of my skirt, put on black pants and a jacket, and drive to Millie's parents' house. I stop on the side of the road to snatch a white flower I don't recognize, and I poke it into the center of the garden bouquet. When I ring Millie's doorbell, I notice the crescents of dirt etched in the fringes of my fingernails. Two does and a fawn chomp on fat purple heads of trillium at the edge of the yard, watching me, the stranger.

Millie answers the door, in bare feet and the same glittery dress from school. Her black hair reminds me of an oil slick. ​

“Oh. Hey.”

I extend my hand, full of plants from my grandparents' garden.

On the way over, I'd thought of what to say: These are yours; Be mine; I hate Valentine's Day but I love you. But my mouth is gravel. I look at her eyes and try not to seem terrified.

For a moment, she's trying to figure out what's happening. Then she understands, and takes the bouquet. The stems are tied in blue wrapping.

“I feel like no one even saw me today,” she says. She pulls me into a hug, and the brief beating of her chest against mine, the transfer of heat, feels like something out of myth.

​

We walk through the woods with arms locked, following the deer trail. I show her wood sorrel, and we giggle at its lemony taste in our mouths. When we see the deer again, they glare at us from behind a cluster of mock orange.

“My dad always makes me scare them away,” Millie says. ​

I pull my grandmother's tin whistle from my sleeve, and hand it to Millie. ​

“Nobody wants to be scared,” I say.

She looks at the whistle, unsure whether she wants to take it. When she does, she screeches a made-up tune that the deer notice, but don’t run from. When it’s my turn, I do the same, plugging random holes with my fingertips. But the deer don’t know we’re playing badly, do they?

Once we’re done laughing, Millie turns to me, and her face changes.

“Alright,” she says, leaning in. “This is only happening once, ever.”

When she kisses me, I open my mouth and accept what she gives.

Dieu-le-Veut's Reel

Two of my friends get married the week after I begin having dreams of a pirate girl on the high seas. In these dreams, I see through the girl's eyes, feel the warm blood left on her fingers after battles with privateers, taste the salt whipping off the blue swells, but I don't think she's me, exactly. When my friends call to ask if I'll help them hang a thousand threads of origami cranes from the ceiling of the venue and set tiny ships in bottles in the center of every table, I want to go back to sleep.

When I do, we (the pirate girl and I) are gripping the wheel of a vessel on its way from Tortuga to the heart of the ocean. The creak of the hull, the way the wind tosses my hair, the burning of the salt in my nostrils – it's as raw as anything that happens when I'm awake.

I awaken with sweat beading my clavicle like a shimmering necklace. I fish around on the nightstand for my phone, and call my grandmother. ​

“Grandma, were there woman pirates?”

I thought I may have woken her up, but I can practically hear her hands rubbing together, as if she's been waiting for me to ask. ​

“All the ones that matter,” she says. “Rusila, Sayyida al Hurra, Grace O'Malley, Ching Shih, Mary Read, Anne Dieu-le-Veut. And these weren't your ho-hum drunken sailors. These were queens. Empresses. Women who escaped terrible lives and took what was theirs.”

I latch onto the last one, Anne Dieu-le-Veut, a name I like the sound of. When I dream of the pirate girl again, I tell myself that this is who we are – this French lady buccaneer – gnawing dried meat and licking salt from stained fingers, mending sails with blistered hands, dreaming dreams-within-dreams about moonlit lovemaking on shores we'll only visit once.

I think about calling my grandmother again, just to talk, not to ask her for something. But I only think about it.

​

The night before the wedding, I cinch into my dress, soft orange chiffon, and attempt to get laid, but no one in my address book has the energy – at least, no one in the coastal tourist village where the wedding will be. I drink half a bottle of wine while still in my dress, lying on my hotel comforter and tapping a high-heeled foot to a tune I can't remember the name of. I decide on nine different colors for my nails, then I don't paint them.

Soon, I'm walking to the beach with wine-breath and a foggy head, a nose full of the sea-smell that takes me back to stacking plastic sandcastle molds as a child, to poking dry jellyfish with my big toe. Never mind that it's actually the smell of decay.

I follow the tapping of a hand drum to a little marina on the ocean. Women in identical orange dresses stand in an oval, swiveling to the thud of a bodhran and a tambourine. The sand is cool now, and soon I'm among them, spinning and weaving, skin tingling, eyes filled with torchlight, the hairs on my arms electric. I shimmy into the center, and each woman moves in opposite me one by one. Some of them are ropy and young, hungry to keep this energy alive. Others have starfish necklaces, skin stippled with seashells, or threads of neon eelgrass in place of hair. One woman moves to the center, locks eyes, knocks our hips together, and tinders a thousand fires in me. When we finish, she returns to the outer circle, rubs her heel, and heads to the docks, vanishing as other women close the gap in bodies. The drumming picks up.

But I'm not tired yet. The next woman enters the circle, and as she whips the purple sea sponges issuing from her scalp, I see the face of my grandmother, what she looked like when she was only a few years older than me. Only now she's not grimacing in a black-and-white photo from a seemingly impossible time period. Now, she's fully animated, grinning, long-limbed and straight-backed, a burst of color.

We giggle, match each other step for step, and I think to myself that we are now at the point we could never get before: adults who can see each other as the fullest versions of ourselves.

“Grandma –”

She shakes her head. Maybe we don't need to talk.

Finally, my knees wobble, and I can feel my pulse in the soles of my feet. Time to sit. My grandmother nods. She understands, but she won't be done for a while.

When I find the woman I danced with before, she's sitting at the end of a dock, legs hanging over the side. The drumming is muffled behind us.

I sit next to her, dip my feet in the ocean, and feel something calling me from below, like whalesong vibrating my bones.

“I heard that the ocean would make me feel small,” she says, staring over the horizon.

I say, “Pirates probably came up with that idea. They didn't always know where they were going.”

She thinks it over, allows a hint of a smile. “By the way,” she says, “who are you, anyway?”

So many ways to answer, all so incomplete.

 Fresh Start by Ann Calandro

 A Night in Edwin Way Teale’s Study

Hunter Liguore

While I should be excited to spend a week at the Edwin Way Teale home, in Hampton, Connecticut, as part of this year’s Writer-in-Residence, sitting at his desk, it feels eerie and unsettling. It’s been left exactly the same way, since the day he passed in 1980.

Edwin was a pioneering naturalist and writer whose lifework spanned fifty years and earned him a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, 1966. His most notable works include, A Naturalist Buys a Farm and A Walk Through a Year, making him one of the first authors to chronicle the seasons in book form. When he died, he left 168 acres to the Connecticut Audubon Society. In 1993, when his wife, Nellie, passed, the house was added to the trust—but it came with the stipulation that Edwin’s office remain “as is.”

The week-long residency is offered yearly, each summer, to a variety of authors and artists, selected by a committee, in an effort to not only celebrate Teale’s life, but to offer space for creatives to work, uninterrupted. Hardly in the door, I’m drawn to Teale’s office—it’s where he wrote and did his best work. It is a real time-capsule: his briefcase sits beside the desk; a box of negatives sits untouched on the desk blotter. The closet is still stocked with unused office supplies, like ink, pencils, and typewriting paper. The fireplace is decorated for a naturalist with seashells and a Henry David Thoreau bust. The Exxon calendar is turned to October 1980. His to-do list hangs on the bulletin board by the door. Things like, “Complete Pantry Brook, Chapter VII” or “update nature notes,” remains unfinished.

In the file cabinet of curiosities I find pieces of paper with Edwin’s scratchy handwriting, where he left notes for future projects. Everywhere I look I see research and cataloging, photos and outlines—all meticulously organized—to one day make up the ingredients that would normally get turned into a readable book. Just not for him anymore.

Surrounding me are decades of books—from Tenants of an Old Farm by Henry C. McCook, 1886, to A Place in the Woods by Helen Hoover, 1969—there is every kind of book for the nature enthusiast. Two family Bibles are tucked away in the desk drawer, along with the Mayflower Quarterly, and a collection of Tennyson. Tucked inside the latter is a piece of paper that reads: total receipts for New Year dinner, $71.00; one poem is marked, perhaps something he read aloud to celebrate the New Year:

Ring out, wild bells,

to the wild sky, the flying cloud,

the frosty light, the year is dying,

in the night, ring out,

wild bells, and let him die.

On the bookshelf I find a marked up copy of Work and Habits by Albert J. Beveridge, 1905, which offers a glimpse into the way Teale lived his life:

The first thing you’ve got to do in this life is to support yourself; the second is to support your family; and the third is to help other people; when you’ve done these things, you’ve succeeded.

Teale worked three decades for magazines, including Popular Science, and then as a freelance author. It was in the latter years that he and Nellie noticed the drastic change of the landscape due to developments and subdivisions. Small towns, he observed, lost their individuality. “One by one the roots that held us were cut.” Their new home became “a sanctuary for wildlife and for us,” and now it’s here for everyone.

The acreage surrounding the home, like the study, is well-preserved, and was like revisiting my childhood and getting to see all the wildlife and insects that have seemed long extinct: rare bluebirds; swarms of hummingbirds; two playful spotted fawns; a beaver; a pterodactyl-like crane; an osprey; monarchs and tiger swallows.

But inside the house, and particularly his unchanged office, there are different kinds of treasure: keepsakes that ordinarily would be kept from public view. In one file cabinet drawer, I discover Nellie’s Valentine’s Day card to Edwin, dated 2/14/1977. She wrote, “Here it is, our 30th anniversary of our first trip north in 1947—to be followed by so many others ... I’m yours with all my love.” They were married for fifty-seven years.

In the closet I find letters stored from Edwin’s hospital stay in January, ten months before his passing. The cancer had returned. The top letter, from Nellie, written during Edwin’s surgery, recounts, “We do a lot of waiting these days.” Her relief, when she learns of his recovery, is apparent, as is the hope of moving forward. “Now for getting well again, dear Edwin.”

It becomes clear the more I encounter Nellie’s influence in the room—her photos, her letters, her handwritten notes for her biography, another unfinished project—that the real

reason the room was left “as is” was for Nellie’s sake, not necessarily to safeguard it for future naturalists.

Nellie lived another thirteen years after Edwin, and in that time, she could’ve gone through things, tossed them out, or given them away. I think she didn’t want to relive or reopen the memories, or have to decide what to keep. To preserve the room like it was, she could feel like I do, that he might still be in there.

Edwin did a good thing when he bought this land and made it a home for the natural world. His wife did a good thing too; she died without ever having to clean out her husband’s office.

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The Favorite

Meredith Craig

I was 35 when I found out I wasn’t the favorite. My son, Teddy, and I liked to cuddle on the couch and read fairy tales, mostly about wicked stepmothers and gallant men who swooped in to save princesses and battle ogres. Anything could happen in the woods. The story of Hansel and Gretel was still rich in rotation, and Teddy could not fathom the horrible treatment of the children. Parents left their kids in the woods to die? I’d find Teddy alone in his room, acting out the story in a cardboard box, pretending to be the caged boy being fattened up for the oven.

One reading, Teddy looked up at me with his rich chocolate eyes and long lashes and asked if a parent could love one child more than another. He was most likely thinking of the birth of his sister, Stella, who was fast asleep across the nursery in her pink bassinet. “Oh no,” I said, smiling. Because of all the “New Sibling” books I’d been reading, I had expected this question months ago when Stella came home from the hospital. I endured ten hours of labor with Teddy, but with Stella, it was a breeze. My baby girl came merrily into the world with apple blossom cheeks and a full head of light hair. The doctors all remarked on what a sweet child she was, and strangers stopped to comment on her adorable pout.

“There is room for all children in a mother’s heart,” I said, thinking how privileged I was to have two when so many had problems with infertility.

Teddy squeezed against my postpartum rolls and snuggled into my armpit. His head smelled like baby powder. He’d always been attached to me, never wanting to leave my side for preschool or soccer camp. Maybe this was how it was with boys. I thought of myself as an octopus with more than enough love and arms to get Teddy and Stella through the physical and emotional hurdles of the day.

“It’s the same with parents. You love both your mommy and daddy the same amount, right?” I was thinking then of Greg at work, picking up Friday night pizza on his way home so I wouldn’t have to cook, and my heart almost exploded.

“No,” Teddy said. “I don’t love you both the same.”

I gave him a little squeeze. My silly billy, my funny bunny.

“Of course, you do,” I said, thinking Teddy’s love for Greg might feel different because he was always at work, and didn’t spend 24-hours-a-day caretaking, getting up in the middle of the night, comforting Teddy when he was hurt, making smiley face snacks and singing lullabies. I thought of the nine and a half months I carried Teddy in my stomach and how he was still a part of me, separated. My body was sacrificed for Teddy, my abdominal wall was ruined, and I still peed a little bit when I sneezed.

“I love Daddy more,” Teddy said.

I felt like I had been slapped.

Teddy blinked up at me through a curtain of black hair and his coal-colored eyes were piercing, even though his position remained unbearably pressed against me.

“You don’t mean that,” I finally said in a hoarse voice.

“Yes, I do,” he said, smiling. “I love Daddy more than you.”

I shifted my body away from him. “That’s unkind,” I said in my schoolmarm’s voice, reserved for when he hit other children or wouldn’t share with his cousin. He continued to stare, and even though I knew my child-rearing books would say he was testing boundaries, I couldn’t help feeling hurt. I had been up all night for weeks, nursing the baby, and was surviving on less than three hours of sleep, all for my children.

“It’s true,” Teddy said. And something about his open expression made me believe him. He didn’t notice what he was saying was hurtful; he was telling the truth.

“Fine,” I said, distracted by the baby’s soft coos across the room. “That’s just fine.” Stella fell back to sleep with her pudgy hand clutching the corner of her sleep sack. Before I could stop myself, I replied with four words that would forever change our lives.

“Stella is my favorite.”

—

Greg was a good husband and father. We met through friends at a summer barbecue, and he asked for my phone number instead of finding me on social media, which I found sweet and antiquated. He was tall yet plain-looking and had a stable job, the kind of guy to get up in the middle of the night to bring me water. Plus, he was upfront about wanting a big family. That was important to me from the start. I never understood girlfriends who tiptoed around the subject. Like it wouldn’t come up eventually.

I knew Greg would be a good provider. What I didn’t expect was how much he’d enjoy the actual duties of fatherhood. Where some men refused to change diapers, Greg always jumped to wipe a bottom or give a bath. But there were other issues. Greg looked at his son the way he used to look at me. He jumped up in the middle of the night if he heard Teddy cry, but never brought me tea in bed on weekends anymore. As Teddy grew into toddlerhood, Greg was promoted to Senior VP which meant a lot more money but more hours at the office and a long commute home from the city. He was hesitant to take the job.

“Are you crazy?” I asked him. “With the extra money, we can redo the kitchen or send Teddy to preschool.” I had a laundry list of other ways to use the money. “We all have to make some sacrifices for the family.”

Greg accepted the job and left Teddy and me to fend for ourselves most evenings and a lot of weekends. He was sour on the company and complained about his “work-life” balance, but from where I stood, he seemed content. He’d come home after team-building happy hours, with sharp clothes and whiskey on his breath, to find me in worn-through sweats, unwashed hair, and piles of dirty dishes.

The few weekends Greg was around, he’d offer to take Teddy out for the whole day so I could catch up on sleep, or chores, or self-care. All the things I couldn’t do when I was stuck at home with my child. As soon as Greg got Teddy in the stroller and out the door, I’d sink into the sofa and end up wasting hours watching “The Bachelor”, wondering why my husband never wanted to spend the day with me instead of Teddy. The two of them would return grinning from ear to ear, recounting adventures on playgrounds and trips to the beach. Instead of reviving me, those long afternoons made me feel worse, and the subsequent “date nights’ Greg suggested in response were intolerable.

One night in particular, when Teddy was three, Greg’s mother visited from Virginia and offered to babysit. After I put Teddy down, I got dressed up in my pre-baby “fancy” clothes, squeezing into a black, out-of-style, one-shouldered dress.

“This is how it happens,” I thought, looking in the mirror at my lumpy body. My feet couldn’t tolerate heels anymore, so I settled on dowdy black loafers. I blew out my mane of thick hair (my only good feature after pregnancy) and caked-on makeup, but the whole thing had the smell of desperation. Neither Greg nor his mother remarked on how pretty I looked because even they didn’t dare lie to my face.

“I can’t fit into my other shoes,” I said before anyone had the chance to ask about the loafers.

“Honey, if you don’t start wearing heels again soon, you’ll never be able to,” Greg’s mother said, shaking her helmet hair.

“I’m still getting over my plantar fasciitis, Louisa,” I said.

“Let’s just go,” said Greg, keeping the peace.

The restaurant was trendy and filled with first dates and groups of loud singles in their twenties. The waiter was mean and hurried us through the courses.

“I used to be someone,” I wanted to shout in the waiter’s face. “I used to wax my bikini line! I used to buy new clothes! I was just like these other women!”

Greg took me home and made love to me in silence so his mother wouldn’t hear us from the fold-out couch in the living room. I barely moved and it was over quickly. The next month I found out I was pregnant with Stella.

I didn’t plan on hiring a nanny or wet nurse when Stella was born. I didn’t with Teddy, so there was no reason to think it would be necessary with the second. I joked with Greg that the second kid would be easier since I’d done it once before. But the problem I hadn’t anticipated was the logistics of scheduling. Preschool started at 9 am but ended at 12:30 pm on the dot, and the gray-haired Director with the wooden beaded necklace didn’t allow exceptions to stroller parking, scooter storage, or late pick-ups. That meant that I’d have to wake Stella up from her afternoon nap to get Teddy, which completely threw off her precarious sleep schedule.

Deirdre appeared like an angel, although she hardly looked like one at close range. I found her when I sold a few unopened newborn bottles on the online Mommy listserve. Through the car window, Deirdre appeared as a pale pinched face, squinting. She looked small with her hair around her head like a halo. When she opened the door and came up the walkway, I saw what I missed: half of her face, neck, and body was badly burnt, and the skin was shriveled with wrinkles.

“Hello, you must be here for the bottles,” I said, over pronouncing the words, to cover up my shock. I’m sure she got that all the time, if not worse. Her corduroy jacket covered her arms, but one hand was also affected. She was late, but given what the woman had already been through, I could hardly scold her. I explained the stressful situation, of needing to get the baby up and get to Teddy’s school, feeling ridiculous as if trying to compare my suffering with hers.

Deirdre said in a voice that sounded like gravel, “You could always hire me. I’m looking for work.” She told me she cleaned as well. I didn’t even check with Greg or Teddy, I hired her on the spot. Later that night, Greg wasn’t happy that I hadn’t asked for references or done a background check. “Does she even know baby CPR?” he asked.

Deirdre started the next day, parking on the street, arriving with yellow cleaning gloves and a bag full of dirty toys. It took a while for Teddy to come around. But at his age, children don’t like disruptions to their routines or personal differences. Teddy hid behind my legs, shrieking when I introduced her. I was embarrassed, but Deirdre seemed nonplussed. She explained her sister had thrown a match into the back seat when she was a toddler in a horrific accident and had endured skin grafts and hospitals. Eventually, I pulled Teddy into his room with her and closed them in together. I told him in a bright voice to show Deirdre his toys. Then I went and rocked Stella to sleep, ignoring Teddy’s banging on the door and his cries to let him out.

Eventually, he got used to her being there. I walked Deirdre to the preschool and introduced her to the Director, explaining she’d bring Teddy home. It was a relief to offload this chore as I hadn’t realized how much I resented that part of my day. After it was all settled and we agreed on Deirdre’s fee, I felt closure. She would be Teddy’s caretaker, and I would have Stella.

Greg’s reaction to Deirdre’s deformities was perfect and his only tell was his rapid blinking when he shook her hand. Later, I shrugged off his questions, and just joked that at least I wasn’t worried he’d run off with the babysitter.

“That’s wildly insensitive,” Greg said back to me.

Having Deirdre allowed me more time to excel at being the kind of mother I wanted to be. One afternoon in a burst of energy, I told Teddy I’d bake Lemon Bars as an after-school treat. Deirdre and Teddy came in while I was carefully measuring out the flour, breaking the eggs, and grating the lemon rind.

“Oh no, Miss, there are bugs!” Deirdre shook her head at me when she saw me brush a cockroach carcass out of the powdered sugar. “You can’t give Teddy that,” she said, standing in front of the boy like I was a firing squad she was protecting him against.

“Oh, I just…,” I wished she hadn’t seen me do it. “I didn’t want Teddy to be disappointed.”

I ended up throwing the whole thing in the trash, where clouds of powdered sugar bombed the grout in the kitchen tiles, and it took Deirdre days of scrubbing in her yellow gloves to get it all out. I didn’t attempt baking again until my birthday.

I didn’t like to make a big to-do about birthdays, and I didn’t expect Greg to buy me a diamond tennis bracelet or anything like that. But everyone deserves to blow out a candle, so I’d make my own. In a magazine at the dentist’s office, I found a recipe for a strawberry shortcake layer cake, and I ripped out the page and bought a new cake pan on my way home. I followed the directions while Deirdre watched the kids, stirring up homemade whipped cream and fresh strawberries that smelled like the farm. It was incredible what could be accomplished in my tiny kitchen. Greg called to see if we should all go out to dinner, but last time we went to a restaurant, Stella insisted on sitting on my lap the whole time and Teddy made a giant mess all over the floor.

“Pick up some pizza and we’ll have that. I’ll ask Deirdre to stay for the celebration,” I said.

“Really? Whatever you want,” Greg said. “Be back in an hour.”

Teddy shrieked while playing one of his make-believe games with Deirdre and Stella gurgled during tummy time. I wedged the cake into the oven and peeked into the den.

“Deirdre, I’ve got something special in the oven, so would you listen for the timer? I’m just going to take a quick shower and get ready. Could you get the kids in their party clothes?”

The babysitter gave a curt nod.

“By the way, would you like to stay? It’s not going to be anything fancy, but I’d love you to be there.”

Deirdre’s mouth shaped into an “o” and her eyes darted down to her hands.

“I’ll pay you, of course,” I said. Heat spread across my face, and I was ashamed that moments ago I thought Deirdre would be flattered. She had her own life and didn’t care about mine.

Deirdre said, “I won’t have time to get a present though.”

“Presents!” Teddy said, jumping up and down.

“Not necessary, really!” I said, laughing about thinking she had wanted money. “It’s settled then.”

In my bedroom suite, I laid out the cream seersucker shirt dress that I bought on sale last summer but never wore for fear of the kids staining it. Then I logged into Facebook to see how many people from college sent me birthday wishes, keeping a mental tally. I undressed and stepped into the scalding hot shower, luxuriating in the water that turned my skin an angry red. I didn’t need a big party like some people. On my birthday I was surrounded by family. I smiled thinking of Stella’s white seersucker party dress and how adorable the “Mommy and Me” outfits would look. Deirdre could take a photo. Too bad Teddy didn’t have a seersucker jacket; he’d be the odd one out.

My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion. I couldn’t even take a shower on my birthday without having all hell break loose. Wasn’t this what I paid Deirdre to deal with? Whatever was going on would have to be dealt with by someone else for once. That could be Deirdre’s present to me.

There was a sharp knock on my door, probably Deirdre, but I had globbed fancy conditioner on my hair that needed to sit for ten minutes. I finger-combed the silky cream through the thick strands. While the conditioner sat in my hair, I shaved my legs and armpits, using Greg’s razor since I stopped buying my own eons ago. Around the same time, I stopped having time for self-care.

Things would be different now that I had Deirdre part-time. I could think about myself, rather than everyone else all the time. The next knock on the door sounded aggressive, but Deirdre would be glad later to have proven her capabilities with whatever meltdown or missing sock was occurring. Most likely, she wanted to let me know Greg was home with the pizza. I’d come out, with my hair blown straight, in a new dress and they’d crowd around to gawk at my transformation.

“I can’t hear you,” I yelled out of the shower, matching the pitch of the urgent rapping. Someone yelled something back in a muffled voice. Then I washed out the conditioner, dismayed at the hair that ended up clogging the drain.

With the towel wrapped securely around my head, I sat down at my vanity table with three-paneled mirrors that had been left to us by Greg’s grandmother. No one else had wanted it; his cousins all had modern houses and weren’t interested in antiques-- not even the old lady, who had died old and alone. I smoothed the skin under my eyes. My jawline was jowly, and my marionette lines were pronounced. I patted on an eye cream that smelled medicinal. Next, from the bottles and ointments set on the table, I selected a rose-hip lotion that I used on special occasions because the scent was intoxicating and a little went a long way. I dropped my towel onto the rug and detangled my locks, struggling to unknot the dark strands with the same determination I took with Teddy after a bath. Behind me, I could see the reflection of my bed, with the stained white coverlet and bedside bassinet. A few of Teddy’s books were piled up on the bedside table, and a stash of laundry sat, untouched, on the chair in the corner. The scent of soiled diapers permeated the house. This was not a room that encouraged romance.

The sound of a cat whining echoed through the closed door, and I wondered if that’s what was going on. Maybe Greg brought one home for my birthday. Just what I needed, yet another thing to take care of. I snipped tags off my new dress and slipped the dress over my head. It was like a tent, and more suited for a day of boating than dinner, but at least it was clean and new. I plugged in my hairdryer, the one that got so hot, I had to keep it moving if I didn’t want a haircut. Greg always joked that it smelled like burnt toast when I was finished, but today the smell really was overwhelming. I’d just work faster, and I dumped my head upside down to reach the back. It could take an hour to finish drying my whole head, so I always waited to put on makeup. The loud whirr of the machine sounded like echoes of screaming or the white noise of piercing wind. The drone reminded me of the wind turbines they had wanted to install just five miles away. Real estate prices would have plummeted, according to Greg. Eventually, you probably got used to the sound. Halfway through. I swung my head up and continued with the top and sides, using a round brush to try to smooth it out. The sound reminded me of machine-cutting metal. I’d be happy I’d spent the extra effort when we’d have a perfect family photo. I could smell hair burning, but it would be worth the sacrifice. When I clicked off the dryer, the sudden silence was a shock. I didn’t hear anything from the other rooms, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was alone. Maybe Greg did come home, and there was a surprise in store for me, and we were going on a family vacation. I hooked a locket around my neck, the one that Greg gave me when Stella was born with her birthdate etched onto the back.

In the mirror, I still looked like a middle-aged suburban mother, but more like a TV mom now and not the real one who wears black leggings with holes in the crotch. I was ready for the party, although I felt a tickle in the back of my throat, and a dry cough coming on. At the last minute, I blotted on some freckle-colored lipstick and opened the door.

My house, which minutes before had been a fixed object in my mind, was now turned sideways like a Salvador Dali painting. The upholstered slipper chair lay on its side, the coffee table dumped haphazardly across the room, and the landline (that Greg insisted on keeping for emergencies) was off the hook. The house could have been ransacked, if not for the strange fog that blanketed the room like the mist off a pond. I stepped gingerly over a strewn sticker book, covering my mouth to cough, and went to the kitchen. Every hair on my head frizzed back up from the humidity, and my scalp felt damp. The ecru stove was covered in white foam. The oven door was hanging open in a scream. "Hansel, stick out your finger so that I can feel how soon you'll be fattened." The tile floor was charred. Soot leeched onto every surface. On the counter was a cake pan. My birthday dessert transformed into a cake of coal. I touched it with my hand and it turned to ash.

“My god,” a voice said. “Oh, my lord.” I was the one screaming. I couldn’t breathe, and I was coughing. I put my hand on my chest, leaving a large black streak on the white dress.

“You can’t be in here, ma’am.” An older man in a rubber suit pointed to the front door with an axe. “You have to go outside.”

I nodded, clutching my throat, and stumbled towards the open front door, afraid I was going to be sick. I couldn’t breathe. My throat felt like it was full of cotton balls. On the porch, my eyes teared up and I leaned over to gag, my hands on my knees, but nothing came out. The taste of chemicals permeated my mouth, my nose, my ears. I puckered my lips like Teddy when he ate lemons off the tree. “Ah, ah, ah,” I choked the sounds out. Where were my children?

When I looked into the yard, the world, which had been on pause, began to play again: the blares of the fire truck, the trampled dahlias in the flower bed, the groups of busy men, some coiling a hose and others reattaching tools to the truck. No sound of a baby crying. Neighbors stood in the street, home from work and holding briefcases or out of their kitchens waving wooden spoons, all of them tutting and shaking their heads. “A tragedy,” one said.

A Honda Accord came to a stop diagonally in front of the house. The driver’s door swung. A man jumped out clutching the top of his head. It was Greg. He wasn’t looking at me.

I swung my neck in the other direction across the yard. An ambulance was parked in the driveway. The doors to the back were open, blocking my view. My arms were limp, and my slack mouth was open. If I tried walking, I would have fallen. Greg veered around a man with a hose but got caught up and half-stepped and half-stumbled over the wide tubing. His eyes were wide.

And then the ambulance doors closed. The sirens flashed. The vehicle pulled out of the driveway at a steady clip. On the other side of the gravel stood Teddy, appearing out of thin air like a magic show. He was holding the hand of an EMT worker in ruined party clothes. His fist was in his mouth. Greg charged at him like an ogre with madness in his eyes, and my son shrunk away.

“Mommy!” The words pierced the wind like an arrow, pointing to where I stood. All the faces on the lawn swiveled to look at me. Teddy wrenched away from the emergency worker and hurled himself across the yard as fast as his legs would go. Up the steps. He ran towards me. His favorite, after all. I opened my arms.

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Graveyard of the Puffins

Steve Carr

With her arm inserted through a wicker basket's handle, Kate carefully stepped over the shoreline's rocks as water sloshed inches from her feet. Tied by a blue hair ribbon, her sandals hung around her neck. A cool, salty breeze that blew in from the Atlantic Ocean made her calf-length tie-dyed skirt billow above her knees like an adrift parachute. Free from being bound, her silver hair that reached the middle of her back floated in the air around her. Sunlight glinted from the dancing web-like strands. Her scrubbed cheeks were ruddy from the assault of wind, and exertion. She bent down and lifted a dead puffin from where it had become lodged between two rocks and placed its limp, battered body in the basket with another puffin. She stood and looked out at the water, holding her hand above her eyes, shielding them from the sun and water's blinding glare. She then spotted a puffin diving from the sky and sighed audibly when it hit the water and then immediately rose back into the air, carrying in its bright orange beak a small fish.

She turned and climbed the few feet up to the carpet of grass, sat down and set the basket down beside her. She untied her sandals and brushed wet dirt and sand from the soles of her feet before putting them on. As the wind whipped her hair about, she gathered it in her hands, shaped it into a bundle on the top of her head, and threaded the ribbon through and around it. Within moments she had tamed it, having returned her hair to the way she always wore it, except when gathering dead puffins from the shoreline's rocks. This act of releasing her hair and then rebinding it, and finding the puffins, and saving their corpses from ignoble death, were mysteriously linked. It had been that way since the time she found her first dead puffin when she was just a child. At that time, it was her mother who loosed the ribbon and helped her walk on the slippery rocks.

The walk from the shore to her small bungalow wasn't long. With her own hands she had reshaped a path of freshly lain pebbles through the grass that led directly to the back door. Every summer, blue-bead lilies, coltsfoot, purple lilacs, and dandelions grew in the tangle of weeds and thick grass that lined both sides of the path. At the start of summer, the first thing she did upon returning to the bungalow from her home in Halifax was pull any sprouting weeds or wildflowers from the path and spread new pebbles where the winter storms and wild animals had created bald spots. Entering the kitchen of the bungalow she sat the basket on the kitchen sink and thoroughly washed the puffins, careful to avoid removing any more of their black feathers than they had already lost. A dead puffin was a delicate thing that naturally shed its feathers quickly but did so even faster when handled.

“Death quickly reclaims those things given to a living thing,” her mother had told her upon finding that first puffin. She had never forgotten it. Her mother said it with a sincerity she rarely used for anything. That was when both she and her mother were still young.    

She toweled off the first one and turned it over in her hands several times prodding and poking every part of its body, then spreading its feathers and closely examining its skin. Smiling, she laid it back in the basket and then turned her attention to the second bird. She repeated what she had done with the first bird, but almost imperceptibly, sadly, shook her head and laid it in the sink. More than half of the puffins she found on the shoreline ended up in the sink. It was long after her mother had passed away from Alzheimer's that she had begun separating the birds in such a manner, but her mother's words stuck with her.

“The unfairness of life lingers on beyond death,” her mother once said.

She would later return the bird in the sink to the waves that washed it ashore to join most of its kind whose lives ended in the cold ocean water.  

She walked away from the sink, carrying with her the basket with the other bird lying inside that she placed on a small antique table by the back door. She had bought the table many years before from a seller near the docks in Halifax whose store was cluttered with items obtained from ships. The table had been aboard a ship renowned for having circled the globe. She thought it perfect in looks, and history, for transporting the puffins from this world to the next.

When she was sixteen her father drowned at sea during a storm while sailing a lobster boat. Miraculously, among the six lobstermen aboard the boat, his body was the only one recovered. It was returned to the bungalow in a coffin the same color as the table. The sight of her dead father profoundly changed her life forever; it shook her already tenuous grasp on the nature of life and death. Through the years as a child observing the dead puffins along the shore during her walks with her mother, death seemed a natural end to life. The sight of her father's corpse didn't strike her as being at all natural.

Her father was buried near the shoreline with a simple concrete marker that read: To the Sea, Evermore.

As her mother's Alzheimer's began to worsen, her husband, Kate's father, was the first prominent thing in her life she had no memory of. 

Suddenly feeling weak – advancing age catching up with her – Kate covered the bird in the basket with a square of linen cut from a larger piece she kept hanging on a hook by the door and went into the living room, where she sat in one of the two overstuffed chairs, the one with a pattern of sailboats on its upholstery. She laid her head back, closed her eyes, and tried to take a brief nap. Instead, images of puffins falling from the skies filled her consciousness.

—

The day she heard that her father's boat was lost at sea, Kate left her mother sitting in the same chair, but with different upholstery, whales instead of sailboats, to walk to the shoreline. Her mother hadn't moved in the four hours since learning of her husband's disappearance. Going out the back door of the bungalow, the young Kate meandered along the dirt pathway, picking wildflowers as she made her way to the rocks. There she removed her shoes, tossed them in the grass, and climbed over the rocks to the water. Her parents didn't believe in God, and she had never been inside a church, but she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer:

Dear maker of puffins

send my father back to Earth

as soon as possible

we already miss him terribly.

She opened her eyes and tossed the bouquet of flowers she had collected into the water. In that instant, a puffin landed at her feet and flopped about for several seconds before dying. She looked heavenward. “Thank you,” she whispered. She bent down, picked it up, and carried it to the small one room guest house her mother had always intended to turn into “some kind of studio.” She opened the door and carried the dead bird into the ambient dim light of twilight that shone through the one window.

—

It was the foghorn sounding from the recently installed warning system built on the rocks a bit north of the bungalow that roused her from her brief rest. She pushed herself up from the chair, brushed a few strands of hair back from her face, tucked them into her bun, and walked back into the kitchen. The waning light of day shone through the window above the sink. The kitchen was filled with shadows. She flipped on the light, flooding the room with unnatural daylight. This had been her mother's favorite time of the day, when she would sit at the table and have a cup of tea while reading the latest edition of the Mariner's News. Up until she forgot her husband had ever existed, she had diligently read the Mariner's News page to page each week that it arrived in the mail just as her husband had done.

Kate went to the window and saw waves of fog rolling in from the sea, swallowing up the land around the bungalow beneath its blanket of gray clouds and mist. She left the window and took the flashlight from the drawer in the antique table and flipped it on and off several times to make sure it worked. She had recently changed its batteries, but it was an old flashlight that, just like her own body, lost the will to work at inconvenient times. She then picked up the basket and went out the back door.

She knew the chill that fog rolling in from the North Atlantic brought with it, even in summer, and cursed under her breath for not wrapping around her shoulders the shawl her mother had knitted for her many years ago that hung on a hook by the door. The shawl had holes where she had caught it on nails that she always forgot to hammer all the way in, although they had stuck out in the same manner since the day they had been pounded in. Although still easily able to see through the thickening gray, she switched on the flashlight that required tapping several times against her leg before it came on.

“When anything can go wrong, expect it to every time,” her mother often said about almost any accident or misfortune. Her husband's death was one of the rare times she didn't say it. About his death she said very little. Her years of mourning said it all.

Shining the flashlight on the path, Kate thought about the many times she had walked it from the bungalow to the guest house that she had turned into a studio as her mother always talked of doing, hundreds of times, thousands, a million. The walk was shorter than that from the house to the shoreline, but she traveled with the same excited, albeit respectful solemnity, when going to retrieve the bodies of dead puffins.

  At the door to the studio, she paused briefly before turning the doorknob. Although she knew what was inside, there were so few things she anticipated anymore that the moment before opening the door gave her a brief moment's pause. As she pushed the door open, she was greeted with the scents of arsenic, borax, cedar dust, and glue. In the pale light that shone in through the window, the contents in the studio took on eerie or unearthly shapes, resembling anything from fierce dragons to angels. She reached over and flipped the light switch installed on the inside door frame.

Light flowed down from fluorescent lights hung from the middle of the ceiling casting a bright glow on the large oak table set up in the middle of the room where tools and bottles and boxes of chemicals were placed in orderly fashion at one end.

On wires hanging from the ceiling were hundreds of taxidermied puffins, their wings spread as if gliding through the air, or their heads pointing to the floor, in a diving posture. They lay tacked atop dowels standing on driftwood bases in the positions their bodies had been found in. They stood on paper mache rocks looking upward, four to five deep along the walls, and were stacked like cords of wood on the floor. Many were packed in lobster traps awaiting a final resting place, each with the words “To the Sea, Evermore” painted on placards attached to the netting, awaiting a final resting place.

The End 

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 Hocus Pocus by Ava Lambert

Infiltrators

D. Dina Friedman

At first, Barb thought she had bed bugs. That’s what Laura told her. Barb winced as the girl edged up her leggings and revealed a crown of red welts above the small pair of bird wings tattooed on her ankle.

“I can’t live here anymore!” Laura tossed her head back with an authority she shouldn’t have acquired by twenty-something and told Barb she wouldn’t pay next month’s rent. Barb began to tear a paper on the table into smaller and smaller pieces. She practiced meditation daily with military attention, but her hands still betrayed an inclination toward hyperactivity. It was a worrisome tic, especially when she was driving and her hands kept going for the dental floss, or the comb, or the hand lotion. And now her hands were betraying her again, raining the shreds on the kitchen counter.

“You don’t have to move out. I’ll call an exterminator,” Barb said flatly because she didn't want to sound as if she were begging. And then, more generously, she added, “You can sleep in my bed until we get rid of them. I’ll sleep downstairs.”

Barb hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, not since she’d hit early menopause last year. To be honest, she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since her marriage began to fail three years ago, even though she and Richard were friends again. She could meet him for coffee without spending the rest of the day mulling over the “what-ifs,” but she drew the line at meeting Jennifer despite her many sleepless nights obsessing over the unknown appearance of the woman who had lured her husband away.

Laura tossed her long blue-black hair, which had a forelock in the front that made her look like a defiant stallion. “I’ll stay with my boyfriend until the bugs are gone.”

But you don’t really like him, Barb wanted to respond. He’s not good for you. She had enough pseudo daughters from her job at the homeless shelter to recognize the irresistible urge to protect a younger person with whatever wisdom and experience she could legitimately offer. Just last night Laura had come home in tears. “He’s a creep!” she cried out to Barb, who’d given up on sleeping and was in the kitchen drinking tea. “I mean, he’s not a creep. He’s cute, and he tries to be nice, but he never listens. Whenever I’m trying to tell him something important—like help me decide whether I should try to find my real mom, he leans in and grabs me, as if we’re in a cheesy movie.” Laura touched the corner of her face. “When I call him on it, he says he can’t help himself because I’m so irresistible, but that’s garbage.”

Barb had wanted to reach out and hug the girl, but she was only the landlady.

“You deserve better,” she said, a pat line she often used with the residents at the homeless shelter, along with telling them they were strong and resilient. She began to pull apart the teabag.

“I didn’t know you wanted to find your birth-mom. Are the records sealed in China? Would you have to go there?” She’d only learned Laura was adopted when she saw the picture in Laura’s bedroom—white people with their Chinese child standing in front of a plastic swing-set.

 “Oh, it’s just an idea. I haven’t figured out what I’d need to do.”

“I could help you.”

“Thanks. I don’t know if I’ll really do it.” Laura took a handful of the chocolate chips Barb left on the communal shelf and disappeared upstairs.

 —

On Monday morning, Barb called in sick to the homeless shelter. She spent three hours on the phone getting information from exterminators. The prices were outrageous. Maybe she could get rid of the bugs by herself. She searched YouTube and watched a fat man with a beard long enough for birds to nest in pour a bucket of bugs into his bed to prove the effectiveness of his treatment, which involved steam, chemicals, and a hot dryer. Then she tried her best to follow the video’s instructions: she stripped Laura’s bedding, including the well-loved panda that sat on her pillow, and sealed everything in a bag to take to the laundromat later. She drove to town to buy the chemical sprays and a steamer, a catch in her throat when she saw the skulls and crossbones on the canisters. But what could she do? Like it or not, she had suddenly entered the business of killing.

It took her two more sick days to strip, seal, clean, vacuum, and spray every available surface in Laura’s room—and the rest of the house, just in case. When she finally finished on Wednesday night, she set her alarm for work, pulled back her new, clean sheets, and immediately noticed a little brown intruder crawling right at the line of her pillow.

“Damn!” Barb turned off the alarm and went to sleep on the couch. On Thursday, she called in sick for the fourth time, steamed everything again, and re-sprayed the chemicals. Then she took the sealed bags of bedding along with every other sheet in the house to the laundromat and ran them through the hot dryer while reading glossy magazines, wondering, as she looked at the models, which face looked most like Jennifer’s.

 —

She’d thought she and Richard had a solid marriage—comfortable, if not passionate. They fit well in the house, an older colonial off a dirt road that she’d fallen in love with at first sight, though they hadn’t intended to live so far out of town when they’d first moved to Massachusetts from Brooklyn. Ultimately, this was why all the boarders she’d rented to since Richard moved out had left. Most were graduate students at the state university, wooed at first by the quiet beauty of the woods, then worn down by the 45-minute commute. Their life cycle in the house wasn’t much longer than a mosquito’s. Bed bugs or not, Laura would have been gone soon. They always found a way to break their leases, and Barb was too kind-hearted to make them keep paying.

The house had been a fixer-upper, all she and Richard could afford, and in their first year, they’d strengthened their bond by painting, wallpapering, and re-grouting tile. Barb loved solving problems with tangibles, a balance to her job at the shelter, where it seemed no matter what resources she found for people, they always came back. They’d had extermination issues back then, too. A cadre of bats had nested in the attic, and Barb had woken one night to find a bat swooping around their bedroom. She’d screamed, surprised at how terrified she’d felt every time the shadow flitted at her from out of nowhere. Richard held her close until her breathing normalized enough to make an escape into the bat-free living room, where eventually they fell asleep on the sofa, tangled in each other’s arms.

Getting rid of the bats had been a nearly impossible job of finding and sealing every dime-sized hole in the roof and planting one-way exits with no return, then a long period of checks and re-checks as they waited for the bats to leave. Barb and Richard had intended to re-sand the wooden floors in the living room, get new cabinets for the kitchen, and eventually convert the spare bedroom, where Laura slept now, into a baby room, but after the bat crisis, they found their wallets and energy depleted. Richard had been ambivalent about children, anyway, and Barb hadn’t wanted to press the issue, so the years went on. Then Richard met Jennifer.

When he told Barb he was leaving, she flung herself at him and tried to stop his words with kisses, but his body tightened, and she looked up to find fear in his dark eyes, his craggy face suddenly older and more tired. He reached over and unclasped her hands from the back of his neck.

“No,” he said as if he were admonishing a small child. “We need to make a clean break.” Suitcase already packed, he stood up and walked out, carefully closing the door behind him. 

 —

The laundromat was nearly empty, the only other person an older, round-bellied guy in khakis and a red beard who looked a lot like the guy in the bed bug video. Barb ran the dryer on high for two complete cycles, then stuffed everything into the pillowcases, too exhausted to fold, and drove home. The darkness in November was unnerving, as always. It wasn’t just the early sunsets, that got to her; it was the way the sky seemed to suck up all the residual light. Heading through the mountain pass and down the hill, she kept fighting the urge to let her wayward hands leave the wheel. It was one thing to floss while driving in the bright sunlight where the parameters of what lay before you could be controlled by keeping the steering wheel between your knees for a few seconds. It was another to let your hands wander in the dark, especially when the deer and possums could stroll nonchalantly into the headlights. Wind seeped through the vents. Barb turned on the heater and yawned. She was so tired…

She hadn’t noticed herself drifting until she heard the honks. Bolting awake, she swerved away from the piercing lights and slammed the brakes. The oncoming car, a pickup truck, pulled up beside her, still blaring the horn. The driver rolled down the window. In the murky light she saw a biker type—thirtyish with a ponytail and Sox cap. When Barb rolled down her window, hoping to ward off a rampage of curses with a quick apology, the man’s mouth softened, his anger dissolving into a look of perplexity. 

“I expected a drunk kid, not an old lady.” He had the familiar local New England accent with drawn-out vowels. “Are you okay?”

Barb bristled at ‘old lady.’ She wasn’t even fifty.

“I must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry. I’ve been having a lot of insomnia.”

“My mother gets that. Do you want me to drive you home?”

“No, I’m okay now.”

“Coffee?” He reached for a thermos, poured, and handed her a Styrofoam cup through the window. Barb could tell from the smell that the coffee would taste like dirty ashtrays. If she drank it, she may as well give up on any hope for sleep tonight. But she couldn’t risk falling asleep at the wheel and having an accident. She thanked the man and took a sip to show her gratitude before driving off.

The house felt lonely without Laura. Not that they interacted much, but Barb enjoyed sensing another presence when she heard footsteps in Laura’s bedroom or wafts of music, even the awful electronic stuff Laura listened to late at night. She opened the sofa bed and took two newly cleaned sheets out of the laundry bag, scrutinizing the fall-out as she shook them. No bugs or bug remains. It would probably be fine to sleep in her own bed. After all, the man in the video claimed he’d gotten rid of his bugs in twenty-four hours. But just in case, she’d sleep downstairs for one more night. And amazingly, even after drinking the coffee, she slept.

On Friday before work, Barb re-checked all the mattresses for bed bugs, and when she discovered several hiding under Laura’s box springs, she gave up, called in sick for the final day that week, and phoned the exterminator.

 “These aren’t bed bugs. They’re bat bugs.” The exterminator explained the subtle difference. Bat bugs fed mostly on bats, but occasionally “they like a little human blood for dessert.” The exterminator winked as if he were trying to pick her up at a bar, never mind that he was closer to Laura’s age than to hers. Wasn’t everyone, these days?

 “We haven’t had bats in years.”

“Well, these are bat bugs and you need a bat man. I don’t do bats. Once you get rid of the bats, we can get the bugs. If we do anything now you’ll be wasting your money. The bats will keep bringing the bugs back in.”

Barb called Laura. “It’s bats.” Somehow, she hoped the new information would be comforting. “The bugs aren’t bed bugs. They’re from the bats. The bats must be back in the attic.”

“Eeww!” Laura squealed. “That’s disgusting!”

For a moment Barb was glad she’d never had a real daughter who might disappoint her. Laura was acting like a spoiled brat.

“Bats eat mosquitoes,” Barb said, as if she were a park ranger in defense of wildlife. “They…” She stopped because she didn’t know anything else about bats. Other than that they were blind.

“Well, I’m going to move out,” Laura’s voice crackled as the cell connection hiccupped. “Jared says I can live with him.”

So that was the boyfriend’s name. One of those pretentious new generation names Barb hated. She’d always vowed that if she’d had a child, she’d give it a timeless, normal name like Michael or Emily.

“But you said he doesn’t listen to you.”

“I’d rather live with Jared than with bedbugs—or bat bugs, whatever they are. I’ll come and get my things in a few days. After I figure out how to decontaminate them.”

Barb told Laura she’d already dealt with her bedding and that based on her research, the rest of her stuff should be fine, though she knew Laura wouldn’t believe her. The girl was one of those germaphobes who ate on paper plates because Barb’s dishes weren’t clean enough for her. Well, let Laura do her own research. The sooner Laura moved out, the sooner Barb could advertise for another renter—once the bats were gone.

 —

On Friday night, Barb didn’t sleep at all. She read the newspaper and the pile of junk mail on the counter, crumbling the urgent appeals for money into little bits before she threw the mess into the kindling bin next to the woodstove. Then, disregarding the sleep-expert warnings never to do screen time at night, she turned on the computer and watched bat videos on YouTube. Swarms of the ugly creatures soared through the sky and devoured their prey, a gruesome and macabre sight close-up. Barb learned that many bat species were on the verge of extinction because they only had one child at a time, though they had a unique ability to find their child anywhere, even in a crowded cave of thousands.

Saturday Barb dozed on the couch. Just like a bat, she thought, sleeping all day and up all night. She didn’t wake up until the bat man (thank goodness he’d agreed to come on the weekend) rang her doorbell at around 3 pm. He spent several hours crawling through the house, sealing up spaces that must have opened since the last bat infestation and planting the one-way exits—places where they could fly out, but not return. 

“We can’t exterminate them; bats are a protected species. They should leave, eventually. We’ll check in a couple of weeks to make sure they’re gone and clean up the feces.” The bat man scribbled some notes on a carbon sales pad and handed her a bill for $800. Barb had to fight the urge to crumble the paper into smithereens.

She didn't sleep on Saturday night, probably because she’d slept so much during the day. But then, she didn’t sleep on Sunday night, or on Monday night either, despite a hard day at the shelter, where Melanie, one of the few girls she’d bet on to beat the system and hadn’t seen in two years, showed up. Melanie told her she’d met such a sweet guy, she moved in with him and gave up the subsidized apartment she’d waited so long to get. When he lost his job, she quit school and expanded to full-time at Dunkin Donuts, but they couldn’t make enough money and he lost his apartment, and they both ended up in a tent by the river. And yesterday he’d told her he was leaving to go back to his wife, after claiming to be already divorced and telling Melanie he wanted to marry her.

“You’re strong and resilient,” Barb said, though she felt sick. Likely, Melanie had omitted some of the story, but no point in judging. Shit happened.

After several hours of sleeplessness, Barb got up and made herself a cup of melatonin-infused tea. Then she went back to bed, and after another anxiety-ridden hour, she decided on “the nuclear option,” the one remaining pill left from her last insomnia flare-up. But the pill merely exacerbated her tossing and turning, so she got up again, and rummaged through the medicine cabinet until she found another pill buried in a nearly empty jar in the back of the top shelf. The date on the prescription was long expired, but maybe the pill would work anyway. She swallowed the capsule and went back to bed. She must have fallen into a restless and fuzzy semi-stupor because she felt as if her head was wedged in a ball of cotton when the alarm rang, a disorientation that continued as she got up and bumbled around the kitchen. As she waited for the coffee to perk, she realized she was falling asleep between spoonfuls of cereal. Maybe she could rest for a minute with her head on the table. She leaned over, only vaguely aware of the cold wood, a mushy flake pressed against her cheek before everything went soothingly black…

 —

Someone was shaking her shoulders. “Barb! Are you okay? You were sleeping with your head in the cereal bowl!”

With her face so close, Laura’s make-up looked uneven, one cheek brighter than the other, a smudge of mascara escaping the lashes.

“What time is it? I have to go to work.”

“Around ten.”

“Oh no!”

“You could call in sick.”

“I called in sick all last week. Because of the bats.”

“You look awful. You should go to the doctor.” There was a sparkling stud in Laura’s nose, which was wrinkled in an expression Barb couldn’t quite decipher, though her voice reflected an unusual degree of care.

Barb hated anything medical, but Dr. Grayson had prescribed pills the last time her insomnia had gotten out of hand. Maybe she should ask him for more meds.

“When I came in and saw you asleep in your cereal, I worried you had a stroke—or a heart attack.” Barb saw Laura’s eyes sweep over the messy table, where the $800 exterminator bill lay on a pile of magazines.

“It’s just insomnia. But if it’s okay, I’ll ride into town with you and try to get better meds. I’m too tired to risk driving by myself.”

“I have to go to work at 3. So, I might not be able to bring you back.”

“That’s okay. I can take a taxi. Or call Richard.”

 —

Laura took less than an hour to pack up her room, a measure that confirmed the insignificance and fleetingness of her tenant’s life in the house. The other young people she had rented to were no different—floating from one random living space to another with only enough possessions to pack in a car: a suitcase, a box or two of assorted nothings, a phone, a laptop. All their music was digitized, not like the crates of albums she and Richard had carted from place to place. Her renters would abandon their furniture at the edge of the road for another rootless soul to pick up or ask Barb if she wanted to keep their stuff for the next renter, figuring they could get whatever they needed in their new home from the street or a buy-nothing site.

 “So, what did they do to the bats?” Laura asked, as Barb helped Laura carry her boxes to the car, an old Honda Accord with peeling seats.  “I hope you didn’t kill them.”

Even in her fuzzy state, Barb noted the change in pronoun from “they” to “you,” as if any positive correction would be attributed to someone else but she’d have responsibility for bat blood.

“They” (she emphasized the word) “don’t kill the bats. They just seal off all the holes so the bats can’t get back into the house.”

“But what about the bugs? Bugs can get in anywhere.”

“The bat people said there won’t be any bugs once the bats leave.”

“Oh, so they’re not gone, yet? What if the bats don’t leave?”

Barb hadn’t considered that possibility. What if the bats didn’t care about having an escape route?

“They left last time,” she reassured herself—and Laura. “We had bats when we first moved in.”

They got in the car and Laura turned on the radio. Barb leaned back and tried to doze between the clashing chords.

 —

The P.A., a young blonde hunk, weighed Barb, took her blood pressure, and asked what the problem was.

“I need meds. I can’t sleep.” Her voice, slow and dreamlike, sounded as if it were coming from somewhere else. She felt her head lolling...

“Not sleeping?” the PA repeated the words, and in her semi-somnambulant state, Barb tried to register the expression crossing the man’s cherubic face. He didn’t look sympathetic, just inquisitive.

“It’s the bats,” Barb tried to explain. “Dr. Grayson knows about my sleep problems. He’s prescribed for me before.”

“Dr. Grayson isn’t here today.” The P.A. had a soft Southern accent and his name was Taylor. Or was it Tyler? Another pretentious Millennial name.

“What bats?” he asked.

“They’re in my attic and they’ve got bugs. Like bed bugs, but they live on the bats.” Barb made herself open her eyes. The PA tapped on his tablet, a concerned look on his handsome face that made her realize her incoherence. “I just need to sleep,” she tried to explain again. “I need meds so I can sleep.”

“Did you take any meds? What did you take?”

Barb tried to remember the names of the pills. “I know I shouldn’t have taken them both,” she admitted. “But when the first one didn’t work, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t sleep, I hadn’t slept in days, and I was so tired—all that work getting rid of the bat bugs…and the bats… it was so expensive, and my tenant just moved out and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for an exterminator…” She didn’t want to cry, and she felt embarrassed as the P.A. wordlessly handed her a tissue.

“Did you drive here by yourself?” he asked.

“My tenant brought me. My ex-tenant. I was too tired and scared I might drive off the road because I fell asleep at the wheel a couple of days ago because I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t slept for days. I just need to sleep.”

“You drove off the road?” The PA leaned close to Barb. She knew he was trying to be comforting, but she felt his invasion into her space. “I think you need to go to the ER. Tell your tenant to bring you.”

“I don’t need to go to the ER. I just need the right sleep meds. Dr. Grayson …”

“Dr. Grayson isn’t here and we can’t give you meds until you’re evaluated,” the PA said evenly. “They can only do that at the ER.”

“Evaluated? For what?”

The PA took her hand. “Ma’am, you seem to be exhibiting symptoms of a psychiatric breakdown.”

Ma’am! Barb couldn’t help it. She laughed, though she knew this would make her seem even crazier in the PA’s eyes. It was her marriage, her house that was broken—not her mind. All she needed was some sleep, and to get rid of the bats and the bat bugs.

The PA led Barb back to the waiting room. “I’ll call the ER and let them know you’re coming.”

“I don’t need to go to the ER. I just need sleep meds. I know I sound crazy, but it’s because of the bats, and because I haven’t slept.”

“They can give you sleep meds after you go to the ER. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” The PA sounded way too cheerful, as if waiting for zillions of hours in the ER was no big deal. And what if they didn’t give her the sleep meds? What if they locked her up? The bats would leave, she realized then. Because it’s in our collective animalistic nature to avoid places without a sufficient means of escape.

 —

“I’m not going to the ER,” Barb said when they got into Laura’s car. “You don’t think I’m having a breakdown, do you? I just need some sleep—some meds to help me sleep.”

“I’ve got weed,” Laura offered. “You think that’ll help?”

 Barb laughed. “I haven’t had weed since college.”

“Let’s go back home,” Laura said, and Barb felt warm inside to hear Laura refer to the place as home. “We’ll roll a joint and I’ll tuck you in.”

 —

Laura rolled expertly, better than Barb had ever done, which made Barb wonder how much of a pothead Laura was. They’d agreed on no smoking or drugs in the house when Laura moved in, but this was an important exception. They passed back and forth for a while, not speaking, the thick, sweet smoke warming Barb’s lungs, her body softening into relaxation.

“Do you think I’m having a breakdown?” Barb asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe I’m just a batty old lady!” And they both burst into such a cascade of laughter, Barb had to hold her knees. She rocked back and forth, watching the last remains of the joint burn in the holder, both too overcome by laughter to take a final hit. 

“Lie down,” Laura gulped to catch her breath. “I’ll get you my panda bear.”

The stuffed animal hadn’t done too badly in the dryer. The bare patches, none worse the wear, showed how loved that panda had been. 

“I treated him for you. I’m glad he survived the hot dryer.”

“She,” Laura corrected. “But thanks.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Emily.” Laura covered Barb with the blanket and put the panda in her arms.

Emily smelled like Laura, spicy with a hint of rose.

“Shall I sing to you? I’m warning you, though. I can’t sing.” Laura burst into another fit of uncontrollable stoned laughter.

“Yes!”

“Lullaby… and good night… In the sky stars are bright … round your head… flowers gay….”

“Those aren’t the words.”

“It’s the version from the Celine Dion album. My mother’s favorite. She sang that song every night to my little brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, they finally had their own baby after they gave up and adopted me. But it’s okay. He’s chill.” Laura bit her bottom of her lip as she tucked the edges of the blanket around Barb’s toes. “Maybe I’ll go to China next summer and try to find my Mom. I’ve got to go to work, now. Text me when you wake up so I know you’re okay.”

In the small clear space remaining under the fuzz of her mind, Barb wanted to reach out and hug the girl, but Laura was already flitting toward the door as Barb sank into a dream where she was lying at the bottom of a cave with bats flying around the high outer rim, shadows against the brilliant sun. She tried to open her eyes and erase the image, but she had already sunk too deep. All she could do was hope this wasn’t a one-way exit. 

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NB

Clyde Liffey

Nota bene, I can’t, I could if I wanted to, only present for what I’m inclined toward, a hook, a fish, alive in the morning, dead in the afternoon, on a plate or moldering later – fly food, botched reversal – then

Snowflakes swirling, wind swelling, squall subsiding, fingers frozen, I stamped my boots on the mat, dislodged some ice, opened the door, searching not for crabmeat, not for fresh eggs, but

“Oh, it’s the Lotto Man,” Holly said.

“In the flesh,” I answered, basking in my imaginary celebrity. It was the first time she spoke to me other than to confirm the price of a purchase or the amount of change due me. I stomped my boots on the mat some more, trying to remove the slush from the soles.

“Don’t worry about it,” Holly said, “the floor’s already a mess.”

I saw that it was, extracted a blank lottery ticket from the dispenser and retreated to one of my usual corners to fill it out. It usually takes me a while to blacken my ovals, longer since I adopted a system I read about in Q. This time I wandered the aisles a while waiting for my fingers to warm.

The store’s staff, perhaps because the daylong storm was finally abating, were in a giddy mood. The trays on the counter overflowed with baked goods and fruit; most likely they had few customers other than plowmen and emergency workers. They seemed to forget me soon after Holly greeted me.

“Yep, this is my twenty-year anniversary,” Holly said.

“Of what?” the younger clerk prompted.

“My suicide attempt. I was foolish then. I still don’t know why I did it.”

“We all get down,” the other said.

“Thank God for Len,” Holly said.

I knew, more precisely, had seen Len. He’s the town fire chief and an EMS volunteer. Most Sundays he sits at the counter, mornings or afternoons depending on his shift, drinking coffee and bantering with the staff and customers. Almost every local paid obeisance to him upon entering or leaving the store.

“He was just a junior fireman then.” Holly went on. “He lived in the apartment next door to my son and me. He must have heard little Huber crying. The door was locked of course but that didn’t stop Len. He pried it open, called 9-1-1, rode in the ambulance with me, fed Huber with the bottle on the way there.”

“I guess he was always something,” the younger clerk said.

“Oh he was. The most remarkable thing, though, was how he fought with the hospital. I didn’t have to pay a cent. I didn’t have any insurance, but he made sure the state covered the bill and that I stayed there as long as I needed to – a full ten days. That’s why I comp him his coffee. I bet he’d be mayor of this town if he had the inclination.”

“Or intelligence unless that’s not required,” I thought. My hands warm, I filled in my numbers, checked them against the sheet I’d devised from Q, and walked up to the counter. The women had a space heater running full blast behind Holly. She’d taken off her flannel shirt. She wore a sleeveless gray t-shirt. I saw tattoos that I normally see only in spring or summer.

“Will that be it, Mr. Lotto Man?” she asked as she ran last week’s ticket through the machine.

I looked around me, saw stacks of the Times on the shelf. “I’ll take a paper, too.”

“Pardon my appearance,” she giggled, “but it sure is hot in here.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m going outside to cool off.”

“You do that.”

My relations with the store staff were more cordial after that. They still called me Mr. Lotto Man, but we chatted about the weather, local sports, even the movies sometimes.

“Oh good, you brought the Times,” my wife said when I returned. “Is there anything in it?”

“I haven’t looked yet,” I said as I handed her the main sections.

“What’s this?” She showed me a picture of a car falling over a cliff. We read the article together. A young American, dissatisfied with work, his love life, or politics drove his car up to New Brunswick, made a sharp right, skidded on the ice, and fell 600 feet into the cold water and rocks of the Atlantic. We discussed his spectacular demise and Holly’s mundane attempt to die over dinner – frozen flounder stuffed with canned crab meat, a green salad, baked potatoes.

The newspaper of course only validated what was already on TV and the internet. The next evening I told my wife that the people at the water cooler were using “going to New Brunswick” as a synonym for killing yourself. She works at a hospital. She heard the same phrase used by one or two doctors or nurses. She found it insensitive. I thought it was funny but my humor is ponderous.

The winter was mostly mild after that blizzard. Most Sunday afternoons I sat in my workshop making lures. Something about whittling took my mind away from work, prepared me for the week ahead. As the weather warmed, I of course thought of using them. I’ve caught a few trout with my creations – “stupid fish,” Len would say but then he despises fly fishermen.

I saw him holding court last year after he returned from his Florida vacation. He’d caught five blue marlins in one afternoon, breaking the marina record. “I had them clean and freeze four of them and ship them to me,” he bragged. “We’ll be eating marlin steaks into the fall. I gave the folks at the marina the smallest one, a 250 pounder, bigger than the guys who operate the boat. That’s 250 pounds of meat minus fins, skins, and entrails. How many meals do you get out of the trout you catch?” he asked me.

“My wife and I sometimes split one for lunch,” I said.

“That’s not much of a lunch,” he snorted.

I smiled, paid for my lottery ticket, and left. The people surrounding him probably thought I was offended. I wasn’t. I didn’t interact much with the people at the store back then: I wasn’t sure what I should do.

Nowadays Len and I are friends of a sort. He calls me a crazy Laputan. If only he knew my schemes for picking lottery numbers.

Spring came. My buddies and I went to some fishing shows. I always bought a few lures chosen more for their beauty than their utility. My wife paints watercolors of them. She’s sold a few on the internet. One Sunday I went to a show over a hundred miles away. I got back too late to buy my lottery ticket at the general store.

“I was worried about you, Mr. Lotto Man,” Holly said the next evening.

“I was at a fly-fishing show. I learned some new techniques I can’t wait to try. Len will be jealous.”

“Len’s been getting his boat ready. In a month or two he’ll be taking it out. He’s been talking about bringing along some new people. Are you interested?”

“I just might be,” I said as I paid.

He never invited me on his boat. It’s just as well, I’d probably get seasick or otherwise disgrace myself.

Trout, catfish, carp, black crappie: once in a while I’d catch one, release it or give it to a friend.  Fishing was a just means to test my lures. The best – by that I mean best-looking – lures never hooked anything. Alone or with a friend, I’d wade into streams or stand on a bank, cast and dream. The fish disrupted those dreams as I disrupted them.

I try to observe, I want to live in the present, I can’t.

Just after Labor Day, my company sent me to a conference in a city on the West coast. My wife joined me on the Thursday, we stayed till the end of the following week. I didn’t fish there, I didn’t miss it. I found a book, more of a pamphlet than a book, by W in a used bookstore there. On the flight back I perused it, anticipating my lure-making season.

Our plane touched down on a Saturday evening. I was back into my normal routine next day. The store was mostly empty when I came in to buy my Lotto tickets. Holly wasn’t there. That wasn’t unusual: she sometimes took days off for weddings, christenings, and the like. I saw Len leave as I came in. He clapped me on the shoulder, didn’t say anything. An old pickup truck pulled in front of the store as I filled out my ticket. A young poorly dressed man came in, waited while a container of soup was filled for him. I saw his sullen dog sitting in the driver’s seat while we waited. “Here you go, Huber. Take care now,” the cashier said as she gave him the container.

The weather turned cold, fishing season was ending. One Sunday, I came in distracted, took longer than normal filling in my lottery ticket. I don’t know why I bother, I remember thinking, I never win more than a few bucks anyway. Len was at the counter showing all who cared to look the gun he’d restored. Deer hunting season was about to begin. “If there wasn’t a limit, I’d give you some venison,” he called out to me over his circle of admirers. “We finally finished last winter’s marlin. I won’t get another supply till I go back down to Florida. You don’t hunt, do you?”

“No,” I answered.

“Not even for mice or chipmunks?”

I couldn’t think of a rejoinder.

While we were bantering, Huber came in. This time the cashier gave him two containers of soup, a cold six-pack, a pint of whiskey, and a carton of cigarettes. He didn’t stop to joke with Len who was like a father or an uncle to him. Someone new came in to admire Len’s handiwork. I left the group to get in line.

As the cashier ran my ticket through the machine, I recalled that I hadn’t seen Holly in over a month. “Say, where’s Holly been?” I asked the clerk.

She handed me my ticket, didn’t say a word.

“You haven’t heard?” she said. “She’s gone to New Brunswick.”

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Pirate Hockey

Twain Braden

The railroad tracks were our path to the Sump, our trash-strewn hockey hideaway between late December and mid-February each year in the 1980s. Long Island, New York, flat, sandy, and jammed with houses and the now-familiar dreck of suburban life, nail salons, car washes, and crappy diners. But the Sumps – dug out by municipalities to contain runoff from the streets, were oases for intrepid teenagers, in summer for the fact that no one could see or hear you – firecrackers, BB guns, Styrofoam rafts, rope swings – and in winter for the ice skating. Every day after school and most weekends. But to get there, for us punks from Mineola (the one claim to fame, and it’s a good one, being that it was birthplace of Lenny Bruce), we had to hop the fence behind our house, walk the tracks of the Long Island Railroad for a half mile, and then, crossing the tracks into the vaunted neighborhoods of the posher Garden City, clamber over the fence rimming the Sump. Once inside, we were safe from nosy neighbors and bored cops; the only real dangers were the possibility of falling through the ice (seldom) and bashing each other with sticks and flying pucks (frequent but not serious).

The tracks, however, were suffused with peril and menace. A few years before, at 2:00 in the morning, a vanload of teenagers, probably drunk, had been hit by a train traveling at high speed as the driver attempted to beat the gate. Nine out of the 10 were killed; news reports described the horrific crash scene: strewn limbs, vehicle parts, and errant shoes. The bloody corridor was immediately behind our home; we could not help but be mindful of the devastation that had occurred on this very section of track as we trudged to the Sump for our not-entirely-legal-but-mostly-harmless afternoon entertainment. Stephen King’s youthful heroes had walked the tracks to find a single body; we did our best not to think of the dismembered nine. Our daily walk also, inevitably, paralleled the “third rail,” the supercharged electric steel rail that powered the trains and had, what appeared even to my callow self, a wholly inadequate guard to protect trespassers, a single thin strip of wood bolted on top; the rail itself, silent and menacing, was entirely exposed otherwise. We often stepped nimbly on the wood to cross the tracks, doing our best to evoke weightlessness. The approach to the Sump also meant crossing the busy road where the teenagers were hit, followed by another few hundred yards of track before we scaled the fence to safety and pond hockey paradise.

As an emerging teenager I was keenly aware of the real dangers presented by the railroad tracks – the LIRR’s trains that would loom swiftly on the horizon and be upon us in seconds. An added terror was the electric trains, which approached with shocking speed and near silence, until they were upon you, at which point the engineers would loose the blare of the horn that, alone, could blow you off your feet at short range. The diesel engines, though heard and avoided from a distance, were awful to behold for a different reason, because the noise of the engines, combined with equally-powerful horns, would shake your body and rattle your teeth and split your head open – even from inside our house. Conversation was impossible for the first five seconds as it screamed past. If, however, you’re 120 pounds and standing 15 feet away in a ditch of weeds and crushed stones and trash, the noise was catastrophic. It pushed out all thought and filled your soul with abject terror. We would clamp our hands over ears, grit our teeth, and shut our eyes and hope the beast stayed on the rails as it roared by. And then, following the whoosh of wind in its wake, we turned and jogged on down the tracks to the Sump, our sticks and skates jauntily bouncing on our shoulders. One final challenge remained.

We had learned there were two kinds of fences in suburban Long Island, the ones separating our tiny yards, with the stiff wire tops twisted and bent over to form a safe, if not handsome, rim. These were usually four feet tall and were barely an impediment to our marauding, and then there was the other kind, whose twisted wires poked skyward, like razor-sharp twist-ties positioned every two inches, protruding a couple of inches higher than the top bar. These were the suburbs’ answer to Latin America’s concrete and broken glass. You could get over them if you really wanted to, but it meant some careful planning, not a small amount of acrobatics, and a pointed determination to get to whatever was on the other side.

To hop the safe fences, we had developed a flamboyant method reminiscent of Errol Flynn at sea or Buster Keaton hopping between train cars, involving a short leap, a quick grip, and a dashing swing of the legs. Running toward the fence (playing tag, Manhunt, or Ringolevio), we leaped forward and upward, briefly resting our midriffs on the top bar, preferably landing on the smooth side, and then leaning far over to the other side. In the same motion, you would put your right arm down on the far side and, reaching low, tightly grab a handful of chain-links, and, at the same time, kick your legs over. The more athletic of our bunch could do this almost without breaking stride, the trick being to swing low and get a good grip of the far side of the fence (the fulcrum), which made your arm into a spring-loaded lever as your legs whipped over your head. If you landed with a short hop and continued onward, we imagined the flair and aplomb was regarded as an Olympic event, preferably, by similarly-aged bystanding girls.

The fence around the Sump, however, was the other kind. Six feet tall and rusty, there was simply no safe way to hop it. We tossed our skates and sticks over, and then, jamming our toes into the links and climbing hand over hand, we teetered at the top with straightened arms, briefly, gingerly, well aware of our tender bits separated from the sharp metal by mere inches and the fabric of our jeans and underwear. We then swung a leg over, planted a toe in the links, and hopped clear on the far side. We occasionally scraped the insides of our thighs and arms, but we were never stripped of our genitals as we’d feared.

Once inside the Sump’s perimeter fence, we were soon out of sight in the bushes at the rim. We slid down the steep sandy sides and skittered out onto the ice. And our pond hockey lives would begin.

It is almost impossible to express why pond hockey in these conditions amongst a handful of teenage boys was so consuming and thrilling. There are the motions of ice skating, which, for the skilled skater on an open pond with no snow and few cracks, comes the same laugh-out-loud joy as swooping downhill on skis, or a snowboard, or the first moments of dropping into a wave on a surfboard. The effortless speed, the smoothness of the expansive ice, the bracing cold, the tap-tap of skate and puck, which, coupled with the difficult act of slipping a puck between two boots as two or three others try to stop you, must be as close to a physiological high as you can get without sex or drugs.

Pond hockey is a different game from one played inside a rink’s boards. There are no real boundaries, meaning speed is everything. If you have the puck and you’re faster than everyone, you simply outskate them. The final seconds approaching the goal presents the only challenge, requiring a few head fakes, some quick back and forth with the stick and puck, and then tap in the goal. Our strategy was that simple. It was an arms race for speed and finesse. My big brother, who was always – and remains – a half-foot taller than I, had us scrappy players figured out immediately. He’d let us race and zoom and tire ourselves out, and he’d wait near the goal, tactically positioning his body as he skated backwards and poked at the puck in a most annoyingly effective way. It was almost unfair in its cleverness and utility. He was usually teamed up with Carl, an aggressive, competitive, mouthy and frankly hostile friend whose athleticism was unparalleled but who had discovered skating a little later than the rest of us. Carl and my brother formed a formidable opponent. Samson and I would give-and-go like two bodies sharing a single hockey brain, maybe with better skating and stick skills than Carl and my brother, but woefully undermatched at the tactical game. They could actually see a game from above, cutting angles, and, Gretzy-like, positioning themselves where a play was about to occur and serving passes to each other that appeared to me, unable to see beyond the moment, to be almost telepathic in their strategy. They were maestros of pond hockey. Samson and I more closely resembled improvising artists, a pair of hockey-playing figure skaters whose plays were free-form and whose medium was the stick and puck. Our games were always close.

And then there was Billy, Samson’s little brother, who would follow us around like Sancho Panza – abrasive, shockingly foulmouthed, incapable of coherent conversation, and often muttering unintelligible observations about the stupidity of certain people – but always up for whatever hijinks we proposed. In winter it was pond hockey and in summer it was roller hockey in the street or some other light hooliganism at the Sump or city park. Billy was the fifth wheel, the punching bag. When he and I had slashed a hornet’s nest with metal curtain rods, I had accidentally (but certainly negligently) slashed him across the bridge of his nose, opening a gash that bled for days and that left what appeared to be a tribal scar. His little body was covered in these types of wounds, punctures, jammed knuckles, busted nose, bruised ribs. Inevitably, when we were able to play more organized hockey, he assumed the position, so to speak, and became our goalie, because it’s what the posse needed, and who the hell else would want the job? Since he was the fifth of our troupe, and pond hockey requires a sixth for a three-on-three, we were always recruiting others in the neighborhood, kids we could talk into buying a pair of used skates and stick and, in exchange for our dangerous form of friendship, agreed to hazard the fences and railroad tracks and wobbling around the ice as we skated circles around them. This sixth person was rarely, for good reason, the same individual, but, since having him was essential to balance the teams, we never stopped our recruitment. One eventual victim, whom I’ll call Benny, learned that he even enjoyed our company and found that, by imposing his own brand of sadism, could balance the tables. He was big and gruff and dangerous and enjoyed pummeling Billy. This was our agreement: he could take out his aggression on Billy provided that he brought his skates and stick. When we played three-on-three, he and Billy were interchangeable to the two teams; the matchup was always Carl and my brother and Samson and I and whichever of Billy and Benny happened to lace up his skates first and pick a side.

The ice in the Sump was imperfect. Because the water drained here from the adjacent neighborhood storm drains, the surface was land-mined with trash, Styrofoam cups, tennis balls, plastic bottles, and beer cans. Once, during a particularly long day of play, we even found an unopened can of Budweiser, its rim frozen in place and barely protruding above the surface. We popped the lid and, inserting a hollow strand of brown reed, lay on our bellies and took turns sucking out the beer. Since we never thought ahead enough to bring water to drink, it was particularly satisfying and remains, to this day, the benchmark of satisfaction in a can. For a suburban kid craving the freedom of the wilds, this represented a thrilling highlight of my young life, as close as I felt I could get to the free-wheeling life on Huck Finn’s river. When we had reached the surface of the Sump’s ice, we were free to play our wild game, cursing at each other, racing back and forth, drinking discarded beer. We each had dreams of playing in the NHL, knew the Islanders’ numbers and stats, and thinking that we were like the hockey version of the Cutters of Breaking Away, a rag-tag band of talented kids who would show the rich kids from Garden City that real hockey’s roots were the Sump. One of us once announced that, if our lives were a movie, the soundtrack would be “Eye of the Tiger.”

In truth, we were terrible. When we finally managed to join a rec league in nearby Christopher Morley Park, what had seemed so brilliant at the Sump became clear for what it was: haphazard and futile. Since we had never taken slapshots or tried to lift the puck at the Sump (against our few rules) we didn’t know how. We had never learned to actually shoot accurately, and we could never get close enough, except on a rare breakaway, to try to deke the goalie and slip the puck in the net. Worse, we had no idea how to use our bodies to check or avoid hits. We were creamed. The only person whose game transitioned to organized hockey was Samson who, because of his strength and athleticism, quickly developed a physical game that earned him a top slot on the hallowed “travel team.”

As we grew up and followed other interests, girlfriends, college, careers, and then families, we all drifted away. Carl, perhaps overwhelmed by the pressures in his head, took his own life; God knows what happened to Benny. Samson and Billy are still in New York; Samson cultivating a successful career and Billy, succumbing to what must have been a latent schizophrenia, lives on the streets. His politics are emphatically Republican, not the conservative brand of old bankers and firefighters and cops that we knew growing up in New York, but the recent, hateful Trumpian kind. When we were growing up, Donald Trump was “The Donald,” a fixture on Howard Stern’s radio program that Howard would call for a gross-out or color commentary on a recent local news item involving sex or money. The Donald was disgusting and harmless and sort of funny if you wanted validation of your basest instincts, being, of course, vulgarity, lust, and greed. Even Howard was occasionally appalled by his comments. To Billy, this worldview has consumed him, stuck, as he is, in an endless loop of maudlin teenage angst.

We’re now in our 50s. I have four grown children of my own now. We live in Maine, on Peaks Island, where we are lucky enough to have three ponds to choose from when the ice conditions are right. With my wife, this makes six; in other words, three-on-three. They are all decent skaters and hockey players. My wife is game, but she has only one good eye and a terrible pair of 1990s skates that are nearly impossible to stand on, let alone skate with. She’s the cheerful and hapless sixth from my youth. We pass to her when she positions herself in front of the goal. My daughter has that same inexplicable knack that my brother and Carl had, seeing the game from aloft, anticipating plays before the rest of us and almost always the leading scorer. The rest of us, the four boys, fast, mildly skilled at stick-handling, race and pass in a disorganized but joyful mash that barely resembles the hockey played on television.

I get vitriolic texts from Billy to this day, usually links to a YouTube video of his favorite Tucker Carlson diatribe or a Tweet by Trump, against people of color, homosexuals, women, immigrants, and whoever in the world believes in trying to help someone else. They’re all chumps, according to Tucker and Billy and The Donald, losers and suckers. And Whole Foods and Amazon are promoting the Gay Agenda to take control of our children’s lives, Billy tells me. When he’s at his most lucid, he screams, “Wake up! Don’t you care about your children?”  

Two winters ago, on the day after Christmas, my wife, children, and I all piled into the minivan. Finding a frozen pond outside Boothbay Harbor, we pulled over and had an impromptu three-on-three until we were exhausted, our breaths puffing out in clouds. Occasionally, someone driving by would yell obscenities that the ice was too thin, or that skating wasn’t allowed here. Probably someone from away, more accustomed to the prescribed life of the suburbs of Massachusetts or New York, not a Mainer, an adopted identity I now ascribe to myself. We tend to leave one another alone, unless asked for help. Life is dangerous and fun outdoors. This past Christmas, we rented a house on Mount Desert Island for a few days; we climbed to the top of  the Beehive in Acadia National Park with our skates and sticks. The peaks rose up on all sides, and it was certainly the most serene and picturesque location for a pond hockey game I’d ever seen. One of my sons fell through the ice; but he hauled himself out, changed his clothes, and kept playing. My dog Georgie, a handsome Australian shepherd not known for his smarts, wandered over to the hole and also fell in. Cricket, a black mutt who knows better, stayed clear, not just of the hole in the ice but also of our game. Final score, 10 to 6.

There are numerous pond hockey games around New England and the northern Midwest. They are often organized into Pond Hockey Classic Tournaments; they have prizes and bragging rights. I’ve played in a few. There are also marginally organized towns and villages that are progressive enough to clear the ice from the village pond. Portland, Maine, my home town, is one of them. But, to me, pond hockey is best played in a place and manner that is slightly, if not overtly, illegal. That perfect patch of ice, hidden away behind fences, on a day in December when the ice is black and clear. Furtively carrying stick and skates, testing the ice’s thickness with the butt end of the stick, and then lacing up and playing an unsanctioned game. I envision a game on Central Park’s Model Boat Pond; the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. (if it ever gets cold enough again), and on those beautiful palace fountain pools of Europe such as the Mirror Pool or Neptune’s Fountain at Versailles, or on one of the remote ponds at Hamstead Heath in London. The more unlikely, the more exciting the game. I refer to our illicit games as Pirate Hockey, inspired by the inherent illegality and danger of the game of my youth.

At the Sump, there were times that the neighbors or cops would flush us out, yelling at us that we were trespassing, that the ice was unsafe. And we would scatter, scooping up our boots and racing to the other side of the ice, scrambling over the fence and slipping away into the neighborhoods before they could interrogate us, take our names and call our parents.

We were back the next day. And the day after that.

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Moral

Joe Taylor

The subway’s starts and stops have been eroding my spine lately; still, that’s no excuse for staring, and I’ve just caught myself doing that. Fortunately, a complicit passenger beside me leans into the overhead bar and whispers, “Life insurance salesman.” So, he’s been staring too.

We both stare at the seated man with translucent skin trapped inside a peculiarly glowing black suit that reveals not a hint of wrinkling, not one aberrant crease. Some anti-new-wave design fabricated from a solidified oil product—or conversely from liquefied coal, since it’s so shiny and smooth? “Dinosaurial,” I whisper, partly to myself, partly to the leaning passenger, and partly to the overhead advertising, which features a Coppertone baby decorated with a lagniappe graffiti doot dangling from its nether.

On reconsideration of the seated man’s attire, the word “get-up” seems more descriptive than “suit.” I turn to the standing passenger, who’s still leaning toward me, and I nod wryly at his no-doubt correct appraisal: insurance salesman. Why else would a person dress in so . . . funereal a manner? And this is up north, so a Pentecostal preacher of doom worrying Christ’s dead bones while gnawing fried chicken and ogling teenaged boobs—that lies in another region altogether. On reconsider, I suppose a person might call what this man’s wearing a “costume,” as in All Hallow’s Eve. The passenger who’s been leaning and staring with me, on the other hand, is wearing a statement, a vigorously flamboyant tie with orange, blue, green, and yellow butterflies, compacted of varying wing spans. What might be his occupation? Scriptwriter? Public Relations? Advertising?

“Whatever he does, whatever he is, he gives me the creeps.” This comes from a thirtyish African American executive wearing a golden tie that complements his butterscotch eyes. He glances to the screen of his iPhone as if it might convey more pertinent information, then adds, “Maybe he’s a mortician.” This is spoken loudly, but the man being discussed, the seated, oily, funereal character, shows no sign of having heard. Perhaps he’s a deaf-mute hired by the city through its new open-access incentive, and his job is to—

None of us have time to speculate further on his occupation, for a young woman across the aisle shakes her head and says, “She’s a model. I know; I’ve seen her on the covers of Elle and Cosmopolitan. That milky skin of hers was all the craze last season.”

She? As the train slows, I lean into my strap and look back at the seated . . . yes, I suppose it could be female. And since the woman who spoke wears a yellow and red dress bulging with Georgia O’Keeffe green foliage—unusual for female subway commuters whose proclivity lies toward protective camouflage—since she dresses so in tune with the outside world blooming in lusty summertime and since she has seen the seated creature on magazine covers with her own eyes . . .

No sooner do we all settle into her judgment than a huge black mastiff, easily weighing two hundred pounds, appears beside the right knee of the person we all now presume to be an anorexic female model. Only service dogs are allowed on . . . where could this seeing-eye dog have possibly been that I didn’t spot it? Certainly not behind any of the model’s body parts, for they’re as non-existent as wrinkles on her liquid coal suit. And sure, this particular coach is crowded, but a dog that size . . . then I realize that the dog’s coat isn’t really black but blends with the floor in a spit-dirt-mucus-scuff interlace. Its eyes, however, radiate an eerie bloodshot hue, as if housed in the skull of a mislaid bum heavy on wine or crack. Its eyes?! They must have been closed, for there’s no hiding them now; they return my gaze in a most unsettling manner. Well, that tops it—even if she is a she, she’s not a model. Blind deaf-mutes can’t be models, can they? I mean, not real models. I mean . . . hell, maybe they can. Why not? After all, they’d be hired on as the look-ees, not the look-ers.

Somehow, I feel that ee/er distinction blurring as I sway with the subway car. Blurring everywhere—except with the damned dog. It’s not blind. And it’s staring at . . . me. The woman in the yellow, red, and green O’Keeffe foliage comments, “Brr, poochie seems to have formed an attachment to you. I . . .” But she doesn’t finish; she simply moves her volatile hips off to the middle of the coach, near two Goth teenagers dressed in black, who grin at her initially—then they too notice the dog and become white-eyed. The simple contrast of white and black unnerve me as I glance to the mastiff’s confusing red-, clay-, and spittle-brindle. My lower spine jolts with a pain that arcs into my shoulders. Referred pain, that’s called. (I once dated a nurse.) And now my heart is clumping with more . . . referred pain, which conglomerates into the most excruciating spasm I’ve ever felt, on the subway or off. I broke my arm once, but that was Hostess Twinkies in comparison this. Nauseated and dizzy, I wince.

An undercover cop—at least that’s what I hope he is—has been eyeing the two teens with a cop’s pre-judgment, but his attention shifts to me, then to the dog and its master, as the latter lifts a . . . milk-blue hand—a prosthesis?—to light a cigarette. Hey, blind or not, that’s not allowed! And I’m already spinning from pain, and the smoke . . . a haze is forming, for everyone’s smoking now, even the undercover cop, even the old woman who’s been nodding off, her head dipping into her Saks shopping bag. Somewhere, one last lighter clicks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mastiff has lit up. What in the world is going on?

“Seven minutes,” the man who initially spoke to me says. He’s still leaning into his strap, but his lean is no longer complicit: it’s haughtily closing on my personal space. “You have just seven minutes to draw a moral.” He blows a steady stream of smoke upward toward the Coppertone doot, where it fans out with a magical white puff. The butterflies on his tie take flight and skitter over the Black executive’s head, to disappear into a thick smoke ring someone has created in a fit of artistry.

“A moral or a puff,” the guy I’ve mistaken for an undercover cop quips three seats away. His hand rises, and a huge blue ring on his index finger sends shafts of cold through me. The blue ring looks like the eye of judgment that King Aloysius used on his sons when they . . . what did those rascals do?

“Or a breath,” a college student who’s been intent upon his book says, returning instantly to prepare for an exam, even as cigarette ashes fall on his text.

“Come on, give us a moral,” the African American executive cajoles, tugging his golden tie as if the smoke’s choking him too. “It’d do us all some good. Camaraderie, I mean.”

“Moral! Moral!” The two Goth teens chant. I look back to them. The woman in the foliage dress stands to their right; she smiles sweetly, sadly, resignedly, and nods in agreement. “Mo-ral,” she mouths through those lovely maroon lips. Then she inhales a deep draught from her cigarette.

With my body I cough, but with my mind I sing, somewhat off-key, this moral: Pay your bills on ti-ime, keep your thoughts in li-ine—then ever’t’ing will be fi-ine. The mastiff and its owner shift. For a fleeting instant I think they’ve read my mind, but truly, I don’t believe they’re interested in any jingle, ditty, or moral I might come up with. So other than coughing out a pressure-building bulge, I keep quiet.

A moral, I think, stunned by the possibility. Cigarette smoke pricks my nostrils with its burnt paper. A moral. It’s hard to formulate morals with this gagging smoke. Hell, it’s hard to formulate them in air-conditioned comfort working forty hours a week. When I get home—I’m divorced, who isn’t?—when I get home I open an imported beer and turn on the TV and let it devise all the morals . . . You know, Moslems, Jews, Christians, Hindis, and Buddhists are okay. Homosexuals, African Americans, and Hispanics are okay; White capitalists are okay; the ozone layer is okay; I’m okay; you’re okay; married moms are okay; sisters are okay; single moms are okay, half-sisters are okay. Democrats are okay; Republicans are okay; marriage is okay; divorce is okay; we’re all okay. Even single White males are okay provided they laugh histrionically at jokes about their tiny reproductive organs. Only smoking’s not okay. At least those are the only capital B, capital M, Big Morals I encounter whenever the sitcoms come on. BM = bowel movement, my ex-girlfriend nurse told me. Before those sitcoms arrive though, I can’t say any Big Moral or BM seems hopeful. During newscasts Off you! Off you too! rings loud and clear, like the tolling of a medieval cathedral bell. Off you! Off you too! Bam! Bam! That’s when I usually down my second beer. That’s why I subsequently lounge through three or four sitcoms. But here and now, a moral? A Big Moral? On a subway? Can this be serious?

If you live in a glass house, don’t cast stones. That moral comes to mind as I peer into the fluorescent dark whizzing outside our coach. Santa Maria, Niña, and Pinto, comes to mind. But that’s hardly a moral—more like a bean soup commercial.

Cigarette ash falls into the Saks sack because the old lady’s nodding. I can’t count on the undercover cop who isn’t a cop to do anything about this fire hazard, so I raise a finger, but the mastiff, ultra-sensitive to my movements, pricks his ears. Does he think I’m searching for an escape hatch on the coach’s ceiling? When I lower my finger like a submissive worm, his ears relax. Likely, the old broad’s ash will burn itself out, anyway. That’s a moral, isn’t it? Oh no, I remember: it’s a children’s song. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Now the mastiff’s owner looks at me. Her/his eyes . . . well, they aren’t sockets, more a bottomless dustbin. And her/his lips stretch in two thin mauve lines as if to display that silly Euclidean axiom we learned in high school geometry, the one about parallel lines never meeting. Except these thinly stretching, twitching lips always meet, they always endure fleshly contact—whenever they don’t encircle a cigarette like they are now, that is. So maybe they’re disproving Euclid’s axiom? Could that be a moral? Distrust Euclidean geometry? But Einstein already told us that. Besides, I must confess that in the here and now of this subway car, time and space strike me as absolute, despite Einstein. I mean, that brainy guy’s absolute now, isn’t he? Evaporated, vaporized—that scary, sad, post-World Trade Center word.

Something I should mention apropos of absolute and non-absolute: At one point, I thought poochie’s owner, the anorexic model, was a kid dressing as a Day-Glo S & M leather freak. I mean, we’re talking a black outfit drawn tighter than a Wyoming taxidermist could dry it. Even now, cigarette ashes scamper off its oily outfit like water beading on wax. It, I think—yes, I can be content with “it” for this character’s sex. This caricature’s sex. Anyway, it better be careful even though those ashes dissipate off its costume. Of course, poochie isn’t smoking, though his jowls ooze what may be chewing tobacco. Blood? I think of the woman dressed in foliage proclaiming that poochie liked me, and I glance to see her staring with a most wonderful set of hazel eyes. I’ve always loved hazel eyes and their ability to be brown or green or gray upon command. There! Isn’t that a moral? Mutability, the ability to change, the ability of parallel lines to meet, however briefly, in the real universe that Einstein revealed. Change, go for it; it’s better than the alternative.

You know, I’ve seen this hazel-eyed woman dressed in foliage before . . . Of course! She works near me. When we get off I’ll have to—oh hell, that dating game weighs so heavy. What did it get me last time? So that’s it for parallel lines, eh? Let them eat cake; let them remain non-intersecting. Could that be a moral? Two lines, forever passing untouched in a subway car?

Hot ash falls on my hand and I start. It’s drifted down from an incredibly tall man—a basketball coach no doubt—too old to be a player. And too thin. He must have gotten on at the last stop. This coach’s face looms familiar also, though I’m certain he doesn’t work in my building and he’s not exactly the type of person you want to approach on the subway. Poison, his cloud-brushing brows say. So, I won’t be asking where I’ve seen him before, even if he hovers until our noses touch.

Something nudges my leg. The mastiff. A rank smell rises from its coat. Soured cheese? Two-day roadkill? His paw steps on my foot, and I’ll be damned, but I can’t pull from under. I mean, I absolutely cannot budge. The weight doesn’t feel that heavy, but it’s as if electromagnetism runs through the paw to the floor, passing through my numbed foot.

“I’m sorry.”

Stupidly, at first, I think the dog is speaking. Then I see that the woman in the foliage dress has moved forward again. “I am so sorry. It really is you that poochie wants.” Her lips form a kiss when she says poochie, and again I think of my parallel lines meeting hers. She turns to the two Goth kids. “He worked in the office next to mine. I heard him cough sometimes,” she says.

He? Worked? Heard? I still work there, don’t I? I cough desperately now, from the cigarette smoke, I guess. Isn’t there a no-smoking sign? Of course, there is. Two of them. Then why is everyone . . .

The would-be cop looks up . . . no, down . . . at me. “Four minutes, bud. You got a moral yet?”

I nod, or think I do. “Pe—people in public places shouldn’t . . .” I plan to end with smoke, but then everyone on the car, and I mean everyone, even the bespectacled, pimply dropout who’s been drooling over a Cavalier, looks so interested in what I’m about to say that I don’t want to waste my wisdom on the trivial.

Moral. The word owns two syllables, but there’s only one of me. This stupid fact sears my chest, leaving me uncertain whether I can handle the concept of morality. After all, I and me each possess but one syllable, and I need three or four imported beers to push either of those single syllables into focus inside my apartment. So, the math isn’t working. Two syllables? I retreat to my old high school chum Euclid: The shortest distance between two points is . . . a leap of faith? A lunge of love? Moral.

“You know,” the woman continues, “I’d thought about stopping over for coffee someday. At his office, I mean. He looked—I don’t know—he looked like he needed company.” As she glances around, I follow her hazel eyes. It occurs to me that I don’t see the she/he/it creature anymore, though its mastiff still keeps an electromagnetic paw on my foot, which seems an eternity away. My foot, not the paw. That seems an eternity close.

Moral: You should always remain alert at work, in case a compassionate possibility moves into the office adjoining yours. Or how about: Love lunges just left around la corner.

“Two minutes.” It’s not the cop, but the woman with the Saks sack. Hey! Wait! Where’d minute number three go? And just how would she know anything about time, with her nose stuck in that bag? What’s her name, Edna Einstein?

“It’s easy enough to measure when it’s someone else,” the kid with the textbook says, as if answering my unspoken question about the lost minute. The damned snooty college brat—Euclid should deflate him with a pointy isosceles triangle. “Look here.” The brat starts to show me something in his textbook, a photograph, but my erstwhile next-door officemate stops him, saying,

“That wouldn’t be in good taste now.”

“Good taste?” The student laughs as only students can, with a carefree frolic concerned only with the next slice of pizza, the next mug of beer. “What’s good taste got to do with it?” Drums and three twangy guitars float as if he’s onstage grinding hips with Lady Gaga. His words take on supersonic, echo chamber importance. But not, I guess, a moral. He’s still laughing when the businessman and the would-be cop insinuate body-movements to show that they not only agree with what the woman dressed in foliage has said but will back her opinion with force. Good taste, propriety. Confucius, could he come up with a moral?

“Serious. Right. Everything’s got to be so damned seer-ee-us!” The student slaps his textbook shut and moves past me with a shoulder twitch to join the two Goth teens, who look at him and laugh. I suppose in agreement. Or maybe disdain. I’m surprised that the only way I know he’s moved past me is the smell of his sneakers so close to my face. Or, or, or is that the smell of my lungs?

Moral: Don’t take life too see-ree-us. ’Cause it ain’t, man, it ain’t. Boom, bang, twang! Bam! Bam! Bam!

“One minute,” someone says.

All the cigarettes are glowing stubs now, like the dog’s eyes. And those, well they’re glaring as if I’m a chunk of hamburger.

Moral: In the end, we’re all hamburger.

Moral: Ask your neighbor out before it’s too late. No, how about just Love thy neighbor? No, that sounds too cornball.

“I’m try . . . ing!” I shout. All the cigarette tips glow brighter.

The woman in foliage—my officemate, my cavemate, my neighbor, my . . . moves. Her high heels are green, like her foliage dress. In the window on the other side of the car I see my reflection. An anesthetic chill grabs my spine. Or is it aesthetic? Chill? Am I standing under a duct? Behind me—I don’t know how since I seem to be on the subway’s floor—behind me stands the mastiff’s owner, with those mauve, parallel lips. She/he/it is leaning as if to judge my bald spot. Too much worry over nothing brought that baldness on. Why weren’t you courting the love of your life or drinking wine with friends instead? It’s like he’s asking me this. He? Yes, I can say he with confidence because he opens garishly slender arms to envelop me. His face is my face; his lips are my lips, which part in two very unparallel lines. So it’s all true, both Euclid and Einstein: they meet and they don’t meet.

Are you pretending to wisdom or Buddhahood? The mastiff’s owner asks this with cheeks drawn taxidermically to reveal . . . fangs? No, too Disney, too Stephen King. Molars. Rows and rows of tired molars grinding ever so patiently to render maize, tendons, neurons, axons, gristle, bones, mortals and morals into pabulum.

I’m rocking side to side with the car, but the pain is gone. Everyone bends curiously, still expecting, I suppose, a moral. Their cigarette stubs give off one last glow. Soon they’ll toss them to the floor, which is where I’m looking up from, coughing an iron-tasting rasp as blood circulates through my head on a dizzying merry-go-round.

Mor-uhl.

The creep with the Cavalier, the three young men, the two executives, the semi-cop, the Saks lady, the basketball coach, and my newfound long-lost love in her pastoral dress all bend to stare. Mor-uhl. Mor-uhl. A chant? A cheer? Two syllables. That’s all they’re asking for. Just two syllables. Mor-uhl. Mor-uhl. They’re so anxious that I suppose I’ll try. I smile. Go on, connect the dots, give them just two, I encourage my mouth. My charitable mouth twists, but only drool emits. Two, just two, you can do it. Mor-uhl. Mor-uhl. Two, just two.

I lose focus and rasp. So, I guess . . . I guess I don’t even have one.

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