This part of Kansas
with its low grassy hills,
ravines and gullies —
whirls of wind
smell like upturned earth;
manure and fresh cut hay.

A covered wagon
lumbered down a path 
in this part of Kansas
to bring her here,
the woman in the photograph.

Small and stout,
long apron over her calico dress,
graying hair fraying from a bun -- 
she glares into the camera,
eyes sun-squinted,
mouth in a frown.

She is remembering
all the burnt biscuits,
the leaks in the roof,
the fevers and ague. 
The floods and failed crops and hunger.
The Indian raids.

Here, 
in this part of Kansas,
where the alfalfa still grows,
her sod house once stood, 
with its white-washed walls,
floors of hard-packed dirt,
mattresses stuffed with straw.

Here is the narrow road
she traveled from farm to town,
and the church where
the babies are buried.
Nearby,
overrun with grass, 
lies her own resting place.
Marked simply:
Mother

###

Sometimes she rises stiffly, 
as anyone would
who's been sitting for years, 
and other times quickly, 
as if the wheelchair
were just another seat —
like the pink recliner
she had at home.

My mother can drive in dreams, too.
Where does she go?
Maybe to the hair salon, 
or to a large retail store,
where she browses each narrow aisle
at her own pace,
or to a small café
for a quiet cup of coffee in a tight booth,
or to the movie theater
where she sits
in the very top row.

My mother, in my dreams,
thinks it's true 
that she can walk and drive.
She doesn't know,
like I do,
the cruel lie of it; 
or how, soon,
I'll wake up,
sad and disappointed,
the way I feel each time
I see her sneakers
at the back of her closet. 

###

Someone should put up a plaque.

“Boy crushed by train here” --
a page 1 story in 1910,
but today you find no proof of his death.

You stand 
near the tracks
in the railyard
at the center of this dying farm town -- 
not a train in sight -- 
and imagine the bustle of long ago.

The train men, sooty and coarse; 
the trains themselves: big, black, smoking. 
And the boy doing a man’s job:
“Marking cars” – whatever that means. 
He stepped backward when he should have stepped forward
and that was it.

“Killed by an Engine,” the yellowed headline said.

The grain mills, the brick buildings,
the train station with its mahogany floors,
even the empty coffee shop across the way -- 
all those things the same back then.
But of the horror, the despair, the heartbreak -- 
there is no sign.

No sound of trains, either, the sound that drove his mother crazy.
So distraught that she moved out of town 
and kept on moving 
until she finally stopped
so that your grandmother could someday meet your grandfather
and now here you are.

Someone should put up a plaque.

###

Gas station lights glisten on 
rain-blackened pavement.
Wet concrete. Gas fumes.

A black crow pulls at a worm in a
patch of grass.

Cars and trucks 
glide over slick asphalt.
A bus groans; 
stops for a woman 
in a wheelchair.

To someone from a hundred years from now,
this scene is historic. 

To someone from a hundred years from now,
the characters are long gone.

To someone from a hundred years from now,
we are relics in old-fashioned clothes —
driving our crossovers,
riding our buses,
pumping our gas.

Naïve.

Not knowing what happens next.

###

Past midnight, just as the planet Jupiter peeked from behind the willow tree outside her window, Cassie heard Freddy stirring in the room next to hers, shifting and sighing, unable to get back to sleep. This was Cassie’s cue, and she got out of bed and snuck downstairs to the dark kitchen. She prepared her big brother a bowl of corn flakes by the light of the moon, pouring just enough milk so that, when the cereal was gone, the milk would be nice and sweet.

She tiptoed carefully back up the stairs, the bowl big in her little hands, and found him sitting up in bed, the dim bedside lamp the only light in the room. Poor Freddy always looks so tired now, Cassie thought. His face was so pale compared with his black, black hair, but tonight it looked even paler, and his eyes were red-rimmed again, because he’d been crying. She had heard him earlier, when Mother had brought in the medicine.

She handed him the bowl before she climbed into bed next to him, and he slurped and crunched the cereal down without a spoon. “This is good,” he said. He had hardly eaten anything all day. “My stomach hurts,” was his usual excuse. No matter how much Mother threatened or begged, he ate hardly anything anymore, except the corn flakes Cassie brought him at night.

“You can start,” he said. He handed her the empty bowl, and she put it on the nightstand and picked up the book, the one she had selected from the bookshelf in the room down the hall. Grandma’s old room. The bookshelf there held dozens of books just like this one: Our Wonderful Solar System. She smoothed her hand over the book’s shiny cover in an affectionate way, the way Grandma used to before opening it up.

“What chapter are we on?” He asked the same question every night.

“We’re on the outer planets now,” she said, having finished the inner planets the night before. She opened up at the bookmark. “‘Jupiter and Its Many Moons.'”

The page had a big picture of Jupiter, banded in pale oranges and pinks and even purples, almost like an Easter egg, and beneath the picture, the caption: “The planet Jupiter is more than two times larger than all the other planets put together” — something Cassie and Freddy already knew. Freddy had read this same book aloud to Grandma during those long sad days before she died; had even set up the telescope in Grandma’s room, the same telescope Grandma used to set up in their tiny overgrown backyard, in the one corner not dominated by the old willow.

Cassie began to read. “‘The biggest wonder in our solar system, in terms of size, is the planet Jupiter. The Romans named this gas giant after the principal god of Roman …’ What’s that word again?” Cassie spelled the word out for Freddy, for his eyes were too weak to read in the dim light, even if he put on his big eyeglasses with the thick lenses.

“Mythology,” he said.

“‘… the principal god of Roman mythology.'”

Freddy interrupted. “Grandma said of all the wonders of the universe, the biggest is that we are here at all. That’s something to think about. Something to remember.”

The tone of his voice worried Cassie; she thought that he might start crying again. Some nights were like that, and no amount of reading could get him to stop.

She barreled onward. “‘Jupiter has 11 moons that we know of, but astronomers are certain many more orbit this gas giant. Its largest is Ganymede …'” She felt proud of herself for remembering how to pronounce the moon’s name, and pointed at the picture of it: a tiny black spot compared with the planet. But Freddy, although looking at the picture, could not be distracted from his train of thought.

“It’s like a big gift,” Freddy said.

“What is? Ganymede?”

“No. Being here. On earth.”

She sighed and attempted to start reading again. But he continued.

“A wonderful gift. But one we can’t keep forever. Like a balloon.”

His mention of a balloon caught her off guard. She’d had a balloon once. She and Freddy had ridden the trolley to Santa Monica Pier where he had bought her a red one, but it flew away when they went on the Ferris wheel. She frowned. “I hated losing my balloon.”

“Yes, but your balloon was lucky. Think about it, flying up to space like that.”

“No.” She shook her head and her eyes teared up as she remembered the balloon, and how it had sailed away without caring how much she loved it.

Freddy nudged her with his shoulder. “Yes, it was lucky. Really it was. It got to float all the way up to the sky. I bet it got to visit everything we see in Grandma’s books. The moon and the asteroids. Mars and Venus.”

“And boring old Mercury?” She didn’t like that idea, her poor balloon circling around a big stupid rock.

“Mercury, too. But that’s not all.”

His voice had become more storyteller-like, less sad, and she decided to stop fussing about the balloon and encourage him. “What else then? The sun?”

“Maybe the sun, but I bet the balloon didn’t want to get too close to that.”

She imagined the balloon with its silver string, wilting near the sun, and she began to feel sad again. “And Jupiter?” she asked quickly, to snap herself out of it.

“Of course Jupiter.”

“I’d like to visit Jupiter best of all.” She ran her fingertip over the picture in the book — the bands of orange, pink and purple.

“Wouldn’t you want to visit Saturn?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “But everyone loves Saturn ’cause of its rings. But I love Jupiter. It’s so big and gassy. Grandma was gassy. Maybe she’s on Jupiter. Could heaven be on Jupiter?”

“Maybe.”

“Mother says there’s no heaven.” Cassie felt embarrassed saying it aloud, like it was something they had agreed not to discuss.

“Mother doesn’t believe in anything. And she doesn’t know everything, either.” Freddy had never said this before, and for a moment Cassie was shocked to hear him say it. “No one knows for sure what happens … you know.”

“After you die.” She felt bad because she knew it made him feel bad, talking about dying. She patted his hand, feeling like the older sibling, not the younger. “I want to go to Jupiter someday,” she said. “Can you breathe on Jupiter?” The thought made her take a deep breath, which made her lungs feel funny and she gave a little cough.

“You don’t need to breathe when you go to Jupiter,” Freddy said.

“But if you could?”

“Well, I suppose the air would be sweet and rotten. Remember when the sewer line broke in the street?”

“That smelled bad.”

“But you’d get used to it,” he said.

Cassie’s little cough had agitated her lungs so that another little cough followed, and another.

Freddy sighed. “You should go back to bed. Mother will get up soon, to make her rounds. “

“Okay.”

She climbed out of bed and tucked him in like Grandma used to and kissed his forehead before tiptoeing back to her room. She lay down and looked out her window. Jupiter had moved just the tiniest bit so that it now sat atop the willow, like a Christmas star. But Jupiter was not a star at all, she knew that. The biggest planet in the solar system. The third brightest thing in the sky, after the moon and Venus, and she liked how Jupiter was so big and yet not a show-off.

She coughed again, this time harder and longer. She hated when the coughing started.

When Mother came in to give Cassie her medicine, Jupiter still sat atop the tree, but four hours later, when the coughing started up again and Mother came back, Jupiter was out of sight.

Cassie fell back asleep. Jupiter, meanwhile, continued through the cold, vast blackness of space as it journeyed around the sun. The weeks passed, and then the months, while Jupiter — stormy and turbulent; unaware of those passing weeks and months — continued on the path set out for it.

One night, the sun had only just set when Jupiter winked at Cassie through the window. But she didn’t notice.

Freddy did, and he told her how Jupiter shimmered in the pearl-like sky, his lips against her ear, his voice louder even than their mother’s. Louder even than the ventilator. Freddy’s voice, the only thing Cassie heard: “The light — when you see it, it’s Jupiter.” Over and over he said it until she did see the light, orange and pink and purple, just like Freddy said it would be, and someone up ahead called to her, and with her last great effort she tore off the mask and gulped in the sweet rotten air.

###

Published in Waterhouse Review, 2013

Ted checked his watch: 9:35. The meeting with the principal was at 10. Better to get there early, so he grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter and called “Anna–time to go” but was careful not to sound impatient. His wife got flustered by impatience. She was already flustered enough, forced as they were to see the principal at Robbie’s school. And on a Saturday, no less.

No answer at first, but then, after a moment, Anna’s quiet response. “Just a minute.”

Ted followed her voice to the front of the house to the doorway leading into Robbie’s bedroom. There he found the two of them, his wife and son, sitting side by side on Robbie’s little bed. Despite all his worry (why couldn’t the principal wait until Monday to meet with us? What the hell had Robbie done?), Ted took a moment to enjoy the scene: The plain white walls and the wooden crucifix hanging over the cot-like bed made it more like a monk’s cell than the bedroom of a nine-year-old. Sure, it was stark, but it was peaceful, too. Not cluttered and gloomy like the room he’d had as a boy.

They had their backs to him and didn’t see Ted at the door. The morning sun blazing through the window seemed to melt Anna and Robbie into one: a two-headed creature with hair as black as coal and skin as white as–

Ted marveled again at the whiteness of their skin. What could be that white?

A maggot.

Oh God no, Ted thought: not a maggot.

A … a lily.

Yes. That was much better.

Skin as white as a lily.

Anna bowed her head and Robbie did the same, and Ted waited for the inevitable: for Anna to mumble a little Russian prayer. It didn’t take much for her to do that, and times like these, with their boy in trouble again, definitely called for prayer. Dear God, Ted would have said if he prayed, Dear God, Dear God … But he wouldn’t know what to say after that. He left all the praying to his wife, hoping God and all the saints didn’t hate the sound of Russian as much as he did. Such a harsh language. So coarse. Invented, Ted imagined, by some drunk, ill-tempered Cossack. He braced himself for the sound of it.

But Robbie piped up before Anna could start to pray. “I’m a good boy, Mama. I swear I am. I didn’t do anything bad.”

Ted knew that tone of voice: Perplexed and indignant. Full of fire, but full of ice, too, somehow. The same tone Robbie used whenever he defended himself. “I didn’t spill the juice on the carpet,” “I didn’t squirt toothpaste into the toilet,” “I didn’t eat all the cookies, I swear I didn’t, I swear I swear I swear!” And last year, at the other school, the thing about the bugs–“Those bugs were already dead, Daddy, I swear!” Perplexed, indignant, his big black eyes full of tears. Big, black and wet. Like Lake George on a moonless night.

Moon. Moon white.

Skin as white as the moon–that’s another good one, Ted thought, before Robbie’s voice brought him back to the hallway outside the bedroom door.

“They’re’ all a bunch of liars, Mama. That stupid principal. And that stupid janitor. He’s the biggest liar of all. Don’t believe anything they tell you.”

“I won’t. I won’t. You’re my good boy.” Anna murmured something else, Ted couldn’t hear what, and then she reached around and touched Robbie lightly behind the ear, just behind the lobe. Robbie touched the spot himself, and they both nodded as if agreeing on something.

Ted pulled back from the doorway and let them have their moment. He found the spot behind his own ear, a soft dimpled pocket where his jawbone ended and his skull began. A pressure point, maybe. Applying pressure there must calm yourself. That was probably it. Anna knew about that kind of thing. She was a nurse, after all.

But what had she whispered to Robbie? A little Russian prayer, maybe. A prayer to Saint Ephraim, the patron saint of consolation. (Or was that Saint Eustathius? Ted could never keep them straight.) Or “Press your finger here when you feel upset”–maybe that’s all she’d said.

Anyway, Ted thought, whatever Anna whispered, it’s none of my business. A secret here, a secret there; what did it matter? Mothers and sons have a special bond. Or some did. The lucky ones. Not him and his mother, of course. Ted’s mother used to slap him whenever he got in trouble. If her mood was particularly rotten, she’d hit him with a belt. “Stop. Causing. Trouble,” she’d say, in time with each whack.

Ted glanced at his mother’s bedroom, right next to Robbie’s, and wondered if he should check on her before they left. The door was slightly ajar and the room semi-dark. Anna kept the curtains drawn; his mother had stopped asking to open them years ago. Ted couldn’t see her from where he stood, but he could still feel his mother’s presence. Big, dark and heavy, like a caged gorilla. She was an invalid now and couldn’t hurt him anymore, but he never went into her room unless he had to. He decided he’d check on her when they got back.

Anna and Robbie emerged from Robbie’s bedroom just then, arms entwined, their faces somber until they saw Ted standing there, and then they both smiled at him with the same toothy grins. It’s almost like they rehearsed it, smiling like that–but Ted chided himself for thinking such a thing.

“Time to go, honey,” Ted said.

Anna dropped Robbie’s arm and stood on tiptoe to kiss Ted’s cheek. “Yes, darling. Time to go.” She rubbed Ted’s arm in that soft way she had, like he was a precious thing, and she held his hand as they walked to the front door.

Flushed and happy from his wife’s touch, Ted forgot to worry about whatever it was Robbie had done. But it came back to him the closer they got to the front door, that unease in his gut. The worry that somehow he was to blame. He was Robbie’s father, after all. “The fruit don’t fall far from the tree” is how his mother put it.

He opened the door for his wife, but before stepping outside, she paused at the metallic icon of Saint Anastasia on the wall. Ted watched her kiss the spot where the saint’s hand held the cross–the same spot she kissed every time, worn down to a pale copper. Anna’s lips were so plump and full; so red, even without lipstick. She stared into the saint’s eyes, said a prayer (in Russian, of course; such ugly sounds, Ted thought, coming from such a pretty mouth) and then quickly left the house. Ted pointed the key fob at the car and unlocked it.

“Hold down the fort while we’re gone, Rob,” Ted said, but Robbie didn’t seem to hear him. He had settled down on the couch and was staring at the TV. A Skittles commercial was on, or maybe it was an ad for cereal. “You’re in charge of Grandma,” Ted said a bit louder, but Robbie still didn’t respond–too busy now, sucking his thumb–but Ted heard a muffled cry from his mother’s room. He ignored it, irritated by Robbie’s thumb-sucking (wasn’t he too old to do that? Anna didn’t think so, but Ted had his doubts) and was on the porch and about to close the front door when he heard his mother cry out again, this time more urgently. He checked his watch, decided he could spare a minute and headed back inside.

Every time he entered his mother’s room, Ted felt his face change. Felt it become hard. Scornful. Impatient. The same expression his mother had worn all those years, until the MS did her in. Ted might wear his mother’s mask when he saw her, but that was as far as it went. He had no desire to slap her. To pinch, to bully, to whip her with a belt.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

His mother’s eyes were big and watery–not blue anymore, but gray, just like the rest of her. She tried to say something but her words were garbled. That new medicine was to blame, Ted thought, or maybe her mind was finally going. In either case, Ted was glad about it. Now she couldn’t nag him anymore, or say terrible things about Anna. “Evil bitch,” is what she usually said, including once when Robbie was in the room. “Don’t say that!” Robbie had cried, to which Ted’s mother, in fine form, had responded, “Well that’s what she is, an evil bitch.” Funny thing, Ted realized now: that might have been the last clear thing she’d ever said.

“Why all the moaning, Mom? We’ll be back soon.” Ted said it loudly, in case his mother’s hearing was shot, too.

She shook her head and held out a hand to him–an old lady’s hand, quivering and spotted. He didn’t take it but instead averted his eyes and pulled the blanket up to her neck. But he pulled too hard and the foot of her blanket became untucked. “We can’t have that now, can we?” he said, something she used to say to him, but never in a kind way.

The sheet had come undone as well, and he was about to retuck both sheet and blanket when he saw her right foot: the long, yellow toenails; the dry, flaky skin; and (this was new) a network of tiny cuts. She moaned and pointed a shaky finger at her foot and looked at Ted with wild eyes. It’s those damn toenails, Ted thought. They’d gotten so thick that Anna couldn’t cut them anymore. He would have to do it. Or could he hire someone to do that? He hoped so. He hated the thought of touching his mother’s feet. She used to make him rub her feet after work as she partook of what she called her “constitutional” (and what Ted called “a rum and coke”). She never took off her nylons when he had to rub her feet. There was something even worse about it that way. Professional toenail cutters–would they be listed in the Yellow Pages?

The blanket and sheet firmly tucked in, Ted stood upright and felt himself towering over her, a sad old woman in a twin bed. That’s when he saw the ceramic saint on his mother’s night stand tipped over, face down. St. Basil. Patron saint of the sick. Or was it the elderly? In any case, Anna wouldn’t like seeing it tipped over like that. She’d say it was bad luck. She’d want to say a prayer. Anna was in the car, sure, but Robbie was in the other room, and if he saw Saint Basil like that, he’d let Anna know about it, and then they’d never get out of here. Ted quickly stood the saint upright. Its tiny white face was grim and unthankful.

“We’ll be back soon, Mom. And don’t tip over the statue anymore. Anna doesn’t like it.”

His mother shook her head and held out her hand again but he turned and left. He kept her door slightly ajar so Robbie could hear her in case she needed him.

Robbie was lost in his TV show–something about cheetahs and hyenas, frolicking across the savanna. What a smart little boy, Ted thought, always so interested in animals. That situation with the bugs last year, didn’t that show he had a scientific bent? Maybe he’ll be a vet, Ted thought. Doctoring ran in the family–well, on Anna’s side, at least. “My father was a doctor,” Anna always said, which is all she ever said about him.

“Be back soon, Rob,” Ted said. He locked the front door and headed toward the car as wispy white clouds sailed across the sky above him, quick and frightened, like they were being chased. Anna was in the passenger seat, gazing down, frowning, and she didn’t look up, not even after he got in. Probably praying, Ted thought. To Saint Kuksha, maybe, or Saint Olga. Patron saints of–oh, hell. He couldn’t remember. Each saint had a different specialty, but Ted got them confused most of the time. It didn’t matter. That was Anna’s domain. To him, the saints were like spices. He knew oregano was for Italian food and cumin for Mexican, but what about, say, marjoram? When was the right time to use marjoram? But he didn’t need to worry about any of that. Anna took care of the spices just like she took care of the saints.

He started up the car, and Anna immediately rolled down her window a crack. She needed the air to keep from getting car sick.

“Would you rather walk?” he asked. It would take only 10 minutes or so. He checked his watch–only 9:45. They could make it in plenty of time.

“No,” Anna said, her expression hard. “Only peasants walk. We will drive.”

Ted eased the car out of the driveway and onto the street. He’d known what she’d say and wondered why he’d bothered to ask. In any case, it was better if they drove. Those clouds overhead–they worried him. More and more were coming in, and they weren’t so white or wispy anymore.

“Why do they call us in like this? And on a Saturday?” Anna made it sound like a challenge, like Ted was to blame, since this was his country they were living in. She tilted her nose toward the open window and continued. “He is too little to have done something much bad. Only nine. What could he have done?”

He made a slow smooth stop at the stop sign and a gentle right onto Elm. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Nothing probably. Maybe he’s getting an award or something.”

Such a strange thing for him to say–“getting an award.” When had Robbie ever got an award for anything? But then Ted remembered telling his mother the very same thing once, long ago, after Ted himself had been sent to the principal’s office and was late getting home. “I got an award, Mom!” But she didn’t believe him. “Liar!” she’d said. And then the ol’ slapawak–what Ted called her beatings. But only to himself.

They pulled into the parking lot, and Ted marveled again at how nice the school was–so much nicer than Henry Hudson Elementary, the one he’d gone to. No barred windows, no peeling paint, and a wide swathe of grass out front, always mowed and litter-free. This is where my son goes, Ted thought, and he felt proud about it. He hoped there wasn’t any real trouble with Robbie, like there’d been at the last school.

They had a few minutes to spare so, after he parked, they sat in the quiet before getting out. He glanced at Anna–he would stare at her all day if she didn’t hate it so. His beautiful Russian wife with her coal-black hair, full red lips and moon-white skin. Such a miracle, having her in his life, when his mother always said he’d be alone forever. (“Who’d want you? You’re too much trouble. Just like your father.”) But Anna, his mother’s nurse all those years ago, had rescued him from that. (“Ha! A fine pair you make, my good-for-nothing son and his lunatic wife …”)

He put his hands back on the steering wheel and gripped it so hard that his fingers hurt. Forty years old and still hearing his mother’s voice in his head. Even now that she couldn’t talk, he still heard it. Even after she was dead, he’d still hear it. He needed some chit chat just to drown her out.

“I saw you and Robbie this morning. Having a pow wow.” But he’d chosen the wrong thing to say.

Anna glared at him. “What is this ‘pow wow’? You make us sound savage.”

“Okay. Never mind.” He shouldn’t have brought that up. It was their moment–Anna’s and Robbie’s–after all. A mother and son moment. Nothing to do with him. “Ready to go?”

Anna nodded, but before they got out she took his hand, squeezed it and smiled at him, her expression sad and sorry. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. Her skin–it was so soft, even the skin over her knuckles. Soft as silk. Smooth as butter. Her whole body was like that.

The wind turned gusty as they walked hand in hand up to the main building. There was no secretary in the office to greet them–Ted called “Hello!” and was about to repeat himself when Anna pointed to a note taped on the principal’s door just beyond the front desk. “Mr. and Mrs. Collins: Come on in,” it said, so they stepped inside the principal’s office and took a seat.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly and somewhat unevenly. “And now we wait,” Ted said, smiling, but Anna had closed her eyes and lowered her head. Praying again. Always praying. For what? Ted didn’t know. Married 10 years and he still didn’t know what she prayed for.

He watched the morning light play across the snow globes along the window sill. About a dozen of them, lined up in alphabetical order, starting with Albany and ending in Washington, DC. They sparkled in the sun, dimmed when a cloud swept by, and then sparkled again.

… Boston, Denver, Miami, Montreal …

Back at Henry Hudson Elementary, there’d never been snow globes to look at in the principal’s office. Ted should know–he’d spent a lot of time there as a kid. And for what? Stealing snacks from lunch pails. Never sandwiches, only snacks. Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Ho Hos. Not all the time, just once in a while, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, those crummy bologna sandwiches, day in, day out. “Teddy took my Ding Dongs!” someone’d cry, and off he’d go to Mr. Fitzgerald’s office, who’d nearly paddled Ted the first time but stopped when he saw the bruises on his arms. So from then on, whenever Ted got sent to the office, he sat at the corner table to work on a puzzle, while Mr. Fitzgerald looked over papers or talked on the phone or sometimes sat right alongside Ted, putting together pictures of Vermont Farm in Autumn or Winter Waters of Lake Champlain.

… New York, Omaha, Pittsburgh …

No snow globes in Mr. Fitzgerald’s office, but Ted remembered the smell of Old Spice and strong coffee. But the smell of whiskey? Beer? Wine? No, Ted didn’t remember that, even though his mother still said (or did say, until the new medicine had taken her tongue) that Mr. Fitzgerald was a drunk. “Stupid old drunk. Everyone knew it. Everyone but you.” What nonsense. Mr. Fitzgerald was no drunk. He had allergies, that’s all.

There was the sound of a door opening somewhere and then high-heeled shoes clicking toward them from down the hall. A moment later, Mrs. Boyd the principal bustled in.

“Thank you for coming in today.” She reached over and shook their hands before sitting down at her desk. “I know how busy Saturdays can be.”

Mrs. Boyd was a heavy-set woman, perfectly groomed, with a powdery, flowery smell. She emanated efficiency and competence, just like Mr. Fitzgerald did, Ted thought. Even when Mr. Fitzgerald’s eyes were unfocused and bloodshot, he had seemed confident and capable.

The office darkened as a cloud blocked the sunlight. Ted suddenly remembered Anna’s car window, and wondered whether she’d rolled it up all the way and whether he should go out and check before it started to rain–but just then Mrs. Boyd cleared her throat. She looked from Ted to Anna and smiled. It was a just-enough smile. One to lessen the blow, Ted thought.

He shifted in his seat and glanced at his wife. Anna’s pretty face was hard and unsmiling. Just like Saint Erasmus. Patron saint of tummy troubles–Ted had no trouble remembering that. There was a ceramic figurine of Saint Erasmus in their bathroom. Dour ol’ Erasmus. Nothing you did ever pleased him.

“We need to talk about Robert,” said Mrs. Boyd.

“Robbie,” Ted said. So that’s how it was, he thought: The people here at school don’t know my son at all. His boy was Robbie, not Robert. The same thing had happened last year, at the other school, with the principal there, that Mrs. What’s Her Name, that ugly horse of a woman, who’d gone on and on about Robbie and that bug collection of his. “You don’t know him like we do,” Ted had said to her, to which she’d promptly responded, “And you don’t know him like we do.”

“Robbie. Yes, of course,” Mrs. Boyd said, temporarily chastened. She recovered her composure quickly and resumed, just as the wind picked up outside and raindrops began to fall. “We’re concerned about Robbie’s behavior. Very concerned.”

Anna squirmed in her chair and made an awful fart-like noise against the leather upholstery. Mrs. Boyd pretended not to notice–a real professional, Ted thought, while he tried hard to squelch a laugh. Being nervous like this made him giddy, and it took all he had now to keep a straight face.

Anna didn’t seem to notice the terrible noise she’d made. She squinted her eyes and set her lips in a hard little frown–the same look she got when she thought she heard mice scurrying behind the walls. She looked toward Mrs. Boyd but not exactly at her, Ted could tell by the confused look on Mrs. Boyd’s face. Anna spaced out like that whenever she was upset. Ted couldn’t blame her. This was no fun.

“What has Robbie done?” Ted asked. He very nearly added the word “now” to the end of his question, but he stopped himself just in time. It would be like admitting something, when there was nothing to admit. True, there was that episode last year, at the other school, that brouhaha over Robbie and those bugs of his. Boys will be boys. Hell, Ted thought, I even kept a box of dead bugs when I was Robbie’s age, and had dissected them, too. “But Mr. Collins, I’m sure you waited until they were dead before you dissected them.” That’s what the principal at the other school said, to which Robbie had responded, “Liar! Liar! They were already dead when I cut them up. I swear Daddy. I swear!” His big black eyes full of tears.

“What has Robbie done?” Mrs. Boyd said, frowning. “Well.” She lifted her eyebrows high and shook her head as she opened up the folder in front of her.

A picture was clipped to the upper corner of the folder. It was upside down from where Ted sat, but he still recognized it. Robbie’s school photo. This year’s was so different from last year’s, when Robbie was in the third grade. The great big smile that Robbie had in his kindergarten picture had subsided each year, until now, in the fourth grade picture, he had no smile at all. Robbie’s eyes were different, too. The light was gone, Ted realized now. Kids grew up too quickly these days. He wondered if the TV was to blame, and if he should get rid of it.

Mrs. Boyd sighed as if what she would have to say was unpleasant. “Robbie killed a cat.”

Ted felt his body freeze and his face flush. The clock’s ticking filled the whole world. He heard his mother’s words–

You’re broken …

Nothing but trouble …

Rotten fruit don’t fall far from the tree …

–and knew now they were all true. His mother was right. He was broken. Rotten to the core. And he’d passed it all on to his son.

Mrs. Boyd continued. “It was one of the strays that wander into the playground from time to time.” She kept her eyes on the typed sheet in the folder. “Mr. Jones–the janitor–said he found Robbie behind the dumpster out near the baseball field after school. He said he found Robbie with his hands around the cat’s neck.”

Ted felt his body unfreeze, just slightly, just enough so he could turn to look to Anna, hoping for some kind of support–anything–but she didn’t look at him. She had untucked a lock of hair, the one she usually kept behind her left ear, and was twisting it. Her black hair looked so pretty against her maggot white skin. No, Ted corrected himself. Lily white. Moon white.

“Cats are filthy. They cannot be trusted,” Anna muttered, to which Mrs. Boyd, clearly surprised by the response, said, “Well I hardly think that’s the point, even if it were true …” and on and on, but Ted was remembering a few months back, when he’d found a dead cat in their own backyard, its eyes bulging, a frantic, terrified look on its little face, its tiny pink tongue sticking out its tiny mouth, and when he’d gone into the house he’d found Anna at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea, flipping through Good Housekeeping, and when he told her about the cat she’d said the same thing: “Cats are filthy. They cannot be trusted,” without looking up from the magazine.

Even for Anna, that was a strange thing to say. Ted wondered now: Had she been covering up for Robbie? Had Robbie killed that cat?

But no: Robbie had been in bed that whole weekend, sick with the stomach flu.

And anyway, Ted thought, why should I think such a thing? About my very own son?

Anna had stopped twisting her hair and had begun to rub behind her ear. Just behind the lobe. Ted thought of her and Robbie, sitting side by side on the little bed, having their pow wow, her arm around his shoulders, protecting him, comforting him; and all the tender times before that, ever since Robbie was born: Anna swaddling him in a blanket, combing his hair, rubbing him all over with baby oil.

No one knew what is what like in their house. No one saw all the love they had for each other, all the tenderness. It had never been like that in his house growing up. And this Mrs. Boyd wanted to ruin all that. Her and that janitor.

This was bullshit, Ted thought. Bullshit with a capital B. Look at the life I’ve built. A nice house in a good neighborhood, a beautiful wife and son. This principal, and the one last year–it was some kind of conspiracy. I’ve worked so hard to build a normal life, and they want to destroy it all. Mother is behind it all somehow. She’s determined to ruin my life.

Mrs. Boyd continued to blah blah blah about something, but Ted cut her off. “My son didn’t kill any cat. He must have he found it like that.”

Anna didn’t respond at all to his outburst, but Mrs. Boyd seemed confused, like she’d lost her train of thought, and she shook her head as if to clear it. “Mr. Jones said the cat was alive when he got there. Barely alive, but still. He told Robbie to stop, but then he ‘finished the job.’ Mr. Jones’ words, not mine.”

“Who is this Mr. Jones? Why should we believe him?”

The force of his words took Mrs. Boyd by surprise; she looked like she’d been slapped. “I’ve never known Mr. Jones to lie.”

“That’s a pretty big accusation to make. He should be here if he’s going to say those kinds of things.”

“I–I didn’t think it was necessary, having him here.” Mrs. Boyd shifted in her seat and made her own fart-like noise.

But Ted was too indignant to be amused by it. “I want to meet this Mr. Jones.”

“If you really think it’s necessary…”

“I do.” Ted felt strong, like a real man of the house. The protector of his domain. Oh, how his dear old mother would sneer if she could see him now. “Think you’re a big shot, don’t you. Well, think again”–he could hear her words right in his ear. But what did she know? Old hag alone in a bed, with yellow toenails and cut-up feet.

Ted stood to leave–the meeting was over as far as he was concerned–and helped Anna up from her chair. Mrs. Boyd, red-faced and flustered, said they weren’t done, said they needed to address this issue, said, if they didn’t, “your son will do something even worse, you can bet on that,” but Ted and Anna left the office without another word.

It was pouring rain now; Ted held Anna’s arm and hurried her back to the car. She didn’t seem to notice the rain, or where they were, or what they were doing. Ted had to help her into the car and then, once he got himself in, he strapped the seat belt over her. He buckled himself in then, but waited before turning the key.

He sat there and watched the rain run over the windshield, turning Henry Hudson Elementary into a smear of crying colors. The janitor had it wrong, but even so, they were all against Robbie now. “The troubled boy” is how they’d see him. They’d have to move again. Try another school. Maybe the third time would be the charm. Maybe at the next school, they’d finally see Robbie for what he was: a good boy.

He said aloud what it all came down to: “They don’t know him like we do.”

Anna jumped in her seat at his words. She looked at Ted as if she didn’t know where he’d come from. But then her eyes cleared and she smiled a tiny smile. “Yes, darling. They don’t know him like we do.”

Her smile died as she turned to look out the window. She tucked her hair behind her ear. The skin behind her lobe–the spot she’d been rubbing earlier–was bright red; raw, almost. It hurt Ted to look at it.

The ride back home was quiet, except for the sound of rain and wipers. We’ll get past this, Ted thought. We’ll sort this out. They don’t know Robbie like we do. He didn’t kill that cat. Ridiculous! They don’t know how it is in our home, how happy we are. Today is Saturday. Tonight we’ll eat dinner on TV trays in the den and watch “Deadliest Catch.” That’s our tradition. Did crazy, dangerous people do that sort of thing? No. They didn’t.

“Why is he outside?” Anna said, and that’s when Ted saw Robbie, sitting on the front porch. Crying in the rain. Soaking wet.

Ted came to a hard stop in the driveway. Anna jumped out of the car and ran to the boy. Ted followed close behind.

Robbie stood up, held out his arms to his mother. There was blood oozing from below his ear. Blood on his neck. Blood on his hands, too, and his shirt, and his pants–like he’d tried to wipe his hands clean of it. Much more blood than could have come from his ear.

He choked out words between his sobs. “I did what you said, Mama–but it didn’t work–I rubbed my ear–a lot–but the bad thoughts didn’t stop–“

Anna shushed him and led him into the house.

Ted followed them in, saw Anna usher Robbie to the couch. Saw that his mother’s door was closed.

He wondered about that.

Did I close her door? Didn’t I leave it open?

“Mom?” He waited for her muffled cry. No response.

He took one last look at his family: Anna with her arms wrapped around Robbie, his head on her chest, his thumb in his mouth as she held him, her little boy covered in blood. Mothers and sons have such a special bond, he thought. And then he opened his mother’s door.

###

Published in Fiction Silicon Valley, 2016

David’s hand shook as he put the razor against Grandpa’s throat. “Hold still now,” he muttered, embarrassed that his words smelled like morning breath — again — and reminding himself — again — that he should always brush his teeth before shaving Grandpa in the morning.

With his head tilted back, Grandpa sat rock-still in the chair backed up to the kitchen sink. The morning sun streamed into the room through the cracked window, and David squinted as he stood bent over his grandfather, shaving all the least-vulnerable parts of the neck first. He started just below the jaw line, making sure to get all the bristles; otherwise, Grandpa would pick and scrape at them for the rest of the day, sometimes until he made himself bleed. “Almost done,” David said, and then, as carefully as he could, feeling gangly and uncoordinated just the same, he began to shave the bristles on the skin over Grandpa’s jugular.

“Just a little deeper, Davey!” Grandpa said, and winked.

The loudness of his voice startled David; he pulled his hand back and fought an urge to curse. This is no time for jokes! he wanted to yell, but didn’t. He didn’t want to wake his mom, for one thing, and raising his voice with Grandpa would only agitate the old man, and he couldn’t risk that.

Today was a big day. An important day. Today David would deliver 10 dozen of his mom’s peanut butter cookies to Big Buns Bakery — the biggest bakery in Long Beach. If they could get Big Buns as a client, that would change everything; they’d even be able to buy Grandpa an electric razor. David had a lot to do before he made his morning deliveries, and everything had to go smoothly. Today was not a good day for Grandpa to become agitated.

“That’s it for today.” He wiped off Grandpa’s face and neck with a damp towel, stifling a yawn in the process.

Grandpa sat upright in his chair and felt the smoothness of his skin. “That’s it for today,” he said, as if he liked the sound of the words. “What’s that thing you used to say, Davey? When you was little? That’s it for now … No.” He shook his head. “No. Remember?”

David took the comb from his pocket and pulled it gently through Grandpa’s coarse brown-gray hair. “I don’t remember. We need to get you dressed.”

Grandpa surveyed his shabby gray trousers and blue button-down shirt. “But I am dressed.” He frowned at David for just an instant but then smiled, his dark brown eyes twinkling, as if David was trying to pull one over on him, and David half-expected him to ask, “Are you trying to pull one over on me?” like he used to, way back when. Back in the good old days. But instead he asked, “What was that thing you used to say …”

“I don’t remember, Grandpa,” David said, wondering how many more times he’d have to tell him that today. “I know you’re dressed, but you wore those clothes yesterday.” He had been too tired last night to help Grandpa into his pajamas. This had been happening more and more, but Mom had stopped yelling at David about it. David didn’t like when his mom yelled at him, but he also didn’t like her becoming less and less concerned about the things she used to care about.

“But I am dressed,” Grandpa repeated, and David sighed and decided not to fight him about it and to let him stay in these clothes. One less thing he had to do this morning, and at least the clothes were clean.

Bobby shuffled into the kitchen, already dressed for school, but sloppily.

“Tuck in your shirt,” David said, and Bobby tried to do it as he got his cereal bowl and spoon from the dish rack. “If you’re gonna do something, do it right,” David said, which is something their dad used to say, and David wished he hadn’t, but lately he couldn’t seem to stop what came out of his mouth. Especially around Bobby. Something about his little brother made David feel old and cranky, even though, at 16 and 10, there were only six years between them. 

Bobby set down his bowl and spoon to tuck in his shirt. Grandpa watched him from his seat at the sink, still massaging his chin (trying to find something to scratch at, David supposed), and said, “Do it right, like your brother says,” but he said it in a cheerful voice and Bobby smiled and kissed his cheek good morning.

The scene made David feel even more separate from the two of them, like he was the mean old jerk in charge and they had made a pact to tolerate him; like David was a sharp piece of glass, sharp like Grandpa’s razor, able to cut through them like dough, and whenever he did, they just smiled and helped each other mend the cuts.

Bobby took his bowl and spoon and the box of Cheerios from the counter and sat down at the table, his eyes just barely open. He opened his mouth to take in a spoonful of cereal but yawned instead.

“Did you stay up late reading again?” David asked. He had seen the flashlight glowing beneath Bobby’s sheets last night, the bedspread raked with shadows from the bars at the window.

Bobby shook his head. “Grandpa got up and woke me up.”

Grandpa sat quietly in his chair at the sink, listening in an interested way as if Bobby were discussing a neighbor or someone on TV, and not him. When David frowned and shook his head at him, Grandpa mimicked his expression and shook his head, too.

“What time did he get up?” David asked. He and Bobby both shared a room with Grandpa, and David was the one who usually woke when Grandpa got up to wander.

“Two o’clock, I guess. He went into the kitchen when Mom was making her cookies. He tried to get one.”

David imagined how that must have been, Mom in her waitressing uniform, pointing her spatula at Grandpa.

“And Grandpa kept saying, ‘I want a cookie,'” Bobby said, in between bites, “and Mom made her possum face.”

David knew that look, her lips bared over her teeth, her eyes wild and angry. Desperate. Beyond exhaustion. “Why do you bother Mom like that?” he asked Grandpa. “You know you can’t eat peanuts.”

“I just wanted a cookie,” Grandpa said. He hunkered forward in his chair, head down, hands on his knees.

“They are peanut butter cookies.” David enunciated each word to get his point across. “You cannot eat peanuts. You are allergic to them. Do you understand? They will kill you. Do you want to kill yourself?”

Grandpa’s head fell even lower until David could not see his face. His sitting like that reminded David of the dog they used to have. A small black mutt. Mitzi. A good dog, except for the peeing on Dad’s recliner. Whenever she peed on it, she’d run behind the couch and put her head down like Grandpa did now. One pee too many and Dad had taken her to a field in Wilmington and left her there.

“I took Grandpa back to bed,” Bobby said, his mouth full of cereal. “You were still asleep.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but David took it that way. “Yeah, well I need to sleep sometimes, too.” He said it too sharply and Bobby cowered, the way he used to when Dad got drunk and looked for someone to blame about something. 

David felt bad for his tone but didn’t apologize. He hadn’t slept through the night since he was 15, or maybe 14 — he couldn’t remember exactly. But it had been at least a year, ever since Grandpa had started wandering around the house at night; ever since his “forgetfulness,” as Mom called it, had worsened.

David splashed his face with cold water from the kitchen tap to wake himself up while Grandpa got up and moved slowly to the kitchen table — very, very slowly, as if he wanted to do it right. Weird, David thought, how Grandpa never seemed tired. Even though he woke up the rest of them almost every night, making them walk around all day in a semi-zombie state, Grandpa never seemed sleepy. Confused most of the time, a little nervous and too alert, as if he were trying to figure out what was making him confused and nervous, but not sleepy.

Grandpa sat patiently at the kitchen table while David shuffled around the kitchen, getting his breakfast ready. He took a bowl and spoon from the dish rack, filled the bowl with cereal, topped it off with milk and set it down in front of Grandpa. “Here’s your Spaghettios,” he said, and then corrected himself — “I mean Cheerios.” He’d been doing that a lot lately, mixing up words. Anyone else might be worried that he was he losing his mind, but David wasn’t worried — not about that, anyway. He knew he was just tired. Exhausted. Depleted. They hadn’t come up with a word yet to describe the state he was in. He plunked himself down at the kitchen table.

Grandpa stared at the cereal, frowning, and shook his head. “I want a cookie.” He pushed the bowl away, spilling milk on to the table. “Just one cookie, Davey.”

“Eat your Spaghettios or you’ll be hungry all day,” David said, yawning. Grandpa still wouldn’t eat. “Eat up, or you’re hair won’t curl,” David said, the same thing Grandpa used to say to him when he was little and wouldn’t eat his vegetables. “Don’t you want curly hair?”

“No. I want a cookie. Just one.” Grandpa frowned and folded his arms. “What was that thing you used to say, Davey? When you was a little guy. Thinking you was a big guy, all tough all the time. You had that one phrase, whenever you tried to get your way …”

“I don’t know. But no cookies.” David put his head on his arms. “Eat your cereal, Grandpa, or Mom will yell at me.”

David closed his eyes and heard Grandpa sigh and then, a moment later, move the cereal bowl closer to him and finally start to eat. David listened to him chomping and — although he didn’t mean to — fell asleep almost instantly.

“Eat up, or your hair won’t curl!” Grandpa said, laughing in the way he used to laugh. Hearty and happy, a real fisherman. On his fishing boat off the shore of Catalina, in the bay Grandpa took him to when they went fishing. Mom there, too; happy again. Smiling. Like she used to. Laughing. Grandpa dived into the water — strong, fit, bronze as a penny — swimming with strong strokes in the open water. “Jump in, Davey, jump in!” David clambered up onto the side of the boat, ready to dive, but Mom stopped him. “Help me, David; get this off me” — a rope around her neck. Grandpa held the other end of it; he swam and the rope began to choke her. “Stop, Grandpa, stop!” but Grandpa swam even further, grinning, as if it were all a big joke, and Mom’s face began to turn blue …

“Stop, Grandpa! Stop!”

David woke with a start and sprang up from the kitchen table so quickly that he felt faint. The room was empty. 

“Bobby?”

The front door was wide open — barely awake, David ran outside and saw Grandpa jogging down the middle of the street, Bobby in hot pursuit, both heading toward the intersection with the boulevard, busy with a steady stream of big rigs coming to and from the port.

David tore off after them; he knew that Grandpa would head toward the ocean, right into the traffic barreling down the boulevard — toward the slice of water just visible between the warehouses across the road — and that Bobby would follow right behind him. “Bobby!” he yelled, but the boy didn’t slow down. “Bobby! Get out of the street!”

A big white sedan turned from the boulevard onto their street and slammed to a stop just a few feet from Grandpa, who tried to go around the car, but by then David had got there, and Bobby was tugging at Grandpa’s arm, trying to pull him toward the sidewalk. The driver — their neighbor, cranky old Mrs. Bittel — unrolled her automatic window an inch so she could yell “It’s about time you put him in a home!” before she sped on.

Bobby’s face flushed hot red and his eyes shone fierce and dark. “Mind your own busy, lady!” he yelled, with that innocence and outrage and pure courageousness that always made Bobby seem bigger than all the rest of them put together. 

David let Mrs. Bittel sail on without a word; he didn’t stand up for himself or anyone else like Bobby did. And anyway, he knew Mrs. Bittel was right. Grandpa should be in a home, but the only one they could almost afford was dark and noisy and smelled like urine mixed with Lysol. Grandpa had started to cry when they’d gone to visit it, and then Mom had cried, too, and that was the end of that. Ever since then, they didn’t talk about nursing homes.

David and Bobby led Grandpa back home, one on each side of him. “That wasn’t good, Grandpa. That wasn’t good,” Bobby said, over and over. 

Grandpa seemed unconcerned by the whole episode and tried to turn around to look at the ocean. “Look at the water, boys. Look at it! Let me go on down there, boys. Just let me go and then — what was that you used to say, Davey? Way back when. You know what I mean. When you wanted to get your way.”

David, still catching his breath, his heart still beating wildly, didn’t say a thing.

Back at the house, David turned the TV on — the Today Show, with the volume turned down low — and told Bobby to sit with Grandpa on the couch until it was time to leave for school. He kept on eye on them from the kitchen while he unlocked the kitchen cabinets that stored the 20 shoebox-size boxes of peanut butter cookies.

Grandpa turned stiffly from his seat on the couch to watch him. “I’ll take me one of those, Davey. Know what I mean?”

“No, Grandpa. No cookie.”

“Just one. Gosh darn. I can’t think of it. That one phrase you had. C’mon boy. Help me out.”

“Don’t know what you mean, Grandpa,” David said. He took out five boxes, relocked the cabinets, and then loaded them into the trunk of the old black Galaxy. He repeated this until all 20 boxes were stored safely in the trunk. 

It was a little before 8; he still had time to drop Bobby off at school before making his deliveries. Despite all the hubbub this morning, what with Grandpa racing down the street toward the ocean and nearly getting himself killed (and Bobby, too, for that matter), David had continued with his morning routine briskly and efficiently. He had to. His mom was depending on him.

Before leaving the house, he checked in on her, just like he did every morning. He opened her bedroom door as quietly as he could and saw her sleeping. Even asleep, she looked worried, with two deep creases in her brow, like two lowercase l’s. He looked for any sign that she was slipping toward another breakdown like the one she’d had before, the week after Christmas, when she barely left her bedroom and stayed in her pajamas all day. He heaved a big sigh as he quietly closed her door. What if Bobby had been hit by a car today? His mom would never recover. He told himself he could never fall asleep at the kitchen table again. Never.

New self-imposed rules usually gave David a spurt of energy, and this one was no different. He ushered Grandpa and Bobby into the Galaxy, determined that the day would go better than it had started out. Today had to go right! If they could get Big Buns Bakery as a regular client, they could get Grandpa some help. And Mom wouldn’t have to waitress anymore. And maybe David could go back to school in time to graduate with his friends. With everyone strapped in, he pulled the car out of the driveway and headed down the street.

Just before they reached the boulevard, Elaina Carrera sashayed down her front steps to the dark brown El Camino waiting for her at the curb. “What a pretty girl!” Grandpa said, like he did every morning. “Who is she?”

“Elaina Carrera.” Bobby said. He whistled like a sailor; something Grandpa had taught him to do.

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” Grandpa said, but he didn’t have to tell David that. Elaina Carrera — David had been singing her name in his head ever since the 9th grade, when she moved in. He’d even thought, for a while — with the way she smiled at him in the hallways and caught his eye in the cafeteria — that he might have a chance with her. But now she had a boyfriend who drove her to school every morning. David watched in the rear-view mirror as she got into his car.

“Make her your sweetie, Davey, that’s my advice to you,” Grandpa said, and David almost laughed. Even if Elaina didn’t have a boyfriend, how could David ask her out? What would he say? “Want to come over and help me with laundry? Or hey, I’m going grocery shopping later, maybe you can come along me. If not that, the drain in the bathroom’s plugged; how about you come over and watch me clean it out?”

The morning traffic was bad, as usual, and the traffic lights were working against him. The spurt of energy David had felt earlier had already dissipated. He met a red light at every intersection he came to, and it made him want to cry. Seemed like everything these days made him want to cry. Everything — the toaster that burned his bread, the lights that wouldn’t change from red to green fast enough, or that changed too fast from green to red. His father used to slap him every time he cried. “Whiney little sissy boy,” he’d snarl, then whack! But then Grandpa had come to live with them, and the first time he saw Dad do that, he’d socked him a good one right in the nose, and then Dad had left for good.

They passed the big electronic clock on the Wells Fargo bank sign. 8:10. He had five minutes to get Bobby to school.

“David?” Bobby said quietly, hunkered down in the vastness of the Galaxy’s back seat. “We got to hurry. I don’t want to be late for school.”

“I know that, Bobby. Don’t you know I know that?” David’s voice was clipped and taut and he hated himself for it, especially when, in the rearview mirror, he saw the look on Bobby’s face, like he was scared David might turn around and slap him.

“Don’t you worry, boy,” Grandpa said. “We’ll get you there. They can’t start school without you, anyway. Right, Davey? The smartest boy in the whole school. Right, Davey?”

“That’s right.” David tried to sound conciliatory, but he sounded phony even to himself. In the mirror he saw that, although Grandpa’s words had made Bobby smile, his eyes still looked worried.

They pulled up to the school with two minutes to spare. Bobby unstrapped and kissed Grandpa on the cheek before he got out of the car, but he didn’t look at David. He slammed the door shut, and they watched him go through the schoolyard gate, loaded down by his backpack full of books, maneuvering through the crowd of boisterous kids loitering on the sidewalk.

“He’s still so little,” Grandpa said in a sad way, and David bristled, assuming he was being blamed for it. He almost started to argue, “Well, it’s not my fault if Bobby doesn’t eat like I tell him to,” when Grandpa said, “He’ll always be the little one. Not like you. You were always old. Even when you was little.”

David knew Grandpa was right about that. He had always felt like an old man.

“You’re the man of the house now,” Grandpa said, using a tone David hadn’t heard in a long time — the same tone he used to use when telling David how important it was to do well in school. “The man of the house is the one who protects. Protects, Davey. Even from himself.”

David nodded, not that surprised by Grandpa’s lapsing into coherence. It happened sometimes — although not often, and never for long. 

He pulled away from the curb and a few blocks down he turned onto Cherry Avenue. They were in the ugliest part of town, full of machine shops and strip clubs and liquor stores. The bright morning sun made it all seem sad and tired, like a made-up hooker in the daylight.

“Probably my fault anyway, you being mean to your brother,” Grandpa said, and David was surprised that his mind had managed to stay on the same track, remaining coherent, for so long. “The mess we’re in, Davey. It’s all my fault. I’m a mess, Davey, and I don’t like being a mess.”

“We’re all a mess,” David sighed. “We’re all a mess together.”

“I just want a cookie. You know Davey? Just one.”

David turned to look at Grandpa and for a moment saw the real Grandpa again, not the man he was now, but the one he used to be; the grandpa who was strong, swimming in the open ocean, socking the noses of much meaner men. The grandfather who David used to know, and he was beseeching him.

“Just one cookie,” Grandpa said, but the look in his eyes became less focused, and he reverted back to the old man he had become. “What’s that thing you used to say? You know what I mean. Back when you wanted your way.”

“I don’t know,” David said, and then added, before he could stop himself, “I don’t like remembering back then.” He hated to admit how he missed the old days, when Grandpa had his mind intact; all those good times that were gone forever. Not that they ever did anything fancy back then — just playing cards, and going fishing, and staying up late to watch the monster movies when Mom was at work. Thinking back, David let himself remember how mean his dad was, because it didn’t hurt thinking about those times and knowing they were gone. But the happy times with Grandpa, he tried to forget those.

The light at Broadway turned red, but he gunned through it anyway and then immediately slowed to a crawl. “There it is,” he said, softly, like a prayer, as they approached the squat white stucco building with Big Buns Bakery painted in bright red letters over the doorway. He drove slowly by the store and saw three small Asian women behind the counter waiting on a steady stream of customers. 

“Woo-ee, Davey. Look at all them ladies.  What they selling, you think?” 

“It’s a bakery Grandpa. They sell bakery things. Muffins. Croissants. Cakes and …” David nearly said “cookies” but stopped himself.

“And cookies,” Grandpa said.

“You forget about those cookies,” David said, and he pulled around to the alley and parked the Galaxy at the bakery’s back door. 

Mrs. Nguyen, the owner, opened the door right away when David knocked. She ordered him to move his car before he could even say hello. “Big truck on its way. You don’t park here.”

Mrs. Nguyen kept the door ajar with a brick and went back inside while David parked the car further up the alley. “Stay here,” David told Grandpa after he’d parked. “I mean it, Grandpa. You need to stay here.” Grandpa nodded and folded his hands on his lap, trying to look obedient, David supposed, but he kept an eye on the old man anyway as he walked around to the back of the car.

He opened the trunk and saw that the boxes of cookies weren’t as nicely stacked as before; all the stopping and starting up again at the traffic lights had caused them to shift. He made a mental note to rearrange the boxes before going on to the next client, and then took out the box of five boxes of cookies Mrs. Nguyen had ordered — 10 dozen cookies in total — and closed the trunk with a soft thunk.

He entered the bakery and deposited the boxes of cookies on a big steel table in the back room just as Mrs. Nguyen ordered him to. While she inspected the contents, he began his usual sales pitch, even though Mom had told him not to (“None of your sweet-talking baloney with Mrs. Nguyen, at least not on the first delivery,” she’d said, trying to be stern, but he could still see a hint of a smile). But he had to make his pitch. Maybe today someone would order something besides peanut butter cookies. “Don’t you want to order a different kind of cookie? Chocolate chip maybe? Sugar cookies with pecans?”

“No. Just peanabudda. That’s the best. You mom make best peanabudda. Everybody say so.”

“Okay, but if you ever change your mind …”

“Ya, ya, sure. I change my mind, I call you. But now just peanabudda.”

David smiled at her, but inside he felt like two more bricks had been added to the load already on his shoulders. Couldn’t anyone see how dangerous it was to have peanut butter in his house? Just one more thing for him to keep track of, worry about …

“Davey, tell me again. What you said before …” Grandpa stood at the open back door, stinking like an outhouse, his shabby gray pants wet and soiled.

Mrs. Nguyen — all five feet of her — charged at Grandpa and shooed him back into the alley. “You get out! You get out!” When Grandpa had retreated back outside and she’d slammed the door shut, she turned on David. “You — what you do to me? You stink up my place!”

David tried to calm her down, but she began to get more hysterical. “This no good! No good! You take your cookies, you go!”

“No, no, please, Mrs. Nguyen.” David knew he shouldn’t leave Grandpa alone in the alley, but he had to calm her down, and quickly. “Please, Mrs. Nguyen …”

But Mrs. Nguyen would not calm down. “This how you treat new customer?”

David had never played on people’s sympathy before, but if ever there was a time to start, it was now. “Please, Mrs. Nguyen, he’s my grandfather, and he’s very sick. I promise this won’t happen again.”

“I don’t care who he is. You take him, you take your cookies, you go.”

“Please forgive me, Mrs. Nguyen, please forgive me. I promise you’ll never see him again.” He saw her soften a bit even as he wondered how in the world he could ever keep such a promise. “Look,” he said. “Tell you what. This shipment is free. Okay?

The effect was instantaneous. “This shipment free?”

David nodded.

“Whole week free,” she countered.

David pretended to consider this and then offered four days of shipments free. She agreed to it and was reasonably placated when he left but yelled “You don’t bring him back” as he left.

He sighed with relief once he got outside. “I saved the sale,” he said aloud, only half believing it. “I saved the sale,” and the constant hunch in his shoulders seemed to straighten a bit and he even felt taller. “I saved the sale!” A startled black cat sprang from behind a trash can and darted across his path, but David barely noticed. 

But where was Grandpa? Not in the passenger seat; David could see the empty seat through the car’s back window. He approached the car —

The trunk was open. Not all the way, just barely. But still open.

David ran to the car, afraid he’d find his grandfather lying dead next to it. He wasn’t.

How had the trunk opened? He looked inside — a box had shifted during the drive here and had kept the trunk from closing all the way. Soft thunk when he had closed the trunk — it didn’t usually sound like that. Why hadn’t he noticed? The lid on one of the boxes looked tampered with; had David done that, when he thought he was closing the trunk? Or had Grandpa …. 

David’s hand trembled as he lifted the lid. Of the four neat stacks of cookies, one had only five cookies, not six.

David closed the trunk — this time with a loud thunk — and ran. No use trying to drive. The traffic was still bad, and he already knew where Grandpa was headed. The ocean was just two blocks away.

He ran hard, dodging the traffic and the litter and the stray cats like an obstacle course, swerving around a bum who emerged suddenly from an alley and asked “where’s the fire?” as David sprinted past. David ignored all of it, his one goal to find his grandfather, his eyes scanning the streets for an old man in blue and gray — 

Something blue was sprawled on the grass near a cinderblock public restroom and his heart pounded even harder and he didn’t know what he would tell him mom — but the blue was only a homeless woman wrapped in a blanket under a squat palm tree.

It seemed like an omen to David, the blue blanket not being Grandpa, as if God was saying, “See? It was only a blanket. Grandpa is okay,” and as he ran his mind took a turn and he thought maybe Grandpa didn’t see the trunk open — David hadn’t noticed it either, not at first — Grandpa was just walking to the beach; he hadn’t taken a cookie — the box had shifted in the trunk, that was all — maybe Mom had miscounted and had not put in the cookie in the first place — she was always so tired, that’s probably what happened — Grandpa hadn’t taken a cookie — if he had, he would have eaten it right away — 

He spotted another swatch of blue and when he ran across Ocean Boulevard he saw it was his grandfather, sitting on a bench, his back to David as he overlooked the water. A pelican swooped low over the water and Grandpa turned his head to watch it. David slowed to a jog.

He got his life back, seeing Grandpa there. A messy, tired life, but his life, all the same. They were all in it together, him and Grandpa, Mom and Bobby; that was the important thing. Things would start to get better from now on, for all of them. They were on the “up and up,” like Grandpa used to say, back in the day. 

And this was just like back in the day, David thought, seeing Grandpa sitting on the bench, waiting for him, just like he used to when David was little and would meet Grandpa at the beach after school.  Waiting so they could fish a bit before he took David home. 

David called out to him, and Grandpa turned stiffly around to look but only briefly before turning back round again, without even a wave. David shook his head like a parent would, like Grandpa was a naughty boy, but he smiled, too, the way Grandpa used to smile, back when they fished here after school, back when Grandpa would buy him greasy French fries slathered in chili, and but it was never enough, and David would beg for ice dream afterward, still hungry. “That will do the trick,” David would always say, and Grandpa would shake his head but smile just the same as he dug in his pocket for some change to buy the ice cream —

“That’s it!” David cried — that’s what Grandpa was trying to get him to remember. “‘That’ll do the trick!'” He laughed like a boy, remembering it. The first good memory he’d had in a long time, and his heart felt even lighter than before. There was Grandpa, and he was okay, and he had made the deal with Mrs. Nguyen, and it would be okay, Grandpa was okay, it would all be okay, he had saved the sale, they were on their way, soon they’d have a thriving business, maybe they could even hire someone to take care of Grandpa at home, and when he wasn’t so tired anymore, they could play cards again and maybe even go fishing sometimes. “Grandpa! I remember! I remember! ‘That’ll do the trick!'”

And with the words Grandpa’s hand fell loose and dangled at his side beside him and his head fell back and for the briefest of moments David thought Grandpa wanted another shave. But that wasn’t it at all.

###

Published in Marathon Review, 2015

I never should have gone out with Gary Ricter. I told myself, after the divorce, that I was done with all that — dating men. And wearing make-up. And shaving my legs. The whole thing. Forty-eight years old, a failed marriage behind me. Two grown daughters and a grandson. No need to start on a new adventure.

I’m happy with the way things are — well, not happy. But content. No, not content either. Stable: That’s the word I’m looking for. Upended by the divorce for two long years, and now I have finally begun to feel stable again. Able to sit down at the kitchen table and eat an entire meal alone; able to sleep through the night.

But last night, after the date with Gary, I hadn’t slept well at all. And now today, this morning, I don’t feel stable anymore. I feel … restless. 

Saturday, a day I usually scrapbook, but I haven’t even got out my supplies. Instead I dig through the closet and pull out this pair of old jeans. The ones I used to wear when I lugged around post-baby fat.

My husband — my ex-husband — hated these pants. “You’re as big as an elephant in those things,” he’d say. “But they’re so comfortable,” I’d say right back, but without conviction, and then I’d change into something else.

Yet one date with Gary and here I am wearing these pants. It makes me nervous. Unsettled. Not stable at all. Not that the date had been earth-shaking. “What did you do on your big date?” my grandson asked when he called this morning, his mother egging him on in the background. “Not much,” I’d said, which was the truth.

We’d had coffee and pie at Carrow’s after Gary got off work. He was freshly showered, which made me nervous, because to me that meant he had romance in mind. But then explained. “I can’t have you smelling elephants on me,” he said. Elephants again. Me wearing my elephant pants after a night out with a man who worked with elephants. Unsettling.

Not surprising, really, that Gary works with elephants. Back in high school, he wrote an essay about elephants in English Composition and presented it to the class. Funny I should remember that. It didn’t interest me at the time, or anyone else, not even the teacher, but Gary didn’t care; he just rambled on and on about elephants until the bell rang. And now? “They call him the ‘elephant whisperer'” — I heard that more than once at the reunion two weeks ago. Not from him, though. We stood there in the low lights of the ballroom at the Hacienda Inn, Gary and I, and not once did he bring that up. Refreshing, in a way — a man who doesn’t blab about himself; who wants to know about you, and what you’ve been doing the past 30 years. 

He’s losing his hair, that was the first thing I noticed at the reunion, but who am I to criticize? Me with my flabby arms and my sagging everything else. “I’m in the phone book,” I told him when he asked for my number, and wouldn’t you know — he looked me up and called. Who does that these days?

Which led to three all-night phone conversations and then to last night’s date. The one that’s left me unsettled.

But soon Gary will be gone. He told me himself, last night. “I’m flying to Nepal on Friday,” he said — to whisper to more elephants I suppose. “You’d love Nepal,” he added, as the waitress refilled our cups. “I doubt it,” I said, but the restlessness had already arisen. “The elephants there,” he said, a bite of cherry pie half-way to his lips, “beautiful. Gorgeous. Like no other elephants anywhere,” and the light in his eyes sparked like a fuse, and I remembered my eyes sparking like that, back when I belonged to the Guitar Club in high school.

“Do you still play guitar?” he had asked that night at the reunion, and last night, too, on the date, he had asked about my playing, only this time he asked why I didn’t play anymore. ” I don’t know,” I said, not knowing how to explain the lost time, the time I could have spent with my guitar, and he said I would have to take it up again because I played so beautifully in high school, although no one else seemed to remember it.

My guitar. I dug that out of the closet today, too. Restless, restless, restless — all this digging in closets. I hold the guitar near me, and after all these years, it still feels natural: like holding a baby almost, a similar joy. I pluck a few strings. The strings hurt my fingertips, but my fingers move nimbly over the frets.

C — G — D …

What had Gary said to bring on such behavior in me? Me, playing guitar. Me in my comfortable pants. I couldn’t recall one particular thing, but it scared me, all this strange new behavior. All these new possibilities. Which is why, last night, I told him “no” when he asked to see me today. And yet …

C — G — D … C — G — D …

And then I hear the ruckus. Out the front window, I see the neighborhood kids running by, pointing to something down the street. 

Stepping outside I see it: an elephant. Covered in a deep-red cloth, with gold and silver sequins twinkling like dew. 

Gary Ricter is on top of the elephant. He waves and grins, leans forward and whispers something in the elephant’s ear. She trumpets and makes the kids squeal.

And me in my baggy pants, I run toward him, knowing how perfect these pants are for riding elephants. The second thought, though, that’s the one that almost makes me stop. Because I find myself wondering if I can carry my guitar on the airplane. 

Or will I have to check it with my bags?

###

Published in Dragonfly Press, January 2015

The mobile made of armadillo bones rattled in the stiff cold breeze at the window. Bettina looked past it to the dirt hills dotted with sage brush, silver with frost. Cold morning outside, but hot in here, even with the window partly open, the mesquite logs in the small fireplace filling the whole house with their sweet warmth. 

“In English, Meyma,” Bettina said again, careful not to sound impudent. This was her mother, after all. “Please say in English.”

Her mother lay pale and listless on her narrow bed, sighed and said, “For Chico sake, don’t mind the vet.”

Bettina moved her chair closer to the bed and felt her mother’s brow. “Meyma, what you — what do you mean, ‘Don’t mind the vet’?” 

Chico the Chihuahua watched Bettina from his spot atop Meyma’s stomach. Meyma stroked his little black ears with her thumb and finger and shook her head. “Eku nu eku nu.”

“You know I don’t speak old words anymore. English, Meyma. English.”

Meyma turned her face away from Bettina, a gesture that meant the words would pain her to say. Bettina sat up straight in her little chair, extra alert.

“The eyes see what they see,” Meyma said. “Don’t mind the vet. Nothing more to say.”

Meyma talking in riddles, the way she had always done, like everyone here in town did. Not saying anything point blank, not like in San Antonio, where Bettina lived now, and had lived for many years. In San Antonio, if you said, “I’ll have the lemon-butter grilled salmon and a glass of Pinot Noir,” that is what you meant, and that is what you got.

“Fine. Fine. I won’t mind the vet,” Bettina said and then muttered, before she could stop herself, “not even if he puts a goat in my attic.” Meyma smiled at her use of the old phrase, but Bettina pretended not to notice. “But it’s you who should see the doctor, not this dog. He’s just sick because you don’t feel good.” Chico looked up at her with sad kind eyes and Bettina softened her tone. “Or maybe you’re just not feeding him right.” This morning he had spit up ugly chunks of brown and red all over the straw rug. 

Meyma shook her head. “I sick because he sick. Once he better, I be. How it works.”

“Fine.” Bettina checked her watch and got up to leave. 

“You not wearing that?”  Meyma said, her black eyes big and round. Scared.

Bettina looked down at her long-sleeved shirt, her slacks and boots. “Yes, why not?”

Meyma turned her face away. “Too much. Too much. Wear the blue blouse. In the closet.”

Blue brought health, Bettina knew that. Or that is what Meyma believed, anyway. “It’s too cold to wear that,” she said and then added, when Meyma still looked perplexed, “I’m wearing a blue bra. Don’t worry.” 

She bundled up the dog in an old weaved blanket and walked down the hard-dirt road toward the vet’s office. The sooner Meyma got to feeling better, the sooner Bettina could go home. Back to San Antonio. Away from this cold dust hole 500 miles from anywhere. Back to her real life, back to her friends — the ones who glittered sharp and brilliant and piercing, like the bleached bones the townspeople here hung in windows to ward off evil. If getting back home meant taking Chico to the vet, then she would do it.

In the vet’s waiting room, a nurse with a long white braid sat reading a paperback . She took notice of Bettina and pointed her to an empty seat and went back to her reading. 

Chico snuggled into the crook of Bettina’s arm and peeked out at the other women filling the room, coddling their dogs and their cats. All women, Bettina noticed. No men. Women she had seen throughout her growing-up years, coming down from the hills for the bonfires and the festivals. All women here, and all wearing such low-cut blouses. “Ay ko!” Poppy would have said, back in the day, for he had always admired the feminine form. None of them younger than 60, as far as Bettina could tell, and all showing their cleavage. Wearing blouses like she had found hanging in her mother’s closet. Like the blue one Meyma had wanted her to wear.

Bettina ran her fingers up the long line of buttons on her long-sleeved shirt. Even the top one was buttoned. Her friends in San Antonio wore shirts like this. Stiff and starched, like something a man might wear. 

The woman sitting next to Bettina had a broad brown face and long gray-black hair and held a despondent Pomeranian on her lap. “You’re Evie’s daughter,” she said and grinned, revealing a mouth of silver teeth (“Such a mouth means luck and wisdom” — another thing Poppy would have said). “How she be?”

“Not as well as can be.” An expression Bettina hadn’t used in years, and yet it fell easily from her lips, like fluff from a cottonwood.

“And little dog worries about her,” the woman said. “Poor little dog. Your meyma’s best friend all these years, since your poppy passed.” The woman kissed the tips of fingers when she said it. Bettina nearly performed the ritual, too, but held herself in check.

“She tell you about the vet?” The woman inclined her head toward the closed door of the examination room.

“She told me not to mind the vet. What she — what did she mean?”

The woman smiled knowingly. “Ay keke. Let’s say he not look you in the eye.” She readjusted the neckline of her blouse, revealing a worn and wrinkled cleavage.

Bettina noticed again all the low-cut blouses in the room and felt a pang of panic. Her hand went up to the buttons at the top of her neck. “You mean …”

“Just let him look.” The woman readjusted her neckline again. “He a miracle worker. He need inspiration. Everyone know that.” She nodded to the other woman in the waiting room and they responded in kind. “So don’t mind the vet. For little dog sake. And your meyma.”

Not mind? Bettina didn’t know how she could not mind. And her friends back in the city — how disgusted they would be! Just like when Bettina told them about the wintertime bonfire, and how the snakes sizzled on the fire. “Sounds ghastly,” they said, their voices clinking like champagne glasses, and after that she didn’t talk about home. Not even her favorite things. The flower parade. The salamander dance.

If she listened hard, she could just make out what the vet said to each woman who entered the exam room. “They are as shy as two bunnies,” she heard him say, and later, “They remind me of flying ducks.” With each pronouncement, Bettina’s hand flew to the buttons at her throat. More than once she got up to leave but sat right back down again, for Meyma’s sake. Word would get back to Meyma that she had left without seeing the vet, and Meyma would cry. Not get angry, but cry. And that was worse. 

But that was not the only reason Bettina stayed. Maybe, she thought, the vet really could cure the dog. She had seen such things before, on her very own body. The warts that fell off like scabs. The earaches and stomachaches, gone in a flash. All from the touch of sacred hands. If the vet could heal Chico, then  Meyma would get better. And Bettina could go home. 

The door to the exam room opened, and the nurse pointed Bettina to go in. The woman with the silver teeth smiled encouragingly as Bettina crept toward the open door.

The vet was short and thin, brown and sun-parched, just like the desert sages who wandered into town on occasion, singing praises to the Old Mother. He looked at Bettina’s buttoned-up shirt as she set the dog down on the examination table. His small brown eyes held a warmth and a depth Bettina had not seen in many years, and she felt safe with him, like she did with the old priest who had taught her the old prayers, even though the vet would not take his eyes from her chest. Chico looked up at her, pleading with her not to mind, while back at home, Bettina knew, her mother lay on the couch, awaiting good news.

“This is my mother’s dog,” she said and then quickly added, “I don’t live here.” 

Chico looked from the vet to Bettina. The vet looked briefly at the dog and then stared again at Bettina’s covered-up chest. Stared at the long column of buttons, each one tight in place. He frowned slightly and his shoulders seemed to sag. 

“I don’t live here,” she said again.

They stood there for a long silent moment, the vet staring at her chest and the dog looking from one to the other. The dog finally put his head down on his front paws and heaved a big sad sigh. “No can help the little dog,” the vet said, still staring at her chest, and he seemed like he would cry as he put his gnarled hand on the doorknob to let her out. 

“Wait.” Bettina looked deep into the dog’s scared wet eyes and sighed. She undid the top button. And the next. And the next until they were all undone. And when the vet kept his hand on the doorknob, she undid the clasp of her little blue bra and pulled it down.

“They are like two healthy guinea pigs,” he said, eyeing her breasts happily, unashamed, and he put a healing hand on the dog’s stomach. And back at home, Bettina saw it clear as day, Meyma got up to make a stew.

###

Published in Blotterature, 2015

To be out of the attic for just a little while. It is all you think of, each long, lonely day. Midnight is the best time for it. By then, the doctor has finished his notes, smoked his second bowl of opium and is asleep in the armchair near the fire.

The kitchen door at the back of the house is your means of escape. It is barred with a deadbolt, but the doctor doesn’t know you have found the key and have learned to use it. Not easy to use, a key, with hands like yours, but you have practiced, and now it takes only seconds to get out.

No one appears to be out at this time, except you. Not even the three-legged cat that lives across the way, amid the broken glass and crumbling brick. Perhaps it is nursing its newest batch of kittens. You have seen the kittens through your attic window. They look like the little powdered pastries the doctor dunks in his tea.

The gas lights flicker. The street glows yellow. You move carefully, quietly, staying in the shadows, under branches of dying elms. The abandoned houses lining the street look even more forsaken than during the day. How you would love to walk in the sun! But it is unthinkable. Impossible. No one can know about you. The doctor is very clear about that.

Far down the street, where the gas lights burn bright, someone is walking. A smallish person, but one who walks with confidence. One with a job to do.

You stand against a tree and watch the person approach. A boy. A teenage boy. The worst kind of person, from what you know about the world.

The boy reaches the corner but doesn’t turn. He is close enough now that you can see his chopped yellow hair, his mouth so full of teeth he cannot seem to keep it closed. You have seen this boy before. You have seen him throw rocks at the three-legged cat. You have seen the other batch of kittens, the one before this, disappear into his burlap bag. The three-legged cat meowed as the kittens struggled and squirmed to escape and, because you could not help yourself, you began to moan, soon so loud that the boy looked up at your window high up in the attic, and the doctor ran in and gave you the draught that makes you sleep.

The boy continues toward you, burlap bag in hand. It is empty now, but not for long. You have melded yourself against the tree, lungs collapsed, until you are nearly invisible. The boy’s face glows in the light. His eyes are dark pits.

He is near you now, only feet away. He shakes open the burlap bag. It gapes black and deep, and you can smell the inside. The smell of kitten, mixed with something else. Something rotten and moldy and stale. Like water trapped in a basement.

You step away from the tree. You block the boy’s path. Your neck frill spreads wide and, before he can scream, you have sprayed him with the sticky muck that will burn him clean away. He turns and runs, wailing the wail of your mother the day she saw you. He drops the bag as the skin falls off. The charred bones blacken and collapse into a pile of dust.

The street is quiet again as you turn toward home. You bow your head, like praying. The scales on your feet shimmer silver with moonlight.

###

Published in Wild Age Press (Restless), 2015