“Is that you, Honey? How was your day? Are you hungry?”

Dan sat in his recliner, smelled the juices from the steak as his wife cooked the flavor out of it, and realized that he and that damned steak had a lot in common.

His wife set the table, served the green beans, salt and peppered the dry slab of meat that landed on his plate with a kerplunk. She then set to work dissecting the meat from the gristle. “This looks good, doesn’t it?” she asked, taking a bite.

But Dan was silent.

“Honey? Is something wrong?”

No reply. For moments ago, Dan had determined that he would not lie again. His intention at the outset was not to give up speaking altogether, but rather, just to abandon the lies, which had become so much work to maintain. As the meal went on, he waited for something he could answer in truth. He was surprised on several counts. Not only did the entire meal pass without conversation, but also, his wife was not very much disturbed by it. Although dinner lacked flavor and originality, he could bear it as long as he didn’t have to pretend that it was a five-star effort. Likewise, his wife’s questions didn’t grate nearly as sharply against his nerves, knowing he didn’t intend to meet them with an answer.

After dinner, his wife cleaned up and he retired to his recliner and cycled through channels on the television. By the time she joined him in the living room he was comfortably on his way to that haze between sleep and consciousness where everything drifted from aggravation to white noise. He vaguely remembered hearing the light switches around him clicked off and his wife asking, “Are you coming to bed?” But there he remained, silent in the comforts of his brown, plush La-Z-Boy.

In the morning, instead of his wife’s incessant rattling, what do you want for breakfast? Coffee or Tea? Travel cup or Thermos? What time will you be home for dinner? He heard only hot air blowing through the heat registers and the hum of the refrigerator. He brought his chair upright and looked out the window. The driveway was empty. His comfort had been so great, that he had not only slept through the night, but also through his wife’s rising, and readying for work. He had the house to himself and felt a twinge of excitement. Instead of the instant oatmeal that his wife routinely placed before him, he searched the cupboards and settled on an unconventional breakfast of cola and pretzels. He contemplated going to the factory, but instead, opted to play hooky. Something he hadn’t done since his days as a bachelor. Instead of work blues, he pulled on jeans and a sweater and even second-guessed the ball cap, without which, even most of his friends wouldn’t recognize him.

After that first evening, his wife no longer greeted him with questions. In fact, she didn’t greet him at all and after the third day, didn’t even look his way as he entered the house. New aromas filled the kitchen, not dried out steak but fresh strawberry salad with spinach and vinaigrette dressing one day, lasagna with garlic parmesan bread the next. Each night, his wife ate alone, cleared her place, and left the remaining food on the table for Dan. On several accounts he caught himself nearly commenting on the crispness of the salad or the sharpness of the garlicky tomatoes before realizing that no one was listening. His wife was busy, two rooms away, changing her clothes and applying a fresh coat of makeup before leaving for unknown destinations. There was no hint of animosity in their new routine, no undercurrents of silent feuding or cold shouldering, just a quiet ease as they circled through the house in their own orbits.

After nearly two and a half weeks, it dawned on Dan that all he’d heard of his wife’s voice in over fourteen days was a barely audible song that she had taken to humming as she breezed through the house. He tried, on several occasions to place it, but with no success.

After that first day playing hooky, Dan returned to work resigned to the fact that he was meant for his job and it was meant for him. Given the day of freedom he hadn’t known what to do with it, beyond springing for a beer with his lunch at the neighborhood 99. He certainly couldn’t put his standing at the factory in jeopardy by pulling such a stunt again.

Mornings, instead of waking to the smell of brewing coffee, the back door closing became his wake up call. In silence he showered, dressed and headed for work without any nagging reminders, any questions, or any coffee.

As the days wore on, he often found himself lowering the volume on the television as he imagined his wife speaking to him. But each time he was mistaken and quickly restored the volume to its former level.

One afternoon he arrived home to find the driveway looking like a county fair parking lot: crammed and overflowing onto the lawn. He circled twice, taking the scene in, before parking at the neighbor’s.

Strangers straggled through his kitchen and into the living room. They balanced small plates in one hand as they mingled. “Hey, come on in,” some idiot invited Dan into his own home. “I’m Charlie. Marianne’s cooking partner.”

“Cooking partner?” Dan lifted his cap and scratched his head.

“At the community school,” Charlie explained. “You’re wife and I’ve been cooking up a storm together these past few weeks.”

“Really?” Was all Dan said as pictures dropped like curtains in front of his eyes: his wife and this bozo, humming that tune together, cooking up dinner and who knows what else.

The next night, although his wife didn’t welcome him home, the aroma of onions did. Dan sat in his La-Z-boy and waited for his wife to finish. He considered joining her, telling her how much he’d enjoyed her cooking lately. As he thought about the conversation they might have, he almost longed for it. But the newly forged status quo had already become a deep rut, and he didn’t have the energy to work his way out of it tonight.

Before long, she cleared her things, humming that flighty little tune and making her way to the bedroom to change. Dan served up a plate of Pumpkin-Peanut Risotto and marveled at how the Parmesan complimented the pumpkin. Enraptured by the satisfying crunch of toasted peanuts atop the creamy sauce he barely noticed his wife as she hummed her way out the door. To think it was he who instigated this change with his silent protests. He patted himself on the back, wondering why he hadn’t taken a stand sooner. As he reached for a slice of toasted ciabatta bread, the melody swam through his thoughts. Da-da-da piano, yes, that’s it. A fifties feel. And the words seemed to buoy to the surface. “Summer sun.” Something light, whimsical, satirical even. “Summer fun,” Yes, that’s it. He filled another fork with risotto and visualized the singer now: young lady in a pretty dress. What was her name? He reached for the lyrics, could almost touch them as he mopped up the creamy sauce with his bread. “We’ll drive to the shore, where there’s seagulls galore.” He was humming now. That’s it! “To poison winged vermin at the beach.” The words finally came. What a strange thing for her to be humming these past weeks.

“We’ll do them in by the flock,
with peanuts laced with hemlock.”

He took another bite, the satisfying crunch of peanuts between his molars as the line came to him in earnest. He stopped and stared at the elaborate meal before him and almost choked as he yearned for a nice, dry slab of steak.

—–

Ruth Schiffmann enjoys writing for many different audiences. More than a hundred and fifty of her stories, articles, essays and poems have been appeared in publications both online and in print. To read more of her work, visit www.RuthSchiffmann.com or follow her blog at http://outonalimbshywritergoessocial.blogspot.com

Read more stories by Ruth Shiffmann here

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Humbole Street however was home to the state sanitarium. It housed those who had no where else to go, who were deemed unfit in one way or another, or those whose relatives simply could not put up with them for one more minute. It is also where Jane Hathaway began her days with seven pills, two sips of water and a yellow sun she had painted on her wall.

She was not allowed to have a sun in her room, so she had painted it rather low down on the horizon so that her pillow when propped on the bed hid it wonderfully. It made her neck a bit crooked to sleep this way, but sleeping with the heat of the warm sun made it a bit better.

It was Jane who first heard on the transistor about the president being shot. She ran screaming through the halls. She was met with laughter, puzzled looks, knowing looks or hostility depending on whom she told. The janitor was the most sympathetic. That’s okay honey. Go back to your room and he’ll be back on tv in probably another half an hour or so. Don’t you worry none.

The rest were not so polite.

She knew a needle was headed her way soon when she saw Dr. Commist heading around the corner. She smiled, curtsied to him and began a hasty retreat. I’m sure I just misunderstood. You know how I am. I just got nervous. He was so handsome. I’m sorry I upset everybody. And I know running in the halls is wrong. I’ll just go have lunch now, if they’re still serving, if that’s okay with you. She paused and took a step back, hoping her ingratiating performance would win her three more minutes without the needle.

Commist was tired that morning. He had been up drinking with his neighbor the night before and was not in the mood for crazies firs thing. He was also not in the mood to call for an orderly to bring her to where she needed to go or to fill out paperwork on the incident. Because of his hangover, he told her to watch herself and kept going to his office for some aspirin and some hair of the dog that bit him.

Jane headed off to find Norma or Lola or even Mr. Anklebiters. They would believe her. She bumped into Mr. A just as she was headed back to her room to grab a notecard to remember the event in case they thorazined it out of her later.

Waddya doing girl? You almost smacked me down!

Oh, Biters, it’s horrible.

Yeah it was. you coulda killed me. he smiled his crooked teeth, stinky breath smile at her.

He’s dead.

Who’s dead? Your dad? I’m sorry.

No, the president. He’s dead. Dead.

Mr. Anklebiters pondered this. Are you sure. I was just watching tv in the rec room. I didn’t hear anything.

They don’t let the news on in there. You know that. Just wishy washy stuff.I was snatching a candybar over by the nurses’ station.

That old guard who falls asleep, he had it on his transistor.

Henry? He always hides out in the toilet asleep til shift change.

Whatever. I don’t know.I just heard the words floating outta his black plastic box. It’s true. They said it six times. Then the guy sounded like he would cry and another voice came on.

Anklebiters tugged her arm. C’mon let’s go tell people.

We can’t. I almost got the shot trying to myself. Commist has a hangover and was going for the whiskey. That’s the only reason I got by him.

Shit.

I know.

Well. what about Johnson? She would believe you.

Yeah, I thought of Norma. Is she on shift yet?

She comes on in about…he scanned the hall for a clock… six minutes.

The two unfits walked down the hall, careful not to hold hands or cry or do anything but stare straight down at their toes as was appropriate in these halls. They found a place by the nurses entrance, or as close as they’re were allowed to get and waited.

They waited. Doctors, nurses, foodworkers, everyone passed by. They hummed, they sang, they griped. They chewed gum. They looked at their toes wondering if it was time for a visit to the cobbler. Some of them poked each other in the ribs with jokes, others hurried by on important missions for important paperwork for important medicines. Still others, one or two, just slowly walked up to a water fountain, paused and took a sip. Waiting for shift end.

After the third water sipper, they saw Norma’s shoes coming up the stairs. They were orange and inappropriate for work, but she wore them anyway. She had been there along enough that she only got reprimanded verbally and nothing ever went into her file. So, she of the orange shoes stepped her way toward the two on the dilapidated couch to say good morning or get the hell back in your rooms, whichever they deserved this morning.

He’s dead. The presidents’ dead. You’ve got to tell people. no one believes us.

She pulled out a cigarette. I think they know Lincoln’s dead. She laughed, but with them not at them like the rest.

No, I’m serious. He-is-dead.

He’s dead? She blinked.

She blinked some more.

Norma ran to the transistor the guards put themselves to sleep by at the desk by the candy machine. she turned it up full blast. It was some kinda crap, and then more crap and then she found a news channel.

President John F. Kennedy is dead. He has been assassinated. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy seems to be unhurt. We are unsure about vice president Johnson. We are unsure about the others in the motorcade. Reports are just coming in. We’ll let you know more the moment we know more.

Norma ran with her smokes down the corridor to find the secretary to make an announcement. she tripped on a mop bucket, pushed past Commist and rounded the corner just as Zelda was leaving for coffee break. wait. you’ve got to go back in. Zelda, the secretary saw the frightened, hysterical woman coming toward her and followed her back into the administration office to find out what had happened. She was reaching for the mike, readying her fingers on the button as nurse Johnson was speaking. Zelda bit her lip and began.

I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. The president is dead.

And, so, at 1:27 pm the president died on Humbole street. It’s probable that he went where all presidents and little children and dogs wind up eventually. Here on Humbole street, however, he had survived 27 minutes longer. Was he marooned in a temporary purgatory, or whirling about as a ghost? Did he bother to go see Khrushchev or Castro? Did he hop back to the White House to hide a few photos from his dear wife? Maybe he stayed by her side, silently with his hand on her shoulder. Devoted in death as he was not quite able to be in life. No one who knew him personally was aware, so they could not be grateful. he himself was beyond caring. the only two who knew, who really knew, were angry.

Still, being tired of shots, while the floor erupted with doctors screaming and nurses hugging each other in pain, they went single file back to Jane’s room. And played cards. Gin rummy, to be precise. Mr. Anklebiters let Jane win. It was the best he could do under the circumstances.

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Meriwether O’Connor is a farmer, short story writer and columnist.

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She walked up and reached into the unshelled pea bowl, took a pod out and stripped the string with her teeth.  The woman’s eyes flicked up at her, but she kept on shelling and didn’t speak.  Jeanne Ann swallowed the starchy, sweet peas, and wrinkled her nose.  She stood and stared at the working hands: they were curled up like the wicker of a basket she’d broken.  Even unwoven, the wicker was bent into curls and twists.  She tried again.  This time she reached into the bowl of shelled peas and tried to lift up a handful.  Her own hands were small and pink.  The woman slapped the peas out of her hand, and she jerked herself back.  She was still young enough to hit without thinking, and she hit the woman in the face, but nothing happened.  The woman didn’t move or flinch or anything.

Chuck stepped forward from the shadows, and called her to away.  “You won’t get anything from Grammy that way, Jaybird.  You’d best leave her alone.  You don’t want her mad at you.”  He led her back into the kitchen and poured her some milk.  “Grammy’s just old, and she don’t talk.  Hittin’ won’t maker her talk, either.  You just let her be.”

“Why don’t she talk?”

“She don’t have nothing to say.”

“Well I can talk.  I can talk lots.”

“You can talk too much.  You best go out to Mama, now.  She’s in the workshop with her paints out.  Maybe you can help her.”

“I’m not s’posed to help her.  She don’t like it.”

“Well, it’s better than hittin’ Grammy.”

“No it ain’t.”

—–

Leslie Ingham is a founding member of the Portuguese Artists Colony.  She is currently at work on a novel.

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I wish I’d kept in touch. When uni ended – the last exam sat, the last joint smoked, the last fry-up licked clean from chipped and borrow plates – we went our separate ways. She drifted to London with the rest of them. Scratched a living from a pick ‘n mix of not very nutritious jobs. Recreated the colourful, butterfly-printed digs of student days in a house in Hackney with peeling walls and loud neighbours.

And me? A white dress, two weeks in the Caribbean and then… what? Happiness? I guess. For a while. Date nights every Tuesday, a bottle of wine and dinner in front of CSI in our well-appointed, two-bedroom flat. Making love on the kitchen surface, not caring if the neighbours saw. We didn’t make too many plans but I didn’t worry about it then. The moment was enough. He was enough.

One weekend we made the trip to Hackney. He told me to leave my engagement ring at home. Just in case. Five minutes after we arrived I lit a cigarette, the first in a year or more. I hovered between past and present until the wine and the laughter kicked in. The conversation lasted long into the night, but he was in bed before 11pm, that man I loved. We never went back again.

But life went on, as it does, like the Queen’s speech at Christmas and tax hikes on budget day. There wasn’t always time for date night. Not after we moved, and there was work to do on the house. Or the flat: tenants to look after, toilets to unblock, radiators to bleed. Imagine me, a landlady! The garden took time too. The fuchsias wanted cutting back, and the rhododendrons. And the patio needed weeding, cleaning, a good spraying down. We made love in bed, occasionally.

The girl I knew, she lives in Sweden now, with her boyfriend and her son and her thriving experimental art career. She’s coming back for a week this summer, invited me to a party. A reunion. All the others will be there. They still live in Hackney, I think. Somewhere in London anyway. I won’t be there though. The gap between then and now is too wide to bridge, and too many tears have run beneath. I couldn’t face the sympathy. I’ll stay in instead. In a flat I never thought I’d call home again. In a bed that’s meant for two.

—–

Formerly a features writer and magazine editor, Rin Simpson (@rinsimpson) now works as a freelance writer and teacher. Her short story In her shoes is published in Honno’s anthology Cut on the bias, and she is currently working on a collection of her own. She is also the founder of The Steady Table writer’s group (@TheSteadyTable), which is based in Bristol.

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I am surrounded by girls who take “Aunt Flo” passes to the bathroom and spend a scholarly amount of attention to the perfect placement of their C cup bra straps. They walk past me as if I’m scenery. As if
I’m a kid on a ten-speed pounding on the crosswalk button while they cruise past in their shiny new cars. And for all intents and purposes, I might as well be.

I’m most definitely not going anywhere right now, lying here with my feet pressed into the stirrups like a tipped over cowgirl, the AC rustling my cellulose dress.

The door to the exam room opens, finally, and Dr. Rosen ambles in.

“Sit up, Alicia. I am not giving you another pelvic exam. I told you last month— and the month before—that you are fine. There is nothing wrong with you.” He sets my chart on the little computer desk and
lowers himself into the chair. I wonder how he can call himself a doctor if he thinks there is nothing wrong with a fifteen-year-old girl who hasn’t become, you know, a woman.

“I know what the problem is. I’ve been looking things up.” I try to make eye contact but can’t turn my head far enough to see him from the exam table.

“That is exactly the problem.”

“It’s got to be cryptomenorrhea,” I tell him. I want so badly for this to be true. “I have a vaginal septum and all the blood is getting backed up into the little pocket. So, it means I’ve been getting my period all along but it’s all stuck inside.”

Dr. Rosen sighs. It’s the sound of my lifeboat deflating.

“But if it is true, then someday it will overflow and I’ll go all Carrie on everybody. Do you want that to happen to me?” I wait. He rubs his eyes by pinching his fingers behind his glasses.

“Can you just check?” I ask. “Please?”

Dr. Rosen stands up. “I will examine you. And then you will put your clothes on and go home and you will not come back until you have an actual physical problem. Yes?”

I nod and close my eyes while he palpates and fingers. I breathe through the click and chill of the speculum. He presses into my belly and I pray he will find something he’s missed in all the other exams.

A lump, a hole. Anything.

He steps to the sink and runs water over his hands. He scrubs methodically.

“There is nothing wrong with you, Alicia. You are a perfectly healthy teenaged girl.”

“Exactly.” I am hardly surprised.

***

I hop the 44 from the clinic with lubricating jelly squishing in my underwear. I recognize the guy three seats behind me. He’s a junior—maybe a senior—one of those guys who spends as much time hanging out by his van in the parking lot as he does in school.

Two stops, and he slides sideways into the seat I tried to fill with my backpack.

“You’re a freshman at Roosevelt, right?” He has more pimples than a senior ought to have and is awkwardly skinny, but his voice resonates.  I try not to look directly at him, so he’ll think I want him to leave.

“I might be.”

“Yeah, you are. I’ve seen you around. You’re friends with that big girl, what’s her name? Karen or Carly.”

“Carla.” It slips out. She’s my neighbor, a total 95 IQer who still has kitten posters in her bedroom. But she has a car.

“That’s right, Gotta Lotta Carla.”

“That’s crass. She’s my neighbor, you know.”

“I didn’t make it up. Anyway, I’m Dave and you’re….” He’s sitting sideways in his seat and he’s got this angular bird of prey look to him, as if he’s all cramped up to perch but might someday unfold into
a magnificent creature.

He looks right at me. It makes him kind of attractive and I’m instantly terrified that I’m not.

I fold my arms over my chest to cover the fact that I didn’t put my bra back on after the clinic. Without polyfill padding, I’m as boob-less as he is.

“I just asked your name. You know, it’s rude to ignore somebody.” He smiles. He thinks he’s funny.

“Allie.”

“Are you like an Allison or Alexis or something?”

“Or something.”

“Nice to meet you, Allie. You’ve got this whole mysterious thing going on, so I’ll leave you alone. I just wanted to get your name.”

He says all this like it’s a line from a chick flick then scoots out of the seat and back up the aisle.

I’m torn between thinking him sweet or slimy. He seems nice enough, but at the same time, he’s giving attention to me, a prepubescent high school freshman. A girl. Maybe he’s some sort of burgeoning pedophile and I’m right up his alley, I think. Or worse, he could be one of those shameless optimists who keeps climbing down the ladder knowing that somewhere, there’s got to be somebody who’ll do him.

By the time the bus rounds the corner to my stop, I’ve begun to wonder if he hasn’t reached his final rung.

***

The next day—Thursday—is one of the days Carla picks her brother up from soccer practice, so I can’t catch a ride home from school.  I follow the salmon en mass toward the bus loop pretending I’m a piece
of driftwood caught in the current and not an actual freshman dependent upon the school bus. I prefer the public transit system to the school bus system. On the public bus, people who reek and pick their noses with their calculus pencils don’t know your name.

I hear my name called across the crowd.

“Allie! Hey, Allie Or Something.” Dave—from the 44—waves to me from a clot of guys. My arm leaps up to a half wave before I can censor it.

He sees and makes a one-arm come hither move, then turns back to his friends. Am I supposed to go over? I don’t really know anything about them except that they’re upper classmen, they have cars and a couple of them have managed real facial hair.

I continue to stand—a rock in the stream—thinking about how ridiculous I am to be hesitating at what is most definitely a cosmic invitation.

What are the chances that this guy has noticed me twice in one week? It has to be an atomic push and, being desperate for any sign of change, I accept it.

I flush and look at Dave’s back facing out of the knot. He hasn’t turned back to look at me. I walk toward him anyway with a kind of warmth inside me. Maybe this is it.

I butt him in the ribs with my shoulder as I pass.

“Hey Something, how’s it going?” It’s a stupid nickname and he thinks he’s being cute, so it kind of is.

“It’s going,” I say. “You guys plotting world domination over here?”

He laughs. “You don’t usually come through here. Gotta Lotta out sick?”

I try to scowl, but for the first time, the name is kind of funny. It comes out like a facial twitch. “Naw, I’m bussing for kicks. It’s like going to the zoo, you know?” This strikes his friends as snot-shootingly hilarious and they all do these wheezy little nose laughs. I try to keep my stance casual but my underwear feels hot.

“You can only do the zoo so many times in a day, I think. You might want to find a different way home.”

“What, like walk?”

“How about I give you a ride? I’ve got a van. It’s like a bus, but without the cranky driver.”

I force myself to think about it, to not look over eager. “That’d be okay,” I tell him.

Dave’s van looks as if it were the hot kid at the party forty years ago, and since then it’s been wandering from state to state trying to hold a job. The back windows are curtained in faded zucchini-colored plaid and Dave is already saddled up in the driver’s seat talking to his posse through the open driver’s side door.

“Climb on up, Little Miss Something,” he hollers.

I sit down. It feels as if his passenger seat has tiny people inside who are petitioning to get out with pointy sticks, but it’s still better than the bus. “I live out by The Oaklands. I hope that’s okay.”

“No problem. I guess it’ll take a little longer to get there, is all.” He winks at me, conspiratorially, and flips on the radio to a metal station.

We pull out of the parking lot and shudder along familiar roads until Dave announces he knows a shortcut. Soon, I don’t know where we are except that it looks like we’re on a back road in Rutherford Park.

The van angles into a pine-needled parking spot between two trees and Dave cuts the engine.

“Yeah, when I said I live by The Oaklands, I didn’t actually mean I live in a tree house.”

“Hey, you seem cool. I thought we could, you know, talk.” Dave reclines in his seat and pulls that moronic yawn-and-stretch move so his right hand falls on the passenger seat. He doesn’t actually touch me, but I feel the heat of his skin just behind my ear.

“Guys never just talk.”

“We could mess around. I got a mattress.” He looks right at me with an intense one-eyebrow-up expression. I think he intends it to be suave but it reminds me too much of Mr. Shuyler in American History.

His hand drops to my shoulder and his voice drops an octave. “And a condom,” he adds.

All this feels rather like a science experiment. I’m curious. How far will he go? How far will I go? What, exactly, does a condom look like when it’s on? I’ve only seen them on skinny cucumbers, and then
only in a video. But maybe sex isn’t supposed to proceed like a lab titration. Sure, you release a little at a time, hoping to see how the chemicals change, but in chemistry, there’s always someone telling you what to do.

Dave volunteers to take the lead by popping off his seatbelt and launching himself at me like some sort of jumping spider. He gets one hand beneath my shirt and the other scrabbles at my neck. There’s something firm between my legs—his knee maybe or an elbow—but he kisses me so I can’t turn my head to see. I am his ResusciAnnie and he’s forgotten to call for help.

His lips are on my chin and my nose, he’s grunting and I feel spit pooling in my mouth. I taste his recently eaten Doritos.

“You make me real hot,” he pants, pulling back for air, then his face lands on mine again. I close my eyes. This feeling that I always use to get as a kid—as if I’m trapped in a high tower with no way out—starts to creep over me. I can always tell him to stop, right? I think about where I can knee him, just in case I decide to wimp out.

He jams his hand farther up my shirt until I feel torn calluses sanding my chest. His hand maneuvers to squeeze my boob and the bra padding pulls away. Even he realizes he has a handful of polyfill,
not breast. His tongue pauses.

That’s when I panic. Is he beginning to realize what I’m not? Will this be my moment of high school notoriety? Maybe there’s some kind of hormonal sensor that he can taste or smell and he knows he’s feeling up a little girl. Maybe he won’t care.

He launches forward again, in a new direction. He leans his weight onto one knee and reaches down along side the seat with one hand, while the other slides to my lower back. And lower. Should I offer
to unbutton something? Is it too soon?

The seat snaps back because he’s pulled some lever and we tumble backwards together. His knee jams itself into my crotch and even though women aren’t supposed to have external anatomy that matters, I
feel impaled. I gasp and squeak. My eyes are wet.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just watch where you put your knee, will you?”

He looks embarrassed and I worry again that he might decide to give up. Despite how desperately awkward this all is, I don’t want him to stop. This feels important, as if I’ll feel older at the end of it.  Experienced.

Ever since I realized what my body isn’t doing, I’ve been trying to figure out what it really means to be a woman. Obviously, it’s hard for me to know, having never been one. It’s like trying to define what it means to be a giraffe or a coffee table. But there’s got to be some gateway, a signal that turns the light green. It’s not fair that menses should be the only one. Pipsqueak sixth graders bleed and have no sophistication. Are they still women? Real women, I mean. And then there’s Carla who packs diaper sized maxi pads into her purse and lets her boyfriend grind against her while they watch TV, but she
undresses in the bathroom stall before gym because she’s afraid that we’ll see her. Is she a woman? Is it sex, is it blood, or is it one of those stupid Zen games where you don’t know what it is until you’ve
found it?

Just like I can recognize the giraffes in their savannah at the zoo, I see women everywhere. They are bold and graceful. They are powerful, confident and beautiful. Some of that power must come from what they have endured. That just begs the question, what must be endured to a woman make?

I am powerless to wrench my hormones into position—I might as easily rearrange the constellations—but I can endure the bump and grind of Sir Doritos-breath. And just maybe, I think, while I wait for him to produce a condom from behind the seat, it will stir in me some deeper kind of knowledge. It sure beats waiting around at the childhood stoplight, where I no longer want to be.

—–

Christie Isler teaches ten-year-olds during the day and writes poetry and short fiction around the edges. To date, she has published both poetry and short fiction, in a variety of online journals.  Her online home at thetriptakesyou.wordpress.com.

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Upon her arrival back at the table, Mac says:  “Honey, you look marvelous, never more beautiful. Something’s different about you tonight, you’re positively glowing. By the way, I ordered a light chardonay.”

Camille blushes, then takes Mac’s hand, puts it over her heart and says “Mac, I have a confession to make.” She takes a moment to play with her earring, she waffles and blurts, “Mac, oh Mac, there’s no point. Mac, I’m sorry but we’re through, it’s over.”

Mac abruptly removes his hand from Camille’s heart and shifts back in his chair. He says, “But I Iove you” then gently, he begins to cry. As the first tear rolls down his cheek, the waiter arrives with the wine, and pours out a glass for Camille, and then one for Mac. Mac raises his watery eyes to the waiter and gives him a weak smile and slight nod. The waiter pats Mac on the shoulder and makes a faint bow, then leaves. Mac thinks the waiter has seen this all before. Probably, just another ordinary night on the job.

Deke, the waiter goes back to the kitchen and tells the cook what happened at Mac’s table. The cook herself recently divorced, begins to weep. So much water comes out of her eyes that she can’t see clearly. Her hand which is holding a knife, seems to lose consistent form, growing bigger then smaller. Eventually, she cuts her finger and screams “Christ”. She puts her finger to her mouth and sucks, but there is too much blood coming, she can’t drink it all.

Deke wraps her finger in a rag, and wipes her tears with his cuff, whispering “It’s ok, it’s going to be ok” The cook’s head becomes unbearably heavy, it can’t be held up any longer so it’s flopped upon the chest of Deke. The arms thrown round Dekes waist for support. With all the body contact the cook has smeared finger blood onto the back of Deke’s uniform.

A bell rings warning of food to be brought to the dining room. Deke gingerly sets the cook down on a foot stool, pats her cheek and says “I’ll be right back, you just wait right here”. He grabs the two plates and exists the kitchen into the dining room. At table six he says “Duck”, Mac raises a finger in acknowledgement, so Deke places the Duck in front of Mac, who’s balling hard now. Next Deke says “Mock Duck” and with tightly veiled hostility he slides the other plate in front of Camille. Next, Deke lifts the wine bottle off the table says “wine” and Mac nods pushing his glass closer to be filled. Before Deke can say “wine” again, Camille shoots her hand covering her glass and with a tight shake to her head, she silently mouths no.

Deke out of sheer habit says “enjoy your meal”. He immediately feels foolish, impotent, and curses his insensitivity. With no more reason to stay at the table, he leaves. Mac and Camille both see the blood on Dekes back. Mac gasps and his eyes widen, Camille says “Don’t look Mac, it has nothing to do with us.”

—–

Having experience with unrequited love, it makes sense that Trumpet writes what he knows. Muddling over memories, harvesting a sigh or cry is something, which is better than nothing.

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Our current novel, Hoodoo, tells a story of visionaries, heretics and lunatics in Utah, centered on the life of Alice Lott, a twelve-year-old girl  who believes that God wants her to have an affair with her junior high school counselor. 

Find earlier chapters in Hoodoo here.

Chapter 9

I’m creeping up, now, on what happened. Half because I don’t want to remember what came of it all, and half because I want time to walk through those days and look around. I want to remember just how our big yellow house at the top of the hill smelled when Mom was cooking, cinnamon and onions and sugar burned and crackling in the pan, how the fall air hit me edge-on when I rode my bike down Center. How my heart turned full and soft as a ripe tomato whenever I came near Dr. Bob; how I couldn’t help thinking, as I breathed in, This is the air Bobby breathed, and it felt warm and rich in my lungs.

I thought Dr. Bob had wiped the memory of our meeting in Carson’s Market right out of his head. He sure never brought it up, and for a while he seemed sort of distant, but I had faith that everything would work out, and I kept finding reasons to see him. I sat in his office and told him about the day we talked about genealogy at Sunday school, and we were going around the room saying where our ancestors were from and then everyone looked at me. I knew for sure they weren’t thinking about my Mom’s ancestors. So I told him how I made something up about a grandfather who was a sheikh and buddies with Laurence of Arabia and Dr. Bob leveled those cool gray eyes at me and I knew he got it. I could say more to Dr. Bob in fifty minutes than I would the whole rest of the week, and he took it all in and never judged. I told him all my secrets except the one that mattered most.

Now everybody knows that faith without works is dead, and I figured I should do whatever I could to help things along some. It was clear that he had to see me doing that Arabian Dance.

So I brought a flyer to his office one day.

“Hi Alice.”

Dr. Bob was writing something down at his desk. The desk was up against the wall so that when a student came in to see him, he could just spin around in his chair to talk without facing a student down across a big old desk. So he had his back to me when I came in waving the flyer, and he held up one finger saying he’d be just a sec, he was almost finished. I laid the flyer down on a clean corner of his desk just as he was reaching for a folder, then, and his hand brushed against mine.

The Tabernacle Choir could take off their robes and quit right then, the singing in my ears was the purest Celestial music ever heard on earth. I swear my hair went from curly to afro, and Dr. Bob, bless him, blushed again, his eyes still on his work but I could feel the heat coming off his body. I was frozen in place, my hand hovering over the flyer, Dr. Bob’s blush fading, he found what he was reaching for and finished writing, just a second’s hesitation, but I knew, I knew the Lord was working in him.

“Sorry, Alice, I didn’t know you were right there.”

I made my hand point at the flyer.

“My dance school is putting on the Nutcracker this Christmas, and I really want you to come and see it, and I’m doing a solo, and it’s really going to be good, and we’re getting an orchestra from Lemuel High, and our Sugar Plum Fairy is from Wasatch Ballet and everything, do you think you can come?”

He reached for the flyer, slowly this time, and lifted it up with a flourish to take a look while I stumbled back to the student chair.

“You’re dancing a solo, huh?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it, and nodded.

“Well, then, I guess I’ll have to come see it, won’t I?”

I grinned, nodding like a retard.

“My daughter will love it,” he said, wheeling his chair over to tape the flyer on the wall above his desk.

I spent a minute mashing my lips together to try and hold back the tears that were just dying to jump right out of my eyes.

I almost asked if his wife was coming too, I might as well know, but something stopped those words right in my mouth.

——

Founder of the Portuguese Artists Colony in San Francisco, Caitlin Myer regularly reads her work at Why There Are Words, Quiet Lightning, and other established reading salons in California.  Her one woman show on Simone de Beauvoir was produced in Seattle. 

Read more stories by Caitlin Myer

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Then it begins: a waterfall of ivory and crimson. One by one teeth loosen and fall. She cannot catch them all. They fill her mouth until there is no more room, and she spits them out. Volatile, white incisors and deeply rooted molars ping into a nearby garbage can. Everyone is staring, but nobody moves, not even as she begins choke. Breaths are shallow and soon replaced. She cannot open her mouth. She cannot scream, only silently cry. Teeth push back her throat. There are too many. Hundreds. “It’s only a dream.”

She sits straight up, looking urgently around the unfamiliar room, barely lit by the first moments of dawn. Her tongue feels around her mouth. They are there. Every single tooth. They feel plastic and fake in her dry mouth. One sigh of relief, and then her attention returns to the room. She doesn’t recognize the bed. She doesn’t remember the empty bottles haphazardly piled on the night table, but her fuzzy tongue and pounding headache suggest that they were once full and hers. A hand she doesn’t recognize brushes against her bare thigh. Did he buy her the drinks? Does he have a name? Was this his apartment?

The face in the mirror looks nothing like the one she remembers having. A couple more wrinkles on her forehead than yesterday.

“Old.” Smudged masacara, still trails down the side of her face.

“Ugly.” She shivers, only wrapped in the rough, unbuttoned shirt of the man she doesn’t know.

“Lonely.”

If only this were a dream too.

—–

Katelyn Snyder is a sophomore new media journalism student at Seton Hill University. She serves as Editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, the Setonian.

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He is a regular, and if the chair opposite him is free someone will invariably take it.  He will offer them his gentle smile as they talk, and he will drink to fill the pauses.  His mouth will otherwise remain closed.  He has given his last advice in this lifetime.  None of it, he has good reason to believe, was ever taken.  The world is exactly the same as it was, only faster, and with a new façade that makes a new generation of promises it cannot keep.

Yes, he nods, yes, what a terrible thing, to the long haired woman in the sun dress who says that she’s given up on dating.  To the reporter who is nervous about his next story.  To the recovering alcoholic who says she doesn’t know how to be around people anymore.  His coffee tastes strongly of cinnamon, and was (the sign says) picked by indigenous farmers in the mountains of Bolivia, who have been harvesting beans since long before the world discovered itself.

—–

Benjamin Wachs has written for Village Voice Media, Playboy.com, and NPR among other venues.  He archives his work at www.TheWachsGallery.com.

Read more fiction by Benjamin Wachs

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“Your spot’s here,” the administrator had said on Huckman’s first hour.  The man – much older than Huckman and black-skinned – wore his white regulation hospital cap, the matching shirt and trousers, and a frown.  He righted a pencil box that had spilled on the Morse’s dial, and then checked the machine’s power supply.  Satisfied, the administrator turned to leave.

“Thomas Edison worked as a telegraph operator,” said Huckman quickly, in conversation.  “From 1863 to 1869.”

The black man blinked.  “In a hospital?”

“No,” said Huckman, “No, I don’t believe so.”  The administrator’s attentions drifted, but the younger man continued to talk.  “Edison filed his first patent while working nights at Western Union.  Quit the job to go into invention.”

The administrator tugged the door from the stopper.  “I’ll close this.  Sometimes the patients make noises.  If anything comes in, take the message after it’s written out and clip it to this line here.”  Huckman gazed above his head.  Two parallel clotheslines, mounted on a rusty bronze wheel, shot off into the distance, disappearing down the hall and around the corner turn.  “After you’ve clipped it, press this button on the wall – this red one.  The line will start to move and the message will be delivered to the head office.”

“Why can’t I just pick up the phone and read it to you?”  Huckman pointed to the cradled black telephone in the corner.

The administrator hooked the telephone’s single wire with his pointer finger.  The end was frayed and not attached to anything.

“Oh,” said Huckman quietly.

“The patients don’t like bells.  We learned that a long time ago.  We put cotton over all the ringers, but on this floor it didn’t help.  Besides, this is the proper way to deliver a message.  On the wire.  Clip it with a clothespin and press the button.”

With that, the administrator closed the door tightly, leaving his new employee the limited view through the door’s window slat.

Hours later, Huckman opened the door to get some air.  The telegraph room was stifling.   It had been midnight since he saw the administrator, who had checked-in only for a moment and then left quickly.

The hallway beyond the door was a bubbling collection of phantom noises – the pipes, the drafts, the settling of an old building.  Never human sounds.  Never patients or doctors.  Huckman began to doubt anyone was even home.  And there had yet to be a single telegraph.

Just as he began to nod off, the dial of the Morse began to clack and electricity hummed on the metal gauge.  A light came on above the telegraph equipment.  A message!  Huckman grabbed his pad and pencil and quickly reset his earphones.  The familiar beep of a Non-Directional Beacon tapped into the line.

A three-character signal, someone trying to identify.

Huckman waited for the message and brushed his jet-black hair from his eyes.  NDBs usually emanated from ships or aeroplanes; it would be unusual for a land station to generate one.   After the identification, the dots and dashes of the message began.  Huckman worked his lead pencil.  In his hand, it felt good.

When the message was finished, he read it.

NDB 469.  BEGIN.  I AM LOST.  STOP.
CAN YOU HELP ME?  END.    

Huckman pushed his earphones onto his cheeks then read the message again, this time aloud.  “NDB 469.  Begin.  I am lost.  Stop.  Can you help me?  End.”

The message didn’t have an addressee.  Who was its intended recipient? he wondered.

After a time, Huckman lifted from his place at the desk.  He found the first clothespin on the wire overhead and snapped the written message tight.  Leaning, he let his thumb drop onto the red button.  The noise of gears shifting, wheels squeaking, filled the room.  These were the loudest sounds all night.  Huckman backed away and watched as the message followed the wire along the outside hallway, leaving him with a grinding, un-oiled set of clicks, before disappearing around the far corner turn.  After nearly ten minutes, the pulley system stopped, and the red button ejected.

“This place is enormous!” said Huckman aloud as he tried to calculate the distance to the head office by using the time the wire was in motion.  He knew the facility was big; he got turned around on an upper floor during his interview and had to be retrieved by security.  The administrator neglected a proper tour, but instead had taken Huckman outside the building and down the back stairwell, straight into his room.  In the closet, sat a toilet and a candy machine.  He’d have no need to wander.  The administrator made this clear.

Several hours passed before the second message.

The telegraph machine began to hum and the light went on above the speaker.  On with his headphones, he wrote in wide, clear swipes until the message was complete.

NDB 469.  BEGIN.  FOR GOD’S SAKE.  STOP.
DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE.  END.    

Huckman sat back in his chair and read the message three more times.  He lit a cigarette and took a great puff before attaching the message to the wire.  After pressing the red button and watching the paper disappear, just as the first, Huckman unhooked the transmitter from its place in the set.  Looking to the cracked spackling of the small office’s ceiling, he shut his eyes and tapped out a reply.

BEGIN.  CALLING NDB 469.  STOP.  MESSAGE RECEIVED.  STOP.  IS THIS RELATED TO HOSPITAL BUSINESS?  STOP.  IF YES, PLEASE GIVE NAME OF RECEIVER.  END.

Satisfied, Huckman listened closely to the buzz of the machine’s tubes, and waited.  Antsy, the operator fished for change in his trousers – the sterile style worn by the administrator – and purchased bag of peanuts from the closet.  Halfway through the bag, the light came on.  Huckman wrote furiously.

NDB 469.  BEGIN.  WHAT’S YOUR DX?  STOP.  YOU DIDN’T IDENTIFY YOURSELF IN YOUR MESSAGE.  STOP.  TRANSMIT NDB.  END.

“So that’s it!” said Huckman with a finger raised.  “He’s not talkin’ ‘til I’m known?”  It was clear the sender was misdirected.  If he hadn’t been, the outbound message would have had a NDB stamp already on it.  Unless the tool was switched off the line, Huckman didn’t have to say who he was at all.  Since there was obviously a wire crossed, Huckman decided to help the poor soul.

He dug through the manuals for the machine, looking high and low for the Non Directional Beacon number of his station.  He couldn’t find it.  The administrator might know it, but it suddenly occurred to Huckman that he had no idea how to reach the man.  He supposed he might tack a message to the wire, a handwritten note, “Can you please come to the telegraph room for a question?” But he didn’t want to violate protocol.  Not on his first night.  He needed his job too badly.  And besides, this hospital assignment didn’t seem to be much bother, an easy job, not a tenth as many messages as at his former employer, Western Union, and twice the pay.

Raising the telegraph machine from its spot on the desk, Huckman searched in the shadow underneath for a number.  Glinting off the lamplight, he saw a tacked silver tag.

469

“469?  How can that be?  I’m certainly not messaging myself!” Huckman laughed.  Then, slowly, he became aware of the echo.  Eyes out of the office, down the long, long hallway of the hospital, he sensed a flutter in the line.  A clank and the gears started.  Huckman looked to the red button.  It had sucked inward with the start.  Standing, the operator went to the frame of the office door.  His cigarette dangling from between his lips, he covered his ears from the squeak of the pulleys.  The white tile and the exposed piping, the barred windows and the boiler below his feet, in the basement, all made the hospital seem like an empty ship, Nate Huckman the only passenger.

When the clipped paper message appeared from around the corner, Huckman blanched.  Rather than wait, he ran down the hall to meet it.  Reaching up, with two fingers, he scissored the small, torn scrap of yellow paper from the clothespin and read the words quickly.

COME AND FIND ME

… it said, in the heavy pencil scrawl of a human hand.

Huckman gave a chuckle, but it faded.  He marched to the turn of the hallway and rolled his eyes.  At the turn, Huckman was faced with an identical passage.  The only difference was a drinking fountain planted against the one wall.  Feeling the dry tongue in his mouth, from the peanuts and from the circumstance, he turned the nozzle but no water came out.

Broken.

Huckman moved on.

He need only follow the wire to find the source, but as he put more and more distance between himself and his station, he began to feel guilty.  If this was a test of his employer (“will he stay put?”), he had failed.  Huckman looked to the note one more time, its instructions.  COME AND FIND ME.  It was almost a dare.

He was led through hallways, a maze of white tile and paint, unfinished in places, and, continuing above him, the dull line of the message wire.  He estimated he had walked a mile.  If he owned a watch, he’d have checked it.  The clock was back in his office.

The square-footage of the hospital was in the tens of thousands.  But strangely, every room was empty.  The administrator’s fear of waking patients with telephone bells was ridiculously unfounded.  Huckman didn’t see a single soul as he followed the line, only the empty desks of nurses’ stations and the abandoned ports for drug dispersion.  Lamplights remained on, but in dim, sporadic supply.  Each time he turned a corner, Huckman felt sure the wing would be dark, or in-use, but only received a constant half-measure, functional but not functioning.

At last, the line stopped.

At a closed door.

Huckman stepped forward and put his face to the window slat.  Inside the room, he saw a square office with a desk in the center, a closet door open behind.  The lamp on the table had been recently pulled and the chain swung back and forth.  Slowly, he turned the door’s handle.

A telegraph machine, its light on, sat patiently waiting.

This place was his office, as he had left it.

Cautiously, he approached the desk.  He rested his hands on the back of his chair and looked down.  The incoming message light continued to blink.

The operator took a seat and slowly placed the earphones on top of his head.

He lifted his pencil and began to decode.

YOU FOUND ME.  STOP. 

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Darren Callahan lives in Chicago.  His novel “City of Human Remains” is published on Fiction365, and can be read in its entirety here. 

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