Village Manor On the day my grandfather is institutionalized, I show up unexpected. My mother told me not to come. She told me to go to my job at the district attorney's office as though it was any other Thursday. She told me she would call after everything was finished and my grandfather was checked into a place he would never leave and my grandmother and aunt began the drive back out to southeast Kansas.I show up not because I think my mother, aunt and grandmother can't handle it. The women in my family have the epic strength of superheroes. They are examples of endurance. I show up because I am old enough to understand that when mothers tell you not t
history Once, sitting cross-legged in front of you while you played guitar, I saw a future in some quiet wild place. I saw you long-haired, carrying wood, stacking it by a cabin where we sleep in the dark, where you sit and play the guitar by firelight. I saw this future life where we need never speak, a forested universe where our language would be linked fingers, song lyrics, foreheads touching, hands callused with work. I would put things in the ground and there would be dirt under my fingernails until I washed them clean in cold soapless water, maybe in a porcelain basin that I emptied in the evenings, maybe in a slow-moving stream, close to a ba
Genetic Genetic(s)The parking lot was so empty. If the office was closed, I didn't want to find myself in front of it in the sun, tugging ineffectually on locked doors. So I instead circled the enormous asphalt rectangle several times until I saw someone else go inside. She appeared magically on the sidewalk, as though she’d been teleported in; she certainly didn’t get out of a car in the totally abandoned lot. Suddenly self-conscious, I parked in the most distant stall, carefully locking the doors when I got out.At first I felt like I was walking in place, as though I was coming no closer, with each step, to the looming brick building.
Dinosaurs I see Michael Parker that first morning back. I think I’m imagining him. He has the same face, the same eyes, but the scruff of whiskers is gone from his cheeks and his untidy hair is neatly trimmed and combed. We make eye contact briefly, but then a group of people entering the church moves between us, and I can’t find him again.As the service begins I realize that this is the pew where I sat during the first Sunday in my memory. I remember it because the new wood of the arm gave me a splinter, and that afternoon during my fourth birthday party my father took away a plastic Brachiosaurus seconds after I unwrapped it.“There
Dreamers 1 “Which place do you think is real?”Sarah only asked me once, even though it was a question all of must have thought about every day. Usually I asked Sarah the questions. I was twelve and she was eight, then. We were in dream. She was big enough there to hold me in her lap, but this time we were just sitting side by side on the edge of a cliff, watching golden dolphins play in a pink sea. Sometimes dream was nice with Sarah.“I don’t know,” I said. I knew what she meant by “real.” Not the awake world, which we called that, but reality.I wondered how much of this conversation we would remember later. Some
Dreamers 2 I had a bad dream after that. It was familiar, the place where all experiences like this sent me. School would have put me naked in a meadow of glass that cut me wherever I touched it. Usually I tried to stand still there, letting my weight press the shards into my feet. If the dream wasn’t long, sometimes I could stand it. If I screamed, the noise would echo, cutting at my ears in a different way.Foster fathers and brothers put me in a close tunnel with sticky walls. I couldn’t see, I could barely move. Slime dripped from the ceiling a few inches above my head into my hair. It smelled like nothing else smelled. Dream was that way
the politics of bears Today I bought gasand was startled to seejust beneath the spinningnumber indicatingthe dollars and cents of my purchasea small bear-shaped symbol,white.(It was then I rememberedthat my gas cost$23 and 2000 polar bears)I hope they don't sayin some future classroom:polar bears saved us.And if they do say it,I hope they don't meanpolar bears saved us likesoldiers or willing martyrsdying for the greater good(because besides the fact thatI don't think polar bears wouldsee it that wayit would be nice if we figurethings out a little sooner)And today when I paid my utilitieswhich came out to $200I not
Eject We all sit around a black table, its wooden surface scarred by time, stained by oily smoke and sweaty palms. The table is in the middle of the street and it’s begun to rain, but we have sat there through worse. Miles sits on my right as always, staring at his cards as though with concentration enough he could change them. Maybe he can, we’re not sure, we’ve taken bets on this. Miles is familiar. I think he might be an actor or a politician: he has that sharpness down the bridge of his nose, as though he’s held his breath too long, leaking lies.The rain is blue, but it doesn’t stain my cards, just rolls down them in
Ghost in the Laundry Room I was on my way to my psychiatric appointment, because that is where a woman goes if she's been talking to her dead husband in the laundry room. I was no longer alarmed by these conversations. My initial certainty that I was completely, irreparably crazy had faded to a sort of muted concern for my psyche. Seeing Peter had become another puzzling aspect of my life, like my forty-year-old sister's pending marriage to a twenty-three-year-old model, or my son's recent announcement that one of his preschool classmates was his boyfriend.In fact, some of these things seemed like greater threats to my sanity than Peter's visits. I had to remind mys
Not Friends I was sitting on this big rock with Michael, waiting for my little sister Wally to bury the turtle. We’d found it while we were digging up rocks in our fort. The turtle had seemed alive to me at first; its head was halfway into its shell and its eyes were this bright yellow color. When I realized it was dead I dropped it and kind of screamed, and Wally gave me this look and picked it back up. She said hadn’t I been holding a dead turtle all this time? Why did knowing it was dead make it gross all of a sudden? And then she told me I have no respect for the dead and she took the turtle off, I guess to bury it. I had this funny feeling
Bought and Sold The sale barn’s air was thick with the smell of too many animals in limited space. Horses were packed into the rows of twelve by twelve pens, their legs swollen from standing on the concrete, flies buzzing around their ears.“I hate this place,” Angie said, following Tanner down one of the narrow aisles. He smiled at her in the way he did when he wasn’t listening, and reached through the bars to prod a particularly skinny animal in her prominent ribs. The horse jumped, irritating the one next to her. The entire group shifted frantically in the confined space as ears were pinned and hind legs cocked.“I wish you woul
Ghost in the Laundry Room 2 Peter’s disappearing has become an expected part of our brief encounters. Initially I was relieved by it, but recently I’ve felt a numb pang, as though he’s died, in a small way, all over again. I expect that has something to do with the fact I expect to be cured at any moment, which would mean that I won’t see him again. For similar reasons, his arrivals are met with equal parts disappointment and relief.When we were married, I saw him less than I do now. Not that he was absent, by any means, but now he is with me whenever I’m alone. At first it was just the laundry room and sometimes the car, but now he’s the
Dreamers 3 I needed neutral dream even more than usual. I usually needed it because I could find Sarah through it. Now I needed it for answers. No one was supposed to be in someone else’s bad dream; Harriet and I were sure about that.Mr. Hansen was away on business the next morning, which was Saturday. Mrs. Hansen vacuumed through the morning, watched the news at noon, and then ensconced herself in the living room with her books. I fell asleep in the quiet of my room, curled on the carpet. It wasn’t hard. I was always tired.Neutral dream was like it always was: never the same. I noticed that little things were different as soon as my eyes
Touching Horses In my oldest memory, I am awkward on my legs, traveling through dense grass with difficulty, anchored by my father's hand. When we reached them, he lifted me effortlessly into his arms. The animals looming close, he took my hand in his and he pressed our fingers into the warm skin.“Horse,” he said.“Horse,” I echoed, naming the experience of my father’s arms as much as the silk and heat of the animal’s copper coat. “Horse.”*I am twenty-two, and I’ve been alone for two years now. Five years ago my brother left, three years ago my mother died, and two years ago my father died. Death is somethi
Ghost in the Laundry Room 3 I became a writer when I was thirteen. My English teacher assigned us all participation in November’s National Novel Writing Month, and I was a zombie for thirty days, typing out a series of vaguely connected short stories I called a novel. After that I did diary entries, majored in journalism in college, and became a freelance writer.Earlier in the same year I wrote the novel, I stole two pink flamingos from my neighbor’s yard. She wasn’t my neighbor them, but she was my neighbor now. I’d made the sacrifice of suffering a close proximity to her for a house I loved. This made things awkward, although I didn’t really
Dreamers 4 Nothing happened to me for a while. I had neutral dreams that were so brief I couldn’t even find Luke’s door. And then I was in the hallways of the school, keeping my head low, watching the seams in the tiles to keep my path straight between talking, living people. And then I was keeping my eyes on my plate at the Hansens’ dinner table.I got called into the councilor’s office on Monday, six days since I’d seen Harriet and Luke. I was preoccupied as I walked through the emptied halls, which looked shabby without people filling them. The lockers needed repainting. The glass display cases had cracks. I was thinking abo
Hellene Elle and Helene meet once a year at this restaurant. They don’t know each other as well as they once did, but they come together out of an affection borne of a shared, distant history. One of the most significant events of that history ties them to this place; a café that has stood on this street corner for seventy years. The establishment experiences occasional turbulence in its popularity, but always seems to return to its hole-in-the-wall origins, hosting a steady stream of longtime customers that wanes to a trickle on weekday afternoons.Helene swirls a straw in the iced tea the waitress brought her. It is warmer by the open wi
The purpose of age Aug 27Today I saw my high school best friend Cali. She was as tall and tan as ever. We hugged, and I remembered how short she makes me feel, how round.While we talked she was animated, recounting the details of her life with accompanying gestures from her artist’s hands, smeared with ink even now from her latest project. I listened to her, falling back into the pattern of days spent listening to her, watching her hands.When she realized several minutes had passed, she looked at the silver watch on her tiny wrist and exclaimed. She said good bye, and she said that we should keep in touch, and I nodded. There was a silent moment, and
Red At the conclusion of his reluctant, inevitable walk, Dale stood beside his wife at the unassuming bank of the old creek. It was not as he'd remembered it. The water was clearer, the shadows paler. But then, it might be the time of day, or a new perspective won by height and experience. There were less terrifying places in the world, he supposed.Eve had knelt to put her hand in the water. He watched her shudder in surprise, smiling up at him. "It's cold," she said. He imagined the way she felt, submerged to the wrist in the murky cool, while sweat freckled the skin of the rest of her arm. It was hot today. He'd forgotten the heat, but not th
Footprint, sand Hey. I just found this picture of you.Okay, I didn't just find it. I found it months ago, but that was years after the last time I saw you, a decade after I burned or tore or otherwise trashed all the others. Yanked them from glossy frames.So, you know, all things relative to the history of us, I basically just found the goddamn picture.You'll remember it, because you liked it, and we never liked the same pictures of you. I liked your smile, could study for full minutes your crooked front tooth, your slightly large nose. You hated your imperfect face. You liked the pictures where your perfect hair hid it, where your perfect body was all
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