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Epiphany Magazine - epiphmag.com
Issue 11
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DISSONANCE
By
Mathieu Cailler
Mick hadn't been this close since he was six-years-old.
He sat in his car, inspecting her house, studying the white paint job, large windows, and untamed bougainvillea that crept across the top of her garage door. An olive tree drooped in her front yard and the wind tickled each branch, causing the shadows that it cast on her driveway to dance.
Mick wanted to see her, talk to her, feel the scar on her right knee (the one he'd been eye level with as a child), remind her he was alive, that he'd survived after what she'd put him through, and let her know that she'd made him live a pianissimo life instead of the forte one he desired.
A classical music station played inside his car. Mick took a sip of his coffee that had now gone cold, and listened to Schubert's "Sonata in A minor," a somber piece that he'd put on the auditory part of the final exam he'd given to his students last week, just before school had gotten out for summer vacation.
It'd be twenty-nine years tomorrow since she'd left Mick and his father. He'd done his best to try to squelch the memory, sought treatment with MDs and taken yellow pills that seemed big as marbles, but it was tattooed in his mind - her big blue eyes, her gray skirt that was pleated like a Japanese fan, her light soapy smell, and her rust-colored hair that sat in pile atop her head. He could see her skinny fingers remove her keys from the hook in the foyer.
"Can I come?" Mick remembered saying.
"You should stay here," she said, looking at her him with her shiny eyes.
"Where are you going, Mom?"
"To the store."
"Can you get me some lemonade?"
"Sure, Mickey," she said, adjusting the ladybug broach on her chunky cardigan.
She never came back. That was it, the last time Mick saw her, saw her back as she flung her purse over her shoulder and navigated the walkway with her black shoes.
Mick's dad called the police. He filed a report. He sat on the couch. "She'll be home soon," he said. "Everything will be okay." But Mick remembered thinking it wouldn't be.
When Mick got older and asked about her, his father said, "She couldn't handle this life. She wasn't ready for this, for us," then he changed the subject and walked in the other direction. Mick's dad never dated again, and did his best to wear a smile and act as if nothing had happened. The young Mick hated that his father faked happiness in the hopes that it would stick, but as an adult, Mick admired him for living a minor life in the hopes of making his major.
Last month, Mick had worn a black suit, buried his father, and tossed a handful of dirt onto a varnished casket. He walked away from the service an orphan with a significant bequest which he'd used to hire a private detective. The detective had found her address: she was only forty-eight miles away, their two homes only a pinky nail apart on the map. She'd left town, but not the county.
Wind powered through her suburban street and leaves scurried along the pavement in staccato-like manner. Her home's features fed his imagination, and he pictured her walking the brick path, saw her hand lifting the mailbox flag, and envisioned her fingers twisting the door knob.
Chopin's "Ballade Numero Un" trickled from the car speakers, each black and white key stroke delivering an emotional punch. Mick closed his eyes and placed his head against the headrest; she used to play this song in the living room. "Feel the emotion, Mickey. Feel the sadness," she used to say. He would sit next to her on the piano bench and watch her hands brush the keys and her feet pump the golden pedals. He remembered her teaching him the first few notes on her baby grand Steinway that could also be used as a player piano, the one that Mick now had in his home. "Remember this Mickey, it will help you remember the line notes - E, G, B, D, F - 'Every good boy does fine.'"
Having had enough for one day, Mick put his car in gear and sped off, but not more than a few houses away from hers, he noticed a "For Lease" sign planted in a neighbor's lawn. He parked the car and got out, grabbed a flyer and toured the home from the outside - two stories, a large garage, and a few orange trees in the front yard. Each of the windows wore navy shutters and some of the paint was flaking. The flyer called it charming and rustic and a handyman's dream, all real-estate synonyms for breaking down.
Mick returned to his car and took off. With the gas tank nearing empty, he pulled into a station and filled up. While he pumped, he combed the flyer; he could afford the place, especially with the recent bequest. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
"Westside Rentals and Services," the voice on the other side said. Mick could practically smell the hairspray through the receiver. He talked to the lady about the house. "It's a great home," she said. "A beautiful place with great neighbors."
Mick took it.
***
The next morning, the movers arrived and Mick let them pack, only giving them one instruction: "Be careful with the Steinway. It's very old."
He drove to his new house to meet the real-estate agent. She was already in the driveway on his arrival, wearing a yellow business suit with a white blouse that had a large collar spread over the lapels; she dangled the keys to his new home like a dog's treat. As they shook hands, her bracelets clashed. Everything she said seemed to have an exclamation point, even routine stuff like sign here and initial there.
"Do you want a tour?" she said.
"It's all right," Mick said. "I'll figure it out."
"Easiest client ever," she said.
They completed the paperwork, and she hopped back into her little red convertible and took off, tapping the horn twice.
Mick opened the front door easily, too easily, as the locking mechanism didn't work. Inside the house, a heavy scent of mildew hung in the hallways. He explored the floor plan and went up to the second story, where he honed in on her home from a bedroom. Mick was so close to the window that his breath fogged up the glass.
A car pulled into her driveway. A tall, mustachioed man and a teenager got out. The teenager was wearing a baseball uniform that was streaked with mud and grass stains, while the mustachioed man wore a newsboy cap and blue flannel shirt. The man opened the gate and the two of them walked to the front door. Mick hoped to get a look at her and see if his imagination's depiction of her matched reality's, but he didn't get the chance as the teenager and the man let themselves in and closed the door behind them.
Mick pulled up a chair that had been left behind and continued to stare through the large bedroom window that was sliced up by panes. Not only have I been left... I've been replaced, he thought.
He went to his car and removed a few boxes, brought them into the house, and placed them on the floor. One thing about moving, he realized, was that he held on to everything, finding an old student's end-of-semester review that for some reason he'd saved. "Music doesn't just seem to be Dr. Raskowski's job; it seems to be his life. You can tell that he lives in music. When speaking of certain pieces, he seems to ache with emotion." He also found an etude he'd begun to write a few years ago, though he'd given up on it when he couldn't compose the proper ending. He inspected his piece, hummed it, and added a few notes. As he transferred a biography of Chopin from box to shelf, he opened the book to the flyleaf: I think you love Chopin as much as I love you. Yours forever, Lisa. He thought about his ex-fiancee, and the way she'd called off the marriage last year, telling him he was distrusting and paranoid, and that she'd never done anything to deserve his suspicion. He dusted off a few more books, and mapped out where he'd put his furniture.
The movers arrived a couple hours later. Mick watched them place the Steinway on a dolly and wheel it the front door. "Right here," Mick said, as they came in. "Right here in the living room," picking a spot near the back of the home where two large windows came together and looked onto the backyard. Wanting to test out the new notes he'd written, he placed his sheet music on the stand and hunched over the piano. Not crazy about it, he played something else - an oeuvre by Handel.Sometime later, the movers finished up and drove off. Mick walked back up the stairs and let his eyes burn into her home, noticing that the car the man and the teenager had arrived in was gone.
Near his bed, the movers had placed a box marked fragile. In it were some records and his father's gold wrist watch that he'd sometimes tried on as a child. Back then, it was so large that it wrapped his wrist like a hula-hoop, but now it fit. The metal was cold and the face was scratched, and he couldn't help but wonder how many times his father had looked at the watch, the numbers, the big and little hand, and thought: How long has it been? When is she coming back? Mick slid off the watch and placed it next to his bed.
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He decided to take a walk. Outside, the air was warm, a typical California summer night. Heat from the black asphalt rose into Mick's shoes. A light breeze washed over him and he savored it. Her outdoor lights were on, but inside the home was black. What if I knocked right now? Mick thought, just pulled the gate open and knocked a couple times. Would she recognize me?
The sky was clear. A plane's lights blinked as it flew across the darkness. At first glance, Mick believed it to be a shooting star, and even when he realized it wasn't, he still made a wish. At the end of the street, a home was illuminated. Inside, a family played a board game, laughed, rolled dice and moved tokens along a little colored path.
He headed back home and brushed his teeth. He wondered if she ever thought about that "going to the store" day, if they ever thought of one another at the same time, if their thoughts crossed where their paths hadn't.
He lay down on his bed and stared at the popcorn ceiling. He thought of his father and the way he'd died in the hospital a few weeks ago. He was strong up until the end. "We had a good run, didn't we?" he asked Mick one day.
"We did."
"We defied the odds. Just remember that. We made it." He tried his best to laugh a little laugh, but it just came out as a cough. "You remember those nights of omelets for dinner? You remember the Mustang I bought you?"
"Yes."
"We had a good time. We had a good time. We had a good time," Mick's dad said, each sentence softer than the one before it.
***
The next morning, Mick drove to different stores around town, picked up tools that were needed to fix the front door, banister and leaky faucets, and bought groceries to fill the refrigerator.
When he returned home and removed the bags from his trunk, a neighbor who looked like a Pez dispenser - with large feet, a skinny fame, and a head like a balloon - was watering his flowers along the property line. "Howdy, I'm Ray," he said.
Mick set his bags down and walked over. "I'm Mick."
The two men shook hands.
"Welcome to the neighborhood," Ray said, moving his thumb over the opening of the hose to soften the stream. "This is a great place to live. Really nice. How do you like your home?"
"Well, there's a lot of work to be done."
"Yeah, it's got a nice view though, right?"
"I guess."
"So what brings you to this little town?" Ray said, picking at a scab on his elbow. "I feel like everyone around here is either starting up or starting over. Which one are you?"
"Not sure yet."
"Well, happy to know you," Ray said. He started telling Mick about the neighbors. When he got to her house, he said: "Juliette lives there. She's an older lady who's been here by herself for a long time. A real sweet woman. You'll like her."
Mick nodded.
Seconds passed. The two men listened to water saturate the ground.
"Well, I better get going, don't want to over water this area," said Ray. "Take care, Mick. It was great to meet you."
"Likewise," Mick said, heading back to his car, playing the sound bites: by herself... long time... sweet woman. He put the food away and began to work on the front door. Before long, dusk had arrived, slowly stealing light from the sky.
While he worked, he listened to the player piano perform a Chopin piece - he relished the dark bass chords and the sweeter notes from the treble clef. Mick continued to tweak the door, unfasten screws and change parts, and then he tested his work, pulling the door closed, hoping it would stay shut. The latch clicked. The door held.
He took a break, went to the piano, sat down on the padded stool, ran his hands over the ivory keys that had yellowed and played Chopin's "Prelude in E Minor." Mick liked the syrupy darkness that it conveyed. He played it again and again, analyzed the soft beginning, the haunting middle and the abrupt and disconcerting finale.
The doorbell sounded. Mick got up, walked to the foyer and pulled the door open.
"Yes," he said.
It was she.
Certainly time had altered her features and loosened her skin, and made her look harder than the character he'd created in his mind, but even in the final obscuring minutes of dusk, he knew. She stood on the welcome mat that had been left by the previous owner; the word welcome, beaten and eroded by the sun.
His fingers began to twitch as they did when he first started performing at piano competitions in grade school, and his heartbeat's tempo accelerated from moderato to presto.
"Hi," she said, a word so routine yet unfamiliar. "My name is Juliette. I live across the street." She turned and pointed to her house. "The one over there with the picket fence and the olive tree."
"Mom," he thought about saying. "Mom, it's me - Mickey," but the words were so foreign, that his mouth couldn't grip them. He inspected her knee-length pleated skirt that showcased the scar she'd suffered, the one Mick used to run his hand over while watching TV. Her hair was no longer the color of rust, but now of steel wool, and her feet, those veiny feet that had walked out, were strapped into leather sandals.
"Anyway," she said. "I made you a pie."
She wouldn't even let him have his day. He'd moved in across the street; he was biding his time, waiting for a moment when a gust of confidence would blow into his chest, but she had to surprise him on his stoop.
Mick had wanted this moment since that sunny lemonade afternoon. So many times he'd imagined the scenario: her face, the place, his words, which changed depending on his mood. Sometimes he screamed, told her how he pedaled his bike to every grocery store and asked about her, other times they hugged, kissed, cried. But not once in all his scenarios had she not recognized him. Not once had he not a thing to say. As Mick held the door open and looked into her shiny blue eyes, he froze - worried he'd be rejected again. If he couldn't keep her in his youth, why would she want him now? He had lived with one rejection, but another - another would make him believe there wasn't a note of remorse.
"Did I hear you playing the piano?" she asked.
Mick drew a deep breath. "Yes."
"Was that Chopin?"
"Yes."
She tucked a piece of grayish hair behind her ear. "You can taste the despair in it, can't you? I used to play the piano, a very long time ago."
The two of them stood close enough to touch but with little reason to do so.
"Well," she said, "it was nice chatting with you. Welcome to the neighborhood. I hope you enjoy the pie."
She turned around and left.
He stood in his doorway, the golden-brown pie in his hands, the rich blueberries oozing from crannies. The dish was still warm, and Mick let some of the heat transfer to his hands. A better neighbor than she was a mother, he thought, listening to the decrescendo of her steps as she walked down his steep driveway and out of sight.
BIO: I'm an educator from Los Angeles who is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction from Vermont College. Recently, I received honorable mention from Glimmer Train and was published in Sleet Magazine and Two Hawks Quarterly.
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"From the sky"
Artwork by Peter L. Scacco
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OVER THE EDGE AND INTO THE WIND
By
David W. Berner
The heels of his brown boots dug into the rocky edge of the bluff, the scuffed tips pointing out over the rim and into the cool open air. Michael tilted his body toward the wind and the vast empty space before him, arms stretching out from his shoulders like Jesus on the Cross. Tony's right hand clutched the tail of Michael's denim shirt, his left arm hooked around the branch of a juniper tree. The only thing between the end of Michael's nose and the dry creek bed below was 300 feet of mountain air.
"Isn't that absolutely fucking amazing?" Tony said, laughing. "Feel it, man? Feel all of it? It's as free as you'll ever get. Ever!"
Michael's closed his eyes and leaned all of his weight into the abyss. Then he began to flap his arms as if he were about to take flight. "My... GOD! This, this is ...unbelievable!" he screamed. Then Tony snatched Michael from the cliff and they wrapped their arms around each other in celebration of shared adrenaline.
"Holy shit!" Michael hollered into the canyon. The two of them jumped in the air, slapping each other on their backs.
Tony rushed to the edge. "Do it for me," he said, pulling his tee shirt over his head and throwing it to the ground."Grab my belt loop."
"You serious?" Michael asked, questioning Tony's trust.
"Put your fingers through it and hang on, man." Tony inched the toes of his shoes just over the edge of the bluff and bent into a crouch. Michael stuck the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the belt loop of Tony's jeans. Tony stood, reached his hands around his head and clasped them behind his neck the way criminals do on those TV cop shows, and shifted his weight into the broad chasm.
"Wooooooooh!" Tony hollered. "This is what life should always feel like! I never, EVER want to die!"
It was earlier that morning when the shadows were long that Tony saw Michael hitchhiking along the highway outside Santa Fe and offered him a ride.
Michael leaned into the open window on the passenger side of Tony's car, an old Mazda, the color faded by the sun, and asked, "Where you headed?"
"You know, man," Tony said, smiling. "I'm not really sure." He tapped the steering wheel with the palm of his right hand and then his left, as if striking a snare drum and its rim. "But I'm pointed west and if that's where you're pointed, we can keep each other company."
Michael grabbed up his canvas backpack from the gravel on the road's shoulder, threw it into the car's back seat, and jumped into the front. He had spent the night sleeping on a bench outside the Deming Municipal Airport. It had been a couple hours on a stretch of Route 549, starting at just before dawn, walking and thumbing. It seemed like hundreds of cars and trucks had whizzed by him, throwing exhaust and dust into his face. Someone in a U-Haul truck slowed down and pulled to the side the highway, but as Michael ran to the door, the driver hit the gas and sped off. It was just a few minutes later that someone else in a convertible, some expensive car, an Audi or something, gave him the finger as he zipped passed, yelling, "Get a job!" With five days of stubble, his hair pulled back in an uneven ponytail, and one wash-up in the dirty restroom of an old Shell gas station somewhere between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Michael didn't look much like a man after a job.
Michael wrote poetry. He came to New Mexico two years ago, hoping to find a reason to keep writing. He spent a few years on Chicago's near West Side in a third floor studio apartment with two old friends from Columbia College. One was a painter, the other a dancer. Michael worked part time at a tiny independent bookstore on the city's Northside. His roommates also had part time jobs. One was an attendant at a small fitness center in Uptown, cleaning locker rooms and wiping away the sweat left behind on treadmills and elliptical machines. The other was a cashier at an adult video store on one of the dark streets under the El behind the Merchandise Mart. Michael knew he needed a change when his roomies started buying more dope than food. But he knew it wasn't just a matter of roommates and apartments. His reasons for leaving were bigger than that. Michael's father still lived in New Mexico, outside Las Cruces, and although his friends believed he was returning to be around family, Michael knew that was far from reality. Any interest Michael may have had for reconnecting with his father had faded like his friend's dreams. Michael was hoping New Mexico might give him emotional familiarity, a good place for a fresh beginning, a place to jump-start his writing, bring back old memories from a good childhood when his mother was alive and his father was interested. Maybe the desert would remove him from the temptations of Chicago, help him find his voice, and get him published. During his time in Chicago he had one poem printed in Columbia's poetry journal and another in a former student's online start-up literary site, but mostly it had been a time of unanswered submissions and uninspired writing.
Michael found work as a substitute teacher in Las Cruces and rented a one-room apartment not far from New Mexico State. Even though it was hard not to at least consider it, he never tried to contact his father. Michael's mother died when he was just starting college, and after that his dad vowed to never leave the home they had shared throughout their 20 year marriage, digging his heels into a life of sullenness, unemployment checks, food stamps, and distancing himself from his son. Michael could understand his father's sadness, but not his rejection. Michael telephoned, emailed, or wrote his father nearly every week during his first year in Chicago, then every month, and then he stopped, giving up when there was no response and the letters came back unopened.
Summer came and the part time teaching job ended. Michael put two tee-shirts, his journals, and a book of Ginsberg poems in a duffle bag and stood along Route 478, hoping to eventually head west. He didn't know exactly where he was going, but that was the idea. During the school year, Michael wrote in fits and starts, deleting words, lines, and some times full poems from his computer. What he thought New Mexico might offer hadn't. It was time to try something different, yet again. Michael now believed he needed to just move, travel, see, and feel new things, away from any familiar surroundings. Maybe he needed to abandoned recognizable surroundings. Maybe somewhere out there was that one thing in another place and time, a spontaneous experience that would help him finally create what he still believed he could.
It was outside Deming on Route 418 that Tony stopped to let Michael in his car.
"What's your story, man?" Tony asked. He flicked his steel Zippo lighter, the small flame igniting his Marlboro, producing a red glow at the cigarette's end. The driver side window was rolled down a quarter of the way so Tony could let the ashes disappear into the rushing wind.
"No story," Michael said. "Just trying to get out of my own way."
Tony took a drag of his cigarette, bluish smoke rushing out his nostrils. "Come on, everyone has a story, my friend."
Tony was five years older than Michael, and dressed as if he had spent a considerable amount of time listening to R.E.M, the independent rock band from the 1990s - gray tee shirt, black jeans, a thick pewter ring on the middle finger of his left hand, a mix of hipster and hippie. He even looked a bit like R.E.M's lead singer, Michael Stipe - thin build, almost gaunt, a shaven head showing the faint outline of male-pattern baldness, two-day growth of beard.
"My story, huh?" Michael asked, scratched his own whiskers. "Do you know much about poetry?"
"What is it you want to talk about, man? Rilke? Rimbaud? Dylan? Cobain?"
"Sounds like you have some definite thoughts."
"I read a bit. Listen to great songwriters."
"Have a favorite?"
"That's always tough. Depends on my mood."
"Pick one."
Tony blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and then looked Michael up and down. "You," he said.
"Me?"
"Yeah, you're a poet, aren't you?"
Michael smiled and turned to look out the passenger side window. "How the hell did you know that?"
"I could tell. And today, you are my favorite."
For several hours along I-10 through Lordsburg, San Simon, Bowie, Wilcox, and Tucson, Michael and Tony talked about poets, writing, songs, girls, school, and work. Michael told him a little about growing up in New Mexico, but never mentioned his father. He talked about Chicago, his stoner roommates, and his love of good words and his struggle to write them.
"I know about loving something so much, about having a passion," Tony said. "And I know what it feels like when you can't satisfy it, or something, whatever it is, gets in the way." Tony had played guitar in a rock band in Atlanta, but the band broke up when the lead singer settled down to start a family, he took a job managing a crew of landscapers outside Birmingham, Alabama just to get some cash. His silly attempt to forget about music failed, and breaking his back hauling dirt and digging tree holes for rich people with big lawns quickly got old. "Worked for about a month. And my Spanish sucked. I couldn't talk to the workers," he said. So Tony took all the money he had out of his bank account - about $5000 - and start driving. "Through Arkansas and Texas and then to New Mexico," he told Michael. Tony grew up in Cleveland. "The home of Rock-n-Roll," he said proudly. "But I hate that town, " Tony said.
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Outside Tucson, Tony and Michael bought pre-wrapped turkey sandwiches and several bottles of Miller beer at a 7-Eleven, topped off the gas tank, and hopped back on I-10 westbound to Phoenix.
"I'm thinking San Francisco," Tony said, unwrapping a new pack of Marlboros. "What do you say, man?"
The ride was a good one. Michael liked Tony. And even though he was hoping for some quiet time somewhere along the road so he might try writing, Michael was enjoying himself. Something he wasn't exactly used to doing.
"Good plan," Michael said. "I've never been there."
"But first, before the city, I need some off-road stuff. I want badlands or something," said Tony. He pulled the car onto the shoulder and opened the map that had been crudely folded and tucked between the front seats. "Let's go here," he said, his index finger tapping the map and pointing to the Prescott National Forest.
Michael smiled. "Rock-n-Roll. Let's do it."
Tony swiftly turned the car off the shoulder's gravel and onto the concrete, tires squealing as he zipped into the far left lane of the highway. The Allman Brother's One Way Out blared from the radio's speakers, some classic rock radio station he tuned into coming out of Phoenix, and simultaneously, Tony and Michael rolled down their windows and howled the bluesy lyrics into the wind, "Cause there's a man down there, might be your man, I don't know!"
Driving north on I-17, Tony and Michael drank their bottles of beer and tried to guess the songs on the radio. Whoever recognized the song first and could yell out the name was entitled to a swig of the other's beer. Tony was good with songs before 1980, but Michael was a killer with anything after 1990. The decade of the 80s was a toss-up, considering Michael was born in 1985 and Tony was just a kid.
"I remember my dad had a David Bowie album," Michael said. It was the first time he had mentioned his father during the ride. "That was the 80s, right?"
"I think." Tony shrugged. "Wasn't Journey big then too? Hate that group."
"My father had a Journey record, too, I'm sure," said Michael.
Tony sang out the opening lines to the chorus, the signature lyric from the most famous of Journey's hit records.
"But, you know, I like your old man better for his love of Ziggy Stardust."
Michael leaned back in his seat and tossed back what was left of the final bottle of beer. "Yeah, I heard a lot of that record," he said, closing his eyes.
"Rolling Stones," Tony said, nodding at the radio. "I'm thinking, what?
1970?"
"You got me," said Michael, his eyes still closed. "And I'm out of beer, anyway."
Tony laughed. "I win, but I lose, right?" He turned off the radio. "Bet Dad had
some Stones albums."
"Probably," Michael said, adjusting his seat so he could lean back even farther. He was done playing the music game, done talking about his father.
"I don't remember what albums my father had around the house," said Tony. "Didn't pay attention, I guess. Didn't pay much attention to anything he did. Tried not to."
There were a few beats of silence and then Michael asked, "Ever see him?" He opened eyes and turned his head toward Tony. "Ever talk to him?"
"Not in years,"
"He alive?"
"Haven't heard otherwise. Spoke with my brother about a year ago. Never mentioned him."
"Didn't get along, huh?"
"Not sure I ever knew him." Tony reached again for the pack of Marlboros on the dashboard. "Not sure he really wanted me to."
"Haven't talked to my dad in a long while," said Michael. "He just kind of gave up on me. It was after Mom died. Not sure I completely understand it. So I guess I gave up on him." Michael turned on the radio again. "R.E.M.," he said, confidently. "Losing My Religion."
"Shit, man," laughed Tony. "You didn't even give me a chance."
Michael put a fist close to his mouth, pretending to hold a microphone and belted out the lyrics to the chorus. Tony joined in.
The remainder of the ride north was filled with songs from the radio and dozens of guesses - Neil Young, Metallica, Green Day, John Hiatt, Sublime. But Tony and Michael were no longer keeping count, and with the empty bottles tossed on the floor of the backseat, there was no longer the reward of a mouthful from the other's beer. The songs that had once been the answers in a simple trivia game, were now markers in the musical score of two lives, the soundtrack for what they hoped to always remember and some of what they wanted to forget.
Prospectors once panned for gold in Lynx Creek in the Prescott National Forest, adventurers searching for precious stones that would transform their lives, settle their debts, or offer them new and better choices. Today you can still hunt for gold along the creek bed, even where it had dried into hard ground. But when Michael and Tony entered Prescott, they knew nothing of past or present riches in and around the valley. Instead, they walked to the first trailhead they saw, a slow climbing hike through scrub and pinyon pine and then to higher elevations of rocky hills and juniper.
"Can you imagine the stars out here?" Tony asked.
"I've slept in the desert before," said Michael, "and the stars are incredible, but it's the sounds of the night you remember. Beautiful and spooky."
"Scorpions crawling in the sleeping bag?" Tony asked, smiling.
"Never had one in the bag, but you just know they're around."
For the next half-hour, Michael and Tony said very little to each other, allowing space in time for their eyes to survey the desert and their minds to imagine life out here in the wide-open world, away from the towns and cities, away from everything. It would be peaceful, they both believed, void of outsiders and influences. It would be a natural life, an authentic life, harsh but real. It was Thoreau who asked men to live deliberately, but Michael knew he lacked the courage to live anything like the man of Walden and found his philosophy, his way of living, to be unrealistic, nearly impossible in a modern life. Still, wild and wide spaces had always given Michael new confidence in the world. Like Thoreau, Michael knew nature fed his soul. It's partly why he returned to New Mexico. Maybe, he thought, men could live thoughtfully, with intent, if they permitted the natural world to guide them, even if only in a small way. Many times when Michael found himself along the secluded stretches of Chicago's lakefront, or under trees in one of the city's big parks, or near an arroyo in New Mexico where he had grown up and to where he had returned, he would consider what it would be like to commit to such a life.
"What a view." Tony called out to Michael who had fallen a bit behind on the trail. "This is what it's all about, man."
Deep greens of pines and browns of desert rock contrasted with the blue sky that touched the tops of the distant mountains.
"Makes you want to fly right out into all of it," Michael said as he stepped to the rocky cliff beside Tony.
Tony smiled, "And that's what we're going to do, my friend. I'm going to help you fly."
The next day, Michael and Tony traveled 500 miles to San Francisco, drove across the Golden Gate, walked through the Haight, downed late night beers in North Beach, then found a room at the Crystal Hotel - what some called a flophouse on Eddy Street - to sleep away the long ride from Arizona, each taking turns on the floor and the bed. And in the morning, Michael found on the wooden table near the door, a napkin slid under a hard plastic bathroom cup, a crushed cigarette butt still smoking from its bottom. On the napkin was a handwritten note.
I hope you find what you want, and always write what you love.
Tony.
That fall, Michael found himself back in Las Cruces. He had taken a full time job teaching English at the high school, and each early morning he had made it his routine to steep a pot of tea, sit at his small kitchen table and look out the window toward the Oregan Mountain range, and write verse that mattered to him. And sometimes on the weekends, Michael would roll out his sleeping bag on the stony desert ground to sleep under the Southwestern stars and dream of flying.
BIO: I am a Chicago-area writer, author, broadcaster and professor at Columbia College Chicago. My first book, Accidental Lessons, won the Royal Dragonfly Grand Prize Award for Literature in 2010. I have had a number of pieces published in literary journals, and have worked as a broadcaster/producer/reporter for CBS Radio and produced documentaries that have aired on public radio stations across the country. I was recently awarded the Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac Project in Orlando.
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"Star Cluster"
Artwork by Peter L. Scacco
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WAIT!
By
GTimothy Gordon
They were waiting together bent over the small twin-seated formica table. An empty highchair sat nearby. The young couple was sitting in the ersatz blue-and-beige food court across from the stylish Thai hostesses manning the T'ian T'an Airport Restaurant where glossy lipsticked quoi tai-tais gather late afternoons for ferocious husband- and- long-gone-children gossip, Gucci lighters and Sobranie Mints Slim 120s parked between delicate cups of oolong. Half-arced by flamed-broiled Whoppers, DQ Blizzards, La Mama´ Cafe´'s aromatic aromatic brews from Africa to Amazon, Sven's Nicest Ices, and Godfather's Pizza ovens, the man and woman seemed not unlike other thirtyish pairs going on to some new place somewhere deciding on food before the prone child in the stroller awoke and would probably need diapering.
He wore black cargo chinos and matching tee, was openly handsome and dark looking, with a cleanly-cropped severe beard and short, responsible, Mediterranean black hair that looked as though it might never need keeping. She wore a plain mustard-yellow pullover and unfashionably faded Wrangler Blues, and creme soft-soled walking shoes or
"flats." She possessed a post-Summer-of-Love freckled face overhung with peevishly
curly brownish-blonde hair so convincingly natural it would have grown in wavy ringlets
had the small dark tie behind undressed it. She seemed more at home with California sun than waiting for the redeye (now blackeye) on the top level of the international concourse.
They spoke quickly and quietly over the speckled formica, perhaps figuring a too tight budget. When he returned with a deep-dish single Personal Pan Pizza-To-GoGo in the small black fryer, she cut deeply all the way through the precuts, pressed two on a plate for him and ate hers directly from the small, gritty black grill with the knife. They took turns splitting the upsized iced Mountain Dew from one straw. They ate as a couple who ate together frequently, and fast, without much talk, concentrating like the Chinese at food, or ch'i, on business at hand. She occasionally peered into the crib at the dozing child who slept attentively and quite breathlessly.
When they finished, he placed the cardboard crusts in the fake wood receptacle, sliding the remains all the way in. He wiped the tray clean with its paper liner advertising the Double Meat Lover's Bellybuster special, extra mozzarella-filled crusts and super-thick slices, and the Double Everything Supreme Magnifico. He put the clean tray in the rack above. Then he went somewhere, probably the bathroom or the duty-frees framing the other wing of the terminal. She surveyed the three strapping pieces of luggage tiered to the dolley, and the child, glancing from time to time over at the fast food counters. Before he returned, the woman awakened the still sleepy, fair-haired child, checked the
diaper, and let him grump his way into the highchair. When her companion returned she had him order a BK Kiddie Kombo that included a small rubber dinosaur or
extraterrestrial from a current extravagant retro or futuristic film.
Perhaps she needed to induce the weary child to eat, probably not wanting him cranky and whiny on a long overnight haul. She fed the child, and herself, when the man briefly disappeared again, taking larger and larger bites from the burger and the fries in front of the boy and healthy swigs of Mellow Yellow Lite from one of the many the luminescent vending machines slotting the naves and apses secreted behind makeshift partitions. When the child finally awoke into his hunger, he devoured the remains as fast as the woman until they and the catsup ended as red greasy swirls on the waxy wrappers. She lightly tidied him up with the rough trademark paper napkins and smeared a quick toilette over her hands. Then she said something to her since returned companion and walked briskly herself down the other far end of the heavily congested passageway before he could say Wait! to where Black Canyon Coffee, Doodles, Sugah Da-Deez Toyz, the toilets, and the up and down escalators were.
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The man waited, even as he bussed his own table of the wrappers, napkins, and food crumbs professionally clean. Then he waited. And he waited still some more. Until it was long past the time anyone might wait for anyone else who was an intimate and took longer than personal needs need taking care of at an international airport, at night. And then he waited some more curled up by the styrofoam red headboard at the tiny table, partnered now by the boy. He lightly teased the undiapered, but fed, child who still sat motionless in the highchair before becoming sleepy again. He waited until most of the other long-term vigilants had long since rolled their grips down the long glossy concourse and disappeared from sight. By then it was long past time waiting for anything.
The groggy child began whimpering to himself. The man probably went from
impatient and morose to sensibly, then insensibly, worried during the long wait. He in took breath deeply. The child too inhaled deeply or perhaps simply sighed before instinctively settling himself back to sleep. His unclenched fingers apparently lost the toy to the floor. And what few long-haul travelers remaining through the dark hours on the upper floor fast food concourse waited with them under the sedate indoor lights. By the warmth of the pizza ovens, hamburger grills, coffee urns, rich smells of breads and cookies, ices secretly shaved behind the giant freezer door, second and third serving- person shifts. The planes streamed in, jetted out, as men and women and children arrived and dispersed with routine efficiency and certainty. Everyone was served hospitably throughout the night. There was just the hypnotic movement of dolleys and luggage coasters, kids being dragged by pliant parent arms, cribs and bassinets, soft-soled footfalls, muffled counter speech, return change dropping from self-service machines, and all the other moving human sounds on the freshly swabbed linoleum before the next
passage in or out of the late-night skies. But it seemed as though no one had moved. Only the room seemed to evolve, take on new lives, newer proxemics, only to release them back to the sky or thick breathless air.
The man paused at La Mama´counter and ordered the special extra frothy and sweet
Latte´ Grande, keeping both eyes peeled on the boy. He thanked the young girl waiting on
him with a smile for working the graveyard shift. She smiled back her Meiyo wenti-ah smile. No problem. When he returned to his small piece of the terminal, he looked down at the child, then down to the bottom floor, so suddenly just breathing just like that.
BIO: "Recent books include EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE, recipient of the Riverstone Poetry P Competition, and GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH(Mellen). Individual poems have been nominated for Pushcarts; Arts and Humanities Endowment Fellowships have also been awarded. An expanded edition of GROUND will be published by Seele this month, FROM FALLING in 2012. New fiction may be found in DOS PASSOS R, TRYST3, and MAIN STREET RAG anthology, THE BOOK OF VILLAINS.
"
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"I Am Here Now"
Artwork by Dan Williams
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PINK
By
Sande Boritz Berger
I am snuggled under the covers listening to the wind howl around the air conditioner my father had recently installed behind my bed. Though when doing so, he blocked all my chances to spy on Philip Burns, the quiet boy next door, for whom I have a curious fascination. A cold draft pushes through the wooden slats, and I slip lower beneath my quilt. Though soon I will have to rise and enter the bathroom where the worst shower in America awaits. Because, as a treat for my sixteenth birthday, my Aunt Shirl, Uncle Ray, and cousin Fern are taking me to today's matinee performance of "My Fair Lady."
I strain to hear the usual sounds of Sunday morning in our house: my father's Mantovani records, burnt butter sizzling in the frying pan, my mother's furry mules scuffing along the kitchen tile. But I hear none of these things. What I hear is a sound like glass, breaking, followed by my mother's shouting.
I run down the hallway and peek into my younger brothers' room. They are sound asleep on the Castro they share. I check for blood, afraid that maybe, this time, they went too far in their sparring. If my mother is not shouting at my brothers, a common occurrence, then she must be shouting at my father, something I've never witnessed. Gripping the railing, I tiptoe halfway down the staircase.
"I don't believe you, Nate!" my mother screams.
"I didn't do anything, one lousy dinner, I swear. Why don't you believe me?"
My father answers.
"Liar, don't touch me." There's metal flying, probably the stainless flatware.
My father's voice sounds closer, so I pivot on the stairs, nearly tripping over the hem of my nightgown. My heart dances like a trapped bunny. I try hiding under the lump of covers, but he finds me.
"Are you awake?"
"Daddy, what is it?" I press myself against the headboard. I wish my bed would travel backwards, through the air conditioner unit and out into the March wind. My father throws himself on my bed and starts to sob. I watch him, this handsome man of gray flannel hats and pin-striped suits. He looks ridiculous surrounded by all this pink - a color I'll refuse to wear until I'm old. His spine moves to the rhythm of his sobs. My hand stretches out in slow motion, as if testing the heat on a stove. My fingers rest on the crown of his head, and for the first time I comfort him, my father, with only my touch. Not the way he usually comforts me - with words pointing to swift solutions.
Later, slouched in the darkened theater listening to Eliza sing, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly,"1 I think of running onto the stage and taking over her role. Maybe then I will stop thinking about my parents.
When Uncle Ray pulls up to the house, I nearly jump from his car. The front door has been left open, and I find my father reading the paper in the living room. He doesn't look at me, the newspaper shielding him from the intensity of my gaze.
"How was it?" He asks.
"Great, really great, so where's Mom?" I have to pee but I don't want to miss anything.
"Honey, she's home," he yells down the hall. I hear my brothers' feet stomping upstairs, a sound so normal I fight back tears. My mother steps into the mauve light of the hallway. She is dressed in a silky robe, and her hair is brushed behind her ears. Her face is flushed, her bow lips puffy, as if, from too much kissing.
"Good show?" she asks.
I nod without moving. I glance over my shoulder to my father, who has lowered his paper to watch my mother.
"Hungry?" she asks.
"Nope."
I look at Dad again - playing a version of "Monkey in the Middle." I am hardly sixteen. I am like a desperate child, hoping to catch a look - something to tell me that everything will be okay.
That night, wrapped in a cocoon of covers, I can't fall asleep. I stand on the bed to peek towards Philip's window, but thanks to Dad's expert carpentry all I see are splinters of light. That's when I ask God to please pay me a visit. I give him what I think is a really nice choice. He can either rest on the edge of the bed or sit at my pretty new desk. The desk my parents painted, together, last summer, in a very pale shade called Seashell Pink.
**1. "Wouldn't It Be Loverly",
Music by Frederick Loewe;
Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
BIO: Sande's fiction and poetry have been published by the Southampton Review, Confrontation Literary Review, and Tri-Quarterly Magazine Issue #126: a short story based on her first novel entitled "A Split-Level Life." Other writing has appeared in Proteus, Reflections, Thirteen Magazine and several small presses and newspapers, including the East Hampton Star. Sande has completed two novels. A 70's suburban story of a double divorce called "Split-Level", and a family saga entitled "The Sweetness" inspired by true events. The latter was a semi-finalist in Amazon's 2010 Breakthrough Novel Awards.
She has taught creative writing as a volunteer at NYU's Medical Center Rusk Institute's pediatric division. Berger has recently completed an MFA in Writing and Literature at Stony Brook Southampton College.
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