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Tope Folarin’s debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, is set partly in Utah and partly in Texas, and it is largely based on the author’s actual experience as the son of Nigerian immigrants. It is a coming of age story and also an immigrant narrative focusing more on the experience of the first generation American children of Nigerian parents. It is both uplifting and heartbreaking—heartbreaking in the way all immigrant narratives are heartbreaking. The father struggles to keep the family together in a small, mostly white small town in Utah after the mother begins to show signs of dementia. Her dementia, undiagnosed, could very well be related to the trauma of leaving home and having to make a life in a strange country. Eventually the mother returns to Nigeria and the father remarries. The narrator is the older son, and he grows up ignorant of both his parents Nigerian culture and popular African American culture. Most of the narrative is about his discovery of his blackness, culturally and politically, and about his search for his mother. It is uplifting in its resolution: despite all the challenges thrown his way the narrator eventually manages to find his own way, and of course because of its beautiful language—the opening section won the Caine Prize in 2013.

—Helon Habila, author of Travelers: A Novel (W.W. Norton) and professor of creative writing at George Mason University, Washington, D.C.

Note: The following short story originally appeared in the 2016 Caine Prize Anthology. 

Our father lifts his axe into the air and brings it down heavily onto the goat’s neck. A lush curtain of blood gushes down from the wound, muscles and tendons peeking out before tumbling into the grass. 

As the blood rushes out, our father snaps one of its legs. And then the other. 

The goat convulses on its side in the middle of our backyard. It is bleating in muffled terror through a gag that our father placed around its mouth just a few minutes ago. The gag is so tight that it has stretched the goat’s mouth into an evil caricature of a smile. A smile now refuted by a bleeding frown a few inches below.

Our uncle is laughing and jumping but we are horrified. We can’t help it — we begin to cry, softly. Our father tells us to shut up. He wipes his face quickly, but not quickly enough. We have already seen his tears. “What did I tell you before?’ he screams. ‘This is supposed to be a moment of joy!”

Yes, he told us this before, as we were planning how we would capture it. He told us that its life had been created for this purpose. He told us that God doesn’t have to provide us with any justifications for His commandments, that our only responsibility is to follow His will. We screamed and cried and refused to help him, we told him we would never do what he had asked us to do, but in the end we obeyed him, because he is our father and he is a man of God.

Yet now we know that we have made a terrible mistake. We have done something evil. It seems as if our father realizes this as well — his eyes are red and brimming. He rubs them and turns away from us.

The goat won’t stop dying. It is trying to wheeze the last notes of its life through its gag, but it’s choking on the long tongues of blood that are violently ejaculated from its second mouth with each ragged breath. The tongues lap at our feet. We cannot move.

After a few minutes death finally comes. A shuddering last breath and it’s over. 

We stand silent for a bit, trying to remind ourselves what our father said when he woke us up this morning. That by doing this we are proving our faith and our commitment to God. That everything would be easier if we thought of him as just another kid. Dad drops his axe and glares at us. Trance broken, we pull on our gloves and aprons and collect the blades and buckets from the stoop.

Our hands will not stop shaking. We start with blades on its skin, cutting away the hair, so slowly, so carefully. Our father makes a long vertical cut from the second mouth to the anus. Something stinks, something is putrid and rotting, and then the steaming innards slide out. We bend and dump the gunk into our buckets. We go to work on the stuff in the buckets, cleaning everything; our father told us this morning that nothing can be thrown away, or none of this will work. Our father and our uncle continue working on the animal, methodically breaking it down. Our mother watches us from the window — she is saying something, no, she is screaming something but we cannot hear a single word because the window is closed.

***

My brothers say I eat too much.

Mom shakes her head as she places another pancake on my plate. “That is the last one. OK? You’ve already had five.’ She tugs at my ear. ‘All this food you are eating, I don’t know where it is going.” 

“Five is definitely not enough for him,” says Dele.

“Yeah, he’s like a monster or something,” says Seun.

They are younger than me, and they’re always saying the same thing, always agreeing with each other, always double-teaming me and everyone else. In other words, they are annoying as hell.

Mom chuckles. “And so? Both of you should mind your business. No one is talking to you. Let him eat. That is what makes him happy.”

She’s right — I love to eat. I am the family garbage disposal, a walking trashcan, and I’m still the skinniest kid in school, probably the skinniest kid in the city.

Just a few months ago, on the stern advice of my doctor, I went on a 3,000-calorie diet before trying out for the basketball team. Dr Kolson checked my reflexes, my blood pressure, placed his cool hands on my back, asked me to cough, and did a double-take when I told him my plans.

“Well, son,” he said, pulling his glasses down his nose. “You’re going to have to gain some weight.”

Mom supported the idea, and Dad quietly acquiesced, so they bought me several boxes of power bars, and I gorged myself on six meals a day all summer long. I’d never been happier. At the end of the summer, I stepped on a scale and, of course, a net loss of three pounds.

I polish off my pancake in about three seconds and join Mom at the stove. “Please,” I say. I give her my best smile. The one she can’t resist. ‘Just one more. I promise.’ This is our Saturday morning ritual. After my fifth pancake I come and see her at the stove, and she’ll make another one, and I’ll devour it, and then another, and then another. Usually I eat ten pancakes. Sometimes more.

Mom’s wearing one of her flowing fluorescent wrappers, and she looks over at Dad as she tucks in an unravelling edge. Dad turns a page in his Bible. The sun is streaming in from the kitchen window onto the table and his tired face. He hasn’t said a word to me, to anyone this morning. A stack of pancakes sits uneaten next to his arm.

“That is all for now,” she says. “Lunch is coming soon. Try to be patient.” She turns away from me.

For a moment all I feel is anger washing through me, for a moment I am actually full, this anger is so satisfying, but then my stomach begins to growl, loudly, insistently. I place my plate in the sink, go up to my bedroom and close the door.

***  

“Can I come in?” the voice says. It’s Mom.

“Yes, Ma.”

Mom opens the door and surveys my room. My Star Trek: The Next Generation poster on the wall, my slim bookshelf filled with my favorite fantasy novels, my unmade mattress on the floor. I am sitting next to the bookshelf, bouncing a tennis ball off the wall.

“Can I come sit next to you?”

“Yes, Ma.”

Mom strides over and sits. She leans against me, and I can smell her hair. It smells earthy and brown, and I realize that I haven’t smelled her hair in years. Now a rush of memories — my small arms around her hot neck; she’s leaning close and rubbing her nose against mine; she’s tickling my neck after whispering in my ear.

“I am sorry about earlier,” she says. “I know you are still hungry. I am already preparing lunch.”

“It’s OK.”

“That is actually the reason I came to see you.” She takes the ball from my hand. She tosses it into the air, catches it, tosses it again. Then she places it on the floor. She clears her throat.

“I know this will be difficult, but you need to find a way to eat less.”

“Ma?”

“You need to eat less food.”

“Why?”

Mom pauses.

“I cannot tell you why. But trust me that it is for your own good.”

She stands and walks over to my bed. She sits. I can’t remember the last time she actually visited my room. Dad is usually the one who barges in, who is waking me up or lecturing me or searching around for something or another. It doesn’t feel like my room now that she’s here. It feels like we’re somewhere else, or like I’m dreaming, one of those dreams that seem so familiar and real that you almost forget to wake up.

She looks down for a moment, and when she looks up her eyes are red, tears beading at the corners. “Please, my son,” she says. “Try to find the strength to eat less. Especially around your father. If you get too hungry, you can tell me and I will try to find something for you. But it is important that from today you find a way to be satisfied with what I feed you.” She leans toward me and grabs my hand. “This is very, very important. Can you promise me that you will at least try? Can you try for your mother?”

She seems frantic now. I am bewildered. But I can’t stand to see my mother upset.

“Yes, Ma. I will try.”

“Yes, my son. Just do it for me. Just for a little bit. I love you so much.”

She hugs me and her shoulders are shaking and I rub her back like she once rubbed mine, in those days before I could walk or talk.

In those days before I consciously made promises I know I can never keep.

*** 

My father is a prophet.

God speaks to him all the time. God told him that Mr Parker, our mailman, had cancer. One day my father told Mr Parker to go see his doctor about his colon, and a few days later Mr Parker returned with his wife, and she would not stop hugging my father, she would not stop crying, she would not stop thanking my father for saving his life.

God told him that the Challenger would fall from the sky. I will never forget that morning, my entire family gathered around the television, the Challenger rising so beautifully into the air, my heart soaring with it, and then my father saying it is going to explode, it is going to explode, and I look back at my father, terrified that he might be right, then back at the screen, praying that he’s wrong, and then that beautiful white blip detonates and dissolves, a trail of fire in the sky, and I can’t stand to look any longer, instead I look at my father, with hatred now, because something tells me he willed this into existence.

God told him that my uncle would be born retarded. My father has told us many times how he told his own mother that God was going to punish her because she refused to find another husband after her first husband — my grandfather — died. Because she abandoned my father and woke up in a new man’s bed every morning. When she discovered she was pregnant she remained home, and her mother came by each day and fussed over her, did anything she asked, and her sisters hugged her close and read stories to her growing stomach. For the most part my father ignored her — the few times he spoke to her he told her she would be having a boy, and that the boy’s brain would never function properly. She cursed at my father, told him to leave her alone, and then her water broke and her family rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a beautiful boy whose eyes were too far apart, whose mouth was locked in a permanent smile.

My father is not a prophet.

God did not tell him that each of his businesses — including his computer business, his shoe business, his grocery store, his electronics store, his furniture store, his Nigerian clothes import-export business, his Nigerian news magazine — would fail.

God did not tell him that Mandela would leave prison one day. Whenever we heard about South Africa on the news, heard about how the world was applying pressure to the government of South Africa to release Mandela, my father would say it will never happen, it will never happen, Mandela will die in prison. He said this on the day we saw Mandela walk out of prison, looking older than we ever could have imagined; even as Mandela raised his fist in the air my father said it will never happen. To this day my father believes that Mandela died in the Seventies, that the man who left prison that day was an imposter.

God did not tell him that his mother would die. I’m not sure if my father ever believed she would die. One day he heard she was sick and he purchased a gold cross and prayed over it for three days. He sent the cross to her by express mail, and the following week his sister called and told him she had passed away. My father shook his head and hung up the phone and continued watching TV as if nothing had happened.

God did not tell my father that he would struggle so much in America. My father still can’t believe that he’s so broke. He still believes that our lives aren’t real, that any day now he will wake up in a mansion with a squadron of luxury cars outside, hundreds of gold bars piled neatly under his bed.

If you ask my father about these things he will tell you that God has never lied. Someone will step forward and say that Mandela died in prison. His mother will poke out of her grave and visit us in America. My father will be wealthier than anyone who has ever lived.

*** 

Dad’s sitting at the table when I get to the kitchen, almost like he’s been waiting for me.

“I guess it’s time for your nightly cookie,” he says.

Before I can deny it, or offer an excuse, Dad shakes his head. “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” he says. “Go get a couple, and get one for me as well.”

I wonder how long he’s known. For the past year I’ve been sneaking cookies out of the kitchen every night, around midnight or so. I started doing this after I turned 16. Around then I noticed that my constant, gnawing hunger had only grown worse. It no longer mattered how much I ate during dinner; at midnight I’d wake up to my growling stomach, and I’d spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to rise so I could eat again. After a few nights of this I decided that I’d steal a cookie or two out of the pantry at night, after everyone was asleep. I decided to do this even though my father once told me that my hunger is a burden I will have to bear for the rest of my life. That I would prove my worthiness to God if I learned how to control it. ‘God gives each of us a weakness so that we have a chance to draw closer to Him,’ he told me. I must have been nine or ten. “Your weakness is your hunger. If you can learn to overcome it, you will be proving to God that your devotion to him is more important than your greatest temptation. And He will reward you greatly.”

For many years afterward I repeated these words to myself at night, like it was my mantra, like it was a prayer, as my stomach knotted up and consumed itself. For a while these words were enough. But then I turned 16 and my hunger was threatening to become the most important part of me. I decided to do something about it. Just one or two cookies each night. Consumed quietly in the comfort of my bed.

Even after what Mom told me a few days ago I can’t stop. I can’t.

Now I go to the cupboard and pull three chocolate-chip cookies from the package on the top shelf. I pass one to Dad and sit across from him. He shoves it into his mouth. “Come on, eat up,” he says.

I wonder if this is a test. Maybe he wants to see if I’ll actually eat the cookies in front of him. If I will sin in his presence. I sit silently while he munches. When he finishes he asks me to pass him another one. “And finish that one in your hand,” he says. “I promise I won’t bite you.”

I slip the cookie into my mouth and eat it. It doesn’t taste as good as it does when I’m by myself. After I’ve finished it I wait for that surge of relief to pulse through me but it never comes.

My father rises and walks to the window.

“God has never led me astray,” he says. “Never. Not once. Even when I think he’s wrong. Even when I doubt His power and wisdom, He proves me wrong. But this thing that God has asked me to do now — it is too much.”

He’s facing the window, so I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“Dad, I don’t think I heard you.”

“Yes you did.”

God asking too much? I don’t know what to say. This can’t be my father. My father who prays at least ten times a day. My father who insists that we attend church four times a week. My father who once banned us from watching anything but Christian television for a year. My father who instantly decided to marry my mother after she recited the first chapter of Psalms from memory during their first date. My father who fasts for days at a time, sometimes weeks, because, he says, God told him to.

I’ve never seen my father this unsure of himself before.

What has God asked him to do?

My father remains where he is. I don’t say a word.

I shrug. “Well, you’ve always told me to trust God, no matter what.”

Dad turns from the window and smiles at me. Then he returns to the table.

“Did I ever tell you that you were a miracle baby?” he says.

“No.”

“Ah. I guess I was waiting until you were a man. I might as well tell you now.” He nods and closes his eyes. “When your mother was about five months pregnant we went to the hospital for a routine check-up. The moment the doctor placed the stethoscope on her stomach I could tell that something was wrong. The doctor turned on some machines and attached some wires to your mother and called some other doctors in. She didn’t answer any of our questions. About half an hour later she told us that your heart had stopped beating.”

My father pauses. He licks a finger and presses it to the table. When he lifts it I can see that a few crumbs are attached. He slips the finger into his mouth and continues.

“Before your mother became pregnant with you she’d had five miscarriages. She had never carried a child for more than three months. When you got to four months I knew that you were meant to live. That you were our blessing. So when the doctor told me that your heart had stopped beating I smiled at her and told her that I respected her opinion, but that I answered to a higher power. Then I grabbed your mother’s hand and we went to the car and I began to drive. We drove for about an hour, and then the car broke down. Your mother asked me where we were going. I ignored her. I got out of the car and fixed it and started driving again. Your mother started screaming at me, telling me that she wanted to go back home, that she needed some time to mourn. I told her that no one would be mourning anything. I continued to drive. By the time the car broke down again she had fallen asleep. I fixed the car once more and continued driving. Four hours later we arrived at the church where I was saved. I woke up your mother and we walked out of the car, and I knocked on the door until the pastor opened it. When he saw my face he knew what was happening.”

My father is smiling now, and I feel like something is expanding inside me.

“I thought the prayer would take hours and hours, but my pastor just laid his hands on her stomach and prayed for only a few minutes. And then he looked at me and said it was done. And though I have often doubted God’s ability to do the impossible at the moment I knew that you had been healed.” My father shakes his head. “The pastor told me that you were the key to the success of this family. That you would serve a special purpose in our lives. And I believed him. I knew you would.”

My father rises, wipes his face with the back of his hand.

“So whatever happens, always remember that you are here for a reason. Your purpose was preordained.” My father leans forward and kisses my forehead. He has never done this before. Then he turns and walks up the stairs.

After a few moments I shut off the light and go to my room and slip under the covers.

My stomach is silent. I feel full, so so full.

*** 

Before last week I’d never heard Mom and Dad scream at each other. Before last week, whenever they were upset with each other, they’d exchange a look and disappear into their room for an hour or so, and when they emerged they’d smile at each other and the rest of us with their entire bodies. Last week, though, Mom said something to Dad, or maybe Dad said something to Mom, and they stomped off to their room and slammed the door and screamed at each other in Yoruba for almost two hours. After they finished they left their room separately, first Dad, then Mom. They ignored each other for the rest of the day.

This happened again the next day. And the next.

Now all they do is fight. Anywhere. Everywhere. They slam plates and slam doors and slam each other with their words. Dele says they are arguing about God. Seun says they are arguing about life and death. I’m not sure what they’re arguing about — my Yoruba is OK, I guess, but for some reason Dele and Seun have always understood Yoruba better than me, even though they are younger, even though we were all born in the States. All I know for sure is that Mom is feeding me less and less. Last Saturday she prepared only four pancakes for me. There are no more cookies in the cupboard. Mom says I can’t snack between meals any more.

I’ve never been this hungry in my life.

Two nights ago Mom came into my room and sat on my bed. I know it was her because I opened my eyes just a little when she walked in. She stroked my hair and kept stroking it. She said a prayer over me — I could not hear her words. Then she whispered something in my ear, like she used to when I was little. She said I will always be with you.

*** 

Dad says: “Go. Chase them.” 

My brothers and I stand, dumb, glancing at one another, and Dad says “Go on.”

Uncle is laughing and clapping his hands. Dad’s expression does not change. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so serious before.

“This is what my brothers and I did when we were your age. Your grandfather made us earn our food. All of you have been too spoiled by America. You can just go to the store and buy bread. You can just go to a machine and buy candy. That is why you don’t value your food. It is not your fault. There is just too much here.”

And when he says ‘here’ he lifts his hands, indicating — I guess — the sky, the grass, the farm, the sun, the goats. Uncle nods solemnly, as if he’s just heard someone deliver an acceptance speech for the Nobel, even though we’ve all heard this speech about a million times. Every three or four months Dad drives us to some random farm somewhere, and he gives the same speech before asking us to milk some cows or feed some hens or pluck a few fat red apples from a tree. We’ve never had to chase any animals, though. Dele and Seun immediately assume a runner’s stance but I don’t move. I have my maturity to defend after all; I’m too old to be chasing a bunch of little dirty-ass goats. I stare at the ground, but I know that Dad is losing patience, charm exhausted, giving me his better-do-it-or-I-will-embarrass-you-in-public look. Which, considering where we are, is kind of ironic. My father isn’t into irony. I lean forward and place my hands on the ground, like Carl Lewis.

I want to be mad at Dad but now I’m thinking about goat meat, how soft it is, how delicious. Saliva floods my mouth. Maybe if I catch a goat Dad will allow me to eat more than my usual share tonight.

“More like it,” Dad says. “So here are the rules: This isn’t just about the chasing. The first to catch a goat and tackle it to the ground wins.”

“Wins what?” I ask. I’m thinking about goat stew. I wipe my mouth.

Dad says, mysteriously: “You’ll see.”

He lifts his head slightly: “ON YOUR MARKS!”

I sense my brothers at the edges of my peripheral vision, just far enough out so that I can’t really see them, but I can feel them lurking, waiting for an opportunity to burst onto my field of sight.

“GET SET!”

The goats start rustling; maybe they notice the tension in our legs.

“GO!!!”

The goats immediately scatter; we chase them all over the field, probably looking quite goatish ourselves, while Dad and Uncle yell directions at us. The goats are quick, cutting from one direction to another in an instant, kicking the air with their hind legs when they sense that we are close. 

Dad says USE YOUR BRAINS, NOT YOUR LEGS! and I examine my surroundings for the first time. There’s a large chain-link fence bordering the field, and the goats — only three of them — are basically running from one end to the other, and sometimes through us as if we’re in the way. I focus on the goat directly in front of me. It has mottled black-and-grey fur, and is shooting shit pellets at me with every step. I stop to catch my breath and Dad says NO STOPPING so I jog while trying to formulate a plan. I figure if I can somehow chase the goat into the fence, angle it in a certain direction, I can pounce just as it’s about to turn. I experiment with this approach, I run hard at the goat and try to force it towards the fence, but the goat catches on to my plan after a few seconds, and now it will only run parallel to the fence. Dad yells NICE TRY, SON.

Another plan. I slow down, almost to a walk, and try to lull the goat into thinking I’m tired. The damn goat figures out what I’m doing before I can start sprinting again, though, and runs even faster.

GETTING TIRED? Dad asks, and Uncle begins to laugh once more. 

I drop all the intellectual pretense and began running full-throttle at the goat in front of me. The goat looks back and for the first time I see fear in its eyes. I keep running, imagining the ground as a massive trampoline, trying to leap forward with each step. I gain on the goat and keep going and keep going. Just as I’m about to jump on the goat and tackle it to the ground I look back and notice that Dad is chasing me. I laugh, enjoying the surprise, executing sharp cuts in the dirt, turning suddenly to the left when Dad tries to cut me off, threatening him constantly with my high back kick. I look back again and see my father breathing hard, wheezing, and I laugh louder, run faster, I’m gaining strength, the goats are my friends now. I feel the wind resisting my face and arms, but the running is glorious. I hear someone grunt and look back again; Uncle’s chasing me too, I laugh harder while evading, dodging, cutting, wondering why is he using his arms like that? So awkward, so ungainly, almost as if he’s never run before, for the two seconds I see him running he has already pushed himself to the edge of exhaustion.

I dodge again. Uncle and Dad try to work together, they try to trap me in a corner, and when they’re about to jump I bolt between them, galloping triumphantly away, sticking my tongue out at them, I run, run, run. Dad and Uncle finally stop, they’re grabbing their knees and panting at the ground, and I stop too, pointing and laughing, jumping up and down with excitement, and someone kicks me hard in the small of my back. The air is evacuating my lungs as I collapse, and someone punches me in the ribs and slams my head into the ground. I feel my arms and legs being tied together and I hear Seun yelling I GOT HIM! I GOT HIM! Dad says GOOD JOB, SON, I’M PROUD OF YOU and lifts me into the air. Someone punches me hard in my kidney. I don’t know what’s happening I thought this was a game I’ve never been so scared in my life. Fists coming at me from every direction, someone spitting on my face, stabbing me with sharp metal. I GOT HIM, I GOT HIM, says Seun and I feel myself being lowered, hands violating every part of my body, and they swing me one, two, three times and throw me into the trunk of the station wagon. 

*** 

Dad ignores me as I lie bleeding on the grass. Everything hurts. I want to apologize for whatever I did wrong, to promise I’ll never sin again, but there is a gag in my mouth. I start to scream but my father ignores me. Seun and Dele are standing far away from me. They look terrified. Almost as terrified as I feel. Where’s Mom? I try to scream her name. My father looks up at the sky. He keeps saying the same thing: ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? Then he looks off to the side, wildly, like he is expecting someone to show up. No one does. My father is crying, his shoulders are heaving, he lifts his axe into the air and I close my eyes.

Reprinted with permission of the author.

“You shall find me again, and you shall lose me…”  – Marcel Schwob, The Book of Monelle

2034

We might be crowded in cells. Who’s to say? There are no walls. No edge to reach. The guards snatch us from the green darkness. The victims wail and plead. When it’s my turn, I hear your voice again: Remember everything and find me.

2007

Jennifer and I set out the telescope for the kids the morning Orpheus would be visible. While we waited for Angela and Emily to wake up, Jennifer and I took turns looking up at the morning sky. “This is historical,” I exclaimed. “We’re part of history.” Jennifer set down her coffee and scooted me out of the way. She adjusted the telescope and stood still for a moment. Her mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe what I’m looking at right now. It feels unreal.” “What are you seeing?” “It’s blue,” she said shakily. 

The girls appeared at the sliding glass door. “Good morning, Em!” I swooped our youngest into my arms. “Are you ready to look at this new planet?” Angela went to her mom. “I wish Ryan could see this,” Jennifer said. Emily looked up toward the tiny shimmering dot. “What if the people on Ominous—” “Orpheus…” Angela corrected her. “Yeah, whatever, what if they were looking back at us?” It wasn’t a totally ridiculous question. NASA had said there were signs of life on the planet, but no indications it was life like ours. As I explained this, I watched Jennifer fall back onto a deckchair with a deep sigh. We caught each other’s eyes. I’m fine, her face seemed to say. 

1969

“Pass me a beer, mijo,” Aunt Maria said from the front-seat of Mom’s green Pontiac. I pushed my little sister Rosa’s sleeping head off my lap and passed the ice cold can to the front. “Where are we, Mom?” The car lurched slowly left then right and back again, climbing higher and higher into the mountains. “We’re almost there, mijo.” Mom’s eyes sparkled in the rearview. “I’ll give you a lemon drop if you stop asking.” “I want one,” Rosa whined, now awoken. “You’ll get one if you stop begging.” Rosa squirmed up and pressed her face to the window. The trees were black and red. Bolts of sun flashed between the canopy of fragrant limbs. 

Mom and Aunt Maria spoke in whispers. “Has he called you?” my aunt asked. Mom shook her head. I stared out the window and caught Rosa’s and my reflection. She’d fallen asleep again.

1980

I was out on a jog approaching Casper’s Cafe. The road and air were all mine, new and hot from a late fall heatwave. My legs and lungs might have conquered the world. The previous nine hours of hunching over car engines existed in some other life. I got to 16th Street and watched the sun set behind the university buildings.  

Up ahead my friend Paul, who it was rumored might leave school early to play for the Warriors, stepped from his lime green Charger, and as I approached, stuck his hand out to give me a high five. As our hands were about to meet I heard screeching tires and then there was sudden darkness. When my eyes opened, I saw my legs tangled up between aluminum spokes and a body splayed out over me. Paul lifted the person up. “Are you alright?” he asked them. Then looking down at me, he said, “Robert, don’t move yet. Hang on.” He bent down and carefully moved my legs away from what I realized was a bicycle. “Shit, man…it looks bad.” My right foot was badly twisted, bleeding, and already swelling. “I think it’ll be okay,” I lied. The pain was only partially overshadowed by the rising anger I felt for this stupid person who had run me over with their bike. I couldn’t even bring myself to look up at them. Until I saw her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was looking at Paul and thought he was waving at me, and I just didn’t see you.” In an instant, my anger drained away. Even the pain disappeared. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She swiped her long brown hair from her face and hid a slight laugh. “Are you laughing?” I asked. “No, sorry, this isn’t funny. I feel terrible.” One of her socks had fallen from her knee down to her ankle. I pushed it back up, for a moment touching her golden brown skin. But that was enough. I was in love.

“You’re not going out like that!” Mom shouted at Rosa from the kitchen. “You haven’t even seen what I’m wearing…” Rosa was in the front living room with me. My room away from my room as I nursed my broken leg. Rosa was dressed how she typically dressed: torn black jeans and dirty white sneakers. She had tucked her Clash t-shirt into her jeans and over that she had a black leather jacket, pins and patches and spikes covering it from collar to collar. “I can smell that leather from here!” Mom shouted. Rosa sat at the opposite end of the couch as me. “How’s your leg feeling?” “How do you think?” I tilted my head back, miming the agony for her. “Stop. You’re faking…” Rosa slumped further into the couch. “Mom said I can only go if you drive me. She has to stay here for her friends.” “I can’t drive like this.” I pointed at my leg propped on the chair. “Robert,” she begged. “If you don’t take me, we’ll both be stuck here for her party. Do you really want that? You wanna play cards all night?” “No, I’m going to watch TV until my eyes fall out—” “You’re not going unless he takes you, Rosa!” Mom shouted again. My sister and I marveled at how Mom somehow stayed part of the conversation without actually being close enough to hear us. “Where do you have to go?” I asked. “We’re seeing the Looters at the Golden Garage.” “They let fifteen year olds in there? You know it’s a strip club—” Rosa shot up and threw a pillow at my head. “Sshhh…she’ll never let me—” “Robert,” Mom shouted again. “You’re taking her. And stay out. I don’t want you ruining my party if you’re going to sit on that couch all night being lazy.”

“Bad Girls” was on the stereo when I got to Paul’s house for his New Year’s party. A gaggle of girls surrounded him in the kitchen. “Robert,” he smiled. “Good to see you, man. How’s the leg?” I shrugged. “It’s funny you came actually.” “Why’s that?” Paul threw his arm over my shoulder, spilling some of his beer, and turned me around. “Because Jennifer’s sitting right out there…” He pointed toward the backyard. “Who?” “The girl who hit you, man…” 

I clumsily pushed my way through the crowd, my heart racing, hands sweating like you wouldn’t believe. She was sitting in a plastic lawn chair beneath the yellow porch light, staring toward the back fence. “Would you like to dance?” I said. She shook herself out of a daze and looked up. Her eyes were red. “I don’t feel like—” She stopped. “Robert? How’d you find me?” “I’m friends with Paul.” “I know, but I meant…nevermind.” She wiped beneath her eyes. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m here.” She looked up at the sky. “I’m really happy to see you again.” She grabbed her rainbow-colored shoulder bag with a sad looking daisy pinned to the strap and started to leave. “Wait, no,” I stopped her. It took me a while to think. “Do you have a ride home?”

Thankfully, Casper’s Cafe was still serving food, though I’m sure the waitresses would have preferred the night off. “Let me buy you something?” Jennifer asked. “I feel terrible about your leg.” I waved her off. “I can’t let you do that.” I looked down at her bag and noticed the sewn-on patches. I pointed at the peace sign. “I like that one.” “Oh…” She picked at the patch and blushed. “We don’t have to stay…” For a split second, I feared I had offended her. Or maybe I had embarrassed her? With too much eagerness, I blurted out, “No, I want to stay. I could eat a horse, I think.” She laughed. “A horse?” She searched Casper’s menu above the counter. “I don’t think they serve that here.” 

We ordered hamburgers and waited for them at a booth near the front window. Sixteenth Street was filling with college kids readying for the countdown. When our food came, Jennifer took the meat from her burger and set it on the edge of her plate. “You don’t like meat?” She dipped the bun into ketchup. “Not all the time. Do you want it?” I took the patty and placed it on my burger. “So do you go to school with Paul?” “Yeah, this is my first year…” She paused to sip from her soda. “…Paul’s in my accounting class. How do you know him?” “High school. Are you studying to become an accountant? You don’t look like an accountant.” “What do I look like?” “I don’t know. Dancer or some kind of artist?” She crinkled her nose and sipped from her soda again. “Honestly, I hate accounting. I don’t know what I’m there for yet. I’m really the worst student. What year are you?” She waited expectantly now. I had known this question would come up, and though it didn’t bother me at all I wasn’t in school, I was hesitant to tell her. “I actually don’t go to school. I’d be in my second year though, like Paul.” “So you work then? Where do you work?” “At an auto shop—” “And you run…” “Yeah, I used to.” I faked a frown and nodded toward my leg. “I’m so sorry. You have no idea how terrible I feel. Are you on a track team?” “Well, yeah…cross country team. The Club Championships were last month but I missed it obviously.” I knew there was bitterness in my voice but I wished there hadn’t been. “Our team did fine without me so it wasn’t a big deal.” I lied. We had actually been ranked in the top ten but without my low score, and because it was unseasonably warm the morning of the race, we finished closer to last. 

Jennifer stared at me, on the verge of saying something, but then she stopped and turned to look out at the street. “Listen,” I said. “You seemed like you were crying at Paul’s. I don’t want to intrude, but if you wanted to talk, you know, I’m basically a stranger, so it might be easier to talk to me about whatever’s going on.” She slumped in her seat and toyed with the straw in her glass. “I don’t think you’re a stranger.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a small red book with library tape disintegrating across its spine. She leafed through the pages randomly. “I shouldn’t have gone out really, but my roommate said I should.” She breathed slowly, her eyes glossy with tears. “My aunt died last week. That’s it. I was—I am just sad.” “Were you close to your aunt?” “My Aunt Carolee, yes.” She was still flipping through the red book but then stopped. “Have you read this?” She pushed the book over to me, but I couldn’t make out the title. “What I wanted was to read poetry. So first, I borrowed this book by Oscar Wilde. Then, a few weeks ago, as I was reading it, I realized I had no idea what he was even talking about because he’s always referencing gods and goddesses. So I went back to the library and asked the librarian about the Greeks, and she gave me all these plays by Plato and Aristotle…” I recognized the name Plato and looked down at the book. “Have you read any Plato? That one is the Phaedo. I really don’t understand it at all. I want to, but I just don’t. And it really irritates me because when I started school, I just wanted to read something beautiful. I wanted to hear a poet’s voice in my head and feel what they felt—” She stopped with an exhausted sigh. “Maybe you should write the poems.” Jennifer considered this for a moment and scribbled quickly in the margins of the Phaedo. “What are you writing?” “Just what you said.” She finished and returned the book to her bag. 

From the kitchen, the workers started the countdown. Jennifer leaned over the table. “So what’s your resolution going to be?” Her eyes stayed on me, waiting for my answer. I detected in them a faint suspicion. As the workers’ countdown reached 1, I knew I had missed my chance to say anything remotely smart or romantic. What seemed most important to me then was not my plan for the future, but my wish that the countdown would not end. That we could stay suspended in the countdown for any amount of time longer.

2003

Jennifer poked her head over the second floor landing. “Hey, could you turn the TV down a little?” I grunted and grudgingly turned the volume down. But, as soon as I heard the door close, I turned it back up and laughed to myself. A few minutes later she came downstairs and went into the kitchen. I could hear her pacing around, opening and closing cabinet doors. She washed the dishes then came out. “What’s your deal lately?” “Give me a break…” I muttered and turned the television off. Jennifer stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed. She was breathing heavily, sucking in her lips. “Why do you always stare at me like that?” “Jesus Christ…” I threw my hands up and rubbed my face. “I’ll be in bed in a few minutes. I just want to watch some TV.” “You know I have to get up early tomorrow. I shouldn’t have to come out here—” “Then don’t fucking come out here…” “I have to drive all the way to San Francisco tomorrow, you know that.” Jennifer turned for the stairs, stopping at the first step. “You could come too, if you wanted.” Her voice had softened. “I have work.” I picked up the remote. “I’m not one of your hippie friends that wants to protest the war.” Jennifer stomped up the stairs and slammed our door closed. I held the remote in my hand, weighing it, and tapping it against my leg. Why were those people wasting their time? Nothing they did would make a single difference. I hoped they’d all be arrested.

1981

Jennifer wove in and out of the graves at the Old Blue River Cemetery. It seemed like we were traveling back in time the deeper we went: Zsoka 1968 Morgenstern 1957 Joby 1940 Roydon 1911 Knaggs 1882 Hall 1874 Specht 1861…and then to the gravestones so blackened and hidden by moss, there was no telling who was buried beneath, nor in what year they died. “Why’d you take me here of all places,” I said jokingly. “Quiet! You said you’d let me take you anywhere…” 

We reached a part of the cemetery forgotten by the caretakers. A small iron gate whined its welcome as we entered the enclosed plot. “It’s the oldest part of the cemetery,” Jennifer explained somberly. “Some of the original settlers were buried here. Before there was Blue River, they called it Sutter’s Town, after an old miner-turned-shopkeeper. He’s buried over there. Indians killed him—supposedly.” Jennifer dropped her shoulder bag atop the decaying leaves and pine needles. “This is it,” she said. “Sutter.” She ran her hand over the small and insignificant stone marker. “How you know it’s his? You can’t see his name or the dates.” “It was in a brochure for the cemetery. Came with a little map.”

We sat near the grave without talking. At first, I had been uncomfortable with the tombstones. Death had always seemed like a frightening thing to me. And why not? Statues of the Stations of the Cross lined the walls of Saint Ursula’s, and I very clearly got the message that dying was an awful and terrible experience. I never wanted to die, or be anywhere near death. But, there in the cemetery with Jennifer, the solitude and quiet of the place was not scary at all. Even the dead needed company. 

“Would you mind if I did something?” Jennifer already had her hand inside her bag. “I wouldn’t mind. They might though,” I nodded at those beneath us. “Okay,” she said, pulling out a stack of cards. “These are my tarot cards.” She spread the deck out on the ground and looked them over. “What do you do with them?” She paused and closed her eyes. “I’m asking them a question…” After she opened her eyes, she reached out and grabbed a card at random. “Oh…” Her mouth hung open. “What does it say?” She passed the card to me, and I turned it over in my hand: Two of Cups. “What does this one mean? What did you ask?” Jennifer took the card back and set it before Sutter’s marker. “Jennifer? Tell me!” I pinched her blouse and wrapped her in a hug. “It told me I was right.”

1982

“What are you working on?” I asked as I shut the door to our room. Jennifer was hunched over her books and papers on the desk my mom had taken from the airbase. Jennifer had painted it emerald green and added silver stars and pink and purple swirls. “Well, I’m trying to figure this poem out,” she yawned and leaned back to catch me as I fell behind her onto our twin bed. “Is the poem for a class or is it one of yours?” I looked down at my hands and picked at the car grease beneath my nails. Now that I had been promoted into the office, I wasn’t going to be coming home so caked in dirt. “I should shower before dinner.” Jennifer turned and gathered up the papers. “It’s one of mine. I didn’t like some of them so now I’m cutting them up and taping them back together in different orders.” She held the taped up sheets of paper for me to see and then laid down on the bed, tugging on my shirt and breathing in. “I don’t want you to ever shower. I love how you smell.”

2008

Even though I was in the backyard, I could hear Jennifer’s car pull into the garage. She was returning from her double shift at the hospital. I watered the lawn, pulled the last of the weeds and tossed the clippings into the green waste. A little later I went inside, tired and thirsty. “Jen?” I called into the house. No answer. I changed out of my work shoes and went up to the second floor. Jennifer’s office door was open, and I could see the back of her head facing the computer, the news scrolling by. “Hey, what’s up?” I leaned against the door. She was still in her scrubs. “Reading,” she said flatly. Then swiveling in her chair, she faced me. “Why are you staring at me? I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. Do you mind?” She reached down and pulled out a stack of paper from her bag. “Why do you have to talk to me like that? I just came up to say hi.” She started writing something on the papers. “Talk to you like what? I’m busy.” There was no point in trying to talk to her when she was in a mood like this. I backed away and turned to go back downstairs. She called out, “Can you shut my door?” I pretended not to hear her and continued downstairs. 

Later that night when she came to bed, she lay next to me and in the darkness said, “I won’t be home until really late tomorrow because of the election canvassing thing.” I swallowed and grunted, “Okay…” “Okay…so you need to pick up Emily from cheer practice and make sure they get dinner.” She knew I would. There was so much I wanted to say to her, but it was easier to say nothing and let her sleep. Tomorrow might be different.

2013

Emily was in tears as she spilled through the front door. “What is it, Mom? What happened?” Jennifer and I jumped from the kitchen table, where we were having a hard time looking over our finances. “What are you talking about, Em?” I said. “Something happened up there, on the planet. I saw it on my phone—what channel’s the news?” She ran to the TV and turned it on. 

On the screen was what appeared to be an image of the surface of Orpheus, blue and shimmering. The reporter’s voice came on: I don’t know if you can see this, but this image, these satellite images have been given to us by PanGen, and they’re saying it shows in real time some type of explosion at or near the surface of Orpheus. The images are remarkably clear. You can see an object crossing into the frame here, and then a moment later, this bright green flash. 

Jennifer comforted Emily and tried to explain that everything would be okay. Maybe that wasn’t right? There was still so much we didn’t know about this explosion, yet what I found myself wondering was why had the images been provided by PanGen? Where was NASA?

1984

We were married at the Blue River court house but had the ceremony in her parent’s backyard. We didn’t have a wedding party. Just us in front of our closest family and friends. Jennifer’s Aunt Sofia recited a poem and my best friend Victor read a verse from the Bible. 

It was the middle of July so I didn’t bother wearing a tuxedo. Instead I wore a pair of white linen pants and a coral blue v-neck from The Fashion Barn. Jennifer wore a white cotton dress with a braided leather belt cinched around her waist. She insisted we go barefoot so we could experience as much of the world as possible. Her hair was long and golden brown, a bouquet of the tiniest forget-me-nots and other wild blooms as her crown. She smelled like the summer and like every common school boy, I prayed the summer would last forever. 

Near the end, Jennifer and I sat down in the grass beneath an apple tree her dad Jerry had planted years before. We watched our families and friends together, laughing and kissing, saying their goodbyes or whatever else they were saying. I noticed Jennifer had something in her hands. “What is that?” She passed the thing over to me. “I don’t know. I just found it right now when I sat down. I think it’s a bookmark.” I studied the long and flimsy piece of paper. “This looks old.” Jennifer took it back. “It probably is. Look, you can’t even make out where it’s from. It’s probably one I left out here, who knows when…” She laughed at herself. “I always read out here. You can throw it away.” I took the bookmark again, sliding it into my back pocket, and breathed in the summer night.

1986

Jennifer was waiting for me at the door with our baby boy straddling her hip when I got home from work. A fresh dribble stain on her jean shorts. “Thank god, you’re back,” she started. “Can you take him? I need to finish this exam before my class tonight.” All of her free time went to school those days. She would attempt to read the stacks of novels she checked out from the library, but the fines accumulated and accumulated.  

I took Ryan and kicked off my boots. “What’re you doing today, buddy?” I kissed his head and tickled his feet. Ryan never wanted to be without her though. He cried and reached out for Jennifer. “No, buddy. Momma has work.” I set Ryan on the ground to let him crawl and chased him around the living room for a few minutes. He chewed on the TV, the carpet, a red plastic toy Jane had given him, his own hand. Through the back slider, I could see Jennifer sitting cross-legged at her emerald green desk on the porch, which she had turned into an office. The desk spent half the afternoon in the sun, so it was nearly bleached out. I had thought about repainting it but neither of us had the time. She’d splayed out her thick nursing books, circling and highlighting. Ryan crawled up to the slider and banged on the door. “No, buddy, come back over here.” I swept him up and took him into the kitchen. “Let’s make Momma some food.” I set him in his chair and tossed a few blueberries on his plate. I sliced a tomato and cucumber. Toasted the bread. Added sprouts, which she loved. We didn’t have pickles, so she would have to go without. Once I drizzled on the oil, the sandwich was complete. I left Ryan in his chair and took the sandwich out to Jennifer. But she had stopped working. Her head lay on the desk, pencil still in hand. She was asleep.

1995

James moved around the officer and stood near the school’s office exit. He was small for a middle schooler, dressed in pants four sizes too big, a white shirt that had clearly been yanked on. I was picking him up because he had just been suspended for pulling a knife out during a fight. He looked to me exactly like his father. Nothing like my sister.   

When we got to my truck, Ryan didn’t say anything but Angela was elated to see her treasured cousin. As soon as James climbed in the front, he turned in his seat, smiling, and made Angela giggle with laughter. As I drove, I couldn’t think of what to say. Our kids were so easy. Jennifer couldn’t even convince Ryan to skip school on her days off when she wanted to take Angela and him to a movie. Finally, I stopped in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. “I don’t wanna eat here,” James hissed. “Your mom’s really worried about you, you know—” “I don’t fucking care. She’s a bitch.” “Hey!” I shouted and slammed my fist on the center console. “Watch your goddamned mouth!” James hung his head and picked at his overgrown fingernails. I could feel the air being sucked right out of the truck. Ryan was shocked, and Angela was on the verge of tears. I started the truck and pulled forward to the drive-through. “If she cared,” James said, “she would have come herself, instead of sending you.” “She couldn’t get out of work—” “She doesn’t work, she’s a loser…” I threw the truck into park, reached over the seat and grabbed James’ shirt. I was about to slap him but his face was too serene. He wasn’t reacting, not even a flinch. It was as if he wanted me to hit him.

2004

Three weeks after we found out James had been killed in Fallujah, we received his last letter to us. Ryan never received the other letter, or if he did, he never told us about it or what it said.   

July 6th 2004

Uncle Rob and Aunt Jenny, 

Hi, you guys, what’s crackin’ in good old Blue River? Is it hot yet? It’s hot as hell here. No joke. We just had a Fourth of July BBQ party. It was probably the best food I had in a while. I wanted to thank you for the letters and packages you been sending. I know I probably don’t deserve much but I dunno I still appreciate it. Tell Angie and Em I say hi. I sent another letter to Ry. Hopefully, he gets it. Things are mostly okay here. I’ve seen some weird shit and a lot of times it’s really stressful, like when we have to go out with the private contractors from PanGen. They’re a bunch of A-holes. Capital A. I’m with a good group of guys though. We look out for each other. I only have to be here 7 more months and then I come home. I’m excited about that. I was thinking I would go back to school. Dunno though. Didn’t work for me last time. I just wanted to tell you guys how much I appreciate what you done for me. Sometimes I didn’t listen or whatever but I know what’s up. I guess you could say if I had it to do over again I would have done it different. Okay thanks again for everything and stay cool. Love, James

2006

Mom’s new apartment was disorganized and cold. Nothing like how she kept house in our old place. The dishes sat dirty in the sink. Piles of mail stacked up against the phone and microwave. It angered me to see her living like this. 

Ryan hugged Mom and kissed her on the cheek. “How’s college, mijo?” She said, kissing him back. “I graduated last year, Nana…” I set Ryan to work on the bathroom and then took to the kitchen. When that was done, I sat Mom down at the dining table and dropped a stack of mail in front of her. “What is this? I don’t know what any of this is, Robert.” She ticked her tongue. “You don’t know what your mail is? It’s the bills. You have to pay your bills.” I grabbed the first envelope. “Like, what’s this?” I tore the edge of the envelope and slid out the sheets of paper. “This is for your utilities. It says you haven’t paid last month’s bill.” She took the envelope from me and stared at it. “I can’t read this. I don’t have my glasses.” “Where are your glasses?” She looked up but not at me. She seemed lost. “Mom, where are your glasses?” “I don’t know…” She looked back down at the envelopes and sifted through them. “Robert?” she asked, in a near silent whisper. “What is it?” She raised her arm up and pointed toward the front door. “Sshh…don’t you see him?” “See who?” “He’s right there. Oh, no, Robert, he’s here,” she cried and covered her face with her hands. “Who’s here? No one’s there, Mom.” “No, he’s here. He’s burning. My poor baby’s burning.” I didn’t know how to tell her he wasn’t real.

2007

Angela happened to show up at the hospital that day. “Here,” she said, handing me her iPod. “Ms. Alcott told me when her dad was in the hospital, it made things easier for him if he could listen to his favorite music.” I looked at the tiny metal object in my hand, unsure of how to turn it on. “Why aren’t you at school? How’d you even get here?” I asked. Rosa, who had fallen asleep in a chair near Mom, roused awake. “It’s Saturday, Robert.” Angela frowned. “I took Mom’s car.” “Oh—” I paused. “Nana’s not really awake so you won’t be able to say hello to her.” “I know, Mom told me.” I noticed she hadn’t gone to the bed or even looked at her nana. I could sense she was upset. Angela had never been stingy with her affection. At that time, I could think of nothing else but holding Jennifer and the kids close to me. I wanted to wrap my arms around them, shield them, press them into my own body, but Angela’s anger resisted that. “I don’t know how to use this thing,” I admitted, holding the iPod out to her. She took it, tapped its screen, then held it back out. “It’s just these buttons. I’ve already loaded up everything.” For the first time in her life, I wasn’t sure if I should hug my own daughter. “Well, I think I’ll leave now,” she said, turning to the door. “I just wanted her to have the music.” Rosa called out to say goodbye but it was already too late. 

I went to Mom and placed the headphones near her head. The surgeons had shaved most of her hair away when they removed the tumor. A rippled cut spread from one ear to the next. She was sedated but not unconscious. Feeling my hand close to her face, she dropped her head toward me. I waited for her to say something but her mouth didn’t move. Her doctors had told us it would be unlikely she would speak again. I clicked the iPod awake and scrolled to where Angela had shown me. All of Mom’s favorites were there. “What do you want to listen to, Mom? Oh, how about this…you’ll love this.” I clicked on Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Spanish Eyes”, and as soon as the music started, Mom turned her head toward the sound. Rosa sat up from the chair and laid her head on Mom’s arm. “She loves this song.” I wanted to believe Mom smiled but I couldn’t be sure.

2015

Jennifer was turned on her side but I could feel her body shaking. For the last few years, but especially since the explosion on Orpheus, I had been afraid of speaking to her. Afraid I had wronged her somehow, afraid I had done something, or worse, afraid I didn’t know what I had done. Was I supposed to ask if she was alright? I didn’t know anymore. I waited in the darkness, listening to her cry. Before too long, I couldn’t handle it and reached over to turn on the light. “What’s going on?” I sat up on my elbow. Jennifer sucked in a breath. “I’m exhausted.” “Take a sleeping pill,” I offered innocently. I knew when I said this something heavy fell over her, over both of us. She was silent and still for a moment. In the quiet, we could hear Emily in the living room talking to her friend on the phone. Knowing Emily was close gave me a sense of comfort I never realized I had until much later. “—are you even listening to me?” Jennifer said. My stomach flipped. I had been listening to Emily and had not realized Jennifer was talking to me.  “Yes, of course.” I lied. “You have this weird look on your face.” Her eyes narrowed. In that moment I realized, somehow, I didn’t know my wife any longer. “What’s your problem with me?” I barked. She was annoyed and pulled the blanket over her shoulder as she turned away. “Look, I’m all ears now. If you have something to say to me, then say it. I’m tired of your moods. We shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells around each other…” “My moods?” she asked angrily. “Whatever, you know what I mean.” Jennifer half-turned. “Can you just turn out the light? I want to go to sleep.” “No.” “No?” “Tell me what’s going on. I told you how I feel—” “Telling me you don’t like my moods is not telling me how you feel—” “Okay, sorry, I’m not good with words. I didn’t go to college like you. I work every day to support us…” “What are you even saying, Robert? I’ve worked every day the same as you.” “That’s not what I meant—” “What did you mean then?” She stopped. “Wait…stop. I don’t want to argue with you. I don’t have…I’m not upset with you about anything. You haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t want to ever argue with you about anything. Not this…” “Not what?” “Ah, fuck it…” She rubbed at her eyes. “I can’t be married to you anymore.” I reached my hand out to find hers above the sheets. “No, stop. Are you understanding what I’m saying?” “You’re just tired. Let’s go to sleep and we’ll figure it out in the morning.” “No, there’s nothing to figure out.” She slid her legs from under the sheets and readied herself to stand up. “Wait,” I said, though I was nearly out of breath and the room had started to spin. “Wait a minute…wait a minute.” Jennifer sat with her back to me. “Robert, I will always love you. We will always have the kids, but I can’t be a part of this. Not with that thing—” “But why? What did I do?” I could feel my own desperation. Like I was drowning and Jennifer was high and safe above but I couldn’t reach her. “You didn’t do anything. This is just what happens. I’ve felt like this for a while, I’ve held it in, I’ve tried to make it better, but it can’t be made better. If you were honest with yourself, you would say the same.”

Suddenly, our door opened. It was Emily, phone still in her hand. “Em, honey…” Jennifer said. “No,” Emily shook her head. “I don’t know what you guys were talking about, but I’m telling you, you cannot. Whatever it is. You stay in love.” Jennifer stood up and walked with Emily down the hall to her room. I was alone, and Jennifer never came back.

2016

Clearly, I had blacked out. How else could I be running barefoot through the streets, rivers of sweat draining from every possible orifice. My feet stung and burned from the asphalt. Up ahead I saw a park. I stumbled toward it and collapsed in the dried out grass. I gulped for air and turned on my side to vomit up my breakfast, though I couldn’t remember what it was exactly. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had done anything. Jennifer had moved out with Emily and for the last few months had been staying with her parents. The streets and businesses surrounding the park seemed fairly dead. But then I actually didn’t know if it was a weekday. Maybe they were closed for the weekend? Had I missed a holiday? Who knows…who cares?

I stared up at the sky. Only a few slivers of the moon were still visible. No one could figure it out. NASA and PanGen had sent probes to investigate. The moon was still there, the actual thing. But from down on Earth, we could see less and less of it. Some people thought it had to do with the radiation from the explosion on Orpheus, but NASA didn’t say.

The last thing I remembered was opening the mail. Jennifer had sent me a package. I had sent her two books, a collection of Oscar Wilde and another called The Book of Monelle, which had been recommended to me by Ian and Mina, the bookshop owners. She had returned them both, rewrapped in the silvery tissue I had used. I could see her words written in the sky. 

Robert, I’m returning these because I know I will never read them. I appreciate the gesture and your kindness. 

She had placed our wedding bookmark in the Oscar Wilde.

I cannot imagine my life without you in it. I need only see Emily, Angela, Ryan to know without you they would not be here. But it would be wrong to act as if I found contentment in our marriage. I thought for a while I could be happy, but the longer it went on, something inside me told me it wasn’t right. The world is obviously more than what we had thought. Just look up and you can see that. There is more to me than being a mother and wife. I’m more than a nurse too. You are also more than what you think. I hope you can see that. It’s just like you to give me something I love. But, if you remember, I’ve read all of Wilde’s work. Maybe some day I will go back to him, but not today. It’s just not what I see in the future for me. The worst thing I can think is for me to stand in your way. And I know I won’t allow you or anyone to stand in my way. We will always be soulmates. In this life and the next and the next…

I heard Angela’s voice. “Dad? Hey, come on, wake up…” She had a flashlight and was shining it right into my eyes. “Hey, what the fuck? Get the light out of his eyes,” she shouted at someone. “You can’t sleep in the park overnight—” another voice said, with the dismissiveness only cops could muster. “Do you not see that I’m getting him up? Don’t you have some unarmed kids to shoot somewhere?” I could feel Angela’s arms going under mine. “Come on, Dad. You need to stand up.”

2023

I startled awake. “Oh shit.” I looked at my phone. Fifteen minutes late. There wouldn’t be time to shower. Unfortunate, because it was my water day. As I pushed on my boots, I saw the message on my internal network. I already knew it was PanGen notifying me I was 5 minutes late, but I had to click on the message anyway or else my biopass wouldn’t work. “Thanks for the update, you fucks.” 

Usually I would take the elevator but I was so late I took the stairs. My neighbor Arwin was coming up as I was going down. She seemed to struggle up the stairs, exhausted by her 14 hour shift. I wanted to help her, but we had never actually spoken in person. I gave her a wide berth as we passed. Later, I knew, she would message me. We only ever talked on the network. A few times I considered asking if she wanted to come to my apartment for dinner or coffee, but she was at least 20 years younger than me and probably not interested in making friends.

It was a quarter after midnight. The air was heavy and thick with heat. Beneath the ever-present scent of PanGen’s grain, there was the smell of the vector repellant, like bleached melons. And like everything they made, sometimes it worked but most of the time it didn’t. The surviving insects darted at you or swarmed the lightposts leading to the packaging facility. I had to spend half my pay on ointments and creams from the bites. When I went through the security doors, the alarm went off. Two helmeted security officers pulled me to the side. They scanned my phone, my network, and then ran a wand over my body. Of course, nothing was amiss. “Report to your workstation, immediately,” one of them said. So I did.

2026

Angela, Em, and I rode in a shared van to the protest in Walnut Creek. Ryan had said he would meet us there, but Em hadn’t heard from him since three days before. Angela sat in the front with the driver, interviewing him for an article she would later post on the community network. “Please, don’t print my name,” the driver said quietly. “If they found out I was here, they’d arrest me and send me back.” Angela assured him she wouldn’t. Em shifted in her seat and fanned herself. “Dad, can you ask the driver to turn on the AC? It’s too hot.” “The window doesn’t open?” She half-heartedly pulled on the van’s window. “No, see, this clip doesn’t work.” “No AC,” the driver said from the front. “Sorry, sorry, it’s not mine. Company car. I’ve got the windows down up here. It’s the best I can do.” 

Outside, the silky gold of California’s foothills was gone. Wildfire after wildfire had burned acres of open land. All the farms were gone. Not that they could grow anything. In their place were the smoldering ashes of the golden state. We had joined cities like Mumbai and Bordeaux as sites of permanent fire. The news called these places the Firelands.     

When we reached the facility, the protestors were already confronting PanGen security guards and the police. Our driver took one look, apologized, and said he wouldn’t be able to stay. The group we had shared the van with groaned and said something about already paying for the ride. “Asshole,” someone from the group muttered. Angela shot them a look. “You paying $40 to get a ride is not worth his life. So shut up.” Em pulled Angela away. “Come on. Mom’s here. She said she’s on the left side near the stairs.” 

A splinter group had taken over the walkway leading to PanGen’s parking garage. It was far enough away from the security guards, everyone could meet and regroup without being bothered. It would only stay like that until the police helicopters came in. But for now, there was a somewhat peaceful reprieve. 

As my girls and I walked up to join the others, Jennifer smiled at us. I hadn’t seen her in over a year. I was surprised to see she was sitting next to my old neighbor Arwin. But when I got closer, I realized it wasn’t Arwin, it was you—though I didn’t know that yet. I caught Jennifer’s eye. She shrugged and tapped her pen suggestively on the notebook in her lap. She wanted to write. 

That’s when the alarms went off. Then a crack.

After having sex with her husband, Sabi left him in bed for the Frenchman on her laptop. Usually, the wireless connection would buffer halfway into a clip, but tonight the signal was strong. Despite needing to get some rest for her third oncologist appointment, Sabi stayed up the rest of the night. In the morning, she would know if the chemotherapy was working. She didn’t want to think about the results of the PET scan or the chemo. She didn’t want to brace herself for another assault of fatigue, nausea, constipation, and that damn metallic taste in her mouth. She only wanted to watch the Frenchman have sex with women.

He appeared on her laptop screen with a beautiful, young brunette. They were in a white room with white furniture. On top of a white leather couch, the brunette sat astride the sitting Frenchman, his floppy, brown hair clung to his sweaty brow as he sucked her perky, dark nipples. She lifted a curtain of silky hair from her shoulders then a jump cut to her kneeling in front of him.

Nick bought Sabi the laptop so that she could watch movies while having meds pumped into her Mediport, a small, metal disc about the size of a quarter that sat under her skin below her collarbone. A catheter connected the port to a large vein. The meds were injected through a thick needle that fits into the port. After that first painful puncture, Sabi reached for the laptop and lost herself in movies. She watched French films mostly. During the first month of treatments, she watched two, sometimes three movies as six hours’ worth of drugs were pumped into her Mediport.

The films ranged from old to new. Historical to arty ones. Films with little plot, some that made no sense at all. She watched philosophical love stories and musicals with tone-deaf singers. She made use of her high school French and turned off the subtitles. She liked how serious yet relaxed all the French actors appeared.

Nick hated the French films; said he couldn’t stand the apathy on display. She tried to convince him that what he was watching was the opposite of apathy. “Don’t you see? There are no pretensions. They are dealing with life and not getting all emotional about it. Emotional reactions are superficial,” she said. “They only help us avoid our fears when in fact we should be facing them.”

Treatment days were grueling, long, nine-hour days, which began with a needle inside the Mediport and a nurse filling seven different sized vials for blood testing. Then Sabi had to report to her oncologist, who reviewed the results of her blood work to determine if she was strong enough to endure the scheduled chemo treatment.

Nick and Sabi would spend their time in the waiting room looking through Better Homes and Gardens, staring at perfect couples inside quaint country homes, looking chaste, untarnished, undamaged by life. Looking as far removed from a sticky, sweaty orgasm as a patient in a coma.

After her last appointment, Sabi and Nick took a long bath together. Nick sat behind Sabi in the tub and carefully sponged her back, arms, neck, breasts, and inner thighs. When he was done, she kissed his soapy hand, felt him grow hard behind her, and then he slowly turned her around, so that she sat facing him. With her legs wrapped around his waist, he slipped his dick inside her. In the 15 years they’d been together, they’d never made love this way; fucking slowly in the bathtub, skin slippery, no sounds coming from their mouths.

That night while Nick slept, Sabi squirmed in bed, wanting badly to dig in and rip out the Mediport. Instead, she tiptoed out to the living room and turned on her laptop.

Still thinking of their lovemaking in the bathtub, Sabi searched for “couples having hot sex” on the internet.

It was astonishing to find so many free porn sites featuring plastic women moaning and groaning while wooden men grunted behind them, on top of them, underneath them, to the side of them. Impossible sexual positions where the men jackhammered away as if they were competing in an Iron Man competition.

And then she found the Brit. He wasn’t the greatest performer. He puckered his mouth when he mounted a woman and exhaled in a whistle when he came, but he had a cute accent and a nice, muscular ass. His belly rippled when he fucked, and he had nice hands. He seemed to enjoy touching the women he was with. It was through watching the Brit that Sabi found the Frenchman.

It was a threesome scene, which began with the Brit making fun of the other man’s accent.

“You a Frenchman, mate?”

“Oui, and I have a bigger dick than you,” he said.

A buxom, older woman entered the room. The two younger men took off their clothes. The woman kept one occupied while the other lost himself in her lush ass. The Frenchman didn’t whistle when he came. He kissed the woman instead. A long, passionate kiss that seemed to take the woman by surprise. Sabi imagined what it would be like to be overpowered by the Frenchman. She wondered if he would kiss her passionately and then slap her tits. She wondered if she would be okay with that.

__

After treatment, she was too weak to eat, too pissed off to talk about how she felt. The Zofran and Ativan helped with nausea, but after a couple of days, the drugs made her moody. On the upswing she was vocal, laughing, singing, talking non-stop about how great she felt. On the downswing, she touched her body, felt for lumps, placed ointment on her scars, and patted the Mediport. “Scar tissue is building around it,” she told Nick, thinking if she said this out loud, she would escape the deep state of paranoia that now invaded her every thought. Sex was what kept her sane.

__

The beautiful brunette had a bush, a rarity in cyberporn. She pulled on it and the Frenchman went wild. He pulled her legs so that her ass hit the edge of the white leather sofa and began to masturbate over her stomach. She tugged harder on her bush. He moaned, grabbed one of her feet, and sucked on her big toe. He yanked on his large, uncircumcised dick as the brunette rubbed herself. The Frenchman took her from behind and whispered French words in her ear as she climaxed.

Earlier tonight, Nick had screamed, “You’re amazing!” as Sabi fondled his balls then played with him until he was hard enough for her to climb on top. Weird that she could be so sexually aroused yet feel so unattractive. Her body felt old and tired. Her ringlets cut short in an uneven bob. Her once thick eyebrows now faint lines over her dark-circled eyes. Her lush eyelashes now wispy nothings.

She hit the pause button when she heard Nick’s heavy footsteps. “Sabi!” he said, walking into the living room. It was five in the morning and still dark out.

“What’s going on? Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Sabi closed the laptop and smiled. Nick looked so young and cute and loving. His glassy brown eyes softened; he ran his hand over his floppy, brown hair. He used to tell her all the time he could never live without her, but he didn’t say that anymore.

__

Last November, nothing had prepared Sabi for her apathy over the whole cancer thing. The oncologist had reached over his desk to squeeze her hand after the diagnosis. He said, “Go ahead and cry if you want to.” But she didn’t want to. She pretended to cry. Gave the oncologist what he wanted.

Before Sabi left the oncologist’s office, she had to do a bone marrow biopsy. The nurse instructed her to remove her clothing, don a paper robe, and leave the opening towards the back. She was told to lie on her side. She felt the cool alcohol on her back and the burn of a local anesthetic. The oncologist said, “Take a deep breath.”

She felt a pinch near her vertebra. “I’m sorry,” the oncologist said as he drew a sample. A preemptive apology for the sharp pain that followed. She imagined a metal string extracted slowly from the middle of her femur, through her hip bone and up her spine.

The metal scraping each nerve ending as it left her body.

Nick didn’t go to the oncologist with her. She didn’t want him there. Later, when she told him the diagnosis, she said, “No crying, no feeling sorry for us, and none of that ‘Why us?’ please.”

He’d fallen in love with a vibrant, healthy woman who’d read more books than he ever knew existed. And now she was sick, but it could be worse. She was stage two. The likelihood of a remission was 80%.

Now it was December, and they would know if the drugs were working. If the cancer is reactive, her chances for remission would go up to 90%. She was undergoing an aggressive treatment program. She risked infertility, dangerous scarring to her lungs, breast cancer, leukemia, thyroid disease. She might get an infection. She might catch pneumonia. She could have a fatal reaction to one of the drugs. But she could be cured and alive. Healthy once again.

__

When Nick stepped inside the kitchen. Sabi was still in front of her laptop, with the volume on mute. She wasn’t fooling Nick. He had walked in on her and the Frenchman before. He always made a face but didn’t voice his disapproval.

She looked up her favorite scene with the Frenchman, “Manu Loves Dana.” She fast-forwarded through the first five minutes, skipped the lovely Dana’s strip routine, which concluded with her on all fours.

Sabi found the right spot on the six-minute seven-second mark. Manu was on his knees in front of a spread-eagle Dana with his nose and mouth buried in her pussy. They fucked on a chocolate velvet sofa. Manu held Dana’s head and kissed her eyes and nose, mouth, and tits. He pounded into her; said she was beautiful. So foocking beautiful.

Dana didn’t look anything like Sabi. She had olive-skin and almond-shaped eyes. She looked petite next to the burly Frenchman. He deftly maneuvered her into a reverse cowgirl position, his head and torso disappeared behind the lovely Dana, his large hands on her narrow hips, lifting her pelvis up and down over his very large dick.

If Sabi’s PET Scan came back clear today, if the cancer cells were gone, then she would still continue treatments; four more months of chemotherapy followed by three weeks of daily radiation treatments to her chest.

“You should shower and get dressed. Our appointment is in a couple of hours.”

Sabi turned up the volume on her laptop. Dana moaned, “Fuck me!”

“Come on,” Nick said. He slapped down the laptop screen and took it away.

Sabi stood up and hugged him. She buried her nose in his neck and sucked on it.

“Sabi.” He pulled away, but she held him by the waist. “We have to go,” he tried again.

“Please fuck me, Nick.”

“We don’t have time for that, sweetheart.”

Sabi gave up, grabbed her laptop, and carried it to their bedroom. She placed it on top of their bed, opened the screen, and stared at the frozen image of the Frenchman plowing into Dana’s ass. His face caught in a grimace, his hands digging into her hips, and Dana looking straight into the camera, biting her bottom lip.

Sabi opened her closet, pulled out a long tunic and a pair of leggings, dug through her pile of high-heeled boots and grabbed a pair of black Converses.

Take a shower. Get dressed. Wear a nice bra and panty set.

She would have to strip at least once for the oncologist and Nick because Nick insisted on accompanying her to the exam room. “For moral support,” he had said.

He didn’t trust her. Nick would sit on a chair across from the exam table. The elderly oncologist would gently knock before entering the room. He’d give Sabi a warm welcome and coldly say hello to Nick.

Nick hated the oncologist. He also hated when the oncologist felt for swollen nodules on her throat, the sides of her neck, along with her collarbone, under her armpits, and her groin. It was because of Nick that Sabi always kept her bra and panties on.

Nick came into the bedroom. He smiled when he saw the clothes on the bed but frowned at the laptop. Not too much, but enough to let her know that the sight of two people fucking was not alright, not helpful, not funny, and not appreciated.

After her shower, she spotted Nick on the bed, watching something on her laptop. She recognized the Frenchman’s voice. Come for me, baybee.

“Why do you like this guy?” Nick spoke without taking his eyes off the laptop.

Grabbing a wide-tooth comb from the dresser, Sabi combed her hair, making sure not to pull too hard on the few knots or scratch her sensitive scalp. “I don’t like him. I don’t even know him.”

“You could have fooled me. I mean, he’s got a baby-arm size dick, so I can see why.”

“Oh god, are we really going there?”

“Is it the anal? We’ve never done that. Do you want that?”

“No. Look.” She slapped down the laptop screen. She wanted to yell at Nick, tell him to stop asking so many damn questions. “It’s just a way to distract myself, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with the Frenchman, or his big dick, or the fact that every woman he touches convulses in orgasmic bliss.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“What I mean is I don’t watch the Frenchman because I want to fuck the Frenchman; I watch him because I wish I could be the Frenchman.”

Nick grabbed her hand and pulled her down on the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I love you, Sabi.” He tugged at the towel wrapped around her body.

On her back, she looked up at his serious face, feeling surprised. He covered her lips with his.

It was not the kiss of a loving husband or a frightened man. This was a darker, more deliberate kiss. Not emotional, but raw and carnal, like he couldn’t get enough of her. She gave herself up to it. Let him take her. He pushed his way inside her. It was like nothing they had ever shared before. It was rough and dirty.

Sabi left the bed after it was over and took another shower. She dressed and threw some mascara and blush on her face. She picked the Monet print silk scarf to wear, the one with the water lilies.

“You look pretty,” Nick said when she walked out into the living room.

“We should get going,” she said, stopping by the mirror on the wall to put on some red lipstick. She put the laptop inside her tote bag and reached for Nick’s outstretched hand.

---

“The Frenchman” was first published as “Sex for the Living” in Literary Orphans. Year Two, Issue 8.

-Albania, 1971-

            The prisoner would remain nameless as far as Besim was concerned. He had first learned his name months ago when he had arrived at the prison. Besim prided himself on knowing the first and last names of each one of the prisoners. He’d try to be generous—to the best of his ability and to the best of their circumstances, but he learned quickly that most of the prisoners had no interest in exchanging niceties with him and that most spit at the officers as soon as their backs were turned. Still, despite subtle displays of protest, they obeyed the rules, too weak and too tired to try their hand at debauchery.

            The prisoner coughed violently. Why, thought Besim to himself, why gamble with your life you simple-minded fool? His fist went numb and then stung as it made contact with the prisoner’s cheekbone. It was dim and cold in the room and the nameless one’s pain echoed off the walls as he grunted and moaned in response. He worked hard to breathe and Besim wondered if he had broken his nose.

            “Get up,” he muttered, as he shook his fist to make the pain go away. The prisoner’s head hung limply to the left and he could’ve passed for dead had it not been for the labored breathing.

            “Get up,” Besim repeated calmly.

            “Do you know why you are here?” Besim asked between breaths as he tried to pull him up and straighten him against the wall. The prisoner didn’t flinch at the sound of his voice. “You were sent to the camp because you cannot be trusted. You were then brought here because you proved us right.”

*

            Edi stopped running and bent over to catch his breath. His adrenaline was draining with the sunlight and in the silence of the forest; reality was beginning to envelop him. His mistakes rose to the surface of his consciousness and his body trembled in the cool evening air.

            I should have waited until after roll call, he thought to himself. I should have waited for darkness to run. The forest was thicker than he had anticipated and he was, at first, grateful he had not taken off into the night. But now he realized his grave mistake in not waiting for the dark, after each person in the camp had been called out and accounted for. He hadn’t been on the run for more than twenty minutes before he heard shouting in the distance, knowing instantly that the woods had been infiltrated with soldiers looking for him.

            Beyond escaping the confines of camp, Edi didn’t have much of a plan and found himself hopelessly lost with the onset of night. There was still a childlike and primitive fear of the dark that he secretly harbored; the old trees blocked out the late sun, and their tangled trunks and abandoned foliage below created a mausoleum-like effect and Edi only hoped he wouldn’t die in the vast wilderness, alone and remembered only as an afterthought, a cautionary tale. He tried to shake off thoughts of his mortality, certain he had left the worst behind him. But the evening’s cacophonous sounds echoed; the sound of snapping twigs and leaves scattering and a slight wind picking up. Edi looked around briefly before setting his aim on one direction and moving towards it.

            He thought about his only companionship at the camp, a priest he had befriended upon his arrival, and found himself wishing more than ever that he wasn’t alone. The priest was different from all the others. Educated and socially aware, he nourished a part of Edi’s mind that Edi didn’t realize had been starving. Their discussions at first were the usual: “Where are you from? Who is your father? Where is he from?” Eventually they began to carry on deeper discussions in broken whispers late into the night. In this country’s new era, religion had become the forbidden fruit—one bite of it and you were destined to a life of destitution, of punishment and deprivation. And while their conversations in daylight veered back and forth between family history and stories of their lives before the camp, after hours there were questions about the afterlife and salvation. Eventually, even those discussions would shift to ghost stories and old family folklore.

            At night when the last family name had been called and accounted for and everyone retired to their homes, Edi would make his way back to the priest and knock twice lightly on the door; twice—never three times. Three knocks foreshadowed an impending death. Quietly the door would open, the priest would smile and stand to the side for Edi to walk in.

            “Did I ever tell you about…” were the priest’s first words and suddenly the night would begin. Edi wasn’t the most enlightened man but he believed his presence had become just as integral to the priest’s life as the priest had become to his.

*

            Edi held his side as he walked in the darkness, the cramp deepening with every breath he took. The forest seemed to grow louder the later it got and Edi wondered how many different animals thrived as nocturnal beings. He tried to recall what made him decide to leave the semblance of security he had accidentally stumbled upon, but nothing seemed to justify his current state of hopelessness. The last discussion he and the priest shared was the first time Edi dominated the conversation, talking about his fears and his insecurities and what he worried would happen to them both if they stayed at the camp. Somehow, through his incessant ramblings, Edi decided he would escape to run through the woods and over the mountains to Serbia and seek asylum. He urged the priest to join him, referring to the trip as an adventure.

            “Have you read anything by Jack London?” He asked the priest. “Have you ever wished you lived in the pages of a story that was so powerful, so exciting, that your life feels like nothing in comparison? As if you’re just waiting for the real part of this existence to begin?”

            The priest studied Edi’s face in the dim light. Edi was a good but simple man. He listened to the priest’s stories like a child weighing every one of his mother’s words. He knew Edi respected him as an older man and as a religious man; this was the first time the priest found Edi sounding provocative. He worried for where Edi’s mind was going, and yet he couldn’t smother the small flame of admiration that he felt deep in his chest.

            “You have a surefire chance of being killed on this run,” he responded. “Stay here and remain with the rest of us. We don’t have it as bad as the others, you know this well. It could be alright.” The priest vowed he’d never forget the look of disappointment on Edi’s face, replaced just as quickly with a look of utter determination.

            “I wasn’t born to be treated like cattle. Neither were you. Neither is anyone else here. I’m leaving whether or not you come with me, but a man can always use a friend on the road.”

            The discussion died down soon after and the priest regaled him once again with stories of the times before the quick rise of communism. He talked and talked until Edi was no longer laughing or responding in return and he realized Edi had fallen asleep, and the priest hoped by morning Edi would wake with a clear mind and a laugh, telling him how he was just overly excited the night before and was kidding around with his talk of running.

*

            “Tell me one thing,” Besim said after taking a long drag on his cigarette. He sat in a chair across the room from the prisoner, who was still slouched on the floor. He was conscious now, however, and he stared back at Besim from where he sat.

            “Tell me one thing,” Besim repeated. “Where did you think you’d end up? What did you think would happen?”

            The prisoner coughed once in response. One, two, three knocks against the concrete wall; he scraped his knuckles on the rough surface before smirking at the officer and found Besim smirking back.

            “You smug son-of-a-bitch. Did you think you’d make it out of the woods alive? And if you did, did you think the Serbs would welcome you with open arms?”

            “Leaving the lion’s den to walk into the wolves’ den,” responded Edi. “Wolves can at least be tamed.” Besim only stared at him.

            They sat on opposite sides of the room studying each other as if they were underwater and the sounds of the outside world were everything on the surface. There was a kind of freedom in Edi’s situation and he realized he was untouchable. He knew they were both killing time until he would be led outside to be lined up against the wall. Perhaps this was the ultimate freedom a person could obtain. The adventure he had so passionately talked to the priest about could be this, and this life was merely a preparation for what lay beyond.

            When he was being carried across the camp after being caught, Edi refused to make eye contact with the priest. He saw him in the distance, amongst the small crowd that had gathered quietly but turned his head and looked straight in front of him as they passed through the crowd. He didn’t want to the priest to see defeat on his face or the sense of regret he harbored. Edi’s final thought before they carried him indoors and shut the door behind him was: well, isn’t this a bitch? And he spit blood on the ground.

*

            Luckily the night sky was clear enough for the moon to shed some light for guidance. Edi felt like an intruder in the wilderness each time his feet disrupted the quiet. He was too large, too loud, and too clumsy to permanently exist there. The deeper into the forest he thought he was going, the deeper he dug into his mind to dust off conversations he’d had with the priest. If he focused enough of his energy on those inner dialogues, he could almost pretend the priest was with him.

            Somewhere in the distance he heard a twig snap. And then another twig. And then another. He stopped and caught his breath, waiting to hear more. In the few moments of silence that followed, Edi quickly tiptoed behind a tree and crouched slowly until he squatted with his head resting on his knees.

            Fuck, they found me, he thought to himself. Fuck. Fuck. They can’t take me. And he began to think about God. He wanted to believe that his close relationship with the priest would grant him protection. He kept his head on his knees and closed his eyes, praying for invisibility.

            Suddenly Edi sat up straight and listened closely. It wasn’t a twig snapping or the sound of footsteps. He listened closely and wondered exactly how dehydrated he had become in the last several hours. Just before he resigned himself to absolute madness and sleep deprivation, he heard it again, clearer and closer. It was his name. Someone said his name. From somewhere in the distance, a voice was calling out to him. Not the priest. Not the officers. It was a voice he knew; the soft, crackly voice—like glass cracking under pressure—of his grandmother who had long since passed. He felt a lump in his throat as he battled with himself; the desire to reach out to her and respond—fighting with the knowledge that he must keep quiet, followed by the realization that he was, in fact, facing his own mortality.

            The corners of his eyes filled with tears as he remembered the endless talk of ghosts and folklore with the priest.

            “Have I ever told you about a neighbor of my mother’s,” began the priest, “who swore she had heard names being shouted one night as she walked home from visiting her sister? She didn’t think anything of it until she realized the names being called were those of the dead.”

            Edi felt his body break out in goosebumps the first time he heard it and again now as he sat bewildered behind the tree. He knew enough not to respond; his grandmother had told him the same lore as a child. A superstitious warning meant to scare children into silence before bedtime, you never respond to your name being called by someone who was deceased.

            The third and final time he heard his name, it caught in the wind and disappeared around him. He didn’t know how long he remained behind that tree, frozen in terror, but when he finally moved, he ran. He hardly noticed the sky beginning to lighten or the tremendous noise he made running through the brush and tripping over roots. Nothing seemed like fantasy anymore, like the folktales he and the priest relished sharing with each other.

            He stopped to briefly catch his breath and squeezed his eyes shut to keep out the possible sight of anything he shouldn’t be seeing. The memory of all those stories and superstitions crept into his mind and when he opened his eyes, Edi thought he saw a movement off to one side of him. He wanted to yell out his grandmother’s name but was scared he might actually be experiencing the impossible. He had always believed in listening to your body and his heart was now fluttering in his chest.

            Why is she doing this to me, he thought as he stood in the middle of a clearing. He heard another twig snap somewhere behind him before closing his eyes and putting his hands up to his ears. In his mind, Edi saw his grandmother as she used to be, long gray hair pinned up into a tight bun. He had always been close to her and wondered if coming face-to-face with his grandmother would be the worst fate to encounter. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times to get rid of the floating dots hovering there. In the distance, in the forest’s darkness he saw a figure moving slowly towards him. Edi choked back tears as he walked towards it, arms back down at his sides.

            “Grandmother…” his voice shook.

            “Over here! I got him! I got him!” Edi recognized the man’s voice from the camp.

            “Please. No,” was all he could mutter while taking a few steps back before he was grabbed and pushed from the side, and he went flying.

*

            He could feel the sunlight even though he saw only darkness. Prior to the walk to the wall, he was blindfolded and led outside. His shoes, worn and thin, created a poor barrier between his feet and the ground. He pressed his toes into the pebbles and ground them around until he created a little crater. He found a strange sense of comfort in the gravelly texture and in the sound the dirt and stones made rubbing against each other. The sound of pebbles skipping and feet being quickly shuffled let him know he was not alone.

            Edi felt a hand press his shoulder roughly, until his tied hands scraped against the wall behind him. He brushed his fingertips lightly against the rough surface and felt the warmth of the sunlight soaked up by the concrete. He pressed his palms against the wall as if gaining energy from the heat, as if he could melt into the structure and hide away there forever. Edi heard words but didn’t process them, didn’t want to give them any weight. Instead, he rubbed his hands against the wall and ground his toe into the ground and used up his last thought on how inanimate objects don’t feel or do, they just are. He felt, for the first time in his life, jealous of something that wasn’t alive.

*

            The priest, though at first considered a prime candidate for relentless harassment and random searches of his home, was diligent about keeping to himself and completing his work to the best of his ability. And because of this—over time—he was eventually left alone and considered one of the more decent prisoners the officers dealt with. His reputation was his ticket into Edi’s home where he was being kept, just before being taken away to the prison.

            He knew he shouldn’t have been shocked by Edi’s condition: swollen eye, blood crusted over his nostrils and upper lip, but he just stared. He let the heat of anger and hopelessness wash over him without flinching and without giving away his sadness to Edi.

            “Well,” whispered Edi, his voice hoarse. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t come?” And he smiled. The priest walked over to him and sat down on the floor.

The priest did something he wouldn’t have risked otherwise, if it hadn’t been for Edi. Leaning forward, he held up his hand and made a small, swift cross in the air and began to murmur a prayer.

            “Tell me something, Father,” Edi interrupted. “Is there really such a thing as Heaven? As Hell?”

            “Whatever you believe there is, there is,” whispered back the priest. “I can’t tell you how exactly those two worlds exist, I’m only certain of the fact that they do. I believe they do.” Edi simply nodded.

            “I heard my grandmother,” said Edi. “Out there. In the woods. She said my name. Just like your stories, I heard my name from someone who was dead. I’m meant to die here,” and his voice caught on the last word and Edi broke down. The priest could do nothing, only blink quickly to keep his tears from falling and put his hand on Edi’s shoulder.

            “You will be alright, Edi. Trust me.” And he squeezed his shoulder.

            As he had promised himself he would do, the priest took out a small piece of paper from his pocket and a pen.

            “Do you want me to write or do you want to do it yourself?”

            “You write, I’ll tell you what to put in there,” responded Edi.

            He began to quickly write down Edi’s words as he spoke them. In this task, he found a purpose he thought he had lost when he first arrived at the camp. It was minor and yet it was what he’d expect of a priest; a final sense of comfort to a man in his final moments. He was going to miss Edi and their nightly talks. Sometimes the priest couldn’t help but wonder if he could’ve prevented him from this fate, but he knew well the stubbornness of man, of that inescapable sin—pride.

            Dear mama, baba…the letter started and continued on to the backside of the page. When they had finished, Edi took a breath and put his head back against the wall. The priest folded the paper and placed it carefully in his pocket. He knew he only had a few more minutes before someone was going to get him.

            “So,” said the priest. “Tell me about your favorite Jack London story.”

Beverly, a town near Salem, spring 1692. A STRONG GUST of WIND then lights up to see a young girl, ELIZABETH, pacing back and forth behind a meeting hall. Her apron has been intentionally placed on the ground to hide something. The sun hangs late in the day. ELIZABETH seems very aware and disturbed by this.

ELIZABETH

 

Another young girl, ANNIE, enters dressed in similar attire. She carries a wooden bucket and wears her apron.

ANNIE

I prayed you’d still be here!

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

I will do no such thing.

 

2.

ELIZABETH

Do you strike out against me?

ANNIE

ELIZABETH

ANNIE turns away.

ELIZABETH

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

You take their story for sport?

ANNIE

ELIZABETH

  3.

ANNIE

Pray, why do such a thing?

ELIZABETH

ANNIE

Shut it, Elizabeth. You talk nonsense!

ELIZABETH grabs ANNIE by her arm and holds her tightly.

ELIZABETH

ANNIE

ELIZABETH releases ANNIE’s arm.

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

  4.

 

ELIZABETH

Ye are afraid. Admit it!

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

   

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH quickly covers ANNIE’s mouth.

 

ELIZABETH

Hush, someone will hear you!

 

ANNIE removes ELIZABETH’s hand

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

I SHALL NOT FAIL!

 

ELIZABETH quickly moves aside the apron on the ground to reveal a bloody knife and a cup. She picks up the knife and cup.

 

ELIZABETH

5.

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

     

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

Because Goody Henry gives him none.

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

  6.

     

ELIZABETH thrust the bloody knife towards ANNIE’s neck then pushes the cup up to her lips.

 

ELIZABETH

You must drink!

 

ANNIE

I SHALL NOT!

     

ELIZABETH

DRINK!

 

CATHERINE, another young girl, sallies in holding three poppets.

 

CATHERINE

I pray, what is the matter here!

 

ANNIE

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

You do not believe me?

 

ELIZABETH lowers the knife and the cup. ANNIE seizes the moment to escape into CATHERINE’s arms.

 

CATHERINE

 

ANNIE

 

 

7.

 

ELIZABETH

 

CATHERINE

   

ANNIE

 

CATHERINE

 

CATHERINE hands the poppets to ELIZABETH and curtsies.

 

ELIZABETH

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

That’s what you think.

 

CATHERINE

  8.

 

CATHERINE (CONTD)

 

ELIZABETH

You are truly wise, Catherine.

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

I am neither sensible nor wise.

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

Aye…you are right. So dangerous.

 

In a flash, ELIZABETH drops her knife, grabs CATHERINE by the hair and quickly pours the chicken’s blood into her mouth. CATHERINE falls to her knees gagging while trying to spit out the blood.

 

ANNIE, alarmed, rushes to CATHERINE’s side.

 

ANNIE

I pray it be tomatoes or beets!

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

You will live, unfortunately.

 

9.

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

Let Catherine give us a word first.

 

CATHERINE

 

Elated, ELIZABETH kneels down next to CATHERINE.

 

 

CATHERINE

OH, GOD! OH, GOD! I FEEL HIM!

 

ELIZABETH

GOOD, I WILL FEEL HIM TOO!

 

ELIZABETH drinks from the cup. The WIND begins to blow.

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

I… I can not.

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

10.

 

The sound of CAWING CROWS joins in with the sound of the blowing wind. Afraid, ANNIE kneels with the others. She takes the cup and drinks. She violently coughs and rolls to the ground.

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE’s body jerks, convulses. The WIND HOWLS LOUDER.

 

  CATHERINE

My Goody Johnson will hang! 

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE rises to her feet and starts to flap her arms.

 

ANNIE

I’M ABOUT TO FLY! I MUST FLY!

 

ELIZABETH and CATHERINE also stand and begin to flap their arms.

 

  CATHERINE

I’M GOING TO FLY, TOO!

 

ELIZABETH

 

They continue to flap their arms while crying out – Goody Johnson must hang, Goody Williams must hang.

ALL

Goody Williams, Goody Johnson, Goody Henry…THEY MUST HANG! THEY MUST HANG!  HANG…

BLACKOUT.

They were arguing, stupid fight, about if you were color-blind how many colors would you see.  Would there be only black and white?  Or is color-blindness something larger in scope, with many shades of color, only re-assigned to objects differently than others see them?  Listening to them fight, Elaine thought more than once that you could perhaps characterize the two men by the positions they took on the issue.  The one who believed that color-blindness reduces everything to black and white, was he the more romantic one of the two?  Or was he the more classical?  “Like Balanchine,” she thought vaguely, having forgotten most of everything she ever knew about Balanchine somewhere over the years.

No wait a second, there must be still plenty she recalled about Balanchine.  Seemed like she could almost see one of his dances, right in front of her eyes, the hush around the dancers, the andante of the music—live music, as she recalled.  Did the City Ballet rely on taped music nowadays, hard to know who to ask.  My God, George Balanchine meant everything to me at one point, Elaine thought, trying to work herself into a frenzy, and now I can’t even think of the names of any of his dances.

She sipped a little bit of her drink, then put the glass down on the marble coaster.  I love these coasters, she thought.

Balanchine, everything black and white, Allegra Kent in some kind of white leotard with little handles around her hips.  The stage all very dark except for spotlights from beneath the stage.  It must have been the 70s, she thought.  She remembered Balanchine’s profile, the way it looked like a mountain peak, and his long legs.  They’d met at a party and she wondered why all the women went for him, then she’d decided the women in question must be a horribly neurotic bunch.  Last autumn she was down in Los Angeles for the West Hollywood Book Fair, and a woman was speaking who’d written a book all about her late-blooming passion for anal sex, and Elaine had been puzzled and a little nauseated, and then all became clear when the speaker revealed she had been one of Balanchine’s ballerinas.

It had been a beautiful afternoon, outdoors, the speakers at long tables under tents, everyone wearing sunglasses.

The heat concentrating on the very top of your scalp, so Elaine had guarded it with some kind of flyer for the ballerina’s anal sex book.  A discreet flyer, thank God, it could have been far worse.  There was something almost dignified about it, just as there was, Elaine realized, about all of Balanchine’s work, no matter if he were choreographing for elephants at the circus (surely he did something of the sort, it was part of his legend), or for these incredibly elegant and soignee analholics like Suzanne Farrell or Vera Zorina.  And that woman Joan in The New Yorker who never wrote an article without bemoaning the way the City Ballet had forgotten about Balanchine and treated his legacy like so much flypaper.  Nowadays there’s a general cultural amnesia about the past.  Why in her dim memory she recalled being taken to the NYCB by her godmother, oh, in the middle of some war, everyone upset outside, but inside a dim sense of peace and money.

“You must know Mary Sue,” Tim was saying, “she’s colorblind and you don’t have to be intimate with her to know, just take a look at her outfits, stripes with plaids, everything five different shades of orange.  It’s like, when you go into an elevator and it’s all gray rubber, gray steel?  At least this is how I understand it, and say you stepped into a big puddle of blood, you wouldn’t even know it.  Gray and red are the same thing.”

“I do know Mary Sue and she has often told me, that she has shoppers who put together her clothes for her.  It’s a service for the colorblind, and there’s a whole C-B department at Macy’s or Saks.  One of them.”

“Oh, she doesn’t buy at Saks.”

“No, that’s true.”

They thought awhile about Mary Sue.  Elaine remembered her from the days when all of them used to act in Beach Blanket Babylon, a San Francisco institution that had been running a hundred years; a revue of songs and topical skits and big, brash satire like Saturday Night Live.  Mary Sue often played the big, clownish types like Dolly Parton, Peggy Lee, Imelda Marcos.  She always dressed beautifully, in Elaine’s opinion, but maybe she had the Macy’s shoppers working for her even then, or else maybe her disease hadn’t spread up to her eyeballs yet (or wherever color blindness affected you last).  She imagined it was in the eyeballs, sort of like cancer except not as painful, perhaps not painful at all.  You certainly never heard people give little gasps or clutch hankies to their eyes and claim they had just had an attack of color blindness.  It couldn’t be painful, but who knew?  That Balanchine woman had evaded the question entirely about whether or not anal sex was painful.  This guy who she met through the personals (of The New York Review of Books believe it or not) didn’t like her lubricated.  He would come over and she was just supposed to lie there while he plunged into her, without a word, without even taking off his pants, just pulling down his zipper—which he could have done easily, in her foyer—and he’d be out of there in two shakes—so to speak—and leave her rapt, restless, and with another chapter’s worth of anal sex to write up in her so-called “diary of obsession.”  So, Elaine thought, if Mary Sue indeed suffered from being color blind—in fact, whether or not she was color blind at all, and she, Elaine, did not think she was, despite what Tim and Gerald were swearing, so united in this one lie, despite being at loggerheads in every other aspect of the color-blindness debate; anyhow, if Mary Lou were colorblind she did not seem to ever have felt pain a day in her life.  Save perhaps for the day when she was fired from Beach Blanket Babylon for moving to Oakland’s Lake Merritt.  You were fired just for moving out of town?  They said it’s a betrayal of the BBB ethic.

 “Could we stop the car, please,” she said faintly.  They’d been bucking up and down the hills of Pacifica and Devil’s Slide for what seemed like hours, and she wasn’t feeling at all comfortable.  The drink she put down more firmly in its slot, above the cunning marble coaster.  Tim took another glance at her, over his shoulder, with an unspoken fear in his eyes.

“Mom, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, dear,” she said.  “That last drink was just a little on the strong side.”

“That’s Gerald,” he said.  “When it comes to pouring out, guy’s got an iron hand.”

Gerald protested, as Tim pulled over to the wide gravel next to Highway 1.  “It’s hard when someone else is driving.  You can’t anticipate, that’s the problemo.”

Elaine put one foot down on the sand, judging its wet firmness.  Thirty yards below, the ocean slopped and howled, a hungry beast prowling the shore.  When they asked her if she felt better, she nodded, but the truth is it’s so hard to gauge how well or ill you’re feeling when you’re looking down at this horrible wet ocean that’s suffering its own spectacular storm from underneath.  All roiled up as though octopi and squids were fighting it out on the ocean floor like King Kong versus the T Rex.  In France didn’t they call nausea the “mal du mer”?  That expressed it absolutely, the sea suffering, and “mal” meant—evil.

“I’m fine, Gerald,” she called back blithely while slipping a little mirror from her purse and quickly dabbing on some blush.  You’re never so sick as makeup won’t help put a better spotlight on things.  She wondered what the colorblind did about blush.  Weren’t they always putting weird colors on their face?  Maybe that’s what happened to all those women the Germans painted in the Blue Rider school, with deep blue cheeks and green chins.  It wasn’t the painters who were colorblind, she flashed, it was the models!  She should write an article for Art Notes about it.  Tiny flakes of powder dusted her fingers and surreptitiously she wiped them on Gerald’s leather seats, the rich leather he was so proud of.  However now the apricot dust was staining the black in a way that reminded her, disconcertingly, of a crime scene.

This wasn’t her first visit to Blanc Marie.  She had endowed the sisters with a $10,000 fellowship to say prayers in some sort of universal novena in Marty’s memory.

Tim had not been in favor of this investment at all.  And Gerald was, predictably, on the fence, not wanting to hurt Tim’s feelings by being disloyal to him, and yet not wanting to rock the boat so far as Elaine went either, for things had been rocky between them ever since Gerald had picked Tim up at some kind of gay cruise and married him on the steps of City Hall.  Tim didn’t understand why she felt it necessary to have prayers said in Marty’s name.  “I loved him too, Mom,” he said.  “But he’s dead and all the prayers in the world aren’t going to bring him back.”

That was his argument, and how could she say that she doubted his sincerity?  But the truth is she knew he would rather she spent the money on what, an extra bathroom on the house Tim was building for Gerald in St. Francis Wood.  Not that it was all so black and white, she admitted.  Marty hadn’t been the world’s best father, number one, and hell, maybe two men living together (with herself to be installed in this deluxe sort of “inlaw” apartment in what wasn’t actually the basement—but amounted to one)—maybe two men needed two bathrooms.  (She’d have her own, of course.)  Gerald thought it would be cute to have a bidet in his.  She made herself grin when she joshed him about it, but inwardly she was thinking of whether or not he enjoyed anal sex and if so, why and how.  She kept looking at Tim wondering how she had raised a son who would inflict anal sex on another, smaller boy.

Well, he was forty.  And Gerald close to it.  They weren’t boys, they just acted like it sometimes.

Today was supposed to be a nice drive in the country but now, as the two men stood there in twin sweaters, staring at her balefully, she felt alarm, seeing her nice afternoon go up in smoke.  “What?” she asked.  “I’m not going to feel any better with you two glaring at me as though I were–“  She couldn’t think of what.  Instantly they broke their gaze off, as though ashamed.  One looked up the side of the cliff; the other, to the rocks below.  They might have been two surveyors, in fisherman’s sweaters, assigned to measure cliff erosion.  Softly, out of the side of his mouth, Tim said, “Mom, do you want a handkerchief?”

“For what?”

“You’ve got all that makeup on the leather.”

Abruptly she swiveled in the backseat and pivoted herself out of the car entirely, hoisting herself up on her pins.  Marty always told her she wore too much makeup.  That she was beautiful just with a touch of lipstick.  She didn’t need all that junk on her eyes.  But what did Marty know?  He was the one who said they shouldn’t leave New York, they’d be crazy to leave a place they knew, and at night she would feel the fear in his bones as he lay next to her, feigning sleep, in that awful apartment on the Henry Hudson, their last before abandoning the city for once and for all.  That lumpy mattress she could have sworn had bedbugs.  Him staring at the ceiling through closed eyes but his pulses jumping like the trotters at Aqueduct.  

“Are you awake?”

No reply.

“Marty, you’re not kidding anyone, you’re awake.”

You’d hear a snore, a horribly unconvincing snore, a snore so fake it seemed to signal the very pit of despair, for it didn’t seem to, well, it didn’t seem to care if you thought it was real.  Whatever it was, it was not going to then turn around and say, oh yes, I was awake all along.  She got up, put her feet in her slippers, padded out to the kitchen, and in the glare of the pink “Pharmacy” neon she picked up her crossword and sat down again at the table, thinking that it would be the last crossword she’d ever do in New York.  The sugar bowl was empty, white crystals clinging to its rim.  The Daily News printed the most preposterous puzzles, clues so simple little Tim could finish one up by the time he was seven or eight.  They did have the Jumble puzzle which has pizzazz, a fairly elegant mess of consonants and vowels you could scramble till they formed a real word.  ECRMA.  You’d look at that combo and then “cream” would bubble to the surface.  She used to tell Marty, “People talk about ‘I love New York,’ all the shops and shows, but all I love is the Jumble puzzles and the City Ballet.”

“Yes,” she said to Tim, “I’ll take a hanky if you have one.  I don’t know why I’m so clumsy.  It’s just the emotion of the day, I suppose.”

“That’s all right, Elaine,” Gerald said.  “We understand.”

“Do you?”

Was there a simper of condescension in his voice?  There always is, when the young address the old.  But they were neither of them young, neither of them old.  Wasn’t there some fellow feeling among the middle-aged, or was your birthdate everything forever?

“Of course we do.  Marty was a great guy and you probably miss him to bits.  I know I do, and who am I?”

“Yes,” she mumbled.  In her fist she was rubbing great streaks into his leather, like a Number Two pencil eraser, till it foamed with shavings.  The white of Tim’s handkerchief, the thick black leather.  It was like some old-fashioned view of the world she had put behind her long ago when she had become a feminist and taken up International Modernism—the new.  No more black and white, she’d laughed to Marty, who shook his head like a rueful cart horse.  “Everything new,” Marty said, looking around him at the new place on Russian Hill—well, sort of Russian Hill.  She never knew when he was kidding.  She only knew when he was afraid of something.

Too, he was the victim of a dreadful pair of, well, you could hardly call them parents, they were just monsters.  That’s all, monsters.  The Nazis, Goebbels and Goering, were better parents, probably.  They gave all three of their kids a loveless childhood and made them feel guilty for wanting to get away from them.  They picked on the one boy so much he gave it up at thirteen, expiring in some sordid Coney Island brawl that made the papers.  And Elaine could just about remember Marty’s sister, who tried to join the Army during Korea and then disappeared into the bars and clubs of the Village sometime around 1956.  And the monsters lived on, as monsters always will, their posture stiff and immobile, ruling the roost and keeping poor Mart under their thumb as though he were still a little boy with his father’s—

“Stop staring at me, boys,” she said.  “It’s just not polite.  Let’s let this be a happy day, shall we?  And when we get to Blanc Marie the sisters are going to treat us to a lunch you’ll never forget.”  The food they offered the public was spectacular, that was the only word for it.  Pressed by friends to describe it, Elaine could only compare her experience at the refectory table to some great fireworks display, perhaps the one Leopold Bloom describes in Ulysses while he’s melting and rubbing himself over that innocent convent girl.  Vaguely she knew, somewhere in her soul, that the voluptuousness of the food was in some direct relationship to the simplicity, some might say harshness, of the nuns’ order, but she couldn’t think why.  “Sublimation” seemed too simple a concept, something beneath the register of the experience.  She had heard that M.F.K. Fisher, the famous California food writer, had devoted a chapter to Blanc Marie in one of her early books, either The Gastronomical Me or I Ate A Whole Fat Pig, but as of yet she hadn’t tracked down the reference.  M.F.K. Fisher—the Balanchine of food writers—joyous, vigorous, sensual, in fact downright sexy.

Gerald had picked up a small stone from the side of the road and was expertly tossing it from one hand to the other.  “Well,” he said, “you want to get a move on, Elaine?  You’re making me hungry, and we still have quite a hike.”

A hike?  Just as though they were walking instead of driving.  But that was Gerald for you: imprecise.  Sometimes, she thought, dealing with him was like dealing with someone who didn’t speak English very well.  His expressions were either slightly askew, or else so vulgar you’d think he’d have dropped them years ago as he rose higher in society and status.  “Chunk of change,” for example.  To Gerald everything was a big chunk of change.  The outlay for Marty’s novenas, of course.  The cost of a bidet.  He whistled beautifully, like Bing Crosby, but only in connection with mentioning a sum of money.  “Four hundred dollars!” he would whistle.  “That’s some chunk of change all right.”

“Oh yes, let’s move on, I’m so sorry,” said Elaine, drawing her feet together and lifting them back into the car proper.  Tim shut her car door from outside, then walked around the car, grabbing for his keys in his pocket.

“We had a little break, that’s all,” said Gerald generously.  He held the black stone he’d found in his palm, gazing at it as though it were worth something.  Elaine watched it glisten, catching the pinkish cool light and something of the rigor of the waves far below.  All greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely!  O so soft, sweet, soft!

“I don’t even know how the sisters get to the farmers market, considering they’re not allowed to talk to men,” Elaine said, looking forward now to her lunch.  “Maybe they speak only to the women farmers there, I don’t know.”

“Or eunuchs?” Tim said, pulling the car back onto 101, eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.  “That would be practical.”

“Hard boiled eggs for lunch?” Gerald suggested.

“Stop it, do,” Elaine laughed.  “You two are terrible, terrible.”  Tim had grown up with Marty’s sense of humor, an uneasy humor you might say, one that found the wry jest in every awful turn of fate.  For Marty, she knew, all too well, such a philosophy had come naturally, for his life really had been tough.  Hearing it from Tim, it seemed a little false, for outside of being gay, which in San Francisco was hardly a tragedy, what had he to complain of?  It was the same way that the jokes coming out of Woody Allen’s mouth at least seemed felt, whereas the same jokes from Jerry Seinfeld lost punch somehow, or even meaning.  Still, nuns were always ridiculous, weren’t they, and the best of them even seemed to concede as much.  Mother Hilda always wore a little smile as though she, too, the intimate friend of Loretta Young and Teilhard de Chardin among others, saw how crazy it all was.  And good with money too!  Tim said that Mother Hilda had the mind of a steel trap, and sometimes she frightened Elaine, just a little; she was utterly pragmatic, hardly spiritual at all in affect.  Like a character from one of her favorite books, The Corner That Held Them, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s divine novel about a cloistered order.  But then again, the older she got the more Elaine realized that the important part of life, the life of the soul, was all about simple things, and like it or not, the simple things cost money.

You could make a little chart, she thought, about which ballerinas, the ones she’d seen and envied over fifty years, which ones were Catholic girls and which were not.  Maria Tallchief, yes.  Alicia Alonso, for sure.  Janet Collins, probably.  Margot Fonteyn, don’t make me laugh.  The drive was lovely, but a little dizzying, and it was beyond her now to correlate the data of religious background to the need some lovely dancers seemed to have for anal sex.  Maybe after lunch all these columns and lists would add up.  In the meantime she applied a renewed vigor to finding a comfortable place on the bridge of her nose for her sunglasses.  In the shadowy back seat, she saw what amounted to a stranger—herself—reflected in the tinted glass.  A stranger with an expensive pair of shades that looked as though they were biting her nose, as though she were in pain, and a stranger who wore a grimace even on a lovely day.

“Can I roll down the window?” she called up to Tim.  “Or are we childproof?”  The three of them laughed, just burst out in guffaws, at the incongruity of—of what?  That she was no child, and that they had no parental authority over her?  That they had no children and they didn’t really want any, so why buy a “childproofed” car?  Well that last wasn’t strictly true, for Gerald in fact had three children, apparently, though Elaine had never met any of them.  To her they were phantoms, forgettable phantoms, to be trotted out whenever any of them wanted a reminder that Gerald wasn’t maybe one thousand percent gay as he so often seemed.  Those three kids, hidden from him by a vengeful ex-wife in Manila or Melbourne, were like the Lost Boys in the story of Peter Pan—they were doing something tropical somewhere, forever young, and noisy, but just about faceless.  Elaine supposed that Gerald knew their names but they were so little a part of her life that most of the time she forgot they existed.  She had to give him that, he wasn’t one of those fathers who was always trying to show you slides of his children, or JPEGs of their first day at school.  Even when he’d downed a few, he never sobbed into his beer about Gerald Junior and the others.

“We’re childproof,” Tim affirmed, and this sent them all into giggles all over again.  It was almost as though they had never been at loggerheads, her wonderful son and herself.

“May I see your little rock?” Elaine asked Gerald, raising her hand to his shoulder, pressing her fingers into the wool of his sweater, with what she hoped was a tender sort of touch.

The face he sent back was confused.

“What rock, dear?”

“That little stone you picked up from the roadside,” she said.  “It was such a thoughtful souvenir of our day.”

“Did I have a rock?” he said.  It was clear he’d forgotten the incident already.  “Sure it weren’t no hard boiled egg, Elaine?”

Her nose itched.  Sort of a flimsy sensation probably aggravated by the severe bite of the bridge.

“You were tossing that tiny stone around as though you wanted maximum publicity for it,” she said, coolly enough.  “I saw it in your hand and for a moment you reminded me of Saint Francis.”

“St. Francis Wood maybe,” said Tim, for that was the luxury neighborhood in San Francisco that he and Gerald aspired to.

“I’m no Saint Francis,” Gerald chuckled.

“Apparently not,” she agreed, with an asperity that afterward dismayed her.  Why couldn’t she keep any affection going for Gerald?  She would catch it for a second, and she could nurse it for minutes at a stretch, but then like a firefly in her hand it would buzz and flare out, you could almost feel it dying, vacant with beauty.  How long did it take to be able to love someone?  With Marty it had happened in an instant, like snapping your fingers—or was that the marvelous diminution that time brought with it—everything seemed to have happened in a jumble, fast as thought itself, even falling in love.  Or one day she, walking through Flatbush, seeing a used condom on the steps of St. Cecilia’s, suddenly deciding that come hell or high water she would move her family out of New York.  And that was that.  There were things irrevocable, matters of the spirit, decided in an instant; and then there were men like Gerald who no matter how hard you tried to treat him like a human being, you just kept seeing Tim’s thing in his mouth, his fat little mouth like a daffodil.

“It might be on the floor,” Gerald said.  He shook his head from side to side.  “The rock thing I mean.”

“You could look,” Tim said.

“Oh it is so unimportant,” Elaine said.  “What’s important is having a good time while we still can.”

“Or when we stop I could get out and get you another one,” Gerald said.

“It’s not like they’re expensive,” said Tim.

“Oh, that would be fine,” agreed Elaine.  “I wouldn’t want you to be out a chunk of change.”

She noticed, in the side mirror to her right, the cheerful orange and white boxy shape of a U-Haul van in their wake.  It was keeping right up; as she thought back, she had been noticing it here and there, in the twisty turns of 101 by Devils Slide, or later, along the bleak Dover Beach seascapes of Pigeon Point, in her peripheral vision that U-Haul van had been almost traveling with them.  When they had pulled over for their impromptu “stretch of the legs,” the van had maintained a discreet distance a hundred yards down the highway’s edge.

“Have you boys been watching this U-Haul truck?” she asked, wanting to amuse them.  “As Marty used to say, remember Tim?  It’s been sticking to us like white on rice.”

“I don’t remember the white on rice thing, Mom.”

Gerald laughed.  “What would he say today, when rice isn’t necessarily white, I wonder?”

Tim glanced in his rear view mirror.  His lip twitched.  “He’d say that the fucking piece of shit was on our ass, is what he’d say.”

“Tim, please,” said Gerald.

“’White on rice,’” he hooted derisively, and if there was one thing Elaine hated it was when someone mocked you by imitating your voice or your expressions—the very things that belonged to you.  “Give me a fucking break.”

Gerald leaned over the back seat, cuffed him on the shoulder.  “Tim, let’s just try to have a nice day, okay?  Our last one for a while, let’s make it nice.”

Last one for a while?

What was going on with that?

“I hurt you, Tim?” Gerald said in a small voice.  “Baby, I’m sorry.”  Then he must have pushed down a button in the armrest of the “childproof” car, for his window rolled down, nearly inaudibly, but she had always had good hearing and she could sense the atmosphere within the sedan changing, shifting slightly.  “I don’t think I hurt our boy, Elaine,” he continued, his voice getting blown about by the wind so that, or so it seemed to her, the syllables in the different words he used seemed to bounce all over them, like the inflatable silver pillows Andy Warhol made for his Factory parties.  Those silver pillows she had seen in Time magazine when all New York was talking of Pop Art and Warhol’s Silver Factory, which sounded so elegant.  Even in the best of times, Gerald had an affected way of speaking.  “He’s made of sturdy stuff as we both of us know all too well.”

Elaine was barely listening to him . . .  When she got to Blanc Marie she planned to tuck into whatever rich dessert the Sisters had set aside for her.  Too often in the past, she’d scrimped and cheated herself to keep the figure she’d had as a young girl, but we can’t all be sylphlike, so we might as well eat what desserts we may.  Look at Violette Verdy!  Balanchine had made dozens of dances for her, might as well call them “pipe cleaner dances,” but by the time she retired it was as though someone had pumped air into her like a dirigible so that by the time Reagan became President dear Violette had that silver pillow look herself, like a dumpling wrapped in foil at some dim sum place.

That U-Haul van was really moving. She saw its squarish cabin comically bumping up and down. She glanced at Tim’s knuckles on the steering wheel, how white and old they looked, his fingers knotted around the wheel as though arthritis had molded them into hooks.  Poor boy, really.  Upset about a tiff with Gerald, no doubt.

A good meal would sort them all out.

“Mom,” Tim said.

Chicken, spinach, chocolate cake—dumplings were in her head thanks to Violette Verdy; maybe there’d be dumplings.  Not the Chinese sort, the—

“Mom, it’s not like we haven’t talked this out over and over,” Tim said.  He sounded resigned.

She felt Gerald’s paw on her left shoulder.

“Oh, Elaine,” he said.  “So awful to see you like this.”

“Don’t pretend you’re, like, all in the dark about the U-Haul, Mom.”

“In the dark?” she repeated.  It was like he was being patient with her.  An unusual note for Tim.  Patience.  Something new for our boy.  “In the dark about what?”

“About the U-Haul,” Gerald whined.  Oh, maybe it wasn’t whining, but his affected way of speaking.  No wonder his kids never liked visiting him.  Who would want a Dad who talked like Lauren Bacall in an old Douglas Sirk weeper like Written on the Wind?  At least Tim had had a manly sort of father, a mensch as they say.

Marty.  Buried on a hill, the sea breeze lilting, the stars above blinking out unendurable messages of gravity.  A branch of one of those sea-drenched white trees pitched above his grave.  Him a suit of bones, as she had used to lie in bed next to him, pressing his skin with her thumb, feeling the bone along his skinny little spine, his absurdly large skull.

“In the dark about what about the U-Haul, can you tell me that?” Elaine cried.  “Because I don’t know what you could possibly be talking about.”

“Oh Elaine,” said Gerald, patting her shoulder, gently, as though she were some sort of National Velvet.  “Those nuns are gonna take such extra good care of you.  You’ll be their sugar doll with all your beautiful clothes and manners.  Look!  I can almost see it now.”  Suddenly his face was next to hers, wreathed in smiles.  “It’s coming up around the bend, just you wait and see.”

Stories in the Worst Way, published in the 1996 with Knopf, first brought attention to Gary Lutz in an era when a few of the big-guns New York publishers still vibed with the mid-century practice of making space for innovative, disturbing writing.

Through the next two decades, this unique writer’s writer continued his language-driven project with four consistent collections published by boutique indie presses such as the visionary yet now-defunct 3rd Bed, as well as Calamari Press, Black Square Editions, and Kevin Sampsell’s long-standing Portland-based Future Tense Books. Now, all of the author’s work is available in this volume from New York Tyrant.

For the uninitiated, Lutz (who has also, in the past, written under the flat, gratifying nom de plume “Lee Stone”) makes short stories with a focus on sentences themselves rather than progressing events or unspooling revelations. These sentences, with stomach-dropping little dictional surprises, draw low-spirited, nervous, and/or masochistic protagonists, most of them nameless and devoid of gender, as they observe their own relationships with wariness and resignation, more or less enduring them, sometimes watching them evaporate. The narrators have no trouble talking or connecting with others, but overall, it’s cold comfort for them. Some of the trouble seems to be the gray setting, a version of our world, from which the narrators’ relationships arise. Simultaneously, intimacy offers these narrators a wealth of minutiae for observation: “She had a frivolity of moles on one arm,” “He was loiny, and pustuled, with an utterness of hair, ginger squibbles of it all over,” “[She was] putty-faced and dressed.”

True, this hardly sounds like a party. But don’t think these stories aren’t hilarious—they are, verbally and situationally. In “Onesome,” the protagonist describes his wife’s work in “a program that reached out to anyone for whom speech had become a hardship. These included the people who said they instead of he or she to jack up the population in their private lives.”  Another narrator signs off a paper letter to an ex-lover with “xoxo,” but, in their ambivalence, adds penmarks to the letter’s closure so it resembles a crossed-out tic-tac-toe game.

Even when the stories take place in the present day, Lutz has a penchant for preserving heirloom words and phrases.  “Car-coat,” “shoehorn” “frankfurter shack,” a “custard shop,” “business traveler,” “the phone book,” “bric-a-brac,” and countless others tint the writer’s prose to mid-20^th Century atmospherics.  Meanwhile, numerous verbs, adverbs and adjectives have the propulsion to make language do more, often pointing to that despair and discomfort about the body. A man’s voice sounds “messy, squirky from disuse,” a wife “fumed and soured and stenched in bed beside a husband who himself was a cloud of exhausts and leakages. (I had to head to the urban dictionary for “slurked,” but am unconvinced Lutz sourced it there).  The understated humor here is edged by bleakness and distant cruelty.

The church meeting-room, the overlit, shabby rental hall, a corner of the discount store: Lutz is brilliant at setting up blurred glimpses of North American communities’ stale, exhausted grimness and drabness. The language can sound quite Ohio or Plains. In “Am I Keeping You?” the narrator’s aunt “could never see herself outshining a child, but there she was with two daughters, neither of them a marrier.” A woman’s lurking boyfriend in “Meltwater” reveals: “Sometimes I could make out a third voice downstairs, that of a contestant female, just a visitor, no doubt, and a laugher. I never got to meet her and to this day still suspect she had a smoky hood of unshampooed hair and the sleep-buckled arms of a quitter.”

The pleasures of those two sentences are fun to parse: their ricocheting sounds, “a laugher,” and the disconcertingly erotic “hood” of hair. Then there’s the wonderfully visual buckling arms and the deft way they correlate with a “quitter,” and the rhythmic closure.

Lutz packs sentences with his characteristic cadences and maneuvers things so there’s a tang somewhere between ghastliness and comedy. In “I Crawl Back to People,” the narrator, with coldheartedness and a signature Lutzian punchline that feels like a drop into hell, offers, “There was a kind of woman you could spend weeks with, months even, and never get it settled to your satisfaction whether she was on the mend or not yet finished being destroyed.”   

“Pledged” takes place in a small city or town. Like many stories in Lutz’s oeuvre, it doesn’t move forward in time so much as rock to and fro. And if it switches between first person plural and first person singular, locales are also neither one nor the other. The narrator, a young woman with a best friend, establishes the setting by stating, “the name of the town depended on which direction you came from. We were approaching form the east, so it was called West Southfork.” The two friends, disoriented for perhaps no other reason than life’s toughness, walk where “grass had been mushed” and “the planeting underneath the dirt felt even mushier.” They drop to their hands and knees and dig into the earth, mud caking their arms and bracelets as if in an actual search for firmer ground. As they pull a pile of graph paper out of the mud, “the planet slump[s] for a sec.” Muddy and “smutched,” they go to a restaurant where a local man leans against their booth, watching them eat with their “abstruse” manners. This causes both girls to not truly eat but pretend to eat. As the leaning intruder’s mouth is “stirred up,” it could be an escalating scene about gender and power, but Lutz is incapable of writing the expected. OCD and nervous, the man yatters at the woman about the way they’re eating: “Is that why you’re doing it? Just to be doing it? For the sake of it? All I’m saying is don’t be picking at it all the time. Leave well enough alone is what I’m saying. You ever stop to think that somebody else might come along and want it? Leave something for somebody else.” The stranger isn’t rapacious, but a Midwest nut overflowing with problems and double entendres. It’s the reliable restaurant server who calls him off.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that Lutz’s fiction comes up sometimes between women readers and/or writers as a topic of discussion along with the sentiment that the writing is sexist–even among those who admire the work. A writer and critic friend summed it up pretty well: “I guess I’m used to feeling pissed off at something or other in men’s work and loving what I love at the same time.” She must’ve been referring Lutz’s narrators’ uninhibited dislike/alarm over female bodies (sentences like “Thirty-eight years of picked-over, furying age she was—brittled hair, a bulwark forehead, a voice that sounded blown-through.”). Descriptions like these can “slap,” my friend attested. This is important to note. However, the narrators don’t spare male bodies from the withering descriptions, either, and…they’re characters. Really damaged ones, too–so it’s all of a piece. Lutz’s work as a whole, domed-over by gray atmospherics of pain, minimizes my response to the narrators’ making verbal field days of women’s appearances—actually it makes me question my own expectation that life should be fair.

Though Lutz’s work makes me laugh more than it offends me, his paragraphs reverberate with the sensation of some sort of serious injury. And most of the stories, which expose little corners of our culture’s cruel, cipher-like qualities, are especially unnerving as the country dips into political despotism today.

The narrators’ bafflements, disconnects, shame, and little humiliations never abate. This is most clear in this book’s final story, “Am I Keeping You?” which describes a seemingly endless series of brute, terribly abusive aunts. No possibility of love, or awe for the universe, soothes any of these narrators’ distress away. But language is there instead: communication, via elaborate, hand-built sentences, tonally fascinating: a complex reprieve.

The writer’s intense interest in words, sound, and rhythm versus fiction’s usual conventions were apparent to me in a workshop he led in Seattle in the mid-aughts. Around this time he also co-authored, with Diane Stevenson, the student textbook A Grammar Reference, which contains sections you’d be hard-pressed to find in Bedford English handbooks: “Indefensible Split Infinitives” and “Special Problems with That.” In both the handbook and his hardworking fiction, Lutz pulverizes the creative writing schools’ injunctions that fiction is best made from lush characterization, painstakingly made beats, and sacrosanct central conflict. I hope this collection of virtually all the short fiction by this legendary writer (including nine new stories), along with a wonderfully anecdotal and contextualizing introduction by Brian Evenson, will bring a new generation or two to Lutz’s mysterious and troubling art.

“Can anyone guess what caused this boulder to split in two?” Eduardo mumbled through clenched teeth as he rifled through his backpack. From his mouth, a poorly wrapped joint hung above the dusty earth below. 

Our once pasty, now reddening faces turned from our pint-sized tour guide and toward the enormous halves, just centimeters apart from one another. 

“Lightning?” I asked, eager to move on and find refuge from the relentless Bolivian sun. I had already endured enough pain in this desert.

Eduardo did not acknowledge my response and only smiled to himself upon discovering the hot pink Bic he had been searching for.

“Some Stone Age tool?” the now blistering, once handsome Swede beside me offered.

“All good guesses, but no,” Eduardo replied absentmindedly. His attention was consumed by the spark-spitting lighter hidden behind his small, tanned hand. After a few more flicks, a weak flame emerged and grasped the tip of the joint. “The Clam Shell, that’s what this formation is called, was actually formed by rain.”

We all stood in silence, staring up at the ten-foot-tall stone masses. Before any of us could reply, he took the joint from his lips and, holding it out before him like the hand of God, gestured towards someone in our group.  

“Lauren, do you want a hit? It will help with the altitude sickness.”

Lauren passed our wall of sunburnt flesh, strengthened by the idea of possible relief. Unlike the rest of us, the sun favored her skin. It gave her the appearance of someone in much better health.  She took the joint in her mouth and inhaled deeply.

“But we’re in the desert,” she rebutted, smoke pouring from her lips. “How was there enough rain out here to break it in half?” 

“It took millions of years and countless little droplets filling a microscopic crack at the top. It was gradual but then…. CRACK!” Eduardo proclaimed with a clap for dramatic effect.

I glanced over at Lauren, both hopeful and scared that we might catch each other’s gaze. 

***

I woke up on the night of my twenty-fifth birthday to the sound of unfamiliar laughter coming from another room. It took a moment to realize that I wasn’t in my own bed. I was on a couch in Sophia’s living room surrounded by empty prosecco bottles and frosting-coated paper plates. Across the room, a large suitcase lay open on the floor with its stretchy, polyester contents spilling out over the sides. The laughter stopped and was replaced by the sound of footsteps coming towards me. 

The suitcase’s owner glided into the room with her golden blonde hair flowing behind her like a cape. She was beautiful in the way I imagined the president of a sorority might be. In high school, we would never have been friends.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she said without enthusiasm. 

“Yeah,” I replied before clearing my throat.  My voice was gravelly from too many cigarettes earlier in the night. “You’re Lauren, right? Nice to finally meet you.” 

“Same. Sophia’s told me so much about you.”

We smiled politely as our shared apathy filled the room. It was suffocating.

“Okay, well I better head home,” I said, desperate to escape. “See you around and welcome to Chicago!”

“Thanks. Night.”

***

“Do you realize that today is our one-year anniversary?” I asked breathlessly as I tossed the last of the gold balloons into the pile at our feet. 

“Jesus, that’s right,” Lauren replied. “Props to Sophia for forcing us to hang out.”

 “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me that we had the same birthday last year.”

Despite our rocky start, Lauren had evolved into something that had previously seemed impossible to secure as an adult: a best friend. After leaving New York, I had begun to feel like my loneliness was unsolvable. All my childhood friends had drifted away, and I hadn’t replaced them. I knew people, of course, but always from a respectful distance. I believed that children alone — being free of all the shame, pride, and fear of abandonment that comes with adulthood — could open up enough to get past a surface-level friendship. But Lauren didn’t have those hangups. She was fearless and always told you exactly what she was thinking. She proved I was wrong about people.

 “So, did you invite him to our party?” 

“Yes, and don’t be a bitch. You know his name is Tyler,” she said, unafraid of sounding critical unless it related to her on-again, off-again, undefined, whatever he was.

“I know, I know. I just don’t get his appeal.”

“You don’t get the appeal of anyone unless they’re a pretentious foreigner,” she replied, driving her knife deep into a wound that still hadn’t healed. 

“Sorry, you’re right,” I said, eager to smooth things over. “I wasn’t trying to be judg-y.” 

I turned away, pretending to play with the floating two and six balloons behind me. I didn’t want her to see my tears eagerly lining up. I wasn’t over my ex, who had dumped me eight months prior. But that’s not what hurt. I was scared that she might leave me as well.

***

“Happy twenty-seventh birthday!” I shouted into my phone. I held my screen close to my face, framing only what I wanted her to see. The sparse state of my unpacked room was too depressing to broadcast.

“Yesterday was our birthday.”

“Okay, happy belated twenty-seventh birthday then!”

As we had planned, we both lifted champagne flutes to our screens and cheers-ed but with differing levels of enthusiasm. Lauren was openly annoyed that I had forgotten to text her back on our actual birthdays, and I pretended nothing was wrong. 

My sudden move back to New York the month prior had put a big strain on our already tense friendship. My continued hatred of her gym-rat boyfriend probably hadn’t helped. I would tell her that I didn’t trust Tyler and that he was beneath her. She told me I was projecting, that I was too proud to talk about the fact that I was still hung up on my ex. 

Besides an occasional foray into the topic of weight loss, our conversations centered around those men. Gone were the days when we pored over travel blogs seeking out the best and cheapest way to get around Croatia, Belize, or Laos. Instead we stared at old texts from men who hurt us, endlessly dissecting them until they ceased to mean anything at all. Our relationship was like a television show a couple seasons past its prime. All the good jokes had been used up, the characters had become caricatures, and the writers had forgotten what the show was about in the first place. That was us.

“So what did you end up doing for your birthday dinner?” I asked, trying to maneuver our conversation into a safe zone.   

Before Lauren had a chance to respond, if she even wanted to, the scream of her buzzer halted our discussion. 

“That’s Tyler. I should go.”

***

Lauren and I were both living in New York by our twenty-eighth birthdays but we decided not to do a joint party. We had our own friend groups from past lives, and it felt like too big of a task to overlap them. If I’m being honest, I was happy with the arrangement. I didn’t care for her friends. I found them vain, boisterous, and generally overwhelming. They traveled as a herd, their heels echoing through the halls of impossible-to-get-into restaurants as they sipped their sixteen dollar cocktails purchased by boorish, former jocks. By contrast, my friends sported Birkenstocks and preferred spending their time in dark Greenpoint bars where Lauren felt out of place. To keep the peace, we made an unspoken pact to keep everyone on their own side of the Williamsburg Bridge.

But I was happy Lauren was back in my life. Now that Tyler was no longer in the picture, it seemed possible to get back to where our friendship had been in the beginning. Maybe it was because we were both single again or because our futures felt unknown, but something was different. 

“Should we do our birthday dinner on your side of the bridge or mine?” I asked the night before our private celebration. I felt like I already knew the answer. 

“Meet in the middle?” Lauren replied through my speaker phone. 

“Palma?!” we both shouted in unison before bursting into fits of laughter.

Yeah, we were back in that honeymoon period.  Things were turning around. We had a chance to rebuild our foundation and throw away the messy combination of over-discussed and under-acknowledged topics that had been causing our friendship to rot away beneath the surface. 

***

“How was your birthday?” I asked Lauren over squid ink pasta from the same Italian restaurant we had gone to the year prior. It was a few weeks past the actual date but this was our first chance to grab dinner since I’d gotten back from Mexico City. “Better than mine, I hope.”

“It was good. Charles took me to dinner…. It’s really weird you didn’t tell me you were in the hospital.”

“I didn’t tell anyone. There wasn’t anything for you to do. I had Montezuma’s Revenge. I didn’t want visitors at home or in the hospital.”

“Noah was there… You could have at least said something. You were totally MIA. I thought you were backing out of our South America trip.” 

My desire not to discuss my stomach issues wasn’t  a lie, but Lauren wasn’t wrong about my anxiety over our upcoming trip, either. We had booked our tickets three months prior when things weren’t as bad, but even then, a growing part of me feared that traveling to Bolivia and Chile together would be a big mistake. 

***

After another twenty minutes discussing the Clam Shell, our tour group was in the car and back on the non-existent road. Despite my frequent motion-sickness, I opted to take the dreaded back row, a place where gravity seemed forever in flux, to get as far away from Lauren as possible. 

“So how did you two wind up in Bolivia?” the handsome Swede asked, swiveling his head around to speak to me and gesturing towards Lauren as he did so. 

“Uhh… Lauren and I planned the trip about six months ago,” I replied as quietly as I could. I knew that she wouldn’t want to hear her name coming out of my mouth. “I had suggested we come here for our birthdays, so we wound up splitting the trip instead of getting each other presents this year.”

“It wasn’t your idea,” Lauren said from the front seat. Her face was pressed against the cold window to reduce her reemerging nausea. “I was the one that suggested we come to Bolivia and Patagonia”

“Oh,” I replied, dumbfounded. Lauren had not spoken a word to me, or even joined a conversation I was apart of, in over twenty-four hours. “Yeah.”

The conversation ended there. The Swede apparently decided that a moment of friendly banter with me was not worth being my middle row, human dam protecting me from the continuous flow of rage rushing my way. I didn’t blame him. No one wants to be casualty. 

 

By the time Lauren and I had left Bolivia and arrived in Patagonia for the second leg of our trip, an onlooker might assume our situation had improved. In reality though, we were just exhausted. We had been worn down by the countless flights, the lack of showers, the endless flow of vomit, and the thought of spending one more moment with each other. 

But it would be wrong to blame all of this on the trip. Our continental divide occurred far above the Southern Hemisphere. I knew it as we were boarding our flight from JFK. I kind of knew it when we booked the tickets. Our friendship had been replaced with a knock-off a long time ago. From the outside it looked like the real deal, but if someone had actually inspected the lining, anyone could tell something was off.

 

Lauren and I immediately parted ways when we landed at JFK, opting to take separate lines at customs. There was no way we would survive an hour-long line together at 5AM. 

By 5:05AM, I was fully submerged in the line and finally able to breathe. Despite spending the majority of the past twelve days outside exploring some of the most beautiful places that nature has to offer, I had been suffocating. Almost every day served me a mixture of feeling attacked, alone, at times genuinely scared for my life (not entirely because of Lauren but mostly), exhausted, and desperate to escape. By 6:15AM, I was waiting in line for a taxi and gulping in the fresh, New York air, thinking that the worst was over.  

But then the following week brought a fresh, new type of pain; heartbreak. It finally occurred to me that I had lost one of my best friends. As it turns out, losing Lauren was a million times worse than any breakups I’d had with past boyfriends, even the ones I took forever to get over. And while this ending was harder than others, I did eventually get over it. Now, I can finally appreciate our relationship for what it was; a perfect birthday cake that came with an expiration date. I chose to ignore the date, so it’s on me for getting sick after it went sour, but damn did it taste great in the beginning.

Anyways, our thirtieth birthday is coming up in two months. I know we won’t spend it together. I wonder if she’ll text me “Happy Birthday.” I don’t know, maybe I would text back if she did.

“The Chair,” the six-episode series written by actress/writer Amanda Peet and writer/academic Annie Julia Wyman, and produced by Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and Chair star Sandra Oh, has garnered much attention in recent weeks. Reviews mostly hailing the Netflix show as “brilliant,” “timely,” and “hilarious” have flooded the media. And the show’s release also lit up academic Twitter with a flurry of tweets that weighed in on what the series got right about academic life and what was left wanting in its depiction of the English department at Pembroke, the fictional college that provides the setting for the playing out of the culture wars on American college campuses today.

The series deals specifically with challenges faced by Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), the newly named Chair of the Pembroke English Department––challenges made still more intense due to Kim’s status as a first-ever-woman of color to hold the position. Within a hierarchy held in place by Dean Paul Larson (David Marsh), woke students and junior professors, and their more antiquated counterparts called “dinosaurs,” play out their opposing roles on a stage defined by the elusiveness of tenure for women of color, the lack of faculty diversity, gendered salary discrepancies, competing teaching philosophies, and a dwindling enrollment. All that is missing at Pembroke is a cadre of poorly paid adjuncts and graduate student instructors who stand in for more costly tenure-line professors, and whose labor currently makes up more than 60% of the teaching in real humanities departments in the US.

The story unfolds in a plot that develops around three of Kim’s main challenges as Chair. The first: to bring Pembroke into the 21st century in terms of diversity and feminism by supporting Black Americanist assistant professor, Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah), during her run-up to tenure. Part of Kim’s plan involves suggesting that McKay co-teach Moby Dick with Melville scholar (and dinosaur), Eliot Rentz (Bob Balaban), rather than offer her own popular and heavily enrolled course, “Sex and the Novel.” Kim’s reasoning is that making such a change would most immediately solve the department’s enrollment issues by filling vacant seats in Rentz’ course with McKay’s overflow of students. Kim’s suggestion is also motivated by the hopes that it will also create a forum in which McKay can show off her talents as a teacher and her grasp of contemporary critical theory to Rentz, who is, it turns out, the head of her departmental tenure committee.  But though it is McKay who brings the students to the classroom, in Rentz’s mind it is he who is the serious scholar, and he quickly relegates his younger colleague to the level of a paper-distributing teaching assistant, as McKay had predicted he would.

The inevitable complexity of this strange-bedfellows merger isn’t the sole cause of Kim’s defeat in her struggle to bring the department into the 21st century. Her plan to select McKay for the year’s Distinguished Lecturer Award is soon derailed by Dean Larson, who, seeking to appeal to alumni and donors, instead taps celebrity and former Yale ABD Beckett scholar, David Duchovny (played by himself), for the honor––though he had left the profession 30 years ago. Though Kim does manage to convince Duchovny to withdraw his candidacy, she doesn’t do it quite fast enough to head off a job offer from Yale to McKay, an offer which comes with the promise of an endowed chair, an expedited tenure process, and a hefty salary. McKay, of course, considers the offer, accusing Kim of abandoning her mission to diversify the faculty by kowtowing to an antiquated academic structure and value system.

Kim’s second and central challenge as the new Chair arises from her dealings with the charming and popular professor, Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), who after arriving late and quite hung over for the semester’s first meeting of his course, “The Death of Modernism,” performed a cocky mock Seig Heil gesture while defining fascism as a cause for modernism’s demise. His students, with cell phones at the ready, snap photos of him in mid-gesture. Eager to identify a scapegoat and to publicize Dobson’s faux pas (in a way that seems ironic in their quasi-fascistic use of PC language and behavior), they cast him as an anti-Semite in the memes they create on the spot and post on social media even before the class has ended. Predictably, “No Nazis at Pembroke” protests break out immediately among students. This terrifies the Dean, the board, and the donors, already worried about low enrollments and thus more attentive to student discontent. Make a public apology, they tell Dobson, or lose your job. But–and here’s the rub–it isn’t enough for the students that he apologize for offending them. He must apologize for being a Nazi, or minimally, for being anti-Semitic. Enter Cancel Culture at Pembroke!

Seeing both accusations as unfounded and untrue, Dobson resists the demand for apology, and thereby puts his job in jeopardy. Doing so, he compromises the legitimacy of his colleague and current boss, Kim, whose advice to Dobson’s TA—to not answer any questions from reporters–comes off as a gag order issued in an attempted cover-up.  Ironically, all her efforts to stave off notoriety gets her is a front-page cover-photo and an above-the-fold story in the campus newspaper.

As if that weren’t enough, Kim’s difficulties as a first woman of color in her position are further complicated by her private life as a single mother of a smart, charming, but rather difficult adopted daughter, Juju (Every Carganilla). The Chair’s depiction of Kim’s work/life balance signals the stress that working mothers face when childcare is not provided by the university, babysitters outside the workplace are in short supply, and parents must depend on resistant grandparents and/or friends to watch their children, sometimes with no advance notice.

Kim is faced with the additional stress of her unresolved romantic relationship with Dobson, former peer, former boss, and current subordinate. Recently widowed, he assuages his pain by self-medicating with every drug and drink known to man in an attempt to “get his shit together.” In the meantime, Dobson’s antics compromise Kim’s need to maintain professionalism with the Dean and impartiality with department members.

And this series is supposed to be funny? 

Well, in fact, it is funny. Very funny. Aside from the humor sparked by the show’s realistic treatment of academic politics, Kim’s personal relationship with Dobson often plays out like a zany rom com. The show highlights their undeniable chemistry and the banter that attests to their clear enjoyment of one another, even through their mighty disagreements. Similarly, Kim’s struggles with Juju, who terrorizes babysitters, befuddles teachers, and worries her amused, though understandably exhausted mother, often spark guffaws.

But the heartiest laughs are prompted by Kim’s third challenge—her attempt to locate a proper workspace for the tenured medievalist professor, Joan Hambling, brilliantly played by Holland Taylor. Hambling, a bawdy, outspoken 70-year-old, has recently been moved to the basement of the Athletic Department, following an administrative decision to make room for young blood by inciting older professors to retire. Hambling’s attempts to be restored to an above-ground office by means of a Title IX claim, her burning of her negative student evaluations in a waste basket bonfire in her office, and her successful flirtatious conspiracy with a newly acquired IT buddy to “out” an outrageously ageist and misogynist “Rate my Professor” critic––are easily the most hilarious moments of the season.

But as entertaining, heartwarming, and poignant as the series is, and as apt as its depiction of the mindsets, policies and politics of academia seem to be, I found the show to be nonetheless somewhat wanting. Or, perhaps, it’s better to say, I found myself wanting––for a bit more. As a former English professor in a respected university suffering from some of the same problems, the shock of recognition and the agony of the situation having been captured exactly as it unfolded in my experience, elicited not only my laughter but also my frustration. I found myself wishing the show had been bolder in its treatment of the complexity and sometimes thorny aspects of some of the behaviors it depicts. The question that remains for me is how the portrayal might have been done more effectively and more successfully.

I’d been impressed with the way a comment by McKay added to the representation of her situation, and humorously, to the critique of racism in the department. However, I found myself longing for a more obvious denouncement of the students’ series of actions following Dobson’s ‘Heil Hitler’ joke and dismissal. The Chair’s writers did a splendid job in composing the zinger that McKay delivers, in which she points to the absurdity of Kim’s protection of Rentz, in his loss of stature, at the expense of his junior, Black woman colleague. “I can see why you feel sorry for him . . .  he only got to rule the profession for the last forty years,” she snaps. I applauded the critique of racism and cronyism of academe that the script levels in that comment. Unfortunately, however, there was no such challenge leveled at Dobson’s students’ own brand of absurd behavior in his class or at his town meeting beyond a straightforward depiction of the scenes.

In today’s universities, when PC responses by students in English departments are so typical that neither guffaws, nor awareness of the absurdity of a situation are guaranteed responses for viewers, lampooning these normalized behaviors might require more work than the use of hyperbole. If critiques of students’ inability to either distinguish between a joke and a slur, or resist a questionable orthodoxy, are points “The Chair” is interested in promoting (though to what extent they are is perhaps still the question), the choice to include a critical or humorous visual or verbal response from an unconvinced onlooker could help. Perhaps a non-conformist student’s point that Dobson’s gesture was made while illustrating a link between fascism and absurdism would have offered a viewer an alternative to students’ certainty of Dobson’s commitment to Nazi politics and identity. Perhaps a student’s use of feminist theory for a humorous woke-on-woke critique of protestors’ misrepresentation of Dobson, could have provided a clearer critique of the students for putting a Nazi cap on his head in their memes. And, lastly, adding an awestruck professor to the group at the town meeting might have shed light on the consequences of not challenging what Anne Applebaum calls Modern mob justice techniques in her recent Atlantic article, “The New Puritans”––such as students chanting memorized lines in sync with each other and with their choreographed moves to insist on only one truth– that Dobson is a Nazi because it serves their purposes, and because they say so. There are never enough of such faculty members in real English Departments; but there is always at least one.

And could that one be introduced in Season Two? 

If not, the series could be wanting for a slightly more obvious satirical stance when it comes to the students, so as not to reproduce the fear provoked by cancel culture in the actual telling of this story.  As it stands, the series critiques the easy issues well—the ones with which most people agree. It succeeds at condemning ageism and coerced retirement, a lack of faculty diversity, the dreaded “Rate My Professor” website, gendered wage discrimination, and the lecture as valid pedagogy on its own.

But, speaking of pedagogy, where was a critique of McKay’s? Unless there is a spoofing too vague to notice, I did not catch a satirical tone taken about her competence vs. her marketability. And the story could benefit from something more than incessant praise for her pedagogy, even considering her beyond rapturous response to the students’ theatrical performance of Moby Dick. I am a lover of using drama and the arts in the classroom, and engaging students in creating responses to comprehend and more easily relate to older literature especially. But, while the students are engaged and have ostensibly learned some things creating the pieces, the exercise cries out for a follow-up to that experience if it is to warrant applause. University students need to go further, and for them, this Hamiltonesque coverage of the novel is seriously wanting as it stands. Would Yale really be satisfied with this lightweight coverage of Moby Dick accompanied by neither necessary reflection nor discussion from its newly endowed chair, or is that question being deliberately–yet clearly too faintly–raised by the show’s writers? I found it hard to tell. The brief rack focus documentation of Rentz’s stunned reaction to McKay’s lesson was the sole response registered and could easily have been interpreted as an indictment of Rentz as the un-woke “dinosaur.”

In addition to issues with her lesson plan, McKay’s demonstrated questioning style, designed for only the response she is after, is problematic without a critique clearer than the juxtaposition of her style with Kim’s open questions and subsequent brief discussion with her class in the final episode. McKay is hailed as brilliant by Kim on about five occasions over the six episodes. And reviewers across the board have also emphasized her brilliance, most likely echoing Kim’s fictional endorsement. But where is the brilliance evidenced in her teaching in the show– the one place we could have seen it?  Or are we meant to question her success based on alternative perspectives possibly running through viewers minds? – the idea that women of color currently enjoy an edge over white contenders in being hired or promoted in the academy– despite holdover statistics?  If so, we have been given no indication of that. All we know is that the writers provided the opening for a critique, and then didn’t take it up.

That said, I do understand that the brevity of the series and the writers’ desire to be humorous as well as heady are reasons for not taking up extremely controversial political topics. That and the risk of being canceled themselves as racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic. Also, some possible real world opposing issues––complaints of “token” hirings and promotions and/or accusations of lowered requirements and expectations for women and minorities––are impossible to lampoon in today’s environment. This is true however clearly stated or masked such feelings may be on college campuses, or however appropriate they may be for a satirist focusing on campus wars. It is also difficult for creators to achieve a balance between representing a reality and including jibes to spoof that reality in the smartest way. This is especially true when the series is ongoing and when episodes are likely in development for future seasons, with opportunities for the inclusion of much that I am wanting for– to be introduced later. 

I will admit, however, that I was encouraged that my desire for a stronger critique of complicated politics was partially fulfilled at the end of Episode Six. This occurred at the final hearing on Dobson’s fate, when his value to the English department is set in stark contrast to the committee’s concern for endowments and the college’s obsession with its latest US News and World Report rankings–concerns that only breathe life into cancel culture.  And, I was especially encouraged by the cautionary statement Kim made to the committee at the end of the hearing, following her decision not to vote for Dobson’s dismissal.

“If you think Bill is a Nazi, by all means fire him,” she said. But, “firing Bill isn’t going to change the culture here or stop what’s going on out there.”

In conclusion then, I find that I am willing to wait and see.  I am also optimistic that with a slightly clearer satirical tone to complement great storytelling, humor, a terrific cast, and a realistic commentary on university life and its current challenges on all sides, Season Two, and others that I expect to follow it, will be more satisfying.

Therefore, re-engaged and curious, I am moved to follow up on Kim’s last cautionary statement with the question that it prompts. A question that may, in some way, guide successive episodes: 

What will change the culture here at Pembroke––and beyond?