“I’m so tired, so tired,” I say and think to myself that I would like to sink back into my dream, even though it made me sad. I remember dread and that something or someone horrible was about to turn the corner into my room. Something is still happening in my dream and I am going to miss it.
“I have to go potty,” she howls, her face scrunched in irritation, “I have to go potty now!” Margot has an unnaturally loud voice and I realize as she begins to claw at the blankets that I’m going to have to get up. She is insistent. I’m groggy. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it all the way to the bathroom.
Margot seizes me by the hand, “I’ve got to go” she whines with some immediacy. “Okay, okay. I’m coming.” My mind makes the decision for me, snaps itself out of sleep and the nest of tangled thoughts I lay in. We walk together towards the bathroom and cat eyes glint up at me as if to say, “Where have you been all this time? She has to go.” They look concerned and I think maybe I have been sleeping too long again.
We push aside the creaking wooden door and I stumble to a seated position on the toilet. My head is cloudy; it is pulling me down to the ground. I reach over to help Margot with her pants. Though she is dancing beside the bathtub, she has abandoned her air of urgency.
“No,” she slaps my hand away. She smirks and continues dancing.
“Come on,” I say, “you said you had to go.” Her little toddler legs pump up and down with delight. Mirth can be detected in her eyes. “I’m waiting for Horace and Florence,” Margot says. She indicates with an outstretched hand the prancing figures of her imaginary friends. “There’s a line,” she explains.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Hands
The day she graduated from college, he text messaged her. Standing on a wooden bench to see above the crowd of parents and students, she tore off her awkward cap and pulled at her stubborn polyester gown. She was looking for someone, anyone really to hug like all the others. But she only saw the shiny smiles of strangers. She didn’t want to look lonely high upon that bench, so she pulled out her cell phone and saw the message. It didn’t make sense.
The truth was that it wasn’t intended for her. Her name was nestled next to another name within a directory of numbers. It was an accident, a message meant for another girl whose name started with the letter E.
It was impossible for her to piece it together, to make sense of how it all began, how they always ended up in the same bed right before the birds began to stir. Staggering up stairs, clumsily collapsing under soft covers, they found themselves time after time tucked up in her room with all of their clothes on. Lying next to one another with the scratchy leg of his jeans pressed up against her cotton dress, they reached for one another’s hand. It was a simple gesture, a natural motion as if they had been reaching towards one another in the dark their entire lives. In the morning, neither of them said a word like an embarrassing one night stand that needed to be put out of their minds. They ate eggs and drank vodka tonics and felt their heads ache in the early afternoon.
Their meetings were never quite planned, never orchestrated or official. No pressure to impress, just casual drinking friends who wasted away late nights because they had nothing better to do. She liked him because he bought her drinks and never tried to kiss her. He stared at other women who swept through bar after bar, discussing the finer points of shapely asses, tits, and legs. When they weren’t together, he’d often find himself passed out in his bed with naked women whose names or hobbies he couldn’t quite recall. They’d pull the sheet over their breasts, eyes turned away from the afternoon light that tore at their blood shot eyes. They’d turn red, sheepish when they confessed they had a boyfriend.
He bought her drinks with funny, fruity names she had never tried and eventually couldn’t even taste. Each one reminded him of a particular girl, a particular night, a particular article from the past. Sometimes he’d shout above the screechy guitars and the raucous thumping of wooden sticks on drum heads. He’d start to tell a story about the pink drink he placed in front of her, about a blonde with big tits who talked too much, a hippie who loved to talk about her period. She heard select phrases, clauses, losing coordinating conjunctions between major chords and keyboards that tried to sound like a violin.
He was an expert drunk driver who took side roads. He always got her home safely. So they made their way up the narrow stairs to her bedroom littered in dresses and tights, discarded panties shoved into the corner of her room. But her sheets were always clean as if she was expecting someone, anyone. Under the lacey comforter, they lay like stiff soldiers until he reached for her hand even though he had shoved the leggy girl’s phone number in his pocket, and she had flirted with the Jewish guy with the Buddy Holly glasses. He got her home safely; he stayed by her side with his rough construction worker hands interlocked with her soft, diminutive fingers. They both knew they could have pursued other forms of empty intimacy. He could have woken up next to the slim brunette with the red stilettos he fantasized about. She could have collected the geeky boy’s number on a slip of paper or scratched it into the cardboard of her empty cigarette pack. They knew they would never have a chance with one another, but he had a key to her house, to her car, and an empty hand that promised to hold hers through the night.
The truth was that it wasn’t intended for her. Her name was nestled next to another name within a directory of numbers. It was an accident, a message meant for another girl whose name started with the letter E.
It was impossible for her to piece it together, to make sense of how it all began, how they always ended up in the same bed right before the birds began to stir. Staggering up stairs, clumsily collapsing under soft covers, they found themselves time after time tucked up in her room with all of their clothes on. Lying next to one another with the scratchy leg of his jeans pressed up against her cotton dress, they reached for one another’s hand. It was a simple gesture, a natural motion as if they had been reaching towards one another in the dark their entire lives. In the morning, neither of them said a word like an embarrassing one night stand that needed to be put out of their minds. They ate eggs and drank vodka tonics and felt their heads ache in the early afternoon.
Their meetings were never quite planned, never orchestrated or official. No pressure to impress, just casual drinking friends who wasted away late nights because they had nothing better to do. She liked him because he bought her drinks and never tried to kiss her. He stared at other women who swept through bar after bar, discussing the finer points of shapely asses, tits, and legs. When they weren’t together, he’d often find himself passed out in his bed with naked women whose names or hobbies he couldn’t quite recall. They’d pull the sheet over their breasts, eyes turned away from the afternoon light that tore at their blood shot eyes. They’d turn red, sheepish when they confessed they had a boyfriend.
He bought her drinks with funny, fruity names she had never tried and eventually couldn’t even taste. Each one reminded him of a particular girl, a particular night, a particular article from the past. Sometimes he’d shout above the screechy guitars and the raucous thumping of wooden sticks on drum heads. He’d start to tell a story about the pink drink he placed in front of her, about a blonde with big tits who talked too much, a hippie who loved to talk about her period. She heard select phrases, clauses, losing coordinating conjunctions between major chords and keyboards that tried to sound like a violin.
He was an expert drunk driver who took side roads. He always got her home safely. So they made their way up the narrow stairs to her bedroom littered in dresses and tights, discarded panties shoved into the corner of her room. But her sheets were always clean as if she was expecting someone, anyone. Under the lacey comforter, they lay like stiff soldiers until he reached for her hand even though he had shoved the leggy girl’s phone number in his pocket, and she had flirted with the Jewish guy with the Buddy Holly glasses. He got her home safely; he stayed by her side with his rough construction worker hands interlocked with her soft, diminutive fingers. They both knew they could have pursued other forms of empty intimacy. He could have woken up next to the slim brunette with the red stilettos he fantasized about. She could have collected the geeky boy’s number on a slip of paper or scratched it into the cardboard of her empty cigarette pack. They knew they would never have a chance with one another, but he had a key to her house, to her car, and an empty hand that promised to hold hers through the night.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Fox Urine
“What you need to do is squirt some of this fox urine onto a piece of cardboard. That’ll get the squirrels outa there fast.”
This is what the guy at the camping store tells me. His name is John.
“It beats using a squirrel cage,” he adds, handing me the package. “You gotta use their own instincts against them.”
I read the directions on the back:
“Yep,” says John, “Gets the deer every time.”
John assures me the stuff will work in a duplex too.
When I get home, I tear a sheet of cardboard into six pieces and saturate each piece with urine. The odor is strong and rank. My cat approaches to see what I’m doing and her tail bushes out with suspicion. She skitters away when the exhaust from a city bus fires.
Before I open the door to the attic, I listen. Usually they’re up there chasing each other across the loft. They sound like midget ballerinas, tumbling around on the floorboards. They’re quiet now, taking an afternoon nap.
Apprehensive, I enter the stairwell. They’ve torn the insulation to shreds. I’m worried that they’ll jump out at me from above. Rabid squirrels. Tenement squatters. Creepy fast moving things.
I don’t sense any movement but my own, though, and so I proceed. I lay the cardboard shims at regular intervals across the splintered floor. “Yaaaghh!” I scream out, hoping to scare them off, “Yaaaghh!”
There are clumps of insulation everywhere. Strands of it hang from the ceiling, rustling with each scream and bending shadows around my peripheral vision.
The next morning, the sun breaks into my bedroom. I awaken, sweating. This is usually their peak time for dancing, for their bony graceless rapping on the floor.
Today, it’s silent.
Confidence grips me, draws me out into the kitchen to fix myself a pot of coffee. I’m spooning out the grounds when I hear a quick clattering noise from above. I stop to listen, but hear nothing, so I turn the faucet on to fill the pot. Again, a loud clack-clack, clack-clack. It sounds like someone tap-dancing up there.
I turn the faucet off. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. Clack-clickety-clickety-clack. I open the attic door and edge myself up along the stairwell to peep over the ledge.
Clack-Clack. Clickety-Clickety-Clack Clack.
Peering into the darkness, I see nothing at first. Then gray shapes separate from the surrounding blackness. A sharp breath sounds, then a turn – click-clackety. A full-grown buck swivels towards me, a tuft of insulation hanging from his left antler.
“Yaaaghh!” I scream, and am afraid. This is a kamikaze deer, with no hope of survival up here. It’s got nothing to lose.
“Yaaaghh!” I scream again. It’s looking at me like it knows something I don’t know. I raise my arms above my head, trying to make it appear as if I have antlers. Then I run downstairs and slam the door.
The walls here are like cardboard.
My downstairs neighbor is banging on the ceiling. Through the pipes I hear him screaming. “Cut out that racket! What the hell are you doing up there?”
This is what the guy at the camping store tells me. His name is John.
“It beats using a squirrel cage,” he adds, handing me the package. “You gotta use their own instincts against them.”
I read the directions on the back:
Spray ten to fifteen drops of authentic fox urine onto scent wick. Place wicks onto trail. The fox urine will mask human scent. Deer may even follow the trail straight to your hunting blind!“So, they use this for hunting in the woods?” I ask.
“Yep,” says John, “Gets the deer every time.”
John assures me the stuff will work in a duplex too.
When I get home, I tear a sheet of cardboard into six pieces and saturate each piece with urine. The odor is strong and rank. My cat approaches to see what I’m doing and her tail bushes out with suspicion. She skitters away when the exhaust from a city bus fires.
Before I open the door to the attic, I listen. Usually they’re up there chasing each other across the loft. They sound like midget ballerinas, tumbling around on the floorboards. They’re quiet now, taking an afternoon nap.
Apprehensive, I enter the stairwell. They’ve torn the insulation to shreds. I’m worried that they’ll jump out at me from above. Rabid squirrels. Tenement squatters. Creepy fast moving things.
I don’t sense any movement but my own, though, and so I proceed. I lay the cardboard shims at regular intervals across the splintered floor. “Yaaaghh!” I scream out, hoping to scare them off, “Yaaaghh!”
There are clumps of insulation everywhere. Strands of it hang from the ceiling, rustling with each scream and bending shadows around my peripheral vision.
The next morning, the sun breaks into my bedroom. I awaken, sweating. This is usually their peak time for dancing, for their bony graceless rapping on the floor.
Today, it’s silent.
Confidence grips me, draws me out into the kitchen to fix myself a pot of coffee. I’m spooning out the grounds when I hear a quick clattering noise from above. I stop to listen, but hear nothing, so I turn the faucet on to fill the pot. Again, a loud clack-clack, clack-clack. It sounds like someone tap-dancing up there.
I turn the faucet off. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. Clack-clickety-clickety-clack. I open the attic door and edge myself up along the stairwell to peep over the ledge.
Clack-Clack. Clickety-Clickety-Clack Clack.
Peering into the darkness, I see nothing at first. Then gray shapes separate from the surrounding blackness. A sharp breath sounds, then a turn – click-clackety. A full-grown buck swivels towards me, a tuft of insulation hanging from his left antler.
“Yaaaghh!” I scream, and am afraid. This is a kamikaze deer, with no hope of survival up here. It’s got nothing to lose.
“Yaaaghh!” I scream again. It’s looking at me like it knows something I don’t know. I raise my arms above my head, trying to make it appear as if I have antlers. Then I run downstairs and slam the door.
The walls here are like cardboard.
My downstairs neighbor is banging on the ceiling. Through the pipes I hear him screaming. “Cut out that racket! What the hell are you doing up there?”
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
The Shave
“My princess,” Gerry says with a dramatic sweep of his hand, “Your throne awaits.” Sheila sits on the toilet, the palms of her hands rubbing against her pants, trying to get the sweat off. It was an honor to be in his bathroom, sitting on her make shift throne, watching him perform his ritual.
This moment was hard for the both of them. Each had made sacrifices, pushing through their fears and handicaps in order to reach the second story bathroom. The narrow stairs were cramped, peeling yellow wallpaper brushing against some of the wooden steps. Sheila’s large frame and lame leg made it difficult to reach the top. She was afraid her knee would buckle and imagined herself tumbling backwards down the stairwell with no one to catch her.
Gerry had not let anyone in his house in the ten years since he found his mother dead on the couch. He never forgot the way her head lolled back like she was snoring, a book of large print crosswords in her lap. It taken him hours to pick up the phone and call an ambulance. When they came, he played with the doorknob and deadbolt for fifteen minutes, clicking the cold metal back and forth before letting them in. There was no way the gurney could be rolled through the labyrinth of papers, cups, and magazines Gerry had so carefully placed around the house. The paramedics had to carry her limp body rolled in an afghan out the door, knocking down a stack of newspapers on the way out.
They ran into each other in the middle of the night at the 24-hour store. She haunted the aisles when she was sleepless and lonely, looking for small items to rip-off, slipping them into her calico cloth purse. He was there only out of necessity, stocking up on toiletries, Styrofoam cups and gummy bears. If there was ever a moment where Fate’s hand pushed them together, that was it. Gerry hadn’t been to the store in over four months.
His shopping cart was full. Sheila’s was empty except for a lamp shaped like a wagon wheel she considered buying every time she was there. She shuffled around the store with it in her cart, but neglected to get it because it wouldn’t fit into her purse.
They had a shared history before she was crippled and overweight, before he looked like a homeless train hopper, wearing three flannels at once over his thinning overalls. They dated for a few months thirty years prior, making it once in the back of Sheila’s Honda hatchback at the drive-in. The drive-in closed and became horse ranch, but the tall white screen remained like a ghost.
What was said was unimportant. Gerry had never forgotten her, was able to see her younger face hidden behind the fat. She had been his only lover and could still feel the warmth of her body in his mind. She somehow was able to recognize him underneath his untrimmed beard as the strange man she dated before her crappy marriage.
He opens the old medicine cabinet and begins removing the necessary items: shaving cream, a new razor blade still in the package, miniature Band-Aids, after-shave. He pulls an old towel from the bottom of the bathtub, a place he uses as a closet since he never takes baths or showers. He fears large quantities of water, hates the feel of water streaming out of the showerhead like blunt tipped spears against his skin. He only uses folded washcloths dipped in a bowl to clean up.
Sheila watches him prepare like a meticulous doctor before heart surgery. His hands are steady and smooth as he begins to cut his beard with the silver scissors. His coarse hair falls into the sink, onto the ceramic floor in loose piles, mixing with the hair leftover from his last shave. His face tells time, not by the crisscrossing lines but by which stage of growth his beard is in. Every six weeks he shaves clean.
She watches him, feeling guilty and turned on like she is peering into a strangers window while they have sex.
She sees Gerry in all of his vulnerability, narrow strips of flesh exposed like an airplane runway. One smooth line cascading upon another until the light from the naked bulb overhead reflects against his wet skin.
He sees Sheila’s image in the mirror as he shaves, fleshy and fat. He dips his razor into the bowl of water, shaving cream and stubble rising to the top like cream. He wonders how the paramedics will get her out if she ever dies. He doesn’t want anymore newspaper towers tumbling, scattering his life’s work all over the hardwood floor.
This moment was hard for the both of them. Each had made sacrifices, pushing through their fears and handicaps in order to reach the second story bathroom. The narrow stairs were cramped, peeling yellow wallpaper brushing against some of the wooden steps. Sheila’s large frame and lame leg made it difficult to reach the top. She was afraid her knee would buckle and imagined herself tumbling backwards down the stairwell with no one to catch her.
Gerry had not let anyone in his house in the ten years since he found his mother dead on the couch. He never forgot the way her head lolled back like she was snoring, a book of large print crosswords in her lap. It taken him hours to pick up the phone and call an ambulance. When they came, he played with the doorknob and deadbolt for fifteen minutes, clicking the cold metal back and forth before letting them in. There was no way the gurney could be rolled through the labyrinth of papers, cups, and magazines Gerry had so carefully placed around the house. The paramedics had to carry her limp body rolled in an afghan out the door, knocking down a stack of newspapers on the way out.
They ran into each other in the middle of the night at the 24-hour store. She haunted the aisles when she was sleepless and lonely, looking for small items to rip-off, slipping them into her calico cloth purse. He was there only out of necessity, stocking up on toiletries, Styrofoam cups and gummy bears. If there was ever a moment where Fate’s hand pushed them together, that was it. Gerry hadn’t been to the store in over four months.
His shopping cart was full. Sheila’s was empty except for a lamp shaped like a wagon wheel she considered buying every time she was there. She shuffled around the store with it in her cart, but neglected to get it because it wouldn’t fit into her purse.
They had a shared history before she was crippled and overweight, before he looked like a homeless train hopper, wearing three flannels at once over his thinning overalls. They dated for a few months thirty years prior, making it once in the back of Sheila’s Honda hatchback at the drive-in. The drive-in closed and became horse ranch, but the tall white screen remained like a ghost.
What was said was unimportant. Gerry had never forgotten her, was able to see her younger face hidden behind the fat. She had been his only lover and could still feel the warmth of her body in his mind. She somehow was able to recognize him underneath his untrimmed beard as the strange man she dated before her crappy marriage.
He opens the old medicine cabinet and begins removing the necessary items: shaving cream, a new razor blade still in the package, miniature Band-Aids, after-shave. He pulls an old towel from the bottom of the bathtub, a place he uses as a closet since he never takes baths or showers. He fears large quantities of water, hates the feel of water streaming out of the showerhead like blunt tipped spears against his skin. He only uses folded washcloths dipped in a bowl to clean up.
Sheila watches him prepare like a meticulous doctor before heart surgery. His hands are steady and smooth as he begins to cut his beard with the silver scissors. His coarse hair falls into the sink, onto the ceramic floor in loose piles, mixing with the hair leftover from his last shave. His face tells time, not by the crisscrossing lines but by which stage of growth his beard is in. Every six weeks he shaves clean.
She watches him, feeling guilty and turned on like she is peering into a strangers window while they have sex.
She sees Gerry in all of his vulnerability, narrow strips of flesh exposed like an airplane runway. One smooth line cascading upon another until the light from the naked bulb overhead reflects against his wet skin.
He sees Sheila’s image in the mirror as he shaves, fleshy and fat. He dips his razor into the bowl of water, shaving cream and stubble rising to the top like cream. He wonders how the paramedics will get her out if she ever dies. He doesn’t want anymore newspaper towers tumbling, scattering his life’s work all over the hardwood floor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)