Home Safe

They were shocked that he didn’t tell them how glorious it was to fight for your country. They felt he was a coward.

Fiction by Henry G. Miller, Spring 2015

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The “Welcome Home Jamie” banner covered the entire wall behind the band. Ed McLaughlin asked his son to wear his uniform since all the family would be there to celebrate. Jamie would have preferred to wear civvies, but he knew the uniform meant a lot to his dad. So he wore his full dress uniform with all his medals. His father rented Schwab Hall to accommodate the large party. His mother would have liked a smaller gathering at home, but Ed was adamant. “Jamie deserves a hero’s welcome. Some thought he couldn’t make it. Well, he showed them.”

Jamie’s father felt vindicated. He supported his son’s decision to join up after 9/11 and he supported the war in Iraq. Martha McLaughlin urged her son to keep his job at the magazine where he was making a name as a cartoonist “and stay in night school to get your degree in art. There’s no telling how far you can go.” Martha never said it out loud, but she felt her son had too much feeling to make a good marine and maybe have to kill people.

“Martha. He’ll be fine.”

“He’s not the same as you, Ed. All his life you’ve tried to make him what he’s not.”

“I always tried to encourage him to do the right thing. In World War II, my older brother went without waiting to be drafted. Korea, I did the same. And what about my brother’s boy, Little Mike, who lost an arm in Vietnam. He didn’t get any student deferment. He went and I never heard a word of complaint about his arm.”

Martha heard it all many times. She just replied, “We didn’t have Jamie to sacrifice for this Iraq nonsense.”

“You’re wrong, Martha. You’ve got to stop these people—if not over there, we’ll be doing it here.”

Martha knew she should feel relieved now that he was home safe and her deepest fears hadn’t come true. But yet, why did he have to go to a German hospital for two weeks? It couldn’t have been too bad for that short a time. But she couldn’t quite dispel a feeling of dread as to what the experience had done to him. Was he changed?

As soon as she saw him, she felt better. Tanned and fit, more handsome than ever.

Ed McLaughlin couldn’t resist. “Didn’t I tell you? He’s a McLaughlin.”

Ed knew the manager of Schwab Hall who gave him a good price. The manager used to work with Ed at Con Ed before he went into catering. And the location was perfect—the Ridgewood section where Brooklyn meets Queens so it would be easy for both sides of the family to be there.

When Martha saw the drawings Jamie did, her fears let up a bit. “Jamie, they’re beautiful. You always did good drawings of little children. Look at their sad faces. You got them good. Are the kids suffering a lot over there?”

“Sure, Mom. A lot of civilians have been killed. Some of the kids are orphaned now. I’d like to start some aid program for the kids over there. I think Americans would support it. Americans have a big heart. Pop is right about that.”

“Where’d you find the time to ever do them? I bet your magazine would publish these.”

Jamie didn’t tell his mother that many of them were done when he was in the hospital, and then after that while he was waiting for his discharge from active duty—good therapy.

“You never made it clear, Jamie, why exactly you were in the hospital.”

“You worry too much, Mom. Hurt my arm. Wasn’t even in much combat.” He didn’t want to worry her.

“I know I’ve always worried too much and that puts pressure on you. The burden of being an only child. I wanted more. But you’ve made up for it.”

“Don’t get sentimental, Mom. Like Pop says, we McLaughlins are indestructible.”

Jamie always felt the pressure of not worrying his mother. He couldn’t tell her he was under psychiatric care. They used to call it shell shocked. Then it was post-traumatic stress disorder. Whatever they call it, Jamie learned what all who have ever been in heavy combat knew. The scar on the mind can never be completely healed. Seeing a lot of killing changes a human being. He didn’t even tell the doctors that one thing, the bad thing, that cornered him every night, making sleep something to be avoided.

It seemed that everyone invited to the party came, and a few extra to boot. There were almost 200. Ed was all over the place, making sure everyone had all the drink and food they could consume and then some. There was plenty of dancing and Ed paid extra to keep the band late and the breaks short and few.

As expected, Ed asked his brother, Michael, and his son, the nephew with one arm, to sing their famous duet of Irish songs. The usual razzing took place. “Is that all they know? No more Irish songs, it’s a mixed crowd.”

Ed loved the triumph his son’s medals gave him. He remembered the time in high school when some boys mocked Jamie for going out for the art club and not the basketball team. After all, Jamie was one of the best, maybe the best, of the schoolyard half-court players. Ed felt it wasn’t manly to pick art over sports. He was particularly upset when he heard one of the players razz Jamie. “Go out for the team, we’re wearing pink uniforms this year.”

Now, Ed was vindicated. Jamie showed them. A decorated marine. Where was that basketball star now? Probably hiding out as some glorified clerk selling women’s lingerie.

“What do you mean, no more Irish songs? You want to hear some Brits like the Beatles?”

On this night, Ed even got along with Monsignor O’Gorman, the pastor at St. Brendan’s. “Well, Monsignor, now you have to admit we’re changing the ugly face of the world in Iraq.”

“It’s still a dumb war.”

“You’re just saying that because the Polish Pope was against the war.”

“Well, sometimes even a Pope is right.”

In the few weeks he’s been home, Jamie thought of talking to Monsignor O’Gorman. But no, talking about it doesn’t change what happened.

Jamie knew he should forgive himself. He didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Just the week before, two of his best friends from his squad hesitated. They let the car come through the checkpoint, thinking it was a guy from the neighborhood. They didn’t make sure. They paid for it. When the bomb went off, his two buddies blew apart in a hundred pieces. After that, everybody was trigger-happy.

Then the next week, it happened. Jamie signaled them to stop. He yelled. The man smiled. It was a trick. Jamie screamed, “Stop!” When the man didn’t, he opened fire. He killed them all. In the car there was no bomb, just a mother, a father, and a little child, all dead. She was no more than seven. Her eyes were still open. Accusingly open—asking why. Jamie tried to bring her back. He breathed into her mouth. But there was no bringing her back.

Ed was introducing his son. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of my son, Jamie. Not only a hero, but a talented artist and someday, he’ll start a family of his own and give Martha and me a grandchild. May I suggest Edward is a good name. Jamie, would you say a few words. Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s welcome Jamie home.”

Jamie knew he had to say something. He would have liked to have been alone tonight, but he couldn’t disappoint his father. “Thank you all for coming. I’m no hero, but I am so happy to be home. I wish I could just wave my hand and make the war go away. I can’t help but think of all those who aren’t coming home. Now all I want to do is get on with my life. I got the best mom and dad in the world and I thank them for this wonderful party.”

Jamie felt he disappointed the people at the party a little bit. They wanted something rousing—how we were saving the world and those that died didn’t die in vain. He felt like that character in the old movie he saw on TV who came home from World War One and told his old Professor and the students how awful killing was. They were shocked that he didn’t tell them how glorious it was to fight for your country. They felt he was a coward.

James had to admit he had joined up with his own illusions. He had seen movies like “Top Gun” before he joined and that sort of made it seem more glamorous than it turned out to be. Down deep he wanted to show those guys that didn’t believe an artist was tough enough, all those guys who couldn’t understand how he could pick the art club over a sports team.

Jamie did his best to start his life again. The magazine took him back—his drawings were better than ever. His mother approved of his seeing Susan, a daughter of a friend, even though they spent a lot of time in Staten Island where she lived. It looked serious. Martha still worried about his moods—but thought they were improving. Ed said, “Jamie is fine. Of course, he saw bad things. That can’t be helped in war.”

It happened one year later. At 2:00 a.m. on the Verazano Bridge. Jamie was alone— coming home to Brooklyn after seeing Susan. They had rented Saving Private Ryan and had pizza and beer. The movie did bother him, but they talked into the night about getting married and having children.

He tried to tell Susan, but couldn’t. After he left her, he walked alone on the beach near her house. He looked across the bay and the water soothed him as he thought how that bay had been there for thousands of years and still would be long after he was gone. He thought of that little girl who would never have a life and never have children and he about to start a life and maybe have children of his own and could he ever tell them what happened and how futile was all the killing and would these thoughts never end. After a while, he felt calm, his mind seeing the peaceful way.

Back in his car, he took out his wallet and looked at the pictures. His mother and father and him when he was a little boy. Him and Susan inscribed, “Forever together.” And the picture of Joey, his buddy in Iraq, who wasn’t ever coming home.

The car crashed through the railing on the bridge and fell to the water. Jamie and the car were retrieved the next day on the Brooklyn side near where it landed. He certainly didn’t suffer.

There was an investigation. The police concluded it was an accident, although it was suspicious that the car was apparently going so fast and seemed to be headed right through the railing. Susan was convinced it was an accident. He was in a wonderful mood as they talked about the future. When he left, he even told her, “I’ve got all the problems figured out now.” He seemed happier and calmer than she had ever seen him before.

He never hinted at suicide. Except that one time when he told Monsignor that he was having bad thoughts about all the killing he had seen.

Ed McLaughlin was a broken man that an accident would take his son. “He survived the war and then died in an accident. It’s heartbreaking.”

His mother, to this day, has never said a word about how he died. She looks at his drawings, particularly of the little children, and believes the answer is there.

*

For more about Henry G. Miller: http://henrymillerwriter.com/

Trust

Hurt ain’t the point. He does the same with all of us. You can count on it.

Fiction by Vivian Lawry, Spring 2015

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We live in The Little House. It’s called that ’cause it’s just got three tiny rooms. Jeannie and me sleep in the front room, foot to foot on the red couch. Mommy made curtains with purty red flowers for the winda in that room and for the door to the room where she and Daddy sleep, Weezie’s crib pushed up agin the end of their bed. The kitchen is about as big as the other two rooms together, but what with the icebox and the range, the table and the chairs, the pie safe and the dry sink, a body can hardly even see the linoleum.

The Little House is squeezed into the space between the lot Mommy and Daddy bought and Mommy’s Aunt Hazel and Uncle Arth’s house. We pay Aunt Hazel and Uncle Arth ten dollars a month to live in The Little House. Right now the only thing on our lot is a big ol’ hole that’s gonna be the basement of the house Mommy and Daddy are buildin’. Daddy is diggin’ the hole after work, and on Saturdays and Sundays. He already broke a pick and one shovel handle. Daddy’s folks are in Kentucky, but sometimes some of Mommy’s brothers help dig, or some of her sisters’ husbands. There’re lots of ’em. But sometimes nobody at all comes to help. Daddy digs anyway ’cause Mommy says Weezie oughtta be outta the crib, and she don’t have room to turn around. We’ll have that house built before winter sets in. Daddy says so.

Jeannie likes to play on the dirt piles but she ain’t s’posed to, now the hole’s so big. She played there last Saturday, though, throwin’ chunks of dirt from the biggest pile back into the hole, laughin’ when they broke apart in bits. Daddy told her to quit it but she didn’t. He said, real even, “I said, ‘Cut it out.’ I ain’t gonna tell you agin.” Jeannie just looked at him—and threw another clod in the hole. Daddy climbed up the ladder, the shovel still in his hand. He grabbed Jeannie’s arm right above the elbow and swatted her behind with the flat of the shovel. Jeannie howled like a haint! She was s’prised, and madder’n mad. Daddy shook her like a rag doll, his big fingers still wrapped all the way around her arm. “You listen to me when I tell you somethin’.” His voice is like far off thunder. Daddy never yells.

Jeannie shouldn’t’ve been s’prised. Daddy always means what he says, and he ain’t a man to put things off. Mommy’ll yell and yell and send her out back to cut a switch and sometimes end up just threatenin’ to use it. But Daddy spanks her on the spot. He uses a ax handle or a horse harness, a frying pan or a fly swatter, a razor strop or a rolled up newspaper—whatever comes first to hand. If he’s swingin’ somethin’ hard, he pulls up right at the end and barely taps her, sometimes just catchin’ her skirt tail. It never hurts much and he knows it, but that don’t matter. Hurt ain’t the point. He does the same with all of us. You can count on it. But Jeannie gets into mischief most often. She’s only four but she’ll try anything and she’s stubborn as two mules besides. Still, since last Saturday she stays off the dirt piles. Most of the time.

Behind The Little House is the old chicken coop. There ain’t been chickens in there for ages. The tin roof’s rusted orange and the paint’s long gone, leavin’ the boards all grey and splintery. Our cousin Tudy—in truth, Mommy’s cousin Norma Jean—uses it for a playhouse. It’s plenty big—near as big as The Little House—but Tudy’s fickle and she won’t always let Jeannie or me play there. She’s nine, and what she says goes. “Don’t you come one inch inside this door or I’ll smack you a good un,” she said this mornin’, wavin’ that deformed right hand. Tudy burned her hand on the cookstove when she was just little and it didn’t heal right. Webs of skin pull down the three middle fingers till they curve like claws.

Now Tudy peeks out the door. “C’mon in, Jeannie. See what I got.” Jeannie stays outside the gate in the chicken wire fence, shakin’ her head like a mute. “I got furniture—chairs and everything.” I can tell Jeannie don’t believe this. She’d’ve seen chairs. “And I got a big bouquet of flowers in the corner. It’s real purty. You can have it if you come in.”

“You’re just sayin’ that, so’s I’ll come in and you can smack me.” Jeannie tugs at a scrap of white-blonde hair and shifts from one bare foot to the other.

“It’s truth! Ain’t it, Weezie?” Our baby sister stands in the doorway next to Tudy, her diaper baggin’ down, suckin’ two of her fingers like she always does. “Ain’t I got flowers in here?” Weezie gazes up at Tudy, then nods, her fingers still in her mouth. Tudy smiles and beckons. “It’s okay if you come in, Jeannie. I changed my mind.” Jeannie don’t move. “You want her to come see the flowers, don’t you Weezie?” Weezie nods again.

Jeannie looks from Tudy to our baby sister. She takes one wavery step through the gate. Tudy smiles and coos, coaxin’ Jeannie across the chicken yard till her toe is in the door. Then Tudy laughs and slaps Jeannie’s face so hard she falls backwards. “Gotchya!” Tudy crows.

Jeannie scrambles up, mad as a hornet. “You said . . . !”

Tudy cackles again. “Yeah, but I had my fingers crossed when I said it!”

Tears cut jagged tracks through the dirt on Jeannie’s cheeks, right across the red welts Tudy’s fingers left behind. Jeannie runs back to The Little House and crawls under the back stoop so’s nobody’ll see she’s cryin’. Jeannie never wants nobody to see her cry.

Mommy pokes her head out the back door and says, “What’s goin’ on out here? Tudy, what are you kids doin’?”

“Playin’. We’re just playin’,” she says and grins at Mommy. That’s the way Tudy is.

Mommy looks from Tudy to me, sittin’ on the bottom step. She says, “You girls behave now, you hear?” and then she goes back in the kitchen, the screen door bangin’ behind her. I look at Tudy, again. She’s still grinnin’. I don’t say nothin’ to her, nor to Jeannie, neither. Jeannie should’ve knowed. She should’ve knowed. Tudy ain’t Daddy. 

*

Vivian Lawry's work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than thirty literary journals. She is Appalachian by birth, a social psychologist by training. She holds B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Ohio University. She has ties to Ohio and Kentucky, to the North Country of upstate New York, to Washington, DC, Maryland, and the Chesapeake Bay. Currently, she lives and writes near Richmond, Virginia. 

Image: Source

Manchester Skies

Photography by Eleanor Bennett

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Eleanor Bennett is an internationally award winning photographer and visual artist. She is the CIWEM Young Environmental Photographer of The Year 2013 and has also won first places with National Geographic,The World Photography Organisation, Nature's Best Photography and The National Trust to name only a few. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, The British Journal of Psychiatry, Life Force Magazine, British Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and as the front cover of books and magazines extensively throughout the world.

www.eleanorleonnebennett.com

How to Live in America

Write essays on cultural identity, and call yourself a Southern girl. When boys with drawls ask you to recite Urdu poetry while their hands slide under your shirt in parked cars, feel powerful and oblige.

Fiction by Hananah Zaheer, Spring 2015

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Housing

Close your eyes and spin the globe. Open and see Asia. Contain your nostalgia; nod when your father tells you the decision has already been made.

This is home now.

Move into a two bedroom in Raleigh with your parents.

Fit yourself into the tiny spaces. Lie on your bed at night, look at the Mexican couple fighting in the window across from yours. Close your ears against the sounds from your own living room. Realize this is what it is like to live in apartments.

Americans do their own work. Make your bed. Clean the bathroom. Read the instructions on the back of the Lysol spray. Find your mother scrubbing the floor of the kitchen at 2 a.m. Watch her crying over the smell of ammonia in her hands. Don’t answer when she asks you if this is what her life was meant for.

Look down when you and your neighbor walk into the hall at the same time. Pretend he did not see you peeking at his door through the crack in yours last night. Ignore the little plastic bag he slips into his pocket. Ignore him when he runs his hand along your arm and asks you why you are a slippery senorita.

Clothes

You are not a Pakistani anymore.

Adapt.

When your coworkers at the sporting goods store in the mall ask you where you buy your clothes, watch them look you up and down. Throw away the white and yellow Bata high-top sneakers you bought the day before you boarded the plane in Pakistan and thought were reminiscent of Michael J. Fox. Realize that your two sizes too big clothes are unfashionable, not modest.

Steal magazines from the local library and paste pictures of models on the back of your closet door. Go to the fluorescent-lit stores during your lunch break. Let the heavily accented Texan saleslady drape purples and reds on you. Let her tell you Americans know fashion and what suits your skin tone. Don’t mention that you like grays and blacks.

Buy the dress that shows your knees. Hide it at the back of your closet where your mother can’t see it. Wear this under long skirts when you leave the house. Shed layers on your way to school.

Transportation

Get a license.

Independence is an important concept in America, even though this is something your mother will never want for you.

Go with your father to buy a car so you can stop riding the bus to school.

Say yes to the twelve hundred-dollar Chevy Celebrity he picks even if the seat belts don’t work. Try not to blush when the salesman sits behind the desk and calls you sweetheart and tries to look down your shirt. Pretend you can’t see your father’s jaw clenching.

Remember your manners.

Say thanks when the man tells you your English is so good. Say no thanks when he asks you if you want a job at the dealership.

Understand what Americans mean by freedom the first time you drive the car down a highway alone. Volunteer to pick up the groceries, medicine from the community clinic, stamps from the post office. Find yourself making the run to the emergency room when your father falls to the floor lifting the secondhand sofa into the house.

Drive your mother to the hospital. Bite your tongue when she cries and wonders why you came to this country.

Language

Americans don’t say tomAHto. Learn to say tomato.

Change the inflection of your Ts to Ds. Let the seventeen years of Irish Catholic schooling fade from your tongue. Say “whatever” and “yeah” and “man” at the end of sentences, and feel your body give in to the casual cadence of the words. When your mother raises her eyebrows at you, tell her this is what your public speaking professor has asked you to do. Wince when she clips her consonants.

In school, speak loudly and say, “fuck”; the Americans hear this as your liberation. When your parents invite their Pakistani friends for dinner, lower your voice, but make sure to keep your accent impeccably American. The uncles and aunties are always impressed.

Let the sentiments of your new dialect bleed into your actions. Make eye contact with men when you speak. Let your hand occasionally linger when you touch someone. Remind yourself to be direct with everyone—everyone but your parents.

Identity

Know that you are meant to assimilate.

When golden-haired boys tell you that you look exotic, that they want to know what Pakistani skin tastes like, feel your heart fluttering against your chest. Let them taste you, but never go too far.

You have boundaries.

When you go to the Fourth of July fireworks, hear your language spoken around you. Smoke a cigarette, watch the shock in their faces, and know that you are not one of them.

Write essays on cultural identity, and call yourself a Southern girl. When boys with drawls ask you to recite Urdu poetry while their hands slide under your shirt in parked cars, feel powerful and oblige.

This is you now.

When your mother tells you that you are becoming too American, bow your head. Let the anger in her words wash through you. Clean the kitchen. Do your homework. Pretend you will succeed in the way she wants you to.

Apologize.

Education

Education is the key to success in America.

Enroll in the university that is closest to your house because you will not be allowed to live on campus. Skip class and sit in the cafeteria, laughing loudly and talking to boys just liked you imagined American girls do.

Realize that medicine is not for you. Drop your chemistry class without telling your mother. Pretend to keep going anyway.

Your friends say you are well-adjusted. Understand your place. Know that you will never quite become what you appear to be, but keep trying anyway.

Write yourself an e-mail from your professor. Pretend that you are the kind of student who would be invited to an advanced sociology seminar every Saturday night, 7–10 p.m.

Show the e-mail to your parents.

Decline your father’s invitation to drop you to campus. Sit in the car next to him when he insists, and feel the seat belt cut into your chest, making it hard to breathe.

Breathe.

Cry when he pulls the car over to the side of the highway and tells you he knows you are lying.

Tell him you don’t understand the directions.

Tell him you don’t understand him.

Tell him you don’t understand anything.

Look at him bent and crying over the steering wheel under the yellow streetlight. Watch the white in his hair glinting. Watch the roughened tips of his fingers no longer used to holding a pen.

Step outside the car. Scream.

Tell him you understand your mother. Ask him why you came to this country.

*

Image: Source

Progress with Traffic Light

Poetry by John Grey, Fall and Winter 2014/2015

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They said, you cannot have this.

No more tavern, no more workman's lunches.

And the chalkboard has to go.

It's burn the burgers. Fry the fries.

Smash the beer bottles. Yank out the taps.

You've had corn yield talk too long already.

Chili, snappy waitresses, likewise.

Progress can't abide pork futures.

And it hates what locals say about the weather.

We're giving you a brand new store,

Chinese workers in a great big box.

We're even putting in a traffic light.

And plenty of parking.

No more gatherings and shooting the shit.

It's get in, buy your stuff, get out, save big time.

So stop with the placards.

Enough with the shouting.

What do you mean,

there's no place left to go?

You've got your memories.

Hang out there.

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John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in Paterson Literary Review, Southern California Review and Natural Bridge with work upcoming in the Kerf, Leading Edge and Louisiana Literature.   

In Bed

Fiction by Phyllis Carol Agins, Fall and Winter 2014/2015

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For Mémé

It’s the same question that begins each stretch of daylight in this maison de retrait in the south of France.

“How are you today, Madame?” the nurse asks as she washes each arm, under flattened breasts, never exposing more than a bit of flesh in the hot air that surely cannot harm.

She answers, “Chocolat.”

“When your son comes,” the nurse reassures. “I’m sure he’ll bring some.”

But what Madame wants to say is: Once I had a bar of soap. One side was orange—scented like the blossoms that fragrance the city in the winter. I’d pass by the trees in January, when everything else sleeps. The opening blossoms caught me, and I’d tie a sprig in my hair so I could carry the scent as I walked. The other side was chocolate—dark and dangerous. I guarded that soap, washing with it only on the special days when my husband returned from the port. Like an animal following a trail, he’d discover me. Lick the small of my back, breathe in the orange chocolate from the nape of my neck, follow me from room to room. Turn to me at night and make love for hours before the sun returned, while we wept together because we were so close. I lost that soap years ago—even before it disappeared from use. But every time the orange trees blossom, I can feel my husband’s touch, even now—years after he first rested in the earth.

The nurse hears nothing but smiles as she leaves. “À demain,” she calls.

*

Some days, after the sun has quietly disappeared from her window, Madame smells the vapors of ground lamb that will soon arrive under its plastic cover. Then her son appears.

“Ah, Maman,” he whispers, burning her cheek with his kisses. His eyes are always moist, his pupils softening behind a fluid film. “I stopped right after I left work. I wouldn’t come without. Look what I’ve brought you today,” he laughs. “Don’t worry about the nurses. We’ll eat this before dinner.”

He holds out a white box tied with a pink ribbon. The ribbon tumbles to the floor, and the walls of the box fall open.

She sees inside the box. “Chocolat,” she says.

“That’s right. Three layers—white, milk, and dark. And look at all the cream, Maman.” He feeds her mouthfuls of cake and holds the cup to her lips so she can drink.

She wants to tell him: When you were young, you loved to cook beside me—even more than your sisters. We baked éclairs together on Saturdays. We watched the puffs cool and then pumped in the cream. The last was the chocolate glaze. You were so patient, waiting in your big apron, leaning over the pots, one on top of the other, with the water boiling beneath and the chocolate melting above. And then you drizzled on the glossy mixture. Finally, you’d pull the spoon to your mouth and lick it, returning to the pot with your fingers. I kissed your cheeks and tasted your freshness and the chocolate at the same time. I think now you buy the cakes for yourself as well, so you can remember the days when we cooked together, and everything was still new, and you were young enough to dream. Do you dream still, mon fils? she wants to ask. Do you taste a future like when you were young and you’d talk of your plans? How you’d discover this or that; how the world would open like this box just did, and time would unfold before you—a mighty river of hope that stretched into the future?

“I’ll come later this week.” Her son wipes her mouth and chin. “And I’ll bring you another chocolate sweet,” he adds as the ground lamb appears in its puddle of mashed potatoes.

*

“Wasn’t that nice of your son?” asks the attendant who comes to wish her good night. He points to the empty bakery box and takes a spoon from her table to offer the last of the chocolate. “No use letting it go to waste.” Then he adds, “I love the dark the best. Which is your favorite?”

Then he turns off the light and closes the door. “Bon nuit, Madame,” he whispers.

She wants to confess, needs to say: I know who I am now between these sheets. All the days I visit time. I see my mother and she teaches me to cook so I can show my son and daughters. I learn to choose the right vegetables in the market. My husband finds me and kisses my neck, and my children touch me. Their small hands rest in mine, and I burn with love. We laugh as we walk along the sea, searching for whales and dolphins the myths once promised. I watch my mother die, and I breathe through childbirth, delivering three infants who scream into life. Then my daughters breathe and pant, and their children are in my arms, and later we all buy ice cream next to the sea, while my husband laughs before he dies and blesses me for loving him. I am alone in my bed, but all those years continue—deep and rich.

She considers for a moment. “Just like chocolat,” Madame whispers to the darkness.

*