Art by Tobias Oggenfuss, Fall & Winter 2014/2015
Monday, November 24, 2014 at 08:20PM Fiction by Mollie McNeil, Fall and Winter 2014/2015
*
Jack yanked at the oars and slammed my shoulder hard against the aluminum side, but I felt nothing. I was watching my mother’s blood web across my arm and drip into the boat bottom, my breath quick and shallow under the weight of her damp body.
Like a daytime nightmare, this memory rushed me every morning, making my lungs tighten and getting me up fast. First thing I’d do is check on the worms. They were always busy, marching up the twig jungle gym I’d rigged. While they nibbled mulberry leaves for breakfast, I chomped raw marshmallows. Sometimes I took them out of their box and let them nose around in the dirt for a while. They never minded the fog with its cool gray tendrils drifting off the ocean encircling us.
But this morning I was barely awake and still lying in my sleeping bag when I heard boots crunching down the gravel path towards my tent. Outside the flap I saw my aunt’s shoes. Nobody else on this planet wore purple cowboy boots as far as I knew. I watched her shaking her head as she poked around my camping equipment, my beat-up patio furniture.
“Marshmallow?” I held out the bag.
“Sure.” She chewed one and smiled. “What have you got there?”
“Silkworms. Mom gave them to me. ” I put one on her hand. It clambered up her arm on its miniature dark legs, its white rubbery skin bunching and gliding.
“Pets or science project?”
“Neither. I’m photographing their life cycle.”
“You always take great pictures. You got that from your mom.” She gave the worm little strokes with her finger. “Your Dad told you why I’m here?”
More boots clomped towards my tent; Jack’s combat lace-ups. Tall and gangly with pale skin, Jack, at fourteen, wore an oversized army jacket.
“Freezing out here. Can’t believe you’re stupid enough to still be living in the yard,” Jack said, flipping back his bangs and stuffing his hands in his pockets.
“Thanks for coming out, Jack,” said Aunt Gemma.
“No choice. Seeing as someone here has become retarded. You’re freaking Dad out, you know. Why don’t you just move back in?”
Dad wasn’t freaking out. When I went in to get food I saw him hunched over his desk in the same frayed brown v-neck that matched the crease on his forehead. He’d nod at me and then go back to his papers. The house stunk of stale wine and greasy styrofoam take-out containers. He didn’t even open the drapes, much less water the plants. Better to be outside.
“Your Dad thinks it’s time we spread your mother’s ashes.” Aunt Gemma looked down and fidgeted with her bangles.
“At Granite Harbor?” Jack asked.
Gemma fluttered her eyelids.
“Yes.”
This was a terrible idea. I wanted Jack to reject the plan outright, but he just stood there. Maybe he was tempted by all the good fishing up at Lake Cascade.
“It seems soon to go up to the lake . . . ” Aunt Gemma’s voice thinned, “but there will never be a good time. If we don’t go in the next couple weeks, the weather will change, and we’ll have to wait a whole year.” She pulled at her rings before continuing. I liked the way she dressed with colorful scarves and gypsy skirts, her hair wild. “It doesn’t seem fair to leave her in that box when we know where she’d rather be.” We had been camping and fishing at that lake since we were little kids -- just Jack and I and my mother. Sometimes Aunt Gemma came, too, but Dad hated to camp.
“Don’t decide now. Think about it. I can come back tomorrow.”
Jack eyed the worms.
“What are these?”
“Silkworms,” said Aunt Gemma with a smile. “Addison’s next photography project.” She gave me a quick hug goodbye and headed out. As my aunt disappeared around the house, Jack turned to follow her. But not before he grabbed the box of silkworms and hurled them over the back fence.
“ Your photography projects suck.”
*
A week later, at Granite Harbor, I set up my tent up as far away from Jack’s as possible. He choose a rocky area overlooking the lake, so I picked a spot by the creek near the aspens. Aunt Gemma’s tent was nearby, too. She had chattered nervously during the long car ride to the lake, trying to fill the angry silence between Jack and I. She seemed exhausted by the time we arrived in the dark, dropped into her sleeping bag and fell asleep.
I listened to her soft snoring, but I couldn’t sleep. The sounds that I once loved -- the wind rushing the trees, the water lapping against the rocks, the distant hum of a June bug – now set me on edge. I wandered along the beach thinking about my smashed silkworms. Bats streaked through the night sky, skimming the lake, scooting in and out of boulders. The half-submerged rocks, slate gray and covered with black moss, looked like huge slumbering beasts. I wish we had never returned. Once the moon had sunk low in the night sky, I finally crept back into my tent and slept for a few hours.
At dawn, as the horizon purpled, Aunt Gemma presented me with a mug of hot chocolate.
“Wake up, it’s the best time for fishing -- boat’s being loaded at the beach.”
The sun had yet to come over the ridge, and my breath came out like drifts of smoke. I shuffled down to the beach. Jack was filling the boat with nets, bait and rods. I almost turned around, thinking it would be just Aunt Gemma and I fishing, but then I didn’t want him to tease me about being scared, so I got in. But no sooner did he start rowing towards Pinnacle Rock than I was slammed by the memories of last June.
When taking photography trips with my mother, I always chose a theme for the day. “I’m photographing things in motion,” I had said as I grabbed my camera and scrambled into the boat on that cloudless afternoon. I snapped pictures of silver minnows darting through emerald water, ospreys hovering above in a wide blue sky, and Mom kicking up gold-flecked dust, ascending the mountain trail.
“Give the pictures a rest, Addison,” said Jack.
“Do something dramatic, Jack. I want one of you climbing that pine tree.”
“Yeah right, I just ate.”
“Mom, dive off Pinnacle Rock?”
“Maybe tomorrow. It’s been a long day, honey.”
“But we’re leaving tomorrow . . . and the boat’s already there. Just jump . . . c’mon Mom, please, just go off Pinnacle – it’s such a good shot.”
“Quit bugging her, Addison.”
Jack was always protective of Mom. They were close.
“Oh, I guess it would feel good this time of day,” she said. I began yanking her excitedly down the trail. Mom was a good diver: it would be a great portrait as well as action shot.
“Hang on, Mom . . . “ I said, flinging the camera over my shoulder on a strap. “Wait ‘til I get just across the cove.” After a few minutes of scrambling, I reached the boulder that would give me the perfect shot of the diving hole.
“Ready,” I said.
I snapped one of her blue eyes glazed with sun, laughing. I took another of her scaling Pinnacle Rock to a sandy ledge, fifteen feet above the water. Then I got her with her knees bent, arms overhead, ready to spring.
Then I stopped taking pictures. Mom’s foot shot weirdly out from her, and she seemed to lose her balance. This triggered a small landslide, and Mom made a shaky effort to skirt the tumble of rocks, but her dive was all wrong -- too far from the safe sandy part of diving hole, too close to the spot crowded with shallow boulders. I held my breath as she hit the water. I waited for her head, slick as a seal’s, to bob to the surface.
I waited longer. There was no head.
“Please . . .” I whispered, scanning the cove for Jack. He had just been there with the boat. I slid down a jumble of boulders to get to the water’s edge, scraping skin off my shins. “Jack! Where are you? ”
He rowed around the corner of the cove. I launched into the water without him.
“She’s still under,” I sputtered.
“What?”
“Mom!” I stroked through the water as fast as I could.
Understanding, Jack rowed over to the diving hole and jumped in. Through the water, I watched him reach her first. He tugged at her, crumpled in the rocks; her head was slumped over her chest. There was blood, too. I kicked down to grab a shoulder, and we brought her to the surface.
“Get the boat,” Jack said after hauling the body on to a slab of granite. I raced to the boat and oared over while Jack pounded Mom’s back, then flipped her over and tried pumping her heart. No breath. We dragged her into the boat, and Jack power-stroked back to the campsite. I cradled Mom’s damp head in my arms, pinched her nose and blew air into her mouth like I saw on t.v. rescue shows. I pressed my ear to her heart and listened. Nothing. The gash at the temple was bleeding steadily. The blood ran down my arms and dripped into the boat. I pressed my hand against Mom’s temple but couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Hours later, after being helicoptered to the mountain hospital, the doctors officially confirmed her dead. When her skull crashed into the submerged rocks, she had broken her neck and drowned.
Seeing Pinnacle Rock once again, I dropped to the metal floor of the boat and wedged my head between my knees.
“You ok?” asked Jack.
There was a rusty smudge on the bottom of the boat. When I tried to look away, the horizon flipped and reeled. All I could think about was Mom’s fast-pooling blood. My mouth opened and shut like a fish gasping for breath. I had to get out of the boat. I catapulted overboard and made for the center of the lake. I swam for a long time in the frigid water until Jack planted the boat right in front of me. I skirted it again and again.
Then Jack jumped in the water and grabbed me. I spat at him and kicked him; I knocked my fist into his eye. But this only made him hold me more tightly. I struggled for a few minutes, fighting him. I dragged him under the water with everything I had. I even bit him hard on the hand, but he continued to hold on to me.
“Don’t, Jack . . .” I hissed.
“Don’t what?” he sputtered, trying to keep from being pulled back under.
“Drown me.”
He spat water out of his mouth, and looked more surprised than angry.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“I made her dive.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“I was messing with the stupid fish bait around the cove. I could’ve been watching – maybe even stopped her.”
We were breathing hard in the cold water, kicking to stay afloat but holding each other’s gaze.
“You could just as easily blame me for it,” he said, “Or fate. Why would she write in her will to have her ashes spread up here?”
It seemed easy to give in. I was so tired. I knew I would sink heavy and fast if I stopped kicking.
“Your face is gray. You know what hypothermia is?” Jack stuck out his hand.
“Truce. Another drowning isn’t going to help anything. C’mon shake it, Addison. I’ve been an asshole. I’m sorry.”
He was sounding slightly more like a brother and less like the creep he’d been all summer. I slipped my hand, wrinkled as a raisin, into his. He looked solemn as he shook it. Then he flipped around and swam back to the boat. I kicked after him and climbed back in the boat. We rowed back in silence, listening to the squeak of the gunnels, watching the fish leave widening circles on the lake surface and wisps of clouds streak the sky.
Back at the campsite, Aunt Gemma looked at us suspiciously as we tromped in with drenched clothes.
“No trout?”
“Swam,” mumbled Jack.
“Awfully early for a swim . . . what happened to your eye?”
“Hit it with an oar,” he lied.
I smothered a smile.
“And your hand! It looks like something bit it. “
“Chipmunk,” I said.
“No big deal, got my tetanus shot,” Jack smirked.
“I don’t think this is funny,” said Aunt Gemma. “What if the chipmunk was rabid? Was it acting crazy? ”
“Yeah, it was acting crazy alright,” Jack glanced at me. We laughed together. It felt good, even if it was at my expense.
Aunt Gemma looked irritated and a little pleased at the same time. Maybe she sensed something had shifted between us.
“You didn’t sprinkle those ashes already?”
“No,” I said, “we’ll get to it later.”
*
That evening Jack sat on the beach slicing rocks across the lake surface. I skipped a few, too. The sun had just dipped below the mountains. Flattened in relief, the tree line looked like paper cut-outs against the magenta sky.
“What was all that about today?” he asked.
“Thought I saw some blood.”
“We were stupid to get back in that same boat. ” The sky deepened to plum and the first stars began to appear. I felt him thinking.
“You ever consider moving in with Aunt Gemma?”
“Want to get rid of me?”
“No. I just think you should quit sleeping in the yard. Maybe it makes things worse lying out there in the fog all alone.”
I listened to the deer mice scuttling in the wood pile, and the papery rustle of the aspen in the occasional puff of wind. The house was so still. And when Jack came home from his friends’ houses, he was mostly a jerk. I rested my chin on my knees and waited for the bats to come out.
Jack went back up to the campsite and returned with a box. Now was as good a time as any to scatter the ashes.
I saw he had also brought my camera down. This seemed strange until I pulled the lid off the box and found my silkworms. There was the full lifecycle -- eggs, larvae, pillowy cocoons and dozens of white moths fluttering.
“Most of them were unhurt when I got them out of the neighbor’s yard, but I bought some new eggs just in case.”
I cupped the worms eagerly, letting them wriggle up and explore my wrists and arms. Then I gingerly lifted the moths out one by one and set them on the beach.
“Won’t they fly off?” asked Jack.
“Silkworm moths can’t fly. They spin around and fan their wings but stay put with their families for the most part.”
A nearly windless night, we stretched belly-down beside one another and watched the moths dance. Their movements were alternately graceful and clumsy, dipping and circling, as they explored the uneven terrain. As they clambered up the gullies of sand, I thought about Jack and I as little kids jumping off logs, flapping our arms, trying to fly ourselves on this same beach. We had laughed as we failed, landed and floundered, but then we popped up to try it again, over and over.
The moths beat their wings in a frenzy one moment and then quieted to stillness, seeming strong and delicate at the same time. I felt something lighten and open in my chest as I watched them flutter and swirl, creating patterns in the dark sand.
“Good night for staying on the beach,” said Jack, “I’m going to skip the tent and sleep down here.”
He flipped on his back and molded a sandy pillow for his head. Then he piled one up for me. A warm night, the moon shone full over the dark water. As I listened to the lake water lap, its rhythmic swishing sounded comforting. Above, the sky was dotted with stars and planets. We debated over which one was Venus, Jupiter or Mercury; we traced Cassiopeia’s Chair, Orion’s Belt and Scorpio’s tail; we counted shooting stars and were fooled by satellites until eventually sleepy, we let the Milky Way roll over us like a gauzy white blanket.
*
Mollie McNeil lives, writes and makes fine art in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Crack the Spine and The Penmen Review, and there is a piece forthcoming in Blue Lake Review.
Thursday, October 30, 2014 at 05:36PM
You are bored by the idea of networks and connections. You yawn at the thought of BIG DATA. You wonder about the absence of creative space—the space where the random firing of a human brain tipsy on red wine might provide you something beautifully irregular and unexpected.
Non-Fiction Words by K.W., Spring/Summer 2014
*
Google your favorite writer.
No, not the one with the monthly staple-bound zine who works at Whole Foods. A famous one. Google your favorite famous writer. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure she’s famous.
The first thing you’ll notice is all of her images.
And so now you scroll down a bit. On the left are the latest articles or news bits about your writer—her book tour, her death, an English professor’s revisionist biography. But on the right, under the images, notice now, if you will, the biographical snippet from Wikipedia; the list of major demographic facts—birthdate, awards, education; the noteworthy bibliography; and finally the “People also search for.”
People also search for.
And it is here—at the People also search for—that you see all the other writers’ names.
Well, usually they are other writers, sometimes they are just others, not writers. Four things are sometimes true: they are other writers (usually) whose work resembles the style (maybe) or politics (probably) or cultural background (read: race and gender; almost always) of your writer.
How nice, how nice! Google has provided you with other writers to read and love, other writers who share those many things in common with your writer. But then you remember: People also search for. And then you think: this is not Google’s doing, per se, but the doing of countless other people. You imagine other people, at home in boxers or out in trendy cafes, also searching for their favorite writers. You then multiply this image and begin to imagine an abstract mass of you—you are the people-who-also-search-for. There’s a comfortable collusion here, a feeling of contributing to some great scheme to search for the best writers in the world and all the other writers they might resemble.
But all of a sudden, you are reminded of Amazon, and how often you disagree with the reviews of other people. And also you are reminded of every comments section you have been unfortunate enough to glance at. How many silent hours you have wasted disagreeing with other people on the Internet!
You are angry.
But just who the hell are these people-who-also-search-for?
You have heard that Google has an algorithm for this sort of thing. You bet that some people-who-also-search-for are given more weight than others in determining which writers end up parked, in square images, next to your favorite writer. How undemocratic. But then, do you even want democracy here? You are the kind of person who reads the New Yorker and Michicko Kakutani to figure out what literature to get your hands on next. No, no, not democracy. You want oligarchy and clarity. You want to be able to respect and know your tastemaker.
You have questions, questions for the people in charge. And all of a sudden you’re not so certain anymore you agree at all with the writers who have been listed next to your favorite writer.
For example, what kind of injustice is this that Zelda Fitzgerald cannot escape her husband, even now in death and on the Internet?
And god, what about diversity? The homophily of this thing annoys you. Of course searching for David Foster Wallace would return to you Jonathan Franzen and George Saunders.
And though she may not be “Literary,” J.K. Rowling surely deserves to be not associated first with Daniel Radcliffe.
You are bored by the idea of networks and connections. You yawn at the thought of BIG DATA. You wonder about the absence of creative space—the space where the random firing of a human brain tipsy on red wine might provide you something beautifully irregular and unexpected. Rather, here, you just have a simple computer amassing the collective wisdom of a mass of people. When you look at a mass of people, you don’t see the deviant patterns. And how boring life becomes without a little deviance. And also, and also, let’s not forget that the crowd often gets it wrong. Just now you smirk at the term “collective wisdom”—an oxymoron if there ever was one.
And you are no moron.
Just now you notice this thing, in small light grey lettering, bottom right—“Feedback.” You click. This is your chance, you realize, to set the record straight, to tell all the other people-who-also-search-for just how wrong they are in their associations and additional searches. And so you click away.
*
K. W. writes and consumes.
Images: All from Google searches
Sunday, June 15, 2014 at 03:04PM 
Mrs. Bevilaqua understood self-control. She kept a very strict schedule. Today was Thursday. Thursday was Mrs. Bevilaqua’s day for an arts outing. This is why she was standing in the hall of Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
Story by Evalyn Lee, Spring/Summer 2014
*
Mrs. Bevilaqua understood self-control. She kept a very strict schedule. Today was Thursday. Thursday was Mrs. Bevilaqua’s day for an arts outing. This is why she was standing in the hall of Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. But a cacophony of school children, brandishing their pencils like miniature lances, was crusading from the Medieval wing to the cafeteria. They were going to march right through her.
So much energy, so much endless human energy.
The stream of blazers with lumpy pockets and shrugging shoulders shoved Mrs. Bevilaqua into the side of a Roman sarcophagus where a husband and wife lay side by side, carved out of marble, holding onto each other’s hand.
“Oh, Daddy, look at that lady’s hair.”
Mrs. Bevilaqua was pushing herself off the side of the sarcophagus.
A small girl, holding her father’s hand, was pointing at her hair.
Mrs. Bevilaqua could not help touching it. She was very proud of her full head of white hair. For three hours, once a month, on a Tuesday, Mrs. Bevilaqua recreated the tight permanent her husband Dick had so loved, under the dryer of her hairdresser’s on the corner of 92nd and Madison Avenue.
“She looks like the Roman lady on the coffin!”
Mrs. Bevilaqua felt her face flush.
“Shh, Grace.”
The father was covering the girl’s mouth with his hand. He looked like a man who wanted to prevent a scene. But Mrs. Bevilaqua did not do scenes. She did daily stable walking. Of course, she wanted to collapse under the pressure of today’s unbearable energy, but she would not. She had come to the museum to see the Fra Angelico exhibit, not to be upset by unruly children.
This child looked to be around four years old. Clearly, Grace, if that was her name (an odd name for a Chinese girl), was at the age where she had to name the world, and name it out loud. Mrs. Bevilaqua remembered being four; she had urgently needed to identify every observation, object, person, animal, color, and each place of shadow and light, in her life. Her mother had struggled with her exuberance, especially in church. She did not envy this father the job of controlling his daughter.
Mrs. Bevilaqua looked at her small gold wristwatch. It was lunchtime. She should stop at the cafeteria but, without company, food held no interest. She decided to walk on. The walk down the stairs to the exhibit came as a relief. The growing stillness and the lessening of the crowds comforted her. As she waited to hand her ticket over, Mrs. Bevilaqua let her left hand with its wedding ring rest on a pile of show catalogs. She did not want to buy one. What was the point? Her bookshelves were full, and Dick was dead.
As she entered the exhibition hall, Mrs. Bevilaqua was grateful for the monastic air in the gallery. She noted how Fra Angelica’s work seemed to inspire each visitor to stand up straighter, and how the visitors would, one by one, walk up to a painting and bow at the waist to read the tag to the right of the picture. It made everyone look like supplicants. The show was beautifully hung. The paintings were luminous. Like stained-glass windows made of paint and gold leaf.
Mrs. Bevilaqua was surprised to find herself upset when she saw the frank little girl and her father enter the gallery. But Grace’s father, of all the visitors, did not bend to read the tags. Nor did he look at his child. No, he had walked straight up to the painting on the wall in front of him. In fact, the only people not looking at the Fra Angelico paintings were Grace and Mrs. Bevilaqua.
Mrs. Bevilaqua was watching Grace. Grace was not watching her. Grace was off, leaving her father to stare at art while she explored the sanctity of the gallery.
Mrs. Bevilaqua admired the child’s ability to get on with the business of being alive. I wonder if she is adopted. The extraordinary independence of this small child began to impress her. Mrs. Bevilaqua watched as Grace decided what she wanted to do next, which was to slide over the surface of the flat wooden benches grouped at the far corner of the hall.
Over and over, the little girl lay down on the flat belly of the bench with her round belly and then pushed off the floor with her feet. When she reached the end of her slide, to keep from falling off Grace put her hands down to the floor. Then she pushed herself back and started the game again.
I never would have been allowed to play such a game in a public space.
Grace stopped sliding and then lay down, on her back, on the bench. Mrs. Bevilaqua watched as Grace crossed her hands across her chest. Was she pretending to be a statue on top of a sarcophagus? The whites of the child’s half closed eyes looked a segment of hardboiled egg. Grace turned her head. She caught Mrs. Bevilaqua watching her. Grace then opened her eyes wide to look at Mrs. Bevilaqua.
No one had stared at Mrs. Bevilaqua this closely in months. No, not in years. Feeling an urgent need to hide, Mrs. Bevilaqua decided to walk around the corner of the exhibition hall. The inner courtyard of the gallery was filled with terracotta pots and plantings that reminded her of home. She was happy to be out of the child’s line of sight, but surprised to come face to face with Dick’s favorite painting: Christ Crowned with Thorns.
Blood from the crown of thorns streamed into and out of Jesus’s gaze. Here was a man very alive at his imminent crucifixion. Mrs. Bevilaqua felt hot then faint.
“Ma’am, ma’am,” she heard someone say. A museum guard? “Please don’t touch the painting.”
When Mrs. Bevilaqua opened her eyes, the guard was taking her right hand away from the wall. He was in his late fifties, spritely and kind. He explained that she had almost fainted into the picture. But fortunately the alarm had not gone off.
“Lean on me,” he said, “there are benches and a water fountain around the corner. You need a glass of water.”
Grace, who was lying on the bench as they came around the corner, sat up as the guard sat Mrs. Bevilaqua down.
“Your face is as white as your hair now,” she said.
The guard did not seem to hear Grace. He left Mrs. Bevilaqua to go get some water. On his return he put a small plastic cup in her hand but did not nod at Grace.
He must assume that we are together.
Grace by now was leaning companionably against Mrs. Bevilaqua like a warm, small dog.
“Take a moment,” said the guard. “I can always call an ambulance.”
He stepped back against the wall, taking his place, in his dark gray uniform, to continue guarding the gallery. She was gathering her strength to thank him. She needed a bit more time.
When she could whisper, Mrs. Bevilaqua asked Grace, “How old are you?”
“Four,” said Grace. “How old are you?”
“I am eighty-seven,” said Mrs. Bevilaqua.
“That’s old,” said Grace.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bevilaqua, “it is.”
“Are you sick?” asked Grace.
“No,” said Mrs. Bevilaqua.
But she couldn’t lift the cup of water to her lips.
The overhead spotlight trembled on the surface of the water.
She put the cup back down.
“I do have unexplained fainting spells,” said Mrs. Bevilaqua. “The doctors don’t know why.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Grace. “You are sad and you don’t eat enough.”
Mrs. Bevilaqua returned to the task of sipping the water. The task seemed endless. Grace continued to sit beside her but now she was kicking her legs under the bench.
“Do you like all this stuff?”
Mrs. Bevilaqua put down the cup. “Yes, very much.”
“Me too,” said Grace. She looked at the cup between them. “You should finish your water.”
Mrs. Bevilaqua picked up the plastic cup of water and drank.
Grace waited for her to finish before asking her next question, “Do you know where heaven is?”
“No,” said Mrs. Bevilaqua.
She began to look around the room for the girl’s father. Where has everybody gone? The whole gallery was empty except for her, Grace, and the guard.
“Well, he’s there,” said Grace.
“Who?” asked Mrs. Bevilaqua.
“Your husband,” said Grace. “He’s in heaven.”
Mrs. Bevilaqua struggled to control the emotions she felt: the anger, the shock, and a strong sense of outrage. That this strange Chinese child, at a Fra Angelico exhibit, on a Thursday, at the Metropolitan Museum, was speaking about Dick’s death was unseemly and raw. Then for no reason she could explain, Mrs. Bevilaqua felt frightened.
She wanted to turn to the guard. But all she could do was watch as a last bead of water clinging to the cup’s rim let go. It slipped down the clear plastic side and onto the wooden bench. Grace rubbed the spot dry with her finger.
Neither of them spoke.
Mrs. Bevilaqua wanted tell the guard, to explain to him that this four-year-old child was lost. That he needed to take her away and find her father. But before she could speak, Grace stood up on the bench beside her. Good, the guard will come take her away. It must be against the rules for her to stand on this bench.
Grace’s small round face was now a dark shadow under bright spotlights.
The guard will help me get up.
Mrs. Bevilaqua felt two hands, warm hands, on each side of her face. A kiss wet her forehead, right below her crown of white hair. When Mrs. Bevilaqua’s head hit the bench, Grace was gone.
*
Evalyn Lee is a former CBS News producer. She lives in London with her two kids, husband and their dog, Hugo. The reporting and writing bug bit her hard when she was six years old. She went into a closet with a flashlight, a notebook and a pencil. She pulled the door shut and sat down in the dark on a pile of shoes while being smothered by coat hems. She was there to understand and write the life story of a pair of purple boots! She never looked back. Please connect with her on Twitter: evalyn7@twitter.com.
Image: Source
Sunday, June 15, 2014 at 02:20PM 
Don’t imagine all the mushy nicknames you will later give her as she sits in the morning sunlight of your apartment drinking coffee from one of your chipped mugs.
Fiction by Simon A. Smith, Spring/Summer 2014
*
Some things you should know…
Thing One: When you are fresh off executing the most masterful courting job on the girl of your dreams, do not get caught woozy and drunk on Cabernet and Pinot Noir at three a.m. after everyone has gone to sleep for the evening with your jeans down around your ankles, hulking rear sweating on the toilet seat, head dangling in the adjacent sink. Do not allow the tender sister of said dream girl, unaware of your haphazard lock-job, to nudge open the bathroom door and shamble in stark naked as you let out a percussive fart and startled yelp at the same time. As the sister whirls and screams, do not notice the soft curve of her smooth waste or sloping buttocks as it disappears out the door in a spasmodic burst. This you will not find in any travel brochures or vacation guides. You are welcome.
Thing Two: While in Napa overlooking the most majestic scene of rolling hills and blooming vineyards, sipping blended wine out of a thin stemmed glass, do not tell a sarcastic joke about how you’d rather be back home in Lincoln because everything there is more impressive and savory. This will illicit a swell of laughter and flirtatious cooing from the girl in which you are falling in love and her younger sister, and this will only serve to give you unbridled hope that will later be vanquished by the rueful boot of fate. Do not picture the way the object of your affection might look down the road, sweet and smiling as she wakes beside you, cloaked in nothing but your oldest, coziest T-shirt and winking those impossibly blue eyes. Don’t imagine all the mushy nicknames you will later give her as she sits in the morning sunlight of your apartment drinking coffee from one of your chipped mugs.
Thing Three: When the trip is over, do not think about how the entire spectacle seems like a metaphor for every relationship you’ve had and didn’t have, about how the whole thing feels like a microcosm for the remaining stretch of life you have yet to undertake or overcome. Or do. Do it. Let the experience wash over you, curling like an ocean wave, appearing like the flaccid penis California resembles from north to south, from Eureka to the Salton Sea. Get comfortable; make it your replacement girlfriend. The taunting nature of the seasons and shifting tides always tending downward before too long… Greetings from sunny California… Don’t let it weather your resolve, all stubborn and resilient, bubbling to the surface of your memory every seventeen months or so... driving in the car or while trying to fall asleep… It’s nothing, dear. Don’t clench or brace for blow. Do not fight it, and you have fucking won.
*
Simon A. Smith writes and teaches high school English on the south side of Chicago. He lives in the Logan Square neighborhood with his wife and a murderous orange tabby named Cheever. A graduate of the Columbia College Chicago fiction writing department, Simon also holds an MAT in secondary education from Northeastern Illinois University. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming on/in Hobart, Quick Fiction, Keyhole, Chicago Public Radio, Whiskey Island, PANK, Curbside Splendor and more.
Image: Source
Sunday, June 15, 2014 at 02:15PM 
We all started crawling, the corporal too, picking up the pearls. “Just one of the strands broke,” I said. I started to cry and couldn’t see.
Fiction by Mame Ekblom Cudd, Spring/Summer 2014
*
We had just stepped through the airport doors. All of us ready to pick up my older brother, Redmond—and there was Corporal Abraham Tunks, skinny and bouncy, a toe walker. The top button of his uniform rested tightly just below his Adam’s apple.
He greeted us: patted Aunt Bayson on her back, shook Dad’s hand—and mine. Then rested his palm a while on my little bother’s head.
Tunks was lucky; he had all his fingers and small flat nails filed into even half moons. I grabbed his wrist and his gray eyes seemed to pop. But, how long do you keep your hand on someone’s head anyway?
Looking scared, he touched his neck. I touched mine. I felt like I was choking. I wore my mother’s pearls, a double strand and she’d been tiny and pretty, and there I stood, everyone staring at me, a big tough girl in a tank top with a stud in her eyebrow.
At home earlier, Dad had pleaded, knocking on my door, opening it, not waiting for me to say anything, his face round like Redmond’s. “Wear the pearls, Linny. It’s like your mother will be with us to welcome him home.”
Redmond had been injured in Afghanistan. You can pay attention and ask all the questions. I meant to. How much of each hand was involved? Dad had to have known. It was an explosion, but where exactly, in a field, near where he was stationed? Or far away maybe, back in the city? I’d dream of puffs of smoke that weren’t dangerous, yet all the cars along the dusty road lay upside down. Sometimes they spun on their roofs while the people walking past, met and talked—but not to me.
“He’s in one piece. Redmond said he’s in one piece.” Dad had yelled that crazy day after he got the off phone. He walked into the kitchen, shaking and smiling, big and doughy, and after hugging Aunt Bayson, he grabbed for me. But I headed for the door and crashed into my little brother, Grafton, a Redmond clone, meaty and reddish, round headed, just eight years old—and perfect.
Dad shouted the news again. “Hey, everyone, his hands are injured, but he’ll be fine.”
The words sounded too happy for all that strangeness and Grafton pressed his hands to his ears and dropped to the floor.
I lay next to him, pleading, “Redmond’s in one piece—he’s not dead.” I pulled at his little fingers. They were damp. I wanted to breathe them in; kissing the palms too, he let me.
“Don’t talk like that, Linny,” Dad said, sounding like he might cry. “Don’t mention that. He’s in one piece, for Christ’s sake.”
I couldn’t look at him.
And then for weeks it was Grafton’s sentence—and not just a statement, the question of every moment, “Redmond’s in one piece, right? He’s in one piece, so he’s okay, right?”—a million times a day.
Dad went to Virginia to see him. The rest of us talked to Redmond from home. We’d Skype and laugh, we did. But I’d back away from the screen. I didn’t really look. I wouldn’t read any official letters explaining anything either.
My crazy habit started around then: As we chatted to Redmond one day, and as Aunt Bayson and I traded places at the computer, I almost pulled the chair out from under her. I made the physical movement, grabbing and jerking it as she sat. But I stopped; I didn’t go too far, not all the way. But part of the way felt so damn good. She hardly noticed, just looked at me for a second. That was it though: making a few physical movements toward doing something wrong, like I was in control of something big, maybe—almost.
And Redmond laughed, too, about his injuries, sort of. Just his large freckled face on the screen—not his hands, “I’m okay,” he’d say, but sound upset. “You know I’m okay.”
But again, what part of each hand? I should know, right? Nobody said exactly. Redmond would have them in the air for a second, but they were bandaged. I’d squint and look away.
Dad wanted to be so goddamn happy; he was trying. He finally had Aunt Bayson—and his oldest son was in one piece. If she wanted to paint every wall in our house white, let her. My best friend Sophia suggested we draw on them with Sharpie pens.
Aunt Bayson, my mother’s sister, slight and dark, one year older—never had any kids. My mother died giving birth to Grafton. Uncle Trey, Aunt Bayson’s husband, soft and slow talking, died last fall and she went right to Dad and that was it. Grafton and I weren’t to ask about it. I did hug her. She even felt like my mother. She left Grafton alone, left him to me, which was right, I guess.
Just last Tuesday Dad and Aunt Bayson sat on the new family room couch, trying it out, some puffy red, way too big a thing. They held hands and Dad whispered again how lucky he was that he found someone exactly like my mother.
He’d let his hair grow out, and I went around to the back of the couch and laughed about braiding their hair together. How funny that would be. I pulled at his gray hair and her smooth black strands. “I’m braiding,” I said, “hold still.” I looked for a hair on each of their heads and gave it a little yank. “Sorry, it got caught in my ring.”
They winced. I wanted to smash their heads together—both of my hands on their heads for a second. I was going to, those actions, the going to, almost a relief, but not a complete relief.
My new habit showed up at school with Jessica Sterner, giving her a little shove downhill during cross-country practice. I wanted to send her flying, the know-it-all bitch, but I held her arm. I laughed. She kind of laughed.
Now, while standing in the airport, I wanted to bite the tip of one of Corporal Abraham Tunks’s fingers—and grind at the bone. He pointed down a hallway. We were to follow him to a special waiting room for service family members. We live outside of Palmers, Oregon, and the regional airport is small, and so was the room. Filled with furniture and tiny Kleenex boxes you get in a hospital and one little window.
Grafton ran over to a giant poster of an eagle flying over water. “I’ll draw that,” he said, grabbing at some crayons and paper they had for little kids. He drew, standing, bent over the coffee table, sucking in his lower lip.
“Perfect,” I said loudly.
Everyone turned. I ran over to the Corporal and took his hand, shaking it but then quickly wrapping my fist around his finger. Pulling it to my mouth, I sucked at the fleshy tip. He yanked, I held; I was larger. We spun and flopped on the couch. Dad grabbed my shoulders. But I didn’t bite; I didn’t go all the way because it tasted like my finger, like Grafton’s. Like dirt and clean at the same time. I felt calm until Aunt Bayson fell on top of us just as the corporal caught his hand on my pearls. They sprayed everywhere, sounding like sleet hitting our driveway back home.
Tunks whispered, “Holy shit.” He held Aunt Bayson on his lap like a child.
And Grafton, his mouth a little fleshy circle, said, “What the fuck?”
“Shit, don’t swear, Grafton,” Dad hissed.
We all started crawling, the corporal too, picking up the pearls. “Just one of the strands broke,” I said. I started to cry and couldn’t see.
“Jesus Christ, stop crying, Linny,” Dad shouted. “What the hell were you thinking? You’ll get everybody upset. Did you know the corporal?”
Quietly, from across the room, Tunks said, “Listen, I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Why can’t Linny cry?” Grafton, the wonder boy asked.
“I’m going to cry. So everybody shut up.” I had my hand so far under the big couch, I lay flat on the floor; the dusty linoleum smelled like sticks. And poor Tunks, what would I say to him?
Aunt Bayson joined in, “Don’t say shut up…to each other.” Her voice cracked.
And Redmond appeared. Tall, his round head on a thin neck, in his fatigues, standing next to Tunks, who I guess had left to get him. I saw a jagged scar under his chin. Grafton ran over to Redmond and hugged him.
“Corporal Tunks said there were pearls all over.” Redmond’s voice was soft. He rubbed Grafton’s head. “I see some, under the coffee table, near the leg, there.” He pointed.
Under the bright lights his right hand looked like a claw. He had most of his index finger and thumb, but the rest of his fingers were stumps, hardly there at all. His left hand was still bandaged. “Hey,” he said. “I can get them.” He knelt.
I couldn’t move. I clutched at the couch. Grafton slid to his knees. We watched Redmond place his only two good fingers—all swollen and red, on either side of a single pearl. I didn’t squint—my punishment to stay and look. But the damn pearl kept sliding around. I held my breath until I couldn’t stand it, and when it rolled near me, I grabbed it.
“How are you, Linny?” Redmond whispered, standing. “We’ll get all the pearls picked up, okay?”
I shouldn’t have helped him; or maybe it was good. I felt crazy, like my head would blow off from not knowing.
Grafton patted Redmond’s arm, “Hey, Redmond; hey, listen,” he kept saying. But everyone was talking at once, hugging and kissing.
Yet Grafton kept at it and when we all were quiet for a second, he finally said, “Hey, Redmond, you’re in one piece; only your little pieces are gone.”
*
After receiving a BA in economics from Wells College and an MSSW from Columbia University’s School of Social Work, Mame worked for many years as a marriage counselor/family therapist. After retiring from practice to raise a family, she turned to her first love, a writing career. When not writing or learning about the craft of writing she spends her time doing seven million other activities that remind her of the human dilemma, the frailties and joys—and why she needs to get back to writing. She attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference (2009 and 2011) and the Arizona State Writers Conference (2006 and 2007). Her work has appeared in Crack the Spine, Fiction Fix, Fiction Magazine, Broad River Review, The Puritan, and SNReview.
Image: Source
Sunday, June 15, 2014 at 02:05PM