Modern Love
By David Waters
I lock the door, hike up my dress, roll down my pantyhose, and perch on the toilet in the bathroom of Ed Dwyer’s Victorian townhouse. I look around. The only bright colors emanate from the Mondrian design on the shower curtain. It has mold along the bottom edge and two of the shower hooks are off the rail. An orangish stain hangs from the lower corner of the window casement, like the hanging tail of an animal who got caught there long ago and perished. I inhale to convince myself that I can’t smell it beneath the lilac air spray. I look for toenail clippings on the floor, but instead see a thin line of ants making the undulating trek from under the bathtub, across the tile floor, and out through the crack under the door. Everyone in San Francisco has ants when it rains. From the street the muffler of a lowrider grumbles, clears its throat, and the wall in front of me trembles in sympathy. The song I hate most, One Less Bitch, by N.W.A., pops into my mind.
I pee, put myself together, and wash my hands. To the left of the sink I notice a package of Rogaine, an electric toothbrush, the lilac air spray, and a plastic bag of Dude Bombs, something to drop in the toilet to mitigate bad smells, I learn from reading the label. There is no medicine cabinet, but bottles of pills are lined up on the right side of the sink. I see losartan and amlodipine, that would be for blood pressure, and metformin and sitagliptin, that would be for diabetes. Should I worry about this dude’s health, I ask myself? Can he get it up? Not for nothing did I go to nursing school. I dry my hands and check out the second row of meds. A bottle of Viagra, that’s encouraging, but also Cialis and Levitra? That’s scary. If he has all three, are none of them working?
I see a narrow line of dust behind the sink and know instantly that a photograph was there, and that he moved it. I find her in the cupboard beneath the sink, a woman in a white bikini who looks disturbingly like me, tall, blonde, older. She had a lot of work done. Is that what a Brazilian butt lift should look like? Those super boobs are as unlikely to move as the Pyramids of Giza, and her lips appear painfully bloated and unnatural.
I remind myself that he just cooked dinner for me, boeuf bourguignon from scratch, and it wasn’t bad. He chose a nice pinot noir. He’s a lawyer for the ACLU, so his politics are impeccable. He’s interesting. He listens to me. That’s rare in men nowadays. And I just passed 60. Nobody clamors for older women and that vibrator can only take me so far.
I look back at the bathroom and see a slim paperback that I hadn’t noticed before, on the floor beside the toilet, butterflied open to page 62. It is poetry, something modern, a poet I don’t know. The book is marked up, dog-eared, worn. I glimpse him sitting there, engrossed in a poem, his undies around his ankles, his little dick peering down into the vast abyss. The image forces me to smile. I carefully and lovingly, yes lovingly, replace the book exactly as it was. I unlock the door and step out, careful not to disturb the parade of ants.
Living Room
By Simon Petrie
While the humans were away, the room moved through the house. It was slow going, impeded by the house’s other rooms to the extent possible. And, though it sought to navigate with utmost care, the room could not help but knock down some items from shelves and tables and mantelpieces in the rooms through which it moved. It hoped these objects were not valuable, or if valuable were not breakable, or if both breakable and valuable were not emotionally prized by the house’s humans; or if all three, that it could credibly place the blame for the damage on one of the other rooms.
No space within the house felt right. This corner did not get enough light; this corner had all the plumbing, which was a responsibility the room didn’t need; this corner got too much light; and this corner had about the right amount of light and an attractive aspect but had been memorably damaged by a car which had crashed into it five years ago, and the room did not want that kind of thing happening to it, thank you very much. The room felt strongly, nonetheless, that the space it needed must be a corner of the house, outward-facing, and so it resolved to go through the house once again. It was on this second pass through, and when it had just knocked over a rather large and dangerously valuable-looking marble statue in the main hallway, that it realised the problem: it was in the wrong house.
Still Life with Wild Turkey
By Beth Sherman
The turkey was standing on the front lawn of the biggest house I’d ever seen, long as a semi-trailer, with turrets, arched windows, and porticos. The bird was so still we thought it was a lawn ornament. Howard even made a gobbling noise, in jest. I tried to grab his hand, but he kept a few steps ahead. It’s what we do on weekends. Look up the priciest houses on Zillow and drive over to see them, strolling around different neighborhoods for an hour or so. Good exercise, cheap fun. You know what I mean?
Well, before you could blink, I heard an excited kee kee kee behind me and there was the turkey, trailing after us like a dog off its leash. One of its feathers had become dislodged and was drooping down its breast, like an arrow that missed the mark. I got out my phone and took the requisite pictures because it’s not every day you see a wild turkey in suburbia. Its head was tiny, its wattle the reddish pink color of falling maple leaves. Walking daintily beside us, picking its feet up deliberately like an old lady easing into the shallow end of a pool.
You might be thinking who cares about a random turkey? I did. Even though this was the week before Thanksgiving, some of the houses still had their Halloween decorations up. Skeletons taller than basketball hoops. Blow-up headless horsemen. Signs with sayings like “The Witch Is In.” A Range Rover came barreling down the street aimed right at us. We hustled out of the way, toward the edge of the lawn; the turkey stood its ground. At the very last moment, the car swerved.
They can fly, right? Howard said, like we hadn’t almost been run over.
Are you serious right now? We just had a near death experience.
He snorted, missing the point, as usual.
That’s the way it happens. When we least expect it. When we’re not really paying attention.
You try explaining to Howard that life is a crapshoot, there are no guarantees. Waste of time. He only hears what he wants to hear.
The turkey was looking at me with its plaintive turkey eyes. I could have reached out my hand to pet it. That’s how close it was.
I googled some stuff about turkeys. In factory farms, they spend most of their lives crammed into filthy dark sheds. If they’re sick or too small, they get ground up alive in a machine that operates like a giant woodchipper. There’s more, but I’ll spare you the horrible details.
I’m just eating sides, this year, I said. No turkey. I’m rooting for this guy.
You’re virtue signaling, Howard said.
What?
Virtue signaling. Attempting to show the world you’re a better person than everyone else.
He’s 46 years old. Because he works in marketing at a clothing company that caters to preteens, he tries to keep up with what’s trending on TikTok.
This is too much information for you. You probably want to know other things about us, like why we don’t have sex anymore or the ways we’ve found to avoid talking about anything that remotely matters or why we got married in the first place. I don’t blame you. They’re perfectly good questions.
Here’s what I’ll tell you: I wanted to take that turkey home with me, feed it seeds, keep me company while I cook and garden and do the laundry, tuck it into bed at night. But Howard would never agree. He’s too closed off if you get my drift.
My turkey discovered an enticing cluster of purple chokeberries. We kept walking. A woman came down her long driveway on the way to her mailbox. When she saw us she smiled and waved, and we waved back, like we belonged there.
Summer’s Last Horse (Uintah, 1896)
By Jane Hammons
“He likes to break things.”
“He’s good at it.” The boy meant horses. All he knew of Estelle’s father, Tallon Bow Kerchee, was that he came and went from his family’s ranches in Utah and Colorado and was good at breaking horses.
Estelle didn’t mean horses.
She meant windows and walls and sometimes bones.
Her mother’s.
Hers.
Estelle and the boy watched Tallon allow the wild stallion to press hard against him, the man’s broad back to the horse’s muscular neck. Both glistened with sweat.
Like her, the boy went away to school and returned home in the summer. The boy’s school was founded by a white preacher for white people who lived in Utah and didn’t want their children educated by Mormons.
Wasatch School.
When they travelled through the Wasatch Mountains, Estelle’s father told her wasatch was the Paiute word for frozen penis.
She told the boy what his school meant, and they giggled. This was why her dead mother’s Cherokee family didn’t like the Comanche, as they called Tallon Bow Kerchee. Or her, who they called Estelle Redbird Billy Kerchee when they added her name to the Dawes Rolls. They wanted her counted as Cherokee even if they didn’t want her.
She was out of school for the summer, too. Permanently out of the Cherokee Female Seminary, where she spent two years hiding and running away and causing trouble that humiliated her mother’s family. The Seminary wasn’t like Fort Sill or Anadarko. It was run by Cherokee for Cherokee. Her mother—Buena Vista Redbird Billy—had excelled. And graduated. A successful Rosebud.
Rosebuds.
That’s what they called the girls cultivated at Seminary School.
Inmates.
That’s what they called the children at the Cherokee Orphan Asylum where Estelle lived for five years after her mother died. Estelle had been a promising inmate. When she spoke at all, she spoke English. What Cherokee and Comanche she knew, she kept to herself.
Her mother’s family claimed Tallon Bow Kerchee undid Estelle’s learning every summer when he took her on the road. They were wrong. She kept her love of geography and history and she liked reading stories. A little inmate, she’d written poems for the Asylum newsletter. But what she learned from her father about prairies and mountains and horses and skies was more important to her than Latin and Home Economy, things the Seminary wanted her to learn.
She liked blue jeans and flannel shirts more than layers of undergarments, camisoles and petticoats, and blouses tucked neatly into skirts, everything with buttons and pleats that need to be sharp and things that matched like gloves and hats. She wouldn’t miss that. Or all the praying.
She did not like church. She’d rather groom horses.
Tallon Bow Kerchee extended the thick rope he’d knotted around the horse’s left front hoof and forced the stallion to stand on three legs, frozen in mid-prance, until it finally knelt before him.
Estelle was 12, and this was the third summer she and Tallon Bow Kerchee had worked at the ranch in Uintah. It was the year the boy’s mother put Estelle to work in the garden and the kitchen instead of the stables and put a cot in the supply closet where Estelle slept instead of in the bunkhouse with her father. For once in her life Estelle had a room of her own.
That wouldn’t be true at Haskell, the school she’d attend as soon as Tallon Bow Kerchee broke the summer’s last horse. She’d sleep in a dormitory and dream runaway maps.
A boy always running away was how her father became the man he was. Sometimes he ran home to Texas, and sometimes he had hired out on farms or worked with blacksmiths. Sometimes he was alone and hungry until someone eventually sent him back to school. Until he met her mother, he was a boy in trouble, a boy running away from the school at Fort Sill.
Geronimo was in jail at Fort Sill.
An inmate.
The horse knelt, its front knees on the ground but then rose quickly, surprising Tallon Bow Kerchee.
Estelle grabbed something out of the air. The boy had seen her do it before. He didn’t ask what she was doing. Estelle Bow Kerchee signaled more than she spoke. A nod, a tilt of head, a shift in her glance, the way she flicked her long braid from one shoulder to the other. She liked to be near him. Her signals told him so.
He released the rope and let the horse run and buck until exhausted by freedom, so it was easy to capture. Then he approached slowly, and grabbed the rope attached to the hoof and lifted it again into the air. The stallion went down on both knees and rolled to its side. Tallon Bow Kerchee waited before stepping over its belly once, twice, three times. With the third crossover Estelle jumped down from the fence and took him the saddle blanket. Her father placed it on the horse’s rump, and sat quietly before motioning for Estelle to bring the saddle. He brought the horse to its feet. Estelle dropped the saddle near him and climbed back onto the corral fence. She sat close to the boy. Tallon Bow Kerchee tightened the cinch and waited for the horse to breathe normally before mounting it.
“Unole.” In Cherokee the word meant wind. It was the first time she’d spoken aloud a name she’d given to the horse spirit she snatched from the air.
The boy repeated the word and didn’t ask what it meant.
Estelle liked that. With the boy she could give some things and still keep something to herself.
Come next summer, she’d summon the wind and ride back to the boy in Uintah.
Broken Glass
By Agata Antonow
It’s 1980 or so, and the memory has the haziness of early childhood, like a fragile shimmer of water. What I remember is my late father at his workplace, in a factory in Wrocław. He has a tube to his mouth, like a cigarette. From it emerges a hot bubble of glass, slowly forming with his breath. The surface dances with liquid rainbows. I catch blue, pink, and green. He winks at me and the bubble stops growing, is carefully set aside to harden. Someone is holding me up—I’m only three—but I can’t imagine who it can be.
Some of the glass cigarette holders and bowls my father’s breath pushed into being may still exist somewhere. But he breathed his last years ago. I never saw him create anything with glass again. Was it a hobby? Was I remembering a job he had temporarily? Or is the mirror of memory playing a trick?
I picture that glass bubble now, its effervescence holding the delicacy of my father’s breath.
ii.
Glass itself is an amorphous solid, I read. If we could look through a microscope at the molecules, we’d find them in slow motion. I like this idea, that the glass pot lids sleeping in my cabinets are wiggling with movement. That when I look out my window at distant hills or the sleet coming in at an angle, I’m looking through slow-waltzing molecules.
It doesn’t escape me that glassblowing combines breath, fire, the sea, and the earth. Maybe this is why that moment of shimmery molten movement made such an impression on me. A living fairytale in fire. A firetale.
iii.
Another memory. It’s a total eclipse and my mother, father, and I are gathered in the narrow driveway of our Hamilton house. My father is holding a thick rectangle of glass, about four inches by two. Underneath is the lighter he uses to light cigarette after cigarette. Only now he’s waving it back and forth under the glass.
Hypnotized, the clear surface darkens. Sooty and oily, it cloaks itself in the patina of smoke. My father carefully passes the glass to me.
“You look first. Who knows how many eclipses you’ll get a chance to see?”
I hold the square between thumb and forefinger and look up. Through the smudged, sooty glass, the sun is a circle with a small bite taken from it. It shows up faint, like the moon on a cloudy night. Looking up, my mouth slightly open in the way I had then, as a kid with asthma and all kinds of nose complaints, I realize that I should be excited. But in a child’s way, I don’t know what I’m looking at. I hand the square over to my mother, who holds it aloft, looks up, and exclaims. A better reaction.
The sun is hot on my neck and around me the city noises drift and ebb. A dog barking. Students walking to McMaster, talking. Someone shutting a window with a bang. The endless growl of cars on our street.
iv.
Glass has been largely replaced by plastic now. As a child, I remember sitting in the bathroom and watching the mysterious grown-up skin care routine my mother went through, in a fit of optimism every, few days before giving it up again.
Every few months, packages arrived from family in Poland. Soft brown paper and underneath bottles of brown liquid that smell like mint and boxes of ampules. At seven, I love that word: ampules. My mouth rolls over the sophistication of it. I love watching this part: my mom extracts an ampule from a box. It’s thin, with a slender neck. With one sharp movement, she snaps the neck and pours the liquid inside onto her hands so she can smooth it, in quick, animal-like movements, all over her face. The glass is wrapped in a twist of toilet paper and thrown into the wastepaper basket.
Today, I’m in my 40s, like my mother was then. My skin care routine is similarly foxhole. I give it up for days, despair at the lines and then tackle my skin with potions and creams and serums. Only everything I buy comes in plastic. A thin plastic membrane covers the tops of jars of cream. I imagine it in a landfill, centuries from now. My bones will be ash, but this sliver of white plastic will still be floating.
Their Person
By Christopher J. Ananias
The firelight touched his sad little face. A handsome boy like his mother. I hadn’t noticed Roger was there. Roger seemed like such an adult name for an eight-year-old. “Go take a pail of water to the dog, since you’re up.”
Roger sat the water pail on the keys table and opened the door. I wished he would move a little faster. A chilly fall breeze ran up my pajamas. I shivered. Mickey always made fun of those silly plaid pajamas. Like I was Ricky Ricardo or some other prude. Maybe that’s why she stepped out on me? Or rolled …
Someone in my position should be angrier. I think the term is a cuckold. Cuckolds are angry, right? I wasn’t sure that term applied while only living with someone. Something about living in sin nullifies the word cuckold. I heard the boy’s footsteps going down the handicap ramp.
I studied the flames licking over the log, crackling and popping on a bed of red embers. It should last for hours. The quiet old house creaked, a draft wrapped around my bare ankles in the slippers, like the house was sighing in relief from the constant bickering. Something ran around in the closet. I stomped my foot, and it got quiet.
Roger shut the door and stood there watching from the dark kitchen. I knew what he wanted. It was part of the routine. I liked it. “Can I let Philly in?” said his squeaky voice.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
The dog, a big Catahoula hound mix, bolted inside and went to the kitchen. Probably going for the porkchop bones. “Philly, get down.” said the boy, sounding sheepish like he caused it. He looked at me to see if he was in trouble. His big blue eyes were always searching my face. What had his life been before me?
I sat there listening to the boy pulling at the unruly dog that got into everything. Mickey was late, again. I rehearsed what I would say. Something like: I want you out, or get out, or damn you get out. It all sounded lame. Maybe we could be roommates for the boy’s sake? He had more riding on his Mom’s relationship than I did. Sometimes he would apologize for her behavior. The uncertainty in his little voice was kind of sad. Saying adult stuff like, “I-I know mommy is a handful mister Tom, but she’s got a goodie heart.” Roger would probably grow up to be some kind of mediator, join the Peace Corps, or stuff it all down and go nuts.
“Philly, get in here!” The dog trotted in and put her black and white spotted head on my knee. Her snout was long like a German Shepherd. I stroked her ears. They were velvety and warm. She stared at me with her bright brown eyes, which had a blueish hue. “What yah thinkin’ about, Philly?” Everyone in the house had all these things on their minds, even the dog.
The boy stood in the kitchen, searching for headlights to sweep across the yard. If his mother stayed out all night, she would force me to do something.
“I like it here with you and Philly,” said Roger standing in the doorway, between the kitchen and the living room.
This startled me out of my thoughts, and I felt low. I had them and all their junk loaded up in the Uhaul with the boy’s blonde head barely peeking over the dash—never to be seen again. Like the rest of them. Mostly bar women, and their unruly kids, who would never take Philly a pail of water.
The last two kids, I didn’t even trust to be around Philly, always running around like maniacs, throwing the sofa cushions, hopping back and forth, and doing somersaults. Philly was too old for all of that, so I kept her outside when they were inside, and brought her inside when they were outside. Then I started doing the same thing, except if they were downstairs I went upstairs.
I had grown accustomed to Roger. He was quiet and never talked back and did his chores. “Well, son. We like you, too. Don’t we, Philly girl?” Philly’s tail started in and she ran out into the kitchen and I heard her feet land on the countertop, going after the porkchop bones.
I listened to the dog chomping and the fire crackling. The little boy snored in the big chair. I threw a blanket on him. Where would Mickey take him? Back to the low-income apartments?
I heard the van idling out in the driveway. I put down my book. The complete stories of Ernest Hemingway. I was expanding my literary horizons. I should get tough like Ernie. He wouldn’t take this crap for a second.
The cold air hit me. Leaves blew inside. I heard the electric whine of the van’s lift. The driver-side door slammed shut. Mickey pointed her chair at the sidewalk, always driving it too fast.
“Don’t start in, Tom.” Her blonde hair sticking up, and her red lipstick smeared. Now she wasn’t even hiding her affair. Mickey zoomed up the ramp. I jumped out of the way. I still had bruises on my right thigh from when she ran into me.
“Hey look, Mickey, this isn’t working.”
She looked up at me. Her face was stunning. Guys were always following her around. Wherever we went some guy would be talking to her. “There’s my little Roger,” she said smiling, acting like she suddenly gave a damn.
Roger stood with his hand on Philly’s mane. “Hi, Mommy,” he said like a little worn-out man. Philly trotted around me and went to Mickey and put her head on Mickey’s knee. Philly loved Mickey. Mickey had become her person, which was annoying. Roger stood beside me, he reached out and grabbed my hand. I think I had become his person.
Silencing the Bells
By Huina Zheng
When I was a little girl, Ba loved to recount the story of the man covering his ears while stealing his neighbor’s bell. Concerned that the bell’s noise would give him away, he opted to shield his ears, convinced this would somehow silence the sound for everyone else. Ba would always roar with laughter, mocking the thief’s folly, as covering his ears did nothing to prevent the bell’s clang from reaching others. I reveled in Ba’s laughter. Yet, neither Ma nor I foresaw that years later, Ba would embody denial—clinging to my infant brother’s body, and warding us off, insisting “the baby is merely asleep, just asleep.” Ba tenderly cradled the baby, his arms encircling in a protective embrace as he swayed, as if to shield him from the world’s woes. But we were not fooled. We surged forward, Ma from the left, I from the right, until the baby “flew” from his grasp into mine. I dashed to the yard, placing my brother in a pre-dug hole, its edges flanked by mounds of excavated soil. Then, using both hands and feet, I scooped and pushed, returning the earth to where it once lay, feeling the damp, soft texture under my hands, like dough of brown sugar buns. Worms wriggled in the yellow soil, and the remnants of beetles lay scattered. I pressed on. Roots burst from the soil, ensnaring Ba as he lunged towards the hole, his body ensconced. Branches sprouted from his torso, his hair metamorphosed into black leaves rustling sharply in the breeze. His eyes became knots, his mouth a cavity, his ears transformed into fungi. Ma plucked mushrooms as more burgeoned from the trunk. She continued until her fingers swelled like sausages. I kept picking until my hands stretched, morphing into a red fabric that enveloped the dark foliage, their embrace muffling the leaves’ crisp rustling to distant murmurs, fading into the stillness of the night.
The Lie
By Mathieu Parsy
The moment Dad’s voice fills the room with falsehoods, I know the evening will be unbearable. My sister, stepmother and I sit around the dining room table, listening to him. He lies about me. As he spins his tales, each word feels like glass shards cutting through my soul. He looks so old and frail now. When he talks, saying hurtful lies, I hold onto the sides of the table tightly and squeeze them in silent anger. He tells a story about him caring for us when my sister and I were kids, and Mom was gone. He revels in his fables of cooking dinners and reading bedtime stories. But the old man, whom I barely recognize now, accuses me of being just like my mother, abandoning my sister, and always being outside with the rest of the street rats. He calls me a coward for being the big brother who didn’t take care of his little sister and never helped around the house. My sister is too young to remember all the details of that time, so she doesn’t challenge his version. But the truth is, he didn’t help us. He never did. He wasn’t even there. So he doesn’t know I helped my sister the best I could to feed her, play with her, love her … did what he should have done instead of spending his days in dodgy bars drinking because Mom left him. But he is not aware of his lies. He just crafts his own false version of reality and convinces himself it is the sole truth.
What hurts more is, as he stumbles to recount the past, my sister casts a hesitant glance my way before nodding in reluctant accord with our father, her lips forming a tight line of silent dissent. And my stepmother’s forced smile fails to conceal the uncertainty in her eyes. Only later will they admit they did so to pretend to agree with him in order to move past the conversation. But I don’t know that yet.
A lie is being told about my life out loud, and everyone is playing along, shaming me … Soon, we won’t have any family dinners with Dad around, but we agreed to listen to a lie about his life, my life, and pretend it is real. The diseased fabricated anecdote is tainting the family evening and creating a subtle shift in how my sister and stepmother look at me—a lingering doubt, a hint of skepticism. The false narrative paints me as a spineless, frightened teenager who ignored his sister during our childhood, and now every exchanged look is carrying the weight of that deception. We all know Dad’s story isn’t true, but still, our interactions are no longer the same; unspoken judgment hangs in the air, the consequence of a distorted tale. Even worse, my dad will take this disappointing fake memory of me with him when his time comes. I want to hate him, but I still feel something for him.
His mind is fading. It is irreversible. The erosion of his thoughts leaves behind jagged edges of buried moments and fractured recollections. He has forgotten most names, stares vacantly and repeats the same story, struggling to recall details, a puzzle missing crucial pieces scattered in the fog of his weakened mind. I realize the lie isn’t just about me; it is about all of us living through this moment of deceit, reshaping our family history, and erasing moments of love and sacrifice he wasn’t part of. But each of us is complicit; maybe for the last time, we leave him with distorted memories. Bad ones.
Dad lies about me, and there’s nothing I can do.
Tell Me A Story
By Lynn Stearns
Tell me a story, the one you used to tell me while your fingers danced across my breasts. You always said it was about a man who married the most wonderful woman in the world, and promised to cherish her all the days of his life. You told me their names, which were our names, and you claimed the happy couple lived on a quiet cul-de-sac by the bay, and they had our address. Without opening my eyes, I knew you were smiling at that part, thinking you were ever so clever.
After our daughter was born, you amended the story to include her, but it has been more than a year since then, and I’m wondering if you still remember it. Tell it to me now. Please, and don’t leave anything out, especially the part near the end, where you take a deep breath before saying they all lived happily ever after.
That deep breath, that dramatic pause, is when I will tell you that I went to visit the woman in your story, though she actually has a different name. It’s nothing like mine, and she lives in the city, in a classy condo with lots of amenities, compliments of her lover, a man with your name. She wasn’t surprised to see me. She said she has been wondering about some things, like whether he was always truthful with her. Before I left, we agreed that men who tell fairy tales with promises of living happily ever after can’t be trusted about anything, and then I went to the bank.
Good News
By Logan Markko
My younger brother Darren called as I was pulling into the driveway on my way home from work. “I have good news,” he said, but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying because there was a bloody lump of mangled fur sprawled next to my mailbox.
“I’m getting married,” Darren said. “Me and Ronnie, we’re finally tying the knot.”
I leaned out the window to get a better look at the animal. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a dead possum, flattened to the asphalt like it had already been run over a couple of times by the cars whipping up and down my busy residential street.
“So, you’re getting married,” I said, rolling up the window and turning off the engine.
“We’ve been dating for five years. It felt like it was time.”
“You love her?”
“Of course, everybody loves Ronnie.”
“That’s good,” I said. “It’s the love that counts.”
I hadn’t seen Darren since the Thanksgiving before last when we’d both had a little too much to drink and wound up wrestling on the living room floor after Washington beat Dallas. We’d had a five-dollar bet going on the football game, but Darren wouldn’t pay, so I had to remind him who the older brother was in this house where we’d both grown up. He gave me a bloody nose, I busted his lip, and one of us put their foot through the big screen TV.
“So you’re getting married,” I said again. “When’s the wedding?”
“I don’t know. Ronnie likes June, but I think it’ll be too hot.”
“You’re right, June can be very hot.”
There was silence on his end and I thought about telling Darren about the dead possum lying in front of my mailbox, but then I remembered him at age eight and me at age ten, when our golden retriever, Lucky, got hit by a car on the road in front of our house and we had to bury him in the backyard. Dad dug the hole and then wrapped Lucky in an extra bed sheet. Mom said a quick prayer, and I read a poem I’d written about what a good dog Lucky was. But Darren wouldn’t leave his bed. He cried for a week, and they let him stay home from school, never mind that Lucky was my dog and I was the one who’d named him.
And now here was this dead possum, all twisted teeth and claws. Ugly and horrible, and in the way.
“Are you still there?” Darren asked, and I couldn’t remember if it had been my turn to speak or his.
“You never liked her, did you?” His voice was soft, the way it got right before he started crying. He was always a crier, and when we fought, I’d pick at him until he started tripping over his words. That was when I knew I had him. I’d tease out his stutter, a little bit at a time, and he’d start throwing punches, tears flowing down his cheeks as his little fists beat the air.
“You know, it was only five dollars,” I said. “Anybody could spare five dollars.”
I could hear him, two thousand miles away, gulping back his hate.
Soon, there would be flies buzzing around the dead possum, maggots crawling out of its rotting belly.
I felt sick.
“How’s Boston?” I tried, taking a deep breath. “Have you walked the Freedom Trail?”
“What are we talking about?” Darren asked. “What are you talking about?”
“You know, real American history. Paul Revere, Bunker Hill.”
“No, I haven’t been to the Freedom Trail.”
“You should, I heard it’s got everything. Really, I’m surprised you haven’t been.”
“Fine,” he relented. “I’ll go.”
“Jesus, nobody’s forcing you.” I hesitated. “It’s just that’s where it all started. You’d think if the Freedom Trail was in a person’s city, they’d go a couple of times.”
There was a pause in the conversation and I thought about telling Darren it was no big deal. We’d walk the trail together the next time I made it out to Boston.
After graduation, I left home and did most of the normal things people did. It wasn’t all good and it wasn’t all bad. It was just life. But Darren was different. He got a scholarship and moved to Boston where he studied biochemistry and got a job in a research lab where he and a bunch of other geniuses worked day and night trying to save the world with their fancy experiments.
I was proud of him. My little brother, the scientist.
“So anyway,” Darren said. “Ronnie’s friends are taking us out to celebrate and I still have a few more people to call.”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course you do.”
I tried to think of something to say that would sound like the advice a big brother would give.
“Hey, Darren,” I said. “Ronnie’s great. I’ve always liked her. You know that.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate you saying it.”
“And Darren, June’s a fine month to get married in. It’s not as hot as July or August, but it’s a whole lot warmer than fall. Spring’s nice too, but June’s perfect if you ask me.”
I heard him clearing his throat, so I knew he was still listening. Then came the muffled sound of another voice in the background and the line went dead. I stared down at the phone in my hand for what felt like hours, waiting for him to call back.
Maybe the call dropped, I thought.
But I knew the truth. We both did.
Animal Control was supposed to take care of roadkill, but there were millions of dead creatures to peel off our streets and highways. It could take days, weeks, even months for somebody to come around and do their job.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and went to the garage to get a shovel.
The Difference Between an Opening Sentence and an End-Sentence
By David Galef
Eddie ate my spaghetti.
We were in the junior high cafeteria in those days, a place of controlled violence where kids lunched in little power groups, and the only free agents were loners and the bullies who picked on them. I don’t know if he had it in for me or if I was just available, but at least once a week, he’d sail by, snatch away whatever I was eating, and wave it in the air. Then he’d chew on it, as if telling me “I’m not even hungry, but this is how I treat losers like you.” I didn’t protest much because Eddie had biceps like miniature trucks, which he’d display as he whispered threats. Everyone pretended not to notice.
I’ve been an adult for a while, and a lawyer, too. The suit-and-tie kind. The other day, I came across a guy strung out on the sidewalk. He was unshaven and undeodorized, thin as two rails, and shivering in the November breeze because he had no coat, just a ripped T-shirt and too-loose jeans. He didn’t know me, but I recognized him. I was going to walk right around him when something stopped me.
Suppressing my disgust, I bent down and said, “Listen, I’m going to help you up and get you something to eat.”
He didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no. So I got him to his feet, hauling him by the armpits, and led him to a nearby diner. Seated in a warm booth, at least he stopped shaking. I ordered for both of us, a deluxe burger for him and, after some consideration, the pasta special for me.
Eddie almost choked on the burger, he downed it so fast. Me in my adult uniform, I wanted something else, a return to another year. Redemption? Not exactly. When he looked around for what else he could consume, I pointed at the dish I’d barely touched, then leaned in. “Go ahead, I’m not that hungry,” I told him in a low voice.
He looked confused. He looked helpless.
I grabbed him by his dirty, fraying collar and pulled him toward me. “Do what I tell you. Now.”
Eddie ate my spaghetti.
BRILLIANT FLASH FICTION 