Each morning my mother opens the door in her housecoat and slippers and draws the newspaper inside like a prisoner drawing his supper dish through the metal slot of his prison door. She lays the paper across my father’s plate so that it will be there when he comes down for breakfast, but she never slips the rubber band off the tightly rolled bundle.
Continue reading “Something from Montreal by Elizabeth Rosen”
I was twelve years old during the O.J. Simpson trial. The summer before the verdict, Mom and I would visit my grandmother and swim in her above-ground pool. That was the month my best friend’s stepdad went to jail, and we spent most nights huddled under a blanket, listening to Alanis Morisette until 2:00am.
The matriarchs would discuss the legal case feverishly while walking laps around the pool, fueled by Jenny Craig and Snackwell’s cookies. Their teal and magenta swim skirts were poisonous spandex jellyfish, hovering above pale, dimpled thighs.
He was so attractive in those Hertz commercials. It’s always the good-looking men, I swear.
Time stretches like homemade slime when you’re that age—prepubescent and eager for womanhood. During those liminal afternoons, I pretended to be one of the seductive mermaids from Peter Pan, brushing my Lana Turner locks while perched on a glistening cliff. I became a siren, viciously pouting rouged lips and fastening a starfish in my hair by the lake’s reflection. The warm water segmented the scorching Texas sun across its rippled surface.
Mom intermittently offered updates about her love life and the recent man she had met in a chatroom, glancing at me to gauge my reaction. She wanted me to adore him, just in case he ended up sticking around longer than the last one. My grandmother interjected her own thoughts.
Oh, he drives a BMW? You should get your nails done before your first date. Also, maybe lay off the TCBY until then, huh?
Together, we created a circular, endless current that became more potent with each revolution around the pool. It could have swept us away at any moment. I wondered if the neighbors noticed my radiant fin as I somersaulted, as if in a traveling circus, until my skin pruned and peeled from too much water, too much sun.
Exotic names like Kato Kaelin danced on my tongue when I came up for air. I loved the way it felt to play with the sounds. Kay-to, tongue bouncing behind the two front teeth, all staccato and pointy; Kay-lin, tongue hitting the palette, lush, full, and bright.
Did you hear those 911 call recordings? I never realized a man like that could have such a temper. He seemed so gentle.
***
One night in July, my best friend told me she was going to run away. She had met a boy from the local high school who drove a pickup truck. They planned their escape before classes resumed, across dark stretches of highway, heading toward California.
He’s on the football team, and all the girls drool over him. But he actually likes me. Can you believe that?
I noticed the faint mahogany smudge under her sunglasses. She didn’t want to talk about it.
I thought maybe I wouldn’t be cool enough because I’m like four years younger, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I think he’ll take care of me, Maddie.
***
We enjoyed a final swim the evening before I started the eighth grade. Once the fireflies emerged, we drip-dried and popped open sweating Sun Drop bottles while toweling off our chlorine-infused hair. We usually stopped for shaved ice on the way home, but my mother shook her head, eyes aggressively glued to the road. I glanced at my bare legs and pulled a purple gel pen from the glove compartment. In languid, intentional strokes, I traced the translucent stretch lines along my skin, dripping rivers of pigment down the length of my thighs. Sparkly roadmaps to nowhere. Mom didn’t notice.
July flowed into August, and she took me on her first date with Chatroom Charlie because my grandmother was out of town. He serenaded her in a Dairy Queen parking lot, on one knee, to a ukulele rendition of “Everything I Do, I Do It for You.”
I liked Charlie but never saw him again after the concert.
Don’t ever trust men, Madeline. There are only a handful of good ones in this world, like my father. You can’t even tell at first. They wear masks all year—until they just don’t anymore.
On my twelfth Halloween, a neighbor and I went trick or treating around our subdivision, dressed like Sporty Spice and Mariah Carey. I crimped my hair and practiced glass-shattering soprano to prove my commitment. We went to the wrong door right before heading home. He was in his mid-fifties, in a white, sweat-stained t-shirt and boxers. He leaned against the door frame, eyes devouring us. We never talked about the rest. I spent the remaining years in that neighborhood checking the lock on my window before bed, convinced there were still safe homes surrounding us, lit softly by the glow of television while families gathered to eat their microwaved dinners on well-worn sofas.
Not guilty? What’s this world coming to? Is there even justice anymore?
***
I’m in graduate school now. I left my hometown as quickly as possible, despite not having access to a jock with a truck. In my thirties, I’m dating again, and it’s healthier this time. We order hot chocolate, and he asks me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I mean, did you ever dream you’d be a social worker?
I think of mermaids. The rice cakes and diet shakes and self-loathing of the nineties. Masks, costumes, performances.
You know…I think, deep down, I wanted to be like Marcia Clark. My family never talked about her—well, only to comment on her hair. But I’d watch her on tv and thought she must be really brave to take on that man, that case.
We are in the university cafeteria. I sip my cocoa and watch the marshmallows bob along the steamy surface.
Who?
Image: Above ground swimming pool in a garden with the figure of a young woman floating from freepik.com
Catastrophe. Social disaster. Already noon and not enough dancers, Kitty told the pool boys.
The pool boys were piecing together a parquet dance floor on her back lawn. They said, We can dance.
I’m sure you can, dear, Kitty said. She could just picture it: scandal. Maybe she’d take up their offer. God knew her husband and the other patricians of Oyster Cove were too dignified to kick up their heels.
Continue reading “The Last Fourth of July by Scott Pomfret”
He stood in the doorway of her sewing room, saying nothing, rocking back and forth on the threshold. She had been expecting him, but it was the alternating squeak and swish of his rocking that caught her attention, “What time do you have to be there?”
Continue reading “Almost There by John Bubar”
The city gets stranger the farther Randy goes and he wears a scowl to ward off potential hostilities. The mood on the street is like a spreading bruise and the faces of passing strangers bear the strains of dark struggles. He walks beneath a sullen haze that roughly complements the worn skin of the old apartment blocks. The nation’s malaise seems to have settled on everything like a fine dust.
Continue reading “One Way Street by Chris Carrel”
We’d always egg one another on, seeing who’d be first to set her off. Every kid I knew did it. It was just a game. Her mind had long gone. She didn’t remember that it’d been done before. Each time she was teased was like the first. We’d wind her up and the payoff was one of her screams. Major horror screams! And then we’d leg it, pissing ourselves laughing! Like I say: just a game.
Continue reading “Bully Boys and Navvy Boots by Pam Knapp”
Here it is, Week 523 which follows on from last weeks 522! Not much of a surprise!
First off, Leila made me realise something, I’ve lost an old skill. She mentioned a song of a favourite Rock Group of mine, ‘Rainbow’ and I realised that I didn’t know it. I was pleased (For my own sanity) that I’d never owned the album it came from. That was what made me think. If you love music and are of a certain age, albums and their included songs came to you hand in hand. This happened in a split second. As soon as someone mentioned a song you blinked and in that time you saw yourself opening the album cover and taking out the record. You then would state:
‘This Night’? – That’d be Billy Joel’s ‘Innocent Man Album.’
‘Spread Your Wings’? – That’d be Queen’s ‘News Of The World’ album’
‘Dirty Water’? – That’d be ‘The Quo’s ‘Rockin’ All Over The World’ Album’
Those three came to me and there would be a lot more but there is probably double that amount that I’d not know when at one time I did.
Continue reading “Week 523 – Dio / Bonnet /Turner, Music Induced Wrath And ‘The Poseidon Adventure Wasn’t Mentioned Because Of The Polo-Neck!”
Night falls black and starless. His eye is drawn to the cemetery. A chill runs through him. Young sees his breath in the porch light. He takes the air into account—the change. Things will have to be shut off soon and covered, other things will have to be turned on. He hears footsteps and the slamming of cabinet doors. Young thinks, are those snowflakes? I hope not. Trinity’s rusty black Chevy Cavalier has the trunk lid standing open.
Continue reading “Girl on a Trampoline by Christopher Ananias”
Sam doesn’t like sunsets. Sunsets for Sam are a daily reminder that death is just over the horizon. Sunrises aren’t much better for Sam either because they just start the clock running again, marking time until the next sunset. Even now, as he stands outside his mother’s house smoking a cigarette while the hospice nurse tends to his dying mother, Sam is unpersuaded by the light of one of those sunsets in which people swear they see Jesus’s outstretched arms in the iridescent rays that beam between clouds. Sam just shakes his head in disgust, then turns and walks inside.
Continue reading “The Weight of Nothing by Kip Knott”
Swordfish laid out in the supermarket, next to tuna steaks and mackerel. Marlin, the guy behind the counter offers, wiping bloody hands on his white jacket. Mussels laid on a bed of samphire. You can almost taste the salt. Call me Ishmael. A wide Sargasso Sea. Wind over waves. Barnacles on the hulls of schooners, where a man could be keelhauled. As it happens, I’m shopping for other things. Breakfast cereal, yoghurt, pineapple, white wine. The list written out on a scrap of cardboard torn from a tissue box. So, yes, move on.
Continue reading “Swordfish by Graham Mort”
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