Month: April 2016

April 12, 2016

A to J: Jerk

Michelle drove in silence as Craig finished calling his boss. The car was hot, the sun was bright, peeking over the horizon, turning the morning sky red and yellow. The flight was early in the morning, so they’d left before dawn, clutching coffees and wiping their eyes, turning the radio off to avoid headaches.

Craig hung up. “I swear, my boss has a stick shoved so far up her ass it’s gonna come out her ear someday.” Michelle didn’t laugh. “Hey, come on, sweetie. It’s just a week. We can do a week apart, can’t we?”

Craig knew just as well as Michelle did that there was no way to prove that. They had been inseparable since they met, lucky enough to have been from cities less than half an hour away, and choosing to live on the same dorm building every year through college—usually on the same floor. And now, living together in an apartment just out of town, they hadn’t had more than a weekend apart in over four years. A week for work? Why was it necessary for him to go all the way to New York anyway?

“Honey, be happy for me,” Craig said, running his hand along her forearm. “If this goes well, I could—”

“You’re not going to see her, are you?”

“My boss?” Michelle shot him a look. “What? Who’s…Bonnie?” Craig shook his head, incredulous, and took his hand off her arm to slide it down his face. “Michelle, what do I have to do for you to understand that Bonnie is nothing to be jealous of? No. I’m not going to see Bonnie.”

Craig slid his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket while Michelle was focused on the road. She didn’t need to see the text messages he and Bonnie had shared about catching up over coffee. Besides, Bonnie had Michael.

“Okay.”

“Seriously.”

“I believe you,” Michelle said, her hands straining on the wheel. “It’s just…I don’t believe me.”

Craig dug his nails into his palm. He hated when she pulled this nonsense, this Lifetime movie drama, whining about stupid non-issues full of self-doubt and wistful angst.

“I’ve never been alone,” Michelle said, and god help her, she started to tear up. “Not except for the summer before I met you, and I’m scared about what might happen.”

Never been alone. Craig sipped his coffee, tried to slow down his heartbeat. Oh, poor thing, never been alone. It must be so difficult to be beautiful, to have everyone you meet trip over themselves to kiss you. Yes, naturally, it’s worse than torture, isn’t it, Michelle?

“I know,” Craig said, the most neutral phrase he could manage.

“You’re the first person I’ve ever loved.”

Bullshit.

“And I just don’t want to mess this up by spending too much time apart,” Michelle continued. “I don’t…like, trust myself.”

“Should I trust you?” Craig asked. His thumb was denting the side of his Styrofoam coffee cup. “Then, if you can’t trust you, should I trust you? Is this you saying you’re going to cheat on me, like all those other people, like how you said you wouldn’t, ever again?”

“I don’t know,” Michelle said, her voice small and garbled. “I just wish you didn’t have to go.”

“Well, I do. I have to go, and you have to take this opportunity not to cheat on me for seven days. Can you do that? Seven days, for our five goddamn-year-goddamn-long relationship?”

“I want to…”

“Do you?”

“Just stay…”

“Stay? I dampen my career because you can’t keep your pants on?”

Michelle jerked the steering wheel to the right, slamming on the breaks.

“Stay!” she screamed, leaning into the spin. The left back corner of the car rammed into the guard rail and sent the car careening off the road and over the shoulder, tipping onto two wheels and landing sideways, its right side stuck a few feet up the side of a tree.

It was dizzying, loud, crunching metal, screeching tires, the two of them screaming, tugging the wheel, the tree and guardrail groaning, the world spinning like they were inside a blender. Craig’s fingers impaled the Styrofoam of his coffee cup and the scalding liquid splashed onto his thighs, his feet, his stomach. Branches forced their way in through the open windows, covering them both with pine needles and tiny scratches. The air bags went off in the middle of all this, smacking them both in the face hard enough to make the spinning seem to reverse direction. They sat frozen for a minute, stuck on the tree at a forty-five degree angle, silent, dazed. Through the cracked windshield, the hood of the car was crumpled like a wad of paper. Craig then realized he was burning and began smacking the coffee off his reddening skin.

“Are you okay?” Michelle asked him.

“Yes…are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“You jerked the wheel,” Craig muttered. He touched his lip—his nose was bleeding.

“I was avoiding something.”

April 11, 2016

A to I: Isthmus

Sue Anne had to look up “Isthmus“ in the dictionary before she moved to Nahant, Massachusetts. She’d lived in the hot, flat country her whole life and yearned for the ocean, for a small town. Nothing smaller than the smallest town in one of the smallest states, connected to the mainland by a strip of land the size of her pinkie.

She was thirty when her mother joined her father in the cemetery. She hadn’t visited him since they buried him there when she was eighteen. She waited until her mother’s coffin was in beside him, then had her Aunt drive her to the airport.

“You don’t have to disappear,” her Aunt said after a long silence. “I can help you with the baby, you don’t have to be alone.”

“Thank you,” Sue Anne said after another pause. “But I do.”

Her hands rested on her swelling belly. Only five months in. She did it artificially, which bothered her mother, but Sue Anne was desperate for children and not very desperate for a spouse. She was running out of time, and she knew that. She was running, and she knew that too.

Nahant. One square mile, though far from being square. It hung off the side of Massachusetts like a splinter. Surrounded by strange, Massachusetts-y sounding towns like Swampscott and Saugus and Peabody, it was easy to find from Boston. Sue Anne had bought a little, crumpled white house that was just far enough from the water that she would have to walk to the beach. She had only seen the house online, but in person it seemed even smaller. Perfect. She needed small.

It came fully furnished, smelling of moth balls and the old couple who had decided to drop everything and retire to Florida. The overcast sky and September chill made Sue Anne wonder if they had the right idea. No matter. A living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a spare room. Perfect for her little family.

She didn’t like the furniture, but she didn’t bother buying anything new. It was free, after all, and the sailboats and fishing net décor did go well with the ocean and seagull sounds outside. She had a little yard, with a birdbath and a small brick border where a garden probably was at some point.

She spent the night sitting on her porch in an old rocking chair, sipping at a glass of wine—the wine came with the house, too. One glass per day, the doctor had said, though she wasn’t sure if her fancy new Boston doctor would have a different idea. She rubbed her tummy. It pushed back.

She held perfectly still. Nothing…she rubbed her stomach again, firmly, and her stomach pushed back. Yes, definitely, that was her baby. It kicked her. She leaned back in her chair, and her baby settled down again. Sue Anne began crying, her tears as salty as the ocean air.

As she rubbed her tummy, holding her breath for another movement, a couple walked by her new house.

“Hello, neighbor!” The man said. “Are you moving in here, then? Do you need help?”

Sue Anne waved. “Oh, no, I’m all set, thank you.” Small town, Sue Anne, small town. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

They talked on Sue Anne’s porch for about an hour, and even made plans to have dinner the following weekend. Sue Anne kept feeling her stomach, waiting for more kicks, but her baby must be asleep.

The woman noticed first, and asked with careful words if Sue Anne was expecting. Yes, she was.

“There’s no father, before you wonder,” Sue Anne said. “I wanted a baby but I didn’t need a husband.”

They all laughed. As the couple left, to go pick up their children at school, they realized they had never exchanged names.

“I’m Suzie Quentin,” Sue Anne said. “They used to call me Suzie Q.”

As she said it, she remembered how the name used to make her furious, how it was the name her dad called her before Alzheimers made him call her a stranger, how she wanted Sue Anne because he never said that unless he was yelling at her, how Michael McClane, her high school sweetheart, broke up with her over the phone and said that he wished he could have his Suzie Q back. She realized, now in this tiny town with boxes to unpack and a fatherless baby in her belly, miles and years away from her father and her mother and her Michael, that she was ready to have Suzie Q back, too.

“Suzie Q,” the man said. “That’s a great name.”

And so, with everything else fighting for her to become an island, the name “Suzie Q” became a welcome isthmus.

April 11, 2016

Hi!

Hey guys–this should’ve been up yesterday but I honestly didn’t have any time, so here it is now, the weekly check in:)

I hope you are all enjoying the A to Z challenge. I’m certainly enjoying writing it! I have pages full of notes on how to connect the characters and letters, what themes go where, and how the bagpipes fit into all of this. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m glad you seem to be liking them too:)

The most interesting thing that has happened since we spoke last was a self defense course I took Friday and Saturday. It’s called RAD (more info here) and focused on basic ways to get out of a dangerous situation. It was actually really empowering.

I usually hate that word, empowering, because it’s usually used in a pretentious context. Like feeling “empowered” after walking a 5K, or while wearing heels. It’s almost always used in a feminine context. Empowered, as if you were powerless beforehand. However, when it came to the self defense course, it feels fitting. I am newly empowered with tools I can use in dangerous situations—tools I didn’t have before. I feel more confident.

The best thing about it was that it reversed my thoughts that I wasn’t strong. I don’t work out as much as I should, sometimes I can’t open water bottles or open heavy doors, I must not be strong. But being taught how to use my body to my advantage rather than seeing it as a hindrance, or as a vessel for my mind to live in, allowed me to feel truly strong and powerful. Connecting to one’s body and allowing it to be used like it’s made to be is a wonderful thing.

Plus it’s really fun to punch foam pads.

I recommend it to everyone! Not just to feel safe, but to feel confident and happy with yourself.

What else? Colin comes back Sunday, which is exciting, and I move back home in two weeks, which is also exciting. I have finals soon, which is less exciting.

I saw my old high school’s musical, The Sound of Music, on Saturday. All the kids who were sophomores and freshmen when I graduated are now juniors and seniors, running the show. They were wonderful, and made me miss high school and theatre as well as their friendships. I miss the excitement of being part of a team, the rollercoaster of emotion, the bright lights and smudged make up, snacking on pretzels and Twizzlers since they didn’t mess up lipstick. Mostly, I miss my old friends, and I’m glad to get to see them again in only a few weeks.

I’m also determined to start learning German again—I’ve been so busy that it’s been pushed to the back burner, but I have my mind set on it.

So, yes. Self defense, German, and The Sound of Music. And, of course, huge bouts of creativity brought on by the A to Z Challenge. I’m really glad I followed through with the challenge. It too is giving me confidence, in my creative writing rather than my body. I haven’t completed writing a novel in a long time, and these little bursts of fiction are helping me feel like a valid creator again.

I’ll also soon be separately posting my book review of Maus and Maus II, so look forward to that today, as well as the letter “I” in about 2 hours. That’s about all I have–enjoy your Monday!

 

April 9, 2016

A to H: Him

Him. Him. Him. Him. Michelle measured her life in a string of Hims, Hims harmonizing, crescendoing and fading like they were strapped to a wheel, mowing her over. Him. The first, brown hair, blue eyes, first kiss, soft lips, on the stair after a middle school dance, ears ringing, heart beating, she could feel the imprint of his hand on her cheek for hours. Him. Black hair, dark eyes, red lines hashed into his wrists. Test cheater, weed smoker, sneaking joints from his older brother’s stash. Him. Second kiss, a week after her first. She never broke up with that first boy, he just faded away, like the cuts that barely broke her skin, she dragged the sharp paper clip edge into her forearm until it was pink, until specks of blood appeared, then stopped, pinching her arm, numb, is this right? Is this how they did it? First smoke. First time, shirt on, pants at her knees, in her second boyfriend’s older brother’s car. Then the older brother, about a month later, same spot. She still hasn’t broken up with anyone. Third boyfriend, three years older. Boyfriend? Strong word. They fumbled in the backseat of his car, parked behind the high school. High school, now, fourth, fifth, sixth. One week of being single between sixth and seventh, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Is this love? Is this sex? Should it hurt this much? Should I be so indifferent? Do I want this? Do I want you? Eight lasted weeks, then months, coming on a year when his best friend asked her if the rumors were true, if she did it at thirteen. Eight was still a virgin. Seventeen. She was fine with it. Best friend was not. Eight. Then the best friend. Then eight was done, so on to nine, or was it ten, now? Floating from man to man like a piece of pollen, like a dandelion wisp, like a ragdoll being tossed hand to hand across a playground. No, not tossed. She threw herself, she leapt from body to body. Ten, eleven…she just wanted to be happy. Twelve and thirteen at the same time, then thirteen and fourteen at the same time, then fourteen and fifteen at the same time. She would leave one house and drive to the other. Always looking for more. Always getting bored. Him. Him. Him. Her? First year of college, she started back at one. One girl, long blonde hair. Curly. Blue eyes, an All American girl. One cheated on her with who would become four. Michelle didn’t mind. This sort of thing happened. Two. Sixteen. Seventeen. Three. Then four, at a party. One was a bit angry. Michelle smoked a lot now, but didn’t bother counting her joints. Michelle burned through joints even faster than her lovers. She was in the dozens, then likely the hundreds by the time she was nineteen, always high, her thumb calloused from sparking the lighter, her lips dry, her eyes perpetually red. Eighteen boys, now, and only five girls. Now, a game. Six. Seven. Eight and nine, at the same time. Ten and nineteen at the same time. She grew her hair long, she worked out, she did poorly in class, she showered less. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Back to twelve. Fourteen. Fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen all in one night, and then eighteen, nineteen, and two twenties all in the same room. She had done it. Forty people, an even split. She bought herself an ice cream cone. She was happy with herself. She didn’t need love. She didn’t want to limit herself to one person. She was a giver. She was a lover. She liked doing things, she liked meeting people. She liked being an individual, even if she was always in at least one relationship. Summer. Long distance? No. Single…single…single…she had already burned through all the boys at home, and no girls were interested. Single…single…single…Michelle was going crazy. Withdrawal, from weed and people. Phone. Scrolling. Names, numbers. 1-20F, 1-20M, she lists them in her head as she reads their names. She needed someone to keep her busy. She hesitates on a few, then keeps scrolling past. Drying out, this summer, like a 12 week program. She laid on the couch with a headache, watching cartoons. Her parents worried. She didn’t bother to worry. Who is Michelle? What do I do, beyond other people? What do I want, beyond being Undeclared? There was no direction to go, so she laid still. There was no one to love, so she began, slowly, to find a way to love herself. Relapse, boy number twenty-one, she met at an ice cream shop. Disgust. Get over it, tell him you want to be alone. First break up…she felt good. Good. Single is good, I need to learn myself before I learn someone else. I don’t need someone else. Michelle went back to school determined to stay single. She would break her cycle. She had beaten her addiction. New boy, a freshman, down the hall, into skateboarding and theatre. New boy. Craig Wu. Twenty-two. Him…him…specifically him. She invited him to smoke, first smoke, first boy in months. I know myself enough now, I suppose.

April 8, 2016

A to G: Goldfish

Mrs. McClane bought a goldfish when Mitch’s pet shop began having financial trouble. It was a usual morning, otherwise—her husband and sons were in the field, her daughter tending to the chickens, pig, and cows. She had gone to buy soap and fabric for new curtains, her leather coin purse lightening as she went, store to store. A floral pattern was on sale, so she with the extra money she decided to treat herself to a professional haircut, only the third or fourth she’d ever had. Well, business had been good. Her children had been good. She deserved it. And her husband would love it!

“How are you, Mrs. McClane?” asked Mitch Healy from the pet shop as she walked by its open door. She knew him from church. He spit tobacco into an empty beer bottle he produced from behind the pet shop counter and invited her inside.

“Hello Mr. Healy.” Mrs. McClane peered around at the small shop. Two dogs gnawed on one cow thighbone in a cage. A cat napped on the counter. Goldfish lined the back walls, and three birds hung from cages in the ceiling. “How are you both?”

Mr. Healy said, “Good,” then added, “Been better.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, business is slow. Tends to get that way before harvest, you know. Kids are at that growing phase and between food for the animals at home and the animals at work I’ve barely enough money to feed myself!”

Mrs. McClane felt the weight of the coin purse tied on her wrist. She approached the fish tank. The ten or so goldfish were the strong majority, with only two hermit crabs and an angel fish for company.

“But, well, that’s a story for me and my Missus,” Mr. Healy said, smiling and folding his hands on the counter. “Never mind it, never mind it.”

Oh, sugar. Well, Mrs. McClane always was good with a pair of scissors. The ladies at church were growing it out longer anyhow. She gazed around the store for a price list—no way could they feed a dog. Maybe a cat, with all the rats in the horse barn, but she needed all the milk the cow gave for her kids and her cooking. She was terrified of birds, and the angelfish looked…expensive.

“I’ll buy a goldfish, Mitch,” Mrs. McClane said. And she did. She was halfway home with the thing held at arm’s length in a shining plastic bag when she realized she forgot to pick up blue thread for the curtains. Well, they’ll have to be in brown. After buying the fish, the bowl, the food, and the pebbles she didn’t have the money for it anyhow.

Her husband wasn’t too fond of the seventh mouth to feed, but after seeing how little the mouth required he began to warm up to it. The kids liked it too, and the four of them would poke sticks in the water, trying to get it to chase it like a dog. Little Bradley would giggle uncontrollably whenever he caught it pooping. Mary took to feeding it every morning before she went out to help with the chickens, and she began trying out names for it—all female, which the boys rejected. Dinner became a secondary activity to watching the table’s centerpiece circle around its home. Even Mr. and Mrs. McClane would find themselves watching the bright orange fins flutter around in the bowl.

Soon, as is apt to happen, the only piece of orange in the house faded to a sickly white. Fifteen days after Mrs. McClane came home with the goldfish, she was burying it in the backyard.

“I thought it would be a good present…it must have been sick. No wonder his pet shop is going under,” whispered Mrs. McClane to her husband as her kids said their final goodbyes to a shoebox labeled ‘Goldfish.’

“Mitch said his shop is going under?” her husband asked. “He’s has been pulling that line since the beginning. He guilts you into buying things, because he says he’s low on cash.”

Mrs. McClane sighed, and wrapped a strand of splitting hair around her fingers. She stayed outside as the boys pushed dirt over the shoebox, all but James holding back tears. Mary plucked a clover blossom and placed it on the grave, then ran into her mother’s skirt, weeping.

“Oh, my Little Miss Mary,” Mrs. McClane cooed, lifting her daughter by the underarms and placing her on her hip. “Honey, it’s okay. He lived a good life, and now he’s in heaven.”

“He didn’t live a good life,” said Mary, her little peach-colored face blotchy with tears. “He swam around in stupid circles all day and now he’s gone!”

Mrs. McClane rubbed Mary’s back. She wasn’t sure who to blame, Mitch or herself, so she settled on blaming the goldfish. God damn that goldfish and its tortured, circling soul for making her children weep and wasting her husband’s money. Godforsaken goldfish.

Late at night, she sat up in bed as her husband slept. She held her ear to the wall behind their bed and could hear her children chattering in whispers they thought she couldn’t hear. It was no surprise that the goldfish was a main topic of the late night chat tonight.

“Mom said he’s in heaven,” said Mary, after Bradley asked where he went.

“Nah, come on,” said Ernest, her eldest. “That’s dumb. How could he be in heaven if he never prayed?”

“Shut up, Ern,” said James.

Her husband rustled, then turned and smiled at his wife.

“You eavesdropping again?” he whispered, lifting the blanket for her to slide back under. She snuck in and held him tightly, silently crying into his chest.

“Am I a bad mother, Harry?”

“Not in the slightest.”

April 7, 2016

A to F: Freedom

With the jacket, collared shirt, and heavy backpack, Mary was warm enough except for her bottom, which soaked in the cold dampness of the sidewalk. She had squished herself into a corner between two buildings and under an awning so most of the rain didn’t hit her, and was trying desperately to sleep but was scared. She missed the country’s spacious skies. The expensiveness of the city held up to its reputation but hopefully it was less dangerous than the reputation described, than the staticky televisions claimed, than the mothers whispered about while sewing pillowcases, their fingers smudged with newspaper print.

Mary was in her brother’s overalls, something she hoped would protect her from any other runaway-turned-homeless person. She dropped her head to her knees.

When she picked up her head some time later, to stop raindrops from dripping down behind her collar, there was a man standing in front of her in a suit too big for him, drenched with rain. He was black, which didn’t scare Mary like it would her mother. She had only met a handful of black people in her life. He knelt and extended his hand, like she was a dog and he was letting her sniff him out first.

“I was wondering if you were alright, Ma’am,” the man said. “Are you alright?”

Mary nodded, captivated by his eyes. He was a handsome man, even in the lumpy suit and slightly overgrown hair.

“May I join you?”

Mary shifted a bit, and he sat down beside her. He had to have been about twenty, Mary figured. Mary herself was sixteen. What her mother would think of her now! Homeless in New York, sharing a dry patch of sidewalk with an older, black man.

“So, what’s your name, Ma’am?”

“Mary McLane,” she said, trying to stifle her accent. “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Bobby,” the man said. “But people call me Treble, because I like music so much. And so they can say, ‘Here comes Treble!’ Sounds like ‘trouble,’ get it?”

Mary smiled. She took her backpack off and began rummaging. “Do you play harmonica?”

“I play a little harmonica. My mom’s family had money when I was young. I learned piano, trombone, a little violin, bagpipes—”

Mary pulled out a harmonica and offered it to Treble. “It’s my brother James’. He didn’t notice I took it.”

“Hey, check it out!”

Treble played a little tune, which made the rain seem softer and the city seem brighter.

“So this concert isn’t free, Mary,” Treble said between beats. Mary’s heart leapt. She didn’t have much money. “You’ll have to tell me what a pretty, western, white girl like you is doing huddling on the street in Manhattan.”

“I ran away.”

“Whoa!” Treble said. He gave her back the harmonica. “Usually it takes more convincing than that. You ran away, huh? Why’d you do that?”

“To see sky scrapers and the ocean,” Mary said. “I found one. Not the other, yet.”

She patted the cold steel of the building they were leaning against. It was both bigger and smaller than she’d imagined it would be.

“So you wanted freedom, then? Me too.” Treble shifted a little so he could look Mary in the eyes. “I left my girl while her belly was swelling. I didn’t want to be doing that. I didn’t want my life stuck to the girl and the mistake. So now I’m here. You know what, Mary? I believe that every choice we make is for either love, or freedom. But you can’t have both.”

“I didn’t have a boyfriend.”

“Who said anything about a boyfriend? You loved your family, didn’t you? Your home, your brother? Listen, Mary, you like Janis Joplin?”

Mary shrugged. They didn’t have a radio, or a player. Treble looked straight ahead, eyes closed, and for awhile it seemed like he was just going to go to sleep.

Then, in a sweet, soft voice, he said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”

Mary sighed, held back her tears, and asked Treble if he had a coin she could flip.

“Heads I go home,” she said as he found a nickel in his pocket. “Tails I stay here.”

“Me too,” Treble said, finding a second coin. They flicked the coins in the air, and they landed side by side on the ground. One was heads, and one was tails.

April 6, 2016

A to E: Escape

James McClane was unaware he had an accent until the admissions lady guessed his home state over the phone. This new information surprised him, but he was able to regain focus quickly when she started talking about financial aid.

“That’s perfect,” he said, dividing the numbers into months. He would be able to make up the difference somehow. He was proud of himself now too, not just his son. “Michael will be ecstatic. He’ll be the first in the family, you know.”

As his father spoke on the phone Michael McClane was laying on the top of his pickup about a mile down the road, chewing on a twig he plucked off a stalk of barley. He breathed clear air at the sky and imagined smoke pooling from his lips to form the only cloud in the sky.

“Can’t we sneak one?” he asked the sky.

“No,” was the answer, not from the sky but from the young girl hunting around the glove compartment for her sunglasses. “It’s a nasty habit.”

“Since when?”

“Since I got caught,” she replied, slipping on her sunglasses. She had hair the color of charcoal that barely hit the tops of her ears. She hoisted herself up on the hood of the car, using the front tire as a step stool. “And I’m not letting your smoky kisses get me in trouble.”

Michael kissed her once then looked back up at the sky. She tasted like sweat. She watched him from behind her mirrored glasses for awhile, but then looked at the sky too.

“I’m gonna smoke in college,” he told her. He closed his lips, and his eyes.

“As long as you don’t when I visit you, that’s fine. If I can visit you,” she added.

Michael turned to face her. Her glasses reflected his eyes, his amber beard, his lips that twitched but didn’t open.

The sound of a truck. Clunk, hiss, clunk. His dad’s truck, they both recognized it. Michael crushed the end of the barley twig into the car before remembering it didn’t have to be snuffed.

“Wanna get the lunch?” he asked, and she slid off the hood to get their sandwiches safe in paper bags. His father didn’t understand doing things for no reason. Lunch was at least a reason. They were unwrapping the sandwiches when Michael’s father pulled in behind their truck.

“Hey, Michael. Susie Q., how’s your dad doing?” James asked from his window.

“He’s well,” she said, hooking her elbows around her knees. “Been better.”

James pulled his head back into the truck and cut the engine.

“Even asking about my dad, he calls me Susie Q.,” she muttered.

Michael shrugged. He liked the nickname. He only stopped calling her Susie Q. when she shaved her head and demanded Sue Anne. He missed Susie Q.

“Michael,” James said, running to him on the dirt road dusted in barley. “Listen, I called the New York university.”

“What did they say?” Michael asked.

James paused, memorizing the picture of his blue-jeans son sitting on a rusted truck in a field of barley with his rock-a-billy girlfriend, wondering how Michael would look in a suit.

“You can go. We can afford to send you.”

Michael leapt to the ground and embraced his father so neither had to see the other cry. Sue Anne smiled, glad that her sunglasses hid her eyes, and cursed her injured, expensive father.

Michael hugged her next, which was a surprise. It had been awhile since he’d hugged her.

“You got your escape,” she whispered.

April 5, 2016

A to D: Defrost

Michelle Wu’s high heels made tracks like a baby stroller through the dusting of snow. “Can’t we just go?” she asked, her voice garbled with two shots of vodka, an old-fashioned, and three hard ciders.

Her darling, Craig Wu, led her to his car, the black frame of it shining dimly in the streetlights. The parking lot was scattered with cars being slowly swallowed by the silent snow, and his was no exception. “I have to brush off the snow,” he said. “Turn on the windshield defrost.”

He opened the door for her and helped her inside. Her heels and bare feet brought a few shoefulls of snow into the car, but a little wetness wouldn’t ruin the interior. Craig unlocked the trunk, and the dimmed lights flared through the covering of snow.

It was light snow, and fell off the windshield easily. He cleared the windows as well, and when he cleared the passenger window he saw Michelle’s face appear, a third at a time. She stuck her tongue out at him. He pressed his lips together.

God, it was cold, but it was a welcome change from the hotness of the reception. The newlyweds had candles as centerpieces and Craig swore the fire ate up the oxygen in the room. He got drunker to feel calmer. Eventually his competitive-drinker wife was dancing a touch too wildly, and being near midnight he decided it was late enough to begin leaving.

Craig threw the snowbrush in the trunk again and slid into the driver seat, banging his dress shoes together to keep at least one side of the carpeting dry. He shut the door, and noticed the silence.

“I told you to put the defrost on,” he said.

“Oh…sorry,” she said. “It’s not that frosty. We can probably just go.”

Craig started the car and cranked the defroster to the highest setting. He stared out his window, which was slowly refilling with snowflakes, at the parking lot dotted with yellow lamp light. Once he and Michelle had danced in the same reception hall, but she had been the one in the white dress. Sleeveless. Snowless. They had left that night for Jamaica.

“Remember Jamaica?” Craig whispered at the window. His breath made a puff of moisture on the glass.

Michelle began laughing. “Yeah…it was a lot of fun. You know, I love you so much. I love you as much as when we were in Jamaica. I don’t think a lot of couples can say that.”

Craig stared past the snowflakes to the stars. They looked identical. He rested his forehead against the door.

“Are you okay to drive?” Michelle asked, placing an unsteady hand on his thigh.

He met her drooping eyes. The white specks on the shoulders of her coat melded together into a flowing veil. He lifted her fingers to his lips. They were like ice.

“You’re freezing,” he said. He switched the dial from defrost to heat, and put her pinking fingers against the warming vents. “Here. We’ve defrosted enough.”

He put the car in drive.

April 4, 2016

A to C: Crown

The people changed, the land changed, the language changed—but the same golden crown ruled these hills for centuries. Vibrant as the summer sun with the power of the stars, it had perched atop hundreds of heads of hair, had spent years on a throne. The rim stretched into seven peaks, arching around seven jewels, signifying the corner of the kingdom from whence they came. The blue corner was lost in a war a hundred years after the crown was made, and now, of course, all the corners are in different countries, but the jewels stayed. People forget. Crowns do not.

The crown passed through families like a genetic disease that skipped generations but always led to death. It went best with the two hundred years of black hair and worst with the seventy some-odd years it had to clash with blondes. It carried its people through floods and droughts, through famine and feasts. One king didn’t like to wear it, and so it spent thirty years in a box. One queen found it too manly, so she added a string of crystals along the rim. Her son hated the crystals and pried them off, leaving small dents in their place. Each ruler perished, but the crown lived on.

The crown spent most of its life right-side-up and off the floor, much like the kingdom it ruled. A young prince liked to wear it upside down and call it a knight’s helmet. Leave it to that family to father a prince who would rather be a knight. The crown transferred from pillow to head for years and years, but it was once worn into battle and splashed with blood, then rinsed by the king in a river. The crown resided in the castle, the stone walls and fresh fruit, the children using it as a plaything when their parents and caretakers weren’t paying attention. No matter what the children did, it always ended in its rightful place, and the children were lectured about the importance of the crown. Nearly the same speech each time, though eventually in different languages.

The crown ruled those hills for centuries, but then the hills began resenting its rule. They rose like tidal waves, powered by rebellion, and knocked the crown to the dirt. The crown hasn’t seen the hills for ages.

The crown will spend the rest of its life in prison, here, in this glass box. It rules over the museum, the kingdom of the past. Its jewels, kept in place with glue, gleam and sing of glory. Its gold, dulled with age, yearns for its lost power. Its rim, buffed with polish, speaks of tyrants, queens, and kings, hums with history, rings with death. The crown ruled these hills for centuries, but the hills will never be ruled by a crown again.