*Hospitality Lost and Found*

I can’t remember if I trembled when they asked. I’m pretty sure I did. The question came in an e-mail but would’ve been cooler if it had arrived via telegraph.

Coming to your town for five days –(STOP)-

Can we stay with you –(STOP)-

Or at least share one good Italian meal

            I cupped my hand under my mouth to catch the excuses as they flowed, mostly buts. But I think Big Girl (our oldest daughter and their missionary nanny for three months) will be at college by then. But we have a softball tournament that weekend. But we don’t have enough room, folks will have to sleep on the sofá and the floor. But I’m intimidated, because the wife mommy is a food blogger. And I’m freaked. What if she’s also a white-gloved dust inspector? The house hasn’t been cleaned, really spiffed up, in so long.

            And yet, how could I say no? Big Girl had lived with them a quarter of a year, in a compact casa in Honduras. They shared their every meal, their children, and their vision with her. I couldn’t say no. But I wanted to, was ashamed that I considered it.

            I tried to say, “Mi casa es tu casa,” but I couldn’t get my Irish, German, English, French lips around the words, much less the concept. The only way I can achieve a really good Spanish accent is to mimic the Verizon recording: “Para Espanol, marque el dos.”

            Where did they go—my gift of hospitality, my spirit of generosity? I grew up. Little Me (“Wanna figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Lollipop? Here, you go first.”) was cannibalized by Grown-up Me (“Me, my, mine. That’s all I have time for.”).

~~~~~~~

Honk! Honk! Honk!

            Big Girl clambered down the stairs. “They’re here.”

            I heard jubilation in her voice. I hope she sounds like that when she speaks of us—her real family.

            I peeked out the foyer window as she sprinted toward the street. My eyes bugged as all five of them tumbled out of a dusty old van.

            The wife mommy’s hair was like whipped cream with one drop of yellow food coloring, but her eyes weren’t blue. With hair that Swedish looking, I would’ve thought they’d be glacier, no, fjord, blue. If I took a glass prep bowl and filled it with good quality Italian olive oil and whisked in vanilla? That would be the color of her eyes. She was tinier than me, with an elegant slice to her deltoids.

            Now he, the husband daddy, was a Mr. America leprechaun. His dark hair was smooshed up into a singular wave. From inside the house I could feel his just-bonked-a-tuning-fork-on-a-brick energy undulate toward me. I possess that vitality too, but somehow while they were here, I felt subdued. Calm not jangly, hot chocolate instead of espresso.

            All three offspring had blue, surprised eyes and banana-colored hair. Baby boy buried his face in wife mommy’s neck. The two toddler girls catapulted into Big Girl’s embrace.

            “We missed you! Tell us a story!”

            Unnoticed, I pressed my nose against the door’s screen, waited to face-plant into the invisible ice-cube structure I was certain would exist between us. I know, I thought, I’ll fetch my crème brulee torch. But I didn’t need to. When they climbed onto the front porch, I didn’t even get goosebumps.

~~~~~~~

I wonder if they ever figured it out. The bad thing I did. In the weeks prior to their arrival, I’d crafted a plan, a schedule, to keep them busy. Away from our place. Because really, how could ten people in a hundred-year-old house for five days be good? I arranged sights for them to see. Over in the next county, with other families, in their homes. Go, go, go. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Then they’d pass out every night by nine, right?

            And then came the day they didn’t want to go anywhere. They just wanted to be. Here.

            “We like your house best,” they said. My eyebrows lifted beneath my bangs.           

            “Really?” 

            “Really,” the wife mommy said. “It’s like a super cool, artsy bed and breakfast.”

            My shoulders descended. The corners of my mouth lifted.

            “Nap time,” the husband daddy proclaimed. He stood—the boy baby slumped in his arms, a toddler girl on either side. They headed for the stairs.

            And then we were alone, the wife mommy and me. I checked my watch, tied my shoes. What do we do now, I wondered.

            “Wanna cook some stuff?” I said.

            She grinned and followed me into the kitchen.

            Over at the counter, I sliced strawberries into thin, red halos. Wife mommy reached for the bowl and showered the fruit in balsamic vinegar, sprinkled it with raw sugar. We ate. Smiled.

            I peeled and chopped roasted golden beets, vinaigretted them. Rained down toasted pecans and tiny diced feta.

            “Add that to the list,” wife mommy said, “of recipes you have to send me.”

            I handed her the menu from our Italian Feast Night. “Mark all the things you want recipes for.”

            She circled almost every item then turned her attention to the shitake mushrooms from the farmers market. She sautéed them in golden green olive oil with heaps of garlic minced by me. She flicked in a speck of Silafunghi, my favorite Italian hot pepper concoction, stirred, lifted the wooden spoon to her lips.

            “Wait!” I said. I pressed the spoon back into the sauté pan. “Don’t taste it yet.” I held up my pointer finger. “I have to do one thing.”

            I darted outside to my herb garden, used my fingernails to nip off the largest sage leaves I could find, brushed the soil flecks away. Grinned as I remembered my mom’s philosophy—You gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die.

            Back in the kitchen. I floated the silvery leaves in hot oil, flipped them when they became see-through, used my grandmother’s tongs to hold them up to the light.

            “See? Don’t they look like stained glass? Or an old Coke bottle? Here, put some mushrooms on your fork and top them with a crispy sage leaf. Now taste.”

            I held my breath and watched. Her tongue worked. Her eyelids fluttered. She held up both thumbs. I laughed.

            As she prepped another bite to eat, I whispered, so she wouldn’t hear me, turned away, so she couldn’t see my mouth move.

            “I wish you lived here,” I said to the refrigerator door. “Then we could be friends. We'd eat like this over and over, not just one Sunday afternoon and never again.”

~~~~~~~

The next day, Big Girl and I waved as their van drove away. The morning sun glinted off my daughter’s tear tracks. I didn’t cry. I was too busy working on my accent, in my head, trying to get it just right in case they circled the block and stopped in front of our house for one more Big Girl hug or kiss. But they didn’t come back. If they had, I would’ve sprinted down the steps to the Street, pecked on the husband daddy’s window till he rolled it down.

            “Just so you know, mi casa es tu casa.”

The Rest of the Story

The second-floor room was not only packed, it was also stuffy despite the droning efforts of a small I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can window air conditioner. Knowing anything could happen at a public open mic event—dreadful poems about cats or pizza, 5,000 words delivered in a monotone—I considered the exit.

            My friend beside me rested her hand on my thigh. “I brought something to read. Please stay.” I smiled and relaxed my grip on the soft, bright sweater in my lap.

            When the first reader centered his girth behind the podium, my mouth hitched to one side. He usually goes last, I thought. I braced myself.

            He said he’d be reading a poem. It wasn't poetry. It was porn. After the first few words, I squeezed my eyes shut, hugged my ribs. A few more syllables and I began to hum ever so softly, twined my legs and leaned forward and back in tiny increments, didn’t stop.

I opened my eyes when I sensed motion nearby. My friend stood and headed for the hall. “Take me with you,” I told her but she didn’t hear. My scream was silent.

Through narrowed eyes, I studied my right foot,  meditated on its crushed-twenty-years-ago sesamoid bone and how the pain had flared recently. I imagined myself walking without shoes, without the custom orthotic that guarantees freedom from pain. Barefoot, my arch tries to make a fist with muscles and tissue someone seems to have scraped with a vegetable peeler.  Pondering pain, I decided, is preferable to hearing hurl.

The moment my mind brought up vomit, I recalled the stench of grade-school spew, the kind that on one level smells like cheese. I pictured a teacher summoning a janitor. When he entered the room, he’d locate the splat then dip his hand inside the sack he'd brought. He'd lift out a mound  of evergreen-colored crumbles and with his fingers splayed slightly he’d shake his hand over the mess on the desktop or floor. The absorb-the-barf bits would rain onto the wet, and shortly after, the room would reek of minty cheese, like if you ate pizza then chewed spearmint gum. As much as I love peppermint, I hate spearmint. It makes me seasick. I think. I’ve never been on a cruise.

~~~~~~

I had trouble sleeping the night of the reading. The morning after, I slipped into obsession mode.

“Why did last night rattle me so? Why didn’t I just leave?” I asked myself those things over and over. “Like my friend did. I sat in the back not far from the door. It would’ve been easy.”

At the kitchen table, I stirred my cappuccino to incorporate the steamed milk into the espresso. I like all of the beverage to be foamy, not just the top layer.

“I'll tell you why I didn’t move.” My words sounded loud, sharp. “Every body part weighed two tons. No way I could move.”

I relocated to the linoleum, my back against the snack cabinet door. Both my bunnies approached. I cringed as all 32 of their one-inch nails assaulted my thighs.

“Am I talking in my I-have-a-treat-for-you voice?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t.” Again and again I slid their silken ears through my fingers.

“I was like Bambi in the headlights, " I told Domino and Coal Pepper, "or rather his girlfriend, Faline.  Like a doe in the road when her eyes glow in the dark and she won’t, can’t, budge. Instead she’s stuck stiff-legged in the purgatory between fight and flight. Motionless. Freaked. Incapabable of doing the one thing that’d save her.” I sighed. “That was me. Me was she.”

Domino climbed my shirt front to get at my face. Licked the salt  she found there.

~~~~~~

Later that day I sat cross-legged on the sofa in the living room, journal open on my lap.

“I wish so much I’d left," I told the golden walls.  "I thought I was all better, healed. Am I not? Why didn’t I leave?”

Those words—why didn’t I—they’re not four letter words but they could be. Blame isn’t a curse word but it ought to be. When the finger that’s pointing at you is your own, it’s so much sharper than someone else's. Freddy Krueger sharp.
         In that moment I made a decision, closed my notebook with a snap. A minute later I opened it again and began to write.

“I’m done being oblique, finished alluding to the rest of the story.

I am a sexual abuse survivor. All my life I’ve felt like a freak for it,

like the child left in the center of the circle at the end of a game

of Farmer in the Dell. I’m not alone. Statistics say at least 1 in 5

women have been sexually abused. Count the women around you—

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Don’t think for a second the eyes of the

wounded ones will glow. They don't always. I can

sometimes spot them, but most of the time their Suzy Sunshine

Syndrome runs way too deep, be it nature or nurture. More often

than not, their competent  functioning misleads.”

        I shut my journal and leaned forward to collect my phone off the cocktail table. Tapped a message to my writer gal pal: If that ever happens again, take me with you when  you leave. I poke the SEND key with a metallic fingernail.

“She’ll know what I’m talking about,” I said, “’cause she’s a Suzy Sunshine too. "

BRB

Guess what? 

I'm taking a blogging break. To do stuff. 

Like what? Like:

To work on a group project. 

To refuel. 

To seek and find the mother lode of inspiration. 

To get an MFA in creative writing. 

To love my family with all my heart. 

Stuff like that. 

Check back now and again. 

I might start suddenly producing stuff at a frantic pace. 

That would be cool. 

Grace and peace~

dt

*The Biggest Loser*

My son raised his hand at the kitchen table.

            “This isn’t school, sweetie,” I said. “What?”

            “Why’d you give me a tiny glass with my smoothie?”

            I waited till he took a swig. “Um . . . I seem to have lost something.”

            His eyes bulged. His cheeks puffed. “Like what?”

            I busied myself wiping the stove. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I said. “Like the mango pit. The shot glass is for the pit pieces.”

            I turned when I heard him gag. A peach-colored smoothie stream filled the little glass.

            “Sorry,” he said as he nudged both glasses across the table. “I can’t.”

            “Aw, c’mon. It tastes way better than the time I lost the plastic measuring spoon. And the extra fiber, it’ll . . .”

            He made his lips disappear, shook his head violently.

            I sighed. “Do you have a quarter?”

            One of his eyes got smaller. “Yeah. Why?”

            “Let’s make a bet. Do you think Daddy’ll figure it out or not?”

            “He totally will,” my son said. “It’s like drinking a stick.”

            My little guy and I tried to keep our faces straight while my husband sucked down his shake. He wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand then kissed me on the cheek.

            “That hit the spot,” he said. “I’m going for a run. See ya later.”

            I waited till I heard the front door catch then I held out my hand, palm up, in front of my son.

            “You owe me twenty five cents.”

            “Gambling’s evil,” he said. “You know that, right?”

~~~

I searched everywhere for the receipt, to figure out how much the watch cost, the gift he gave me for our twentieth wedding anniversary. I found the credit card statement in the bill pay drawer and used my pencil eraser to go line by line. I found the store name then followed the dots over to the right to figure out how much he— My palms, underarms, and the divot under my nose felt suddenly damp.

            “Did you find it yet?” my husband said when he came home from work.

            I reached for his lunch bag and shook my head. He sorted through the mail pile, slicing the top of each envelope with an old butter knife.

            “It’s probably gone forever, you know.”

            I crouched beside the foyer’s settee and ran my hand underneath.

            “I don’t think so,” I said as I withdrew a dust fluff in a pincer grip. “I’m pretty sure I’ll find it when I change my closet over. It’s probably in a pair of shorts.”

            The next week I was at my desk—writing, editing, checking Facebook. I heard a voice. Well, I didn’t really hear it, not out loud or anything but it was definitely there, inside my head. Lift up the printer.

            There it was—a small hill of silver links and a barely blue pearlescent face. My throat felt tight. I blinked a couple times to keep my eyes from spilling over.

            I fished my cell out of my pocket, slid it open, typed a text.

            “Guess what I found?”

            “No way.”

            “Way.”

            I closed my phone, leaned back in my chair, gazed up at the ceiling.

            “Thank you so much.”

~~~

After I dialed my husband’s number, I plugged the sink and ran water, squirted in soap and tugged on my Playtex rubber gloves.

            “Hello, Sunshine.”        

            “Um, we have a problem.”

            I heard his breath hiss out through his nose. “What now?”

            With one hand I bobbed my favorite pottery mug in and out of the bubbles. I admired its pale aqua beauty, the ditch for my thumb, the dragonfly impression beneath the handle.

             “I kinda sorta  . . . misplaced the—”

            Another angry nose noise. “What did you lose now?”

            I rinsed the cup and placed it on the drying rack, stroked the dragonfly with my yellow-gloved finger.

            “The tax return,” I said. “I sealed it, stamped it, drove it to the post office . . .”

            Huff. “Tell me you’re kidding. Wait a minute. Is this April first?”

            I shook my head. “It’s not April Fool’s Day. No such luck.”

            “Dang it!  We’re getting back, like, $2,000.”

            I pushed my lower lip out, pinched the bridge of my nose to stop its prickling.

            “Did you call anybody?”

            I straightened and nodded. “I did, the High Street post office lady, the one who always wears a Pittsburgh Steeler jersey on Fridays. She said maybe somebody’ll find it, be nice, and stick it in the outgoing mail.”

            Snort. “Yeah, right.”

            Days later I grinned and paced as I waited for my husband to answer his phone.

            “Guess what?” I said.
            “What?” His voice was still flat, even though the missing tax return debacle was a week old.

            “Please don’t be grumpy,” I said. “I have good tidings. She has it!  The Pittsburgh Steeler post office lady has our tax envelope. The guy who changes the rugs every week found it this morning. It was under the runner in front of the outgoing mail slot.”

            “Thank God!  And . . . sorry. I was—”

            “I did. I know.”

~~~

Brrriiiinnnnnggggg!

            I slung my jean jacket on the foyer settee before I answered the phone.

            “Hello?”

            It was my friend, Diana. We’d said goodbye not even five minutes ago, at the high school down the hill.

            “You missing something?”

            I tilted my head, pondered for a moment. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Like what?”

            “Uh, like your son?”

            My mouth fell open. I laid my hand over my heart. Pound, pound.

            “My little guy?”

            I spun in a circle, pointed at people: oldest daughter, husband, middle child, her best friend. No son, no man boy of mine.

            “You left him down here,” Diana said. “At the school, after the show.”

            I slammed my forehead with my palm. “Dang it!” I said. “I counted heads, got the right number but the wrong kid.”

            I grabbed my keys and jean jacket. My husband stepped between me and the door.
            "I'll get him. You stay here with the others."
            I whimpered but moved aside, watched him flip through the keys on the fish-shaped key rack then plunge his hands deep in his pockets—pants, coat. All the while I heard his mutters, words like loser and responsibility and grown up.
            I followed him into the kitchen. He dumped his lunch bag on the counter, batted the empty Tupperware containers this way and that. He stood in front of the key rack by the back door, sorted through each peg. That's when I got it. And grinned.
            I walked into the dining room and ran my hands along the top shelf of the antique mantle. It’s where I stash extra front door, back door, and car keys.
            I returned to my husband, dangled the spare key to his car. "Here."
            He enclosed it with his fist. Thirty seconds passed before he lifted his eyes to mine.
            "Thanks. And . . . I'm—”
            "You're welcome and . . . I know."

Afraid Again . . . Naturally

I am afraid. Again. An ordinary woman with extra ordinary concerns, surely more than the average female.

            The fear comes to greet me each time a child prepares to fly-be-free. Anxiety bids me to taste it and I obey, cannot resist though I know the flavor hasn’t changed, has not improved one whit since the last time.

            Afraid’s mouthfeel is that of rust, peat moss, a scab slicked by a child’s tongue then dried by the wind. Burnt Sienna Crayon flaked on a box grater. A crushed cigarette eaten with no water to wash it down.

            Is all fear—of life, not death—like this? Suffocating, strangling? Causing one to quake like corn kernels in a heated and covered pot, skittering frenetically in order to avoid death by drowning in high temperature olive oil (not canola oil as it is really RAPEseed oil).

            Surely death, or considerable damage at the very least, is inevitable if I grant my fists permission to unfurl. Instead I clutch my balled hands in my lap, relocate them after a time to beneath my thighs so as to prevent their becoming manacles around her delicate wrists, the means by which I hold her here, close to my heart, gasping for breath.

            All I want is one person to acknowledge my angst, recognize it as a higher form of love. I need someone to watch me cup my hand over my mouth to silence my sobs, my keening. Will someone please applaud as I murmur, “You can be anything, accomplish whatever you set your mind to. I’m sure of it.”

            For eighteen years I’ve known this was coming, the severance of a second umbilical cord, this one invisible—a rope of me, her, her papa, and God—encased in a gleaming moist sheath which is love. It thrums with the possibility that each goodbye may be the last. Unseen hands tug the strand from “gone forever” to “wildly successful and full of joy.”

            Someone please fetch that box over there, the one lacquered almost black with open heart pink satin lining. Inside I’ll arrange the grayed strips of paper which when ordered correctly read: I can take better care of her than she can, He can.

            Now I need a brick, a hammer, or a gun so I can obliterate the square in one fluid WHAM! Next I’ll locate a sheet of diaphanous yet metallic vellum and a pen with silver ink. At the dining room table I’ll make loops and swirls on scratch paper to guarantee flow then I’ll form calligraphy letters big as baby fingers: I TRUST. After I trim the statement, the affirmation, I’ll fold it again and again till it’s the size of a vein, a whisper.

            Where is the wee velvet box my husband snapped open on a pier over the ocean two decades plus ago? I’ll tuck my trust wisp into its white satin cleft, let the lid bite shut then nestle it at the bottom of a fireproof chest hidden in the secret place. Surely it, she, will be safe then . . . 

*Write Now*

"How many thumbdrives did you put your manuscript on?"
            I pressed my tray table up, locked it, then turned to face my husband.
            "Four. No, five."
            He raised his eyebrows a couple times. "Is it good?" he said. "Your book?"
            I shrugged. "I think so."
            "And it's ready? You're sure?"
            I looked out into the night, peered down at the sprinkle of lights that was Colorado Springs.
            "Yep. It's ready. I'm sure."
            He squeezed my hand. "Cool. Give one to anyone who'll take it."

~~~~~~~

In bed that night, I flipped through my Writing for the Soul conference binder. I paused at the page titled, "20 Things a Writer Should Never Do.” I counted my transgressions on my fingers, then toes. I ran a finger across one of my palms, noticed how it was slicked with sweat. I glanced at my husband. ESPN SportsCenter lit and darkened his sleeping face.
            I shoved the covers down and swung my feet onto the plush carpet, tiptoed over to my brown and pink Hello Kitty tote bag. I unzipped the back pocket and dug under business cards, tampons, and lipglosses to find one, three, five jumpdrives. I cupped them in my left hand and opened my suitcase with my right, found my Monday day-of-the-week undies and folded the thumbdrives inside.
            "Not yet, guys," I told the bundle. "You're not ready, not even close."
            I switched off the bedside lamp and slipped back in bed, drew the silky sheets and pristine down comforter up to my chin. I squinted at the mini-chandelier above me. Moonlight twinkled on the crystals.
            "Thank you," I said in a wee voice.

~~~~~~~

Friday after breakfast, I shook hands with my first appointment—a lady agent. I forced myself not to stare at her basketball-looking hairdo, tried not to think about her biography. "Handpaints hobbit models in her spare time.”
            The woman drummed her French-manicure on the table between us.
            "So. Do you have a sample chapter?"
            I stuck my trembling hands inside my Hello Kitty bag, produced a packet of what I thought was my best work.
            The hobbit painter tapped the table with a red Bic pen as she scanned my work. She didn't look up when she spoke.
            "Too much telling," she said. She turned a page. "Not enough dialogue." She nudged the chapter back to me. "You write in passive. Stop."
            She removed her rainbow, polka-dotted reading glasses and leaned toward me, attempted a smile. I tried not to stare at the parentheses ditches on either side of her mouth.
            "Honey, it's like you typed out a phone conversation you had with your best girlfriend. Don't tell me what happened. Show me. Put me in the room with you."
            She looked past me, raised her hand. "Next."

~~~~~~~

I stopped in front of the woman who reminded me of Maude, a television actress from way back when. Her eyes seemed kind. The placard in front of her read, "Christian Writers Guild Mentor."
            I breathed deep through my nose. "You busy?" I said on the exhale.
            She sat straighter, patted the empty chair beside her. "Sit."
            I sat, rooted for a lipgloss in my Hello Kitty bag, pinked my lips.
            "So?" she said.
            "So I brought my manuscript here."
            "And?"
            "And the lady agent who decorates Frodos told me I write passive, that I don't use enough dialogue."
            She pinched at the pleats in her slacks. "How long did it take?"
            I sighed. My lips flapped. "About two minutes."
            "No," she said. "I meant to write the book."
            I huffed. "That's just it," I said. "It only took six months. It just flowed out of me, like pee.”
            I peeked at her from under my lashes, to see if I'd offended her. She didn't blink.
            "Oh."
            I tilted my head. "Oh, what?"
            She plucked the cap off her pen and used it to clean under her nails.
            "That happened to me too," she said. "Did you think because it just came out of you, it was great? That it was a gift from God?"
            She chuckled and lifted my chin to close my mouth.
            "Guess what?" she said in a whisper.
            I spoke softly too. "What?"
            "That's not a book. That's your first draft."

~~~

I was late so I tiptoed in and found a seat in the back row of the Saturday afternoon "Thick-Skinned Manuscript Clinic.” Jerry Jenkins and his assistant stood at the front of the classroom on either side of an overhead projector. They wore white labcoats, had stethoscopes around their necks.
            Jerry held up a red pen, waved it like a conductor’s baton. "This," he said, "is my scalpel. And now, I cut."
            He bent over the projector and read silently for a minute or two. Finally he glanced up.
            "Okay," he said. "First to go are the helping verbs. Eliminate words like is, was, am, were, etcetera."
            He marked, read, and slashed some more, then turned to face his assistant.
            "Andy?"
            Andy made red stripes all down the page. "No -ing verbs," Andy said. "Weakens the writing."
            Jerry hovered beside the projector. He grinned as he drew looped lines through modifiers.
            "Why use three adjectives when one will do?"
            Andy tapped the overhead surface. "Not to mention, 'tall, dark, and handsome' is a cliche.'"
            He looked over his shoulder at the screen then back down at the transparency, crossed out two more phrases.
            "As are 'white as snow' and 'old as the hills.'"
            Jerry examined the writing sample again. More red. The page seemed to bleed. Up near the front of the room, someone whimpered.
            "People," Jerry said. "You've got to omit needless words. Trust me. Less is more."
            At the bottom of the piece, Jerry paused. He grinned and drew a smiley face, tapped the transparency.
            "This is great," he said. "'They buried the farmer in his overalls with the dirt still under his fingernails.'  I like that, like it a lot."
            Andy approached the screen in front of the room and pointed to the smiley face sentence with his pen.
            "Plus this is where the story really starts, don't you think, Jer?"
            Jerry stroked his goatee. "Good point. Who cares about all the stuff up top? This is your first sentence."

~~~~~~~

On our last morning in Colorado, when I went to put on my Monday day-of-the-week panties, five jumpdrives clattered as they hit the white tiles in front of my bare feet.
            "What was that?" my husband said from bed.
            "Five thumbdrives hitting the bathroom floor.” I waited.
            "Five?" he said. "You didn't give any away? Not one?"
            "Nope."
            "Why not?
            "They're not ready. I mean—  The book's not. I have to go home and start over, omit needless words, add more dialogue, stuff like that."
            "You sure?"
            "Yes, I'm sure. Believe me, I am very sure."

Don't Fence Me In

I wept the day our next door neighbors fenced in their backyard. I hid behind our dining room drapes so they couldn’t see me from their patio where they watched the work crew toss rolls of chain link from a pick-up truck bed to their mowed twice weekly grass.

            “You lied,” I said softly, “when you promised the green spaces outside our homes would always be wide open, when  you told me the story of how years ago everyone on the street swore they’d never put up fences. ”

            I dried my eyes with my t-shirt hem and moved into the kitchen, ran water to do dishes. I bet she’s punishing me, I thought, because last week I wouldn’t say for sure if I thought OJ murdered his wife Nicole or not. I shut the water off and tugged on rubber gloves.          

            I’d seen my neighbors’ daughter in Kroger’s awhile back with her boyfriend, his sleek young arm a dark circle under her blonde bob. Was he the reason my neighbor had taken such an intense interest in the trial and maybe he was why the girl had moved out sobbing last week. Was she even done with high school yet?

            “No daughter of mine . . . Not in my house!” The declaration, a lion’s roar, had rattled my insides.

            I removed my yellow gloves and returned to the dining room window where I pointed my words at the mom.

            “She doesn’t resemble you at all. Bet no one ever tells her she’s the spitting image of the blue eyeshadow gal on the Drew Carey show.”

            The next day I watched from a second floor window as the neighbor woman used a yardstick to space out forsythia pots inside the shiny silver boundary.

            I sighed through my nose. “Now you see me, next year you won’t.”

An Unexpected Grief

(Sometimes we write to connect with others. Other times we write to connect with ourselves, our pain. This is one of those circumstances. This piece of writing is oblique and I know it.  Even so, I can’t bring myself to be otherwise. Yet.)

Will you weep with me? Share my woe? Then perhaps it will be halved, divided. Might you accompany me to the places sadness leads, examine the items it dredges up? 

            I grieved the unknown then found I preferred it to the truth. Now randomly, frequently, the surprise of loss claws at me, flings punches in the vicinity of my kidneys. I wasn’t ready. It was too soon, much.

            The trail of my tears is charcoal gray with bits of plum and glimmers of silver shine, or is it Fool’s Gold?

             The feeling of responsibility whether warranted or not is insistent. If only . . . What if . . . I shouldn’t have . . . It’s not even my burden but I take it on gladly, not wanting it to break another beneath its crush.  And then there is the silence, the secret, that must be maintained. We cannot open wounds in others with this knowledge. Secrecy is a frigid lightless cave insisting you are alone even if you're not.

            Should I thank this sorrow for the way it’s making my hand bleed upon the page? In this moment, I wish I’d write never more. Will I be despised? For my incompleteness, my lack of clarity, my refusal to truth tell? Translate my reticence as mystery, an opportunity. Fill in the blanks with your heart. What is your secret grief, your regret? What is the reason you hum, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus” and soon after, “And the things of this world will grow strangely dim”? Or perhaps your song is, "Comfortably Numb."

            I want to gather the people who know, the very few—the two, no, three, who are aware. I’ll arrange us in a row with me in the middle then I’ll unfold a handkerchief and smooth it out atop my thighs, outline a fuchsia lipstick heart in the center. Soon after, I’ll drop my tears inside of it. 

+Always When+

The man jabbed at his oatmeal before he took a bite, certain he’d recognize poison if he saw it.  From time to time he used his binoculars to note his wife’s progress out in the yard. While he ate, he scratched on the notepad next to his bowl: church, filling station, library, home. He ripped the paper from the spiral and tucked it into his breast pocket, rose from the table and deposited his bowl in the sink, ran water to fill it. He returned to the picture window for one last property inspection. When he saw her gaze lift, he ducked behind the curtain.

            He tucked the newspaper under his arm and walked down the hall to the bathroom. Before he sat, he took the list from his pocket, smoothed it and propped it on the vanity where he’d be able to review it, recite its lines over and over, so he wouldn’t forget. He hated the forgetting and its frequency of late.

            “First I’ll drop her at her Bible study then I’ll fill up the car. Her and the hens’ll yack for at least an hour, maybe two, so I’ll have plenty of time to go to the library, look up ways she and her doctor might be trying to kill me.” He ran his hand over the nape of his neck. “Might have time for a trim too.”

+++

She didn’t speak on the way to town other than to point out the bluets that were lighting up the forest floor on her side of the car.

            He kept his eyes straight ahead. “Can’t look, gotta watch the road.”

            He clenched his teeth when he spotted it, the turn where he’d gotten the Buick hung up back before Christmas. Near as he could tell everything had pretty much gone all to hell that night.

            There hadn’t been a storm like that in forever, started out with hail as big as chestnuts, moved on to ice. He should’ve known better than to go down the mountain when The Weather Channel said not to, but they’d both had a hankering for cheeseburgers and pie from Larry’s Diner, plus he figured he could beat it—the mountain, the weather. Besides, how often were those young TWC bucks right?

            The Buick had fish-tailed on an ice patch. He steered in the opposite direction and the car’s rear end swung wildly, first one way then the other. He death-gripped the steering wheel and pumped the brakes again and again. When the car finally came to a stop, they were half-on, half-off the road. He glanced over at his wife. Her eyes were shut tight and she was whispering to herself a mile a minute. He reached over and patted her leg.

            When she opened her eyes, he smiled. “See? I got it under control.”

            He put the car in park, set the emergency brake, and popped the trunk. As he rooted around for the bag of kitty litter, he heard something. He inch-stepped toward the sound, clutched the trunk’s edge, leaned hard right. A man was there.

            “Who the hell are you?” he roared as he slip-slid his way toward his wife’s door.

            The stranger straightened, extended one hand but kept the other near his wife’s window. Is he touching her, the man thought, is he? He could barely hear the stranger’s voice over the howl of the wind and the siss of the sleet.

            “Michael Taylor, sir. I thought I might be of assistance. I have four wheel drive and a cell phone. May I drive you two off the mountain? Call a tow truck?”

            The man fought to keep his composure in front of the handsome young stranger, in front of his wife, in front of the good-looking stranger who no doubt wanted his wife, might've already— He squinted at the name tag on the man’s suit jacket. Remember the name, he thought. Do not forget it. 

             The stranger glanced down. “I just left the hospital. I’m a physician there, internal medicine.”

            “Of course you are,” the older man said. “Well, you can move along now. I don’t need your help. I’ve got kitty litter in the trunk. We’ll be just fine.”

            He saw the doctor take one more look at his wife before he walked back to his fancy vehicle. The older man waited for him to leave but he didn’t. He stayed until the Buick got back on the road.

            On the way down the mountain, the older man kept checking the rear view mirror.          

            “Damn fool’s following us,” he said.

            His wife’s hand hovered near his shoulder. He slapped at it. 
            “Don’t you coddle me. I know what you and your—” He heard the whisper of her coat on the seat as she tipped over to look out the side view mirror.

            “Don’t be . . . He is not. See, he's turning.”

            The man hunched closer to the steering wheel. “Yeah, but now he knows we live around here somewhere.”