M U S E
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P U B L I S H E D
WORDS+IMAGES
07.08
ISSUE
B Y
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L I T
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”
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H E N RY DAV I D T H O R E AU
The LIT Heats Up This Summer.
Best of Ohio Writer becomes the MUSE Literary Competition
MUSE seeks submissions in the following categories:
Short Fiction: Up to 5,000 words
Poetry: 500 words maximum, Up to three (3) poems per submission
Creative Nonfiction: Up to 3,000 words
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: September 30, 2008
A first place only cash prize of $500 will be awarded in each category, along with
publication in the January 2009 issue of MUSE and a complimentary one-year subscription. Entry fee is $25 for initial entry; $10 for each additional entry. For further
guidelines and rules, visit www.the-lit.org or email us at [email protected].
COVER
THOMAS FONTINI
THE FIELD TRIP (ANCIENT OFFERING)
contents
3 DIKE 14
MILES BUDIMIR
5 LITTLE GIRL IN A WASTELAND
DAVID HANSEN
7 VELVET MOURNING
ERIN O’BRIEN
12 BUDDHA
CATHERINE DONNELLY
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retreat to the tranquility of Spa Walden’s elegant private suites.
If you are too enchanted to leave, invest in a custom dream home
tailored to your unique lifestyle. Explore the wonders of Walden on
our new website. Then when it dawns on you to get away to it all,
contemplate a visit to your Walden.
12 A BOUQUET OF HAIKU
JACK MCGUANE
13 A WILD BIRD
MICHAEL SALINGER
14 SNAKEBITE
KAREN SANDSTROM
27 WITCHES AND THIEVES
TERRY DUBOW
31 A TICKET TO RIDE
SARAH SPHAR
33 THE LEGACY OF THE SAUCE
LORI WALD COMPTON
888 808 5003
BACKGROUND
KAREN OLLIS-TOULA
FISH JAR
Literary Events presented by Shaker Heights Public Library
DIKE 14
MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT
Meet The
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Shaker Heights Public Library and
The LIT: Cleveland’s Literary Center
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Writers on Writing
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MILES BUDIMIR
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as huge machines dredge up heavy metal sludge”
JUDITH MANSOUR-THOMAS
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Our sludge, which settles into
Dike 14,
thousands of tons of
cadmium, arsenic, mercury-soaked soil
held firm by steel plates and boulders,
SUBMISSIONS
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the Cuyahoga’s toxic plaque
scraped clean from the city’s arteries
toxins that gave us life,
kept us working, sweating, fed and warm,
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August 27
Bertram Woods Branch
20600 Fayette Road, Shaker Heights, Ohio 44122
Reservations are requested by calling 216-991-2421.
Mary Doria Russell
September 14
Scott Lax
September 28
Paula McLain
October 5
seeds scattered from far away lands,
on feathers of migrating birds,
blown by winds that move sand across the Sahara,
blow ash from Mount Pinatubo,
Main Library
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Reservations are requested by calling 216-991-2030.
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THELIT
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2 5 7 0 S U P E R I O R AV E N U E
SUITE 203
CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114
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Books will be available for sale and signing following each presentation.
www.shakerlibrary.org
216 694.0000
W W W. T H E - L I T. O R G
here, they sprout grasses and mugwort
poison hemlock and mustard garlic, cottonwoods,
and weeping willows,
and the birds of the heavens
build nests atop our industrial sins,
as butterflies hover, light as a whisper,
wild turkeys and minx, coyote and deer
step gingerly on this new earth;
“Look,” they show us, “how all is One,
how our Mother brings life from death,
sings her Paschal hymn.”
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Nancy Pearl
July 16
this slurry of death
congeals into 88 acres of what
the Earth does best; bring forth life with
3
DAVID HANSEN
Dear Father,
Thank you for this. For all of this. It
must have been sweet. Sweet and
easy. I wish I could go from day to
day, from moment to moment, never
having to think. That, more than
anything – more than water in bottles,
than food in boxes, than chips in bags,
more than ice and air conditioning
and water from a tap – that must
have been the ultimate, not having
to think. Because not having to think
means not having to think about not
having to think.
It’s hard. Like the President used
to say, when I was a baby. It’s hard
work. He wouldn’t know hard work if
someone worked hard on his face for a
while, with a hammer. But we do. I do.
We get by. My friends and I, we
stay when we can, and farm when we
stay, surrender what we must to those
who accost us, which isn’t often. Not
too often. And we do what we must to
eat, to drink, to persevere. We have no
luxuries.
The government is there, we see
it, but it cannot help us, not much.
Mostly it gets in our way or gives us
grief. The handouts have stopped.
The medicine is gone. The animals are
bemused face.
“Man,” she breathed. “That’s
fucking bleak.”
I swallowed hard, and spoke. “I
wanted you to read it,” adding, not
too confidently, “for fun.”
“And you wanted me to read this
after you died?” she said, waving it a
little bit, adding even more drama to
what was admittedly, my very selfindulgent act.
“Well,” I said, “I realized …” My
throat closed a bit. I made a sour face
and cupped my fingers to her for a
sip of water. For a moment Z. forgot
her irritation and glanced about for
my tube, which she served to me with
awkward grace. I sucked at the tart
liquid.
Taking a noisy breath, I
continued. “That would be wrong.”
“Things aren’t as bad as this,” she
said, gesturing with the letter.
“But they are bad,” I said,
deflating into the mattress. “I miss the
frogs.”
“I miss the fucking Dodo, this is
frustrating.” She drew her eyebrows
together, squinting at the sheet of
paper, then to me. “Do you wish I had
never been born?”
“What? You think – God, no.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t. Stupid
question, right? But… do you believe...
do you seriously believe I wish I had
never been born?”
I paused for a moment, the pain
in my abdomen briefly giving way to
the rising dread, that fond, familiar
feeling of fear – of rejection, of failure
– rising in my belly, my mouth in a
tight, sad frown and my forehead
tense and armored.
“Don’t you?” I asked.
And it would have been so easy
for her, for anyone, to say, in this
moment of need, “Of course not.”
But she was, after all, her father’s
daughter, prone to saying the wrong
thing, even when it was right.
“Honestly, Dad,” she said. “Who
can answer that question?”
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LITTLE GIRL IN A WASTELAND
dead. The sky disappeared, with the
ice caps. It was awful for what seemed
like a day, and then … well, then it was
like what so much of the planet was
already like, only you hadn’t noticed.
There was famine, war, pestilence, and
death.
It was not the End Times. It had
always been like this. It will always be
like this. It was only you who were
living in Paradise. Just you, for a brief
moment in time. Everything you ever
dreamed of, lovingly handed to you
… and then you handed it right back
in the form of a Styrofoam plate,
smeared with gooey icing with a
plastic fork poked through it.
I dream of those days. Of green
lawns. Of TV. Of soccer, and princess
tiaras and toys – so many toys. Of
eating. Of getting a cool drink in the
middle of a peaceful night. I dream of
a play house we called home.
Why were you all so careless?
You could have had half, and made
your Paradise last twice as long. Or
four times, I can’t remember (math is
hard.) Yes, I am selfish enough to wish
it had lasted long enough for me. But
who am I to teach you of being selfish.
So this is my Father’s Day wish
for you. That you are somewhere
peaceful and cool, spending eternity
the way you lived your life, for that
was truly Heaven. You have no idea.
And when my toil is through, I wish
to join you there. Because I truly love
you, even if you spent my inheritance,
and broke all my dreams.
Your daughter, Zelda
The letter had been tucked into
an envelope that was almost as crisp
and white as the day it was bleached
into existence. I wrote it for my girl
in 2008, when she was only five, and
now she was finally reading it, sitting
with one hip propped up on the edge
of my hospital bed, doing that frownsmirk thing I do that pisses people off
so much.
She had one of those hippie
scarves tied low over her forehead,
her long, honey-hair pouring straight
down and around her grandmother’s
tremendous ears, and about her
5
VELVET MOURNING
ERIN O’BRIEN
Darrington was hunkered over his hard cider and rum, crying
and mumbling a song I could not decipher. He would stay until I
pushed him out into the night to stumble across the street, up that
narrow staircase and into his poor wife’s bed.
Outside, the air was easy and fair and not completely still. So
unlike the tavern, with its lingering pipe smoke and the feeling of
men with their needy eyes. There was one table left to scour.
My ears pricked at the sound of a cart. It neared the tavern
and I hoped it would pass. But the rumble of its
wheels stopped beneath shuffling reins and I
sighed with disappointment.
To my surprise, it was the voice of Alvy
Laird calling whoa to her ass. The beast snorted
and whinnied and finally settled after a few
snaps of the reins.
“Sorry for the late hour, Rose,” she said
as she stepped in. Her tone was conciliatory,
considering she was a woman with a handsome
purse and a dead husband. “Have you time for
one drink? Will you have one with me?”
She was dressed in burgundy velvet and looked at once sad and beautiful and
spent. There was only Darrington left. The meats and cheeses were
wrapped and put up on the cellar shelves. The corks were in place
and all I had left to do before slipping between my bed linens was
snuff the lanterns and ascend the staircase that led to my rooms.
But the pleading in Alvy’s eyes spoke to me and I had surely earned
a pint that night, perhaps a whiskey as well.
“For a woman who has traded in her black cotton skirts for
that of royalty, I will gladly pour a whiskey,” I said. “Sit, Alvy.”
She chose the table by the window, where the breeze wafted
in. I urged Darrington to his feet. He rose without a fight. But before turning to the door, he looked at Alvy and began singing with
the voice of an angel.
“O take me in your arms love, for keen doth the wind blow.
O take me in your arms, love, for bitter is my deep woe.”
His voice, stripped of the usual blubbering, struck us both.
We blinked in the silence until I gathered myself and ushered him
out, “To your wife with your gibberish, Darry,” I said. He smiled
a melancholy smile, belying the handsome man he once was.
Then his brow collapsed in bewilderment. His head and shoulders sagged back into a droopy line. Finally his feet, clad in heavy
leather, carried him away without another word.
I poured two pints of the better cider and pulled the bottle
of Cavan’s whiskey from the crevice behind the slotted block of oak
that housed my knives.
My heart
tumbled and
broke in all
the familiar
places.
Three Floors of New & Used Books
www.macsbacks.com
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Mac’s Backs
Books on Coventry
“What stories have you, Alvy?”
“Ones that may have heard before,” she said.
“How could I possibly know the history of this beautiful
skirt?” I took up a thick drape of it. “My my,” I said in a low voice.
So pleasurable was the velvet against my hand that I fondled it until
Alvy took it from me to caress and worry herself.
“You know the man they call Zwieg?” she said, smoothing
the velvet across her thighs.
My heart tumbled and broke in all the familiar places. I
swallowed hard against the swell. Alvy did not wait for my answer.
“He is a man like any other,” she said. “He is a man like no other.”
She moved her eyes to the stones stacked on the porch of Brainard’s
masonry shop across the way.
“Have that good cider then and tell me of Zwieg,” I said. She
was consumed with her thoughts and did not notice the red heat
on my cheeks. Such was the nature of Zwieg’s stain, this I knew. His
7
But the night was
dappled with our
respective wounds.
Hers were fresh
and sharp. Mine
were worn and dull.
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“Then you know what they are,” she swallowed. “But Zwieg,”
Alvy’s voice dipped in reverence. “The weave of his words, Rose,
was the rarest thing. Every lie he spoke enchanted me.” She paused. “I am a fool.”
“You are no fool, Alvy,” I said. “You are a woman.”
The liquor and the deepness of the hour thinned the veneer
that hides women such as Alvy and me. “The irony of men I most
enjoy, Rose,” said Alvy, “is the hardness, the evidence of desire, over
which is stretched skin as soft as-”
“Velvet,” I said, touching her skirt. “How long did you share
a bed?”
“Three days and three nights,” she said. “And had it been three
years my desire would have been as fervent, my folds as welcoming.”
The lanterns cast a forgiving light, softening lines of her face
and bathing her in a golden glow. I could not take my eyes from
her. My throat went dry, so I drank.
“Imagine this,” she said, “his lips are as lush and full as any
woman’s. These he pressed to my ear in the first light of dawn and
said, ‘Alvy,’ as he pushed into me. ‘Alvy, Alvy,’ he said as he filled me,
‘Today it is my prayer.’ I let myself believed it.”
As I had believed him when he said his prayer was Rose in
exactly the same manner two winters before last. “This morning,
was it?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “And then he left. He promised to return. I
will hope for such—die hoping—but it was surely another lie. I will
not know him again.” She arched one eyebrow then tipped back the
last drop of her cider. “Except for when I wrap myself in his velvet
gift.” She clutched at her skirt once more and spilled a handful of
coins on the table. “For the drink,” she said. “And perhaps one day I
will repay you the company.”
“I’ll take only that for the cider,” I said, pushing the bulk of
money back towards her. “The whiskey was my contribution.”
Alvy nodded. “This is not a night for arguments,” she said.
“So I will thank you for the whiskey, Rose,” she paused. “And for the
gentleness in your voice.”
I stood with her and draped my arm about her waist to walk
her out. She smelled of the earth and the spent drink. The years had
not padded her curves and she was lithe beneath her cloak. Had
Zwieg taken her hands and stood with her before the firelight? Had
he cupped her breast in his hand and moved his mouth to the hard
nub there?
I turned to Alvy in the doorway and kissed her. Her return
was neither indifferent nor desperate. We might have lain together,
a move that had never seemed natural or appealing to me until that
moment. But the night was dappled with our respective wounds.
Hers were fresh and sharp. Mine were worn and dull. They simultaneously ignited and extinguished the desire between us. Zwieg.
“To the comfort of your blankets and tears,” I whispered,
breathing in the richness of her hair. Alvy brushed her fingers
against my cheek.
She mounted her cart and snapped the reins. The wheels
turned slowly under the weary animal, but then she was a moving
thing beneath the moon. She disappeared into the night as I basked
in the warmth of her kiss and the satisfaction of knowing my own
secrets surrounding Zwieg were still intact.
I poured three fingers of the fine scotch whiskey into my
empty cider pint. I unlaced my boots and hitched my foot upon
the table. The satin ribbon around my ankle was faded, but still it
shimmered with the memory of the night he tied it there.
I mourned for Alvy and myself. I mourned for Darrington
and his wife. I mourned for Zwieg and his indelible shadow. I
mourned for the castles and the warriors and the virgins.
SID RHEUBAN
TWO GENTLEMEN OF RAVENNA
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salty taste and
the fine down on
his chest lingered
long after his
shadow passed
through a woman’s door.
“He is a
dancer, a poet, a
rogue,” she said.
“He was traveling
with troop of his
kind. He’s been
through before.”
“Yes,” I
said. “I know of these men.” And of the oath he took to know no
other but me if he were to return.
9
But the night was
dappled with our
respective wounds.
Hers were fresh
and sharp. Mine
were worn and dull.
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“Then you know what they are,” she swallowed. “But Zwieg,”
Alvy’s voice dipped in reverence. “The weave of his words, Rose,
was the rarest thing. Every lie he spoke enchanted me.” She paused. “I am a fool.”
“You are no fool, Alvy,” I said. “You are a woman.”
The liquor and the deepness of the hour thinned the veneer
that hides women such as Alvy and me. “The irony of men I most
enjoy, Rose,” said Alvy, “is the hardness, the evidence of desire, over
which is stretched skin as soft as-”
“Velvet,” I said, touching her skirt. “How long did you share
a bed?”
“Three days and three nights,” she said. “And had it been three
years my desire would have been as fervent, my folds as welcoming.”
The lanterns cast a forgiving light, softening lines of her face
and bathing her in a golden glow. I could not take my eyes from
her. My throat went dry, so I drank.
“Imagine this,” she said, “his lips are as lush and full as any
woman’s. These he pressed to my ear in the first light of dawn and
said, ‘Alvy,’ as he pushed into me. ‘Alvy, Alvy,’ he said as he filled me,
‘Today it is my prayer.’ I let myself believed it.”
As I had believed him when he said his prayer was Rose in
exactly the same manner two winters before last. “This morning,
was it?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “And then he left. He promised to return. I
will hope for such—die hoping—but it was surely another lie. I will
not know him again.” She arched one eyebrow then tipped back the
last drop of her cider. “Except for when I wrap myself in his velvet
gift.” She clutched at her skirt once more and spilled a handful of
coins on the table. “For the drink,” she said. “And perhaps one day I
will repay you the company.”
“I’ll take only that for the cider,” I said, pushing the bulk of
money back towards her. “The whiskey was my contribution.”
Alvy nodded. “This is not a night for arguments,” she said.
“So I will thank you for the whiskey, Rose,” she paused. “And for the
gentleness in your voice.”
I stood with her and draped my arm about her waist to walk
her out. She smelled of the earth and the spent drink. The years had
not padded her curves and she was lithe beneath her cloak. Had
Zwieg taken her hands and stood with her before the firelight? Had
he cupped her breast in his hand and moved his mouth to the hard
nub there?
I turned to Alvy in the doorway and kissed her. Her return
was neither indifferent nor desperate. We might have lain together,
a move that had never seemed natural or appealing to me until that
moment. But the night was dappled with our respective wounds.
Hers were fresh and sharp. Mine were worn and dull. They simultaneously ignited and extinguished the desire between us. Zwieg.
“To the comfort of your blankets and tears,” I whispered,
breathing in the richness of her hair. Alvy brushed her fingers
against my cheek.
She mounted her cart and snapped the reins. The wheels
turned slowly under the weary animal, but then she was a moving
thing beneath the moon. She disappeared into the night as I basked
in the warmth of her kiss and the satisfaction of knowing my own
secrets surrounding Zwieg were still intact.
I poured three fingers of the fine scotch whiskey into my
empty cider pint. I unlaced my boots and hitched my foot upon
the table. The satin ribbon around my ankle was faded, but still it
shimmered with the memory of the night he tied it there.
I mourned for Alvy and myself. I mourned for Darrington
and his wife. I mourned for Zwieg and his indelible shadow. I
mourned for the castles and the warriors and the virgins.
SID RHEUBAN
TWO GENTLEMEN OF RAVENNA
07
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salty taste and
the fine down on
his chest lingered
long after his
shadow passed
through a woman’s door.
“He is a
dancer, a poet, a
rogue,” she said.
“He was traveling
with troop of his
kind. He’s been
through before.”
“Yes,” I
said. “I know of these men.” And of the oath he took to know no
other but me if he were to return.
9
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JAMES MARCH, ABSTRACT PAINTING
10
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JAMES MARCH, ABSTRACT PAINTING
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CATHERINE DONNELLY
A smile that knows.
A sensual, corpulent
body—
no desert eremite he.
Earthly and
Enlightened
begin this same way:
taste each moment
like an August grape.
The tongue feels how
flimsy
the tart skin,
how floodingly sweet
the meat set free.
Ah!
A Bouquet of Haiku
MICHAEL SALINGER
JACK MCGUANE
We try so hard to
escape the cage we cannot
live outside of.
She stands vainly at
the exit ramp with her sign
I haiku for food.
We walk around with
empty buckets looking for
milk that is within.
SAVE THE DATE!
2008 Writers and Their Friends
Biennial Literary Showcase
Saturday September 6, 2008 7pm at
The Ohio Theater, Playhouse Square
Book Browse, Showcase, and Reception
Tickets $25
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A Wild Bird
For more information, visit www.the-lit.org
or call 216.694.0000
A wild bird in the house portends bad luck
Even death
So said my grandmother
She of Slovenian descent
This superstition though, transcends nationality
Migrating across imaginary boundaries demarcating countries
Italians, Greek, Scandinavian, Irish, Chinese
All warn against harboring
Undomesticated things with feathers
The cats wake us at sunrise
Howling and chasing through the front of the house
And I assume they are fighting
Over another imaginary feline slight
Then I recognize
The flutter of wings in distress
So I put on my slippers
The mourning dove shivers
Wedged behind the grandfather clock
Cat tails twitching with pendulum precision
Feathers littering the room
Betray the mayhem that had only just subsided
I eye the bird’s beak
Thin, pointed, needlelike
Weigh the chances of disease
As I cup its warm, weightless and hollow boned body
In my hands
Pinning its wings with my palms to its side
I open the door with my elbow
I toss it into the air
Not knowing whether it will fall lame
Or fly
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Buddha
13
KAREN SANDSTROM
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The past arrives every other weekend in a rusted El Camino. Tonight Diane watches from the window as the car rocks over the
curb and up the driveway. The muffler is shot. She sighs and releases the edge of the curtain. “Your dad’s here,” she calls.
String-bean Emma springs up behind her, gripping the
nylon strap of an overnight bag. Her bitten nails are painted black.
“OK, Mudder,” she says. It is what she’s called Diane since she was
three. “Love you.”
Diane barely has to bend to kiss Emma’s soft pre-teen
cheek. “Be good. See you Sunday.”
Kenny is standing on the porch when Diane opens the door. He
thrusts his hands deep into the pockets of acid-washed jeans he’s
had since before they divorced. “Hey, Emmalee-Shmemalee.”
“Hiya, Dad.”
Kenny tosses his head in the direction of his car. Emma
gives her mother a little wave, and when she is safely out of earshot,
Kenny says,“That goddamn kid’s growing up too fast.” He wears a
gleaming smile, flashes the dimples that had been softening women’s hearts for years.
But she knows too much to be charmed. The grin she
manages in return is one kind of charity she offers her former husband. “I gave her a twenty,” she tells him. “Take her for Chinese or
something.”
“Sure,” Kenny says. “Thanks, Diana-banana, that’s awful
fuckin’ nice of you.” Kenny always swears with boyish exuberance.
Diane says, “For God’s sake, Kenny,” by which she means,
do you have to be so infantile? But of course he does.
“So,” he says. He’s staring at his shoes. He’s rocking on his
heels. “You know that thing I asked you about.”
“Rick’s been really busy, Kenny. We haven’t had a chance
to discuss it.” She hesitates and adds, “We’re a little strapped these
days.”
Kenny nods. “Sure thing,” he says. “No pressure, Diane.
Just anything you can do. You can bet your ass I’ll pay you back.”
Soon the El Camino is backing out of the driveway. Diane
retreats inside, closes the door. Rick will be home from the office
within the hour. While she waits for him, she dumps a basket of
clean laundry onto her bed and begins to fold the clothes. She rolls
Rick’s athletic socks, the ones he wears when he plays handball at
the Y, and wonders whether Kenny could actually lose his apartment. She has never known anyone who was evicted.
Their house stands on five acres off a rural highway. Diane has
dahlias and bee balm in the garden just to the rear of the house.
The farthest edge of their property backs up against wooded acres
that belong to a man they’ve never met. They have big plans for
that rear part of their yard. Rick has designed a treeless tree house
with built-in bunks and a tiny kitchen for Emma, who is almost
too old for such a thing now, but doesn’t admit it. These days, when
the sun stretches itself over the evening, Rick’s routine is to come
home, change clothes and dive into the work of preparing the yard.
Tonight he asks Diane about her day as he sheds his work shirt. He
reaches for a cotton T-shirt he’s set on the bed and her gaze falls on
one sculpted shoulder.
The house is empty, she thinks. I could take down your fly
with my teeth. We could bang the headboard. But she doesn’t suggest anything. She wants it to be his idea.
Rick runs a hand through her hair, pecks her on the forehead, and leaves her side. She hears him take a beer from the fridge
before heading outside.
Dinner will be broiled chicken and salad and rolls and
margarine. It comes together easily as Diane treats herself to a couple of gulps of white wine that has been open in the refrigerator a
little too long. The chicken goes on the platter, and the platter goes
on the table, and Diane thinks about how she should skip the rolls
and probably won’t. She has put on weight, just a little, but it has
settled oddly. Saddlebags! It seems it has begun, that downward
slide everyone promised would come when she turned thirty-five
but didn’t. She was not especially worried when she turned thirty-
She is about to call Rick to come in for dinner when he
emerges through the sliding glass door, his left hand cradled in his
right. He studies the hand, pressing it hard. There’s blood on his
palm. What has he done to himself now?
Rick is reckless in his domestic chores. He is forever earning blisters and calluses, skinning his shins and hammering his
thumb. He once lost his balance while trimming a maple for a
neighbor. Next he knew, he was on the ground, and his chainsaw
was inches away, buzzing maniacally. The story gets funnier and
more self-deprecating every time Rick tells it, but Diane refuses to
be amused. More than once, Diane has been at parties and dinner
tables where she alone refuses to laugh at Rick’s tale.
“What did you do to yourself?”
They look each other in the eye for a quick moment. “Are
you sure?” Diane asks. “That it was a garter, I mean?”
Rick goes to the sink and turns on the faucet. He squints
at his hand as he holds it under the stream. As the blood washes
away, his palm reveals small marks where teeth have pulled skin
away.
“We don’t have poisonous snakes around here, if that’s
what you mean.” Rick says this with confidence, a quality she has
always loved about him. He whips out reassurances like Daddy
Warbucks peeling twenties from a wad, and Diane counts on him
to be right, even when her own faith is shaky. Especially then.
“I thought there were copperheads in Ohio,” Diane says.
She tries to sound casual, but she knows there are copperheads in
Ohio. At the junior high science fair, she won third place for her diorama on reptiles of the state.
But Rick laughs. “I was a Boy Scout, babe,” he says. “This
was no copperhead.”
“What did it look like?”
Rick has wrapped a dish towel around his hand now.
“Well, it had big black diamonds on its
back, and long fangs and it wore a hat
with a skull and crossbones, but I saw
through the ruse.”
Diane puts her hands on her hips. “I’m
calling Eric.”
“No, Diane,” Rick says, his
voice quiet and very calm. “I don’t need
you to bother Eric. No one has ever
died from an encounter with a garter snake. Eric would tell you that, if we
called him, but we’re not calling him.”
Eric Wilks has an urgent care
clinic in town. He and his wife, Susan,
are good friends, which Rick usually mentions on occasions that Diane
is inclined to seek Eric’s free medical
counsel.
“OK, then I’ll drive you to the
hospital,” Diane says.
“Diane,” Rick says. “I don’t need a hospital. This is
nothing.”
But he’s standing with a dishtowel around his hand, and
Diane is growing annoyed with Rick’s determination to be cavalier.
“Well, you can let me call Eric. Or you can let me take you to the
E.R. Or we can fight about it all night. Those are your choices, because you tell me you were bit by a snake, and normal people seek
medical help for such things.”
Diane watches Rick watching her. She doesn’t care
The past arrives
every other
weekend in
a rusted
El Camino.
“Shithead bit me,” Rick says, startling Diane. He seldom
swears.
“Let me see.” Diane takes Rick’s hand in hers and checks
out the raking wounds. It looks like he’s been cutting roses without
gloves.
“What was it?”
Rick sighs. “Garter snake, I guess. There was rock I
thought would be nice for your garden, and I went to pick it up.
Thing was in the weeds right. I never saw it till its mouth was on my
hand.”
07
08
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U
S
E
M
SNAKEBITE
five, because Rick was already forty-five, and she assumed she
would always feel young by virtue of being younger than he was.
But now Diane is thirty-eight, and coffee suddenly gives her heartburn, and her jeans feel snug in strange places, and her ex-husband
refuses to move away or find a girlfriend or obtain lucrative employment or just take a very long road trip and get out of her hair.
15
CATHERINE DONNELLY
A smile that knows.
A sensual, corpulent
body—
no desert eremite he.
Earthly and
Enlightened
begin this same way:
taste each moment
like an August grape.
The tongue feels how
flimsy
the tart skin,
how floodingly sweet
the meat set free.
Ah!
A Bouquet of Haiku
MICHAEL SALINGER
JACK MCGUANE
We try so hard to
escape the cage we cannot
live outside of.
She stands vainly at
the exit ramp with her sign
I haiku for food.
We walk around with
empty buckets looking for
milk that is within.
SAVE THE DATE!
2008 Writers and Their Friends
Biennial Literary Showcase
Saturday September 6, 2008 7pm at
The Ohio Theater, Playhouse Square
Book Browse, Showcase, and Reception
Tickets $25
07
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12
A Wild Bird
For more information, visit www.the-lit.org
or call 216.694.0000
A wild bird in the house portends bad luck
Even death
So said my grandmother
She of Slovenian descent
This superstition though, transcends nationality
Migrating across imaginary boundaries demarcating countries
Italians, Greek, Scandinavian, Irish, Chinese
All warn against harboring
Undomesticated things with feathers
The cats wake us at sunrise
Howling and chasing through the front of the house
And I assume they are fighting
Over another imaginary feline slight
Then I recognize
The flutter of wings in distress
So I put on my slippers
The mourning dove shivers
Wedged behind the grandfather clock
Cat tails twitching with pendulum precision
Feathers littering the room
Betray the mayhem that had only just subsided
I eye the bird’s beak
Thin, pointed, needlelike
Weigh the chances of disease
As I cup its warm, weightless and hollow boned body
In my hands
Pinning its wings with my palms to its side
I open the door with my elbow
I toss it into the air
Not knowing whether it will fall lame
Or fly
07
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Buddha
13
KAREN SANDSTROM
07
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14
The past arrives every other weekend in a rusted El Camino. Tonight Diane watches from the window as the car rocks over the
curb and up the driveway. The muffler is shot. She sighs and releases the edge of the curtain. “Your dad’s here,” she calls.
String-bean Emma springs up behind her, gripping the
nylon strap of an overnight bag. Her bitten nails are painted black.
“OK, Mudder,” she says. It is what she’s called Diane since she was
three. “Love you.”
Diane barely has to bend to kiss Emma’s soft pre-teen
cheek. “Be good. See you Sunday.”
Kenny is standing on the porch when Diane opens the door. He
thrusts his hands deep into the pockets of acid-washed jeans he’s
had since before they divorced. “Hey, Emmalee-Shmemalee.”
“Hiya, Dad.”
Kenny tosses his head in the direction of his car. Emma
gives her mother a little wave, and when she is safely out of earshot,
Kenny says,“That goddamn kid’s growing up too fast.” He wears a
gleaming smile, flashes the dimples that had been softening women’s hearts for years.
But she knows too much to be charmed. The grin she
manages in return is one kind of charity she offers her former husband. “I gave her a twenty,” she tells him. “Take her for Chinese or
something.”
“Sure,” Kenny says. “Thanks, Diana-banana, that’s awful
fuckin’ nice of you.” Kenny always swears with boyish exuberance.
Diane says, “For God’s sake, Kenny,” by which she means,
do you have to be so infantile? But of course he does.
“So,” he says. He’s staring at his shoes. He’s rocking on his
heels. “You know that thing I asked you about.”
“Rick’s been really busy, Kenny. We haven’t had a chance
to discuss it.” She hesitates and adds, “We’re a little strapped these
days.”
Kenny nods. “Sure thing,” he says. “No pressure, Diane.
Just anything you can do. You can bet your ass I’ll pay you back.”
Soon the El Camino is backing out of the driveway. Diane
retreats inside, closes the door. Rick will be home from the office
within the hour. While she waits for him, she dumps a basket of
clean laundry onto her bed and begins to fold the clothes. She rolls
Rick’s athletic socks, the ones he wears when he plays handball at
the Y, and wonders whether Kenny could actually lose his apartment. She has never known anyone who was evicted.
Their house stands on five acres off a rural highway. Diane has
dahlias and bee balm in the garden just to the rear of the house.
The farthest edge of their property backs up against wooded acres
that belong to a man they’ve never met. They have big plans for
that rear part of their yard. Rick has designed a treeless tree house
with built-in bunks and a tiny kitchen for Emma, who is almost
too old for such a thing now, but doesn’t admit it. These days, when
the sun stretches itself over the evening, Rick’s routine is to come
home, change clothes and dive into the work of preparing the yard.
Tonight he asks Diane about her day as he sheds his work shirt. He
reaches for a cotton T-shirt he’s set on the bed and her gaze falls on
one sculpted shoulder.
The house is empty, she thinks. I could take down your fly
with my teeth. We could bang the headboard. But she doesn’t suggest anything. She wants it to be his idea.
Rick runs a hand through her hair, pecks her on the forehead, and leaves her side. She hears him take a beer from the fridge
before heading outside.
Dinner will be broiled chicken and salad and rolls and
margarine. It comes together easily as Diane treats herself to a couple of gulps of white wine that has been open in the refrigerator a
little too long. The chicken goes on the platter, and the platter goes
on the table, and Diane thinks about how she should skip the rolls
and probably won’t. She has put on weight, just a little, but it has
settled oddly. Saddlebags! It seems it has begun, that downward
slide everyone promised would come when she turned thirty-five
but didn’t. She was not especially worried when she turned thirty-
She is about to call Rick to come in for dinner when he
emerges through the sliding glass door, his left hand cradled in his
right. He studies the hand, pressing it hard. There’s blood on his
palm. What has he done to himself now?
Rick is reckless in his domestic chores. He is forever earning blisters and calluses, skinning his shins and hammering his
thumb. He once lost his balance while trimming a maple for a
neighbor. Next he knew, he was on the ground, and his chainsaw
was inches away, buzzing maniacally. The story gets funnier and
more self-deprecating every time Rick tells it, but Diane refuses to
be amused. More than once, Diane has been at parties and dinner
tables where she alone refuses to laugh at Rick’s tale.
“What did you do to yourself?”
They look each other in the eye for a quick moment. “Are
you sure?” Diane asks. “That it was a garter, I mean?”
Rick goes to the sink and turns on the faucet. He squints
at his hand as he holds it under the stream. As the blood washes
away, his palm reveals small marks where teeth have pulled skin
away.
“We don’t have poisonous snakes around here, if that’s
what you mean.” Rick says this with confidence, a quality she has
always loved about him. He whips out reassurances like Daddy
Warbucks peeling twenties from a wad, and Diane counts on him
to be right, even when her own faith is shaky. Especially then.
“I thought there were copperheads in Ohio,” Diane says.
She tries to sound casual, but she knows there are copperheads in
Ohio. At the junior high science fair, she won third place for her diorama on reptiles of the state.
But Rick laughs. “I was a Boy Scout, babe,” he says. “This
was no copperhead.”
“What did it look like?”
Rick has wrapped a dish towel around his hand now.
“Well, it had big black diamonds on its
back, and long fangs and it wore a hat
with a skull and crossbones, but I saw
through the ruse.”
Diane puts her hands on her hips. “I’m
calling Eric.”
“No, Diane,” Rick says, his
voice quiet and very calm. “I don’t need
you to bother Eric. No one has ever
died from an encounter with a garter snake. Eric would tell you that, if we
called him, but we’re not calling him.”
Eric Wilks has an urgent care
clinic in town. He and his wife, Susan,
are good friends, which Rick usually mentions on occasions that Diane
is inclined to seek Eric’s free medical
counsel.
“OK, then I’ll drive you to the
hospital,” Diane says.
“Diane,” Rick says. “I don’t need a hospital. This is
nothing.”
But he’s standing with a dishtowel around his hand, and
Diane is growing annoyed with Rick’s determination to be cavalier.
“Well, you can let me call Eric. Or you can let me take you to the
E.R. Or we can fight about it all night. Those are your choices, because you tell me you were bit by a snake, and normal people seek
medical help for such things.”
Diane watches Rick watching her. She doesn’t care
The past arrives
every other
weekend in
a rusted
El Camino.
“Shithead bit me,” Rick says, startling Diane. He seldom
swears.
“Let me see.” Diane takes Rick’s hand in hers and checks
out the raking wounds. It looks like he’s been cutting roses without
gloves.
“What was it?”
Rick sighs. “Garter snake, I guess. There was rock I
thought would be nice for your garden, and I went to pick it up.
Thing was in the weeds right. I never saw it till its mouth was on my
hand.”
07
08
M
U
S
E
M
SNAKEBITE
five, because Rick was already forty-five, and she assumed she
would always feel young by virtue of being younger than he was.
But now Diane is thirty-eight, and coffee suddenly gives her heartburn, and her jeans feel snug in strange places, and her ex-husband
refuses to move away or find a girlfriend or obtain lucrative employment or just take a very long road trip and get out of her hair.
15
07
08
M
M
U
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16
It is good to hear him say that. Poisonous snakes had fangs
– Diane suddenly remembers that.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Rick tells Eric, and when Diane
mouths, “what?” but Rick is listening to Eric.
“Yes,” Rick says. “No, I get it. Do me a favor, talk to Diane
for a second, will you?”
Diane takes the phone.
“Hey, Eric. Sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” Eric says. “With a snakebite, obviously, you
want to be certain the snake’s not venomous. He sounds sure, and
you’d see a different kind of wound if it were. Just wash it up good.
Rick says he got a tetanus shot last year, so that makes things easier,
otherwise I would have had you haul him down here.”
Eric’s voice gives Diane a slow, warm feeling of calm.
If they ever have a real medical emergency, she wants Eric there.
Mostly, though, she wants never to have a real medical emergency.
“I feel like an idiot for making him call,” she says.
“Don’t,” Eric says. “Better to be safe. Even a garter can
cause an allergic reaction, so if you see anything like that you can
give him some Benadryl.”
The call ends, and Diane goes off to find Rick, who’s in the
bathroom, squirting anti-biotic spray on the wound. “Thanks for
humoring me,” she says.
Rick looks at her, tilts his head and gives her a little smile.
“No, you were right,” he says. He picks a hand towel off the counter
and presses it against his palm. When he lifts it again, they both can
see that the wounded area looks angry, and hives have begun to lift
the skin on his wrist.
Over dinner, Rick washes two Benadryl down with a beer while
Diane cuts her chicken and tells him a new story from the little upscale diner on the main drag in Houston Falls, where she is day
manager with a 30-percent stake. Between the staff and the customers, she accumulates a story a day, some better than others.
She has been keeping a notebook on them ever since the day Rick
walked in and asked for a table for one. Diane, working hostess,
told him, “I’m sorry, sir, a table for two is the best I can offer,” and
Rick gave her his shy grin and said, “Better still.” There was something grown-up and sure about Rick that woke her. Kenny – perpetually childish and aimless – didn’t survive her hunger for a
full-grown man.
“So this couple comes in. I think they were from Austria.
Maybe Germany,” Diane says. “I’m thinking tourists, but then again
if you lived in Europe, would you come to Ohio?”
Rick studies his dinner role and begins a deliberate
buttering.
she’s got
this black
dress with
a deep V,
you know,
plunge. I
swear, she
looks like
she just
popped
out of the
opera box.
“He’s a nice old gent,” Diane continues, “and he helps his wife with
her coat. She’s tall, maybe two or three inches taller than him, and
she’s all decked out. She’s got this mound of really white hair, all
done up. And she’s wearing these black dangly earrings, totally
over-the-top for the situation.”
Rick nods and chews slowly.
“The coat comes off, and he goes to hang it up, and
she’s standing there with her hair and her earrings and green eye
shadow, and she’s got this black dress with a deep V, you know,
plunge. I swear, she looks like she just popped out of the opera box.
Now, she’s probably 75 if she’s a day, tall and slender, but the whole
picture is way, way too much. All the customers are staring at this
gal, and I thought Jerri was going to drop her tray when she laid
eyes on her.
“So I take them to Four, the table by the flower box, and
they both sit down and he thanks me, smiles, and she’s not saying
much. And then I look over, and she’s got this big peek-a-boo thing
going on.”
Rick looks up quizzically.
Diane giggles.
“Her right breast has done
this sort of slip toward the middle,
right? It’s hanging there, nipple and
all, and she’s completely oblivious. I
can’t help myself, and I sort of blurt
out, ‘Oh, dear.’ But she has no idea.
And just as I’m thinking, they’re
going to sit here for an hour with
this old bird’s boob hanging out,
her husband leans over the table
and tucks it back into the dress, just
as casually as if he were fixing her
collar. Then he looks up and says to
me, in his little accent, ‘Soup before
sweets, right?’ ”
“Good God,” Rick says.
“That’s one for the book.”
The two of them share a fantasy that some day Diane will put her
diner stories together in a collection,
but whereas Diane thinks it’s too
pie-in-the-sky, Rick presses the notion with the seriousness of a person
who sees his ideas carried out.
“How’s your hand?” she asks.
Half of his chicken is untouched.
“Feels OK.” If his hand looks no
better than before, it’s no worse, either.
“You all right, Rick?” She walks around to him and puts
her hand on his shoulder. His T-shirt is soft and the muscle under
it is hard. It makes her want to hold him.
“Little woozy from the Benadryl,” he says.
“And the beer. Nice combo.”
She circles the table and sits down again. She holds her
breath, hesitant to say what she’s about to say, then exhales loudly.
“Kenny’s in trouble again. He asked me for help.”
Any mention of Kenny makes Diane feels as if she is tainting her life with Rick, and yet she cannot help it. She’s embarrassed
by Kenny’s immaturity. And still he is human, and not a terrible father. He adores Emma. How far can she let him slide without helping? Without trying, at least?
Rick nods. He’s unsurprised by the news. “How much
trouble is Kenny in, exactly?”
“Three months behind on rent.” Diane clears her throat.
“They’ve threatened eviction, but he thinks they’d roll over if he
paid up.”
Again, Rick nods, but Diane is looking at her dinner plate.
This is the fourth time in two years that she has asked Rick to help
Kenny. She always expects indignance. She’s pretty sure she would
be indignant, if she were Rick.
“I’m wondering,” Rick says.
“Yes ...?”
“If it would be cheaper for us to, you know, just adopt him.”
Diane snaps her head up. Rick wears a weary grin.
“We don’t have to decide now,” she says.
“I’d do anything for you and Emma,” Rick says.
“I know.”
“But you know I’m really sick of bailing this guy out.” He
says this as lightly as possible, and still it stirs a thread of anger in
Diane. Of course he’s sick of it, she thinks. Everyone is sick of it.
Even Kenny would be sick of it, if he had the ordinary God-given
allotment of pride.
“You don’t have to, Rick,” Diane says. She works to keep
her tone neutral. “You can say no. It’s your money.”
And it is his money. She lives a better life now all around,
flush in love and in material assets, but the latter is something he
brought to their marriage, and she is never able to forget it.
“It’s our money, Diane. It’s about our future. We just have
to decide how much of it we’re willing to flush. You can write him a
check tomorrow, if you want. But sooner or later you’ve got to pick,
you know? Which marriage gets the resources, your old one or your
new one?”
And suddenly Diane is mad at everyone: herself, Kenny,
and at Rick.
“You didn’t really say that,” she says. “You’re not really suggesting I still have feelings for Kenny, right?”
07
08
M
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M
whether he can be persuaded that he needs help. It matters only
that he knows he can’t win this debate.
“Fine,” Rick says. “I’ll call Eric.”
She stands by as Rick dials Eric at home, only to be told
by Susan that he’s still at the clinic. Rick tries again, on the cell this
time. After a few seconds he is apologizing and promising to keep
the call short.
“Don’t worry, I don’t need medical advice, just some marital intervention,” Rick says. He laughs, and then tells Diane, “He
says he’d rather give medical advice.”
Rick holds the phone up with his good hand hugging the
towel-wrapped palm to his chest. “A garter snake took a little nibble at me while I was doing some yard work. Anything I need to
worry about?”
Diane puts the cap on the bottle of olive oil while she’s
watches Rick, listening hard. She can hear Eric’s voice in a kind of
muddle through the receiver, but she can’t make out his words.
After a moment, Rick says, “I’m 99.5 percent sure it was a garter.
Definitely wasn’t anything lethal. Bled a little, but there were no
fangs.”
17
07
08
M
M
U
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16
It is good to hear him say that. Poisonous snakes had fangs
– Diane suddenly remembers that.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Rick tells Eric, and when Diane
mouths, “what?” but Rick is listening to Eric.
“Yes,” Rick says. “No, I get it. Do me a favor, talk to Diane
for a second, will you?”
Diane takes the phone.
“Hey, Eric. Sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” Eric says. “With a snakebite, obviously, you
want to be certain the snake’s not venomous. He sounds sure, and
you’d see a different kind of wound if it were. Just wash it up good.
Rick says he got a tetanus shot last year, so that makes things easier,
otherwise I would have had you haul him down here.”
Eric’s voice gives Diane a slow, warm feeling of calm.
If they ever have a real medical emergency, she wants Eric there.
Mostly, though, she wants never to have a real medical emergency.
“I feel like an idiot for making him call,” she says.
“Don’t,” Eric says. “Better to be safe. Even a garter can
cause an allergic reaction, so if you see anything like that you can
give him some Benadryl.”
The call ends, and Diane goes off to find Rick, who’s in the
bathroom, squirting anti-biotic spray on the wound. “Thanks for
humoring me,” she says.
Rick looks at her, tilts his head and gives her a little smile.
“No, you were right,” he says. He picks a hand towel off the counter
and presses it against his palm. When he lifts it again, they both can
see that the wounded area looks angry, and hives have begun to lift
the skin on his wrist.
Over dinner, Rick washes two Benadryl down with a beer while
Diane cuts her chicken and tells him a new story from the little upscale diner on the main drag in Houston Falls, where she is day
manager with a 30-percent stake. Between the staff and the customers, she accumulates a story a day, some better than others.
She has been keeping a notebook on them ever since the day Rick
walked in and asked for a table for one. Diane, working hostess,
told him, “I’m sorry, sir, a table for two is the best I can offer,” and
Rick gave her his shy grin and said, “Better still.” There was something grown-up and sure about Rick that woke her. Kenny – perpetually childish and aimless – didn’t survive her hunger for a
full-grown man.
“So this couple comes in. I think they were from Austria.
Maybe Germany,” Diane says. “I’m thinking tourists, but then again
if you lived in Europe, would you come to Ohio?”
Rick studies his dinner role and begins a deliberate
buttering.
she’s got
this black
dress with
a deep V,
you know,
plunge. I
swear, she
looks like
she just
popped
out of the
opera box.
“He’s a nice old gent,” Diane continues, “and he helps his wife with
her coat. She’s tall, maybe two or three inches taller than him, and
she’s all decked out. She’s got this mound of really white hair, all
done up. And she’s wearing these black dangly earrings, totally
over-the-top for the situation.”
Rick nods and chews slowly.
“The coat comes off, and he goes to hang it up, and
she’s standing there with her hair and her earrings and green eye
shadow, and she’s got this black dress with a deep V, you know,
plunge. I swear, she looks like she just popped out of the opera box.
Now, she’s probably 75 if she’s a day, tall and slender, but the whole
picture is way, way too much. All the customers are staring at this
gal, and I thought Jerri was going to drop her tray when she laid
eyes on her.
“So I take them to Four, the table by the flower box, and
they both sit down and he thanks me, smiles, and she’s not saying
much. And then I look over, and she’s got this big peek-a-boo thing
going on.”
Rick looks up quizzically.
Diane giggles.
“Her right breast has done
this sort of slip toward the middle,
right? It’s hanging there, nipple and
all, and she’s completely oblivious. I
can’t help myself, and I sort of blurt
out, ‘Oh, dear.’ But she has no idea.
And just as I’m thinking, they’re
going to sit here for an hour with
this old bird’s boob hanging out,
her husband leans over the table
and tucks it back into the dress, just
as casually as if he were fixing her
collar. Then he looks up and says to
me, in his little accent, ‘Soup before
sweets, right?’ ”
“Good God,” Rick says.
“That’s one for the book.”
The two of them share a fantasy that some day Diane will put her
diner stories together in a collection,
but whereas Diane thinks it’s too
pie-in-the-sky, Rick presses the notion with the seriousness of a person
who sees his ideas carried out.
“How’s your hand?” she asks.
Half of his chicken is untouched.
“Feels OK.” If his hand looks no
better than before, it’s no worse, either.
“You all right, Rick?” She walks around to him and puts
her hand on his shoulder. His T-shirt is soft and the muscle under
it is hard. It makes her want to hold him.
“Little woozy from the Benadryl,” he says.
“And the beer. Nice combo.”
She circles the table and sits down again. She holds her
breath, hesitant to say what she’s about to say, then exhales loudly.
“Kenny’s in trouble again. He asked me for help.”
Any mention of Kenny makes Diane feels as if she is tainting her life with Rick, and yet she cannot help it. She’s embarrassed
by Kenny’s immaturity. And still he is human, and not a terrible father. He adores Emma. How far can she let him slide without helping? Without trying, at least?
Rick nods. He’s unsurprised by the news. “How much
trouble is Kenny in, exactly?”
“Three months behind on rent.” Diane clears her throat.
“They’ve threatened eviction, but he thinks they’d roll over if he
paid up.”
Again, Rick nods, but Diane is looking at her dinner plate.
This is the fourth time in two years that she has asked Rick to help
Kenny. She always expects indignance. She’s pretty sure she would
be indignant, if she were Rick.
“I’m wondering,” Rick says.
“Yes ...?”
“If it would be cheaper for us to, you know, just adopt him.”
Diane snaps her head up. Rick wears a weary grin.
“We don’t have to decide now,” she says.
“I’d do anything for you and Emma,” Rick says.
“I know.”
“But you know I’m really sick of bailing this guy out.” He
says this as lightly as possible, and still it stirs a thread of anger in
Diane. Of course he’s sick of it, she thinks. Everyone is sick of it.
Even Kenny would be sick of it, if he had the ordinary God-given
allotment of pride.
“You don’t have to, Rick,” Diane says. She works to keep
her tone neutral. “You can say no. It’s your money.”
And it is his money. She lives a better life now all around,
flush in love and in material assets, but the latter is something he
brought to their marriage, and she is never able to forget it.
“It’s our money, Diane. It’s about our future. We just have
to decide how much of it we’re willing to flush. You can write him a
check tomorrow, if you want. But sooner or later you’ve got to pick,
you know? Which marriage gets the resources, your old one or your
new one?”
And suddenly Diane is mad at everyone: herself, Kenny,
and at Rick.
“You didn’t really say that,” she says. “You’re not really suggesting I still have feelings for Kenny, right?”
07
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whether he can be persuaded that he needs help. It matters only
that he knows he can’t win this debate.
“Fine,” Rick says. “I’ll call Eric.”
She stands by as Rick dials Eric at home, only to be told
by Susan that he’s still at the clinic. Rick tries again, on the cell this
time. After a few seconds he is apologizing and promising to keep
the call short.
“Don’t worry, I don’t need medical advice, just some marital intervention,” Rick says. He laughs, and then tells Diane, “He
says he’d rather give medical advice.”
Rick holds the phone up with his good hand hugging the
towel-wrapped palm to his chest. “A garter snake took a little nibble at me while I was doing some yard work. Anything I need to
worry about?”
Diane puts the cap on the bottle of olive oil while she’s
watches Rick, listening hard. She can hear Eric’s voice in a kind of
muddle through the receiver, but she can’t make out his words.
After a moment, Rick says, “I’m 99.5 percent sure it was a garter.
Definitely wasn’t anything lethal. Bled a little, but there were no
fangs.”
17
“The snake. Did you kill it?”
Rick holds up a finger on his good hand, wagging. “Nope,”
he says. “But I gave it a very stern talking-to.”
07
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18
The dishwasher hums. It seems to take a long time to move through
its cycle. It is after midnight, and Diane lies in bed. Next to her, Rick
snorts raggedly every third breath. Although their bedroom is on
the second floor, the dishwasher downstairs is keeping her awake.
It came with the house, which came after she married Rick, who
came only a little while after she divorced Kenny.
When they were married, Kenny did the dishes. He was
working then, selling Chevys and doing all right, but he didn’t like
to put money into practical things, so instead of buying a dishwasher, as Diane would have done, he washed dishes by hand, every
night. It was one of many things about him that seemed charming
before everything turned; before she saw that she was married to a
ridiculous, overgrown child. Once a year he took their meager savings and bought the two of them four nights in Vegas, where Kenny
would lose $1,000 at blackjack. Diane would bring a stack of books
to read by the pool and argue with herself over whether Kenny was
too fixed on fun or she wasn’t fun enough. At night they’d drink
to dizziness and sweat up the hotel-room bed with vacation abandon, but in the mornings, she could see that Kenny was at peak fulfillment and it made Diane want to cry. They did this for years right
up until the time Emma was born, after which he took to going
with one his buddies from work.
The house falls silent again, and cool air curls in through
the window, which Rick leaves open a crack in every kind of
weather. Diane drifts off for ten minutes or so before her eyes fly
open and she realizes that the dishwasher has finished its noise, and
that the abrupt silence has awakened her.
Or has it?
There is something else, something that tugs at her from
behind her sternum. It’s not quite a pain as much as a bit of unfamiliar pressure, and she wonders if she has been sleeping in an
odd position. She rolls to her right. Rick, too, lies on his right side.
In the dark, she can see only a vague lump of him under the sheet.
They are separated spoons. The sensation in her chest does not respond to her shift, so she flops onto her back again.
She has begun to hate her body for all kinds of new reasons.
She read a book once called “The Gratitude Diet” that
promised readers relief from common afflictions if they followed
a regimen of prayer and healthy eating. Every day they were to
begin with a meditation during which they thanked each and every
body part for the work it did on its owners’ behalf. The book included heartfelt anecdotes about the less fortunate. The paraplegic thought not of her inert legs, but gave thanks for the powerful
muscles she’d developed in her arms. The diabetic sent gratitude
to God for the skin that accepted his insulin injections. There was
something to it, Diane thought at the time. If you were busy remembering to be grateful, what time would you have for a cookie
craving?
But Diane is out of the habit of being grateful, or maybe
she is just no longer in the mood. Maybe she shouldn’t be angry at
her heart, her “steadfast life companion,” as the book calls it, but
right now there’s a worrisome pressure in her chest. How much
gratitude does she owe her heart? She imagines it exploding, pictures the tissue tearing away and sees the bloody spray, and the very
idea turns what has been pressure into pain.
Diane suddenly sits straight up in bed. Beside her, Rick’s
breath has gone quiet. He still lies on his side, but now he is noiseless, and unresponsive to her sudden movement. It is a blessing and
a curse, the way he can sleep like the dead. In the morning, if she
is alive to tell him about her middle-of-the-night heart attack that
will have turned out to be nothing, he will say, “You should have
woken me up.” He says this whenever she complains of insomnia
or a headache that woke her or a dream that startled her and needs
to be shaken off. He always tells her she should have woken him up,
but she never does.
Besides, she tells herself now, she cannot be having a heart
attack. She might not be young, but she’s young enough. This is a
classic anxiety attack. She’s almost sure of it.
The wood floor is cool against her bare feet when she
stands. She picks her robe off a chair in the corner and wraps herself up in terrycloth. She is trembling and she pulls the belt into a
loose tie. There is something wrong with her, she knows. Then: No,
there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with my
heart. This is stupid, I’m being neurotic, and I will simply get up
and distract myself until I calm down.
For a while, she tries to clean.
The table in the family room has draws full of junk. She
has been meaning to organize them anyway. She pulls one open
and finds all manner of detritus: Emma’s old watercolor sets, a deck
of cards, leaky ballpoint pens and a box of matches. And then, in
the back, Diane finds a half-empty pack of three-year-old cigarettes. She had hidden them from herself during the time she was
quitting. She shakes one from the pack and tests it between her
Diane is out of the habit
of being gra teful, or
maybe she is just no
longer in the mood.
lips. Stale as it is, the aged whiff of unlit tobacco sweeps her back
to her other life. She and Kenny didn’t have common interests, but
they smoked a lot. They smoked together and they drank some,
and it took a while for Diane to figure out that a fresh pack of cigarettes and a night at the bar more or less represented the height
of his aspirations. Sometimes, in the aftermath of their divorce,
Diane would run into an acquaintance who would want to know
what split them up, and sometimes she would tell the truth: that all
Kenny wanted to do was have a good time.
Saying it out loud always made her feel like an asshole. Like a climber.
The pain in her chest is pulsing. It is not going away, and
Diane suddenly does not feel like cleaning. She shoves the debris
back into the drawer. She wants her body to calm down, and to behave, but it is becoming difficult not to at least consider calling 91-1. If she is having a heart attack, these are the critical minutes, the
moments that might determine whether she lives or dies.
And yet she does not expect to die. She is supposed to be
the lucky one. Kenny is the mope. It is an unkind thing to think, but
it has turned out to be true.
Six months after their divorce was final, Kenny lost his
first job – the best job he had ever had or would have for the foreseeable future. He took part-time work at Wal-Mart the week
Diane and Jack and Emma bought the house and the land. The first
time Kenny came there to pick up Emma, he offered to be their
“fuckin’ butler.” He said this as goodnaturedly as it was possible to
say it.
Diane returns to their bedroom. She almost notices the
startling silence, except that she can’t because the pressure has returned and is gathering over her chest and shoulders. She leaves
on her robe as she climbs back into bed. In a moment, she will
have to wake him. She doesn’t want to call a dispatcher and mobilize the emergency systems in the middle of the night. The thought
of whirling red lights and gurneys and sirens is too unbearable to
manage. Maybe everyone who has ever called for an ambulance in
the middle of the night has asked that the drivers leave off the lights
and sirens, but Diane knows – though she doesn’t know how she
knows – that this is not a matter of the customer’s choice. The commotion is a requirement, just one more element in a turn of events
no one ever asked for.
So she will not call for an ambulance. She pictures herself placing her hand on Rick’s shoulder and jostling him. She will
tell him she’s not feeling well. He’ll sit up and rub his eyes, ask her
what’s wrong, and she will explain the pain and the pressure, describe the chill that is overtaking her from deep in her cells. They
will drive to the hospital and endure the protocols of the emergency room, and Kenny will keep her calm while the medical professionals rush around her.
04
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A light dims in Rick’s smiling eyes. He lets a silent moment
linger, then quietly tells her, “No, Diane. I wasn’t suggesting that.”
The conversation has gotten away from her. Somehow she
has let Kenny slip in and mess around with her good love. She is furious with herself, and feels suddenly desperate to fix things with
Rick. “Good. So we’ll tell him he has to go somewhere else for help
this time,” she says.
Rick nods. “That’s an option.” He puts his balled-up napkin on the table and says, “I think I’ll watch a little TV in bed.”
She knows he’s tired, and tired of the conversation. He means only
to put the issue to rest now, and yet she hates that he seems willing to leave her on brittle terms, to let a coolness slip into their bed
tonight.
And suddenly she remembers that she meant to ask him
something. “Rick?” Diane says. “What happened to it?”
“To what?”
19
“The snake. Did you kill it?”
Rick holds up a finger on his good hand, wagging. “Nope,”
he says. “But I gave it a very stern talking-to.”
07
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18
The dishwasher hums. It seems to take a long time to move through
its cycle. It is after midnight, and Diane lies in bed. Next to her, Rick
snorts raggedly every third breath. Although their bedroom is on
the second floor, the dishwasher downstairs is keeping her awake.
It came with the house, which came after she married Rick, who
came only a little while after she divorced Kenny.
When they were married, Kenny did the dishes. He was
working then, selling Chevys and doing all right, but he didn’t like
to put money into practical things, so instead of buying a dishwasher, as Diane would have done, he washed dishes by hand, every
night. It was one of many things about him that seemed charming
before everything turned; before she saw that she was married to a
ridiculous, overgrown child. Once a year he took their meager savings and bought the two of them four nights in Vegas, where Kenny
would lose $1,000 at blackjack. Diane would bring a stack of books
to read by the pool and argue with herself over whether Kenny was
too fixed on fun or she wasn’t fun enough. At night they’d drink
to dizziness and sweat up the hotel-room bed with vacation abandon, but in the mornings, she could see that Kenny was at peak fulfillment and it made Diane want to cry. They did this for years right
up until the time Emma was born, after which he took to going
with one his buddies from work.
The house falls silent again, and cool air curls in through
the window, which Rick leaves open a crack in every kind of
weather. Diane drifts off for ten minutes or so before her eyes fly
open and she realizes that the dishwasher has finished its noise, and
that the abrupt silence has awakened her.
Or has it?
There is something else, something that tugs at her from
behind her sternum. It’s not quite a pain as much as a bit of unfamiliar pressure, and she wonders if she has been sleeping in an
odd position. She rolls to her right. Rick, too, lies on his right side.
In the dark, she can see only a vague lump of him under the sheet.
They are separated spoons. The sensation in her chest does not respond to her shift, so she flops onto her back again.
She has begun to hate her body for all kinds of new reasons.
She read a book once called “The Gratitude Diet” that
promised readers relief from common afflictions if they followed
a regimen of prayer and healthy eating. Every day they were to
begin with a meditation during which they thanked each and every
body part for the work it did on its owners’ behalf. The book included heartfelt anecdotes about the less fortunate. The paraplegic thought not of her inert legs, but gave thanks for the powerful
muscles she’d developed in her arms. The diabetic sent gratitude
to God for the skin that accepted his insulin injections. There was
something to it, Diane thought at the time. If you were busy remembering to be grateful, what time would you have for a cookie
craving?
But Diane is out of the habit of being grateful, or maybe
she is just no longer in the mood. Maybe she shouldn’t be angry at
her heart, her “steadfast life companion,” as the book calls it, but
right now there’s a worrisome pressure in her chest. How much
gratitude does she owe her heart? She imagines it exploding, pictures the tissue tearing away and sees the bloody spray, and the very
idea turns what has been pressure into pain.
Diane suddenly sits straight up in bed. Beside her, Rick’s
breath has gone quiet. He still lies on his side, but now he is noiseless, and unresponsive to her sudden movement. It is a blessing and
a curse, the way he can sleep like the dead. In the morning, if she
is alive to tell him about her middle-of-the-night heart attack that
will have turned out to be nothing, he will say, “You should have
woken me up.” He says this whenever she complains of insomnia
or a headache that woke her or a dream that startled her and needs
to be shaken off. He always tells her she should have woken him up,
but she never does.
Besides, she tells herself now, she cannot be having a heart
attack. She might not be young, but she’s young enough. This is a
classic anxiety attack. She’s almost sure of it.
The wood floor is cool against her bare feet when she
stands. She picks her robe off a chair in the corner and wraps herself up in terrycloth. She is trembling and she pulls the belt into a
loose tie. There is something wrong with her, she knows. Then: No,
there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with my
heart. This is stupid, I’m being neurotic, and I will simply get up
and distract myself until I calm down.
For a while, she tries to clean.
The table in the family room has draws full of junk. She
has been meaning to organize them anyway. She pulls one open
and finds all manner of detritus: Emma’s old watercolor sets, a deck
of cards, leaky ballpoint pens and a box of matches. And then, in
the back, Diane finds a half-empty pack of three-year-old cigarettes. She had hidden them from herself during the time she was
quitting. She shakes one from the pack and tests it between her
Diane is out of the habit
of being gra teful, or
maybe she is just no
longer in the mood.
lips. Stale as it is, the aged whiff of unlit tobacco sweeps her back
to her other life. She and Kenny didn’t have common interests, but
they smoked a lot. They smoked together and they drank some,
and it took a while for Diane to figure out that a fresh pack of cigarettes and a night at the bar more or less represented the height
of his aspirations. Sometimes, in the aftermath of their divorce,
Diane would run into an acquaintance who would want to know
what split them up, and sometimes she would tell the truth: that all
Kenny wanted to do was have a good time.
Saying it out loud always made her feel like an asshole. Like a climber.
The pain in her chest is pulsing. It is not going away, and
Diane suddenly does not feel like cleaning. She shoves the debris
back into the drawer. She wants her body to calm down, and to behave, but it is becoming difficult not to at least consider calling 91-1. If she is having a heart attack, these are the critical minutes, the
moments that might determine whether she lives or dies.
And yet she does not expect to die. She is supposed to be
the lucky one. Kenny is the mope. It is an unkind thing to think, but
it has turned out to be true.
Six months after their divorce was final, Kenny lost his
first job – the best job he had ever had or would have for the foreseeable future. He took part-time work at Wal-Mart the week
Diane and Jack and Emma bought the house and the land. The first
time Kenny came there to pick up Emma, he offered to be their
“fuckin’ butler.” He said this as goodnaturedly as it was possible to
say it.
Diane returns to their bedroom. She almost notices the
startling silence, except that she can’t because the pressure has returned and is gathering over her chest and shoulders. She leaves
on her robe as she climbs back into bed. In a moment, she will
have to wake him. She doesn’t want to call a dispatcher and mobilize the emergency systems in the middle of the night. The thought
of whirling red lights and gurneys and sirens is too unbearable to
manage. Maybe everyone who has ever called for an ambulance in
the middle of the night has asked that the drivers leave off the lights
and sirens, but Diane knows – though she doesn’t know how she
knows – that this is not a matter of the customer’s choice. The commotion is a requirement, just one more element in a turn of events
no one ever asked for.
So she will not call for an ambulance. She pictures herself placing her hand on Rick’s shoulder and jostling him. She will
tell him she’s not feeling well. He’ll sit up and rub his eyes, ask her
what’s wrong, and she will explain the pain and the pressure, describe the chill that is overtaking her from deep in her cells. They
will drive to the hospital and endure the protocols of the emergency room, and Kenny will keep her calm while the medical professionals rush around her.
04
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A light dims in Rick’s smiling eyes. He lets a silent moment
linger, then quietly tells her, “No, Diane. I wasn’t suggesting that.”
The conversation has gotten away from her. Somehow she
has let Kenny slip in and mess around with her good love. She is furious with herself, and feels suddenly desperate to fix things with
Rick. “Good. So we’ll tell him he has to go somewhere else for help
this time,” she says.
Rick nods. “That’s an option.” He puts his balled-up napkin on the table and says, “I think I’ll watch a little TV in bed.”
She knows he’s tired, and tired of the conversation. He means only
to put the issue to rest now, and yet she hates that he seems willing to leave her on brittle terms, to let a coolness slip into their bed
tonight.
And suddenly she remembers that she meant to ask him
something. “Rick?” Diane says. “What happened to it?”
“To what?”
19
Kenny sat next to her while Emma’s cries settled into
whimpers, and let his thigh fall against hers and Diane let it rest
there. She let herself feel his plain, boyish physicality, the stuff that
had snared her at the start, and she tried not to listen he began
to say the predictable things about Rick. He knew guys like that,
Kenny said, guys who would hit on other men’s wives. Diane didn’t
think of Rick as “one of those guys.” On paper, Kenny should have
been one of them, though in truth he’d been only loyal to her in
their years together. Diane sat with Emma draped across her lap,
whispering, “ssshhh” to both of them, to Kenny and Emma, but
Emma kept up with little sobs and Kenny kept talking.
“You think that asshole is going to save you because he’s
rich, but he can’t, Diane. Money doesn’t save you when Moneybags
is gone,” he said. Then he laughed. “And my friends always thought
you were too deep for me.”
Emma stopped crying just in time for Diane to raise her
voice. “I didn’t leave you because of Rick, Kenny. I left because of you.”
A white-haired couple stared at her from their chairs
across the room. Emma got five stitches that night.
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20
The room is cold. Her fingers are tingling as she pulls the chain
on the lamp at her bedside. The walls glow orange. She turns to
Rick, and feels a surge of fear at the sight of him, still turned away
from her as he was an hour ago. The light won’t wake him, it never
would, but it should disturb him. She waits for a mumble, or for
Rick to roll on his back. And still he lies. He lies still.
She whispers his name once, then tries it louder, but it
comes out like a cough. Nothing. Her chest contracts as she steps
out of the bed and walks around to her husband’s side.
Rick’s face is the color of ash.
His head on his pillow lies inert. His mouth hangs open
in a small O. His right arm is concealed beneath his body, but his
left is resting on his side. The left hand looks all wrong, swollen and
discolored, and it is so alien that she dares to touch it. It is warm,
like a fever, but it gives her courage. She puts three fingers up to
his open mouth and feels slow, slight pulses of warm air. Then she
pushes him hard, and Rick flops over on his back, and Diane says
sternly, “Rick! Rick! Wake up!” but he doesn’t respond. She straddles him, pressing her palms to his cool cheeks. Something inside
her whispers, “Who will save me?” but she shoves the voice away.
Rick’s lips tighten and relax. She’s still on top of him as she
leans over to grab the phone from the nightstand on his side of the
bed, but before she dials she rests an ear against his shirt, that wonderful, soft shirt. The beat that greets her is dim, and very slow, and
she reports this, in her calmest voice, to the woman who finally answers at the other end of Diane’s emergency call.
It is just before three when Diane begins to hear the siren
in the distance. She stands at her bedroom window, tapping one
foot and willing the driver to be faster. Her head swivels from the
window, where she’s watching for the glow of red lights in her
driveway, back to the bed, where Rick still looks as if he might sit up
and give a big yawn. The pain in her chest has not vanished, but it
has fallen into the background. She has forgotten to notice it.
The ambulance hesitates in front of the house, then stops.
It is time to go downstairs and greet the EMTs, but she doesn’t want
to leave. In their bed, her husband lies gray-faced. If she leaves the
room, she thinks, he will vanish. But the front door, of course, is
locked. She has to let the emergency workers in.
She heads out to do it, looking over her shoulder as she goes.
“You stay right here,” she tells her husband. “You stay right here.”
He disobeys.
The ambulance workers give Rick an I.V. They’re not supposed to let Diane ride with them, but she has to go with him to the
hospital and she’s too upset to drive, so she sits in the passenger seat
while two medics communicate briskly but quietly in the back. And
then they are in the hospital, and she is waiting, and signing papers.
She waits and stares unseeing at the television hanging in the cor-
ner of the waiting room.
Not long before the final word comes down, a young man
approaches Diane and introduces himself as a nurse, and asks
Diane if he can call someone for her. There is so much kindness in
his pale, unlined face. Diane didn’t know it was possible for young
men to be this kind. The nurse puts his hand on her shoulder.
“Who can I call for you, hon?” he asks.
Diane coughs a wet cough. “My husband,” she says. “Call
my husband, please?”
The nurse tilts his head in confusion. Then his expression changes to something like pity. He has seen this before, a disconnection with reality in times of fear and trauma. “It’s OK to
wake him,” Diane tells him, and then recites Kenny’s number so the
nurse can make the call.
She puts three fingers up to his
open mouth and feels slow, slight
pulses of warm air.
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Wait. Not Kenny, Rick. Rick will be with her.
She pictured Kenny there so clearly because the only other
time Diane has visited that emergency room it was with Kenny. It
was in the raw days when he had just figured out that Diane wasn’t
simply leaving him but that she was already seeing Rick. Emma was
little then, only three, took a tumble down the stairs at the apartment Diane had rented, and split open her forehead right above
her eye. Diane called Kenny, then pressed a damp rag to her daughter’s head and waited for him to come get them. The three of them
arrived at the emergency room and sat like a regular family, waiting
to be called. Emma was bawling while Diane held her, and Kenny
chose that moment to point out what families did for one another,
how they formed a safety net for troubled times. Diane wanted him
to shut up, but she saw how he was right – more right than even
Kenny knew. Anytime Emma had a problem, or she had a problem
that affected Emma, Kenny would be her go-to man. She saw it so
clearly. The fallacy of divorce was, in that waiting room, suddenly
so obvious.
21
Kenny sat next to her while Emma’s cries settled into
whimpers, and let his thigh fall against hers and Diane let it rest
there. She let herself feel his plain, boyish physicality, the stuff that
had snared her at the start, and she tried not to listen he began
to say the predictable things about Rick. He knew guys like that,
Kenny said, guys who would hit on other men’s wives. Diane didn’t
think of Rick as “one of those guys.” On paper, Kenny should have
been one of them, though in truth he’d been only loyal to her in
their years together. Diane sat with Emma draped across her lap,
whispering, “ssshhh” to both of them, to Kenny and Emma, but
Emma kept up with little sobs and Kenny kept talking.
“You think that asshole is going to save you because he’s
rich, but he can’t, Diane. Money doesn’t save you when Moneybags
is gone,” he said. Then he laughed. “And my friends always thought
you were too deep for me.”
Emma stopped crying just in time for Diane to raise her
voice. “I didn’t leave you because of Rick, Kenny. I left because of you.”
A white-haired couple stared at her from their chairs
across the room. Emma got five stitches that night.
07
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20
The room is cold. Her fingers are tingling as she pulls the chain
on the lamp at her bedside. The walls glow orange. She turns to
Rick, and feels a surge of fear at the sight of him, still turned away
from her as he was an hour ago. The light won’t wake him, it never
would, but it should disturb him. She waits for a mumble, or for
Rick to roll on his back. And still he lies. He lies still.
She whispers his name once, then tries it louder, but it
comes out like a cough. Nothing. Her chest contracts as she steps
out of the bed and walks around to her husband’s side.
Rick’s face is the color of ash.
His head on his pillow lies inert. His mouth hangs open
in a small O. His right arm is concealed beneath his body, but his
left is resting on his side. The left hand looks all wrong, swollen and
discolored, and it is so alien that she dares to touch it. It is warm,
like a fever, but it gives her courage. She puts three fingers up to
his open mouth and feels slow, slight pulses of warm air. Then she
pushes him hard, and Rick flops over on his back, and Diane says
sternly, “Rick! Rick! Wake up!” but he doesn’t respond. She straddles him, pressing her palms to his cool cheeks. Something inside
her whispers, “Who will save me?” but she shoves the voice away.
Rick’s lips tighten and relax. She’s still on top of him as she
leans over to grab the phone from the nightstand on his side of the
bed, but before she dials she rests an ear against his shirt, that wonderful, soft shirt. The beat that greets her is dim, and very slow, and
she reports this, in her calmest voice, to the woman who finally answers at the other end of Diane’s emergency call.
It is just before three when Diane begins to hear the siren
in the distance. She stands at her bedroom window, tapping one
foot and willing the driver to be faster. Her head swivels from the
window, where she’s watching for the glow of red lights in her
driveway, back to the bed, where Rick still looks as if he might sit up
and give a big yawn. The pain in her chest has not vanished, but it
has fallen into the background. She has forgotten to notice it.
The ambulance hesitates in front of the house, then stops.
It is time to go downstairs and greet the EMTs, but she doesn’t want
to leave. In their bed, her husband lies gray-faced. If she leaves the
room, she thinks, he will vanish. But the front door, of course, is
locked. She has to let the emergency workers in.
She heads out to do it, looking over her shoulder as she goes.
“You stay right here,” she tells her husband. “You stay right here.”
He disobeys.
The ambulance workers give Rick an I.V. They’re not supposed to let Diane ride with them, but she has to go with him to the
hospital and she’s too upset to drive, so she sits in the passenger seat
while two medics communicate briskly but quietly in the back. And
then they are in the hospital, and she is waiting, and signing papers.
She waits and stares unseeing at the television hanging in the cor-
ner of the waiting room.
Not long before the final word comes down, a young man
approaches Diane and introduces himself as a nurse, and asks
Diane if he can call someone for her. There is so much kindness in
his pale, unlined face. Diane didn’t know it was possible for young
men to be this kind. The nurse puts his hand on her shoulder.
“Who can I call for you, hon?” he asks.
Diane coughs a wet cough. “My husband,” she says. “Call
my husband, please?”
The nurse tilts his head in confusion. Then his expression changes to something like pity. He has seen this before, a disconnection with reality in times of fear and trauma. “It’s OK to
wake him,” Diane tells him, and then recites Kenny’s number so the
nurse can make the call.
She puts three fingers up to his
open mouth and feels slow, slight
pulses of warm air.
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Wait. Not Kenny, Rick. Rick will be with her.
She pictured Kenny there so clearly because the only other
time Diane has visited that emergency room it was with Kenny. It
was in the raw days when he had just figured out that Diane wasn’t
simply leaving him but that she was already seeing Rick. Emma was
little then, only three, took a tumble down the stairs at the apartment Diane had rented, and split open her forehead right above
her eye. Diane called Kenny, then pressed a damp rag to her daughter’s head and waited for him to come get them. The three of them
arrived at the emergency room and sat like a regular family, waiting
to be called. Emma was bawling while Diane held her, and Kenny
chose that moment to point out what families did for one another,
how they formed a safety net for troubled times. Diane wanted him
to shut up, but she saw how he was right – more right than even
Kenny knew. Anytime Emma had a problem, or she had a problem
that affected Emma, Kenny would be her go-to man. She saw it so
clearly. The fallacy of divorce was, in that waiting room, suddenly
so obvious.
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GARIE WALTZER
TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FORUM
2007
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GARIE WALTZER
TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FORUM
2007
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the William n. skirball Writers Center stage program
is brought to you by the Cuyahoga County PubliC library Foundation and the Plain dealer.
DISTANCE
GRANT BAILIE
announCing the
2008
2009
f o r t i c k e t s c a l l 216 .74 9. 9 4 8 6 o r v i s i t w w w.w r i t e r s c e n t e r s ta g e . o r g
Dav i D mCCul lough
october 21, 20 08
up next
david McCullough, “master of the art of narrative
history,” is a two-time Pulitzer Prize and national
book award winning author and recipient of the
Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s
ohio theatre
highest civilian award. his latest book, 1776 –
a New York Times bestseller – has been called
a
playhouse square
“classic,”
and
his
acclaimed
biography,
John Adams, is now a seven-part mini-series
running on hbo.
ja ne & m iCh a el s t ern
December 2, 20 0 8
young l i t er a ry iCons
Jane and Michael stern are the authors of more
march 3, 20 0 9
than thirty books about america. their column
Colson
Whitehead,
recipient
of
the
Macarthur Foundation “genius award,”
and anisfeld-Wolf award for writing
novels with inventive plots that weave
for Gourmet magazine “roadfood” has won the
James beard award three times. their website,
www.roadfood.com, was named a top site by PC
Magazine and “best of the Web” by Forbes.com.
american folklore and history into the
stories. his titles include The Intuitionist
and Apex Hides the Hurt: A Novel.
Season was adapted into a critically acclaimed film. her second novel,
Wickett’s Remedy was published in 2006.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels, including Motherless
Brooklyn, a national book Critics award winner, and The Fortress of Solitude.
he has also published a novella, two short story collections and a volume
john upDi k e
may 12, 20 0 9
John updike is an american novelist, poet, short
story writer and literary critic. his “rabbit” books,
Rabbit Run and Rabbit Redux, helped establish
him as a leading author of his generation. his
best known titles are The Widows of Eastwick and
of essays.
The Witches of Eastwick. his most recent works
these young authors will be interviewed on stage by nPr commentator and
are Due Considerations and Terrorist.
national book reviewer Nancy Pearl.
sponsors : Cuyahoga County Public library, dollar bank, dominion Foundation, eaton Corporation, Forest City enterprises, inc., Key Private bank,
Margaret Wong & assoc. Co, lPa, Playhouse square Foundation, roetzel & andress, tWist Creative, inc.
partners : Joseph-beth booksellers and the ritz-Carlton
JOE STAVEC
HUMAN CONDITION
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essayist, writer and book reviewer Myla Goldberg’s bestselling novel Bee
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of ar t and
foo
fusion
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S
nd Annual
he Orange Art Center is excited to invite you to our
2nd annual exhibition and benefit, Shall We Dine, the
fusion of art and food. This exhibition will showcase and auction
the works of artists from around our region.
Sunday, September 14, at 5:00pm the fun begins with a
Live and Silent Auction, Amazing Hors D’oeuvres and Wonderful
Wines. Live and silent auction conducted by Bob Hale of Benefit
Auction Services, LLC.
For a list of our participating artists visit our web site at
www.orangeartcenter.com
Please join us for this very special event!
Ticket prices: $50 or $100 (special gift included)
For more information and to purchase your tickets contact Orange Art Center at 216-831-5130
WITCHES AND THIEVES
TERRY DUBOW
The witches
come around
dinnertime when
Dorothy is
watching
television in the
living room.
Her sister is too young to see them, and so she scurries in and out
of the kitchen with an overturned bowl on her head. We call her the
flying monkey.
Evidently the witches come through the windows and walk
through the walls. None of us know for sure. Dorothy greets
them with screams. I’ll be in the kitchen making dinner when the
screams come and that’s when we know that Wicked Witch and her
good sister Glinda are in the living room and they may be staying
for the meal.
When I was sixteen, I kissed the girl who played Dorothy in
the high school play. She was younger than I was and so when I led
her hand down she pulled it back up and told me she wasn’t ready.
Our Dorothy doesn’t respond to her real name much. “Jeanne?”
my wife asks. “Where is Jeanne?”
“She’s gone,” Dorothy tells us. “Gone far away.”
Just about every morning Dorothy begs her mother to let
her wear blue gingham and braids. Her mother sometimes says yes
and sometimes says no.
Her mother and I still kiss and not just
on Saturday nights when we feel each other’s bodies again. One night in bed I ask her
about Jeanne’s witches, and she says that
when she was five she used to do the same
thing.
“That’s supposed to be encouraging?” I
ask, and then I lead her hand down.
We named our newest daughter Julia
after one of her mother’s high school friends
who died just after her freshman year of college. I don’t remember what killed her.
One night last week I was in the kitchen
making dinner. Their mother sat at the
breakfast table reading a brief, a finger of
hair slipping down her forehead and over the
bridge of her glasses. The witches were in
the living room with the girls. “You know,”
I started. “Some day the witches won’t visit
anymore and then what will we do? They’re like free baby sitters.”
Their mother looked up from her papers. “Sam,” she said,
“the witches aren’t going anywhere. In a few years, they’ll be here
for real.” I smiled because I knew what she meant.
She meant that this is what happens to daughters. Their
magic comes, and then they’re mysteries standing on rooftops or
descending in bubbles. They’ll be at our dinner table and then they
won’t, Dorothy becoming Jeanne and Jeanne becoming something
new and Julia alive, I can only hope, and then both of them disappearing and then where will their mother and I be?
I called the girls for dinner, and they both came. Julia first
like a laughing monkey and Dorothy second, busy talking to the
space that the witches occupied.
We sat down and ate, but the witches in the two empty seats
didn’t touch their meals. Dorothy said they’d already eaten.
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Provoke.
Experiment.
AUDRA SKUODAS
PATTERN STRUCTURE AND ARCHETYPE SERIES 2
Engage.
See yourself at SPACES.
Exhibitions featuring local,
national, and international
artists
SPACES World Artists Program>>
International residencies
SPACELab>>
An experimental project space
Innovative programs and events
WBg
William Busta Gallery
Cleveland Ohio
2731 Prospect Avenue
Cleveland OH 44115
[email protected]
216.298.9071
Free and open to the public.
For more information on upcoming exhibitions,
visit www.SPACESgallery.org
Appletree Books
12419 Cedar Rd.
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
216.791.2665
07
08
216.621.2314 www.SPACESgallery.org
M
2220 Superior Viaduct, Cleveland, OH 44113
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R E V I E W
Open and Student competitions for Ohio writers sponsored
by Wick Poetry Center. Full entry guidelines are available at
http://dept.kent.edu/wick. The deadline for submissions to
the Chapbook Competitions is October 31, 2008.
All books published by
TorNado · Ted Lardner
$6.00
“Each line of Tornado sends out a beam that flashes
in the line then bounces like sonar in the reader’s
deeper parts where we keep our beloved dead. . . .
It’s as if Lardner did not write on a keyboard but
with a typewriter ball with images, not letters. . . .
This is a wonderful book.”—Bill Tremblay
SPoTliT Girl · Kevin Oberlin
$6.00
“In sonnets so marvelously subtle and fluid that we
don’t even wake up to the fact that they are sonnets, Kevin Oberlin guides us into the life of a girl
in the spotlight. . . . There’s no chaff here, only a
handful of beautiful, flexible, elastic sonnets written with natural ease.”—Molly Peacock
The Kent State University Press and available for purchase at
www.kentstateuniversitypress.com
Island Writers’ Retreat
Catawba Island, Ohio
Saturday Sept. 20
REAL ESTATE SERVICES
Downtown
Loft/Warehouse Facilities
A day or stimulating workshops & good talk
with fellow writers in a beautiful location.
“Moving Poetry” Maj Ragain
Poet and teacher from Kent State University
“Flash Fiction & the Prose Poem”
Eric Anderson
THE ROY GROUP
(Cleveland)
Bruce D. Madorsky
Craig M. Madorsky
Fiction writer, poet, BGSU Firelands
“Nuts & Bolts of Writing & Publishing”
Rob Smith, Carole Calladine, Larry Smith
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Includes 3 workshops, lunch & dinner
Reservation: Send $50 to
Firelands Writing Center/ BGSU Firelands College
One University Rd./Huron, OH 44839
Contact: Larry Smith at [email protected]
Supported in part by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council
2530 Superior Avenue, Ste. 701
Cleveland, Ohio 44114
Ph: (216) 696-1402
Fx: (216) 696-1028
[email protected]
A TICKET TO RIDE
Paula McLain
SARAH SPHAR
“It was 1973. I was fifteen and Fawn was sixteen and what was there
to do but consult the weatherman and Wella Balsam and the radio
gods? We had memories that seemed built particularly for storing
song lyrics … Here, the songs seemed to be saying. All of this is for
you. You can have it.”
first thought, and that her cousin’s benevolence can turn quickly to
scorn. Tired of alternately seeking to either win Fawn’s approval or escape her mocking attention, Jamie realizes her cousin is a dangerous
chimera, capable of using others either to further her own motives or
save her own skin. When a foolish escapade results in tragedy, Jamie is
So begins Paula McLain’s debut novel, A Ticket to Ride,
set in Moline, Illinois during the summer of 1973. Fifteen-year-old
Jamie, abandoned as a baby by her troubled mother and raised by
ailing grandparents, now lives with her Uncle Raymond, a responsible if distant guardian whose life is a mystery to Jamie.
As the summer begins, Jamie’s beautiful, confident cousin
Fawn Delacorte comes to live with Jamie and Raymond in Moline.
Quiet Jamie is captivated by Fawn’s
worldly ways and
soon submits to her
cousin’s commanding presence, allowing Fawn to dress
her, dictate her
hairstyle and otherwise transform
her. For a time, the
cousins pass the
summer by lying
in the sun, listening to the radio and sneaking out at night – where
Jamie becomes exposed to the world Fawn so comfortably occupies.
McLain has the rare talent of delivering a tale of adolescence laced with equal parts wonder and foreboding, which, of
course, is the way it really feels, especially during a watershed summer when the unknown becomes known. “If you’d have told me
then that by the end of the summer I’d be utterly unfazed by this
sort of landscape, that I’d know what to do with a joint, a condom,
ruined panties, I’d have said you were crazy,” says Jamie during an
early after-dark excursion with Fawn.
As Jamie discovers boys, drinking and drugs, she soon becomes aware that Fawn’s tutelage is not the kind or loving thing she
caught up in Fawn’s schemes, and realizes too late the hazards of letting herself be controlled by her cousin’s powerful personality.
McLain’s novel deftly recreates the complicated dynamics of a teenage female friendship and the endless quality of aimless summer days before children had cell phones and schedules,
before teenhood was merely a time for relentless overachievement.
The author also gives the taciturn Uncle Raymond a rich inner life,
McLain’s novel deftly
recreates the complicated dynamics
of a teenage female
friendship...
alternating his point of view with Jamie’s and bringing the two stories together when Raymond tells Jamie about his sister, her longlost mother Suzette.
The cautionary tales of Fawn and Suzette – both manipulative, given to poor judgment and tragically aware of their beauty
– would seem to paint a grim picture of female opportunity for
the uncertain and high-strung Jamie. “Was there anything sadder
than starting your life?” she wonders at the end of the summer, a
changed young woman no longer filled with hope by popular song
lyrics. In the end, however, Jamie’s decisions are shaped more by
her own certainty than by the uncertainty of others, and that, too,
is how adolescence really feels.
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New in the
Wick Poetry
Chapbook
Series
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
2008-2009 Theatre Season
For ticket information & reservations call
the Fine Arts Box Office 440-951-7500
www.fineartsassociation.org
38660 Mentor Avenue • Willoughby, Ohio 44094
THE LEGACY OF THE SAUCE
August 29 – September 14, 2008
LORI WALD COMPTON
October 3 – 19, 2008
November 7 – 9, 2008

November 28 – December 21, 2008
13th annual




one act
festival
February 27 –
March 15, 2009
April 24 – May 9, 2009
May 29 – June 14, 2009
Be a part of the excitement at
Cleveland Reads’
7th Annual Fundraiser
Sample dynamic wines and robust beers on
July 19, 2008 at the beautiful Shoreby Club in Bratenahl
from 7-10:30p.m. Also enjoy delicious heavy
hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction and spirits table raffle!
Proceeds will strengthen and enhance
literacy in Greater Cleveland.
I believe in
pasta sauce:
I believe in its aroma and its flavor
the last urgent months before her
you’ll get a metallic aftertaste.”
and its power to unite.
own death from pancreatic cancer.
Is it better to know you are going
recipe, along with others for fried
Italian mother-in-law – that would
to die and start the long good-byes
eggplant, meatballs, and chicken
be my second husband’s mother,
or to be taken by surprise, leav-
Parmesan. They all rely on simple
Angela. I married her son after my
ing others to pick up the pieces?
ingredients, a good olive oil, and
first husband died of cancer.
My mother-in-law’s answer was her
an elusive harmony of stirring and
sauce.
simmering.
I learned the recipe from my
“Chop the garlic, at least four
cloves. Heat up the olive oil. Don’t
a partHer
of gravelly
the excitement
at making my children go through
was
forget theBe
onion.”
Cleveland Reads’
another loss in their young lives.
smoker’s voice echoes in my head.
Still, there was no point in hiding
Angela 7th
didn’t Annual
like my beingFundraiser
with
Be a part of the excitement at
to my husband, he says “pretty
good, but not yet.”
I know what he means. I think that
it. The three of them had already
if I can somehow summon the nu-
kitchen, lean her stout body against
watched their father die of can-
ance of flavor, the perfect amount
the counter, and transform the mun-
cer. They had been there before.
of oregano, I will capture something
dane space into a bustle of energy,
“What’s going to happen after you
ephemeral and lost and I’ll taste it
smells, clattering, and sizzling. In
die, Grandma?” my youngest son
between my lips. Some may think
the process, my children became
was not afraid to ask.
that is impossible, but you have
her grandchildren, and her sauce
to believe in the sauce and, as my
became the family standard for all
boil, then reduced it to a simmer.
She brought the sauce to a
“The on
first thing I’ll do,” she said, “is
thingsSample
good. dynamic wines and robust beers
July 19, 2008 at the beautiful Shoreby Club in Bratenahl
from
7-10:30p.m.
Also enjoy delicious
“Pour
in one forty-eight
goheavy
to meet your father.”
hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction and spirits table raffle!
Proceeds
will
strengthen
and
enhance
ounce can of tomatoes. Make sure
“Don’t add the salt, sugar, or
literacy in Greater Cleveland.
mother-in-law would say, not be
stingy with the olive oil.
pepper until the end. It’s okay to
are $90/one, $160/two and include
can be Tickets
seasoned
with Italian basil or add a little oregano, dried or fresh,
all wine, beer, food and valet service.
parsley. That part doesn’t matter.”
Tickets are on sale NOW!! To purchase
tickets or for additional information, call
Cleveland Reads at 216-436-2222
or visit www.clevelandreads.org!
Every time I present my sauce
her son. She would come into my
they’re crushed, not chopped. They
Tickets are $90/one, $160/two and include
all wine, beer, food and valet service.
She couldn’t stand that she
I recorded Angela’s sauce
either is fine. But, you have to be re-
Tickets are on sale NOW!! To purchase
laxed and call
happy while cooking or
She taught me her
sauce
in
tickets
or recipe
for additional
information,
Cleveland Reads at 216-436-2222
or visit www.clevelandreads.org!
Be a part of the excitement at
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