It gapes like a salmon. I open the front door and walk inside, remembering last night’s salmon dinner.
Teresa dumped me last night. She broke the news right after we ate peach cobbler. In my belly, the salmon we baked still feels worse than rat poison.
A cardboard box sits on the kitchen counter. The box is full of Teresa’s kitchen knickknacks. The shelves are bare. I realize how little I own.
The creature opens the door. It hops onto the counter and heats the kettle and says, “Tea.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “The tea’s been packed. It’s on its way out.”The creature, which now looks like a bird with hands, claps its hands and grumbles.
I have never been followed home by a mysterious creature, but I’m sad and lonely and feverish in heartbreak and salmon sickness. “Alright, I’ll get you tea. But let me warn you, this will upset Teresa. Wild animals frighten her. If she catches you 71
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drinking tea, she might lose it.”
I pull back the flaps of the cardboard box and dig through canned foods, spice bottles, a dual can opener/spatula, shot glasses, ketchup and mustard packets, silverware, measuring cups, and other painfully familiar items that are on their way out. Piled in the box, they appear alien. Their haphazard grouping makes it evident that Teresa, a self-admitted neat freak, packed them in a hurry.
I find three loose tea bags at the bottom of the box. “Hope you don’t mind cheap green,” I say, wondering if I should be talking to this creature. Who knows how much it understands?
For all I know, some very lonesome widow taught it how to ask for tea.
The creature holds out an open palm. I place the tea bags in its feathered palm.
I decide to test this creature. After all, it followed me home and asked for tea. I ask, “Do you understand the things people say?”It nods and sticks out its tongue. The kettle whistles. The creature turns off the stove and dangles the tea bags by their strings. “Mugs,” it says.
I fish a mug out of the box and hand it to the creature. It drops a bag into the mug and holds up three fingers. “Mugs,”
it says.
“No, I don’t think so,” I say. “One mug is enough.”
The creature sighs. It picks up the kettle and concentrates on pouring the steaming water. After it fills the mug, it floats off the counter, sets its bird feet down on the linoleum, and waddles to the kitchen table. It sits on a chair like a regular guest.
Since many months will pass before my life feels whole again, and without any friends to call on, I figure wasting a few minutes in idle conversation might be good for me. I might have no one to talk to for a long time.
I sit down at the table and clasp my hands. “So what do you do?” I say.
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The creature blows on the tea. It sniffs at the rising steam and ignores the question, stifling my small hope for conversation.
“I guess you don’t understand anything but tea,” I say.
It blinks at the ceiling and says, “Follow.”
“Follow?”
“What I do is follow,” it says.
“Oh, so you do understand.”
The creature sips at the tea. “I understand a lot of things.
Understanding is easy when you follow things around for long enough. You, for instance.”
I sit up in the chair and say, “You’ve been following me?”
The creature licks the rim of the mug. “One evening by a river, I saw you with a woman. You both looked so unhappy. I wanted to understand why you stayed together if you made each other miserable.”
So the little blue snoop has been spying on Teresa and I.
“You followed us? I should kick your ass,” I say, trying my best to intimidate the creature.
“It was open knowledge to anyone who saw you. The difference is that I cannot ignore these things. I must understand them.”
“So you followed me.”
“So I followed you.”
“Well, she left me. Now I’m twice as miserable. Does that satisfy you? Do you understand that sometimes it’s worse to be alone than with the people who torment you?”
“I am always alone. I never feel dissatisfied or miserable.
Nothing torments me.” The creature slides the mug toward me.
“Drink up.”
“You must be a special case,” I say, wiping my sweater sleeve along the mug’s rim. “Anyway, you’re not human. You don’t know what it means to feel.”
“Oh, but I feel.”
The tea has gone lukewarm. I gulp it down. I halfheartedly hope to catch an alien virus from this creature, which now 73
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resembles a warty toad. I marvel that I could have been so blind and wrong to mistake it for a raccoon or a bird.
Right then Teresa walks in the door. She stops cold and says, “What the hell is that?” She says this in a stern but gentle voice.
“It’s a mysterious creature,” I say.
“Whatever,” she says, and leaves the kitchen.
The creature climbs down from its chair and follows her.
“Mam,” it says, “mam, may I speak with you for a minute? Just one minute of your time, mam.”
“What kind of sick joke is this, Gary?” Teresa yells.
“It followed me home. Is it such a crime for mysterious creatures to follow people home?” Maybe it’s a symptom of the breakup, but I want to defend this creature, even if I’m furious at it for following me and want nothing more to do with it.
Maybe I’m only desperate and clinging to what’s gone.
Teresa slams the bedroom door. I hear the creature pawing at the hinges. It knocks and calls out in a soft voice, “Mam, this man you cal Gary says he’s twice as miserable without you. Is this true for you too? Are you twice as miserable without him?”
Teresa yells and stomps across the bedroom. I walk into the living room just as she opens the bedroom door a crack and says, “That man I call Gary is an asshole. You’re a fool to think I’m worse off without him.”
“I know how miserable he made you,” the little bastard says. “I assumed nothing, mam. I merely asked a question.”
“Stop asking!” Teresa says. She cranes her neck around door and glares at me. “Gary, take your pet and get out of here. I’ll be gone in an hour.”
She slams the door.
I sit on the couch and hang my head and cry. The creature pads over to me. It hops onto the couch and rests a hand on my shoulder. It sits close to me, wheezing. “Why do you cry?”
it says.
“Leave me alone,” I say. “Go away. Stop bothering me.”
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I shake my head and sob.
From the bedroom, Teresa yells, “Which copy of The Metamorphosis is mine?”
“Yours is the dog-eared one,” I respond, “unless you bent the pages of mine as well.”
A few minutes go by, then Teresa yells again. “What did you do with my Astral Weeks LP?”
I try to say it’s in the den, still on the record player from when I played it on repeat last night. I’m too ashamed to respond. The only other time Teresa saw me cry was at my father’s funeral. “I wanted so bad to make things right,” I say.
“Do you think you failed?” the creature says.
“I know I failed. Why else would I feel so terrible?”
“You enjoy being miserable, don’t you?” it says.
I raise my head. Through my tears, the creature looks like a blob of Jello.
“I gave you tea,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Can’t you go?”
“I came for more than tea,” the creature says.
“So you said.”
The ugly thing nods. “Tell me why you enjoy being miserable.”
In the bedroom, something crashes to the floor. It must be the bookshelf. That’s the heaviest piece of furniture in there.
Startle
d by the crash, the creature lets go of my shoulder and covers its eyes. It burrows between two cushions and cowers there, whimpering like a chastised puppy.
I laugh a little at this. “You’ve got no idea how hard it is to love and be loved and struggle to find joy in the shit people put each other through,” I say. “I can’t reject the awful parts.
Even when miserable, I’m overjoyed by it all.” The hypocrisy of saying this as I’m crying and feeling like death doesn’t evade me.
After the crash, Teresa has been silent. I’m starting to wonder if she’s alright in there. Beside me, the creature peeks a red eye between two pale fingers.
I get up from the couch and move toward the bedroom door.
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I reach for the handle, then turn back to face the mysterious creature. It nods and waves me on, once again resembling a raccoon.
I open the door. Books are scattered across the floor. Teresa lies on the bed. She cries into a pillow. My Batman pillowcase.
She took all the other pillows. I clear my throat, choking down sobs, and say, “Is there anything I can do?”
She buries her face deeper into the pillow. I hope the bookshelf didn’t fall on her hand or something. Maybe it hit her head. Maybe she needs to go to the hospital. She mumbles into the pillow.
“I can’t hear you,” I say. “If you need help, you’ve got to speak clearly.”
She lifts her head and stares at me, eyeliner streaking her cheeks. “I can’t leave,” she says. “I tried to leave and I can’t.”
I slump onto the bed beside her. The bedroom door is still open a crack. I want to put my arms around her but worry what she might say. I fear that she would recoil from me, like she did all week, even before she told me last night that she and Rob had been—
“What about last night?” I say.
She touches my thigh and says, “There’s got to be some way we can make this work.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” I say, crying again.
“That’s the total opposite of what you said.”
Teresa and I lean in to each other and embrace, our wet cheeks touching. We jump apart when the front door slams shut. The mysterious creature must be gone. I brush tears from her cheeks as she pulls me close to her.
We lie down.
It seems like forever passes before either of us says a word.
We crawl out of bed.
After we repair the bookshelf, we go into the kitchen. I 76
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fill the kettle with water and turn on the stove. Teresa sits at the kitchen table. I look out the window in the door, so badly wanting to step outside and smoke a cigarette on the porch.
Instead, I sit across from Teresa at the table.
“What should I tell Rob?” she says.
I shrug.
“You’ve known him longer,” she says.
Our hands are locked together on the table.
When the kettle whistles, I get up and turn it off. I look for the box of cheap green tea but it is not on the counter and not in the box of kitchen supplies. The tea is simply gone.
I move from the stove to the door. I lean my face into the window and scan the yard. To the right of the chestnut tree, I spot the mysterious creature. It sits on the tire swing, holding the box of green tea in its lap.
“What’s wrong?” Teresa says.
I open the door and step onto the porch. As I cross the overgrown summer lawn, I feel like I’m gliding. I pass some bushes overloaded with blackberries. I stop in front of the creature sitting on the tire swing. The creature resembles a bluebird now. It holds the box of tea in its beak.
“Want me to push you?” I say, pointing at the ropes of the swing.
“Tea,” the mysterious creature says. The box falls from its mouth.
The creature flaps its wings and takes flight.
I pick up the fallen box. I head toward the closed door of the house. Teresa stands on the porch. She’s crying into her cell phone.
I’m halfway across the lawn when she walks inside and slams the door behind her.
I stop, frozen. I don’t know how long I stand there, staring at the house. I can’t bring myself to go inside now. I’m worried about what that phone call means, so I turn around and retrace my steps.
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The sun melts on the horizon, clinging on for dear life. The red and purple clouds, puffy like cotton candy, lose out to a breezy summer night.
Even as the dark comes, no lights turn on in the house, but I’m not ready to go inside and turn them on myself.
I sit on the tire swing and hold the box of tea in my lap.
“Tea,” I say.
Belatedly, I will name it Tea.
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FLOWERS
When Franz Kafka’s ghost awoke, he found himself transformed in his coffin into a flower. Clawing with his petals at the coffin lid, Kafka’s ghost began to sweat a glow-in-the-dark juice that stank of sulfur. “This must be my spirit leaking out,” he said, and ceased clawing to preserve what remained of his soul.
“This might be Hell,” he said, “but a man could truly sleep down here.”
Yawning, Franz Kafka curled his petals (seven, he counted) beneath his frail, leafy belly. With no alarm clock to disturb the sleep of the dead, Kafka’s now-comfortable ghost nodded off to nightmares of diamond-eyed golems eating the sky. He dreamed of insects reading the scriptures in muddy corners of the cosmos, and in those scriptures he caught muttered accusations against shapeless, yet-to-be-named insects. Among those judgments, he overheard his own name. He beheld a vision of himself as one of those nameless vermin, and of the terminal white light with which every life bloomed before consuming its own petals.
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THE
DEAD MONKEY
EXHIBIT
A monkey with amputated limbs gave birth to a meat-eating plant in the monkey pen at the zoo. The monkey had a history of giving birth to meat-eating plants. The meat-eating plants the monkey gave birth to did not eat monkeys. The meat-eating plants liked eating lions. In order to eat lions, the meat-eating plants needed to lure the lions into the monkey pen. To lure the lions into the cage, the meat-eating plants amputated the limbs of monkeys and tied the limbs to ropes.
As the monkeys screamed over their missing arms and legs and other limbs, limbs without names, the monkeys dragged themselves around the cage. Their limbs hung from the ceiling like furry chandeliers strung with red crystal lights that dripped. The smell of monkey blood attracted the lions a few cages down. The lions licked the air. “Yum,” they said.
They unlocked the door of their cage and people screamed even though the lions did not want to hurt them. “We will not hurt you,” the lions said.
The lions marched past crying children and crying mothers and crying fathers and crying people who were crying for other 80
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reasons, maybe because they came to the zoo by themselves and felt alone. The lions marched past the wombat cage and the panda bear cage until finally they stood outside the monkey cage. The meat-eating plants crouched behind rocks.
They looked at each other and held their hands over their mouths to contain the laughter. Playing tricks on lions was so much fun.
The lions unlocked the door of the monkey cage and entered the cage single file. They stood on their hind legs and batted at the monkey limbs hanging from the ceiling. They took the limbs in their jaws. They ignored the screaming, bleeding monkeys. Lions were not that interested in eating real, live monkeys. That seemed inhumane. The lions did not know that monkey limbs came from real, live monkeys.
If they knew, maybe they would have stopped eating monkey limbs. Maybe they would have eaten salads instead.
The lions stuffed their mouths with limbs to contain the laughter. Eating monkey limbs was so much fun. The meat-eating plants nodded to each other and leaped from behind
the rocks. They attacked the lions and the lions were helpless because their mouths and bellies were full of limbs.
The meat-eating plants ate the lions, leaving not a bone or golden hair behind.
By now, the crying people had alerted the zookeeper.
The zookeeper, who was very old, limped up to the monkey cage with a cane in one hand and a shotgun in the other. The zookeeper took aim. He squinted down the barrel of the gun, an old habit that reminded him of hunting with his father as a child. The habit was useless. He was blind in both eyes. He pulled the trigger. He shot bullets into the cage until he had killed all of the meat-eating plants and all of the screaming, bleeding monkeys.
The zookeeper sighed. He had even killed the dead lions that were inside the meat-eating plants and the dead monkey limbs that were inside the dead lions. He reached into his 81
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pocket and pulled out a sticker. The sticker pronounced, in black letters on a white background:
D E A D
The zookeeper peeled the backing off the sticker and stuck it on the sign outside the monkey cage. Now the sign outside the monkey cage read DEAD MONKEY EXHIBIT. The zookeeper rested his forehead on the bars of the monkey cage.
In a moment he would return to his dark shed, but not for long. He would have to order new lions from Africa, and the monkey with amputated limbs never stayed dead. It returned to life again and again, always spreading its life to the other monkeys, and they always grew new limbs. Then the zookeeper had to limp out of his dark shed to cover up the word DEAD
on the sign outside the monkey cage. Then the new lions came in from Africa and the monkey with amputated limbs gave birth to meat-eating plants. That was the routine. He hated it, but as long as the monkeys were alive and the lions were in their cages, the people did not cry.
The zookeeper limped past the crying people and returned to his dark shed. He sat on the stool in the corner and held his face in his hands.
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