by James Thomas
The baby instantly quieted so everyone could think.
I woke up and saw only the squirrel who hung upside down from the bird feeder and chattered.
JIM HEYNEN
Why Would a Woman Pour Boiling Water on Her Head?
Why would a woman pour a pitcher of boiling water over her head while standing naked in a snow bank near a cabin in the north woods?
I was going to rinse my hair, she says, though we know there must be more to it.
See our woman with the flaming face inside the cabin now, rocking near the fire with a towel filled with ice pressed to her forehead. She was standing in snow when she burned her face, so she is trying to defrost her feet while chilling her face.
See a large stone fireplace with white-barked birch and sweet-fragranced cedar burning in a calm flame.
See a moose head from the 1920s pondering the scene from the log wall.
See old encyclopedias, magazines from the ’40s, a piano with withered ivory.
See open rafters and a balcony with dark sleeping quarters overhead.
The room divides between moonlight and fire light, between pleasure and pain, between fire and ice.
Feel her burning misery, but hear her say, It is the mystery of the incongruous, as if this were enough to accept the skin on the bridge of her nose skimming loose like the film on stale cream at the touch of her finger. It is the mystery of the incongruous, she repeats, and offers a smile to all who will listen. I feel as if I have sinned, she says, and that I am being punished. But my sin, my sin, it was so ordinary.
ERIN DIONNE
New Rollerskates
Mrs. Peterson paid Margot a quarter every day to push the buzzer to the Petersons’ apartment if Mr. Peterson came home early. Margot Twitter sat on the front steps of her apartment building, flipping the quarter over and over in her fingers, watching. Mr. Peterson was coming down the street, early. He was walking stiffly, as though he had Popsicle sticks for legs, and his hands were balled fists. Margot had been watching for Mr. Peterson for 160 days. She saved 159 quarters to prove it. They pooled, shiny silver, in a bowl next to her bed in apartment 5D. With the forty dollars, twenty dollars per foot, Margot was going to buy new rollerskates.
Mrs. Peterson was inside with Stanley, the building’s handyman. Margot knew sex was going on up there. She chewed on the end of her pigtail. Her bedroom was right below the Petersons’, and she knew that if she were in there she would hear the bedsprings creaking. Little groans, too.
She could see Mr. Peterson’s red face now. He was scowling. Margot stood next to the buzzers, fingers lightly tracing the one for 6D. Mr. Peterson passed her in a surly gust of wind. The front door slammed. Margot Twitter took her hand away from the buzzer, pocketed the quarter, and sat back down on the steps. New rollerskates.
CLAUDIA SMITH
Mermaid
My sister killed herself the week I turned eight. Three days before my birthday. We didn’t celebrate. That afternoon, I walked along the beach in my bare feet and filled my pockets with shells. I found some seahorses, but threw them away because they stank. I found a sand dollar. They were rare. My sister always found them but I never had. She’d told me once that if you crumbled them the right way, they would divide into pieces that looked like doves.
I crushed the sand dollar. The day was cold so I kept my hands inside my pockets, and just felt the broken pieces. I thought about the scar on my index finger, where she’d smashed a cracked shot glass over my knuckle. I pulled out the finger and kissed the white lines across my knuckles. She had a temper.
Her room was painted aqua blue. Not the color of our ocean, the color of postcard oceans we had never seen. Our ocean was gray, and on cold days, almost as black as oil. Only five days before my birthday, she’d walked along the water with me and told me that once she’d seen a mermaid behind some driftwood, through the corner of her eyes. She had only caught a glimmer, and had been afraid to look again. She knew the mermaid would either be beautiful or terrible to look upon. She liked telling me stories, she liked pretending Santa was real and she wanted me to stay a little kid. I told her I believed her. Then she asked me if I ever wondered what it felt like, to live someplace where there was no light, at the bottom of the sea.
CLAUDIA SMITH
Colts
We read books about colts, born in milky wetness, learning to walk, and then winning races. We knew what the Withers and Run for the Roses were about. The willow tree in her yard was our refuge, where our horses trained, and where our dolls jockeyed championship races. We tied our dolls to the weeping willows, swung them around like children on a carnival ride. I was thin; she was plump. Her parents had sent her to fat camps; my mother said her mother was the type to want a daughter in pageants. Her parents had cocktails and little wieners on cocktail bread with pale cheese. We drank the leftover liquor and fought over the glasses without melted ice. Our mothers didn’t like one another, but recognized the value of girls and their secrets. Sometimes, we snuck into her father’s desk and stole his letters. She never came to my house, but I told her about the loose change my father left on the dresser, how I took it to buy jewelry from the mall. Her father kept a stash in the liquor cabinet. My father was a cop. Her father was a lawyer. Our mothers both wore dark glasses, hiding their marks behind scarves and migraines. We compared their bruises as if they were badges. We tied our dolls to the trees by their necks. We hanged the cowardly women.
FRANCINE WITTE
The Millers’ Barbecue
It is the night of the Millers’ barbecue. End of August ritual. Everywhere, summer loves are shutting down. Sheets being draped over hearts like they are vacation furniture.
Mr. Miller, loan officer down at the bank, prods the burgers. They are nicely striped and ready to be turned.
Mrs. Miller glides through the yard with the same swimmy elegance she uses in their pool. Blonde hair and midriff top, she fills the glasses with lemonade.
Bret, the 19-year-old neighbor stares at her thighs. She pretends she doesn’t see him. Pretends there were no late cricket nights in the garage while her husband slept.
While her husband dreams about interest rates and garden tools and oh yes, Margaret. Margaret, who is right now waiting by the grill for her second burger and ends each conversation she has with Mr. Miller the same way, “When are you going to tell her?”
Bret rattles his empty ice cube glass toward Mrs. Miller, who is talking to Frank Brown. I am thirsty, Bret whispers. And when she doesn’t answer, he jumps fully clothed into the pool.
Where everyone suddenly stops what they’re doing to watch this love-heavy boy sink straight to the bottom.
Everyone except Margaret, standing alone now by the grill, watching the burgers sizzle down to coal while Mr. Miller jumps in to save poor Bret. Bret who flip-flops like a landed fish once he is back on the concrete. And just as Mrs. Miller starts to look at her hero husband with an interest she hasn’t shown in years, Margaret whispers into the burger-smoke air, “You know, now would be a perfect time.”
FRANCINE WITTE
Jetty Explains the Universe
He starts like this: it’s big and endless.
I point out that nothing is endless, and he rolls his eyes.
Jetty and I met years ago in an online chat room. We both had cats. Mine has since died.
Jetty was born Chester. Chester. Chet. Jet. Jetty.
He goes back to the universe. This is all the answer to the simple question I asked. Where are we going? It’s a girl question, I admit.
“Who knows?” he says. He says we are floating matter, and no matter what anyone says, no one ever knows where they’re going.
I remind Jetty of our two cats and how they pretended not to know the other was alive. Mine a tabby and Jetty’s a Siamese. Mine got out and ended up dead. The Siamese wouldn’t eat for a week.
“They loved each other bigtime,” I say. “What about that?”
“They were just cats and theref
ore, totally random. Cats don’t know anything,” Jetty says.
“Yeah, well my cat is energy floating around in the universe. Right now, she is purring into your ear.”
He goes to the fridge and pulls a beer bottle from a six-pack. I know the carton will stay there till I throw it away.
He pops the tops with his side teeth. Something I am tired of warning him about. He waves the open bottle at me like a finger. “Look, who cares where we’re going?” He swigs long and gratified. “We’re all gonna end up starmatter.”
He likes that word, starmatter. He likes it so much he ends the conversation there. Finite. Done. Not in any way like the universe.
THAISA FRANK
The New Thieves
One night my lover said: you must learn to be like the new thieves—they never steal, they add. They enter rooms without force and leave hairpins, envelopes, roses. Later they leave larger things like pianos: no one ever notices. You must be like that woman in the bar who dropped her glove so softly I put it on. Or that man who offered his wife so carefully, I thought we’d been married for seventeen years. You must fill me with riches, so quietly I’ll never notice.
The next day I brought home a woman in camouflage. She looked just like me and talked just like me, and that night while I pretended to sleep she made love to my lover. I thought I’d accomplished my mission, but as soon as she left, he said: I knew she wasn’t you. I knew by the way she kissed.
I tried new things but nothing eluded him: shoes like his old ones, scuffed in the same places; keepsakes from his mother; books he’d already read. He recognized everything and threw it away.
One rainy afternoon when I couldn’t think of anything else to give him, I went to an elegant bar, the kind with leather chairs and soft lights. I ordered chilled white wine, and suddenly, without guile, the bartender smiled at me. That night while my lover slept next to us, we made love, and the next morning he hung up his clothes in my lover’s closet. Soon he moved in, walking like a cat, filling the house with books. My lover never noticed, and now at night he lies next to us, thinking that he’s the bartender. He breathes his air, dreams his dreams, and in the morning when we all wake up, he tells me that he’s happy.
THAISA FRANK
The Cat Lover
When a door opens and you can’t see who’s coming, it’s almost always a cat that wants to be your lover. These cats take great care until one paw hooks and the door swings open.
After the door opens, the cat sits at a distance. It’s the distance of masked balls, 18th century calling cards, once known by humans, never forgotten by cats. The cat stares in all its wildness and comes to rest upon your heart.
Last night my cat lover woke me from a dream where I’d been looking for someone in an unfamiliar city. The whole family had gone to bed in chaos: my son asleep by the television, my husband on the living room couch, my daughter in my son’s room, me in my study wearing velvet clothes, something I do when I hope there will be no night. There was an unplanned feeling to the house, as though all of us, in order to sleep, had entered different zones and the house wasn’t able to dream. The cat sat on my chest, but I shook him off and ate lemon ice that reminded me of a place in France where summers were so hot that ices dissolved when they hit the street. I stayed in the store to eat them and never knew what they looked like.
While I ate, I thought how nothing has skin—neither my children, nor my husband, nor me. Falling into his body was just something I did fourteen years ago, because light bound us together like gold. I finished the ice and my cat lover visited again: the approach, the encounter, the looming. His fur and my soft velvet dress felt the same—dark, pillowy textures, things to love and dream in. His small wild heart beat against my chest.
PETER ORNER
At Horseneck Beach
She’s wearing a daisy-patterned yellow one-piece and an enormous blue hat and she’s rubbing sunscreen on her husband’s flubby back. He’s got a cigarette drooping out of the side of his mouth, and he’s so pale he looks like he spent the last thirty years in a basement. She slides her fingers under his waistband. He leaps and yelps, For crying out loud, woman, on the beach in front of all these people? She hands him the bottle. Now do me. He takes the bottle and squeezes a burble of lotion into his palm. Then he breaks an egg on her head, one hand cracks his lotioned fist, and he slithers both hands past her ears. She does not scream, just says quietly, I’ll kill you you fat bastard. He shakes the remaining contents of the bottle on his own head and musses his hair. Now both have shampoo-lather heads. She takes his hand and says, I should have married Bea Halprin’s brother, Aubrey, the dead one. Let’s swim, he says. He’d have croaked by now and I’d be living on State Farm. I said let’s swim, he says. They walk to the edge of the water and linger there. That wasn’t funny about poor Aubrey, he murmurs, as his wife, who is Sarah, dives and shrieks into the cold June Atlantic blue.
GRANT FAULKNER
Model Upside Down on the Stairs
“A woman’s beauty can be her damnation,” her mother said. One guy told her he’d never seen an orifice he didn’t like. Sure thing. But you’ve got to know something about tenderness. He just poked. She likes eyes on her, though, so she finds herself in the occasional awkward pose. Her boyfriend, the photographer. Her, the contortionist, the fucking astronaut. He’ll have her hanging upside down from a tree tomorrow, his gaze going distant as his glory takes over. Why doesn’t anyone listen to me? Aren’t ears an orifice? The edges of the stairs wedged against her back. Never enough.
GRANT FAULKNER
Way Station
In Puerto Umbria, Maeve rented a room from a whorish-looking landlady. There was no door, only a wispy pink curtain. Her giggling brood of daughters kept slinking in to watch her dress and brush her teeth. There was little else to do than drink each night. A feline-looking boy in front of the cantina put his arm around Maeve and said, “Come in and have a drink,” letting his hand slip down to her ass. Vultures ate a dead pig in the muddy street. She found comfort in the pink lamp’s dirty tassels. Sometimes any kind of touch felt good.
LYNN MUNDELL
The Old Days
In the old days, there was no Human Resources. You worked or you were canned. Everyone took staplers and notepads from the supply closet. No one cared. In the old days, people helped you carry your boxes to the car, even Louisa, the manager you’d meet after hours in the closet. Although you were angry driving home, you wouldn’t honk unless you saw a pal, like Ray. In the old days, people didn’t flip each other off, unless you were Ray, Louisa’s husband, yelling, “I got you fired, sucker!” People took the high road, except when they were provoked by someone who really deserved to have his block knocked off. It was just a shame that Ray called the police and your wife.
From there, life could go downhill pretty quick. Your brother would post bail. You’d come home to sleep on the couch. The years would begin to pile up like newspapers. You’d get another job, half the pay. You’d still wear ties, even when other men like your son-in-law started wearing babies on their chests. In the old days, it was okay to spank kids a bit. Except for your daughter Susie, they’d grow up fine, not bitter over nothing. In the old days, there were no “family meetings” with words like “behavior” and “concerned.” You had family dinners, everyone, together. There was no Berkshire, A Skilled Living Solution. Old people lived with family. In the old days, I lived with all of you.
NIN ANDREWS
The Orgasm Needs a Photo of Herself
Preferably a head shot to go with a short bio. She takes a selfie leaning against a tree, looking too posed, looking not at all au naturel as she’d planned. She takes another selfie sitting on the hood of her car, smiling. Behind her, written on the front window’s condensation, is her message to the world. She throws them both away. Then she lets her hair cover her eyes and mouth and tries again. She doesn’t want everyone to know what she looks like. No orgasm does. There is a rule against an orgasm who shows too
much in public. A rule against an orgasm who shows too much in private, too. Who lets anyone gaze into her soft brown eyes.
NIN ANDREWS
The Orgasm Thinks You Have Forgotten Her
That you no longer feel her like a tingle, a tug, or a whispered word in the back of your mind. That you have taken from her whatever you wished, whatever you wanted, whatever you thought you must have. And you have tossed her aside without looking back.
It happened so easily, she sighs—as easily as pulling a thread from a hem, unraveling her slowly at first, then faster and faster. Now she wakes, late and alone, with a memory of all she has lost. All that once shaped the hours around her like a lit and shimmering gown.
WILLIAM WALSH
So Much Love in the Room
The baby would fix everything. The baby would be a magic bullet. Their marriage wouldn’t fail with a baby in the house. They would have more than a marriage, with a baby. They would have a family. Their family would not fail. They hated failure more than they hated each other, so they would do anything to keep their marriage from failing. They would have a baby.