by Brian Turner
The silence that followed. A silence among the chaos of nurses and orderlies. A silence between my wife’s heavy pants of breath, my reverberating heart.
Then the sound of his first cry.
After I clipped his umbilical cord, after the chaos of the night subsided and my wife was resting in her bed, I watched my son—my son!—breathe in a bassinet beside the bed. I kept watching, in fear that I might lose him. I put my lips on his wrinkled forehead, and like my mother, when she kissed me good night those many years ago, I breathed him in.
III
My son does not give kisses. He devours. He will take your face in both hands and open his mouth wide and seek to encapsulate the whole of you. He will take your nose, your forehead, your chin. His kisses are a possession.
Except for me.
He does not kiss me, though I spend the majority of the day with him. Though he reaches for me and cries when I leave a room. He loves me, I know, but he does not kiss me. My wife says it’s because I don’t have boobs. My mother says I need to get rid of my scratchy beard.
IV
The old woman wants to see every element of my son’s day. She wants to witness his eating habits. How he sleeps. Bath time. She wants to see him jump in his jumper. Wants to inspect the state of his diapers. The old woman is too old to travel, her legs unable to withstand the twenty-two hours on a plane. So in the time we have she wants to observe her grandson’s life. She says, I love you. She says how badly she wants to hold him. She says she wishes she had more time to know him. She says, Do you think he loves me?
At the end of every conversation, she puckers her lips and brings the screen in and out. “Jube, jube,” she says. Kiss, kiss.
And my boy opens his mouth wide, taking her whole.
TRIGGER
Lacy M. Johnson
I want to say it begins with the boy in the baseball cap, one hand plunged deep into the pocket of his jeans; the other holding out a bottle, offering a drink. His cheeks glow red, lit by the booze and the midnight air. It is February and we are standing in an empty parking lot beside the highway. He offers the bottle again, says, It’ll keep you warm, his breath making a cloud around his face. Where have I told my parents I will be? I am only fourteen, and he is a few years older than me. Tall, like a man, I think. What do I know? He is on the basketball team, over six feet tall. His mustache and chest hair appear in earnest patches. He takes a drag of his cigarette, blows the smoke over one shoulder. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. What does he see? I lift the bottle to my lips, tip it back, and drink.
In the morning, my thighs are purpled with bruises from his sharp pelvic bones, a rust-colored stain on the sheet beneath me. My arm is sore at the shoulder, my lips swollen, full, and smashed-looking in the mirror. I bend over the toilet while the night returns to me in heaves and waves: our lips meet once, and then again, and then he is clawing and desperate. I want to move away from his kiss, from what is approaching and unstoppable, and let a “No” fall from my mouth—then a string of them dripping like pearls. Afterward he dresses and slips out the door. The bile in my stomach surges, acid and cinnamon and sweet.
I am only fourteen, and I do not yet know there is a word for this. I know the word—spoken as a warning, as a threat, a premonitory curse—but it conjures only the image of a woman crying out, a man emerging from the shadows to pin her arms and spread her legs. Maybe there’s a detective fishing for a notebook, a policeman with a pair of handcuffs, a mother cursing the man and blaming herself. The word does not conjure a kiss that tastes like smoke and cinnamon and mentholated lip balm, so instead I call him my boyfriend, though it isn’t because he walks me home after school, or because he calls after my parents go to bed. A girl in my homeroom hears what has happened and she explains the word back to me: “Slut,” she calls me. “Liar. Whore.”
I believe her, and so does the boy on the bottom bunk of his college dorm room, the boy on the golf course, the boy who corners me at the dance club, the boy at the party, the boy in the back of the car, the man who forgot a condom, the man on the motorcycle with tattoos for eyebrows, the man who tried to kill me, the man I married and then divorced. Their wet mouths form a chorus of unstoppable kisses.
I want to say it begins with the boy, that first boy, who kissed and kept on kissing until my body was not my own. How I got it back is another story. But as for him, I heard that boy never stopped kissing, not even when he put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth, pursed his lips, and pulled the trigger.
A LETTER TO MY WIFE ON HER 40TH BIRTHDAY
Brian Castner
September 2016
My love,
Today you turned forty years old. Today my friend’s wife died. My friend’s name is also Brian. He and I were soldiers, we fought in the war and that meant we were supposed to die first. But he didn’t die first, and now I see I might not, either, so I cling to you like you never had a shadow until today.
To celebrate your birthday we went for a hike. There is a hill near our home that is covered with statues. They call it a sculpture park: fantastical animals, nude maidens bathing, wrought-iron turrets and castles, enormous insects, a maze without a minotaur, and the busts of generations of women, all the way down the line. We walked the grassy paths among the sculpture, under a blue sky so sharp as to cut, and I held your hand and you knew I thought of my friend Brian.
That’s why you asked me to write you this letter.
I never met Ilyse, Brian’s wife. She died today, but she had been dying for some time. Brian and Ilyse are poets, and the more cancer she got the more poems she wrote, and that’s why I feel like I know her a little bit, too. We had heard the end was coming. A ghastly relief.
Brian and I fought in an overseas war. We fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them back here, that’s what everyone said. A year of bombs in a faraway desert was the cost of keeping you safe back home. I paid my lot, and gladly. But what war can I fight now to spare you even a sweet slip-off while asleep at home in bed? Of the two of us, I’m the one who hates to see you grow old. Not for the smiles around your eyes or sparkles in your hair, but because it exposes the lie that I can protect you indefinitely.
We stood in the bright meadow and looked across the hollow, untouched yet by autumn color. I smelled your sun-warm hair and touched your neck with my finger and laid my brow on your shoulder until your shirt was wet. I didn’t say anything and you said, “We’re very lucky.”
If I could loosen my grip even a moment, I might hear those words. We were married so young. Everyone said we were just kids, and though I didn’t believe them at the time, they were right. I grew up with you. Only half our lives together thus far, but you float at the edges of my childhood memories as well. I’m surprised, when I look at old school photos, to see you absent. I missed you before I met you.
But today, on your birthday, you’re here. You are happy and healthy and sexy and strong. You have lived on this planet for forty years and I am somehow alive with you. Astounding.
How to spend your only fortieth birthday? Fearing and fighting what will pass, or cherishing that unlikely moment? I didn’t speak this question aloud, but you answered, and in the most surprising and wonderful way.
You took off all your clothes and ran in the sunshine, and in that moment, all shadows were burned away.
That’s when I kissed you.
Forever, Brian
FALLING
Andre Dubus III
It was after midnight, and we were standing on the flat tar roof of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, fifty-six stories above the street. The light cast from below was the color of embers. We were so high just a few other buildings rose above us, and we couldn’t hear the taxicabs moving through the square below, but from the short knee wall we could see them, small as dried kidney beans, though she had only glanced down for a second before pulling back.
Her hair was long, brown, and curly. She wore gold earrings, and it was late spring and chilly
so she must have been wearing a jacket. She was twenty-six, and I was twenty-eight, and twelve hours earlier in Massachusetts she’d sat next to me in the backseat of my friend’s car, and now we had known each other for less than one day. We’d been walking through the Lower East Side looking for a place to dance, but we got lost and ended up in a dark neighborhood, empty crack vials crunching under our feet. She had to stop to bend down and adjust the strap on one of her shoes, and she reached out her hand to me and I took it, telling myself I shouldn’t, but I did anyway.
We continued walking. I kept her hand in mine, and we held hands all the way to Times Square and its unapologetic assault of neon where she needed to find a bathroom, and so we found ourselves in the grand lobby of the Marriott Marquis, where I waited for her, staring at the glass elevators sitting in the center of the carpeted lobby. Then she came out of the bathroom and looked so beautiful, walking with the straight-backed poise of the dancer she was, and I took her hand again and said, “Let’s go up.”
The elevator rose fast, and we could look out and see each floor of the hotel fall away beneath us. She stepped closer to me, close enough I could smell her hair, and that did something to me, and when I stepped out onto the carpet of the fifty-sixth floor I took her hand again, and said, “Let’s go to the roof.”
What I did not know is that she was afraid of heights, and what she did not know is that for months I had been trying to get over a longtime girlfriend by seeing more than one woman at the same time, trying to feel something substantial for each and failing, and so just a day earlier I’d cut it off with all three of them. I vowed to spend the next year alone, and so why was I holding the hand of this woman less than one day after leaving the others? Why was I pulling her up to the unlocked rooftop of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square?
Because hours earlier, sitting in the backseat of my friend’s car, she told me that all she wanted to do was what she was already doing, which was to dance and to draw, and I wanted to look away from her dark eyes looking directly into mine, but I could not, for I had known this woman before, maybe many times, before my births and after my deaths, and now I wanted her to feel how high we were; I wanted her to see those tiny taxicabs of New York City. I could feel the knee wall pressing against my shins. I could feel the lighted city far below, faint car horns rising up like wisps of smoke.
She stepped back quickly. A small voice inside me said, You’re supposed to be alone now. It’s time for you to be alone. But when I turned away from the roof’s low wall, she hugged me, and I could feel how afraid she’d been of falling, and then we were drawing closer and then we were kissing. It was soft and warm and lasted longer than I knew it should, for this wasn’t my plan at all, it just was not. But I kissed her again, and I kissed her last night and this morning, too, twenty-eight years fallen away behind us, our three children grown and living elsewhere now, doing their own falling, one ride and climb and fateful kiss at a time.
THE RIDE
Siobhan Fallon
A city at night, seen from inside a taxi, can seem like any city, street signs and neon lights, the stop and go of city blocks, the skyscrapers and mini-marts. New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Honolulu, Dubai.
You devised this taxi ride. You wanted to be alone with him. You wanted this fleeting envelope of time, caught between two destinations, anonymous and dark, all those people outside the windows caught in the same human crush but oblivious of anything you might do.
The radio sings in another language, a stranger drives without speaking, all of it dares you, this last chance before you arrive at the train station, before you say goodbye. The two of you had sat next to each other on a couch at a party, your feet near but not touching. You got ready to leave when he checked his watch, assuming he wanted you to go with him. In the taxi, he put his seat belt on and you smiled, thought he was silly, what grown man wears a seat belt in the backseat of a taxi? But you did as he did, playfully, wanting him to see your raised eyebrow, your side smile, to see you were game. And why else would he wear a seat belt except to create a barrier between you, an attempt to behave, to show you he felt like he must restrain himself?
That thought is all you need. You unclick your seat belt and move close. He tilts his chin at the sound.
“Just let me kiss you.” You say this, you, and you are surprised at your predatory powers and territorial lean, you are small but in this taxi you are almost the same height as this tall and broad-shouldered man, and all those things that are female and weak are suddenly an advantage, that you can continue to move without waiting for more than his quick and helpless nod, the sigh that escapes him as if this is not entirely consensual, this is a capitulation, but that thought will come to you later—in the moment you are already pouncing, you are only thinking of your need to press and enter that contained male space of suit and tie, buttoned-up and armored in layers compared to the flimsy material so free and smooth on you. Though the distance is divided it is not so hard to cross, and the taxi is hurtling so fast now, so little time, how can you not try for it, this one small thing?
He is soft as a child, as an adolescent, as that very first game of spin the bottle in the woods behind a badly built fort. Twelve years old and discovering this strange game, Catholic school kids playing their own Pentecost, this new gift of tongues. Curious children testing the edges of sin.
His lips, his tongue, his cheek beneath your palm, smoother than you could have imagined.
There are countries in that kiss, years of experience, ghosts of past lovers and the tricks they taught you. Your lives peel off and exist on their own, future selves in all of their possibilities and computations, couplings and separations. It could be the beginning of everything. You can see it. You can see him and you want him there, in all your tomorrows. Anything can happen while you are inside that small, wet place, you believe in forever in a way you would never be foolish enough to believe otherwise, there’s neither reason nor reality to ruin the soft click of teeth, the perfect alignment of lip and tongue, that necessary balance of suffocation and breath.
You would pay dearly to unclick a belt and so eagerly unleash yourself onto other things, other moments, other passions, to be so intent upon keeping a small flame alight that you don’t care about anything else. But this, too, is something you will only think later.
The taxi stops. Grand Central Station.
Immediately you are two separate bodies. Immediately you are forced to be aware. You are embarrassed, finding yourself in his lap.
And you realize you have to pay, as you do in all things. You slide quickly back to your seat, reaching for the purse kicked over, your wallet on the floor, so clumsy. The taxi driver flicks on a light, perhaps to be helpful, perhaps to be an asshole, you must be red-faced, suddenly sober and shy now that you are no longer in motion, now that the cars outside are merely traffic, the streets dirty and strange. Your fingers search for the right bills, your mind trying to figure out how much you need to tip, but he tells you he will pay the fare, of course, because he will not exit with you, he will take this ride farther without you, to his own destination ahead. You can barely look at him, though you feel him watching, and your downcast eyes notice his seat belt is still buckled, that silver glint at his hip, that strap across his chest. How is it you didn’t notice there had only been one attempt at release?
The realization catapults you out the door, everything that had seemed graceful suddenly awkward, your high heels, your legs, your very hands oddly loose at your wrists. There are pedestrians in your way, the streets too alive and loud and close.
You hesitate, wonder whether you ought to face the taxi and say your goodbye through the open window, or walk toward the station and hope he will change his mind and follow.
How could you have shared breath and suddenly be afraid that a glance will be too telling, too intimate?
But when you turn, you see you are too late, the cab is already driving away, the breath you shared was only air, the taxi windows op
aque, nothing but the bright lights of a blind city reflected back at you.
HOLLYWOOD, ENDING.
Schafer John c
1: CHASING IT
I was an actor. After a rough upbringing and theater work in Chicago I was told I could possibly make a living at it.
I moved to Los Angeles. Two years later I found myself in the Hollywood Hills attending a birthday party for my well-regarded manager and two of her clients. One would go on to star in a long-running television show and subsequent films. The other would pinch my ass.
The party was an indoor/outdoor affair; crowded and I knew no one. As the most recent client signed, people did not gravitate to me. I ate, drank, and stood on the brick patio staring in awe at the thousands of lights dotting the surrounding hills. The hills themselves rose up against the night sky backlit by the ambient glow from the Valley on one side and the effulgence of Hollywood on the other. For a flatlander it was all hypnotic: the low music, the cool dry night backed by the pulse of a hundred people mixing in a limited space.
Inside and searching for the manager to say my goodbye, I turned sideways through the crowd, holding my drink aloft, and I felt the unmistakable pinch on my backside. I pivoted, more curious than annoyed, and she was there holding a slightly inebriated smile. We locked eyes. She was beautiful. It was L.A.. The room was beautiful. She leaned in. At five-foot-nine and wearing cowboy boots, she didn’t have to rise on her toes.
“You looked like you were leaving.”
“I was.”
“You should stay and help us clean up.” Eyes holding, her smile relaxed. Time bent. People rubbed by. Finally I responded:
“Now, that’s an invitation.” The corners of her mouth turned back up. I stayed.
Three hours later, on a deck above a ravine, we stood at her door. Hollywood shimmered below to our right, the hills all around, downtown L.A. a faint luminescence in the distance. A car hundreds of feet below wound its way small and silent up Laurel Canyon. The walk was easy and light, the neighborhood quiet, the alcohol burning off. The talk had been free and slightly urgent as if to catch up with the looks we had exchanged. The last ten minutes we had held hands. It was seamless and natural.