Crack the Spine - Issue 128

Crack the Spine

Literary magazine

Issue 128

Issue 128 September 30, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine

Cover Art: “Lifeguard in Blue� by A.J. Huffman A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her eighth solo chapbook, "Drippings from a Painted Mind," won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest. She also has a full-length poetry collection scheduled for release in June 2005, titled, "A Few Bullets Short of Home" (mgv2>publishing).

She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.

CONTENTS

Melissa F. Pheterson Tempus Fugit

Ron Riekki Dr. James Crow

Timothy Schirmer The Risk of Killing Bees

Garrett Hines To Marlon Brando and All My Friends Lost in the Fray

John Ballantine I Lost My Voice, Driving

John Repp Cooking By Flashlight, Supper By Lantern (With Loons)

Melissa Tombro Interstate 80

Melissa F. Pheterson Tempus Fugit

In 1941 my grandfather’s mother opened a letter informing her son of his duty to serve in World War II. She crumpled on the floor and died of grief.

Last Sunday my mother, who lives in the town next to mine, returned from a grueling weekend of caring for my daughter—cooking dinner, coaxing her to eat, bathing her, sustaining her kicks of protest over the slathering of lotion—only to collapse into bed at twilight with her iPad and find on Facebook a picture of Paige taken with her other grandmother, both forcibly yet prettily posed at a restaurant.

“Facebook is a crock of…soup!” she texted me before weeping into the night, or so I deduced from her splotchy face at the airport the next morning.

We were on the way to visit my grandparents.

“If your in-laws were nicer,” she

muttered, re-counting the sandwiches she’d made for Paige to consume in flight, “I would cook for them. So you wouldn’t have to set foot in a chain restaurant.”

Now, in the Tacky Eighties excess of my grandparents’ apartment—centered on a Formica bar with etched glass waiter carrying a tray of martinis, thrown-back head glowing absinthe green with the flip of a switch—I search for a memento to post as an act of contrition.

“There are no photos of your father here,” David hisses to me, already deeply sunken into the leather couch in the den. “Ever noticed that?” A few feet away, my grandfather Jacob smacks his lips through fitful sleep, his hunched frame in a blue terry tracksuit like a deposed Mafia kingpin. The veins in his crossed arms have distended into

blistered channels, as though rubbed raw. Thick gobs of crusted squamous cells have erupted on his bald head; to me, the scab that spills from his forehead to his eyebrows has the outlines of a beautiful tulip. The worn recliner and the wheelchair are his sole options; leisure has become prison. Last week his doctor said to Mitzi: “Enjoy him.” This guaranteed that my grandmother would not, for the unspoken words taunt our eardrums: …while you can.

My mother nurses her pain in Grandma Mitzi’s bed, which still reeks of the cigarettes my grandfather used to buy her in bulk. Paige is fighting a sudden virus whose cause is under debate. Mitzi adjusts Paige’s waistband to make sure her toddler yoga pants give her system ample room to work. At any moment one of us will fling back the covers and jump up to switch the laundry thrashing in the machine,

running several dry cycles to banish any risk of dampness. Repose makes our nerves sputter, like a pedal floored in a parked car. My father is downstairs, having purposeful downtime in the condo Jacuzzi. I hope that he’s aesthetically pleased; that daughters or granddaughters, not the residents they’re visiting, are on display.

Accusation and reassurance collide mid-air as Paige’s coughs send ripples through the afghan. My mother believes she’s to blame. Just yesterday she crowed to Mitzi how Paige has been healthy for so long; how grandmotherly devotion and hot soup shielded her from the bugs circulating at preschool; how my mother cleverly booked seats in Row 13 of the airplane because we’d likely have it all to ourselves, spared the germs of all those misguided superstitious souls. Of course these boasts have summoned the Evil Eye, and my mother cannot forgive herself.

Or perhaps Paige is out of sorts because she fell out of bed in our hotel last night. I did not want to use the resort crib, sensing my mother’s reservations that it festered with invisible germs, and we could not pack or carry Lysol on the plane. Instead David took Paige into bed with us, ignoring my parents’ anxious pleas to take her in theirs. He was still furious with my father for embracing the beefy TSA agent and sobbing: “Thank you for keeping my treasure safe.” I knew my father didn’t mean me; not anymore. It would make a great Facebook vignette.

Or not. I already wince at the rampant subliminal chorus of sneers and disdain, silent cicada jeers hammering under the “Likes.”

At any rate, Paige—already a night owl, inheriting the sleeping habits of David ascribed by my mother to poor parenting—thrashed her way to the side of the bed around midnight and

announced her fall with a gut-scraping thump. David threw off the covers, stabbed her half-closed eyes with the pin of light encased in his smartphone, and bellowed: “Paige? What’s your name? When’s your birthday? Count to thirty!” My daughter grunted, refusing to wake. David flipped on the lights and asked her if she wanted some ice cream.

“Okay,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

I felt my belly begin to ache.

Room service took thirty minutes to arrive, compensating for the delay with extra scoops. As she continued to hack through golden threads of mucus, David plied her with nonpareils from the minibar. I remained seized in waves of panic, bowels churning, praying that she hadn’t gotten a concussion. A patch of rugburn scarred her cheek. I wanted to run to my parents and unload the problem; and yet I rather liked the respite we had from them. Usually, the

Photoshop crop tool is the only way to keep them out of the picture.

Paige ate her ice cream, counted to thirty, and collapsed into a scat-rhythm rest, snorts and hiccups overlaying the whirring huff of the A/C. At twilight she threw up and her soft skin grew hot.

“Too much chocolate,” I said.

“Too much anxiety,” David said.

“You’re making her sicker with your nerves. Am I wrong?”

I heaved up a mock sigh, exhaling the smoke of my anger. “I know. I guess I’m just too empathetic.”

Paige pounded her fists against my shoulder. “Stop. STOP!” “Who are you mad at?” David asked her. “Mommy or Daddy?”

He offered to keep her by his side for the day, but my mother did not like this idea.

“It’s my father’s birthday,” she said, frown lines cleaving her chin.

“She’s not sick,” said my own father,

the doctor, and my worries fell away.

“She’s just adjusting to travel. That’s all.”

So Paige is now in bed with me, my mother, and my mother’s mother, a 90year-old certifiably wise “old wife” who has deemed Paige’s illness a mere disturbance of equilibrium, too much icy food consumed too late. Even in a tropical climate, attention must be paid.

My grandfather has a cold, not to mention squamous cell carcinoma. We have just traveled. It’s best nothing refrigerated enter our systems. Mitzi even had Paige’s apple juice waiting on the counter when we arrived. When I saw the cup, I nearly cried. How could David—who critiqued his cousin for the triteness of his eulogy at their grandmother’s funeral—possibly understand?

“Karen, don’t be crazy,” says Mitzi to my mother. She is chewing on Nicorette gum with jarringly red lips, tarted up for

the benefit of the menfolk. “It was nothing you said that brought the Evil Eye. It was that David schtupped her in the middle of the night.”

“Whoa. Double-entendre alert,” I say.

“Remember when Grandpa asked your girl at the salon how much she charges for a blow job?”

“Oh, yes.” She coughs out a laugh.

“See? He was always confused.”

“Always,” agrees my mother.

Everything is fine; he’s not declining at all.

Now there is another woman, and not just for hairdressing. Rita speaks only Haitian but has the muscles to lift my grandfather from recliner to wheelchair, gives him a decent shower, and has access to her husband’s Facebook on her phone. Therefore, her husband and I are now “Friends.” Mitzi doesn’t like to pester Rita, but sometimes when Rita has finished texting or watching Real Housewives my

grandmother asks to see my news feed.

That Rita’s husband is a convicted felon thrilled David, sending him into merry outbursts of objection.

“You’re exposing our life to a criminal?” he asked. “Brilliant.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

When Mitzi ogles Paige on Facebook, she immediately calls my mother to ask: “Why is Paige in short sleeves when there’s snow outside?” “Why is she getting crumbs on the couch?” It adds a new layer of angst to my presence there. I want to lay claim to a mystique, a sultry intrigue that peels back like a strip tease, but I post too much backstory. I have no circles of friends that surround me like the rings of a tree. They all crouch in a silent watch fraught with secret mockery, and if I dress Paige in an outfit that says “I Drink Till I Pass Out,” I have no way of knowing if it’s funny, dorky, or just in poor taste. And yet if I post good

tidings, there’s the fear I might invoke the Evil Eye. And yet if I gripe about my day, I’ll offend everyone I’ve seen. Each piece of myself fractures in the public eye, exposing white lies and risking umbrage. Besides, I have no reason to seek advice and validation; my parents have all the answers and resources I could ever need. David might say this sardonically, but I cling to their authority with desperation. My grandfather always said: “Better off still.” Better to deny access to the onlookers; better to join my mother in reading posts aloud and snickering.

In the drawer of the guest room, nestled between my old Victoria’s Secret nightgowns, I find my grandfather’s discharge papers from the Army. The white type struck against the black carbon page imparts a bureaucratic, hatchet-job tedium.

“Occupation: Shecker.” “Education: 3

Yrs HS.” For his service he drove a laundry truck in Burma, which probably endeared him to my grandmother.

Laundry is in our blood.

With my phone I take a picture of the discharge papers. “Burma to Brooklyn to Boca,” I mutter, captioning in my mind, extending my hand like a zombie so I can pick up a signal. Kitty-corner to the uproarious cocktail waiter, the cherry grandmother clock chimes. Its metal face reads “Tempus Fugit” in ornate lettering. I had moped in front of that clock so many times, airless and sticky days when time seemed to bear weights rather than wings. A few feet from its base, Paige’s pink suitcase leans on the mirrored wall, an elaborate spray of flowers circling a blank space that normally bears a name. In the dizzying throw of reflection, the omission intensifies.

“Put a fake name,” David had counseled my mother, spraying pretzel

crumbs. “That way, we’ll know who the perverts are when they shout it ineffectually.”

“Maybe Fakename,” I said.

“FaKeNaMeh!” My mother squirmed in her desk chair.

“I have to put a name that sounds like she’s black?”

When David had gone, I reminded my mother how David’s neuroses were airtight proof he was becoming more like us, renouncing his family’s wanton ways. After all, hadn’t my grandparents always called each other “Jay” and “Helen” at the mall? Their intimacy is still airtight. The thrill of deception binds us together. My grandmother keeps making excuses to avoid seeing her few friends who aren’t yet dead.

And when I found myself bereft of a date for my brother’s wedding, Mitzi called escort services to find me a “medical student” for the night. “But

it’s all women,” she sighed to me. “And zaftig ones at that. Big bosoms.”

How grateful I was to marry. And yet because of David’s scruples, my poor grandfather is forced to call Paige “little girl.” I know seeing her name on the suitcase would have jogged the memory that agitates, like a mixed-forecast map, underneath his scalp.

I had wasted his clarity—above and below the scalp—on stoner exboyfriends who brought me to Florida in the swelter of June and August, the better not to waste money on me. My grandfather had driven us in his Lexus, which he referred to as “Lexus Harriet,” pointing out the various highlights of their retirement compound: clubhouse, gymnasium, tennis courts. “This is real suburbia,” he always said, pronouncing it “so-boi-bia.” On my next trip down, alone, he’d ask me, “How’s your fiancé?”; and if I burst into tears, he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his

Dockers and stared at his loafers.

I had memorized the tour by the time my (real) fiancé flew down to meet the family. By then Grandpa was losing his touch with Lexus Harriet. Driving my grandma home from the beauty parlor, he drifted into the wrong lane during a thunderstorm and nearly killed a young black woman. Of course, my grandparents’ term for the near-victim was one my husband couldn’t abide, even though my brother loves to throw it around. My brother wants to be a crusty old racist Jewish man as much as I want to be a nagging old neurotic Jewish woman: the hippest, youngest “old wife” out there, spewing admonitions with style and with vengeance. The kind of mother who would dress her newborn in fleece pajamas, despite the summer heat, without Mitzi having to issue the orders first.

Failing to find a signal, I sneak into the den and kneel down in front of the recliner, prop my elbow on the cracked leather, and lace my fingers through my grandfather’s. He opens his rheumy hazel eyes and smiles a toothless baby grin. He has swallowed his fake teeth one time too often for my grandmother to arrange another trip to the dentist.

His hand seems to float against mine, and his breath arrives with great effort.

“I won a volunteer award at Paige’s school,” I tell him, nuzzling the salt stubble of his cheek.

“Yeah?” he gasps. “How much money they give you? A nickel?”

“A penny for my thoughts,” I say, delighting in hearing laughter dribble through his wheeze.

Suddenly I see Rita’s reflection streaking through the mirrored walls, frizzy orange bun and turquoise sundress chasing the wheelchair she’s pushing. “Okay, Yak, we go to dinner,”

says Rita. “Excuse, hon.” She digs her hands under my grandfather’s broad, slumped shoulders. Her nails have sparkly peach rays bursting from a single gold rhinestone.

“One, two, four,” they recite together. His chuckle stabs my heart.

Only my grandmother calls him Yank, and Rita can’t even get the term of endearment right.

I retreat to the wraparound deck, staring down at the banyans with their mad thicket of roots, as though frozen mid-whip in a gale; the ficus trees still look like haikus, pared down to trunk and branch, even though it’s been years since the last hurricane hit.

When David and I bought our house, I insisted on a ranch so my grandparents wouldn’t have to climb stairs. I had succeeded in getting pregnant in the fall so my grandparents could fly up north in the summertime. I refused to believe they could no longer travel. As a

housewarming and baby gift, they sent me a check for a washer and dryer. It was okay for me to use communal Whirlpools, but a new generation was here: a girl who had to ride the course of our neuroses, soaring up past caution, through hyperbole, and finally crashing into parody.

“I’m going to post Grandpa’s papers on Facebook,” I announce to the ladies in bed. “I’m going to say that he never finished high school but he’s the smartest man I know.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” says my mother. “He’s ashamed that he didn’t graduate.”

“But it was to serve his country.” A hot itch of irritation grabs my skin. He’ll never remember that he didn’t graduate. He doesn’t even know my daughter’s name. She’s Blank Paige.

“He doesn’t want anyone to know,” says Mitzi.

I take another drag on the cigar of my temper.

“My tennis coach is cute,” I say, finally. “He goes out of his way to avoid me. Someone from Michigan Googled me, and his brother went to school there.” I twist my ring, a diamond that had belonged to my greatgrandmother, whose last words expressed fear that I might be cold in the mini-dress I had worn to the hospital.

I excuse myself, leave the room, and throw my phone at the base of the clock. It needs a different Latin inscription. Something to express time bobbing and slipping in sprays of gastric juice and knotted nerves, failing to launch. It’s time for my grandfather’s birthday dinner.

My grandparents are forty minutes late. Rita has doubtless gotten lost in Suburbia. Perhaps she has dark

intentions and should join her husband in jail. My brother Matt—a younger version of my grandfather, with abundant curly hair and a broad nose— checks his Movado watch and eyes his twin boys warily. They are five years old, blonde like his wife, and prone to punching each other in the head. My father alternates between making them laugh and reading the newspaper, folded like a handkerchief to save table space.

“I keep telling you,” Matt says now.

“That Haitian is a retarded mute.”

“She’s very strong,” my mother murmurs.

Paige slides down from her chair and begins to crawl under the table, taking swipes at people’s legs.

“There’s a doggie here!” I say.

My stab at diffusing tension produces only withering looks above the table, and screeches below. “No dog! No!” “Why can’t you discipline her?” David

snaps. Shame floods me; then a steely rage descends like a sluice, backwashing the flood into my heart.

“Paige is hungry,” my mother says, shooting out of her chair like a bottle rocket. “That’s all. I’ll order her some spaghetti.”

“You’re going to accost the waiter for spaghetti?” scoffs Matt. “And your grandsons who have actual manners have to sit here and watch?” But she has already gotten up. A mom on a mission, steadfast and devoted, worrying faster and better than I, sitting there like a retarded mute.

“That’s it,” says David, throwing down his napkin. “I’m taking Paige on the next flight home.”

I know it’s just bluster, meaningless words; but for weeks, he will frame this all-expenses-paid vacation as a harrowing sacrifice on his part, a credit upon which he will draw daily to browbeat me into deference on Paige’s

diet and bedtime. How I missed my grandfather’s epigrams. Does Macy’s tell Gimbels? Two wrongs don’t make a right. Or a left.

Paige’s face is filthy with tomatoes by the time Rita parks my grandfather at the table, his chambray button-down neatly pressed. At least she can iron.

“Hey! Who are you?” he asks through trembling lips. Please let him be joking.

“What are you, a wise guy?” I ask, pangs splitting my gut.

“Birthday boy’s here!” says Mitzi, lipstick refreshed, gold pantsuit already crinkled. She wields her cane like a conductor, whipping up harmony, abruptly swinging it toward the Haitian waiter approaching our table. “The baby shouldn’t have ice in her water,” she says. Matt snorts.

The waiter dodges the cane easily.

“Happy birthday, Mr. Fuchs,” he singsongs. My grandfather used to leave tips for the whole waitstaff in teacups

that he would hand them with feigned nonchalance, claiming they were dirty.

Now his eyes dart back and forth around the table. He is already pining for his recliner. “This’ll cost me a nickel,” he says to the napkin. “That’ll cost me a dime,” he says to the fork.

My nephews, still immaculate, get to pose with my grandfather for posterity and Facebook glory. Paige’s face and dress, at this point, are beyond Photoshop repair.

“I hope you don’t mind I got her spaghetti. She was so hungry,” says my mother.

“She was barking like a dog until she scared herself,” says my brother.

“Well, we’re not dog people,” says my mother.

“You mustn’t give her a fear of dogs,” scolds my grandmother, watching Rita cut my grandfather’s monkfish. “It’s too late for us, but there’s still hope for her.”

“She’s allergic to her other grandmother’s dog.” My mother’s voice breaks. “She gets a rash. I hate seeing Facebook photos of her rolling around on the dog. I can feel her skin getting irritated.”

“Maybe it’s your irritation that’s spreading,” I blurt out, glancing at David. But he and my father are staring with disgust at the tongue my grandmother has ordered, sticking flatly onto the plate with grainy mustard smeared on its frank pink sprawl.

A chocolate cake with a pale, skinny wax candle appears in front of my grandfather. He chews his lip.

“Blow it out!” we cry, and his throat strains to make wind.

“Hooray!” we all chorus as the flame dies.

He eats quietly, eyes swishing to and fro, then folds his hands in his lap. Rita dabs his chin. I sidle up to his other side.

“Maybe a little cake they could bring

me?” he murmurs.

“Grandpa!” I mash my nose into his face. “Look at your plate. Full of crumbs. That’s your candle.”

He rewards me with a sheepish halfsmile as I draw back. “Can’t fool you, can I?” “And, see.” I thrust my phone in the air. “Here’s a picture of you eating cake.

I posted—I put it on the computer.”

“A picture? Oh, no! That’s gonna cost me a dime!”

The phone lights up, startling him.

My friend the convicted felon has already Liked my photo. Over my grandfather’s scalp of volcanic cancer, my eyes meet Rita’s. She winks.

Ron Riekki Dr. James Crow

He sits us all down, piled on the bench, says even if you love the unemployment, even if you love the drugs, you have to turn to the walls of health care, theirs, get caught up in the courts; it’s part of the slave-anthem, the echoes of the future. Here is you—hopeful.

Here is you—fucked. The sky all filled with God. Of course, it’s not your sky.

Yours is filled with smoke. They call it clouds. Don’t let them fool you.

Timothy Schirmer The Risk of Killing Bees

It was late and I was strong, and Jude soon with fear, like someone reading in bed. I glanced over at Jude, who was asleep next to me, and noticed a red-hot, fourfingered scratch right down the center of his back. The elastic image of a naked woman appeared and vanished in my mind.

I set aside my book and brought up the lights to see things more clearly.

The scratch was raised and glittered red with the indication of near bloodshed.

It did not possess the softer crescent track marks of something self-inflicted.

The bedside light was

opened his eyes, but he wasn’t awake.

He smacked his lips a few times and he said, “There is risk.”

I had a sensation like swallowing a smooth but inedible object. I was leaning over him as a woman would lean over a pool of water to see her own reflection. I said, “What risk?”

And he said, “There is risk in killing bees.”

And I said, “Jude, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Jude rolled his head around on his pillow and suddenly looked gnarled

slipping from the meaty forearms of their trapeze partner, someone who was falling and could not believe that they were falling. But Jude’s face did quickly smooth over and he looked like Jude again.

He closed his eyes and said, “There is risk in killing bees. Now please, turn out the lights.”

I might have laughed had I not discovered a few lusty-red scratches on his chest, too, and a dainty, fading bite-mark high on his neck. In the dark, I laid next to Jude, close enough to pick up the thin scent of someone else’s

soap on his skin. Was it Basil?

Was it Black Licorice?

I thought of once, in college, when I had ripped an elegant orange spider out of its web so that I could have a quick shower and go to my morning class. I remembered the twitchy suffering of roaches I had hair-sprayed to death, and a ladybug I had impulsively thumbcrushed on the hot decking of a public pool, over which I felt an overblown tug of guilt.

But I had never killed a bee, because yes, even in his sleep, Jude was probably right about that.

There was some sort of risk involved.

When we were kids, my brother pulled a knife on me.

The longest and sharpest knife in our kitchen—a blade my mother had laid away for whole watermelons and raw sweet potatoes. “I could kill you,” said my brother, wagging the knife’s tip at my young neck.

“You could,” I warned, “but you won’t. You’d be in big trouble forever and ever if you did.”

“But I could,” he said, with a touch of wonder and excitement. “I could.

I could, I could,” he kept saying, each pronouncement was softer and less valid than the one before it. Then

he laid the long, perfect knife back in its drawer. I would like to think that it had scared me, the threat, if even just a little. But it hadn’t scared me. I understood what he meant.

I understood perfectly.

Garrett Hines To Marlon Brando and All My Friends Lost in the Fray Brando, my man, I am LOST! I’ve put mucho faith in what I can’t see and have ended up with a pocket full of lint.

I over-hyper-drudge analyzed the scenes: the breakdown, which I’m pretty sure was scribbled by a secretary.

The script, which I’m pretty sure was super-glued together.

The soul, which . . . come back to me, I still haven’t found it yet.

But Brando, Jim Carey asked me to “choose love” over “choosing fear.”

I’m afraid there’s a “choosing too late.” ______________________

Here at Loa, the mescal has too much pepper for what I have to offer.

I’ve drowned in lemon bitters and American Spirits and I feel all my acts unraveling.

I feel the bite take a piece of my heart in this path of love I chose to take.

With each sip I sense-memory her kiss on my lips, I feel her sweat on my fingertips.

I lost track of time . . .

Is it June already? _____________________ When my dog Rocko and I move out West, I’m hoping he’ll still believe in me.

I’m hoping he’ll still believe I’m the only creature capable of spooning out the can food.

He’ll still believe in my ability to sustain him, in how only I can find that spot behind his ear which makes his leg twitch like Thumper’s. ____________________

The thought of suicide crossed my mind once like train tracks.

They’re still there, grown mossy and covered with dry twigs and oxidized to shades of green, But they’re still there (I choose truth above lovefeardeathjoy, Jim). _____________________ It’s too damn hot in here, Brando, the glass and I perspire, wishing both our faces are like the cool white marble tabletops, not like the candles on the wall: shotgunned in no particular pattern.

Light bulbs dangling above us in glass brains.

I grab the martini glass, take another sip, and stare at the blonde sitting on her lover’s lap as they share a bike taxi with black velvet seats.

Their hands holding in soft peachness, her pink dress revealing tanned shave lines.

I hope she can’t see my eyes staring through the window, over the cocktail in my hands. ____________________ I still think of the love I lost: what she’s wearing, how she tried and succeeded at looking cute in a flower top and plum skirt on our first/last “half” date.

I grabbed her hand and she told me she was guarded and I trembled and stroked her knuckles against my cheek.

She giggled like bubbles, “you’re cute when you wanna be.”

I also just really liked her touch.

Really. __________________ Brando, my man, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

So where does that leave people like you and me?

Our entire existence is based on subtleties, on how we filter the subconscious

through thin mesh wire strainers.

It pours like tequila and eggwhites and Basil Hayden into the here and now.

It’s just in our nature: my ability to never let anyone go will be my shiniest tool and my dullest point.

Everyone leaves, my man, I have to hold on while I can.

John Ballantine I Lost My Voice, Driving

I lost my voice on the New Jersey Turnpike between exit 14 and 13 on October 10, 1967, to be precise, or so I thought, but looking back, it was not my voice. It was sculptured, molded, and shaped by eighteen years of schooling.

“What are the causes of the Civil War, why did Lady Macbeth feel so bad, and was Benedict Arnold really the traitor they thought he was?”

“Foul, foul, double trouble, see Birnam Wood stir. All is not as it seems.”

I wrote essays and took to quantum mechanics with a passion—“God would not play dice with the universe”—only Caesar’s Gallic wars and Aeneid’s wanderings left me flat. My eyes saw more than these words, formed over centuries. My lean body, all 6 feet 1 inch with sandy blond hair, showed the privilege of class that I barely

understood.

I thought I had a voice. My understanding of the world carried me this far: Good family, very good schools, a path to prosperity, wife, home, children, and maybe a picket fence. You know, the Leave it to Beaver neighborhood just down the street. This was America before the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, The Feminine Mystique, poverty, and the Cold War. A world I barely saw on the New Jersey Turnpike with trucks crashing down on the blue MG, as my father told me that he and my mother were separating.

“What, what did you say?” over the deafening din of cars roaring by.

“Your mother and I will not live together at 82 Library Place this year. I have a basement apartment near school in Hoboken.”

A city I never saw. I heard my father

speak, but I went quiet and looked at the planes sliding into Newark airport.

“What you, you didn’t know? How could you not know?”

I had no idea. I did not know my mother and dad as separate people. I looked at the tachometer spinning above 4,000 revolutions per minute, trying to keep up with the trucks looming above. The planes crossed the highway, close enough to see the passengers looking down on us. I took People’s Express from Boston at 9:00 a.m. that morning, two weeks into my freshman year, summoned home for this? What were they thinking?

The October day was graying. Here I was on Saturday morning, visiting my broken home in Princeton, New Jersey. I looked again at the dashboard. I guess these are the facts. My parents are separated. I had no idea what that meant. The noise of the road subsided as we passed Elizabeth, New Jersey, and

the Mobil refinery on the right, flaring off the gas.

I still didn’t know what to say. This was not some sort of Greek tragedy, with a chorus whispering directions.

Just me and my distracted father who was trying to assure me that everything was okay. What did that mean?

“They didn’t know what to say, what to do. Divorce didn’t happen back then.”

“We will have Thanksgiving together and not tell our neighbors or our friends what is happening. I will sleep on the third floor and, over Christmas, we will fly to Minneapolis to talk with your grandparents. Then we’ll take the train to Montana for a week of skiing with your cousins. That is the right time to explain the separation to Mumps and Gumps.” This was such a logical, doable plan for them, my parents.

I didn’t lose my voice then, because I had no such voice. No words for the emotions stirring beneath. No worries

about the relationships I didn’t understand. If somebody didn’t like me, “tant pis.” It must mean I am doing something right. I am here. Noticed, not liked, so what?

Love in the books, in lines of poetry, was about conquest, miscommunication, and not understanding.

Often something worked out, or they died of sorrow. And love, not marriage, was mostly about sex, not attained. That is what they said in the books I read.

So I had no voice, no words for the slowing tachometer as we got off at exit 9 and made our way down Route 1 to Princeton.

“How are classes— astronomy, Greek tragedy, history of revolutions, the renaissance, and Chinese dynasties? What do you like?”

“Oh, you know, just the same. Sit, read, take notes, write papers, and talk to people in the Harvard Union at dinner. Rugby too, with the future King

of Togo, a big round burly fellow.” I looked blankly out at the cut down cornfields lining the road.

We drove down Nassau Street, turned right on Library Place, and parked by the back porch, entering the kitchen, not the front door. The kitchen was warm, with apple pie, fried chicken, and hugs. But my mother was not right and, Chia, my younger sister by twentythree months, was uncomfortable—she did not like this meal because she knew all along, for months, and she didn’t tell me. Henrietta too did not smile easily as she cooked our meal.

We stood around the tin table in the kitchen, cutting the chicken and eating right there. “All will be the same.” My mother’s eyes were red, and they looked away as she spoke. My father tried to smile. “We’ll have Thanksgiving here, and then you two can join your dad in New York. He will be here for the day, and you and Chia will be with him

on Friday for a play.”

But that is what my mother did.

I murmured, “Okay.” Just accept the facts. What did that mean? I didn’t shout, cry, ask why, or look away.

Maybe I was a stoic or just out of it.

Chia acted as if this was normal, part of life in our home. Of course, we didn’t say anything.

“Don’t tell anyone. Don’t let the Morgensterns, our neighbors, know or your roommate, Mark Jacobs, your best friend from Princeton.”

I stood there next to Chia, and we looked at each other, “Okay, but why?”

“It could all work out.”

Right. After six years of growing apart, it would not work out. But they didn’t know that then.

“Just say no, look away, say nothing, and it will go away. Say no, all will be okay.”

I didn’t have a voice for this talk. I didn’t even know what this scene in the

kitchen meant. The world had changed, just like that, on the New Jersey Turnpike with trucks crashing down on me and planes landing one by one, every minute.

Back in Harvard Yard that Columbus Day, the ROTC was barred from recruiting. Protestors stormed the halls in Columbia, and the war was on TV. Bob Dylan told us, beware the “Masters of War.” I hovered in the dark rooms with my friends, listened to the music, looked at the windows, and said little.

The voice that I wore so well that grew over eighteen years failed me. I had been taught with the careful instruction of schoolmasters these words and these sentences, but they did not make sense as October darkened into November. My world was not right.

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”

John Repp Cooking By Flashlight, Supper By Lantern (With Loons) Symes Pond, Vermont The heat had parboiled us for three days, strawberry flies had chewed our don’t-DEET-on-me skin, mosquitoes had sung because I call the wheezy scree that scuttled us from the porch song so the planet’s self-evident simmering doesn’t slap a stick of dynamite in my right hand, snap my left thumbnail cross the tip of a strike-anywhere match & frog-march my sweat-slick, metonymic ass toward the nearest oligarch juggling last winter’s snowballs as he sniggers at all us book-reading Poindexters. That son of a bitch has no idea my love of lyrical anthropomorphism has delivered him up to a post-prandial lemon vodka, has freed him to float in the current burbling through his earbuds —a think-tank “audio-book” pooh-poohing

the Battle of the Overpass perhaps— & oozing past the tweezed pinna into his skull, suffusing the brain-stuff with soothing abstraction, safe as George Will’s adoration of baseball. Rain poured down at last.

We drove north cool & dry, remarking the devastation, reciting our gratitude for where & how we found ourselves.

All up Route 5, downed power lines, tree limbs, impromptu cataracts, rescue vehicles careening & near the turn onto the two-track that would lead us home, a platoon of citizens chainsawing a hemlock off the collapsed roof of a sagging farmhouse cut up into apartments. The further back into the woods we drove, the worse it got,

rain overwhelming the wipers, steam condensing on all the windows & two miles in, an oak down & it wasn’t home we headed for except home means wherever we three find ourselves.

We slogged down & failed to budge the tree, shouting our failure & mucking back to the car to call Carl, who came awhile later to saw the tree up & follow us to the cabin to light the lanterns & point out the gas line.

All week, our son had mimicked the loons, but not that night. He shone the flashlight he & he alone had remembered to bring on the cast-iron pan his parents filled with the feast. A cool, wet breeze wafted in.

We’d earned the right to employ the word wafted & to thank the Lord of Hosts for the nearby cell-phone tower & chainsaws & gasoline & the air-conditioning for which we didn’t hunger

that night, the bullfrogs being bullfrogs & the bats bats.

Melissa Tombro Interstate 80 “Angela went to Albequerque, Billy went to Bermuda, Carlton went to Cicily…”

long journey ahead.

vents making her eyelids heavy and her mind The family was on their wander. way to the state fair where they were going Dad was silent. He hadn’t “That doesn’t work!” to enter their pumpkin, spoken a word yet, two Aysha yelled from the the one that took six hours into the ride. In front of the pick-up truck men, dad’s plow and one response to this most back at her brother, small girl all their might recent question, he “Sicily starts with an S.” to roll into the back of grabbed for a cigarette the truck. The rear tires from his front breast “No it doesn’t,” Reggie looked almost flat from pocket and pushed in the replied, sure his sister the weight and Reggie car lighter, glancing in was right. She was had a bumpy ride as each Aysha’s direction only always right. dip in the road made the upon hearing the pop of entire vehicle lurch. its readiness. She was “S-i-c-i-l-y, I win!” she fast asleep. He lit his yelled at the top of her “Are we there yet?” cigarette and cracked his lungs.

Aysha asked growing window to let it hang sleepy in the front seat, out. A glance in the “Ugh, not fair, “ Reggie the combination of the rearview mirror mumbled under his endless stretches of land revealed Reggie was breath, settling in for the and warm heat form the passed out too, making

little unconscious grunting noises each time they hit a bump.

It was still five hours to town and the sun was setting as they drove into the horizon of yellow, orange and finally red. On the side of the road was the old familiar sign, “Last rest stop for 80 miles.” He eased the truck over onto the exit and coasted down the woodsy country road.

In the distance he saw it, the set of red wooden bungalows with their cracked hand-painted sign, “Tim’s Rooms for Rent.” He eased the truck onto the gravel and put

on the brake. He opened and closed the door quickly enough for the kids to peek open their eyes and grumble.

He approached 3A, a small bungalow with black hand drawn letters and took the key out of his back right pocket.

The door, with a good firm push popped open, the last rays of the sun filtered though the blinds and onto the orange coverlets of the twin beds. He didn’t bother to close the door.

He sat on the nearest bed’s edge, cigarette still in hand, and waited for someone to come in and find him.

Contributors John Ballantine John Ballantine is professor at Brandeis International Business School. He teaches courses in economics, finance and energy and is director of a one year program in finance. John received his bachelor degree in English from Harvard University and master's degree and Ph.D. from University of Chicago and NYU, respectively. He has been writing on the side for many years. Over the past five years, John has been part of weekly "Writing Down the Bones," Natalie Goldberg's writing group in Concord, Ma. where free form writing practices and creativity are encouraged. His recent reflections and memoir vignettes are an outgrowth of the voice that emerged from these writing classes. John continues to make time for writing, reading and discovering our wonderful complex world while teaching full complement of classes at Brandeis.

Garrett Hines Garrett Hines is based out of New Orleans. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Southeastern Louisiana University. His work has appeared in Southern Road Trips Magazine, and the Literary Journal Gambit. He was also a panelist in the 2009 Tennessee Williams Festival, where he read his short story "Keya".

A.J. Huffman A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her eighth solo chapbook, "Drippings from a Painted Mind," won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest. She also has a full-length poetry collection scheduled for release in June 2005, titled, "A Few Bullets Short of Home" (mgv2>publishing). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.

Melissa Pheterson Melissa Pheterson received her B.A. from Cornell University and her M.A. in journalism from New York University. Currently, She is a freelance writer of health and lifestyle content for local and national media. For a recurring feature on restaurants, she invites chefs into her home to guide her through the re-creation of a meal featured on their menu, despite her fear of knives and heat. In her spare time, she volunteers at her local synagogue’s museum of Judaica. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Bacopa Literary Review, decomP, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Healing Muse, Jelly Bucket, JewishStoryWriting.com, Jerusalem Post, Louisville Review, Minetta Review, Oklahoma Review, Quiddity, Rubbertop Review, Talking River, Wild Violet,numerous Gannett News Service publications, on the websites Salon.com andiVillage.com, and in the anthology "Have I Got a Guy For You." She received two honorable mentions for magazine articles from Writer’s

Digest and recently received an Award of Excellence from the New York News Publishers Association in feature writing.

John Repp John Repp is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and book critic. His most recent collections of poetry are "Music Over the Water" (Alice Greene & Co., 2013) and "Fat Jersey Blues" (University of Akron Press, 2014).

Ron Riekki Ron Riekki's books include "U.P." (Ghost Road Press) and "The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works" (Wayne State University Press, chosen by the Library of Michigan as a 2014 Michigan Notable Book). May 2015, Michigan State University Press publishes "Here: Women Writing Michigan's Upper Peninsula." His plays include "All Saints' Day" (Ruckus Theater), "Dandelion Cottage" (Lake Superior Theatre), and "Carol" (equity production, Stageworks/Hudson).

Timothy Schirmer Timothy Schirmer currently lives in the last lovely little corner Manhattan, a place called Alphabet City, where he's happy to walk down the street with his headphones on. His writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in RATTLE, FriGG, The Adirondack Review, The Monarch Review, Quiddity, Bluestem, Gertrude, Punchnel's and elsewhere. You can find him online at: timothyschirmer.com.

Melissa Tombro Melissa Tombro is an Associate Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, in New York City, where she teaches writing. In addition to teaching, she volunteers for the New York Writers Coalition, where she runs writing workshops for at-risk and underserved populations. She lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with her husband Matt and their dog Lily. Her work has appeared in Eclectica magazine.

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