Money
We were in grade six, Ryan and me. We’d go around the neighborhood with a bucket and two sponges and some dish soap and try to wash cars. We charged ten bucks a pop if people asked, but we preferred to let people pay what they wanted (some people would pay fifteen or twenty bucks, but most paid four or five). One afternoon we were hanging out at Ryan’s place, drinking Coke, when Ryan’s mom asked me if I wanted to wash her car. I said, Sure. I washed the car. Ryan stayed inside. Ryan’s mom came out and carefully inspected the work I’d done. She was satisfied, paid me twelve bucks. I felt weird about the situation. I was happy to have the cash, but I felt weird. My friendship with Ryan shifted after that. We were never as close. Sure, we still washed cars and made money together. But something changed.
FICTION by Alejandro Leopardi
Into Obscurity
“Don’t go,” she pleads with me. “Please stay with me. I don’t want to be alone.” I recognize her, I think, this tiny person, her face veiled and distorted. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I tell her. It pains me to even say those words, though I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe it’s because she’s so young and fragile to be abandoned in the world. Her attachment to me is strange. I turn to leave, but her little hands grip my sleeve, anchor me in place. I…she…we both search for help, but there’s no one else there, no one else she nor I can turn to. Each time, we stand like that, lost and confused, for just a beat longer until a billowy smoke envelopes us and we lose sight of each other. Her grip loosens, and even with my vision shrouded, I know I’ve lost her, too. I fan my arms and keep my fingers outstretched trying to find her. I never can.
They say dreams are distorted reflections of our reality, our mind trying to recreate our experiences from the waking world. Mine don’t seem to make that distinction, blending with my actual reality and turning my life into a waking nightmare. And it’s the same one each day. I don’t want to sleep, and I don’t want to be awake because I’m frightened of both.
The relentless rays of dawn filter through the half-shut blinds of my room each morning, and each morning, my eyes hesitate to open, the relentless fear of those constant dreams washing over me. I’m unable to stop it from happening as much as I try to force the evils out of my mind. It’s the same every day. Even though it’s likely been a few hours, I feel as though I’ve been asleep for days. My body yearns for more rest, but my mind won’t allow it. So, I just lay there lifeless for a few more minutes while my eyes adjust to the ever-burning light, my mind wandering through the endless possibilities of meaning.
It takes all the strength I can muster just to turn my head and look at the time. Seven-fifteen a.m. Of course, it is. I tend to think I’ve slept more than I have, so it’s no wonder I ache so badly. I can’t keep going like this. My body literally cannot take it. Night after night of sleeplessness may have been tolerable at first, exhausting, sure, but tolerable. But now? Now it’s an unbearable burden, crushing my ever-waking being.
Too many weeks of this. My mind’s slowly rejecting rational thought, and sometimes thought itself, as my mental alertness creeps toward deterioration. It’s not just my mind, though I wish it was. My body, too, is slowly succumbing to a level of physical exhaustion unfathomable even a year ago. Getting up in the morning, getting up at all, means mustering up every ounce of energy, and even then, I slither rather than stroll to any destination.
The worst part, still, isn’t a melting mind or futile frame, however much I keep wishing they were. What plagues me day in and day out is that I don’t remember how it started or why. It came on suddenly like a car crash. Life can be so cruel sometimes. Hunger and thirst provide some reprieve, my brain shifting toward life nourishment for the moment.
SHORT
***
Today, just like every day for the past few weeks, feels a bit odd. Even now as I get out of my comfortable, warm, familiar bed, I can’t help but to sense that things aren’t wholly right. Maybe I’m delusional. It could very well be I’m imagining the warped world around me and manifesting my delusions into some form of alternate reality. Maybe. Or maybe I’m finally seeing things as they should be. Whatever’s happening, I get a sense that parts of my life have, in some way, been altered, manipulated somehow by someone or some force invisible to me or anyone else.
As I make my way through my apartment to the kitchen, I find myself stammering into objects, the very same objects I placed myself and yet cannot maneuver around. Nothing has been moved or touched from what I can tell. Faux Paris painting in the hallway next to the bathroom. Check. Record tower randomly, yet strategically, placed in the corner of the living room. Check. It’s possible I’m overreacting and allowing my general disorientation to control my life. I’ll take control back now, thank you.
Food. I need to eat. I need my coffee. That’s it. Too much time has elapsed since waking without ingesting what I know can salvage my existence. My mind and body aren’t working in unison today, so I’ll force them to.
As I finally sit to relax, the caffeinated aroma swirls and dances, swings and trots in its crisscross pattern toward bodily enlightenment. Because of it, everything in this realm appears normal again. No strange movements. No visions. Just pure bliss with oatmeal and java and a brain awakening. Until a voice calls to me somewhere in the distance, somewhere not in this room.
“Luis,” the voice calls out. I live alone, have so for years. Impossible. “Luis, are you paying attention?!” the voice gets louder this time.
I don’t want to, yet I know I must. Slowly, reluctantly, I look up from my bowl. The spoon and its contents go crashing down onto the counter, spilling over the side and onto the floor. I see it, I just don’t believe it. There is just no way this can be true. Trying to piece it all together doesn’t offer solace, doesn’t offer a solution.
I am no longer in my kitchen. I am not even in my apartment or anywhere near it. Somehow, some way, I ended up at work with my boss angrily staring down at me. I’m tongue-tied. Words form and dissipate simultaneously. But I need to speak. I have no choice.
“Yes sir, I’m here,” I say aloud though it feels like I’m communicating with a phantom.
I look around to make sure I’m not hallucinating all of this. Having downed half a bottle of whiskey last night could very well have led to this hallucination. Pills and booze don’t mix, but I don’t listen. Never have. Wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands, I open my eyes wide. How the hell did I get here? Did I black out? Was I asleep at my desk and dreamt I was home? Damn it, I just can’t remember.
“Look Luis, I need you to focus,” my boss says as my eyes wander around the room. “You’ve been a little distracted today, walking around here like some kind of zombie. I’m not a monster. I know it’s been a difficult period for you personally. But you’re going to have to shake it
off soon, get it out of your system. We have a big meeting coming up and I need one hundred and fifty percent from you. Tell me you understand what I’m telling you, Luis?”
“Mhm. Yup. For sure,” the words tumble out before I’ve run them through quality control. “I, uh, I feel a little under the weather. That’s it. Sick, I think.” I’ve never been much good at lies.
“Have you talked to anyone about your, um, personal stuff?” I remember this conversation. It feels like we’ve had it several times, and I’ve responded the same way in all those occasions. I’m not sure what more he wants from me. So instead of saying anything, I say nothing at all. “Okay, how about you take an early lunch and clear your head,” he says, shaken at my sudden silence. “Take some aspirin or something. And when you get back, I want you firing…” He stops mid-sentence, his face red. “I want you getting right into the presentation.”
“Sure, sounds good,” I instinctively say. “Will do just that,” the answers spill from me automatically. I don’t think. I talk, I react.
“Good. I want you to succeed. I want us to succeed. So, I’ll see you in a couple of hours then, clean and refreshed,” he utters walking away.
I have to figure out what exactly happened between eating breakfast and arriving here. A rational explanation feels out of reach, but I need to find the connection and get myself back home. The urge to call James rises inside me. My trusty sidekick for the past couple decades may be able to add a coherent voice and some clarity to this situation, something I’m not in the right state to do.
Fifteen minutes later I’m sitting in the lobby of the office building waiting for James, still as confused as ever. The elevator doors open, and I spot him coming out from within its enclosure. Suddenly, I’m riddled with anxiety. What if he thinks I’m crazy? He’s going to think I’m utterly nuts, bonkers, out of my mind. He’ll never believe this story. Hell, I don’t believe it. All this is a little too late because here he comes.
“Luis-a, what’s up buddy?” James playfully asks. “What’s so urgent that you dragged me from my eleven-thirty power nap under my desk?”
“Can we take a walk?” I ask, already making my way to the doors.
“Guess it’s more serious than I thought.”
We walk around aimlessly downtown. I do that often, the downtown meandering. It calms me during a busy day in the office. Still, it all feels a bit anomalous to me. The streets filled with people, buses passing loudly, dogs barking at passersby, they all feel like illusions feigning reality.
Once the idle chatter has reached its peak, I proceed to tell James about the day’s events. It’s much simpler to relay than I’d expected. One instant I’m in one place, the next I’m somewhere else. When the story’s all told, his thoughts reflect outward, his face like a Rorschach test displaying a mix of compassion, sadness, and confusion. Reading him becomes an endless, winless battle. One thing is clear: His concern isn’t what’s happening to me, per se, but what’s happening inside of me.
In a panic, I try to explain it all away, but James stops me mid-speech. “Bro, look, you’ve been a little…” he chooses his words carefully, “not yourself lately. I get it. Obviously, it’s reasonable given…everything. This whole insomnia thing, though, is starting to take a toll on you. At first, I thought, maybe it’ll pass, that maybe you’ll get so tired you’ll have to sleep. But this, this is something far beyond just being tired. Think about it, how else would you zap from one place to another without even moving? And if you were going to choose a place to zap to, it wouldn’t be to a place you despise.”
He’s right, completely and utterly right. I tell him I’ll get rest, but judging by the look he’s giving me, he definitely doesn’t believe me.
“I know you want to mean it. Frankly, though, you need to get yourself together. This isn’t just about you, and this sleep deprivation, well, to be brutally honest, you’re making it about you and you alone. Do us a favor, do yourself a favor, and get some rest so you can get back on track. Meditate. Do yoga. Anything. Just relax. And try not to drive.”
“What does driving have to do with any of…”
Before I can finish the sentence, I notice a white, plastic bracelet on my right hand, one I don’t recognize and didn’t see before now. I stare at it intently for some time, having completely forgotten about the conversation. James glances at the bracelet, patiently waiting for me to finish my thought. I’ve no words left. The phrase I’d started has shrunk, and now it’s trapped inside, as is my breath, both afraid to release.
Just like that, as unexpectedly as everything else I’ve experienced today, a loud screech comes from the street. James and I pull our attention off the bracelet and onto the direction of the sound. Just as we do, just as our eyes find the exact location from which the sound emanates, an oasis-blue SUV crosses an intersection and slams violently into the driver-side of a shadow-grey two-door coupe. The SUV drags the coupe several yards before the smaller car unhinges from the grille, flipping over onto its roof. Within seconds, the coupe’s engine bursts into flames. Almost as swiftly, the entire car bursts into an enormous, fiery red blaze, car pieces rising high before showering the streets and passersby.
As horrific as this is, the scene puts me in a momentary, involuntary trance. I stare on, watching death hover, ready to pounce right before my eyes. I don’t move, don’t try to stop it or help anyone, yet I can’t pull myself away from a tragedy so surreal. Instead, for whatever reason, my first reaction is to shut my eyes tight, and at the top of my lungs scream, “Help!”
My voice is drowned out, replaced by a loud siren. As my eyelids part and my pupils adjust to the light, I realize I’m in my own bed again. I look around aimlessly. Impossible. A moment ago, I was downtown witnessing an atrocity of flames, and now I’m here. How is this happening? Why am I in a dream within a dream wrapped in a waking nightmare?
I reason with myself. I must have imagined myself waking up, going to work, then seeing all of that. Of all the possibilities, it’s the only sane explanation I can render.
I sit up and check the clock on my nightstand. Seven-fifteen a.m. Just a coincidence. The sleeping pills I took last night for my insomnia are a lot stronger than I thought. My dreams now
intertwine with reality, weaving in and out at will. I may not even be awake yet, stuck in a dance where my mind is being led rather than leading. My head begins to feel like someone’s hammering nails into it. The throbbing spreads to my forehead, down to my sinuses and eventually down the length of my spine, and when it gets there, I wince and tense up. The pain is agonizing. Whatever I took, whatever I did to myself, my body is punishing me for it now. There has to be some way to stop this wretched torment.
I try to get up out of bed. The throbbing in my head, though, has blurred my vision to the point where everything in the room is a complete haze. I can’t even see the bedroom door, mere feet from my bed, clearly anymore. I’m drifting through time, unable to connect to anything, except that when I look down, both my feet sit firmly on the floor. The pulsing in my head and face are my only companions, all other sensations have vacated my mind and body. I need to fight whatever’s happening, so push myself to walk. I stand all the way up only to fall right back into place. No matter what I do, I’m stunted, strapped to this bed.
I’ve got it. My cell phone is on the nightstand! If I can just manage to find it, I can call my sister to run over here and find me something, anything, to cure my ailment. Having succumbed to the fact that I’m immobile, if only temporarily, I resolve to lay down and do everything from my bed. It’s less painful this way. I reach over to feel the edge of the bed, then inch my hand over to the nightstand and snatch my phone up.
I can only see blurry outlines of the phone even when I bring it close to my face. Dialing, evidently, won’t work. So, I use voice command and blurt out my sister’s name, “Call Natalia,” which comes out mumbled, the words slumping their way to the speaker. Somehow, my phone recognizes the command, and the phone starts ringing. I wait impatiently for an answer, for Natalia’s familiar tone to come through on the other end. As the phone rings, thoughts bounce around my already weak mind. What if she doesn’t answer? What if I can’t do anything about this and it worsens?
“Luis?”
“Natalia, I need you to come over as quickly as possible,” I plead, my speech temporarily restored. “I’m not sure how to explain what’s happening, but I really need your help.” What are you talking about?” There’s something peculiar about her tone. “Come over where?”
Puzzled by her reaction, I respond brashly, “My place, my bedroom! This pain, I just can’t…” Before I have a chance to explain the situation, she interrupts me. “Is this supposed to be a joke? If it is, it’s definitely not funny.”
“What do you mean a joke? This is serious. I need you to come over here right now.”
“Stop playing whatever game this is. I can see you sitting in your car in front of my house, Luis. Hang up and come inside. You’re freaking me out now.”
The words strike me like a fist, thoughts spinning in a dizzying frenzy trying to piece it all together. I pull the phone away and look up. Sure enough, I’m sitting inside my car, stationed on Natalia’s driveway. More miraculous is that my vision has been restored, the world clearer,
yet more frightening than ever. The hurting that embraced my body just moments ago has, too, passed as quickly as it came on. The car is in drive but I’m idling. I shift it into park, realizing I’ve only just arrived. Why can’t I get control of my life? I just want to understand what’s going on.
Natalia’s walking toward the car, her face a mixture of wonder and irritation. I don’t know what to say to her now. She opens the passenger side door and peers in at me. “Everything okay with you?” she asks as she takes a look around inside. She’s probably checking for drugs, or alcohol, or who knows what the hell she could be thinking. “Mind if I sit in here with you?” I can only nod my head before she jumps in and closes the door.
Natalia looks at the ignition button and the gas gauge. I realize I don’t need the engine on with her inside because I’m going nowhere fast, so I shut it off. I place my phone in one of the cup holders. My attention then turns to her worried eyes. The words are not coming to me as rapidly as I thought they would. With all that’s happened, I figured the storytelling would shoot out like bullets. Instead, I’m planted here staring at my sister’s face utterly speechless.
She, not I, breaks the silence. “The look on your face is concerning, especially after that call. Then I come out here to find you looking out of your windshield like you’re not even here, the engine still running. Are you going to explain to me what’s wrong, or do I have to admit you to the E.R. …or a psychologist, depending on how this pans out?”
A flurry of words floods my brain like a broken dam. Nothing leaves my lips. I look away from her to try to muster up enough of my nerves to get the explanation out of me and into her ears. Breathe, I tell myself. So, I slow my breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and try to find an object to focus on that will bring me back to center, wherever that may be. At first, it works. I can feel a sense of calm washing over me. That’s short lived, replaced with an incredibly sharp squeeze on the top of my left hand. The pinching spreads to my right hand. It’s not enough to make me squeal, just enough to make me flinch. Physically, there’s nothing wrong with my hands, as far as I can see. They’re perfectly still, regular hands.
It’s now or never. I have to tell Natalia what’s been happening, what’s still happening, even if she doesn’t believe me. I manage to tear my eyes from my hands, shifting them ever so slowly back to Natalia to tell her…
I’m burning up. On fire. Blazing. An intense heat gradually slithers through the entirety of me. And now a new panic has crept inside me, one that inhibits even the thought of looking up, looking forward. It’s paralyzed me. I allow my eyes to wander to the only thing that matters in this moment, the only object I’m less afraid of, Natalia. But when my eyes land on her, she, too, is engulfed in a blaze of tall red and blue flames. They torch her, the car, everything in their path. I refuse to believe this. I won’t. The entire car is on fire, I soon realize. Smoke fills what air is left. Natalia looks to be screaming at the top of her lungs, but I don’t hear a sound. The paralysis has grown stronger, rendering me helpless, and yet I still try to reach out to Natalia, try to grab her hand and console however I can. When I do, a large flash goes off, blinding me.
The glare from the flash of light slowly fades, as does the heat, the pain in my hands, and the fire – all dissipating rapidly. I’m, once again, in my bed. This time, however, it’s different. I feel different. Everything that happened, it all felt so incredibly real, even down to the heat of the
fire. And my sister, my poor sister. The relief is palpable, thick in the air, heavy in my mind. It was all a dream, something I can do away with at will. For my own sake, for my mental health and wellbeing, I’m to have to call out of work today. There’s no way I can make it in like this, I don’t care what my boss has to say.
I reach for my cell phone on the nightstand and take a quick glance at the clock. Again, seven-fifteen a.m. I shake it off. Dream within a dream again. No time for dwelling because I’ve got a phone call to make. It’s early, which means no one’s in the office yet. I’ll have to try Candice, our receptionist, on her personal phone. The phone only rings once before she answers.
“Candice, it’s Luis. Look, I’m not going to be able to make it into work today. I’m not feeling well.”
No sound, only silence on the other end. For a moment, I think I’ve dialed the wrong number. Then, I hear Candice. “Mr. Diaz? I don’t understand.” She sounds just as baffled as Natalia did in my dream.
“What is there to not understand?”
“You’ve been out for a few weeks,” Candice sounds uneasy now, her voice shakier, more uncertain. “You’re not due back to the office for another month. I…I…” she can’t find any other words to add.
“What day is it?” I ask, fearful of the answer.
“You sure you’re okay, Mr. Diaz? Is she having a hard time adjusting?”
“The day, Candice. What day?”
“It’s Friday,” she says almost whispering now.
No, she’s wrong. That can’t be right. I drop the phone on the bed and immediately stare at the wall, the only blank space left. If what she just said is true, I’ve been lost in my own mind for a lot longer than I imagined.
Now, I hear voices off in the distance. Am I imagining this, too? The voices sound remote at first but grow increasingly brasher and closer. It’s almost as if I was swimming, the water beginning to clear out of my ears. A crowd, a large crowd, it sounds like, with a bunch of people talking all at once but none of them make any sense. Something is still muffling the voices enough that I can’t make them out.
Darkness – everything has gone blank. The only thing that stands in front of me is pure, frightening, unforgiving nothingness. But the voices, those unrelenting voices, they haven’t gone away – I still hear them, now accompanied by an array of distorted images. They swim through my brain and disappear so quickly that I can’t decipher what they mean. Snapshots pop in and out. I can’t make them out clearly, and when I can, I’m not quite sure what or who they are.
James, Candice, the truck, Natalia, a crash, fire – all jumbled up with sounds and voices. There’s agony, screaming, the sensation you feel when every part of you hurts, and then, an unnerving calmness. My eyelids shoot open. I’m awake again and back in this damned room. This time I’m more lucid. I can also remember. Thoughts and memories come into view…
“Mr. Diaz, do you understand all the information we just covered?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Natalia Waters, nee Diaz, listed you as the sole caretaker of her daughter, a Jenna Waters, nine years old, in her last will and testament. You have agreed to the terms I presented, so now all you have to do is sign, and little Ms. Waters will be in your custody.”
I agreed but couldn’t live up to the responsibilities my sister put on me.
“Luis, it’s mamá again. I’ve left you messages, I’ve texted you. Please call me. You lost your sister, and I lost my daughter, but Jenna has lost everything. I can’t bear to see her cry one more day. She wants to be with you. She needs to be with you. Please, Luis, this is hard for all of us, but Natalia would want us all to be together, to be a family. I love you.”
I look over at my nightstand. Seven-fifteen a.m., the exact time the world stopped spinning and life became meaningless. I lost Natalia in that wreck. I lost Jenna, too, and for her, my heart breaks into millions of pieces each and every morning. Jenna reminds me so much of Natalia that it hurt just looking at her. She even sounds like her. I should do better, I should be better, for her, for mom, for Natalia. I just…I can’t.
Next to my phone on the nightstand, nestled just behind a framed picture of the three of us, Natalia, Jenna, and me, is exactly what I need. The magic pills and a little whiskey to wash it down. My eyes remain transfixed on the picture of the three of us, smiling and happy and so full of life. I continue looking even as I open the small prescription bottle and pop a handful of pills. I take one last glance at that image before engulfing one-third of the liquid tranquilizer, placing it on the nightstand to strategically hide the frame from view. My head goes back, my eyes close, and I disappear from the physical world and back into obscurity.
*
* *
POETRY by Sharon Whitehill
In Praise of Ridges
whorls in a thumbprint the ripple of ribs under skin the furred ridges of corduroy wales furrows in a tilled field frilling the gills of a mushroom ribbing the rim of a dime leaving a V in the wake of a swan or quilting the creases in snow algae that buffers the windward side of a reef to screen the sensitive coral as hair shields a head as the skull shelters a brain itself folded and grooved around the hippocampus or seahorse, whose delicate carapace crinkles with fused bony plates
POETRY by Trevor Conway
Forwarding
Having found another home that fits his frilly criteria, he opens the kitchen press that housed his foods for three years, consults its contents to script his final meals accordingly. With less space for books, he must decide whether he’ll ever actually read the conjugations of five hundred Spanish verbs.
Despite his preparations, he hasn’t yet considered the reservoir of spirit he’ll need to draw on, scrubbing and washing from room to room. In the final hour before departure, a feeling will flourish within him – exhilaration, with a dash of despair –snagging his mind on memories, telling him the past must be mourned.
When he can clean no more, he’ll gather his bags, stand at the door and think of the sprinkling of Spanish he’s learned: they use estar, not ser, when speaking of someone’s address, the verb “to be” as a temporary thing, as if to say all homes are fleeting.
POETRY by David Ward
The Pitcher
Each morning she fills a pitcher with water from the rusty tap in the yard.
She places it on a table beside her bed, then sets out to work in the fields.
Each evening she returns, weary and thirsty, to find the pitcher is empty.
Sometimes she wonders who drank it. Sometimes she does not think about it at all.
Sometimes she wonders whose are the dusty footprints that lead from the yard up the stairs to her room.
Sometimes she wonders who has rumpled the sheets, who has slept all day in her bed.
One day she does not fill the pitcher, but hurries out to the fields.
She cannot remember whether this was deliberate, or whether she simply forgot.
As she returns at sunset, there are no dusty footprints. The bed is just as she left it.
But the empty pitcher, dull ochre and brown, lies smashed in pieces on the floor.
POETRY by Elinora Westfall
Merivale
On the 28th March 1941, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse. The following is an Ekphrastic poem inspired by the painting of her sister, Vanessa Bell, by fellow Bloomsbury Group member, Duncan Grant. This poem is a moment wherein Vanessa is writing to her sister, only a week or two after her death, where life continues to break back in, with all of its sharp edges.
Have you ever been to Merivale?
She writes. While
Angelica, (six), fist full of flowers, arranges them in a pattern similar to that of the painted tile of the hearth.
Violet stalks with purple faces for the V and daisies for the W while she sits, cross-legged, in the milk-dish of sunlight coming in through the half-open door.
Have you ever been to Merivale?
She begins again. Blots the end of the pen, nib down for too long on the fold of cloth.
Watches the ink bleed out blue, blue, blue…Perhaps-
She falters, Perhaps we shall go, you, me-
A song thrush in the wisteria just outside of the window calls from her nest, Leonard whistles back from where he stands between the tulips
Vita perhaps,
Angelica hums a tune half-forgotten and half-remembered, and the children, of course, they do so love to see you.
She smiles, watches her daughter weave her own initials with petals from the Forsythia.
And, upon our last visit, Angelica fell rather in love with a cow which she gave your name to-
Out in the garden again, just by the door, Angelica picks weeds, plucked with the hollow sound of the milk thistle or dandelion stalk
A brown cow, all doe-eyes, soft-muzzle. Standing on legs with knees like pollarded trees.
She smiles. Gains momentum. Shifts in her chair that creaks and scrapes against the flag-stone floor.
Netty’s here, folding your stockings, rolling them into yellow balls like eggs - like eggs, in a basket.
As soon as she is gone, I’ll unravel them, fitting perhaps, for I seem myself unravelled.
She hears Netty on the stairs. Knows the satisfaction she will gain from this rolled nest of previously unravelled and unkempt stockings.
Did I tell you I see Vita now?
She comes to dinner in your place, sits in your chair with its back to the fire, with some hesitation, of course.
She looks at me. And I in her see you, and you in me she sees, though neither of us has spoken of this of course.
Instead, darling Tom slaps cards down upon the table, Queen of Hearts upturned, only fleetingly, between her and I, And then, of course, Duncan slaps his card down too - the King, perhaps, of Spades, as suits him, and the moment passes, without whistle or trace-
The song thrush sings again, greets her mate with a beak of soft sheep’s wool scraps.
- only the echo for which I have spent these last few weeks digging for beneath the roots of speculation, only to find dust and grit, the shrivelled bulb of a daffodil dug up too often and the skull of a blackbird buried by Angelica, I am sure, though at your behest.
Now, the ticking of the clock, the whirr, the readying, readying, then the chime. Too loud. Always, too loud.
She closes her eyes, waits, waits, for stillness, and then-
Have you ever been to Merivale?
She has digressed for too long.
I ask not because of the (now) literary bovine, but because, in passing a cottage I noticed a young woman, a girl, perhaps, sat, elbows on the windowsill, Mrs Dalloway between her hands - and it was such a shock to see you there, so suddenly, so starkly, in this house painted the colour of our Cornish sea, because you see (as only you do, you did) I look for traces of you, without knowing it at all, and I find I cannot speak, cannot say, as you would have done, so eloquently, but I cannot, neither with voice nor with pen the pain it is to glimpse you so suddenly, and so sharply within your absence.
The house is quiet, the bird has flown, Angelica has gone, the garden too tempting.
Such is death.
The stillness stretches.
But one of these days we may contrive to speak again. Who knows?
Again, the stillness
My darling Virginia, I miss you.
And this letter is nothing, without you to receive it.
The hesitancy of pen held above paper.
Yours, always, V.
SHORT
FICTION by Elinora Westfall
The Roses and the Weeds
Ollie talks.
Not that Bridget listens. She’s too absorbed in the mundane task of fastening her bra, a simple action frustrated by a twinge of back pain, a lingering stiffness in her shoulder, and her own condemning thoughts: You’re getting too old to shag in a van. Apparently, she’s not getting too old for Ollie, though, because he keeps coming back for more; she’s continually mystified, flattered, and unable to resist. He’s too beautiful. He is too close to physical perfection.
Despite this however her interactions with him frequently disappoint, her sexual and aesthetic experience diminishes substantially with the inevitable occurrence of one very simple thing: He speaks.
She wishes that she had kept a written record of all the epic bloody nonsense that has come out of his mouth over the years because she could have gained some kind of minor social media fame and parleyed a book deal out of it to boot: Shit My Stupid Shag Buddy Says. It occurs to her that as far as sordid shag buddies go, she has run the gamut from an Oxford graduate to this, the man who thought that when his sister was pregnant with twins, she’d be pregnant for eighteen months rather than nine. It’s her typical anti-accomplishment: From the gutter to the stars and back again.
As Ollie blathers about football he leans over to tie his trainers and this singular movement initiates a glorious symphony of muscle and flesh in stirring, magnificent counterpoint with one another. She longs to trace the perfect trapezoid muscles within reach but doesn’t, knowing that he would interpret this as an overture for a second go-round, which she’s not really up for because of the pulled muscle in her lower back and various other reasons that she won’t let herself think about.
So, she lets him go on and on about Liverpool and the proliferation of their bloody stupid fans up North.
“They’re everywhere,” he says,“everywhere! I don’t get it. I mean, there must be a Brazilian of them here.”
Bridget successfully resists the urge to bang her head on the side of the van.
“Don’t you think?” He gazes up at her.
Aw, bless, he’s trying to engage her in conversation; it would be touching if it weren’t so pathetic. “A Brazilian,” she says flatly. She rubs her aching shoulder and pulls on the hideous yellow work apron; she has to give the cafe credit for picking the one colour that makes all pasty white people look like utter shite.
“Yeah. You know. Like a lot. Like more than a million?” Ollie rolls his eyes. “Know maths is not your strong suit Bridget, but Jesus, everyone knows that.”
“It’s billion,” Bridget enunciates with a certain sarcastic slowness that immediately reminds her of Vita, and that makes her want to slam her head against the van until she is unconscious. “You mean billion. Not Brazilian.”
He’s sceptical, “you sure?”
“A Brazilian is a person. From Brazil,” she forces out the point between clenched teeth,“the country.”
The light-bulb goes off over Ollie’s handsome head, offering only a bare minimal illumination of knowledge.
“Oh. Right, right,” he nods vigorously,“okay. Yeah. That makes sense,” slow, graceful, and lazy, he pulls on his shirt, “we doing this again next week, maybe?”
“Maybe,” she lies, and ties the apron at her back with stiff fingers, catching a hangnail on the waistline of her jeans; she wore jeans to work today and amazingly Claud didn’t call her out on it. Ollie said it was because she looked stunning in them. He rarely compliments her, so she figures it must be true.
Again, she thinks of Vita, who once said - you should always wear jeans, it ought to be the law of the landwoozily stated after one nap, two orgasms, and three glasses of wine, so she was feeling uncharacteristically munificent that day. And again, she wishes she would stop thinking of Vita, at least immediately after shagging idiots.
Ollie laughs, “it’s weird. You’re really like a bloke sometimes,” he pulls a face. “Shit, that sounds really gay, doesn’t it?”
She stares at the abandoned used condom on the floor of the van flaccid, sad, and inanimate as if it were the eviscerated hydro-skeleton of some strange jellyfish.
“Yeah. It does,” she grabs her jacket, pushes at the van’s heavy door with her good shoulder, and she’s free. For the moment, anyway.
At home, the windows are fogged up with steam from the beef stew she’s reheating on the Aga. She’s staring at her own reflection, sullied and blurry, hair all over the bloody place, curling about her jaw, slipping out from her poor excuse for a ponytail. An unremarkable colour at the best of times, but in this steam bleached reflection it is even more limp, even more of a non-colour - an insipid pale brown with a fleck of early grey. And her eyes, staring back at her like the eyes of a ghost, almost too pale to see, almost the same colour as the sky.
“What’s this?” Her dad pipes up. He’s fishing for something in the drawer of the kitchen dresser. She turns around, “what’s what?”
He’s holding a champagne cork. “Taittinger’s? When were you drinking Taittinger’s?” He laughs, his eyes twinkle.
Oh, you stupid slapper, stroppy trailer trash, foul-mouthed slattern. Who do you think you are? Someone worthy of fine champagne?
It’s not the kind voice of her father, but the voice of the past that fills her head so unexpectedly.
-
It’s been said that the past is another country; in Bridget’s case, it is more than that. It is an enemy combatant. Any object that could possibly function as a passport into this hostile territory runs the risk of emotional high treason and as such is mercilessly discarded. When she turned 30 (nine whole years ago...) she trashed or burned nearly everything sentimental. Including herself. But there were clothes, photos, keepsakes, a napkin with a heart drawn on it from a first official date, all consigned to the flames or the rubbish heap. The cork is an emissary from a different part of the past, however, and she should have got rid of it but couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. The cork, the same one she absently touched to her lips that night as she stood in Room 503 of the Belgravia Hotel, fully clothed and ready to leave but unable to as she helplessly stared down at Vita, sprawled face down on the bed in a dead sleep.
Oh, you...
Bridget jams a wooden spoon into the dense, beefy glop of stew, which plops ominously like a volcano stirring from a dormancy of a thousand years.
“Don’t remember when.”
“Looks recent,” he turns the cork over in his hand.
“Bloody cork expert now, are you?” She throws him a sideways glance through the steam and he smiles at her, that sweet smile that always gets her right in the chest. You’d better not ever bloody die. She thinks. A thought so often passing through her head that it had now become a sort of mantra, something she had to think daily to save his life.
He gives a vague nod of his head, amusement behind his eyes as he places the cork carefully back into the drawer.
The front door opens, the hall floorboards creak, and for the briefest of moments she feels the gritty unevenness of those floorboards against her bloody cheek, and hears that voice in her head; God it was fun breaking you, Bridget.
“Granddad,” Ryan drops a school bag down by the leg of the dining table and claps a hand over his granddad’s shoulder.
“What’s for dinner?”
She feels his presence behind her. She wants to turn and hug him, draw him close and apologise for everything; for the stew, for the bad weather, for not knowing who his father was...for being such a disappointment.
“Thought you ate at school?” She says instead.
She hears him groan, can just about make out his reflection behind her in the window.
“Bloody salad.”
He wraps his arms around her waistline and she swats at his wrists with her free hand.
“Language.”
Her dad hums sympathetically from the corner of the room.
“What’s news?” She asks absently, glancing at him before turning to the washing up in the sink.
“The usual,” he shrugs. He’s wearing the hoody she bought him for Christmas.
“Sounds fascinating,” she says, mouth full affectionate sarcasm as she notices the holes in his cuffs.
“Actually, there is a bit of news, about our hermit next-door neighbour.”
She feels the skin just above the veins in her wrist begin to buzz and she plunges her hands into the too-hot water.
“Vita?” She doesn’t know why she’s asking, they only have one neighbour for miles around.
“So, what’s the news?” She prompts while Ryan nods through a gulp of coke from a bottle she hadn’t noticed he was holding.
“Looks like she’s got herself a girlfriend.”
Bridget is glad she’s facing the window. She waits for the sky and the land to do their usual trick of calming her, bringing her peace. She studies the thin band of clouds frosting the blue sky, the way the
wind presses into the long, faded grass. She squeezes the steel wool pad in her hand. Watery brown gunk from the pot she’s been scrubbing surrenders to the drain and she predicts by the end of the week she’ll have to take apart the pipes again to work out the clog. Didn’t expect her to remain on the market forever, did you? Despite the fact that she was a middle-aged woman.... a widow, a posh bitch, a recluse...
Put like that, Bridget asks herself, why are you so keen on her, you dozy cow?
She dries her hands with a towel and turns around. Keeping her hands busy always settles her nerves. She can tell by the way Ryan looks at her that he’s waiting for her to trot out some smart-arsed remark, some homophobic put-down.
“Good,” she says softly. She clears her throat and tries it again this time firmer and louder, and almost convinces herself, “that’s good.”
“You met her?” Her dad asks from the dresser. He’s left the drawer open. She stares at it, unblinking, while Ryan answers.
“Briefly. She was leaving when we showed up. They were kind of giggly together. It was cute.”
Bridget twirls the limp, damp dish-towel into a sinewy rope and attempts fashioning a hangman’s noose out of it.
“She seems cool. Didn’t talk to her for long but she was funny, smart. Her name is Sacha. Works in finance or something. There was an article on her and her family in the Courier yesterday Clarissa was telling me, God, I think even Clarissa likes her anyway, the family’s really posh and they set up some new scholarship fund for, you know, ‘underprivileged students,’” Ryan employs the good old air quotes around the phrase an Elizabeth sarcasm speciality, and again Bridget suspects that he has a crush on Vita, even as she simultaneously acknowledges the fierce irrationality of her ridiculous jealousy. At this pathetic moment, she is even jealous of the Jeep Cherokee she sees parked in Vita's drive every morning, jealous of it for its close proximity to its owner, not to mention the front seat.
Oh, Christ, you are bananas.
“Maybe you should apply,” her dad says.
“I’m not underprivileged. Right, Mum?”
Bridget hums absently.
“Mum?”
“Yeah?”
Amused, Ryan smirks, “why are you making a noose with the dish-towel?”
Her dad propels himself from the edge of the dresser. “My cue to leave, before she gets any ideas.”
Oh, that joke isn’t funny anymore.
“I’ll join you.” Ryan follows his granddad from the room. Bridget hears the creak of the sofa as they sit down in the sitting room, a pause, then the welcome murmur of the television.
She fishes for her phone in the pocket of her jeans, flicks the screen on and hits Google...
This is what she has become.... someone who stalks a former shag buddy with whom you have the grave and stupid misfortune of being in love. It’s exhausting. She yawns. After a good ten minutes, she is finally online and hopping to the Courier’s website, where the fluff piece on Vita’s new woman is found easily enough.
In Bridget’s mind, there are two types of English woman: The Roses and the Weeds. Vita, of course, is a Rose: pale and elegant, seemingly perfect, secretly thorny, and bitchily unrepentant when blood is drawn. She herself is, of course, a sturdy English Weed: tough, available, and usually trampled upon by blokes in obsessive pursuit of the Roses. Ollie alone is proof of the paradox. When they weren’t shagging, they were drinking and talking about Vita; a shared loathing of the same woman bonded them more than sex ever did.
But Jennifer Elena Sacheverell Easley Parmenter Jesus Christ, Bridget thinks, what kind of person needs five fucking names? is a voluptuous variation on the Weed: A bit horsey-looking but well-
groomed, well-dressed, and possessing abundant dark locks a la Nigella Lawson. Not to mention big tits. No, she is not a common English Weed, this lady’s not for trampling. She’s the weed that will wrap with luxurious abandon around everything in a garden till it’s hers, that will scale the stone walls of the mansion until her wild garlands smother everything in sight. In the photo, she’s smiling handsomely, about ready to burst out of her blouse, and sandwiched between two happy teenagers and a man, whom Bridget is pretty certain she might have shagged.
Bridget reads on. Jennifer is a CEO of a digital music company. Even though she and her fucking ex-husband, a fucking barrister, both went to fucking Cambridge she fucking supported her fucking son when he wanted to go to fucking Oxford. Her fucking father is a fucking marquis and here
Bridget dies a little her fucking Italian mother is a fucking “member of the distinguished, aristocratic Milanese family” that includes the filmmaker Luchino Fucking Visconti.
Defeated, she leans back in the chair. Sure, great. That’s just great. She manages one final, rallying thought: Can Jennifer single-handedly replace a toilet? Plumb in a washing machine or rewire a house?
Bet not. Top that, bitch. “Fucking slag.”
Bridget does not realize she’s said this aloud until Ryan calls loudly from the couch: “Who’s a fucking slag?”
“The Queen,” she shouts back.
“Too right. Always thought she was a bit tarty with all those hats.”
She scowls, realizes her mother was right so many years ago when she still had possession of at least a few marbles; Someday you’ll have one of your own, and they’ll be mouthing off to you the way you do to me, and you’ll be sorry then.
She is very sorry indeed. About a lot of things, but not that.
POETRY by Alexander Etheridge
Before Morning
by Osip Mandelstam
You and I will sit in the kitchen a while, the good smell of white kerosene, sharp knife, a bread loaf . . . If you want, wick the oven up at full bore, or gather some string before morning to tie the basket closed, so we may leave for the train where we hope no one can follow.
January 1931, Leningrad
translated from the Russian by Alexander Etheridge
Glow
When light vanishes it’s not gone, only elsewhere . . . Look inward, there’s the ocean with its own light, that other bluish and dark green glow it goes on and on. Where’s the land? There aren’t any ships either, just you, your own stormy Atlantic where a wave of pink mist rolls in. Quietly risen from the tides, a question speaks itself with words of creation, ashes, fire and ashes, like the day you opened your eyes, and the day they’ll close.
