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doodles #1, #2, & #3
No story this time. Instead, here are some doodles in my class notes from the past term, when I should have been paying attention. (click for full size if needed):
the speed of electricity

SARAH RUBBED HER FEET on the carpet and died again. The static electricity got to her. I watched her die then resurrect herself with a recklessness and expertise that could only be attributed to someone who had spent a good majority of her life solely practicing the art of interchangeably swapping between life and death, someone who had been granted the privilege of having more than one try at existence, and more than grateful for the opportunity, took it upon herself to abuse with carefree abandonment an ability usually reserved for deities, so I cheered and hooted as she recovered from the shock of wooly socks rubbed on carpet and she patted herself on the back for another job well done and said that it was now safe for me to step down to her apartment floor from where I was sitting out in the fire escape, astounded and entranced and thoroughly spellbound at watching her reincarnation miracle, finding the event as difficult to calculate as much as the time when she had boasted about having a knack for underwater breathing, which she showed to me, when I had then called her an accomplished amphibian and her face exhibited a glow that matched the fireworks from when her head exploded with egotism, and she had blathered about her feats with hand movements that would have had orators envying and I had then clamped them together with my own manacles and told her that inhaling should not also be ignored when in habit of speaking in sentences three-hundred words too long in one breath as she so often did, just as I did now while pleading for her to be careful, not to put on headphones in thunderstorms so as to not die of electrocution, to not meet an end usually seen by slipshod technicians and machinists, to avoid hearing the hum of the current from where it would be coming, inside the power lines, miles away at its origin, how there would be a slight vibration, a low buzz, a crackle somewhere inaudible amongst the lyrics, something not right in the noise, a sort of static signifying loose wires somewhere, a defective connection in the headphones, or a flash lightning storm sending its first warning signs, and how it would all be coming for her, sending sparks faster and faster and faster and faster at the speed of electricity.
sweep the dust in search of dinosaurs

I DON'T KNOW WHY the dinosaurs ran away. But I can tell you that the top of my door is dirty. The top of doors, dirty with years of accumulated dust, never having been wiped down partly because of neglect, partly because of there never having been any previous demand for clean door-tops, no inspective fingers hanging with strained effort from its upper ledges in search for areas besprinkled with seemingly sociable gatherings of dirt and grime and soot. That's why I'll bet you the top of my door is dirty. Because I never get to wipe it down. Because that part of a door gets ignored often, the top of it. And no one ever gets to see it. The topsides of doors. Dusty. My doctor says that I have trouble expressing my thoughts. Thought impedimentitis, he said. I tend to disagree, as most people, even the most agreeable of the lot, are advised to do when dealing with physicians in charge of judging your mental faculties.

But the dinosaurs, I asked him about them. Sure I had complained about the velociraptors going through the garbage. Sure I had grieved about the pterodactyls circling overhead just above the chimney. Sure I had noticed when Fido hadn’t come in from his doghouse a few days ago. But I hadn’t expected such an abrupt departure. I hadn’t expected the sudden quiet synonymous with the absence of prehistoric animals. No more high-pitched shrieks that harkened back to Jurassic times, no more rumbling footsteps of the larger ones outside my bedroom window at night. I told him how I had been playing pinochle by myself when it happened. How I had been winning. How I then noticed the missing stegosaurus.

I told him that I looked at the half-eaten ferns I had planted outside. That I thought it a little cataclysmic how municipal ordinances don’t regulate the disappearance of ancient reptiles. That I had panicked and thought about the regularity of life without dinosaurs. Undone dishes, clogged drains, tops of doors being dirty. The doctor, he said I should look for them in likely places. Then the unlikely ones. He said I should wipe the top of my doors, sweep the dust clear off. So I did that. I dusted my doors in hopes of bringing back the dinosaurs. I ran my finger along the ledges. I said good riddance. Someone ought to have done this earlier. Someone ought to have cleaned all this up.
about house fires and ladybugs

IT WAS A HOT SUMMER. It was a hot summer and my house burned down with the showmanship expected in a building being consumed by flames, so I put down the flamethrower I had used to torch the air conditioner that wasn’t working when it should have been, when I had gotten angry at the unbearable heat and accidentally started the inferno that mimicked the one raging ambiguously in my head, not considering that setting ablaze an indoor cooling appliance in sudden outrage would not do much to abate the source of my irritation. So I abandoned the trench warfare weapon, put on a bathing suit, and ran into the burning kitchen to grab an ice pop from the freezer and altogether stop-drop-and-rolled out to the street in a performance not unlike a rock practicing sphericality in an avalanche, the neighbors and even the firemen just arriving at the scene stopping what they were doing to applaud.

I got up and licked at my ice pop and said cherry and bowed in gratitude until my back creaked. Then I watched them fight the fire until I was overtaken with boredom, at which point I trudged away singing arson arson with operatic passion and glanced behind myself at the blaze to mourn the fates of the termites living under my floorboards and to worry about the dirty laundry in the hamper. When I had finished exercising my empathy, I walked twenty miles to her place. I told her to please open up, but she said no, to which I said why, to which she replied because I’m stark naked head to toe, save for a nose ring I’ve put on for your entertainment, the mindless cattle that I am in your presence. She opened the door spinning her underwear above her head in unprovoked celebration, the flag of nether-regions pirouetting on her finger.

The underwear-twirler demanded an explanation for my presence at her doorstep with a dessert in my yap so I tell her how my house burned down, how flamethrowers are not good solutions to combat seasonably high temperatures and she says how she wants to go see it, the results of my handiwork, and she drags me to the site, me trailing behind with the freezie still cold in my mouth. So we bumble back. When we get there, we stop and stare at the embers, shoulder to shoulder, together, and we don't say a thing, so I take the chance to promise her things, pretty things, a big house that won’t smolder and puff away like factory smokestacks, to reach for high-placed objects in the cabinets, to open jars that won’t open, and whatever else it is that two people madly in the throes of companionship swear to impart on each other and she says yes so I look at her standing there in her dress, that dress with the black polka dots so much like a ladybug, and I finally say okay.
Amagansett red

YOU HAVE RED CAR SYNDROME. You see one passing by your place on the way out. There’s two parked across the street. Three, four more down the next block. Another next to you at the traffic light. Two red cars in an accident on the freeway. A red fire truck to the rescue shortly thereafter. Is it because you want a red car that you’re noticing all these? You do want a red car though. You’ve been thinking about one for months. But why do you need another car? You just got a new one two weeks ago. So why do you need a used car for that matter?
But you stop in the parking lot of Cuccinelli Motors anyway. Colored triangles on a string waving in the wind. You tell the snide salesman, I need a car. Used, you say. He just saw you get out of your brand-new one, the temporary license plate still in the rear window. But he doesn’t say anything about it. He’s all about business. He smirks and says why don’t we go discuss it. You say you want a used car, you want a red used car. Has to be red, you say. Used because of insurance and depreciation, you say. This is my budget, you show him.
I have a red car out there with your name on it, he sneers. Certified pre-owned, he says. Your price plus five hundred for an extended warranty, he says, negotiating. You don’t need an extended warranty, you protest. Let’s talk about payment plans, Mr. Snide says. You want to ask how’s the condition, the engine noise, the suspension, transmission, cargo space, what’s on the odometer. But you don’t care. You just want to see it.
It’s a bargain, he says, as if you were looking for one. You’re not hearing anything about financing options. It’s all too expensive anyway. It’s too much money. Instead you’re looking at your reflection in the polished window of the red car. Soon to be your red car. You check out your hair. You had spent half an hour styling it this morning. It’s not yet ruined by the wind. It’s still perfect. You decide: the world is a mess. But your hair is all right. It's still good. It's still fine.
tap dancing on Sundays

A HOMELESS MAN once taught me how to tightrope walk. The knowledge of balancing on a precipitously small surface area did not prove to be as practical as I had originally hoped for until yesterday, when I stood in limbo on the window sill. I had gorged myself on so much spaghetti for lunch that after finishing, I was struck with an immediate sense of guilt and shame inconceivable to the limits of human emotion, a sort of biblical self-disgust capable of humiliating even the largest of binge eaters, so coming to terms with my narcissistic gluttony, I stood at the open window, shivered some in my underwear at the cold, and duly jumped out and fell seventeen stories to the ground below with hopes of ending my overindulgent tendencies but landed instead with a disappointing ever-slight thud whereupon I was promptly attacked by a pack of awaiting coyotes a tad too brutish for my tastes. When I had recovered my limbs and other missing appendages from the beasts, I called my mother and told her of my exploits. She said that’s nice, that’s pleasant, jumping out the window on a slow Sunday afternoon, now what would you like to have for dinner tonight? So I told her mother mother I am no longer four years old but forty and threw the phone down to get my crayons and a juice box and sat with my legs splayed out and drooled and googooed over toy blocks and trains on the carpet.
After the playthings were thoroughly varnished with saliva, I ran to the mother’s for Sunday dinner. Little Robby was there crying for sweetened treats. Narcoleptic cousin Jolyn was there on the sofa falling in and out of sleep on command. Your condition is nothing to be laughed at, they said as she woke up. Your Coke-bottle glasses are everlastingly fashionable, they said when she had fallen back asleep. Uncle Howard was still forever slapping his wife's ass, always under the pretense of checking for a mosquito, and she still calling him a beslubbering git, that there existed no such insect on her voluminous buttocks, how dare he. So he checked and slapped and slapped and checked and said neener-neener as I walked in with my nose in the air, decidedly abrasive to the intimate ruffians who made it a habit of invading my mother’s house on weekends. We scuttled to the table as dinner was announced, crowding for space with fidgety elbows, those failing at the impulsive game of musical chairs forced to the end, those dozens failing more forced in a line leading up to it, the extents of which reached out the front door where passersby inevitably mistook it for a queue at a spontaneous soup kitchen.
So when everyone had been seated, both kin and non-kin alike, they talked. They chirped and chatted and chattered and prattled about this and that, here and there. And when that was over, I watched the festivities. I chronicled it in a journal, all ho-hum in the corner by myself with the evasiveness of a remote village. I worked under the assumption that I had been born to be a recorder of events, that I had ejected from the womb with a nice pen and a shiny leather-bound notebook, scribbling how it was like floating around inside breathing without gills and being fed regularly through my bellybutton. So I wrote what I saw. I watched them tap dance on the hardwood floor in acts of pedal prestidigitation, most of them not fitting in the confines of an indoor living space, spewing out into the streets instead. They tap danced even when they were too tired to go on, even when the policemen arrived for a round-up, the time by which their minds were already too far aflutter to worry about noise pollution and disorderly conduct and handcuffs. So they danced. They went at it until their shoes just plain broke, as it so often happened late into the night on Sundays.
tell of how it is

THERE IS A BANANA in my apple tree. It’s growing there. It’s hanging there, halfway up. I threw the dishes down in fright. I made for the backyard. Dear banana, I said. What are you doing in my apple tree, I said, hand to heart. It was silent. It was busy ruining the uniformity of green and red. I tried coaxing it away. I laughed at it shoo-shoo. I tried provoking it. Poor ostracized thing, I said. Unwanted by other seedless tropical fruits, I goaded on. I called it an exile. I called it bad names. An outcast forced to foreign places, I soliloquized. The banana, it hung there stupidly.

I’ll feed you monkeys, I offered. I’ll give you milk and cereal, I said rationally. I got a bowl of it from inside. I ate it. See it’s tasty, I said shoveling with the spoon. The milk dripped down my chin. You can have some too, I said, lactating. When that didn’t work, I tried violence. I kicked the base of the trunk. I shook it. I rammed the apple tree with my pick-up truck. This ought to do it, I said. But the banana stayed. I pointed at it. You bad word bad word, I said. I examined the damage I had done.

My great-great-grandfather had planted it. Now there is a banana in it. I felt guilty. So I climbed it in a style that harkened back to more primitive days. I slashed at the banana. I tried a chainsaw. I tried being nice. Beseech your majesty, I said. But it hung there a bit invincible. So I finally left it alone.

When I got used to the fact there was a banana in my apple tree, I went about my business. I didn’t think much of the resident banana. I didn’t have fitful nights of sleep, didn’t require counseling sessions. I didn’t do much to bother my permanent guest. It never outstayed its welcome. These days it's still there. When others come to marvel at it, I show them. I say there is a banana in my apple tree. And I tell them how it is.

It sure is something else, I say.
after the earthquake

BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE, I had a cup of tea. Earl Grey, extra dark, extra bitter as usual. Most of the other townsfolk had already left. They had left for relatives’ places, temporary disaster shelters and the sort, preparing for the worst. But me, I made a cup of tea. I nailed my furniture to the floor. I taped my books to the shelf, the paintings and art prints to the walls. I glued the toilet seat up. I pasted my dominoes upright on the living room rug. Then I finished the milk. Checked the provisions in the cupboard. I made sure things were secure.

And I looked out the window, behind the curtain, at the equipment and trailers parked outside. A team of geologists arrived at my door, setting up camp around the block. It’s going to happen, they said. It's going to start right under your living room, they said. It had been meaning to happen for some time now, they assured. They told me it wasn’t safe. They told me to go. I said no, unwilling to absquatulate. They shook their heads. They asked about building codes and emergency supplies, flashlights and sturdy shoes, to turn off the utilities, and good luck. And they left with radio chatter on their belts.

So I made myself some tea. I double-checked clothes hangers and other free-hanging, free-standing objects. I thought about what I will do after the earthquake.
Later, when everything crumbles and car alarms sound off and the cracks in the sidewalks widen, no longer cracks that you can skip over, but chasms that command leaping and bounding and hurdling over, I might run. I might flail my arms theatrically and scream and check on the dominoes still trembling on the living room floor in the aftershocks. I might pick up broken dishes that defied adhesives, unbend contorted metal.
But for now, I’ll sit in my chair for a while. I’ll lean back, all the way back, supporting myself on only the rear two legs. I’ll lean back almost to the point of no return. Until it teeters on its edges, balancing. Then I’ll wait for it.
collisions in a paper bag

A LOBSTER CRAWLED under the refrigerator while I was out getting the mail. I haven’t purchased seafood in years. Still, the lobster stared back at me as if fully cognizant, as if aware of its own sudden presence under my refrigerator. Cease with your magical trickery! I yelled, introducing myself. I tied its claws. I taught it a lesson. I stuffed it in a paper bag and called the local fish market. I asked about buy-back options. No, I hadn’t just bought it, I said to the fishmonger. In fact, I never bought it, I denied. I found it under the refrigerator, I told him. The lobster, it had been right there, crawling in the dust on the linoleum when I moved the refrigerator, I said. Snooping around with its antennae. Beady eyes vacant. Claws clicking.

I explained how I had been getting the mail. I explained how my favorite pen had fallen off the table and rolled under the refrigerator as I was opening a letter. It has my name engraved on it, my pen, I said. She gave it to me as a birthday present one year, I said. Then: It’s this really nice personalized ballpoint pen constructed with a sleek gunmetal coating. It’s a highly stylized and sophisticated writing implement with a dazzling lacquer finish, I said advertisingly.
She sounds like a nice gal, the fishmonger said. Why don’t you call her over for a lobster dinner? he suggested. I stuttered. I said it’s complicated. No, don’t be sorry, I said blubbering, it’s nothing like that. See, I'm not very experienced, I said, romantic shellfish-themed banquets not being an aptitude of mine.

I asked for the fishmonger’s advice. What was the best way to kill a lobster, to cook a lobster. Lobster bisque, lobster Newburg, lobster rolls, lobster bake. Should I wear my gabardine suit with matching tweed pants. Should she be in her pretty chenille dress. But the fishmonger finally said he had to take care of a new catch coming in, that he couldn’t help me. So I slammed the phone down. I approached the bag on my own. I heard its contents colliding on the paper sides. And I reached into it. I found it bottomless. I poked. I prodded. I fumbled about in its emptiness, the void infinite as a rubber band.
Sophia

HER PARENTS HAD DROPPED from the tree a year ago in autumn. Her uncles and aunts and cousins followed shortly. Her other relatives, her extended family, their friends, all of them. Then she was born the following spring. She was born near the top, on one of the most outward branches. I watched her grow through the season, then through summer. From a little bud to a full-sized maple leaf, she grew. She lived the life of a leaf, playing in the wind, drooping in the dew and mid-morning rain.
She was temporary. She knew it. But she refused to acknowledge it. I refuse to drop, I heard her say to her friends. And they had laughed at her, swaying playful. I admired her from afar, from across the street, in the evergreen pine where I am a needle. I admired her structure, her symmetry, her palmate veining, her faultless V shape. With sharpened tongue, I cried out for her as well as a pine needle could. I pined for her, but one knows coniferous foliage can’t cry.
So she passed through the end of summer, still stubborn about her awaiting autumnal fate. Her friends continued teasing swoosh-swoosh, swaying more. With photosynthesis waning, I hoped the best for her. It was getting colder. Then like the rest, she changed. From green to yellow and orange and red and brown, golden, titian, crimson. She watched on with sadness. I won’t drop, she said, all the while soaking less sunlight. I refuse to drop, she said, losing chlorophyll.
She was one of the last few. One of the stragglers still holding on to their twigs. The McCallisters had raked up her friends a while ago, the ones who had already dropped. She had watched from her branch aloft, speaking in low undertones to herself. I kept watch over her. Looking for the exact moment. I didn’t sleep. I almost missed it. It was a silent day. I could almost hear the separation. I saw the twirling, the curling, looping, twisting, spiraling, the dropping. And I cried out for her once more. How I wanted to fall with her. How I wanted to know her name.
what happened to the great ear-closer

I WAS TWENTY-FOUR the first time I tried to close my ears. They had been getting wider for some time. I had complained to the doctors about the two gaping holes in the side of my head. But they had said there was nothing they could do. Ears come like that, they said. It's natural, they said. I thought them a little stupid. I told them they'd been growing for a while now, my ear holes. I shouted at them and slammed the door, a bit childish for an adult I’ll admit, but one can’t expect any less from a man with two open orifices in the back sides of his face. So I stayed at home all day and practiced closing my ears. Close, close, close, I meditated.

But they just got wider and wider. I could barely stick my pinky finger in before. Then my fist entered easily. My headphones stopped fitting. But the ear holes continued opening, unhindered. I found myself dropping things in them by accident. Coins, paper clips, keys, little packages of saved condiments from the refrigerator. My grandmother came to visit one day. I had answered the bell. I had said come on in. And she had gotten lost, unable to find the door, walking into my ear instead. Sometimes I can still hear her knitting needles clicking together in there.

So I kept trying to close my ears, but with no luck. I was ready to give up. At first, I didn’t feel a thing. Then one day it happened. I was practicing over some potato chips and a trashy talk show on TV. I heard a crinkle. Like cellophane being disturbed. I rushed to the bathroom mirror and found that I really could close my ears on command. They had folded in on themselves. It was enough to put ear-wiggling clowns out of business.

I can close my ears, I declared out the window, inviting others to join in the revelry. Swimming was finally manageable again. I never had trouble with insomnia anymore. Sandstorms became more tolerable. And these days when I find some people a nuisance, I secretly close my ears. I act interested. I nod. I pretend like I understand what they’re saying. As if I were actually listening. I close the cavernous holes.
spaces for the polar bears

TODAY AN ATHEIST saw an image of the Big Bang in a slice of burnt toast. Star clusters are clearly discernible in the upper right hand corner, he said. The atheist is not a friend of mine. He’s a cousin of hers. You don’t need an astronomy degree to see the universe, he said, pointing to the burn patterns. It's right there, he added, buttering the Milky Way galaxy. I had come home early from work. I had put my shoes under the rack in the foyer. And the atheist was standing there, down the hall, in the kitchen, in front of the stove, holding a piece of bread with a pair of tongs over the open flame.

I hadn’t said hello. I said why isn’t he using the toaster for that. She had leaned in to my ear and breathed that no, remember that cousin is from the country, remember that the farm that his family had owned for generations was foreclosed just last week, remember, and be nice about it. And I had whispered back that wasn’t he a little early, I thought he was supposed to be here later tonight.
Cousin wanted to surprise us, she had exhaled. Oh. Then I had asked aloud, audible even to him, why he was toasting the entire loaf of bread, piece by piece. But she had said cousin, when you’re done with that, remember to stack them all back up neatly inside the bag.

That was when cousin said that our solar system was clearer in this here slice than any other one. I asked why he kept toasting only one side and leaving the other untouched. He was leaving room on the other side, he said. For the polar bears, he said. Where it isn’t as hot, he showed me. Then he continued what he was doing. He went back to it, working his way to the end of the loaf, still looking for explosions.
hanging from the lampshade, whistling to myself

I WAS CREEPING up the walls of my room today. My mother told me to get down. One should not be climbing anything when sick with malaria, she said. I told her I had taken my antibiotics and that I was indeed ready to scale walls and fight lions and jump in the mud and think girls icky and whatever else it is that immaturity fosters. I told her she was not very sensible in thinking that any illness would be able to bring down the unruliness and cruelty of youth, that her passions should instead lie in crocheting, having bridge parties with the ladies next door, or making scrumptious cookies for my consumption, to which she replied why you little blank and blank blank blank. I yelled hooie and scrambled out from out under the covers, crawling and making knee-holes in my pajamas to the flight of stairs, rolled all the way down tumbleweed-style right into my dirty boots, ran around the living room some footprinting all around, then affirmed that yes I will be home for dinner and that yes the cat made a mess under the couch again and yes that is definitely grandmamma yelling for her from downstairs in the basement. I left the front door unlocked, something she would find completely unforgivable, and met up with a perfectly good stranger walking from the opposite direction with a little gimp.

I said Gimpy Mo, why do you saunter and stride with such a delightful little crick. He said he had his knee replaced not long after his leg got caught in some pressing machinery at work, that it was all bloodied and battered right after it came out the other end, so my innocence entirely shattered, I instantly felt sorry for the fellow, his name actually Randal as he told me after, and invited him to come with me to the bookstore where I was planning to go before I bumped into him. I showed him all the predictions and premonitions I had scribbled down on ripped up little pieces of stationery I stole from the mother’s antique desk in her study. I said here’s the one that came to me just yesterday, the one that tells a guy where he misplaced the key for his safe deposit box at the bank, here’s the one that reveals to an old man that his son is to eventually die before he does, here’s the one that notifies the woman who lives over a couple blocks that her husband was unfaithful the night she went out for an emergency trip to the drugstore for feminine products, unfaithful with whom specifically no I could not tell, the damage already done.
He asked if all of these were true and I said as true as the hat on his silly head. He wanted to know very badly what I was to do with these little unsolicited pieces of information and I detailed out each and every last one, the books they will be placed in, the specific pages at which they will be stumbled on, seemingly at random when the individuals pick it up the next time they visit this place. I said deposit box guy likes to stick his nose in classics whereas the unfortunate old man enjoys yachting magazines and Mrs. tampon sucks romance novels through straws, how ironic. Then lastly I showed him the poem I wrote, which I too will hide in a book for myself to accidentally discover when I grow up, dusty and yellowed by the time I get to it years later, and how it goes:

I want to Play

I want to Play
I want to play
But mothers
said “no”.

She said
I had a
cold But
I want to play
sometimes behind four doors

I WAS DRIVING THEM to school. Buckle up, I commanded. “Done,” they clicked in unison. “My trousers are too short,” he complained afterwards. Your what? “My trousers.” “They’re called pants,” his sister enunciated, chin up. “Well, they’re too short,” he said, looking down at them. They’re fine, I said, running a red light. They fit you fine last year, I added. “Well that was last year,” defended the one with short trousers.
No one’s going to notice, I tried. “Angela will,” his sister instigated. Who’s Angela? “His girlfriend,” she egged. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he reciprocated. Eat your breakfast, both of you, I said. And they ate, wrappers crinkling, she munching uppity, he gnawing ravenously. “Why do you always stuff yourself like that?” she poked. “Getting ready for the winter,” short trousers went. Enough, stop it, I said.
“He spilled grape juice all over himself again.” I told you to hold onto it, didn’t I? “You braked too quickly,” he accused. You’re just clumsy, I said. “Ridiculously so, the round fellow,” said upturned chin. I reached back, dabbing a napkin at the stain without looking, still driving. “They’re way too short,” he continued. Well your mother had said to wear the old ones in the closet first, I said. She said make sure they outgrow the old ones first, I told them word for word. “When did she say that?” his sister asked. Before she went up there, I stuttered, pointing upwards, my finger stopped by the soft roof.
“So can’t she see my trousers are too short? You can even see my socks and legs and all. I mean she must have a good view from there. She must know about them. They say that everyone from there knows everything. She’d probably tell you to get me new ones if she could, if she were still here. New ones that aren’t as short as these.” And I had to stop, pull off to the side of the road. I reached back with my hand again, unable to turn around to them, feeling blindly for the hem at his ankle, and knowing for sure I’d feel skin instead.
Mr. Tuney with the chrysanthemums

I HATE MY FACE, she said. So I made her a new one. I made it out of plaster of Paris. How’s it fit? I ask, worried. Splendid, she whistles, trying out her new mouth. She winks. She blinks. She blows her nose. She wiggles her ears. She yawns. And she motions, Lovely. She likes it so much she commissions me to make her more. A girl could do with less clothing, but more face, she says. More face. One for dinner parties, one for family reunions, one for everyday, she goes on. Do make them pretty, she says.

So I did that. I sculpted stone, wood, terracotta, stucco, molded bronze, gold, silver, clay, wax, everything. Hell, I said, and even used papier-mâché. You’ve a pretty face now, so instead of breaking hearts today, why not care for those chrysanthemums you've been neglecting, I say. They’ve been wilting out in front, I remind her. Even perennials need water, I say. They've been waiting for you. You don't have to be so shy anymore. And she goes nod nod. Mr. Tuney also, try it, I say to her, getting up. Mr. Tuney, the harmonica I gave her. Mr. Tuney, unused with no lip marks on it.

But she turns her back to me, even with her new collection of countenances. I run to the other side of the room. I close the window out of which she used to scream obscenities then sigh to herself. I put some flamenco on the stereo. Doesn’t this just make you want to dance, I say, grabbing her, not looking at her. She mumbles, inarticulate. Put on your face dear, I say. But she flicks me away.

I’m bored of them, she murmurs. I sit back by her side. I make more. I work all night. My hands crack, peel, burned. They fill the room, these faces of hers. There's hardly any space to stand. How about now? I fall exhausted. They’re grand, she says, arranging them. Are you satisfied? I cough. And she purrs no no, full of aplomb and insatiable needs.

And I didn’t want her to go back to weather-watching, back to bird-watching, the minor masterpiece that she was. So I put a chisel to her. Maybe you'll leave your room now, I say, chipping away. Maybe you’ll be worth looking at now. And she says, not yet, but soon.
every minute from this minute now

I LOVE YOUR SIGNATURE, she had said. It’s curvy. It’s curly. It’s expressive, she had said. That was all before little Jimmy Hearst got his stomach pumped after drinking too much tincture, before my uncle’s lifelong partner and consort accidentally rammed her car halfway into the backyard of the house on the corner of Second Avenue, and right about the time after my fat friend Bill jumped out of his seventeenth-story window leaving for work after developing a sudden fear for elevators and narrow staircases, and lived to tell about it, getting up from the fall none the least bit shaken, instead exclaiming hurrah hurrah gravity is not king.

An uneventful life is unknown to me, I had told my father on the telephone while I was nursing the burn wounds of Pup, my Doberman, the ones it got after it decided to jump on the stove. Do be careful, the storm’s coming in tonight, it’ll be wet it’ll be slippery, my father had said. Worry not, I had answered unperturbed, for that’s what galoshes and ponchos and blow dryers are for. And we had hung up. That was when she came pounding on my door after driving six hours from Nowheresville. I got your letter, she panted through the door. I love your signature, she said. It’s curvy. It’s curly. It’s expressive, she said. I haven’t slept a wink since you’ve been gone, she wheezed. And I had imagined her behind there, excitable, gasping blue-faced. From a lack of oxygen, I would have pointed out. But then she had skittered down and out, gone forever before I could say anything.
I had found myself drowsy in the easy chair afterwards, awoken the next morning in daylight by the meteorologist on the radio squawking it’s wet outside, a little slippery, it rained overnight and a cold front moved in from the west so do be careful, and also by thoughts of the wayward girl who whimpered for me through the closed door, the one who used to tear clothes off of herself and cry liberation when she was feisty, never one to say get your filthy maws off me, not even when she looked like a mess at three or four in the morning when she would be all petered out from wrecking her mind in enthusiasm during the day, how I have none of this anymore because she pleaded for me to stay while I begged for her to go, back when water from the overnight storms still leaked from our patched ceiling as we had breakfast in bed with the curtains open, and we were fine with that.
and what’s there to do today?

TODAY THE JONESES leave for vacation. They live across the street, in the well-kept tudor with new shingles, installed just last month when the weather wasn’t yet cold. They’re off to their annual excursion to some tropical place. They have a timeshare down there. They’re well-off. They’re not poor. So today when they leave in the Lincoln Town Car from the car service, we’ll pick a vantage point where we can see them going, all of us, the whole gang. But here they come now, see how Mister struggles with the luggage. Missus in her afternoon hat and aloha shirt. She curtsies to the driver and Mister starts to proclaim something. Hold your tongue, she mouths. They get in. And they’re off.

But that’s not the main attraction, that’s not what we’re here for. We have to wait for the Moleys from next door. The Moleys are an older couple. This is a once-a-year event. There’s their dilapidated storm door banging open, right on time. What’s the rush, Old Man Moley protests unwaveringly at the door. Why do you not join me out here? his wife says, already outside. My shoes aren’t back from the cobbler’s, he answers, stumbling. They’ve had many holes in them, almost irreparable, he says. And the old woman curses. Oh baloney baloney, she spits, surely one does not need footwear for such an occasion. So they skip out, past the weeds, past the rickety fence, to the sidewalk in front of the Jones place, barefoot. They dip their toes in their lawn. They try it out. They agree: it's just right. And they lie down on their neighbors’ manicured grass.

It’s past dawn, so they sunbathe. In the low winter sun. He in his torn workman's pants and battered windbreaker. She in her apron and shawl and old housewife dress. They are on a property not their own. They are trespassing and they are thinking about their oncoming mortality and what color they would redo their house in if possible and how come they can’t have new shingles and how come they can’t afford to hire landscaping people too, how come. And we let them think all these things while we stay quiet here, keeping to ourselves, not making a sound, so they can't even hear us breathing.
Maribel by the window

MY MARIBEL, she was lying there fetal on the carpet, under the window. She was lying there huffing vowels. Ooooo, aaaaa, she shuddered. I’m cold, she trembled. I’m cold and I’m shivering, quivering, shaking, quaking. I want you to take me to lonely places, desolate airport terminals with solo fliers, sittable rocks high atop some cliff rise, gulches, ditches by the side of the road, central subway stations late at night. Comply this instant, she said, hussy fussy. So I took her to one. This place gets busy during the daytime, I said. Half a million strong, I said. Ah was her response. We waited for the 3:19 train out to my parents’. We waited for the sake of waiting. But time was stubbornly slow, so we walked some.

A bum met us along the concourse. Good hobo, said I, why art thou scouring the subterranean depths? I have an aversion for the night sky, he said, it is full of blinky things and melancholy, he said. Then he opened his rucksack. This here is a camera, fifteen dollars. Her brother used to own a pawn shop on Main Street, I said pointing to her, knowing the peddling nature of hobos. It was not a very lucrative business, I said, hoping to drive him away. Her brother was reduced to watching Bob Ross on public television stations in the early afternoons, I mocked he-he. Fifteen dollars, he insisted.

Fifteen dollars poorer, I pushed her to the awaiting train. Urgently she begged, I want you to show me your old room, the stairs under which you used to hide, the noisy dishwasher, the musky basement, show me the two hundred year-old house across the street, neighbors’ mailboxes you used to knock down, ex-girlfriends’ gardens so I can compare, and later we’ll do this and that under the shade of a hidden tree. And it was then that I wanted to shake her, shake her by the shoulders and say tell me tell me you magnificently beautiful thing, what is it that you see in me? but thought better of it in fear of disturbing my luck at having already procured as much as her attention, so I thought yes we can even take pictures with that camera, and though it was fifteen dollars and has no film, though it is probably broken, we can still pretend.
to be as silhouettes

IN THE AFTERLIFE, I plan to have things good. My shirts will always be laundered and ironed, shoes will not scuff, people will be well-mannered and refined, snoring will not exist, snow will not ice over before it melts. All of these and more, but most importantly, she’ll always call me on the weekends. She’ll call me from her bungalow, one at the foot of the hills, an old thing once belonging to her parents.

She’ll call and sigh, “I miss you I miss you I goddamn miss you” and I’ll say, “You remind me of a girl I used to know” to which she’ll just as easily and loverlingly reply, “I don’t care I don’t care, would you like to come procreate with me?” in a tone that will be nubile and whiny and eager, so much so that I’ll drop the receiver just as quickly as I’ll have picked it up in desperate anticipation from waiting up inside in my treehouse, one overlooking her place a couple hundred yards away, and I’ll climb down and knock on her door, standing there with champagne bottle in hand just stupefied and overcome thinking about her and hard-pressed not to say, “Why, procreation for recreation? Yes, darling” and such and such.

So when that’s done and through, she’ll urge me why not stay a little longer, she can knit me quilts with leftover fabric in the attic, she can serenade me to sleep, be my seamstress and songstress. But I have to be home before dark, I’ll hum with wistful carelessness. Before I go, I’ll point to the picture hanging on her hallway wall. It was drawn for her by me, she’ll say. It was drawn for her with love, she’ll say. Then I’ll shrug off how I should’ve drawn something more practical, like purple mountains and idyllic birds. Scoff scoff scoff, she will sound.

I have to be home before dark, but why don’t we just take your red bicycle out for a spin instead, I do have time for that, I’ll reconsider. What red bicycle? she will ask. The one with the little horn. She: What red bicycle? The two-seater one, with the wide handlebars and rusty spokes. And finally—Oh that bicycle, that red bicycle, I threw it away ages ago, after I stopped knitting quilts and singing you to sleep, the day that you died.
the day the sky refused to die

THIS IS A TALE about a girl and her pen pal. This is a tale concerning a kite and the miraculous art of letter-writing. Like tales of this sort, it is told in media res, in which the beginning is left out, and the end just in sight. It is a tale unforgivingly bashful and careless, hence its succinct nature.

It is a tale in which a girl wonders aloud, “Daddy Dearest, will a story be written about me?” and the father rushes to the desk and returns with pen and paper saying, “Oh my, yes of course.” It is a tale in which the girl has written a letter to her pen pal, one by the name of Ashlynn. She has written to Ashlynn only to discover it is Sunday and the post office is closed. “The post is closed, baby,” the father says. So she makes a kite. A kite made from a paper bag and yarn. The father is dumbfounded by her and her solution, in all her understated beauty and prettyteeth and curlycurls.

It is a tale in which she attaches the letter to the kite’s tail and lifts it off the ground. The father supervises her with hand signals from inside, behind the bay window. She guides it. She avoids the tree branches reaching out for it in half-wickedness, half-longing. “Now, now, mind the clouds and the space debris,” she breathes to it, anxious. It is a tale in which it is not a particularly breezy day, but a kite still defies transcontinental distances.

But ultimately, this is also a tale of vigilance and caution and I want to tell her to heed tree branches and clouds and space debris and strangers and look-both-ways and reckless drivers and sharp objects, but in the end, my voice is just too small, too humble, too inadequate.