Everyone knows my name, face, and products. I appear on screens across the world. Wealth and I speak a coded language, encrypted inside green and silver. Luxury touches every corner of my existence. I touch no one. Distance keeps profits safe.
Then, for fun, I bet my associate, “If I walk through one of my factories in a central state and someone recognizes me, another layoff is possible. The workers are not watching what they are doing.”
I did.One of the older men on the line almost ran into me.
“Geesh, do you know who that is?” another man whispered. He was loud as thunder. “Quiet, Jake, his son was laid off last time around. He couldn’t feed eight kids no more. His baby died last week.”
I finished my check without adequate detail. I will send someone from my staff for the next inspection. Workers need to watch where they are going.
Dear Ruby, I realize I should explain why I’m writing an old-fashioned letter instead of talking to you in person. I’m not sure what I want to say. There would be too much silence between words—not a thoughtful pause, but Ausable Chasm without its beauty.
Remember rock climbing at the chasm on our honeymoon? Was there ever anything typical about us?
Our wedding day, when for better or worse was a phrase that had as much significance as a television commercial for the terminally naive.
In black and white, that’s all we had in the 1950’s. Black or white cowboy hats determined whether a character was on the side of the law or not. You said that bullets killed both sides equally. I noticed only action and fantasy.
We were young. I wanted to get a job and protect you forever. As the mom, the cook at home.
“No way,” you answered, sweetness mixed with acid. You needed a career as well.You rerouted my chauvinism and triggered my admiration. However, my ignorance could only be channeled so far.
Our baby. A boy. Lived three hours.
“But, sweetheart, he didn’t have a chance anyway.” I tried to comfort you with facts instead of arms. “His brain and kidneys were not properly developed.” Perhaps I need to say goodbye to both George Henry Sr. and George Henry Jr.You mourned our baby. I lost you.”
Draft Two:
Dear Ruby, In my dream last night I bought a second engagement ring for you. But the ring disappeared when I tried to slip it on your finger. And you got angry as if I were trying some ill-mannered magic trick… No, I can’t admit that. It overflows with insecurity.
Attempt Three:
Dear Ruby, I worked late again the day we reconciled. It had been dark when I entered my brother’s house. His wife left food for me. She is kind, but sometimes feeling sorry for me leaks out of her and stains my ego. Thanks for taking me back. I have something important to tell you. I’m a changed man—odd timing, I’ll admit, but for the first time in my life, I see clearly you have always been the stronger half. Okay, minus the five months when we were separated. You got a break.
Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. Vicki Harrison
One sip of coffee. I ask it to wash away chaos inside my head, to stop yesterday from flooding the kind of memories that jolt reality, to cause a friend’s dead fingers to move again.
Outside, the wind stops as if it understands. All moments end.
I recall making my friend laugh. A story about childhood innocence.
Now may I hold onto that memory at least for the next moment.
When we are children, we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. Patrick Rothfuss
Nope, No Wedding Yet
The rock at the bottom of the street of my grade-school home was like a mini-mountain, perfect for climbing. It was hidden behind enough trees to be its own paradise, a place for a kid to climb and become king of the world. At nine, I saw nothing peculiar about a strawberry-blonde girl king.
The great play arena eventually disappeared as developers plowed through. But in the mid-1950s, Joe and I claimed the world. He was my self-proclaimed boyfriend. Fourth-grade style. I hadn’t graduated from paper dolls and mud pies, so the notion of a white veil followed by a life in the kitchen sounded as appealing as living with a perpetual mop. I was allergic to homework responsibility, much less life responsibility. Imagination had greater appeal. Joe was a friend who happened to be male.
He wasn’t like the other guys in my class. I knew his family wasn’t tidy. I didn’t care. He was Joe. He didn’t need the meaner boys around him to be okay. He wasn’t the tallest and most handsome. Mom never met him. That alone was good enough for me. Outside, Joe and I could always be free. From homework or chores. We challenged an open space where the air moved freely around our imaginations and the blue sky was on our side.
“Hey,” he said one day. I saw a kind of shy smile in his brown eyes that didn’t match the same dirty blue jeans he wore all the time, and he planted a kiss right smack on my lips.
I thought, oh yuck, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Joe wore a kindness that transcended grime. You had to face foreign lands on a rock to see past the classroom, to understand Joe. We never talked about school stuff. Only the next jaunt into places we changed simply by creating them.
“I’ve got a special surprise for you since your birthday is coming up,” he said. “Come to my house.” We cut through two yards and landed on his street in three eyeblinks.
“Hey, Mom!” he called. “Where’s the engagement ring I found? I am going to give it to Mary Therese.”
Mary Therese! My at-school name. I groaned. Oh no. Formal talk. Sounded like a nun. Not me. I’d never hit anyone with a ruler in my life. And I would be off balance with a rosary that big at my waist.
A wedding would spoil that lifestyle but neither wife nor sisterhood sounded appealing. And call me Terry, my at-home name.
How could I say something about how I thought girls had to at least have boobs before getting engaged without sounding personal? But Joe’s mom wasn’t mine. The question would need to wait.
“Oh Joe, I’m sorry,” his mother said, not sounding sorry at all. “That ring got accidentally flushed down the toilet.”
Joe groaned. His head down, and his right hand on his head. Now that I didn’t need to worry about a commitment, gratitude filled every cell of my tiny being. Who needs a ten-year engagement? Or worse, a lost recess for a wedding ceremony.
Yet somehow Joe quickly recovered.
Our relationship ended long before puberty. As time passed, I hoped Joe found someone. Later. Much later. Long after the septic system absorbed my first engagement ring. I always wondered whether it had been born in a box of Cracker Jacks or found on a sidewalk.
At least now if someone asks if I ever broke someone’s heart I can say, “No. The ordinary toilet took care of that for me.”
Christmas Eve or not, as I watch Phil fiddling with the tree lights, still blank as our bank account, I could just scream. If he hadn’t taken so long setting Teddy’s train around the tree, we wouldn’t be stressed for time like this. There’s no reason a model train needs twenty-five test runs! And he should never sit on the floor that long. Besides, staring at our old gray rug depresses me even more.
Not that I don’t complain.
I set hot gingerbread cookies on the mantle. Franny’s little fingers can’t find them there. One cookie head breaks anyway. Mine feels close to snapping. Phil hasn’t been the same since he came home from the war in ’45. The leg shrapnel I can deal with, but the metal that opened his head, changed our lives forever. I remember when Phil graduated college. He chose to pursue chemistry in graduate school. We had it all worked out. Then, he left for the European front in March, and never finished the program. Part of him seems to be missing.
“Don’t worry, dear, I’ll find the offending bulb,” he says.
I nibble on a cookie I don’t want through a fake smile.
My Aunt Marilyn could have at least given Phil a Christmas bonus. Even if she couldn’t give him dignity. Just a twenty-three-dollar-a-week job at her bakery on the other side of town. Seems to me the doughnut hole is sweeter than Marilyn. Since Phil can’t drive, I need to take him there every morning. In a car running on a prayer and three gallons of gas. With Franny, Teddy and a set of infant twins. At 5AM.
Franny traced herself in the bedroom mirror with nail polish, then played tick-tack toe on Teddy’s belly with my good Sunday lipstick.
At least my parents took all four kids to their house for the day. That’s our Christmas Eve tradition. While the children are gone Santa comes. When Mom and Dad bring them home, we all celebrate. Well, thanks to S&H Green Stamps, Phil and I saved enough for a few toys. But my celebration feels as absent as the tree lights.
Phil:
“Esther, look. I’ve found the problem light. Naturally, it was the last bulb on the line. Don’t you just love these true, real colors?”
She smiled, I think, or was it a twitch? I grab the edge of the sofa and hoist myself up. I’m careful to turn my face away from my wife so she doesn’t see the grimace when I lift my bum leg. But I know I’m not hiding anything from Esther, the realist.
I’d love to tell her about the day last week when I took Franny with me to the corner barbershop because she was driving Esther crazy. I met the president of the state university and learned he lives less than a mile away from us.
“You’re Philip Howard?” he said. “Most interesting. I’m a man of science, not fate. Nevertheless, I’ve got to wonder why I ran across your undergraduate thesis just this morning. Brilliant work, sir. Brilliant. PhD material.”
Before the holidays the barbershop gets busy. While we waited we talked education. Every facet. Esoteric and practical. Even more amazing than our chance meeting, Franny sat humming “Silent Night,” as she colored. I wondered if another kid had taken Franny’s place.
Suddenly she chimed in. “My daddy is the smartest man in the world. And the nicest too.” I’m sure I blushed. But the university president didn’t act like he noticed. Then he allowed me to get my hair cut first while he talked to Franny.
He listened to her five-year-old audacity while the barber complained about how I always waited until I looked like a brown dust mop before I got haircuts. I wouldn’t dare tell him it was because I barely had change left after groceries.
Then when I got up to leave, the president told me to expect a call. There was a teaching assistant position opening. And he would push for me to get it. If I wanted it. As well as a scholarship to finish my education.
I tried not to thank him like a sycophant fool and came home. Silent. Esther would mention the obstacles. Yes, yes, of course, if he called I would tell him about my injuries. No details about the trembling shakes. But as a man of science, he would know. Yes, he would know.
I would know.
I turn away from the lights, too colorful now. Too bright. A seizure trigger perhaps. No, I can’t handle radiance, even for a moment. Not anymore.
Franny:
“A table and chairs just my size. How did Santa know I needed them? But when’s your big present coming, Daddy? I’ve been waiting all night.”
Daddy looks at me funny. “What big gift, sweetheart?”
Now Grandma and Grandpa look at me funny too. Grownups are hard to understand. Daddy looked so excited at the barbershop. And that man with all that gray hair promised. He promised me too.
“Don’t you remember? I told the man at the barber shop how Daddy taught me how everything in the world is made of puzzles, like water was made of an H and a 2 and an O. And how good that was for the smaller things to get along. He asked me questions and laughed, even when I didn’t know what was funny. Then I told him about how after the war, sometimes Daddy shook and fell down, but he always got back up again and talked about how the little parts of everything fit together again. No matter what. Even after working all day for what Mommy says wouldn’t feed a church mouse. Even though I looked and looked, but never saw a single mouse in church.
“Then the man said that I was a good learner and Daddy sounded like a great teacher. And he had the biggest, greatest Christmas present ever for Daddy. And that Daddy showed him good really did still live in the world, and I was the angel sent to show him.
“So, now I’m wondering when the man’s going to get here.”
Mommy looks confused until Daddy tells her about the gray-haired man. She starts smiling, big like the lights on the tree. And Grandma and Grandpa laugh.
Then Mommy and Daddy do something I never saw them do before. They giggle like Lucy and me do when we play boat race in the bathtub.
“Sweetheart,” Daddy says, “Thank you for giving me my big present.”
I don’t understand, but Mommy looks happy for a change, and she lets me and Lucy eat two gingerbread cookies instead of just one.
Snow fell avalanche style. Margie didn’t bother to look out the window. Family Christmas celebration would wait until the week after New Year’s Day. It didn’t matter. Her husband Len had left this world. Ten years ago. On December 24. She hadn’t believed him when he told her he didn’t think his weak heart would hold out any longer. So unfair for a man in his fifties.
“We’re seeing the cardiologist on Monday. He’ll find something else we can do,” she had said, as he shook his head, eyes unblinking.
Len. He had seemed to be the lazy half of their relationship. Long before his illness. He always had an excuse for tasks like taking out the garbage. He would lean back and say, “I’ll do it after reading one more page of this book. You need to relax more and stress less, sweetheart.”
Margie often waited until the sun had almost set, then lugged the garbage cans to the curb. So many times.
Len had the energy level of a sloth on sleeping pills, but he was a scholar. PhD. Piled higher and deeper in anything on a metaphorical cloud. Nevertheless, he often bragged to his friends about how his wife could shoot a basketball from half-court and win the game with five seconds left.
Margie qualified the statement. “That happened once. When I was a sophomore in college” She couldn’t understand how she could love Len and be totally irritated by him at the same time. What could he do? It had to be more than cat lounge. She complained. Often.
Then of course there was the frequent argument. The one where Margie hit Len where it hurt him most. His family. Too many black sheep. A brother in prison. Two more who should be. Why he didn’t like to admit his last name, Crimm. Change the last letter and it could become crime. She bit her lip and was almost sorry it didn’t bleed. They never had time to make up. “Forgiveness,” Margie whispered to herself. “The only gift I really want for Christmas.”
The phone rang.
“Margie,” the voice called. “I have a huge favor to ask of you.”
“Sure, what do you need, sis?”
“A young woman named Dara is on her way from up north. She’s not far from your place, but she doesn’t think she can make it to mine. Okay if she stays out the storm with you?”
“Tell her to stop. If the snow settles soon, we will be at the celebration. If not, I would need more than my little Honda to plow through this stuff.”
“Thanks, Margie, I can always count on you.”
Her sister gave Margie an every-hair description of Dara Nubes. “Black straight hair, pale skin, large bustline, a continuous smile…” Her voice faded and disappeared.
Margie punched in her sister’s cell number. She didn’t get to the final digit before the doorbell rang.
Already. Dara had arrived.
“You are a lifesaver,” Dara said slipping off her boots. “The interstate is backed up for miles.”
“I am glad to help.”
“Awe! I smell something delightful cooking. Oatmeal walnut cookies.”
Margie opened her mouth, but nothing came out. This was the first batch of oatmeal walnut cookies she had ever made. She didn’t have much confidence in the baking world. This was an experiment. For Christmas at her sister’s. If it worked, wonderful. If not, no one needed to know about it. And what kind of sense of smell would someone need to recognize walnuts and oatmeal in a cookie?
Dara rushed to the kitchen, opened the drawer where Margie kept her kitchen linens. She opened the oven and handed the two thickest potholders to Margie. As she lifted the pan to the top of the stove, Dara oohed, “Could you give me that recipe. The smell shouts delicious.” She placed one hand on Margie’s arm.
Margie relaxed as if she had stepped into a whirlpool bath. Warmth. It didn’t come from the weather. Maybe she would figure it all out later and enjoy the moment. Some kind of psychic had visited her house, but at least she was a pleasant one.
“These cookies are lifting off the pan perfectly,” Dara said. “Do you bake often?”
“Not really.” Margie hesitated. “Not the kind of calories I want to wear.”
“Gotcha. Not when there’s so much you can do with a spinach salad.”
“Would you like one? I have some leftovers in the refrigerator.”
“Made the way Les liked them. With so much Caeser dressing the vegetables drown.”
“That’s exactly the way he put it.” She stared at Dara, then blurted out, “How do you know so much about me? And Les? I…I…”
“Your sister is a wonderful friend.”
“Yes. I know. But did she tell you this much about my husband?”
Dara didn’t answer the question. She paused before saying, “You are more valuable than you think. And Les is sorry.”
“What?” Margie wondered how she could stammer so much speaking one word.
“Okay. Let me try again. My name is Dara Nubes. Your sister has never met me. She does not know who or what I am. But all is well. More than well.”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Les knew he put off facing his heart condition too long. And it was his biggest regret because he knows it hurt you.”
“How can you know this? Who are you?”
Dara handed Margie an envelope that seemed to suddenly appear in her hand. “A message for you. It’s why I am here.”
Margie took the envelope and stared at it. Inside was a handwritten note. When she looked up, Dara was gone. The front door had not been opened.
My dear Margie: Look inside the old chest in the bedroom. I saved all the letters you sent me when I was in the army. There are some other treasures there, too. And, my dear, please go back to sports, something super active again. Girl, you’ve still got it. You are only in your fifties. Sure, we’ll meet again, but not for a long time yet. My guardian angel told me when that will be, but it’s against heaven’s rules to divulge secrets. I am sending an angel to deliver this message. Let’s forgive one another, Les
Margie opened the chest. Inside were coins and jewelry, some possibly worth a fortune. There also were journals in Les’s handwriting from thirty years ago. Page one: Today I met a girl. She let me know I am worthwhile even if my family couldn’t do it. Her name is Margie…
In their innocence, very young children know themselves to be light and love. If we will allow them they can teach us to see ourselves the same way. Michael Jackson
Nature’s Creations 101
A young boy clasps a crayon with his fist and draws an oblong, orange sun with long uneven spokes. He scribbles a blue-clouded sky. His big brother points out the real sky with patterns his kindergarten colors can’t imitate. The boy wads his drawing and his art into a ball and throws it at his sibling. Their mother grabs the crumpled paper. She tells her sons Nature creates superb designs. But the sun is too hot and too far away to fit on the refrigerator. Could the child please try again. And, would Big Brother please tend to another art work Nature has provided. The lawn needs to be cut.
terrypetersen 