Peggy got down on her knees and asked God to send her a good man. She thought she had one in Jack but her friends told her that he wasn’t a good man, or if he was, he was good in the way that men are good which is different from the way that women are good. Something about the difference between a deal and a contract. Peggy thought all goodness was the same and maybe the goodness in Jack was hiding. For six months Peggy and Jack had dinner once a week until one day he stopped answering her calls. “He’s just not that into you,” her friends said. But wouldn’t he have said that around the time they promised that they would always be honest with each other? And couldn’t he have said that before or after he told her, I feel like I can tell you anything?She called his house at doubling intervals — one day, every two days, every four days, every eight days, every sixteen. “Stop calling,” her friends said. “He’s going to think you’re crazy.” But just in the way Peggy knew Jack was good, she knew she wasn’t crazy, so why should it matter. “What if he’s dead?” she asked. “What if he’s hurt?” Then one or another friend would say they just ran into him in the supermarket. So Peggy got back down on her knees. “Kind and capable,” she thought, that’s all I want God. Then she spoke it out loud in case God wasn’t listening with his brain-ears. “Kind and capable, please.”She had three recurring dreams about Jack. In the first one he was smothering her with a pillow. In the second he was holding her under the waves while she drowned. In the third, which was the most violent, he was stabbing her in the bony place between her breasts while she held her hands up and tried to take the knives in the smooth basket of her palms instead. The dreams were eerily silent, like the moment before Jack’s automated voicemail kicked in. The only voice in the dream was Peggy’s, always asking the same question: “Why are you doing this?” Years passed and God sent Peggy several ok men. Jack died, not from suffocation or drowning or stabbing, but prostate cancer. For months after his funeral Peggy told anyone who would listen that she was disappointed in the catering. “Jack hated horseradish,” she told her friends. “Jack hated cold cuts. Anyone who knew him would know that.”
She had only applied to work in the Halloween store because she thought it would be temporary. But this store was open year-round—the building owned, not leased, by a man named Ed, who was thin and wiry, nostalgic and ambiguous as a figure in a Grant Wood painting. The devotion he extended to the rows of ludicrous masks and cackling witch animatronics seemed more suited to the motions of a farmer, tending to something whose harvest would keep people alive, rather than fleetingly amused. Ed preferred silent, solitary work: keeping inventory, tracking shipments in the back room he seemed to live in. He wanted someone to take over the register, be more “front-facing.” “Are you a people person?” he asked her when she first came in. She lied and said yes. In the Halloween store, time was always running out, yet somehow not passing at all. Ed’s business philosophy consisted of keeping a permanent GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign out in the front window to create what he called “a false sense of urgency” in the customer. The music that played during her shift was always the same recording Ed had made of a Top 200 countdown on Labor Day 1993, commercials and all, every day climbing the same apex towards “Heart-Shaped Box.” Then it would start its loop all over again, trapping her inside. She would think of all the other times she had heard these songs over the course of her life—these same songs again and again and now, a million times more. They were engineered for liminal spaces: checkout lines and waiting rooms and traffic jams, to give people the illusion of movement and rhythm when their lives were going nowhere. Usually this time of year, Christmas music took over, the ultimate opiate of the masses, to distract everyone from the cold fact that another year was slamming shut forever. But not in the Halloween store. The music didn’t change. It never would. That would mean something was coming; that would mean something was ending. To stay afloat, the store also sold other holiday items, stocked as if they were perennial: pastel Easter baskets of unraveling wicker, Thanksgiving wreaths of fake papery leaves, snowmen whose bodies were made of Styrofoam and crumbling glitter. It was the snowmen’s season now: winter, at least by some definitions. But this was Florida, and the seasons never really changed, not in any meaningful or significant way. That was her favorite thing about coming here: the pure indulgence in wasting perfect days, because they were in seemingly infinite supply. It didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do with each one, because another would reappear the next morning, new and clean and glaringly bright. She couldn’t possibly be held accountable to change if nothing else around her did. The store was listed on various obscure websites and in off-brand guidebooks as an “oddities destination,” although the people that stopped in were always on their way to somewhere else. Usually, they would stalk the aisles for a minute or two before walking back out empty-handed, muttering there wasn’t much to see, just the same old shit you could get anywhere in October. “Speak for yourself,” she would think as she watched them leave, staring out the display windows into the vanishing point of the horizon. The store possessed the most beautiful natural light she had ever seen in an interior space—that was its most extraordinary quality, what should have been advertised in the guidebooks. Every afternoon, the golden glow that seeped in and wrapped around her nearly brought her to tears. Its beauty had something to do with the time passing, a phenomenon that persisted outside the safe confines of the store. The light was a reminder that life was short, something which was easy to forget whenever she was inside. Even Ed’s sign out front was only a false alarm—time running out rendered merely a marketing tactic and as such, a lie. She came home at night smelling like the plastic that everything in the store was made from, the way she used to come home smelling like coffee when she worked at Starbucks, her first job, her first failed attempt to make a life for herself. But unlike the way coffee’s nutty sweetness had begun to smell foul, the pungent scent of the plastic began to smell not quite sweet, but the next best thing: unnoticeable. Like how when she was a child she realized that all of her friend’s houses had their own special scent, but she could never smell her own. The place she came from always smelled like nothing, like it wasn’t a place at all. From her view at the counter, she could see the rack of personalized tombstone decals, some of the store’s best sellers. People thought it was hilarious to pretend to be dead. HERE LIES ADAM. HERE LIES ANNIE, they went, and so on. She could see her own name hanging there, a straight shot at eye level. When she interviewed for the job, Ed had asked her what scared her the most. She considered the question, really thought about it. But then too much time had passed so she just blurted out, “Nothing.” The word lingered in the stale air of the store. She could sense it hanging over her, like a spirit. She felt it, she believed in it, but that didn’t make it real.
For several days I have been followed by a man I cannot see— a man who presses his nose to the back of my head, who laughs quietly whenever I whirl around only to confront empty space. He casts no reflection. He never speaks. Who the fuck are you, I yell. Why are you doing this to me. Always at a steady pace, never sprinting, keeping my strength, I keep space between myself and my pursuer. I make sure to pass the lodge several times, the one that used to have the sign COMMUNITY SOUP KITCHEN draped over the doorway. I got a packet of sanitary pads there once; typical goods for the homeless. The woman who handed it over would not look at my face. I remember the foundation caked in her wrinkles. Now it is locked up. Frantic, I call for help a few times with no answer. I do not believe that no one is there. The solitary yellow window on the second floor winks out as soon as I rattle the door. I give up, trying to ignore the prickle at the back of my neck. But in the dark I feel the man gaining on me. I frequently slap myself across the face to stay awake. I wander the streets circuitously, in the cold and rain, until the sole of my left shoe is unglued and flapping, and my jean cuffs fray. When my bladder becomes a boulder I squat, timing myself. He always catches up.I fall asleep on my feet, head knocked back by a lamppost. The man touches my shoulders and my stomach swings like a hammock. Fuck off, I slur. I shrug out of my coat and jog into a crowd. Pedestrian eyes travel up the tracks on my arms. I haven’t slept in days! I scream at passers-by. I can hear the soft pad of footsteps behind me, not even struggling to keep up. His laugh. Somebody fucking help me!Limbs jostle me from all sides. The concrete sidewalk leaps up to smash my elbow. In the lodge there was a plaque praising community service above the kitchen entrance. I remember a penlight shining in my eyes, blurring the figures standing around me. My shirt was wet, sticking to the skin of my chest. The rank smell of vomit hung about me like a cloud. The voice of the woman wearing cakey foundation said, “these people are such animals.”Now, I’m in an empty hospital room. The only light is fluorescent. A poster to my left takes over the wall: Understanding the signs of addiction: we are here to help.The door slides open and a young PA with a tablet asks me how my elbow feels. I do not speak, because it is too late. I know I will not have his sympathy. I focus on my breath until he leaves. I finally feel that I am able to get up and stumble to the bathroom. To the mirror. And now you will leave me here, with the man blocking my way, as I cannot look around the back of his head. He stands here with elbows bent, shoulders rising and falling in the motion of tying a tie. I, doomed to occupy the space of a shadow, cast out and grasping for the physicality I’ve lost— I am disgusting to you. As days lengthen to weeks you’ll forget my pathetic begging. Smile, and, smugly, tell yourself that everything is how it should be, of course. Nothing is the matter.You’ll make way for him.You’ll call him sir.
This story could be called ‘The Christmas Blues’ if I told the story of Mama's Christmas eve swaying, watching the record player playing, glass glinting blue in her hand, tears, some dropping onto her festive plastic-aproned chest, and her blue-denimed legs, and the rest soaking into the faded-blue carpet pile, her bare feet pressing them in. This story could be called ‘No One’s Coming Home This Christmas’ if I told the story of why Papa, instead of just saying no, had to work Christmas day and every day, in some lab, lying to us about fixing acid rain, when we know he owes the ‘wrong kind of people’ money, from when he said to Mama on the house phone he can't come home or they'll make her work for them too, that he's gotta pretend it's just him, until he pays it all back, until maybe forever. This story could be called ‘So Santa Hates Poor Kids’ if I told the story of what was under our fake tree on Christmas morning, and how Mama held the telephone for Papa to hear us as we open presents, pointing at her face as she makes a fake smile and bops her head and waves her arms in fake delight and we play along, and really get into it, as we open newspaper-wrapped presents of our own stuff, wrapped up and it's not even a surprise, cos we watched Mama wrap them up last night, and we're just pinning all our hopes on the food today. This story could be called ‘The Christmas Happy Meal’ if I told the story of the four of us at the kitchen table, Mama in Papa's seat and me in hers, round the KFC bucket, Mama saying it's a tradition in some places and we nod, not caring, chewing on chicken bones and wearing the newspaper hats she made, and our paper-mache wings from the school Christmas play, and Mama says she's full from breakfast and smokes a cigarette instead, and the record player plays the song ‘Its Gonna be a Cold, Cold Christmas Without You’ and we sing along, mouths full and cigarette smoke blurring the edges of this happy Christmas scene.
The Christmas after Jo’s mom died was bad. Her older sister Jules showed up the evening before Christ’s birth, driving the 13-hour stretch from Chicago to Western Pennsylvania in one go. Jo and her dad watched on the front porch as Jules’ Prius rattled down the driveway, Brittany Spears blasting from open windows, tires crunching against the snow. The car was in poor shape, salt-covered, and trembling like a racing dog whipped past its limits.Jo’s dad shifted nervously as his eldest daughter climbed from the car and trudged toward them. His hands were folded down the front of his apron, which read: “My Spawn R The Coolest.” “Greetings, family,” Jules said. “The season is upon us.”Jo had seen her sister worse off, but not by much. Jules’ Boston University sweatshirt was covered in dark stains. There were raccoon circles where her eyes should’ve been. Her duffel bag was half-unzipped, a tumbleweed of cords dragging in the snow. “Jesus, kiddo,” her dad said. “Did you drive the whole way straight?” “I dozed off some in Ohio,” Jules said, wiping the back of her wrist across her nostrils. “And I’ve been banging down lines every ten minutes, which helps with the concentration.”Her dad made a face. “I hope that’s a joke.”“Fine, don’t believe me.” Jules pushed past him, hugged Jo, and took her bags inside.Her dad turned, bewildered. “She was kidding, right? About the drugs?”Jo lifted and lowered her shoulders.Her sister was skinnier than she remembered (“Soul Cycle,” she said dismissively), but Jo knew it was the cocaine. She figured that was why Tom, her husband, hadn’t joined her. Jules only did drugs when she felt insecure about her weight. She didn’t care enough about Tom to watch her figure when he was around. It must have been a new lover. “Don’t ask me about Tom,” Jules said. “Don’t ask me about my job. Don’t ask me about going back to school or having kids or anything that might ever come within the fucking realm of my personal life.”“Fine by me,” Jo said. Christmas Eve dinner was bottles of wine, plates of pasta as an accessory. In years past, they’d have something unique– sushi or kebabs, Mediterranean. Jo’s mom never liked typicality. The pasta was a deliberate choice, both in its blandness and the family’s ability to ignore it even as the food filled their bellies. The girls quickly finished a bottle and then another. When they drained the good stuff, they broke into the cellar and found a few old cabernets that had never been opened. They were questionably sealed, some rodents had gnawed little holes in the wax. But Jo thought it was excellent, well-aged, like drinking buried history. (This is what mummy semen tastes like,” Jules said). Jo drank until she felt sick, scarfing down breadsticks and trying not to cry when her dad started talking about the semester at school, which had been rougher than the ones previously.“Don’t worry about your major,” her dad said. He held up his smudged glass and tipped it towards her. “Explore your interests. That’s what college is about– shedding your old self and becoming the person you’re meant to be.”“I appreciate that, Dad, but I have to pick one by the spring,” Jo said. “Or else I can’t graduate on time.”Her dad was already tipsy. He waved his hand. “ You’ll find the right path, trust me.”Jules frowned into her pasta. “Jesus, Dad,” she said. “Pull it together.”“What?” “I’m just saying, don’t do that.”“Do what?”“Go all Mr. Rogers on our asses. Just admit it– your kids are fuck-ups.”“Hey,” Jo said. “Don’t lump me in with you.”“I’m so proud of you two,” Her dad said, teary-eyed. “You both are perfect. Perfect angels.”“No, I’m not,” Jules said. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”“Please stop talking.”“Guys,” Jo said.“Let’s just have a nice dinner.” Her dad let out a low sigh and rotated his eyes toward the ceiling. “Can we agree on that?’“I have to make a phone call.” Jules stood and drained her glass. “I have people who are relying on me. Business and associates and important things.”“Okay, honey,” Her dad said. “I’ll put your leftovers in the fridge.”“Whatever.”Jo and her dad sat in silence, clinking their forks against porcelain. On television, Ralphie from A Christmas Story demanded his parents purchase him a Red Ryder air rifle for the holiday. Shortly after, he beat the shit out of that hillbilly kid and betrayed his best friend for saying the F-word, nearly blinded himself with a stray BB shot. Ralphie was kind of a psycho, Jo realized. In modern days he would’ve fit the profile of a school shooter. Or a Republican candidate. Jo asked, “Can I have more wine?”“Sure, babe.” Her dad refilled the glass and looked up at the overhead fan, its blades shaking from the force of Jules marching back and forth in her room. “But you have to watch your consumption. Alcohol can be a gateway to a more–ah–complicated life.”After dinner, Jo helped with the dishes and poured herself another drink. She thought about school– whether she would major in dance or writing or maybe something useful in the real world– economics or whatever. In high school, she took Advanced Calc, and the patterns revealed themselves to her easily enough. But the idea of tabulating figures and sums for the rest of her life put a sour taste in her mouth. Being 20, being without a mother, she knew that life wasn’t as simple as all that. You removed something or someone from the equation and the results weren’t linear, or predictable, they were something else entirely. Finished cleaning, Jo grabbed her coat and decided to go for a walk while her dad wrapped presents. She cut a path across the yard, boots kicking up shallow tufts of snow in the late December light. Beneath the darkened tree line, she paused, bowing her head in reverence. The family pets were buried in the frozen dirt here– Toby the Dog, Sam the Cat, and Garfield, the defenestrated guinea pig, who met his maker via a leap of faith from the girls’ jungle gym. On nights like these– cold, forlorn, biting– Jo was grateful that her mother had chosen cremation. It didn’t seem right to put someone in the ground and forget about them, to have their only memory as a headstone, half-buried, collecting snow in the wintertime, a bunch of wilted flowers in the summer. Was that love? Paying tribute to something that wasn’t there, that had– as far as anyone knew– moved on to another plane of being? Fuck, Jo thought. The wine was making her philosophical. That happened sometimes when she drank; she felt a flash of wisdom that disappeared just as quickly as it arrived. Upstairs, Jo flopped on her bed, definitely drunk now, listening to Jules talk in serious undertones with her lover through their shared wall. It was easy enough to imagine him: older, flabby, likely with a kid in high school he never saw. The guy thought Jules touched something deep inside him– something “he never knew was there.” Jules had a type. Not a good one, but a type, certainly. In high school, Jo had found herself the unwilling recipient of many a lurid tale. Jules complained about her life, her teachers and boyfriends, varsity sports, the “hoes” talking shit. Back then it had irked Jo, her beautiful, do-no-wrong sister, bitching about the cosmic forces out to get her. Now that they were both older, Jo figured Jules had simply been ahead of her time.But here, on this night over eight years later, Jules vented to someone else. Jo heard the dry-nostril snort of her sister bumping a line and talking to this new guy, Kirk.“Kirk– no, shut up, this is serious. Okay, listen– and then my mom died. And my dad is a fucking weirdo–snort!– and I think Tom secretly had a vasectomy and is planning on moving out. Hold on a second– Jo, are you there?”Jo didn’t say anything. She was counting the watermarks on the ceiling, trying to recall what it was like to be a child, how life looked endless, rhythmic, inescapable.“I’ll call you back.”Click.“Jo.” Jules’ mattress creaked. “Were you listening to me?”Jo didn’t respond.Jules knocked on the wall. “Jo? Are you still up?”After a long time– too long– Jo said, “No.”There was a pause, and then Jules said, “Do you want to do a bump with me?”That night was the first time Jo did cocaine. She and Jules kneeled like Catholic schoolgirls on the fuzzy carpet, snorting messy lines off their Sleeping Beauty mirror. They giggled at this, the mixture of adult life and childhood sweetness, their sloppy handling of the drugs as they passed the rolled-up dollar bill back and forth. With each line, Jo felt increasingly lit up, like a candle was burning inside her chest. Overtop their frantic sniffling, the Irish Christmas song played from the living room below. It was their dad's favorite– that duet about the NYPD Choir and Galway Bay. The drunk couple calling each other every slur imaginable as they poured out their fucking hearts and prepared for the new year. “Tell me about school,” Jules said. “Any boys?” “A few,” Jo said. “But it’s whatever.”“Want to talk about it?She shook her head, “I'm good.”It was nice of Jules to ask, but Jo didn’t feel like delving into the events of her love life– disastrous as they were. There had been a fight over a boy, in particular, at a frat formal. Jo threw a drink at a girl and then the two of them were tangled together on the dance floor, swearing and shouting and hitting. Jo had been afraid of expulsion, but the school showed leniency, let her off with a warning. It was like that with her other faux pas, too– the late homework and passing out drunk in the communal bathroom. There was no shortage of sympathy from the administration or her group of friends. No matter how badly she acted, she was forgiven. After all, her mom had died. All roads led back to that. It was all anyone ever talked about. Sometimes, she thought, it was all she was.She didn’t even realize she was crying until Jules reached over and patted her softly on the head. “There there,” Jules said. “Do another line, kitten.”She decided to take Jules’ advice, dropping her face to the mirror. Immediately, she felt better. She liked the cocaine. The forcefulness of it. It was like a locomotive pushing all the bad thoughts from her head, clearing a path through the snow in her brain, the residual slush and soot. With a providential foresight, she could almost sense how tomorrow would go– Jules sleeping in late, vomiting in their joint bathroom, refusing to come downstairs for presents. Her dad, harried and emotionally drained, playing cheerful music to drown out the awkwardness. And there was Jo, stuck in the middle, feeling the cave walls of her heart collapse on itself. But that was tomorrow, and today was today. You had to deal with these things accordingly. You had to take them one step at a time.“Promise me you won’t make the same mistakes I did,” Jules said. Her eyes swiveled and popped in their sockets. Jo noticed for the first time how red and thick her capillaries were, like hard candy. “Promise me you’ll do something fucking important with your life.”Jo did another line and looked at her sister. “Yeah,” she said. “I promise.”“Good,” Jules said. “Good.She held out her hand, and Jo took it. Together, they sat with their backs against the wall, closed their eyes, and listened to the music.
He is the big stud with the big arm and the big serve and king of the courts. She is the glitter girl, the glamor queen, the incandescent prodigy of homecoming competitions. She consorts with star basketball players who are six foot eight and academically challenged but cocky because they can dunk blindfolded. However, everything changes the afternoon she looks at him in that certain way through the wire fence of the tennis facility and says something that is lost in the wind. But he rises to the occasion by asking, “what in the world are you doing on this side of campus when the basketball facility is definitely over there,” and points with his racquet. “I like tennis players’ legs,” she says, hooking polished fingernails coyly through the fence. “Yeah,” he says, “and they’re tanned too, not like that anemic white you get from running around in gymnasiums. Those guys might as well be living underground like goddamn Morlocks.” And she laughs. The two of them dine that evening in the university cafeteria and then stroll to the school’s arboretum—that facilitator of budding romances and carnal lust—where they neck for several hours. A month later they are sitting in the student lounge sharing an ice cream cone and discussing his plans to enter the professional tennis ranks. She shakes her head and says, “darling, you’re a wonderful tennis player, but only a few pros make any money on the circuit and I don’t want to be a tennis widow sitting around waiting for you to come home. I want to get married and live a normal life. You need to decide how important I am to you.” He will wonder many years later if he made the right decision. So they marry at a country club during the summer and very soon acquire a home on the eighth fairway of the same club. There follows a nice middle-class existence of friends, social events, theater tickets, and vacations to exotic locations. There is little to complain about
Antithesis
until he is sitting contentedly on the patio one evening with a half-consumed daquiri in hand and she sits down somberly to inform him that she is planning to visit her sister in Philadelphia and would be staying for a while so she has “time to think.” A vague ripple of anxiety passes down his spine and he wonders if perhaps he has not paid sufficient attention to the subtle changes that have been occurring in his marriage over the past year. William Shirer, the writer, once remarked that “time and circumstance take their toll” on marriages, but he never believed this applied to him. The following day he stands mutely in the driveway as she pulls away in her Toyota Avalon with hardly a backward glance, and returns to a home that has suddenly undergone a dramatic transformation. It is silent. In fact, the silence is palpable, infiltrating his mind and body like some poisonous radiation. He realizes for the first time that he has never been alone. In the beginning there was his family and then the dormitory with all the guys horsing around and then the marriage. And now . . . . He stands in the middle of the living room while a knot forms in his stomach. In the next few weeks the knot worsens and he begins walking around slightly bent over like an old man. He visits a physician and complains, but the physician is clueless. He asks, “have you been experiencing any stress lately?” He laughs. His wife phones and informs him that the marriage is over and she is “moving on,” plunging him into a profound depression. For months he goes through the motions of daily necessities but is curiously detached. He is reminded of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”: sealed off from the world while everyone else is blithely carrying on their activities. Food is tasteless, relationships don’t matter, work is a boring waste of time. Rage wells up inside him as he struggles to figure out what he has done to deserve this. Christmas eve arrives. He knows getting up in the morning will be a struggle. Why bother? Instead, he decides, take your useless, sorry ass down to Walmart and buy a nice Christmas holiday weapon of your choice and then go home and get your joyous holiday affairs in order and type out a note on the computer that serves as your Last Will and Testament for these wonderful holidays and make sure the cat has enough food and water to last a couple of days in case your sorry, useless ass isn’t discovered while everyone is celebrating the wonderful holidays and then put the gun into your mouth and squeeze the trigger . . . .
Synthesis
but a tennis court materialize before him, the university tennis court, the final match of the season, the conference championship, for all the marbles, with his eternal nemesis Harper Ruff on the other side, serving his last serve, that big kicking monster you can barely return, allowing Harper to volley sharply into the opposite corner, a shot seemingly out of reach, but you anticipate, sprint madly, racquet drawn, wrist cocked, for that final headlong dive to send the ball screaming over the net, just out of Harper’s reach, the ground crashing into your body, watching the ball as it soars down the line, as Harper looks on, as the crowd looks on, as time stands still, as the ball descends, drifts downward, gently, to kiss the outside of the white tape, leaving that glorious mark of victory, and you are, by god, for the first time ever, the conference champion. “Memories are not key to the past, but to the future,” Corrie ten Boom once said. Yes. It is time to move on. There may be a way out of this. Christmas is calling.
Lydia was in the Sam's Club reaching for a box containing three boxes of cereal when the lanky man pushed his flatbed cart uncomfortably close to her flatbed cart."As you can see, I have a compendium of canning jars," he said. "Are you also interested in canning?"She squinted at his selection, six jars with glass handles that said “Wine-O-Clock” instead of “Ball.” Feeling charitable and a little intrigued, she said, "Did a whole shelf of asparagus this weekend. You need the tall jars for those."The man nodded stiffly. "And do you enjoy dining at Cook Out? My favorite order is the chicken quesadilla with another chicken quesadilla and a third chicken quesadilla as well."Lydia laughed, leaning on her cart. He sounded like he'd watched a video called How to make casual conversation with new acquaintances. "I'm partial to the spicy chicken, the corn dog, and chili. With an Oreo shake.""Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh," the man said. "And do you also work at the spaceport?'"Well…I'd call it the flight center," Lydia said. "Or just Marshall. Are you new here?""No!" the main barked. "I am a longtime employee. And let me tell you. Those clowns!""Yeah, they got some problems, don't they?" Lydia said. "I tell you, if they do one more reorg and fuck with my reporting structure I'm about likely to drive a golf cart over a retaining wall. For all the good that'd do."The man looked at her intently. "Why do you think we've never gone to Mars?"Lydia gave the man a once-over. It seemed like a line, like he wanted to debate her. She straightened up, maybe trying to intimidate him a little. Lydia was tall and bulky, with short hair and wide pants. A woman of substance, an old coworker had called her, which pissed Lydia off until she realized he kinda liked women of substance. You're gonna get slapped if you try that line on some other lady, she told him, drinking coffee in her backyard a few weeks later, robe open to the autumn breeze."You know what?" she said. "You remind me of my ex-husband. Ed. Well, dead husband. He went to Afghanistan and came back different. More fun. Kind of a hoot, actually. But you know how it is. That brain stuff catches up with you eventually.”"Does it?" the man asked.Lydia retrieved a box containing two bottles of ranch dressing from a shelf. "Hey, you want to go out tonight? The Duke's Bonnet downtown, maybe 8ish.""I'd love to," the man said, a slight look of panic in his eyes.Lydia began pushing her flatbed away. "What's your name, anyway?""Tyvee," he said."Tyvee?" Lydia said, stopping short. "Like teevee but Tyvee?""Tyvee," he repeated, the panic seeming to mount.“Isn’t that funny,” she said. “A funny name for a funny guy. I’ll see you tonight.”
***
At the bar, Lydia introduced Tyvee to her friends, all widows or divorcees. She finished at Delia, wearing, as she usually did, a rock tee tucked into high-waisted jeans. "This is Tyvee," Lydia said, "I think he might be a spy. And this is Delia. She works at the base, too."Tyvee said, "Why do you think we've never been to Mars?""Mars?" Delia said. "You kidding me? We haven't even been to the moon in who knows how long.” The jeans allowed Delia to make strategic use of her butt, and she used it here to box out Tyvee, in favor of Lydia. “Always seemed like a suicide mission to me anyways. You’d just be trading bodies for data.""Do you work with Lydia?" Tyvee said. "Doing repairs?"Delia laughed. "Has she been feeding you a line? We do clerical work. They mostly only let men in the build spaces.""We started the same week," Lydia said. "My Ed and her Jesse got a job here together after their service was up. Deployed together, too."Tyvee nodded aggressively. "Did Jesse come back fun, too?""No," Delia said, "he did not."There was a silence, and then Lydia pointed out the front window, which had been painted with lizard green letters advertising 99-cent wing Wednesdays and three dollar Miller Mondays. "Holy shit. It's the guy with the hearse. You are in for a treat."They all piled into a long black car with bottles of liquor clanking in a plastic rack, and the driver took off, fast enough for Tyvee to look a little queasy. The air conditioner wasn't working, so they rolled the windows down, all sweating in the summer heat. Lydia and her friends began reminiscing about their husbands' funerals."Twenty-one gun salute?" one cried."Twenty-one gun salute!" the rest replied, cackling."Goddamn, that thing was noisy as hell," Lydia said. "I just about cussed aloud when that first volley pierced the clear blue sky.""Remember when I pretended I was so gosh-darned bereft that I was gonna throw myself on the fuckin' coffin?" Delia said.Lydia slammed her glass down on an armrest, splashing the brown liquid on fuzzed, blue fabric. "Oh my God, you were being such an asshole.""Everyone staring at me all sad-eyed. Thank God you were holding me back, like, Honey, cut it the fuck out, hissing in my ear. Otherwise I would’ve had to fake a Charlie horse to keep my own godforsaken body out of that hole.”"It was not the time for irony," Lydia said.Delia toasted her, ice cubes clinking wetly. "Then when is?"A few more turns and the hearse stopped, and the widows and divorcees all stumbled out. Tyvee grabbed Lydia's arm for support, his lanky body heavier than it appeared. He's drunk as hell, Lydia thought, but said, "You OK, hon?""I saw your house from orbit," Tyvee said, “knew it was a spaceport, a launchpad for probes or a maintenance shop. A place of expertise. It glowed from the air, a massive, brilliant display, blaring and blinking like the sign of some distant planetary system. A darkness evincing rotation. The unmistakable signal of an eclipse." "You saying you wanna get out of here?" Lydia asked. "I can show you the bright lights."
***
As Lydia drove through her neighborhood with Tyvee in the passenger seat—it was unclear where his car was—there was no mistaking which house was hers. Its glow rose above the roofs of her neighbors' brick colonials and vinyl-sided ranches, bursts of reds and greens interrupting brilliant white. She turned onto her street and the full scope of her Christmas decorations became clear. They engulfed the whole house. "There it is!" Tyvee said, pointing. "I want to see everything. The repair bay on the side. The research and development lab at the center. Your deck, where you lay out your plans for interstellar travel.""Oh yeah," Lydia said, "They're right in there with my Heisman trophy and Academy award."In the garage, an inflatable Jesus held an inflatable Santa by the neck. An inflatable banner said "JESUS FIRST." Lydia punched Jesus causally in the face, in a way that suggested she did it every time she came home. Inside, the rooms were piled with shipping boxes and parts. As Lydia made Tyvee another drink, he plucked a metal doodad from atop a table. "And what is this for?" he asked."Servo motor," Lydia said, putting her hand on his back and rubbing in little circles. "Moves Santa's hand so it looks like he's scratching his balls. Just like Ed used to. God rest his soul." She perched on the table and took a long drink. "But now it's just me here. We've got the place to ourselves."Tyvee seemed to steel himself. "Lydia, you're right. I am a spy," he said. "Oh, okay," Lydia said, freshly intrigued. "And I'm a high-ranking Soviet apparatchik.""I'm from another planet,” Tyvee went on, ignoring her, “far, far away from here. My project—the one I’ve spent forty of your years on—is to determine what's to be done about civilizations, thousands of them across the galaxy, that have the technical resources to travel between planets but never make it into the stars. How to get them there. And I think I've almost got it.""Mmm-hmm," she said, kissing his hand. "And what's your theory, Herr Doktor?""It's spaceports like these. Skunkworks, staffed by a hardscrabble crew of tinkerers and mercenaries. I've found them on every planet. Glowing dimly, but insistently, from space. If we just give them a little boost, all of you, well. You can all join us in the stars." He grabbed her hand. "And you're the perfect spokesperson for my project. Articulate, charismatic. I've already informed my organization about you. Preparations are being made. You're going to be famous."She grabbed her hand back, hopped down from the table. "Are you fucking with me? You gotta be fucking with me. Is this a prank? Did Delia put you up to this?"Tyvee ignored her, pawing through a green plastic bin full of parts."OK. I'll play along. These are decorations, Mr. Alien," she said, pulling up a cord from a winder on the floor. "Christmas lights. I don't build spaceships. I buy inflatables at the Home Depot and mount 'em on my roof. With some custom mods."This finally got to Tyvee. "I don't understand.""Come outside."She led him out her front door, which caught on its frame, as if it were rarely used. From the house next door, someone yelled "Lydia! It's July!" She stuck a finger their way.When they reached the middle of the street, Lydia said, "Now, turn around."Tyvee saw the glow of her house then, up close for the first time. Dots of tiny lights covered every inch of the walls and roof, criss-crossing lines of colored blobs snaking their way up her tree trunks. "It's not a beacon?" Tyvee said, "It serves no purpose?""Well, I dunno about that," Lydia said, "It has its uses."Tyvee looked closer, at the figures on the roof and the lawn. One Santa was helping a baby elf with long, straight blonde hair kick a ball. Another was holding the hand of Mrs. Claus, who was laid up in bed. Another Santa, behind a puffy craps table, had his hands in the air, cheering, clapped on the back by ecstatic-looking elves throwing red and green chips in the air, their arcs indicated by curved tubes of LED lights."Are they all your Ed?" he asked."Yep, that’s him helping our daughter learn soccer, that there's him taking care of me at the hospital, and that there's the time he went on a forty-eight roll run," Lydia said, lighting a cigarette. "And of course, being strangled by Jesus in the garage, like he was by all of his goddamn bosses. Same type of folks who decide things at the base. Who decide not to go to Mars, like you keep asking about. Who, in the guise of our local government, send me these fines and threatening fuckin’ letters." She took a drag, blew it toward the moon—a waning crescent. Almost extinguished, but soon to return. "Ed passed just before Christmas a few years back," she continued. "After the funeral and all finished up, and our daughter went back to Atlanta, I just didn't have the heart to take the decorations down. Came to like 'em up there, welcoming me home, so I figured I'd add some more. If I made it bright enough, maybe he could see me." She shook her head. "But I guess you saw me instead, huh?"Lydia looked down. Tyvee had collapsed to the street, arms around his knees. Lydia stuck the cigarette between her lips and tried to drag him up by his armpits. "Hey now," she said, "none of that.""You just leave these lights on all the time," he said. "There's no reason. It serves no purpose. This isn't a spaceport at all. You're nothing like the people I found everywhere else. Your neighbors hate you. I hate you, too. You're ruining my career."The man wasn't budging and Lyrida gave up on dragging him to safety. Some people just can't be helped, she thought."Well," she said, brushing her hands off, "you'll be happy to hear that the city is making me take 'em down. Delia's coming over this weekend to help. Thousands in fines I can't pay. Finally they said they'd shut off my power.""Why would they do that?" Tyvee said, coming out of his ball."Just jealous, I suppose,” Lydia said. "You don't know what it's like to be us, to be one of the little lights. God forbid you want to do something special. Or even just work a steady job and raise your family. They've got a purpose for you. Maybe that purpose is to be small and keep the books. Maybe that purpose is to die. And if you have the temerity to make yourself bigger, or to come back alive, they just chew you up and bury you in the ground.""That's so sad," Tyvee said, struggling to his feet, "You're all so sad."She clapped him on the back, like the elves did Ed. "Cheer up, baby," she said. "After all, it's Christmas." And her laugh, sharp and cackling, rose up through the night air like a lost rocket in search of somewhere to land.
She called him a sexually transmitted disease. Carl doesn’t recall who shewas, but if he did, he’d send her a bottle of Dom Perignon for Christmas.“I am an STD,” he says.“You say something sir?” Rufus asks. He turns his sweaty face to the back of the car and grimaces at the effort. His thick neck strains and his cheeks, bright red, match the Santa hat Carl has him in. But he smiles through the pain and awaits a response. Carl hits the button. The partition slides shut.
***
The gym is nearly empty. A lone muscle-freak deadlifts in the corner. Rufus, under the air conditioner, greedily sucking down the free bottled waters and Carl, of course.Carl does not sweat. Does not allow himself to: a trick of the rich and one he has mastered. The key lies in comfort, never leaving it. No matter how hot Los Angeles gets, how thick and woolen his suits, he never degrades himself by sweating; unless, of course, it is time to sweat. Then Carl, like everything else he does, will do it to perfection.He decamps the treadmill looking like he swam the English channel.
***
Air conditioning works on the sweat and Carl feels coated in ice. He watches, comfortably, the discomfort of others. So many lost souls in the traffic. Unhappy, hideous people. Deep grimaces, shining foreheads. Wiping their heads with their arms and doing nothing but transferring the moisture in an infinite loop, amplifying their misery. Carl giggles. Wonders how many of them are in Los Angeles living the dream he sold.
***
Shower is perfect, of course. He doesn’t use a towel. Doesn’t need to. The temperature of the house just one degree warmer than that of his body. The mess made unimportant. Someone to clean it, assuredly. In the bedroom though a problem. Light peeking from behind the curtain, stretching the length of the floor, nearly striking his foot. “Sue,” he says.There in an instant. Doesn’t know how she does it. “Fix that,” he says, pointing to the light.Diligent but confused, she grabs the remote for the electric blinds and raises them. He does not reprimand her though, too amused by her attempts at avoiding eye contact with his exposed, glistening genitalia. Her head bobbles in unison with his cock, always a step ahead. He puppeteers her, spins her around like a dancing ballerina.Sue is fifty. Hair chopped bluntly in the shape of a rainbow. Lower teeth protruding like a chihuahua. She is hideous, by design. Work is work and fun is fun, never to mix again. He has learned this the hard way. Three divorces. Thirteen years of alimony. Payments to exes amounting to the GDP of third world nations. But now, suddenly, there is something desirable in the horridness of this idea, even in Sue’s complete and utter grotesqueness. Sex and Sue so incongruous, repulsive and unimaginable, it actually feels impossible. Out of reach. He must have it.“Sue,” he growls. He grasps her by the elbow and yanks her forward, but is momentarily distracted as the blinds complete their ascent and reveal the snow.Snow. Flurries of it, swirling and dancing outside his window. It is hypnotizing and by the time he remembers Sue, she has slithered free, heels clattering rapidly down the hall.Carl ponders the mystery of snow in Los Angeles for a moment more until he sees the two sour-faced men operating their respective machines and remembers he has paid for this. A memory. Linda, saying this, thinking it would be nice for the kids. It is a distant memory. Linda gone. The kids gone. The water slicking his body has turned, is now unpleasant. Carl closes his eyes. There is a feeling inside him, beneath his detachment and the carefully medicated euphoria. It hovers over his inner life like the sun: omnipresent, coloring everything but never to be looked at lest it burn his eyes. Carl, shivering, does not like this feeling, despite its familiarity.“Sue,” he calls.But she is gone. He knows.Carl, on the brink of something, becomes aware of the eyes on his body. His nude, glistening body. The two men operating the snow machine stare in a mixture of awe and disgust. It is power they see. Power in its truest form, a gleaming wet cock and balls destroying their Christmas morning, for reasons that escape them all. And as their faces show obvious signs of rage, as he notices the rings on their respective fingers, the tapping feet waiting to get back home to their families, the sun inside Carl sets. And now Carl, though painfully cold, cannot retreat. He stands in place, watching nothing for three deliberate minutes until it is certain he is exiting by choice and not bashfulness. And as he departs, showing his dripping wet ass, he is euphoric again.
FourteenIt’s Friday night. Not 24-hours into winter break. High school, 1994. Me and Simone go to the mall, like normal, although the arresting office will be sure to tell us, What you girls did was not OK. Do you hear me? Stealing is a crime, Girls. And it is a crime, but in my head it’s a normal one. The handcuffs they put on us, those seem normal. My mom’s response as she’s driving us home to face my father? Probably normal and anyway, I can take it from her, she has a right. She’s been overseeing my fuck-ups for a while now. He, though. He’s not allowed. And because I believe my father does not have the right to tell me anything, All of a sudden–now? when we butt heads that night, it’ll be so bad we never will again. Although it’s more than a butting of heads. When he realizes he’s on top of me, both hands around my neck, I can feel him know he’s lost control. His grip is ashamed. And my neck? Brave. Then guilty, for making him do it. When Christmas comes two days later, we exchange gifts like normal and no one says a word about it. Not ever again. Thirty-FiveIt’s the second week of December. I’m 9 weeks pregnant. We haven’t told our kids yet, he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t say those actual words–I don’t want to tell them, he just won’t say the other ones I want him to. It’s early Saturday morning and the fight is big and quiet like we’ve learned to be so the boys don’t hear. They’re playing Xbox in the garage we’ve converted into a room for them.You need to leave, I tell him, shaking and red with hurt. He shrugs, as if helpless. OK, he says. How can you just say it like that? OK!? All calm?! And he says, It's your house, and I say, So that’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say? Tears streaming down my face. Aren’t you even gonna ask what I’m gonna do about it?” I don’t call it a baby. But he simply shakes his head as he folds the clothes he’s packing to take, and I grab my red beanie from off the bed and walk from our bedroom and the quiet yelling, to the garage where the three boys are–his two, my one. Come on, Train, I say. You’re gonna be late for practice. When we get to the beach, Train grabs his surfboard from the back, shutting the trunk behind him. Then walks barefoot across the parking lot like someone who will not be having an abortion in seven days. Sitting in the car, I watch him slog through the sand to the frigid gray waves as I cry, silently. Even though I can be as loud as I want now. After a few minutes, I make the drive back to the house. Hoping that when I pull up, he’ll still be there, packing. But as I make my way up our street, my heart falls through my chest, through the seat, through the floor of the car and clear out into our empty driveway where his car is no longer parked. And as I turn off the engine, car keys in hand, I vow to myself that for as long as I live, I will never call it a baby. No matter what. Forty-TwoIt’s Christmas Eve and Grandma and Train and I have already done the three mile hike up Mt. Roubidoux in the 85 degree December heat and now we’re fresh out of ideas to occupy the next 10 hours together before we can each retire to our own rooms at Grandma’s house and not seem like we’re being rude for wanting to be alone, or just, not together. Train’s visiting from college and me, from the chaos of my new life without him. What about lunch? Grandma asks. Applebees?Train says sure.I say nothing.Before we leave for the restaurant, Train corners me in the hall. Wants to know what’s wrong?I’ve been trying not to cry all morning. Trying not to feel like whatever a mother with a birdless nest might. Looking down at the white 12x12 ceramic floor tiles, I say, I wanna tell you but if I do I’ll just cry. Distracted, he grabs his phone from his back pocket, looks down at it and says plainly, emotionless, OK. At the restaurant after we all order, Train heads to the bathroom. My mother looks at his empty seat, then at me. The Game’s on, or rather, they all are. Kelly Clarkrson’s I’ll be Home for Christmas desperately tries to cut through the din of the many T.V. 's. A few tears laze down my cheek and slip into my tea. Mom takes a sip of hers, trying not to notice. I think it’s going really well, she says, swirling her napkin along the table. Cleaning a mess that isn’t there. I’m in hell, I say. She smiles. Because she doesn’t understand. Well. You’ll always be his mother, she says consolingly. Don’t forget that. I nod. Then why do I feel like just some woman now? I sit stirring my drink that’s already gone. And my mother, she doesn’t have to smile. Because she knows just what I mean.
Jacobson's organ is an olfactory organ that helps animals detect chemicals in their environment. Located near the roof of the mouth, it’s present in many mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.*“Keep your distance from the river,” I told her. I ran my tongue along the roof of my mouth and felt the old, corrugated tin shed hidden up there with no tools in it to speak of, only a panting, half-dead snowbird. I was in love for the fifth or sixth time that week and my apartment was very cold. She went under the counter looking for another bottle of vodka, the pom-pom and point of her Santa hat bobbing along the bar’s sticky, tinseled horizon like a hand puppet. “Distance from what?” I stepped off the bar stool, then thought better of it, immediately repossessed the hunched posture no one ever seemed to want me to escape. I was always misunderstanding her—the important part was I wasn’t alone. One more. She was always asking about what happened to me as a kid, as a man, as a state senator and then saying oh wow under her breath like she felt sort of sorry for me while she counted bottles and flapped her wet hands at clouds of drain flies, squinting. She poured another one. I said, “Farmhouse. Falling apart.” I told her my childhood home was abandoned. I talked slow to make sure I was saying it right and not changing any details from the last time I told it. Where was she going again? I drove by it with my sister last year, the farmhouse. We got whoopings in there and worse. The bartender said, Ahhhhhhhh in a pouting way, then lit up when a guy walked in, a torturously duded guy in a billowing mustard-and-red sports outfit. He had a flattop and a smeared lobster or scorpion tattooed on his forehead in faded black ink, faded like he’d tried to rub it off with sandpaper. Randy! She ran from behind the bar, a bottle opener jutting out of the back pocket of her elf pants, and jumped into the man named Randy. I always struggle with this. The boyfriend is—okay, okay—Randy, and I know they both make fun of me when I’m not planted squarely in front of them. Though they do give each other little looks, I think, from time to time when I’m explaining something I feel is important. So maybe even then, too. Every outfit is a sports outfit for Randy and it corresponds with the seasons. It’s nice to see young(ish?) love…but what about me? Donna took off quite a while ago, right about when I got voted out and, after a few months of moping in the basement or garage, I started coming here and a few other dark places to do my moping. Randy held her by the waist and his mouth was open and his eyes were dead. I told them I used to be the Speaker of the House and they both laughed a little like I’d never said that exact thing and she took my fifty dollar bill. Randy was my signal to go.I went into the cold sunlight and the other one, other bartender, was out there, still smoking. We watched an extra-long Christmas stocking writhe in the breeze, squirm crazily across the parking lot like a crimson serpent until it wrapped itself around a parking meter and gave up. She squeezed my arm lightly and shivered back deeper into her long red-and-green sweater. Lisa? I think it’s Lisa.“Headed home, Senator?”There we were, two vertebrates shivering under an ice-drooped awning. “Next place,” I told her. Lisa. They know where I go. Hell if I’m going home at one o’clock in the afternoon. I walked to the bus stop. Chemical reactions filled every seat when the time came. The snow bird’s broken call was just a whisper, not nearly loud enough to cut through the chatter of people’s bodily functions and sparse applause. I kept my hands to myself. There was a time my hands wandered everywhere, over forbidden lands navigated by the most immaterial of senses.Senator Jacobson may now address the assembly.I bet Randy never passed a bipartisan appropriations bill or helped build a casino out in the middle of fucking nowhere. To be honest, I could never remember if her name was Maria or Marie or Mary. And perhaps his name isn’t Randy. I wished I had a piece of gum. I wished I had Donna. Memories. Growing up, our farmhouse had miles of flat sunflower fields around it on all sides. They had us surrounded back then! Long, uneven lines of spindly trees gave no encouragement and the little lackluster gravel road we all hated the sound of became an unanticipated benefactor: I ran and ran and ran. It turned out I had gone to seed. Fortunate things occurred that I struggle to understand, pheromones be damned, undecoded specters of possibility. Love wrapped its greedy mind around me. Respect came my way by way of Donna’s father, a State Supreme Court Judge. My constituents seemed to me to be androids assembled from unnatural components but I loved them—how couldn’t I? Service was my middle name. I voted with my subconscious to great effect. Intersections were scolded, freeway tolls burned alive screaming like children on a canyon-plunging field trip bus. I could smell the suffering and death. Bleeding. Stuffed animals. “Pass this or else!” I’d cry. At the end of my duties—the day some hidden things clamored, white and bleary into sunshine—the whole chamber echoed with a singular gasp when I collapsed at the podium, limbs folded underneath me like a chain-link fence in a windstorm. The whole tool shed was on full display: Ken Jacobson, State Senator. We knew he had issues.I remembered! She said Randy(?) wanted to take her sledding on the river!I pulled the string and the snowbird went ding.At the next place—a little dive with a circle bar and a statue of Elvis—the man at the curving counter said plainly with a new neon moustache, “No. Remember. We’re done here, Ken.” On to another bar a block down, I shoveled myself into the future past the shops with their windows dressed merrily and I thought, at the end of the day, I just don’t want that nice girl to drown. Not this time of year. The thing about the river in late December is it’s tricky. You can’t tell if its solid just by looking at it. You’re taking your chances. Will it bear your weight, bide its time, or split open laughing to leave you clawing and clamoring beneath its long, frozen tongue? At the next spot, Belinda or Becky had my drink made before I even sat down.“Merry Christmas, Senator. We close in half an hour.”
