Gratitude and grief in Amy Hempel's short story collection 'Sing To It'

By Caroline Henley 

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Sing To It, Amy Hempel’s eighth book, is a gift to her readers, a collection of stories of ill-fated dogs, philandering husbands, and secretly taped conversations, set in a scattering of houses up and down the East Coast — houses that all happen to be in dire need of repair.

Hempel’s stories sit in moments of grief then breeze swiftly to moments of joyful appreciation for life’s minutiae. Hempel has said in past interviews that she’s drawn to such moments when small power shifts occur between two people. Sing To It plays with these transitions of power, with wisps of scenes that move from the narrator idly pulling twigs out of a pool drain to a shocking tale of child abuse and suicide at the neighbor’s. 

In “A Full-Service Shelter,” Hempel asks her readers to stay as late as a kill-shelter’s volunteers do and bear witness to the injustice suffered by the pitbulls on death row: “They knew us as the ones who worked for free, who felt that an hour stroking a blanket-wrapped dog whose head never left your lap and who was killed the next morning was time well spent.” The repetition of “they knew us as” contributes to a mounting tension and anger throughout the story. When the volunteer passes a homeless man who asks for the same compassion she shows the dogs, the story pans out into the wider world and that anger crumbles into helplessness. 

Hempel could easily leave us in these moments of despair, considering the darkness of the subject matter in each story, but mercifully tempers it in turn. In “Quiet Car,” she describes a confused elderly man who settles into a leather armchair, which had been abandoned in a back-alley. The police “were kind when they contacted the man’s son in another state. But this won’t go well, I thought, and chose not to follow the story.” Hempel is conscious of how hard she can push and pull the reader and curates a deft balancing act throughout these stories. 

Hempel’s orchestration is at its most dramatic in the final and longest story, “Cloudland.” In the book’s acknowledgments, she thanks author Chuck Palahniuk for leading her to the true crime story that inspired it, which he passed to her because “he could not find anything funny in it.” Hempel details the narrator’s awful discovery of what really happened at the “maternal home” where she birthed, then gave up, a daughter. 

Throughout her reckoning, she also teases funny anecdotes of daily life during the same time period: a saleslady tries to sell her two left rain boots, and she signs a petition protesting animal abuse at Mariah Carey’s upcoming wedding. Why vacillate between horror and these more peaceful moments? Hempel writes, “You want to be choosy about what you let into your soul when you are likely not long for this world.” Sing To It confronts the traumas of life head-on, but takes the necessary time to recover afterward. 

Caroline Henley is a writer living in Brooklyn, where she runs The Farm, a reading series for satirical and critical writing. She’s currently a student at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Non-Fiction program.

Faculty Picks: Rebecca Schiff on short stories by Abigail Ulman, Tracy O'Neill on Marie NDiaye's novel of unknowing

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I know a book has gotten to me when I start texting my friends asking if they’ve read it. “You read Hot Little Hands?” “Have you by chance read Abigail Ulman’s story collection?” I want to discuss it and I want to discuss it now. I want everyone to know that in this world of James Bond remakes and tepid bestsellers, there’s a writer daring to say something new, to tell us what she sees, to describe things I’ve felt but haven’t yet articulated. In nine poignant, sexually frank stories, Abigail Ulman articulates what it’s like to be young and female so accurately that this book could almost be a primer. (A primer for what, I’m not sure.) Ulman’s stories have range—a twenty-two-year-old culture blogger decides to have a baby instead of finishing the book she’s under contract to write; a Russian gymnast’s visit to the U.S. takes a disturbing turn—but somehow they feel personal, too. I loved “Head to Toe,” in which two Australian teens get so bored with late adolescence that they go back to horse camp; and “The Pretty One,” a story that flips the conventional script of longing and obsession so that the fixated one is the female narrator, and the pretty one is a male bar-back with “black converse, tight gray jeans, a yellow T-shirt inside out, and a bunch of curly brown hair pushed to the side of his forehead.” A lifetime of descriptions of female beauty hadn’t prepared me for what it might be like to lust, along with the narrator, for a male object, to see how closely her crush is tied to the boy’s beauty, to understand exactly why she’s afraid to screw it up. I’d stumbled upon the female gaze, and I long to gaze with Abigail Ulman wherever she next turns her head. — Rebecca Schiff


As a kid, I never checked out scary films on trips to the local video rental store in Merrimack, NH, and I once told a man I was dating that watching a zombie movie felt, to me, like watching the two-hour cardio session of several people who'd not dressed for the occasion. Nevertheless, I find myself of late allured by a particular style of horror defined by a high-wire plot of unknowing. Recently, I began reading My Heart Hemmed In by Marie NDiaye (translated from French by Jordan Stump), who won the Prix Goncourt in 2009. The story of a couple who have become deplored by their small community without any seeming reason for it and who are shocked by the sudden appearance of a strange wound on the man's abdomen, the novel balances lucid prose with mysterious unease. Its conceit mobilizes and turns on its head our desire to find rationale for the infliction of cruelty, asking us to consider the everyday horror we enact as we mark and withdraw from others, and as we believe that the presence of horror suggests horror is deserved. — Tracy O’Neill

Rebecca Schiff and Tracy O’Neill are members at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Non-Fiction.

Mountain Fall

By Derrick Craigie

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The world outside the car windows is splashed in October grays and late-fall browns.  The White Mountains are colored by rain and rattled with winds that promise the coming winter. The weather is not on our side. It’s been years since the three of us have been together in one place, and we’re here for my dad. We’re going to find Hawthorne Falls.   

“You ready?” I asked.

              “Yep,” Ryan replied as he settled into the passenger seat and fastened his belt.

              “Dad?”I looked over my shoulder to see my towering father pretzeling himself, grey beard, dark glasses, and all, into the backseat of the Honda Civic. 

              “Let’s go.”

              “Gentlemen, have you ever heard of Celtic death metal?”

              Ryan blinked.

              “I’m guessing we’re about to,” Dad said.

              I smiled, hit play on the car stereo, and cranked the volume as the lilting flutes, whirring hurdy-gurdy, and crushing guitar riffs of Eluveitie surged from the factory-standard speakers. I might be a dad now, but I’m still metal.

Traveling over roads that climbed the frequent, terrain-defining hills around the towns of Littleton and Bethlehem, our conversation is unforced and casual.  Ryan and I have been friends since we were 16. Now, 40 isn’t so far away. In high school, we bonded over 90’s action movies, brash humor, and not caring about “fitting in.”

According to the high school paradigm, it was a friendship that didn’t make sense. He was a high school basketball star and I was the kid that wore Star Trek t-shirts back before being a geek was cool, or even accepted. You got ragged on, insulted. Bullied. We understood each other as outsiders, and through a shared struggle with anger. 

The friendship lasted. Through college drama and into the responsibilities and shifting priorities of adulthood. We’re fathers now, each with our own family. The offbeat sense of humor is still there, just not when the kids are around.

              We leave the pavement behind, turning on to a sodden dirt road. The tires rumble and shake over the rough surface. My phone speaks, the omnipotent GPS directing us to the trail-head. My dad doesn’t say anything, I feel his disapproval. The man has an atlas in his head. Directions are not my strong suite.

              We find the Gale River trail-head and park. Mist hangs in the air. Ryan and I are both wearing nylon, quick-drying, hiking clothes. My dad managed to avoid wearing cotton. To protect himself from the rain, he puts on heavy, tarp-like motorcycle rain gear. I already know that stuff won’t breathe, and I start to worry. Overheating is a real risk.

              We strap our packs on and go. I carry spare clothing, food, a forest axe, a camping woodstove, and the gear to make tea on the trail. It seemed like a good idea when I was packing.  

              “You sure that won’t be too heavy?” Ryan asks.

              “Nope, left most of my heavy stuff at home. Should be good.”

              “But you have an axe.”

              “It ‘tis but a small one.” My British accent is bad.

The trees are black slashes against a shining carpet of yellow and brown. Water droplets spatter down throughout the forest, raising a staccato that accompanies each footstep, each breath. The parking lot disappears behind us. My phone is in airplane mode to preserve its life and grant us access to the GPS when needed. Graded roads and electronic tethers fade away and the northern forest envelopes us in its silent embrace.

              The trail is wet, but not yet a bog. The trees stretch above us, birch and maple and balsam, a patchwork of fall vibrancy that stands against the gossamer gray of October rain. The conversation flows, ranging from Ryan and me talking about our young families, bushcraft, and the plan for our ascent. Our familiar companionship breathed in the silent woods. 

              A few miles of trail covered and we reach the Gale River. The water strains against the banks and whips over the rocks. We cross, stepping on stones that still peak above the white foam and crystal rivulets. I dare to hope I don’t slip. 

              Map check: the river crossed, this is where we leave the trail. Upstream, hugging the river as close as the terrain will allow, is our next course. The falls are in this direction, somewhere through dense growth, above us on the mountain at an elevation of 3,000 feet.   

              There used to be a trail here, but it’s gone now, washed away in the 1930s by a hurricane and never restored. Other people have made their way to falls before us, and documented their travels on various websites. We knew where to go, approximately. What we didn’t know is that the latitude and longitude of the falls, as officially recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey, is off by one-half mile. The error had been dutifully perpetuated over the years. The red arrow on my phone, our primary navigation, was wrong.   

              Ryan stops, looking closely at the grass and dead stalks ahead of us. He points.

 “Look at how the ground dips down here, and rises there, all along this entire length. This is where the trail used to be.”

              Dad steps up next to us. “It breaks up further down, you can see this is where the river floods its banks, but I think you’re right.”

              I just nod and issue an agreeable Hmmm

              The course of the terrain pulls us away from the river, but we keep it in earshot. The brush turns into small trees, bramble, and assorted burs. The talking stops as we focus on finding secure footing through the undergrowth. 

I look back at dad, watching for heavy breathing or unsteady steps. He’s in decent shape, but he doesn’t do this regularly. 

Ahead, Ryan, has paused to check on us. The trek is marked by constant safety checks and excuses to rest disguised a pauses for conversation. There’s no planning or discussion around this, it’s simple rhythm. 

              We find our way back to the river’s edge, the terrain flattening out a bit and the growth opening up and allowing larger patches of sky to shine down. The forest itself seems to relax and not blanket the land so thickly here. Before us is a granite shelf, shaped a bit like the front end of a WWII tank. Angular and blocky. The river cascades down the face of the granite in sheets of white to the cacophonic symphony of its own decent. 

“These aren’t the falls, are they?” Ryan says.

              “Can’t be, they’re not tall enough, and we’re not in a box canyon like I’ve seen in pictures,” Dad replies. 

               “Funny story,” I say,” These are called Hawthorne Cascades. The falls are still a mile upstream, but a lot of people make it this far, think they’ve found the falls, and turn back.” 

We take some time to appreciate the cascades, resting our legs and drinking water.  Ryan and I snap pictures while my dad sits on a stone and simply takes it in. He mops the sweat off his brow. Somewhere along the way, he managed to catch the side of his rain jacket on a branch, and the tarp-like material tore wide open on the side. I’m a bit damp from the rain, but my nylon layers of quick-dry material are still keeping me fairly warm. Without saying much, I take my lightweight hiking raincoat out of my pack and offer it to him. “Here, this will breathe better and keep the worst of the rain off you. If those pants don’t hold up, I have actual rain-proof hiking pants.”

“What about you?”

“I think my legs will be okay, these pants shed water pretty effectively, and I have more layers in my bag, including another waterproof jacket. I’m good. Try it. Trust me.”

Satisfied that I’m not making a sacrifice, he accepts the jacket and stuffs his own into his pack. The rain has abated for now. We shoulder our bags, take one more drink, and ascend the bank along the cascades.  

Immediately above the cascades is a swath of bare granite, made slick by rain and the Gale River. Unconfined by any banks, the river spread itself thin and swift over most of the rock face, the center being slightly deeper as the rock is worn by centuries of erosion. This is one of the last open spaces we encounter on our trek.

At the top of this table the woods close back in and the river resumes its standard form.  We’re able to walk along the river’s edge on wide granite slabs that form ersatz steps. Orange leaves till cling to the trees. Deep pools and small cascades frequently manifest along the stream. Verdant moss covers the untouched stone. A fall here could break an arm or leg, but we can move quickly. We take the risk.

The stone steps run out and the water comes right to edge of the river bank. We climb back into the woods, but this is very different than before. Ryan, being the most experienced woodsman, takes the lead, I’m in the middle, dad brings up the rear. It’s impossible to see farther than 20 feet ahead. Branches and limbs crisscross in front me, scratching at my arms, slapping against my chest and leaving dark lines of soaking rain water along with flakes of bark and moss. The ground is no longer the ground. 

Large trees grow from the steep slope, and their roots stand above the rocky soil in a network of curling, thick tendrils. They support our weight, but leaves cover much of the area and hide little gaps that lead to steep drops. They wait for a single misstep that will allow them to swallow one of us right up to the thigh. Some of the gaps are big enough for us to fall into completely. Pitfalls, shadowed with decay and slashed by grey light bleeding between the roots.  These are ugly woods, and unforgiving of inattention. 

I pull out my phone and check the map. The falls are a red arrow a mile away. The river bends away from us. We can hear it, but it’s a dull roar threading its way through the stuttering rain. 

Dad looks over my shoulder at the screen. “Think we should cut a straight line to falls?

I nod. “Yeah, as much as we can.”

“We’ll probably have to move up and down the hill. It’s getting thicker ahead, but it might open up down there,” Ryan says and points to a wall of half-dead evergreens.

Putting away the phone, I take a drink of water, stretch my back, and say, “Let’s do it.”

We find the falls through sheer luck, despite the faulty coordinates. After pushing through sodden branch after sodden branch, traversing up and down the steep grade of the mountainside, we pushed down to the edge of the river, almost directly on top of the falls. We stepped out onto some rocks, only feet away from the edge. We couldn’t see how far down the drop went, but it was far.

“This has to be it,” dad says.

“It seems like it, but the map says the falls are still further upstream. At least another half-mile.” I show the screen to both dad and Ryan, pointing to the all-knowing red arrow. 

“Are you sure?” Ryan asks.

“I’m not, this certainly looks like the falls, but we confirmed the latitude and longitude in the phone before we came out here, remember dad?”

“I do.  Well, let’s see what’s upstream.”

I’m not proud of this part, that I trusted a smartphone over my own eyes and logic, but we wasted at least an hour trying to push further upstream. We didn’t even make it to the position indicated on the phone. At some point, a storm had blown down hundreds of trees on this side of the mountain, and we simply couldn’t press on further. 

It was decided we’d head back to what we were suspected were the falls. 

We should have trusted our instincts. Perched upon large boulders that sat in the stream, we looked up at Hawthorne Falls. Cascading from forty feet above, torrents of white water tumbled down granite steps in an endless hurtle towards a final destination. I don’t know if New Hampshire has box canyons, but it felt like we were in one. Gray and green stone rising on either side and the river cutting away from the falls through forested ground that sloped down to the water in converging lines. 

Leaning over to speak into my ear, the roar of the falls was constant.

Ryan deadpanned, “I hope this thing doesn’t flash flood. We’d be fucked.”

I laugh, thinking he has a point. After three hours of pushing through ugly, drenching woods, I’m not going to rush this.  Dad sits on one of the boulders, taking in the falls. He looks up at me, wiping his brow with a handkerchief that he always seems to have at hand. Ever since I was a kid he could produce one of those things like a magician. 

Catching his breath, he says, “I have wanted to do this for decades.”

“Any reason?”

“No, just something I wanted to do. Thank you for doing this with me.”

“Glad to. This is beautiful.”

If we were different men, we’d probably hug. I remember a time, back when I was in fourth grade, that he brought in the glasses I had forgotten at home. Right there, in front of the classroom, I’d wanted to hug him but held back. 

A year before that, my oldest brother passed from cancer. Lost in tears wrought by a pain that no one that young should feel, I wanted to crawl into the empty pit that opened up inside me and never come out. He held me. But that was different. Men from the North Country like to think they’re made of granite, but in earned moments of joy and loss, cracks appeared. 

And it was okay.

We stayed for several more minutes, filling our water bottles with filtered river water, taking pictures, and simply absorbing our surroundings. You could feel that not many people had been here over the years. I asked Ryan to snap the last photo, me and dad standing shoulder-to-shoulder, the falls behind us.

The rain picked up. We changed into drier gear, shouldered our packs, and climbed back into the woods. I looked back a few times, but the river disappeared quickly as the branches closed back in. I could still hear it, just beyond sight, accompanying us on our way back down the mountain. Ryan in the lead, me in the middle, and dad the rearguard. During the final stretch, when my bad ankles gave into fatigue and started turning on the rocky trail, my dad spoke up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, this happens sometimes. Just have to be careful.”

“You need new boots. That’s not good.”

“I’ll be okay. No worries.”

“I’m your dad. It’s my job to worry.”

Derrick Craigie is a graduate of the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

On Character

By Terri Alexander

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Last Friday evening, I found myself reading in Harper’s Magazine a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, “The Unexpected.” In the story, an aging, famous writer is attending a book event in her hometown when she is blindsided by the wrath of former classmates. In one conversation, a woman named Olive, or Olivia (the writer cannot remember), tells her, “You’re remembering wrong. In everything you write, you remember wrong.” And also, “That’s why you write such lies – to change the way things were, when you couldn’t change them any other way.”

The “all characters fictitious” legal disclaimer, boilerplate language for virtually all novels and story collections, states, in part, that “any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental,” and gives license to mine our lived experience for material. From auto-fiction to science fiction, writers’ real lives frequently co-mingle with their work. However, we are taught that to use an actual person in a work of fiction is an ethical no-no. Characters, then, are built in the gray area between the real world and the imagined.  

            Joyce Carol Oates does not reveal to the reader to what degree, if at all, the author acknowledges her characters were based on people from her past. It prompted me to wonder if the protagonist had a psychological blind spot, as hinted at in the story’s title, or if her characters were less veiled than she believed. Another possibility entirely is that the characters were erroneously making it all about themselves when the famous writer perhaps didn’t have them in mind at all.

The reader also doesn’t know how much of Oates herself is represented in the main character. It can start to feel like a psychological jigsaw puzzle. As a novice fiction writer, I have some underlying fear that my stories make my own personal issues transparent to the professors, students, and editors who read my stories. Today, we seldom allow a work to stand on its own, but insist on considering it through the lens of its creator. How much of it is true? Who hasn’t read a work of fiction so compelling that we’ve flipped to the author bio for clues as to how much of the story could be based in fact?

Writers of fiction have a rare freedom to build worlds and characters without limits, and yet there is the frequently recited advice to “write what you know.” My best characters tend to be shaped by snippets I take from a wide sample of relationships, interactions, and observations from my own life. I get an uneasy feeling when I recognize that a character I’ve written is based too much on one person. If that person read the story, would she recognize herself in it? If the answer is yes or maybe, I’ve gotten too close to that ethical boundary. In a 1983 interview with the Paris Review, Raymond Carver’s advice was this: “A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.”

            At the end of Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Unexpected,” the writer meets a former classmate who had a huge crush on her, and in fact still does. He discloses to her, “I’ve discovered enough of myself in your fiction to keep reading, and to keep hoping.” The protagonist is astonished at his words, and yet as the degree of his worship is revealed, she becomes more and more attracted to him, admitting to herself that he was meant to be her soul mate all along. In the last paragraph, the protagonist walks home with her admirer. Oates writes, “The sky overheard appears to be impacted with clouds, light comes from all sides, there are no shadows.” I finished the story and immediately googled, “Joyce Carol Oates personal life.” There was no obvious correlation, and I wasn’t surprised – the character in Oates’ story was completely alive on the page.


Naked

By Marjorie Frakes

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Washing my face was the worst part of every day. I'd stand at the mirror, admiring my effort, feeling fully myself, before splashing on water, soap, and/or whatever magical concoction I was currently trying. My effort, sometimes an hour's worth, swirled down the drain, and my naked, red, blemished face stared back at me. I denied ownership and flipped off the light.

            The causes varied. Helpful friends told me what I was doing wrong. They used a particular product and look at them. It was probably something I was eating. Stress, maybe. My favorite: the oft-recurring belief that it was punishment for vanity. I'd wanted to be beautiful probably from infancy, and this seemed a plausible and succinct way of letting me know that that was not part of the big plan for me.

            More important than clothing, my makeup bag became my arsenal and my armor. Mornings were terrifying. I'd get up early early early, especially if I was traveling, and hurry through my shower. Communal sinks were also terrifying, and I'd try for a corner spot, ignoring the beautiful faces at the sinks beside me, paranoid by their glances. Makeup on, I'd smile, but now a few more people knew my secret, and I assumed word would spread.

            A sentence in a book haunted me, and haunts me still. Subject, plot, and content have departed, but one sentence remains: a description of a minor character as "a woman with bad skin." How dare whomever? But that was accurate, I was sure. If anyone was going to remember anything about me, it was going to be that.

            I dated, by some miracle, though not much. And the highest level of intimacy I could offer was my naked face. Camping trips were not fun. One boyfriend told me I was beautiful "real", and I tried to believe him. Another encouraged me to accept myself, and I went out to breakfast one morning with a completely naked face. But I was cowered under a ball cap, and it wasn't quite the victory I (or he) had been hoping for. Also, my face was almost clear. I had my limits.

            Right before my wedding, I made my first trip to a dermatologist. "Yes, you have acne," she said, staring at my face, neck, and for some incredibly horrible and recent reason, chest. "Shsssh!" I wanted to say. I was prescribed topicals that burned my skin and bleached my towels. But it was an improvement. My portrait neck wedding dress looked stunning, and my skin looked acceptable.

            I ditched the topicals eventually. They hurt. I was accepted and loved and generally cushioned from exposing my naked face to anyone other than my husband. I used natural products and natural makeup, and most days were okay. On bad days, however, I noticed I held my head differently. I looked at the ground or tossed my hair (if it was long enough) in an attempt to distract. I was less talkative, and I tried to exit the conversation as quickly as possible.

            And my chest. How can I even discuss this? This, certainly, was some sort of wrath thing. It was a ploy to keep me buttoned to the top button, always. Google search: high neck swimsuits. No, this was not okay. During my annual checkup I told my doctor it was ridiculous and I was tired of pretending it was okay. I was thirty-six, because I am a very slow learner.

            Three years after this pharmaceutical panacea, I still don't love my naked face. I'm older now, with bags under the eyes and wrinkles telling stories. But my skin is soft and smooth, and the somewhat constant visitation of at least one blemish is forgiven, seeming almost whimsical. In this I'm lucky, I know. My chest is clear, and scoop necks, v-necks, and a low plunge are the balloons that celebrate this wonder. Please forgive me.

            I can still take an hour on my face, but now it's more likely to be a smoky eye. Made up me is me, and ever shall be. After a day of skiing, my husband and I remove our ski gear. "Dinner?" he asks. I look at my wide, naked eyes. "Gimme a minute," I say, reaching for my eyeliner.


Marjorie Frakes is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

In the Secret Parts of Fortune (Excerpt of a Novel)

By Kevin P. Keating

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For three consecutive nights someone with a fondness for fire and poetic spectacle has been burning the mailboxes on Île Saint-Ignace, one of the celebrated wine islands of the Great Lakes, and now, on the first Friday in September, twelve hours before the official start of the annual Barge Party, a dark tendril of smoke comes creeping across a cloudless summer sky, curling curiously around the old lighthouse, probing its copper weathervane, its obsolete lantern room and its great, pale gray blocks of fossiliferous limestone excavated a century ago from the abandoned quarry at the center, at the very heart of the island. In secret the perpetrator plants the seeds of discord, cultivates a diseased garden of strife, an unbalanced botanist who does his best work at that extraordinary moment just before sundown when tourists gather at the water’s edge to admire the fleeting bloom of soft colors above the blue burst of lake. He works quickly, too, using materials close at hand, easily obtainable, inconspicuous—a box of matches with long wooden sticks, a rag soaked in alcohol and stuffed into a wine bottle filled with motor oil and gasoline. Poor man’s grenade, weapon of protest, of resistance, of insurrection. With a skillful strike of a match behind a cupped palm, he ignites the homemade wick, and then with a smirk, a stealthy smile, a sideways sneer of sinister achievement, he disappears down a shady lane, some say on foot, others say on a bicycle, its chain well-oiled for a silent getaway, the tires inflated to the recommended pressure for maximum escape velocity.

            Since no one has witnessed these criminal activities, and since no one can say for certain whether the guilty party is male or female, much less know what the culprit is thinking, it is perhaps imprudent to use masculine pronouns, but most of the islanders insist the villain is a sociopathic teenage boy from the mainland, a canal rat, an undereducated punk with a terrible green glance brimming with class envy and testosterone-driven rage. Michael Bettelheim has seen his neighbors stomping out smoldering bundles of bills and the evening edition of The Observer, has heard them cursing in the streets, making ugly and unsubstantiated claims, leveling accusations, promising to deliver swift justice. In town and on the ferry, they offer him passively hostile frowns and, having worked their suspicions into convictions, turn their backs on him in what seems to be a ritual display of baronial anger. Cruel caricaturists, unapologetic snobs, they refuse to consider the possibility that one of their own prim and priggish children might be responsible for these crimes. The residents are beginning to panic and have planned an around-the-clock neighborhood watch. Vigilantism, reprisals, strategic counterattacks are no longer beyond the realm of possibility.

            On these pressing matters Michael says nothing and concludes nothing. He has successfully purged his mind of all toxic ideas, all neurotic nonsense, but now, while making the thirty-minute crossing aboard the General Zaroff from Île Saint-Ignace to the mainland city of Jolliet Harbour, he is forced to reconsider the precise meaning of the smoke. Its literal meaning is becoming increasingly clear to him, but its trajectory, its final destination, its ultimate outcome remains uncertain. Rather than dissolve in the prevailing winds and assume an ethereal and indeterminate form, the smoke, as it rises above the warty hackberry trees that crowd the island’s leeward side, only darkens as it inches closer to the mainland. It starts to look, at least from Michael’s vantage point, like a deep and brutal scar, as if the invisible incisors of some ravening, celestial beast has ripped through the protective layers of the earth’s atmosphere. Eternal night gushes from the angry wound. Can it be a minatory symbol, a promise of divine retribution, a hint that the time fast approaches when Michael, for his moral cowardice, for his inability to take meaningful action, will fall prey to some cosmic injury? The stakes have proven too high, too imponderable for rational calculation.

            He runs a hand along the hood of the army green jeep and tries to assure himself that life is good and the world is on its proper course. Heavily rusted and rough to the touch, the jeep, one of several in his uncle’s fleet of classic cars, is long overdue for a meticulous restoration. Michael strikes a match against the back of his boot and lights a cigarette, the last of his secret vices. He walks to the ferry’s stern and rests his elbows on the railing to take advantage of the unrestricted view from horizon to horizon. As he watches the gulls bank steeply in the sky, he feels a vibration in his back pocket. Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of his sobriety, and all day long his phone has been buzzing with messages from well-wishers, old friends, former bandmates, fellow dipsomaniacs on the mend, not to mention his degenerate cousin Horace to whom he hasn’t spoken since last year’s Barge Party. But what baffles Michael most is the amount of time it has taken for his mother to call. Burdened by a sense of filial duty, he closes his eyes and prepares himself for the usual tense conversation.

            He spins the cigarette butt into the churning wake and through a ring of smoke says, “Hello, Mom.”

            For a moment he hears only her raspy breathing, and with each passing second his mother’s menace seems to multiply. In her moody, churlish silence he detects a dangerous combination of self-interest and political paranoia.

            “Do you see the smoke, Michael? Can you smell it?”

            Her voice has a frightening, melodious pitch, as if she just finished screaming at some quaking subordinate, the head gardener maybe, a housekeeper, or possibly her own reflection in the endless dark depths of a cracked mirror.

            Michael fights the temptation to roll his eyes, a childish habit and one that his mother can invariably detect, even over the phone. She has a name for this power, Love’s Telepathy, and firmly believes she is in touch with invisible forces. She claims to possess a talent for reading signs and wonders, the out-of-season flowering of a tree, the unexpected infestation of water snakes on the pebble-strewn shore, the arrangement of Tarot cards on an oval table in a candlelit room, the macabre procession of gibbering ghosts in bad dreams, a crazy coil of black smoke unspooling above the lake. She feels no need to sift through the contradictory evidence or to keep an open mind about matters of guilt or innocence. For her even hard facts tend to be superfluous, and she can usually get her man, as it were, simply by concentrating on the crime in question and entering into the desperate and dangerous labyrinth of pure speculation.

            “So nice of you to check in, Mom. How are you?”

            But he knows, before she utters another word, that she has been drinking. Instead of her usual glass of Riesling or Pinot Noir, she has developed a habit of plundering the family cellars for bottles of ice wine. An epicurean pleasure, as she describes it, but in recent days her drinking has spread beyond the cocktail hours and the post-dinner nightcaps into high-noon lunchtime sloshes. Michael can picture the scene quite clearly in his mind, Ciara Campbell Bettelheim sitting alone at a corner table in the winery’s tasting room, pouring the syrupy liquid into a crystal cordial glass that she carries in her crocodile handbag. With all the solemnity of a private ritual, she taps her manicured nails against the sparkling flute, her fingertips stained with the blood of the grape, and admires the wine’s full body and lush color, the same decadent shade of amber as those well-bred island girls, perfect athletes, walking advertisements for the booming tourist industry, who frolic on the beach, kicking over sandcastles and playing volleyball. The Bettelheim Family Cellars produce some of the finest Cabernet Franc grapes in the region, so say the connoisseurs in their fancy culinary magazines, and Michael, in the days before his widely publicized downfall, was once the happy beneficiary of this modest bit of fame. 

            “Arson,” says his mother, “is such an egregiously cowardly act. What do you make of it?”

            He pretends to consider the question and runs a hand through his hair, neatly cut, edged and parted in a razor slash. His new corporate look. “I really don’t know…”

            “Well, I know, Michael. I know you’re not out of the woods. Not officially. Smooth sailing, that’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what we all want for you right now. A few more hours and you’re a free man. Until then you don’t need any more trouble in your life.”

            “There’s nothing to worry about, Mom. Nothing that concerns my interests, anyway. Or yours.”

            “You sound awfully sure of yourself. Has the word ‘saboteur’ ever crossed your mind? You do understand why I’m obligated to ask, why I’m compelled to ask? The police want to implement a curfew. They have direct orders from the chief to keep an eye on tourists, guests, aliens. Everyone on the island is a person of interest, residents and strangers alike. No one is above suspicion.”

            Unable to suppress a sardonic smile, Michael says, “That should be our family motto—nemo est extra suspicionis.”

            “Yes, darling, our family has learned so much from the Romans.”


Paradise on Edge (Excerpt)

By Arlene Quiyou Pena

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Jacob didn’t miss Port-of-Spain, the bumper-to-bumper traffic commute to his office at the bank, or the starched button-up shirts and ties that had come to define his orderly life. Now retired, he grew his hair longer and delighted in his daily walks to the sea. The sun was rising as Jacob reached the midpoint of the hill in front of Neville’s house. He opened the gate when he saw a lamplight in the window. The small house stood nestled between Tilly’s wild orchids, red ixora plants, and the vegetable garden at the back. The mango tree branches drooped with the weight of the ripe fruit as the sparrows feasted on the discarded ones rotting on the ground. It had rained heavily the night before, and the purple honeycreepers drank the dew off the leaves. Since Tilly had died a year ago, her husband, Neville, sat at their bedroom window, seldom leaving his home as the overgrown foliage threatened to devour the house.

            “Morning,” Jacob called out as he walked up the stone pathway. Neville’s head peered around the curtain of his bedroom window; he waved and then quietly pulled back out of view. Jacob had sat next to Neville in primary school and could recall the tall bony nine-year-old who made the girls laugh. Now the two men sat in front of the living room’s great bay window.

            “Hazel came by yesterday to check up on me,” Neville said. “Boy, when you going to marry her?”

            “What make you think she wants to get married?”

            “Women want to get married,” Neville said. “Only we men like to play the fool.”

            “Times change,” Jacob said. “You don’t see how these young girls treating the young boys today?”

            “You not so young,” Neville said. “And neither is she. You better be careful someone don’t snatch her up from right under your nose.”

            “Eh-eh, you trying to give me some competition?”

            Neville laughed. “At my age?”

            “Who you think you fooling?” Jacob said. “You had your eyes on her since you were sixteen years old.”

            “Sound like you jealous?”

            “Nah!” Jacob said.

            Voices from the garden diverted their attention. They looked out the window and watched as five young men dressed in ill-fitting clothing move through the garden like locusts.

            “What the ass is this?” Jacob said. The two men stood and hurried out to the porch.

            Neville called out to the approaching men. “Get off my property!”

            When Jacob walked down the front steps towards them, the young men, their arms loaded with vegetables and mangoes, ignored him and strolled past the trampled plants and out through the gate.

            “What kinda behavior is this?” Jacob shouted after them.  “We don’t tolerate stealing in Mari Village. Where you fellas come from? You want some fruit ask for it. Don’t steal!”

            After Jacob closed the gate behind them, one of the young men stopped and pointed a long stick at Jacob’s throat and squinted at him.

            “Man, the fruit rotting on the ground and you quarreling? I come from this island, just like you. So watch yuh self.”

            Jacob stared at the young man as he strolled up the hill to meet the others. He picked up a broken orchid plant with its tangled roots exposed and bleeding and recalled his neighbor’s recent complaint about hearing somebody in her yard the night before last. He didn’t know if these fellas were responsible for any wrong doings on the hill, but their brazenness exemplified an ugliness plaguing the island.

            “In our day, them fellas could never get away with that shit. We would’ve run them outta the village,” Jacob said. “Boy, what happen to us?”

            “We got old and tired,” Neville said. 

            Jacob felt uneasy as he continued down the hill toward the seawall. He walked along the beach away from the fishermen’s boats. He stopped and removed his khaki shorts, red faded tee shirt, sneakers, and walked into the sea in his bathing trunks. The water reached his mid-thigh as he stood on a sand bar. He thought of the young man who had pointed the stick at his throat. Was this the new heir to Mari Village? He shuddered. He raised his hands above his head and shouted, “I’m not old and tired!”

            But he had felt threatened by the young men. In his youth, he had avoided trouble, but when arguments escalated to fights, Jacob never backed down. He recalled a schoolboy’s scuffle with Neville where both of them had nursed bruises and hurt feelings. In the end, Neville had become his brother. Now, Jacob no longer recognized the island of his youth. He had stopped buying the newspapers. He didn’t want to read any more stories about murders or botched kidnappings.

            Enveloped in the cool water, he wondered what he had done with his time. He had no wife, and no children to whom he could pass on his history. He wondered what his life would have been like if Hazel had stayed in Mari village. He had held onto his memories of her during his marriage and divorce from Mona, and his relationships with Teresa and Camille. He remembered Hazel pale blue dress, and a satin bandeau that held her dark curly hair away from her face. It was at the church’s bazaar. Jacob had watched her from the side of the bandstand as he tried to summon his courage to ask her to dance. Her mother was in charge of the cake booth, and when Hazel wasn’t dancing with the young boys who sought her attention, she stood behind the table and moved in time to the calypso music. He had inched his way closer to the booth and looked into the glass cabinet at four large cakes - chocolate, coconut with cream icing, pineapple and cherries, and sponge. He glanced at Hazel and saw her looking at him. He had hesitated, unsure of what to do next. He recalled feeling the perspiration dripping down the center of his back. “Yuh want to dance?” Jacob asked. She looked over at her mother who had nodded her approval. He held Hazel’s hand and took her to the dance floor; the tone of her voice and her smile had enchanted him. Yet, within months after meeting Hazel, Jacob had heard that her mother had sent her to live in New York. He had seen her only once in the last forty-five years, a chance encounter ten years ago at a carnival fete where he met her husband. Now Hazel was back.

*

Four months earlier, when she returned to Mari Village for her mother’s funeral, he had arranged to meet at her home. He had arrived minutes early and sat in his car. He surveyed the house, which he had avoided after Hazel left. The curved coconut tree that had once stood at the entrance was gone, but Miss Myrtle’s precious vegetable garden bloomed. He looked into the rearview mirror, and wondered if his face revealed his lost years. He grabbed the bottle of wine he had brought for her and exited the car. He saw her on the front steps leading to the veranda and embraced her. He felt her body stiffen, and then she relaxed into him. He followed her into the house, and had expected to see her husband, but he sat alone with her in the kitchen as she prepared the dishes for their lunch. She looked lovely, he had thought. He traced the profile of her face, the fine lines on her forehead and slight creases along the side of her nose. Her beaded earrings brushed against her bare shoulders as she took the macaroni pie from the stove and place the dish on the counter. She told him that she was happy many of her mother’s friends had come to the funeral.

            “I thought I would’ve seen you there,” Hazel said.

            “I couldn’t get out of a meeting. I heard it was a good service.” Jacob hadn’t forgotten his humiliation when Miss Myrtle had asked him to leave her yard so many years ago.

            “How long you staying in Mari?”

            “A couple of months. I have to fix up the house before I put it up for sale.” 

            He followed Hazel to the veranda and helped her place the dishes of stew chicken, fried plantains, and raw cut vegetables to the table. He had stopped drinking alcohol, so she filled his glass with coconut water. They sat across from each other and talked about the changes on the island, her years working as a guidance counselor in Brooklyn with high school students, and his work in the village council.  

            “I remember meeting your husband?” Jacob said. “I forgot his name.”

            “Kenneth.”

            “Right.” Jacob nibbled on slices of guava cheese. “I thought I would see him today.”

            “We’re divorced.” 

            “Oh? How long ago?”

            “Some years now.”

               Jacob’s mind buzzed. He wanted to ask her more questions about the divorce, but Hazel had pushed her chair away from the table and took the dirty plates and utensils to the kitchen. He stayed on the veranda and watched the sea glittering like a sequined tapestry undulating in the wind. He thought of their last week together on the beach before she had left Mari Village all those years ago when they were teenagers. He had kissed her for the first time, awkward and curious. Now, he rejoiced in the death of her marriage and felt energized with the possibility of a new life with her.

*

Jacob felt the heat of the sun on his face now and dipped his head under the water. He saw Hazel’s house in the distance. He picked up his clothes from the beach and crossed the road. When he entered the house, Hazel handed him a bath towel. He placed his arms around her waist. The smell of the freshly baked bread reminded him of Christmas, familiar and reassuring. Jacob held onto Hazel, as if he could conjure up those missing years of their youth. He noticed an open suitcase on the floor in Hazel’s bedroom and her clothes folded neat on the bed.

            “You going on a trip?” Jacob asked.

            “Cassie’s wedding in New York.”

            “Oh yes, I forgot. Talking about wedding,” Jacob said. “Neville asked me when we’re getting married.”

            Hazel laughed. “Tell him to mind his own business,” Hazel said. “Besides, our relationship is probably closer than most marriages.”

            “Don’t know how you can say that,” Jacob said. He was changing back into his tee shirt and khaki shorts. “We don’t live in the same house. We eat breakfast and some dinners together, but then we head back to sleep in our own beds.”

            “So?”

            “You take off to New York for weeks at a time, and I don’t know what you doing. In my book, when you love someone, you get married and share your life with them.”

            “We’re still getting to know to each other.”

            “I’ve known you since you were fifteen.”

            “That’s a long time ago,” Hazel said. “We are not the same people.”

            “I never stopped loving you.” When she didn’t reply, Jacob kissed her on her forehead. “I have to open the store. Mrs. Graves is coming in late this morning.


Close Range

By Colleen McCarthy

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It was dangerous to like a guy like him. I did it anyway. Looking back, I can now recognize the moment I should have wised up, saw him for who he was, and ran. But I didn’t. Not then. (That wouldn’t come until many months later, when he abandoned me mid-PTSD panic attack at a party so he could go fuck some girl he had met at the pub.)

On the night I should have learned, we were in a friend’s small house on the lake—me, him, the friend, and some other girl whose name I never caught—sitting on two pleather couches the color of dark espresso. This house, covered in wood-paneling, with rooms full of cluttered nonsense from someone’s childhood (a toddler’s Strawberry Shortcake scooter, a stack of Disney coloring books, a binder full of Pokémon cards), was where I’d spent every weekend that summer, fall, and now late into winter. Because he was always there.  

            I sat still beside him on the couch, holding my breath. We were so close his thigh grazed mine each time he moved. Was he doing it on purpose? Then he leaned back, and I felt the weight of his arm as he casually rested it behind my shoulders. A subtle gesture, but a gesture.  

            While he talked, his arm around my shoulders, he would occasionally glance at me. When the conversation turned in a direction that he liked—toward aliens, or conspiracy theories, or, most especially, Justin Timberlake—he’d use his free hand to tap at my knee. Every once in a while, he’d turn to me and just smile. I felt like he saw me.

            An orange kitchen plate was laid out on the coffee table in front of us, lines already cut, as if it were cheese and crackers. A rolled up five-dollar bill hung carelessly off the edge of the plate. As I sat there, I mentally prepared and rehearsed several potential responses in case someone offered me a line: No thanks, I’m good; or, I don’t like to mix with alcohol; or (and this one I would deliver laughingly), I had my experimental phase in college. Nobody offered.

            The weight of his arm lifted from my shoulders and I watched as he scooted forward, perching on the edge of the couch. He grabbed the five-dollar bill and rolled it tight between his fingers before putting it to his nose. He leaned forward, snorted loudly. I could hear it over the TV, which was playing a Childish Gambino music video on YouTube. I watched as the rolled bill glided across the plate vacuuming up the line. Still sniffing, he threw the bill back on the plate and wiped his nose with the meat of his thumb.


“I should have known then; I should have walked away right there. But seeing how sad he’d looked standing there blinded me.”


Later, he led me to the back porch where he lit a cigarette. I stood with my arms wound tightly around myself and watched as he exhaled thin curls of blue smoke that hovered in the frigid winter air before finally dissipating. He seemed to want to talk, so I listened. His voice was deep and smooth, a voice you could listen to endlessly. He told me a story about how that previous summer he’d been shooting his BB gun “in these very woods.” He said he’d been trying all afternoon to hit something—a squirrel or a chipmunk—wanting to prove to himself that he could.

            I followed his eyes as he stared into the darkness, as though I might be able to see the events unfolding as he spoke. He set his sights on a chipmunk frozen in fear. As he described it, he slowly lifted his arm, his middle and index fingers extended, imitating a gun. He closed one eye and jerked his fingers upward, mimicking the kickback it made when it fired. He stood like that for a moment, silent. He’d hit the chipmunk, he told me. With a mixture of dread and excitement, he’d strode over to see the damage he’d caused. The chipmunk wasn’t dead. He watched as the tiny creature struggled for breath, blood running from its wound. In that moment, he said, he felt regret and sorrow, and he wanted to take it back. He wanted to put the chipmunk out of its misery, but was unable to bring himself to kill it. To shoot from a distance, from the safety of the porch, that had been one thing, but to kill an animal at such close range was another game entirely. He said it was the most oddly beautiful thing he’d ever seen, how the sun reflected off the blood and pooled in a leaf.

            The ghost of a shamed-smile spread across his face and I almost felt bad for him. I should have known then; I should have walked away right there. But seeing how sad he’d looked standing there blinded me. He was a coward. He’d taken an innocent animal to the brink of death, then walked right up to it and hadn’t had the courage to end its misery. He let it suffer, watched as it struggled for its fleeting life. He’d found beauty in it.

            For months after, we’d step away from our friends to come out here on this porch. We would have quiet conversations alone. Huddled together against the chill, he’d tell me he was no good, that I was too good for him. He’d tell me that I shouldn’t like him, and then he’d ask why I did. He’d say this over and over and I’d tell him again and again that he saw me, and that that meant something. I told him I believed in him, I believed that he could be a good man, that he was a good man. He’d just been dealt a shitty hand.

Every time we had these conversations it brought me back to the night when I should have stopped liking him.  It took me back to when he tore his gaze away from the woods and looked at me. He wiped at his nose, dripping from the coke, and asked if it was running. I shook my head, no, and he smiled. “You’re sweet,” he said. “But you’re lying.”


Colleen McCarthy is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Pan

By W. Jade Young

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There was a logic in his belly that made everything he said the truth. He used it to build people into heroes, to make them feel glorious, to draw followers to his empty church. I fell into the rhythm of his tatta-tat cadence without noticing I’d begun to march. I was nineteen, he was older.

The first words I said to him were, “I will fucking cut you.”

This pleased him. He laughed from his gut and told me we would be friends.

And so, it came to pass.

His friends became my friends. He told me beautiful half-truths about them, made them gods. He told them beautiful half-truths about me, made me their equal.

 *

We were pretenders; it was our bread. We were actors and storytellers and fakes. We wrote backstories, wore costumes, painted faces, spoke in voices that didn’t belong to us. Once, twice, three times a month we were not ourselves. We were fairies or monsters or sorcerers or knights. We wielded swords made of PVC pipe that left black bruises for days, shot each other with 25-pound bows and padded arrows that left welts. We killed each other again and again.

I was always a different me, but he was always the same him.

 *

When we weren’t pretending, we were reliving our pretend lives. We ate dinner together, everyone, after we went back to being us. At dinner, he would spin our straw stories into gold, make us grander than we were. We knew they were lies and exaggerations, but who was harmed in the making of heroes? Who benefitted from the dulling of our adventures? The listeners were treated to the bard’s performance, and the heroes were made to feel invincible, infallible.

I began to love the other mes more than I loved the me I was. Those mes were daring; they were just, instead of just me.

 *

We took his words with us to other games, other groups, other friends, and told them for ourselves. They were never as shiny, but they filled us with warmth. We sprinkled the borrowed words like fairy dust on our same-old lives and thought happy thoughts.

He was Peter Pan. He taught us to fly.

We stopped searching for our own truths because his was all we needed. It was good to have someone as all-knowing so we didn’t have to ask any questions or form independent thoughts.  It was a relief to know my opinions were wrong, that he would help me form new ones.

He was fat, his truth-belly spilling over his belts. No matter the level of physical exertion, no matter the weather, he sweated through the pits and down the backs of all his shirts. The reason for this last was because of the incomparable pelt of thick, wiry hair that covered him from neck to ankles.

He had two girlfriends, both young, beautiful, smart, strong. They were girlfriends with each other, too. This, I was told, was polyamory, but whatever name they gave it, I never understood the physical draw he had. He was another Pan, old Pan—half-god, half-goat—patron of sexual energies and fucker of innocent things.

I never wanted anything more than his stories of me.

 *

I had seen the other side of him, the monster-man who whipped words around himself like a lasso and tied people wrist-to-ankles. They were deserving of his dark power. They were terrible or mean or damaged or misguided or weak or confused or easy.

He knew the tender places inside a person just by looking. He knew where the foundational fissure would be, where to place pressure so the structure came down with one strike. He left people dazed and wondering why they hated themselves and how he had known. They left less than human, stripped of their skin, bleeding disgracefully.

He told their stories, too. They were villains. They were conquests.

They weren’t us, so it was okay.

 *

It was sudden when the luster wore off, or else it was bitterly slow. We were give-and-take, he and I, ten years of together. We were colleagues, coauthors, roommates, best friends.

I had come to him already shattered by the one man who should have protected me above all else. I had been collecting shards of myself, trying not to cut my articulate fingers on my own sharp edges. I’d been a ghost, and he had performed my séance. He showed me the fractures in my own foundation and told me they were not irreparable. He helped pour concrete for a new one, helped secure beams, hammer in hand.

Sometimes I cry when I think of how much better he made me before he broke me.

 *

There is a depth of sorrow that, when you reach it, you stop being the same person. You make inhuman sounds. You make inhuman faces. Your body forgets how to move like you, your mind forgets how to think like you.

You descend into a singularity of every weakness, every inability, every flaw of your own character. The crying goes on for days, but feels like moments. You can’t remember the last time you bathed or loved or felt anything other than nothing. You are a mass of tears, held together by raw heartstrings only. Your soul evaporates, illusive heat-vapor on tarmac.

It leaves you only shards.

The blessed never know this. Me, I’ve known it twice.


W. Jade Young is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Remedies

By James Seals

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This morning I almost consumed the wrong medicine. In my pre-dawn drowsiness, my eyes failed to distinguish between bottles – ibuprofen, sleeping capsules, allergy pills – but luckily my hands remembered and recognized the incorrect bottle lids. I must take a 180 milligram dose of antihistamine twice a day to manage my inducible urticaria: pressure triggered hives.

During my master’s program, my skin became sensitive to everything: friction, sweating, cold, heat, sunlight, water. I had to visit a dermatologist, who explained to me that anxiety, pressure, strain (e.g., the stress of my MFA program) could trigger my symptoms, and I might have to live with hives for the rest of my life.

I sat there, taken aback at the prospect of having to spend at least $50 every two weeks on medicine, at the prospect of having to forgo participation in physical activities, and at the prospect of having to explain to my high school students, No, the rash on my neck is not a hickey, for the rest of my life.


 “As my mother aged, her anxiety became more of an issue. She developed this nervous habit of ingesting pills right along with her intended patient.”


I was saddened to be entwined in America's love affair of prescription drugs. In an August 3, 2017 Consumer Report article, Teresa Carr revealed that more than half of the population of the United States took prescription pills (four tablets of some sort) each day and that $200 billion per year was spent on unnecessary procedures and improper treatments. That declaration both alarmed me and made me laugh. It alarmed me because our healthcare industry is out of control. It made me laugh because this statement reminded me of my Filipino mother.

My mother might have caused the initial spike in the 1980s, which so alarmed those studying the increased use of prescriptions in the United States. My mother acted as family shaman, healer, witch doctor. She grew Johnny-jump-up, Feverfew, St. John's Wort, and other houseplants for medicinal purposes. Our poor Aloe Vera had been broken, scarred, and sliced as she attempted to repair her children’s rips, tears, and minor abrasions. She also believed in overmedicating her kids.

The very moment she heard a throat clear, my mother would be reaching for the purple stuff—dark berry-colored cough syrup she filled a clear-plastic measuring cup to the brim with, before hustling to the ailing person’s side. She made my siblings and me shoot multiple shots of this medicine even when none of us showed signs of illness. Because of her quick draw, my sisters and I often hid in our dark, musty closets the moment we heard our mother’s medicine cabinet click open. At Filipino parties, at the park, or in the car, Mother toted a white, plastic bag filled with multicolored liquids and chalky pills—just in case someone needed saving. My older sister and I called her bag the rainstick because every time it tumbled from a chair to the floor, the pills made the sound of a gathering thunderstorm.

It stormed a lot throughout my childhood.

As my mother aged, her anxiety became more of an issue. She developed this nervous habit of ingesting pills right along with her intended patient. She seemed to believe that the more she swallowed her elixir, the better her chances of thwarting any illness. So, instead of just watching me take shot after shot of the viscous, purple syrup, I would watch, wide-eyed and with an open mouth, as Mother threw back three or four shots herself before making me drink.

When we were young, my older sister and I began to take advantage of our mother’s growing obsession, especially when Benadryl became her lifesaving antidote. We began to fake illnesses on Friday mornings, in hopes of having another three-day weekend. Cindy coughed or I cleared my throat, and then we waited for the carpet-muffled footfalls of our mother dashing up the stairs, bottle already in hand. She would match us shot for shot, and it didn’t take but two or three to sedate my four-feet-eleven-inch Filipino mother, and after she fell asleep after 20 minutes or so, Cindy and I would just skip our bus—there being no one to force us to go.

 *

In that same Consumer Report article describing America’s prescription love affair, Teresa Carr also quotes a doctor who stated, “many Americans—and their physicians—have come to think that every symptom, every hint of disease, requires a drug.” I disagreed with this because when time came for my mother to receive her much-needed treatment for an irritation that started in her foot then traveled to her brain, no doctor provided her with any purple syrup or chalky pills or some other form of help.

In early 2000, my mother had a tingling sensation at the bottom of her left foot. After suffering with it for two years, she  finally went in for an examination. The doctors told her that the tingling was nothing more than a invention of her imagination. And when it moved to her hip, then arm, they again told her she was making it up. My mother soon developed vertigo, could no longer drive, and lost the enthusiasm for the life that she had exhibited each day when my sisters and I were kids. Her inability to move meant she could no longer grow her remedies, conjure cures, which meant she felt useless to her children. Mother lost her status as shaman. She didn’t believe she would be healed. And she didn’t know which doctor to turn to. So, she had people pack her bags, sell her house, and fly her to the Philippines, where she chose to waste away—Parkinson’s disease.

I have considered purchasing a pill box to ensure I take the correct medications. Still, so far, I have avoided buying one. Those clear, little cases remind me of old people, reminds me that I am starting to age. But I think the real reason I haven’t bought one yet is because it cannot replace my mother—my mother the shaman, the healer, the witch doctor—the only person who knew the recipes to the old remedies, the ones I now miss taking every day.


The Murder House

By Margaret McNellis

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In the fall of 2017, after only a few weeks of commuting between southern Connecticut and southern New Hampshire, my search for an apartment had transitioned from picky to desperate, and so, out of options, I expanded my search radius to include apartment listings within one hour of campus.

            It was advertised—in that disquieting vortex of yard sales, property listings, catfishing, and employment scams, i.e., Craigslist—as a one-room rental in a house of “artists.”

            I ignored my better instincts and emailed the landlady.

            She couldn’t meet with me right away, she wrote back, because she was traveling for a modeling job. I’m not sure what kind of “modeling” she was into, but alongside her Craigslist ad was a photo of her. In it she looked thin, but not skinny, had a hooked nose with deep-set eyes and blonde hair that fell all the way down to her calves. That hair creeped me out a little—but not enough to keep me from viewing a place that was only $500 a month, utilities included.

            We made an appointment for me to drive out and see the place later that week.


“The rooms in the basement are, obviously, where they kill people, I thought—dolts like me who would answer a Craigslist ad from a crazy lady with feral felines and hair falling well past what could be considered normal. “


My last class ended early in the afternoon, but by the time I made it through the mountain pass, still looking for the address, the sun had already begun to set. Autumn leaves, awash in plumes of orange, red, and gold, swayed vividly in the day’s dying light. After a series of wrong turns and one boulder-sized roadblock that forced me to backtrack a number of times, my heckles were raised; it was like Google Maps itself was plotting against me, aiming to keep me from my destination. So, I bargained with myself that if night fell before I found the address, I would turn around and drive home.

            Twenty minutes later, I arrived. And there she stood before her house in the pale evening light, her waterfall of hair blowing loose and hanging down around her ankles. Next to her stood a man holding two open beer cans for some reason. He wore an old denim shirt streaked and stained with so much paint I wondered if any had actually made it onto the canvas, while his hair, thinning and gray, flapped about in the wind like bat wings. At least the ad had been right about the view; it was astonishing.

            The painter handed us his warm beers, mumbled something about smoking a cigarette, and moseyed back behind the house.

            My potential landlady welcomed me and talked about the place while with one hand she swept her hair up into a bun larger than her head. The house itself looked like two buildings joined together at the hip: one half covered in wood siding like an old cabin; the other half, more like the concrete barracks from a war movie.

            She took the can from me and opened a creaky screen door, bade me inside, and against my better judgment, I followed her. My first impressions: dark, with an overwhelming smell of cat urine, and why for the love of all that’s holy were there mattresses propped against the foyer wall? Stained mattresses.

            I now believe this was when I should have run.

            “We just let the cats go wherever they want, so watch your step,” said the woman who I had come to think of as Cousin Itt.  

            She showed me the kitchen—where a pot of beans, blistered and crusted both inside and out, sat on a long-suffering, multi-stained stove—and offered me a drink. The woman appeared friendly enough, but I was convinced if I consumed anything, I’d never leave, like a trespasser in Hades.

            “Uh, no thank you,” I said. She caught me trying to cover my nose and I pretended to stifle a yawn.

            She showed me the basement level where her lodgers—all single men in their fifties—resided: the artists, the cultists, the double-fisted beer drinkers and shared-spoon-black-bean eaters. The room for rent turned out to be a dark, concrete box with no windows. I believe it was formerly used for interrogations.

            “You’d share the bathroom at the end of the hall,” she said, pointing. There was another empty room, she told me, which was also available, though slightly more per month. I could have if I wanted. Its previous occupant had to leave “unexpectedly.”

            Next on the tour was the indoor pool. Fancy, right? Except it had no water, just an empty cement pit with a diving board and a mound of cat feces resting at the bottom.

            The rooms in the basement are, obviously, where they kill people, I thought—dolts like me who would answer a Craigslist ad from a crazy lady with feral felines and hair falling well past what could be considered normal. I remembered a Law & Order episode where a victim was buried under a parking garage, in concrete. I imagined this indoor pit would serve such a purpose.

            The tour not yet over, she led me to her bedroom where her husband lounged bare-legged on the bed with their pair of Sphinx cats prowling about. His hair was short and dyed a severe black with what I guessed was a home kit or one of those aerosol spray-on cans. His laptop was propped up on his stomach. He didn’t speak.

            She bent over and scooped up one of the cats and nuzzled it. “I expect my roommates to oil my cats for me when I’m away on photoshoots.”

            “Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “You’ve got to keep your cats oiled.” I was planning my escape, if needed. First, I’d bum-rush Cousin Itt—I thought I could take her—then beat it downstairs before Dye Job could even get his computer off his belly.

            “They have a gown and tux,” she said, “for their wedding.”

            “Who does?” I asked.

            “The cats.”

            I blinked. “Right, well, I should get going,” I said in my don’t-mind-me voice. “People are expecting me.” I slowly began backing out of the room. “I told them I was coming out here and that it’s a bit of a drive, but they’re definitely expecting me.” No one in the state of New Hampshire knew I was out here. If I went missing, no one would know for at least a few days.

            Thankfully, she didn’t kill me. Her cats didn’t bite me, and I never had to oil them, or share a pot of black bean surprise. But I’ve thought of that property as the Murder House ever since I toured it—the murder house with its stained mattresses and breathtaking vistas—and decided to stop my apartment hunt and just cope with the commute.


Margaret McNellis is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Work Hard and Be Nice

By Sarah Eisner

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Ten-year-old Wilson tilted away from me on the two back legs of his chair and balanced there with the ease of a water buoy. He was studying, as I’d begun to notice was routine before he ate after-school-snack, the haphazard collage of our photos I posted to the bulletin board on the adjacent wall. I leaned toward him from across our kitchen-cum-dining room table.

After a moment he plunked down on all four legs and stripped off his favorite white Stanford tee, then seemed to focus on the image I never switched out: a year-old picture taken during a launch celebration at my office. In it my husband, Noah, my younger son, Ben, Wilson, and I are shoveling huge chunks of what looks like bright pink wedding cake into our open smiling mouths; in the background, my co-founder, my employees, my family and friends—nearly everyone I love in my Silicon Valley circle—are grinning at us, blurrily displaying teeth tinged pink with sugar and wine.

            “That was a good cake,” Wilson reminisced.

“It’s good I’m home now,” I said, mostly to myself, though I nodded at the premade burrito I’d managed to heat for him. He looked at me with his deep blue, diving pool eyes.

            “I kind of wish you had a job still,” he said.

“Why…” My stomach sunk and my voice caught, “…do you say that?”

Wilson looked down, poked the burrito, and then his neck lengthened somehow. We had surprised one another, but he was an honest boy. He gazed up at me. “Because then our whole family would be successful.”

“What,” I said, and I wanted to add, the hell did you just say? But I dutifully refrained.

Wilson was assessing my reaction, watching my shoulders, which had begun to droop. “Mom,” he said. “It’s not bad.” His regret was elephantine; I knew I should rescue him. He was ten, and a patch on his smooth white neck was beginning to flush cardinal. His collarbone seemed to curl around his sternum and cave his chest inward, as if in an attempt to protect his whole heart, and he glanced across the floor at his shirt, as if he just wanted to put it back on. But I was angry. Not at him, but at everyone.

“I mean your company was cool,” Wilson said. “I liked it. And Dad’s is cool too.” 

“I know,” I agreed. “But I like this, too.” And I did like being with him. But I hadn’t known it would feel so much like shame.

In the past 20 years, I’d studied engineering, traveled the world training men on Internet routing technology, and co-founded three companies. In the past 30 days, I’d been ousted from my own company, and learned that inhaling hot bacon and salty lard runoff as the sun rises on a well-deserved weekend morning is comforting and heady, but smelling residual animal fat coagulate like candle wax in the dirty glass jar by the microwave as the lunch hour approaches during what used to be a work day with nothing to do and no decisions to make is, for me, oppressive and dire.

This was not real oppression, and to use the word “dire” is too bleak. I had ample choice in the matter; I could afford to stay home. I also could have gone right back to my striving. And yet, I vaguely knew getting another tech job would just make things worse. I wasn’t yet sure why.

Wilson nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “Why’d I say that?” He duck-dived beneath the wave of tension I hated myself for having formed, and brought his face down to the burrito instead of lifting it up to his mouth. He took a bite, and I stifled a sob.

The sign on the wall behind Wilson’s head said, “Work Hard and Be Nice” in big white letters on dark gray wood. This passed for art in our house, and for religion. I had chosen it on a lunch break years ago and hung it in my home’s most visible spot like a cross.

I knew that we need to hold these values in at least equal measure; that success in life is about personal striving, but it is also more importantly about being kind. As an entrepreneur I was known mostly for my hard work: a limited virtue. Once home, I worried that I would be known only for being nice, although I so often felt pissed off at myself and unlikable.

“It’s okay buddy,” I said, thinking I’m sorry, Wilson. I could see that he knew I was lying and he didn’t like it. I wanted to tell him it was not a lie but a half-truth. What he had said was okay. But increasingly, I was not. Because although I so badly wanted to feel good enough, my gut said he was right. I was newly forty, and a failed entrepreneur. Without a title or a paying job, I felt as if aside from my life with my family, I did nothing. I produced nothing. I only consumed. This made me feel both worthless, and extravagantly self-centered. I was not enough for Silicon Valley, and motherhood was not enough for me.

Here is what I imagined Wilson innocently asked of me: Why don’t you have a job like Dad? I thought you were good at it. I thought you loved running a company. So tell me, Mom, if you’re not working and happy now, then what was it all for? What are you now?

“Come on,” I said, “eat.” Wilson had soccer practice in an hour and I needed him to feel strong.

I wondered how long that sign would haunt me. There was no fucking chance I was taking it down.


“The sign on the wall behind Wilson’s head said, “Work Hard and Be Nice” in big white letters on dark gray wood. This passed for art in our house, and for religion.” 


Optimism is our most positive word related to striving: the striving we do to satisfy needs or achieve. When we hear optimism, we think of things we hope for or desire: lasting love, pleasure, and the security of peace. When we hear optimism, we think of upward mobility, ambition, and grit: the requirements to cash in on the American promise of “the good life.” The good life: the ability to pause and be satisfied; to let go, and feel free.

“A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing,” American scholar and cultural critic Lauren Berlant writes in her book “Cruel Optimism” (2011). “It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a political project. It might rest on something simpler too, like a new habit that promises to induce in you an improved way of being.” These objects are not inherently cruel or harmful, Berlant explains, but become cruel when they actively prevent you from the very thing they promise to enable.

*

It’s possible that when Wilson said he wished our whole family were successful, he simply meant he wished our whole family were accomplished. But later, I began to wonder if it was something more generous, and also more alarming. I began to think he could see that I wasn’t feeling good, and he didn’t like it. But instead of saying he wished our whole family were happy, he said “successful.” Maybe he chose “successful” because achievement was what he identified with most as making me happy. Maybe the kind of extreme striving for success we worship in Silicon Valley today was already the main thing he’d attached to what would make him happy, and define him as good enough.

That is what scared me.

I asked my children to work hard and be nice, an ethos in which I will always believe. But what did that sign represent, and how might it send the wrong message or be connected to the Silicon Valley ethos of never-enough today?

*

The American mythology is: work hard and follow the rules and you can achieve “the good life” dream. But while we often equate this ethic with the optimistic sounding platitude “Work Hard and Be Nice,” and a moderate life, it’s worth examining where this ethic actually came from, and the fact that it often isn’t associated with doing particularly good work, or with being kind.

Manifest destiny legitimized the idea that God had ordained the white protestant male as worthy and good with a boundless right to pillage and conquer. This limitlessness inspired a long tradition of dichotomous either-or thinking. If you happen to be able to amass increasing land, power or wealth, you’re good. If you’re not, then you’re told you’re bad. But truly being kind—to ourselves, to our children, to others—requires being open to the fluidity between good and bad; it requires real compassion, and more than a single definition of what success, and “enough” means. The high moral code of Manifest Destiny was and is, instead, less generous, more circular: keep the momentum of white protestant imperialism going.

“Our national faith so far has been: There’s always more,” the American cultural critic Wendell Berry writes. “Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism.”

*

There are many different kinds of religion. There is the kind of religion you are forced to observe as a child and that makes you feel shame. There is the kind of religion that lights you up for God as an adult and makes you want to believe. There is the kind of religion—I am good or I am bad, I am this or I am that—like routine prayer inside your head. There is the kind of religion—Let Go and Let God—you adopt to try to ease I need this or I need that. There is the kind of religion that spreads across the cubicles, break rooms, and happy hours where you work, and there is the kind of religion you practice with your body on a mat, on a mountain, or in a pool. There is the kind of religion you openly reject as extreme or on the fringe, and then there is another kind of religion. It is the kind you don’t think of as religion at all, because it is all around you but not named.


Epilogue

By Amira Shea

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Sweet winds come to me much as before. They bear salt for my lips, caress the nape of my neck. Icterine sun splashes malachite leaves rises to entwine falling drops, each into the other until the union bears a rainbow. Black lava and red clay bind and balance me much as before. Much, but not everything, is as it was. Now there is piss on the breeze. Ray-cut shadows harbor rot and rain wrenches rust forth without consent. The land is more coral than sand, and I, too, am not as I was before. My heart beats less, weighs more.

~~~

We stood in cool darkness outside the community center. Patches of wispy clouds drifted past a waxing moon, fading to backlit grey against dull stars. The meticulous landscaping included strategically placed plumeria trees, and their heady perfume, the signature scent of these islands, enveloped and overpowered the smoke from our cigarettes. Night-blooming jasmine growing in one of the fenced yards coyly joined the bouquet, slipstreaming intermittently. We extinguished our smokes in silence and headed slowly back to the waning graduation festivities. It had been a pleasant evening spent among the family and friends of our daughter’s boyfriend, and we were in no particular hurry. From a few steps behind, my husband asked without preface, “Do you think you’ll ever leave Hawaii?”

            Tightening the grip on my purse strap, I stopped and inhaled deeply. Wispy flora wound down my throat, looping my lungs, down to coil in the pit of my gut. “Ropes now,” they whispered, “No, never. You could never…”  I took hold of the slippery vines overrunning my psyche and tugged, hand over hand. I unwound them from my lungs, and pushed them back they way they came. Exhaling into the night, I turned to face him. “Yes, actually. I’ve been thinking about it recently. How about you?” My voice was low, hesitant.

            “Yeah, me too,” he answered. “I don’t see how we can continue to live here.” He bridged the feet between us, and we fell in step, walking silently and slower than before.

            Inside the banquet hall, the blue and white colors of Kamehameha Schools draped tables, chairs, streamers and balloons. 250 people, Kupuna to Keiki, Cousins, Aunties and Uncles laughed along with the comedian and gasped at the hypnotist. Balloon animals squeaked and bulged in one corner, a photo-booth with cheery props was put to constant use. On the back lanai, guests piled plates from a generous buffet of local foods, the graduate’s favorites: Teri Chicken, Sushi Rolls, Lomi Salmon, Ahi Poke, Beef Stew. Lei strung from money, ribbons, yarn, and flowers hung from his neck and the necks of his mother and father. They were good people. The young man treated our daughter well, and his parents welcomed her as one of their own. I’m so glad they are together, I thought first, then immediately, I’ll miss them.  This last part a strange pebble tumbling through my mind. Once unimaginable to me, the idea of leaving Hawaii was now viable, tangible, loosed from the silt of solitary musings and wonderings and presenting itself to the real world. It could no longer be ignored.

            Back at home, we settled into the remainder of that Saturday night: pajamas and movies for our youngest kids; phones and games for the older ones; my husband and me out on the back porch, smoking and throwing darts. Instead of the usual trash talk between turns, we spoke about leaving.

            His reasons were mainly financial, and the numbers didn’t lie. A family of four earning less than $93,000 per year was defined as being low-income, according to then-current (2018) U.S. Housing and Urban Development guidelines. We, however, are raising six children, and supporting a brother-in-law who suffers from a chronic failure to launch – this – in a market where home prices quadrupled in 20 years and milk sells for $10 per gallon. Hard work, sacrifice, and having extended family on the island have sustained us, but even when our combined income topped $200K, we were never more than poverty-adjacent. It was increasingly unlikely that our children would be so lucky. For the past two decades, we had been frogs in a pot, paddling to keep our heads above water as the temperature rose. I paddled the most furiously, staunchly defending the price of paradise. Gradually, though, almost imperceptibly, our skin blistered and our flesh cooked.

            “Look around,” I was fond of saying, “You won’t get this anywhere else. Sure, we could buy a compound in Nebraska for the price of a year’s groceries, but then we’d be in fucking Nebraska!” Then a small, decrepit house in a historically undesirable part of town slid across my feed one day. It was listed for $1 million dollars, and became my proverbial straw. I admitted defeat, if only to myself at the time.


“When the pediatrician’s office called to schedule her annual physical, I was caught off guard. My eyes misted and my tongue grew thick.”


Squaring up to the regulation distance line duct-taped to the concrete slab, I fanned and flared the plastic flights on my custom titanium darts, squeezing the fins between four fingers and twisting slightly to ensure a firm attachment to the shaft. I cocked my right arm and closed my left eye, zeroing in on the bullseye, and let fly. Thup. Thup. Thwack. My shots echoed through the pitch black of our grassy common area, bouncing off the surrounding aged, wooden dwellings. The stale musk of crushed jacaranda blossoms drifted over from the road. I collected my darts under the glare of our focused trouble light, recorded my points on the chalk scoreboard and retreated to the patio table. Lighting another cigarette, I agreed things were getting too damned expensive.      

            “There’s more to it though,” I began, “everything is changing.” I rattled off a list of the ways and was surprised to realize it had been 10 or 15 years since some occurred. A favorite after-hours haunt, the kind that only really got going at 3am was one. Its viscera of shabby barstools, well-worn go-go cages, clouded drinkware, and chipped shelving were unceremoniously dragged onto the sidewalk for bidding vultures. Now million-dollar glass-and-steel condos stand on its grave.

            The sea has reclaimed so much sand from Waikiki beach that most of the current grains are imported from other beaches or from miles offshore. Astroturf-like sod sits demurely a block from the strip, where an armada of flagship stores – Valentino, Hermes, and Tiffany’s among them – are tastefully broken up by Cheesecake Factory and Cheeseburger in Paradise franchises. One block over you can rent a Maserati, if you’re not in the market to purchase one, and escape the hustle and bustle.

            Farmland has yielded to sprawling suburbs, replete with gated communities. The roads and related infrastructure, dormant for decades, now scrambles rabidly to catch up. 24/7 construction guarantees Oahu an annual spot in the nationwide ranking of worst traffic. We left our house in the country to rent closer to work because the 16-mile commute had ballooned to two-hours, one way. 597 square miles has never seemed tighter or more congested.

            Our family was changing too. Our eldest daughter had left home two years earlier, and was doing well in the military, attending the same training and working the same mission as my husband and me had before her. When the pediatrician’s office called to schedule her annual physical, I was caught off guard. My eyes misted and my tongue grew thick. Swallowing hard, I managed to eek out, “Umm, she’s in the Air Force now, she’s an adult…so yeah, she, uh, won’t be coming in this year.”

            “Oh, ok, I see. I’ll take her off the reminder list then,” the receptionist replied crisply, in a hurry to escape the awkward space I’d created. Just like that, I thought, there’s one less thing to remember. One less.  Our next in line graduated this year, and along with her boyfriend, started college in the fall. One day, I realized that since she’s living on campus, I wouldn’t need to pick up her favorite fruit roll-ups. This led to another round of tears and drew a few uncomfortable stares in the produce section. Another thing less. We are far from empty nesters; however, this new, leaner lineup of A Tribe Called Shea is taking some getting used to.

            But children leave home, landscapes change, and places go out of business in most places. The rich eat the poor and crap jacked-up commercial consumerism most days. If it bothers you enough, you leave; if it doesn’t, you stay. I knew these factors played a part, but taken alone didn’t account for the paradigm shift I was experiencing.

~~~

The truth was, my existence in the only place I had ever called home now felt like a divorce. Not the white-hot flash paper, scandal-ridden, tearing asunder of poorly planned and hastily built homes. The kind I had in my early 20’s. No, this was slower, gentler, and profoundly more painful. This was looking up from coffee on an otherwise unremarkable morning, to realize that you felt no longer bound to the table beneath you, the person across from you, the life surrounding you. This was not anger, nor betrayal nor the desire to meet new people or do new things. Not a midlife chasing of young flesh and elective surgery and fast cars. This wanting to leave Hawaii was simply the expiration of a forgotten lease, signed decades prior, and covering a specific time of life. It felt as simple and as cruel as turning in the keys and driving away with only the clothes on your back. Somewhere along the way – I may never be able to pinpoint where, exactly – I went from being from here to just here.

            “I feel like I don’t belong here anymore,” I started when it was my turn to speak, “I can’t explain it. We go the same places, we do the same things, and it’s like we’re just going through the motions. January: we go to the park for Martin Luther King day, March: spring break, June: the start of hurricane season and summer vacation, October: pumpkin patch – if it’s not too crowded – and then comes the whirlwind of ThanksgivingChristmasHonoluluCitylightsNewYearsEve and boom! The sound of illegal aerials dies down, the smoke clears and January 1st marks the reboot of our own personal Groundhog Day.” I offer this cobbled together explanation slowly, quietly. I’m afraid to hear my thoughts out loud, breathe life into them with my speech.

            “I mean, it’s been 20 years,” I continued. “This is all our kids know and I feel like we’ve failed them in a way. I never imagined raising root-bound children. There’s a whole big world out there, and they’ve grown up on a rock. Beautiful and lovely but a rock all the same. Fucking 20 years. Now the rock is expensive, and everything smells like piss to me – I mean, I smell it everywhere, and there’s nothing new or fun, at least not enough to lure us out of our rut, and it sucks. Doesn’t help that all of our friends have moved away either.”  I paused.

            My words felt like a betrayal, but I knew this place no longer cared for me. I wondered if it ever did to begin with. My love for this land was tethered in the rosy memories of youth. Maybe Hawaii had merely been a soft landing after a nomadic childhood, and I’d forgotten that the respite was supposed to be short lived.

            “It’s been 20 fucking years, and there’s nothing holding us here,” I continued, “20 years and it’s time to go.” I slumped in my seat—spent, nervous, and at once excited at the possibilities.

            My husband nodded and shrugged in agreement before leaning forward in his patio chair. Gardenia-saturated puffs swept at wayward ashes on the table. Geckos cried out for mates. Stars winked their approval as he called his phone to life. “Siri, find me jobs in London.”