Talespinning

Word Count: 227

Lord help me, I never saw the child within the man. It was too easy to look instead at his girth, the broad shoulders, the tower with the light shining blink-blink-blink above me.

Some women will put down their man, all men, to rise above their own failings. I never did. It was more comforting to have him to depend on, to trust, to believe he knew much, much more than I.

And he did; a scholar, an engineer with his mind unconvoluted by tunnels and rolls but blueprinted out with such perfect lettering. Yet the simplest things weren’t drawn in.

Like noticing changes in his own body. Like mentioning changes hidden from me. Like considering that life doesn’t always know its own ending, its own expiration date. And how, with the proper protection you can use eggs beyond the blue stamp.

After surgery he came home quiet, even quieter than he’d been all along. The strong, silent man I had married had overnight, turned into a clam.

Yet he let me feed him, change the tubes, wake him for medicine, wash him down with a sponge from a bowl of soapy warm water. How gentle, how gentle I touched him, dried him with stove-heated towels. Somewhere inside was the child that he finally let himself be. And that turned me into a woman.

Word Count: 383

My sister was older and should have known better, but I got away scot-free.

It was always like that but my folks didn’t see it, that I was the smart one, the instigator, the one who got us both into trouble.

So I was sent early to bed but I couldn’t sleep. Waiting, curled in the weight of the blankets and quilt, waiting for her to come into our bedroom. I listened to the whomp! whomp! of my father’s belt. That was it, just two blows regardless of whatever we’d done. She never screamed, never cried out. The door would open and I’d watch her silhouette slip inside the room. I pretended to sleep, seeing the darkness of her move towards the bed, undress, slip under the covers of the bed that matched mine. Just a small sniffling sound, a slight heave of the round lump of her in the dark.

You okay? I’d ask.

Yeah, she’d always answer.

I’m sorry, I’d say.

But she wouldn’t answer; this time, she pretending to sleep.

I wanted to ask her if it hurt. What it felt like, that fine strap of leather. I never did but I’d imagine the swish of it cutting the air, the crisp slap of it on my backside. I’d fall asleep wondering.

As teenagers she covered for me if I snuck out or dated a boy my mother hated. She walked me around the mall parking lot for hours the first time I got seriously drunk. She was the one who drove me into the city for an abortion. Let me stay at her apartment for a few days to recover. She was the keeper of all of my secrets and yet I never said thank you. Only years and years of I’m sorry.

Her husband died years before and her two sons were married and living out of state. They sold her house and put her in a home. I’m the only one who visits her now. I sit and feed her soup and crackers and brush her hair and buy her pink housecoats and gowns that are forever disappearing even though I put her name on them in indelible ink on the labels. And though she doesn’t know why, she smiles every time I say thank you.

Word Count: 403

I followed him, the man who spent his days walking up and down Broadway. He would stop at noon, sit down in front of the Chinese take-out, when they were too busy to chase him away. He would spread out his coat, lean against the wall, just under the Moo Goo Gai Pan neon sign in the window, his one and a half legs in plain view. He’d take off his grey-brown fedora, lay it by his side upside-down. Then he’d fall asleep for a bit, maybe dreaming of the coins some passersby would drop in the hat.

I noticed the double row of medals, ribbons discolored to a greasy colorless display on his chest. I noticed the scar on his jaw that ran from his left ear down into the sparse peppery beard. He had one eye that looked eastward, as if seeking the enemy. We were all around him and he knew to be wary despite the silence of sniper fire, without the flashes of bombs through tall trees.

He was of a different time, a different war, one that made sense even after its end. He came back missing more than a limb, more than the wife who couldn’t wait for him, more than the friendship of friends blown up by his side.

I dropped three twenties and two fives in his hat. I started back to the office but stopped and turned around as if I’d reached the end of a run. The man was still asleep. A young boy stood nearby. He’d walk a few steps, turn and re-pace the sidewalk in front of the man. Then, in sync with the music inside him, the curtains drew back and his movements became planned and precise. In a graceful arc he danced by, dipping down into the man’s hat in one fluid bow. Then he froze.

The man never opened his eyes but held the boy with a grip of pliers on his wrist. The boy slowly rose to a standing position as much as the man would allow. The money floated down like leaves from his hand. He stepped back as the man guided him away. He turned and ran. The man opened his eyes, his chest heaved in a sigh. He pocketed the cash, pulled his hat down on his head, and gathered his things to get back on his journey down Broadway.

Word Count: 341

Three friends down, one to go. Daphne was her last hope for a Friday night spent away from the serene solitude that after a month had become cloying, suffocating. She swore that one more night breathing in the loneliness that permeated her apartment would find her dead-blue in the morning.

They went to a bar down on Eighth Avenue, a place where Jen had been only once before. With Stuart, the latest in a long path to her present condition of near decompression. She remembered she liked the old wooden floors, the stained tables, the rows of glass bottles shining like jewels behind the bar. She lit the candle in the ruby-red glass on the table. It flickered like love trying to survive.

Daphne was married but her serviceman husband was still six months away from release back to the states and his freedom. Daphne was a nurse. Jen and she went back to college freshman dorm days. Daphne was a good listener. Daphne also wasn’t going to go on and on about her own love life like Jen’s single friends did.

They drank Margaritas and Jen licked the salt from the rim. It was a self-imposed punishment for being a loser at love. Unfortunately, she learned to like the salt more than the tangy lime drink.

They downed two bowls of salsa and chips. They talked about old times back on campus, carefully avoiding the mention of the men who’d fucked them both up for semesters at a time. Daphne had regained her confidence once she’d gotten married. Jen was still fighting to breathe.

At midnight they got up and left. She dropped Daphne off at her apartment half the city away. When she climbed up the stairs, unlocked the door, put on the light and shut the door behind her, Jen was still smiling. Even through undressing and brushing her teeth, she felt pretty okay.

Then she slipped into bed, held herself tight in a ball. And within minutes, the demons came back singing Mexican songs.