author | artist
My sister said
a poem can’t be a blogpost
I said ya wanna bet
watch me and I wrote
a poem and published it
as a blogpost
The thought of writing
another godawful story
makes me want to
puke although it could be
the blue corn tortilla chips
I ate for dinner
The new windows
keep out the yips of coyotes
and roars of muscle cars
They also keep in all the
noises and smells of
the other occupants
of the house
Sid stood in line with a dozen people waiting for his turn to speak with the dead. Now that he was here, bundled up against the winter chill in the shadow of the tall exchange building, he was starting to have regrets. He talked to his mother often, but only in his head, which had always been much safer than talking with her in person. However, the Living-Dead Exchange had been running a Christmas Eve special, and so here he was, kind of wishing he were kicking back in his apartment watching some old movie on TV. He thought it might be better if the old lady kept on resting in peace, or pieces, as the case may be.
He noticed people who went in did not come out. He mentioned it to the gray-haired woman in line behind him. In her arms she carried a small white dog in a red vest. “They go out a different door,” she said, motioning with her head around the corner of the building. “The Exchange doesn’t want anyone to see them. I’ve seen pictures. It’s not pretty.”
“Who are you here to see?” Sid asked.
“My sister,” she said. “This is her dog. I thought he might like to hear her voice. A Christmas gift for the little bugger. I think he’s depressed.”
“Hope you get a good connection,” Sid said politely.
“Your turn, kid,” she said, nodding. He turned to find the guard at the door beckoning impatiently.
“Register at the front desk,” the guard pointed. “Someone will escort you to the phones.”
Sid filled out the forms, paid the money, which still seemed exorbitant, even with the discount. After signing a stack of disclosures and waivers, he followed a uniformed woman with a long blonde ponytail along a dark wood-paneled corridor. He paused to run his hand along the smooth surface, marveling at the workmanship evident in the cornices and railings.
“Is this the original phone exchange?”
“It sure is, didn’t you read the brochure? Built in 1878, Cincinnati’s first, and the tenth in the nation.”
“They don’t build like this anymore,” Sid said. They walked the length of a long wall taken up by the switchboard. Short wooden walls divided the wall into cubicles, which were all full of visitors wearing headphones, sitting on wooden stools facing the wall.
“Fire trap, you ask me. Here’s your seat, Sir.” She stopped next to the only empty stool. On the narrow ledge in front of the stool was a large pair of somewhat modern-looking headphones. The girl pointed. “Put on the headphones when you are ready. Think of the person you would like to speak with, and then plug the jack into the hole that appears.”
“That’s it?” Sid said, but she was gone. He sat on the stool. The seat swiveled underneath him. He clutched at the desk and straightened himself out. He put on the headphones. Too big. A faraway roaring came through, but nothing distinct. As he fiddled with the headphone size, he noticed a digital timer counting down his time. He had fourteen minutes left to make the call.
Sid picked up the long cord with the jack on the end and waited for a hole to appear. The roaring in the headphones reminded him of a childhood trip to the seaside with his family. The rushing and receding of the waves, the piercing cries of seagulls wheeling overhead as he and his three brothers threw bits of stale bread into the wind. Mom had been upset with Dad for some reason, he recalled. Still, it had been a great trip.
The visitor in the cubicle next to him suddenly burst into tears and ran for the exit, still wearing her headset. Sid turned back to the switchboard. Time to talk to Mom, he thought. To his surprise, three holes had appeared when he wasn’t looking. He scanned for some help, but no one in a uniform was visible. The visitor on the other side of him was hunched over, making moaning noises.
Sid noticed the cord in his hand now had three jacks on the end, one for each hole. He only had one mother, as far as he knew. With some trepidation he plugged in the three jacks, closed his eyes, and listened.
The sounds of the ocean came in clearer, then voices moving closer.
“Sidney!”
“Vince?” Sid said. “Wait, you aren’t . . . what the hell? Are you . . . dead?”
“Yeah, didn’t anyone tell you? Those cowards.”
“Hey, who you calling a coward?” came another familiar voice.
“Tony?” Sid and Vince said at the same time. Sid felt his stomach drop. It’s not like they had been close after they grew up and left home, but he’d just assumed, he’d never imagined . . . two of his brothers were apparently dead! “What happened to you guys?”
“And me, too, don’t forget me,” said a third voice.
“Bill?” Sid groaned. “Oh, no. All you guys are dead?”
“Guess so, if you are talking to us on that thing. Wow, I didn’t know I was dead until just now. I’m kinda pissed off, tell you the truth. I guess I took that turn too fast one too many times.”
“Sorry, Bill. I know you really liked that truck,” Tony said. “Me, I had cancer. I didn’t want to say anything, you guys were all so busy. It was quick. Vince, what happened to you?”
“I’m embarrassed to say, I choked on a fish sandwich on my way home from the Sea Shanty,” Vince said. “They found me in a ditch. Of course, the five beers probably didn’t help.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say. I had no idea you were all dead. I haven’t seen you all since Mom’s funeral. Nobody said a thing. No cards, nothing. Now I’m the only one left?”
“Enjoy what’s left, Bro. Your turn will come soon enough,” said Vince.
“I hope Mom left you some money,” Tony chuckled. “She didn’t leave me nothing. Stupid old bat. I wonder how she’s doing. We don’t hear nothing from anyone else over here. It’s pretty quiet. Peaceful, you could say.”
“Well, to be honest, I was kind of hoping to talk to Mom tonight,” Sid said. “But I got you guys instead. I’m glad. I wasn’t really looking forward to talking to her on Christmas Eve. She would ask me if I had a tree.”
“Right! And a girlfriend!” They all laughed.
“I was hoping we could get together sometime next year, maybe go to the beach like we did when we were kids.”
“I remember that trip,” Tony said. “We had a great time, didn’t we?”
“Sorry we didn’t get around to making it happen, Sid,” Vince said. “It would have been fun.”
“Go take that trip, Bro,” Bill said. “Feed some seagulls and think of us.”
Frank could not see land in any direction. His small boat floated on a calm sea. He could not remember how he had come to be here, in a wooden dinghy, adrift, apparently in the open ocean. It could be a big lake, he thought. I might be out in the middle. There might be land nearby, hidden along the misty horizon.
Frank sat in the bottom of the boat and drifted for a while without thinking. Oars, he thought after some time. Paddles. He sat up and looked around the little boat. The bottom of the boat was empty of anything he might use to propel the craft in some direction. No folded up sail, no lump of tarp to use as a shelter, no canisters of water or food, not even a waste bucket. Frank resumed his position in the bottom of the boat and drifted.
The light never gets quite light, he realized some time later. Darkness falls sometimes, but it never gets completely dark. The sky is always somewhat lighter than the water, but the horizon is hard to define. Am I dead, Frank wondered. Is this what death feels like, eternity in an empty boat?
Frank emerged from a meditative reverie and tentatively reached over the side of the boat to immerse his hand in the water. I feel nothing, he thought. The ocean must be the same temperature as my hand. He watched his hand ripple under the surface. It doesn’t look like my hand anymore. It looks like someone else’s hand.
What someone else? Have I ever known anything but this empty boat?
Frank tried to remember what had come before. Images seeped away like mist. Something like a face, not his face. He took his hand out of the water and patted his face with both hands. What do I look like? One side of his face was wet, the other dry. Two halves of one person. Who am I?
The fundamental question was too much. Frank reclined in the bottom of the boat. This must be death, he thought. No hunger, no thirst, no movement, just the rocking of the boat. How long can I endure this endless rocking? Should I wish for a storm?
Time passed. For Frank, time had no meaning. Light and dark were hardly distinguishable. Did I ever know light and dark, he wondered. Morning and night? Sun and moon? How could I forget how bright the sun was rising over the mountains. Mountains? Did I once know mountains?
I surely must be dead, Frank thought. Or in a coma, in a hospital. Am I surrounded by my family? Are they deciding whether to turn off the machines?
Do I care? Frank resumed his position and let his bones dissolve into the curve of the hull. He was content to drift. Let them turn off the machine, he thought. I am an empty boat.
Simi nibbled her last cookie and tried to ignore her parents shouting at each other in the family room. She wondered if she should try to clear the dinner table, but she was afraid to attract their wrath when she inevitably dropped something. She kicked her feet and nibbled and wished she were somewhere else.
Movement at the open kitchen door caught her attention. Simi cautiously climbed down from her chair and tip-toed to the door. A wizened person in a floppy straw hat waved at Simi with a gnarled hand. Long gray hair cascaded from under the hat, full of what looked like moss, oak leaves, and tiny twigs. A long gray-brown cloak concealed the short round figure but didn’t quite hide the most amazing pair of hairy feet Simi had ever seen on a person.
“Who are you?” Simi whispered. She bent down to peer under the brim and saw a round wrinkled face. Two bright blue eyes blinked at her. A wide mouth showed a set of sharp teeth that couldn’t possibly be anything but dentures. Simi knew about dentures. Horrible objects Grandpa kept in a glass by his bedside, gross.
“I’m Granny Wilding,” the woman said in a voice that made Simi think of water running over pebbles in a mountain stream. “Come on, Simi, I need your help.”
Simi looked back through the kitchen door. “My parents.”
Granny Wilding tossed her head and then clutched at her slipping hat. “They won’t be done for a while. We won’t go far. Oh, and bring your watering can.”
“My watering can!” Simi echoed in surprise, but ran to the garden table to fetch her green plastic watering jug, full of water from recent showers. She lugged it after Granny Wilding’s departing figure. A silent shadow swooped down from the holly tree. A moment later, a baby owl perched on Granny Wilding’s shoulder and swiveled its head to stare at Simi with yellow eyes.
Simi’s yard was big, and in the early evening sun, it seemed bigger than ever. She loved meandering its overgrown paths, spying deer and rabbits in the underbrush. Her parents used to wander with her, but a year ago, something bad had happened at her father’s job, and now all they seemed to do was yell at each other. Simi had tried to keep up with the weeding, but her ambition was bigger than her hands and her tools. Despite her efforts, her mother’s garden had gone to seed.
The tomato plants were a jungle of twisted vines and leaves. Herbs had gone wild. Simi knew enough about herbs to know that once peppermint got a footing, you’d be drinking peppermint tea for the next hundred years. In fact, all kinds of herbs were vying for supremacy, completely outside their neat borders. Little runners of oregano had sprouted in the unmown grass by the patio.
Eventually Simi had come to appreciate the overgrown garden. The birds and bugs found value in the mess, and that was surely a good thing. Rabbits were everywhere, of course, along with badgers and squirrels, busily digging in the dirt and nibbling at roots and leaves. Frogs seemed to enjoy lounging under the collards. Slugs partied every night. In fact, the slugs were the boldest of the garden creatures, as evidenced by the gossamer trails criss-crossing the kitchen’s wooden floor every morning.
“Come on, Simi,” Granny Wilding called back over her shoulder. “It’s time to fill the water cups for the Greenies.”
“What are Greenies?” Simi puffed. “I’ve never heard of Greenies.”
“They don’t come out very often, but when they do, they’ll be powerful thirsty. We need to fill up their cups so they keep blessing the wild garden.”
“Are they some kind of rabbit?”
“You’ll see.” Granny Wilding stopped under a tall spreading maple and pointed at a flat stone embedded in the dirt between the roots. “There, see that smoothed out place in the rock? That’s a watering cup for the Greenies. They look like ordinary flat stones, don’t they? But they hold a little bit of water, see? When you start looking, you’ll see them everywhere.”
Simi lugged the watering jug to the rock and poured water to fill the indentation. “Like that?”
Granny Wilding clapped her hands. “Just like that, good girl. Let’s find some more.”
“There, I see one!” Simi searched the area under the tree and found more flat stones to fill. Soon all the cups were brimming with water, shimmering in the last rays of the setting sun.
“Now, let’s sit over here on the stone wall and see if the Greenies will come out to drink.”
Simi sat next to Granny Wilding on the wall. Leaning toward the old woman, Simi smelled wild wheat, wet grass, holly berries, and cinnamon.
“There! Look!”
Simi strained her eyes in the mellowing light. At first, she couldn’t see anything but the maple leaves rippling in a wayward breath of wind. Then the air coalesced into tiny winged creatures that glowed like fireflies. “Fairies?” she gasped.
“Ssh, let them drink. If they want to, they might introduce themselves, but they’re very shy,”
“So pretty,” Simi breathed. She watched as the little figures hovered and dipped over the watering cups. They seemed to cast grateful glances in Simi’s direction, although it might have been a trick of the fading light.
There was no mistaking the moment a Greenie came close. Simi heard singing before she saw the details of the little fairy’s face. Sharp blue eyes and sharp teeth, like Granny Wilding. Simi had the sudden realization that Greenies could probably rip her throat out. Simi held her breath.
The Greenie bowed and touched Simi’s nose with one finger. Simi tasted the color green on her tongue. Then the Greenie was gone back to its clan. In a few moments, darkness descended on the garden. The glowing Greenies evaporated.
“That’s it, Simi,” Granny Wilding. “Well done. And now I must leave you. Until next year! Oh, tell your mother hello for me. Tell her Little Bit has grown into a beautiful deer and has a fawn of her own.”
“Wait, Granny Wilding, don’t go,” Simi said, but she could feel Granny Wilding was gone, leaving Simi alone in the dark wild garden.
“Simi! Simi! Where are you?”
Flashlights bobbed toward her. She felt her mother’s hands on her head.
“Are you hurt?” her father asked, bending down to shine a flashlight in her face.
“No, I was helping Granny Wilding water the Greenies,” Simi said.
After a long moment, Simi’s mother said, “Granny Wilding?”
“I thought she was a legend,” said her father. “How did you hear about Granny Wilding, Simi? Did your mother tell you the story?”
“I never told anyone but you, Sam,” Simi’s mother said in a shaky voice. “You laughed and said I must have been dreaming.”
“She’s real, Daddy,” Simi said. “Not a dream. Mommy, Granny Wilding said to tell you Little Bit is all grown up and has a baby of her own.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Simi’s mother began to cry.
Simi grabbed her hand and patted it in the dark. “Come on, you guys, it’s time for the Flintstones.”
When Maria’s friend Anna did not show up for lunch, Maria sensed trouble. She drove to her old friend’s house and saw Anna sitting on the front porch step. As Maria hurried up the walk, she didn’t notice at first what was wrong.
Maria stopped. Surely this could not be. Her friend was missing all her memory bubbles! Her heart dropped in her chest. Memories, all gone! Impossible! Everyone had memory bubbles, the almost-transparent glistening spheres that bobbed along behind and around every person, at least, every person Maria had ever met. Only babies lacked memory bubbles, which made sense, considering they hadn’t lived long enough yet to make memories. As babies grew, though, memory bubbles began to surround them, and stayed with them all their lives, until they died. Everyone had memory bubbles.
Except Anna. Anna had lost her memories.
Maria sat on the step next to her friend. “Do you know me?”
Anna nodded. “Yes, I think so. Maria, right?”
“We were supposed to meet for lunch, do you remember?”
“No. No, I don’t remember that.” Anna looked around in confusion. “Is this your house?”
Maria felt chilled to the bone. Normally, a person would be able to retrieve a memory bubble and remember instantly their plans, or what they had for breakfast, or who said what to upset them on December 2, 1984. Oh, sure, memories faded over time, and the bubbles shrank or withered a bit, or they became so transparent they were practically invisible. But those memories were insignicant, inconsequential, trivial things you wouldn’t necessarily need to recall. If you looked hard, you could drag them to the front of your bubbles and see them. But to lose one’s lunch plans? Inconceivable. To not have the company of one’s memories was a tragedy too terrible for words.
“Hold out your arms,” Maria commanded.
Anna held out two steady arms.
“Come with me,” Maria said. “We’re going to the ER.”
Maria put Anna into the passenger seat. She found it hard to look at her old friend, so tiny and sharp without her usual bobbing complement of memory bubbles. Anna had always been the one to remember details of their conversations. Anna remembered Maria’s birthday with a card. She’d even sent a card on the anniversary of the death of Maria’s beloved cat. Anna looked defenseless, like a child. Seeing Anna without her memories made Maria think about things she wanted to avoid.
“You have not had a stroke,” the doctor said to Anna. “However, it appears you’ve lost your memories.” Anna nodded but Maria wasn’t sure if her friend understood.
The doctor wrote a prescription for something to help Anna sleep and gave it to Maria. “Will you stay with her? If this persists, she will have to think about other living arrangements. She certainly won’t be able to manage on her own.”
On the way home, Anna asked, “Have I had a stroke?”
“The doctor said you have not had a stroke. She gave you some pills. I’ll stay with you tonight.”
As they pulled up to Anna’s house, Anna got out of the car and asked, “Have I had a stroke?”
Maria led Anna into the house, gave her a pill, and helped her friend to bed. She turned on the bedside lamp. Slumping onto the bedroom armchair amid a stack of unfolded sheets and towels, she thought about the fragility of life. Her own memory bubbles clustered around her, some sharp, some blurry. I take my memory for granted, she thought. What if I were to lose my memories of my cat, my mother, my former husband, the first time I met Anna, the many times she and I have had lunch and talked about everything under the sun. Unsettled and frightened, Maria watched Anna sleep.
Around midnight, Maria woke to a sound she had never consciously noticed, it was so embedded in her experience. She looked at Anna sleeping on the bed. In the air, a few small bubbles were forming out of nothing, gently jostling for space around her friend’s body. Her memories are returning! Maria rejoiced. Then she noticed after a few moments, the bubbles seemed to evaporate. Maria moved closer to the bed. The wrinkles in her friend’s forehead had softened, as if time were smoothing them away. Maria recognized an Anna she’d forgotten, the fresh-faced college grad, the new mother, the one whose life had seemed so full of promise. Even as Maria watched, the lines and furrows that made Anna’s personality seemed to be eroding.
Maria woke to the smell of coffee. She sat up in the pile of sheets. It was daylight, and Anna’s bed was vacant. She hurried out to the kitchen, where she found Anna standing in a ray of sunlight looking out the window to the backyard.
Maria smiled at her friend. “That coffee smells so good.” She got a mug out of the cupboard and poured coffee from the pot. “I was so worried. Thank God, you didn’t have a stroke. Are you feeling better? You look better this morning. I don’t think I’ve been so scared in my entire life.” She sipped the coffee and made a face. “This is horrible, did you forget how to make coffee?”
Anna looked at her with a blank expression. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”
Cam loaded some paint on her paintbrush and stepped toward the easel. She made some loose brushstrokes on the square of white canvas. She smiled at the four white-haired women sitting in wheelchairs around the table. “See? Like that. Now you try!”
The women picked up their paintbrushes in shaky fingers.
“A blank canvas can be a bit daunting, I know! Try a little green and then some blue, see if you can get some rolling hills going. With some sky. Maybe an ocean.”
“I used to be a great artist,” one woman said. She stabbed her brush into a pot of green paint and smacked it on the blank canvas on the little easel in front of her.
“I’m sure you were, Mrs. Lewis,” Cam said in an soothing tone. “Careful not to knock over your easel.”
“I got my blue and green mixed up together,” said Mrs. Hsu, looking sad.
Cam patted her bony shoulder. “That’s okay, that is called blending.”
“Bending.”
“Right, blending.”
“Look, I’m painting a cat,” declared Mrs. Lindsay, holding up her canvas to show the large wet blob she had daubed in the center. Paint started running down the surface.
“That’s great, just don’t add so much water next time,” said Cam, hurrying to tip Mrs. Lindsay’s canvas back toward horizontal. A few drops of black paint fell. Seeing the woman draw breath to scream, Cam said, “Don’t worry, that is why we wear smocks! Try adding some white paint now, see what happens.”
For a few minutes, she enjoyed the silence as the four students worked. On autopilot, she walked quietly behind the novice painters, looking over their shoulders, murmuring, mostly just making noises that wouldn’t upset the tranquility of the moment. Her mind was on the dinner menu: Her husband had asked for something other than frozen microwave entrees. What should she get at the store on the way home from this session? Her artistic skills didn’t extend to cooking. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Oh, fudge.” She emerged from her reverie just as Mrs. Lewis smeared a garish streak of red paint on her face. The old lady looked like a victim of an axe attack. Cam’s art session had once again turned into a hazmat fiasco. Mr. Davis would probably never book her again. He ran a tight ship, which meant he did not approve of any activities that created a mess. He particularly disliked Cam’s painting sessions.
Mrs. Hsu seemed to be on the verge of weeping. “It’s okay,” Cam said. “Look at what Mrs. Lindsay has made!”
Mrs. Lindsay had discovered that orange and blue made a muddy shade of gray.
“Hideous,” Mrs. Hsu grunted and licked some blue paint off her fingers.
Cam wondered how much longer she could keep providing painting “lessons” for the old folks at the retirement home. Enrichment, my foot, she thought. These old relics were long past the point of finding enrichment. All they cared about was the ice cream they would get with supper. Maybe it was time to get a regular job.
She paused behind the fourth student. “Wow, you’ve really got some talent!” Cam said.
Despite her gnarled fingers, Miss Diamond had painted a pasture and part of a fence. Cam could almost smell the green grass. Now the artist was adding some branches of a tree along the side, a maple or a live oak, something big and shady. With deft strokes, at the foot of the tree, she sketched in a bubbling brook.
“That’s lovely, Miss Diamond. Is that a place you remember?”
“She doesn’t talk,” Mrs. Lewis said, making red polkdots on her canvas.
Cam gazed at Miss Diamond’s painting as it took shape, thinking, if I could paint like that, I could get into galleries. A surge of envy choked her throat for a second. So much talent, wasted on an old woman who was at the end of her life! It didn’t seem fair.
Cam resumed her slow track around the table, dreaming of a day when she might be able to make a living selling her art. It seemed impossible. The only path for artists these days was to teach. So far this gig at the retirement home was all that had emerged. All those years of art school . . . for this.
Mrs. Lewis’s voice brought Cam back to her senses. “Where’s Miss Diamond?”
“What?” Cam looked around. Most of Mrs. Lindsay’s muddy gray cat had dripped onto her smock. Mrs. Hsu had abandoned her brush in favor of her fingers. Miss Diamond’s wheelchair was vacant.
Mrs. Lewis said, “I always knew she would get out.”
“How could she have left?” Cam went to the door. No one was in the hall. “Did anyone see her go?”
A terrible thought occurred to her. Heart pounding, Cam hurried back to look under the table. She sat back in relief. There was no one slumped on the floor, taking her last breaths while being kicked by old women in house slippers.
No. Somehow, Miss Diamond had disappeared.
Cam stared at Miss Diamond’s painting, feeling numb. Movement on the canvas caught her eye.
“Oh,” Cam said.
The surface of the painting was alive. As Cam stared in wonder, a small figure in a painter’s smock jumped nimbly over the brook and strode up the green hill toward the horizon.
“No, come back!” Cam said. “What will Mr. Davis say?”
At the crest of the hill, the figure turned and waved. It was clearly Miss Diamond, wearing a triumphant grin. She raised both arms in a gesture of victory. Then she was gone.
Dolores (75 going on 30, well, okay, 40) visited the bathroom multiple times during the night to relieve her sensitive bladder. It was always an iffy venture, given age and infirmity, and her vestibular system was prone to upset, even during the day, which is why she didn’t trust her senses when (around 2:00 a.m.) as she sat on the toilet, she got the feeling the bathroom had developed a tilt to the west.
Delores did not trust her senses. Bathrooms in old buildings tilt, she reasoned, especially bathrooms in mobile homes, which is where this bathroom was located. And especially for bathrooms that are not well maintained by greedy landlords.
This bathroom was nothing special as bathrooms go, just a small room with an uneven floor paved with adhesive vinyl strips made to resemble wood planks. The walls were painted a flavorless vanilla, not white, not quite beige, just that noncommittal off-white landlords seemed to favor (probably from getting a good deal at Home Depot). At one end of the bathroom, a vanity with a Formica countertop and ill-fitting cupboard doors occupied the width of the room. At the other end was a plastic shower, well, probably fiberglass, what did Delores know. Definitely something softer than porcelain, a fact Delores cherished (although grudgingly) given her propensity toward dizziness. The suction cup handgrab bar had fallen off long ago, but Delores hadn’t attained her advanced age by being careless. She knew stepping over the sill was risky, which is why she only showered once a week, and often sat on a stool.
“This place is falling apart,” Delores muttered in the dark. She sometimes used a night light, but the battery had burned out. Darkness made the dizziness worse, which is why when Delores noticed the bathroom was tilting, she chalked it up to her imbalanced head. However, from her perspective on the toilet, the windowsill appeared to have departed the horizontal by at least five degrees.
Already planning her call to the landlord, Delores finished her business, flushed, and lurched to her feet. She flipped on the light switch. The bank of five round white bulbs over the sink illuminated a large mirrored set of cabinets over the sink. For a moment, Delores recognized her mother in the mirror.
“You again. Go back to sleep, Josephine.” She turned her back on the mirror to survey the rest of the bathroom. The toilet looked normal. The toilet tank was slowly filling with water, a familiar sound. She lifted the lid. Was the water level just slightly unlevel?
She stepped to the window and slid the moveable frosted pane along its track. Cold night air rushed in. Nothing was visible beyond the bug screen. She flicked off the light and leaned toward the window until she smelled something besides toothpaste, soap, urine, and mildew. Dry things wafted on the breeze, waiting for rain. A bright moon, not visible, hanging somewhere around the other side of the metal awning, lit up the gravel yard between the house and the tall oleanders that guarded the perimeter.
Delores slid the window shut and turned the light back on. Was the window binding a little more than usual? A gentle burbling caught her attention. Turning toward the shower seemed easier than it should be. She shook her head to get it to settle. Even so, the pull of gravity was unmistakeable. I ought to know by now what gravity feels like, she thought.
The shower door looked normal, two panes of shower door glass, made of crystalline textured semiclear tempered glass that resembled a cascade of water caught frozen in motion, so popular in the mid-1980s when the mobile home was built, along with the RV-style cupboards, flimsy pre-fab walls, and cottage cheese ceilings. The burbling sound definitely emanated from the shower. Darn it, thought Delores, resigned to making yet another call to the landlord. It seemed every week the mobile home deteriorated a little more. Soon there would be nothing left but a hunk of kindling, vinyl flooring, wall-to-wall shag, and a few kitchen appliances, all destined for the landfill.
Thinking to assess the damage, Delores slid open one shower door and peered into the fiberglass enclosure.
“Is that a . . . what the heck is that?” A stream of light appeared to be slowly circling the drain. That was the source of the burbling sound. Delores looked at the low-flow handheld showerhead hanging in its bracket. No drips. Delores leaned and felt a definite tug pulling her forward. Clinging to the sill, she bent down and put a hesitant finger in the swirling stream of light.
Two things happened. First, she tasted something yellowish-green, an entrancing flavor she would have sworn she knew and yet when she tried, could not name. Second, as the urge to lick her finger kicked in, she found she could not remove her finger from the stream. In fact, the light was starting to foam over her hand and up her wrist.
“Well,” she said. “This is a pickle.” Was this death coming at her? It didn’t feel like death. She felt curiosity but not fear. As she usually did in moments of confusion, she called upon the spirit of her dead mother: “What would you do, Josephine?” Whatever came through, she vowed to do the opposite.
The ghost of Josephine (not something she believed in) wasn’t giving clear signals, but Delores seemed to be picking up a general admonition toward caution. That’s all Delores needed. She kicked her slippers uphill into a corner and with her free hand, tied her nightgown in a knot around her thighs.
The shower doors had started leaning inward toward the spinning light. Delores kept her free hand on the plastic wall and put a toe into the stream. The circumference of the stream expanded with a bubbly whoosh. Within moments, warm effervescence swarmed up her legs. Or was she sinking into the vortex of the light? As is often the case on planet earth, gravity took over. In a few more seconds, Delores was swallowed by the light.
Probably the story should stop here, or relate what happened to Delores. In this version of the story, the circle of light had reached an unstoppable tipping point and proceeded to consume not only Delores and her bathroom but also five other mobile homes in the immediate vicinity before it slowed and sputtered to a halt. After a few hours, all that remained was a shimmery puddle.
There were no bodies, so nobody could say for sure who if anyone had died. Police counted the missing. Scientists who came to investigate had no explanation. Grieving family members blamed Obama. Others mentioned recent testing at the Hadron Collider. Black hole, they said. Wormhole to another universe, some claimed. People in Australia and China loitered around sewer covers, ready to help should any of the missing miraculously appear and need a hand up.
Delores’s landlord blamed Delores, although no evidence existed to prove she was the cause of the Shining Vortex Disaster, as it came to be called. Delores was ground zero and received the blame, not being present to defend herself. The courts awarded the landlord his insurance money, but he couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that Delores was somehow protesting in favor of tenants’ rights and had martyred herself to spite him.
We stared at each other across the miles between our computer screens. I’m not sure what she saw, a former friend, a stranger. I saw the face of someone who used to be closer to me than my own sister. Even at our advanced middle ages, her skin was perfect, except for the ravines marring her forehead. I had a deep crevice of my own, a vertical line embedded in the flesh between my unkempt brows. I wondered if she remembered me at all.
Behind her was a room I’d never seen. A framed poster of Laura Nyro hung crooked on the wall next to an electric piano. The end of a gray couch was barely visible.
“Soon we have to go under the bridge to get the buckets,” my friend said, sounding resigned. Her forehead crinkled with anxiety. “Bells won’t have it.”
I nodded. “Right. Bells, with the buckets. Under the bridge.”
“Singing doesn’t give cushions.” She shook her head in frustration.
“Okay,” I said. “I never could sing anyway.” I proved it by humming Stoned Soul Picnic. That got a smile but I was too embarrassed to dig for the lyrics. She was always the musician in our partnership, not me. I was the clown.
My friend leaned toward the screen. “We have to get out of this village,” she whispered.
A shadow passed behind her. Royal blue scrubs, wide hips to heavy breasts. The scrubs paused. We both stopped breathing. The scrubs moved on.
“You need to get out of that place?” I leaned close. My laptop fan whirred at top speed.
“I love you so much,” she said, looking somewhere over my shoulder. I resisted the urge to turn. There was nothing on the wall behind me.
I reached out my hand. “Come on, then,” I said.
Her hand loomed. I saw red fingernail polish. Our fingers touched. Years of lunches, whispered stories, competitive spats, shared dreams rushed from me to her and back again along a conduit old as time itself. I remembered then: We’d always known each other.
She hesitated. “Can you fly?”
“Now or never, my friend,” I said.
Our hands met.
“Wait, you can’t do that! What are you doing?” I heard heavy footsteps rush across a linoleum floor toward us.
“Keeping it funny!” my friend giggled as I pulled her through gray Zoom space into my arms.