No Place Like

His breath danced in the air for a moment and then disappeared. It was close to midnight and there was no one to share the moment with. This far from the road, he could hear only the faint echo of cars. Past the trees, the headlights were but a hazy glow.

Mark sat on the cold bleachers and pulled the collar of his jacket tight around his neck. The air was cold, but had, until now, been still. The breeze picked up and carried another breath away into the silence of the night. Mark took his hand from his pocket and checked the time on his phone for the third time in five minutes.

He bent over and picked up an old, crumpled leaf that had settled in between his feet and looked at it through peered eyes in the darkness. With a sudden swell in his chest, Mark crushed the leaf in his fingers and stood up. It was a gesture of defiance, but with no one to witness it was an empty one. He smoothed his tie against his stomach absentmindedly and then stepped down the bleachers. 

His breath puffed around him like unspoken thoughts fading away. 

It had been more than a year since he was last home. He thought his friends would at least care enough to see him once before he left again. Hands in his pocket and with his back to the increasing wind, Mark walked across the empty park in silence. It had been almost a week and there had not been so much as a text. He had made a point to let everyone know he'd be in town. Called a few people the night before arriving, posted a Facebook status, everything a tech-savvy young person was supposed to do to have a social life these days. 

It was growing colder quickly. When he left New York it was with the promise of warmth. The city never did anything for him, even less after having lived there for a year. It was noisy, it was crowded, it was always busy, and it was always lonely. Coming home--leaving the skyline behind--lifted from Mark a great burden he never even realized he had accumulated. Life in the city was always cold. Coming back to this town, Mark was expecting--well, some feeling of completion he had never been able to find in the city. There was nothing special about this place, but it was reassuring to be coming back to something familiar.

"What are you up to while you're home this week?" his mother asked after the family came back from dinner for his older brother's birthday.  

"Who knows?" Mark responded with a smile. "There's a lot to catch up on. I heard Dave is going away to grad school in the fall. MD/PhD program. Tom's engaged to that girl he's been seeing forever."

"Sounds like there are some celebrations to be had."

"Well that's the plan at least." He reached into the fridge and took out a beer.  

"What happened to that girl? Jess, was it?"

"Can we not talk about that?" pleaded Mark, before taking a long sip.

"I was just curious what she's up to," responded his mother, feigning innocence and disinterest in that way mothers are inherently experts.

"She's in New York. I don't know. Probably drinking coffee and writing her next great artistic breakthrough." Mark loosened his tie. "I'm out with that one, I think."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Whatever. There's a billion people in the city. There's plenty of time," Mark went on, half to himself.

"You know you're 24 now, out of college for a year already. I'm just worried about you. We hardly hear from you throughout the year, and when we do it's not often about anyone else."

"I don't feel like talking about this," Mark interrupted too quickly to sound polite. "I don't want to talk about that stuff. I'm not in the city, I'm home now and that's what I'd like to concentrate on. Being home."

Home. He laughed as he peered through the fence of trees that separated the park from the road. The Christmas lights across the street blinked in a cheerful rhythm. 

"Yeah, by the baseball field. We can walk to the bar after. It'll be fun. I'll let Dave know. See you in ten."

That was more than an hour ago. No one ever showed up. He never even got an insincere apology text. It was not completely unexpected. The last time Mark spoke to either of his friends was well before he left for New York. Maybe he was deluded for trying to recapture something that had fallen apart a long time ago. No one ever tried to catch up or visit him in the city.

Was it this town? Did people come here and disappear? When Mark left, first for college, then for work, it may as well have never existed. No one else ever left. The place fed on dreams, on ambition.

Mark brushed past the trees and made his way down the street. His path was illuminated by the red and green light of the holiday season. Christmas had past, it was not yet the new year. Everything was ending but nothing was ready to start again. 

Mark was accustomed to having some kind of clean slate in the new year. In a new semester, things were fresh. But this year he only had a week and nothing new to look forward to. Nor, as it turned out, did he have anything old to fall back on. 

Mark left the city expecting to find solace in familiarity, but nothing here was familiar. In fact there was nothing left here at all for him. Everyone had found their way, and now Mark was alone--whether it was in the city or here.

He stopped by the bar he had planned to spend the evening catching up with Tom and Dave. He sat down, ordered a beer and watched the regulars come and go. He was not much of a conversationalist to begin with, and not in the mood to chat with a bartender or that OK-looking girl in the corner who he may have gone to high school with.

"Mark Wyatt!" The name resounded across the room and he looked up to see the familiar, if wider face of--what was his name? They went to school together their whole life. "How have you been?" the classmate sat down at the stool next to Mark and slung his arm around him. "Richie! Get my boy here another beer." Mark waved his hand dismissively. "What are you up to? What's it been, six years?"

"Something like that. I'm OK. Working in a publishing company up in New York. Home for the holidays, you know how it is. How've you been?" He let the sentence trail off. John? Justin? Ryan?

"Chillin', chillin'. I'm around here. Doin' this and that. I got a nice thing going up the road at the Shop Rite." Mark spent the next ten minutes pretending to listen to this old classmate. His eyes wandered the bar and at one point met with the OK-looking girl, who he was now convinced was the girl he had a crush on in high school. She gave him a knowing and sympathetic shrug before leaving. He watched her go, her name was Liz, he remembered, and he wondered if she even remembered him. But high school was a long, long time ago, and as this conversation with  John/Justin/Ryan, a man who was essentially a stranger, continued, he realized that there wasn't all that much worth remembering from those days.

At long last, J/J/R finished his tale and Mark quickly downed the last of his drink. "It was nice catching up, but I have to go." He exited the bar abruptly and retraced his steps down the Christmas-lit street. It was nearly two in the morning, and the New Year was steadily creeping closer. There was not much to celebrate--not from the past, certainly, and Mark spent the walk home admiring the silence. There was something to be said for being alone in silence. 

The cold air licked at his face and when Mark finally reached his door and entered, he breathed in the warm air greedily. But he was not even completely inside the house before he was hit several times in the face by a flurry of orange.  "Augh--what the f--" he looked down the hall to see his little brother standing there with a Nerf gun in hand and a smirk on his face. "Nice to see you, too. What are you doing awake?"

"Can't sleep, playing video games. Wanna play?"

Mark smiled and threw his coat on the closest chair. "You know what? I can't think of anything else I'd rather do."

In the Car

There was snow on the ground and it wasn't even November.

In the waning light of an autumn dusk that tinted the snow a pale violet, branches fell from trees to join the leaves they had discarded. And I--we--drove. 

The unseasonable cold had left me unprepared and the car was louder than usual as I tried to thaw out the frigid air. Our conversation was almost as chilly. "I can't believe this weather," you said. I nodded. I wanted to say something funny, but the more I wanted words to form the less they did. It was typical behavior for me. With you it didn't start out that way until we started talking more. "Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it. My dad flat out refused to drive me."

"Hey, I've got to be good for something, right?" you laughed at that; I was always good at making you laugh, do you remember? "Are you excited?"

"Terrified is more like it. It's a great opportunity but it's so far away, you know? I've never been away all that long." I stopped at a red light and looked over at you biting your lip to keep yourself from biting your fingernails. The dimming light of the sun reflected off of the snow on the side of the road in just a way to bring out those auburn highlights in your hair you had put in at the end of September. The airport was only twenty minutes away and I could see you watching the seconds tick away, counting. The conversation was for your own benefit, I was barely there.

I waved my hand across the emergency brake in an aborted attempt to place a hand on your shoulder and brought it back up to the steering wheel. It was too late now. "If you weren't terrified you'd be crazy."

"Helpful."

"Hey, I'm just being honest. Halfway across the country? It's a big commitment. I get stressed out planning a trip for a week." I got a raised eyebrow at this and smiled apologetically. The light turned green and we drove again. 

The familiar landscape passed us by, and even though you were the only one going away it felt like we were both descending deep into the unknown. The sun was almost down. "What if I forgot something?" you asked suddenly, looking at me frantically. 

"Do you think you forgot something?" I responded dismissively. There wasn't a reaction and when I looked over I couldn't even see your face you were so deeply entrenched in your purse. "Calm down, if it was important it would've been on a packing list. I saw that list, you are covered." A sigh and the purse went back on the floor. 

"I'm just anxious. It's so weird to just be leaving everything behind. I knew it'd be hard to say goodbye to my mom and dad but I mean you and I haven't even been friends that long."

"Gee, thanks."

"You know what I mean. I keep thinking about all the things that I got started over the last couple months and now I'm just up and leaving." I kept my head facing forward and my eyes on the road to hide the way my jaw clenched at the thought. If my insides were visible you would have seen my stomach doing somersaults. 

"When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, my dad just told me to pursue what made me happy, what I enjoyed. Granted, I still haven't figured out what that is, but it's worked out pretty well so far. If I hadn't we wouldn't be having this conversation. So I think things haven't gone so bad. This sounds like exactly what you've been talking about since I met you."

The highway opened up in front of us and we trudged forward into the deepening night, the path ahead of us illuminated only by the brake lights of other travelers.  I've always enjoyed driving at night. There's something about the solitude of a highway in the evening; a sense of communal pilgrimage with the other stray cars on the road. 

Tonight it felt like a procession. 

There was a long silence. I felt like maybe I tipped my hand. The next few minutes felt like forever. The only sounds were the car's engine and the random soft rock station that had been playing on the radio the whole time. It was a station neither of us liked, I'm not even sure what it was doing on in my car, but that night we never even noticed the music. We were in that car together but I could tell you were already on that plane and across the country. I wanted to pull you back and force you to be present, but I've always been bad at being selfish and I knew I had to let you go.

In front of the airport we unloaded your bags and you gave me a hug. You promised to call when you arrived and then I watched you enter through those sliding doors and exit my world.

I drove home that night from the airport and I listened to the music on the radio but never heard a word. I was trying to remember the last thing we said to each other before we parted, but couldn't remember. 

You did call me that night when the plane landed. We talked a lot over the next few months, more than we ever had. About our hopes, our failures, our trials, our joys, and our defeats. And those conversations were like the ones before that autumn ride to the airport and before the October snow; effortless and honest. 

In the end, though, you were happy. The phone calls dissipated. I still think about how different things would be had I met you earlier, or if I had just been a little more selfish. But maybe you'd be less happy, and that thought is even worse than the image of that sliding door closing behind you. Maybe nothing would have been different. 

Maybe everything would be. 

Waiting Rooms

I've spent a lot of my life in waiting rooms.

Waiting rooms are afforded the same design aesthetic of college residences, for what I imagine are the same general reason: to inspire no particular emotional reaction in any way. A waiting room won't keep you calm, it just won't make you upset.

I have become a frequenter of waiting rooms. A regular at the white washed walls of emotional absence. I've come to recognize some of the regulars; not specific people, but archetypes. I've noticed my own place in the pantheon.  There's the friendly middle-aged man who knows all of the receptionists and hands out bad jokes about his middle-aged wife and twenty-something children. "She put me in here, didn't she?" one man laughed, his mirth interrupted by a cigarette-smoke fueled cough. He fishes in his pockets for his wallet and pulls out a ten for the copay, unfolds it on the reception desk and sinks his hands back into his pockets in a ritual as practiced as tying his shoes. Not that this man ties his shoes anymore, he's moved onto the single motion loafers in an early bid for the retirement lifestyle, even though he's still twenty more years of laboring away for his last kid's college education. He turns around and returns to his seat, grabbing a magazine that looks as old as his youngest daughter. He buries his face into the magazine as he sits one seat past the comfort zone between myself and anyone else. 

There's the elderly woman who shuffles along in her slippers and looks like she should be using a walker but is too stubborn to admit it. Her snow-white hair has streaks of gray that seem to, remarkably, represent a sign of youth. She, too, knows the receptionists and chats with them. Too old now for the banter, she goes through the motions of the sign-in process with mechanized efficiency, but all the while still as polite and warm as your grandmother. She walks to a seat near the middle aged man, and all the while I want to sit up and take her by the hand to make sure she doesn't fall, but I'm too busy trying not to be noticed. The middle aged man politely strikes up conversation, his bald head iridescent in the fluorescent light. They chat about their now-adult children.

Then there's the ten year old girl who is even more out of place in this room than I am, but she is trailed by her mother, younger than the middle aged man, colder than the old woman, but on her way to being as versed in the art of waiting room expediency.  The daughter is bitter she has to come here, taken away from the much more productive act of watching the Disney Channel show reruns of the same five shows all afternoon. The mother whispers just loud enough for everyone else in the waiting room to know that she spoke, but just below the ability for any meaning to be taken from this noise. She walks to the reception desk with a hurried dispassion, pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder where it had begun to slip from bending over to speak with her daughter. Her hair is taught in a ponytail, but fraying at the front and a few stray single strands bounce before her forehead. She is as brutally efficient as the old woman, but in a hurry. No doubt she just came from work to pick her daughter up from school to get her into the office on time. "Traffic was unbelievable," she says, and the receptionist smiles and pretends to take in this woman's complaints. The mother has no qualms with burdening others with her first world woes of minor inconvenience, and as she scribbles the copay into her checkbook, her whole body seems tense enough to snap like a rubber band stretched too far when a child tried to shoot it across the room.

A waiting room has no life of its own and inspires no emotion, but it takes on the attributes of those within. Maybe the receptionists can tell, with their too-polite-to-ignore-your-complaints continence  acting as a counterbalance to the strange, hollow, mechanized ritual and stilted conversation brought on by waiting room regulars.

Because the middle-aged man, despite the fulfilled life of family and career, is still sick and needs to wait for a doctor. The old woman knows that she has spent more time in a waiting room than she has seen her grandchildren in the last two months. The mother fears that her daughter is going to be the twenty-something sitting awkwardly aloof and out of place, staring at a phone that doesn't actually have anything on the screen, trying to pretend that he does not exist.  When my name is called to sign in and present all of my information I do it with a fumbled practice that is purposefully ignorant. Because admitting that I am as practiced at this as the middle-aged man is a disheartening realization. To think that I was once the ten year old child who just wanted to watch TV is heart-breaking. And then there's the old woman who is the only one that truly belongs in this waiting room, and it  fills me with a sweeping joy for her that maybe, just maybe, she was never any of us.

Random Memory: West Virginia, Project Appalachia, March 2011

Wednesday I was sick. Violently ill. I left the work sight after lunch following some awful stomach pains and, yes, I'll admit it, vomiting. I spent an hour in the car trying to recuperate, thinking that I'd be OK if I could just lie down. It wasn't the case and Fr. Carl and Katie drove me back to the church we were staying in.

I had some lovely conversations with Katie that day through the bathroom door as I was too sick to stay in bed and had to get up every time my stomach needed to rebel. Eventually, I was able to settle down and fall asleep. I tossed and turned for a while as my stomach did summersaults. I've never had that kind of stomach bug before. I've had lots of stomach problems but never such a crippling 24-hour virus. I still don't know what caused it--I was the only one who got sick.

The next day, Thursday, was our field trip day. I was worried that I was going to have to miss this. But I woke up early that morning 2-3 AM, I guess, feeling a world better. It was wonderful. I wasn't tired anymore, after having slept the day away, but I stayed in bed. There were three other guys in the room (this was the first year there were enough men to get our own room!) and I didn't want to disturb them. 

I woke up the next morning, and got dressed.

"How are you feeling?" from just about everyone. Fine, fine, totally better.

We hiked New River Gorge that day. A couple miles. Beautiful scenery. A couple times we stopped at lookouts and looked down at New River and the cliffs from high above on the mountain. There was one particular clearing that was breathtaking that only myself, Rick and Katie were able to find. I noticed it through some spare trees and wandered over. The three of us were in the back, so they wandered over when I did. Trying to capture such an expanse in words is a futile effort. Capturing it in a photo was a poor enough substitute. I stood on the edge of a mountain and looked at the River below and for that moment, I was overcome with calm.

 After spending some time taking in the primal beauty of a land untouched by the horrors of modern life (which was hard to believe, considering how close we were to such squalor and poverty) we caught up with the rest of the group, who were settling down for lunch.

I don't know that it really was, but as far as I was concerned, this was the top of the mountain. The breeze on top of a mountain is like the breath of God Himself. A calming serenity comes with that wind. But strangely in this natural splendor, there was a cutout on the rockface, and through this narrow passage was a ladder descending downward into some kind of gorge below. When we arrived, three people had already made their way down. 

Rick had no hesitation in going for it. I am somewhat scared of heights and ladders, so I had made the decision not to go. "Come on, man, when will you get the chance to do this again?" Rick asked. I shrugged and laughed. It looked scary. 

As Rick readied himself to go down he turned to me and said, "You should do it. Sick one day and climbing mountains the next." Again, I simply laughed it off.

Rick went down and Katie followed, bolstered by Rick's fearlesness. She later admitted that she was initially scared, but couldn't let Rick show her up. The rest of the group that had already been there awhile had not gone down and had no plans to.

As I watched both Rick and Katie go down the ladder, what Rick said ate away at me. "Sick one day, and climbing mountains the next." That was a  damn good story. I remember my inner debate being longer, but it could not have been more than a few seconds because the two were still on the ladder. I hollered down that I was on my way and descended to join them.

The climb was longer than it appeared. The ladder was only the first stop. There was a short rocky slant that led to a thin, metal bridge, connected to another, even steeper ladder. I felt my way through that slant,  grabbing the rope that lined the rock wall with all the strength I could muster. I somehow managed to keep my legs from trembling,  perhaps by sending that nervous energy into my grip and through the rope. I came to the end of the bridge, which was only a few feet and turned precariously. All in all this whole process took seconds, and when I set my foot onto that second ladder's first rung it was still trembling. As I took another step the fear disappeared in a single instant, as if it never existed.

I descended the ladder and reached the bottom victorious. Rick and I exchanged high fives. 

Suddenly, everyone that had stayed up was coming down the ladder. We gave each new adventurer cheers and support as they screamed down about how scared they were. We were a team, suddenly, a community. That ladder brought to our week-long family a uniting force of support and camaraderie. It was a surreal moment that seemed to come from nowhere, like many things about this last trip to West Virginia. But it fit so perfectly. It made sense and brought us together. We all overcame something there in that strange, carved out descent. We explored this new area for a time, and then went back up and there I unwrapped my sandwich and breathed in the fresh air. Just yesterday I had been too sick to get out of bed. Today, I was eating lunch on top of a mountain.

I thought about you on the beach today

I close my eyes and this moment is perfect.

The sound of the waves is like constant rolling thunder. The breeze blows the pages of the book that sits open on my lap. They flap to the rhythm of nature itself.

With my head leaned back on the reclined chair sinking into the sand, I can imagine the world around me disappear and even the rolling thunder begins to sound far off. All that is left is the wind. With this world so faded, the problems and the doubts and all the muck of the mind seems to go with it.

I close my eyes and this moment is perfect. No pain, no trepidation, no maybes, no what-ifs. No more second guessing past decisions. The past and the future dissolve into a single a moment. Uncertainty is a thing wholly beyond this moment and the world, for all its distance, seems more concrete. More vivid.

The breeze rouses the pages on my lap into a panic. The rhythm of the world's calm, renewed, bliss momentarily broken, my eyes open. There is no transition. No hesitation.

The world seems clouded now. Spots dance across the surface of my eyes, speckling the horizon of the beach that now seems so far away. The world was clearer with eyes closed. I move my toes and they grind against the sand between them.

As the rolling thunder unfolds before my speckled vision I wonder about all those things that had slipped away when my eyes were closed. Overwhelmed, my head falls back from the weight of its  thoughts. My eyes look straight ahead and there is an island of blue among a sea of clouds. The maybes and the what-ifs swirl.

I keep my eyes on that island and I smile. This moment, too, is perfect.

Deeply Rooted

“I’m a tree.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m rooted in this one spot. I haven’t moved and haven’t done anything. Things just happen to me, man. I’ve just learned to embrace it.”

“And you lost me. …You never had me. What are we talking about right now?”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“No shit. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

I sigh. I’ve never been good at…well, at talking, really, but especially about, you know…feelings. “I’ve lived my life pretty well, I think. I do well in school, I’m friendly, polite, whatever.  Maybe kind of quiet, but I’ve tried. Put myself out there. Went out on a limb, even. Too much? Sorry, I’ll cut it out with the tree metaphors. As much as I could, anyway. But…you know…in the end I’ve discovered that things don’t really work out for me when I’m really trying really hard and sweating all the small stuff. I’m a tree. Things work out best when I just let it happen. I’ve quit trying. I quit trying a little while ago and it’s the best thing that’s happened to me. I’m less concerned about—about all of it, really. About what people think when I do things or anything. I guess I’m putting things on my terms more than I did when I was actively trying to put them on my terms?”

Joe drinks his beer. Takes what I say in. For a moment he looks like has something to say. I look out toward the distance. We’re on the corner not far from his house. The sun’s out. It’s a warm day. A good day.

“That—that doesn’t sound positive,” he says.  It’s my turn to take a drink.

“Well, I mean, no, I guess it doesn’t. Eventually, though, I guess—I guess I just got tired. You know? Stressing out about everything wasn’t working out for me, either. Overthinking. Not that I’m not still overthinking everything, but, a little bit less. I’m just doing what comes natural. What makes me happy. So sick of trying to play games and dance around what other people do.”

Joe raises his bottle. “Fuck it.” I turn my head incredulously. “You’re right. We waste so much time worrying about what everybody thinks we’re supposed to be doing. Or what we think we’re supposed to be doing. Go with the flow. Do what makes you happy. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t let opportunity pass you by, but, don’t try to do stuff just because you think you’re supposed to.”

Midsip, I raise my fingers in an excited agreement. Swallow, lower the bottle. “Exactly.”

I am a tree.

I repeat it to myself in my mind over and over.

Maybe eventually I’ll actually believe it.

I'm a winner!

My recently posted story, The Bridge, won second place at my school's short story contest! Not quite first, but I'm pleased nonetheless.

Hopefully once this semester ends and summer comes I'll be able to devote some more time to writing. I'm working on one thing right now (I posted a screenshot of it) but hope to do more over the summer months. I've noticed most of my stories deal with similar themes so I want to try changing things up a little bit.

Thanks for reading!

- Tim

After the Wind (Another Revision)

The wind came through town last night. It took everything with it. The power was out everywhere. Electrical wires hung limp from splintered poles. They did not even spark; the power had been cut off some time during the night to prevent fires.

My car was down the street, lofted in a neighbor’s tree.

No one else was outside. I could never sleep through the wind, and as soon as it ended I walked out into the aftermath. The first thing I noticed was that it was hot. That dry, breezeless midsummer heat, times two. The grass did not even move between my toes. It appeared that Mother Nature had used up all her breath in that crescendo of a tantrum. The next thing I noticed was that it was quiet. Absolutely quiet. No birds chirped, no wind shook the leaves. There was not even the sound of insects. All the animals had left; those that hadn’t were probably blown away.

Which brings us back to the silence. I never experienced silence like that before then. I rubbed my arm as a chill ran down my spine. It was like I was living in a dead world. I shuffled my feet just so that I could hear the grass crackle beneath them. I needed to remind myself that sound still existed.

That was why I jumped when a screen door creaked open. The reemergence of normalcy to this stark scene was a jolt. I turned my eyes to the source, and saw my neighbor, Mister Moore, walk outside, sipping a mug of coffee in his bathrobe, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Behind him, the screen door floated shut. It didn’t slam.

I was perhaps more shocked by his nonchalance than I was at the silence that I had just experienced. He looked over at me and raised his mug in greeting. Mister Moore was about fifty years old, his thin hair gray, but only recently receding.

I mentioned before that I couldn’t sleep through the wind. Older folks like Mister Moore and my parents could sleep like it was any other night. They had lived through it a few times.

The last winds came when I was eleven, and I spent the whole time huddled under my doorway with a blanket over my head. To be fair, my reaction this particular time was no different.

Mister Moore surveyed the damage, the belt on his bathrobe eerily still. He raised his hand above his eyes and peered down the street. I did likewise. It was like some kind of highway nightmare. Cars piled on top of each other; none looked at all salvageable. My eyes flitted back to my car, a few houses closer, lofted in a tree. Compared to those in the pile it appeared immaculate.

Briefly, the image of my car as some kind of holy emperor, more majestic and beyond the paltry problems of its inferiors played across my mind. I laughed almost immediately. Yesterday it had been the cheapest hunk of junk on the block.

Mister Moore must have been looking at my car too. “You got lucky, we should be able to get that down today. You’ll be the envy of the neighborhood pretty soon.”  I smiled at him as a courtesy. Again, the imaginary immaculacy of the car played through my thoughts.

I wanted to drive off and leave this town behind. All of its bizarre avoidance of the eventual, annual fate had grated on me more and more every year. I thought about leaving last night. Taking that car that hung so calmly from wooden branches now and racing away. To what? It didn’t matter— just out of this town. I hated this coordinated disaster and I hated that no one did anything about it. I have known for years that I didn’t want to repeat what my parents have done—to live here and simply deal with problems as they came and constantly avoiding what would eventually come.

I began to wonder why anyone stayed here. Every ten years this wind came, and every ten years the people who lived here had to clean up this mess. How had his town even survived so long?

Needless to say, it has been my plan to move away at my first opportunity. Maybe the fact that my car survived unscathed was the universe trying to tell me something: that I’m not supposed to deal with this, that I still have a chance to escape the fate of my parents and Mister Moore and not have to rebuild my life every decade. How did they afford it? Why would you even bother?

Mister Moore was in disturbingly cheerful spirits and so was my dad when he came out, in almost an identical fashion to my neighbor. My father’s eyes squinted against the sun, which beamed down with severe intensity because there were no clouds to veil it for once.

Pretty soon the front lawns of the block were specked with a gaggle of robed, coffee-drinking, middle aged men. I tried to retreat back inside, but my mom intercepted me and began to explain to me how the clean up process worked.

First was the gathering of all the debris. Most people who lived here now had figured out ways to minimize this damage but some people never bothered. My dad never bothered—he seemed to enjoy the cleaning process.

As I watched him survey the scene nonchalantly sipping coffee, I was furious. Why was my mom still talking to me?  I felt that my supreme bitterness had to be emanating in waves from my pores. I’d be gone in a month for school, and I’d be away from all this mess. I hated it here. It wasn’t just this wind or the cleanup—it was this whole place. It was stagnant. No one in this town ever did anything new. The same thing every day, every month, every year. I wanted no part in stopping progress. Whatever my mother was telling me fell on deaf ears. Why should I help?

Before I realized it, I had asked that “Why?” out loud. My frustration with the whole situation had boiled to a point where it began to overflow. Keeping my mouth shut wasn’t an option. “Why bother? It’ll cost more to repair all this damage than to move!”

“This is home, dear,” my mom explained, and the voice she used attempted to be so calming that it just made me angrier. “Your father has lived here his whole life, why would we leave just because of a minor setback?”

Minor setback. We owned three cars. One was sandwiched in between a telephone pole and a Volkswagen Beetle, another had fused into a T-shape with a decrepit truck, and the third was stuck in a tree. Not for the last time, I imagined myself driving my lofty chariot down that silent road away from here, the only sound echoing in the air my defiant laughter.

My dad came over and put a hand on my shoulder to calm me down. “It’s alright, we’ve got plenty saved away to fix all of this up. Besides, I’ve been needing an excuse to fix our landscaping.” His smile felt more condescending than reassuring. Was this why I was driving a car that was older than me? Because my parents were saving all their money to repair and replace things they knew would be ruined? Was that why they had never taken me anywhere farther than the lake for our family vacation?

I tried to pass off my gritted teeth as a smile. I don’t know that it worked, but either way my parents continued onto their business and in a horrifically synchronized manner, the cups of coffee had been finished off, and all the older men of the neighborhood retreated inside.  My mother was circling the house and surveying the damage. I wandered over to the tree that held up my car. The branches looked slumped beneath the weight. On a normal autumn day the tree looked barren enough, but especially so today.  Some of the bark had been stripped, and the branches looked weak around the trunk. In the unearthly silence I could hear the faint sound of the wood creaking.

Mr. Moore from across the street was already dressed and trying to sort out the mess of cars. His house had been wind-proofed, so he wasn’t concerned. I always thought it was funny he had spent so much on renovations over the last few years but still drove a powder blue Nissan Stanza. I felt like an idiot for never realizing all of this before. Suddenly, my always-lingering desire to leave this place became more immediate.

No one else my age lived in this town. It was like an entire generation realized the futility of having to rebuild every decade. I had every intention of joining them. My closest friend lived in the next town—this one didn’t even have its own school district, I went to regional schools. I was never bitter about it before the wind, but suddenly every slight injustice felt like a history of oppression in the face of futility. It took me 21 years to get to this point, and all I had to show for it was a car flipped upside down in a tree. 

My mother told me stay nearby for school; I knew before I was out of high school that was not going to happen. My family couldn’t afford to send me too far, though, and I settled for a small private school about an hour away. Far enough to pretend for at least a little while that I was not tethered to a place of such unavailing monotony.

My father and most of the rest of the block had come back outside, and began to pick up their lawns. “Little help here, son?” My dad requested. I pretended not to hear him, and walked over to the pile of cars.

I wished mine were down from its height. I looked up at it again.  Logistically, I couldn’t see how to get it down. A branch looked like it had lodged in the axle of one of the wheels somehow. But more than that, it just seemed like there was no way to keep it from falling. Maybe the car wasn’t special or lofty; maybe it was just the last to crash.

I turned my eyes to the rest of the block again. Most people were working hard on gathering up the debris. A few had begun to try to sort out the mess of cars. There was still not even a slight breeze; the air was just as motionless as it had been when I came out. Other than the sounds of the clean up, I could hear no animals. There was still a chance this was all a dream, because it certainly felt unreal.

I looked back at my house and my mother came back around to the front with a long list of damages. Curiosity took the better of me and I retraced her steps into the backyard.  A tree from next door had destroyed our fence and pieces of roof from well down the street littered the grass. Leaves from all over had mingled together, while the cherry tree in our backyard stood naked but somehow still standing. As I looked at the piles of leaves they didn’t so much as wave.  One of our windows had been shattered by something, but luckily we had boarded them to keep any glass from getting inside.  

 I turned my attention from the house itself to the rest of the yard and then my breath left me like a punch in the gut. Ripped right out of the ground was our old swing set. It was older than my memory, and here it was splintered and sprawled across the yard. One of the seats hung limply from the cherry tree branch, but the rest of it was almost beyond recognition. Something deep and visceral went through me at the moment my eyes surveyed the remains of that once-wondrous source of joy.

I can’t say why I felt this way; it had been years since I had touched the thing. The chains were rusted and the noise it made when someone tried to use it was like the dying sounds of some large animal. Every part of it swayed with the movement of the swing. Even in normal wind it shifted.

But I could still remember spending whole afternoons on those swings, pretending I was in flight high above the rest of the world. Above the feeble troubles of schoolwork and chores. For years that swing set had been my sanctuary.  I slept a number of nights in the lookout above the slide. Escape. Freedom. But that had been a long time ago.

It seemed like there was no escape anymore. Dad needed me to help out with the clean up. Next time the winds came he’d need me even more. I began to realize that even if I moved out there was no getting away. Was that it? Was everyone just resigned to this absurd fate by obligation? My car came back to me again. It had done the same as the swingset used to. It meant freedom. It meant escape.

My feet took me to the limp swing hanging from the tree branch before I could even process that I was moving. Apparently it was very precariously balanced.  As soon as my finger brushed against the plastic seat, the metal chain slid off the branch with a metallic hiss followed by a thump with the weight of a fifty-pound sack hitting a padded floor. Maybe I was projecting.

“We’ve been meaning to get rid of that for years—it’s been such an eyesore. But we figured we’d save ourselves the trouble.” I jumped at the sound of my dad’s voice; every sound this morning was still so loud as it hung in the unnaturally still air.  I said nothing.  “Here, can you help me with this?” he asked, as he lifted what had once been the lookout’s roof. I stared at him for a moment, then at the piece of wood. I wanted to refuse, but also knew it needed to get done. Silently, I picked up the plank of wood with him and we carried it over to a corner of the yard. My dad proceeded to collect wooden debris and carried it over to start a pile. “We could get a lot of use out of this for a while,” he explained, all smiles.

I was still speechless, and I began to notice something about my dad’s behavior this morning, and Mister Moore’s, for that matter. They weren’t just going through the motions. Something about this for my dad was enjoyable. I couldn’t figure out what, or why, but I wanted to find out.

“You want to come with me to look at cars tomorrow? We can finally go ahead and replace that old Taurus. I never liked that car, it was such an ugly color.” I shrugged. I wasn’t feeling particularly committal. But I paid attention to what he was saying. The words seemed so much clearer than they would have on another day; maybe it was because there was nothing in between him and myself except the dead summer air.

Something about that simple proposition struck me. I had always thought that for my dad the Taurus was like my swing set, some old object he had some kind of sentimental attachment to. In that way, I guess I was wrong. But much like that old swing set, he had utilized the wind to take care of the work for him.

As I gathered the leftover plastic of what had once been my sanctuary, I felt the weight of the years that had passed in each piece. I let out a deep breath while I piled the various pieces of plastic on the side of the lawn.  My childhood was laying at my feet in a very real way.  And as that deep breath left me I felt a tension I hadn’t even noticed before leave me. I turned my eyes to my dad who was already moving onto another project.

I knew that this day was coming for years, but I had always just assumed my parents were being stubborn about it or ignoring it. I assumed that cleaning up would just be futilely mending fences and waiting for things to break again. But despite the leaves on the ground and the various and sundry broken parts all over the place, I realized what my father saw: a renewal.

The swing set had been torn down because it was time for it to come down. It had ceased to be an escape a long time go and had been for years tying me to a past that no longer existed. I hadn’t used it in years, and the only reason it had held on so long was because I wasn’t ready to let it go. Any time the subject of taking it down came up I protested, but I never really had a valid argument for it staying.

Dad wasn’t avoiding reality by staying here; he was making the best of it. In that way, he even had me beat, because all I wanted to do was run away. That’s all I ever did.

A crash came from down the street and the sound swept down the row of houses like a shockwave. I knew what it was before I went and looked. The branches of the tree had given way, my car’s precarious loft had given out and it had landed hood-first on the blacktop.

The dream of pulling out of this desolation in a victorious laughter shattered in front of my eyes.  So much for an emperor’s chariot, now it was once again just a piece of junk.

Mister Moore, still in his bathrobe, was probing his Nissan Stanza for things that may have been left behind, but it seemed like he wasn’t turning up much. I looked down at my own car and peered into the window, but the only thing that had been in there had been my hopes of getting away from this place.  I wondered what Mister Moore was hoping to find in that wreck, but didn’t ask. Much like myself with the swing set, he was probably just looking for hope that he didn’t have to let go. Mister Moore complained about that car a lot, but he took meticulous care of it.

Meanwhile, my dad was gathering up the broken pieces of our house’s exterior. There wasn’t anything he was looking for. . There wasn’t anything he was holding onto—he accepted that this was his chance to get ready for whatever the future held. Dad struggled to roll a pillar that had broken off of our porch out of the bushes. “Here, let me help,” I called across the yard, and I felt my words taken away in a summer breeze.

In progress

This is what an in progress jawn looks like.

The Bridge

"They tore it down a year ago."

The sentence washed over me and rested around my ankles like a pair of cement shoes. When you're young the places you see every day are a simple fact. Never given a second thought. Life isn't a changing and growing organism; it's a static and structured thing. It is a building. A place. A definitive monument untempered by time.

I walked over the torn up soil where there was once an old wooden bridge over a small creek. “I don’t think tore it down is quite the phrase you wanted to use,” I joked, pretending that the loss of the bridge was not a big deal. “There was a creek here. They fill that up?”

“Yeah, before the bridge went, even. Honestly I’m surprised it took them so long to tear it down.”

Amy had been one of my closest friends through grade school into high school. She was one of those rare friends that didn’t abandon you in the awkward pubescent years. We waited until after high school graduation to drift apart. She got attractive in eighth grade, which put me in a weird position because I always looked young for my age. It wasn’t until late in high school that I sprouted up. She could have left me for any boy she wanted or because a sudden interest from a cooler group, but she never did. We watched Star Wars on Friday nights and saw Attack of the Clones opening day. In retrospect, perhaps a waste of money. I never thought of her as a girl, which is why I never understood why guys hated me after they asked her out and they saw us at McDonalds. She was just Amy.

My family moved just before I started college. I guess they figured I’d be going away to school anyway, so what was the harm? At first I visited Amy and home during breaks. After a while it got harder. I didn’t have the time and I only ever spoke to Amy occasionally online and said, “Man, I haven’t seen you in so long!” That led to “We have to see each other this Christmas break,” but never to actually seeing each other.

Amy came up to my school last semester because I guess we finally got tired of the circular conversations. It was fun, we spent the night watching Star Wars and drinking every time they said “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” or Darth Vader choked someone. But it was different, like the time we spent apart was separating us the whole night. It manifested in a gap in conversation, in an awkward reference to embarrassing things we had done together that we had forgotten about. It was as if we were eulogizing the friendship instead of reinvigorating it. I decided then that I needed to visit home again.

And that’s why we came here. When we needed to get away from parents or high school drama we’d come to the bridge and sit on the edge and throw rocks into the creek.

“I remember more trees,” I said. If my memory served me I was standing at the center of the bridge. If I closed my eyes I could see the old view. Lush and green trees older than the world we knew. They blocked out the late afternoon sun. Today I had to shield my eyes. When we were here, time stopped for just a little while. It didn’t matter if it was day or night; there was always the same hazy glow from between the leaves. The trees were our sanctuary.

“Oh, those have been gone for years, James,” Amy responded as if this wasn’t a travesty.

“Shit. It’s been a really long time.”

“They’re supposed to turn this whole place into a new development for the over-50 community,” Amy explained, and laughed. “Can you believe that? We came here to get away from grown ups.”

I laughed and tried to forget for a moment I was 23 now and was part of that world I wanted to escape when we used to come here. “This was our place.”

“I guess things change,” she offered with a half smile, placing her elbow on my shoulder, despite having to reach up to do so. She used to do it all the time when she was taller than me for most of our lives. It was a habit she hadn’t broken despite the shift in size. “Besides, it hasn’t been our place in four years. Not since you moved.” I shrugged using one shoulder.

“What do you think would have happened if I stayed? Would we be here right now?” Amy moved her arm and I heard her feet brushing some fallen leaves around beneath her feet.

“The bridge would still be gone,” she answered. I turned around to face her and she was doing that familiar ballet twirl she always did when she was thinking about something. She hadn’t even taken a dance class since she was ten. “We grew up, you know? It just happens.”

“Yeah, I know, but…I missed you. I missed this place and this town. Maybe we would’ve gotten to say goodbye to the bridge before they took it down.”

“Don’t be such a girl,” Amy teased and pressed her finger into my chest. That was familiar, too. “When was the last time we even came here? Before the day you moved, anyway. We never came here after graduation. One day something is there and the next it’s just not. We can’t live in the past forever.”

I looked again at the patch of soil that used to be our bridge and took in a deep breath. “How about us? Think we would still be friends if I hadn’t moved?”

Amy laughed at that. “What, we’re not friends anymore? We’re here now, aren’t we? That’s enough for me.”

And I guess with those four words it was enough for me, too.

On struggles

Maybe it’s the beautiful weather. Maybe it’s because I’ve been kind of miserable myself, lately. But I find myself considering the universal temptation we all have to be negative, to be self-involved and hate our daily grind in the face of all of our blessings. It’s easy to get lost in the struggle, to lose ourselves in the moment and forget the things that make life worth living. But so often—so overwhelmingly often—I see people who have had so much come easily to them be the most miserable. Maybe I’m generalizing, but Facebook and social media in general has made it abundantly clear that too many people do not take the chance to look at their lives and realize how lucky they are. I wish more people would, the world would be better for it.

Perhaps it’s because of the things I’ve seen, the trips I’ve taken, and the life I’ve lived that has allowed me to have this perspective. But I can’t help but feel bad for those who have everything come so easily to them and are still miserable. I’ve seen poverty firsthand, I’ve talked to people who have almost nothing and still cling to the small things that make life worth living. But it doesn’t even need to be so extreme as that.

We all have our issues, I’m not denying that. Whether that’s loneliness, illness, schoolwork, sitting next to the person you’re crazy about and not being able to say anything.  There’s death and moving away and break-ups and fights with friends. Part-time jobs and full-time careers. They all have their pains, but you know what they have in common? They make you stronger in the end.

In my own life, I’ve had to fight to be healthy, to make friends, to find some place in this world that is a place to belong. It makes me all the more grateful for the victories. I’m not sick right now, I’m in college, I grew up in a neighborhood that could afford to educate me, I have an amazing family.  For all of the years of anger and stress and bitterness that went along with those fights…I wouldn’t trade any of it in for an “easier” life. I wouldn’t be as strong as I am now, I wouldn’t be able to be thankful for this, perhaps brief, period of health and time spent with friends, even if that too is still an ongoing struggle.  I wouldn’t be able to see and appreciate all of the great things I have if I didn’t have to work so hard to gain them. The struggle is a part of life…it’s a beautiful part of life.  I am lucky and I am blessed enough to be in college to be able to be stressed about it. I have people in my life I care about enough to stress over.

And if you took the time to stand back and survey your own life, what would you see at the end of those struggles? I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the end, the profoundly wonderful memories didn’t outweigh the unpleasant ones.  So step outside into the sun today and think about those things that make today a day worth being thankful for. I know I will.

I guess things are gonna change

I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately. About the changes we have to resolve ourselves to make, the ones we want to make but are too scared to make. About changes that are forced upon us, about changes that we can do nothing about.

And it’s all scary. Even the changes we want to make most. I’m not treading any new ground in saying this. We’re all terrified of it. How do we know that it’ll work out for the best when we make those changes? How can we cope knowing that decisions that will affect our lives are made without us?

We can’t know the future, and the comfort of the past leaves us a cushion to fall back on. When that cushion is ripped away from us and we can’t continue to rely on it, moving forward is scary. It’s scary because our safety is gone. Experience has trained us to expect that cushion to be there for us and when it isn’t, we don’t know who or what to turn to when things potentially go wrong. And so sometimes it’s easier to just hide away from it. When the change is in our control we can choose to leave things as they are, instead. We can sit and stare at it until the opportunity has run itself dry and be left to wonder “what if?” It’s an all too easy option. Change could lead to something better in those cases, but the possibilities of what could go wrong can keep us from making the decision. Our choices define us, and sometimes, it’s hard to live up to that expectation.

Change begets change. Sometimes, the unforeseen ones have the largest impact. There are people who touch our lives that must leave it.  We have to deal with that when it comes, be reminded of the temporary nature of relationships, of the impact one person can have on us. And I’m not even talking about people passing away—people move, they graduate, they find new opportunities—they move on. And we have to let them, and we have to move on for ourselves. When that is our only option there is nothing to do but ponder what the change means, what we can learn from it and how to create a new world of comfort for ourselves. Ponder the relationships we have now and how to make the most of them—say what we want to say, ask what we want to ask, let people know what they mean to you.

“In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back.” – Charlie Brown

We have to find our own answers and judge for ourselves how to deal with change and how to confront it. Because when we look back on our lives, there’s nothing we can do about the changes that have happened and the ones we have failed to make happen. I’m not an expert, I don’t even take my own advice, but things are always changing. We should, at least, control the ones we can and embrace the uncertainty. Maybe I’ll do that.

I think I spelled your name wrong.

I think I spelled your name wrong.

Hopefully you didn’t notice. Of course you’ll notice; it’s your name.

But hopefully the sentiment was enough that you can forgive such an error. I was in a hurry and didn’t even think to check that one word at the beginning. Cause, see, when I think of you I get caught up in the bigger picture. I think you can overlook that, I just can’t help it.

We’re only human and I know that sometimes grand gestures are silly but I get caught up in the idea of them and I lose the details. I really want the big picture; the whole package.  Details are for the patient and I really don’t have that.

I’d say it’s because life is short but it’s because I really just want to skip to the good parts; you know, the stuff in the movies. Maybe that’s girly, I know it’s not supposed to be the guy’s problem to have his love life expectations dictated by media. That’s not archetypical. I’m supposed to do all the work.

What I wrote to you was great: eloquent and articulate. I said everything I wanted to say and I said it well. I thought about maybe sending it with a flower, but that would be cheesy. I don’t want to be cheesy; I just want to be honest.

I was so concerned with the how and the when that I think I spelled your name wrong. But that doesn’t matter because I was too afraid to give you the letter, anyway.

The Hill

The fire has gone out. The plumes of smoke that once tapered into the sky are gone now. Only a lone stack remains, like an abandoned candle blown out by the wind.

And all the men that stand on the hill sip champagne and clap one another on the backs. They are victorious this afternoon. Their long struggle for environmental reforms ending victorious at last. They smoke cigars and the ashes fall over browning grass.

 There was life here once. It wasn’t green and growing and foliage and deer and birds. But it was life.

Families spent afternoons on this hill, watching the smoke rise, proud of their fathers who made their afternoon possible. Teenagers spent evenings on this hill, drinking beer under the distant glow of the flames. First kiss beneath the smoldering sky.

People were married here.

Now the grass cracks underfoot. There haven’t been families on this hill in years. There hasn’t been work beneath the smokestacks for a family to live on. The town beneath this hill was once the distant fantasy of the far away dreamers. Cars traveled to and from the flames constantly like moths with a purpose. Mothers walked their children to the store. Dads lined up outside stores on Christmas Eve for last minute presents.

Nothing travels those streets anymore.

The fire has been dying for years now. Lobbyists and politicians have been demanded it be extinguished. It bothered them. A rustic remembrance of an outdated economic model. It wasn’t the need to cut costs, they said. It was public health, they said.

The fire had killed the memories upon the hill. The dream was burned away from the inside, not poisoned from without.

A single father stood in his old home beneath the hill. The fire had gone out and with it gone, so went his parent’s home. They had bought the house brand new so that future generations could have a place to live. It had lasted one and a half.

Upon the hill there were no more families. There was only the hollow victory of a hollow battle that meant nothing for anyone. The men in their suits had no plans for that old, blown out candle.

The sun dips beneath the horizon and for the first time in many years the hill is dark. The people beneath the hill muddle about their homes to salvage former lives, while the men in suits leave their cigars behind, a miniaturized memorial of what they have extinguished.

The fire has gone out.

Some Poems

 

First World Angst

Dawn at midnight
Endless cycle of borrowed time
Day becomes evening,
Evening becomes companion.
Fallen down traditions

Rupture.

No more conventions,
Only gatherings of faithless movements.
Modern times,
Postmodern times,
The story is still the same.
Things change.

 

Perspective

Flying high, but never free
Set on course by debts repaid
Fleeting joy and endless possibility.
A single choice,
A defining moment.
The world continues without change,
Spurious choices alter only perception.
Fly on course, fly higher and higher.
Reach the stars, the same old stars,
Veiled in fog.
Defaulted debts;
Free at last but without chance.

I. Guerilla War

Stolen glances behind backs,

Trained thumbs dance

Over choreographed keys.

Abbreviated messages

With hidden meanings,

Brokered faster than conscience.

Insincere smiles mask bitter feuds,

One-sided and unspoken,

But hard-fought and brutal.

Taking aim by deflection,

Battles never won.

Confrontation

Ignored.

Treaties were never brokered

With passivity.

Untitled

Fortune favors the bold, they say.

Former heroes lie in bed,

Burns and scars and everything

Broken.

Empty windbags on the hill,

Stare down at the favored bold,

Poor and struggling;

Fortunate.

 

 

 December 2010

Haikus and short poems

1.
Cannibal soup
I’ve heard it tastes quite good
But varies by person.

2.

Notebook a mess
Scribbled out writing
Breakfast would have helped

3.

Leaves on the ground
Make it hard to be shifty
No muggings tonight

4.

Working in a sewer
Makes a person grateful
For a pet skunk

5.

Foundation shaky
Shouldn’t build a house of cards
On a moving bus

November-December 2010

A Trip to the Zoo (2nd Draft, Work in Progress)

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Philadelphia; the perfect day to take a child to the zoo. The sun was out, there was a cool breeze and the traffic off the Vine Street Expressway was only mildly suffocating. In the parking lot, Margaret Fuller took a long drag of her cigarette and absentmindedly blew the smoke into the sky. Her son Ricky ran around her in circles laughing. “Please settle down, Ricky, we’re in public,” she sighed. Ricky slowed and then hopped twice before coming to a complete stop. “Come on!” he called, bouncing in his Payless sneakers. This was Ricky’s first trip to the zoo. Margaret’s too, for that matter.

Margaret dropped her cigarette and dug it into the blacktop beneath the sole of her shoe. “Let’s go,” she said, and unceremoniously took Ricky’s small hand in hers. While she absentmindedly walked between the cars, each of her son’s steps were a conscious march to an excited drum that built to a crescendo until they came to the pay window.

“An adult and a child, please.”

“That’ll be 24 dollars, ma’am,” the seller responded.

“It’s 14 dollars for a five year old?” The man nodded. “Ridiculous, he’s barely a person. It’s not enough I had to pay 12 dollars for parking?” The question was, of course, rhetorical, and Margaret threw 30 dollars down for payment. The ticket seller seemed used to this treatment and continued to smile as he made change.

“Enjoy your visit, little man,” he said to Ricky, who couldn’t take his eyes off the horizon, where already he could hear various animal sounds. Margaret let out a sniff of annoyance, “Have a wonderful day,” she hissed with sarcasm. “Come on, Ricky.” Again she grabbed her son’s hand and they headed into the zoo.

Ricky was too infatuated with all of the new visual stimulus and exotic smells. “It smells like poop!” He proudly declared.

“Hush, don’t say that out loud,” Margaret corrected. As soon as they came upon the nearest cage, Ricky broke free of his mother’s loose grip and ran to it. There was simply too much new here for the boy to handle. Sights and sounds and smells that were unlike anything he had ever encountered before. His heart pounded and his feet operated faster than his brain could process.

“Monkeys!” He yelled, bouncing up and down as he held onto the railing in front of the cage. Margaret’s phone rang, and she turned to answer it, finger against her ear. All of this nature was so noisy. Margaret was adjusting to the new sensations as well. The taste of stale nicotine mixed uncomfortably with the smell of fertilizer in the back of her sinuses. The sounds of the monkeys reminded her too much of a shrieking baby.

“Hello, Donna. No, no, I’m at the zoo with—yes, I know, but I promised him ages ago. He hasn’t let me forget. I always assumed children had the memory span of a goldfish. No, I wish. I don’t even like dogs. Ricky, honey, don’t go under the railing!” She called from the distance, only vaguely noticing that her son had started to try to attempt to join the animals. “Honestly, it’d be easier if I had one of the monkeys. Donna, yes, I’ll be seeing you soon, I don’t think we’ll be staying here long, not if I have anything to—“

“I want to see the polar bears!” Ricky shouted, tugging at his mother’s pants. Apparently he had not been successful at climbing the fence.

“OK,dear, we’ll see the polar bears,” Margaret managed to get out between her friend’s sentences. “Donna you have just got to tell me about last night,” she continued, letting her son lead her to where he thought the polar bears were located.

All around the zoo, various types of birds wandered freely, all of which enticed Ricky to no end. “Ricky, stop running, dear,” she peppered between gossip with Donna. “He really is an impossible child slow down, dear. Anyway, did he live up to the hype? I just can’t find the time for men while having to raise Ricky, it’s such hard work.” Margaret howled in laughter at something Donna said, at the same time Ricky had just successfully tossed a rock at a rooster crossing his path. Encouraged by this response, he picked up another pebble and threw it at the bird. It crowed, inciting Ricky to run behind his mother’s legs. “See, honey, that’s why you need to be respectful,” Margaret explained. “Now, which way are the monkeys?”

“Polar bears! Already saw monkeys,” Ricky said matter-of-factly, wagging his little finger at his mother. “They’re this way!” He declared, and continued on his path, now avoiding the chickens.

In fact, the polar bears were not at all in the direction they were going, but every other animal imaginable seemed to be. Margaret tried her best to not actually look at any of them, but Ricky was fascinated and pulled at her pant leg until she paid attention. She was much more concerned with living her friend Donna’s life vicariously through the phone. Donna led such an interesting and exciting social life, one uncolored by an unplanned five year old.

“Unfortunately, Donna, Michael couldn’t take Ricky today—I know, I tried to explain to him that I had already made plans, but Michael insisted I take care of Ricky today. Something about not seeing me enough—no I don’t know what he’s doing today, probably spending it with that woman he’s been seeing. Oh yes she and Michael have been together for a year. Where he finds the time I have no idea—Ricky, stop here—OK, yes, I’ll see you then. Absolutely, tonight. Wine.”

Mother and son came across the lions, and Ricky had his face pressed against the glass. “Where’s the daddy?” He questioned.

“Letting the mommy do all the work, I’m sure,” Margaret answered. This was the first time she had actually looked at the animals—Donna had to go to a salon appointment—and she began to envy the lioness. Not so much because a lioness was accepted as the one who took on many of the responsibilities, but because if she was really frustrated with her cub, she could just tear it apart as she bathed it.

Ricky made his way over to a pile of freshly fallen leaves and began gathering them up, while his mother stared out into space. He hoisted his shirt collar over his head and began to stuff it with leaves. “Mommy, look at my mane!” he declared, and followed it up with a roar.

“It’s beautiful, honey.” She flicked on her lighter and inhaled deeply from her fresh cigarette, her eyes fixed blankly on the shuffling crowd and never actually passing over her son. Ricky stayed posed for his mother for a moment and then shook the leaves from his shirt. Margaret took a last look at the lions before turning to her son.

When she caught sight of Ricky again, he was wandering away from the lion exhibit.

“Gorilla!” the boy was amazed and ran over to the glass to get a look at the animal. “The big monkeys are my favorite. Why do they have hands for feet? Do they need to hold more bananas? How come they aren’t smart enough to talk? Joey told me that they are just like humans only not as smart.” Margaret exhaled a wisp of smoke from between her lips. “Do you think they can understand people talk?” Ricky continued. “BANANA!” he shouted at the glass, and pressed his nose right up against it. “Banana!” he screamed again.

“Ricky, be quiet, honey, we’re in public,” Margaret corrected, exhaustion clear in her voice. Ricky tore himself away from starting at the gorilla and ran to the elephants that he had just noticed.

“Ma’am, you can’t smoke that here,” someone behind Margaret spoke. She turned to look at the voice. He was young, maybe in his 20s, and was wearing the green employee polo. “You can’t smoke here, I need you to put the cigarette out.” Margaret stared at him for a moment, and let the cigarette fall from between her fingertips. With as much grandeur as she could muster, she turned on her heels and walked toward her son.

He was already bored with the elephants and was again running toward the lions. Margaret already missed her cigarette. She followed her son toward the lion exhibit, past the tigers, and they wound around the felines twice. “No polar bears,” Ricky declared sadly.

“Let’s have lunch, dear, I am starving.” Ricky looked up at his mother, pouting. “But I want to see polar bears!”

“We’ll find them after lunch, dear,” Margaret assured him in as motherly a voice as she was capable of.

“But I want to see the polar bears!” Ricky reminded more forcefully. Margaret stared at him, much as she had stared at the zoo employee that told her to put out the cigarette. “Fine, we’ll go find the polar bears.” Her lips were pierced together so tightly that if she had still been smoking she may have cut her cigarette clean in two. Ricky bounced up and down in excitement, and Margaret led him away. She took a last look at the big cats, and noticed the lioness holding the cub against the ground with one paw. “If only,” she thought.

Together they wound around the lake at the center of the zoo. All the while, Ricky attempted to get a good look at all the different animal exhibits, but Margaret was on a mission for polar bears. The boy did not seem to mind too much, though, and was enjoying his brief glimpses at so many different creatures. She looked at her watch. They had already been here an hour-and-a-half.

“Rhinosaurus!” he squealed, and squirmed out of Margaret’s grip. He ran over to the fence where the rhinoceros were gathered, and appeared to be eating. Ricky pointed his finger from his forehead and walked toward his mother, jabbing her in the leg with his faux-rhinoceros horn.

“See, even the rhinoceroses are eating, Ricky, we should be, too,” Margaret pointed out, apparently not even noticing she was being jabbed by her son. She stared at the horned creatures with much the same interest she had the lions, as if they were the first animals she had ever taken the time to look at. They seemed completely disinterested in the world around them, unconcerned with anything but their grass. Two stood side-by-side, apparently completely unaware that the other was there; completely focused on what they were doing at the moment.

Ricky had given up on his one-child stampede and looked past his mother. Behind her he saw on a nearby sign a drawing of a bear. “Bears!” He ran past his mother and pushed through the crowd.

Margaret turned slowly, and followed the general direction Ricky had taken off on. She found him a few moments later, staring through the glass at a swimming polar bear. Margaret leaned disinterestedly on an informational plaque. “Where do polar bears come from, mommy?” Ricky asked.

“I don’t know, honey,” she responded, idly fiddling with a pack of cigarettes she wished she could open. The polar bear floated toward the glass, and Ricky’s eyes widened in disbelief. Margaret tapped her fingers on the plaque she was leaning against. The bear seemed to look at the crowd for a moment, and then turned away just as suddenly. Ricky was either terrified or excited to have seen the animal so close. He turned to his mother in disbelief. Margaret was more concerned with the idea that they had even taken the time to look at the polar bear, and as far as she was concerned, the polar bear looking back at them was a silent agreement with her assessment.

The bear pressed its nose against the glass and Ricky was in the perfect position to have his small fingers up against its nose. Astonished, he banged as hard against the glass as he could. Margaret put a stop to that immediately. “You’re going to embarrass me,” she whispered. Ricky was not hindered by this turn of events. He pressed his lips against the glass. As he did so, the polar bear swam away and out of its pool.

“I scared it!” he declared. His mother glanced around to see if anyone was staring. Ricky pulled at her pant leg .

“What is it, honey?”

“I want to see the monkeys.”

“We saw the monkeys already, it’s time to go get food.”

“But I want to see the monkeys!”

“I told you after the polar bear we’d go get food. Didn’t you like seeing the polar bear?”

“Yeah, he looked right at us, it was so neat!” Ricky seemed so pleased with the last experience that he simply wandered off without any particular goal. Margaret took her opportunity and without saying anything further, led her son to the exit. He didn’t seem to mind, as he continued to chatter nonstop about the animals. The elephants had apparently sprayed each other with water. The monkeys were funny too, because they all jumped over one another, and apparently he had managed to see a peacock spread its feathers.

They were in the car and back on the road before Ricky seemed to notice they had even left. For a moment, Margaret was prepared to explain why it was time to leave, but Ricky began to talk nonstop again, and continued to do so until they had reached the suburbs.

The highway gave way to rows of identical houses. Manicured shrubbery and piles of bagged leaves framed the sidewalks. Middle-aged women tended to their dying flowers, and more than a few men were out mowing their lawns. Margaret pulled up to the driveway of a particularly well-kept house, one that still had green grass and not a single leaf on the lawn. She parked behind a slick, red Corvette that looked like it had just been washed. Margaret stepped out of her mid-90s brown and faded Escort and she and her son approached the door. She knocked and waited.

After a minute, she grew impatient and knocked again. Moments following, the door opened, and a visibly flustered man in his early 30s came to the door. “Margaret, what are you doing here? Is Ricky alright? I didn’t expect you back today, not this early at least.”

“We finished at the zoo, Michael. Right, honey?” Margaret responded. Ricky nodded absentmindedly, too involved in chewing on the french fries they had picked up from a fast food place to really have an answer.

“Did you have fun, Ricky?” Michael asked, and extended a hand to invite his son back inside.

“Yeah! A Polar bear looked right at us! Wasn’t it cool, mom?”

“It was very cool, dear,” Margaret responded.

“Why don’t you go inside, Ricky, I’ll be in with you in a minute, Laura’s in the kitchen baking a cake.” Ricky ran inside at the mention of cake, leaving Michael and Margaret alone to talk. “You were supposed to spend the day with him.”

“I was supposed to spend time with him. And we did! He’s wanted to go to the zoo for a long time, and I promised him I would take him, we had a great time.” Michael rubbed his temples in frustration, but Margaret was sincere.

“We had a great time,” she repeated.