What just happened? One minute I was scrolling on my desktop, the next the screen went black. I realize this could mean I won't be able to work. I am trying a reboot now. But the harddrive might be dead. What if it is? Shit. I've never experienced this before. How will I survive offline? Off Line?! Disconnected. No longer on the team. But there are expectations. I have to read the Highline Document and produce the sequence code for Len. Len's going to be pissed. I wonder if the coffee is still hot. Maybe I'll go for a walk.
daily fiction took a stumble, broke some bones, went to the hospital, was given drugs, took the drugs, fell asleep, woke up in worse pain than daily fiction had ever known, slurred to the person in the next bed over, watched the person shrug and push the nurse’s alert button, accepted the nurse as competent while he tucked the wool blanket around daily fiction’s sore feet, saw the way the cotton crumpled between the nurse’s legs as he walked away, waited while the doctor checked boxes on the forms, let the wheels roll down the hallway, and was granted love.
The midnight walkway is vacant but for two men. One wears a green print polyester-blend button-down shirt and white slacks, the other wears a tight black polyester-blend knit v-neck and jeans. They don’t make eye contact. They pass each other. The night lit neon makes steady pulse. Cars wait at stop lights, blinkers, headlamps, slick shine of chrome rims. It is a long way before they each reach their destinations. One man wishes he the other would turn around. He thinks it would be nice to kiss the man in the black shirt. The other man has only one thought.
The alley is lined with motorbikes: red, yellow, blue, silver, hard coated paint on Japanese scooters. Every day I come home to more water in the house. I don’t understand how the roof went so fast. I can’t handle dumping the plastic basin. Instead I make pancakes and eat while watching television. Some flunky kid is singing a Deanna Durbin song with no conviction, not even the sweetness of Durbin, like he never heard the original, like he doesn’t know Deanna Durbin from Doris Day. I wonder how many times I’ve insulted someone informed by not knowing what I’m doing
In the movie, he wakes up with a sore arm. He can hardly move. His mother takes him to a priest. The priest uses a miniature chair and dances it across a table, spelling out words another man reads. The priest doesn’t wear a shirt. The table is scuffed from the writing. The mother drinks water and the son doesn’t tell her he was in a movie, acting dead, floating in a contaminated river. His father gives watermelon to a repair man when his wife isn’t looking. There is a leak in the bedroom. Buckets of water have dripped in.
But they didn’t leave. “Look at that!” “And she told me.” “What did you do?” “I never thought it would be like that!” “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Promises made and broken in an instant and Carmichael began to think he should join them. Maybe they had hotdogs. Maybe they would tell him a joke he could repeat to Ray and then Ray would be his friend all the time. Carmichael dropped from the tree and brushed his pants off. On the road, he knew he would never fit in. He felt certain that his life may as well be over.
Their noise reminded Carmichael he was alone. His butt felt cold on the tree, the damp was seeping in, his feet ached, toes frozen, and he felt foolish looking around, watching birds sitting watching him, the tide going out, leaving behind its smell, those kids cracking jokes he didn’t understand so that he felt he was eavesdropping when he was the one who was always there, not them, and there was nothing he could do about any of it. He cursed them, he imagined them exploding, catching fire, realizing it was useless, because they would die soon enough, and leaving.
How’d that happen? Carmichael thought he was the only person to know how to get to this section of beach besides Ray. But there it was; a bonfire with older kids, high schoolers, laughing and crushing cans of grape soda in shows of strength. Carmichael pretended they weren’t there. They kept laughing, occasionally a girl squealed and Carmichael heard her feet scattering rocks as she tried to lung away from one of the guys. The guys said things like, “Watch this,” and, “You gotta know about.” “When you look at it this way,” one said. Carmichael tried not to hear.
Ducks are oily, he thought, they have hollow bones, or was that birds that fly, or wait, ducks fly, so they have hollow bones. I don’t remember having eaten duck but maybe I have. I wonder if I liked it. Maybe Mom remembers. Dad says he likes duck. He used to hunt them. All the ducks are in the Harbor. Just gulls out today. There’s a sandpiper there. I hear a woodpecker in the forest. I wonder what a mocking bird sounds like. Carmichael felt cold wind through the hole in his sole and thought about his parents’ usual reaction.
The next morning Carmichael was woken by the sound of the lawnmower. Carmichael shrugged on his jacket and looked out the window, rain. Not enough to stop a good Washingtonian but still raining. The mountains locked the rain to the Sound. Carmichael decided to go to the waterfront. Rain splashed down his collar from tree branches, huge drops that soaked through his shirt and clammed his neck. Being in the rain mattered little to Carmichael. Once on the beach he sat on the fallen tree trunk and watched the birds. He wondered what it would be like as a duck.
Ray argued the point. He said that was the whole point of a super power – to change. He grumbled that Carmichael was afraid of his own skin. To be a super hero a person has to be comfortable enough to accept himself however he appears. Carmichael hated Ray for saying it. One friend was all he needed. But Carmichael knew Ray wasn’t really his friend. Ray would only talk to him when Ray had no one else. Of course Ray wouldn’t mind if he changed, he already was changeable to suit his needs at the cost of a true friendship.
He wished he had super powers. What kid doesn’t? Super hearing, super strength. But he didn’t want to transform. He hated that the Silver Surfer was silver. He didn’t like when Batman put on his suit. Why, thought Carmichael, did Hulk have to be Hulk? They start out normal, they start out average, but then they change into something they aren’t. Carmichael decided if he stepped in toxic waste or was bit by something powerful or simply woke up with powers, he would not let himself change. He would rather not have powers than have to transform to use them.
Number One issues were always prized. Carmichael overheard as much said by the older kids, the kids with money, the kids whose parents didn’t mind them buying comic books, kids with allowances. Carmichael wished he had an allowance. He had asked his dad once and his dad said, “You’ll get an allowance the day you get to work around here.” Carmichael tried to prove his worth by doing dishes and cleaning the fireplace but it wasn’t enough. His mother said, “We just can’t afford it right now.” So Carmichael stopped doing chores and went back to walking and reading comics.
He was beyond reading the text. Carmichael loved the illustration, the lines, the ka-pow and lightning bolts of revelation and pain. The coloring was printed off line, image blurred against the color match, spots matrix to the left of proper and that, too, made the art fascinating. Carmichael knew people in the city kept their comics in plastic slip covers. If he lived in the city he’d use covers, he’d catalog his comics in special boxes with alphabetical dividers, and he’d get a job so he could buy subscriptions, buy every comic he ever wanted, including number ones.
“You get the lawnmower fixed?” Carmichael’s father asked. “Did it give you trouble?” “Not any more than you do.” They smiled, some recognition of years together, an understanding Carmichael tried to ignore. Carmichael took his plate to the sink, his parents stayed at the table, not noticing his departure for what he could tell, and he went to his room. He lifted his mattress and pulled out a comic book, not Richie Rich, not Fantastic Four, not Spiderman. The comic was worn. The cover had been folded back too many times and nearly ripped as Carmichael opened it to study it again.
Carmichael’s father and mother sat across from each other not talking, the sound of dinner, the way his father held his breath when he bit down, the way his mother licked her lips after every bite, the tink of flatware hitting Goodwill ceramic plates with mismatched decorative trim. Carmichael tried to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t want to add to the noise. There was some pleasure to listening to his parents’ routine sounds, also, too, the satisfaction in knowing he drew no attention. Invisible, he could almost not be there at all and, in not being there, happy.
He kept having to sniffle as he watched his mother chop sweet potato and line it in a glass baking pan. She tossed a bag of marshmallows at him, “Open these.” He tore the bag with his teeth and sniffled, quickly plucking a mallow from the bag. “Don’t spoil your appetite.” She took the bag and dumped half the contents on the sweet potato and shoved the pan in the oven. “I can’t wait,” said Carmichael, drumming his fingers on the counter. “What else?” his mother asked absently while perusing the fridge. “Tuna melts?” “Go ask your father first, kiddo.”
Without the mower the blackberries would eventually strap over the roof and take the house down with purple pulp. Carmichael’s dad devoted days to chopping them back, using the mower like the rich folks hired men to use weed-whackers, leaning back to leverage the heavy machine over the vines. Carmichael would eventually be handed this task. His back would ache at night, his bed with the pressboard plank frame would become more comfortable than he could imagine and Carmichael would begin spending his leisure time reading with blankets up to his chin, cozy and ignoring the world, but not yet.
Leverage was difficult with his mother holding the mower up but Carmichael pulled. The mower sputtered. “Maybe it’s fuel?” he asked. “You don’t think I didn’t check that?” “I dunno.” “Try again, kid.” He pulled the line and the motor took hold. His mother’s stance was tilted with a smile and she bonked her fist against his shoulder like they were war buddies, survivors of the mower. “Turn it off before it sucks all the gas,” she said. “I’ll fix you up something good. How’s that sound?” “Fried Baloney?” He shoved the mower to the blackberry side of the house.
Dirt crunched under his shoes but his mom didn’t look up from her job. “Mom,” said Carmichael. “What you need?” “You fix dinner yet?” His mother fitted the top of the mower and pushed the machine at him as though she was going to roll him over. “Try this, will ya. I can’t stand to have it not work again.” Carmichael slipped the plastic pull in his palm and yanked, yanked, yanked and the motor turned restless. “Damn,” she said and tipped the nose of the mower to look underneath. “I’m going to hold it up and you try again.”
Carmichael wished Ray had let him play video games instead of leaving him to walk home and see Jeremiah on the hill, the conceit that Ray could change Carmichael’s path. As he walked to the house he saw the driveway was littered with lawnmower parts. His mom was running a rag over the thing that turned the belt that made the blade spin. Her hair was curling out of a banana clip and her apron cinched the rolls of her stomach as she crouched to the mower and tightened the metal thing into place and looped the belt over it.
Jeremiah was spitting loogies across the street and the other kids were waiting to try and beat his distance. Jeremiah’s technique was to lean back with his fists clenched at his waist, he’d inhale deep, scrape up a wad of phlegm, tongue it to his teeth and purse his lips and, as he lunged forward, hurtling air and spit. “Huhwah” was the sound he made when he thought he didn’t spit far enough. Carmichael had practiced alone but could never spit so far as across the street. The other boys all hocked loogies but none went as far as Jeremiah.
The streets on the island were few, a handful of long, winding roads that intersected only when necessary for residents to survive. The road passing Carmichael’s house started at one side of the island, ascended a hill, was intersected by a main road, descended and doing so forked into Marina Drive and Bay Road. Jeremiah and his posse of dirty middle schoolers were walking across the fork, flashy new sedans roared around them, traveling too fast to slow in time but agile enough with the latest engineering to swerve smoothly. Carmichael saw the boys and was sure they saw him.
“Tuna melts, I think.” “Do you have the Mario Brothers?” “No. I asked for it for Christmas.” “Can I come play?” Ray scowled. They had reached his driveway, a long, coniferous tree-lined dirt road the roped curves and hills to his house. “Not today.” Carmichael shook the domino box and, in a tone of differential carelessness said, “I mean when you get the game.” “I guess.” Carmichael used to follow Ray home for dinner and games but Ray’s parents made Ray stop it. Ray didn’t like Carmichael to recognize him at school, either. Now, friends by and for convenience only.
The dominoes rattled in the box as Carmichael hiked the path to the road behind Ray. When they reached the road Carmichael asked, “Now what are you doing?” Ray shrugged. “I gotta go home, I guess.” If they were in the city Carmichael would ask Ray to play more but living on the island there wasn’t much else to do. “Are you going to play Atari?” asked Carmichael. “Maybe,” said Ray, “Mom wants me to study for school.” Carmichael stalled. He followed Ray in the gravel along the road, “What’s for dinner?” Ray always knew things like dinner in advance.
“You have apples?” “No, I mean, the apples on the island.” “Oh.” The beach leveled and water rode over it almost to the cliff and the boys jumped through the thin lick of water, splashing at a flock of sandpipers and sending them to the air for a moment. The sandpipers snapped into the sky, circled, and landed in unison like a sheet whipped from a line and falling to a lawn. Carmichael worried he disturbed the birds, worried they already pulled food from the area they were in, worried birds would always fly away though he didn’t mean harm.
“When you catch a fish, you remember what I told you. Fish food: people, kittens, your shit you flush, all that crap and flesh, fish food.” “We should get,” said Carmichael before jumping from the tree. His breath was blown on landing and his feet stung from impact, hundreds of pointy rocks and barnacles jabbing through the thin rubber soles. “Yeah,” Ray picked his steps around certain rocks, directed toward the old cement dock. “What if the ferry still ran?” asked Carmichael. “We’d be rich,” said Ray. “My dad says so.” “Really?” “Sure. City folks would come for our apples.”
“If I get married,” Ray offered, “I won’t cry.” He held a seaweed whip and cracked it against a toppled fir tree. Carmichael walked the wet tree like a tightrope until it submerged in the Sound. The tide was coming in. They had about twenty minutes to get back up the hill or they would be trapped by water. Carmichael knew they could shin up the cliff banking the beach. His grandpa had told him how a person drowns and turns into fish food then the fish gets caught on a hook and taken home, flayed and fried for dinner.
Gulls canted overhead. A teen on a jet ski whooped at girls basking at the point around the bend of the island, out of sight for Carmichael and Ray but they knew the girls were there, the girls were always there, all summer into the fall, until the sun was gone and the Sound grew breezy with the Pineapple Express. A domino slipped from Carmichael’s fingers and knocked the start of a run, pieces crashed into each other and Carmichael looked on dejected. “Now you gotta do it again,” laughed Ray. “Shut up,” said Carmichael. He flicked the other dominoes.
“My momma,” said Ray, “was saying we oughta stay out of war.” A larger crab, still no bigger than Ray’s thumb, snipped at him as he stirred wet granular dirt. The crab moved behind a good skipping stone, slipping under until Ray’s hand lifted the rock. Fists raised, the crab motioned at Ray but Ray was bored and let the rock drop. “What do you think?” asked Ray. “Dunno,” said Carmichael, “I wish we lived in New York.” As though New York were impervious, as though people in New York didn’t talk of war. “Are you going back?” Carmichael squinted.
Ray brushes the seat of his tan pants before he sits on a round, chipped rock. His pants remind Carmichael of an old man, the seam where the zipper ends points down, exaggerating his crotch, and the knees are stained. Ray loved to play marbles. Carmichael talks while he arranges the pieces. “My dad says there’s going to be a war in Nicaragua. The terrorists are going to get it and we’re who’s gonna give it to them because everyone else is too chicken shit.” Ray lifts a rock and sticks his finger into the crabs, crushing a spotted baby.
Carmichael will never realize this. He’ll shake the older man’s hand all the while admiring the not-boyfriend’s ability to smile and gain the older man’s trust, enough trust, anyway, to induce the older man into letting the not-boyfriend take the sail boat any day he felt like it. On that day, when Carmichael is twenty seven, Carmichael will decide he is not an ass kisser, no matter the perks, though he will watch the not-boyfriend closely to make sure he knows what ass kissers, generally speaking, Do. Carmichael, setting dominoes on the beach, doesn’t know what an ass kisser is.
Seeing the supplication in my eyes she lifted up the thick dirty-gray shawl with the air of a benefactress. "Three months." The first thing they tell of a child is its age. The little worm very leisurely wrinkled its forehead of peeling satin and stretched itself, opened two rather glassy eyes encircled by mauve, and let out its guttural wail through a toothless aperture upholstered with flesh. The provident mother had already pulled a rubber pacifier out of her pocket, which transformed the wail into a monotonous greedy gurgle.
"Will you be quiet! They're an awful trouble. You'll see," she declared, gauging my heavy figure. "I had bad luck, I had no milk. No use giving him gravy or bread soaked and boiled. He doesn't get any good out of them. If you think you can fatten them on the doctor's fine words, as if the doctors even know what they're talking about!"
"I believe you!" bawled a big blonde. The baby which she had a triumphant way of carrying had hanging cheeks and bottle-blue eyes in buttonhole slits. "Just look at mine. At nine months it ate like us. What do you say to that, eh?"
A group gathered.
"What are you here for then?" asked a huge creature with a gray ogress head, high cheekbones and skin streaked with fine veins. The blonde turned her baby over and showed its chubby flesh covered with a crusty, scabby, red-streaked sheath.
"Oh, only this." The ogress dropped into an empty place on the bench and paraded her darling on her knees.
Title: Woman
By
Magdeleine Marx.
Translated by Adele Szold Seltzer.
Published 1920.
posted by Julie at 
