Stories to Tell

We recreate the world we believe already exists; stories offer alternatives.

Short Stories

Page contents:


"Codes" (short story in full)

"The Gazebo" (short story in full)

"Distance" (short story in full)


Codes

A short story by Kate Sheckler


Honorable Mention in QWF/CBC short story contest, published in Minority Report, Vehicule Press


My mother, who gardened her way through the world trailing flower beds in her wake like a brides train, schooled me in the catechism of verdant life. For her, each leaf was a dialogue, each blossom a tale, and upon these scrolls were cross written in Victorian splendor all the secrets of the earth. I did not value this knowledge. So, while my mother taught me that delphiniums were far reaching yet delicate, and must be supported; that mundane dishwater and elitist roses were the perfect match; that daffodils, although brave, were importunate and would take a mile when offered an inch; I longed for other secrets. And although I was practiced in the correct mode of behavior for interacting with a peony, the information that I needed was in the codes and rules of engagement by which humans relate to one another. For me, the ciphers that mattered were those of synapse and desire, electrical epiphanies that motivated human aspiration, the impulses that powered the heart and mind of a human being. I needed to know why we love and hate, why a mother stays with her child, or leaves it behind, why one man dives into icy water to save a stranger and another refuses to care for his father in illness. It was all well and good to know that a willow will choose a reed for a companion, but useless when what I wanted to know was who would choose me.

So when I left home at 21 - left the garden and by default my mother - I considered myself as an orphan in the storm, a wild child who'd had no one to teach her the language. Caught up in the need to understand the rules of the land that were innate to the most foolish passerby, I rushed forward, lapping up the words, involving myself in everyone - except my mother. In her I perceived no mysteries, and tossed into a drawer the packages of seeds and pressed flowers that arrived between the blank pages of cards without even a "Love Mother" scrawled across the bottom. Insatiable, but learning fast, I chose to spend my life in a sea of words and people, messy and inaccurate, clinging to a firm belief that if the correct words were chosen and offered all secrets would become clear, communication would occur.

I live with a man who, like me, feels that if enough words are employed. . . tossed. . . battered against one another, progress will be made. Our fights, discussions, wars all occur through words, as does our intimacy. Even when most physically entwined, it is my name breathed soft that thrills me, brings me home to my husband whose body presses me into the images of flowers in which our bed is dressed, our home is swathed. For, although I have left my mother behind, the flowers haunt me still, and despite my flight from that wordless garden, some part of my self rebels. It must be so, for even now, with purposeful years and miles between me and my mother's overeager greenery, each choice I make, each room I dress is filled, not with flowers themselves, but with their images, their ghosts. When asked, I respond that I do not like flowers, that I find them obvious, too gaudy and unsubtle. I do not like flowers - yet each time I choose them. Perhaps I have been preparing for Harriet.

Harriet has no words. No. I exaggerate - as those who love words more than accuracy often do - but Harriet has taught me accuracy. My daughter does have words, but the words she possesses are utilitarian, functional, flat. She is, however, like everyone else, surrounded by them, her world defined and colored by their syllables, barricaded by a fence constructed of such disquieting words as: developmental disorder - syndrome - autism. And although an unexpected touch to her body will cause her to leap away with a scream, lashing out, her hand striking hard at the face or chest of the offender, the words with which we try to reach her glance off that towering construction to leave her untouched and without contact. While we attempt to build bridges of meaning, Harriet turns away, uninterested in making the voyage across. Only the flowers connect.

Harriet has always loved the flowers, spent hours stroking and rubbing their images on couch and bed, kissing the painting that hangs in her bedroom, rolling on the bouquet at the center of the carpet. By the time she was three we no longer went to the park, knowing that any bed of blossoms would be uprooted by soil encrusted hands and ardor. Nothing so delicate as a bud could survive my child's passion, and because the need was so large we were told to remove the source, told that her frenzy was incorrect, that it did damage. So, we offered her pale phantoms and grieved as she flailed. At 10 Harriet had not advanced.

When it happened, it was heralded by our own anger bursting forth on a day when we had been unkind - not cruel, but stupid - a day when we had insisted (as we had been taught) that our daughter use our methods, our language, our means. We had been furious when, one more time, compliance was not achieved. She had run from us then, her shriek high-pitched, lacking in definition but filled - overflowing - with content. When I found her, she was hidden, shut away in the dark, dry-eyed and breathless as she rocked; my lovely words were futile. The coaxing, the pleading, the whining: all to no avail, so in the end I crawled inside to sit next to my daughter in her closed, black space. It was only then - there in that wordless cupboard - that I noticed the flowers, the packets and dried petals I had discarded. All those envelopes mailed - sent out into the empty universe in hopes that they would reach me. All those love notes that I could not interpret between the fingers and spread across the lap of my child. I was careful not to wet them when I cried.

Harriet lives with my mother. Together they work the garden, side by side, with the correct number of inches between them. And I, who could not leave this place too quickly, have had to learn to school myself to moderation in my returns - must be careful to remember not to come too often. When I do visit, I have learned to sit at a distance, calm, not unhappy, as I watch them weed and dig and plant, leaving space between the seedlings, room for each to be what it must.



The Gazebo

A short story by Kate Sheckler


Published in The Canadian Authors' Asscociation Anthology


"Marie Josee Gagnon? Ou est la maison de Marie Josee Gagnon?"

The man behind the counter gazes at Harriet with an uncomprehending stare - not hostile, but blank. Either he doesn't know, or Harriet's French is worse than she thinks. Shifting Lily so that she rests more fully in the crook of her arm, Harriet looks around the depanneur. Typical, it offers the usual variety of instant coffee (mini jars, neatly stacked), canned soups (3cans of each, red labels, yellow labels turned out for display), beer and junk food. There hasn't seen a grocery store since St Agathe, 40 minutes back. Where do these people shop? Surely they need something other than beer and canned soup?

A chortle and coo, and Harriet glances down to collect a smile from the tiny girl in her arms. She's been a surprise, this good-tempered baby, all patience and smiles, with her huge, brown eyes full of intimate affection and complicity. Laura had been a lovely baby too, but more difficult, demanding attention, whereas Lily simply collects the attention she requires - there is no need for demands. Lily is impossible to resist, and so Harriet must smile back despite the knot of worry that sits in her stomach - a lump of undigested business, a tangle of syllables that have been left unsaid. Lily is one of the reasons that Harriet is here. The nonnegotiable necessity that had leant power to Marie Josee's request, her voice thin and breathless - "Mais petite soeur, I haven't seen the baby. It would be wonderful if you could come."

Petite soeur - it's what Marie Josee has called her from the beginning, as if their relationship has not been based on business - as if from the start they shared something different than the simple passage of money and goods. And there is something different, something more between them - Harriet just doesn't know what that something is, doesn't understand why Marie Josee has loved her so. They are so very far apart. Harriet, well educated and from a stuffy English background, had chosen her career - her business - despite a family who disapproves, but Marie Josee had fallen into it. Divorce, young children, abusive men, little education - all of these had made it necessary for Marie Josee to find her own way - some way - to make money. And so she has plied her needles to support those boys whose appetites grew with their bodies and still return home to "borrow" some desperately needed cash. Harriet can always tell when the boys have been in touch.

"May I do a little extra this week, ma petite soeur?" The words had always been a sure sign there had been a call from one of the "garcons."

"A phone - c'est possible? - vous avez un telephone?" The man behind the counter sighs. This he understands, and - not unkind, he nods and swings the phone around, holding it still so that Harriet can dial the old rotary model without disturbing the baby.

"Marie Josee?"

The voice on the other end of the line is thinner yet. "Petite soeur! Ou est tu?"

"I'm in a depanneur in St Calumet. But how do I get to you?"

The instructions had been sketchy at best. Come to St Calumet, Claude would come and get them, bring them to Marie Josee.

This situation - isolated and bizarre - is new. Up until a year ago Marie Josee had lived like everyone else, in an apartment, in a building, on a street where, when necessary, Harriet could find her. It was only after Claude had appeared that things had changed. Only after Claude, that miracle, that late true love had arrived - Claude, who had seemed so different from the other boyfriends, those men who drove taxis and slept in and left bruises - had Marie Josee started talking of moving back, moving north, owning horses, land, something. Her eyes had lit each time she had spoken of the possibility, had glowed with the final decision. And after the move she had been so happy, the lines of her face smoothed away each time Harriet had seen her on those the trips into town to deliver work, trips that had slowed to once a month by the end of those first six months. They had stopped entirely with the news of the cancer.

"Mais petite soeur, Claude is not back. I'm here alone."

Her voice is soft, raspy, breathless, and Harriet says hurriedly in an attempt to ease that painful wisp, "Maybe I can get there on my own."

There is a pause before the voice comes again. "There are no signs petit soeur, just a track; left off the main road and then through the gap in the trees." Down a track, through a gap, into a hidden valley - who lives like this? - ridiculous. But what option is there. Another glance around the store. Linoleum and shelving, there is nowhere to be.

"I'll find you." She says goodbye, thanks the man behind the counter and exits into the bright autumnal sunshine.

The light through the red and orange leaves is so bright she must pause, adjusting her vision before turning the car out onto the street. It is one of those falls in which the colors are like wet paint splashed - finger-painted onto the landscape, yet Harriet barely notices, cannot forget the strangeness of the situation, cannot fail to notice the knot in her stomach, the sense of removal from all that is familiar. She is not good at this.

If only it were the same as before. If only Marie Josee lived on Dupont Street still. If there was no Claude, no valley, no horses. . . no cancer. Dashing beneath a row of trees, the dappled and bright golden light brings tears to Harriet's eyes. It had been on an October day too when Marie Josee had announced the move, stood smiling with Claude behind her, big, dark, impassive, and Harriet had (after a moment) felt she must smile back, congratulate the two of them on the choice, despite the foreboding, the worry.

There is a track to the left - Maybe? Harriet hesitates; turns the car. She can always back out.

She is not good at these things. Illness makes her uncomfortable, has caused her to fail more than one friend, disappoint more than one relative. It's not death that she fears, but the intimate, unspoken knowledge that comes with it. What is there to say? And how do you leave? End it? Walk away when likely there will be no next conversation? No next chat about the boys, the baby. No boxes of baking exchanged. No hand against her cheek. No Marie Josee. . . Harriet grips the steering wheel, the knuckles of her hand white. The track bumps and winds over the uneven ground, and the landscape - the colors - close in as she wends through a gap in a hedgerow.

On the other side and slightly below is a perfect bowl of a valley, tiny, suspended, as if a hammock slung from the tops of the three miniature mountains that surround it. Each is alight with festoons of color that seem closer yet, no distant landscape now - no mere photo op that presses at the sides of Harriet's peripheral vision - the tiny mountains strut their party clothes, cavorting with the breeze. The gold and red swirl, enclose, encircle, color the very air. With her involuntary intake of breath, Harriet can almost taste the rich soup that is autumn in this place. Pulling away from the row of trees that make up the hedgerow, the gap closes behind, shutting her in, and before her there is an old and very small trailer next to a newly built barn. Opening the door of the car, the only sound is the distant honk of geese, the snort and thump of a grazing horse.

Lily has fallen asleep, but still Harriet feels the baby must not be left in the car . . . not even here - especially not here. She doesn't stir as Harriet lifts her, adjusting the soft head against shoulder. The trailer sits, bleak and rusted, nearly dismantled. "Hello?" The door swings outward, and the interior is worse than she could have imagined. Appalling - the thought of Marie Josee, sick and dying, here in this dark and cluttered room. But she isn't here. At second glance it is clear that if anyone ever lived here, it's been many months abandoned and now is more of a storage shed than a home. Broken chairs, cheap furniture, boxes filled with detritus - no one. Stepping back out into the brilliance, Harriet must squint and consequently, it takes a moment before she notices the structure behind and set off from this little cluster.

A gazebo.

It's what Marie Josee had said she always wanted. "Un belvedere - a gazebo, like ma mere. We would sit and sew and sometimes eat there. That is what I want again, mon petite soeur, a gazebo, where you and I will work together in the sunshine. That is why I'm moving."

Unlike the other buildings, the gazebo is finished. Beautiful. Ornately carved vines, climb the posts at each of the eight corners. The paint, a soft combination of greens and golds, is so fresh it still exudes a faint scent. But it is not a gazebo - not a true gazebo - for the arches between those lovingly crafted shafts are glassed in - secured, out of reach of the winds.

With carefully placed feet, so as not to wake Lily who still sleeps against her shoulder, Harriet walks through the golden grass of the pasture, spotted with the fallen confetti of autumn.

"Marie Josee?"

She hasn't knocked for fear of disturbing, and so the face from the bed looks up with surprise - and joy - without which Harriet would not recognize the wasted features and pale skin. Marie Josee had never been hale, but her rangy body had been somehow permanent, not like this ethereal frame that barely lifts the covers of the bed set in the center of the room. If one would call it a room, for it is indeed a gazebo. Enclosed, and warmed by a small stove set to the side, the walls of glass, so clean as to be almost invisible, seem no barrier at all, the railing that forms the bottom section reminiscent of bandstands and clandestine meetings of lovers. This is not a "room"; rather, it is a protected portion of the valley - a place of fair sunshine and liquid color - an enchanted bed placed in the center of a magic meadow. The stuff of fairytales.

"Petite soeur." Marie Josee's face, shards of bone under a covering shroud, is the stuff of nightmares.

"Oh Marie Josee!" Harriet is terrible at this, is frozen with horror, is sure that her face displays all those things she must not say. She needs to cry out, to run from this remnant of her friend, but Lily stops her. For it is Lily who wakes with a rumble and stir; Lily who makes her noises that mimic the sounds always claimed for but never realized by other babies, the "goo goo, ga ga" Harriet has never heard from any child but this new being she is still getting to know - who keeps Harriet from running away.

"Oh petite soeur - the baby!" and Marie Josee - for it is Marie Josee - holds out arms that she can barely lift from the bed. Lily smiles, first at her mother and then at this stranger with the wasted face - but not a stranger - another person who will love her.

Laying the baby carefully in the crook of her friends arm, pillows carefully piled to support the weight, Harriet sits back to watch the two before her - so different. Plump and fresh, pale and used the faces interact, conspire at love and seem to share some knowledge Harriet has no access to. As the two in the bed murmur, the colors flow in through those glass walls, reflect off white painted ceiling and floors, fill the space with joy so tangible she could put out a hand, press against it, rub it between her fingers. Harriet can feel it against the skin of her face, soft against her eyelids as she sits, finally finished with the worry of the day. When Marie Josee and Lily have done with their meeting it is alright - it is just Marie Josee who Harriet loves and can sink into conversation with, can lean back in this room of leaves and sunshine and exchange stories and affection as the minutes slide by, the baby sleeps, the light deepens.

"Ah ma belle - she found you - the petite soeur."

The deep voice surprises the two of them, but doesn't wake Lily. Claude stands in the doorway, smelling of woods and cold. He wipes his feet on the mat that Harriet hadn't noticed and steps to the other side of the bed to lay a hand against Marie Josee's sunken cheek. When Marie Josee reaches up to press that huge hand closer still, Harriet must look away, must pretend the baby needs her attention, must not intrude.

Claude's chat is light, engaging: it is the day for the nurse who will be here soon; Jako, the horse, misses Marie Josee, and Claude will lead him over later in the day; today is the day when Marie Josee must eat an omelet - just a small one with fresh herbs that are a gift from Madame Roy from down the road. His voice fills the air - an accompaniment to the sunshine. And Harriet is surprised that it seems so familiar. Never before had the this man seemed anything but a threat - before, that voice had seemed dark, full of the unknown and endings. Not like now when it lights the room. Effortlessly, the voice lifts their spirits and carries the minutes along until it is time to go.

So the tears are a surprise. They glitter in the fading light as Claude stands by the car - slide down his cheeks to disappear in the dark, thick beard, and Harriet, who is so very bad at this, is amazed when she finds her fingers reaching up to take his hand, press it in her own, leave a kiss on his bearded face before passing out through that hedgerow into the common colors of the world.


Distance

A short story by Kate Sheckler


Published in Cahoots Magazine


It's here in this restaurant that I think of her the most. That surprised me a bit. I've worked in a lot of restaurants over the years and, although she's always with me, it's never been like this before, what with me seeing her just as if she was really here - right there in front of me every time I turn around. Of course, seeing her here - she doesn't look the way I saw her last. In this place I see her like she must be now; she's tall, I think, and blond for sure, what with his hair and mine. She's pretty too, at least she comes to me now looking real pretty, but I guess that might be wishful thinking. Well, wishful thinking or not, for me she's pretty as any picture I've ever seen, with none of my sharp bones, but maybe my blue eyes.

"That's two enchiladas Verde, Rico, and could I please get a side of rice with that?"

It's funny that now I'm up north I'm working in a Mexican place. I never did before - even with all those southern towns I've lived in - but, now that I've left Texas and New Mexico behind, here I am smack dab in the middle of enchiladas and tacos. Maybe that's why I'm thinking of her now. Maybe because of all these damn sombreros all over the walls. Makes me think of Texas. But probably not. It's probably just because of the girls.

"Bobby, honey, I need a couple of Marguerites, both frozen, one with salt."

The manager of this place tends to hire only young girls - God knows why he hired me - and used as I am to working with a lot of females, most times there's at least a few my age. Not these girls - they're as fluffy as chicks. It makes me feel like some kind of mother hen. The oldest ones are a good 10 years younger than me, and the youngest are the same age she would be now, and - come to think of it - there's not so many years between 'em.

There's this one - Lucy, who looks just the way I picture her looking - just the way I see her. But I would have named her Carrie. They didn't want me to name her, though - said it would do me no good, said that I would get attached and muddy the water in some sort of emotional way. Well, I could have told them, I was attached the moment I looked into her eyes and, in a way, not getting to name her hurt most of all - felt like I couldn't give her anything. I guess it's only fair, when after all, I couldn't give her a home. If I had raised her, she would have been 'Carrie.'

"Are you folks ready? Now before we get started I've just got to tell ya'll about how good the Chili Rellenos are today. You might want to consider them while you're doing your choosing."

I thought about it. I thought about raising her on my own - cause of course, he was long gone by the time I delivered - but I was a baby myself and even then I knew I wasn't about to stay put. But I thought about it - thought about packing her into some kind of backpack and taking her with me. Maybe if I had, she would have grown up special, as it would have been a special sort of life, free and free thinking. Maybe it would have been a good thing - me as a mother. Maybe. . .

"Watch that tray, Lucy, honey. You got it okay now? You better keep your other hand on it, baby, 'til you got the hang of it."

Well. . .probably not. My life's been fine for me and all, but it was no kind of life for a baby. I must have lived in nearly 20 towns in these 20 years and, for sure, that's not a life for a little girl.

I used to imagine her being raised by some perfect mom and dad in some perfect house somewhere; at first it made me feel good, like I had done the right thing. Now when I think of her coming from that kind of place, all I can think of is that I would have nothing to say to her, nor her to me, and that's just plain sad. After all, say what you like, she's part of me. I know that it's loving and caring that binds people together, but maybe other things do too. You're always hearing about how some set of twins that got separated meet and are just alike: married to the same kind of guy, doing the same job, living lives that are too much alike to be any kind of coincidence. Well if that could be true then couldn't she and I be bound up in some way?

"Lucy, sweetie, let me help you with that. You're about to drop it all over the floor, girl. There now, that's better."

You know, Lucy could be my daughter. . .she could. When I look at her lately she's been reminding me of someone, and just yesterday I realized that it's him. She looks sort of like him around the chin and through the eyes, so it's possible. Really - it could be.

I've been feeling lately like I might be getting ready to leave (it comes on real sudden sometimes) and what I'll miss about this place is Lucy and seeing her - my girl - everywhere I turn. And I've been thinking that maybe I'll just pretend that Lucy is mine. Not that she should know any such thing - it's better not - but it might be sort of comforting to think of her - pretty and happy and moving out into her own life and here in this restaurant where I'll know what she's doing - know how her days are spent. It would be a comfort, like having this notebook in my pocket to write things down in. Yes. . . I might just do that.

You know, I had a thought about love just the other day, 'cause despite not getting much of it in my life - despite those ugly days when I'd swear the world has no spot in it for me - I think that I am sort of okay. It doesn't make sense that I would be okay - not with the things I've seen - but there it is - or - there I am. . . okay. So I was thinking about just why that might be, and here's what I came up with: all my life, even though I've never been with her, I have loved that baby girl of mine; I have thought about her; I have carried her with me in my heart and in my brain, and, even though I handed her away a minute or so after she was born, she is the biggest thing that ever happened to me. So here's the thing - maybe you can replace getting love with giving it. Maybe loving somebody - even somebody who isn't there - can act like some kind of anchor in a life. Maybe giving love makes you just as fine a person as anything else might.

Next

Joe Blown

A novel by Kate Sheckler


Chapter 1

People talk about what's in a name. Some people claim that the name is the essence, others that the essence decides the name, and still others that the name is beside the point: a rose by any other name - and all that jazz. Some think that you live up to your name and others say your name's your destiny. Now that one's always bugged me because it sure sounds like predetermination, and who could believe in that? I mean if nothing you do makes a difference, than why do anything? Besides, predetermination means that someone out there is real organized, and I haven't seen any other sign of that much organization in this world. Anyway, whether it's been my destiny or I've lived up to it, I've always wondered what my parents were thinking when they named me Joe Blown. Now to be fair, they actually named me Joe Bloun, but still - sounds the same, and I find very few people asking me for the spelling. So, either way and to all intents and purposes, I've ended up Joe Blown and, like Jacy once said, there's no reason to put a toupee on an ugly, bald guy - still ugly, still bald. My life has been the life of someone named Joe Blown, so why try to pretend it hasn't.

It's a funny word, blown. It conjures up all sorts of ideas about being blown up, or blown out, or blown around. They're all things that happen to you, even the one regarding sex, and excepting the sexual one (and depending on your preferences), they aren't particularly good. Add Joe as a first name, and you end up with a kind of double negative, Joe Blown, Joe Blow, just anybody - or nobody. No matter how you look at it, put it all together, and it doesn't look good.

Not that I'm complaining. Well, I guess I am, sort of, but it's really more of an explanation, and I'm going to ask that you bear with me. Besides, looking back at things now that I've managed to find the other end of my twenties, I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out. Still, my life has not exactly been crowded with choices. In fact, more than once it seemed like there was none at all, and that's what being blown about means no choices. So I've gotta say, my parents naming me Joe Blown leaves me sort of stymied, wondering just what it is that they were hoping for me. But then, I've never pretended that I knew what my parents were thinking. Maybe when I get to the end of this story, you'll be able to tell me.

My mom was a real lady, and she taught us two older kids very fine manners, though in the long run Jacy's didn't seem to stick. She liked perfection, my mother, and that was probably why she left in the end. When perfection is your bare minimum, what do you do when it isn't happening? What my mom did was leave.

Looking back at that time back when Mom was still here, I can picture the place, pristine and looking like a postcard, the fences and barns always neat and trim, and always painted. And the gardens, people couldn't believe our gardens, we had flowers enough to fill a church. Sometimes I look around this place now, and I can't believe it's the same brick house - and the fences, forget about paint, they're not even there anymore. Funny, but I think I prefer it this way. Anyway, about being perfect, we were. The house was perfect, the yard was perfect, and Jacy and I were as perfect as we could manage for kids under ten. So here we were the perfect family, and then Mom found out she was going to have Lottie, and she got real unhappy. Jacy had just started kindergarten, and I was in third grade, so Mom had been talking about how she was going to be able to keep the house neat, now that we were finally in school, talking about the peace and quiet she would finally have in her garden. Then she found out there's going to be another kid.

I know exactly when she found out cause we came home from school, and there she was sitting in the rocker that came from Grandma's house. It was the only thing Mom said she wanted from the old place, everything else she'd sold off without a second glance, but she loved that rocker, loved it's curved back, loved the soft creak it made, loved the red velvet that was going bald in places. But I don't remember her ever sitting in it; I don't remember Mom sitting much at all. But that day, the day she got the news from the doctor, we got home, and there she was sitting in that old chair rocking and staring, her eyes clear and shimmery, just sitting there swaying back and forth, not quite rocking, more like when the wind blows a chair left empty on a porch. She sat there barely moving the chair, looking out the living room window, eyes gleaming so that they looked like the watercolor paintings Jacy used to do, the ones with more water than paint. Like something had thinned her out until she was almost transparent. For two days she rocked, doing nothing else, not even getting meals, and on the third morning she got up to get us breakfast, but she wasn't like she had been and never did get back to normal after that.

The house got dirty, not even messy, but the kind of dirt that makes everything a little tacky, so that cups set on the counter didn't want to let go when you tried to lift them. The gardens went straight to weeds as I don't think she ever stepped foot in them again, and Mom just got bigger and slower until it seemed to take all her day just to put the food on the table. After she had Lottie, she went back to rocking, nursing her all the time. Not that Lottie cried much; she was a real good baby. The first day home from the hospital she opened her cornflower blue eyes with the whites all clean and new, and smiled right at me. Such a good baby, she gurgled and played and ate and slept, and never cried much at all, not even when Mom left.

Lottie was a year when Mom left, and she must have been in some kind of a hurry, 'cause she didn't even close the door. Jacy and I came home from school, I remember because it was September, and I was real happy, full of thoughts about Miss Jesse, my teacher, who I had plans to marry any day. We came bouncing off that school bus, and there was the door just standing open. Jacy and I went in real quiet, (we had gotten used to being real quiet), but it didn't matter because she wasn't there. There was just Lottie in her crib, blond curls all lit up like some sort of halo while she played with the sunbeams on her blankets, happy as can be. Even when she saw us there instead of Mom, she didn't cry, just held out her arms to me and smiled. I picked her up and looked down to see Jacy's eyes as big as fifty cent pieces, and so I tucked Lottie up on my hip and took Jacy's hand and said, "Anybody want to watch TV until Dad gets home?" We weren't allowed TV in the afternoons, so Jacy was all excited. She didn't know that I was feeling like we had to stay as quiet as possible, like if we moved at all we might upset some kind of balance, as if movement might tip over the boat, leaving us all to drown. So until Dad got home, we just sat.

Funny as it seems now, I don't remember much about my Dad until after Mom left. He must have been there, but except for a few things that showed up not so long ago, I can't seem to find any actual memories of him until that day when the door was standing open. That day when he came home, we were all sitting in the living room still watching TV, Jacy beside me, Lottie on my lap, her head putting out that sweet and sour smell that babies have. I remember that smell in my nose as her white blond wisps of hair like dandelion fluff tickled my chin, and I remember how the Bonanza music was galloping round us as we sat there not daring to move. It was then that Dad walked into the room and asked, "Where's your Mom kids?" And I remember looking at him and thinking, That's Dad, as if I were reminding myself about some distant uncle I hadn't seen in years.

I suppose it's a kind of disloyalty, not remembering Dad before then because he was real good to us kids after that, and you've gotta know that it was hard for him, what with working all day and taking care of us when he wasn't working. He and I learned to cook together, cause neither one of us knew much about it, and although Dad would cook if he were home, I had to know how too because there were lots of days when he worked late. I've got a fair number of memories of being in that kitchen cooking up a pot of chili and listening for Dad's truck with Jacy doing homework at the table with Lottie playing blocks or dolls or deep dark cave underneath it. There were three years that way; just Dad and the three of us, and I remember it as if it took place under water with everything moving kind of slow and sounds all stretched out as if none of us could hear properly. I'm sure that the shrinks that we are all going to need at one point or another would say that we were all in shock. Shock or not, it was a nice time - a quiet time, and quiet is the important word in that sentence because the four and a half years after that were anything but.

When I was 12, Jacy and I came home one day and there was Mandy standing in our front hall with my dad's hand so tight in hers that his fingertips were bright red. She had on a soft suede jacket the color of the crust on perfectly toasted bread, and even I, at twelve, knew her blue jeans couldn't have fitted any better. Red curls falling into her bright green eyes, she stood on the old braided rug in the front hall and laughed at the look on our faces. She said, "Is it okay if I come be your mom?"

Oh, it was real clear why Dad fell in love with Mandy; she was kind and pretty as a fall morning, but most of all she was so easy to talk to and more fun than a back yard full of puppies. In fact, just about everybody in her imediate vicinity fell in love with Mandy. I fell for her like a ton of bricks myself, but she wasn't quiet and neither were two of her three kids.

Rita, Will and Lottie. When Dad and Mandy got married Rita was nine, Will was eight and Lottie was four, just like ours. Mandy told me it was that fact, that shared name, that made her first notice Dad. She'd was waiting tables, and Dad had been a regular customer for almost a month, trying to flirt with her since the day he'd walked in, but it wasn't until he mentioned his baby girl, Lottie, that she did more than smile and joke, only when she heard the name did she stop and take a real look at Dad. Now it's true that our Lottie was Charlotte and hers Carlotta, but neither ever went by anything other than Lottie. Two Lotties, both four years, old, but that's where the resemblance ended 'cause otherwise they were as different as night and day. Ours was as quiet and sweet as can be, and Mandy's was a hellion and a half. If Lottie 2 didn't get a turn soon enough, or get to watch her show on TV, or if you didn't cut her sandwich just right, or pretty much, just 'cause, Lottie 2 would have a fit. And could she have a fit, man oh man, a red hair flying, spit spraying, howling tantrum; she was the queen of fits. For that matter, even though she's grown up, and despite the fact she's a mother and wife, she isn't half bad at them now.

When I found out that our Lottie was going to have to share her name, for a moment I was real angry. Much as I was already crazy about Mandy, it seemed to me to be a horrible thing to have to share your name in your own house and even worse with a howling mess like that. Mandy was always saying that Lottie 2 just felt things more then the rest of us humans, but I wasn't sure about that because if she felt her tantrums more then I did, she would have gone nuts because they were enough to drive me around the bend. Anyway, I was all ready to come out blazing for our Lottie when the funniest thing happened. It was like those songs about falling in love all at once - like two halves of a person coming together. Not that we had ever found anything wanting in Lottie, but the two of them from the moment they met were completely linked up, hand to hand, mind to mind. They took one look at each other, and I swear you could see the connection like a blue laser between their pairs of eyes. It took a while for Lottie 2's fits to slow down, but whenever she would have one, Little Lottie, our Lottie, was there stroking her hair and whispering into her ear, words no one else could hear, and Lottie 2 began to calm down a little. They played together all day and then slept wrapped in each other's arms. It was like they had been looking for each other for the whole four years of each of their little lives. Since then, until they married and moved into houses no more than a hundred yards apart, I don't remember seeing them separate unless they didn't have a choice, and we all stopped worrying about which one we were calling, just shouted out "Lottie!" and both were sure to come running, hand in hand.

The day Mandy came to live with us the sun shone. I remember waking just at dawn that morning. I let myself out of the house, still wearing my pajama bottoms and stood under the maple that is the king of our front yard, and up in its branches the birds seemed to be having some kind of competition as to who could make the most racket, and I thought for a moment that my chest might have to get bigger just to hold my heart. Looking up through the leaves of that tree to the bright pricks of sunshine tucked in between the branches, my eyes teared up, and I figured I would never be sad again, and for a while it seemed as if maybe we wouldn't have to be.

Mandy and Dad were very serious about making us all a family, even changing her kids names to Bloun. And her kids were okay. Rita was fine, quiet and in her own head, Will was just an eight year old boy with all the trucks and trouble that eight year old boys are, and Lottie 2 was Lottie 2. What I didn't figure on was the lack of space. . . and the noise. I'm pretty quiet and our Lottie has always been as quiet and good as anybody could ask for, but Jacy is a loud kind of person, so I thought I was used to loud. Well let me tell you, there never was anything so loud and so tight as that house with all six of us kids and Mandy. Always, there was someone talking or singing or yelling or chatting, and everywhere, there were toys and books and clothes and just general stuff. But even so, with all the noise and all the clutter and all the bodies everywhere squeezed up one against the other, for the first year it was fine, better then fine, fun. It was lots of fun right up until Mandy got sick.

She was always a bit sick, with lots of headaches and getting tired for no reason, but sometime in the second year it changed and the sick wasn't anything an aspirin or a nap was going to fix. First of all, she was going to have a baby, and she said that she was real happy about that, but sometimes she didn't look so happy. One day when the baby was maybe two months away I came home to find the Lotties by themselves in the living room. Lottie 2 was crying, and Little Lottie was holding her sister's head in her lap. When I walked in the room Little Lottie looked up at me with that look she used to have whenever I came home, like all the clouds had cleared off, like whatever it was that was broken, she knew I could fix it. (Used to scare the hell out of me, that look.) Anyway, Lottie looked up and said, "We can't find Mandy. Will you find her Joe?" I looked down at those two little girls and thought, God, they are filthy. And I suddenly realized that they were always dirty these days, and they never used to be.

When I found Mandy she was out back of the barn standing in the field that looked up at the view of the mountains. A cotton puff of a cloud had gotten snagged on the peak of Brougham Ridge, pretty as you could ask for, and it seemed at first like she was watching something up there, but she wasn't. She didn't answer me when I called, not until I called again, and even then I had to touch her before she turned. The green in her eyes had streaks of yellow I had never noticed. As she focused the streaks disappeared, but for a second she didn't seem to know who I was. "Joe. . .?" She laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh, more like filling emptiness. She didn't say anymore, and I didn't ask; we just turned back to the house, and when she hesitated, I took her hand. Just like on the first day with Dad, she held on tight, as if she was afraid of getting lost.

From then on she seemed tired - more than tired - bone weary. It was about when the baby was a month away that her thinking started to get messed up; she started forgetting things, easy things, like where the measuring cups were kept or did she buy flour. I took care of stuff as much as I could, cooking and cleaning up the house and keeping the kids as quiet as was humanly possible, but it didn't help. There were good days when I would come downstairs, and Mandy would be cooking breakfast and singing, and nobody was better organized or happier. But then there were the bad days and the bad days kept getting worse.

After Ethan was born, I hoped it would all just clear itself up and the days when Mandy couldn't get out of bed or couldn't stop crying would somehow disappear. I had heard about hormones, and I thought maybe it was just a real bad case of them. But it wasn't and it didn't, clear up that is. By the time Ethan was two I didn't know whether I would come home from school and find Mandy in the kitchen whistling while she made our dinner with the house as neat as a pin or whether I would find her in her nightgown crying under the old oak tree in the back yard and have to race off through the tall grass of the meadow to find Ethan who'd have wandered away.

Mandy seemed to be okay when Dad was around, and so I got this idea that it was up to me to protect her and to hide what was happening from everybody. Even Dad. Now, when I think about it, I figure I probably did a fair amount of harm to Mandy by not telling someone. Maybe if the doctors had found out sooner they could have done something. But then, maybe not. Now, when I go see her once a year or so, her doctors talk about "bipolar disorder" and say that she is in a "catatonic state," and they say that they don't think there was anything more that we could have done. But then, what are they going to say? That we fucked it all up? That it's all our fault? That it's my fault? Anyway, no matter how it came out, Mandy wanted to hide it all, and I wanted Mandy to be happy, so there you are.

The day she checked herself into the hospital she seemed okay while we were getting ready for school. In fact that day in particular she seemed better than what had been normal for a while. School too was really pretty normal: math class was fun, all the numbers clicking into place just like they always did, history was a bore, the fact that Mr. Gilmore was obsessed with dates and had the temper of an old barn cat made sure of that, and Mary Kelly was sexy as hell. Amazing that I remember all that, but I do. In fact, I specifically remember I was looking at Mary's pretty brown legs, one all twisted round the other as if that twist was the only way she was ever gonna remember the elemental table, when I heard my name being called through the PA system at school. I remember too, that it took me a minute to recognize that it was me they were calling, and I sat at my desk like some kind of dummy, some kind of walking dead, until Mr. Murray rapped out my name and told me to get moving. I don't know why, but hearing my name called that day was absolutely terrifying. Walking down that hall toward the office with my footsteps echoing the way they do when you're all alone and everybody else is in the classrooms, I felt as if my blood had grown thick and sharp, full of ice needles, and when I saw Mandy standing in the sunlight let in by the big front doors way down at the end of the corridor, I knew.

For a moment or two I didn't move, but just watched her, standing there in the sun. Looking down that dim tunnel it was like I was looking up from the bottom of a well through green water. Mandy sparkled and shone, her red hair bouncing around her pretty white face which was wearing the biggest smile. She looked like some being that didn't exist in this world, something from a brighter and happier place. But still, I knew, even before I got close enough to see that the smile was quivering and inside her eyes she was screaming.

We left together and went out to sit in her old Chevy. For a while we just sat, and she held my hand with that tight grip that made me think about Dad's bright red fingertips, and for a second I almost laughed, but I stopped myself and just sat, letting her squeeze. My hand was starting to cramp up, and the cracked vinyl of the seatback was prickling the back of my neck when she said, all of a sudden, "I'm real sorry to put this on you Joe." That's when I knew that she was leaving. She didn't cry, but I think that I probably started to then. "It isn't fair to ask you, but I'm going to." The sun beating in through the windshield was hot, but I knew it was a fake, I knew that outside it was cold. Mandy took a couple of shaky breaths, each one a little slower than the last and said, "Could you please take care of the kids while I'm away? Not that your Dad's not a good man, he is, but he doesn't know the kids like you do." There was another shivery breath, as if she knew it was cold out in the world just like I did, but then she stopped, holding on to that breath as if deciding something. "I don't know when I'm going to be coming back Joe. It's hard, you know. When it's a bad day, it's like I'm on the bottom of the ocean, and I can't find my way back cause there is weed everywhere and someone has turned all the signs so they read wrong." She stopped again and a tiny smile crossed her face, slowly, like a lazy cat rolling over. It was as if she was daydreaming, as if she had already left, and for one second I wanted to slap her and scream that she was a coward, that it wasn't fair.

I ducked down and away to wipe at my eyes with the cuff of my varsity jacket. She wouldn't have noticed anyway, and nothing I could have said would have made a difference. She was already gone; happy somewhere else, if you went by the smile on her face. "But you know, Joe." She was speaking slow, so that her words were round and clumsy. "When it's a flying day, I don't seem to want to come back, cause this place here is where the hole into that ocean is, and I'm so happy when I'm flying." It was then she started to cry, and I held her hand tight as I could and felt terrible for all the hate I'd been full of only a minute before. And I promised that I would take care of everybody.

When I go to see her these days, and I sit by her bed and hold her hand again, I have to pry it open to fit mine inside. There she is all rolled up tight, her eyes squeezed closed so that they're creased, and when I look at her, I always hope that wherever she is, she is flying.

After Mandy went into the hospital Dad just seemed to give up. Whether she had asked me or not I would have had to take care of things, what with the way Dad's heart just seemed to fall to bits. He only stayed on with us about one more year, and by the time he left, I wasn't surprised at all. It gets to be something you expect after it happens enough. Not that I blame Mandy for going. Well. . . not really. . .not blame. After all, it was hardly something she had a choice about. Dad too in a funny way. Any blame I got I think is with my Mom. Not so much because she left because who knows why that happened; no, I blame her because somehow she seemed to set all the leaving in motion. As if by walking out that door she made it so it was possible to walk out that door. As if she started some rock rolling down that mountain above us and then didn't seem to notice, just walked away, and there we were looking up at all those rocks rolling down about to bury us. It's probably not fair, my blaming her, but I'm not so sure that I much care if it's fair or not. So, there you are.

Dad left just as if he were going to work one day, and I didn't notice, what with getting everyone out the door to school and running Ethan across the road to Mrs. Carson's. Just as the bus came round the bend, I realized that I had forgotten a report on Gandhi that I had spent a whole lot of time on, and I wasn't about to let it be late. So I asked Henry, who drove the bus, to wait for me and ran back to grab the paper off my bed. Laying there beside it was Dad's note. I knew what it was right away, don't know how, but I did. I must have sat on my bed for a couple of minutes just looking at it there all folded up. It was Henry honking at me that made me remember the bus. I leaned way out the window, feeling the sill hard against my thighs and the frame that hadn't been painted and so was splintery against my palms. "You go on without me Henry, I'm feeling kind of bad." Then I watched that school bus disappear around the next turn, sure that I wasn't going to be riding in it again.

It was in October that Dad left. I had just gotten early acceptance from Penn State, and I hadn't told Dad yet cause, even though we weren't poor, it was going to take some money, and there were seven of us. But in my mind, I was already walking to classes and making friends and just being a college student. Just a goddamn college student.

I sat down on the bed and picked up the letter. It mostly said how sorry Dad was for going. He didn't really say why, but then, it didn't really matter why.

Like I said before, I don't think I'm very mad at any of them, except maybe my Mom, and even that's probably just cause I was too young to know her reasons. But with Mandy, she couldn't help it, and with Dad, I think he just ran out of gas. The tank was empty, and there was nothing left to give, and if later he thought better of it and there were regrets, well now, that's a whole different thing and fact is, he was a whole different person. So if I'm mad, it's not with the Dad who raised me when I was young. Maybe someday it'll hit, and I'll be furious. Maybe later I'll hate the hell out of them all. But right now the whole thing just makes me sad. But then, there's a whole lot I had yet to learn about being sad, a whole lot to know, and much as I thought I knew about sad, what with Mom and Mandy and all, I learned more about where sad can take you sitting there on my bed then I ever even began to imagine up until that day.

What I really know about sad is this: for some people, there is a great big, black hole in this world. A hole that swallows up everything . . . even people if you let it. I imagine it's the same thing Mandy was talking about when she told me about the ocean. Most people don't know about that hole, and it's better if you don't. It's better not to know about the inside of nightmares. On that day, I sat in my room looking down that black hole, and it was as if there was no such thing as the sun anymore. Fear lives down there and loss and, for me, anger and hate. They crawl around in the mud at the bottom and howl, and then they reach for you when you get too close. That day was one of the two days when I felt their scaly hands clutching at me; sitting there with eyes that couldn't see and my head about to explode, I could feel the pull of their bony fingers with the silence in the house pressing hard against my ear drums. In fact, everything was pressing hard against me or out of me, as if my body, and the world too, didn't fit in its skin anymore. Like nothing was ever going to fit again. I sat there fighting to breathe and fighting against all those bad things sucking me down, dragging at me, when suddenly there was Ethan.

Mrs. Carson had let him out on the lawn and at three he was too smart for anybody's good. On that day he figured out how to work the latch on the gate and made his way across the road back home. I didn't even hear him open the door downstairs, but there he was, his arms wrapped around my knees, his face way back just under my chin, grinning up at me. "I got you Joe." Looking down at Ethan, gapped toothed and red haired, Mandy's hair, a smear of something sticky across his cheek, I felt my eyes burn hot again, but the pressure in my head deflated like some kind of ugly, burst balloon. "I got you Joe."

After a minute or two I patted him. He grinned and sat down on the floor to play with my football, his grubby, little fingers trying to press into the hard pebble of the pigskin, and I realized that, somehow in the cracks of the time when I was looking down at Ethan, the big, gaping hole that had been threatening to suck me in had shrunk. It was still there, but it was small and only took up a little part of my mind. That left the rest of me clear to think, and what I thought about was those six other kids and how in hell was I going to take care of them. That it was up to me to take care of them seemed like breathing, not even something you think about.

Next

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Short Stories

"Liability" .... 2013 CAA Anthology

"New Year" .... Carte Blanche, issue 2

"The Faceting of Lara" .... Carte Blanche, issue 3

"Rapture" .... Carte Blanche, issue 4

"Rapture" .... The Loose Cannon, issue 2

"Distance" .... Cahoots Magazine

"The Gazebo" .... 2011 CAA Anthology

"Codes" .... Minority Report (Vehicule Press)

"The Mechanics of Destiny" .... When One Door Closes, Reflections of Women (Sugati Press)


Poems

"The Island" .... Qaartsiluni, Ekphrasis


Awards

The QWF Mentoring Program, 2004

CBC/QWF Short Story Award - Honorable Mention,2008/2009

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