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STORIES
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Sarah Dravec, "To Shiver"
Jaclyn McGuire, "The Real Story"
Sharon Cebula, "Destination"
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Sarah Dravec

To Shiver
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When she opened her eyes, it was cold. Bare rooms. Her first apartment. Nothing.
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She found her hands. Her palms met the cool fabric and pushed gently. Her feet, her knees moved beneath her as she sat up slowly. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes, they burned, and she reached instinctively toward her cell phone. She could see the light before she had opened them again, narrowly, turning away from the sting of her eyes adjusting. Four a.m.
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The phone lay on the mattress, casting a small orb of light through the dark. She counted the slow, tired paces it took to cross the room. One, two, running her fingers slowly over her hair. Three, her eyes beginning to work, the light from her phone dimming. Four, five, the bones in her body crackling, adjusting to her weight. Six. Trying to keep her eyes open. Seven, eight, reaching for the wall, pausing against it for support. Her breath was quiet.
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Half-asleep the past several days, trying and wanting to keep herself oblivious, she slid her feet over the linoleum floor. She gripped the edge of the countertop tightly, probably the most energy she had exerted in days, held on until the dizziness stopped. Bottles littered the countertop, she took one without knowing what it was, poured the remainder of its contents into a glass. She held it, nearly dropped it, and wanted to throw it against the blank wall behind her, shatter it, angry with her clumsiness. She stumbled.
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She made it back to the mattress. She lifted the glass to her dry, cracked lips, feeling for her phone with her free hand. When the burning in her throat stopped, the steady stream of liquid was gone, she blinked slowly. Her wrist fell lifelessly sideways, and her fingers lost their control. The remaining drops darkened a few fibers of the carpet, turning them the color of wet sand. She squeezed her phone, shivering.
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She smiled at herself from her cell phone’s touch screen background. She sat in the driver’s seat while Rae pulled her close, an arm wound around her neck. She laughed into the camera as Rae kissed her cheek and made peace signs with her fingers. Rae had changed the text banner on the screen as well. She stared into the blurry text, i love baby j!, read it repeatedly without knowing what it meant.
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A small icon on the screen indicated a voicemail she hadn’t listened to. Asleep, she must have been too far away to feel her phone vibrate. She opened her recent calls menu and stared into the first names and numbers listed.
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Nathan. Eight days ago.
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Rae. Seven days ago.
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Dad. Six days ago.
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And that one. That number. The last outgoing call she had made. Six days ago.
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Dad. A missed call. Less than one hour ago.
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The light, once again, burned her wide eyes. She shivered. And she drifted, drifted.
~~
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“Hey, babe.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
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“Olives and banana peppers?”
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He laughed. “What else?”
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“That’s what I thought. See you in twenty minutes.”
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With the scent of pizza circulating throughout her car, she began a drive so familiar that she could have closed her eyes and still felt sure of her location. Deciding that may not have been the best idea, she grinned to herself and stared through the windshield. The sun was just about to descend beneath the trees. It burned bright orange over everything in its final minutes before setting. The patch of glass on the windshield that reflected the sun was a blinding white. She glanced into her narrow eyes, greener than usual, as she checked the rearview mirror.
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Her keys rattled against one another, high-pitched and soft, as she balanced her purse on the pizza box and pushed the door shut with her hip. She walked quickly toward his house and let herself in, knowing it would be unlocked. The sound of the breeze and of spring itself settling once again was lost as the door shut and the hush of the house overtook her ears.
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She walked through the living room and set the pizza on the kitchen counter. She tore two paper towels from a roll beside the sink and folded them twice, tucking each beneath a plate. She ran cold water over her hands and stood for a moment, listening to hear his footsteps on the stairs. She checked her phone. It had been less than twenty minutes. She was always early.
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She filled two cups with water and put them on the table. She opened the box and could barely see the pizza before she lost her balance and nearly fell to the ground. Instinctively reaching upward, she laughed as she clutched the forearms that had locked across her body. Nathan.
With a smile stretching across her face, she turned just enough to see the side of his face. She managed to free an arm and reached to touch his cheek. He released one of his arms, pulling her into his side and grabbing a slice of pizza.
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“Starving,” he said happily.
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“Well,” she said, standing on her toes to kiss his face, “it’s a good thing you can count on me.”
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They sat at the small table and ate together. Nathan ate half the pizza in what he was convinced was record time. She laughed and stared into the bright cotton of his t-shirt. She could see the skin behind it without seeing it at all, see a light that surrounded him that he wouldn’t be able to see when he looked in the mirror. Something was hurting inside her chest. He looked up and smiled at her. His left eye always crinkled when he smiled. She couldn’t have counted the number of times she had seen that smile, but it didn’t matter. Her heart stopped.
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“So are you scared to go?” he asked.
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“I’m never scared,” she said. “You know that.”
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“You’re scared all the time.”
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“You know that, too.” She smiled.
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He stood, dropped their dishes in the sink, and threw their napkins into a trash can that was nearly overflowing. He stopped in front of her and took her hands, pulling her to her feet. She followed him as he walked toward the stairs. She watched her feet as she climbed them, reaching forward to keep holding his hands, to hold onto his hands.
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She remembered during the confusing moments when her feet moved automatically and she tried to resist a feeling of vertigo the first time she had spent an evening with Nathan. They had always been around each other, really. They had classes together throughout the years and were friends with the same people, but chance had never put them close enough to know one another. He stopped her in the hall one day in high school as she was leaving.
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“Jamie!” he called. She stopped and turned, searching for the voice, and smiled as she walked toward him.
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“What’s up?” she asked. They were close. His sense of calm was astonishing to her.
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“Hey,” he said. “Anything going on this weekend?”
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She smiled again. “Not really.” The crowd surged past them. Hundreds of voices echoed through the hall. Were they in the hall or in her head?
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“Cool. You want to grab something to eat tonight?”
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Where they went and what they ate there couldn’t have been less important, but she remembered every second of it. It didn’t matter that he was wearing a blue polo and faded blue jeans, or that their waitress’s name was Callie and that she had incredible bright brown eyes and Jamie just wanted to hug her once she took their orders, or that she ate eggplant parmesan that came with French fries that were still partially frozen, or that he paid for her food and as a result she forced him to allow her to pay for the drinks they each ordered afterward at a coffee shop that was two minutes down the road. It didn’t matter that that was the night she learned that Nathan would have picked tea over coffee any day or that his middle name was Joel. It only mattered that she was with him.
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They stayed at the coffee shop until everyone else left. Other customers shuffled out alone and in groups, discarding their paper cups and refolding their newspapers, all of them disappearing among the dim light of the parking lot. She would have stayed there with him all night if the manager hadn’t politely asked them to leave after he had locked the doors and turned out the lights, kindly informing them that he would be opening again at seven the following morning. They laughed, Nathan shook the man’s hand, a gesture which seemed to mildly confuse him, and she walked with him toward the tall streetlight that rose like a beacon over his car, gently grasping his arm. His car was the only one left.
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“Hold on,” he said, holding a hand to her shoulder before he moved away and looking back at her as he leaned into his car. He turned his keys and rolled the windows down, and quiet music floated through the open spaces. She moved her head slowly from side to side, farther every time, swaying and letting her arms pull away from her sides. He watched her as he walked back to her, slowly lifting his hands to match where hers had risen into the air. Mirror images.
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An arm’s length trembled between them. He broke the silence. “Come here,” he said.
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She laughed. “Why?”
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He smiled. “Because I want you to dance with me.”
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He pulled her close to him, resting one hand on her hip and the other on the small of her back. She held his shoulders and forgot everything she thought she knew.
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She had no idea how long they stood that way, moving together, how many songs played, or of anywhere else she could have been during the time that passed. She didn’t speak. He didn’t either. She didn’t know if the beating she felt was coming from his heart or hers. When she felt like she couldn’t breathe, she rested her head on his chest and took in all the cold air her lungs could hold.
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“Jamie,” he said. She looked up. “I’ve only ever dreamt of you once. We were standing in the middle of an intersection. There were cars all around us, but none of them were moving. I told you that you were perfect.”
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She smiled and put her head against his chest again. A soft noise escaped from her throat before she spoke. “If I took you away and kept you forever,” she began, “would that be bad?”
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“I wouldn’t stop you.”
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She stared at him. He smiled.
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“I wouldn’t stop you,” he said again.
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Now, the bedroom around her at the end of the hallway was as familiar as her own, and the trail down her neck was ice cold while her blood was on fire. Eyes ablaze, locked on one another’s, her body shook.
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“Nathan,” she breathed heavily into his ear.
~~
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“Jame,” Rae said in a tone that mocked sternness, “you’re just going to have to deal with it. I’m bringing at least two pints, a bag or two of chocolates, and a purse full of chick flicks. And we will get through all of it if it takes us all night.”
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“I’ll see you soon.”
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“Oh, and maybe a cake. I haven’t decided on a flavor yet, though.”
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“Rae.”
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“Okay, fine. I’ll text you when I’m on my way.”
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She couldn’t keep herself from smiling as she tossed her phone on her bed and returned to her bathroom to finish straightening her hair. She gazed at her reflection, briefly considering her eyes before deciding on a blue eyeliner that would contrast her purple nail polish in the best way. She had never been afraid of a little color. She stood in her closet and took her favorite pair of jeans from a shelf. Poised to put them on, she remembered the list of food Rae had just mentioned. She laughed at herself. Who was she kidding? Sweat pants were definitely a better decision.
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Rae was there after fifteen minutes, stepping inside with several bags weighing down her arms. Rae kissed her cheek and held out a bag for her to take. They blindly chose a movie from Rae’s purse, and before half of it was over, wrappers littered every inch of the floor. Rae moved her head from Jamie’s shoulder and began searching through the bags beside her. She found what she needed and pushed an envelope into Jamie’s hands.
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“You can’t read that,” Rae said, putting a hand on Jamie’s wrist, “until you get there.”
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She smiled. “Okay.”
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Rae put an arm around her and pulled Jamie’s head to her shoulder. Her back rose and fell slowly as she rested her forehead against Rae’s neck and closed her eyes. Rae tightened the grip on her arm.
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“You’re going to be great,” she said.
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Jamie didn’t blink as tears slowly found a way into her eyes. They grew heavy and fell onto her face once she finally closed her eyes. Rae turned when she heard her take a shaky breath.
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“What is it?”
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She shook her head, closed her eyes again, and stayed quiet at Rae’s side until she calmed down. She sat up and turned her body to face Rae. Their knees were touching as she looked into Rae’s face. Gray eyes, dramatic cheekbones, wide nose, naturally red lips. In the flashes of white light from the television, her skin was translucent, and she could see the veins that wound through Rae’s neck and up her cheeks. Jamie wiped her eyes and exhaled.
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“Are you okay?”
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“Of course I am.” Rae pushed at Jamie’s knees with her own.
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“Then so am I,” she said.
~~
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“Daddy?”
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“Hey, Jame. How’s it going?”
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“Okay. I have about another hour. How are you?”
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“Wonderful, hon. Before I forget, I have a quick favor.”
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“Sure,” she said, questioning. “Does this involve going through security again? Because I don’t have time, and there are some things I just can’t put myself through, Daddy, even for you.”
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“No, no,” he said. “I just want you to imagine my confusion when I saw hundreds of colorful, foil wrappers all over the living room floor this morning. I don’t remember putting them there. Come to think of it, though, they really class up the place. I may not even throw them out.”
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She laughed loudly. A few people glanced in her direction. “I’m sorry, Dad. Rae was over and I didn’t pack anything until after she left. I was so distracted, I probably didn’t even notice.”

“Don’t worry, Jame. Just wanted to check in and tell you to have a great flight.”
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“I’ll talk to you when I land.”
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“Sounds great. Love you.”
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“Love you, Daddy.”
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She listened as the call was disconnected and sighed, tapping her fingers against her bag and looking out over the massive airport. People rushed along the corridors, crowded the waiting areas beside their respective gates, and pushed through lines to buy food that may not have been better than what they would be served on the airplanes. A toddler sat directly across from her, tugging at her mother’s sleeve as she was trying to read an article in the latest issue of People and returning to scribble over a coloring-book image of Elmo after her attempts had been futile. The child stared blankly at her for a moment, hair wild and eyes wide as Jamie smiled, before focusing at last on her crayons.
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She passed her boarding pass to the flight attendant leading people onto the plane and quickly found her seat. She scrolled idly through the text messages in her inbox, reading a few from Nathan and Rae before turning her phone off and dropping it in her bag. I’ll talk to you when I get there, she had told them. When I get there. She sat, mind preoccupied, flipping through the book and journal in her carry-on to try to distract herself, but it hardly worked. She closed her eyes, determined to make the flight more bearable, and tried to find peace in the dark.
~~
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She had never been one to spend a second more than necessary on an airplane, and it was no different once the passengers were permitted to remove their safety belts and gather their bags. She was one of the first people off the plane and was waiting for a cab on the dirty sidewalk as soon as she found her luggage. She considered leaving her suitcase, but she had little enough with her as it was and figured she wouldn’t be any less anxious about starting a new life with nothing at all.
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She had scrawled the address of the apartment complex on a sheet of paper, but she had read it and reread it so many times in her mind that she knew she could never forget it. She clutched it tightly in her palm nonetheless as she sat in the back of the cab, breathing in the smell of tobacco that was radiating from the driver’s clothing. Progress was slow as traffic was backed up with thousands of people trying to get to countless destinations at once. The jungle, the exhilarating city jungle unfurled with skyscrapers like giant, gnarled and thick-rooted trees, the glittering asphalt streets the dirt paths overgrown with burnt rubber and footprints from designer heels, the countless flyers, the graffiti and billboards endless branches and thick canopies of leaves, the humans at once millionaires and the homeless poor begging at their feet the creatures fleeing their attackers, terrified of the power of the mighty lions. The cab drove on through the noise and the city’s thick breath toward the outskirts where she was able to live.
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The rumble of the engines all around her slowed, quieted as the cab pulled away from the heart of the city and toward the complex. She handed the driver money when they arrived, more than was necessary, and didn’t consider her change as she thanked him and stepped outside and walked around the building until she found the room that belonged to her. Key already in her hand, she twisted it inside the lock and stepped inside.
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There was a table in the kitchen for which she had arranged along with a twin mattress and a floor lamp in the corner to her right. Everything else was blank.
She wheeled her suitcase in behind her and brought it to the bedroom. She unzipped it and looked at the clothes, photographs, and various items inside it. She organized what she could, turned her cell phone back on before placing it in her pocket, and reentered the living room.
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She sat for five minutes. Then, she couldn’t sit anymore.
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The door fell against its frame as she pulled it shut and locked it once more. Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she walked into the early evening.
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She could have gone shopping for groceries or home necessities or made any of the preparations she should have for the following days, but she walked. Her feet carried her until her head was clear, until she had passed through the crowds on the brightly lit streets of restaurants and shops and theaters, until no other action seemed reasonable at all, really, but just walking forever, and until her body was so tired that she felt she couldn’t move anymore. Still, she kept walking.
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It was midnight when she saw him.
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She had made her way back onto familiar looking, less crowded streets that she had seen earlier from the back of the cab. The noise around her faded, the voices of others stopped following her once she had left their conversations behind, and she found herself alone again as she resolved to return to her empty apartment.
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She passed a row of brick buildings as she made brief eye contact with a man, drooped and pale, who was leaning against a building with a beer bottle in his hand and one of his feet against the wall behind him. She didn’t stop walking. He started.
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“Where you headed tonight?”

Something went cold in the pit of her stomach. She poked her index finger into her pocket and felt the cold surface of her cell phone.
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“Hey, girl,” he said, playfully. He wasn’t right behind her, but he was close enough. She pulled her phone from her pocket as discretely as she could and held it against her jacket, hiding her arm against her stomach.
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Nine.
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“Just want to talk to you, baby. What’s your name?”
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One.
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“Come on, girl. I ain’t gonna bite you,” he taunted.
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One.
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She heard his bottle shatter against the sidewalk and thought she heard his footsteps stop. Her thumb shook over the send button.
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“Bitch, I’m trying to talk to you,” he swore, angry now. She slid her open phone into her coat pocket and let her purse fall to the crook of her elbow. She stopped. And she knew she was gambling with her life.
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She turned around.
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She smiled. “Hi there,” she said to him.
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He smiled. “That’s more like it, girl. What’s your name?” He slid his hand into his pocket. She saw the bulge of his fist against the inside of his coat.
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She dropped her purse on the ground behind her. She turned, slowly, knelt to the ground even more slowly, and slid her hand from her pocket.
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She pressed the send button. Blood pounded through her head.
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“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
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Her eyes shot upward, raced back and forth from one side of the street corner to the other.
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“Grant,” she said, as loudly as she dared, “and South Hill.” Her fingers closed weakly around her bag. She rose again, slowly, lowering her phone.
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“Put that fucking thing down,” he said. She heard a soft, sickening click, and she knew what would be in front of her when she turned around.
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His expression was set, eyes empty, rage written all over his face. She felt waves of everything that had ever wronged this man passing over her, again, again, again, and she felt they would push her to the ground. She felt so much pain. Her heart felt like it was going to rupture.
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Her hand opened. Her phone, shining a small square of light from its screen unevenly through the night as it fell, hit the concrete once, turned in the air, twice, and settled, crashing against the ground with a sound that echoed through her head as her palms turned toward him, trembling as they rose through the air.
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“My name is Jamie Elizabeth Shiylat.”
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The way Nathan looked at her as soon as he woke up in the morning.
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“I’m twenty-two years old.”
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Rae’s heart let out on the letter she had given her. I’m always going to love you, Jame.
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Always going to love you.
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“All I want is to be your friend.”
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How it made her smile to still feel like a child in her father’s arms.
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“Please,” she said, no idea whether she was whispering, screaming, or making any noise at all. “Please.”
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If he dropped the gun, if he shot it and missed her. If he swore at her, hit her, threw her on the ground. If police arrived, subdued him, took him away, if he resisted and fought them back. If she was taken for questioning, if she was placed in a quiet room with someone to talk to and given names and numbers of doctors she could contact when she was ready.
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All she remembered was an endless, mind-numbing flash of red and blue lights. Everything she looked at, the walls, the streets, her skin, was stained the colors of emergency. The next thing she could recall was waking on the bed on her apartment floor in the clothes she had been wearing all day, waking up shaking, shivering, and gasping for breath before she fell asleep again.
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Somewhere in the blur of the days that passed, she had changed her clothes and taken a taxi to a market outside the city. She paid the driver to wait outside for her while she went in and bought a reasonable amount of food, knowing she would barely touch any of it. After a quick calculation, she took as many bottles of cheap liquor from the shelves in the back of the store as she could afford with the money that was in her pocket. She made her way outside, kept her eyes on the ground, and returned to her apartment. She locked the door. She drank. She slept, tried as hard as she could to sleep.
~~
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When she opened her eyes, it was cold. Each breath she took echoed like thunder in her head, piercing her ears unforgivingly. The light from her cell phone burned her eyes, the scrapes on its finish from where it had met the city street scratched her fingers, and she saw that she had a voicemail that she had yet to listen to. Four a.m. as the alcohol ran through her blood and seeped into her brain and she sat in an empty apartment, shivering.
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She pressed four keys to access her voicemail. She pressed one other key, and her father’s voice was magnified and filled the entire room.
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“Hey, Jame. I haven’t heard from you yet, so I just wanted to check in. Everything’s good here, just working and thinking about you already. Listen, I know you don’t have much with you, so I ordered something offline for you a couple days ago and had it shipped there. Check your mail when you get up this morning. It should be there by now. Love you, girl. Give me a call later today if you can.”
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Jamie balanced her weight evenly over her arms and legs and slowly stood up. She leaned into the wall and rubbed her eyes, looking around the apartment until her vision cleared. She moved gingerly toward the door, fumbled with the lock, and pulled it open.
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Cool air met her face, the dark light from the very early morning making its way around her. Several cars were parked around the side of the building, silent and still as the night. Patches of landscaping adorned with round bushes and skinny trees were placed throughout the lot, green grass swaying lightly in the breeze. She looked down at her bare feet on the cool pavement before her door and saw a white, cardboard box beside them. She bent carefully to pick it up. It was large, but light in her arms.
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She stepped backward into her apartment and sat on her bed with the box beside her. Ripping at the tape over the flaps, she pulled it open and lifted a plastic-wrapped lump from inside. She stood and let the plastic fall to the ground. Inside was a patchwork blanket, sewn with designs of several shades of blue, large enough for her to wrap herself in at least twice.

Jamie stared at it, letting the fabric warm her hands. She unfolded it and let it fall around her, wrapping it around her shoulders and hiding her feet in the extra material that fell to her bed. She smiled, laid down, and slept.
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Much too warm to shiver.
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Jaclyn McGuire

The Real Story
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She grabbed the tabloid newspaper angrily from the attendant, scowling at her face on the front page in her wedding gown. She fumed. The newspaper and media were supposed to stay out of the whole event. However, seven months after the wedding, someone had received photos and published them. Slimy bastards, she thought. The story was hysterical, to say the least, with details of a glass slipper and a whole bunch of other bologna. Like some kind of pumpkin carriage and how the prince swept her off her feet. Sounds like someone in the prince’s PR department leaked this one. She was going to have to talk to them, along with her so called Prince Charming.

She rolled up the newspaper and stalked off into her bathroom. She had to pee twelve times a day it seemed, and her swollen belly wasn’t making using the bathroom easy. Her swollen feet had led to swollen toes, and she looked at the skin pushing up over the nails as she sat on her permanent bathroom seat. She tried to calm her breathing, especially with her temper flying out of control at random, not to mention the hormones pumping through her body. This was not how it was supposed to be, she thought, listening to the endless stream of pee. I was supposed to be a princess – how naïve. She shrugged her shoulders at no one and looked at the massive rock on her finger, a four-and-a-half carat diamond ring set in white gold. It looked dwarfed on her fat fingers, and she sighed while the pee continued.
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The stupid parasite kept kicking her bladder, and she kept wondering what her life would have been like had she not met Prince. Her swollen body ached. Her back ached. Her sides ached. She wasn’t allowed outside for fear something might happen to “the next heir”. No concern for her safety of course. Yes, it was seen to that she was comfortable, had the best pillows and food, but her lavish diet and lack of physical activity, along with the body growing inside her, had not helped her waistline. She hated looking into the mirror and seeing the full cheeks and second chin that had developed.
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Ugh, she though miserably, maybe I didn’t have it so bad at home before. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and started a bubble bath. She knew she had to relax before she talked to her husband, because she didn’t want to start screaming and be labeled a crazy queen, which some of the kitchen staff had already labeled her.
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She had walked into the kitchen one day and saw a young girl of about fourteen scrubbing the floors in the most abominable manner, swishing the dirty water around, not using enough soap, and definitely NOT getting the marble clean. Cindy stopped over the girl and looked down at her contemptuously. “That’s how you think a floor gets cleaned?” She snatched the girl’s rag and started scrubbing the floor the way it is supposed to be scrubbed, and the girl’s eyes grew wide with terror. She knew the Head of Kitchens would see the new queen scrubbing the floor and throw a fit. “M-m-miss Queen, um, Ma’am, um, see here’s the thing. I’m gonna gets into a whole lotta trouble with you on the floor here ma’am, and uh, I ‘preciate what you’re tryin’ to do an’ all, but I gotta do it.” Too late. Head of Kitchen, Marmy Green, already saw the queen on the floor. “BRIDGET!” She screamed. Bridget scrambled to her feet and lowered her eyes to the ground. “Yes’m” she mumbled. Marmy lowered her voice. “Bridget,” she said quietly, so quiet it silenced the kitchen, “can I ask what the QUEEN, the QUEEN is doing on the floor doing your job for?” Marmy paused for an icy smile. “I expect an answer, an answer so clear and explanatory that you will not lose your job, which you know feeds your younger siblings.” Bridget paused and started to stutter an answer, with a couple tears hitting the floor, “M-m-ma’am, uh, I was, uh, cleanin’ the floors here, and uh, Queen Cindy here, she uh...” “THAT IS ENOUGH!” Marmy interjected. Bridget started a low whimper. Cindy quietly scrubbed away at a dirt stain. She sat up, looked at Marmy and said, “I would appreciate it if you would NOT yell at children in such a derogatory manner. It is not her fault she does not know how to scrub a floor. You, her trainer, have failed to train her. In fact, the simple act of me not firing you yet is quite an anomaly, and if I hear you raise your voice to,” she paused and turned to the girl, “your name is Bridget, correct? If I hear you raise your voice to Bridget again, you WILL be fired.” Cindy threw the rag into Marmy’s arms and said, “Teach your kitchen staff next time. They are your responsibility,” and she gathered her skirts in hand and walked out of the kitchen.
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Ever since that moment, the kitchen staff called her Crazy Queen, and she did not want her husband’s friends to start. She watched the water run out of the faucet, hitting the ceramic tub and spreading along the bottom. She added some purplish liquid that smelled like lavenders and relaxed at the smell. From inside the bedroom came a slamming door. Cindy winced. She hated how many people had access to her whenever they wanted; she couldn’t even take a bath without interruption. She stretched two towels around her and rolled her eyes. What could Luke want? Luke had been her attendant since she first came to the kingdom. The Prince thought because Luke was a eunuch, he could leave her around the Queen without worry. Not true.
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Luke came bursting into the bathroom full of energy and vivacity. “Cinders, lovely, how are you today?” He bowed to her, in a most gracious manner, but Cindy would not have it, although she cracked a smile and tried to hide it. Luke saw the smile and continued. It was a little game they played. “My dearest, fairest queen, how doth thou feel?” This time Cindy smiled broadly, her white teeth reflecting the sun coming through the window and playing on the growing bubbles. Luke realized her anger might be ebbing, but he thought it might be safe to go for a laugh anyway. “Do you want to hear a funny story?” he said, and she said ok. “So, what happened was, I was walking along the trail out by the cherry trees,” they smiled together knowingly, “and I happened to find, shockingly, a handkerchief, that I thought may belong to my fairest queen, and I had the chivalry to return it to you, unharmed, unused, and undirtified.” She laughed this time, revealing all her teeth and tilting her head backwards to let the laugh ring throughout the marble. She stopped suddenly, and thought, Everything in this house is marble, how depressing, how cold, how stone.
.
Luke looked at her suddenly, wondering why her laugh vanished. He approached her this time. Kneeling on the floor, he placed his hands gently on her swollen belly, and placed his ear to her stomach. Cindy stroked his head gently while he talked to the little baby inside her. Luke cares more about this damn leech than I do, thought Cindy. Luke sang the baby a song and then looked at Cindy’s face. “What’s wrong, Cinders?” he said gently, placing a hand on her cheek. She leaned into his hand, and tears wetted his fingers. “You can tell me Cinders, whatever it is. I’ll fix it. Is it Prince? I swear to God if he laid a hand on you, I will, I will, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something!” “No,” she laughed quietly. “That would almost be a blessing.” She looked at him with tear-filled blue eyes, and smiled, forcing more tears to cascade down her face. She pushed the blonde hair off her shoulder, revealing her slim collarbone, and trying somewhat to stay covered with her two towels.
.
She remembered the first time she had met Luke, and it was at her wedding reception. Prince had introduced them. He had said, “Here’s your personal attendant Cinderella,” and ran off, but not in time enough to see him wink at another girl at the party and grab another whiskey. She was in shock. She was supposed to be his one true love. No one else. No other women. Or so Prince had told her. Luke looked at the shock on her face, with those deep, deep brown eyes, and said, “I will be there for you. I always will.” Cindy was confused! What was going on? Her new husband just dropped her with another man on the way to another woman? What kind of kingdom was this?
.
Luke brought her out into the garden and sat her down on a bench. He then ran and got her champagne, a large glass, and shoved over her poufy wedding dress a little so he could fit on the bench as well. “Now, I know this may come as a shock. But, um, before I continue, can you take a big drink? Yes, keep going. Nope, a little more. Okay, now, Prince is, a little, um, shall we say, promiscuous. I am here to tell you you can exit the marriage at any time. Except, if you do, some people may just plan an accident for you.” Luke paused and shook his head. “Mary was the last wife. She said she hated his drinking and was leaving him. The next day, she was found on the hunting grounds, an ‘accidental’ gunshot wound.” He shook his head again. “Pretty nasty stuff. I am only telling you all of this because I want you to be prepared. Especially if you get pregnant. You become the birthing vessel. They plump you up like a cow, and then steal the child, and you’ll never see him again. Well, hopefully it’s a him, because if it’s a girl, well, they might plan an accident then too.” Cinderella looked at him in shock, her eyes wide with disbelief. “So wait a minute, you’re telling me I can’t go away? I can’t do anything? What? And I’m supposed to believe you, and not my husband? Who do you think you are?” She threw her champagne at him and stood up to leave, but she tripped on her dress and fell to the ground, messing up her hair and getting grass stains on her wedding dress. She looked at him with poisonous eyes and said, “YOU MESSED UP MY WEDDING DRESS!” She grabbed it indignantly and tried to stand, but could not because of the weight of the dress. Luke tried to help her, but she yelled, “I can get it myself! DO NOT TOUCH ME!”
.
He watched her struggle for a few more minutes, and then burst out laughing, “Well, you’re quite the stubborn one, aren’t you?” Ignoring her cries, he lifted her up and took her up the back staircase into the castle. “You put me down this instant!” She flailed in his arms and punched him, almost getting a nail into his eye, but he restrained her. He kicked open the door to her bedroom and threw her on the bed. “Goodness gracious princess! You are quite fiesty!” He laughed at her sour face, and then laughed again. “The bathroom is over there, your pajamas are in the top drawer over there, and please get cleaned up before your Prince Charming arrives.”
He smiled deviously. She started to stop him, but Luke left without another glance.
.
The first night went normal enough, and Cinderella didn’t sense anything odd. Until a week later. He said her name was no longer Cinderella, but Cindy, because Cinderella sounded trashy; he drank all the time with his friends; and he never did any work! He just lived off his parents’ money, gambled with his friends, played with his horses, and hung around Cinderella in an effort to produce an heir. Cinderella realized Luke was right, and asked him to be her attendant again. She apologized, and they became fast friends. And then more than friends. It got to the point Luke pretended the baby was his, and she let him. So here she was, crying with Luke, the cold marble easing the pain in her aching swollen feet, and all she wanted to do was go back and scrub floors for her stepmother. Stepmom Gertrude really had not been so bad. Cindy made it sound worse than it was so the Prince would pick to marry her at the dance. She said her stepmother beat her and her stepsisters were jealous of her beauty, when really they were quite nice. They all had chores, and Cindy was just being a brat and didn’t want to do her share. So she wasn’t supposed to be at the Prince’s Ball as punishment, but she went anyway. She took the spare carriage, an awful orange color, and stole one of her older sister’s cuter dresses and went anyway. When she arrived, the Prince came to talk to her, singled her out, and danced with her. She told him her alleged sob story, but right when she was getting to the good part, Gertrude spotted Cinderella and she ran from the hall, losing a shoe, which the Prince then returned. It wasn’t a struggle like the tabloid made it out to be. The Prince didn’t have to make every girl in the kingdom try on the shoe. Cinderella had given him her address.
.
He returned the shoe, and Cinderella was scrubbing the floor for her disobedience, while her mother and sisters sat around talking about the ball. When the Prince showed up, Cinderella’s entire fabrication seemed true, and he whisked her away to “safety”. Gertrude gave permission for the marriage and said she was truly happy for Cinderella. However, her family was not invited to the wedding since they were commoners, and Prince would not relent. Cinderella just wanted to say sorry now. She had been wrong, and now she was pregnant. She couldn’t get a break. Yes, she had been bad, and yes, she was sorry, but she did NOT want to be pregnant. Or married to Prince. Prince’s father died a month after their marriage, and he inherited everything. So he stopped doing everything but drinking and partying. He didn’t even seem sad his father had died, and Cinderella really liked him; he had reminded her of her own father.
.
Cinderella looked into Luke’s sad eyes, and she said, “Did you see the paper?” He laughed and said, “Yeah, I saw it. But it’s like no big deal. It’s like a story about aliens. They said you had a fairy godmother that dressed you for the ball and little animals were your only friends, and a pumpkin carriage took you to the ball and at midnight you had to leave because that was your magical curfew. Who writes that crap anyway?” Cinderella looked at Luke and said, “Yeah, and what about the part with Prince having to have everyone try on the shoe? Wasn’t that a riot?” Luke said, “Yeah, it was pretty funny. My favorite part was the one about the mouse Gus-Gus, and how your stepmom was evil. Those parts cracked me up.”
.
Cinderella realized how ridiculous it was for her to be upset over such an obnoxious article. She still wanted to find out who leaked the picture though. That was upsetting. What an ugly picture it was too. She kissed Luke and thanked him for making her feel better. “I always do, Cinders.” He smiled. He talked to her stomach one more time. “Now, whoever you are in there, my name is Luke. And I’m your Daddy. And please come out a girl, because then Mommy and I get to run away together.” Luke helped Cindy into the tub full of bubbles, and Cindy prayed for a daughter, too.
.

Sharon Cebula

Destination

Mary consults the hand-written directions while she's stopped at the deserted cross-roads. Flat, dusty land stretches out all around her, fading into cornfields to the east, edged by sparse thickets of scrub and a sandy-sloped train track about fifty yards off to the west. Straight ahead, to the north, the road stretches away, blurring in the distance, then rising a bit so as to be cut off by the sky before the curve of the planet.
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Mary chews on her thumbnail and tries to determine which way to turn. The railroad tracks seem like an important landmark, but they're not included in the directions from the gas station attendant. When Mary received the letter six months ago, she knew it was something big even before she opened it. Her horoscope that morning in the paper had predicted, "Happy news from an unexpected source; look for the Silver Lining!" Not even the return address had daunted her rosy expectations for its contents. And she had not been disappointed. The rusty Pinto sputters in its uneasy idle and Mary taps the gas pedal absently.
.
Hands resting lightly at ten and two, she looks up and surveys the world around her, turning her head slowly all the way to the left, then all the way to the right. As she brings her gaze back to the windshield, a pickup truck crests the rise some 200 feet in front of her. Mary takes it as a sign. She keeps her eyes level on the pickup, breathes slowly in through her nose, fully expanding her lungs. Lips parted, she exhales forcefully through her teeth in a long "shhhhhhhhhhhhhh." She crumples the paper with the directions, stuffs it into her bag, lying open on the passenger seat, drops the gear shift into drive and accelerates gently, not bothering with her right turn signal.
.
This boring, dry landscape is so different from the lush, green, rolling hills back east. It is difficult for Mary to get a sense of scale out here. Her eye is so often fooled by the horizon, thinking it only five or ten miles off, only to drive for hours and never get any closer. But she is learning to trust herself, her intuition. The horoscope in today's paper said, "Learn to trust your instincts: you know what's best for YOU!" Mary was so very pleased to finally hear this. She had had a sneaking suspicion for years, but no one else ever seemed to believe her.
.
She switches on the radio and sharp static whips through the car, carried by the hot wind rushing in through the open windows. The first three pre-set buttons pick up nothing but static, the fourth an evangelical preacher. Mary pauses on this station for a moment, long enough to hear the preacher's exaggerated drawl turn 'friends' into a multi-syllabic word. The fifth button screams out hard, metallic thrash punk. Mary jumps and snaps the radio off. She doesn't realize that she's humming quietly to herself. She thinks about Nettie's letter.
.
She and Nettie had met in Mrs. Hagan's third grade class, seated together because of their last names. Until that year, Mary had been the only child in her level with a last name that started with P. She was miffed at first when this Nettie Pennsworth showed up mysteriously, halfway through the fall term, barging in on her monopoly of the sixteenth letter of the alphabet. There was not much unusual or distinctive about Mary, and she fiercely guarded what she had. She was neither the prettiest nor the ugliest, the smartest nor the dumbest, the nicest nor the meanest. She was not the tallest, shortest, fastest, slowest, best or worst at anything in particular. But she was the only P in first grade, then in second. It was really all she had looked forward to for third grade.
.
So she didn't want to like this pretty blond in a stylish ruffled skirt and gingham blouse, who said "yes, ma'am" when Mrs. Hagan asked her to stand up and introduce herself to the class. As Nettie stood up at the table she and Mary shared, Mary could see the stain of red begin at her ears and spread out to her cheeks and neck. Nettie's eyes stayed on the table and she spoke just above a whisper.
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"I'm-Nettie-and-my-dad-moved-us-here-from-Michigan-and-we-got-a-new-dog-named-Bulldozer-and-I'm-happy-to-be-here." It all rushed out in one breath and Nettie sat down quickly, her cheeks and ears a blazing red. Mary really felt for the poor thing. She was very shy herself and always hated Show and Tell, when you had to stand right up by the teacher's desk, in front of the whole class. Kids teased her sometimes about it, called her Tomato Head or Lobster Lady or Red Face, the last one always accompanied by a one-handed palm-forward mock-Indian salute.
.
Once Mrs. Hagan had finished urging the class to make Nettie feel welcome and had turned the attention back to the geography lesson at hand, Mary nudged Nettie softly with her elbow. Nettie's eyes were shiny with brimming tears as she turned them slightly from staring intently at the table top to look at Mary. Mary smiled and whispered, " I like dogs." The look in Nettie's eyes slid from abject humiliation to surprise, then to delight. She grinned with astonishment and scooted her chair a little closer to Mary. Mary pushed her geography book over to the middle of the table so they could both see the map of Europe.
.
After about fifteen minutes of monotonous tan fields that fade right into monotonous pale blue sky, a shimmer of metal appears on the horizon, like a mirage in the desert. As she inches closer at 75mph, Mary sees that it is, indeed, The Granite County Women's Correctional and Detainment Facility. She whistles softly with relief and realizes how stiff her neck has become.
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Mary brings the Pinto to a dusty stop next to the little wooden guard's shack, positioned just outside the chain-link fencing that defines the perimeter of the prison complex. Fifteen feet high and scalloped with coils of razor wire, the fence is just the first barrier, keeping the prisoners and staff safe from the punishing expanse of arid terrain around them.
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An angry-looking young man in a dark blue uniform reluctantly opens the window to the shack to accept Mary's identification, examining it through mirrored aviator sunglasses. Mary can feel a weak draft of electrically cooled air waft from the open window. As the guard slowly and carefully consults the curly papers attached to his clipboard, Mary notices the remnants of what must have been truly horrible acne on his cheeks. Or maybe chicken pox. Mary wonders when his birthday is. Without lifting his eyes from the list, he addresses Mary.
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"Inmate?"
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"Pennsworth. Antonetta, Louisa, Pennsworth."
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He uses Mary's driver's license as a guide, sliding it down the columns typed on the sheet of paper. Mary's pulse pounds in her ears. A red flush creeps unbidden up her neck and spreads to her cheeks. A coil starts to tighten in her belly. The heat of the day has been building and sweat beads Mary's upper lip and drips from her mousy, matted hairline. The pressure in her bladder reminds her that the restroom at the gas station had been out of order. The weak chilly breeze from the guard shack smells lightly of peppermint.
..
Their favorite candy was York Peppermint Patties, their favorite color was purple, their favorite holiday was Valentine's Day, for the chocolate and lacy hearts, not the lovey-dovey stuff. Nettie and Mary had dangled on swings together at the edge of the playground on recess and got to know each other in that easy short-hand way of nine-year-olds. They liked dogs and Cabbage Patch Dolls but hated boys and rock music. Mary was good at math, Nettie was good at drawing, but they both loved reading. Most importantly, their birthdays were exactly seven days apart, making them both Pisces, March Babies. They were practically inseparable from that day forward.
.
Without changing his icy expression, the young guard hands Mary her license and warns her against parking anywhere other than a designated visitor's spot, under penalty of being towed. He tersely slides the window shut before Mary can put the car into gear. A loud metal clanging is followed by a low buzz as the chain-link gate slowly swings open toward the Pinto.
.
Mary maneuvers the Pinto into a visitor's space and it shutters to an inconclusive stop. She sits for a moment in the sudden silence, her mind a careful blank, hands at ten and two. She closes her eyes and slowly breathes in through her nose, fully expanding her lungs. Her lips part and the lungful of air shooshes out through her teeth, like her therapist taught her. She opens her eyes, meets them in the rear view mirror.
.
"Here we go!" she says.
.
Just inside the heavy glass doors of the visitor's entrance is a partition decorated with a single poster, detailing the many items and behaviors not permissible in the Visitor's Area. Among them are loud talking, cell phones, alcoholic beverages and, for some reason, scissors. All Visitors and Bags are Subject to Search. Mary steps around the partition and comes to a metal detector manned by two white men and a burly, black woman in matching tan uniforms. Mary steps up to the conveyor belt and slides her brown leather bag off her shoulder. She can remember buying it in high school.
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She and Nettie had been best friends all through the rest of elementary school and middle school. They were excited to start at the high school, feeling almost grown up, and had gotten Mary's older sister, Rachel, to take them to the mall. The best part was, Rachel wanted to go hang with her own friends and smoke pot behind the mall. If they covered for each other, Rachel would get brownie points with Mom--looking like the Role Model Big Sister--and Mary would get to shop without Mom watching over her. This was before Nettie started dating James, the beautiful quarterback, before Mary's parents died in a plane crash, before everything changed forever.
.
She had spent her entire savings on the purse, thirty dollars she had scraped together from baby-sitting wages. Usually so frugal, so practical about money, the luxurious smell of the leather bag had intoxicated her, and it was on mark-down. Nettie's endorsement that it was "elegant" had been the clincher. More than anything, Mary wanted to be elegant. She carried the purse to school and her various jobs for the next sixteen years, occasionally re-sewing a strap or replacing a zipper. Even stained and fraying around the edges, that bag carried her youth, her sweet memories of her friendship with Nettie.
.
After being frisked and made to sit through a lecture on how to behave during the Inmate Visit Period--no touching, no passing objects over the partition, no loud speech--Mary is ushered, with the handful of other visitors, into a short corridor lined with institutional green tile and closed at each end by heavy, metal doors, each with a tiny mesh-enforced window near the top. The other visitors are all women--odd, Mary thought, for visiting female inmates. One carries a sleeping infant, wrapped in a pink cotton blanket, drool oozing from his tiny, slack mouth. The small group stands uncomfortably and silently in the harshly-lit hallway.
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At last, a loud electronic buzz sounds and a burly, stern-looking woman in a blue uniform opens the door at the far end. "Visiting Period!" she hollers unnecessarily. The words ricochet off the hard tile and make Mary jump. The baby wails at having been startled awake.
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"Adamson. DeLeuthe. Findley. Pennsworth. Sorensen. You got one hour."
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The massive woman stands to the side, holding the door open for the group of visitors to pass through. The Visiting Area is lined with the same pale green institutional tile as the hallway, but with a story-and-a-half high ceiling, from which hang pendulous metal light fixtures. Windows run along the top of the far wall, letting in sunshine but too high to afford a view. A long table bisects the room cleanly, bolted to either wall. Along its center, a vertical partition, a foot and a half high, runs the entire length of the table and is also bolted heavily to each wall. The two halves of the room mirror each other exactly: Cheap metal chairs are tucked neatly in along both sides and black, plastic ash trays wait at regular intervals, some of them containing stale ashes. A metal trash can stands in each of the two corners under the windows.
.
The visitors file in and take seats. Mary takes the farthest chair, closest to the windows. The woman with the now-quieted baby sits one chair away from her, patting his bottom and humming him back to sleep. The baby sucks arduously on his own fingers. Mary can smell that soft, sweet scent of baby oil. After about five minutes of quiet, another electronic buzz sounds and the door on the other side of the partition swings open. Another hefty black woman in the same blue uniform enters and holds the door as five women in orange jumpsuits and shower sandals shuffle in, all of them linked together by chains attached to their handcuffs. Three of the prisoners are white, one Hispanic, and one very black. They wait in their shackled line, heads bowed, while the large black guard closes and secures the door behind them. She walks around to the Hispanic prisoner at the head of the line, zips a huge clump of keys forward on its nylon tether attached to her belt, and unlocks the handcuffs. She does this for each prisoner in line, gathering up the length of chain as she goes. Each prisoner rubs her wrists reflexively upon being freed, but stays in line, facing the windowed wall. After freeing Nettie, the last one in line, the guard goes to stand with her back against the locked door, the bundle of metal and chain in the crook of her arm like a basketball.
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"Visiting Period!" she calls out in an unnecessarily loud voice. This command seems to release the prisoners from their position in line, and they all look up toward the table. Faces break into smiles and conversation fills the tall room, as the orange jumpsuits cross each other's paths and find their respective visitors. Nettie walks slowly toward Mary, not smiling, her blue eyes guarded. Mary stands up and smiles warmly at her old friend, desperately holding back the tears that spring up. It has been so long since she has seen Nettie; she is surprised at the changes in her beautiful face.
.
Their junior year in high school, Nettie had started drinking frequently with James and the other football players. Mary knew that Nettie and James had started having sex over the summer, which Mary had spent working at the grocery store. She had gone to a couple of keg parties, but frankly found their drunken antics boring. Once classes resumed in the fall, she had expected Nettie to return to their regular routine of studying together and sleeping over on the weekends. But the partying seemed to intensify, especially when James befriended Dodger, a tough, mean, transfer student from Los Angeles who liked to brag that his dad sold cocaine to movie stars back home. By winter break, they had discovered crack and Mary just couldn't bear to be around them. She would see them across the cafeteria, rough-housing and laughing loudly, or at the far end of the parking lot, radio blaring, smoke billowing out of cracked windows. Nettie lost her beautiful figure and became emaciated. James was put on academic probation. Neither of them seemed to care.
.
Over spring break, they both disappeared. Mary spent the break at her grandmother's home in Virginia, and by the time she returned the funeral was over but gossip abounded. Some said James had gotten too high and jumped off the Viet Nam Memorial Bridge into the icy river. Others said he had overdosed in his parent's basement. Still others claimed he had committed suicide because he was gay. No one seemed to speculate about Nettie. She was just gone.
.
"Oh, Nettie! It's been so long! It's so good to see you again," Mary gushes, still standing.
.
"Call me Toni, for chrissakes," she hisses in response, folding herself onto the chair and glancing surreptitiously around the room to see if her fellow inmates have heard the old childhood nickname. "I'm Toni in here." Her eyes meet Mary's with a hard glare as Mary sits down.
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"Sorry! I didn't know." Mary had just assumed. The letter was brief, outlining tersely that Nettie was 'incarcerated' and 'working through the Program.' There was something in it Mary didn't quite understand, about making amends. The signature, "Ever your Friend, Sincerely, Nettie," had been the hook in Mary's heart. Even after some twelve years, Mary still misses her best friend, has never replaced her with another, has never managed to forge another bond like the one they had sealed on the swing-set so long ago. She starts again.
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"You look good! Still beautiful," she lies, smiling, face starting to go hot.
.
Nettie snorts a derisive laugh and pulls a pack of cigarettes from the chest pocket of her jumpsuit. All of the prisoners and several of the visitors are already smoking. Mary notices a small blossom of red on the left side of Netti's neck, but it recedes after the first drag on the cigarette. Each of the other prisoners, in turn, has pointedly noticed Mary. Mary lowers her voice.
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"I got your letter, " Mary starts again. "I'm not sure what you need to make amends for, but I'm really happy to see you again. I've missed you."
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Nettie sits back and exhales, left foot bouncing nervously on her right knee. She squints at Mary's hopeful expression.
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"Yeah, well, ya know; it's part of The Program."
.
"Do you mean Alcoholics Anonymous? Cuz I didn't even know you were still drinking..."
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Mary trails off when Nettie barks out an angry laugh, lips curled back in a sneer. She notices a dark space where one of her canines should have been.
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"You didn't know, huh? Well, what you don't know could just about fill up this desert." She takes another long drag off her cigarette and leans forward to crush it into the plastic ash tray.
.
Immediately she shakes another from the pack and lights it. "Besides, I wasn't exactly drinking."
.
Nettie tosses the lighter onto the counter before her and eyes Mary defiantly. Mary feels the heat climbing into her ears and the coil tightening in her belly again. She really wishes she'd had time to go to the ladies' room before being rushed into that Visitor's Lecture.
.
"I tried to find you, to find out about you, after..." Mary looks down into the brown leather bag in her lap.
.
She had. She had really tried, but no one wanted to tell her anything, to talk about it at all. No one at the Pennsworth's would answer the phone and when she went to the house, only the cleaning woman would come to the door, saying they were out of town, she didn't know anything else. Mary had asked the principal at school and been sent to talk to the counselor, who only said it was none of her concern, and what colleges was she planning to apply to? Mary wanted to ask James's family, but her brother, Mark, had talked her into waiting until after the school year was up. By then, both Mary's parents were gone and her own world was completely upside down. In the end, she had had to let it go and just move on, like everyone else seemed to do. But she never forgot about her, never stopped hoping.
.
A dozen years later, when the letter arrives, Mary knows it is destiny. She hates her job as a clerk in the automated shipping firm, has no boyfriend, no real friends, no reason at all to keep trudging along, day after day, in a pointless, endless circle of going through the motions of life. When she reads her horoscope the day after reading the letter, she quits her job and tells her landlord she is breaking her lease. "Your life is only yours if you make it your own. Sometimes, a clean break is best," the stars said. Mary knows it isn't a coincidence; it is a sign. It takes her two weeks to tie up the loose ends of her life and toss them all into the rusty Pinto.
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"Well, I guess you finally found me," Nettie snaps, smirking.
.
"Yes," Mary says to her purse. She digs into it and pulls out a misshapen silver-wrapped blob, holding it up with a shy smile."Want a Peppermint Pattie?"
.
Nettie grins for the first time, revealing a twinkle in her blue eyes that Mary had begun to fear was gone forever. They both laugh and it almost sounds like two young girls giggling. Mary waves the silvery blob at the black woman standing at the door, motioning her over so she can get permission to share the treat with her old friend.
.
By the end of the hour, something has been restored. Mary isn't sure if it is the same friendship it had been when they were girls, but she is sure something real has survived the years, the mistakes, the miles, the regrets. She feels free and almost weightless as she hums to herself in the Pinto, charging along the dusty road back into town.
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"Your life is only yours if you make it your own!" she shouts to the flat expanse.
.
She parks the Pinto in front of The Granite Top Café, just inside town limits, and lets the dust settle around her. Hands at ten and two, eyes closed, mind a careful blank, she fills her lungs through her nose and holds it in for a beat. Then she expels it through her teeth in a long "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." She gets out of the car, goes into the Café, snatching the "Help Wanted" sign from the front window and striding confidently up to the sweaty, smiling fat man standing behind the counter.
.

Incomplete

~

This semester is almost over. I have turned in grades for two classes and have one to go. I mark days off on my calendar, like a prisoner chalking days on his cell wall. I will pick up some essays at school and read them tonight or tomorrow morning. I will experience momentary happiness giving students who have done a good job an A or B and momentary unhappiness giving students who did a less than stellar job a C or less. Even when the latter is accurate, it is never satisfying. It leaves the taste of incompleteness in my mouth--like biscuits not cooked through completely.

I recently heard from a couple of friends that they hoped one day to read all the books on their shelves which they have started and not finished or had intended to read but have not cracked. That sounded like something I ought to understand, but I realized I did not have this problem, as I have enough of a driving need to finish what I have started or know why. A book I have not finished does not go back on my shelf, but into the Goodwill box--because it seems to me not worth finishing. There's another feeling of incompleteness.

Once I pick a book to read, I generally read it through. And I generally pick a book knowing a little bit about it. I have usually read or heard something about it, or, more often, read a few pages or a chapter in the book store, enough so I know whether or not I want to read it. A lot of people loved The Lovely Bones, but after a few pages of stomach turning prose I knew I would never be able to finish what seemed essentially a book for young girls. I think the word that tipped me off was skeezy, though I may be botching that word. The young girl who was clearly about to be molested and killed said that something made her feel all skeezy. I put the book back on the shelf. There was enough in that word usage to let me know I had nothing to gain there: morbid sentimentalism and false youth.

There is not much better than finishing a book knowing that it has satisfied you in many of the ways a book can satisfy. I can name things that beat it on the fingers of one hand, though, to be honest, I use all the fingers. In the pitch of the last weeks of a semester, I am usually unable to read something not required of me, as I must reread the books I have assigned, and student papers and stories, perhaps a thesis or two, keeping up and finishing off as grandly as possible. So as soon as I had attended my last class of the semester, and even though I still had plenty of work to complete myself, I picked up a book my dear Lisa recently bought and began to look at it.

When she bought it, it seemed like a book I would pick out; it had been niggling at the back of my mind since she put it on the shelf unread. As soon as I got home from the last class, I pulled it out and gave a look. It looked short enough I thought I might finish it in time to get back to what the world required of me. Two hundred pages of pleasantly produced text, a handsome cover with a photo of lissom grass on a sand dune, obviously near the ocean--inviting and forbidding under the title Being Dead. The writer was a Brit named Jim Crace, who looked pleasantly like he had spent some time on such a dune. Also on the cover, a small gold seal which claimed this novel had won the National Book Critics Circle Award, which had no effect on me whatsoever until I finished the book and felt this was a pretty good choice for such an award.

One thing I noticed right away: each 'chapter' of the book was short, generally of the same length as all of the chapters. This matched the gentle and generous tone of the novel, and made it more pleasant to read, as it seemed to open before me. In the very first chapter we understand that a pair of married zoologists have been rather brutally murdered on a sand dune much like the one on the cover, that Celice is naked from the waist down, and her husband Joseph is totally naked and holding on to her ankle.

Throughout the novel, the couple remains dead, though they are visited by various insects and birds and small mammals, and, finally, by their human counterparts. You might say that the entire novel is a meditation on their being dead, though we go back to the momentous and very unspectacular day they met, and several days in between, but that doesn't really account for how engrossing the book became for me.

Why does it strike me as a small miracle that the two main characters, though dead, were in their fifties? And not entirely attractive. She is built a little like like a satyr, a lovely, small-breasted torso from the waist up, and the large butt and thighs of a normal woman. He is too short for most things, as he often points out, and certainly shorter than her. Their lives, though intense and dedicated to their science, are really common, moderate, usual. And the natural processes of death to which they become susceptible are also completely normal, though often shied away from in the course of our lives.

I want to note that I am sixty-three years old at this writing. I have had a heart attack, which I like to call minor, and have two stainless steel bits in my chest to keep arteries from occluding once more, so thoughts of death, while sometimes as inviting to me as to anyone else, are not entirely welcome. I do not like to take long walks through graveyards--which I take to be the reason I chose not to read The Lovely Bones. In addition to this, sentimentality often seems to me like a way to invite death to your doorstep; please don't ask me to elaborate. But this death I enjoyed reading about. It left me unfrightened, accepting, acknowledging.

Perhaps this is because Crace is something of a naturalist in his understanding of the processes of senescence and thanatology, which are the basis of the study to which the deceased couple gave themselves in life. How, you might ask, can such a gentle novel of death keep the reader's attention? I think the answer is balance. He balances this discussion of death with scenes from life, and just when it seems impossible that Crace could keep my attention alive through his meditations, we get a new character--the daughter of the deceased couple who becomes involved in discovering what has happened to her parents.

Even with her rebellious nature (she has left home, shaved her head, and gone to work as a waitress at a hot spot called MetroGnome) she manages to charge the prose without taking over. In the course of the novel, she discovers her place in this world, and a little about her parents, even if only that they were born to die; much more isn't required of children, is it? Children of decent parents, let's say. That should be enough to cause them to be loved by the child who took life from them and will yet take it further than she or they could have imagined.

But now, alas, I must leave this discussion unfinished, as my duties call me back. I must finish, submit grades, a hundred other little things--some of them large and heart-breaking in their smallness. But let me say this much: the life in Jim Crace's book is real, unadorned by dreams or falsity, yet touched by the grace of decency, of respect for life, such as it is, such as it will be, in this world. And finally, it is touching. Because, at last, the novel is as beautifully complete as their lives.

A Few Words about "Flip Cards"

~
I am going to say a few words about my personal essay "Flip Cards" for my friend Steve Smith, who asked me to. An English class he teaches at Manchester High School will be reading it in the Fall of 2009. When I think of what to say about it, I first think about the experience of getting it published, and only after that what it was like writing it, so that's the way I'll go here. I think these notes will be best after you have read the personal essay.

"Flip Cards" first appeared in The Georgia Review, was reprinted in The Pushcart Prize and then again in my book of stories, Private Acts. I never really thought much about whether it was a story or an essay, and when I first sent it to Stanley Lindberg, at The Georgia Review, I didn't identify it. Stanley told me he first thought it was a story, but then it lit up when he realized it was a personal essay. I had sent him a few things before, and he had published an essay of mine already, but this time he sent me a rejection saying he wanted to publish it but felt the ending needed to capture and reflect the whole essay. I had ended with an image of my friend Danny's father wandering around their house playing the accordion, which seemed to me to do everything I wanted, but then I am strongly oriented toward the visual image rather than excess talk or reflection.

This rejection found me at the end of my rope. It exasperated me more than I could say, enough to write out, by hand, a rather frustrated response that stated that I thought the reflection and any conclusions that could be made were already obvious from what was there. I told him what these reflections and conclusions might be under the force of my anger that even my best work, which this seemed to be, was being tested like someone sticking their toe in the ocean. I laid it out for him. What did I have to do, walk on water? I let him have it. And this is a testament to how frustrating it can be to send out your work, because he was the smartest, kindest, most gentle editor with whom I have ever had the privilege to communicate.

A few days later I got a phone call that I never expected. Stanley asked me if I had a copy of the note I sent him, and I said I did not, a little embarrassed that I had sent it at all. He said, "Let me read it to you," and then I felt like pure crap. But he read it to me, and then he said, "Bob, this is what you need at the end of your essay. Now, I'm going to send this back to you and you see if you think you could work it in. Don't do it if you don't want to, but I think this is exactly what you need." As he said it a light came on in my mind. I could see exactly what he was saying, and that what I had sent him was in fact the true end of the essay. I could not wait to get the note back, but by the time it had arrived I had already been working on the end. I rewrote it and sent it back to him, knowing this was the right way to end the essay. You can see how it ends now, and this is the result of Stanley feeding me back the note I sent him.

Once he had the finished essay in his hands, he called me on the telephone, at a time he had already set up, and we read the essay to each other over the phone. He said he wanted to hear it. He asked me questions about the essay and we talked about it for over an hour--he had a meter on his phone. We didn't change the essay, just read it aloud, perhaps the best experience I have had with an editor. I did make one change from the conversation. For some reason, I had decided to make one of my paragraphs one long sentence. I had seen writers try to make long sentences before, and I always thought they weren't really sentences, that the reader knew most of the time that this one had been patched together for effect. I wanted to write a really long sentence that worked perfectly and that no one would notice. Don't ask me why. Probably pride.

Anyway, Stanley was reading at this point, and when he reached the end of the sentence he paused. "I just noticed," he said, "that sentence is one, two, three....thirteen lines long." I told him what I had tried and he said, "You did it. Now, can we put some periods and commas in there?" I laughed. "Sure," I said, "now that I know I did it." The paragraph was just a little better, and there were no splashy effects after that one was removed.

And then, some time after the essay appeared, Stanley called again. "The Pushcart wants to use it. This is firm. They want to publish it." He was very happy about it, almost as happy as I was, it seemed to me. But all this took place after the essay had been written.

When I wrote it, I experienced delight, not so common for me. I can't remember how the idea entered my mind, but the first thing I did was to describe a game we played when I was a kid, involving baseball cards, and how much I loved these cards, and how they smelled, and how good I was at playing flip cards. Sometimes you discover a talent you didn't know you have and you have no reason for possessing, and it's a high experience, so you go with it. Asked once why she wrote, Flannery O'Connor said she wrote because she was good at it. I played flip cards because I was good at it, and because it became the mode of the day, the thing we did, the expression of our desire.

I spent a very long time one bright morning writing that first section and then I went home. I wrote it at my office at the university, and I didn't think there was anything more, until I returned the next morning and started thinking about my childhood friend Danny Gary, and his parents, and where they lived. I thought, there is more to this, and so I wrote the next section. Every morning I returned I had something more to say, more to remember about this time in my life. What a wonderful period this was, living on the edge of the ocean! Delight filled me as I wrote, and then I spent some time putting it all together. I just laughed when I finished it, a little embarrassed about the way I had been spending my time, feeling foolish about writing so much about my own childhood.

When asked to give a reading on my own campus, I decided to try it out. This seemed like a safe forum, but I was deeply embarrassed to be sharing such private moments, and to talk about who I was at that young age. But I read it aloud and the response was overwhelming. My colleagues might be polite a great deal of the time, but this went beyond politeness, and it surprised the hell out of me. I went back to my office, put it in an envelope, and sent it to Stanley Lindberg with my heart beating. So when I got that first rejection I was dashed.

This was the process of writing, a pure joy, an exploration of memories. In an earlier story, "Beth," I had discovered that once you began to remember a period of time, the memories came back with greater fluidity. You remember what happened before and after, and then before and after again. It spreads, it opens up, before it finally closes again, and the story is finished. This happened with "Flip Cards." And the memories were so bright, and so filled with delight for me, that even the darkest moments were mitigated. The essay made me happy like a piece of music, and it had taken two weeks to complete!

I immediately started another autobiographical piece, one that I had been thinking of for some time, about the year I was seventeen and a paper boy in Maryland. Six months later, worn out, pleased, and still engaged, I sent out a completely different kind of personal essay that had come in three parts. The first, "The Friends of a Stranger," appeared in The Missouri Review, again the first place I sent it, and the third part appeared in the alumni magazine under the title, "Lucky Bob." All three appeared as the last entry in my book of stories, under the title "A Million Billion Trillion Stars," a title taken from an e.e. cummings poem about the good Samaritan. This one was darker, but, I thought, in the long run richer, but readers have always like "Flip Cards" best.

I wondered why this one made such a hit, and for a while I thought it might be the baseball stuff, with the baseball card material, and then I thought it might be the delight with which it was written, the glow of light from another time. Finally, I just let it be and stopped rereading and revisiting it. I moved on, but it was back there, the spot of light, that landscape and seascape with the sun rising or setting over it. It was there just a surely as that time in my life had been there, as magical in the experience as it had been in the writing.
~

"The fairy tale...takes these existential anxieties and dilemmas very seriously and addresses itself to them: the need to be loved and the fear that one is thought worthless; the love of life, and the fear of death."
--Bruno Bettelheim, in The Uses of Enchantment

My first experience of fairy tales was my mother reading at night before we went to sleep. She read other stories, recited poems, but nothing in a fairy tale stopped surprising. I'd like to know your take on any fairy tales that sticks with you: essay, story, poem. Send to rpope@uakron.edu, whatever form it takes.

~

Contents:
Steve Smith, "black dreams and blue thieves"

Dave Materna, "Boondockle"
Robert Pope, "The Tailor's Boy"Mary Biddinger, "Show Pony"
Shurice Gross, "The Princess of Building 4"
Tony Bradford, "Slumbering Siren"
Alex Cox, "The Edge and the Other Side"
Dave Materna, "Pre-Mortem"
Gillian Trownson, "True Love Waits"
Tara Kaloz, "Mr. Horner's Heads"
Brittany Stone, "In Support of the Little Guy"
Two by Kristina von Held, "Transformation," "The Pull of the Water"
Nick Elder, "Sandy"

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