moody street musings

AN ANGEL IS SITTING NEXT TO MY BED

2013-03-27T07:22:00.000-04:00

by Marianne Carlson

My twin sister, Hannah, and I were born 12 weeks ahead of our due date. Needing intensive care, we were placed in separate incubators. Hannah began to gain weight and her health stabilized but I only weighed 2 lbs, had trouble breathing, heart problems and other complications. I was not expected to live.

Our nurse did everything she could to make my health better, but nothing she did was helping me. With nothing else to do, our nurse went against hospital policy and decided to place both of us in the same incubator. She left us to sleep and when when she returned she found a sight she could not believe. She called all the nurses and doctors and this is what they saw. Hannah had put her small little arm around me as if to hug and support me. From that moment on, my breathing and heart rate stabilized and my health became normal.

From the day we were born we were always together, Hannah and Sonia, the Bauer twins. Hannah watched over me as if her mission in life was to be my protector. She was 21 when she died, and I have been an empty shell ever since because when she died, my soul died with her. We were born in Berlin and moved to America when we were toddlers, we spent our childhood in a modest home outside Washington DC in the 1950’s and 60’s. Because we left Germany when we were so young, Hannah and I never carried any guilt resulting from the horrors of the war. In a way you could say we were collateral damage because our fellow classmates always regarded us with suspicion. We knew something bad had happened but we didn’t know what, and had no idea what it had to do with us.

My parents grew up in a parallel universe. The war had impacted both their lives on a daily basis, they were heartbroken; their beloved Berlin in ruins, so many friends and relatives taken, their homeland despised. Because of this they never felt safe while growing up and were determined to create a stable, healthy home life for us while maintaining our German heritage. Our family was extremely close, and my twin sister and I were inseparable.

My father, a career officer, worked as an attache at Quantico, the Marine Base. Throughout his long career in the military, he always remained a gentleman, a very gentle man, who loved poetry and must have found his position on the base difficult to say the least. The military did not suit him, he was a pacifist in a uniform, and he wrestled with this paradox throughout his entire career. The war had ended too recently for the passage of time to even begin to heal all wounds, but both my parents managed to handle a delicate transition with grace.

It was important to our parents that we maintain our German heritage, we spoke English at school but always German at home, and Hannah and I always spoke German to each other, creating an air of secrecy between us in school. No one understood us which was the way we wanted it. It must have been hard for my mother because we had each other but she had no one. Her thick hair always tied back in a knot, her calm, competent aura always created for us an environment of safety, like a comforting mother robin in her nest. My father worked long hours while my mothers’ days were spent cleaning the house. I can’t remember her having any friends, she must have been very lonely, but she never complained. She had great dignity, great beauty, and there was a certain sweetness about her , a softness, which revealed itself every time she smiled. Losing Hannah robbed her of that softness, it was replaced by a hard edge. Every day after school we had kaffee und kuchen at the kitchen table and told her about our day. As we grew older we had other things we wanted to do but she insisted on this one tradition from her homeland, and we couldn’t say no to her.

It's strange, I can close my eyes and visualize our home, but try as I may, the only way I see Hannah is by looking in a mirror where I can see her facade, her smile and her dimple reflected back as me - but hollow, a ghost. Her essence has disappeared from my mind like a flashlight that slowly dims before dying completely, and nothing will ever replace it. The dark red hair, the pale skin, the rakish, defiant attitude is all there, but without any substance. I have become one of those life-size cardboard cutouts, an exact replica, but lifeless. She was my touchstone. Only I knew the extent of Hannah’s mood swings, her highs and lows. To the rest of the world Hannah was the aggressor, the stable one, and I the introvert - but I knew better. As our high school days were coming to an end, her instability grew. She covered it up well but the prospect of high school ending and leaving home to go to college was more unsettling to Hannah than to most. We often talked well into the night with the lights out.

“If something happens to me, you need to promise me that you will be all right,” Hannah whispered one night.

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“We are too close, we need to disentangle ourselves.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I remember saying, the hair on the back of my neck rising.

“Probably not, but if something does happen to me, you need to know I will never leave you. Look for signs, little signals that may pop up when you least expect it.”

Boys became a factor in our junior and senior year but they gravitated towards Hannah like a magnet whereas they seemed to tolerate me as Hannah’s appendage. She was constantly arranging double dates but this “two for the price of one” wore rather thin, both for the hapless boy who was to be my partner and for me. I would have far preferred reading a good book than spending endless hours hanging out in the local coffee shop. The truth is I believe I must have been jealous of any boy who seemed to be stealing Hannah away from me but none of it mattered until Stephen came along. I rerun it in my mind endlessly, how it unfolded, how it ended, if there was anything I could have done to prevent it.

“Heute traf ich den meisten hübscher Junge, ich denke, dass ich ihn heiraten möchte.” (I met the cutest boy today, I think I am going to marry him.”)

“Ach? Was ist sein Name?” (Oh? What is his name?)

“Stephen”

The romance, for lack of a better word, came quickly and then it ended. Hannah was crazy about him. Stephen never tried to understand how important our German heritage was, to the contrary, he insulted Germans every chance he got. He took her to the senior prom but dropped her like a hot potato shortly after and moved on with his life, leaving Hannah devastated. I can never forgive his cruelty, the way he played with her like a rag doll. Following the breakup the juxtaposition of our roles was staggering for both of us. I, who had always been the weaker, was suddenly expected to hold her up, and I was totally unqualified. I never fully understood the depths of her depression until I found her lifeless body in the car in the garage.

Years later I returned to Berlin, I work for a large publishing company, my bilingual ability has served me well as my father promised. Single, I doubt if I could ever give myself to another person as I gave myself to Hannah. The pain is too excruciating. I believe I will continue to feel as if an integral part of me is missing until the day I die. One day I was on a train headed to Hamburg to attend a conference. As was my custom, my thoughts had once again returned to Hannah. I remembered what she told me, that she would never leave me, that I would receive signs, that they would pop up when I least expected them.

“Achten Sie auf Anzeichen, Hannah told me. (Watch for signs.) I studied the list of publishers who would be attending the conference absentmindedly, when I happened to glance out the window at the German countryside. And then I saw Hannah’s sign. My heart leapt. How like her, a perfect sign from Hannah in full sight for the world to see.

An Angel is Sitting Next to my Bed

It's All Temporary

THE SIMULACRUM

2013-02-26T08:47:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

"Ok can you look at each other as you if you actually like each other? Remember, this is a happy time."

"Like each other? We LOVE each other," Adele gushes as her invisible tentacles wrap themselves around the hapless male standing next to her, a mere boy, taking grown up steps into a future he can only imagine.

Unable to look each other in the eye, the couple stand awkwardly in front of the garden backdrop in my photography studio, posing for their engagement announcement photo, they barely hold hands. As if caught in a trap, uncertain whether to struggle or lay low, Clark does neither, but assumes an attitude of tortured acquiescence. My camera clicks unceasingly. He looks as if he would rather be anywhere else, as if he is drowning.

Adele could be a spokesperson for a Weight Watchers commercial, strutting her newfound thinness in front of him seductively, more in love with her new svelte body than in love with her fiancé. Within a year those 40 pounds will return and then some, and Clark will be constantly on her case about her weight, her "enormous butt." He abhors fat and will beleaguer her with insults.

I give this marriage five years at best. I wish I could tell them. If I could do my work without the necessity of interacting with people I’d be fine because the truth is I really don’t like them very much, the messes they make of their lives. The strange thing is, they so often want to tell me everything, to confide. A hair dresser once told me that her clients often want to reveal their deepest secrets to her. She thinks it has something to do with the fact that she is touching their heads. Maybe on some level my clients believe they are talking to my camera?

I am surprised to find Clark take a keen interest in the shots, and even more surprised to discover that his taste is impeccable. I have him pegged all wrong. Adele's interest is superficial at best, she scans the shots with annoying insouciance and gravitates towards the worst of the worst, leaving the choice to Clark. Focused, he is a different person than the boy in front of my camera, it is as if he has matured in a matter of minutes.

“Let me know when you decide which shot you want to use.”

“I have already decided. It’s this one.” He chooses a shot which is off balance, not very complimentary of either one of them. In the shot Clark appears to be crowding Adele out of camera range, a diaphanous shadow partially covers her face. You can’t see her eyes. I love the shot, I love Clark for choosing it and look at him in new a light.

I want to ask him why. Why the rush, why are you doing this, why are you marrying her at all, but I don’t. Instead I write up the order, process his credit card.

“I know what you are thinking.” Adele has excused herself to go to the bathroom. Clark and I are alone.

“You do. Well, tell me then, what am I thinking?”

“Why am I marrying this foolish girl, that’s what you are thinking.”

“You said it, not I.” He is on the verge of unraveling into that insecure boy who stood in front of my camera, but through some strange inner process known only to him he again transforms in front of my eyes. His tenacity frightens me.

“Adele’s father is my nemesis. I hate him. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a cinematographer. I want to shoot movies. It is all I have ever wanted.”

“Good for you, I can understand that. You’re a bit young for such grandiose ideas, though.”

“Adele’s father is one of the top guns in Hollywood. I interviewed him, way before I ever met Adele, and he turned me down flat. He not only rejected me, he humiliated me in the process. In essence he told me not to let the door hit me on the way out.”

Clark’s rage was palpable. “Does Adele know this?”

“No.”

“Does she know you want to follow in her father’s footsteps?”

“I don’t want to follow in her father’s footsteps.”

“It’s a mean industry. You need to have very thick skin.”

“I know. But being married to the boss’s daughter helps, doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

I wish them well as they make their way to the door thinking that five years is a long shot. He will drop her like a hot potato as soon as he lands his first movie. Sitting in my den watching The Academy Awards ten years later, the camera zooms in on the nominees for best cinematographer. There sits Clark and Adele and as his name is mentioned he kisses her lightly on the cheek. Just as I imagined, she has packed on a few pounds. He still looks young and resolute, that iron determination written all over his face. He didn’t win, but he will sometime in the future. They have three children, a boy and twin girls. Adele isn’t going anywhere. Good for her.

It's All Temporary

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

2013-02-18T10:18:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

"Keva? Is it really you?" I looked at her in stupefied amazement. I had not seen her in at least five years, it might as well have been a lifetime, so much has changed for me since last we met. Potent emotions swept over me rendering me powerless to react in any but a superficial manner. For a moment I thought I might faint.

"Fancy meeting you here." Keva had changed. Once pencil slim, she had put on weight giving her a solidity I found somewhat off-putting. When slim, she had a chimerical quality, I often thought of her as Tinkerbell but Tinkerbell has been lifting weights. Her eyes had not changed though, that unrelenting stare, her refusal to look away. She was a chameleon, but a chameleon with a mean underbelly.

"I'm fat."

"No, you look good Keva. How's life been treating you?"

"Not so good. I have been away."

"Oh?" She had always been laconic, her way of dropping innuendos, then carrying on as if I was a mind reader. It was one of the things I had loved about Keva, her quietness. I grew up with a mother who never stopped talking, and it drove me crazy. Then along came Keva. When we first met, when we were in the throes of first love, I thought it compelling. Now I find it rather sinister.

"Away?"

"Shipped upstate."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Springdale Women's House of Correction. The food was starchy."

"Are you telling me you were incarcerated?" For reasons that were unclear to me, I wasn't surprised. Our relationship had always included some act of sedition or another, usually minor. We both had QUESTION AUTHORITY bumper stickers on our cars but Keva was far more rebellious than I.

"You always told me I would bite off more than I could chew, well I did."

"It must have been a hell of a big bite."

"It was stupid. Basically I was set up."

"What did you do?" I felt like I was pulling teeth, trying to get information out of her, and suddenly I recalled how this person had almost destroyed me. I thought I was over her, but I was not. It was as if she pulled a switch and the deep recesses of her personality were once again hidden while at the same time her irresistible nature dominated. It had always been this way, a lethal game of hide and seek. I, always the seeker, trying to peel through the layers of Keva’s psyche.

"I got caught up with some not very nice people, they were into drugs, and used me as a mule."

"You are too smart for that, Keva."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Tell me about prison."

Much to my surprise, she radiated, a subtle inner glow crept into her usually opaque eyes. "I met some wonderful women. Believe it or not, I was sorry to leave."

"Really?"

"I'll never look at life in the same way again. I'm an X running around in a world of O's.

"But you always were, Keva.

"Remember you used to tell me, "deep calls to deep," Keva said, and I always told you I had no idea what it meant?"

"I remember."

"Well, now I know. My cell mate taught me, but I'm not sure I have the depth to answer her. It was nice seeing you again." Keva turned abruptly as if to leave, she had revealed more than she felt comfortable in doing.

Nice? Is that what she calls it? Nice, when in five short minutes she managed to reduce me to a shell of my former self again. Stronger now, I will be able to replace the pieces of my shattered ego, but it will take a strength of character I am not certain I possess. Deep calls to deep.

It's All Temporary

THE CHINA DOLL

2013-02-13T16:15:00.000-05:00

By Marianne Carlson

Sarah had it all. A few months after her birth the small town where she lived with her family (two older brothers, her parents, and Angelo, the Maine Coon cat) had a Cutest Baby Contest. Sarah won. The prizes consisted of a year's supply of Pampers, assorted jars of Gerber's baby food, a mobile for her crib and a 529K. Tom and Terese, a handsome, annoyingly righteous couple, were thrilled. They were careful not to boast, but it sealed the deal for them. Sarah was preternaturally special in every way.

It was impossible to carry on a normal conversation with Sarah's execrable parents. Any subject not involving the welfare of Sarah was of no consequence, conversely, anything even remotely concerning Sarah was monumental. Both parents were child psychologists. Tom, a professor at a prestigious university, has been published often. His specialty, the gifted child, has been cited as beyond reproach. The fact that Sarah may or may not be gifted was never questioned.

Her two brothers, Hank and Tom Jr., were well aware that Sarah was the favorite child, and it did not sit well with them, there seemed to be an omnipresent tension in the air. With the passage of time, their dislike turned to hatred. They called her “The China Doll.” If the boys needed new hockey equipment it was given reluctantly, if at all, because Sarah needed new figure skates, if the boys needed money for Little League, it came only if there was enough money for Sarah’s gymnastic lessons, if the boys wanted to join the swim team, they had to work to come up with the money, although money was readily available for Sarah’s diving lessons.

“What an endearing child,” strangers would say when Sarah walked along the sidewalk hand-in-hand between Tom and Terese. Dangling her feet in the supermarket cart, she attracted attention in every aisle. When too big for the cart, she pushed it behind her mother, giving an accusatory glance if she was not pleased with the choice that went into the basket. A convoluted relationship between mother and daughter developed as Sarah matured, a juxtaposition where Sarah called all the shots. Terese appeared to be scared to death of her, and for good reason. Sarah was a scary child, and as a teenager, she was worse. Her straight A’s, her beauty, her seemingly effortless ability to excel in almost everything did not make her complete. She had no friends, and there was something off, something wrong when you looked at her. Most people were blinded by her beauty, but that beauty did not disguise the haunted look in her eyes.

Angelo was a lap cat and liked nothing more than to sit on a lap and purr but he would have nothing to do with Sarah. He did not like her. Since there were coyotes in the neighborhood, the family agreed that it was not safe for him to go outside but he didn’t mind. He sat on the love seat in the sun all day long and purred, waiting for Hank, his favorite, to come home. Like a dog, he ran to Hank as soon as he walked through the door, and they would snuggle.

“Hay Tom, did you clean Angelo’s box?” The boys took turns cleaning the cat’s box, Sarah was exempt from the chore, God forbid her precious nose may have to smell Angelo’s prolific poop.

“No, it’s your turn this week.”

“I know, I just went to clean it but there is hardly anything in it.”

“That’s strange. Where is Ang? I haven’t seen him all day. Come to think of it, he didn’t sleep with me last night.” Hank looked troubled.

“Sarah, what did you do to Angelo? Did you let him out last night?”

“No, you creep, why would I do that?”

“Because you hate him.”

“No I don’t.”

“Cats hide in the strangest places.” Terese said. “He’ll come out from some shelf sooner or later.” Terese wasn’t worried, she had a parent/teacher conference later in the morning and she planned to give Sarah’s teacher a piece of her mind. Sarah had been moody and disrespectful recently and it had to be her teacher’s fault since Sarah was incapable of wrongdoing. And then there was this boy, Kevin. Tall, gangly and pimply, Terese didn’t like him at all, but he was always hanging around Sarah - like an over anxious puppy.

“I don’t like him, Sarah,” Terese had told her yesterday. He is declasse. He is not good enough for you. He needs to stop hanging around.”

“Declasse? Declasse? Oh mother, give me a break, what makes you so high and mighty, the be all and end all?”

“I’m not the be all and end all, it’s just that I want the best for you.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want the best. Maybe I don’t deserve the best. Maybe I LIKE the fact that he’s not snobby.” Sarah stuffed her books into her knapsack, slamming the door behind her.

The parent/teacher conference did not go well. Sarah’s grades were falling, she was skipping school, and Kevin was more of a factor than Terese had realized. Her teacher said they were inseparable. Shaken, Terese called Tom and began to relate the particulars of the conference. While she talked Angelo sauntered across the kitchen as if he owned the place, ate his dinner, took his usual place on the love seat and quickly fell asleep.

“Oh, Tom, at least there is one piece of good news. Angelo just reappeared, none the worse for wear. Hank will be happy.”

Angelo slept, oblivious to the initial concern, fear, and then horror that occurred under his roof. Hours, days, weeks, months passed and still there was no word from Sarah. She disappeared without a trace, as did Kevin. Tom Jr. and Hank feigned concern, but soon their life went on as before. Shattered, Terese and Tom never fully recovered.

It's All Temporary

MONICA

2013-02-04T07:57:00.005-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

“I’m worried about her, I’m no child psychiatrist, but there is something wrong.”

“She’s fine, she is just experiencing growing pains.”

“Growing pains?” Evelyn was incredulous. A handsome man, it was important to Mark, husband of Evelyn, father of Monica, the subject of discussion, to keep his emotions in check, and when he felt the slightest indication that he may loose his cool, he had a habit of biting his lower lip. The bite, more like a nibble, was a reminder to him to pull himself together. Since things were not good between Mark and Evelyn, that lower lip was being mangled daily. Tall and muscular with thinning brown hair, his brown eyes were often troubled. It was as if there were many unresolved issues which he pondered frequently, and these issues gave him sleepless nights.

“Plus the fact she doesn’t like school, she told me she hates Miss Lilly, her teacher. Miss Lilly told me she has to put Monica in a time out at least once a day and when I asked her why she said it is because Monica often hits the other kids with shovels from the sandbox. She threw a little dump truck at Peter from down the street and he needed stitches over his eye. If it had hit him in the eye, it might have blinded him. According to Miss Lilly, Monica has disturbing tendencies towards violent behavior.”

Mark took a deep breath, God, what a headache, would she ever stop talking. A prosecuting attorney, he was masterful at his job, a raising star, but his days were full of perpetrators whose lawyers were always looking for a plea. A nasty business, this plea bargaining, and it gnawed at him. Thugs who should be facing time in the slammer released on community service, a travesty. Mark’s court room persona was perfected to a fine tune - an orator weaving a tale, his face a blank slate, until he went in for the kill. This was one reason why he was so good at his job, but his insomnia was making things much harder, and the last thing he needed was to come home to an irate Evelyn, overwhelmed by Monica’s foibles. That lower lip was getting raw.

“I’m serious, Mark something has to be done.”

“Where is she now?” Mark hung his coat in the closet and started for the stairs.

“In her room. I told her she needed to stay there until she was ready to apologize.”

“Apologize? To who?”

“To Peter. To Miss Lilly. To me. I don’t know, Mark. She is beginning to scare me. She has no remorse whatsoever.”

“I’m not sure a four year old even knows the meaning of remorse, Evelyn.”

Mark climbed the stairs, reluctant to enter Monica’s small bedroom. She sat on her pink bedspread, too young to be so crestfallen. It was as if the weight of the world was on her tiny shoulders. The quintessential bedroom for a four-year old girl, everything was pink, but for the first time it struck Mark how incongruous all that pink was, pink did not suit her.

“Hi Monica, tough day at school?”

“Not bad.” Monica was so still she almost appeared drugged, a strange lassitude for a four year old.

“But not good either?”

“Yeah, not good.

“What happened?”

“Peter hit me with a toy truck.”

She was lying. Peter knew that she was lying, and as he listened, an ineffable horror almost overwhelmed him. His work had brought him face-to-face with too many career criminals, some (for whatever the reason) came out of the womb warped beyond repair from the beginning. He knew all these time-outs were a harbinger of things to come, and for the first time he faced the future with Monica with great apprehension because he knew with every fiber of his being that this future was not going to be pretty.

“Miss Lilly tells us that it was you that hit Peter.” Without realizing it, Mark had assumed his nonchalance mode, a signal that he was preparing for the attack. He thoughtfully nibbled his lower lip as he watched his daughter’s body language, always a dead giveaway.

“Miss Lilly hates me. She always chooses Peter to stand at the head of the line.” Monica’s unflinching stare was unnerving, a face-off between two adversaries. As he watched her, he realized to his horror that it wasn’t his daughter, but himself that he was trying to stare down. Years of education, college, law school, none of it held a candle to what Monica taught him at that moment. Looking at her was like looking into a mirror, but it was worse than that, it was as if he was stripping them both bare. Suddenly the realization that years of polished performances in front of a judge had removed his ability to know himself at all, he was an actor unable to remove his mask.

“Stay in your room until dinner,” he told her as he abruptly turned and left the room. Shaken, he went into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed. Evelyn came in and confronted him with her usual sledge hammer approach.

“Well, what did she say?”

“She said Peter hit her.”

“Did she really? And you let her get away with that?”

“No. She knows that we know she is lying.”

“How will we punish her?”

“I don’t know, Evelyn, I don’t know, but I need to lie down now. I have a terrible headache.”

It's All Temporary

HE SHALL COVER THEE WITH HIS FEATHERS

2013-01-29T07:43:00.004-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

When I was in the second grade I started sleeping at my grandmother's most nights. My parents never even knew or cared where I was but her kitchen always smelled like bread baking in the oven, and it was warm there. Our house was always cold. I slept in a spare bedroom under one of her handmade quilts. I remember the sun used to shine first thing in the morning on a framed Bible quote hanging on the wall. The room was white, and there was an old oak bureau under the window. I put my treasures in the top drawer: my Hello Kitty knapsack, lip gloss, toys from MacDonald's happy meals. As I grew older, my treasures changed to bags of weed, pipes, needles.

I'm not sure why I am telling you this, maybe because I have sat through too many group therapy sessions where anything goes as long as you keep talking. A lot of what is said in those groups is just plain bullshit. I can spot a bullshitter a mile away. I never said much in those groups. Confessing all was never a catharsis for me, and the older I get, the less I talk. There are too many talkers as it is, and I don't think I could ever hear anything ever again that would surprise me.

My grandmother practically raised me. She was a tiny, fragile looking lady, but cantankerous. I remember once some cretin tried to swindle her at a convenience store, and she knocked him over the head with her cane. Damn near killed him. It is hard for me to talk about my grandmother now because I broke her heart, not once, but over and over again. We lived down the street from her, my mother and father and six kids. I was the youngest, a most unwelcome surprise. I figured that out as soon as I learned about the birds and bees. Our house was a real pig pen all the time, but my grandmother's cottage was a safe haven, and my grandmother didn’t drink. My father was drunk all the time, a mean drunk.

On the wall in the room where I slept next to the Bible quote was this framed picture of an owl sheltering all these little owls under his wings. My grandmother told me that the owl was supposed to be the Lord, He will always protect me if I believe in Him.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High

shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

He shall cover thee with his feathers,

and under his wings shalt thou trust:

For he shall give his angels charge over thee,

to keep thee in all thy ways.

Yeah right. What I saw in that picture was that there were five little owls under those wings, but the sixth one was left out in the cold to fend for herself, and that sixth one was me. There wasn’t gonna be any angels watching over me, that’s for sure.

It was in middle school when my life began to go down hill. The only time I ever went home was to see if I could swipe some money from one of my siblings so that I could buy weed. I smoked pot every day. My grandmother could sniff out a bad actor in a New York minute, and she hated my friends.

“You’re known by the company you keep,” she would say to me when she caught one of the shifty high school boys hanging around.

“Keep them away from this house. Boys shouldn’t be wearing earrings.”

“Birds of a feather flock together.” More birds, more feathers, this was the worst thing she could have said to me.

One of the “walking wounded,” I dressed like a freak, wore black, dyed my hair a different color every week, pierced every possible area of my anatomy. I dropped out of school in the 10th grade, got a job washing dishes for a local restaurant, had an abortion and fell in love with heroin. The trajectory of my life seemed to be set, and in that path the owl was nowhere to be seen. In retrospect, I am amazed I survived at all, but I am beginning to entertain the notion that perhaps that owl was operating behind the scenes. I was spiteful. I pummeled my grandmother with cruel behavior, taunting her, the last person in the world to deserve it.

“Where were those angels when that piece of shit killed the people in that movie theatre in Colorado? I guess those angels weren’t into Batman.”

“Why didn’t those angels show up at Columbine?”

“Are the angels on vacation when a plane crashes or some poor bozo crossing the street gets hit by a drunk driver?”

She always had the same unsatisfactory answer. “You have to learn to love the mystery of it all.”

“Fat chance,” I would answer.

After too many years of chasing some elusive dream, I overdosed on a combination of pills and heroin, the medics told me that I was more dead than alive when I was wheeled into the ER. From the hospital I spent a month in rehab and another six months in a halfway house, I learned that angels come in all shapes and sizes and that I better listen to them if I wanted to stay around awhile longer.

My grandmother died when I was in rehab. No one in my family told me, I guess they were afraid it would set me off. She left me her house so I am back in the same bed I slept in when I was in the second grade. The owl is still on the wall, the little owls still under his wing. I don’t sleep well, most recovering addicts don’t, insomnia is something you learn to live with. The funny thing is I could swear I can hear that owl hooting at me sometimes, and when I do, I think it’s my grandmother’s way of telling me that she was right all along.

It's All Temporary

EXQUISITE PAIN

2013-01-23T07:53:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

Everything I needed to know about her was encapsulated in one glance. Or so I thought. From her well worn, dirty white Converse high tops, her skinny jeans, low at the hip, her faded gray hoody, she was an interesting combination of class and grunge, an uptown girl who spent time downtown. She didn't wear the hoody, instead she wore a tweed golf cap with a little visor that partially covered her dark hair and shaded her eyes so you couldn't tell if she was looking back. The effect she had on me was not pleasant. As I watched her, she made me feel as if I was stealing things from her. Little did I know that in the long run, she would be the thief.

It was the golf cap that gave her class. She entered the supermarket, disentangled a shopping cart by ramming it back and forth several times into the long line of carts, and took off like The Little Engine That Could to the dairy section. The golf cap rose above the rest of the shoppers, she was very tall and she walked with great purpose. I had never seen anyone shop with such determination, without a list.

I was in hot pursuit, an average man, not very tall. One percent milk went into her cart and therefore into mine. Six large eggs in a thick plastic carton (guaranteed to harm the environment) followed the one percent milk. I could tell she was hesitant about buying those eggs, perhaps she was an environmentalist, but if she was, so be it. I could learn to kneel at the alter of Al Gore, although she would be pushing her luck with that. Six large eggs landed in my cart next to the milk.

The market was quite crowded and so well lit that it became difficult for me to follow her. I thought I had succeeded until we waited in the checkout line. The cute young cashier with curly red hair and purple nail polish was in training, (aren't they all?) She didn't know the difference between a cantaloup and a honeydew, the scanner refused to scan, it was an endless wait, but she was rather endearing, like a puppy eager to please. While waiting, the golf cap spoke.

"You have been following me."

"You noticed?

"Of course I noticed. You're not very subtle." Unfazed, she said nothing more, then looked in my cart, looked in her cart, back in my cart. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, the way a naughty boy feels who has been caught red-handed doing something untoward. Then she laughed.

“How vexing.”

It was silly of me, and childish, but at the very least it opened the door a crack to a conversation. In retrospect, it was idle chitchat, but it was all I had.

“Vexing? I love that!”

“Love what?”

“That you use the word vex, what a great word. Are you an English major?”

“No, English is my second language.”

“Let me guess! German?”

“Right.”

“I knew it!”

“How did you know? My accent?”

“I knew it before you said a word. I can always pick out a German. Germans have a look.”

“A look?”

Yeah, I can’t describe it. But the Converse high tops are a dead giveaway.”

Our novice cashier had managed to bungle her way through three or four people in front of the golf cap. She was next. I had to act fast or all would be lost. Beep, beep, beep went the scanner, the cashier was on a roll, soon the golf cap would be out the door. Covers from THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER, PEOPLE MAGAZINE, a potpourri of celebrities, faces frozen by too many face lifts, were almost blinding me. I suddenly realized that the golf cap was one of the most authentic females I had ever seen and I would probably never see her again.

“Aufweidershen,” she said. “Enjoy your quark.” She smiled as she exited through the automatic door.

That smile haunts me, I have searched for it ever since. The French have an expression, “La Douleur Exquise.” It means the heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have. That says it all. Ten years have gone by and in those ten years, I married and have two children, a boy, Thomas, and a girl, Bette. The marriage has been on again, off again, it probably wasn’t a good idea. My wife, Candice, is well named because her nickname is Candy and I find the sweetness in her nature to be nauseating at times. Those times are increasing, as is the botox, fillers, manicures and pedicures. I fight her tendency to steer Bette in that direction by buying her books about Pipi Longstocking and young girl detectives, but I don’t hold much influence over her.

The software company I work for sent me to Berlin to attend a conference on innovative software for the construction industry. One day I had had just about enough of German construction workers and ducked out for a quick lunch. While buying a sausage from a vendor on Alexanderplatz, I saw her. It’s strange, I never knew her name, somehow it added to the allure not to know, but I know it was her. She walked arm in arm with a handsome German, held the hand of a little blue eyed blonde girl, the golf cap sailing above the crowd. Our eyes met briefly. I will never know if there was a slight twinge of recognition on her part. It doesn’t matter because in that brief moment, she once again gave me what I needed, only this time I did not feel as if I was stealing, I had earned the right to it.

“Ihre Änderung, Herr, Ihre Änderung.” The vendor called me back to reality as he handed me my euros. I momentarily wondered if he was cheating me, but it really didn’t matter.

It's All Temporary

A SENSE OF URGENCY

2013-01-18T07:57:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

The cottage has seen better days, but it was all Rosie had and she loved it. Half a block from the beach, half a block from the golf course, it was an ideal location for a summer rental property. When Rosie’s mother was alive renting was out of the question. Her mother painted water colors, soothing scenes depicting the coast of Maine, for every room. “Like a miniature museum” friends said as they walked through the house, stopping to admire the dollhouse in the stairwell. “Look! In every room a tiny painting! How like her, the most creative person I know.”

These same friends were nowhere to be found when senility robbed her blind. First her eyesight, then her mind slowly drifted away, like a low tide slowly washing away from the shore. Rosie and Chloe, her pug, cared for her. Chloe never left her side, she told her stories about life as a puppy on the farm, about her seven brothers and sisters, her mother, Hilde, and how hard it was to leave her pug family. “The Law of Attraction was at work,” said Chloe, and that is why she had to leave Hilde and her favorite sister, Barbara, to come and live with Rosie. Rosie’s mother drank up every word, begging for more. “Tell me more about Hilde, about Barbara,” she would say to Chloe, her eyes misting over, happy in her own world that protected her from the bruising that life often brought to the rest of us.

When she inherited the cottage, well meaning people told Rosie to sell it, but her heart wouldn't let her so her uncle, a financial planner, told her to rent it out. "Run it like a business," he said. Running anything like a business was foreign to Rosie whose only previous business interactions consisted of negotiating some pretty savvy drug deals with shady Portland dealers. It was while in her second rehab that Rosie realized if she didn't shape up, she would surely die. Used to being surrounded by beautiful things, the florescent lights and white-washed stucco walls of A New Beginning Rehabilitation wounded her soul. Completely hollow when she entered, she left three weeks later, drug free, but filled with regrets, remorse and resentments. Chloe was no longer alive, she was with her mother “in a better place.” Almost any place was better than the shaky ground Rosie found herself navigating without so much as a joint to mellow her out, but she was determined to stay clean.

Tall, thin with beautiful posture, she floated, rather than walked. This is what you first notice about Rosie, then you begin to take in the rest: black framed glasses behind sad blue eyes that could surprise you with an unexpected twinkle, long blonde hair, tattoos, a great sense of style coupled with a sense of urgency. One of those rare young women who looked good in anything, she could grab a dress off the thrift shop shelf that was ready for the rag bag and look great in it.

The cottage was rented, the new tenant was to move in later in the day. Rosie floated through the cottage, scanning her check list on a clipboard, looking for cobwebs, crooked lampshades, memories. If she squinted, she could see Chloe and her mother huddled together over the kitchen table, whispering. Rosie wished that she could be with them, she yearned to die but suicide was not an option. Gone were the paintings, the dollhouse, the antiques - anything that had made the cottage home. What remained was all generic, generic furniture, generic dishes, generic quilts from Walmart.

“Hello, you must be Rosie.”

“Who are you? How did you get in?

“Walked right in. The door was unlocked.”

“You should have waited. The lease says arrival no earlier than 10:00 a.m.”

“I apologize.”

“Apology accepted.”

This self possessed, strange little man sat in Rosie’s mothers chair. Oddly enough, he looked perfectly comfortable, as if he belonged there. Even more odd was the feeling that her mother would have liked him there. He had a rather endearing quality about him, an ingenuous aspect to his nature. Everything about him was somewhat faded, his white hair, white beard, pale gray eyes, flannel shirt, blue jeans. He looked as if he had been through the wash with a bit of Clorox thrown in.

“Would you like me to show you the house?”

“No need, I took a walk through, it’s perfect.”

“Would you like to sit on the screen porch? My mother loved the porch.”

“I would.”

They sat on the old white wicker furniture with the floral seat cushions, slowly rocking back and forth, saying nothing. The bell on the chapel across the street rang, calling parishioners to Sunday service, a mild reminder to Rosie that life goes on.

“My wife and I were married in a little chapel similar to this one,” he said softly.

“Where is she? Your wife?” Rosie wished she hadn’t asked, she felt as if she was intruding, but he lit up like a Christmas tree adorned with gentle white lights.

“Oh, she died many years ago. I still miss her, I think about her every day.”

“You never remarried?”

“No. I would have always been comparing my new wife with my first one. It would have been unfair.

“Oh.” Rosie could see he was not listening, he was far away.

“And it’s a funny thing. I know my memory is distorted. She wasn’t as perfect as my mind likes to tell me, but I don’t pay attention, I like to allow her to be perfect in my head.”

“I think that is what I am doing with my mother,” said Rosie, her eyes beginning to tear.

“Nothing wrong with that, no one can take your memories from you. You have a long life ahead of you, just remember, slow but steady wins the race. No sense of urgency, just one day at a time.

It's All Temporary

ON BEING A BENEFICIAL PRESENCE

2013-01-11T15:55:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

"I always thought there was something not quite right about her."

"Not quite right? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you know, a little left of plumb. I mean, let's face it, she is drop dead gorgeous. I mean I really really have come to hate hate hate beautiful people. You know, they are just so perfect, I'd like to strangle them. Wouldn't you?"

"No." Marcia munched on her bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich as she looked around Annabelle's. Her dark eyes scanned the booths, the tables, the bars, only half listening, as if she was looking for someone. It was the usual lunch crowd, not an empty table, some of the heavy wooden twosomes set for three, elbows and knees knocking. Marcia vaguely wondered if the fire department was aware of this overcrowding. Background music, “Someone That I Used to Know.” repeated endlessly, almost hypnotically, adding a strange intensity to the atmosphere. The bar tender sang along as he mixed drinks, dancing behind the bar. He was in a good mood, shaking up those Margaritas.

"Well a fine lunch date you turned out to be. You haven't heard a word I have said." Kayla was definitely someone Marcia used to know, the change in her friend was immense and very sad. Her hair, too blonde, a severe Dutch Boy cut, aged her. It was as if Marcia was having lunch with a helmet. Her skin was sallow, pox marked under gobs of foundation, and her eyes were awful - pale, tired and mean. She wore one of those yoga workout outfits designed to go “from gym to dinner” which accentuated her huge shoulders and arms like an angry mama gorilla past her prime. Resentments, the mother of all rages, oozed from every pore.

"How's business? Any new clients?" Marcia needed to change the subject. Kayla had sensed the friendship waning for months, and the more Marcia withdrew, the angrier Kayla became. She was a ticking time bomb.

"They come and they go. One client wants me to be at her home at 6:30 in the morning, and another at her house at 7:00 at night. Some scattered in-between. And the traffic is brutal, just brutal. Being a personal trainer ain't what it's cut out to be. The truth of the matter is I am bone weary all the time.

"Maybe you should think about doing something else, Kayla. Being a personal trainer is a young persons career. You're in good shape, but this is just too much for you. It's too much."

“Well gee thanks for the encouragement. I thought friends were supposed to be supportive. With friends like you, who needs enemies?”

Marcia’s iphone began to hum. Expecting a call from Sam, she glanced to see if it was his number. “I’m sorry, Kayla, I have to take this.

“Go right ahead, anyone is more important than a friend in crisis.”

“In crisis?” Kayla was beginning to attract attention so she decided to let Sam go to voicemail which annoyed her. (Now you’re somebody that I used to know, used to know, used to know.)

“Yes, in crisis. I want a drink. Don’t you want a drink?”

“No.”

“Well, I do.” She began waving frantically to the server who was balancing too many plates en route to the kitchen.

“This place is going down hill. Can’t get anyone to wait on you any more.” Kayla continued waving her arms in the air like windmills until the happy bartender caught our server’s attention and pointed our way with a quick nod of his head, never losing a beat, a bemused smile on his face. He was kinda cute. (Now you’re somebody that I used to know, used to know, used to know.)

“Scotch rocks. Dewers. Make it a double.” Kayla barked her order to our server, talking to her as if she was a slave, not quite human. Within minutes the caramel-colored liquid arrived. Karla stirred the ice rapidly with one long red fingernail and then tossed down half the glass in one gulp.

It took but a very few minutes for the alcohol to do it’s number. Marcia found herself with a brand new person sitting opposite her, and not a welcome replacement. This replacement vibrated. It was as if a low voltage quiver was shooting waves of anger into her pores as her index finger stirred the ice frantically, and then ordered another double.

"You can sit there looking so perfect. No one knows how hard I try. God I hate you sometimes. Say something. Oh you're too high and mighty to talk to me now? I am doing everything I can to be the best personal trainer in the city and I am! I. am. the. best. Itch marketing. Mark.Et. Ting. I donhave the money to mark. Et. Myself. Whaddaya have to do to gedadrinkk around here?

Memories came flooding back. Marcia as a child, sitting at the dining room table, her father, very drunk, yelling at her mother. “You’re a worthless bitch. Whaddaya do all day, you piece of shit.” Marcia and her little sister never saying a word, playing with their food, terrified for their mother.

“Never try to reason with a drunk,” her mother told her later. “Just remove yourself from the scene as quickly as possible because you can’t win with a drunk, just try to be a beneficial presence, and then get the hell out. ”

The server and the happy bar tender stood over their table. “You need to leave,” the bar tender told Kayla who sat wedged into her chair, mama gorilla ready for battle.

“Fuckyou. I’m a paying customer.” Kayla slammed her fist down on the table, knocking over the empty scotch glass.

Marcia remained mute as the left over patrons sat, eyes riveted to their table. She wondered if she was a beneficial presence, but when the bartender winked at her, she didn’t care. He was kinda cute.

It's All Temporary

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

2013-01-04T11:29:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

Our marriage counselor told us that it was important to set rules for a fair fight. Rule #1 was "avoid accusatory, all encompassing statements. "You always, you never" were no nos. I can close my eyes and picture the small, wise, sweet man who wanted so much to help. A Paulist priest, his office was warm, uncluttered. Books of a religious nature lined his shelves and a picture of a very gentle Jesus hung on one wall. Even I, an agnostic, could learn to love that Jesus. There was no crucifix. I think he knew he would be pushing his luck with a crucifix; send me right out the door.

When I found the letter, tucked in among a pile of old bank statements in the attic, memories came flooding back, memories from 15 maybe 20 years ago. The letter wasn't dated but in my mind's eye I saw our son, Jason, now a freshman at Harvard, as a toddler with his blonde hair, big blue eyes, snot running out of his nose, I saw our three bedroom, two bathroom house painted brown, lots of toys and tricycles on the front porch, I saw myself, pregnant with Jenny, now a high school senior, an honor role student with her father’s gray, troubled eyes who never saw a dog, cat, horse or squirrel she didn’t want to take under her wing, I saw Jerry coming home late, trouble in the dining room, (the waitresses hated their new uniforms) trouble in the kitchen, (the chef was drunk again) trouble with the bar tender. Always something. Jerry was in the hotel business, a demanding occupation, and I was an unreasonable and demanding wife. It was typed, the letter. As I read, a sense of disquiet enveloped me.

Dear Jerry:

I am uncertain whether Father Paul can help us. It is unclear to me why priests would ever make good marriage counselors anyway. What do they know about the difficulties of hanging on to something that was once precious, but is now slipping away like sand through our fingers? Expecting a priest to understand a marriage is like expecting an elephant to understand a ballet.

(I would think I could have come up with a more appropriate simile. Our marriage was many things, but a ballet it was not.)

Because the "Rules of Engagement" set forth by Father Paul prohibit any blanket statements, I will refrain from calling you an asshole.

(That was harsh. Do you think I might have found a slightly more eloquent pronoun? How about jerk? Or maybe fool? But asshole? Did I write this before or after my "three week vacation" in rehab? I suspect it was definitely written before the meds began to kick in, before I turned into a zombie.)

I feel nothing for you any more, but don’t feel badly because you are not alone. I feel nothing for anyone except Jason, and my love for him is so strong it frightens me. Perhaps the child I carry will help me to learn how to be human once again. I don’t know.

(Jenny’s arrival did enable me to pull myself together long enough to worship every hair on her head. I still do, which is probably why our mother/daughter conflict has been worse than anything I could have ever imagined. We were best friends until she reached puberty when she turned on me. Jerry became her everything, I became the monster. When I look back at pictures from this era, I am very surprised I didn’t have horns. Was it at that time that I lost my mind?)

I owe you an apology. I am very sorry I nearly set the house on fire. I threw all that trash into the fireplace out of spite, because you told me not to. It was childish, I could have killed us all. I don't think you can blame me for acting out, though. My entire world is unravelling, and the only ones around to help me pick up the pieces are a diminutive priest with eyes like a golden retriever and a little blonde boy who loves me unconditionally for the time being. It won’t last, though, because I’m not lovable.

(I had forgotten about that, about the fire. I was a mean, vindictive woman. I still am. No wonder Jenny hates me. It's a miracle Jason even tolerates me.)

That fire emboldened me. I started seeing Father Paul on the sly, two, three, sometimes four times a week, and believe it or not, it was meek little Paul who initiated the change in me, he helped me morph from a shy kitten into a tiger with claws. Who would have guessed it? In retrospect that gentle Jesus must have more going for him than I ever gave him credit. Paul likes you, he likes you a lot more than I do, which is a fine kettle of fish we are in: you, me and Paul. I shall remain in the kettle, I'm not going anywhere, and we will continue to follow the same rules of engagement. We shall see. Love, Janice

What a ninny I was! I wouldn't have gone anywhere if my life depended on it. And poor Jerry! He didn't deserve this. He may have been more in love with the hotel than with me, but after reading this letter, I don't blame him. And what's with all the "J's"? Paul would have said maybe I wanted to throw Jesus in the mix, we both would have gotten a good laugh out of that. I miss him. I even miss Jerry and hope he is happy with Jane (yet another J!)

It's All Temporary

Somebody That I Used to Know

2012-12-31T07:33:00.000-05:00

It's All Temporary

AN INDIFFERENT WORLD

2012-12-25T17:52:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

“This ain’t no way to treat a lady.”

“She knows, she just KNOWS that we can’t make a move without her. Why would she LEAVE us like this? It is humiliating.”

Gracie, near tears, spoke from a prone position underneath the stage. Head thrown back, her mouth appeared massive, way too big for the rest of her face. Partially open, no teeth, there was nothing cute about her. The studio was a mess. A large backdrop, a photograph of an ultra modern kitchen, leaned against one wall, the heavy pots and pans hung from hooks on the ceiling.

“My arm hurts. I think it needs stitches, and my glasses fell off. How am I supposed to read without my glasses?” From behind a stool, Deedee, was almost in tears.

“Reading is the least of our worries, Deedee. What if she has skipped town?

“Skipped town? You mean just up and left? Deedee sounded horrified. She would never do that without putting us back in the trunk. And she wouldn’t leave all these props scattered every which way. She is very meticulous. She likes things in their proper place, she’s obsessive compulsive, she’s got an attention deficit disorder, she’s got a borderline personality disorder, she’s deteriorating as we speak.

“She is a manic depressive, approaching a complete psychotic break.” Gracie continued their litany of psycho babble from under the table as if they actually knew what they were talking about.

“I liked her a lot better when she was in her manic phase. We may have worked a lot, but at least she was fun to be around.”

“Yeah, remember the show about the parking wars? That was funny.”

“And the fortune teller?”

“Well, she is depressed now.”

“And for good reason. Cooking with Gracie, got exactly 12 hits. In the entire internet youtube world, 12 hits.”

“Well this cooking crap has got to go,” said Gracie. Who wants to watch puppets cooking?”

“Nobody. I have an idea. Puppet porn,” said Deedee.

“Puppet porn?” Gracie thought for a bit. “ I like it, I love it. Puppet porn.

“No, I’m serious, Gracie, we need to step up our act.”

“I think I heard her come in. Shhh, she’s talking to someone.”

That someone was David, Brenda’s friend with benefits. Brenda, a small blond with stiff kinky hair like a mop was sitting in the living room, a room not suited for living, but the living room nonetheless. Everything about the room was dark, including (at the moment) Brenda. The drapes, upholstery, carpets, were all more suited for an older, more mature person. Brenda inherited the house and everything in it from her uncle, an attorney who had a propensity towards the dark side of life. Into this house blew Brenda, like a small tornado. She converted the dining alcove into a puppet studio; this studio became the heart and soul of the house.

Today both the heart and the soul were in need of a boost. When she made a puppet, Brenda became so obsessed with her project that she shut out everything else. The rest of the world simply did not exist; she and her growing puppet were enveloped in an invisible protective shield. Day blended into night, sleep and meals became superfluous. Her love for her creations was something fierce to see, it gave her a persona that sometimes resembled a vicious mother, a mother blinded by love and an inability to understand why the rest of the world did not appreciate her efforts.

“I suck, David. It’s an indifferent world out there. I am a complete failure, a pant load. No one cares what I do.

“You’re not a pant load, Brenda. You are the most talented person I know.”

When Brenda fell into one of these moods, David assumed his mentor/therapist/priest mode. He was tall, thin and serious, a PhD student in biomedical research with rimless glasses behind brown eyes as calm as cows and soft blondish hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was far more interested in parasites than puppets. Although he loved Brenda dearly, her moods were becoming burdensome to him. Not knowing what was coming next, he tried to reason with her as if he was talking to an exotic caged parrot with a large vocabulary. Gracie and Deedee adored him.

“I am too a pant load. I am going to build a fire and throw every one of my puppets into it.” With an ominous glint in her eye, Brenda methodically stacked wood in the fireplace, placed scrunched up newspaper under the logs and lit a match exactly as her uncle had taught her years ago. Soon a blazing fire lit up the dark room.

“What happened? Where are we?” Deedee woke up. She was sitting on a large desk, leaning against a stack of books, her glasses on the bridge of her nose, right where they were supposed to be.” The room, far from dark, was brilliantly lit by large, florescent lights overhead. Unforgiving in their intensity, they glared on both Gracie and Deedee, offering them no place to hide. David stood over his microscope, his white lab coat unbuttoned, his attention fixed on the slide under the glass. Gracie, although shaken, was sitting next to Deedee. Both girls had managed to regain their dignity, as they whispered to each other.

Neither David, Gracie or Deedee had any idea what an impact the presence of the girls had on the other students in the lab. David carried on with his research, digging deeper and deeper into his thesis. Language in the lab cleaned up considerably. Experiments went smoothly. Long-standing disagreements cleared up almost overnight. All went well until the day that Brenda came looking for David.

“You bastard, I want my puppets. You stole them.”

“No, I saved them, you tried to kill them, Brenda. You are an unfit mother.”

“They are mine and I want them back.”

While the bickering continued Gracie and Deedee slipped quietly behind a bookshelf. There they remained until peace returned and Brenda left empty handed.

It's All Temporary

little tree by ee cummings

2012-12-22T17:59:00.001-05:00

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel"

It's All Temporary

THE TIP JAR

2012-12-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

Helen was not a wealthy woman, far from it. She worked as a food server at a bar and restaurant called Annabelle's. They used to be waitresses, now they are servers. Although she had zero patience with political correctness, apparently the political correct mafia sent out a decree declaring that waitressing was demeaning, serving was worthy, therefore she served. Actually it's not a bad motto. "I serve."

Annabelle's owner, an intense, methodical man with no sense of humor named Matt required that his servers wear uniforms: pale blue/green dresses which fell to the knee. The servers hated them. The color washed away any sign of health, they always clocked in looking as if they had been up all night. Matt had poured over catalogs for days before choosing these uniforms and he chose this particular "green" because he thought it would be a good neutral color that would please both his customers and his staff. The opposite was true. No one would say it to his face, but there was a universal groan from hungry people as they slipped into a booth on the day the uniforms made their first appearance.

"What happened to your uniforms? I liked those little red checks!"

"What a horrible color."

"He can't be serious."

"Barf green."

Matt was unaware of the bruhaha his choice of uniform caused, but Helen was mortified. Customers and staff alike were unhappy, and from that day forward life at Annabelle’s took an unfortunate turn. For Helen, the turn was almost catastrophic. It was as if she woke up one morning a different person, like a child recovering from a long illness who was regaining her strength, but not her old self, which had been replaced with a much sadder soul.

“What’s with you these days?” Helen’s long-term lover, Jeff, asked as they lingered over coffee. It had been a long day at Annabelle’s, a day where everything that could have gone wrong, did.

“I’m just tired. Matt has been in a terrible mood for days now, the sous chef never showed, tips are down, Agnes quit.”

“Agnes quit?” Jeff was surprised, he always liked Agnes, she had the same biting sense of humor that he had.

“Yup, she told Matt that life was too short to wear vomit green every day, took off her apron, threw it in his face, and said I quit.”

“Wow!”

“You should have seen the look on his face, I think it was the first time he realized what effect these new uniforms have on his beloved Annabelle’s.”

Without Agnes, work became tedious. Helen did not realize the joy Agnes had brought to her day. No one else had the ability to make her laugh in quite the same way as Agnes because her laugh consumed her. When Agnes laughed, Helen laughed, sometimes with her, sometimes at her, but there always seemed to be something to tickle their funny bones. They had nicknames for the regulars: Shifty, for the man with the shifty eyes, Ms Tits for the buxom blonde who came in every morning for coffee, and Quaker Oats for the truck driver who ate oatmeal every morning for breakfast. The customers still came like clockwork, but without Agnes, the nicknames didn’t seem satisfying, they were merely customers.

What did not tickle her funny bone, was the gnawing sense that Agnes had been stealing. The tip jar on the counter was a prime target, it always sat there unattended, and more than once Helen saw Agnes take money from the jar and pocket it when she thought no one was looking. Now that she was gone, the jar remained solvent, bills and coins stayed put.

Several days after Agnes quit Helen and Jeff were getting ready for bed when their was a knock on the door. They were both tired. This was odd, no one was expected, so when Jeff opened the door to find a most distraught Agnes, neither knew quite what to do.

"Can I come in?"

"Of course, what's up?"

She was so agitated that every cell in her being seemed on fire. She sat on the couch, fell on the couch is more like it, and speaking in a whisper, told them she was being stalked.

"Stalked? Who is stalking you? You don't have to whisper, only Helen and I are here.

"Please close the blinds."

"Ok." Helen closed the one remaining blind, tip toeing to the window at the same time rolling her eyes behind Agnes' back.

"Who is stalking you?"

“I don’t know. Maybe one of the customers from Annabelle’s. Maybe one of the staff. That creepy sous chef. He gave me the creeps from the day he walked in the kitchen.”

“Were you followed today?” Helen thought about the sous chef’s absence, but said nothing.

“I think I was. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”

“Of course.” Jeff grabbed a pillow and blanket from the linen closet, handed them to Agnes with a smile, went into the bedroom, and fell asleep quickly, like a small tired child exhausted from play. No stalker would disturb his sleep but this was not the case for the two friends who noticed a small dark car parked outside. The sous chef drove a small black VW.

Helen and Agnes kept vigil, waiting for the car to move, but it remained until about 2:00 a.m. when a patrol officer checked the car and told him to move on. With the aid of the cop’s flashlight, the girls could make out the profile of the sous chef.

The following morning Agnes was gone when Helen dragged herself out of bed. The sous chef was also gone from the kitchen at Annabelle’s. when she clocked in. He, too disappeared in the dead of night never to be seen again. Helen tried repeatedly to contact Agnes with no luck. She simply vanished.

What also vanished were the barf green uniforms. The little red and white checks reappeared, and business at Annabelle’s immediately picked up. The tip jar was almost always full but Helen’s heart was empty. For days her hands shook when she poured coffee, mixed orders, arrived late, burst into tears for no reason. Before going to bed at night, she always checked. The black VW parked outside frightened her, so much so that she called the police who told her that there was nothing they could do. The driver was not breaking the law. Not yet.

It's All Temporary

NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT

2012-12-16T09:07:00.001-05:00

Our hearts are broken.

NATALYA AND VALENTINA

2012-12-10T08:39:00.000-05:00

NATALYA AND VALENTINA

by Marianne Carlson

For as long as she could remember, Natalie had an imaginary twin. As a child her twin was her constant companion. Had it not been for Valentina, life in the small NJ suburban town outside New York City where she grew up would have been unbearable for it was Valentina who pushed her, kicking and screaming, to try out for the swim team, to sing a solo in Guys and Dolls in the local theatre production, to denigrate herself continually auditioning in front of bored clients looking for the perfect teenager. How ironic her life had become. Since the Ruth White Agency had signed her up, Natalie was the perfect “girl next door” in magazines and on billboards. She sold shampoo, deodorant, jeans, her soul. As her fame grew, her ego, brittle to start with, diminished and was in danger of disappearing altogether. Natalie walked through the door, charming agents and photographers alike, but it was Valentina who always sealed the deal.

Tall and graceful, she moved like a giselle with the long, lean look of a ballerina. When she smiled, which was rare, she was captivating. When pensive, she appeared to be consumed with melancholy, her mind was clearly somewhere else, not a good place for her to be.

“Natalya, we have to be more careful, people are beginning to notice.” Valentina always called Natalie “Natalya.”

“Notice?”

“Yes, never talk to me in front of other people. They will think you are odd, that there is something wrong with you.”

Fear gripped her. As Valentina talked, a feeling of pure terror engulfed Natalie. They were coming more frequently, the preliminary rush in her head leading up to a full-blown panic attack, leaving her weak, vulnerable and shaking. She had learned early on to never let anyone know what she was thinking, never tell anyone, never utter an opinion about anything. Valentina thought for her. The magnitude of losing her twin began to take hold from that moment on. Natalie’s reality, her fame depended on Valentina, without her she was nothing.

“Look at it this way, Nat. I’m the alpha dog, you the beta.”

“OK. Fine with me.”

But it was not fine. If you are always someone else, who are you? Natalie was a graceful swimmer, her free style times beat everyone else in her age group but while Natalie walked into the locker to change into her bathing suit, it was always Valentina who walked onto the deck of the pool. And then there were those damn auditions. Natalie’s mother enrolled her in a spiffy advertising agency in Manhattan. The woman who interviewed her was everything Natalie hated - large, loud and brassy with lots of bracelets that clanked as she drummed her long red nails on her day planner while looking at Natalie through myopic, pale blue eyes too proud to wear glasses. One too many face lifts had frozen her thin lips into a smile that looked more like a perpetual grimace, and through that grimace she oozed hostility born from jealousy. Surrounded by young girls on the cusp of their allure, hers had long since passed her by. As a result, anger bubbled below the surface, and unacknowledged anger can be a very scary thing. There was no way Natalie could deal with the horror of this woman, but Valentina loved her. She was a challenge, and Valentina loved nothing more than a challenge.

“Dear, you are exactly what Ruth White looks for. How do you stay so slim?” Both Natalie and Valentina hated it when anyone called them “dear,” it was the kiss of death as far as they were concerned.

“I swim.”

“Wonderful. Just keep on doing what you are doing and you will go far with us.” The Grimace said she would be in touch, and the next thing she knew Valentina was signing a contract. She signed “Natalie” on the dotted line.

“Oh, my dear, you are lovely beyond belief,” Natalie muttered as she went down the elevator, talking to the mirrored walls surrounding her.

“You bet your sweet ass I am, and we are going to make some big bucks off of you, Grimace, ” answered Valentina.

And so it began: the “cattle calls,” looking for teenage girls for a fast foods commercial, a shoe line, a family scene advertising a mini van, rain gear. Natalie auditioned for all of them. The panic attacks reared their ugly heads on a regular basis. Every time she read or danced or smiled or cried or ate some God-awful processed cheese for yet another self-serving client, Natalie panicked, but Valentina was always there to put the pieces together as quickly as she fell apart.

“Please swim to the edge of the pool, pause, and then climb slowly up the steps. Try it again, you almost have it.” The client for SwimGear was becoming exasperated. It was hot on the deck and the lights from the crew and photographers were making it even hotter. Natalie began to shiver, she had been in the water for over an hour and she was cold.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“The timing is off, if you could swim a little slower, and then pause and wait before you climb the stairs.” The client, the ad people, The Grimace was pissed.

“I can’t do this, I just can’t. Natalie’s world was beginning to cave in on her, the panic, the voices, they were in the pool, they were coming after her.

“Over here, Natalya, over here.” Valentina waved from lane six, her white bathing cap and black goggles shrouded in a cloud of mist. Natalie left lane one, and swam under water across the pool.

“What the fuck is she doing now?” The camera man shook his head while wiping the sweat off his red, pudgy face.

Natalie’s lungs were caving in but she managed to reach Valentina.

“Valentina, I thought you had left me, I thought you were gone, this time for good,” Natalie sobbed.

“I told you, Natalya, I would never leave you. You need to believe me.

The crew on the deck watched the white bathing cap go under water again, and waited for it to reappear. After ten minutes, The Grimace called 911.

It's All Temporary

AN AIRPORT ENCOUNTER

2012-11-24T13:25:00.000-05:00

By Marianne Carlson

Tony was early. As he sat waiting in the generic holding pen the airlines created for passengers waiting to board, he watched her. Not especially attractive, yet for reasons unclear to him he couldn't stop himself from staring. She had the gift of youth, both a blessing and a curse - blessed to have a face clear of wrinkles or lines, yet her face lacked character, like a mannequin in Macy's window. She was remarkably thin.

He checked his iPhone for messages. Nothing new. Now she was looking at him, her eyes somehow veiled as if glossed over by a microscopic film, yet he could tell she noticed him. He couldn’t read her, he didn't know what to do. Approach or avoid? She looked at him with a half smile, almost a smirk, as she removed her black leather jacket with a jerky impatience, took one more sip from her Starbucks cardboard cup and began leafing through a magazine, abruptly turning pages. Somehow he found her more attractive when she was not smiling.

Every page seemed to annoy her. Everything seemed to annoy her, the magazine, the airport, the waiting passengers, life. She reminded him of a small stuffed animal, a tiger maybe or a lion that had suddenly been given the gift of life and had no idea what to do with it. From her boots to her thick mantle of hair, she was an enigma, but an enigma with fantastic energy who dominated the space they inhabited.

“Flight 460 to New York City has been cancelled due to inclement weather on the East Coast. Please check with the American Airlines ticket agent for rescheduling.” Like sheep in a pen, they gathered up their belongings, lap tops, briefcases, bags of half eaten food. The herd stood in line, approximately 25 disgruntled sheep, baying discontentedly. Tony stood behind the girl with the hair, a time bomb waiting to explode.

“Here we go again.” She spoke to no one in particular, but Tony took this as a good omen, and did not hesitate to answer. If he thought she appeared annoyed before, it was nothing compared to her present anger.

“We can’t blame the airline for the weather.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s not their fault,” he answered weakly.

By the time they reached the ticket agent, it was clear that they would not be going anywhere for awhile. Flights were cancelled up and down the coast, and both Isabelle and Tony were marooned, at least for the foreseeable future. While in line he learned that her name was Isabelle. It suited her.

“Tony? Is it really? I was engaged to a Tony. I will call you Anthony, Tony brings back very bad memories.”

“You can call me whatever you like.” Actually no one ever called him Anthony, it felt as if she was talking to a stranger.

“Like a drink? It looks like we have nothing but time.”

“Sure.”

They made their way to a bar with a huge flat screen TV broadcasting a Knicks game. The volume was way too loud. She grabbed the last remaining table while he ordered a couple of beers. Between the Knicks and the disgruntled passengers, the atmosphere was anything but intimate, yet as soon as they sat down she began.

“I just had a marathon session with my boss, begging, pleading with him not to fire me, but he fired me anyway. I thought I was more persuasive, but not so. It was: don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear that.” He was surprised, she didn’t look to him like the type that spills all but he was to be in for quite a ride. She held her mug lightly, playing with the frost. He couldn’t take his eyes off her hands, they were so beautiful. She could have been a hand model, advertising soap or toilet paper with her long tapered fingers. Anything soft.

“Where do you work?”

“Where did I work, is more like it.”

“Sorry, where did you work?”

“Rhinehart Labs. It’s a small laboratory in Los Angeles.”

“You’re a scientist?”

“You could call it that. Actually I am a chemist.

“I never would have guessed it.” His work in the art department in a small Hollywood film studio suddenly seemed insignificant, almost demeaning.

I was working on a huge project. Rhinehart perfected salt water chlorination, a replacement for chlorine used in swimming pools.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it was going great guns. YMCA pools all over the country were converting to salt water when suddenly people began to get sick. Certain viruses popped up.

“Oh?”

“A little boy died, we were sued, the Y’s stopped using our system, and that in a nutshell was that. Twenty of us were laid off, I was the first to go.

“But it sounds as if you were on to something. Couldn’t the formula have been tweaked, perfected, made stronger?

“Yes, but the law suit wiped us out. And someone died. A little boy died, and I feel responsible.”

The transformation in Isabelle was remarkable. Tony sat in stunned silence as she dropped her mask. What remained was hard to look at: confusion, guilt, the horror of the death of a child, and he began to feel uncomfortable because he realized that he was the first person she had confided in. Her pain was unbearable, he wasn’t equipped to handle it.

“I feel responsible. I was the one who signed off on the formula. I should have tested it further, but we were all in such a hurry to go forward with this. The money was unbelievable.”

The Knicks game ended. They lost in an overtime. Strangely the two strangers were aware of the score as they discussed the death of a six year old boy who had lived in Dayton, Ohio. It served as a form of comic relief to an otherwise excruciating topic.

“Perhaps you should go to Dayton, visit his parents?” Where that came from Tony did not know but it was exactly the right thing to say.

“Will you come with me?”

“I will.”

An exhausted ticket agent asked Isabelle, then Tony where they were going. They both changed their reservation to Dayton and waited in the same holding pen. Neither would ever be the same again.

It's All Temporary

NO ONE EVER DIED OF A BROKEN HEART

2012-11-23T15:01:00.000-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

It has been my experience that well-meaning people say, “You’ll get over it, put on a happy face. You’ll see, no one ever died of a broken heart.” These same well-meaning people also will tell you, “No one ever died from lack of sleep.”

Wrong. I have known many people who are driven close to suicide because they CAN’T SLEEP! But I digress, and besides, Marva was a sound sleeper. It is I who can’t sleep. I sometimes wonder if I will ever get a good night’s sleep again because it is when I go to bed, try to sleep, that my defenses are down and this sense of overwhelming sadness creeps in almost drowning me with sorrow.

“Come on, Otis, out you go.” Marva’s constant companion the once feisty black and white Boston Terrier, sniffed at the door before stepping out. He used to be energetic, happy, curious. Now he exists only to look for Marva behind every bush and tree. His once trusting eyes are subdued, any glimmer of hope has long been snuffed out. We go to bed together at night. He sleeps at the foot of my bed, his little paws occasionally in motion, dreaming most probably of Marva. I take comfort from his presence but cannot sleep.

“I met the nicest man today.”

“Oh?”

“And believe it or not, he’s not married.”

“Or so he says,” I remember answering. Once a cynic, always a cynic. Marva smiled.

“I want you to meet him.”

We met later that week at Annabelle’s, the local hang out where everyone knows everyone, but no one knew Curt. He seemed to have blown into town from another planet. Annabelle’s was hopping that night, I remember there was a peculiar unreal atmosphere. Both Marva and Curt were strangely animated. I didn’t like Curt at all, he made the hair on the back of my neck rise. Marva glowed. I had never seen her like this, right from the getgo, he possessed a certain power over her which spelled trouble. It was his eyes. Curt had Rasputin eyes, and all his sweet talk couldn’t negate the glaring contradiction emanating from his eyes which I translated as pure evil. Marva didn’t see it, she was “blinded by the light” in every sense of the word.

“Marva, you need to read Carl Jung again. Your projections are blinding you.”

“What projections?”

“What projections? Give me a break. You don’t know anything about this guy. For all we know he has been incarcerated.”

“Well what if he was? It would have made him a better person.”

“I am simply saying you need to take it slow. Get to know him a little better. Look at Otis. Even Otis is upset.”

It was true. Otis did not like Curt either. Low rumbles from deep within his throat reached the surface of his being every time Curt came within three feet of Marva.

I have examined and reexamined my behavior ever since. Was I jealous? Maybe, but I was more concerned than jealous because with every passing day Marva decompensated. Her beautiful mane of thick blonde hair became limp. She used to light up a room, now her skin was sallow, she looked unkempt, her lovely blue eyes dulled. When they were together she always stood behind Curt allowing him to dominate the conversation. My once happy, opinionated friend became a mouse in front of my very eyes as I stood by and allowed it to happen. There was no reckoning with her. She took her cues from Curt. If Curt laughed, Marva laughed, if Curt didn’t like something, Marva didn’t like it. She became a shell of her former self.

“Curt doesn’t love me any more.” Marva and I were having lunch in her once pristine kitchen, now littered with dirty dishes, baskets full of dirty laundry, piles of unpaid bills. Those unpaid bills should have been a huge red flag, Marva was a stickler with her money, she never allowed her credit cards to go unpaid. Otis was lying next to her, his eyes half closed as if he feared something would happen to her if he slept. In retrospect, Otis was right not to sleep. This was to be the last time I saw her.

“I have become a stalker.”

“A stalker? My God Marva, you really need to get a grip.”

“I can’t help myself. Curt is cutting me cold. I need to know who he is seeing behind my back.”

It was many months later that she texted me. “In Kansas with Curt. Very happy.”

Kansas? What the_____? Marva is a city girl. Hurt beyond belief, I couldn’t believe that my closest friend, my BFF, would leave without so much as a fare thee well. Since Jr. High School we had been inseparable. She was my touchstone. And all this for a piece of shit like Curt?

I’m still not over it, I’ll never fully get over it, life doesn’t have the luster of days gone by. One morning I awoke and realized that Otis was not at the foot of my bed. I missed his weight snuggled up on top of my feet, keeping them warm. I went to my back door and found his lifeless body on the porch. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong with him, he told me he died of “natural causes” but I know why he died. Otis died of a broken heart.

It's All Temporary

The Pickaxe by Rumi

2012-11-17T08:21:00.000-05:00

The Pickaxe

tear down this house. A hundred thousand new houses
can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian

buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then

digging under the foundations. With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done

without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall on its own. The jewel treasure will be

uncovered, but it won't be yours then. The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,

the pick and shovel work. If you wait and just
let it happen, you'd bite your hand and say,

"I didn't do as I knew I should have." This
is a rented house. You don't own the deed.

You have a lease, and you've set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches

on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You've got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask. Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body

is always getting torn. You patch it with food,
and other restless ego-satisfactions. Rip up

one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You'll see two glints in the dirt.

Rumi

It's All Temporary

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

2012-11-14T07:56:00.002-05:00

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

It's All Temporary

WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY

2012-11-08T11:17:00.001-05:00

by Marianne Carlson

Valerie was a waitress, sometimes bar tender, sometimes in-house shrink at Annabelle's, the most popular watering hole for miles. In spite of the poor economy, Annabelle's continued to thrive. Some say it was because of the poor economy. Many regulars were out of work. With too many hours of daytime TV, too many mind-numbing Angry Birds, too many items crossed off the to do list, people had to get out of the house. Significant others were becoming insignificant and on top of that, the dog was exhausted. He refused to take one more walk.

"Last night was a good night, I made close to $200 in tips." Valerie punched her time clock into the slot with a clunk, talking to no one in particular as she entered the kitchen a few minutes before noon.

"But I'm feelin' it today." She looked tired. Working so many late nights was beginning to show on her face. She counteracted this by too much make up around her eyes, concealer that never concealed, mascara that accentuated both the positive and the negative of her hauntingly beautiful blue eyes that craved more sleep. Although she was still young, somewhere in her mid 30’s, she had a matronly quality about her, a softness that made her easy to talk to. This was deceiving. A rapacious reader, she had a mind like a steel trap, packed with one liners. Male customers found themselves pouring their hearts out to her, tipsy or not, but they underestimated her sheer tenacity for survival. She never married, the only male she seemed to care about was her father who lived near by.

Anyone in the hospitality business knows there are two distinct parts, "the front of the house" and "the back of the house." Annabelle's was a refuge for lost souls with broken egos, and those lost souls could be found in both houses.

“Hi Val, how’s it going?”

“Hi, Paul, it’s going.”

With zero training in the restaurant business, Paul had been hired as a dish washer and worked his way up the chain - potato peeler, food prep, stock boy. Before he knew it he was behind the grill flipping cheeseburgers and French fries. Tall and pencil thin, he was able to consume large quantities of food without gaining an ounce. His skinny jeans were covered by a dirty white apron, his Converse All Stars never stopped moving as he danced from sink to grill, singing out orders. He looked like a skin head with his tattoos and earrings, but he wasn’t menacing as skin heads tend to be. Over Paul’s chopping block was a sign: WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY, and he did. And he was.

“Hi Paul, it’s going well but I’m bushed, I hope it’s quiet tonight. I just want to go home and sleep and sleep and sleep.”

“Well, be on your toes because Big Foot is on a rampage.” Big Foot owned Annabelle’s. Since he had no life, (other than Annabelle’s) he was always there. Nothing happened at Annabelle’s without Big Foot knowing about it.

“What now?”

“Some guy caused big trouble right before we closed last night.” A small , seemingly insignificant, shadow passed briefly through Val’s consciousness and then left as quickly as it came.

“Do you know who it was?”

“I think it was one of the guys who was laid off from the plant.”

“Who?”

“Not sure, but I guess he was pretty smashed. Big Foot was pissed that whoever was tending bar didn’t shut him off. This is getting to be a real problem, when to shut people off. Gotta keep those bar tabs up. Big Foot can’t have it both ways.”

The lunch crowd drifted in. Regulars took their favorite tables, patrons of Annabelle’s were very territorial, and Valerie knew almost everyone in the crowded room, where they would sit, what they would order, who they would vote for, who they loved. The tempo in the room picked up, a steady buzz, like waves of bees changed the ambience from a sleepy tavern into a ruckus of hungry patrons. The bar crowd buzzed, everyone was talking about the bruhaha that occurred the previous evening.

Val had the ability to ignore waves of fatigue, sleep would come later, today she must work. As she placed orders, refilled drinks, cleaned tables, she was vaguely aware of something. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Were people looking at her, as if in a new light? Was it her imagination that the focus was on her?

“Big Foot needs you in the kitchen,” the bar tender told Val, pushing two beers towards her for her station.

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I’m pretty busy, can’t it wait?”

“He said now.”

Val took the beers to her table and handed them over with a smile. Nobody smiled back. An eerie foreboding gripped her as she entered the kitchen. What the hell was going on? Paul and Big Foot were in Big Foot’s office, one of the kitchen lackeys was cooking in Paul’s station. This never happened. Paul never allowed anyone else to cook for him.

“Val, sit down.” She took a pile of menus off the one available chair and sat.

“What’s up?”

“It’s your father, he was a part of the altercation last night.”

“What happened? Is he all right?”

“He was beat up pretty bad.” Paul told Val what happened. She could not have asked for a more benevolent soul than Paul to give her the horrendous news. As he held her hand, he told her how her father tried to break up the fight that occurred in the alley behind Annabelle’s.

“Where is he?” Is he all right? My father is not a violent man.” She found herself shaking all over, partly from the news, partly from the almost Christ like effect Paul had on her.

“He is in the hospital, you need to go see him.”

“Will you come with me?” She didn’t want to go alone, she didn’t feel strong enough.

“Of course I’ll come, I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me.”

Need is a sometimes thing, but Val’s need for Paul never left her from that day on. They stayed together during her father’s long, painful recuperation, their eventual marriage, and her difficult pregnancy. When Paula was born, he held her hand throughout eight long hours of labor. The staff at Annabelle’s gave Paula a tiny white apron. Val and Paul gave Paula a framed sign which they hung over her crib: WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY. And she did. And she was. Today Paula owns Annabelle’s.

It's All Temporary

Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye

2012-11-02T18:20:00.000-04:00

Famous

by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

It's All Temporary

Mother/Daughter

2012-10-25T15:45:00.000-04:00

Alice Neel

Mother/Daughter

The preferences for extroversion and introversion are often called as attitudes. Each of the cognitive functions can operate in the external world of behavior, action, people, and things (extroverted attitude) or the internal world of ideas and reflection (introverted attitude). Carl Jung

My mother was an extrovert. She plowed through life like an express train, taking no heed whatsoever as to how her behavior affected others. Jung says that extroverts tend to act, then stop and reflect. Not so with my mother, her reflections were more like internal strategy sessions. (How can I get out of this mess with a minimum of damage?) She was also diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder, and like most borderlines, she was charismatic. She was also very beautiful. I hated her. Some would say I was jealous, and maybe there was a grain of truth to that in the beginning, but as her life unravelled, I became increasingly hostile.

To say that she was ill prepared for motherhood is an understatement, and yet here she is, holding me like a bomb. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, it is clear that our relationship was off to a rocky start. I cried all night, every night for one entire year. She tried everything: nursing, bottles, burping, changing, walking, rocking. Nothing worked. She considered herself a problem solver, yet I was a problem she could not solve.

It’s funny, I remember that olive green dress, she wore it around the house for years. In my mind’s eye I see her in the kitchen, her tall straight back standing at the sink, scraping my unfinished dinner down the garbage disposal with one hand while talking on the phone to her current amour with the other. Even before cell phones, she was addicted to telephones. She always wore huge yellow rubber gloves to save her manicure. Her manicure was important to her, far more important to her than I ever was. One of her many talents was dialing with rubber fingers although speed dialing was usually not an option, the men didn’t stick around long enough to become one of her contacts.

There was just the two of us. I never knew my father, and when my mother spoke of him, it was always with a grimace. She was one of those women who could change at the drop of a hat; ebullient one minute, morose the next. She really should have been on the stage because the woman could put on quite the show when she wanted something. I often pitied the poor bastards who were beguiled by her charm. Her eyes became magnets, drawing people in with a bewitching cunning, and she had this ability to pout, her thick, baby doll lips puckered, causing her to look like an aging Barbie Doll. Between the eyes and the pout, it was game, set, match, especially with the male sex although she was also a master at playing women, pitting one woman against another until she ended up destroying them both. Her jobs never lasted because of her ability to manipulate women in the workplace causing havoc, the men never lasted, because she used them up and spit them out. Her taste in men was astonishingly eclectic, she would sleep with anyone as long as they supplied her with enough cash.

An introverted person's energy is generally directed inward toward concepts and ideas whereas an extroverted person's energy is generally directed outward towards other people and objects. There are several contrasting characteristics between extroverts and introverts: extroverts desire breadth and are action-oriented, while introverts seek depth and are self-oriented. Carl Jung

Because she was constantly reinventing herself I never knew from one day to the next who would walk through the door. We moved every two years or so, our apartments were always on the wrong side of the tracks, dark and sparsely furnished because we never took anything with us. I became increasingly introverted, in retrospect, traumatized, because I never knew from one day to the next what to expect.

“Pack up your bags, Cecelia Sue, we’re moving,” was as familiar to me as what’s for dinner.

“I don’t want to move, I like it here, I like the school, I love my art classes.”

“There are other schools, other teachers, Cecelia Sue, we’re moving to Toledo, and that’s final.” Or

“It’s steak tonight, Cecelia Sue, put on your pretty blue dress, Tom is taking us out to dinner.” Tom was her latest, a fat man with a red face, darting rat-like eyes, cheap suits and a pinky ring so small that the flesh bulged out around it probably making it impossible for him to ever take it off. Tom had money. Tom was spending almost every night in my mother’s bed.

A psychologist once told me that above all, a child needs to feel safe. Safety was foreign to me, and as time went on I became more and more introverted. Art was the only thing that sustained me, it was a constant in an other wise unstable world. Today my paintings resemble a Jackson Pollack nightmare and my nightmares, well, suffice to say, I dread going to bed at night.

“Look, Mama, see what I painted,” I recall saying as a little girl.

“Oh, Cecelia, how lovely.” She would give it a cursory glance as she applied another coat of nail polish, her fingers outstretched like daggers.

“I won first prize in the young teen’s art contest at school, Mama, they even framed it.”

“Honey, Mama is proud. We’ll hang it right here over the couch.” And so she did. It was a painting of a horse galloping through a field, and as we moved from place to place, the horse moved with us. We often arrived at new apartments with the clothes on our back, a few mugs, and my horse painting. As our lives became increasingly insular, the horse continued to gallop away.

“Cecelia, come here and let me look at you.”

“I’m busy, Mama, I’m painting.

“You’re always painting, I’m lonely, I want to talk.” She had been drinking, her words slurred as she begged me to come. In retrospect, perhaps I should have appeased her, for it was later that night when my life changed for good. I awoke to flashing blue lights outside my window, police in the kitchen, and my mother in her bathrobe, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, cussing and screaming as they cuffed her and took her away.

“Who called 911?”

“She did,” one of the cops said. “She claimed self defense.”

“Where is the body?”

“In the bathroom.” She slashed his throat with a razor blade.”

“Look, there’s a kid here.”

“Jesus, call protective services, we need to get her out of here.”

“Don’t worry, we will take good care of you,” a female cop told me, trying to be kind. Her kindness was wasted on me, I had no idea what good care was, I had never known it, but I was to soon find out as I was shuffled from one foster home to another. One of my foster mothers, a wealthy woman who encouraged me, saw great talent in my painting and paid my tuition at The Rhode Island School of Design.

Today I don’t make a lot of money on my art, but I make enough to survive. I visit my mother in the penitentiary once a month. She is always subdued, I suspect she is medicated. She looks terrible, without make up, graying hair, without her usual hair dyes. She calls me “Darlin.” The horse hangs on the wall of her cell. He is a bit faded by now, but he continues to be free, something my mother will never again know.

It's All Temporary

Vocabulary

2012-10-23T18:24:00.000-04:00

Vocabulary

by Jason Schneiderman

I used to love words,

but not looking them up.

Now I love both,
the knowing,

and the looking up,
the absurdity

of discovering that "boreal"
has been meaning

"northern" all this time
or that "estrus"

is a much better word
for the times when

I would most likely
have said, "in heat."

When I was translating,
the dictionary

was my enemy,
the repository of knowledge

that I seemed incapable
of retaining. The foreign word

for "inflatable" simply
would not stay in my head,

though the English word "deictic,"
after just one encounter,

has stuck with me for a year.
I once lost "desiccated"

for a decade, first encountered
in an unkind portrayal

of Ronald Reagan, and then
finally returned to me

in an article about cheese.
I fell in love with my husband,

not when he told me
what the word "apercus" means,

but when I looked it up,
and he was right.

There's even a word
for when you use a word

not to mean its meaning,
but as a word itself,

and I'd tell you what it was
if I could remember it.

My friend reads the dictionary
for its perspective on culture,

laughs when I say that
reference books are not really

books, but proleptic databases.
My third grade teacher

used to joke that if we were bored
we could copy pages out of the dictionary,

but when I did, also as a joke,
she was horrified rather than amused.

Discovery is always tinged
with sorrow, the knowledge

that you have been living
without something,

so we try to make learning
the province of the young,

who have less time to regret
having lived in ignorance.

My students are lost
in dictionaries,

unable to figure out why
"categorize" means

"to put into categories"
or why the fifth definition

of "standard" is the one
that will make the sentence

in question make sense.
I wonder how anyone

can live without knowing
the word "wonder."

A famous author
once said in an interview,

that he ended his novel
with an obscure word

he was sure his reader
would not know

because he liked the idea
of the reader looking it up.

He wanted the reader,
upon closing his book, to open

another, that second book
being a dictionary,

and however much I may have loved
that author, after reading

that story
(and this may surprise you)

I loved him less.

It's All Temporary

Luften

2012-10-18T15:51:00.000-04:00

“Guten Morgen, Blinken.”

“Guten Morgen, Klaus.” Even though it was 9:30 on a cold December morning in Hamburg, Germany, the sun had not fully risen, it was dark, dreary and bone chilling cold. Klaus, my perpetually sunny, perpetually youthful husband kissed the top of my head as I sat at the breakfast nook in our apartment wrapped in a blanket. The window in the nook overlooked a typical Hamburg street, veiled by a diaphanous curtain of snow falling relentlessly on the ubiquitous bicycle racks in front of brick buildings, graffiti everywhere, mostly large block letters defying rhyme nor reason. Klaus doesn’t allow me to call it gloomy, to him it is peaceful.

Although I was born and raised in Los Angeles, it has taken me 45 years and several years in Hamburg to fully comprehend what a strange, macabre place LA truly is. Winter in Southern California is much like summer in Southern California, give or take a few degrees. It is as if a very bright light shines on the city continually. There is no place to hide. An environment obsessed with appearances, it leaves no room for soul, either in the heart of the sprawling city itself, or in her citizens who run from their plastic surgeon to their personal trainer to their dietician to their acting coach to their shrink who tells them that she sees improvement (but need more sessions to the tune of $200 an hour.)

I have come to realize that all these self-serving activities serve one purpose: to obliterate the aging process. Since there is no need to fight the elements, Angelinos fight their inner demons. It is a warm place with a sordid underbelly which allows things to fester. Almost anything is permissible, even encouraged. Drugs and alcohol are everywhere, kids buy and sell baggies on every corner, they then flock into AA meetings where frustrated second rate actors practice their schtick on fellow addicts.

Los Angeles is a land of beautiful women and beautiful cars. Maintenance is the key to both. Hamburg is a land of hard working women without cars waiting for the bus on a cold corner with a wool hat pulled down over her hair, maintenance an afterthought. Conversely, museums in Los Angeles are full of paintings of dark, tortured souls, most paintings in German museums are gay and colorful (except for Otto Dix whose people are beyond bizarre.)

“Give me a kiss to build a dream on,” Klaus sang to me as I spread a thick layer of quark on a hard roll.

“Do you want to come watch us shoot today? We’re filming on the harbor.”

“Are you out of your mind? It will be freezing down there.”

“OK, but please give me a kiss to build a dream on before I go, and my imagination can thrive upon that kiss.”

“You are such a jerk.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Klaus always got the last shot. He did again this morning as he looped a wool scarf around his neck, German style, and put on his heavy boots.

“Happy shooting,” I said as he lumbered down the stairs leading from our fifth floor walk-up.

Klaus and have been married for 15 years. He was drop dead gorgeous when we met, and continues to be so even though we are both in our middle 40’s. Half Swedish, half German, he has dark blonde hair, Paul Newman eyes that smile when he laughs, an iron man torso, and those rare genes that enable him to age into a distinguished gentleman.

The fact that he still calls me Blinken, which means twinkle in German, is a bit of a misnomer. It has been many a moon (if ever) since I have twinkled, but I find it endearing and I love him for it. My eyes never smile when I laugh, my adolescent photographs show a teen ager who is very uncomfortable in her own skin. Why? I do not know. I am tall, slim, have great skin, if I do say so myself, but my over active negative thinking processes tend to show on my face, giving me a somewhat petulant expression most of the time - at least this is what I see when I unexpectedly catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror.

Germans tend to be a serious bunch, but in our marriage I am the worry wart, Klaus the happy warrior. We met in Los Angeles where he was filming a documentary on pre World War 2 Germany and I was being paid as a consultant. European History was my major in college, my thesis was on The Third Reich. Being married to a German hunk isn’t always what it is cut out to be, but I prefer it to being married to an obese bald man. We compliment each other, Klaus makes movies, he loves the hustle and bustle, the intrigue, the acting. I write. I like staying home.

Nowhere is the juxtaposition of LA and Hamburg more pronounced than in the German’s obsession with fresh air and their daily habit of luften, where every window is slung wide open. It’s an airing out the likes of which I have never seen. Curtains blow wildly out of most windows at any given moment.

“We Germans worry about mold,” Klaus explained.

“Mold?”

“Yes, mold? We build very tight buildings. Like people, buildings need to breath fresh air every day.”

And so it began. Every day between noon and 1:00 there was a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on my door. “Freulein von der Hyde, öffnen Sie die Tür. Offnen Sie die Tur. Open zee door.” I knew what was coming, so I close my lap top, open my windows, open the skylight in the bathroom, and brace myself for his wrath. Herr Bauer, my landlord, has arrived. His English and my German are both shaky. We communicate in bits and pieces, but we both know that he is not at all happy with my luften, I am not doing it properly. It is beyond me how there can be an improper way to open a window, but apparently there is. He communicates his displeasure through his gestures, waving his arms wildly as he points to my half open window. It is cold, very cold in the apartment, yet beads of sweat form on his brow as he unzips his jacket, loosens his scarf and stamps his heavy boots. I am used to bare feet and flip flops, these boots almost frighten me.

After three years in Hamburg we returned to La La Land and moved into an apartment on Doheney, just off of Pico. It’s a snazzy address, Klaus’ career has taken off due to the success of his Hamburg Harbor movie. We have lots of money which is a good thing because our electric bill is astronomical. I keep the air conditioning on high day and night so that I can walk around our apartment wrapped in a blanket. Klaus wears a heavy sweater. We both miss luften.

It's All Temporary