Her backyard is filled with plastic bottle tops and torn ad papers and Skittles wrappers ripped open and emptied. An Election Day leaflet. A peanut butter jar chewed clean through on one end by a suburban squirrel. Didn’t anyone ever describe the dangers of eating plastic to them? Do forest dwelling squirrels know the difference between real food and fake, or are they so ravenous they’d peel through plastic to chow on some peanut butter, too? Maybe this kind of destruction is primal. Like the anger that erupts from her sometimes. Or the pain that often overtakes her and makes her a visitor in her visceral body.
She picks up a hand towel she’s never seen before that’s lying near the fence line. It’s soaked with the regrets of winter and maybe some melted snow or early morning rain. It’s hard to tell the difference. She doesn’t bother to wring it out, just dumps it into the garbage bag she’s carrying, the one that thumps against her calf when she walks the perimeter. It’s filling quickly.
Her daughter’s old doll stroller rests, faded and tipped over, near the gate. It has a rip in the cotton sling and a broken wheel. Too big for the bag, she deposits it at the curb. From the street behind her, she can hear the garbage truck rumbling, then screeching to a halt. It sounds exhausted. She speeds up her efforts, anxious to get this junk off of her lawn and out of her sight.
Beneath a cracked Frisbee is a crescent of new grass, green against the dead yellow tan of the yard. She tisks at it. Doesn’t it know that it can frost in Chicago as late as Mother’s Day? Doesn’t it know that it should still be hiding? Or doesn’t it care about the Mother’s Day rule? Either way, she thinks this grass should bunker down and hide its head for six more weeks if it knows what’s good for it. If it cares about surviving at all. If it can. She crouches and strokes the soft, damp threads with her fingers. She thinks that this is what vulnerability must feel like, and she wonders if that’s primal too.
1. The bottoms of her feet fleshy and pink, cracked yellow heels, meeting deep dewy skin. I see my mother’s legs, long and muscular, propped on the railing of the porch. Everything is blooming. The bees are not all dead yet. Hummingbirds vibrate and shimmer through the porch shade, stopping at the feeder to drink sugar water for less than a second. They nest in the pear tree. My mother drinks a margarita. Her stomach is flat and she rolls up her shirt to collect the sunlight in the folds and creases of her skin. When she smiles, it’s her eyes.
She lets herself sweat, lets it roll down the backs of her arms, from her neck, from her chin. She lets herself drip into the garden bed and onto the stones. I imagine this rosebush then, grows accustomed to my mother’s taste.
I am picking raspberries to make a pie, but we eat them all before going inside.
My mother’s fingers, red and sticky. The hummingbirds watching. We eat in greedy handfuls and gulps like berries are breath and body for us.
2. The morning grayscale tone of her hollowed out cheeks.
My father has dressed her in a pink fleece zip up and soft flannel pants. She is wearing her slippers, lined with faux fur and a blue fleece beanie. Cushioned and insulated, nothing can touch her. The fabrics, my hands, a cup of tea, my father’s goodbye kiss — everything soft when everything hurts. My mother sniffles. She begins to leak. I don’t know what’s wrong, but I know what’s wrong. The thing that lives inside her chest banging and lunging to get out, the thing we don’t talk about. Her eroded lungs shake, and I remember she used to seem bigger. Now her edges blur and her arms fade into the couch. One collarbone peeping from her sweater as sharp as a dagger.
My mother’s palms are yellow-pink, her hands faded from tan to parchment, fingers long and slender with perfect, oval nails. Her hands are cold. My hands are cold.
Clear liquid snot and tears mix at her chin. I hold a tissue to my mother’s nose and instruct her to “blow.” Wipe her face while I fail to keep mine neutral. We do this again and again. When the knocking in her breath stops, I test her tea on the skin of my wrist, and ask if she wants some. I hold the mug to her mouth and she takes tiny sips, the muscles in her neck straining.
She is sorry, her eyes say.
I know.
Looking into blooms of soft, green lichen, lashes gone, eyebrows gone, looking into eyes that are alive in a body that is dying, I tell her that it will be OK.
The sun comes up. Maybe I’m not lying.
3. Red Lodge, Montana.
A woman is a hawk at rest, at any moment ready to take flight.
A woman in a cowboy hat and mauve puffy coat, too short, her slender talons show beneath the sleeves. Even sitting, she is long and tall, even blurred, she is happy. Evergreen and alpine flowers and soil — the scent she carries on the breeze as she circles above, riding air currents. To watch her dive fearlessly into a meadow is to know joy. To see her come up with a body in her claws is to know death.
Watch as she devours a snake.
Alive.
My mother, the hawk, sits perched on the bumper of a beat up blazer, breathing easily and steadily in the early summer sun, full-bellied, clear-eyed. Less of a woman and more of a bird.
This morning my cat, anxious from the move to our new apartment, would not stop crying. I placed a cardboard box on the floor, she crawled inside and quieted. I put the coffee on and wished I could sit in a box, although, gazing around my tiny studio apartment, I guess I am. After they left my mom said my dad regretted not leaving me weed.
At this time exactly a year ago my cat and I were moving into a different apartment a world away. That one had three rooms and a backyard, enormous for a city, even an extension of a city, like Bat Yam, where we lived. My cat could spend half her time outdoors. She’d taunt the ferals until they’d attack, then dart inside for mommy or daddy to come running and shoo them away.
My cat cries because she misses the yard. My cat cries because she misses the smell of her home country. I wonder if she misses the man called daddy, too? The man whose eyes would flash with anger if I referred to her as “my cat” instead of “our cat.” I always knew to stop when he’d spit a curse in Hebrew.
I open a cardboard box just bigger than his fist. I pull out a little ceramic gray kitten with a ceramic white face and paws, asleep in a little ceramic cardboard box. We saw this kitten on a shelf in a store in Breckenridge. He loved it, so we bought it, but he insisted I be the one to keep it when we parted. He tended to buy me things he thought I wanted.
The title of my graduate school admission essay should have been I chose grad school over love, so grant me admission. He held me at the airport and promised he loved me.
I go to Amazon and for the hundredth time this week I consider buying magnetic poetry. Perhaps with the words so readily available I will be the type of writer who writes, instead of the bitter kind who reads the poetry books at Urban Outfitters and thinks “I could do better” without actually trying. I haven’t bought measuring spoons yet, so to brew the coffee I estimate pinches of grounds.
During the last meal we shared a man died in a pool of blood beside us. Perhaps an aneurysm, he fell flat on the pavement. We’d never seen so much blood before. That night we drank arak and toasted every glass to him.
Now I’m flirting with other men. He asks me what I’m doing, I say I’m writing a creative nonfiction essay, but I have no idea how to say creative nonfiction in Ivrit.
I have a superpower. I throw acrylic paint onto plywood board with my fingers and push. And push until my hands become part of the painting. The cadmium yellow is my skin, running underneath like spiny veins. I can convince myself that I am simply a brushstroke, pink and red and brown and green. And I can control my curves and grooves and make myself seen and unseen—
But I didn’t learn about this superpower until after nineteen.
The scabs on my feet caused from running barefoot through woods and roads would wake up and bleed, forcing me to wrap them in gauze and walk gingerly on my sandaled soles. The streets of Williamsburg, Virginia were colored golden by the leaves on oak trees and stinking late-summer magnolias. They reminded me of Easter Sunday with my grandparents and the magnolia tree reaching over the sidewalk outside of the old Episcopal church. Sometimes I can still feel the thin, waxy petal of those magnolia flowers against the skin of my thumb and forefinger. The magnolias are the only thing I miss, with their flowers that are larger than my hands and the leaves that crunch under your feet in October, and my faith-filled lungs in the swampy heat.
I thought they smelled like a corpse, those magnolias— like the byproduct of my rotten flesh on the bottoms of my toes. They didn’t bring joy like they did when I was six, feeling their leaves crunch under patent Mary Janes, just a flash of running past twisted tree branches under clouds pregnant with rain. When my feet healed, I threw off my shoes and would wander between those trees at four in the morning and shiver each time I caught a low slung male voice echoing from behind those deep green leaves.
Maybe if I had been Raphael, I would have painted the glossy photograph of us smiling, lying on top of one another, taken with a disposable camera that I purchased and developed at the last place in town that still did that. I thought it was kind of retro— the sort of thing we did as kids— rolls of birthday party and vacation photographs stored in cardboard envelopes with the pharmacy’s insignia all over them.
He loved the picture because of what you cannot see. Our smiles are wide, cheeks stacked on top of one another, his head covered by a red baseball cap, my neck dripping in hemp necklaces that I made myself. What you cannot see is that we are lying on a woven blanket in a thicket of trees next to a lake. You cannot see that we had just been making love and thought ourselves so clever. The things you cannot see—
He loved that photo because behind us there was the danger of getting caught. I was all his. His magnolia petal that smells like rot.
I held the photo in my hand, crying, when he called to tell me he’d taken all of his Xanax. He said would be in the hospital for a few days. I was confused— we had been arguing. I called his best friend who told me that he tried to kill himself. It was because I was making him upset, because I’d killed his baby, because I tore apart his family.
Call again. Tears rolling down my face. He said he was fine— it was a false alarm. He’d gone to urgent care, but they sent him home. He lied. “The doctor told me that you would choke on Xanax before it would kill you,” he said. I wasn’t sure that that was true.
When I relaxed, I assured him that I wasn’t changing my mind. We could not continue like this. He said he had no reason to live. I had killed his baby and he had no reason to live. I hung up the phone and I called a friend. I called his bluff.
My thumb and forefinger slid against the sheen of the glossy 4X6 photograph, increasing the pressure, remembering that what he could not see in that photo is that my feet were bleeding. He liked me better without shoes. I tore it to pieces. I wrapped my feet in titanium white gauze.
I didn’t know then that I was a paint thrower or I would have emptied my pthallo green to wash out the sheen of his liar’s smile. But I am now and can
Lucrezia stood hooded in the corner, watching the display in front of her in disgust as the monk shook his fist and shouted for all the frenzied crowd to hear. He threw a book on the flames. The crowd roared as the flames devoured it- dancing and flickering as they reflected off his bald head. The smoke billowed around him and to Lucrezia he had the look of a crazed demon who just crawled his way out of the pits of hell.
Lucrezia did not say a word as she hid in the shadows watching the mounting spectacle. She was not completely sure why she felt she must come and witness this, but once the whispers had reached her ears, she could not keep herself away. The palazzo she knew so well had been invaded by Savaranola’s bloodthirsty Piagnoni, its treasures stripped and thrown haphazardly in carts and transported to the Piazza della Signora, where they would await a smouldering execution for offenses to the propriety of the self-proclaimed moral compass of Florence.
The palazzo’s owners had long since abandoned the city, fled to the safety of the surrounding hills, where they would await the inevitable change of tide. Life and power in Florence was never stable, and for any of the powerful families to maintain a foothold in the erratic political machine that was Florence, they must be prepared for any eventuality. Lucrezia understood all too well their desire to survive. She was smart, cunning, charming, and beautiful- but perhaps most importantly- she never forgot her place. Having been born to the streets of Florence, she understood hunger and sickness and she knew that she would endure anything to keep those wolves at bay.
For two years she had been brought into the palazzo to please the elder son of a wealthy merchant. He was smitten with her and as long as he mounted his ugly wife every ten months (or thereabouts) to produce another heir, his father paid for his every whim. He was not her worst customer. He was quick, not too rough, and always fell asleep straight after, leaving Lucrezia waiting for him to either wake up for more or summon someone to remove her. It was in these respites that she discovered the one thing that had ever made her question her existence- to feel like there was something more to this life than surviving in the highest degree of comfort one could manage. In the elder son’s room there was a painting. The first time she saw it she stopped moving and was, for a brief moment, lifted out of her body. A harsh tug on her arm brought her back to reality, and as she stumbled to keep up with her escort, she noticed the hairs standing up on her arms, felt for the first time a pleasurable tremble run through her hardened soul.
From that moment, she spent every moment looking forward to her next summons to the palazzo. She could hardly wait for her occasional lover to be done with her, so she could sit and look at the entrancing scene before her – its power over her so strong- she ceased to hear the loud snoring of her paramour, to feel the most recent bruises he had left on her delicate skin. Sometimes she would be drawn to the bathing nymphs, other times it was the goat man dancing in a small thicket of trees. Every so often she found herself looking so deep into the painted forms on the canvas that she ceased to remember they were there, so transfixed was she by the vivid colours she had never seen before in the real world. Mostly though, she gazed at the river, so lifelike she could convince herself it was moving. She imagined herself on a little boat sailing down the river to ‘Away-‘ the name she had given to the place she would one day go. Never having been out of the walls of Florence, she did not know about anything that may lie beyond the city walls, but one day she would have enough money to seek it out. For all she knew, the goat man would be there- and they would dance through the woods barefoot, occasionally dipping their toes in the crystal-clear river.
She never asked the elder son about the painting, for this would not have been acceptable. As a woman, and one of the city’s meretrice, discussions of this nature (and generally discussions of any nature) were out of bounds- and so Lucrezia never knew the name nor the painter of the masterpiece that had put a spark of light in her soul.
Savaranola lifted the painting high above his head- displaying it as the crowd of sheep baa’d their disapproval. Singular cries of ‘burn it’ came from the crowd. A few more chimed in until the mob built enough momentum to reach a fever pitch of unity… ‘BURN IT!’ Savaranola smiled his demoniac grin and triumphantly threw the canvas onto the bonfire. The multitude exploded into deranged cheers and Lucrezia turned away, imagining the river nymphs screaming in agony as the once peaceful river transformed into a torrent of flames. A single tear trickled down a hardened face that had never before allowed the touch of salt water to kiss its cheek.
Look for seedlings to poke and rise within the week.
Track two full moons and there will be blooms.
Look! They’re bursting open—one flower, one stem.
Know this: these beauties are deer-resistant sun lovers.
Water them a little (an inch they say) every week.
Wait for butterflies to land and hummers to hover.
Apply fertilizer as needed.
Beware: confident and colorful, Zinnias die out with the first frost.
A Mockingbird trills ree-ree-ree-swoo, ree-ree-ree-swoo, over and over again. Bright yellow mustard flowers flank the weedy plot of dirt where, seven years ago, a ravenous gopher ate through the middle of three out of four newly planted Buddleia—Butterfly bushes. Weeds abound. Unlike marriage, their success relies—
Weedy mental meandering is what I do when endings and beginnings are wedged-up like incompatible vegetables planted too close together; cabbage and strawberries, for example; or tomatoes next to bush beans. But while avoiding vegetable catastrophes only requires a bit of research, avoiding personal catastrophes is less clear-cut, by far. One only has to look to Shakespeare for proof.
In junior high, I accidentally played Juliet. Ms. Anderson, the drama teacher, saw something in me and claimed I’d be perfect for the role. Me? I thought, five seconds before my ego primed my lips with a commitment. Each night, under cover of darkness, I’d earnestly rehearse my lines in the back garden:
Deny thy father and refuse thy name/Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love/And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
Weeks later I’d plunge Romeo’s dagger through two layers of chiffon, fake blood exploding across my abdomen, and collapse dead on the stage.
What wasn’t clear to the eighth-grade me, anything related to my feminist renaissance to-come, is now as transparent as air. Juliet should never have offered to give up her name. After abandoning my maiden name four times, as if getting married was akin to existing in a self-induced coma, it took Donald Trump becoming America’s 45th president to wake me. In an instant, every flimsy belief I’d held became sturdy inspiration for deep internal change. Raised by strong women and nearly absent—either physically or emotionally—men, I can only scream to myself: What took you so (52 years) long? Doesn’t matter, really. A maiden name isn’t difficult to reclaim. A dead marriage is.
I read recently that in shade, Zinnias produce fewer flowers on smaller plants. Shade is a problem for them, just as it has always been for women who stand in the shadow of a man—we can’t grow properly there.
Zinnias were discovered in the 1800s, by Johann Gottfried Zinn, a German botanist, and have become a symbol of endurance. I’m envisioning the Zinnia’s floral antecedents through the eyes of budding botanist Alma, from Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things. I’m belly-to-the-dirt, clothing of the day notwithstanding, investigating flora and fauna, calculating exactly how our world first began to grow. I’m maintaining a detailed notebook of lichen, replete with illustrations, and envisioning what our world might, based on these micro-investigations, become. But a botanist also understands that our existence predates its discovery, that something always came first.
The feminist me predates my 2016 discovery of her. I see her as an independent five year-old pulling up patches of grass just to peer into the teeming world below. I see her in a lifelong refusal to embrace religious discrimination against the gays, and in my wonky determination to keep trying to get love right even after repeated failures.
Some people don’t like the word feminist much. It’s as misunderstood and poorly labeled as “weeds” that are just flowers that want to grow, unobstructed.
An ending, I understand, is a synonym for a beginning, which is a synonym for someone who wants to…
I’ve stared out of the window for the past three months. Some days I haven’t been able to see past the streaks of rain that stain the window like dried tears on cheeks. Other days, I’ve cradled my morning coffee and watched as green turns to brown, as the nights consume the days, and as the Sun weakens.
Nothing grows without the Sun. Our garden has become a graveyard. From my window I can see grey slabs leading to an infertile bed of sandy brown dirt. The ferns tendrils curl into the ground, no longer thick and lush. The olive tree, a wedding present, stands lifeless, propped up by soil and stones. The lavender that once attracted bees and butterflies is crisp and grey.
Amber evenings spent in the garden, enveloped in the perfume of jasmine, rosemary and lavender, are only memories.
Some days my gaze rests on the windmill that juts incongruously out of the dirt. A child’s whirly windmill. Its rainbow rosettes poke up above the brittle twigs of abandoned plants. It was supposed to bring joy and life. A splash of colour and a whirl of movement. But its faded petals remind me of a rundown seafront in winter and bring me only sadness. They, like I, seem to have succumbed to the muted, washed-out skies. It’s not clear whether it is us that have faded quietly, imperceptibly into the grey, or if the grey has seeped into us, draining our souls of colour.
I’ve stared out of the window for the past three months, as winter pervaded and overwhelmed our home. I’ve been so focused on what’s not there, I’ve been blind to the life that’s struggled on in the peripheries.
But today the Sun’s rays light up the garden and reach towards me through the window. The warmth can just about be felt on my skin. Tiny hairs prick up on my pale arms. Today I am able to see through the dirt-streaked window. The dawn glow shows me the rosemary bush that has stood stoically throughout the winter months. Through the glass, I can almost feel the softness of the lamb’s ear that has appeared without me noticing: the Sun transforms its grey leaves into silvery, soft fronds. Today I want to smell the rosemary, I want to feel the lamb’s ear.
Today, I go outside. The air is no longer frigid and I shed the heavy layers that I’ve grown accustomed to wearing. Green buds have appeared on the olive tree, a cluster of daffodils explode brightly from the planter of bulbs that I’d forgotten about. The cricket pitch nearby comes to life with the thrum of a lawnmower and the scent of freshly cut grass. The thwack of ball on bat as the players come out of hibernation signals the start of a new season. Of hope and anticipation.
I notice the dirt is no longer barren. Tender green shoots poke out defiantly: their fragility makes them seem even stronger. They’ve been waiting patiently for this moment. Having survived the long, dark months of winter, they’re ready to show themselves. Life even pushes up through the cracks in the grey slabs.
The warm spring air carries candyfloss blossom from next door’s tree and scatters it like confetti across our garden, celebrating the life that has laid dormant, but not dead.
The windmill is still faded but it spins and whirls in the shower of blossom.
Maryanne, well, she was just, Maryanne, with her strawberry-blond hair and readily-burnt skin. Her brother created stunning sculptures that fetched high prices in Detroit art galleries. Maryanne couldn’t draw, let alone sculpt. She was soft and curvey—a bookkeeper at a landscape maintenance company. She wore khaki slacks, button-down oxfords and, in the winter, sturdy, weather-proof boots.
At one of her brother’s parties Maryanne was puzzling over the horsed-overs when she was approached by the Brazilian poet, Rafael. He had thick swirls of black hair and luminous dark eyes that always seemed ready to weep. When he spoke to someone, he took all of them in. He came to Detroit to live in one of those writer’s houses and though he could have any woman he wanted, he was always alone whenever Maryanne saw him.
“How are you tonight, Maryanne?” Rafael said in his smooth electric voice that sent shivers all over her body.
“Oh, okay. How ‘bout you?”
“I have been thinking all day about the pair of peregrine falcons that are nesting on the Fisher Building.” Rafael pointed toward the window. “You can see them from here with binoculars.”
They walked to the window and stared at the Fisher Building. Maryanne liked its Art Deco elements: the forlorn faces and the large eagle sentries.
Rafael looked at her. “I’m sorry, I did not bring my binoculars to the party.”
Maryanne shrugged. “How can they nest on such a steeply pitched roof?”
He shook his head. “Lower. They’re nesting just several stories above ground. To the left of the door arch. See there,” he said, tapping against the window. “There is a box for them, but they don’t use it.” A platform jutted from the sill of an arched window. “Peregrine means wanderer,” he said. “I am a wanderer. Or pilgrim, as some would say. On a journey to recover my heart.”
Maryanne thought about Rafael’s heart and how she wanted to crawl inside it and live there, its smooth sides beating against her, caressing her with every life-affirming moment. But she stood there, her mouth hanging slightly open, working hard to find something, anything, to say to Rafael.
“Peregrine falcons are the fastest flying birds in the world, Maryanne. And you know what?”
She shook her head.
“They mate for life.”
And Maryanne said, “Today, I had to credit Mrs. Johnson fifty dollars on her account because Earl weed-whacked her annuals.”
Rafael stared wistfully at the Detroit skyline.
***
Most every night, Maryanne dreamed she was flying. She could peer down like a hawk as she coasted above the world. She felt free and light and often woke up with aching muscles in her arms and sweaty sheets beneath her. She wondered how she could know what the landscape looked like from a bird’s-eye view, how it felt very much as if she were flying over Venice or Paris or London or Detroit. Some days the dreams sustained her through the monotonous hours at her desk but other days, they depressed her to the point where she made mistakes, paying Detroit Edison the amount owed to Consumer’s Energy, for example, or billing Mrs. Smith for Mr. Jones fall clean-up. She never realized the mistakes until her boss stormed over to her desk and yelled.
It was on those days that Maryanne questioned the meaning of life. To be more specific: the meaning of her life. Was it some kind of nasty trick that her life was paying bills and sending invoices, watching Downton Abbey, and checking her Match.com account for potential connections with men that held no interest to her.
She kept going to her brother’s dinner parties because there, there were the kind of people she was attracted to and if all she managed was to hang around on the periphery of their existence and appear to them as a floating specter in the corner of their eye then it was a good night. But there’s only so long a fairly bright woman can steadily move through a life that feels like swimming in a giant bowl of plain yogurt. When her dreams are the only times she feels truly alive and her waking hours are muted in the slack grays and browns of a snowless winter.
***
On the day before her thirty-fifth birthday, Maryanne rented a small cottage on the shore of Lake Superior and lay awake most of the night, listening to the waves crash against the pebbled beach. She tossed and turned and when she did sleep there was no relief in her dreams. She had felt for the longest time as if she were wandering aimlessly along the bottom of a deep gorge without a river running through it. Her mind was parched. The dark granite cliff walls that surrounded her allowed not a single drop of sunshine to reach her. There was no one to guide her out. No one to hold her hand. A thick blanket of snow had fallen upon her heart and soon her heart would freeze entirely then crack and shatter.
In the morning she drove to the Porcupine Mountains State Park then hiked to the wooden overlook built on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Lake of the Clouds. Maryanne thought the trees looked glorious in the autumnal blaze. Naturally, she was entirely alone: it was early morning, with a crisp chill to the air. She’d watched her breath all the long hike up the trail, telling her breath good-bye, this is it.
She climbed to the top rail of the fence-like barrier and … jumped. It was a straight shot down; she was whizzing past the rock mountain face. Well, not really a mountain like the Rockies, but a five-hundred foot drop anyway. She expected to splatter and be done with it.
Instead, Maryanne watched the film of her sorry life, that she very much expected to be in sepia (it was in full-color, HD, 3-D, surround sound), and about 2.5 seconds into the fall, she changed her mind. It was the disappointed look on her deceased father’s face that flashed before her that weakened her resolve. “You’re going to ruin the Porkies for us, kid?” he said and Maryanne remembered family vacations as a child, her father searching through the UP’s abandoned mining towns for those glass insulators they used to put on the top of telephone poles.
As soon as she regretted her decision she flung her arms out to the side at an instinctive forty-five degree angle (palms up) then shot straight forward, immediately suspending the fall. She zoomed a remarkable distance, and when her “energy” gave out, she pulled her feet in and crash-landed in a small clearing, somersaulting through the brush and forest litter. Not a single creature seemed to notice this remarkable and unusual occurrence in Maryanne’s life and so she took it upon herself to shout at the heavens until she collapsed, broken down by the angst that had propelled her to jump in the first place.
When her senses cleared, Maryanne wondered if it had been a dream. She could hear the wind whisper in the evergreen trees and see the pine needles bend in response. She could smell the organic matter of the woodlands and when she touched her face, she felt the gentle touch in her fingers and on her cheeks. She stood up and began picking the bits of leaves and needles from her hair and clothing. A bruise was forming on her right forearm and she remembered the rock she’d smacked against when landing. She poked the bruise and said, “Ouch.”
She was too scared to jump from the wooden overlook again to see if it were true. Plus, she wasn’t quite sure how to get back up there. She had left her phone with its handy GPS capability in the car. Maybe the flight had been an anomaly in her life or another cruel joke. Not that she believed God sat around playing pranks on his beloved. Encouraged by this thought of a benevolent higher power, she began walking around, searching for something to climb up and jump off of.
She found a rather impressive boulder, surrounded by other not-as-impressive boulders that served as stepping stones to the highest point. She huffed and puffed her way to the top, catching her breath while appraising the situation. She was about twenty feet off the ground. If she jumped and could not soar, she would be seriously injured.
If Maryanne knew anything, it was that the realization of one’s dreams does not come without a cost.
She jumped.
She soared, swinging her arms open at the same angle as before.
She tumbled again upon landing, laughing enough to fill her mouth with forest floor.
She soon found out that she couldn’t walk or run and then take off flying. When she did this, she remained earthbound. She needed to drop from a higher spot. She began climbing (painfully and awkwardly) the tallest pine tree (the needles scratching her), crawling to the middle of a nice sturdy branch. She looked out upon the Porcupine Mountains and lost her breath in the spectacular creation. She thought she must have been over one hundred feet in the air. What did she have to lose at this point? She crouched, bracing her heels against her bottom, counted to ten, sighed deeply, and dived.
Just like a flying squirrel she could glide. She rapidly learned to twist and turn to navigate back to the ground, with too many instances of close encounters of the treed kind. She would be black and blue, her clothing shredded, before night fell. She was surprised that whirring past the tree trunks seemed to occur in slow motion, her vision staying in time with her speed. She easily oriented herself to the lay of the land when she soared above it, as if she did have the eyes of a hawk.
It took a while before she thought to land on top of a tree and save herself the climb. This realization made her feel like a complete dummy but hey, at least, she made progress and got to the ranger’s station before it closed for the night and they locked the parking lot gates.
***
Maryanne flew secretly at night—jumping off water towers, cell towers, city buildings she could easily access—gliding as far as she could stretch the glide. She kept making mistakes, misjudging when to throw out her arms, when to put down her feet, how far she could go when she jumped from a certain height. She was always sore, scratched, injured. She thought she should fly barefoot then broke her pinkie toe, catching it on something hard and listening to it snap back. She halved a popsicle stick back at home and used it as a splint then wrapped the toe in first-aid tape. She took a week off then got restless.
Sometimes she felt discouraged; she was never going to get this soaring thing right. She started studying the masters of her craft: birds, in life and in books, on YouTube. Why did she have to be just a flying squirrel? she thought, comparing herself to the great flyers.
She snuck onto the flat roof of one of the 11-story wings of the Fisher Building and watched the peregrine falcons, thinking about Rafael and his heart. Maryanne did not need binoculars anymore to see far away. She wanted to mate for life. She wondered if she’d ever have the courage to show Rafael that she could fly.
Most every afternoon, she took a nap after work and woke up starving: craving a Cornish game hen or a squab or some other form of poultry that she’d thrown into the crock pot that morning. She started eating a lot of berries and snacking on sunflower seeds. She wanted to see Rafael. She’d been dreaming about him: delicious moist dreams that woke her with intense longing.
She put together a flying outfit comprised of black yoga pants and top, with a snug-fitting black Lycra hoodie, and a pair of steampunk aviator goggles. She landed best in a simple pair of black ballet shoes; boots didn’t provide the flexibility she needed. Her feet often ended up cold and wet.
When Maryanne found an open rooftop door on the Renaissance Center, it became her favorite launch. Over time, she learned to manuever her body so as to soar directly over the Detroit River before landing on Belle Isle. Several times she crashed into the river and the swim to the Detroit side had been long and cold. Closer and closer she’d get to the water until the polluted river only grazed her chest. The rush of the wind against her face, the way her body tightened for the launch then eased during the glide, the smell of the river, the lights of the city, the sense of accomplishment she felt on a perfect landing, were addicting. After the soar, she’d walk across the MacArthur Bridge then take a bus back to her car.
Maryanne wondered why she could fly. How can you save someone when you have to climb the skyscraper first? She had to take the elevator like a regular person then get on the roof, all the while the victim would be screaming hysterically as he dangled from a thin thread of hope. Plus, she didn’t think she could catch someone mid-air, and there was no way she could stop a school bus full of children from dropping off a bridge.
Maybe flying was one of those things that existed for pure enjoyment. That’s why her father collected glass insulators—“For the fun of it, kid,” he’d say. Flying was fun. Her favorite dreams had been the ones in which she’d flown and now that she was actually flying, those dreams stopped coming. She loved soaring above the earth, the wind racing past her, her mind focused into precise consciousness so that she was sensually hyper-aware. It made her so horny.
***
It didn’t bother Maryanne to keep books all day because she could soar after work. She dyed her long hair raven-black then shaved the sides of her head. She bought coral pink knee-high leather boots with delicate laced details and she pierced her belly button. She got a tattoo across her entire back: wings. She started playing the guitar. After about four months, she showed up at one of her brother’s dinner parties and no one recognized her, not even her brother. When Weld announced who she was, the partygoers erupted in spontaneous clapping, surrounding her and begging for details.
Rafael did not but stood, staring wistfully upon the Detroit skyline. Maryanne was famished, filled her plate with chicken wings in all flavors and approached him, her heart trembling.
“So, Maryanne,” he whispered in her ear. “You have been—transformed?”
She nodded, chewing.
“What is this on your back, wings? Let me see.” He slowly turned her and ran his smooth hands over her exposed shoulder blades, being ever so gentle on the black and blues and the myriad red scratches. “Mmmm,” he said as if she felt very good to him.
His hands felt so good to her that she had to set her plate down on the windowsill for fear of dropping it. She was going to have to talk to him, express herself, express her new self. But he was the wordsmith and she was? She wasn’t sure yet. Somebody else but also the Maryanne she had always been. She knew she could fly, but no one would believe her if she told them she could. And sometimes, she still got it all wrong. She crash-landed or smacked into something or misjudged so that every time she dived it felt as if she’d never soared before.
“What kind of bird are you, Maryanne? Let me guess.” He turned her to face him. He put his pointer finger to his lip and wore his face in a puzzle. “I think, a beija flor. Yes.”
She was transfixed. Never before had she wanted someone so badly. She wondered if she was falling in love. How foolish to fall for someone so far out of her league. He was an award-winning poet for Pete’s sake.
“Do you know what this beija flor is? It is a bird who kisses the flowers for their sweet nectar,” he said.
Maryanne knew this was her opening. What should she say? “Hey, Raff, I can fly, did you know?” And he would laugh or worse yet, smirk then stare at the skyline. Yet, he was waiting for her to jump in that space with him, where they could flirt and see where it went. It was like diving into the black of night. Something she’d done and done well at times. She grabbed Rafael’s hand and pulled him along.
He laughed and teased her, “Where are we going? Is this an adventure? Take me on an adventure, Maryanne! I have been so bored here.”
They raced up the stairs to the roof of the high-rise, shoving the door open. The rush of winter took their breaths away. Rafael hugged himself then shivered. Maryanne ran to the edge of the roof, frightening him. He pulled her back.
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I want to show you something. I want to show you who I am. Promise me, you’ll just watch. Don’t be scared. I just want to show you and not anyone else right now. Okay?”
“A mystery? Yes! I promise.” He zipped his lips closed with his fingers, his eyes moist and bright.
“Close your eyes but open them when you hear me say your name.”
He closed his eyes then opened them quickly. “You’re not going to kill yourself, are you?”
She shook her head. “You have to trust me.”
He searched her face for the truth, found it then nodded and closed his eyes.
He was so beautiful. Maryanne climbed onto the ledge of the roof. The city light pollution cast a magenta glow upon the night sky. Traffic rushed below. The air was crisp, clean, forceful. She wondered if the peregrines had had any successful hatches. Their nesting platform seemed cold and empty. She spotted the falcons huddled together in a niche on the building, the bitter wind ruffling their blue-gray feathers. She didn’t want to be with Rafael (or anyone else) who did not love her as she was. Rafael’s teeth began to clatter. She drew in her breath.
The rain pattered against the storefront glass, weaving throughout the flashing reds and blues of the sirens outside. George could see distorted figures through his rain-veiled view and in that moment, had no memory of where he was. He had to hurry, though he’d misplaced why, and knew only that he had an important job to do, if only he could remember it.
The gas station attendant, a dark-skinned boy with eyes to match, looked up at him from beneath the counter, surrounded in the debris of what it once bore. Bags of chips, multi-colored candy bars and packs of cigarettes littered the floor between them, all but swallowing George’s bedroom slippers.
The young attendant’s eyes welled with tears, eyeing the old man and the baseball bat normally kept beneath the counter. The milk and eggs still by the cash register, where minutes before all was a normal Tuesday.
The television behind the counter blared now, and a woman in a dark-pressed suit, microphone in hand, took the screen. Her head lurched upward, and she fluttered a moment, some lifeless malformed robot booting-up.
Breaking News: Alluwity Police have located George McCauley, the 77-year-old man who wandered from his home off 4th and Crescent Street. He lives with his daughter, who discovered George missing around 3am this morning.
George hadn’t heard the television, and was gripped instead by the roaring static of the SCR-536 on the shelf nearest him, the same radio his platoon had used in Sicily. Still peppered with sand and the blood of the young radio man who had died moments before. George needed to radio for support. They were almost overrun- Italians to one side and Nazis on the other. It was up to him to save them all, to save what little of the operation he could.
The static roared in George’s ears, and as the clapping of the machine-guns and men screaming in the night rared up at him, he fell against the inner-side of the counter, trembling.
“Mr. McCauley,” the boy said, through clenched teeth and still eyeing the bat. “The news, we’re on the news.”
George jumped as the artillery-lined screams crescendoed and died within the walls of his skull.
How did the boy know his name?
George would’ve known if the kid had been on the line with them in Sicily, but no- that was long ago. And most who knew him from the beach were gone now. Decomposed and one with the earth they fought upon. No, he had never seen this boy before, he was sure of it. George straightened, clenching the bat in both hands as a thought struck him. The Imposter, he could’ve…
A chill ran through George and he drew his face close to the boy, who recoiled into what little space was left between him and the wall.
“Who are you?” George asked, his horn-rimmed glasses descending his nose a bit. “How do ya know my name?”
The boy’s eyes leapt from the bat to George’s glare, silhouetted in the still looming red and blue lights from outside the gas station. He opened his mouth, but said nothing.
“You come in once a week, George.” A voice from the other side of the counter. A heavy-set man in a red shirt like the boy’s held a phone to his chest. “Milk, eggs and a scratcher, every Tuesday. George, your daughter’s on the phone. She’s outside, with the police.”
His eyes widened at that. He and Evelyn always talked of a little girl, but it just wouldn’t work right now, not with her so sick. That’s why he was here, because they were after them, he and his ailing wife.
Evelyn had helped so many people in Sicily, where they’d first met, she a war nurse and he an infantryman in the U.S. Army.
George remembered the beach and the wails of the boy beside him, both caught in a barrage of Italian-Nazi gunfire. George took a round in the thigh, the boy took them everywhere else, and as the kid fell to the ground, so did the radio. Lodged in the sand, in some hole his mother wouldn’t care to hear about.
As far as George was concerned, getting bitten by the bullet was the best thing that ever happened to him. It got him off the front, and into the 128th, a hospital just east of Palermo, and that’s where he met Evelyn.
He saw the nurse coming, and despite his crutches, held the door for her. The gap was small, and she struggled between it and George, who balanced awkwardly on his surrogate legs. She’d run ahead a bit, and held the next for him.
“Returning the favor,” she’d said, southern accented and in a tone his New York ears hadn’t heard before. And that’s all it took, one simple gesture to fall in love. In a room of makeshift beds, a Malaria outbreak and men melded with shrapnel, George had met her, an angel if one ever existed, and from then on everything made more sense.
George clenched the bat in his brown-spotted fist, time trickling away with every breath. The Imposter had been closing in on them, but George was smart. He’d been planning this awhile now, and as soon as he had the money for Evelyn’s medicine they’d be long gone.
“…in the Fast n’ Ready off of Oak Boulevard, and from what authorities tell us, is wielding a baseball bat. McCauley suffers from an acute form of progressive Demen-“
The digital chime echoed throughout the racks of magazines, chips and candy, and it was then George saw her, the woman he knew and yet, had no memory of.
“I know what I’m doing,” she said, swatting the officer behind her away, though he still managed to follow her through the door. She was young, perhaps in her thirties, and she reminded George of Evelyn.
Her hair assuming that particular shade of hazel; those big brown one-of-a-kind eyes, like his beloved’s, like Evelyn’s. She looked at him and her shoulders dropped, as if a weight pressed down upon her. Mascara running down her cheeks, smeared in black lines, like the trenches they dug in the war.
She wiped away the half-formed tears with the back of her hand, and with a sharp breath in, stared him in the face.
“Dad, it’s me, Karen. Do you know what year it is?”
George froze at the sound of her voice. She was sent by The Imposter. Why else would the officer draw his weapon, if not to capture or kill him? To stop he and Evelyn from being together.
“Mr. McCauley, drop it. Let the boy go,” the officer said, cold and with a sense of duty; his career on the line.
George heard the officer say something, something he couldn’t make out for all the ringing. The ringing of the old wheel-bound phone on the counter behind him, the same one he and Evelyn had had in their first house together. The Louisville Slugger fell to the floor, and he lifted the receiver mid-ring.
“He- Hello?”
“Hi, honey,” Evelyn replied, and he could tell she smiled through red lipstick on the other end. “Tell me again, what we’ll do when we get back.”
“Get, back?” George asked, hoping that through some miracle, he and her shared the same air.
“After the war, silly,” she replied, and he saw her sitting on the porch outside their first home, where the white paint chipped and peeled in the hot Georgia sun. George brushed the scar where the bullet had been removed those years ago, thinking of the care it took for his Evelyn to do so.
“I,” he began, tears welling in his eyes. “I’m going to make you better, dear. I’m going to make you well.”
A hand fell on his shoulder.
“Dad…who are you talking to?”
“We’re getting out of here. The Imposter, he-“
The woman pressed a fist to her nose, holding something within herself.
“You mean the man in the mirror…don’t you? Dad, we talked about this…”
“My wife…you’ll never find her. You and The Imposter will-“
“Dad, Mom’s gone. She’s been gone ten years now…”
George took a step back from the woman next to him, the phone still to his ear, still hearing Evelyn’s breath through the receiver.
“I’m going to make her well,” he said, vomiting the words from the deepest parts of him. “Like she did for me, and all those in the war.”
The woman took George’s face in her hand, cupping his cheek, the tears still streaming in that black mess of salt and mascara.
“I know, Dad. I know. Say goodbye to Mom.”
“Bye, Evelyn,” George said, lowering the phone, the pattering of a machine-gun in the distance.
#
The leather chair wrenched as he adjusted himself, watching the woman he knew and didn’t on the television across the dimly-lit room.
He thought she must be famous to be on the news like that, and would have to ask her what it was she did.
The Evelyn-esque woman, hair in a bun now, set a sandwich and mug of water before him. George smiled up at her and pointed to the television where an anchor interviewed her outside of a Fast n’ Ready. George loved the hot dogs from the local convenience store and resolved to make a trip out that way soon.
“It’s like, there’s this hole in my dad’s brain and his life spills out more and more each day. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember he’s still my father. The man who pushed me on our swing as a child. The one who loved my mom with a fervor I hope to find in a partner one day.”
“And do you think they’ll have him moved to a facility? I’m not sure the police or any medical prof-“
The picture rushed to black, the after-image swimming in greens and blues before George’s eyes.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Dad,” the false-Evelyn said, sitting on the love-seat nearest the television. “It’s just, sometimes, I hate you for not remembering. I know it’s wrong, but sometimes I just do.”
George watched her as she nestled into her chair, and scanned the room filled with pictures of people he didn’t know.
Some in military garb, a tank in the shot behind them, men arm in arm with one another, all smiling at the camera. The barren earth and ocean creeping in behind them.
Another photo, a man in a grey suit, holding a woman in his arms, standing in front of a white house with blue shutters, in between the opening in the picket fence where the miniature gate lie spread open.
Cracked for the newly married couple.
George pressed his glasses to his face and leaned forward, taking in the picture and the woman there-in. Something about that smile, those eyes, that dress, that suit. It was him, he and Evelyn. The two of them at the start of it all. The house on 1606 Acorn Avenue, down in Georgia. They had been married, Evelyn had passed and they’d had a daughter after all.
And in that moment, something awoke in him. Something smothered and buried deep in the darkness came up for air.
“Karen?” George said, tears streaming down his face. Her mouth fell, and she leapt from the chair, her sandwich and water splaying on the floor.
She knelt beside her father, eyes wide and ears wider, clasping his wrinkled hand in her own. “Dad…? Oh my god, Dad, I-“
He muttered something, and Karen leaned in close. “What, Dad? What is it?”
“…I left him on the beach. Just a boy, bleedin’ out in the sand…”
Karen placed a hand on her father’s own, her eyes a levee, battered and breaking.
“Dad, it’s over. The war is over.”
“Let me die, Evelyn…just let me die.”
Karen gasped, hand clasping her mouth, and as the tears came, she left the room, her wails echoing down the hall.
George sighed as she went, grabbing his sandwich from the fold-out table before him, and taking a bite, he wondered what she could be crying about. He hated to see her cry like that, and thought she seemed nice enough, whoever she was.
A chill ran through George and he sat upward, his eyes focused on the man staring at him from across the room. George raised his brows and The Imposter did the same. George puffed his cheeks, and The Imposter did the same.
His heart slammed in his chest and he gripped the sides of his chair. They had to escape, but they’d never make it without Evelyn’s medicine. Her medication was expensive, but he would find the money and then they’d be on their way. The war was over, and they’d survived the shelling together; they would surely survive a life in the suburbs.
“A little longer, honey,” he said, under his breath, shielding his words from The Imposter, who still surveilled him from the mirror. “Just a little longer…”
#
He awoke with a gasp, heart pounding in the darkness, and as the fog rolled in, an old man began to wail, not knowing where, or who he was.
18:18 in Tokyo and I reactualize in row 21, seat A on Air Canada flight 004.
***
8:15: I wake up in Sam’s bed to the sound of my alarm. Sam’s phone still won’t charge. We wake in silence. There’s not much I haven’t already said over ¥300 wine and 7-Eleven gyoza. I begin to change, but he tells me to keep the gray sweatshirt I slept in. He kisses me once.
9:00: I carry my own clothes back to my little Kawasaki apartment and prepare to part with my little Kawasaki life. I’ve already done most of the packing. Yesterday I bought a second suitcase from the mall near the train station. I shower, change into my airport clothes and carefully fold Sam’s sweatshirt into my already-stuffed baggage. Things aren’t just things when you’re leaving.
10:30: Our friends meet me downstairs and we say our goodbyes. We got all the tears out of the way over whiskey last night. I still want to cry, but I don’t.
11:20: Sam walks me to the train station.
11:28: Sam hugs me goodbye and I black out. I think he says, “I’ll miss you,” but I don’t know for sure.
11:32: I leave him and I don’t look back. I buy my ticket from the kiosk.
11:40: The Narita Express doesn’t come.
12:10: The next train doesn’t show up either.
12:40: An announcement reveals that the trains to Narita International Airport are canceled until further notice.
12:43: I call a cab.
***
It’s not raining tonight and the sky is so clear and black that I imagine myself falling upwards into it.
As we walk home from our bar, I fall behind my friends and imagine a scene: Savannah and I sit in the backseat of a cab on the way home from the airport and as the sun sets over Tokyo Bay I think, that’s it. The sky alone was worth the airfare. The moon just looks bigger in Japan. When we get home, I Google the difference in elevation between Tokyo and Philadelphia. Can 100 feet bring you closer to heaven?
***
I get a text from Savannah.
“Hey Erin. I cried in the taxi on the way to meet my mom. I felt like you.”
I think back to that first sunset. I texted home: “I also saw my first Japanese sunset in the taxi and almost cried but I didn’t take a pic.”
And I’m glad I didn’t. Some things are too special for Instagram.
***
Sam’s waiting downstairs when I get back and he asks me out for dinner. We decide on the sushi place next to the train station, the one where Savannah and I used to spend hours eating roe and making plans for our futures.
We sit next to each other, but we don’t speak. We just listen to the hum of the conveyor belt and watch the little sushi plates pass by. Sam orders every type of fish he thinks he hasn’t tried yet. I eat as much fatty tuna as I can. We had planned on getting ice cream—our usual—but we’re both too full after dinner.
“A new era,” he laughs.
胸がはち切れそうで (Mune ga hachikire-sōde). My chest is going to explode.
***
18:26 in Tokyo and Air Canada flight 004 is about to take off. Seat B is empty. Soon I’ll be in Vancouver, then Toronto, then Philadelphia, where it’s colder and darker and the moon’s not so big. I don’t think about what Sam’s doing now, or when I’ll talk to him next, but I do think about his apartment—the big windows and how we’d peek outside late at night to see which of our friends were up smoking cigarettes, or how we’d pull the curtains shut on Sunday mornings. I stare out at the tarmac and think about my own apartment’s view: the train tracks and the route I used to run. That stark white building that became a home.
My view now is still. I hear the roar of the engine over my own thoughts.
On the plane, I wonder: would I have stayed? It doesn’t matter now, but maybe it feels better to imagine there’s another option, an alternate reality where I stay in Sam’s bed, wearing the sweatshirt and we wake up late and meet our friends for pancakes. A world where I ask him to tell me, just once more, over the buzz of the conveyor belts. A world where I turn back instead of walking toward the train ticket kiosk. One where we run and run and keep running until we reach the park bench where we shared our first—
It doesn’t matter now. It’s time to fly. It’s 18:30 in Tokyo and the plane takes off. I look toward the ground and I don’t think, “Goodbye.” I don’t think anything.
***
It’s two days later and I wake up in my childhood bed and check my email.
