Party

It is almost the end of the party. I dream every night about what it was like when the party was young. Everything was fresh and new and full of wonder and hope. Now I look at the balloons sinking to the floor under gravity's cruel embrace and the torn streamers dangling melancholic from the rafters and I am haunted by the memory of what was.
The worst part is knowing that I was annoyed by the noise of the music and the party blowers. I was stressed by the chaos of spilled drinks and chip crumbs ground into the carpet under carefree heels.
While the party was happening I barely enjoyed it, I was so worried over the myriad details and eager for a perfection born of fantasy. I wanted organized games, quiet conversation, careful observance of etiquette. It seemed like the party would go on and on and I wished for the madness to end. I didn't know how to enjoy it, how to throw back my head and laugh with the others or dance the night away in blithe merriment.
It took time for me to see the magic contained within the pandemonium, time for me to let go and join in the festivities. And now that I've learned how to do it, the party's almost over. Everyone's gone or leaving, suddenly as serious as I once was. They've grown older and I've grown younger so that once again there is a gap between us, insurmountable as I sit among discarded party hats and other favors on a layer of sparkling confetti, watching them go.
It was a beautiful party.
I wish that it could have lasted forever.

Simple Gifts

Of the three gifts Granny Hart left her granddaughters, the stick was perhaps the most lackluster. Being the youngest, Katya was last to choose from Granny’s things, which is the same as saying that she had no choice at all.

Annabel, the oldest, chose first. She selected the mule whose talents were beyond question. As soon as she could, she placed one kitchen towel before and one behind the creature and commanded, “Bricklebrit!”  Each of the women could remember the first time that Granny had demonstrated the mule’s ability. She had allowed them to take turns pronouncing the command one night in the barn long ago. It had been an evening of unbelievable and giddy delight full of laughter and clapping and girlish squeals.

Shrouded by the passage of years, they might have begun to believe it was only a strange dream if not for the gold coin they each received in a card on the anniversaries of their individual birthdays.
Now, as level headed adults, they watched gold coins shower from both ends of the mule. Annabel merely bore a small satisfied smile, raised an eyebrow to her sisters and gathered up the towels full of loot.

Second to choose was Lise. Without hesitation she took possession of Granny’s table. The strange powers of this item had also been demonstrated to the girls in their youth, in this case more than once. Lise went around the table and pulled out a chair for each of her sisters inviting them to sit before seating herself. She hesitated a moment, biting her top lip and looking at both Annabel and Katya before clearing her throat and speaking,
“Table be laid!”

There was a momentary shivering of the air above the table before items began to materialize; a vase of fresh cut flowers, a bottle of wine, delicate long stemmed goblets, three place settings. First a plate of appetizers appeared, calamari frites with a sweet thai chili sauce. The three sisters sighed with pleasure with the first bites.
Before they could finish this the salads appeared;  Endive, Pear, Prosciutto, Blue Cheese, and Roasted Spiced Walnuts topped with a walnut vinaigrette. Their eyes widened as they chewed and issued more sounds of appreciation.
The main courses materialized as the salads were nearly finished. For Annabel Glazed Duck Breast with Poached Pear and Baby Carrots under a Vanilla-Cinnamon Glaze, for Lise Grilled Hanger Steak with pomme maison in a red wine mushroom sauce, and for Katya grilled Chicken Paillard with artichokes, tomato and olive tagine topped with grilled vegetables.
When the women thought they would burst Chocolate Pots de Crème appeared before them. This consisted of a Belgium chocolate custard topped with white chocolate whipped cream accompanied by steaming cups of fragrant coffee.

The sisters took their time recovering from the feast. They recollected that the fare had been simpler in their youth, consisting often of macaroni and cheese or fried chicken drumsticks. They could now conclude that part of the table's magic involved perfectly suiting the appetites of those it served. Lise outlined her plan to open a gourmet restaurant using the table as an exclusive highlight to be reserved for the highest paying patrons. Annabel agreed to help finance the operation until it could stand on its own reputation.

At last  Katya collected her inheritance, the stick in its long burlap bag with a strap that could be worn over the shoulder. None of them had ever seen it used, though grandmother had described the method of application and the situations in which it had come in handy for her. Those had been frightening stories. If not for the table and the mule the girls would have believed Granny Hart was merely spinning yarns for them. As it was, Katya knew better.

Lise’s restaurant, The Enchanted Table, grew to be a tremendous success. She married her head chef, Jorge St. Jorge, an already famous man with his own magazine and cooking show. Likewise Annabel had been enjoying the benefits of the mules special ability. Though the mule could only do so much, it was no small amount and Annabel’s wise investment strategies made good use of it. She became part of the jet set, sampling the best of what the world had to offer. She opened a chain of successful hotels and as her wealth accumulated she turned her attention to philanthropic enterprises.

Meanwhile Katya backpacked Europe with her stick in its sack over her shoulder. Emboldened by its particular magic and guided by her inquisitive nature she found herself soon bound for more dangerous treks. While Annabel flew the bright skies and skimmed through glittering hotel lobbies Katya became better acquainted with the world's entrails.
After returning to the states she hoboed  for six months before at last settling in Granny Hart’s house, of which she was one third owner. She dusted off an old Smith and Wesson typewriter and sat down to chronicle her misadventures, relaxing back into the quiet life.
One afternoon as she was hard at work on her manuscript, the doorbell rang.

It was Lise, suitcase in hand, red faced and puffy eyed. It seemed that Jorge had divorced her and as the face of The Enchanted Table had managed to win sole ownership of the establishment. Worse, though it had been awarded to her, Granny’s table was missing. When she tried to bring it home from the restaurant it’s magick no longer worked. She was certain that it was a clever forgery placed there by Jorge so he could keep the original. Yet for all this, she cried hardest of all because she was heartbroken.

Katya knew what had to be done, but poor Lise was in such a terrible state she was afraid to leave her alone. On her third day home Katya found her unconscious in the bathroom beside an empty pill bottle and half drunk bottle of wine. Thinking quickly she turned Lise over the side of the tub and thrust her fingers down her throat, gagging her until she vomited up the sleeping  pills and booze. After this she hardly left her side and tried to keep her spirits up with chocolate ice cream, funny movies, and walks through the hills..

She tried without success to contact Annabel and left her several messages. Nearly a month had passed and Lise was showing small signs of improvement when the doorbell rang again. It was Annabel, looking pale with blood shot eyes, her driver in tow with several suitcases. Unlike Lise, who was perhaps the most sensitive of the three women, Annabel did not cry much. She took off her long black gloves and laid them on the coffee table beside Lise’s tissues.

“Where’s Lise?” she asked Katya after her suitcases were in the house and the driver was gone.
“Asleep in her room.”
“Good.” Annabel said and sat on the couch putting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “I’ve been very foolish.” She said when she at last looked up at Katya sitting in the easy chair across from her. “You know, I knew Jorge from the beginning when I first helped Lise set up The Enchanted Table. I introduced them. In the early days I was there a lot, helping Lise, writing checks to cover her expenses, bringing in my rich new friends to sit at Granny‘s table.

That’s why it didn’t seem too far fetched when Jorge showed up a month ago, before the divorce was finalized. He said he’d married the wrong sister. That he’d been secretly in love with me for years. I don’t know why I did it Katya. He can be so charming. He convinced me that it really was love. I wasn’t checking my messages, you know, because I was hiding from Lise. I didn’t know what he had done. I just thought that after a decent amount of time passed I could talk to her, let her know that I was with him… or maybe the whole affair would be over and I’d never have to mention it.”

Annabel sighed. “Then last week  he talked me into taking him to my place upstate. You visited me there once after your Appalachian trek. Well, a strange thing happened right away. The barn was left open that first night and a number of the animals were missing in the morning, including my mule. It seemed like a wild dog had gotten in, killed a few chickens and scared the other animals away. I was so furious. I fired my groundskeeper because I thought it was his fault. The goats made their way back but not the mule.
I called the police and the game and wildlife commission. Jorge kept saying it was crazy for me to fuss over some farm animals, he made a fight out of it, over how I wanted to search for a missing mule rather than spending time with him. Of course I thought he didn’t know about the mule’s talent and I didn’t want to tell him. The fight got bigger and bigger and he broke things off between us  and left.  I paid for a big search for the mule. People up there think I’m certifiable now, but no mule.
And then I had some time and realized I was so relieved that Jorge was gone, and that I could check on Lise now without trying to hide from her. I listened to all my messages. I should have been there for her, I feel so guilty. I heard yours too. Pills? Really?” she asked.
Katya nodded.
“I am such a terrible person.” Annibel said and her voice cracked. She reached for the tissues. “I’m the one who should die.” her tears at last started falling, “Not poor Lise.”
Katya got up and came to Annabel’s side, wrapping her arms around her.
“Shhh,” Katya soothed, “She’s better now. I can’t handle two suicidal sisters, so please don’t think like that.”
Annabel  sniffed.
“Do you think I should tell her? I want to, to apologize, but I don’t want to hurt her more.”
“I don’t know.” Katya admitted. “Probably. It would be better not to have a secret.”
The two sat in silence for a while. Then  Katya  asked,
“Do you think he took the mule?”
“Definitely." Annabel answered. "It’s all he wanted. Lise must have told him about it.”
“Do you know where he is?” Katya asked.
“Probably back at the restaurant.” Annabel answered helping herself to another tissue and blowing her nose.

Katya stood up and went to the hall closet. She took out her leather travel jacket and put it on.
“I need you to keep an eye on Lise.” she said and pulled out the sack with the stick in it. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

Jorge was not in the restaurant but Katya left a message for him saying that she had just come back from a three month trip in the amazon and couldn’t get in touch with either of her sisters. She left the number of the hotel where she was staying and went back there to wait. It wasn’t long before Jorge called and asked Katya if he could cook her dinner. She came to his new apartment on the upper east side at the appointed time.

“Have you heard back from your sisters?” he asked her as soon as she was through the door.
“No.” she said, “Is Lise here? I can‘t wait to tell her about my trip.”
Jorge brought a hand to his head and began to ckoke back a sob.
“Are you alright?” Katya put a hand on Jorge’s shoulder.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I guess you haven’t heard. Lise and I are divorced.”
“What?” Katya feigned shock.
“She left me, for another man.” he began crying again. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. It’s still too much for me.” He headed for a chair to sit down, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as if to stifle an anguished cry. Katya shut the door and came to his side.
“I’m so sorry Jorge. I had no idea. I can’t believe it.”
“She was my sunshine.” he cried, “The world has been so dark for me without her.”
Katya patted his back ,
“I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have bothered you if I knew. I should go.”
“No, no.” Jorge protested. “I promised you dinner. Forgive my outburst and stay. It will be so nice to have some company again. I‘ve been very lonely since Lise left.”

He served her Wild Mushroom Ravioli with arugula, sundried tomatoes and fresh herbs and kept the wine flowing. All the while he kept up his heartbroken act.
“I’m ruined without her.” he said after sufficient wine seemed to have been drunk. “She took her magical table with her. What is The Enchanted Table without the enchanted table?”
“You’re a wonderful chef. You don’t need it.”
“Thank you.” he said, “But the world is hard for those of us without enchanted tables or magical mules. I suppose you know.”
Katya cleared her throat,
“Well actually, I don’t know. I have something even better than those things,” she said and patted the sack concealing the stick which she had brought and hung from her chair.
“Really?” asked Jorge. “What is it?”
“Never mind.” Katya said, “I’ve had to much to drink and am talking silly.”

They moved the drinking into the living room for a while and Jorge cried some more burying his face in Katya’s shoulder, then apologizing some more. It might have been a very successful seduction technique if Katya had not known it was all an act. At one point he kissed her, then apologized, then tried again,
“If only I had met you before Lise.”
Katya said, “It’s getting late, I should go.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you should stay here where you’ll be more comfortable. I have a guest room. You can stay as long as you need to get settled back in the states and get in touch with your sisters.”
Katya accepted and made a show of carrying the sack into the bedroom with her and setting it against the night stand. She said goodnight to Jorge and lay down on the bed and waited.
An hour passed before the door swung quietly open and Jorge crept into the room towards the nightstand. Katya smiled in the darkness and waited until his hand was tugging on the drawstring of the sack. Then she said, “Let me help you Jorge.” clicked on the bedside lamp and cried, “Stick out of the sack!”

Jorge’s face was a comical mask of surprise and pain as Granny’s stick flew out of the sack and delivered the first blow to his groin. It continued to administer sharp thwacks all over his body until he cowered on the ground trying to escape the vicious attack.
“You didn’t suppose that an all you can eat table and a gold shitting mule were all that there was to the Hart legacy did you?”
Jorge could do no more than scream with pain.
“Stick be still.” Katya said and the stick paused in the air over Jorge’s crumpled form. “It can go on all night, but you can’t. It will beat you to death if I let it,” she pulled the collar of her blouse to the side revealing a scar, “as it did to the man who gave me this. A thief in Cuzco.”
She slowly unbuttoned the blouse revealing another  hideous scar across her middrift.
“And the one who did this. Somali pirate.” She began to button the blouse back up. “And I will let it do the same to you if you don’t tell me where to find the table and the mule.”
Spitting blood Jorge whimpered,
“Something’s broken. I need to go to the hospital.”
“Well, we’ll see about that when I have what I want. First where is the table?”
Jorge merely groaned.
“Stick fall to.” the blows resumed harder than before until Jorge cried,
“Stop, stop, I’ll tell you, please stop!”

The news of Jorge St. Jorge’s hospitalization after a brutal mugging reached the two elder sisters before Katya‘s return. When she at last arrived in a moving truck they embraced her and helped unload the table and lead the mule to the barn. That night the three sisters once again feasted together upon the enchanted table in Granny Hart’s kitchen. They talked deep into the night and it was agreed that both the table and the mule should remain at the house and be kept a secret under Katya’s care. Whenever her sisters needed money, a meal, or protection they came to Katya’s door.

Of the three gifts Granny Hart left her granddaughters, the stick was perhaps the most lackluster, but Katya was rarely seen without the long burlap sack slung over her shoulder. It could be seen in the photo of her within the dust jacket of her book after it was published and even at the Tokyo launch party she wore it slung over her shoulder and exchanged nods with Japanese gentlemen covered in tattoos. The best parts of her stories always had to be left out of her books, but she had the scars to remember them, and miles more to go with her stick slung over her shoulder.

Forgotten Things

She walked around the toy store, letting children’s voices and warm forced air dry her clothes from the rain outside. There were colors everywhere, a rainbow of possibilities. Purple, blue, green and sparkles. She picked up a small stuffed wolf from a high wooden shelf among dozens of other animals and held it in the crook of her arm, holding it there as she looked at picture books and soft felt puppets shaped like peacocks and octopus. The small wolf, a little bigger than a football, stayed in place, a soft comforting presence at her side.
She fell into it.  The warm stuffed cuddly possibility of its unrequited love. It felt good, though she didn’t know why. It was somewhere hiding in the folds of thick blankets, furry friends and clean blankets. It was years in the past.
The wolf was intended as gift, but part of her regretted wrapping it up in pink and purple and waiting for another day, a coming night among family and a round table and birthday chanting. She wanted to take it to bed, have it sit next to her as she read another novel that took her into Greece forty years before. She tried to remember playing with toys, and she searched her mind for a memory when her parents had taken her to a toy store. Nothing came.
Later that night she called her mother.
“Can you remember any toys I used to play with?  I can’t remember playing with any toys.  I only have a memory of playing with that red sand I brought back from the Nevada desert.”
“Oh sure, you played with lots of toys,” her voice got very soft, with an undertone of defensiveness. “You played dress up and went to Deta’s for tea and worked in the garden. I bought you Jenga. You played with Blackstar. You had a bike and a scooter and skates. How did this come up?”
“Don’t worry, this isn’t a critique on your parenting, I just couldn’t remember playing with toys. I was walking around a toy store and couldn’t remember ever being in one. I couldn’t remember any toys I used to have except for a few Barbies.” 
Later she searched the motives in her words. It had been a critique, however baseless. She had wandered around the toy store, a little jealous of all the children inside picking out toys. She wanted a stuffed bear.
“You had Legos.”
“I never had Legos.”
“Yes you did.  I remember picking them up.”
“Well, it must have been when I was really little. They must have been the big kind.”
“Yes, they were. And you had a big dollhouse, several of them actually. Your dad was so proud when he brought it home for you. He was sitting next to you drinking a coffee while you moved the furniture all around. He was so proud.” 
Her voice was light with sweet memories.
The thought of her father sitting there so happy with his little girl brought the prickling pain of tears to her eyes. They had all come so far from then, down the dark road of adulthood and clashing politics and the black space that their words could not fill. Three strangers constantly filled with misunderstanding, doubts, anger. Her dad now could not sit next to her comfortably, he couldn't just sit and feel his love for her, feel her love for him. 
“You also had that big cardboard doll house when we lived in Sharon. It was big enough that you could get inside.”
“Yeah,” she said, remembering the structure in the attic with one small window in their three story house.  Remembering her sister there, just a baby. “I do remember that.”
“Oh, you do?”  There was a moment of quiet between them. “I think we watched too much TV together though.”
“Yeah probably.”
“I think that being an adult is much more interesting and challenging though. I can’t remember my childhood either. I think the further you get away from it, the less you remember. I can’t remember a thing.”
“Really?”
“Not a thing.” 
She knew her mom had blocked out the painful past. The weekends she had once talked about when her mother would leave her at home with frozen dinners, alone and scared while her mother went to the theater. There where other memories that perhaps she had forgotten, forced away, hidden. 
They hung up and she lay in bed, still only remembering a select sliver of her own childhood. She grabbed a pillow and tucked it into her arm, pulling it tight.

Struggles With Mother

She has always wanted me to be different, I understand that more clearly now. I didn’t have the words long ago to describe the repeating pattern, the predictable questions and requests sewn together like a simple quilt of three colors that followed me at first, then absorbed silently into my skin, tempering me with its weight and threads. 
I see it now from a slightly objective angle, my eyes just barely reaching above the gray fog and swirling shapes, the unsaid yet clearly defined goals that propelled me to a university and into the angst that would endure for decades, a sort of uneasy darkness that was just under the skin and could ooze out, thick and black if scratched just slightly. 
I didn’t understand it then, could not see the words making up the sentences that rolled through her head like a conveyor belt, getting more and more worn and rusty, but rotating nonetheless. As a baby girl she must have looked at me with all the hope and wonder in the world, projecting onto the blank screen of my white naked body all she saw as right and just, all perhaps that she had done and enjoyed and wished to repeat, all that she had not done but hoped to do through my skin and eyes.
As a young woman, both headstrong and naïve, I pushed against what I thought were inequalities, the mores of American society that everyone I knew seemed to accept and go along with, nearly universally without question.
She tried to keep me as a girl for as long as she could, even when my breasts started to bud and poke out from smooth cotton t-shirts.  She would not let me shave, and then when I did on my own, without consent, she looked at me sadly, finally relenting to the unstoppable flow of womanhood and said, ‘now you can never stop.’ 
Five years later, a head full of simple feminist ideology, unanswered questions and a body and mind full of open, bursting wonder and tinged with a splash of vehement anger, I stopped.  There was a contradiction I could not reconcile…I could not quite understand why when I looked at a man’s leg, covered in hair, why was I not repulsed?  Why did I have the opposite reaction seeing a slightly smaller leg, one of a woman, covered in hair? I decided it must be the culture, it must be a shared, accepted concept of beauty without anything behind it but current fashion and taste.
She did not see the young girl struggling to find her place in the symbolic order. She did not see the exploration, the push and thought against culture and the play with body and definition and experimentation with beauty and expectations, the transgression of a young girl in a society that demonized questions and moving against the wind. 
Then, as now, she could only see me through the eyes of others. She wondered and worried about how she would be defined and judged, how she would be one of the mothers that failed, who had not properly created and raised a young woman ready to join society beyond the safety of four walls. It was she who was the voice of society, she who demonized me, who pushed back against my own conviction with equal force, who judged the hair, who looked at me in disgust.  It was she who could not, who refused to see the thoughts behind the action, the tension and struggle.
I had thought it was them, the great nameless of society, thinking, moving, bulging as one big mass. I never thought it would hit so strong, come right back without ever leaving our house, come with such force from the single person tasked with guiding me through the world.
She has always wanted me to be different.  After nose rings and tattoos, it is now her obsession to hide my trees and mermaids from polite society, to hide me from the bikers and drug addicts they will attract, to hide my transgression and keep it locked in the dark attic of our household. 
This is not the girl she imagined, not the girl she wanted, the girl who would travel Europe- not Mexico. The girl who would go to a university and get a career and a Jewish husband, who would provide grandchildren. 
These wishes, pushed onto me since birth, have gone unanswered. I am not what she wanted. I am asked to hide myself, to shave, to wear long dresses, to go along with the lies she has woven about career and status. I have lost interest, the sting has dulled though every rematch is a burden- the tug and pull of my own thoughts wondering if I should please her, shock her, ignore her, and which one of my actions is coming from which thought? 
What hurts more? Covering myself time and again or seeing the disapproval in her eyes, the ashamed glance down as she looks at my skin? She has never taken me as I am and I have never cut the string, the threads of just a few colors which bind us together.

Excalibur

“Do you remember who you are?” said the disembodied voice. It came out of a very dark and long tunnel that stretched out in front of him.
”Do you remember who you are?” said the voice again. This time it lingered inside the tunnel, like a cloud of vapor. He thought that it was surely hiding something malignant within its folds. It had to be.
The earth trembled underneath his feet just then, the tunnel vibrated like a string on a guitar. His heart started to race, faster and faster.
He feared a heart attack, he always had. This prompted him to scream in desperation. But there didn’t seem to be anyone there that could listen.
His scream ended but his lips were still wide open. His mouth had turned into a kind of vacuum, he felt as if he was swallowing the tunnel itself. The tunnel was rushing into his mouth, a big black snake making its way past his open lips.
As the tunnel disappeared underneath his eyes, another landscape was revealed behind the
emptiness that was left behind, something that looked like a room, a familiar room that was proportionate to his body.
The tail of the snake was suctioned violently into his mouth and it disappeared completely. This final step in the process made him jump a bit. Again he felt like screaming. But he managed to keep the scream inside.

He felt something heavy pulling him towards a chair. He looked down and recognized his legs, little by little he recognized his hands. He brought them to his face to examine them and he noticed they were glittering.
As he bent his head to examine his hands, he felt a pain right behind the neck and just below the cranium. He moved one of his hands and positioned it behind his neck, stretching and opening the fingers, massaging his own knotted flesh. In the meantime his head swung slowly on its base from side to side. He wasn’t purposefully doing it, but it was happening nonetheless.
He heard some voices in the background, they became louder and louder as he listened more intently. He balanced his body forward and opened his eyes wider. He managed to stop his massive bold head from swinging and he allowed it to rest on one of his hands.
A moment of stillness, a moment to come back.

The voices were coming from the television at the end of the room. This made him realize he had fallen asleep on a couch, a particular couch that he knew very well.
He discovered his daughter Ada sitting on another sofa. He remembered how before he fell asleep he had been working on something. He also remembered that at some point Ada had joined him in the room and turned the TV on.
Ada was a dark skinny girl, with a disproportionate head that made her look like a gigantic brown ant. She had her black hair rolled behind her neck in a bun. Every so often, she would let her head fall forward while opening her big mouth, allowing a silver spoon to feed her white chunks of melting vanilla ice cream.
He was scanning her with his eyes, trying to remember her completely, allowing the previous events to pass away from the antechamber of his mind as his attention settled on things he could name and track in a consistent timeline.
Then the voices on the TV interrupted him again. The colorful pixilated image of a familiar face was jumping on the screen. The dark, eerie face occupied most of the available space.
All of a sudden the camera seemed to be moving backwards, slowly showing the whole figure of a person.

“Do you remember who you are?” this person kept saying. It was a man sitting in a dark room and wearing a black robe. He looked like some kind of monk, with the black robe and a black hood that produced a shadow over his eyes. All of this made him look somewhat sinister.
The camera then revealed another figure, sitting backwards right next to the talking face. This figure had a shiny bald head, with chunks of white hair on each side.
He realized that the room on the screen was the main chamber of a medieval castle, lit by a fireplace. At the very least, it was a movie maker’s idea of what a medieval castle would look like inside. The reflections from the fire made the entire image jump around in an ocean of shadows.

“Do you remember who you are?” The voice uttered again.
This time the camera moved closer to the person sitting backwards. Like an invisible satellite, it started to orbit the bald head as if caught in its field of gravity.
It was an old, old man, with big black eyes. His eyes were fixed on the trajectory of the needle he was holding between his fingers. The needle was leaving a trail of exes on a long piece of cloth.

“Do you remember who you are?”
The voice exclaimed in the background again, this time louder, more insistently. This startled the old man. His eyes moved like loose balls on their sockets.
He turned his head around. On each side he was greeted by empty dark space.
He exhaled and shrugged his shoulders, then resumed his sewing. He did 3 more exes, and stopped to pick up the pair of scissors that were lying next to him. With them he cut the needle loose from the thread. He tied the thread with his fingers and lifted the black cloth. The cloth rolled down and hung from his fingers. He was slowly turning it into a black robe, sprinkled with silver stars stitched to the hem.
He swung the robe in the air, and placed it over his shoulders. He stretched each arm underneath the long sleeves and allowed the hands to pop out on each side. He used the hands to button the robe closed. While he was doing this, he took a few steps towards one of the brick walls.
He smiled when he finally spoke up to say:
“Oh that’s it! I have finished it! Finally!”
He said it with deep satisfaction. He picked up a pointed hat from a table next to him, and laid it on his shining bald head. He adjusted the hat and rushed to the wooden door and disappeared in the dark hall beyond the door.

The image on the screen changed again. Now it was brighter and clearer. There was a person standing on stage, dressed as a jester. He had a microphone in his hand and he was raising it to his mouth to make an announcement:
“Ladies and gentleman, please help me welcome to the show… the one and only Merlin the Magician!”
As the jester said it, a shower of claps could be heard in the background. The old man with the robe full of stars and a pointed hat slowly made his way onto the stage. He placed himself in the middle of the scene, bending forward respectfully to salute the unseen audience.

“What is it that you are watching, Ada?” he suddenly asked.
Ada had kept her eyes fixed on the television set the whole time, and she kept them in place even as she replied in a rush:
“I am not so sure, but I think it’s some kind of horror movie. Something about a man who plays a magician in a performance without knowing that he is a real magician. Then something creepy happens. I’m not sure yet about it all. But it’s something like that…”
“Ah, a horror movie!” he replied with disappointment. He shook his head and remembered to
keep doing what he was doing before he fell asleep. He had a deck of old Tarot cards laid out on the floor, and a wooden panel right underneath his feet. He had been going trough the deck, sorting them out, trying to decide which ones to stick to the wooden panel.
Ada noticed how quickly he lost interest in the movie and turned around towards him with curiosity.
“What are you doing dad? What is that?”
“Oh I am doing something for the restaurant. I want to place it on one of the walls. You know, for décor, to add more ambience to the place. So I am selecting the Tarot cards that have illustrations that relate to the middle ages, you know, castles, magicians, jesters, etc”
“Ah, cool,” said Ada, and she continued to watch the horror movie and eat her melting ice cream.

The camera zoomed out of one of the windows, and a wooden billboard appeared outside of the house.
“Excalibur Restaurant, Magic and Entertainment”
Underneath the billboard there was a paper flyer pasted on the fake stone wall:
“Tonight’s show: Merlin the Magician! –Starring the Magician himself! Don’t miss it!”
There was a rush of strong wind just then. It lifted up a flock of dead leaves and scattered them over the deserted street. The sound it made was like something you might hear in a movie. As suddenly as it had arrived, it died down and everything went back to being quiet, just the sounds of a TV in the distance and a little boy laughing a few houses away.

“Do you remember who you are?” said the voice.

The Angel Of Death

He winked at me.
I winked back.
He e-mailed me.
I e-mailed back.
He called.
We talked for two hours.
The next night we agreed to meet at Jack's Bar and Grill.

It seemed like a simple conversation at a normal bar and grill with a few flashing neon signs on the windows and the pungent smell of French fries and stale beer mixed with diluted chlorine bleach. I knew differently. This wasn’t just normal. This was the place. The eternal chamber. The loud murmur of dozens of conversations, the waitresses in matching black uniforms that resembled casual wear. The smell, that left-out-all-night smell. The thin red carpets. The dark space lit by the glow of many small lamps above our wooden tables. Amid the diners, there were others that came and went. Stopping for a quick beer before heading home. A couple on their first date. It was clean. It was comfortable with its soft booths and relentless drone of plates that meet utensils and muffled conversation. It was comfortable. A little too easy, like slipping into a warm pool. Like climbing into a warm bed.

Michael was very charming. His eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief and sexual thoughts. I looked at him with desire. With heat that came up rapidly from my core. It spilled out of my eyes, into his. He seemed to catch my wishes with his eyes, he held them there, saving them for later. He sat across from me, a mug of chill beer gathered a small pool of condensation where it met the table. Shadows from the soft overhead lamp danced on his well-worn cheeks. We laughed and talked. We joked. I watched a few tears make their way across the long landscape of his face. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said:
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

When his father was sick in the hospital, he walked into the white walled room, into the white light of an early afternoon that found its way through the window. His father was in bed, the old man looked at him and said:
"Are you an Angel?"
Michael replied, "Dad! It's me, Michael, your son!"
And with that, his father passed.

Michael served in Vietnam in 1972. He was in the Army Special Forces. Their motto, "De Oppresso Liber.” To liberate the oppressed. He did reconnaissance missions to rescue POWs. He had 38 confirmed kills. The child he once was never left the jungle. He went with those 38 bullets. He went with every bullet. He went with every curse, every insult. He went with every young white face he saw fade to blue.

We met at Jack's several days in a row. We got along wonderfully. We had the same twisted sense of humor. I found him innocent and childlike at times. Then, like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said:
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

After the fourth night his charm took me to bed. We drove to my place. The kids were asleep and we snuck upstairs to my room. I felt alive. I felt giddy. We played on my sheets. We bounced on the bed. We kissed. He gave me what I had been craving. We made love all night. Surprisingly, he had talented hands. He knew where to touch me. How hard. How long. How deep. He moved with rhythm and force. He knew exactly what to do. I wriggled and squirmed under his touch. My body wanted this. My body needed this. And then he was inside me, inside me for hours. We shared ourselves until the sun finally broke free of the black cloth that defines night. This was our pattern several nights in a row until he stood me up when he was supposed to meet two of my sisters and their husbands. Later when I talked to him, he said he had afraid. I knew he was.

One night he did meet my little sister and her husband and my son. He was still very, very afraid. His jokes sprinkled out of him less frequently. His charm was muted by a spattering of self conscious movement and quick nervous gestures.

We met every night. He drank every night. Then, like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said:
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

We made love almost every night.

Then I went to San Francisco for a short weekend. I had been gone for less than 24 hours when I got his call, then his text. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something like:
“I knew this would happen, good luck.”
My heart plunged. My stomach hurt. I tried to call him back. I wanted to understand the severity, the finality of his words. I didn’t understand it. It hurt. It hurt like a dull knife, so unexpected, so deep. The air between me and my friends fizzled as my mind skipped 2,500 miles away. My smiles were stained with uncertainty. My jokes could not hide the deep pain that moved up and down, creating a halo of worry around my head.
I knew he was trying to give me an "out.” I knew he had been cheated on. I knew he worried that he could not trust me. He had told me all his problems. He had had cancer. His young boy had died. He was an alcoholic. He had PTSD. He had obsessive tendencies. I thought he had told me everything. He wondered if he had revealed too much. I talked to him early Sunday morning, while my friend and her two little girls slept in the other room. I flew back a few hours later and we met at Jack's that same night. He sat with his hand on his glass, he looked at me.
“I have to go to the VA hospital tomorrow morning for some tests. I’m afraid my pancreatic cancer came back.”
It turned out to be anemia. We met at Jack's Monday night.

When I stepped off the plane I had been eager to see him, eager to settle my queasy stomach. From that moment on I watched my once disciplined habit of exercises and daily activities go by the wayside. I watched it happen. I watched in paralysis as my will slipped through my fingers like a quickly fading dream. I didn't want it to happen, but I watched it all the same. It was like watching a movie. I saw myself, I wanted to shout at her:
“No, don’t go that way…don’t do that!!”
I wanted to warn her, but I was too tired. My limbs were sore from all the positions I was being bent into. I wanted to yell at her, but my voice was hoarse after all the moaning. I wanted to whisper, but I was asleep.

On Thursday we met again at Jack's. Then, like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said”
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

He asked me who Popeye's nemesis was.
“Brutus.”
“No,” he said, “it’s Bluto.”
He used his cell phone to connect to the internet. It said, “Popeye's nemesis = Bluto.” I could have sworn it was Brutus. I would have bet money on it!

I had to pick up my daughter at 8pm. Michael suggested I bring her back to Jack's to meet him. I agreed. I picked her up and brought her to Jack's. Her friend was going to pick her up from there. She was not friendly to him and made some snide comments. Michael was disappointed that she did not like him, I could see it on his face. I was going to say something to her but he grabbed my arm quickly and said:
"Not now, it's not the right time. Talk to her about it later."
When my daughter left she texted me and said that she didn't like him and that she thinks he'll abuse me because of the way he grabbed my arm. I went out to the parking lot to call her so that I could explain why he grabbed my arm. When she picked up, she started going on a rampage. I went back inside. Michael was extremely disappointed. He was sad. He was angry. His feelings had been hurt. He looked into his glass as his body trembled and his teeth clenched and gritted.
“I finally meet someone I get along with so well and some 21 year old snotty brat is going to ruin it for me? The plot next to your father is empty, right?"
"Yes" I replied, caught off guard.
"Well, you let me know if you want me to take care of your daughter and fill that plot," he said sternly.

What the fuck? Wow! He became very strange at that moment. I felt the energy both drain and fill the room. I felt fear. I watched speechless as the twinkle in his eye became a spark of sheer violence. He wanted to hurt someone. He wanted to destroy something. I was fearful, but I was calm. This was survival. For a moment I realized I knew nothing about this man. What sat before me was a lifetime of grief and sadness that needed an explosion and I did not want my family to understand the true nature of his pain. Right then I talked to him very slowly, very calmly and rationally. We went outside into the still-warm night air. We talked for a little while. I became angry that he actually thought he could kill my daughter.
“You know,” I said, “this whole evening is extremely unacceptable and we should call it a night and talk tomorrow.”
He kissed me and hugged me and told me to call him when I got home so he knew I made it home safe. I called him when I got home. By this time, my body had finally caught up with me. The calm, cool, collectedness came out in a sudden bout of diarrhea, nausea and the shakes. I told Michael what I was feeling. I told him the last time I experienced these sensations was after an initiation. He told me the initiation I might be feeling right now is the initiation of the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He suggested I read the New Testament. I held my tongue and we hung up after what seemed like ages.

The next day I looked up Popeye's nemesis. In the earlier version, it was Bluto. In the later versions, it was Brutus. We were both correct.

I talked to my friend that morning, then I called Michael and told him I was not trained or equipped to deal with what had transpired the night before. He said:
"I was expecting this. Good luck."
I replied "Michael, I hope you find what you are looking for. At this point, I don't think it is a woman. I think it is something far bigger than that." We hung up.

That was Michael, the Angel of Death.

Like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said, “in 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

The Emperor And The Moon

Sara bent over the bucket of foaming suds and dipped the over sized sponge into the warm wetness. As she did so, the daisy dukes tightened and strained around her apple shaped ass. Her father, who had just come outside, blushed at the site of his 15 year old daughter’s figure poised so accidentally alluring. Immediately, a wall of words was raised between his forward consciousness, the “I” that he presented to the world, and the desire that had surged in the darkness of his heart and loins.
“Sara, telephone.” He called gruffly from behind his black beard and she started at the sound of his voice, then smiled and dropped the sponge into the bucket and hurried up the driveway. Her youthful breasts bobbed under the thin tank top as she lopped over to him, sandals click clacking on the concrete. He noticed that the white straps of her cotton bra were exposed over her bare shoulders.
“Who is it?” she asked breathily, chest heaving gently from the mild exertion.
“Somebody named AJ.” He told her, his voice still bear-like. Something in the tone made her feel guilty, although there was no spoken rule that had been broken. She reached for the phone, but he withheld it and said,
“You need to get inside and put something on. Those shorts are way too short.” The tone was accusing.
“All of my shorts are like these.” She protested in bewilderment.
“Well,” he said wagging his head, “You need to get in here and figure something out, because those are totally inappropriate.” And then he relinquished the phone and turning his back on her, he stomped back inside.
Sara clutched the phone in her hand and fought back hot tears. Guilt and rage and sorrow welled up in her chest and constricted her throat. Her mind howled with questions that danced around a central point: regret for having earned his disapproval. The intelligence in her struggled with the emotional storm of self loathing, reasoning that she had not done anything wrong, she was not trying to be “inappropriate”, which she knew really meant “sexual”, that others were defiling her with their inappropriate response to the sight of, what? Her bare legs? The parts of her body left exposed for comfort in the summer heat while she washed her father’s car?
The great excitement that had fluttered briefly through her belly upon hearing that a boy was calling for her had transformed entirely into a lead weight. This boy calling her also confirmed for her father her “inapropriatness”. Her overactive mind wrestling with her turbulent emotions churned out a suspicion that now that she had become the subject of this “inappropriate” attention. Her father no longer loved her and this in turn became a rage directed at herself, at her own body. At last she sniffed a constricted,
“Hello?” into the receiver.

Leaving

A small leather suitcase sits open-faced on a purple and white floral bedspread. Just a little over half full, there are neatly folded shorts and colorful T-shirts stacked in neat little squares. Along the edges are soft balls of black and white socks. A young girl stands close to the bedside. In her arms is a striped sun dress. She presses the garment to her body and folds it, placing it carefully into the suitcase that sits like an open mouth, waiting to take whatever she gives.
The room hold the remnants of a recent childhood. The walls are painted a pale shade of pink. A stack of teddy bears sit in the corner close to a near-empty closet and the dark light of the night is blocked by a red velvet window shade. It is a girl’s room, but the girl in front of the suitcase is no longer a girl.
She is slender and tall, just over 5’8. Long brown wavy hair cascades down her back, looking like the rushing movement of a waterfall. The girl wears a long flowing nightgown with a yellow floral print on a white background. It is an old fashioned nightgown, covering her arms and legs and reaching her collar, but even beneath the yards of flowing cotton fabric, the body of a young woman pushes through, pushing itself outward like a daisy meeting the sun. The fabric below the lacy neckline is bulging with pointed breasts, but she stands in her bare feet beside the bed, next to the collection of little dolls on her dresser, the new woman still swimming through the child-like waves of time.
An older man with a weathered face and graying hair stands in the doorway, it is a threshold he cannot cross. But he stands staring in, looking at the girl he can barely recognize. Who is this woman in a girl’s room? He clears his throat and finally gives voice to his thoughts.
“Gloria, I really don’t know what you’re doing. You just can’t take a bus and get dropped off in the middle of the city. They’ll eat you alive there out there! Come on! You know better than this. You don’t know anybody there, you don’t have any friends there, you don’t even have a place to stay for Christ’s sake! What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to kill your old man?”
The young girl holds still, then tucks another folded sun dress into her suitcase. She turns to her father. The gray hair by his ears, the sagging skin below his chin, the lines around his eyes, he looks older than he had at dinner. Wherever there was skin, there were worry lines etched into his face, but they had been there for years, slowly getting more and more defined. She looked at him with a small smile, a little bit of sympathy welling in her heart, giving him the smile of the truly innocent.
“You don’t need to worry. I know what I’m doing-”
“How can you possibly know what you’re doing?” he interrupted. “You’ve never been there, you have no place to stay. This is a half-baked plan at best.”
“Look, I’m almost eighteen, I can take care of myself.” She heard a small snort come from him. “I do. I told you already, I’m going to get a hotel room until I can find a place.”
“Do you have any idea how expensive hotel rooms are in New York? Your birthday money is going to disappear like that!” he snapped his fingers and tried to look out the window, but it was covered in a red shade.
“Look, I got to do this. My teacher said I have talent. What better place to go? I’m going to get a job and an apartment and it’s all going to be fine.”
The old man shook his head. He was powerless, unable to stop his daughter with force or words. She just had no idea…no idea at all. He shook his head and looked at his shoes, unsure of what to do next. She turned away from him, picking up another cotton T-shirt and folding it, tucking it neatly into the suitcase, it alone was going with her, into the heart of the city.

Yossi and The Little Girl

“Daddy, daddy!” the little girl called. Her little legs took her across the marbled-covered living room floor. Her feet slapped against the floor as she waddled, she was only a couple feet high, having taken her first breath only 18 months before. “Daddy!” she called. Her mother smiled and knelt close to the little girl, “that’s not daddy, his name is Yossi.”
The mother and daughter had just moved into the condominium complex a couple of months before, the little girl did not have a father, but somewhere, amongst TV shows and the greater collective unconscious, she had quickly learned about daddies. The middle aged couple from across the street, Meg and Yossi, had invited them to spend the afternoon and the mother and young daughter were guests for a Sunday barbecue. It was a sunny day, the sun being the reason the older couple had moved from Boston to this southern California town, a town they always said resembled New England, with its mature trees and charming downtown. They had come here twenty-three years ago, bringing with them their two young daughters.
“Yossi, Yossi! Look at me! Look at me do this!”
The man looked over and smiled. He was a short, stout man with olive skin and a barely-there white beard that he refused to completely shave. His legs and arms were slender and muscular, but his belly was full and round and extended from his white polo shirt no matter how much he exercised in the evenings after work.
“Yossi, Yossi!”
There were different impulses moving through him, happiness and annoyance, tenderness and humor, they were all moving because of the little girl. There were five other adults in the house: Meg, the little girl’s mother, a man named Vince (Meg’s friend, and Marylyn and Ruth (another mother and daughter, but aged 55 and 84). The little girl called to none of them.
“Yossi! Watch me do this!”
He was not used to this, his own wife did not talk to him this much. He was not used to such overpowering innocence, such unobstructed attention and unashamed requests for love. His own daughters were grown, they had moved out of the house years ago and he and his wife had created a new home, a place of sophisticated style and marble and hard edges. It was clean and uncluttered, it was obvious that children had not lived there for many years. The only trace of his daughters was on the cluttered piano, an instrument not used for music any longer, but a place for a multi-leveled arrangement of picture frames that held the images of the two daughters: first as little girls playing with dolls, then as teenagers in pretty dresses, and then as young women. Long ago he had held them, protected and comforted them. But it had been many years. They had stopped turning to him so long ago, even before they left his home. They were his blood, but they were all strangers. Once, he lived with little girls that wanted to sit close to him and be picked up, but it had been so long. Now, he preferred a clean, quiet house. A home without dog hair, without anything that required much of his time or attention or worry. Now, here was this little thing, this little girl, barely two feet tall, who called to him constantly. Whether he was outside tending the barbecue meat, whether he was in the kitchen or sitting on the couch, the little girl kept calling his name, she kept running to his legs and hugging him. He smiled, slightly embarrassed by the love.
There were no toys for the little girl, but she wandered around the small downstairs and found the extra room. The door was open and she walked onto the plush gray carpet. There were a couple of piles of paper on the floor next to the couch and there was a mesh bag full of neon green tennis balls. She went back to the living room, carrying her find. Like nothing was ever more interesting, she pulled out the balls one by one.
“Yossi, look at me do this…” and with her little arm, she threw a tennis ball across the room and then ran to retrieve it. She ran back to him, a smile of achievement on her face as she hugged his legs.
“Watch me do this…” she threw another tennis ball and went after it. The adults sitting in the living room smiled while a barbecue smoked on the back patio.
“That’s good,” he said. He smiled, laughed a little, liking the attention, and at the same time a little unsure of how to react. He had forgotten people could love so openly. The little girl ran back to him and raised her hands, “Can I sit on your lap?”
The hamburgers were ready. He picked her up and sat down, he gave her some small pieces of meat and he held her while she ate.

A Box With Three Hearts

My face is dripping off, millisecond by millisecond. The youth once commanded by this form slips away into the deep canyons and riverbeds of flesh that feed my eyes as streams do the turbulent seas. Their color has grown cloudy; the whites tend towards yellow laced with red veins like crimson spiders webs. The hair that once glistened like polished gold in the sunlight has turned the color of tarnished brass under the mists.
All of this, the culmination of minutes and hours and days and months spilling into years of confused dreaming. I am something magickal, something mechanical and strange. How seldom we look at the human organism and wonder about it. We are it, so we unfold, blind to the intricacies of our own existences.
I am a replica of two others who were each replicas of two others. I am a thing which yearns to replace those two sad lost creators. I grew out of a dark and tangled wilderness, screaming to know why I had been made, and my makers couldn’t tell me.
Why should anyone live or die? Why does this world go round and round that shiny yellow star that makes everything so warm and keeps the wheat growing and the bread pouring into the mouths that gape open like endless caverns that meet somewhere in the earth’s center, tunnels through which alien life forms run rampant in the darkness.
There are some answers to some questions. There are also some questions sprouting from answers like the many little green shoots rising from a chia pet, or like flowers from the finger tips of blue meanies.
I make my dreams up after I wake. The fact that I have always remembered so many dreams means that I am so imaginative that every murmur which disturbs the placid pools of my being inspires in me a story composed of vivid characters and startling landscapes linked in a chain of events put into sequence within the blinking of an eye.
Do you know that when I arrived here today I didn’t know what to do?
I didn’t know what I could do. It’s been a while since I could do all that I can do.
I had some disturbing phone calls and some unnerving emails waiting for me. My mother tells me of two dogs coupling in her backyard and how, unable to part afterwards, they yelp with anguish and she, not knowing what else to do, goes out and pets them until they calm down and are able to disjoin. A strange man has sent a message suggesting that I do it doggie style with him while smoking a cigarette. The lines in my face deepen.
I strain to remember what I need to do.
I received a box with three beets the size of human hearts, their bright purple and red stems looked as if they would bleed if I broke them, so I tried to be careful.
This head hurts, the eyes are puffy and itchy. The lips are painful and dry. The inside of the mouth feels as if the delicate flesh within it will all peel out. I don’t know why. I think that it wasn’t always like this. Once my body was a delight. I could do anything with it. I couldn’t imagine being old, even though I tried. Now that I am older I know that I never imagined it as it is. I could walk any distance without experiencing fatigue and saw the words written on signs long before I passed under them. It will get worse and worse. Every thing will sag under the weight of gravity, my head will hang low like a vulture’s, hovering out in front of my stooped shoulders. The veins will be apparent under my skin, as translucent as tracing paper, and, beneath its scaly surface, you will see the blue and purple of the bruises that I will acquire from the gentlest touch, like a piece of overripe fruit.
And why? Why was I born, why will I die and why must I ask?
I feel thirsty. As if the water that is life has ceased to run by this way and I am wading in the dust of the riverbed, wondering. One wrong step and the waltz disintegrates into disorder.
I received a box of paper board with three beets the size of human hearts, their bright purple and red stems looked as if they would bleed if I broke them so I tried to be careful.
My daughters mentioned their father at the dinner table.
“I remember when Daddy gave us those jelly beans for Christmas.”
They discussed the flavors of the jelly beans from that box. The youngest made up a story about how her father directed her to the trash can to spit out a bad one.
“That never happened,” the eldest told her.
I could almost touch him. I could almost feel his presence. All of the terrible things that I wanted to get away from, they seemed imagined. I could only recall how he loved us.
We three sat at the table. They talked. I cried a pair of little tears that couldn’t be spilled, so these faded eyes swallowed them back up with a careful blink that helped to wash the lens of the eye. I excused myself from the table.
Here I sit, my flesh dripping off, millisecond by millisecond, replaced by something new, by a replica, and it will not know why then any more than I know why now, no more than my daughters will know why, no more than their father knew why, no more than the two dogs in my mother’s back yard know why.
I received a box of paper board with three beets, the size of human hearts.