The Monastery (Final Draft)

           The moment I told my family I wanted to become a monk, quiet swept over the house. That was the experience I plainly recollect above all, which was followed by snippets of time.

            My family had observed me doubtfully when they considered the idea of a female monk. I had invested little in the ambition, but a person’s mind works in peculiar ways as it perseveres to accomplish what can’t be done.

            “What kind of schooling will you receive?” my mother had asked.

            “I may not attend any formal school,” I replied, going on to explain that I considered a life away from the mistakes of society refreshing. Finding the way I fit into the world could lead me down the path of helping others, like I’d been taught to do as a child.

            A scholar would have been an acceptable occupation, or even a librarian at a minor school. Even though this lifestyle was implied, I knew somehow it wouldn’t work for me. That sort of life felt like molasses, the trapped, sticky indulgence my friends would consume when we were kids. It was a luxury for all of two minutes, and then the point would fade to grey. In my family, nevertheless, every member had followed a scheduled path of normality.

            Afterwards at home, I was asked if I was certain in my career choice.

            “Why would you want to leave home and your life here?” my brother and sister said.

            My positive affirmation hadn’t been enough to calm my family, who hovered over me like a nest of bees. Instead of seeking to dismember my train of thought when it came to the topic, I was unguarded against hours of persuasive comments opposing my wish.

            “What if you don’t find yourself? What if you get lost traveling parts of the world where none of us could find you again?” asked my father.

            Doubt had begun to form in my mind, as I did hope to return to my family someday after my travels. However, becoming a monk meant leaving any home I lived in, to give up physical dwellings. I didn’t know how to make the anxiety stop that was caused from these repeated conversations, until I decided to leave home.

            Living on the same block, watching the same styles of living pass before me, was a perpetual occurrence for seventeen years of childhood. I have repeatedly circled back to those positive, clear memories. The trees, small homes and busy streets included an intelligent group of people who were confused me. A more confident version of myself might have glanced back to relish the thought of baffling such a logical, educated community, but I wasn’t that person.

            In the spring I could sense dew under my feet when the youngest dog wanted to sniff the world at five in the early morning. I inhaled the scent of herbs my Italian family would pluck from the small garden before I carried the basket into the house. The wafting steam of pasta would slide onto the table, a taste of sauce not soon to be forgotten. Fall would follow but I never got the chance to rake leaves, or smash them as I fell to the ground. The crinkling sound of leaves could calm my thoughts.

            I had been told stories of the origin of my name, how I was named after a beloved artist. My parents often repeated the tales of my grandparents’ adventures in Sicily. They had studied ancient manuscripts and befriended members of the neighboring monastery, and simply sitting listening to the story inspired me to travel there one day. Living a simple life in a monastery appealed greatly to me.

            Gullibly, my family taught me to search for spirits below mushrooms in front of our house. If a circle of mushrooms grew at night, that meant a day to search had been picked for me. A bridge over a running river sit in the woods nearby, a place assembled for trials of strength and dares.

            By the time I was eighteen, I had crossed the bridge so the younger children would no longer be scared by its presence. I had cut down the mushrooms from the ground to feed hungry mice from the forest. I had learned my family’s pasta recipe, then had moved onto perfecting Asian dishes they abhorred. After I offered it up as a new, beneficial spice palette, the town dubbed me as strange, but at least friendly. My friends were convinced that social gatherings were something I enjoyed, but rarely was this the case. I was commonly holed up in my room as a child, reading every book in the town’s library, dreaming of far off places to visit one day. Socialization was healthy, so I gritted my teeth through every conversation. This went on for repeated years, often enough for me to still get a toothache once in a while.  

            My family, to some extent, did understand me. An appreciation for literature, music and art flowed through each member of my family. An appreciation pure enough to disregard fame or wealth that could come with possessing abundant knowledge. My parents had gone to school, and had emphasized to their children that education was important, but the pressure to continue learning was apparent when I became an adult. There was my mother, who could remember every plot point in classic books. My father read in various character voices, leading to a combination of accents when he was tired after a day of work. Although we had our disagreements, my family members shared most of the same opinions as I did. A close Italian family stayed together no matter what.

            When I was growing up, they communicated with me that my kindness must develop. Most children in town dismissed these lessons, but I could sense the desperate, melancholy feelings of the poor with the kindness taught to me by my family. I could spend time recreating a picture of my life, filled with volumes of emotion, yet being able to empathize with others never included homesickness. While being in close proximity to my family, I spent time realizing that traveling elsewhere was my goal, combined with giving back to the people around me.

            Once I left America, I talked with enough people to soon understand how common missing home was. Being empathic made me used to the sensations of severe happiness, sadness and aggression that others could feel on a smaller scale. I fell into the habit of believing this was my weakness.

            Even so, I never was without pride for my family. A happiness had overlapped the fears of telling my wish to others. I had never imagined their reactions, but for the first years of my childhood, I pictured them delighted.

            I hid emergency money deep in my closet where no one else could discover it. I had never thought I’d use my inheritance to run away. The money was passed down to each member of my family, as the parents intended for us to use it later when we became adults. I had saved all of the money I’d received through the years. Figuring out my destination had been the easiest part of my plan. I’d heard stories for years of a monastery in Sicily near where my grandparents were born. I’d be welcomed there and maybe I could inquire whether my wish of becoming a monk was even possible, as women usually were only allowed to become nuns.

            I had traveled to the monastery on the path of emotions alone as they had directed my actions since I was a child. My empathic self was my shadow, a force that never faltered in following around my shape. I was driven by selfish, determined thoughts. I never pictured my family’s expressions the next morning when they woke to hear the front door close, see the front gate open behind me and wonder how I could’ve misunderstood them.

            I began walking. Looking back, I smile slightly for believing that if any person could walk the length of the world, I could. A boat took me across the most unnavigable distances where land was separated by sea. Without seasickness, I could feel the flourishing of the waves below the ship and watch the sky transform. Craggy shorelines, aged statues and vibrant gardens replaced the mismatched houses and outdated eateries of my town.

            When I arrived at the peninsula, I searched for the town where my grandparents lived. By the end of the day, I had spied the towers of the monastery. Sunburnt and fatigued, I had stumbled to the entrance where monks and nuns had greeted me. Once I explained who I was and my wish to lead a modest life, a room and humble dinner were offered to me. After dinner, I had learned I could become a nun in the monastery, but fasting was taken seriously. Not wanting to insult those who had offered me shelter, I had agreed that after seven months of assessment, I would attempt to fast. I had no wish to become a nun, but I couldn’t insult their beliefs.

            The turrets built in a European style held my attention once I first entered the monastery, but now they receive an occasional glance from me. I take the time to observe the workmanship of every piece laid down to accommodate architecture and sculpture. Centuries have been seen by this building, as its purpose has been changed to a mosque and several leaders have watched over its activities. I glance at the book I am writing in. It is a documentation of every plant, animal, insect and piece of artwork I have been uncovering in Sicily. Since three days ago I had begun my fast, seven months had been put into its production, but I haven’t decided what I would do with it. It is too personal to be published and isn’t impressive enough to show to the people working in the monastery.

Beginning the book had given me time to reflect on how I left home, so I’d sent a letter to my family. To my surprise, I had received a letter back from them three days ago. Their letter had made more sense than anything they ever said in person. They took the time to understand the need I had to return to my family’s homeland. If I came home one day after becoming a monk, they wanted to make it up to me with a graduation party for my success. Laughing to myself, I hadn’t had the heart to tell them that monks don’t traditionally have graduation parties.

            Now I travel through the monastery’s enclosed walls, only reaching the wide spaces when I study its construction outdoors.

             Sitting in the open air, vines and shrubbery climb the walls behind me. I do nothing to stop them, and was doing little otherwise, before I spot the apple. Not once, in the seven months I’d stayed at the monastery, had I seen fruit grow from the flora outdoors.

            I eat the fruit before any other thoughts are processed and guilt explodes in my mind where homesickness had not. I have interrupted my vigilant fasting, a schedule I have sworn to obey. I could alone chastise my mistake. No one yet knew I was outside this morning to work on my book.

            I rush up the monastery’s flight of stairs, a task unknown to me. I never neglect to pause and take in the art around me, a sight I appreciate more than anything. I barely feel my feet against the hard stone as curved archways pass over my head.

             Once I reach the tiny room I have been staying in, I march over to my desk with hands shaking. I feel their actions led by humiliation and fury. I drop the book that I have been assembling on the desk. I have only one page left to complete.

            I separate the bindings. They are ripped through as I feel bitterness spread in me. Pages flutter to the ground in my room. I ease away the cover and spine, taking no pride with each action. Every silencing of the words on the book’s pages cripple my legs. All the notes, sketches, descriptions and new discoveries I have made are tarnished. It doesn’t matter anymore, as I could never become a monk. I am fooling myself, pretending that being a nun is my wish. Through being a monk I can assist more people in the world, instead of being a nun who serves only the monks. By the time the sheets are hanging by threads, my arms have grown stronger, but my legs threaten to plummet underneath me. Still I can’t quit from my act, ruining something that no one would miss except me. Now a slow notion of minutes are around me, unable to stop what I am doing. Tears are absent from my face, a face that permanently appears older than eighteen. The pages fall onto the stone, near where the bottom of my brown robe curls at the floor.  

            Even as I stand alone in the room, I see a shadow slant to my left side, directed from the light of the window. The pieces of the book lay discarded on my desk, making me wonder what my frustration has accomplished. I reach for my quill, ink and paper. I begin a letter to my family, asking them to take care of the extra copy of the book I had sent to them. As I set down the paper, I feel my emotions arrange themselves. My legs stretch as I stand up. I’m left with one emotion I can now understand: homesickness.

I Hope You’re Happy (revised)

There was once a girl, Daisy Philipp Carr. The girl with the soft, smooth skin, long curly brown hair, a smile, and not just any regular smile, the type of smile that would light up a dark room when there were no candles in sight. She was the girl. Every guy wanted her and how could I blame them? She was mine though, I knew everything about her, like her favorite type of dessert to the color she always painted her nails, creamy nude. I loved her.

Daisy and I were both born on December 21, 1990 on a cold winter’s night. I was born in my parents’ house, a small two bedroom apartment with no heat or light, since my parents couldn’t afford it. She was born in a nice warm hospital with doctors and nurses tending to her from the first second she was born. I met her during pre-school on our birthday, we both laughed and argued over whose birthday it really was and I will always remember her saying “Benjamin, you will have your birthday on December 22 and I will have mine on the 21^st.” I paused for a moment and with a smile I said “I will always celebrate it on December 22, I promise” and I meant it. From that day I would do anything for her.

Growing up Daisy was very popular. She was captain of the field hockey team and secretary of our class. I was none of those things. I spent my Saturday nights in my room. Daisy would always say “come on Benjy, you got to have a little more fun. You’re only young once.” But Daisy’s idea of fun was different from mine. She’d go out to the local frat houses, get trashed, not remember what guy was the last to touch her, and call me crying to pick her up. The stars were the only thing lighting up my house, as I grabbed the keys to my parents 1976, baby blue Honda Accord Hatchback and drove to her. I would do anything for her.

   *                                                                        *                                                                           *

December 22, the winter of my 17^th birthday. It was held at Daisy’s house. Her house was gorgeous, just like her, a garden of pretty flowers in shades of white and pink attractively bloomed with small decorative garden gnomes laughing at me in the front lawn. The inside was even better. It was no expensive mansion, but it had its elegance, with a Christmas tree blinking with every color, life-size snowman happily singing Frosty the Snowman, a rug that looks like it should be in a presidential suite, and the most elegant thing of all- Daisy. I’d been having my party at Daisy’s since the fourth grade, since neither of my parents could afford to offer me the materialistic things that her parents gave her. Her parents would order extra food just for my party, as if I was their son. Of course, my party was not nearly as grand as Daisy’s, but it was mine and that’s all I could ask for. My party only consisted of Daisy, a couple of my Magic the Gathering friends, and light Beethoven music in the background.

Seventeen is such a delightful number. It’s the only age between being an adult and being a teenager. You can get into R-rated movies, drive your friends around after dark, and legally donate blood. Imagine me, Benjamin Boyer, with a car driving Daisy around to all the R-rated movies and giving blood to save lives together. I was awoken by a loud noise yelling, “HELLO, EARTH TO BOYER! ARE YOU IN THERE,” I awoke to see Josh, my chubby, loud mouth, best friend with a bottle of water ready to pour on my head.

“Hey, I’m up! Get that bottle out of my face, is it my turn to lay down a card?”

“It’s been your turn since Daisy left.”

            Daisy. All this time dreaming and I forgot about my true dream girl. “She went upstairs to take a phone call, but that phone call was an hour ago,” my friends said. Being me, Benjamin Boyer, the sly detective and best friend, I decided to investigate the scene, so I got up, excused myself, and ran up the stairs to her room, only to regret my decision. December twenty-second, the coldest day.

I walked up the steps, knocked at her door, and opened it. My virgin eyes saw Daisy hooked around the local lowlife, scum, Cooper. They didn’t even notice I was in the doorway staring at them. They continued going at it. I slammed the door and ran out of the house, without saying a word. I ran.

Cooper was your average 19 year old if you think being nineteen and a junior is normal. He had long, shaggy black hair that needed to be groomed. He smelled like a skunk, nothing. He blasted songs with harsh lyrics and always had a new girl by his side. He was a whore-ible person.

I got home, my parents nowhere in sight. I opened the fridge: half eaten cucumber, spoiled milk, and my favorite last week’s takeout pizza. I put the pizza in the microwave and sat down on the couch to enjoy the darkness. I was interrupted by the loud engine coming outside my house and opened my door to see Daisy standing there, with the smell of a flirty, floral fragrance and her hand just about to knock at my door. Happy Birthday to me.

“I’m sorry, Benjy. I came all the way over here to say-”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “The fact that you came all the way over here just proves to me-” I was interrupted by the sound of that harsh engine and a horn honking. The street lights were dim, but I could make out which car it was coming from, a bright, obnoxious car, with an even more obnoxious driver yelling, “Hurry up babe, were going to be late for the party,” Daisy turned around and yelled “Just one minute, Cooper.”

“I guess you have somewhere to be,” I said. “Just leave.”

“Okay, if you insist.” Daisy said with a smile. “I’ll call tonight?”

 “Don’t. I’d rather not talk to an alcoholic stoner all night.”

“What’s that supposed to mean Benjy? Why are you acting so hostile? You’re seventeen not seventy.” I backed up and slammed the door.

Daisy stopped calling me. Daisy stopped coming over. Daisy stopped being the girl and instead became a stranger. She wasn’t the friendly kind of stranger you smile and say hi to when passing. She was the type of stranger to look the other way when you passed by or give you a dirty look when you told her good morning. She moved out of state during our junior year, without her parents. I never asked why, maybe she just wanted to get away from Cooper and maybe me.

I thought going to school without Daisy would be difficult, but it wasn’t. I didn’t need her help to get into all my AP courses for the year and I surely didn’t need her help to get into my dream school, The University of Maine, with a full-paid scholarship majoring in Biochemistry.

Gym class, the most dreaded class of the day. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing I only have two more months of this demonic torture. “Good Morning class, today we will be enrolling a new student in our class, her name is Daisy.” Daisy came in, she was still beautiful, but she wasn’t the same when I last saw her. Her smile was darker, her hair was cut short, and her face exposed acne that was not there before. I never was one to insult a woman on how she looked, but Daisy clung to her stomach and awkwardly sat down on the bleachers. I did not even look at her. I turned my back and engaged in a game of dodgeball.

Daisy hung out with the outcasts. The students who started their day with a bowl of grass and ended it with a mixture of drugs, or “party enhancers” as they liked to call it. The rumor going around was that Daisy was going to have a child.

Daisy never looked at me, she always had her head down buried underneath her sweatshirt. Maybe it was that she didn’t recognize me. I grew a couple inches, could afford nicer clothes, and grew a bread. I was handsome! I wanted to talk to her. I was determined to talk to her. I had a plan to talk to her.

One day after school as she was sitting there waiting for her group to show up, I pulled up beside her and told her to get in. Without any hesitation, she jumped in without a simple “hello.” I didn’t really expect it. I waited a minute to see if she would jump out, but she didn’t, so I drove.

We drove to the first place we met, Mouse Church Pre-school. I stopped in the grassy field where we used to always sit down and look at funny pictures in books. The engine was off and the only sound we heard was a group of children sitting on a park bench, the reminded me of Daisy and I. We stood quiet for what seemed like a day, until I heard the click of the locked door and jumped. Daisy was trying to leave, without saying a word to me. If you don’t want to talk then I will, I thought. “Do you remember this place?” She nodded her head. “I wish I could go back to these times, don’t you?” She didn’t look at me, just zipped up her jacket and stared straight across the field. I wondered what she was thinking, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me. I backed up my truck and proceeded back to school, stopping at every vacant lot to see if Daisy would say anything, she didn’t.

I pulled up to the school parking lot and said, “Now what?” Her voice was weak and all that came out in response was partial sentences that made no sense. She grabbed the door handle and ran, too fast to be seen. This was my sign. I didn’t chase after her, all my life I chased after her.

            On my birthday, December 22, I stood looking out my window and saw a familiar face strolling around a child. She looked at me and it was like I have seen her before. I feel a hand reach up behind me and a laugh, “what are you looking at?” says Rebekah, my girlfriend. “Nothing,” I say and proceed away from the window. I hope you’re happy now, Daisy. 

The Murkiness at the Bottom of the River

The Murkiness at the Bottom of the River

            Maddy had her toes in the river.  It was clear there – the murkiness didn't start until about a foot from the bottom – and a school of curious trout fry were staring unabashedly at the odd pink things that were invading their world from above.  One of them, no bigger than her little finger, even flitted up to nibble at her pinkie toe, which made Maddy giggle. She flicked her foot at the opposite bank, scattering the fry and causing a shower of rain to fall briefly on the dusky, underwater universe.

            “Maddy!” Clara hissed, twisting from where she sat on a rough outcropping of rock to glare at her sister.  “Don't do that.  You're going to scare the fish away.”

            “We've been sitting here for half an hour,” whispered Maddy, who had always had low patience and had never caught a fish.

            “Just twenty more minutes,” Clara insisted and returned her gaze to the rod and line drooped in her hands.  Maddy followed the hair-thin line with her eyes for a moment, but soon let her gaze drop off into the water again, to float in the lazy amber current where the fry had begun to regroup.

            The Mattawamkeag River looked like a channel of iced tea: long and fat and golden, it lay basking between reeds and evergreens in a slow, crooked arm around Gordon, Kingman, and Macwahoc, all the way up to Haynesville.  It was four o' clock in the afternoon and the sunlight was saffron yellow, sweeping in a band across the far bank, the east bank, and turning that side of the river into apple juice.  Maddy and Clara were perched on the end of a mounded cliff which seemed as though it had been thrust forth from a veritable explosion of greenery; a hillside of bough, vine, and leaf that towered 100 feet above their heads. 

            Somewhere at the top of that hillside their summer home hid among the trees.  It had belonged to their grandmother before them, and it had been she who had first taken them fishing, in the small, silver hours of the morning; it had been she who had shown them the secret paths that drew the house to the river bank.  “Remember, girls,” she often said as they picked their way through bracken fern and trillium, “Always watch your feet.  You never know what might be hiding beneath the leaves.”

            Maddy's eyes bobbed slowly over the deserted pebble beach on the opposite bank, then floated down to rest on her sister.  Maddy had always loved Clara. They did everything together, and she admired her more than anyone she'd ever known.  Clara was clever and brave and patient and, two years older than Maddy at twelve, everything her younger sister wished she  could be.  Her eyes were brown, brown like the river, and they always seemed to have a sharp light in them as if she were looking through a magnifying glass.  She wasn't afraid of the murkiness at the bottom of the river.

            The murkiness.  Maddy leaned over the edge of the rock and peered down into the depths of the riverbed, where centuries of silt had collected like globs of cocoa powder, making it impossible to see what was underneath.  Her grandmother had warned her about what might lie within the murkiness – water snakes that wove between your legs, thin and dark, snapping turtles that would bite your foot off if they could see it, unexpected rocks or submerged logs that could trip you and send you crashing into the murkiness yourself – but Maddy had always felt certain that there were worse things down there; sinister things, things that should never see the light.  Maddy loved the river, with its slow, amber grace and overhanging blue spruce boughs, but the murkiness frightened her more than anything.  She dared not disturb it.

            She looked up from tracing the rock with her index finger.  “Clara-”

            “Look, Maddy!”

            Maddy leaned forward, and her mouth pressed down into a thin line of excitement.  The red and white float that had been sitting blatantly on the surface of the water for nearly an hour now had been suddenly submerged and was now being yanked back and forth, sending out quivering ripple after quivering ripple.  Maddy could see the fish now: a dark smear in the dusky brown depths.

            Without warning, the brown water heaved and the fishing line pulled taught as the fish lunged away from its fate.  Both girls shrieked in surprise and Maddy scrambled towards her sister breathlessly, saying “Reel it in, Clara, reel it in!”

            Clara began to crank at the reel, one white-knuckled hand wrapped around the rod.  The fish appeared again – a heavy trout with wide, bulging eyes spraying water left and right as it flung itself wildly around the hook – and its captor squealed and pulled at the line.  And then the fish was on the rocks, flopping and gulping, with dust and bits of grass sticking to its sides. 

            The two girls knelt beside it and watched it thrash.

            “What do we do?”  Maddy asked.

            “Well, we have to kill it, of course.”  Clara touched the fish, poking its fin with a hesitant finger.  It jerked sideways and both Maddy and Clara jumped back.

            “How?”

            “Break its neck.”

            Maddy wrinkled her nose.  She didn't like the thought of snapping the neck of the poor fish.  She'd seen her grandmother do it many times – one quick motion and it was done – but neither she nor Clara had ever done it themselves.  And she didn't want the fish to suffer, struggling out of water, unable to breath...

            “I'll do it,” she said quietly, and reached for the fish.  It was cold and wet to the touch as she'd expected, but the spikes of its webbed fins were sharp and its body was as thick and strong as her forearm.  She turned the poor thing upside down, one hand just above its tail and one hand on its throat, then shut her eyes and yanked its head back as quickly as she could.  She didn't feel a snap.  She didn't feel the jarring of the spine, the release of tension.  She bent it back further, until the fish was in two.  Still no snap, but the fish had gone limp.

            Maddy released her grip and opened her eyes a crack.  For a second, the fish dangled from her hand, its scales glittering in the light of the setting sun.  Then its sides heaved and its eye rolled around to look at Maddy, bright and dark and looking at her. 

            Maddy couldn't pull her gaze away.  “Clara,” she whispered, her voice breaking high, “Clara, it's still alive.”

The Time Maker

The Time Maker ~ Cassidy McGinty

He was like a surgeon in many ways. A man with a quick mind that could memorize parts and pieces the naked eye couldn’t see quite right. His hands were steady and soft bearing an untouched pink where blisters and calluses should have emerged. He was a delicate craftsman, an artist of sorts, working into the night on occasion for hours at hand, back bent, neck crooked as he repaired the most tedious damage by the light of a dimming fifty watt bulb. He had control over your life. He was the Time Maker.

His shop appeared when it was needed. Tucked away into an alley with a faded, once green awning shading the window, Hoffman’s Clock Repair presented itself to various passer bys who may have just dropped their wrist watch into a nearby fountain, or perhaps just finished cleaning out their Great Aunt Penelope’s attic discovering an antique coo-coo clock. In any case, there it sat, and inside of it also sat Mr. Hoffman, who hated that name. Mr. Hoffman was his father’s name. His name was Valentine John Hoffman III, but to everyone he insisted on being called Al.

Al was oddly short for a man, though there were many odd things about him. His nose was too long, and at the age of forty-three his hair was almost entirely gray and he had yet to marry. He always wore a pair of circular, wire rimmed glasses that increased the size of his eyes from cloudy blue marbles to unusually large golf balls. He also had a habit of taking apart and rebuilding clocks for seemingly no reason at all. The few customers he had a month thought him quite odd and may have even mentioned him at the dinner table to their families when the monotonous ritual of conversation fell in their laps. It was a mystery commonly troubled over for no more than fifty-seven seconds before it was replaced by more important things like whether or not little Philip had finished his math homework, or how often the neighbors watered their blueberries to make them grow so plump and sweet.

It was on an evening in April when the spring rains were waging war against the barren cobble stone streets, that Al sat next to the second story window, dismantling one of his favorite clocks. It was an 1885 Walnut cased Shelf clock that he had named “America”.  His mother had, after all, loved the clock and she had always dreamed of going to America. The clock had a paper Roman dial with Nickel plated dial pan, pendulum and alarm disc, each piece original and hand crafted. The glass case that guarded the clocks most vulnerable parts was patterned in silver with an image of a large flower planted in a hanging pot above an elegant porch. Al, even as a child, had always admired the swirl of the banister and the realistic appeal of the plants around it. He had wondered whether there was a person in the world with such a view from their bedroom window. He could spend all his time from such a perch.

Al laughed at the thought. The idea of being able to spend time was as ridiculous as being able to make it. But he did do that. He took peoples’ time, repaired it, and then handed it back to them. And they pretended they needed it. He made them more time to focus on time, to live by time, to measure in time. And Al thought of how much people would hate time if they knew what it really was.

But there, in his Oak work chair, beside the window with the rain making tears on the foggy pane, and the soft glow of the street lamp below being swallowed by the mist of the night, Al took apart the clock. He started with the glass. The most breakable parts were always first. That’s how it had been with his mother. Slowly, her body had become weaker and weaker until one day it simply broke. He placed the delicate glass on a red velvet covering and folded the fabric over the intricate silver design. From then on his mother had to lay in bed all day, and their neighbor, Mrs. Hare made them casseroles and came to the house to clean once a week.

Al removed the face and gently set it aside on his work bench. He remembered when his mother was sick he would sit and read to her. But after many days he began to notice something different, like he couldn’t recognize the thin, wiry woman sleeping in front of him as his mother. At this point Al used his fine tools to unscrew the securities which held the inner workings of the clock in place. They were beautiful, the golden gears, perfectly matched with one another to perform a smooth function. His mother’s hands had been smooth and she had smelled like soap and the kitchen after a meal had been cooked in it. Something had gone wrong with one of the gears inside her. Something had gotten caught in them. They had tarnished and dulled until one was finally so askew that her heart stopped ticking all together.

His father had wanted a casket for her. He was Catholic and still thought his wife was beautiful. Al read about morticians. He read how they cleaned out the insides, and put things back together if necessary. Al worked a rag over each gear and spring until it shined. His fingers were nimble and fast as each part found its place once more in the working of the clock. He put the face back on, and reattached the pendulum, dial pan, minute and hour hands, and the alarm disk. His mother had looked beautiful. Her long black hair had been brushed and braided. Her lips looked full and red and there was even a blush in her cheeks.

He wet a small rag and cleaned the glass. The priest had thrown water on his mother’s casket and walked around with a small, smoking pot. It made the room smell spicy and the scent burned his nostrils. Al clicked the glass into place and wiped the clock off one last time with a soft towel, admiring the pattern in the wood. There were no trees in the graveyard. He had been disappointed because trees meant shade, and with the sun cooking the grass and drying the dirt until it was crumbly and not easy to pack, Al could have used some shade.

When he couldn’t see his mother’s gray casket anymore, and the blue overalled men had walked away with their shovels, his father took him home. The next morning his father woke him and told him to get dressed.

“It’s time to learn about clocks, Valentine,” he said. And that was when he began thinking about time.

Who made time, and who got to say how much time each person had? What was time exactly? And his father had selfishly brushed the questions away like a set of ripped rags on his work bench. But Al had learned the answers anyway.

He gazed at ‘America’ with a blank sadness, his eyes focused on it but his mind was elsewhere. His mother had offered him a sentence that had confused him up until that very day.

“It’s my time,” she whispered to him, her chocolate, almond eyes filled with tears. Al had asked what was wrong with her time. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just run out.”

 He had wanted to give her some of his time. He had wanted to make her more time but she said that it was impossible. So Al had let her sleep and the next morning she didn’t wake up.

So now he makes time and he gives it to those who want it, and there are always those who want it. And with each clock that he fixes he always offers his customer a piece of advice.

“You’re better off without time. It just runs out.”

A Song for Myself

The harsh sound of my alarm clock woke me at exactly five in the afternoon, just as it did almost every Saturday. The machine produced a high pitched sound that was perfect for rousing even the most talented sleepers. I remained in bed for about 20 seconds before the vitriolic noise forced me to open my eyes. Then, I walked to the other side of my room where I turn off both my alarm clock and the speaker that increased its volume.

                I groaned, I cracked my back, and grabbed the jar of bourbon that sat on the floor beside my bed. After a few swigs, I felt awake enough and was ready to start working. I walked into my small, dust covered kitchen where I checked the calendar.  Damn it! I remarked. Today was the day that I had been dreading for weeks. I took another shot; I knew I was going to need it.

 

When Debbie called me I was stoned. I was not expecting her to call, and I didn’t want her to know that I had been using. I agreed to everything that she said or asked and made an effort to get off the phone as quickly as possible. When I checked my email the next day I received an electronic invitation to her pre-wedding celebration. Attached was the following note:

Hey Jason,

Thanks again for DJing at my party. I don’t want things to be weird between us, but you have the best ears, and I want this party to have the perfect music.

-Deb

                I should have just let the call go to voice mail, but hell, I was so out of it that night. I was not thinking strait. And to be honest I probably would have let gunman walk into my house; I was that high.

A few days later I forgot about her email, her phone call, and the party.  However, when June began and I examined my calendar, all the memories came flooding back.  Now, the dreaded day had finally come, and I was not ready for it.

After I took a shower I loaded all of my equipment into the van and headed to the nicest place in town, The Davidson Ballroom.  I got there around 7:30 and was ready to start by eight. That was when he came up to me.

“Hey, man, you must be Jason”.

I’ll play along, I decided.  “Indeed, I am”, I said with false friendliness. I forced myslef out my hand and let this guy shake it. His hand was soft, had he been using hand lotion? Weird.

“I’m Will” he said.

Nope, I can’t do this. “I know”

He made a strange face, but then remarked, “Nice gadgets”, and pointed to my sound equipment.

“Yeah, Thanks”, I said.  Just being around him made my veins seep with anger. I wanted him to go away so I started fiddling with my turn table. He seemed to get the message, and after a few seconds he walked away. Thank God.

I started the music, and as the minutes passed more and more people began to enter the room. Some sat, some danced, and some gorged themselves with food. After I played a few more songs and I began to wonder why Debbie hadn’t entered the ballroom yet. I felt a small tug in my chest and cursed myself. She is getting married, she’s in love with another man, I told myself.  For some reason I still wanted to see her. Stupid. I played another song. She didn’t enter. Then it occurred to me that she may not be coming, and with that thought, I let out a sigh of relief.

It happened fast, the hefty security guard who smelled of stale beer told me to turn the music off. The crowd of people grew silent.  

I see her walking in a silvery white dress and remember when she was wearing a pink one. It was only ten years ago, but it feels like a lifetime. Back then I was just beginning my DJ career; Dad had been arrested, and mom was never home. I started doing pot. But when I got to school and everything was okay. She was an aspiring pianist. She was beautiful, and when I was with her I felt like everything was alright. I felt free. When I went home things changed.  I looked for a distraction, for a getaway, and I found marijuana.  

 Senior year came and I took her to prom; she wore the pink dress that night. After the dance I drove her home. While we were on the highway she opened my glove compartment in search of a good CD to listen, instead she found weed. She cried. She dumped me.

We avoided each other for the rest of the school year and during the summer.  In September she went off to some university in Boston. She quit piano and traded it in for a master’s in business administration.

After she earned her degree she moved back to town. She had a boyfriend; and he moved in with her. Sometimes I saw them when I went grocery shopping, other times I saw them sipping hot drinks at the local coffee house. Sometimes she looked at me.  I wished I was able to read her mind.

***

I tried to focus on my computer screen because it was better than watching her with hands and lips all over him. The evening went by slowly, and eventually, the time came when the party goers wanted a slow-dance worthy song. I don’t know if it was the beer I was drinking or something else, but I got a crazy Idea. I selected the song “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, it was perfect for slow dancing, and it had been our song. I thought that if I played it she would look at me. I thought she would realize that after all these years I still loved her. But that didn’t happen. She didn’t even look at me. She danced with him; to her I was nothing more than the DJ.

I zoned out for the rest of the party. I let my hands dictate the songs that I played. I felt the vibrations around me, but I heard no music. By 3:00 in the morning most people had left, and at quarter after her brother approached me. He handed me a check for two-thousand dollars and told me to head on out. So I did.

I drove home; I unloaded the van.  I carried my equipment up two flights of stairs, and put them in the living room of my apartment. Then, I took my equipment apart. I pulled out the wires, took out the screws, and deleted “Iris” from my song bank. I knew she would never be mine.

However, in the weeks that followed, I began to put my equipment back together. I quit smoking weed. I grew tired of living in the past. Since then I have come to realize that all I have is now. Now I just live.

 

I would be lying if I said I forgot her, I will always remember her.  And I think that part of me will always love her. But she does not consume me. Only I can decide when to take my equipment apart, and only I can decide to put it back together.

 

The Mothball Autopsy

That first day was as she imagined drowning. She had arrived first, four thirty AM with her father’s panel van to stake out a space for her air mattress and saturate the building with an attitude of possession she was patently without in every other situation. That, at least, was what she imagined as she sped cross country from New York. Her vision was one of passive control over the frenzy; a kind of serene dominance by merit of her unparalleled caring. She would assert herself as one invested to the point of deserving the role of mediator.

She had a few hours start on the move-out before the first collective of her sundry cousins and aunts would be there, and she had planned to use them well. She marched alone through unlit hallways and took mental stock of rooms and their contents, surveying for their preservation.

There were four stories, including the basement, and between them lay enough objects to fill a dozen comparable houses. The back staircase was so obscured by a hoard of canned goods that it was rendered unusable. The library, while packed to the ceiling and most of the floor, could not accommodate the many cubic yards of books stored in piles in hallways and bedrooms. The attic housed half a dozen life-sized plush wild animals, including a dromedary camel and three species of tiger. Trash and treasure were compiled indiscriminately: a shoe box full of googly eyes and a toilet brush would sit balanced atop a cello that outdated the United States of America. A wedding ring might hide at the bottom of a tea tin used to collect extra rubber bands. She loved this place; growing up with the rare treat of a visit, the discovery of rooms she never knew existed, the rich and antient density of the walls and the hollowness of the space between them. She loved the critical mass of objects. A world of boxes in which a lid could be lifted and a secret suddenly known, and forgotten just as fast. She loved its strange smell, composed of things she would try to list and inevitably give up on: bricks, old books, dial soap, soot, wallpaper paste, whisky, wool, coal smoke, old upholstery, cake. And something else musky and indescribable, which her father attributed to carcinogenic moth balls from many decades ago that no one could find. She had never seen any, but she had seen plenty of moths.

Imaginably, she lost her control as soon as she was anything but alone. A pack of cousins arrived with their giant cars and their agendas for organizing chaos: burn it, sell it, claim it, or throw it away.  She spent the morning trying first to direct the dismemberment, then, backing down, to protest it, piece by piece as it was done before her eyes and carried out to the driveway.

The campgain desk from 1790 that always stood in the dining room between the abacus and the Christmas decorations – “Just set it in the main hall – John and Margarite claimed it.” She called, vowing to impose it upon John and Margaret later for safe keeping. She could trust them.

The enormous tin of cookie cutters that hadn’t been touched since the gingerbread rush when she was seven – How dare they leave them open for the pitiless aunts to comb through for the few worthy peices?

The three hundred stuffed sheep that were being borne down from a children’s guest room – those had to stay together – all of them! They couldn’t be dispersed like a persecuted religion across the abusing world of second-hand stuffed sheep. They were her sheep!

But soon there were too many of them. She was all but ignored after an initial greeting, and then forced to run frantic down hallways after them.

This would fetch half a grand at auction.

That matches my friend’s drapes at home.

Those are garbage – throw them out in that dumpster you rented.

By midday another taxi full of well-meaning relatives rolled in and, in her desperation, she let the second story fall to the rest of the rest of the clan, then the third, and the vast and mysterious basements and attics. A little at a time at a time she was outsourced by her own necessity until there was no ground she could hold. Every word spoken to her served the same purpose as the breadcrumbs in a very stingy meatloaf. Things – the things no one else would be able to put in the right place – were flying out through every door and window, floating up through the chimneys and running down the drains. She shut herself in the drawing room downstairs and held out, her hair coming unfastened and falling around her face. If I can salvage this one room… Her face was steaming. Sweat hung in her clothing and the strings of the apron she had put on to save it from being thrown away with everything else that no one had the time or patience to treat deservingly. She spun on her heel in the middle of the oriental carpet, trying by process of painful elimination to isolate what she could deal with. It was like trying to take a living thing apart without hurting it.

The stack of magazines on the sofa: she had all the New Yorkers at home already. Good. Those went into the wastepaper basket. Nothing else easy on the surface. Aunt Mabel burst in wielding a silver candlestick in her hand, as if to fend others off from the coffee service she was smuggling to her Grand Caravan outside.

“Out!” she yipped, dropping the last stack of magazines. Mabel turned and bustled out before a slamming door.

Drawers. She didn’t know what was in those. She eased the nearest one open and began spreading its contents out on the couch next to her. A parcel of letters so old she couldn’t begin to decipher the handwriting. A handful of miniature nutcrackers. A finger puppet. A turquoise ring. A roll of register paper. A collection of pencils. A cigar box full of empty tins. A package of spearmint lozenges. She could throw those away, but she remembered them. They must have been there for twenty years, and that was just her memory. Maybe it was longer. But how could she even begin to do this if it seemed wrong to throw out a Hall’s product? She leaned back into the velvet security of the sofa and took the room in whole. The grand piano stood with the bass-viol propped against its hip. The leaded windows filtered the light in patterns wrought in antique glass. On the porch beyond the windows a trumpet vine rose in a shaggy column toward the ceiling, painted an original copper blue.

How could she hope to reassemble this place somewhere else? In her own tiny life, between certainties, between loves, between homes, without all the people who had pieced it together? Without time? How rare it was to have amassed so many lives like layers of fallen leaves in the same place! Nothing she could do with the pieces could put right the way the light fell white-gold on rugs from Persia and mahogany from extinct trees. The same ghosts wouldn’t take hold in a surrogate body. That was reanimating the dead.

The moving men came on someone else’s orders, and as they dragged the hutch away from the dining room wall a little white door was exposed in the paler space left in the furnishing’s outline: a portal onto the dumb-waiter shaft. The dumb-waiter had been torn out like a crustacean from its shell some fifty years ago, to accommodate for new electrical wiring. She took the knob between her thumb and forefinger and drew it open. A fire-extinguisher had been stowed away inside on the makeshift partition that made up its floor. And next to it, under the same dusky blanket of dust, lay a small colony of moth balls.

Alone for a moment, she inhaled slowly, a deep, searching breath and reached in to gather them in her hands. Six chalky white spheres that left their shrouds of dust on her skin. The naphthalene smell bloomed around her. There they were. A few of however many thousands were hidden inside the fabric of the place.

She shoved them into the side drawer of The Campaign Desk from 1971, next to the unintelligible letters, and picked it up on her way out. They had filled her van for her, with things they wanted her to take to auction later that day; to squawk and heckle like them to people who could not be made to know. She slammed the back doors, set the desk on the passenger seat and leapt in next to it. She never bothered to take off the apron. As the engine started she looked back at the shoddy Italianate temple, its lights flashing on and off as the people marauded room to room. And then she drove away.

::

Firefighter's Memory

           Emmet would have preferred earbuds on the way to the accidents. The blaring noise of the sirens reminded him of an oven alarm which reminded him of baking brownies which reminded him of his wife. Correction. Ex-wife.

            He didn’t like to think about it; the thing that would be waiting for them when they turned up with their hatchets and chainsaws and heavy yellow suits. He always hated the calls to the roads far more than the smoking houses and buildings. Calls to the road meant observing every horror occurring; the fires supplied thick smoke that shielded the view of displaced shoulders and crying mothers. His wife said, his ex-wife used to say, that it was because when he was young and playing hide and seek, his parents used to pretend that they couldn’t see him when he closed his eyes.

            This car had bent itself around a telephone pole. Somebody was screaming, and Emmet did not comprehend how loud it must have been until he realized that nobody had turned the sirens off and still the scream was there in the highest frequency thought possible. He was momentarily reminded of a sixth grade science teacher droning on about wave lengths and amplitudes and the undeniable frequency rattling through his ear canals now.

            There was little time to contemplate this. She’d always been saying that. Little time for reminiscing. Now is what’s now, Emmet. But he didn’t want to think of her because when he thought of her he sometimes cried and he needed his eyesight to see the wreck that he didn’t want to see. Every firefighter was bolting to the mess of a Honda and Emmet was still the first one to the vehicle despite the mess in his head.

            The battered door frame went first, and the men threw it to the side like it was made of Styrofoam. But Emmet couldn’t think of that for long because Styrofoam cups reminded him of pollution which reminded him of documentaries about saving the world which reminded him of his wife. Correction. Ex-wife.

            The window wasn’t there and there was no broken glass on the edge of the frame. It had already been removed, Emmet presumed, because he knew what broken windows looked like and it wasn’t this. But he also thought he knew what broken marriages looked like and it wasn’t that.

            This part of the job was like heart surgery. There was no room to make a mistake, when you hack out the armrest that’s putting pressure on a man’s broken leg or you break the back window to get to the other side of the backseat. There was no time for anything but doing. Perhaps a heart surgeon would disagree. That’s what she says, that’s what she used to say.

He wanted to know why she had infiltrated every part of his life and had then decided to recede. She didn’t even abide by common courtesy and clean up after herself. Instead, she left spots and streaks of her memory behind, and not only the bad ones. Emmet would have been fine to abandon the negative things that made the thought of her light up in his head the same way brake lights do on the highway. But the good things were avoided now, too, like the smell of baked ziti or the feeling of the first snowfall in November. Finishing a jar of homemade jelly in a few hours and then using the jar to catch fireflies was the best way to ruin a day. Finding good books at the thrift store and singing off-key to the Beatles were lined with caution tape. They were all sticks that prodded his burning memory, searing a hole through his ears and into his brain when he listened to the silence as he drove to Christmas dinner alone. And now, the dismantled car revealed an empty passenger seat which reminded him of his empty passenger seat which reminded him of his divorce which reminded him of his wife. Correction. Ex-wife.