Write about taking a shower

Laurence massaged his chest, his abdominals, his glutes, his quads, his hamstrings, his calves, his biceps, his triceps – oh, how delicious his own body felt in the hot, steaming shower, now that he had the physique he’d wanted to attain since being dunked in the deep end of the pool at 13 by that nasty Hal Hayward.

Laurence remembered Hal. A year older, he got his pubic hair before anyone else on the wrestling team and sprouted a muscular chest and pumped-up shoulders that Laurence could only long for. But now … now he had the body that would put Hal Hayward in his place.

He just wish Hal could be here in the shower with him, right now, watching Laurence later up his pectorals. But no – Hal was serving time in prison for having assaulted that older couple and stealing their Preparation H. All because of a botched face-fall.

Laurence got out of the shower and looked at himself in the mirror. He patted himself dry and then took the towel away. He wouldn’t get any face-fall, and he wouldn’t dye his hair or tattoo spider veins onto his physique. He liked his taut, tight body – and wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t care that, when he walked down the street in his tank top and gym shorts, no one looked at his muscles and his layered blond hair. He’d become invisible at his age – didn’t know how it’d happened.

But Laurence didn’t need that. He had his own body, and he had his own mirror. What else did he need?

Houses have their secrets

Meryl and Salvadore sat strapped in their Lazy-Boys, wrists and ankles tied with rope to the chairs and their mouths sealed shut with duck tape. The thug had knocked Salvadore out cold with a single elbow blow to the back of his head, and had assaulted Meryl and tied her up long before Meryl could get up the courage to call the elder police.

The man rushed about the house, Meryl could hear, drawers opening, doors slamming shut, pots and pans clanking in the kitchen. Meryl tried to turn her head, to see Salvadore, but she couldn’t turn her head. She had the shakes and couldn’t stop them, either – surely a slow, painful death awaited her and Salvadore, once that man got what he wanted?

He came back in the room and Meryl had a good look at him. Half-shaved head, the other half, long and stringy hair that’d been dyed blue-gray. A face-fall that had gone bad. One side of his face, all wrinkled, sagging, and pockmarked with brown liver spots, had all the beauty and grace that only the best models in the world sought. But the other side of his face – smooth, taut, blemish-free, a milky white complexion that highlighted a strong jawline – was revolting and repulsive, to the point that no one on the street could look at the man without vomiting. Meryl herself felt the urge to retch, and panicked anew. What if she vomited into the duck tape?

“Got me what I want,” the thug said. Meryl saw what was in his hands – Salvadore’s bow ties from the Lawrence Welk Show. Her own Preparation H and orthopedic oxfords. Meryl was crushed – their most prized possessions. All would be lost.

She left a note

There would be hell to pay when the media got ahold of this one, Chris Crumpet thought to himself when he got the phone call from the field operations in Dubuque, Iowa.

In seven years of operations, their movement had never incurred a fatality. But thjs morning, it had finally happened. Aging Is Beautiful would be dragged through the mud because of this – and the Youth-ites who’d been elected to Congress in the cataclysmic mid-terms would be introducing legislation to stop them.

Chris dreaded the consequences when they read the papers tomorrow morning. Tiffany Bump from Dubuque, Iowa had lowered herself into a bathtub of hot water with a hair dryer. Plugged in and turned on. And she’d left a note, even more damning. My life is no longer worth living. My parents won’t allow me to get a face-fall, and they won’t allow me to dye my hair gray, and they won’t allow me to have purple spider veins tattooed onto my legs. I’ll never be beautiful like Grandma Pickens, and I’ll never drive that Mercury Grand Marquis I’ve been wanting for a year now.

Chris had taken the call from Iowa field operations. All was in an uproar there, people screaming at each other, hitting each other with their canes, rolling their wheel chairs outside into the middle of traffic. He’d better call New York and see how they could spin this one.

Write what is forbidden

“Donald Trump has signed on,” Meryl said, her eyes jumping up and down, accented by her carefully cultivated crow’s feet, “he’s agreed to have a public burning of his toupee collection.”

“Fabulous!” Salvadore said. He struggled out of his Lazy-Boy, grabbed his cane, and waddled over to Meryl. She sat at the kitchen table, a stack of volunteer sign-up sheets on her right, a bowl full of prunes on her left.

“Do you realize what this means,” Meryl said to Salvadore. Odd, how comfortable she felt with him. They’d only known each other three months, since they’d both signed up for Aging Is Beautiful. “It means we’ll have a real platform to proselytize. The message will get out.”

“I’m stunned that Donald Trump has signed on. Maybe he’s tired of all those bimbettes who keep dumping him. Perhaps it’s all the plastic surgery bills that have kept piling up. Maybe it’s all the itchy sweat that builds up under that skull of his.”

Meryl thought of the beautiful future that lay ahead for them all. The outlawing of plastic surgery, the end of becoming invisible at the age of fifty, the social struggle to achieve equality in the workplace for the elderly. And those Miss America pageants – even this year, the winner was a 58-year old grandmother from Piscataway, New Jersey.

Aging Is Beautiful was finally – finally, after all those years of Googlets, texting, below-the-hip jeans – finally making a positive impact.

Something you saved

Celia met Jenny at the door, dressed in a faded taupe sweater and worn jeans with holes in the knees. Her hair had grayed since Jenny had seen her, seven years earlier – and she’d let the natural curls come out. But it was Celia’s weight that Jenny noticed first. She’d gained at least forty or fifty pounds.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Jenny offered, manufacturing a little smile around the corners of her mouth.

“Liar,” Celia said. “And you look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

“Now be nice. I’ve just flown out here from Manhattan. You could invite me inside.” Jenny hesitated at the last remark. She wasn’t sure that Celia would invite her inside. She’d sent her e-mail from the local Kinko’s on Lexington Avenue, and had only gotten a terse Sure, come on out reply. What could Jenny expect, after seven years?

“Yeah, I could, couldn’t I?” Celia said, laughing out a guttural grunt. “What the hell, come on in. Forgive the place, it’s a mess.”

Celia wasn’t kidding. Stack upon stack of journals, old magazines, and newspapers surrounded the sunken-in sofa and stood on top of the coffee table. The shag red rug frayed all over the place. Ashtrays with used cigarette butts dotted all sides of the room. But the Royal Doulton figurine on the mantel – right below the mirror – brought a hush to Jenny’s heart.

She’d given that figurine to Celia on their fifth anniversary. So, indeed … there was hope, after all.

A wise Latino at the bus stop

It’d been an uneventful flight for Jenny, except for some pretty bad bumps when they passed Denver. Something about the Rockies, the loud-mouthed, red-faced schlump from Larchmont who sat next to her said, laughing in a guttural, wheezy way. Jenny hated turbulence, almost as much as she hated this overweight, self-satisfied, over-indulged suburbanite who’d sat next to her.

After collecting her luggage from the Delta baggage claim, she walked across the street to the bus stop. She’d take BART to get to Portola Hill. Sure, she knew she could take the train. But Jenny didn’t want to hurry. She needed a little more time to organize her thoughts.

When she’d sent Celia the e-mail, asking if she could come for a visit, Celia had replied – yes, my dear, please come, I’ll help you get through this. She wondered if Celia really meant it, or if she’d just use the opportunity bitch at her for leaving her without a word, six years ago. You broke my heart, Jenny remembered the e-mail saying – leaving without a word. But Jenny had nowhere else to turn.

A man stood at the bus stop – a handsome man, Jenny couldn’t tell whether he was Latino, Southeast Asian, Filipino, or Mexican. He had that kind look of a man who’d been ignored all his life – and had learned never to look anyone in the eye. He didn’t look at Jenny. He waited like anyone else would wait at the bus stop, minding his own business. Face it, you’re a man, the wall advertisement said – how appropriate, Jenny thought. This guy looked like a man to Jenny – unlike Bill, who’d turned out to be a schlump.

There’s that word again, Jenny thought. Just like the Larchmont man on the plane – yes, Bill had been a schlump. Six years married, and he’d never done anything for her. Except cheat on her. She’d given up her life in San Francisco, alienated the only woman who’d ever loved her, and he’d turned around and cheated on her with Dina. Jenny wanted to spit.

The bus came, and Jenny boarded it along with the man. She had a lot of explaining to do. She hoped Celia would listen.

Taking an unfamiliar road

By the time they’d released her from the hospital, Jenny had worked out the whole story.

“Dina was a smoker,” she told the officer. “After she stabbed Bill, she attacked me, not realizing I was inside the apartment. And then, thinking she’d disabled me, she tossed her cigarette into the kerosene lighter down the hallway.”

What about running out of the house with the knife, Officer Culpepper had asked. Jenny liked Officer Culpepper; she had a gruff voice and thick Harlem accent, but something in her eyes had Jenny trusting her. A good woman, honest, too.

“Imagine my feelings. I was angry, I was in shock. I saw my husband murdered, I saw my home destroyed by fire. And the woman who did it was getting away …”

What did it matter if Dina took the fall for the episode? She was dead, after all. And she’d betrayed Jenny’s marriage, so she deserved to take the blame. Officer Culpepper filed her report, but the inquest would be set for October 31st. Appropriate, Jenny thought – Halloween.

Jenny had Mr. Whitlinger pick her up from the hospital. He was the super at the building. Pathetic, Jenny thought, that Mr. Whitlinger was the only person she could ask to pick her up from the hospital. Her husband dead, her home destroyed, and the closest friend she could ask to help her out was the maintenance man. And he didn’t even have a job any more. The fire had destroyed his job along with the building.

“You have anywhere to go?” he asked when they finally drove down West 18th Street.

“Yes,” Jenny said. “Take me to Frank Campbell’s.”

Ah, yes, Mr. Whitlinger said – but why was Bill being laid out all the way up town? She told him, they’d buried Bill’s parents, when they’d died.

“Where’ll you go after the funeral home?”

Jenny had no idea – but she’d figure it out. First thing, she wanted to see Bill’s face. She wondered if she’d feel any guilt when she looked at him. Doubted it.

Everything means something

Jenny woke up in the hospital, her eyes blinded by the white walls, the fluorescent lamp above her, the white tiles, the two nurses’ white uniforms. She looked at the women, fiddling with something wrapped around her abdomen – she had no idea what – and when she tried to lift her head, a heavy weight in the back of her head pulled it right back down. She closed her eyes again.

“No use trying to do too much,” she heard a thick alto voice from somewhere on her left say, with something of an accent that reminded Jenny of Harlem, but also of the Lower East Side – “you just rest now, ‘cause I’m going to question you in a little while.”

Jenny opened her eyes and looked to the left. It was the police officer, that woman who’d shot at her when Jenny had charged out of the house, aiming the knife for Dina’s back. Before Jenny had done anything, the bullet had hit Dina in the chest and she’d ricocheted backward into Jenny and then to the ground.

“Where’s Dina,” Jenny asked. She thought a moment – she’d have to think before answering this woman’s questions. Everything she said would mean something – something very important, the difference between freedom and prison.

“Dead, lying in the morgue.”

Thank God, Jenny thought – now she had control over the story. She closed her eyes again. A million thoughts went through her head. Bill, lying dead on the floor, no doubt consumed by the fire. Their apartment, ravaged and destroyed. Bill’s blood, Dina’s blood, her blood, all over the place. But would the police be able to put the pieces together, the fire having destroyed everything?

“My home?” she managed to say.

“Isn’t no more, I’m afraid. Everything’s lost, sorry to tell you. You think you could answer a few questions now?”

“I can try, officer.”

“We found a man who died in the fire upstairs, lying in the hallway. Took his body in for autopsy. Did you know him?”

“Bill Perkins,” she said, knowing they’d discover the truth, “my husband. Dina stabbed him before starting the fire.”

“Why’d she do that, ma’am?”

“She was his lover – I believe. That’s what she told me when I found them –“

“Yes?”

She had to think before continuing. “Nurses, I’m getting tired and confused now. Could you ask the officer to come back in a little while?”

On the front porch

The fire had ignited and spread through the Manhattan walk-up quickly – dry wood and the summer drought didn’t help. Dina had made a break for it, thinking Jenny would be disabled by that final slam, but no. As Dina catapulted down the stairs, three at a time, to make a quick exit – and head for the police – Jenny caught up with her and jumped on her back. The two went flying forward into the floor.

Dina groaned. She felt a dull weight in her stomach, still reeling from the shocked emptiness of having vomited – and wondered if she’d punctured her abdomen. But no warm, salty scent of blood came to her nose. Just the heat from the fire and smoke above. With everything left to her, she elbowed Jenny in the ribs. Jenny screamed, and Dina slammed her fist into Jenny’s porcelain face, stood up, and kicked her in the jaw. She turned around and went for the stairs.

This time she made it to the front entrance, grabbed for the lobby door. Was there no one else in this burning building? And then she remembered – Bill, upstairs, dead, his body probably being burned at that precise moment – and began to hyperventilate. But then she heard heavy, rapid steps from the stairwell and knew, she had only a moment. She ran to the front door, pulled, and the heavy steel door gave way, and she ran out, onto the front porch.

A fire truck was pulling up, and a police car stopped on the other side of the street, an officer getting out right away. She was a young African-American woman. Dina stopped on the porch, amazed at their speed. What had it been, ninety seconds, two minutes since the fire had begun to spread?

And then Dina heard the front door open, but before she could turn around, she saw the officer, that young woman, pull her gun, aim right toward her, and – but then she shifted a few degrees, and then fired a shot.

Write about ashes

Dina screamed, terrorized by the scene before her: Bill, face down in front of his apartment, a large kitchen knife protruding from under his body; Jenny, white-faced, blood on her hands, splattered on her neck, down her cleavage, her eyes blazing and poring into Dina.

Dina’s cigarette slipped right through her fingers to the floor. The hallway zoomed out like a mile-long tunnel and zoomed back in, hitting her direct in the face. Ceiling shadows menaced her like scampering tarantulas, a sudden itch in her back startled her into turning around, sure that a violent murderer would soon seize her, and Jenny's eyes penetrated right to the bottom of her stomach. It lurched and seized her abdomen; she vomited her dinner. Spinach from the salad she'd eaten only forty minutes ago blew out her nose, landing on the white wall beside her.

"You cheating bitch!" Jenny screamed, flexing her talons, her blonde hair falling into her face, wet-streaked with perspiration falling down her blood-stained face.

Before Dina even stopped vomiting, Jenny was on her, grabbing her long, dark hair, pulling her head back. Dina choked on vomit, struggled, and spit on Jenny's legs. She looked above her, weeping for the impending doom she was so soon to reach.

But then, with her free hands, she clubbed Jenny in the knees, pulled one of her legs in one direction, the other in the opposite. Jenny fell forward on top of her, pulling hair out of Dina's head, falling on top of Bill's back. Dina kicked at Jenny, pulled herself free, and with all her might slammed her fists into Jenny's back. And then the bitter smell of smoke came to Dina’s nostrils …

Walls the color of tears

Jenny cowered in the corner between the nightstand and the high-backed chair, the reflection of her blonde hair from the window’s twilight the only visible entity in the Manhattan studio. She felt Bill stomping across the courtyard, entering through the back utility door, galloping up the back stairwell three steps at a time, like a bloodhound on the scent, coming directly to her. She'd turned out the lights, long before assuming her present position, a cat ready to pounce on its prey.

That afternoon, she'd witnessed what she'd long suspected, Bill having an affair with Dina, right under her nose, right across the courtyard at the Old Memories Inn. She couldn't believe her husband was sleeping with an easy divorcee so slatternly as Dina. Once, she could forgive, but she knew, from what she witnessed this afternoon, its duration, how long Bill stayed with her, how many times her binoculars betrayed the shadows bouncing back and forth like a misshapen pendulum -- all from the two narrow windows of her studio apartment.

So she'd retreated to the corner, like a cat, ready to pounce the moment Bill entered the apartment. She heard heavy footsteps approach, each step louder than the previous, the hard black leather soles of the man's shoes mocking her, daring her to confront him. The key made a staccato sound as he put it in the lock. The door opened. He turned the light switch -- nothing, no light. She peeked at him from behind the chair, saw his 220 pounds of muscle and ignorance. He seemed confused when he called, "Jenny? The light switch doesn't work!"

She jumped up from behind the chair and landed the heavy steel knife right in the center of his chest. His voice croaked as he fell backward into the outer hallway, turning around in chaotic spasms and falling on his chest, the knife lodged even deeper in his convulsing body. And before Jenny knew it, the convulsions ceased as he lay in a pool of blood. The walls played out hallucinogenic patterns of dark red on the frozen white walls.

Jenny, her eyes blazing with satiated desire, stood in the doorway, blood on her hands and her dress. She heard more footsteps -- lighter, more delicate, approach from around the corner. Jenny saw Dina appear down the hallway, and then she turned, startled to run back into the apartment –

Someone cheated

“Why in the hell are you standing there,” Mildred asked, left hand on her hip, right hand holding a pot of cold baked beans, “stark naked? Put something on, George. It’s January.”

“Aw, come on, Mildred,” George said, a plaintive tone in his watery baritone – and the scratchy years of heavy tar nicotine edging his words, “have a heart. I ain’t had sex in two months.”

“And ya ain’t gonna have it for another two, either,” Mildred said, pushing her lips out as far as they’d go. Like an angry duck who made it alive to the end of duck hunting season, she thought – and giggled to herself. Mildred walked back to the kitchen, but before she got there –

“Hey wait a second,” she said aloud, her chicken’s voice echoing off the bare walls and linoleum (which she loved, but George kept pestering her to take up in favor of plastic tiles), “two months?”

She stomped back to the bedroom, where George had turned away from her. Boy, did he have a pimply ass. Bald head, fat beer belly, and a pimply ass. No wonder she didn’t want to get laid by him anymore.

“Two months!” she screamed at him, “we haven’t had sex in nine months! So who’s the bimbotini, Mr. Wilkins? Huh? Who is she?”

George turned around. “What’re you talkin’ about? I ain’t never been unfaithful to you, Mildred. That’s a load of malarkey.”

She stomped over to him. “This,” she said, lifting the pot of cold baked beans, “is a load of malarkey.” So she leaned back, emptied out the baked beans onto his beer belly (which went straight down into his nothing-crotch and three-incher).

“You bitch,” he said. “Now you’ve done it.”

“Oh, yeah? Well now I’ll really have down it.” And she leaned back with the pot and swung it at his head, full force. Conk! And down he went, his pimply ass landing on top of her piano bench needlepoint work.

In a foreign country

The sun shone on Jake’s alabaster skin that Saturday afternoon in Munich’s English Gardens. He felt the cool summer air sweep across the field, where hundreds of sunbathers lay in that segment of the park by the stream leading to the Isar. It was the nude section of the park, carefully noted by signs on both sides. Grandmothers and grandfathers, young children, middle-aged couples, young men and women, all enjoying the sun al fresco – including Jake.

He’d certainly never had this kind of freedom in Pittsburgh, where the closest he came to public nudity had been that two a.m. romp in the bushes of Schenley Park with William and that hairy muscle boy from Cleveland. They didn’t call that glen the Fruit Loop for nothing, Jake remembered. But Munich – thank goodness he’d gotten the student exchange from Bucknell. He supposed some unlucky Bavarian was bored out of his mind in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Gruss Gott, the swarthy Turk said to Jake, luring him out of his sun-soaked reverie. Jake had been cruising him more than an hour, twenty feet from where he’d been sitting. Lucky that Jake spoke German - which he made clear in his reply. Was machst du, denn? “What’s up with you?”

“On my way to the beer garden, thought you might like a beer,” the Turk said, also in German. He introduced himself as Attila, and Jake could barely stifle his snicker – though Attila was so good-looking, Jake managed it. Like Jake, he’d been sunbathing in the nude, but he’d put on his jeans and stood there – shirtless, a dark hairy chest thrown into profile by the jeans in the foreground, the sky in the background, and Jake admiring him from the ground.

“Sure,” Jake managed to say, portraying a non-chalant attitude as best he could. He got up and dressed, followed Attila to the beer garden. Like Jake, Attila was an exchange student at the Technical University – studying astronomy, unlike Jake’s international relations. They clicked beer steins when they got their Hacker-Pschorrs, drank them down quickly.

“So what’re you into?” Attila asked after the second round of beer.

“I like English literature and film noir.”

Attila laughed. “That wasn’t what I meant. Thought you and I could meet in the gardens later tonight. Around two a.m.”

No invitation to his flat, Jake asked himself – no dinner invite? No different from Pittsburgh, Jake thought. And yet, that hairy chest …

“I’d love it.”

Black as a crow's wing

“Have Emily deliver the Belkins portfolio to Delphi on the 17th, and put the Orpheus prospective on my desk, right middle,” Arden dictated into her phone, staccatos on the consonants just to make sure Anne didn’t muddle it all up. “And make sure there’s a Starbucks sitting on my desk, not lukewarm, but hot just as I like it, so I can edit the lingerie section in peace.”

Arden hit the End button and went back to reading the text from the Joffrey manager – they needed the photo shoot on the 13th, not the 14th, and please send Oliver if you’ve got him, otherwise we’ll do it the 20th or the 21st, Joffrey said. She texted back, We’ll make it the 14th –

“Ma’am, that’ll be $38.75,” the cashier said, and Arden looked up a moment, not long enough to register what she looked like – all she got were the cashier’s eyes, halfway rolled up in to her head, and the round blob of a mass beneath the raisin-shaped head – but sighed and put her phone on the register ledge and reached for her Amex.

“Here you are,” Arden said, going back to her phone. “— don’t worry about Oliver –“

“You got to swipe the card yourself, ma’am,” the cashier said, this time her voice two tones higher, a bit too tinny for a woman of her proportions, Arden thought, angry that she even had to waste time thinking about this woman’s tinny voice.

“Oh, all right, everything has to take so long at this check-out counter.” Arden fumed at the incompetence of everyone she encountered today – right down to the Bergdorf’s saleswoman who questioned her when she asked for a black suit. As if she had any right to question her order, never mind the fact she was wearing all black today, too – just like in every day.

“Just the way it is, ma’am. Here’s your receipt.”

Arden went back to the Joffrey text. “—Oliver will do as I say.”

Eating out

Ruthie darted her eyes left to right, making sure none of the guards saw her pick the red apple out of the garbage. She hid the fruit in the pocket of her burlap wrapper, so rough that it chafed the skin on her neck and arms to a tender, raw red, but the makeshift covering kept the cruel winter's wind from sweeping across the fields and freezing her solid. Ruthie walked across the dirt to the other building. A mountain of work awaited her.

She picked up her tools and continued hammering nails into the standing two-by-fours. She and her compatriots, eighteen women altogether, would finish the building by the end of the week. Otherwise, there'd be hell to pay with the guards. Already rumors flew, they'd be sent east if they didn't finish in time. Worse rumors flew, of course, that the guards would pick and choose -- half would live, half would get on the train. They'd all been warned before they'd been picked up in Cologne and brought to this camp in the Polish veldt: the further east your train traveled, the more people died.

Ruthie hadn't seen her family in eleven months. She wondered if Oma and Opa had survived the raid, but had no idea. She knew Mama had been killed at the house, fighting off the S.S., but Papa had surrendered and had been taken away, just like she and her sisters. They'd all gone separate ways, so she had no idea. Perhaps she'd find out when the war was over -- if, indeed, she survived herself.

Lean hunger seized her abdomen. When she thought no one was looking, she reached into her pocket for the apple, but Ruthie didn't see the guard around the corner, staring at her as he cocked his gun.

This is what my grandmother told me

The fire roared in the fireplace, Bing Crosby crooned White Christmas on the stereo from the other room, and we all sipped our warmed eggnog. Mom sat in her usual chair, wearing her usual red and green floor-length skirt. Dad sat across from her, his legs crossed as they were every year at this time, smoking a pipe. Gary and Jeff book-ended our grandmother, dressed in a green and red plaid suit with a white blouse, her hair freshly rinsed with its blue-gray tint. I sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table, my back warmed by the fire behind me.

Granny tore the gold and silver wrapping paper and opened the box. She opened her mouth, put her head back, and burst into laughter, exposing a long row of silver-laced dentures. The rest looked at me, as if to say, what did you get her for Christmas?

My grandmother lifted the object out of the box. “A wooden rhinoceros,” she said, tears of laughter running down her face. “Who’d have ever thought of such a gift, but for my little Jimmy?”

All at once, I felt five years old again. Little Jimmy, indeed. How could she? I was fifteen years old and already six inches taller than she was.

“Oh, dear,” she said, settling down a little bit and wiping the tears from her eyes, but still laughing. “It’s the most darling gift anyone’s ever given me. Thank you, sweetheart.”

Funny, how memories stay with you over the years. I remember that moment, thirty-five years ago, as if it were yesterday, as if my grandmother were still alive, rather than gone thirty years now, as if time had stopped and held us in its arms. And yet, I go back to that moment, wishing I could change what followed –

“All right, everyone,” my mother said a little later that morning. “Let’s get ready to go visit your grandfather.”

“Will he remember our names this time, Mom?” my brother asked.

“Quiet, Jeff,” Mom said. “Not in front of your grandmother. It’s bad enough as it is.”

“Nonsense,” Granny said. “There’s nothing bad about visiting your grandfather.”

You're in a tent

“Clifford!” Marjorie asked, summoning thirty-seven years of impatient irritation at the befuddled buffoonery of her erstwhile husband. “Get over here and help me set up this tent, you nincompoop.”

“All right, dearest,” Clifford said from the other end of the glen – let’s shift into his point of view for a moment, shall we? – wishing that she’d get eaten by a bear, starting with the feet and munching ever so slowly up the leg, right through that dried-up you-know-what and her frozen raisin you-know-whats and her neck and her receding chin and her big fat nose and her bossy eyes and that stupid damned forehead – but Clifford digressed from the moment at hand to fantasize about the Land of Oz.

Clifford breathed through his nose. “I’ll be there in a jiffy, love of my life.”

“Honey dearest,” Marjorie said, the consonants as hard as Stonehenge rocks (and just as mysterious, no one really knows where they come from) – back to inhabiting Majorie’s mind – “I need you now. Get your sorry ass over here.”

Clifford looked over to that stupid khaki tent, Marjorie flailing about underneath it like a dog suddenly covered in the unexpected blanket. All right, he thought – let’s get back inside his head – I’ll go over there and help the bitch out. He took fifty-seven seconds to cross a path thirty-two feet wide. Ho, hum.

He lifted the tent over Marjorie’s head. “What’re you doing under there, sweetheart? You’re supposed to set up the frame before you put the canvas on it?”

Okay, let’s invade Marjorie’s head: That no-good son-of-a-bitch has ruined my life. I could’ve been a society hostess on Park Avenue, but no – he got laid off from Dupont at thirty-nine and never worked again. “What was I thinking, darling,” she said.

Now it’s Clifford’s turn, we’ll invade his head: You weren’t thinking, you wrinkled-up ball squeezer. “Don’t worry about it, Marge. I love you anyway.”

“What took you so long over there?” Marjorie said. “There I was, flailing about …”

Clifford looked at his gremlin wife. The truth, or a lie? He decided on the latter. “I was wondering, what in the hell is Jimmy Carter doing these days?”

A place where the wings unfurl

“Oy, my stars,” Rhoda exclaimed on her way back from walking Lily and Zorro, peeking in her condo neighbors’ window just after dinnertime. Jim waltzed around the apartment in the nude, holding a toothbrush in one hand and perching the parrot on his other. And Mike sat in the love seat swiping his fingers over the iPad.

Rhoda squinted to focus and saw it. She just knew it! He was surfing gay male porn. Oh, those sluts. But who was she to comment? Here she was on her way to Husband Number Five, and boy – what a great one he was turning out to be. And how lucky, Norman lived right here in the same building. On a penthouse floor, no less!

Rhoda peeked a little further. He didn’t think they’d notice. Light inside, dark outside, how could they? So she just watched the little evening drama unfold. Jim turned to Mike and leaned forward, saying something. Probably a nag. He had that reputation in the building, you know. He leaned even more forward, pushing the hand with the parrot out even further.

Ah, yes – he wanted Mike to take the parrot. Jim’s face got a little red. Was he post-shower or pre-shower? Obviously one or the other, Rhoda thought – the bathroom light was on, bright as the sun, and a bath towel hung over the door.

“How tacky!” Rhoda said aloud. Even if Jim had been the most discreet board member, he sure did have a lot of tacky moments like this. Like being naked with a toothbrush.

“What’s that, Rhoda?” Joel said, walking toward her from the elevator. Rhoda practically jumped out of her skin – a major feat, given all her facelifts – but she just shook her head, said nothing, and walked Lily and Zorro back to her own apartment.

A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown

“Officer, you just have to do something,” Ken said from the corner of 5th Avenue and 36th Street, smoothing down his blond locks. “Look at her up there. She’s going to jump any moment.”

“What does it matter to you folks, anyway?” the policeman said with the New Jersey accent in his voice that always made Ken think of bologna sandwiches and beer. “She falls, you just put her back together. Or you can get another one.”

Ken didn’t want another one – he wanted his Barbara, she was the only one for him. And he had to get her right in the head again. Ever since that nasty Emily Waterston had thrown her away, his dear sweet Barbara had been beside herself. Why, the liquid tears feature had malfunctioned and now she cried all the time, even without a master to push the button on her back.

“Barbara,” Ken screamed up the side of the building, hoping his beloved would hear him – he never called her Barbie, that demeaning nickname that all her masters had called her, he always called her by her given name. She deserved all the dignity in the world, his glorious, statuesque lady of poise, grace, and long blonde hair. “I’m coming up to get you. Please don’t jump!”

Barbara looked down from the ledge and began to cry. “What’s life worth, anyway? These little girls always grow up and then toss me out with the garbage or give me to some bratty little Episcopalian in Westchster. I’m going to jump –“

“No,” Ken screamed up. “We’ve got a life together, sweetheart –“

“Good-bye, Ken,” Barbara said. “Now’s my time …”

Ken ran into the building, up the stairs to the eighth floor, past the policeman guarding the room, out to the ledge where his beloved stood, leaning forward and ready to jump.

“No,” he said. “Let’s run away together to St. Thomas. We can live on the beach and drink rum and coke all day long. Please, sweetheart, just for me … Barbara.”

The tears stopped pouring from his very own’s ducts, she turned to him and kissed him on the cheek.

“It’s too late for us, Ken. Good-bye.” And then she jumped – so Ken jumped after her, and they both fell to their demise at the feet of the New Jersey policeman.

“Oh, brother,” the cop said. “I’ve seen it all now. Wait ‘til I tell Sid from homicide about this one.”

My triumph!

“Son, I’m gonna tell you a story,” Grampa Zack said, sitting back in his rocker and spreading his legs out. “Back when I was your age, same thing happened to me.”

Matthew squirmed in his chair, eager to get back to his iPhone. He wanted to text Caitlin, not listen to his grandfather’s stories about things that happened back when no one was alive.

“First two weeks, they was the worst. Couldn’t barely get out of bed, didn’t want to eat. Next six weeks, they was pretty bad, consumed by anger and outrage. Month after that, I hated everyone around me. And the next three months, I hardly cracked a smile. But then six months had passed and I started to feel a glimmer of hope, it might be better some day.”

Matthew listened – he didn’t know Granny had dumped Grampa then they’d gotten back together.

“If I hadn’t felt that glimmer of hope, if I hadn’t gone through that pain, I’d never have met your grandmother, and you wouldn’t be here today. Best thing done ever happened to me, son, getting dumped by that Estelle character. She went on a married boy who done got her in a fix, but she didn’t have a single day’s happiness. But me and your granny, well you know how it went.”

Grampa gave him a broad, toothless smile and looked around the porch. “Look round you, ain’t this a house of love? You got to go where you’re wanted, boy.”

Matthew nodded his head, but couldn’t smile. He just knew Caitlin had made a huge mistake, didn’t mean what she said, was just waiting to see what he’d do. He ran off the porch over to the field and texted her.