Things to Still Do

by Tina Christian

1. Sweep kitchen — the dogs’ fur is everywhere
Why do I care for? I can’t see it anyway, but she would point that out to me.
2. Find a reason to smile
3. Call everyone — thank them
4. Clean the closet

I’m such a closet list maker. That’s what comes to mind as my feet remain cemented to the floor while I stand with the door open looking in. What am I staring at? Your clothes. The soft white light of the bulb above the door frame spotlights various colors and fabrics waiting to be plucked from the rack. I can’t push myself to move forward just yet; the fastball grip I have on the knob would choke out its agreement I’m sure. I get my sense of humor from you, sarcastic, light, a practical joker. I learned that early on.

Both of us are sitting in the car together years earlier, heads together laughing at our ingenuity to lift my aunt Sherri’s pack of cigarettes while she went to make a phone call. What were we doing with them? We were replacing her half-used pack of smokes with a new pack that was rigged to blow up, intermittently of course. My idea, your agreement to the mission made us a team (which was rare), and our intended victim made it all the more fun. “Kid, you realize she’s going to hit the roof, right? She may not forgive us for a while?” I chuckle, “Good, it’s about time we get her, she’s always bragging about how good she is at getting us.” We go back into the building.

My aunt not back yet, chuckling we plant the filled cigarettes where Sherri had her old pack on the table. Then we sit and wait. She arrives back at the table and doesn’t light up right away. Damn, come on, we look at one another across the table with eyebrows raised. The building we were in is humming with a couple hundred people, including deaf Grandma Thelma sitting across from Sherri at our table. Boy, was Grandma going to get a show. I almost blow it by chuckling before the big event. Just when the noise started to die down and we thought she was never going to light up, she did. At first she thought she had a defective nicotine stick because that particular one fell apart. Crap. Then she pulled out another and lit up. It was a live one. Pop!

The cigarette end blew apart sending nic-bits and paper all over the table, and she lost it. Crap. She cursed more fluently (in English) than my Grandpa Al did when he used his colorful farm analogies about cows and pigs (in German and Russian) while he was mad. People around the crowded hall were laughing, my co-conspirator and I turned beat red from lack of oxygen, even deaf Grandma was laughing (which was scary rare) too. Sherri was so angry at that point; we admitted nothing as she proceeded to pick apart each and every cancer stick on the table. Her paranoia made us laugh harder at the picture she made while digging in the tobacco laced paper. Later on in the evening, my partner and I admitted what we had done. Sherri went on record as saying, “That was mean and you could’ve hurt someone.” Oh please, this coming from a woman who teepeed houses with her son the summer before. She didn’t speak to us for a month.

However, that small practical joke you and I plotted and executed together carried on us the same secretive grin with one another when ever my aunt (who didn’t like to be called aunt) visited. I loved that we were on the same team together. The endless lectures of possibly amputated body parts and what is funny versus malicious I received from Sherri was worth it. You and I knew she was just blowing smoke because we had gotten the upper hand and the score had just increased in our favor. Sherri was all talk, like a manager kicking dirt at the umpire, all bluster, no back up.

Yes, my sense of humor is definitely from you. The overnight bag I took that day grazes my left hand as if to say, it’s okay kid you can do this. My hand loosens its hold a bit and my attention switches to your bag which is hanging above it. Carefully I take it off the hook, hold it to my chest, and sit in a cross-legged position on the floor. Cradled in my lap, I take the contents out.

1. Green shirt & black stretch pants
2. Cigarettes & lighter
3. Brush, lipstick, toothbrush
4. Humorous romance book

I stare at these things I gathered for you in a hurry. The shirt has your essence. I hold it to my nose and smell you on it. I gingerly put it down and pick up the book. I unfold the corner you had folded somewhere in the middle and skim the words, something about one character playing a practical joke on the other and the person it was directed at not having a sense of humor. Yeah you had a twisted sense of humor that would come out at the oddest times; I grin picking up the shirt and hold it to my cheek.

Laying on the bathroom floor moaning and groaning about possibly having food poisoning or catching the nasty flu I had the week before. I wiped your forehead with a towel while my gut clenched for the pain you were in. I wondered if I would get used to being on the other side of the dugout taking care of you, instead of you me. You were good at that, making me feel better when I was sick as a child. I felt inadequate for the position I held as I sat there with you on the floor. Then as if you sensed my uneasiness the twisted side of you came out; the only time I ever heard, “Ya know, I feel like Elvis lying here.” Then I replied, with an inward grin and exaggerated roll of my eyes that would always get on your nerves, “Very funny, Mom.” Ironically that was your last joke.

1. I set the shirt aside — not wanting to let you go yet
2. I stood up & closed the closet door — quietly
3. I picked up your things
4. I shut the light off and walked out — alone

Things to still do
1. Clean the closet, not today — it’s only been a week

I’ll go sweep the kitchen floor instead.

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They Eat Their Young

by Ben Torbush

When he pulled the knob, the television hissed and crackled into life. He had twenty minutes or so before the race started, so he idled through the channels to find something else. The rabbit ears only picked up a few stations from the city: Five, Eight, Eleven, Seventeen, and Thirty-six on clear days without much wind. Most of the networks ran cartoons pretty much the whole day Saturday, so he skipped straight to public television.

It was some nature program. A guy with a British accent was narrating footage of crocodiles — or were they alligators? — Monty could never tell the difference. The little ones peeped and squawked as they emerged from the large mound of black mud and rotting leaves that served as their nest. They seemed oblivious to the fact that their plaintive metallic calls were dangerous. The voiceover continued without emotion, “The adults of this ancient species of reptiles have been known to eat their young.” There, in the water nearby, the unearthly glowing eyes of an adult sat just above the murky surface. The babies — juveniles, the British guy called them — were going to make a tasty snack.

But no, the camera cut to a second adult: Mama or maybe Papa gator come to scare away the other one. No gator snacks today; these babies get to live a bit longer, to keep making that infuriating racket. Monty wondered if the whole thing was staged. Maybe the hungry adult was really just some other footage they shot on some other night. Or maybe the film crew shooed away the hungry adult themselves. He laughed a little to himself, If they didn’t, they’d sure have a damn short show.

The sound on his old television deteriorated into scratchy static; sometimes he couldn’t hear what the British guy was telling him. A front must have been moving in. The TV reception always got bad when the weather changed. But thank goodness seventeen usually came in pretty well. The grandkids were watching those ridiculous cartoons in the den, the sound turned up loud enough to obliterate any possibility of thought. He would have to shut the door to hear the race.

Monty could almost understand why alligators or crocodiles or whatever they were liked to eat their young. He couldn’t understand why his grandkids had to make so much noise, squeaking and bellowing like the little juveniles on the nature show. When he was a kid, he knew his place. If he had carried on like that his pop would have boxed his ears. But these days you couldn’t even spank your kids without feeling guilty. If somebody saw you punish your kid, regardless of if they knew you or what your kid did, they’d jump on the phone to child protective services. They’d call just to get you in trouble. Monty couldn’t understand why nobody spanked their kids anymore. He sure as heck got whooped as a boy. Did him good; made him behave like he had some sense. He never yelled and carried on like the grandkids in the next room.

The TV continued to dissolve into static. A warped pink and green line cut across the top of the screen too. Part of the picture from the bottom, but wrongly colored and tilted jumped up top where it shouldn’t be. Monty could remember when televisions used to have a vertical hold knob where you could fix that sort of thing. But now the best thing he could do was to adjust the rabbit ears, or maybe whack it a couple of times. Hitting the television rarely did more than make the off-colors swim around a little, but that didn’t stop Monty.

He picked up the walking cane, a joke gift for his fiftieth birthday he kept beside his chair. The walking stick served as a reminder that he was getting older and only aggravated his frustration with the television. But he kept it nearby since it proved handy when the television acted up.

He hadn’t been too pleased with the whole fiftieth birthday affair. He wasn’t much for parties. He wasn’t much for birthdays either. But Lorraine loved that sort of hoopla. She had invited some of their friends from way back in high school and strung black crepe paper all over the kitchen. She had even baked a cake and covered the whole thing in black icing. Actually the icing was just a dark pond-scum green, but she announced to everyone as they arrived that it was supposed to be black. She had spelled out “Over the Hill Happy 50 Monty” in white icing. All of their old high school friends, nearing a half century themselves, had giggled and congratulated her on her masterpiece.

The gag gifts everyone brought, like the cane, just made Monty feel shitty. Lorraine had laughed until it was embarrassing at a black Over the Hill mug someone had bought him. Some bastard had even wrapped up a package of adult diapers. Monty had tried to be nice and laugh at the joke, but seethed underneath thinking it was just an asshole thing to do. Afterward he had tried to sneak most of the stuff into the garbage. Lorraine caught him throwing the black mug away and fished it back out. She had a habit of keeping bullshit like that.

Monty swung the cane against the plastic side of the television. It made a satisfying whack, so he did it again. The pink and green band at the top of the screen swam and blinked. The volume of the rushing static increased. Monty thought maybe he could hear the British guy a little better too. The third time he brought the cane down on the top. The set made a rattling noise like some loose piece of metal inside was vibrating, resonating the blow. But the reception didn’t improve.

Monty set the cane down beside his chair. It was about time for the race. He flipped the channel over to Seventeen. Commentators yakked about who they expected to win. They couldn’t shut up about pretty boy Jared Blake. Monty couldn’t fathom why anybody liked that asshole. He wasn’t a real driver. Monty had watched him prance in front of the cameras before and after every race; Blake just liked to be on TV. Monty liked Danny Martin Junior. Now that was a race car driver. He was third generation. His granddaddy had retired from racing at fifty-two when he was still beating the pants off all those young bucks. And Danny Martin Senior had gone out exactly like he would have wanted to: leading the pack into turn three when somebody clipped his fender and sent him into the wall. Monty had watched that race, had held his breath with every fan in the stadium, and had watched the rescue squad pull Danny Senior’s charred remains out of the beetle-black shell of a car. But this Jarred Blake guy was in it just to be a celebrity. Monty wouldn’t mind seeing that bastard go up in flames.

The announcers were just starting to talk about Danny Junior when the TV crapped out again. Monty could still see the picture, well, with the tops of their heads cut off by the intrusion of the bottoms of their ties. But the sound was obliterated in a fog of static. Damn it. Monty grabbed the cane and whacked the side of the box. It took six smacks before the sound came back. But they had already finished talking about Martin and had gone on to somebody else Monty didn’t like. Well, he ought to go get a beer before things got started.

As he made his way from the living room through the den to the kitchen. He couldn’t help but scowl as he passed the grandkids wrestling and bellowing in front of another television. He doubted they could even hear what was going on with the little blue people they were watching. They had the volume turned up as loud as it could go and they were still carrying on over it. Sometimes Monty wasn’t sure why he and Lorraine ever had kids.

He thought about those first few months as he grabbed a beer out of the fridge. He and Lorraine had been sweethearts in high school. Even though he was a year ahead of her, they had actually shared some classes. She was always ahead, the smartest girl in class. Hell, she had been one of the smartest girls in the county, always winning writing contests and spelling bees and stuff like that. He just barely made it through. The only classes he was good at were math and auto mechanics. Coach Smither had praised him for the way he replaced the carburetor in the Fairlane in one class period. But Lorraine, all the teachers loved her.

It made Monty mad the way she was so damn smart but could act so damn stupid sometimes. Like right after they got married. That first night when they were getting ready for bed he’d asked her if she was taking precautions. “Of course,” she’d said. So he thought they were both planning on waiting to have kids.

Then a month later she came up to him all excited because she had skipped a period. Damn, he didn’t even like to have to think about all that stuff. But there she was, grinning up at him like it was the best thing in the world. Why didn’t she wait to get pregnant? If he had known she was going to start squirting out babies, he never would’ve touched her.

And once she started, she didn’t stop. Just as soon as one kid graduated from diapers, Lorraine would wiggle up to him with that big cheesy grin on her face. “Monty,” she’d start in a smug sing-song voice, “I think we might be pregnant again.”

We? Shit. We nothing. Having kids was her thing. He’d told her after the second one, he didn’t want to have any more. But she was petulant, whiny in a way he couldn’t stand. And it wasn’t as though he could stop being with his wife; that just wasn’t what a man did. So he relented.

So baby came after baby until her doctor finally told her she was too old to keep having kids. He’d made her go through all these tests with the last one. A high risk pregnancy, he’d called it. Monty supported her through all that, but afterward he was through. He told her he wasn’t going to touch her again until she got fixed. With the doctor’s warning, she had to agree.

But by that time the oldest ones were already getting married themselves. Now grandkids were hanging around the house all the time. The older kids were always bringing their brats in to squall in his den. And if his kids had made a racket, the grandkids were worse. Spoiled rotten by their grandmother, they were always bellowing about what cartoons they wanted to watch or throwing tantrums ’cause Grandma wouldn’t give them another cookie or hollering for their mamas who were off doing God knows what. Probably enjoying some peace and quiet. Monty would have loved to have some damn peace and quiet. But with all the kids around it just didn’t happen.

“Why don’t you kids go play outside instead of here in the den? Go get some fresh air,” Monty grumbled at the wrestling pile of children on his carpet.

One little girl stood up from the roiling clump of cousins. She had a bubble of snot threatening to run out of her nose. She sniffed the green glob back up into her sinuses and smiled at him. “Because your yard is bor-ring,” singing the final word like a doorbell. “You don’t have anything fun to play with.”

The muscles in Monty’s arm twitched. He had half a mind to backhand the obnoxious little twit. When he was a kid they didn’t have all these toys and cartoon videos and shit. And he was never bored in his life. “Go tell your grandmother to give you a tissue.” He went back to the living room to watch the race.

In the other room the kids kept on bellowing and screaming. And they kept turning the TV up louder and louder just so they could shout above it. It pissed Monty off. All this noise for no reason. He couldn’t even hear the announcers getting ready for the race to start. There was too much static and way too much extra noise in the house.

Monty caned the side of the television a couple of times for good measure, but it didn’t seem to help. He stood up and fiddled with the rabbit ears, trying to get the sound to come in, but only fuzzy static emanated from the speaker. Then he whacked the box with the flat of his hand. The picture blinked and tilted and a loose metal rattle came from inside, but the sound didn’t improve. The pace car began its first circuit of the track with the rest of the field crawling behind it. In a second, the pace car would tuck back into pit row and the race would really start. The kids’ racket reached a fevered pitch in the other room. He couldn’t even hear the static that well.

“Why don’t you kids shut the hell up?” Monty shouted against the wall of sound coming from the other room.

He gave the idiot TV another whack with his palm. Nothing. He smacked it again, harder this time. Still nothing. He banged the top of the box with his fist repeatedly until the plastic began to fracture, cutting the side of his hand. Nothing at all. Monty whacked it one more time with his bleeding fist.

This time the TV gave a static pop and the whole picture went green and wobbly for a second before blinking out all together. Monty stared at the dead grey box, allowing the rage to bubble up inside him. The box stared back accusingly with a tiny white pupil in its dusty glass eye.

Monty picked the television up from its stand and walked toward the front door. It only resisted for a second when he reached the end of the cord still plugged into the wall socket, but that too came loose. The worthless rabbit ears trailed behind — jangling against the coffee table and the arm of the couch — as he dragged the TV out the door.

Monty stomped out to the trash can by the sidewalk. He managed to get a finger under the lid and flipped it up. It crashed onto the curb and rattled like a giant coin in the street. He heaved the television onto the lip of the can. Too big to fit inside, it bounced off the edge, rebounded against his leg, and crashed onto the lawn. Monty howled in pain. The TV just glared at him.

He stomped inside to retrieve his cane and returned to his silent nemesis. Monty delivered blow after blow to the fragmenting plastic cover. When big chunks fell off he tossed them victoriously into the trashcan. Finally the black plastic cover came entirely off the back of the television, revealing the fragile picture tube within. Monty pounced on it, whacking the burnt grey glass repeatedly with his cane. Fragments of broken glass and plastic sprayed into his lawn and the street. After a few minutes of battering, pieces of his cane started flying too.

Monty stopped to catch his breath. His lungs were heaving, and both his hands were bleeding. There seemed to be something warm trickling down his face too. He wasn’t sure if it was sweat or blood or both. A thousand glass eyes blinked up at him from the sidewalk, the street, and his lawn — even from Lorraine’s marigolds. Casualties of wire and plastic also lay scattered here and there.

Monty looked up from his defeated foe to see his neighbor, George, watching him from the other side of the chain-link fence. George seemed to have forgotten that he was in the middle of watering his hibiscus bush. The hose idly spilled water onto a random patch of grass.

“Good evening, George,” Monty heaved, trying to force a pleasant note into his voice.

After a blank few seconds George responded, “Hi Monty,” and paused, “Everything alright?”

“Fine, fine. You going to watch the race? I think it just started.” Monty smiled as if he weren’t brandishing a fractured cane, bleeding from multiple wounds on his hands and face, and shedding splinters of broken glass.

“Yeah,” George started carefully. “Just finishing up watering. Are you going to watch it?”

Monty looked down at the broken shards of what used to be his television and thought for a minute. He finally sighed and said, “No, I don’t think so. You know, the grandkids are visiting. You know how much they love those cartoons. Think I’ll probably just spend some time with them. Guess you’ll have to catch me up on how ol’ Danny Junior does at church tomorrow.” Monty hazarded a neighborly grin resembling the half-submerged smile of an alligator.

“I’ll do that.” George turned back to his flower beds as Monty stooped to pick up a coil of wire at his toe.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ben Torbush has worked as a newspaper reporter and taught high school English in the United States for several years. His fiction has also appeared in Poor Mojo's Almanac. He now lives and writes in Barcelona, Spain.

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Twilight Time

by Michelle Reale

Bernice had barely gotten to Nardo’s house, sweaty and breathing hard, before he’d told her she’d better get something started on the stove. She wiped the moisture off her forehead and sat on the chair nearest to the front door, taking off the knee-high stockings she insisted on wearing with her sandals. Her thick bunions cracked the leather around them, and her brittle toe nails had a bluish hue. She roughly rubbed her old feet, wiggling toes and rotating ankles. The heat had made her sleepy, and she would have liked to rest a bit, cool down from the heat, but she didn’t want to keep her man waiting. Nardo stood up from the couch, where he’d been watching her, controlled but with the slight facial tick that preceded impatience. Despite the cluster of sun spots in her eyes, she could discern Nardo’s jaunty chin flick towards the cellar. She stood up from the chair and wobbled a bit, pulling her dress down in the back and smoothing the damp crinkles out in the front, while humming lightly. Nardo, looking aged in sharply creased pants worn shiny on the seat and a thin short sleeved shirt, lead the way. She followed, swaying slightly back and forth down the cellar steps.

Not much of a cook, Bernice opened up a jar of spaghetti sauce and boiled a pound of linguine. She thought of her dead husband, Sidney, an artist, and how food was never important to him. For most of their married lives, they lived like Bohemians, drinking wine and eating while standing at the kitchen sink or at the refrigerator door. Then she would read and listen to their precious jazz records, letting them crackle late into the night. Sidney would light a cigarette and smoke it all the way down while he sat on a low stool, legs spread wide in front of one canvas or another. They lived in a world all their own, Jews by culture only, which had infuriated both of their families. They’d left everyone behind, with barely a glance, after marrying. Nardo was nothing like Sid. Nardo was controlled and quiet. Bernice fancied that he simmered, whatever that meant at his ripened age.

Bernice watched Nardo across the table staring into space, his fork suspended over his food, as if deciding whether to take another bite. The hard set of his already jutting jaw was the last strong statement his body seemed able to make as he stared straight ahead chewing like it was his job. The dark basement kitchen was cool despite the heat and humidity outside. Bernice cleared her throat and hummed a bit, a tune she’d heard on Dancing with the Stars, which she watched religiously. It made her long, however improbably, to hold a man close and dance into the night. With curiosity, she fingered a stiff, wild hair growing from her chin and concentrated hard as she tried to pinch it with her fingernails and give it a pull. She forgot herself during the effort. She looked up to see a faint flicker in Nardo’s eyes, as if he’d forgotten for a moment that she was sitting right across from him. His cold Reunite wine stood in its cloudy, thick rimmed glass untouched. She ate slowly, trying to make the food on her plate last, but felt an extreme hunger. She decided that while she did the washing up, she’d scarf what Nardo would, once again, leave uneaten. Nardo pushed his plate away and gave a sigh from his depths. Bernice grimaced with disgust that bloomed through her belly at the impossible length of Nardo’s yellowed fingernails. He tapped them on the grey Formica table top, as if waiting for something. Without even a word of thank you for the meal, he stood, pushed in his chair, and shuffled out of the kitchen up the stairs. The back of him, his small, sloped shoulders and the deep wrinkles on the back of his neck reminded her, with a painful twinge, of something she’d felt long ago. It excited her and made her sad at the same time. She wished she could remember what it was. She gave her large head with the mass of white hair a shake as if to knock a memory loose. She looked at the cold pasta on Nardo’s plate and gagged. Why had she thought she’d want to put his leftovers in her mouth?

Her cotton dress hung unevenly as she made her way slowly around the kitchen. She listened with interest to what was going on outside. The sounds reached her muffled, as though they were coming from under water, submerged. A sliver of late afternoon sun shone weakly through the ground-level window, illuminating the bubbles in the sink. With slow circular motions, Bernice rubbed the plates longer than she needed to. She closed her eyes and reveled in the caress of the warm water on her stiff hands. She felt lonely. The feeling turned to panic and made her feel brittle and confused.

She’d known Nardo for only a few months. She took a bus and a train from Northeast Philly, then walked the three blocks from the station to Nardo’s row home on Garibaldi Street. “Come, stay!” he’d said, in his Italian accent, tipping his fedora back, which he wore no matter the weather. They’d been standing awkwardly at St. Monica’s on senior night. Her friend Frieda, never married and always suspicious, had met him the same night and said he “acted like a lord” with no reason to and that she could tell he didn’t have a “pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.” At 80, Bernice was attracted to the small proud man and felt that he might have seen something he liked in her, too. She stood slightly taller than him, though more stooped. She liked to be needed and foolishly ignored the fact that Nardo’s initial talkative nature gave way quickly to a menacing silence. More significantly, they hadn’t yet touched, though she longed to feel the back of a man against hers in bed. But right away Nardo insisted that Bernice sleep in the extra bedroom. At first sight the small room looked clean enough. Closer inspection revealed the sheer curtains were stiff and thick with dust and the sand colored chenille bedspread was worn and moth eaten. Bernice endured the room on the weekends, alternately passing the time coughing from the dust and tossing around in the twin-sized bed waiting for the morning light

Bernice climbed the steps from the cellar and found Nardo in his bedroom. He looked like a small child on the big bed. His fedora sat like a silent witness on the nightstand. His shirt lay carefully at the bottom of the bed. Bernice stood at the doorway her throbbing hands at her sides. She knew he was awake but pretended not to be. She walked evenly, for once, towards the full sized bed in the small, but ornate bedroom. Curtains with Roman columns printed on them framed the irregular-shaped window. Two golden lamps, with dull faux-crystal drops stood tall but sad and unused. Bernice imagined it all must have looked grand many years ago.

Nardo opened one eye, saw Bernice and closed it again.

“Get outta here, leave me alone,” Nardo said, waving one hand in the air, sounding breathless.

“Ah, Nardo, calm down. I want to be with you, just a bit, okay?” Bernice sat carefully on the edge of the bed and began humming her tune at a higher pitch and tapping her feet on the worn carpet. She looked around, clapping her hands softly.

“Whaddya want? Huh?” Nardo asked, momentarily resigned to Bernice’s presence.

“So quiet today, Nardo. What’s wrong? Tell Bernice!” She thought light heartedly of how Nardo’s questions sounded like the kind that take place between married couples.

She felt a faint stirring, so deep, struggling to come to the surface and then felt confused again. She looked at Nardo’s small frame and felt an aching tenderness. He’d forgotten his anger and closed his eyes again. She wanted to curl her body around his and rest her head on his chest. A glance at the large crucifix above his bed, draped with black rosary beads, made her think of all of the sacrifices one makes for love. She reclined roughly on the bed. Catching her breath after a moment, she placed one shaking hand lightly on her breast, the other on Nardo’s thigh. She slowly exhaled.

Suddenly, she was wearing nothing but a long string of white pearls around her smooth, long neck. She flexed her legs inside seamed stockings with a garter belt. She hummed and then a soft moan, starting in her throat, escaped from her lips. Her wide bottom wiggled with subtle joy. Nardo sat up straight to a sitting position, looking confused. It was twilight, and he struggled to remember where he was. He held his tiny fist up high ready to strike.

“Get the hell outta here! Go home!” Nardo screamed; spit collected in the corners of his mouth.

Bernice flinched and gasped. She could hear his rage, but felt as though she was still stuck in her dream before pulling herself through the thick membrane of a quick, deep sleep. Her body retained the memory of her strange arousal, and she was amused to find her dress twisted and hiked up above her knees. She slid off the side of the bed, turned around and saw Nardo holding his head in his hands. Though his back was to her, she saw his convulsing shoulders. She stood transfixed for a moment at this rare show of emotion. She shook her head sadly and thought of how everyone only gets to know the tip of the iceberg of another’s life. What we hold deep, she thought, could be summoned and perhaps carry us through when nothing else would. With starling clarity she realized, like the idea was new, that she no longer had an ocean of time left.

“Dirty Jew,” Nardo hissed over his shoulder.

Bernice sighed. That’s how it always is, she thought. She walked unsteadily back to the extra bedroom, holding onto the walls as she went along. She would stay awake until she could take the first train home. She heard Nardo in his room, like a fallen king, wailing because he apparently still longed for the past glory of whatever life he used to live. Bernice blinked at the warm tears that flecked her rough face. She began humming a familiar tune. At some point, she forgot how the rest of the song went. Her head hurt with the effort of remembering.

With a start, she realized she’d left the light on in the basement kitchen. She decided against going down to shut it off. Nardo would be furious at the waste, but Bernice didn’t care. It just didn’t matter anymore. She’d be gone by morning.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Michelle Reale's fiction has been published in Penquin, 3711 Atlantic, Verbsap, elimae, Underground Voices, Apt, Lily, Yellow Mama, Bewildering Stories, and many others. She works in a university library and is nearly finished with her MSLS degree in library science.

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