MY CABIN

I don't like what they've done to my cabin.

They painted it a faux weathered look. Well, it already had the weathered look. From weather.

They rebuilt the deck floor so it doesn't slope anymore. How will their kids practice skateboarding in summer and snowboarding in winter?

When the living room was expanded, somehow the large stone fireplace shrunk, no longer dominating with its warmth and light. What was once my daughter's sweet little bedroom is now a walk-in closet and her loft (at various times a bed, a castle or a fort) has become storage.

The rooms are green now, various hues throughout. They must be going for the effect of adjoining the green outside in the woods, but to me, it diminishes the coziness of being inside out of the elements.

Oh there is one thing that seems okay. The mudroom is now a pantry. Probably more practical for them. They seem the kind of people who can live in the middle of this rainforest and never get muddy.

Otherwise I don't like what they've done to my cabin. Then I remember it isn't my cabin anymore.

THE GLEN

I say goodbye, put down the phone, and stand motionless for a minute. Five minutes, maybe? Suddenly, the walls inside my small cabin seem unbearably confining, and I run outside. I don't know where I'm going, but my legs do.

without a glance
at the wildflowers in bloom
I run to the glen

Out of breath, I slow down. Should I be running? I don't know! I don't know anything! That realization terrifies me, makes me run fast again until I arrive at my secret glen.

The grass runs wild here. I sit down in my usual spot, resting my back against a log fallen long ago during some winter wind storm years before I arrived.

fallen log
moss-covered, rotten in places
I bless your support

Impossible, winter. No such thing as winter. I run my hands along the top of the grass blades surrounding me. If winter exists, then how did all the fresh green grass get here? Does anyone believe all this growth can sleep, nourished somehow under a hard cold ground?

not believing
I touch my flat hard belly -
pregnant, you say?

I cry and laugh and eventually, fall asleep. A year later, my baby sleeps here, too,on the grasses at the glen.

In later years, she'll play here and we'll read together here and she'll run away from me to come here and she'll take her husband here. We both agree, the grass in the Glen is the best, the softest, the most beautiful green in all the world.

*Eavesdropping in Oxyrhinchites

Category: A Day In The Life Of A Writer

Author comment: I could live in Suzallo.

At the beautiful Suzallo Library on the University of Washington campus, I'm supposed to be researching Jewish race track owners in the United States, past or present. But I'm having trouble concentrating. I'm more interested in the discussion between two rumpled elderly gentlemen at the next table.

Rumpled and elderly - my idea from childhood of what scholars look like. Put yarmulkes on them and they're arguing Talmud. I'm only picking up every seven or eight words and the rest might as well be Yiddish.

I move closer to hear them better. The younger (maybe 80) and more alert of the two looks up sharply. He tries to disguise suspicion by arranging his features more pleasantly. It doesn't work. His original expression is difficult to change at will after a lifetime of facial occupation. This reminds me to smile more often.

He's making me feel like an industrial spy. Wish I could could explain I'm just eavesdropping for pleasure. I'm not going to sell information to anyone.

It turns out they're discussing the inflation of camel prices at the height of the Roman Empire, and other ordinary chit chat likely to be engaged in by citizens of Oxyrhinchites, a conquered city in Egypt. Here's a helpful hint I overheard: "To keep bugs out of the house, mix goat bile with water and sprinkle."

I'm on it.

The life of an eavesdropper is rewarding. It offers ample entertainment at parties, limitless possibilities for stories, and as mentioned above, potentially valuable information.

*death.org

Category: death worries transformed via sleight-of-hand

Author's Hand: As sleight as it comes

Death. My friends and I were just talking about it yesterday. Well, we talk about it every day because we are card-carrying members of dead.org. DEAD stands for Death: Easy And Dead.

Our belief is that the only way to remove the fear of death is to die everyday. A basic membership fee covers an easy death, though revival from death does cost extra. It works in a remarkably short time for most people especially those who don't choose the revival option. There's a week-long special, seven days for the price of five, that made it affordable for me. And that's all it took. After dying daily for the week, I was cured of all death fears.

Some of us actually came to enjoy the process of dying. We think that is due to an attraction of the attributes of the state of being dead. A sense of peace, for instance (or to be more precise, the absence of the concerns of life), is quite liberating. Plus, there are no taxes, that's for certain. And I've noted the artistic influence of death on my home decor. Heaven (I've been there) is so big that there is no clutter. My apartment by contrast is small and I was, until dying, a slob and a collector. No more. I got rid of everything except room-size mattresses soft as clouds.

My only problem at this point is trying to compile enough money to die again, as often as possible. I started a home business, which is recommended in this economy, and so far, I've been successful. Paying customers come directly to my home where we have sex on the soft mattresses. My original plan was a week of sex alternating with a week of death. But it hasn't been enough. Enough death I mean. I seem to crave more and more of the death, which leaves me less and less time for the sex. But it's the sex which enables the death. That's a paradox I have to resolve soon, because it's killing me.

*My Death Haiku"

Category: Haibun (haiku or senryu within musings or a story)

Author's Degree of Acceptance of the haibun's subject: Some. Not moving along as briskly as I could. Dragging my feet, so to speak.

One's death haiku is serious business. It's time to create mine. No premonitions of imminent demise or anything like that. I just think it's as useful to plan for one's death in artistic ways as it is in practical and financial ways.

Senryu is the form of haiku I choose. Senryu is about human affairs. It draws its meaning from human nature rather than nature nature. It offers a wry or humorous look at ourselves.

If I can't be wry or humorous about my death, I'll be in trouble. I lost my sense of humor while giving birth - and when I realized that, I was bummed for the next several hours of labor. Oh, the birth center staff and my husband started cracking jokes, which made things worse. They were all guffawing together while I couldn't muster a lousy chuckle. So I know in advance I'll need to have my wits and wit about me for the few moments before death. I'm working to imprint this information upon my subconscious, even now. I have my heart set on leaving the way I arrived during my own birth, with a smile I was told. Obviously

there was some kind of in-joke I can no longer remember. I'm hoping it's just missing the punchline, which is what the death haiku will turn out to be.

Here's my death haiku made up when a bunch of haiku poets had a death haiku competition:

sake cup -
empty or full
does not matter

Okay,not funny ha-ha but it is wry.

Here's an idea. It's not a death haiku but it is an instruction to leave in an envelope for my daughter, marked "Open In Case I'm Going To Die Pretty Soon" :

pre-death arrangements -
a drama queen must depart
in a thunder storm

If it's not summer, the last line could be: with a gale-force wind. Maybe she could read me the weather report, and if a storm is on the way I could hold out for it, like people hold out to die until after Christmas so they won't ruin the holidays for their grandchildren the rest of their lives. Or maybe they just hold out to see what in the world people got them for Christmas when they were dying.

One problem: haiku are so short. What if I say mine and still don't die? If it's one of those movie scenes with everyone around me in bed,that could be awkward. I'd be annoyed if my grandson (a person who doesn't exist yet) started looking at his watch frequently, while his sister (equally faux at the moment) kept rolling her eyes. There needs to be entertaining bedside activities for these people. I'd better have a pre-made statement ready, so I can point to it with a bony, shaking but still authoritative finger:

Shh - no more talking
let's hum along together -
music of the spheres

But no:

no one will believe
I ran out of words
finally

If I'm very very lucky, I'll awaken briefly, see everyone around me, and like my grandmother at her life's end, I'll manage to smile and say

Oh!
Is this a party
for me?

My grandmother never heard of haiku and never knew she wrote one. But she did die as artistically as the best of 'em.

I suppose in thinking about my death haiku, I ought to have a contingency plan in case I die all alone, in an accident, say my car falls off an icy cliff. I don't want to say "shit" - I mean, after I scream of course. I read once that 'shit' is the most common thing said right before death. Once, I did slide on an icy road, and there was a cliff my car was heading toward and I did say "shit" and that was even before I read the article. However, during the height of this incident, "SHIT" was quickly followed by "NO!" and "GOD" and then I managed to turn the car around - almost flipping it, another danger - but everything turned out okay. I was pleased with my driving, and I was pleased with myself that God would have been my last word before death. Now it serves me again, this time as a reminder that I could die alone. There would be no one around to prompt me, no doctor saying, "Uh, Ms. Jaye, still want me to alert you when it's time to start composing your death haiku?" I see now that dying alone could keep one very busy.

Yes, I did say God at what could have been my death, which makes me happy religiously, but is not satisfying artistically. I don't think haiku should be one word, albeit a teriffic word, an enormous word, like God. The rules have changed for haiku, like, it doesn't have to be 5-7-5 anymore thank goodness, and it can be on one line and not three, but even with the changes, I don't think haiku can be one-word. If I could count on having a few spare moments, I could elaborate on the word God, turn it into a prayer in haiku, as in:

God, please receive me
and remind my dearest love
my life was great, thanks.

(Wow, that's good! I'd better commit it to memory.)

Lately I've been wondering, maybe death isn't meant to be orchestrated by the die-er. Maybe it should be experienced in whatever way it comes. And because the format cannot be known ahead of time, I should be prepared to improvise. If that sounds difficult, remember that it would be like all the time that preceded death, in that period after birth called Life. We should all be accustomed to improvisation by the time we're dying, and we should appreciate how it takes away the necessity for memorization or practice. So, if I can't, at the time, articulate my death haiku outloud or I can't write it, it's probably within the rules to think it inside the mind.

the last dream -

my short simple poem

is over.

*Me Au Naturale

Category: A page or two from my vacation journal

Author Analysis: Somehow, a lot more than I planned got into this.

A couple of blue jays are taunting me and the cat this morning. I believe they're chuckling because neither of us can fly.

They are nearly ruining our morning. I'm sitting out on the porch in the pleasant post-dawn but can't concentrate on writing, the way those birds are dive bombing us. The cat near my feet has more dignity than I do. He's ignoring them, illustrated by an all-pervasive tranquility as he occupies his patch of sunshine. His tail is swishing however, so I know his true feelings.

Ignoring them is not an option for me. "I can so fly," I tell them. "I just need a machine to do it, is all."

That's not the whole truth, though.

"All right, birds. I need the man too, the man that operates the machine."

"So where is this machine," one calls down from a nearby tree branch.

""Yeah, where," the other echoes from a different tree.

"And where's the man," the first one says on his banked turn above my head, as he joins the second one, to show a solidarity of couplehood.

"Yeah, where" the other echoes.

The cat's bush tail brushes my ankle. I look down.

"They're just trying to piss you off," he says. "Don't give them what they want."

It was too late. I was pissed off already. Mostly at a certain pilot who once flew me around islands and over mountains and along the ocean. He forgot to stop for me one day. Flew straight over the runway, didn't even tip his wings like in the past.

These birds are just trying to rub it in. They know darn well I've been evicted from the sky.

*New Jersey, Broke and Beeudeeful

Category: Just a story

Author's Spelling: phonetically, when it comes to Jersey

I pick up the ringing phone, and hear someone say, “I got a Schilke B3 for sale. Wannit?”

Wrong number, I start to say, but suddenly the voice sounds familiar. A flat voice, no expression, but even an autistic New Jerseyite has the state accent.

“Bobby D!” I exclaim. “This you?”

“Yeah. Wannit? The horn?”

“Bobby D! Bobby! What a…surprise!

Surprise? Sonofabitch, I almost dropped my antique Limoges egg cup! Putting my breakfast tray aside on the bed, I buzz the intercom for Maria Four to remove it.

“Bobby! I can’t believe… We haven’t spoken since ...how, how did you…even get my number out here?”

“Your cousin down the shore.”

“Which cousin? I’m Italian, remember?”

“Little Lina. But not little now. She’s real fat.”

I laugh to learn that Lina ran to fat from the side of her family I wasn’t related to.

“How many big moles she got on her face ?” I ask Bobby D slyly, knowing he will tell me whatever I want if I phrase it carefully.

“Seven” he responds.

You made my day, Bobby D, and it’s only noon.

I stretch under the silk comforter and look at my stiletto nails. True Jersey girls maintain long, pointy fingernails whatever the current fashion, and we painted our toenails well before it was the in thing to do everywhere else.

God how it all comes back. Jersey.

“How ya doin’, Bobby? Still in the sales business, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. I sell stuff in my parents’ garage.”

“How are they, your parents?”

“They’re okay. They died.”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Really, it’s another shock. His parents, called the Bickersons in our neighborhood, were almost a force of nature. Their battles were heard the length and breadth of a city block. Hard to imagine them at peace.

He described them first as “okay.” Well, I reflect, the dead are okay in a sense. Bobby D has a way with words sometimes.

“So I guess it’s your house now,” I say.

“Yeah. I forget. So you wannit?” He didn’t mean the house.

“”Whatta yiz tryin’ to unload on me? A what? A “B” what? I mean, what is it?” I laugh inwardly, how I’m slipping back into my own accent, 3000 miles and 40 years removed.

“I said. A horn. A trumpet. Present for your boyfriend.”

Though I’m gazing out the window at the Pacific Ocean as he says this, I’m seeing another ocean, the one visible from the boardwalk of Wildwood New Jersey. I’m among a sqeak of squealers heading towards a club called - what else? - On The Boards. Our heels cha-cha in sync with the brakers, and we want everyone to hear them clicking on the wooden planks. We don’t even notice all the holes in which they could get caught. We don’t know from broken limbs and arthritis yet.

Tonight, Steve “The Bad Boy” Sheehan is playing his horn in a band. I’ve just told my five best girlfriends – and Bobby D, trailing at his usual few paces behind - that The Bad Boy and I slept together for the first time the previous evening.

The only reason we parted was so’s he could get to his gig in time. The last thing he said walking out the door was, “Watch my lips tonight when I play, baby. Later, they’ll be back on you.” It’s the kind of line a woman recalls for decades, wincing at her youthful stupidity. It will be my last thought before death, I’m sure.

“It sounds beautiful.” Bobby’s voice is in my ear and the word is drawn out, Philly & Jersey style. Bee-u-dee-ful. “Plays broke Christmas carols real smooth the man said.”

“Baroque,” I say automatically. Bobby D. doesn’t process new information easily, so he generally ignores anything he doesn’t understand. Whatever he learns in connection with the objects he sells, that’s pretty much it as far as he’s concerned. Same thing with people. Last time he saw me, I had a trumpet player boyfriend. Therefore, I will always have a trumpet player boyfriend.

“The Bad Boy and I split up when we arrived in California. I haven’t seen him since. So I’m not in the market for a trumpet, but it was real nice of you to think of me. ” I pause. “Got any anemometers,” I ask jokingly. My current boyfriend has a sailboat and talks about wind all the time.

“I’ll look,” he answers, seriously. “S’long.”

“Wait, what’s your hurry?”

It has been so very, very long.

“All these years…my God! Bobby! We were in kindergarten together!”

“Yeah.” He’s waiting for me to start a new conversation, since he already said what he called me about.

“So, what’s new?” I make my voice overly enthusiastic, to get him involved. “What’s the gossip?”

I haven’t stayed in touch with Jersey. My five best girlfriends went far away, like me. My mother died and I have no interest in the relatives that stole her stuff from me. I don’t even know how Lina got my number.

“My mom didn’t like gossip,” Bobby D. reports to me.

“Well, I mean, who’s left in the old neighborhood? ” I’m determined to get more out of him. He calls me up, brings Jersey right into my bedroom, and I’m damned well going to find out about people. “How’s Fourth Down?”

“Still paralyzed.”

“Who takes care of him? “

“His big sister . She never got married .” He stops talking in a way that sounds like a pause. I wait. “But she got engaged to Pam Polanski at Christmas.”

Ka-CHING! Good one, Bobby D! Lesbian senior citizens coming out in a blue collar New Jersey neighborhood!

“Who else is still around?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who do you run into at the WaWa?”

“It’s a tattoo place now.”

“Well, who’ve you seen wherever you food shop.”

“Mrs. Scott, at the new big WaWa.”

“Mrs. Scott? Our fifth grade teacher?! Holy Steel Pier, she still alive?”

“Yeah, and she don’t have wrinkles.”

“Maybe we just thought she was old because we were ten.”

I lean back on the pile of plump cushions in full nostalgia mode. Sure it’s annoying to have to keep prompting him, but I was warming up to the task. I think Bobby was warming up too, though only an expert could tell. And who was more expert at communicating with him than me, even after all this time.

Another scene from long ago, from kindergarden days, floats to my memory on this rogue wave from the Atlantic. My mother is telling me to take care of Bobby D, to watch over him in school so mean kids won’t hurt him.

“Don’t worry Mommy. He’s not really there, so nobody even sees him.”

I don’t understand why that makes her look sad. He’s just being Bobby D. His parents are the Bickersons. People are who they are. And me? I’m a little girl who dreams of love and other fancy things.

“Okay, who else,” I ask him now

There’s a silence.

“Toldja everyone.”

“Any more kids die?” I know he understands I’m speaking of our generation.

“Pip Lugasa did, cancer, then Angel dropped dead the same day. They only got one funeral.

I pictured these two, sweethearts since junior high. Sneaking a smoke together in the basement bathroom one day, Pip confided to me that she and Angel did it, all the time now.

“Oh it’s the best feeling ever,” she said then. “You just gotta fall in love, so you can feel it too.”

I wanted to, fervently, but was still a virgin at that point. And now, I couldn’t feel too sad about the Lugasas. They had a world class romance for most of their lives.

“Who do you pal around with, Bobby?”

“Mutt “

“Who? I must be getting old. I don’t remember anyone named Mutt.”

“He’s my dog.”

“That’s real nice, you got a dog. What kind is – oh, never mind.”

“Rescued him. They were gonna kill him.”

I look over at Pfeffer, a Shiatzu lightly snoring on her side of the bed. I got her after my last divorce. She rescued me.

My mind wanders a minute and there’s silence, a beat too long for Bobby D.

“Gotta go.”

“Thanks for calling, Bobby. Sorry I don’t want to buy your trumpet.”

“That’s okay. S’long.”

The receiver goes dead.

I sob for maybe 15 minutes straight after that. Life is broke and beeudeeful in California too.

*One Of Wilt's Girls

Category: Story

Author's Request: To my family: Just forget it's me writing this, okay?

"My wife was one of Wilt's Girls," the guy I’m working for says. He stares at me. I think I'm supposed to react.

"Ok, I'll bite,” I say. “Who's Wilt?"

“Wilt Chamberlain.”

“Oh. And who's that?”

“Wilt Chamberlain? God you’re young. One of basketball's first superstars. AND legendary in the sack.”

He shouldn't be talking to me like that. I'm only 17 and he’s, like, twice as old. But at least his lame conversation, the pathetic story of his boring life, just got interesting.

I'm working for this dude for two days. Very exciting work, right. He hired me to help with a mail-out for his new construction business or maybe it's reconstruction or reproduction. I haven’t read the flyers. I just fold and stuff them into envelopes. 1000 of them. That's a lot of folding and stuffing. We’ve been at it for hours in his office.

It’s not a real office, it’s the trailer where he lives. Temporarily, he says. It’s gross here. Part of the floor is rusted right through to the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised to see toadstools growing up in the hallway, toward his living quarters. Excuse me, “The Bedroom Suite,” he calls it. The whole place reeks “newly divorced.”

After the folding and stuffing today, I'll start addressing the envelopes tomorrow. Hand-written names and addresses, he wants, in a nice handwriting. He asks me where I learned calligraphy. That's what I told him to get the job, that I knew calligraphy. Where did I learn it? I said I went to a special school. Well I did. St. Monica's across the Boulevard. So I didn't actually lie. It didn’t offer calligraphy instruction, but it's still a special school, cost my mom and dad a fortune as they remind me constantly. But it didn’t really prepare me for the working world, and I can only find little jobs like this.

Tonight, I'll search for a "how-to calligraphy course on the Internet and practice what it says. Then finish the job tomorrow. He promised me a hundred dollars.

But now, we're still folding and stuffing together. It’s boring, which I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t talk so much. I’d rather think my own thoughts, until he started talking about sex.

“In what way is Wilt legendary,” I ask.

“He fucked 20,000 women, that's what way.”

“I still don’t see the point.”

“My wife, she, my EX-wife was…umm, she was...”

“One of them?”

“She was one of them, yeah.”

It's like he’s proud of this.

“What number was she?”

“How do I know? I’m not sure she knows.”

It seems to me if she were #1 or #20,000, that would be cool. But if she was, like, #482 or #11,044, how would Wilt even remember her?

When my grades and SAT’s weren’t good enough to get into college, I told my parents I didn’t want to go to a community college. I wanted to learn something useful in life.

I just did.

*The Mallard: A Radio Play

CATEGORY: Humor

AUTHOR DISCLAIMER: No animals were injured during the writing of this piece: they were already dead before I met them. The humans, however, are a different story.

Hi Buns. I’m back!

Oh honey, I have someth-

Where’s the mallard?

That’s what I -

Where’s the mallard?!

That’s what I -

Where - is - the- mallard?

That’s what I -

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MALLARD?!

Give me a chance to tell - -

I’m listening.

No you’re not, you just keep asking - -

Oh, you mean I just keep asking where the mallard is because it isn't where it's been for the last two decades?

While we were gone, a rodent broke in and - -

Where - is - it?

The rodent?

THE FUCKING MALLARD!

It was...it wasn't...well, you know it had feathers and- -

Did you put it in the garbage?

You don’t want to - -

{sound effects in sequence: slamming door, running footsteps, rattling garbage cans, walking footsteps, opening door}

Thank God there was no pick-up yet!

DO NOT BRING THAT THING IN HERE! IT’S DISGUSTING!

Hah! I always knew you didn’t really like it.

What do you mean? I love it.

Oh I see. You threw it away because you love it.

Don’t be sarcastic.

Okay. I'll be straightforward: You hate it!

I admit, when I moved in with you it was difficult, at first, to enjoy my meals with a dead duck looking over my shoulder.

So you beat me home, realized you finally had it at your mercy and seized the opportunity to - -

Are you implying I've been plotting against a stuffed mallard for three years? Now, if it was one of your ex-wives, okay, you might be on to something,

You're too late. They've already been recycled.

Look, I just never got used to the mallard at the dinner table, okay?

You never said anything.

I did tell you dinner guests are grossed out - and that was even before it got chewed up by mice.

Not my friends.

True, your friends would hunt it down through the house if it had any mobility left. I'm surprised you didn't put the thing on wheels for their target practice. And now...LOOK at it.

I can fix it.

It’s been deteriorating for awhile.

I can fix it.

Fine, but...but... I’m putting my foot down.

You're going stomp to death what’s left of the poor thing?

Despite the fact that you treat it better than you do some of my very much alive friends, the mallard is already dead, remember? And after you fix it up, it’s not going to live on the dinner table anymore. We’re putting it in your clubhouse.

What clubhouse? Am I one of the Little Rascals?

You don’t have to call it a clubhouse. You can call it your workshop or your poker palace or your den of iniquity, I don’t care.

Whatever it’s called, I don’t have one.

Then build it. And the walrus head goes in it too.

He looks great in our bathroom!

Those beady little eyes watch me when I’m naked.

Now a walrus head is lusting after you? Why didn’t you ever mention this before? I can’t believe my sweet little Buns is saying all this.

I’ve been picking and choosing my battles. More than moving the walrus head, I wanted that swordfish off the bedroom wall.

Well you got your wish there.

You only agreed because it stabbed you in the balls when it fell during the earthquake.

You're the one who initiated sex during the quake, said you wanted the earth to move in every way possible.

Now I just want the mallard and the walrus to move.

Which first?

The mallard! I’m the one that found it, remember. I almost threw up.

It’s not like you don’t have any hobbies that affect our relationship, you know.

What’s your objection to my knitting?

None. It’s your meeting men on the Internet I don’t like.

I meet poets, not men.

Literary “chat,” my ass. They just want to get into your online panties.

Only when they take online Viagra. {pause} Honey, let’s not fight. I’m sorry about the mallard. It just looked so awful, I had to get it out of here.

Well, you broadsided me with all your revelations about the mallard and the walrus and the swordfish and the bear - It’s been building, I guess.

I forgot about the bear.

I’m going out to the garage to take care of the mallard.

Honey, are...are the differences between us starting to be a problem? I mean, these separate vacations we took, and now this fight the first time we see each other in a whole week.

Would you mind postponing a relationship talk so I can attend to my mallard?

That’s more or less what you said before our vacations.

I have no objection to talking about our relationship. It’s your timing that annoys me.

The mallard waited all week in that state. Maybe our marriage can’t.

Call those Native American friends of yours and have them bring a peace pipe, okay, or they can smudge us.

This is serious.

Hey, we’ll call my clubhouse a ‘sweat lodge’ in their honor!

Oh, just...go to the garage and fluff up the mallard's feathers. Excuse me, feather now. Singular. I’m going to bed.

Wait, Buns. Can't you understand I'm a bit upset? {pause} I brought you a present.

Was it something you shot? You know I won’t wear death on my person.

Look, I made no secret of the fact that I’m a hunter and fisherman. I told you on our first date and you said you didn’t mind.

You didn’t. You did. I don’t.

That’s big of you.

I can live with the hunting and fishing. What I can’t live with, as I finally realized looking at the mangled mallard, is the display of your murder victims all over the house.

They weren’t murdered. They had a sporting chance.

Guess I should feel grateful you’re not a bullfighter.

Those Native American friends of yours are killers too, you know. Whales and seal pups. Though some of them I’m not even sure are Native Americans, like that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Wolf Ghost.

Ghost Wolf.

How’s he listed in the phone book, anyway ? Plain old Ghost Wolf? Or Wolf comma Ghost ? Or maybe by his wife's name, Eagle Ears or Ears comma Eagle?

That’s his daughter. His wife’s name is Medicine Bitch.

Okay, okay, I don’t want to argue about your friends.

You don't even want to meet my friends. And this isn’t arguing. We’re busy not having a relationship talk.

I missed you, Buns. On my vacation, I missed you.

Me too. NO! STOP! Please don't hug me while you're holding the mallard.

I’m sorry. I’ll take it to the garage {pause} I guess the dinner table really isn’t the most appropriate place.

I AM sorry this happened to it honey. I never wished it ill.

I know that. Let me assess what restoration work I can do, then, well, maybe there’s another kind of restoration needed around here.

I’ve even grown fond of the walrus head. Not in the bathroom, but I am fond of it.

And I think your Native American poetry chants are...um... spiritually uplifting.

{they laugh}

(sounds of kissing and sighing)

Maybe you'll get lucky tonight.

How so?

Maybe I'll move the earth for you again.

Move the bear first, and you got a deal.

the end

*The Others

CATEGORY: Memoir

AUTHOR HINDSIGHT: Full of myself, I was. Still am.

Of all our mother's boyfriends, my sister Gail and I hated Morris the most. Not just because he was fat and bald. Al the trumpet player was fatter and balder and we almost liked him (though we never admitted it except to each other).

"You won't give any of them a chance," Mommy complained.

We didn’t bother to deny it.

"Gail,” she continued, “you just glare and won't say a word. It scares them."

Gail glared at her.

"Mommy, she glares at everyone."

Gail glared at me.

"And you, Sandy, always with sarcastic remarks they don't understand but can sense are not flattering."

"Can I help it if you pick boyfriends whose combined IQ isn't as much as an 11 year old’s?" I asked.

"Listen girls, I want to get married again, and I'm going to, even if I have to sneak dates with the guy and introduce him to Sandy Smartass and Gloomy Gail, after the fact."

That alarmed me. Mommy was capable of doing such a thing, especially considering her mental problems.

"Al," I said decisively, figuring we should go with the pick of the sorry litter. "We want Al."

"Al?"

"You forgot him already? He's only, what, four boyfriends ago? Let's see, there was Al, then Mickey the mechanic, then -"

"Mickey! Yeah! He had great Mr. America muscles," Mommy said, with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Uh-huh, and he smelled like gasoline and got grease all over the house the minute he walked through the door."

"Al got married, for your information. And it could have been to us."

My heart sank. Best cut our losses and keep going with the review.

"Ok, after Mickey there was umm, Axel?"

"God that man was handsome! Blue eyes like Paul Newman."

"Axel," I said, “who bought an alligator farm in Florida with his brother. Mommy, I just don't see us in proximity to alligators."

She grunted with what I assumed was begrudging agreement.

Obviously, grunters can begat glarers.

Back to the list.

"After Axel,"I reminded everyone,"there was Stevarino."

"Wait a minute," Gail spoke up. "You're skipping Lochinvar. He wasn't creepy like the others.”

"Agreed. He was merely embarrassing. Remember when we were in line to see The Little Mermaid? He recited ‘Down to the Sea in Ships’ to the whole movie line."

"Everybody clapped," my mother said.

"It was by John Masefield," Gail chimed in again.

Mommy looked smug. "See, Sandy. You can actually learn things from some of the men I date."

"I kept all the poems he wrote for me."

I could have clobbered my turncoat little sister.

"That's sweet, honey. I kept all of mine, too."

"Why in the world would you guys keep them? They didn't even rhyme!"

"What if he's famous, someday? They'd be worth a lot of money, girls." She was ever practical when it came to making an easy buck.

"I like them,” Gail said.

"Like them? You don't even understand them," I sneered, finding my own niche among the grunters and the glarers surrounding me.

"No, but they make me think interesting thoughts," she replied, with dignity and without glaring.

"Let’s move on from this fascinating literary discussion, shall we” I said, trying to keep everyone on task. “Now, after Lochinvar there was Stevarino."

"God he was fun. Girls, stick with the guy who's the most fun."

"Good advice, Mommy, but just remember, the man referred to himself as Stevarino. In third person."

"So?"

"I'm not even going to be sarcastic about him. Stevarino. It stands alone in all its glory."

"Which brings us to Morris, girls."

Yes, Morris. The most dangerous of all because he was the current boyfriend.

His fatal flaw wasn't being greasy or raising alligators. He didn’t say "Morrisino wants to go for pizza."

His flaw was more serious: Morris had a lustful eye for little girls. That was my trump card, and I intended to play it to stop the wedding ceremony itself if necessary. I hoped it wouldn't be, because I sensed this was new territory for us, adult territory. I had felt something wrong with Morris without a name to put to it, but when Gail said something to me last week, I knew it was big.

"He's like those bad guys school tells us to stay away from," Gail said. "Pooverts, Sandy. He looks at me funny."

"Good intuition, kid," I smiled at her, but was concerned.

"So here’s what I wanted to tell you girls about Morris. I'm not dating him anymore. His neighbor Ben asked me out. What a dreamboat! He's tall. A lean and lanky cowboy. He's a musician too, plays the banjo, so if you liked Al maybe you'll like him too."

Great, I thought. Does he yodel to the cows as he plucks his banjo strings, I stopped myself from saying. But I didn't want to jinx Ben. Morris was out!

"Do you do this to your father," Mommy asked,"or is this dual treatment of sarcasm and moody silence reserved especially for my love life?"

Gail glared at her.

I sneered.

"So what don't you like about his girlfriends?"

"Well, Carol made us go to the symphony way beyond the norm, which I would say is once a childhood. And Laura had a bratty son who stole candy and stuff from us. Minnie was funny, not Minnie-ha-ha, but funny in the head. Technically, we didn't break them up, though, because she got committed before we could do it. And Devon -"

"That's enough," Mommy laughed. "I get the picture!"

No you don't, I thought to myself. The "picture" is just the four of us. Gail, me, Daddy, and you. Together in one frame. And those others are never seen again. Let them be in their own family portrait.

Eventually, our parents each married an "other." The experience of having a stepmother and stepfather wasn't as awful as we had anticipated. They were both okay people. Anyway, by that time I only had a couple of years left until I could leave home and start screwing up my own life.