Static

It was empty and cold inside the cabin, but the old man woke up at four just the same, creaking into his ragged slippers and shuffling forth past the comfort of the two portable heaters positioned by his bed. Half awake, he made his way to the bathroom, coughing up phlegm and acid from his empty stomach, cursing the cold and the sixty some odd years of smoking in bitter unison. Outside the gray clouds wicked away any hope of sun and the eventual transition to spring. The moon, in the finality of another cold night, reflected off of the foot of snow that had already accumulated.

Chewing on a few antacid tablets, he patiently waited to empty his bladder into the bowl, counting backwards to take the pressure off of his swollen prostate. It came eventually, a thin stream that sputtered like Morse code through the quiet house, rendering thoughts of earlier years spent pissing into the snow, squeezing streams off to dot I’s and cross T’s. After washing his hands, he walked to the kitchen to prepare his breakfast.

Dear Helen;

It’s cold again today and it looks like more snow. The car is almost completely hidden out in the driveway. Bobby said he would come up in a day or two to check in on me though, so maybe he’ll help me with the shoveling. The lake is entirely frozen over and snow is just lying on top of it, like it never existed. Just wooden docks leading to nowhere. Just overturned boats lost hopelessly in a field. The television is going to be gone tomorrow. They’re switching over to digital and whoever didn’t buy an antenna box converter won’t be able to get the signal, but it never worked worth a damn up here anyway. I miss you. I know it’s pointless, but I do. There are things that sometime run through my head, things that shouldn’t. Oh don’t worry about it, life will take me soon enough I know. Bobby keeps telling me I’m a fool for staying up here through winter in what he calls ‘my condition’. I keep telling him that old is an eventual condition in all of our lives and he laughs forcibly. I know he’s mad that I’m stubborn. I know he probably wishes I’d live with his family, but I won’t be shelved away. The sun is finally coming through, bleak as it is—

The coffee finished brewing so he put down his pen and picked up his pack of cigarettes, dropping them into his bathrobe. His mug sat chipped but not broken on the countertop next to the pot. A gift Bobby had given to him almost forty years ago on some otherwise nameless Father’s Day. It was ceramic except for a coating of Plexiglas around it, holding in a sheet of paper that once read, ‘To the greatest dad in the world’ and had a childish drawing of the planet earth and a stick man standing on top of it, his arms at his sides like a superhero. After years and years of washing, however, moisture found its way in and distorted the writing, making it almost illegible. He didn’t wash the mug anymore because of this. Just a quick swish of water from the faucet.

From the sun room beyond the kitchen, you could view the entire lake, along with the other houses nestled away in the trees. Some of them reminded him of cathedrals, with A frame peaks and windows in the rafters to let in the sun. Most of the older homes were gone now, sold and bought by younger, richer families. The type of people that tear down and build over instead of simply making additions. The type of people who are only seen one month out of the year. In the summer you can see the strings of Japanese lanterns on their decks, can almost make out their idle conversations. He took a sip from his coffee and fumbled with his cigarettes. When are you gonna quit those things, Jack? You know they’re gonna kill you and where will I be, huh? Another widow of a silly, stubborn man. But the joke was on him he supposed, pulling one out and slipping it between his loose lips. It was starting to flurry again, such a soft transition against the gray and white outside, like it had been snowing for hours and he was just starting to notice. Radio had called for more snow. Radio had called for more snow all weekend. His first drag made him cough so hard he almost lost the cigarette. A cough coming from deep inside his body, like it was trying to take his lungs out with it. After a few more drags though it came easier and his body calmed down a bit.

-- bleak as it is, but now it’s snowing again. I don’t know what to say about it except let the damn snow come. May we all drown in the powdery shit. May it pile up against the windows of these cathedrals and punch through, spilling upon their fancy Persian rugs and silk upholstered decadence. When the snow finally melts, birds will build nests inside; squirrels will run rampant through their kitchens, digging through the cereal boxes. May their goddamn houses rot from the foundations—

At this point the old man stopped, laughed in short, phlegmy gasps, and scribbled the last passage out. Helen never liked my bitter pessimism, he thought. His thoughts drifted towards what memory he still had of here. There was a time when he could remember every freckle on her body, remember her smell, the way her smile sparked around a summer evening campfire, but memory was fading and he refused to look at her photographs. They were too still, like stolen images of the past.

In the living room he flipped through the channels. The shows on television were all foreign to him now, and he didn’t much care for watching the news, but he felt the obligation to bid the old electric contraption one last hurrah across the spectrum, before tomorrow washed away another chapter of the past. Bobby had once offered to fix him up with digital television, but the old man just wouldn’t have it. The hell do I need digital television for? You mean to tell me that the cable company is going to force everybody to buy these damn convertor boxes and pay extra for more of the same bullshit channels?

“Come on, Dad. I’ll buy the convertor box for you. I’ll set it up. I’ll even make sure you pay the lowest possible price. If you don’t do it, you’ll be completely shut off from the outside world. Honestly how can you be so damn stubborn?” Bobby with his pleading eyes, only wanting the best for his father. Only wanting to stop him from becoming obsolete. But the old man hadn’t budged and here he was bidding a final goodbye to the once wondrous machine turned filth box. He hit the power button, calmly took out the batteries from the remote and walked restlessly back to the kitchen.

--bleak as it is, I find comfort in my obsolescence. I wonder, Helen, if machines could think would they fear their own end? Would they want to be converted to a new age, a new age they know they will never understand? Would they watch tearfully as shinier, sleeker machinations slowly surfaced around their countertop? I don’t think so, Helen, I really don’t. The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that we old remnants of the past should never be forced to convert. Should never want to. Maybe you wouldn’t understand, you never lived past the tipping point, but I’ve come to the point in my life where every gesture is an afterthought, every smile in my direction is tinged with the bitter remembrance of happier times, every birthday another ticked second that cheated death. I don’t like it, Helen. Let me stew in my own past. Death is just another non-converted wood paneled television.

See you soon,
Jack.

As the Leaves Fall

The wind picked up around noon. Its gusts moved in all directions, rousting leaves from their piles and sending them across yards, streets, porches. A plague of sorts—frozen from autumn cold and brittle to the touch, skittering down the sidewalks like dried up locust shells. The house on Rivington Terrace took them in without question, trapping them in all its winded corners. It stood there deftly, a house built on the incline of a hill, so as to make the basement halfway underground and halfway above, its large front glass window gazing out at the wooded area across the street. There were two cars parked in the wraparound driveway, but no sign of life within the house walls. Sunlight, a bitter mirage in this cold, still managed to beam through the windows, probably cutting warm rectangles into the living room carpet, though from the outside, one could only make guesses at such things. Ashen clouds eventually choked out the light anyway, like weeds through a healthy root system.

The rain started soon after.
A few large, chilled spatters, then steady drizzle.


Raining. It must be raining.
The smell of urine was overpowering, hanging salty and warm in the crowded air. There was a wet sheen to the plumbing, part sink leakage, part evaporated piss. From her one source of light she could make out the rough shapes of cleaning products; bleaches, dish detergents, boxes of trash bags, all aligned askew, the result of blind crouched shoves with no second thought. She viewed everything wide-eyed, peering just above her folded knees, ashamed of her wet clothes but too scared to move—a little girl cowering under the sink. She prayed for no lightning, whispering childish incantations, remembering the last of the booming summer electrical storms. Those evenings her mother would coax her out from behind the couch and soothe her in her arms until the storm passed. Evenings eternally distant, a season long past. She pushed the thoughts away.

Inside was quiet, except for the clock in the living room keeping time and the steady thwapping sound coming from some other corner of the house. It was steady, the sound of something heavy being slapped upon the floor. It would slow or it would speed up but it was always there, beating cadence. The sound frightened the little girl the most. It was a dull reminder that something inevitably was waiting for her, counting the seconds.

She sneezed.
Her stomach rumbled.
It was an elongated sound, not so much an echo as a continuum, begging for attention. She tried to smother it by bringing her legs in closer, only succeeding in shortening her breath. The hunger was becoming too much to bear and she knew it. She would need food soon, but leaving her position, even if it was to walk a half step to the refrigerator directly across from her, would expose her to the stillness of the rooms, the dust hanging in the air like snow, wavering in the absence of wind or breath. She’d seen it in the movies, the ones where the girl hiding in the shadows sees that glint of hope and timidly shuffles forth, building the tension with her slowness only to be plucked away into the darkness again by a cold hand around the ankle.
She was also afraid to look at the pictures.

The faces of her family encased in rectangular glass, smudged at the corners from clumsy handling. Faces overexposed, dopey-lidded from blinking mid-flash, huddled together as evidence of their existence. They are tacked up haphazardly, held between fridge and randomly collected magnetic junk. Pictures of mom in this very kitchen, pulling a turkey out of the oven. Her head is turned in surprise, half-smiling, a few reckless strands of blond loosed from her ponytail swinging in her eyes. There are pictures of dad, unshaven and clearly hungover from wine the night before, making his way to the tree in his pajamas and Santa cap. Below the tiny magnetic words forming unfinished shopping lists and silly remarks, she sits; a picture for every growing year, huddled between parents, blowing out candles, running camera-blurred through a summer backyard. The collective lives of a family snapped and developed and laid out in nonchalant fashion, chronicling their polished lives. Their smiling faces scared her more than any exposure, but still she knew it was inevitable. Biting her lower lip, she prepared herself.
She put her foot out through the cupboard door, jerked up momentarily by the coldness of the linoleum. She shimmied out, eyes searching wildly in their sockets, catching a brief glimpse of the rain beating against the window above the sink, projecting across the filmy white curtains in wild shadowplay. When her fingers tightened around the refrigerator handle, she looked around one more time before pulling the fridge upon, a quick thrust that spilled dull yellow across her face.

Dozens of consumer products crowded her vision. There were plastic containers with tin foil tops filled with god knows what. Milk, eggs, cheese and lunchmeats all had their place. She could barely make out the row of beer cans lining the back of the top shelf, remnants of her father. She saw him for a brief second, bent over, the tail of his shirt just starting to come loose, his arm sliding in, careful not to knock anything over. How many times had she seen him repeat that action? The words came back swiftly…

“How many is that?” her mom in a half-joking, half-serious tone, so as not to rattle the cage too much.
“I’m not drunk, Janine. Just trying to re—”
“—I didn’t say you were drunk, I was just asking a question.”
“Don’t’ cut me off.” He looks over to his daughter, transitioning his anger into a soft, lucid smile. “Daddy’s not drunk, honey.” The anger returns just as quickly. “There nothing wrong with having a few beers after dinner to relax. I have enough god damned stress at work and I sure as hell don’t need it here.”

She grabs a tube of cookie dough from the top shelf, arching her feet up and stretching out for it, but as she pulls it out her hand hits the milk and it comes down onto her head, spilling over the floor. Almost slipping, she goes back under the sin, leaving the milk on its side, the contents pooling out around itself, inching across the linoleum. Somebody heard me. They’re coming after me, she thought, but the only thing she heard was the lapping sound of her dog, Coda, just outside the cupboard door. The sound of the chocolate lab calms her down some, but only slightly. Coda must still be sleeping outside of Their bedroom.

Coda lapped the milk gratefully, taking quick pauses to whimper in the girl’s direction.

After a few minutes, he gave up and loafed back into the living room and around the corner and the thwapping sound began again.
Light was fading fast.

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

The man in the dark green slicker just stood there in the rain, partially hidden by the shrubs, staring over towards his seemingly empty neighbor’s house. A burst of wind sent his hood flying back and the rain ran off his balding head into eyes causing him to curse. He looked up at his leaf-bloated gutter, clogged up at the drainage point, sending a thin waterfall down to puddle around his basement window and cursed again, louder this time. “Fucking Halloween night and I’m stuck doing this shit,” he said to no one, flipping his hood back up and pulling out a pack of Camel’s. He’d been watching television when his wife yelled up that the basement was leaking.

Now here he was about to break his neck.

The smell of the leaves hit him as he walked out towards his work shed, the piles he had so nicely raked up the day before taking in the water, decaying rapidly. He slipped on the slight hill around the side of the shed and almost swallowed his cigarette. The ladder was cold to the touch and hauling it back up towards the house was a pain, but he managed, though somewhat clumsily. It was that fucking wife of his that was responsible, always, yelling, making him drive out to the drugstore to buy candy when he knew that no parent in their right mind would take their kids out trick or treating in this weather. And yeah, so the basement was leaking a little. It always leaks a little. There was no need to do this now.

Finishing his cigarette, the ladder propped against the house, he first noticed her, watching him from the bay window next door.

Little Amy Todd.

It didn’t seem odd to him at first; Amy was always watching him do his yard work. She especially loved to watch him mow the lawn, ducking out of sight when the mower moved too close to the window. She was a ghost almost, head hovering above the sill, obscured b Halloween knickknacks. He managed a slight wave, even in his mood, steadied the ladder and began his ascent. It wouldn’t be until a few hours later, when he was dry and warm and positioned just perfectly in front of the television, that he would realize that all the lights were turned off in the house next door and that maybe Amy was home alone for some reason.

Amy peered outside, past the dusty Halloween decorations.

It was almost completely dark now. She lifted one of her hand up very slowly past the sill, a finger extended to touch the back of a wooden scarecrow figurine, tracing its whittled turns. They were all dark silhouettes against the muted sky, standing rigid, immune to everything but time. Over towards the front yard she noticed a jack-o-lantern was falling in upon itself, the carved out eyes and nose sagging in to form one giant black hole. Would kids be out trick or treating tonight? Her costume was lying out on her bed, witch hat and robe with a rubber nose and broom, crumpled in with the sheets.

Mr. Pinsky was walking up from his yard; a ladder propped through his arms. He scared Amy, being out in the rain with his face totally obscured by his hood, but she didn’t move or look away. Instead she watched intently as he propped the ladder on end and stood in the rain, smoking his cigarette. When he looked over and noticed her she froze. He’s gonna see me he’s gonna come get me, but he only waved and flicked his cigarette. Downward she slunk, prostrate on the wooden dining room floor, pondering her next move.

She was brave in the darkness, moving from shadow to shadow, huddling against the fringes. It was a blanket covering her moves, keeping her from harm and exposure. Her house was a cocoon now, scabbed off from reality. No one was going to take that away. Slithering around the corners, she found her way to the living room.

It wasn’t as dark in there because of the dull streetlight coming through the front window, but she found peace within the cushions of her couch, wedging in and underneath, covering herself with throw pillows.

“What’ll it be tonight then, hunny? Let me guess, hmmm let’s see, you want to watch the news, is that right? Catch up today’s current affairs?” He said it the same every time and every time she giggled and yelled an emphatic ‘no’ and he would frown, taking a sip of beer. “I see, well, I guess I don’t know my daughter anymore then, she’s foreign to me.” He’d droop his head in mock sadness to fool her, making her lean into him, arms wrapping, even though she knew what would come next. “I guess I’ll just have to tickle you then!”
“Ahhh haha, nooooo daddy!”

But only silence now.

Coda was over in the corner to the left, huddled up in the little alcove that separated her and her parents’ room, the bathroom between the two. The dog hadn’t been outside for two nights now and the smell of stagnant urine and fecal matter wafted through the area. He hadn’t moved since earlier that day, whimpering from hunger, pawing at the bedroom doors. Amy wouldn’t go near those rooms. Instead she reached out a scrawny arm to grab the remote, pausing for a second or two before actually turning on the television. The sound burst throughout the house, echoing words in mid-conversation, easy-reconcilable sitcom fights enfolding. Coda lurched up and half barked, but lost interest quickly once Amy hit the mute button. She was content to watch anything as long as it wasn’t a horror movie.

The doorbell rang.

She heard voices outside, the vague laughter of a group of children. Amy slipped out of her cushions and made it behind the couch before the second ring, crouched down, moving the curtain slightly away from the ceiling-to-floor front window. Outside she watched the kids giggle in excitement. They were all wearing slickers, but their faces were still made up in zombie-pale makeup and mummy wraps, the crayoned in widow’s peak of a vampire losing its shape in the rain. Parents stood above them with umbrellas, huddling them onto the porch.

“What do you want to be this year?” Her mom’s voice, after an after school snack ages ago.
“A witch!”
“Oh really? Not an angel or a princess?” She shakes her head no, smiling.
“Let the kid be a witch for chrissakes. It’s Halloween.” Dad on the couch after work, beer in hand, waiting for dinner. “Kids want to be ghosts and ghouls and their parents always talk them out of it.”
“I wasn’t talking anyone out of anything. If she wants to be a witch she can be a witch. Do you have to butt into every conversation?”
“Just sounded like you were trying.”
“Oh just shut up and have another beer.”
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do.” Amy flinched at the word and her mom quickly ushered her to her room, telling her to get her homework done before dinner. She was left staring into her history book, the sounds of their yells only slightly muffled between the walls.

Outside the kids gave up and made their way down the street, avoiding puddles and running ahead of their parents. Amy decided it was time to go to her room. In there she could lose herself in the covers and pretend like everything was fine and she certainly didn’t want to spend another night under the sink. This posed only one problem.

She would have to pass her parents’ bedroom.

Tom Pinsky heard the doorbell. At first he couldn’t believe that people actually were out tonight trick or treating, but then he thought of course they would be, somebody’s got to prove my wife right. He slowly got up and emptied his first bag of the night into a large salad bowl, heading for the door.

“Trick or treat!” All yelled in unison.

Tom smiled. It was nice to see the kids all excited and dressed up. “Well well well. What do we have here? A zombie, a mummy and Oh My! Dracula!” The kids threw out their bags, which Tom noticed were not even halfway full. He decided to help them and along, emptying the entire bowl between the bags. The kids screamed in excitement, thanking him.

He lingered on the porch after the kids had moved on to the next house, the Todd’s house. He noticed that none of the lights were on except for a faint glow that could only be the television. When no one answered and the kids moved on, he grew worried, very worried. Was the girl there by herself? Can’t be, both the cars are there. He was about to call, but decided that maybe he’d better walk over instead, just to make sure everything was all right.

Tom threw on his slicker and walked back out into the cold rain, making his way across the yards.

She had made it to her door, actually touched the knob, before she made up her mind to go into her parents’ room. Coda whimpered below her but did not move as she turned around and tiptoed her way to the door. The dog stood up alert, however, when she touched the doorknob and slowly began to turn and began to bark. The sound gave Amy an odd feeling of strength, enough to push her to go through with it. She turned the knob until it would go no further and pushed, letting the heavy door swing open on its hinges.

Just darkness. She began feeling up the wall for the light switch, stumbling upon it sooner than expected and flipping the switch before she was ready. The dog began barking wildly now at the room, bearing its teeth in attack mode. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing at first and when the reality of the situation hit her like a gunshot, she could do nothing but shut her eyes and block it out. She ran from the room, unaware of the frantic knocking at the front door.

When Tom decided to stop knocking and just try the door, he knew in his heart that something was horribly wrong. The Todd’s dog, Coda, had just started to bark wildly. He found the door unlocked (another bad sign) and rushed inside, looking around wildly, trying to assess the situation.

“Amy?” He called once before moving towards the only source of light in the house. Coda didn’t even acknowledge his presence as he turned into the alcove, noting the piss and shit on the floor. He just kept on barking at whatever was inside the room. Tom looked in quickly, readying himself for anything.

At first he thought the room was empty. The bed was unmade. The clock on the nightstand was blinking twelve. He took one step into the room, looked to his right, and there he saw Mr. Todd.

Tom Pinsky lost control of his bowels, a night’s worth of beer streaming down his leg. He knew it was Mr. Todd because of the Led Zeppelin t-shirt he always wore. His head was almost entirely bashed in. Blood that was beginning to dry was clotted in the crevices of his face, his nose and eyes almost totally unrecognizable. What Tom couldn’t handle, however, was how the body was propped up against the wall, feet splayed out, shoulders slunk, a kid put in the corner by his mom for being bad. As he ran from the room, he caught one last glimpse of what looked like feet, as if someone had fallen off the bed and was just lying there.

Tom fell twice between the yards before making to his house and calling the police, dialing the number wrong the first time in his panic.

When the police arrived, they found Mrs. Todd lying on the floor next to the bed, an autopsy later revealing thirteen sleeping pills in her stomach. After further investigation it had been determined that the Todd’s were engaged in serious argument, likely due to Mr. Todd being fired from his job two days prior. Interviews with his ex-boss had confirmed the cause of termination to be drinking on the job. The fight had apparently escalated and ended with Mrs. Todd hitting her husband in the back of the head with a crowbar (ruled to be the actual cause of death). She did not stop there. Police estimates reveal twenty-two blows to the face and five to the chest. She took the sleeping pills shortly after.

Not mentioned in the report was the finding of their daughter, Amy, huddled under the sink, wearing a cheap drug-store witch costume.

The Backyard of My Youth

I went for a walk the other day. Just to pass the time.

Just woke up and went out the door, back home from college, anxious to relax and reel back, a motion picture being rewound slowly, almost frame by frame. I wear conservative athletic shoes now, quite a ways from the converse all stars that I could almost still hear clapping cadence into the summer-dry nights of my youth. I almost always made it home late those nights, heart racing, hoping my mom wouldn’t notice. Those were the nights I ran too fast and missed the things that only come to me now as feelings. Light breezes through sparse shrubbery. Dogs, all fur and teeth, flashing in and out of sight in people’s backyards, sometimes running with you to the corners of their fenced in kingdoms. The dull yellow cones of light from streetlights, spraying down upon coolly ticking cars. Those nights I didn’t have time to appreciate the cool shadows of youth, how you savor things to look back upon later, like a roll of film you use up over a span of years nonchalantly, forget about and them come across later on those nights you can’t sleep. There were only two places I would be running home from in those days, eking out every stretched second, calmly assuring myself I could make it up by running faster. How many nights were there like that? Playing Nintendo in Nate Delp’s basement, the breeze coming in the rectangular windows and drying our sweaty palms. Or Dane Henrichsen’s basement, playing pool under the stained glass lights that gave the felt a well-watered look. The days become meaningless I suppose, but it seemed as if I was always running and only now am I learning to walk.

I walked down Elm Street, the backbone of Penbrook. Every other street horizontally intersects it and you can follow it the whole way through, past Zimmerman’s candy store, past my old house on Boas Street and up towards the edge of Reservoir Park where Dane lived. His street looped around and got tangled into Hoffer and 29th Streets, back towards Nate’s. I walked quietly, slowly, thinking hard about then and now and what exactly was in between. I remembered sunny spring days when the sidewalks were sprinkled with gravel from when the snows came down and the plows had moved through the streets, forming embankments and taking loose macadam with them. Everything seemed so ripe then, so fresh.
There were days when I just had nothing to do so I just walked around, but not like this.

The small borough is slate gray now, a cold mother with empty nest syndrome, abandoned by her children and slowly being overrun by urban sprawl. Not one kid was outside playing, confident and curious kids roaming the territory they were born into, finding the nooks and cranny’s, the escape route and shortcuts. The most secret places to smoke cigarettes and talk tough. I suppose there are still kids running around, maybe the place hadn’t changed since I was a kid. Maybe they’d simply found different places to run.

Zimmerman’s candy store looks like some monolithic atrocity now, expanded and encased in tan industrial siding. There is even a new entrance and a parking lot beside it. I hadn’t been to it since I was in high school and it probably wouldn’t have been that big a deal to watch it slowly turn, slowly expand into what it is now, but being away so long has made it a foreign and depressing thing to see. I remember a time when it was a one room little charming place, selling fresh roasted peanuts and peanut butter. They had the candy behind the counter in glass cases to be scooped out at request. They had pez dispensers and solid chocolate bunnies at Easter. I marvel at the fact that Penbrook had a candy store back then, but then again I guess it wasn’t a big deal. Communities were communities back then, they weren’t hidden away like upscale suburbs or compressed like urban cityscape, they were the places in between, the stretched out puddy to fill the cracks. Back then you knew people, you knew their tendencies and secrets. You knew that it probably wasn’t a good idea to go up into Reservoir Park at night, though you may not have known why. You knew that once summer hit and school let out your pool membership would become your greatest and most cherished possession. You’d laminate them and put them into those plastic baseball card sleeves to keep your wrinkled prune hands from slowly deteriorating it. People had porches and actually used them. They weren’t hidden away in the back so no one could spy on you, they were out front so you could talk to your neighbors, walk from side yard to side yard, the adults talking tall and cross-armed, the children playing tag and manhunt until dusk. When something bad hit like a blizzard or an electrical storm, the aftermath was observed from front porches. People grouped together and rebuilt. And nothing was more central to a kid year round than a candy store. Zimmerman’s has certainly changed, but I have as well so I can’t really fault them for that. I catch a quick whiff of roasted peanuts as I pass, however, and the scent in some way gives me hope.
Past the old day-care building with its fenced in macadam playground.

Just another haunt where the roller blade wheels still whizzed.

Past the Cippicioppi place with their eight kids and dirty backyard next to an old car storage building. The building had a nice ramp from bike jumps. Matt Cippicioppi’s dad was arrested for growing weed in a closet in a bedroom just above the day care center they ran and it was kind of disconcerting to think about the youth being exposed to such things until you think about the fact that the people they sold to were probably the kid’s parents. There was and still is an abandoned store across the alley from the Cippicioppi’s backyard. Always I thought it was just a matter of time before it was sold and renovated and used again, but it never was and will most likely end up being leveled. I spent a significant amount of summer nights talking with my old next door neighbor Tyler Kobler about breaking into the place and looking for stuff, any relic of the past that we could wear as a badge of honor and ponder upon late at night when the lights were off and the slow traffic revved by and streetlights produced patches of rectangular light onto our bare wooden floors. It’s funny how any little mundane thing can take on a mythic quality if we wait long enough to go back to it. I remember nights singing old pop songs in the shower and thinking about the first girl my age that ever moved into Penbrook, the first girl I ever really liked. These were the untold memories, the ones that, separate, were meaningless and mildly embarrassing, but compiled cast a shadow long enough to cover the tendencies of adulthood. Is any memory really meaningless?

Past the Moroski’s place.

I never knew her husband Zeke Moroski, but I used to dog sit her cocker spaniel Buffet (pronounced like the strung out beachhead singer) when she used to go up to Penn State games. Her house was huge, blue and on its own little triangular block behind my block and across the street from our bike ramp garage area. The dog-sitting came at a time when I was just on the brink of alcoholic revelation—wanting to drink, but having absolutely no means to obtain it until I found her fully stocked bar in the basement. One night I got drunk with Nate in that basement, mixing liquors together from a book we found. Mrs. Moroski also had a huge collection of Stephen King novels I still haven’t returned. She took an odd pleasure I think from lending them to me, knowing she’d probably never see them again. Around the side of her house was a woodpile that I used to hide porn under. Outdated Playboy images of women bent over, holding fake pearl necklaces so they snaked between their asses. Ripped out of magazines and folded many times over, for easy insertion into the waistband of my pants. I hid them out there because my room wasn’t sacred enough. I just felt the need to have those pictures outside, in foreign environments, not yet knowing of masturbation. I’d stare at them for hours, wondering exactly why I was so enamored by thirty something year old women pretending to be twenty something year old women spreading their overly make-upped thighs to the folds of a glossy magazine spread. Later I would find a copy of Playboy in the Moroski house and wondered what she was doing with a magazine like that. I stole the magazine, of course, but I wonder if it wasn’t a cherished possession of hers. The last remnants of her dead husbands porn stash. Sweaty handed moments of her husbands’ life she had never known.
And there, hidden away, through a rusted wrought iron fence it stood.
The backyard of my youth.

A duplex with a long, skinny backyard fenced in on one side. The back edge used to be my dad’s garden and how many hours had I seen him out there tilling and putting up his tomato stakes? He loved that garden, in many ways I suppose it was the one thing that kept him sane, what with all the young kids running under the eaves, crowding his living room, upping the volume on a thousand television shows while he patiently tried to do his crosswords. Fenced in by chicken wire, it was the one place we knew we couldn’t go.
Of course, that didn’t stop us.

Closer to the house there was a patio of cement and I’ll always remember the small gap between the back stairs that led under the porch. I’d spend hours crouched in that little niche, peering desperately into the dark, hoping to spot some old toy or something discarded years ago by my older brothers—a hand-me-down of a different sort, hidden, a treasure hunt caused by indifferent discarding. There was also a smell that emitted from that gap. Later I would associate it with the smell of the damp earth left in vampiric coffins. It had a musty, dirty smell I could only call nostalgia.

Past the patio a narrow walkway cut the yard in two and also served many other purposes. It was a raceway for my skateboard, me imagining I was in some relay race, board to knee, other leg propelling. It was a plane of battle for my GI Joe’s, each side trenching up in the tall grass waiting. But first and foremost, it was a home plate and further down second base to my little baseball diamond. I was a pretty good baseball player in my youth and I think much of that derived from my lonely (yet not so lonely) days bouncing tennis balls onto that cement walkway, hitting the ball and racing to catch the ball. In my mind the game played out perfectly, me switching sides did not change the fact that my batter was still running around the bases. I made up fictional names and fictional teams and kept track of them, so deeply saturated in my own overactive imagination.
I even announced my own games.

Looking back, that back yard was just as important as the house that went with it. More important maybe. Unlike today, where video games and more television channels fight to keep kids inside, kids my age where pushed out into the world by moms fastidiously scrubbing and dusting, tired of the little mud sneaker prints that trailed throughout the house. And we made due. Did we get ourselves into trouble? Of course, no one’s a saint, but I do think we got something deeper from our excursions, our trial and errors. I think we established an inherent perspective of our surroundings, a sixth sense of perception that has served us well even all these years later. A feeling of home turf, a proud beating in our chests. Or it could just simply be our hearts racing as we rounded the block and slowed to a walk, taking in the last rushes of air as we made our way home in the fading day.
I keep walking.

Atop Reservoir Park, the highest point in Harrisburg, I can see it all rolling downward before me. Houses nestled around patches of elms and shrubbery, alleywayed and intersected, a technical schematic of everything that was my youth. I knew the place well. I knew the people well. We moved out of Penbrook my sophomore year in high school to a house just barely in another township. The little borough had decayed inwardly by then—older people dying off or moving to retirement homes, and outwardly with the forever-growing city. The trees look lonely now, but the crotches of their forked branches once provided footholds for my size eight’s. The shrubbery has mostly died off or made way to fence, but you may still find a little arched space in the twigs, small enough for a kid to speed through in a night game of flashlight tag. It serves as a reminder that youth is a supernova that explodes and is gone before you ever thought it would be. The heat still lingers through high school and by college you are only left with the memories. But every now and then you feel like walking, slowing down, and you make your way through the hallowed ground that was your whole life, finding and retracing the steps you once made. Your steps are much bigger now, so you need patience, but in time, you may find a ghost image or two of that little kid with a Penbrook baseball cap and a freckled grin, laughing as he makes his way home.

Smiling, now lost in memories, I make my way home.

Brevity

Presently she is pressed against the porcelain. The grout between the tiles is blackened with whatever sins the previous occupants have left behind, but she likes the stinging feeling against her. Water as cold as she can stand sprays from a limp showerhead, tickling her as the drops trickle down to find their way between the white of the tiles and the moon-pale glow of her untanned portions. The shower curtain is a dull tan, probably bought for longevity’s sake, and she leaves it partially open to let in a strong shaft of light, only hitting this motel’s bathroom window at this particular hour.

This is a ritual she knows well.
Her breasts pressed tightly to the wall, she imagines her heart beating Morse code into the plumbing, vibrating the secrets she can never expose. She feels the scents of the day washing away, sliding down her Goosebumps, amassing at her ankles, but she knows that although they may have left her body, they will not leave this room. They will evaporate off of the plastic curtains, the fogged metal knobs. They will join the other scents of this stranger’s abode to be sanitized by cleaning products and sprayed over by fake fresh floral disinfectants. Nothing in this room is ever left out in the open for very long.
When she finally gets out, squeezing the excess water from her long brown hair and wrapping a towel around her body, she lights a lone cigarette and sits upon the sill, slick wet legs crossed and kicking anxiously. The back of this motel has nothing particularly special to offer as far as a view is concerned—a high chain link fence tangled by vines, the backs of a few nameless warehouses—but she stares out transfixed anyway, taking long drags and glancing back every now and then to watch her puddled footprints evaporate to nothing. Birds she doesn’t know the names of are chirping out their last songs to the rhythmic rise and fall of crickets. All this she takes in to create the detachment, to make this more like a movie she has watched over and over and less like the reality it has always been. And has she always done this she wonders, a sudden breeze blowing off the fragile ash from her cigarette. Has she always taken a romanticized view of this sin? As if the rituals have become just another way to refine the variances of everyday life into a script she stands erect to the window and unravels the towel, white and damp with water, letting it fall beneath her. A gust of cold air snatches away the last beads of water, sending shivers through her body. Has this ever been more than just an escape?

As if to place the dot below the curved question mark a car is heard pulling through the gravel of the parking lot behind her. She bends quickly to grab the towel and dry off completely, wiping harshly and tightly wrapping herself up again, sliding through the opened bathroom door and out into the curtain-muted bedroom. Almost hoping it isn’t him, almost wishing away the ritual, she looks out into the parking lot. From her view from the second floor, out over the paint chipped balcony, she can only make out trunks. Out past the parking lot, cars are slowly funneling their way past—speeding up and slowing down at lights, an idling crowd of people staring straight ahead to avoid any sort of connection or contact with those around them. Though there is no movement within the lot and by now she is certain that his car has not pulled in (stupid, it is still an half hour from their agreed upon meeting time), she tries to make out which car has most recently arrived. Tries to find some small clue, as if she could feel the heat of the hood, or hear the ticking of the engine from her sealed in existence. Finally giving up, she falls back into the bed, again unraveling her herself naked beneath the damp towel and lights one of the two cigarettes sitting on the stand beside the bed.

You shouldn’t be wasting your best years on the worst of situations. She hears her mother’s words from a past fight, like the pointed edges of the broken coffee mug left behind her, smashed upon the floor. Walking briskly out of mother’s house towards her car (she’d never give her the satisfaction of running away), waiting for a final yell from the doorway as she drove away. But only silence. And in truth, there was nothing more to say. Her mother had always used her words frugally. They had been talking over breakfast in the kitchen. Light conversation turning a dark corner before she could even finish her toast. It must have been something that was boiling up inside her mother, something that needed to be said and there were no smooth transitions into such things.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh don’t do this to me, Caroline, don’t act as if I’m senile and can’t see—”
“—Moth—”
“—No, you’ll hear me out this time. You think I don’t know about him?” Caroline laughs spitefully, half-heartily trying to dismiss her mother, half simply trying to shut her up.
“Him who, mother? I haven’t been on a date in months.”
“So clever you think you are. Naïve. You think I don’t notice the private phone calls, the sneaking around. Sure you haven’t told me about any boyfriend, but there is man hidden in those actions—” Then silence, she could only sit there and brush the crumbs off the table. “Does he have a wife, is that—”
“Oh you think you’re so smart don’t you? You think you know everything, like my life has to be on display for you and everyone around me?”
“No.”
“You think every fucking thing I do is a mistake, don’t you? And you want it that way, don’t you? You want to just sit there laughing, watching me fall so you can make up some lesson for me to learn.”
“No listen to me.”
“Yeah maybe I am seeing some guy. Maybe I have my own reasons for not letting you in on every little thing in my life. Maybe I just enjoy a quick fuck every now and again without any goddamn attachments. Who are you to criticize?” The bitterness was flowing freely now and she knew that it was only exposing her more.
“Caroline.” The tone was stern, echoing from fights long past. Her mother would have her say. The air hung stagnant in morning light. When their eyes finally met, Caroline knew. And she knew that the words her mother spoke would hit that much harder. “Trust me; I know what you’re going through.”

Trust me; I know what you’re going through—a subtle line echoing infidelities down from mother to daughter. The words had crushed her.
The television inside the motel was old, veiled with dust, and rarely had a clear picture. Out of the few basic cable channels to choose from; the infomercials, the soap operas, or the daytime talk shows, she always chose the latter. The talk shows at least were grounded in some form of warped reality. Mothers that didn’t know the father of their child. Underage prostitutes confronting their parents. Relationships so enmeshed with infidelity that it was hard to tell exactly who was cheating on whom. These were everyday people who made mistakes.
The daylight began to recede, the shaft of sunlight crept back out through the bathroom window, leaving the rooms dark except for the television bouncing light off of the dull, white walls. Almost drifting off into a light sleep, Caroline checked her watch. She would have to get up soon and get dressed. And wasn’t that silly, she thought, putting on clothes that would just be taken off again. I should just open the door in the nude and save some effort. Is that all he really wants me for? Could that be it? Was it all for the sex? What was it, if not sex? The curled vines entwined together in formal relationship only clutch so tightly to the rusted fence for a chance of flowering one day at a better vantage. Why struggle up the tensioned links only to try and bud under the light at some new haphazard point? There was a drama involved in these ponderings that she would never call sultry, but she twisted over the sheets of the bed to try and quell the fire inside her.
Detachment.
It must all lie in the detachment, the double-edged sword. The very thing she used as shield against moral depression had only served to prolong the immorality. I’m an actress on a cheap set waiting for my scene to start. There is no reality outside of these walls and no family for him to go home to—just a finite script. When she finally swung herself around on the bed, feet hitting the floor, she realized that she would have to go to the bathroom. She moved quickly, the cold feeling of the bathroom tiles only intensifying her urgency to urinate. And just then, her lithe body cutting a dull silhouette in the dark room, by some cruel design, she heard a car pulling into the gravel lot.
Fuck fuck fuck, she thought disdainfully. She did her best to hurry up; thinking how ironic it was that she was still completely naked. The flush of the toilet beat out the knock on the door and quickly, her heart racing wildly with an excitement she rarely felt, she softly padded towards the door and opened it, the last light of the day exposing her to him.

“Now there’s a sight you don’t see every day,” he said smoothly, moving in towards her, slipping a short, skinny arm around her smooth body and moving towards the bed. Caroline laughed and after quickly realizing that the door was still open, kicked her leg at it, successfully swinging it home with a thud.

He set her up carefully at the foot of the bed only to topple her, crashing into the cushioned springs with a wheeze, an old sigh of dust collected from the past. She fell crucified, smiling, her breasts bouncing independently from one another. The man took her place at the foot of the bed, eating her up with his tired gray eyes, squinting through his glasses. He was a balding, middle-aged man, semi clean-shaven and anonymous, a face in the crowd. You could glance at the two together and put a good fifteen years between them, though this sort of calculation is always flawed by the fact that men seem to age faster, weighted down from hand-me-down pressures, not unlike gravity weighing down the mind and the soft, sagging parts in unison. In reality he was thirty-five and she was a firm twenty-six.
His belt clanged dully as it was loosed and pulled serpent-like by its head from the loopholes. She sent ten plump toes crawling up the front of his thighs, a two-pronged attack to rendezvous at his manhood. Her big toes were clever generals, quick and thorough, leaving no sensitive spot un-probed. She giggled with excitement, hearing his heaving breaths—the air had gone thick, electric. There was a soft friction to his tie being unknotted and discarded. It was a mellow sound with a gentle, melodic whistle that they both acknowledged with a secretive reverence. Every minute detail was magnified, important somehow, to be toiled over later in the days apart. An evil smile crossed her lips as she watched him watch her hand slide down to her cunt, rolling her fingers across her folds. Another giggle escaped her lips as his hands now forcefully worked the buttons of his shirt, fumbling, misfiring, pulling and tugging. Soon he was as naked as she, firmly awake in the drowsy afternoon, a palpable silence between them.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Harbinger. No calls today, but there is someone here who would like very much to meet you.” It proved to be the thunderclap, a lilting phrase transcending to that other world where she was just his secretary and he was just her boss. It was careful, cruel and sensual and thoughts quickly turned to actions.
The bed anchored clumsily as he dove upon it, grabbing her legs quite roughly and spreading them. He was careful however to mix the harsh with the gentle, riding his slick wet lips across the tensioned muscle of her left calf, catching an errant hair now and again, but persisting onward, flicking his tongue out over the soft crook of the under part of her knee, causing her leg to kick reflexively, a motion quickly stunted by his strong grip. He was intent to torture, then reward and when his tongue finally reached its destination, she screamed unabashedly, thighs squeezing together trying to quell the fever within her. He took his time and did not fight when she rolled over onto her stomach, flipping him on his back, straddling his face, pulling herself upright and back to reach his cock, spitting saliva into her hand and working it into his skin with a dirty professionalism. His thighs and torso began to rock back and forth in a thrusting motion, his buttocks flexing and relaxing, giving up the secret of his desires and she acknowledged; dismounting from his face now covered in her juices. She kissed him deeply, moving her body round to meet him squarely. His thrusting slowly quickened, gaining momentum, careful not to pass the point of no return. Caroline cried out wildly, arching her back to change the angle of entrance, her breasts now bobbing wildly. She bent down again to kiss his gaping mouth, letting her hair spill down to enshroud them. His pace quickened, slowed, quickened—torsos beating against one another in sometimes rhythmic, sometimes chaotic punches. He rolled her back over and she lay helpless among the sheets, sweat glistening over her body, taking whatever he was giving. She was faintly aware that their hands had clasped together in a white-knuckled grip. He was losing his control and his glasses were sliding comically down his nose. In a few minutes it would end and they would lay together, heated bodies clutching each other until they cooled, separating as the calm veil of sleep covered them. An epilogue playing out to the cacophony of an idle television quietly cutting to commercial breaks.

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

Caroline and fallen into a short, deep sleep. Her body—spent to the point of exhaustion—lay sticking to the sheets as the sweat from her body dried. Her mind, however, was wild and alive in the murky depths of dream. The images were fragmented and confusing, mixing time and perspective, placing people in the wrong memories. In between this tangled cross-stitched web there lay a dark, incestuous undertone. Her mother, aged backwards at least twenty years, stood naked in her present day living room, peering out of the tiny front door window on the tips of her toes. She had the lithe, muscular legs that her daughter would inherit and the likewise naturally straight blonde hair. Though the house seemed lit with the afterglow of a late summer day, there were dark storm clouds outside the windows, heavy and pregnant, the promise of a storm. Trees were swinging; bearing the brunt of what must have been hurricane-like winds, losing branches, hitting power lines. Her mother relinquished her lookout at the door only to walk over to the large bay window, staring out unabashedly, muscles clenched and anxious, clearly waiting for someone.
Then she began waving.
From the back end view of the dream, her breasts, young and firm, lolled back and forth to the momentum of her waves like crude pendulums. Slowly the men appeared. Dark silhouetted bodies on the front lawn, peering in the windows, closing in on the house like a slowly amassing group of zombies. Her mother brought her hands together, clasping them and jumping up and down like a little child waiting on Christmas. Short bursts of giggles were the only sounds in the staticky room. The door burst open either from the wind or from the dark figure that stood in the doorway now, not necessarily menacing, but there was a hint of sin in the air as he entered. A blank, anonymous man come to take her mother. As they resided to the couch, he pounced upon her, grabbing at breasts and clumps of hair. Her mother laughed maniacally, laughter that echoed through the realm of dream and into reality as Caroline was rocked violently awake by her own shivering. The room had gone cold in the darkness. Michael lay next to her, breathing heavily, occasionally snoring. She eventually collected herself, but the image of her mother would not leave her.

********************
“What are we doing here, Michael?” The first words spoken in close to ten minutes. Startled, he adjusted his glasses which were creeping clockwise upon his pale, squinted face.
“What do you mean?” An awkward reply, wary of any tricks. He sat upright on the bed, attempting to turn on the light, but she stopped him.
“What are you doing to me, Michael?” He inched closer, trying to make out the look on her face.
“Well, I thought I had been making love to you, but I suppose—”
“—Are you sure, Michael? Are you sure you’re not just fucking me?”
“What the hell is that kind of talk?”
“Look, Miche—”
“—No seriously what the hell are you thinking, Caroline?” There was a defeated tension in his words as with a man ceaselessly holding together a poorly made dam. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, exhaled more out of nerves than exhaustion. Two naked bodies lying parallel to each other, foreign and scared to touch each other now that the intimate moments had ended. Caroline refused to look at him. Instead she spoke halfway into the pillow, half hoping she could muffle the words she was so afraid of saying.
“This is not healthy for me, Michael. This can’t be. Look, I know that deep down I do love you. I know that there is this fierceness inside me that shakes me wild with excitement when I think about our times together in this motel. But it’s just drama; it’s just escapism. I’m lonely and you’re unhappy. So we arrange times to fuck and then we go back to reality and act like there is nothing between us. Maybe I’m fulfilling some theater dream I had as a child. It’s play acting, Michael, it’s just fucking play acting.” Her words rose above and settled not between the sheets, but between their separated bodies. Michael took some time before answering.
“I’m sorry.”
“We both are, that’s why we’re in this situation.”
The words between them died as Caroline eventually drifted into a light sleep. Michael got up to take a quick shower and left quietly, looking back only once before exiting. It was a sad glance, one borne of self-loathing, cowardice and guilty desire. Caroline had rolled herself up into one of the white sheets, her hair feathered across her face. The door clicked close.

When Caroline finally woke up, she was slightly startled by the darkness of the room. Michael must have turned off the television because there was only darkness. She got up, rubbing her head, which was groggy from her nap, and walked towards the bathroom. The light blinded her eyes and the shower was damp and humid still from Michael’s shower. She turned on the cold water, letting it massage the back of her head. Looking down she laughed, seeing strands of Michael’s hair curled in question marks around the drain. Every time there seemed to be more down there swirling around. He really was losing his hair, she thought. She pictured his sink at home cluttered with hair thickening products. She wondered if his wife was a realist about it or if she played it off to him. She always had these thoughts afterwards, picturing what his family was really like inside their little house. And later, in her apartment she would check her email and he would have written some form of explanation or apology that would make her come back. She always did.

This is a ritual she knows well.