The Presentation of Self Online: A Study of People’s Relationships to Online Social Network Publics

Recently my Master’s thesis was approved by New York University’s John W. Draper’s Program of Humanities and Social Thought. My thesis was  based on past academic research and the study of over 100 internet-active human subjects from over thirty countries. For those who are interested in reading my thesis, or specific chapters, please let me know: marylorraine.snauffer@gmail.com

Abstract below:

How is the addition of online social network systems (SNSs) transforming the ways we think, perceive and behave? In 1959, noted sociologist, Erving Goffman, coined the term the “dramaturigical perspective,” which argues that human actions and social interactions are dependent upon time, place, and audience (1959). Does this hold true when the players move from a physical environment into a virtual, meditated environment? How are the politics of our social worlds transformed when the “actors” and the “audience” are not simultaneously acting in real-time?

This thesis is not as concerned with the technology of online social network sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Hi5, etc., but how we allow these new social tools to recreate our sense of self, our creation of self, and our perception of one another.

Examined through four main parts:

1. Trends of past media theory scholarship.

2. The “Architecture” of SNSs, specifically the erosion of fixed social boundaries.

3. The ways users create their online identities and negotiate invisible audiences and the “Authenticity” of SNSs in users’ lives.

4. Lastly, whether SNSs are affecting the ways users archive personal artifacts and the possible benefits and pitfalls of housing personal artifacts in an online, digital environment.

A Quick Note to Loyal Readers or Passerbyers

Some people think I’ve stopped “writing.” I haven’t. It’s part of my essence. I have been working on two stories for approximately eight months. But during those eight months I also wrote a drab 20,000 word MA thesis, made this show that will be a pretty big deal one day, and was full time employed. I know, these sound like excuses. But it is what it is. And I’m just saying. I feel like I have more time now and I’m going to get back to it. I promise. I am going to finish those stories. And they will be wonderful. Really terribly sad. But wonderful.

Thank you for your patience. 

Or, ha, if you are one of those wandering souls who happened to stumble here from the Official Peace Corps blog site– because I have blog stats, I know where my readers are coming from, you might want to scroll down a lot. I was in the Peace Corps over two years ago. 

Anyway. Thank you again. And come again soon…

My Three Year Poem

Exerts from my journal. In chronological order. Between 2006 and 2009

Had a nightmare last night that I woke up

in the U.S.

that I had

gone home. /

I told my parents I had

to go. They could hear

pigs squealing in the background. /

He said it’s such a long time

when you come

back. I will be a man and I said

stop. /

“I’m restless and figity and so are you.

And we’ll always be this way. Sorry to

break it to you. It’s going to a

bitch sometimes.

But

it’s the way it has to be.” I didn’t

write back. /

Do GRES in Bangkok– ideally. /

I found out my dad– dad– my father– not exactly sure

why

I blanked on that. My Dad

had a heart attack. I feel like my chest

the circumference around my breasts

hurt. /

In bed, dark- hate dark

in Phang Nga- alone- I’m like a baby

again. /

A whiskey and water balanced

on his belly. I may see it now. You get

further and further out. More

and more alone. The fan makes

a cranking sound. /

I think of boys

like husbands.

Who could I marry? /

Everyone has been praising me recently

for being here and I

can’t stand it. /

A little drunk off beers– that’s not entirely

honest

and whiskies alone. Not eating a lot. It’s a

control thing. /

Last night I had nightmares. Hundreds of them.

Where I had to force myself. To open my eyes. To wake up.

In between all of that I dreamt I saw Peter Edling– he had very blue eyes-

he was walking towards me and a flock of great

white

birds

giant

were flying over us and then stopped-midflight,

in their flight- against the blue cool sky. Peter said

that’s the most beautiful

thing I have ever seen. /

I submitted my NYU application. /

I feel like I am on a brink of a break

down. Just stomp through it.

Like a solider. /

I’m stuck on a jumbo jet. If I miss

my connection in Japan. What will happen? /

I have to figure out. I have no idea

what I will do after

Oregon.  Can I get my book

published? I have to get

my book published. /

Peter and Katie and Will and I were the last ones up

in the basement. Nothing changes. /

I feel like I found myself

again.

There is a Keith Haring mural between my apartment

and school. /

I made Gavin go the wreck

room. I started crying over my salad

and whiskey. About– I’m not even

sure- not wanting to live in

New York City.

I was in such a natural pattern in Vermont. Writing and

waking up early and

clean air.

Gavin loves me so much.

Awful Secrets

 “I do see what I am doing, darling. I promise,” she ironed out the white linen tablecloth with her soft hands.

The woman and the man were at the good restaurant on top of the hill. The building was a restored farmhouse. There was a pile of cold, pregnant pumpkins outside and electric candles in the windows and very heavy white dinner plates. She was a doctor and he owned a business but they were still both young.

“It’s not as though I am having an affair,” she said.

But it was, actually, exactly like that, he thought—tipped the vodka soaked ice from the bottom of the square heavy glass towards his mouth, crunched the ice and thought. When the bottle of wine came she still had her vodka.

“You’re stuck in this spot. You just need to shake out of it.” The woman opened her mouth slightly, released a puff of air and then drew her lips back. She touched her lips with a finger and then rested her chin on the back of her hand. She looked out the window—it was frosted and the thick pains were the color of cream.

“I’ve been everywhere,” she said. “I remember,” she went on, “the first time I felt indifferent. I was sitting on a pile of ruins in Scotland with fine company. And nothing, nothing. It should have been everything. “Thing is, I don’t want to leave my job. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to go off somewhere. But just the same—just the exact same— I don’t want to stay at my job. I don’t want to stay with you. I don’t want to stay here.”

He took a sip of wine. “What a great, big privilege to feel this way!” She laughed. The waiter put down the oysters. The man took one and looked at it first. She leaned in. Her breasts were pushed up against the table. Her eyes were wide.

“It’s like this great, big impolite secret that life is boring.”

He swallowed the oyster.

“Do you think of my feelings? When you talk like this. Do you ever think of how this makes me feel?” He took another sip of wine. Faced the window quickly then turned back to her. “You are saying awful things,” he said. “I think you are saying some very awful things.” He was wiping his hands with the cloth napkin.

“It’s all nothing,” she said and waved a hand in the air as if she were fanning out cigarette smoke. “It’s all a great, big nothing. “Maybe this happens to everyone. Maybe it’s just another big secret. It happens to everyone and that’s why everyone lets themselves die.”

“I don’t know what you need. Maybe you ought to go somewhere for a while. Or to your parents house.”

“If I couldn’t see what I was doing here, darling, I’d be frightened. If I didn’t understand. But my love, my love you have to begin to understand me—there is nothing and I don’t care.

“I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care—I promise. So it’s all right. Can’t you see that?

“Don’t, don’t do that, please—”

The man had covered his face with his cracked, bouldery hands. She watched his shoulders tumble forward like a wave breaking. When his chest reached the table he pulled himself back up—like a wave going back, she reaffirmed.

She thought, fine, tonight she’d just cheat it and drink until she was happy again.

Save My Life

A story.

“That night the fever started and later, in my delirium, I said over and over, I am dying. (Maybe you even start to die, and then something saves you. Perhaps it’s like flipping a coin or stepping off a high, unrailed porch when you’re first starting to walk, flinging the leg out into space … Save my life … Isn’t that the core of childhood, that cry as you tip over and what will happen next?)”

-Harold Brodkey, “This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death”

The landlord’s eyes don’t rest that’s the first thing I noticed when he came over to the cabin.
It had just hit midnight but even so the landlord let himself in. I heard his pick-up rattle down the dirt road, saw the headlights cut through the white pines in the front. The shaky light pushed in through the big open window at the front of the cabin and dodged around the room. That window has no curtain.
I had just put wood into the stove that sat in the middle of the main room. I had collected a pile from out back earlier in the day, after I got home from class. Bought an ounce of good pot, it was sitting in a mason jar on the kitchen counter. I planned to put more wood in the stove, smoke two joints then pass out. I wasn’t expecting the landlord.
I had been lying on the fringe carpet, just lying on my back with my hands under my head when he opened the door. I turned my head to the side and saw him. He was old and stocky and short. Hardly had any hair left. The hair that he did have was either plastered to his head or sticking straight out. He pulled off his gloves and stuck them in his coat pocket. Then he bent over with a grunt and unlaced his boots. Stepped out of one. Had to kick off the other. He was wearing thick blue socks.
“Pete, where you at?” He hollered before he even looked up, then he looked up and saw me just lying there in the main room, looking at him.
“Well, there you are, boy,” he said as if he had searched. The landlord walked in the room. Settled down in the one old easy chair that was near the stove. His nose was red and a line of thick, clear snot began to crawl out of his right nostril.
“Get me a beer. You’ve beer? Get me something to put my feet on. Stool. A box. I don’t give a fuck, just something, my feet ’r killing me.”
I didn’t say a word. I got up though. Walked to the kitchen and pulled two beers from the fridge. There was a milk crate in the corner, I grabbed that.
I handed him the beer and tossed the crate on the floor. He straightened it out, put his socked feet on it, crossed them and sighed out. I sat back on the floor, further away from him, leaned my back against the wall. I opened my beer with a lighter and then tossed the lighter back on the floor.
“Listen Pete, you ain’t gonna pay in cash you’re gonna pay some other way and that’s just how it’s gonna be. Gotta pay someway somehow, boy.”
“What’d you have in mind?” I asked. I knew what he had in mind.
He let that lizard smile loose and ran his fat, pink tongue over his thin top lip. He wiped the snot from his face with the back of his hand. My head was hanging low but my eyes were looking right at him. I told him I had to smoke first.

I think it’s the oddest thing all the horrors people allow to harbor in their bodies while going on about their day to day. How those people can look just the same on the outside as they did before the horrors started. I was thinking about this later that night, when I was lying with my back on the fringe carpet stoned out of my mind looking at the wood-burning stove in the center of the room. My feet were right up close to it and they were hot but I kept them there anyway.
The landlord had left. When he got off the old chair and walked to the door, stepped into his boots, bent down to tie them up, I crawled back to the center of the room. Lied down in the same position I was in before. Flat on my back with my hands behind my head. I listened to the landlord open the door, shut it, walk down the way. I heard the pick-up start with a rattle then drive off, the light cutting in and out through the room. I was thinking how if someone had seen me before midnight and then had come back and saw me now, in this same position in these same clothes, here with my back on the fringe carpet, there’d be no reason to think anything had changed. No reason to think I had just sucked that old, rotting man’s dick. Twice.
But shit like that must make a mark inside us somewhere, I thought.

Last week the nurse at the health office told me I didn’t have AIDS.
“That’s good,” I said, “But now there’s blood coming out of my penis.”
She didn’t look surprised. She didn’t look any different. She kept on the same calm face. She said I didn’t have to worry about it but she did make me another appointment with the doctor.
It’s not like it’s bleeding all the time but it’s still bleeding. It’s still weird. I try not to think about it. Try not to imagine it while I’m sitting in class. How there are small beads of ruby red blood dripping out of the tip of my purple spotty dick.
I was standing in my bedroom in the cabin one night. My bedroom is the only room on the second floor. The roof slants from the middle of the room and goes down to one side. That allows me to stand up straight only in half the space. I was in my room taking off my clothes when I pulled off my boxers. I stepped out of them and began to ball them up, was about to throw them in a pile on the floor. I stopped myself and held them out in front of me, spread them wide. The bloodstains were all blotchy. Like some sponge painted red butterflies. I considered this and then I threw them on the floor.
See, I’m having trouble sleeping. That’s another thing but it’s all right. I change in my bedroom and then come back downstairs. Read or smoke or drink beer and just lie there. I’ll just spread out on the fringe carpet and watch the wood stove burn.
I’ll think about things. Things I’ve tried not to think about for years. It’s like recently all these things have been bombarding my mind. They force themselves in. They rape me. That’s the only part about the whole not sleeping thing that really gets to me—how I’m not able to turn anything off. How it just keeps going. My mind just flips everything over and over again and I wish, I mean honestly wish, I could just turn it the fuck off. So yeah, yes, maybe the not sleeping thing does bother me a little.
And I see things. Pictures. They just flash in front of me. I’m looking at the wood stove and then suddenly I’m looking at my mother on the kitchen floor. Or I’m looking at Kate’s old house from my living room window. Kate, my best friend, my childhood neighbor. Kate. Pure. Pure. Pure and good. I drum her name. It’s better to think of her than to think of other things. I know that. I do try.
See, now I’m there. In Connecticut. Now I’m standing in my house watching Kate’s house across the street and I’m sixteen. I’m watching the warm yellow light from her front bay window pour onto the dark front lawn. I’m watching it spread out like a picnic blanket. I see her mom walk by the window. And I know I’m far away. I’m in some ice blue country watching her house all warm and yellow. I know I am very far away.
When the pictures come they are clear. They are very, very clear. It’s like all of a sudden I get it. And I see it. Clear as day, right there in front of me. So what if it happened five years ago? So what if I was wasted at the time? Now I can see everything. What’s that good for? That’s my main question.
I see the Pain. It is a slow and steady creeping red lava. It boils and bubbles and I watch it slither through my old house. I am obsessed with it. I watch it. I try to catch it in old peanut butter jars. I want to trap it and I want to contain it. But it’s impossible to hold Pain in one place. It keeps moving everywhere. It doesn’t stop.
When my mother’s body hits the floor it makes a thud. It sounds like a dead tree and I’m fucking annoyed. I’m reluctant to retrieve it. She is a chore. No more, no less. A chore to slap her in the face. To pull her arm out of it’s socket, accidentally. To call her doctor again. “Yeah, I’m sorry but my mother is having another episode, yes, I’ve stuffed a rag in her mouth…”
We’re at the kitchen table. My mother and I. I am sixteen. The pill container is between us. She shakes out the pills. They tumble into her hand. Bright orange plastic pellets. There is a big glass of water. The glass is blue. Orange in the palm of her hand. A smooth white hand. She laughs. “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Big blue glass of water. She clinks the glass in the air. Cheers. “We’ll see.” Hand covers her mouth. Brings her hand down and the orange pills are gone. She smiles. Squeezes her eyes when they go down hard. She smiles. What’s on my face now? I can’t see that.
Then my mother goes upstairs and gets into bed, tucks herself in and I swear to god she doesn’t wake up for the next two years.
“Here’s looking at you, kid.” She laughs.
My neck hurts and I’m on my bedroom floor again. The back window is open and ice cold is wafting in. There’s that first waking moment of the long drunk black out before you know where you are, when you can be anywhere. Endless possibilities. There is a messy note on my stomach from Kate. Kate’s gone but her notes always last. Black permanent marker on my bare stomach. Wake the FUCK up Peter! I rub my belly. Rub the note. I get into bed. Crawl up into the bed like a dog allowed back in the house. It’s morning. That doesn’t matter. My neck does hurt.
I shave off all my hair for no good reason. My mom sees my skinhead in the kitchen and goes running up the stairs sobbing like a baby. Fucking cunt. I take a picture of myself. Hold the camera out and click. Standing there shirtless in the empty kitchen. Shaved head. A three day old letter on my stomach that reads, Peter STOP STOP stop stop STOP! My stomach is hard now. Punch it, it’s hard. I’m a warrior. I don’t smile. There isn’t a flash on the camera. The picture’s no good.
I find the Pain. I am seventeen. Warm black red blood is crawling down my body. The lava. It’s exactly how I imagined it. I’m digging for more. I’m digging to get it all out. Digging with my dead grandmother’s silver sewing scissors. Digging into my left forearm. I’ve found it and I’ll get it now. Kate’s in the doorway. Kate’s standing there silent and dumb looking like a baby idiot. Is she even fifteen yet? Is she fourteen? I don’t know. I come at her with my silver scissors when she tries to get close. I am growling like a creature. She retreats. She slinks down against the wall. If she stays quiet I won’t give a damn. I’ll let her stay if she stays silent. Say one word though and I’ll get you. I dig and I pull out the Pain. Pull it out like some long intense from a dead person’s gut. Scrap it on the floor. I’ve found it and I watch it dry up and hiss and die. The red turns to brown. It looks like shit.
It’s morning and I have clean white gauze wrapped around my arms and thick white tape. The window is open and Kate’s gone.
I’m on my bedroom floor arms and legs spread out like a dead dried up starfish. My mom’s in her bedroom asleep and gone away. Night after night. Year after year. It is a tomb! Years have passed. Moss has grown over everything. There is long grass coming out of the kitchen tile cracks. There are brown maggots crawling out of the telephone cord and the television remote control. And where is my sister? Where is my father? Where did they go? The house is a layer of corpses slaughtered, left behind to rot. The Pain did it. And then the Pain left. The two who stayed behind were demolished. Had no chance.
Now it’s the woodstove. Now I’m back on the fringe carpet. I’m not asleep but it’s not exactly like I’m awake either. I see the woodstove. I am here and I’m alone. I am in my cabin in the middle of nowhere Maine. I just sucked my landlord’s dick and I don’t care. I’m alone and I can’t stop seeing things.
And I know. I know this is not good. I know. I’m not an idiot.

When I first moved here Kate was the one who warned me over the phone not to tell my mom I was living alone.
“Why’s that?” I asked laughing at her.
“It’ll make her nervous,” she said concerned. Kate was pretty much always concerned. I was pretty much always laughing.
“Anyway,” she pressed on, “I told her you lived off campus but with friends. She asked if you lived with Andrew. I don’t know who Andrew is but I said yeah anyway.”
“Who’s Andrew?” I was laughing harder now.
“I don’t know Peter,” she was getting angry, “but just go with it, okay? It’ll be easier.”
“Fine, that’s fine,” I said.
Kate was still living with my mom then, in my old bedroom. I never understood why she was doing that.
After Kate moved out of my mom’s house she went back to West Virginia, to her parents’ house for a few months before she would start college in January. Last month, out of nowhere, she called and told me she wanted to come up to Maine to visit me. I said that would be fine even though the whole prospect made me uncomfortable. How she would see it all, see me. Like I said, I knew I was pretty far out. I knew I wasn’t exactly in a good or stable place. But I couldn’t say no to her.
Kate came at the end November That was the last time I saw her. She stayed for two days. This was last month.
When I left to pick her up from the airport it was cold out. There was snow over everything and ice over that. It all just looks so far here when there are no leaves on the trees and nothing is blocking your view from seeing out. Except for the pines, they’re still covered.
“I nearly died!” She said laughing. Kate was walking towards me between a row of plastic orange chairs bolted to the floor. The carpet was old and brown. Illuminated flight announcements were scrolling on the wall. She had a backpack over her shoulder and a red scarf looped around her neck. Her hair was staticy and longer than I remembered. She was small. Kate’s young. That’s always what I’d notice first when I see her after a time. I think, Who is this child?
We walked out to the car and she kept going on with the story. How she was convinced that small plane she was on had almost gone down. How the fat Muslim sitting next to her had pulled out his Koran and started praying out loud.
“I swear to god!” She cried when I said yeah right.
“Well, what’d you do then?” I asked.
“I just sat there! I was just thinking how good of a story it’d be if, you know, if I survived.”
That first night I made grilled cheeses on the gas stove. Kate sat on a stool. She still had on her red scarf and she was looking at her lap, fingering the tassels.
“So, what do you do here most nights?” She asked finally. It had been quiet. She had commented on that, how heavy it was here. The silence and the space. She said here they felt like actual things, parts she said, not nothing.
I shrugged my shoulders. Kept pushing down the plastic spatula flattening the slices of bread on the griddle. The butter hissed.
“Write. Do work. Go to parties. Have parties. I don’t know, whatever, stuff.”
After a time she still hadn’t responded. I turned back and glanced at her. She was still looking at her lap, nodding, thinking.
“You’re alone though, I mean most of the time. Do you think you’re alone most of the time? Here, I mean.”
I laughed. “Kate, come on,” I said. I flipped over one grilled cheese, then the other. Pushed them down more. I didn’t know what else to say. I knew what she was thinking. I was wondering how much I had fucked her up. Overall. I was wondering if she would ever blame me for that. For fucking her up. Probably, I thought, eventually.
I shoveled the grilled cheeses onto a plate and put the plate on the table. Kate and I sat down. Kate brought her feet up onto the edge of the chair her knees in front of her chest. She picked up her sandwich and started to peel off the crust. She always ate the crusts first. She did that when we were kids, I remember that.
“You’re going to college in a month then?” I asked her, even though I was well aware that was her plan. I wanted to shift the focus.
“Yeah,” she said and bit into her sandwich.
“Nervous?”
“I don’t care.” She looked up at me and smiled. She put her sandwich on the plate. “I’m not just saying that, you know, meanly or whatever.” She paused and picked up her sandwich again. “I honestly just don’t give a damn about it. I don’t really give a damn about much.”
I nodded, I understood. I got up and walked to the fridge. I asked Kate if she wanted a beer.

Kate said she didn’t mind sharing a bed with me, it was the only bed in the cabin, and after she finished dinner she said she was pretty tired. I led her upstairs, she carried her backpack. I warned her to watch her head on the ceiling.
I told her I still had some homework to finish. That I’d do it in the kitchen while she slept. She stood in the center of the room and pulled down her jeans. She stepped out of them and left them like that. A little mound on the floor, still holding her shape in the seat. She left her t-shirt on while she unhooked her bra and pulled it out of her sleeve. Kate was trying to be brave. She was trying to be casual and she was trying to be brave. I watched her. I missed her. That’s what I was thinking then, how much I missed her. Still, right then, even though she was right there. There was so much space between us. I wasn’t even close to her.
She got into my bed, which is just a double mattress on the floor pushed against the window. There are beige flannel sheets and two plaid comforters. I had changed the sheets for Kate. She pulled the covers over her and looked towards me.
“Just stay here for a bit and then go downstairs, okay?”
I sat on the floor in the center of the room. I crossed my legs.
“What homework do you have to do?” she asked.
“Reading.”
“About what?”
“The ancient Greeks.”
“What about them?”
“Stuff. Some philosophy stuff. How they saw time.”
“How’d they see time?” Kate rearranged the pillows. She pulled the blankets over her shoulders and then she closed her eyes.
“Well, they saw it like, differently than how we perceive it. Sort of the other way around. You know, we face forward. That’s how we imagine it at least. We’re walking towards the future while walking away from the past.
“But the Greeks saw the future as something that came up from behind them. So it’s like they’re standing there facing the past and then the future grabs their shoulders and drags them into it backwards.
“Okay, I mean, think about being in a car. Think about being in a station wagon, okay? We’re in the front seat driving. We see our destination as the future, as where we’re going, what we’re headed to, the point, you know? We’re driving towards it and the Past is just receding away behind us, it hardly matters. Whereas if the Greeks were in the same car they’d be sitting in the trunk of the station wagon, they’d be looking out the back window. Watching what they’re moving away from as they’re being driven into the future. It’s interesting. Does that make sense?”
Kate nodded her head but kept her eyes shut.
“Peter,” she said and then she stayed quiet for a while. I just sat there, waiting.
“Do you ever miss us? Miss the people we were as kids? Together like that,” she smiled to herself but kept her eyes closed. So she understood the space then, too, I thought.
“I think I’m like the old Greeks,” she went on, “I think I’m always facing those kids playing.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Alright,” she said. “You can go downstairs now.”
I told her goodnight and then I got up. I went downstairs and rolled a big joint at the kitchen table. Put on my coat and went out to the front stoop. I watched the night and tried not to think about a thing but like I said, for me that’s pretty much next to impossible.

I never actually went upstairs when Kate slept in my bed for those two nights. I ended up sleeping on an old chair in the main room. I would get stoned after she went to bed. I thought I had AIDS then. And if I didn’t have AIDS I figured I must have something else. That was one reason why I never went to bed with her. What if there was something sick inside of me? What if I got into bed and she reached for me? What then? I didn’t want to infect her. In a way I wished she had never visited me in the first place. It was too late. I missed Kate. The whole time she visited me I was missing her.
She was there but she wasn’t and I wished I didn’t have to know that. I wished I could blame our physical distance on the great space between us. But she was upstairs and I still couldn’t touch her. I was gone.
I am dead in large parts. I know that.
I love Kate. I do. And now I just need her to stay far, far away from me.

The next morning we climbed a mountain and I gave Kate a wool hat to wear because she didn’t have one. I packed a backpack with water and sandwiches. I had climbed the mountain plenty in the summer and fall but I had never gone up in the dead of winter like this. I didn’t think it would be that difficult but like I told her I thought it would be worth the view.
Kate didn’t seem too concerned. She asked how long I thought it would take to reach the top. I told her maybe three hours. Truth is I had no idea.
I remember she started up before me and I followed her. I found a good walking stick early on. I could have moved faster but I wanted to stay behind Kate. In case she fell. In case something happened. I wanted to be able to see her.

Kate wrote me this email last summer. It was right after she graduated high school. I was in Guatemala. I was in this dingy internet shop. A little cement hole in the wall with two beige computers set on a weak, blue card table. The computer screen pulsated and it was making me sick. The shop sold bottles of warm coke in the front and there was a fat little boy running in some sugar-induced circle. There was an old man with a freckle in his eye and long stringy hair chain smoking in the corner. It looked like he had been planted in that spot for decades. For generations. I thought he and the boy were the same. There was a circle to life that was easier for me to see there, in that poor, dusty town somewhere east of Guatemala City.
In Kate’s email she told me that she was going to live at my mom’s house because her parents were moving to West Virginia. She said she didn’t want to go down with them. Said there was no point since she was just going to college that fall. She asked me what exactly I was doing in Guatemala. There was no easy answer for that, I thought. She asked if I thought it was weird that she was going to live with my mom, she reminded me again why it was practical. She was trying to be brave. Kate was always trying to be so brave.
Then she wrote the last part. I imagined how she must have written it. Quickly. Like ripping off a band-aid. Quickly. Squeezing her eyes shut right after she pressed send. She wrote, Peter, without you I don’t know who I am.
And that was how she ended the email.
I remember I never responded. I thought about it but what was there to say? A couple weeks later I went to reread it, I was in Mexico searching for the town where Neil Cassidy died. I looked through my email and it was just gone. My email box only holds so many emails and if you don’t save them they eventually expire. Disappear.
Where did it go? I was surprised how badly I felt when I realized it was gone. I imagined emails go to the same place where dreams go. My dreams can be so vivid. Horrifyingly vivid. I will dream I have love, I mean I will really feel that love. Completely. And when I wake up alone I wonder if it counted.
Where did Kate’s email go? The one where she said she needed me in order to be herself. In what space in this world do these things collect? Where did the love my father hold towards my mother go? If nobody deliberately threw it away where did it go? Where was Kate’s email? We lose things every day. What I want to know is where they are right now, as in this second. And are they still alive? And do they still count?
That was the same night I had sex with a male prostitute in an alleyway. I didn’t know he was a prostitute until he asked me for the money afterwards. When I started to walk away he came at me with this small, stupid pocketknife and I laughed at him. I told him to go ahead, stab me. He just stood there looking at me waving his knife back and forth like a fly swatter. Then I gave him the money. Threw a crumple wad of pesos at him. When I told that to Kate she cried. We were at a diner. It was late. I kept eating my pancakes and she just cried, her head hanging low over a cup of coffee.

When Kate and I reached the top of the mountain everything was white and black. It was wide and it was open and it was free. Kate and I hardly had said a word to one another on the way up. She stood there, standing on a boulder covered in a foot of snow, looking out at that great distance before us. She held her arms around herself. I stood behind her and I watched her. The mountain rolled down into hills that spread out and settled into fields. Everything was under the snow. The bare trees looked like fractures running up and down the landscape. Like slits in the universe. I imagined that if you wanted to you could just step into one of those black cracks and find yourself somewhere else.
I imagined running then. Just running straightforward. Running pass Kate and running pass the trees. Running over the boulder and just jumping off the side. Just jumping into the white and black and falling into it completely. I pictured myself as a buffalo. I imagined that someone had herded me to this point. And now they were about to run me off the edge. Even though I knew. Even though this was my land and I knew where I was running to. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care.
Kate stood in the center of it all. Kate, Kate, Kate, pure and good.
Black and white and cold and snow. And Kate.
I stepped back. I kept walking backwards and with each step Kate became smaller and smaller. I turned around and walked a distance away from her. Then I turned back and there she was. Still. Looking off at that great distance. Her body against the white mountain, the white sky and all those black cracks. She was dressed in light blue and her red scarf was swimming. Rippling up and down in the wind. I watched her dash of red waving, continuingly waving at me. I watched it and I started to step back again. Slowly at first and then quickly. I stepped back further and further until I couldn’t see Kate at all.
I spread out my arms wide and I let myself fall back. The snow had started to come down lightly. My back hit the ground and the pain echoed through my body quickly and then that was that. I opened my mouth and the snow came in. It filled up my mouth.
When Kate left the next day, when I drove her to the airport the last thing I said, when she was looking up at me with her long hair, I cupped my hands on her face, my fingers were touching her hair. I said, “Kate,” and she was waiting for it. I said, “Kate, go on.”
She smiled and then she did. She turned and walked on. I just stood there and she kept walking. I watched her backpack, the bottoms of her shoes come up, her scarf. Then she turned the corner. And she was just gone.

It’s not all bad, the things I see. Right now I’m sitting out on the front stoop smoking a cigarette and watching the night and suddenly I see yellow.
I’m not wearing any shoes and I’m fifteen and I’m telling Kate, I’m saying, “This is perfect, I can’t even see you!” And she’s right there in the center of that gutted out yellow bush hollering, “You sure? I’m waving my hands, can you see me wave my hands?”
“No! You can’t see past the flowers. I can’t see a thing.”
I crawl in and we’re both just sitting together in our secret space. That big azalea bush next to the garage, behind the Albertson’s house. And we talk. We talk and we talk and everything is exactly as it should be. I know that.
The bottoms of her feet are black. We’re in Kate’s kitchen and her mom laughs. Says, “Why don’t you kids ever wear your shoes?”
“We’re making our soles tough,” Kate goes, waves her off.
“Making them tough for what?” her mom says back.
See, now I’m starting to think that maybe we did suspect something was about to happen. And maybe what we were doing was actually preparing for it. Why else did we think we needed that secret space so badly? I think it was all in preparation. I think, somehow, we sensed what was looming ahead.
I see Kate sitting cross-legged inside our yellow secret space. I see Kate and her hair is long and wet and clean. I try to touch her. She doesn’t even realize it. She has no idea. How much I love her. I try to reach out my hands. I want to touch her. I try to reach out my hands.
I love her. I love her. Can’t you see that? Can anyone anywhere understand? Does any of this count?
But now she’s gone and its still night and I am alone in nowhere Maine. It’s cold and all that’s in front of me is my breath. I hear the landlord’s pick-up before I see his lights. Then I see the lights cut through the white pines and I know he’s coming back.
I can’t see Kate anymore but I’m thinking about her still. I’m thinking about what we could have known and what we never said. And I know there was one thing, only one thing that I am sure neither of us had anticipated and that was the fence. When the Albertsons tore out all the bushes and the fence was put up well that, that was truly a surprise.
The landlord kills the engine. He is hacking when he opens the door. He spits and turns back, reaches into the passenger seat for something. He is digging through glass bottles. I hear them clinking.
And I see the old fence now, white and peeling, dividing two overgrown lawns. The wind comes through. I see the high grass blowing. A cold tin trash can. Big black round bags piled up. A broken garage window. A fallen oak tree branch mushy with mold. And I see that Kate and I are gone. And I have to wonder, I can’t stop thinking, I cannot stop thinking and I can’t sleep, please. Can you understand this? Can you understand me? Why I need a fucking ounce of sleep? I cannot stop thinking and what I’m wondering now is, what I have to wonder is where, I mean exactly where did Kate and I go?
I need this to stop. I can’t. I need sleep. Please.
The landlord has a big, clear bottle in one hand and he takes a long swig. He slams the car door with his elbow. Ambles up the way. Throws the bottle in the woods, it shatters against a tree. “Boy!” he calls out. He’s wearing a bright orange hunting cap. “Where’s the party tonight, you tell me. Hey, boy! Where’re you at?”
And I know, I know, this is not good.
“There you are,” he says standing above me.
I am trying to be so brave. Can’t you see that? Can anyone anywhere understand? I am trying to be so brave.

Tangerines & Cigarettes

You know. Things happen. When I was nineteen I was in Galicia, the hard coastal northern tip of Spain over Portugal. Rocks claw out of the sea—the sea claws back at the rocks. I remember the senoras with their tight silver buns and blue kerchiefs, baskets in their arms—and the bread. They walked in flocks buzzing from the market. Their breasts lapped over their bellies and the tops of their hands were lined with veins that looked like tree roots, looked like if they finger the soil they will be swallowed down, digested, and then they will come out again and bloom into a row of soft smooth lovely girls.

I don’t exactly feel like telling a story just now. I feel like poking at the beautiful parts. Are they still alive some place? I am taking an Archiving class. I wonder if I print this story out and stick it into a filing cabinet will it stay alive? If the potential to be found remains—does it continue to count? You know. These stories are my marrow.

It was July in Galicia when I was reading For Whom the Bell Tolls for the first time. I took acid in the main plaza with Karen. Sitting on the ground leaning against the big pillar—I could feel the stones coolness on my bottom through my skirt. I kept itching at my bare knee. We drank tea from a thermos and watched the pilgrims. Streams of them with the seashells around their necks. Dirty, their shoulders raw and burnt. How far had they come? It varied, Karen said—she was examining a pebble, twisting it in her hand. Holding it up to the sun and squinting. As far as Bhutan.

Bhutan. All of the doors felt unlocked when I was nineteen. And Karen was in love with me. And on acid I was in love with her, too.

Years later, in a rural village in Thailand Bootsaba told me how her husband fell onto her when he was dying. It was in the middle of the night and he was going to the bathroom over and over again.
—We both knew he was dying. I knew and I did not know.
She could feel Dying in the bedroom. Could feel Dying packing it’s things into a suitcase.
“I will be ready in five minutes,” it might have said.
—But we would not say it out loud. We believed in words so much! If we did not say the word maybe it would get bored and shoo away.
He would go to the bathroom and then to bed. He was scheduled to check into the hospital early the next morning. Dying in a hospital? Can you imagine anything more awful? Staring at that beige speckled ceiling. Your last earthly sight.
We shuddered. I feathered my left hand. I shuddered again. No, I cannot. Imagine anything as awful.
—We knew. We must have known.
Now Dying pressed the last shirt into the suitcase—a red blouse with a ruffled collar. Smoothed it over and thought, am I forgetting anything? Talcum powder.
—If I had found him on the floor, between the bedroom and the bathroom. I would have never been able to go on. He knew that. My heart would have died.
Bootsaba had fallen asleep, she supposes, is surprised, but must have, and then she woke to his warm body falling onto her, falling into her with a heave or a sigh or a moan or a relief—You are the safest place on earth, he might have thought.
And Bootsaba cried out, “My love, my love, my love!” And she took him into her warm, safe, beating chest.
The suitcase snapped shut. Both locks clicked. Dying straightened its back. Evened it’s shoulder pads.
He fell into Bootsaba and then he fell through her and then cool, cold, colder.
Shaking him now, crying. Screaming. Crying. But before he became cold she was not frantic. She held him and loved him for that moment. For that minute or hour or season. It doesn’t matter. That time, from when he secured himself into her chest to when he died, it wasn’t neat time. Was not measurable rather, was more like the space of daylight filling a room.
—I was brave, Bootsaba says. Smiles. Ticks her head to the side and leaves it there. First her eyes are away but then they come back and refocus on the temple facing the West.

This is the story she tells me in a peeling blue classroom that only has three walls. The sun parades in. There is no wind this month. The temple is on top a hill with 506 stairs leading up to it. We watch it from the classroom. The monks are robed in orange ascending the stairs. Their balled brown heads buoying lightly and in unison. In the blue room Bootsaba and I are sitting by a fan and drinking water and eating wedges of tangerines. There are two stray dogs sleeping in the corner. I look out towards the monks and then back at Bootsaba’s old lovely mapped face—lines running in every direction. Her life’s evidence. Her proof. She breaks my heart, chiseling it away with a very small hammer. There are tangerine peals all over. They smell divine.

Karen and I were going to get matching tattoos so that later in life, when we had left Galicia and had moved on to different places and people and times we would have evidence that one another existed. That we were important to each other. That we were not alone.
—It would be hopeful, she said.
I propped myself on my elbows. We were lying in the grass on the hill that looked over the cathedral. The pilgrims flowed in and out like water. The sun was going down and the light was a warm autumn red. I peered out at it all.
Where was I? Where had I begun?
If we exist in memory does it count?
We never got the tattoos. She burnt my left forearm with a cigarette though. Under a Ferris wheel. There was a traveling carnival. We had befriended a pilgrim, Jordan, from Johannesburg. He stuck around for a while. The three of us would buy wine and bread from the store and drink it on that hilltop in the evenings. Jordan and I kissed once. He pushed me against that cathedral and kissed me suddenly and for a while, I remember. Two years later his car was stolen and he was shot in the face in the afternoon. I saw it on International CNN, the only English station that came into Antonia’s apartment in Barcelona. I was standing up when I saw the clip, holding a pile of textbooks. First they flashed his picture and then they said his name and I knew.

I was asking for it and Karen was exasperated.
—Fine. Fine!
It was nighttime and the glow of the colored Ferris wheel lights fell down on us like dots. Jordan flinched, then laughed.
—I cannot believe, he began. Then instinctively he gritted his teeth, showed his gums. The red cherry went out on my forearm, sizzling. I gasped in a shot of air.
Then I was left with black, a circle of ash haloing around a bubbling blister.
—Happy?
She tossed the cigarette butt on the ground.
—Now we will remember it forever!
I clapped. I was drunk. I looked at Jordan and gave him a prideful smile. I felt like I had won something, that I had just proven correct on a difficult test question.
Now this will always count.

Six years later I am rubbing the dot of scar tissue. Now. Today. In my bedroom in Manhattan’s lower east side. The sound of the street is pelting in through the window like stones. It is my birthday. What do I have to prove it? That I have completed all of these years—that my life has existed? I don’t even own a bed frame or a kitchen appliance. I don’t know. I was once burned under a Ferris wheel in Spain. I am rubbing it. I have proof. I have that.

Ahja Was the Name of the Baby

I wrote this article in the middle of my Peace Corps service. It was never published. But I like it more than any of the other articles I published. So here it is. Two years late.

The Muslim prayer chants are broadcasted from the mosque near my house every evening. The sound bounces off the mountain I live near. I love this sound.

My friend, another volunteer who lives a few hours away, found a nest of baby rats sleeping in his mattress. Rats are a problem here. He drowned them. Then he bought rat poison, which was a ball of tar, and put it in the kitchen. When the rats try to eat the tar their face fur burns off and they scream, which signals for neighboring rats to come and assist, then they go for the tar and the cycle continues until you have all the rats screaming and burning in your kitchen. Then you have to kill them. He didn’t realize this when he bought the poison; he just thought they’d die. He killed the rats in his kitchen with a machete.

I made a joke that his rat problem reminded me of a recent terrorist attack in the south. The five most southern provinces bordering Malaysia are called “the restricted zone,” in Peace Corps jargon and I’m not allowed to go there. The closest province to my house is a couple hours away. There are bombings or shooting almost daily. It’s been going on for the last few years. It has to do with Muslims and Buddhists and the Malaysian border. I’ve never fully understood the root of the conflict.

Anyway, a couple days ago a man shot a noodle shop owner, the police came, and then a bomb went off. It had been hidden in a motorbike. The whole thing was a set up. Lure over as many people as possible and then detonate the bomb.
“Just like your rat poison,” I said.
“I don’t like killing them,” he said.
I was bit by a stray dog a few weeks ago and have had to bicycle to the local hospital every day for cleanings. It’s a deep puncture wound. I sit in that hot, outdoor waiting area for hours sometimes. I watch the poor, old, crumpled women that are pulled out of the backs of pickup trucks with their big, elephant feet twisted in awful directions.

Yesterday I was sitting on a plastic stool outside my house watching a half dead lizard being devoured by ants and wondering what I was doing here. The sun had just set. I was wondering why exactly I had volunteered to be tossed across the world. I wondered whom I was trying to impress—as if I had gone on a giant, two-year rollercoaster to awe a date.

I wasn’t feeling particularly altruistic that evening. The day before I had succeeded in sealing tens of thousands of dollars to be donated to one of my schools by a private donor. –“Whatever you want,” the donor said, he was an American. He had retired and now divides his time between philanthropy and golf. “Whatever you think this school needs, let me know.”

I couldn’t think of anything tangible. The teachers and students need motivation, inspiration, something that will lift the bar around here, lift the standards. Donating the money, I thought then, is the easiest part of charity. I thanked him graciously. Then we posed for pictures.

The old grandmother who lives next store came to my house. In her flowered sarong and oversized button up shirt with the baby at her hip. I love this baby. I took her from the grandmother and walked her to the dumpster down the street where the bony cats loiter. The baby and I like the cats. We watched them paw through the garbage. The Muslim prayers started chanting from the megaphones into the early evening, long scratchy wails and cries. The baby touched my face and I turned to walk her back home.

The Dark Place

Based on a true story, names have been changed.

When I opened my eyes there was light.

Boston. Matthew’s mother was standing over me. I was on the floor, in a sleeping bag, in the main room of the apartment which was everything, was the kitchen, the living room and the office. I considered her. She held her eye on me, kept an eyebrow raised. She drank some coffee and then the fax machine went off and she walked towards it. I had a headache and I felt nauseous.

Boston. Three walls of the apartment were made of glass. The apartment was on the third floor. It was $5,500 a month. The government was picking up the bill. “They’re treating us real good with this,” his mother said later. Said about the apartment, not about the situation. She was angry about Matthew’s benefit party. She was angry the government wouldn’t let Matthew leave the hospital to go upstate for it, even though his doctors said it would be okay. That Matthew would be okay to leave for the weekend. He’d travel by ambulance. But the government wouldn’t have it. Matthew’s mother kept at it. Calling people. Asking for favors. She said three of her boys had given their service to the U.S. Army and she had never asked for anything except for this. She let out a long sigh, said she was a country girl and hit the fax machine with the heel of her hand. “What am I doing here?” she said. I thought it was time to get off the floor. Brian, Matthew’s brother, was gone. I wondered where he went. I wondered if he was planning on coming back.

Outside there was a walking bridge over the freeway. The walking bridge was the same level as the apartment, if I stood at the window I was eye to eye with the pedestrians. “You can see the whites of their eyes,” Brian said last night. I wondered if he said that in Afghanistan when he was in the marines. I thought it was an odd way to put it. Last night everything was funny. When Brian and I were drunk we turned on all the lights. Brian mixed Black Label whiskey, his father’s, with ginger soda and ice. “Watch out, it’s strong,” he said bringing over another glass. He had manners I wasn’t used to. He kept asking if I was comfortable. The Celtics had just won the play-offs. We could see fans spread out of the stadium from the windows. I pressed my palms against the glass like I was surrendering. I examined the streets. Brian pushed at my neck with his fist. He rolled his knuckles from one side to the other. Playfully. It was same game Caitlyn was telling us about. How it tickles your spine. Caitlyn was sitting with Pat’s wife, Abby. They were drinking Coors Lights. Abby was telling Caitlyn about how Pat couldn’t shit. About how his head is three sizes too big and the swelling won’t go down. “But he’s all there,” she said. “I can see him in there. He’s just deep in it. I can see him though. He’s a mess. It’s a mess.” She said. I wondered if Brian and Pat’s wife had ever had sex.

The hospital was on one side of the apartment building. The bridge on the other. The big stadium on the third with the biggest Bud Light banner I have ever seen hanging over everything. The Mass Pike snaked around it all. Under ground and above ground. Burrowing below and then sticking its neck back out, cars darting out everywhere. I hated driving around Boston. Caitlyn and I got lost when we were trying to find the hospital. It was late. At one point we ended up at Logan airport. We had been driving for eight hours. We were laughing but mostly we were frustrated. I was frustrated. I was frustrated I was being pulled along into this whole thing. I just wanted to go to sleep somewhere. Get a motel. But I had already told Caitlyn I would go with her. I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it now. But I wanted to. I kept thinking of different excuses to tell her, but I couldn’t get any of them out of my mouth. So I didn’t say anything but my mind was going wild.

“There’s something I should tell you,” Caitlyn said and paused, “about Brian.” She said this somewhere along Route 95 in Connecticut. I had only met Caitlyn a few days before. I had begun to notice a disturbing pattern of how often she started up her sentences with that phrase; “There’s something I should tell you.”

I was eating baby carrots. I put the bag on the dashboard.
–“He was a heroin addict,” she started, “I mean up until three months ago. He had been using for the last two years. It was pretty serious. He was married, he got married really young, and she got into heroin. Brian never touched it. They had two kids and Brian was doing everything, working, taking care of the kids, taking care of her, everything. And then finally she left him. Just like that. Just disappeared. And that’s when Brian tried it. Like he wanted to know what this thing was, you know, this thing that ruined his life. And he got into it pretty deep. He lost his kids. His parents pretty much dropped him. But then he heard about Matthew and it all stopped. I mean slam-on-the-brakes stopped. He’s clean now. He’s devoted everything to Matthew. Him and his mom. I don’t know, I wanted to tell you that in case it came up there.”
I nodded. I thought, Great. I thought, That’s just great.

“I pray to the good Lord every day,” Matthew’s mother says. We are sitting at the kitchenette table now, she and I. She pours me a cup of coffee. “So many good people are praying to our Lord. And You’ve helped us, God knows. You’ve helped us. You brought Matthew back. Matthew had bled out, you know. When the medics arrived Matthew had bled out. When they got him to Germany he was gone. He was gone for one month. And then You brought him back. This is Matthew’s rebirth. And it’s our rebirth, too, it’s the time for our rebirth, and I thank the Lord for that. Just look at Brian for proof. He’s a new man. A completely new man.” She shook her head, focused on her coffee mug, and then lifted herself from the chair.
She excused herself to the bedroom to get her Bible; there was a passage she wanted to read to me. I was thinking then how there are different levels of religious people; there are the kinds who reference God a lot. But then there are the sorts who talk as if God is right in the room. Drinking his morning coffee or flossing his teeth in the bathroom mirror. I realized pretty quickly Matthew’s mother was of latter category.
I wondered how often she told this story.

“Hey you two,” Abby hollered to Caitlyn and I from down the hall. We were walking through the hospital. The hospital was filled with freaks. There was a boy missing most of his face. It was as if someone had just pulled down a long piece of thick skin to cover his eye, his nose, most of his mouth, like it was plastic wrap and his face was a heaping bowl of leftovers squished down underneath. He was sitting with a boy who was missing his left arm except for a small stump coming off the shoulder. They were on a couch in the hallway near a window. The boy with half an arm kept his eye on me.
–“If Matthew’s bitch of a wife comes in we can sneak you girls in Pat’s room! You know what Pat said? Brian did you hear this? Pat said, put ‘em in my bathroom!”
–“Did he really say that?”
–“Swear. I was telling him how we’re sneaking the girls in and he said throw ‘em in the bathroom!”
–“That’s a good one. We just might.”
Caitlyn was Matthew’s ex-wife. Caitlyn had explained that to me in the car. She told me that Matthew’s new wife was a control freak. That she was a jealous psycho-bitch. “She doesn’t want any single women visiting Matthew.” Caitlyn laughed, “His legs were blown off! Who the hell does she thinks wants to steal him!” She paused and considered her words. “So it’s sort of like, we’re going to sort of sneak in. Brian will help us. But like,” she paused again, “if his wife catches us I’m fucking toast.”
I kept my eyes on the road. I asked Caitlyn if she wanted any baby carrots. My mind was going wild.

Brain fell. He knocked his knee into the coffee table and fell onto the couch where I was sitting with my legs folded underneath. “Shit!” he laughed. “Jesus, Brian!” Abby said coughing out cigarette smoke. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Caitlyn. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Walking it off,” he laughed, took one lap around the coffee table and then sat back on the couch.
Brian took a big sip of his drink. I watched him. I watched him like he was a new and different sort of animal I found, like I was spying on him lurking around my backyard from the kitchen window, debating whether or not to call someone.

I was on my way to Maine, that’s where I was going. I had a job there for the summer. Shortly after I arrived I would realize the whole thing was a mistake. That I was better off staying where I was. Later I would hear a story on NPR, when I was driving alone between Baxter State Park and West Forks. Up there in the middle of nowhere. Long stretches of road and trees and what I consider to be nothingness. An hour would go by and I’d realize, anxiously, that I hadn’t seen one car yet. I was alone so much in Maine. I didn’t think it was good for me, not like I used to. I used to think that sort of thing built character but my mind was starting to change. Self-imposed challenges and exiles didn’t seem noble or educational anymore. They seemed stupid. I wanted to go back to the place where I knew I was happy. There was a physical place, 400 miles south, where I wasn’t lonely and it seemed strange and unnatural that I had voluntarily moved myself from that place. I was changing.

The story on NPR was about a Unitarian minister who told families that kin had died. One story she told was about the death of a 40-year old man in Brewer, Maine. It was a clear night in early December. She said he had decided to go ice-skating on the pond. The stars and the moon and the memory of the stars were bright when they came out of the woods, so much so that when the search and rescue team reached the pond they didn’t need flashlights. The minister said, “I didn’t blame him for wanting to go ice-skating that evening.” She said it was a beautiful night and she understood. She described seeing the tracks from the skates on the ice forming two nearly straight lines starting from the edge of the pond, through the middle, and then, towards the far side, a clean hole lit up by moon. And that was it. That was everything.
There was something I found very peaceful about that story and I found myself thinking about it from time to time when I was alone. In my tent in the woods, or driving from one place to another. Waiting to go home, I waited most of the time in Maine, to go home.

But I didn’t know any of this yet. I was still optimistic about my summer in Boston. Caitlyn was a co-worker who I had just met in New Jersey a day before and we were driving up together. That was my only relation to her. It was shortly after we left Jersey that she began with it all. Asking me if it’d be okay with quickly visit her ex-husband in Boston. How it would break up the drive. The other details started to trickle out later. We’d get back into the car after a rest stop and she’d mention he was in the hospital. That he lost his legs in Iraq three months ago. A few more miles down the road and she would add she hasn’t seen him since he left for his third tour of duty. How she left him after his second tour. And it went on. I kept telling myself it wasn’t that big of a deal. That it was going to be awkward but it was only one night and that by the next day we’d be in Maine so it was fine.

“I can just wait outside,” I said and Brian and Caitlyn just looked at me. “I have a book,” I added. I started to fish through my backpack to wave it in front of them as proof.
–“He’s not going to bite,” Brian said and I felt like an asshole.
We were standing outside Matthew’s hospital room. Caitlyn and Brian were sanitizing their hands. I wondered who Caitlyn told Brian I was. I felt a strong urge to explain my relationship to Caitlyn, which was that we didn’t have one. That we weren’t friends. That we barely knew each other. I strategized ways I could explain this politely.
–“It’ll be fine. He likes visitors,” Brian said. I smiled. I think I might have said Oh, okay, great then. I put my book back in my backpack. I sanitized my hands.

“Matthew’s still totally full from the ice cream social earlier, aren’t you buddy?” Brian said and clapped him on the shoulder. Matthew gave a smile. One leg went as far as his knee and the other was totally gone. There was a white knit blanket that went up to Matthew’s chin. He was handsome. He was twenty-three.
I smiled at Matthew when I walked in and he smiled back politely. Caitlyn followed in after me. I had wondered, thinking about it in the car, what she would do, seeing him for the first time like this. I had imagined she’d start crying. I pictured her falling onto his hospital bed crying. It seemed like the sort of thing you’re supposed to do. I was thinking about the movies—it was all I had to go from.
–“Oh my god, Matty,” she said when she walked in, “we got so lost in Boston! I’m still shaking. I was driving stick! Can you believe that? Stick! I can’t even drive automatic and we were going in all these tunnels. We ended up at the airport!”
–“How in the world did you manage to get to the airport?” Brian asked. Caitlyn laughed. She sat down on the chair near Matthew. I sat in a chair in the back of the room, by the end of the bed, where Matthew’s feet would have been. I didn’t know if I should introduce myself. I am no good at improvising so I just sat there and smiled when everyone else smiled, laughed when everyone else laughed.
–“You got new tattoos.” That was the first thing Matthew said to Caitlyn. Matthew seemed drugged up. It was late. Brain said earlier, when we met in the hospital parking lot, that Matthew had already taken his night meds, but he was trying to stay awake to see Caitlyn.
–“Matty got his first tattoo a couple months ago, right buddy? On his calf.” Brian said, he was standing on the other side of the bed opening up a laptop, “but then two months later he got it blown off! You should see if you can get a refund. Can you imagine, going back to the tattoo parlor? I’d bet they’d give you another one for free.”
Matthew and Brian laughed. Matthew told Brian to show us a picture of it on the computer.
–“It was the Punisher, you know the cartoon? His whole unit got it. Matty was really close with his unit, he’s been getting all these letters from them back in Iraq.”
Brian was still trying to pull up the photo on the laptop. “Matty’s a celebrity. Caitlyn, I don’t know how much of this you know but Matt’s been on I swear, every news channel. He was on Fox News.”
Matthew was nodding along.
–“Tomorrow I’m doing a radio interview for a Boston station,” Brian continued, “When we get back to the apartment I’ll show you the album my mom is making of the newspaper clippings. I mean he’s been in everything.”
Abby was standing in the doorway. “Hey Mary,” she said and I looked up. I was surprised she remembered my name. “Want to meet my Pat? He’s right down the hall. He’s still awake, I think he’s excited about the whole secret mission of sneaking you girls in.” She smiled.
“I only met Brian here,” Abby began when we were in the hallway, “We live on the same floor in the apartment, and we met in the elevator. I mean his face was familiar because we were both doing the same thing. Waking up, coming to the hospital all day, going home, going to bed, over and over, you know? And finally I said something. There are a lot of us at that apartment, the government pushed us all in there,” she laughed. “You know, it’s nice and it’s close to the hospital. But mostly it’s the wives, and a lot of them are just, I don’t know, it’s a lot for a person. Brian’s different though. We can have fun together. You have to have fun or you’re going to break. You’re going to completely melt down. We’ll get some beers after and,” she paused. “You know, he understands. He’s a good friend. Anyway,” she said turning the corner and pushing open a door.
“Honey, this is Mary, Caitlyn’s friend.”
His head was swelling from the left side. It reminded me of a cartoon dinosaur egg. It reached the end of his bed and was wrapped in white gauze. He didn’t have an arm.
“Roadside bomb,” Abby said, “just like Matthew. You just got’ve thank god there was no shrapnel. You’ve no idea what’s that like. How dirty. Just one piece. Those injuries. It’s hard to imagine.”
Abby walked to Pat and rubbed his shoulder.
“We don’t have to hide anyone in the bathroom, I don’t think Ashley will be in tonight. She usually leaves around suppertime. It would’ve been funny—can you imagine? If you girls were holed up in his bathroom? That was a good idea, honey,” she said to Pat, “Brian and I had the whole escape plan routed out. It was like an army mission.”
I stayed with my back against the wall.

“Matthew is our miracle,” his mother says, coming back into the main room slapping the Bible onto the dinning table. “He’s our miracle. They came to my door. Upstate. And I saw them coming in their uniforms and,” her eyes teared up. It was eight in the morning. “They said there was a roadside bomb. Everyone in the Humvee was dead.” She pulled out tissue from her fanny pack and blotted her eyes. “Before that it was a normal day. Before things that mattered, I was upset we were out of coffee beans. That’s what was on my mind before I saw them driving up. The coffee beans. And the lawn needed mowing. But then, a month later, Matthew came back to us. He woke up in Germany.” Matthew’s mother started directing the conversation to the Lord again. I wondered if she was ever lonely, always keeping God in the room.
–“And Brian. Brian had lost his way. He was in the dark place. In the dark place for years and we couldn’t reach him. But he’s back now,” she looked at me and smiled wholly. “You gave Brian back to us. He found his way. His purpose in all this. He’s a caregiver. That’s why he was put on this earth and now we know it. How he treats Matthew. When you don’t know your purpose it can be hard.” She paused. She remembered the passage she wanted to read me. She flipped opened the Bible. Her nails were painted peach. The page was bookmarked.
“It’s about Our Rebirth,” she said and began to read.

“Matthew’s so fucking proud he’s getting $100,000 from the Army and I’m like Jesus fucking Christ you don’t have your legs! You lost your legs!” Brian had been chain smoking ever since his third drink. Caitlyn had gone with Abby to her apartment down the hall. Brian and I were sitting by the window. All the Celtic fans had gone home. Every once in a while a person would cross the walking bridge, I followed them with my eyes. It was two am. It looked so quiet and lonely out there all of a sudden. I took it as my job to watch the night people, when they came, to cross the bridge.
–“And the pride. The language for all this. Hero. Bravery. Pride. Bullshit.
“Sorry, there is no one to rage to here, you know,” Brian laughed. “I’m not going to tell this to mom or anything. Or Abby. I mean she goes along with a lot of this—you have to. It’s all you have. These words. Otherwise, I mean, otherwise it’s all a depressing waste. Meaningless. It’s too depressing. So it makes it better. The ways we spin our stories in order to live, the imagination it takes to bear it.
“I told Matthew I’d be his legs. I told him from now I’d be his legs. He’s my life now, you know. He’s my baby brother.”
Brian kept on talking. And I listened. I thought about how one minute people are strangers and then the next something happens and you are bound to them. You are harnessed together hurtling through the universe. You are holding onto them for your life.

A while later Caitlyn and Abby came back with more beer. “You have to hear this one!” Abby started up. “About Matty’s crazy wife!” She started to put the beer in the fridge as she began to tell the story. It was funny and she kept interrupting herself to laugh. She couldn’t get it out. “You just can’t make this shit up!” She cried, wiping mascara off her undereyes with her thumb. She brought everyone a beer and sat down on the floor. She kept going on with the story, we were all laughing.

As Matthew’s mother read the scripture I wondered where Matthew’s legs were. I wondered what doctors do with the parts. I imagined a department store’s basement piled with mismatched mannequin pieces. The light was pouring into the apartment still, piles of it like stacks of boxes.

Like the Universe beginning it all burst into a trillion stars. And then the Lord sat down in the sun. Hot and dry. Sitting on the Humvee’s fender 100 yards from the engine. He started to pick at an ingrown hair on his arm. After a while the Lord shook a pebble out of his sandal and stood up. He stretched his back from one side to the other and walked to Matthew. The blood was blooming into a larger and larger flower and Matthew’s body was the center of it all. With no great speed, the Lord put his hands under Matthew’s arms and picked him up. Put a hand under his behind and an arm around his back. Matthew rested his chin on the Lord’s shoulder and kept his eyes shut. The Lord rubbed his back. He hushed him.

“Matthew is our miracle,” his mother said again.

The Lord walked away with Matthew. The blood came out and rolled down the dust, rolled back to the broken car and the broken body parts and the bodies, the blood rolled out until Matthew was pure and empty. The Lord walked Matthew out of Iraq. He walked over countries and over the Atlantic and over most of the United States to Brian in some basement in Arizona. He grabbed Brain’s collar with his free hand and dragged him out of his self-imposed nothingness. Brian allowed himself to be pulled away. And then the Lord walked them both home.

I am driving alone now. Turning a corner on Route 201 in central Maine that looks identical to the corner I turned a half an hour before. I am imagining the hole in the ice again. The ice-skating tracks leading up to it. And how the stars and the moon and the memory of the stars must have looked illuminating it all.

A Full Ride

This is one short story from a collection of stories.

“My name is Marjorie and my father’s an alcoholic,” I said. I was standing in the basement of the brick church off Elm. I had been in this church once before, a while ago. I went to an afternoon service with a friend and her family. I thought I’d be able to find the meeting easily only it turns out the way to the basement is through the back door. I didn’t know that. And there weren’t any signs. An older man asked me what I was doing. I was just sort of standing in an empty hall with a piano in the corner and a lot folding chairs piled up. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was thinking about leaving. He didn’t give me a chance to answer. He said, didn’t even ask, just said, “If you’re here for the Nar-Anon meeting you’re going to have to go outside, walk back, and enter that way.” So that’s what I did. Now I’m here but I’m starting to get the feeling this whole thing was a mistake.
Our high school guidance counselor was the one who recommended I come here. I told my mom I was going to the movies. First off lets get it straight why I went to the guidance counselor in the first place. I didn’t go to talk about my dad or to cry or whatever, I went because I’m applying to colleges. Good ones because I’m smart, that’s what the guidance counselor said. She said, “Marjorie, I know you’re bright and I know you work hard and the colleges will see that, too.” She said, “You’re going to get very good scholarships to very good schools.” She said, “I’m positive.” She told me how I’m going to be a Franklin High success story, how I’m going to make our town proud.

I don’t know about that. Though I do know not much tends to happen or change here. People in this part of Maine, the interior, like to stay put, plant themselves in. That’s what mom says. And I think it’s pretty much true.

After the first meeting with the guidance counselor I wrote down all those good things she said in my diary that night, even though it felt a little wrong, self-indulgent. When I was in her office and she was going on with it all, praising me basically, something warm shot up through me light and good like sunshine. It almost hurt my face not to smile. It was like I was trying to hold back the leash of a very strong and excitable dog.

She asked me if I wanted to go to school in state or out of state. She said out of state is more expensive but she could nearly guarantee I’d get a full ride. She kept saying that, a full ride. The more she said it the more I enjoyed hearing it. As if soon I would be buckling up, getting ready to take a long trip to the moon or to sail around the world. I was about to go on a full ride.

She told me not to think too much about money, that we could sort through that later. For now she just wanted me to narrow in on what sort of college I’d like to attend. Big or small. Urban or rural. That sort of thing. The guidance counselor made it all seem so easy. I could tell her what I liked and what I didn’t like and then she could just put me there. As if what I like is the only thing that matters in the world.

It was when she asked if my parents were proud, she said that at the end of our hour. I guess I should’ve probably just said Yes. It was that sort of question. A wrap-up question, a polite send-off. She couldn’t have been expecting any sort of real answer. I don’t know why I didn’t just say Yes, smile and then let myself out, that’s what I was supposed to do. What she was expecting.

Instead I sort of laughed and said, “My dad could give two cents.” It was a stupid thing to say. Inappropriate. It was one of those things you only say if you’re looking for something, looking for help or whatever. And I swear I wasn’t looking for anything, it had just popped out. I had a bad habit of letting sarcasm pop out, the same way some people accidentally let burps escape after they drink warm soda or even just because.

The guidance counselor got some look on her face, narrowed in her eyes. She turned her chair away from her desk, which was against the wall and faced me directly. She crossed her legs, leaned back and bit her pencil.
“What makes you say that, Marjorie?” She asked. I thought to myself, good move, try to squirm your way out of this one.

After I told the whole room of strangers that my father was an alcoholic I sat back down on the folding chair and crossed my arms over my chest. The man sitting next to me stood up, he must have been in his late thirties. He said his mother was an alcoholic. I thought he was pathetic. I thought most of the people in the room were pathetic actually. I hadn’t expected to be the youngest one. Not that I had given it much thought to begin with, but I guess I just assumed that the people would be about my age. Young. In high school or middle school. At an age when they actually need their parents for one thing or another. Why did a thirty year old need his mother not to be an alcoholic? Why did it matter to him? I couldn’t wrap my brain around that one.

Mom said it’d be fine if I went out of state. She said it’d be good for me to get out. Mom was just about the only person I knew who hadn’t grown up in Cording. She grew up on the coast, four hours east. Her father was a fisherman and died out there when she was a girl. There’s a picture of him standing by a horse in the hallway.

What dad will say, if he gets to talking about it, which is rare, he’ll say, “I found your mother living in the Motel 8 with a St. Bernard and a pile of books.” He says that she had gone running away from her fiancé. A high school sweetheart, mom says. Mom says she knew it wouldn’t have worked out but she didn’t know what else to do, what else there was. She says her mother wanted her to marry. Everyone just assumed it was going to happen. Once dad said, I remember, he looked at mom and said, “Going to that Motel 8 was the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

Anyway, that Motel 8 was right on the edge of Cording. She met dad, got pregnant with me, and that was that and she’s been here, basically, ever since.

“My dad doesn’t embarrass me, with his habits,” I said to the guidance counselor.
She said, “Well Marjorie, it must have some effect on you. It must be difficult. I know how it can be.”
I had brought my legs up, had my feet on the edge of the chair and my knees covering my chest. She had told me to make myself comfortable so after a while I did. I had started to hug my legs a little. My backpack was on the floor. Mom said I was too skinny for my own good, but I liked it. The way I was turning out. I liked how my hair was long and thick as a horse. I liked the way I could compact myself, fold my body up if I wanted to or how I could spread out and just be tall. I liked how I was turning out. I know most girls don’t say that when they’re my age, or aren’t supposed to at least, and it’s not like I’d tell anyone, but it is what I thought.
“How much does your father drink?” The guidance counselor asked and I thought that was a pretty stupid question. What does how much matter? You either drink or you don’t. You’re either a drunk or your not. You’re either dead or alive. You do it or you don’t. I didn’t even think it was possible to measure. How many cups did he drink? How many ounces? Of liquor or beer? Does it count more if he’s drinking a glass of vodka at breakfast than if he’s drinking a glass after work even if it’s the same size glass? Like I said, I thought it was a pretty stupid question.
I told her I didn’t know. Then she asked what my mother thought of it. I said she worked around it. I said that’s what I do, too. Just work around it. I told her it’s not like I know any other way. It’s like the old men who drink at the Knights of Columbus, my dad used to drag me around there when I was younger, the ones who have a stump for a leg or whatever, they handle it. If you lose a part it’s a big deal in the beginning but after some time you handle it. You just adapt.
“So,” she said leaning her head to the side, “You view your father’s alcoholism as a disease then?”
I didn’t see how that mattered either. He had just turned off. It just didn’t matter to him. I got that. What else was there to say? Anyway, it was about that time she recommended I go to this meeting.

The man sitting next to me had been talking for over twenty-minutes about how his mother only bathes herself every five or six days and that’s after he practically begs her to. I mean that was the only thing he was going on and on about. His sixty year-old mother’s bathing habits. I didn’t understand why he wasn’t just getting to it. Getting to the point. It was like he kept dodging it, running around in these inane laps. Just say it, I thought. All he had to say was he was sad because he doesn’t think his mother loves him enough to care about herself. That’s all he had to say. Not all this stupid bathing, moo-moo wearing nonsense that he was just jabbering on and on about endlessly.
This is when the meeting really started to get to me because I just felt like, you know, not to be arrogant, but I felt like I got it.

I was narrowing in on Boston and I think that was only because of the movie Good Will Hunting, which I rented from the video store practically every Friday night for two months solid. Mom said it was getting ridiculous. She even offered to buy me the movie. When she said that I said no, I didn’t want to own it, I told her this was the last time I planned to rent it anyway. So after that I stopped but I still found myself thinking about it from time to time.
It wasn’t the actual storyline that I liked though that was fine; it was the background. I enjoyed watching the background. It made me feel comfortable and warm. The old sweaters the characters were wearing. The colors of paint on the walls. The stacks of books in the corners. The picture frames. Coffee mugs. I wanted to find that background and put myself in it. That’s why I told the guidance counselor, during our second meeting, I wanted out of state. I wanted Boston, I said. She was scribbling down some note on her desk and gave out a long smile when I said it, like I had answered a difficult question correctly. Like I had decided to join her club.
She said, “That’s good.” She said turning towards me in her chair, “I think that’ll be perfect, Marjorie.”
So, since then that’s been that and now I’m pretty sure I’ll be going to some college in Boston.

It’s not as if my dad’s a bad drunk, that’s something most people don’t understand about drunks, there all different kinds. I know about bad drunks. Luke’s dad two houses down is a bad drunk. I know. Dad will go over there himself if it gets real loud. One time it was so loud it woke me up. I had fallen asleep on the couch. I must have been in elementary school. I fell asleep with my head in my dad’s lap. I remember that. Dad was watching some history program. Or at least that’s what was playing on the television.
“What’s that?” I asked, arching my back and raising my arms up in a stretch. I was tired, didn’t know what was going on. If I had put together that the sound was coming from Luke’s house I probably wouldn’t have said anything, I know when to keep my mouth shut.
Dad said, “I’m going to see if everything’s alright. C’mon.” He never told me to come on, so it was a surprise but a good one. I didn’t even have time to lace my sneakers or get a coat. Mom must have been in her room because she wouldn’t have let me go if she was around. Especially without a coat. It was cold but I wasn’t bothered by it. I followed Dad down the road, had to hurry to keep up, but I kept behind him. When he walked up Luke’s front stairs I stayed back on the sidewalk; thought that was best.
There was more yelling and throwing and finally the door opened. It was Luke’s dad and he was red and steaming. He looked like some half boiled lobster just pulled from the pot.
“What’d it?” he said and looked dad up and down once.
“Just want to make sure everything’s okay here, Bob, that’s all. Heard some noise down the way, just wanted to see if everything’s okay. Dorothy here? The kids?”
“Fine Dale,” Dorothy said poking her head out, behind Bob’s arm. “Thank you.”
“You sure?”
“What the hell that’s supposed to mean, buddy? I know why you’re here, buddy, and there’s no business for it.”
“Don’t mean to get into anything, just checking, I’m with my kid, just making sure,” I remember dad paused then, said, “just making sure everything’s peaceful.”
“Sure, yeah, okay,” Bob said, turning back, going to shut the door. As it closed Dorothy said, Thank you Dale, real sweet of—” then the door shut with a rattle.
Dad walked down the front stairs to the sidewalk. I wasn’t sure if he was going to say anything to me about it or not so I just stood there waiting. His face changed. He said, “I’ll you carry you home on my back, kiddo.”
At that time in my life that was just about the best thing my dad could have said to me, that was about all I ever wanted.

After the meeting, which I thought was a complete waste of time I had to drive an hour west to Auburn and pick up dad from the protest. I had agreed to that condition when mom let me take the car out in the first place. Dad was in the Union and every once in a while he’d have to drive out somewhere and picket with the other workers. Dad hated it, but he did it anyway, said it was all part of the job.
See, that’s what I’m trying to say here, what the guidance counselor doesn’t understand, my dad may be a drunk but he gets his work done. He does his part. There’s a big difference there. A big difference from a lot of the other fathers.
Dad’s a turn-off drunk. That’s just what he is. He drinks enough in the morning so he can go to work and get his job done. Dad always goes to work. Goes to the grocery store. Mows the lawn. He does the things he’s supposed to do. Then later, afterwards when he comes home, well then he keeps on drinking. He’ll set the bottle of vodka on the coffee table and a glass next to it. Put a pack of cigarettes on the table, too.
Sometimes mom will come in. Sometimes she’ll sit on the chair next to the couch and smoke a cigarette and watch what dad’s watching. Then she’ll get up and go into her room and do whatever it is she does in there. I’m always at the kitchen table, doing my homework. I always do my homework. I do more than I need to. My teachers always say, “Marjorie, you go above and beyond.”
I don’t do it for them though, for my teachers. I wasn’t even doing it to get into college, to get out of Cording and get a full ride to Boston. I didn’t understand that whole side of things when I was younger, when I would do extra projects and readings and papers for no good reason, that weren’t even assignments to begin with. I just did all that because, well, what else was I supposed to do? I mean that. I honestly had no idea what else I was supposed to do every evening. So I just sat at the kitchen table and kept at my books.
Thing is, I mean basically, if you want to get down to it, I know how it is exactly. Dad has to get drunk to do things. I get that. If he doesn’t drink he’ll be sick. And when dad doesn’t have anything to do, that’s when, like I said, he just keeps on drinking until he can turn-off completely. He just goes away. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t get loud, doesn’t hit us, but he’s gone. I get that.
But how’s that any different than mom going into her bedroom for all that time? Or from me reading all those books at the kitchen table? How’s it any different? How aren’t we all going away? That’s the main thing the guidance counselor doesn’t get, even though she said, “Marjorie, I know how it can be.” She doesn’t. The people in the meeting don’t get it either. They were all there because they were sad. Because they felt unloved. Well, the difference is I’m not sad so I don’t see why I have any business being with those sorts of people in the first place. I don’t think I have much in common with them. That’s why I’m not going to the meeting again. I don’t think it’s necessary.

I parked the car on the curb about a block down from the protest, which was clear as day. There must have been about two or three dozen men standing around. Holding signs, holding styrofoam coffee cups, they were just standing around. They weren’t yelling out chants or marching, nothing like that. It almost looked like they had all just gone out to mingle with one another.
I saw dad standing by a giant blow up rat and walked towards him.
“Heyyah Marjorie!” A man yelled. Mr. Stinsky, he used to pick up dad for work in his blue truck each morning. He’d come over for dinners some nights, when I was younger, with his wife. I remember that. They didn’t have any kids though they were about that age. You would have assumed they had kids at home. But they didn’t, I remember mom commenting.
“How are you sweetheart?” he asked, patting my back. “Boy oh boy you’re growing up. You’re going to give your dad a headache with all the boys chasing you, bet you’re already starting to.” He laughed, patted my back again.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Give it time, honey,” Mr. Stinksy went on. “Ah, hell,” he said looking up at the hotel. “You know you have to put in your time with these things. That hotel over there’s employing all these illegals to do the new wing, that’s why we’re here. Dad probably told you that though. I could give a damn, honestly. Yeah, you’re dad, he’s right over there somewhere.” Mr. Stinsky turned his head, squinted his eyes and pointed off into the crowd.
“I see him, thanks,” I said and continued on towards the blow up rat.
Dad was just standing there minding his own business. He had a cup of coffee in his hand. He was looking off.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, “Ready?”
He looked at me for a second. Processed I was there. Then he nodded and we headed to the car.
Mr. Stinksy yelled out a goodbye as we walked passed. He yelled out to dad, “Lucky bastard, I’m here for another hour.” Laughed. Dad gave a nod. I waved. We kept walking.

When we got to the car Dad went around to the passenger side and got in there. I didn’t say anything, just got in behind the wheel and started up the car. I was pretty hungry but I knew dad wouldn’t want to stop anywhere. He would say it was fine if I wanted to get food, but I knew he wouldn’t get anything. I figured I’d just wait until we got home. I could make a sandwich there. It’d be easier.
There was some traffic getting through the main road in Auburn. Bates in Auburn, it was a college town, you could tell that pretty quickly. It was different from Cording in a lot of ways. There weren’t any flyers in Cording, for one thing. I always noticed that. The different colored fliers stapled on top of each other on the telephone poles. There were coffee shops here, too. The kinds with blackboards behind the counters and all different colored chalk used to write up the menu items. There were board games and books piled in the corner. The sort of places that invited you to stay as long as you wanted, even if you had only bought a one dollar coffee. In Cording there was a Dunkin Doughnuts but I didn’t think anything about that place felt inviting, at least not for more time than it takes the average person to eat a doughnut.
When I was younger, mom would take me into Auburn. If she had a doctor’s appointment that was out of Cording, something like that, if we were around the area. We would go to Cafe Bon-Bon and mom would buy me a sandwich and a smoothie. Mom would pick up the paper and read it while I ate. I remember that because mom doesn’t read newspapers at home. I didn’t ask her about it, but I remember thinking it was strange, that she read the paper.

In fact, I wouldn’t say much at all. I was just happy to be there. I liked watching the students. I liked it there. I didn’t say anything to mom because I didn’t want to remind her I was there, that I was sitting at her table. I thought if she remembered I was with her it would remind her that she had to leave. That she had to go back home.
Dad turned on the radio, which I was surprised about. Whenever I wanted to listen to the radio, to the stations I liked, he’d let it go on for about two blocks before saying, “Please Marjorie, I just can’t listen to that noise.” He didn’t say it meanly. He just said it and I would turn it off. I started bringing my walkman and listening to tapes when we’d go somewhere that was further away than the grocery store. Dad never commented.
He turned at the dial until he got to a classical station. He listened for a second and then he brought his hand off the dial, rested it on his lap and leaned back in the seat. There was a song playing that was just the piano. There was piano and there was silence and the silence sounded just as loud as the piano. The piano keys dropped like hail on a moon roof. That’s what I thought of. Right in the beginning of the storm, before the hail comes down hard, right in the beginning when you hear one hit, then a space, then another hit, it was like that. I wondered if dad was thinking about the song, too. If he was even listening.
I was stopped at a red light. I was the first car stopped at the intersection. There were two or three cars behind me. In front of me was the bridge crossing over the gorge, the gorge was to the right. Mom, Dad and I had gone hiking in that gorge the day after Thanksgiving a long time ago. I was young, really young, must have been five or six. Dad had to carry me on his back half the time. The trail was too much for me then.
Well, we were just sitting at that red light when I saw the boy. Or man I guess. But he seemed young. He was a college student though. That much I know. You could tell by the way he dressed. In this messy sort of way that was still cool, I thought so at least. He had longish hair it was coming out of the bottom of his hat. He was walking like he had some place to be. I remember I was just listening to that piano song and I was watching him. I didn’t even think about where he was going. I never thought it was strange. I was just watching him. I wasn’t thinking a thing. Just watching.
He crossed the street right in front of me. Right in front of the car. He turned and he looked at me. First he looked at the hood of the car then his eyes came up and he was looking right at me, but only for one second. But it happened, I remember that. I was embarrassed, I remember, because I knew dad must have noticed and I wondered if that boy had just looked at me or if he had looked over and I just happened to be there, where he was going to look anyway. I didn’t know which it was.
It didn’t matter though because after he looked at me he brought his head right back down and then up to the place he was going, which was the side of the bridge over the gorge. He just walked to it, briskly, like I said, it was like he knew exactly where he was going. Like he had a clear destination in mind. He didn’t pause. There was no hesitating about him. He just walked to that railing on the other side of the road, the railing that looked down into the mouth of the gorge. He gripped the rail with both hands, brought his head down into the gorge, swung his body up and over and he was gone. He was just gone.
I didn’t get it at first. What had happened, I didn’t understand, it was like any old thing. Then the light turned green, or maybe it had been green, a car behind me blew its horn and then, then, I got it. It felt as if my insides had been waiting at the peak of a very high rollercoaster and suddenly they had just dropped.
Dad got it one second after me because I had just started to shake when he grabbed me, grabbed me and pulled me down into his chest. And he held me there. He just held me there. Covering my face, pushing me so hard into his chest I could barely breath.
I have no idea how long dad held me like that. Tight and deep in his sweater. Neither of us said a thing.

The police told us we had to come to the station to answer some questions. Dad said it was because we were witnesses. I knew as much. I knew we were the last people who saw the boy alive. I knew, couldn’t shake it, I was the last person the boy looked at, but I’d never tell anyone that, of course. It didn’t matter, I didn’t think. Though it would come into my mind from time to time afterwards. For no good reason that memory would just flutter in and settle down. The look, for that one second.
When we got to the station it became pretty obvious we were going to be there a while. Dad didn’t like it. I could tell he was uncomfortable, his hands started to shake and he kept rubbing them over his lap. They were like worn leather, his hands. His nails were always bitten down only I never saw dad actually bite his nails. I never asked him about it, but I would wonder about that sometimes. When he did that.
We were just waiting. Sitting on a long wooden bench. We must have been there for over an hour, maybe two. I had no idea. I was fine. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Just sitting there for some reason was fine by me. It made me feel comfortable. Dad went up to the officer at the desk. They talked and then dad came back to the bench, said he was going out but he’d be back in thirty minutes. Asked if I wanted anything. I said no, said I was fine. I knew he was going to the bar. I had seen it and so had he, when we parked the car. It was on the corner. It was nearby.
I watched dad walk out of the station. He let the door swing shut behind him. I just sat there. There was a lot to take in. I had never been in a police station before. Everyone seemed pretty slow moving, the officers. That surprised me. I thought they would move faster but I guess there wasn’t much to do around here.
The door opened again and I looked up. It wasn’t my dad. I didn’t know what sort of person it was. He didn’t look like anyone from around here that’s for sure. He was older. Dad’s age. He was wearing a pressed button up shirt. It looked like it had been starched. He was pale with a white puff of hair. He looked delicate like some old bird. Like a vacationer. That’s it I thought. The sort you see in Bar Harbor in the summer. That’s exactly what he looked like.
The man walked to the officer at the desk, the same one my dad had talked to, they said a few words, then the officer walked around the desk, led the man to the same bench I was sitting on and the man sat down. The officer went back to the desk. The man crossed his legs and then uncrossed them. After a moment he crossed them again.
He turned to me. I could feel him looking at me. I kept on looking straight ahead. I didn’t see what he would have to talk to me about.
“Are you here for Peter?” he said after a time. I didn’t know if he was talking to me. I turned. He was staring straight at me. His legs were uncrossed again. They were spread open and his hands were clutching his knees.
I didn’t know who Peter was. That’s what I said. The man kept looking at me like he didn’t believe me. He was nodding, looking like he was assessing the situation, working something out in his head. An officer came out of a room, went up to the man and put a hand on his shoulder, introduced himself. The officer said, “I am sorry for your loss.” Then he said, “We’ll make sure this stays brief.” He led the man to a room in the back. I was happy to see him go.
A while later dad came back to the station. He sat down next to me. He smelled of liquor and cigarettes. At that time in my life I still liked the smell of that. The smell of liquor and cigarettes hanging off my dad’s sweaters. Like I said, it was all I had known.

There You Are

This is one story, which is part of a larger collection of stories.

There You Are

Kate wondered if it was considered inappropriate to let a stranger touch her, that’s what she was thinking when she got off the train.
Carter was waiting for her on the platform and when he saw her he smiled.
“Hi,” she said walking towards him.
“Hey,” he pointed down the platform. “Car’s over there.”
They walked towards it in silence. Readjusting to each other always took them a few minutes.
Once they were in the car Carter hooked his arm around her back and brought her in close to him.
“I missed you, baby,” he said and kissed her neck. She smiled.
He started the car. Kate eyed herself in the side view mirror and let a piece of hair fall loose from behind her ear.
“The house I live in this year’s giant, it’s downtown but it’s still pretty close to campus.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me. You said it has all those trees.”
“Yeah, right, a ton, they’re nice. Big.”
He turned on the college radio station. Kate and Carter were in their junior year. Kate went to school in Boston and Carter was a student at Cornell. They both told friends they saw each other once a month but often several months would go by before either would make the trip. It was long, five hours.
“Hey,” she asked, “want to get a drink somewhere before we go back?”
“Are you sure? You don’t want to change or anything first?”
“Implying something?” Kate teased.
“Shut up, you look good, you know you do.” He put his hand on her thigh. He switched lanes after looking over his shoulder at his blind spot.
“So, where do you want to go?” he asked.
“You’re the tour guide.” She eyed herself again, putting the loose hair back in position behind her ear.
“Well, what are you in the mood for? Hey, you know there is a good place for martinis downtown. Still into those girly appletinis?”
“No!” she snapped. “As a matter of fact I’ve been drinking dirty martinis recently.” Kate put her hand on the back of his neck and then brought it down his arm.
“Very sexy,” Carter turned off the highway. “Okay, so we’ll go to Arthur’s then. It’s nice. They have leather booths and a ton of bookshelves. It’s your type of thing.”
“It’s a shame about the smoking ban,” she said.
“Baby, you don’t smoke.”
“It’s not that. I miss the atmosphere. Romance is dead without smoky bars.”
“Romance may be dead but at least the people aren’t.”
“Oh god,” she huffed, “forget all that. I’m talking about the scene, dark bars with people figuring out the world in the corners and the jazz and the smoke, you absolutely need the smoke.”
Kate had rehearsed that on the train. The bit about the romance dying with the cigarette smoke.
“Sure,” he said and quickly parallel parked the car. Kate got out and straightened her denim skirt.
“It’s down here,” he pointed, leading the way.
Carter held the door to the bar open for her and then led her to a booth in the back. It was warm. Kate pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. The waitress came over to the table.
“Are you ready or do you need a minute?” she asked.
“She’ll have a dirty martini and I’ll have a scotch.”
The waitress nodded, nearly dropped the bowl of peanuts on the table, some nuts scattered. She skirted away.
“Scotch!” Kate gasped smiling. “I didn’t realize I was drinking with my father.”
“Whatever. It’s smooth,” Carter’s nails were bitten down so it was hard for him to pry open the peanut shells but he kept at it.
“And what if I didn’t want a dirty martini?”
“You did, you said it in the car,” he said looking at his peanut.
“I said I had been drinking them—not that I necessarily—”
“You did,” Carter said again, harder. “Don’t try to do this girl, feminist thing right now. How I ordered for you just then. I opened the door for you, too, but you didn’t seem to have a problem with that. Or that I just picked you up from the station. No problem there. I hate when girls try to make these things out of nothing.”
Kate didn’t say anything, not because she was angry or sad but because she didn’t have anything to say.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got this bitch in my ethics class who is driving me up the wall. Picking over every little thing. I mean she holds up the whole class on these stupid details. The other day she was comparing this guy shoveling snow off her car hood, she didn’t ask him to, he just came over and started doing it and she told him, you know, that no, she could do it herself, but he did the whole job anyway. So she compared that to rape. How she said No but he did it anyway. I mean come the fuck on. You can’t even be a nice guy. It’s a lose, lose situation.”
“Nice guys always finish last,” she said as a joke.
“Exactly!” he slapped his hands on the table.
Kate went back to looking at the walls. They were lined with old bookshelves filled with leather bound novels. She saw “Tender Is the Night” and reached for it. “Have you read this?”
He laughed interrupting her. “They’re not all there.”
She pulled out the book and realized it had been sawed in half the long way.
“Why’d they do this?” she said paging through the unlatched sentences.
“I don’t know, so the books wouldn’t take up as much space I guess.”
“That’s a really tedious, stupid thing to do isn’t it? Just for some space.”
“The books,” the waitress said, coming over with the tray on one hand, “are all that way. See the shelves are only four inches deep. We needed the room,” she put down the drinks. “People pay for space, you know? Books don’t.”
Carter laughed with the waitress and the waitress walked away.
“That’s awfully stupid,” Kate said again. Carter took a sip of his scotch.

The first time Kate read “Tender is the Night” she was in Croatia. She had been traveling with Marjorie. When Kate thought about it, in that moment, it was like recalling a scene from a movie. Or slowly reeling out an exotic fish from a backyard pond. How the image of that girl in Croatia reading Tender is the Night is the same body and blood, the same person as this girl here today seems impossible to her. Reading “Tender Is the Night” in a cool, stone wine bar—an old woman in a beige blouse unassumingly sets down a blue plate of red, dry meat and a glass of cold, white wine. The woman suddenly strokes Kate’s hair once and Kate isn’t sure what to do, then the woman walks back into the kitchen through two swinging doors that continue swooshing back and forth after she’s gone. Later, Marjorie stands in the doorway of the wine bar. Her body, tall and thin, is a silhouette against the afternoon light. She is leaning in the threshold. She’s wearing silver bracelets. There you are, she says. Kate looks up from her book—

“So, how was the train?” Carter asked and then took a long sip of his scotch. Kate was still holding the half of the book. She put it back on the shelf.
“Funny, you know what, a weird thing happened actually. I forgot. I just remembered it now.”
She hadn’t forgotten.
She bent her head down and sipped from her martini glass. She was afraid to pick up the glass. It was full.
“So?” he said. She had finished her sip and she hadn’t said anything.
Kate started up, “Well, I was sitting next to this old man, he must have been like fifty or something and he was reading the Economist and I kept eyeing it because the cover story was about Guantanamo Bay and we started talking a little, it was nice,” She bent down and took another sip.
“Yeah,” he said, trying to crack another peanut.
“Well, anyway, he asked if I wanted to read it and then he told me I was lovely looking. Just like that, he said, lovely.”
“Lovely looking?” The boy laughed out loud. “Who says lovely? He was old right—how old did you say?”
“Fifty or something.”
“Creep,” he was chewing the peanut. “So, great story. That’s a good one.”
“I’m not finished. It wasn’t sleazy. He said I looked like his late wife.”
“Oh, of course, his late wife,” Carter laughed again. “No, baby, that dude doesn’t sound sleazy at all.”
“But this is the thing, he asked me if I would mind if he put his hand on my knee while he slept.”
“What!” the boy looked up from his peanut. “Are you kidding? Did you change seats?”
“No, it wasn’t like that, what you’re thinking. It was sincere.”
“Jesus Christ! I can’t believe you just buy this kind of shit. When we’re together. I mean when we’re out of school and all this long distance stuff is over you better stop doing this sort of shit. You always do stuff like this. Just buy these lines. Think things are more than just sex. God,” he laughed, cooling down, “You’re so naive. I mean with men. You have no idea,” he laughed shaking his head.
“So then you let him? You let him put his hand on your knee? Did he bring his hand up your leg? ‘Accidentally’? While he was ‘sleeping’?”
“No. It was fine. It was nothing. I think my mannerisms were just comforting to him. Why’s that a big deal? I didn’t mean for it to be a big deal. It was just a story.”
“You’re too fucking trustworthy. You can’t just let the world go around fucking you because you feel bad for it.” He finished his drink and put the glass down.
“It wasn’t like that. You’re not even seeing the point. The scene of it was just so lonely looking, like a painting, the two of us like that on a train.”
“What did you have to feel lonely about?”
“Not me, the whole thing, the moment, it was all so lonely.”
Carter huffed loudly and then waved to the waitress and she came over quickly. He looked at her and smiled.
“Hey, Molly,” he said eyeing her nametag, “so is there anything you recommend?”
“Well, I’ve always been a shot girl myself,” she said with a wink.
“Yeah?” he said grinning and raised an eyebrow. “That’s good, get me something you like.”
“Will do,” she smiled.
He looked back at Kate. “God, I can’t believe you sometimes. You’re so weird with shit like that.”
Kate brushed her finger along the book spines.
“What do you think they do with the other halves?” she asked.
“Throw them away. What else would they do with them?”

Kate thought about the man on the train. How his old hand looked against her leg. How he slept with his head facing away from her. She thought about what the other passengers might have thought when they walked by and saw his hand up there gripping her thigh. Was he her boyfriend? Her father? She thought about how she let his hand stay there, even when it did move up slowly, but not all the way. How it seemed to be the right thing to do, like letting a baby take from your breast.

After another round of drinks they went back to the car and Carter drove Kate to his big house with the trees.
In the car he put his hand on her leg but didn’t remember. Then he did and said, “Hey, so is this how the old man did it?”
She laughed and said no. She gripped his hand and pushed it under her skirt, between her legs. “Like that,” she said. He was laughing now. Grabbing at her and rubbing. Getting his hand underneath her underwear. “Like that?” Carter laughed, pushing a finger through now. Sliding his finger in and out.
“Like that?” he asked again.
“Yeah, yeah,” she was looking towards the window now, “like that.”
Kate continued to look out the window. They were driving passed vineyards in snow and the sun was low. The grape branches looked like black cracks running up the snow into the lower part of the grey sky. The land is very flat here.
For a long time now Kate has felt like she has been waking up in someone else’s life, only she isn’t sure when it started, when her life ended and the other one began.
When the train had stopped and she and the man were getting off, Kate asked, after working up some courage, “Did it help?”
He smiled slowly and carefully and said, “Unfortunately, it only reminded me that she’s dead.” Then he put on his hat. He told her she was a sweet girl and he thanked her for humoring an old man.
Kate didn’t know what to say so she didn’t say anything and then she got off the train and met Carter.
Carter brought his hand out from under her skirt and held her hand tightly. She glanced at herself in the side mirror and put the piece of hair back behind her ear. She didn’t know who she was and she didn’t know what she was doing.

In Croatia, Kate remembers Marjorie holding a handful of rocks. When Marjorie walks through the doorway she’s no longer a silhouette. She sits at the table and lets the rocks scatter. The sound echoes. She pulls her hair up in a loose bun and her bracelets clatter down her arms. “I was looking for you,” Marjorie says. Kate earmarks her book, sets it down.

“I’m glad you’re here, baby,” Carter said as they pulled into the driveway of his house.