The Virginia Literary Review Spring 2007 / Volume 29 / Number 2
The Virginia Literary Review
A Magazine for Creative Arts at the University of Virginia Spring 2007 / Volume 29 / Number 2
The Virginia Literary Review The Student Activities Center at UVa Newcomb Hall Charlottesville, VA 22904-4701
[email protected]
Executive Editor Stephen Leonelli Production Manager Andrew van der Vaart Art Editor Sean Kelly Fiction Editor Mary Baroch Treasurer Lindsey Wetherby Staff Billy Benson Stephanie Doupnik Drew Liming Denise Linn Howard O Ashley Williams Corrie Williamson Website Design Michael Loew Editor Emeritus Chris Wagner
The Virginia Literary Review is a contracted independent organization run by undergraduate students at the University of Virginia. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the University. The magazine is funded in part by a student activity fee allocation. VLR is published twice a year, in late April and early December. The review staff considers literary submissions from individuals in the University community during the first three-quarters of each term. Fiction, poetry and visual art should be submitted via the box in Bryan 236 or emailed to
[email protected]. For information on joining the review staff, please contact the editor at
[email protected]. Approximately 800 copies of each issue are distributed around grounds and to local establishments free of charge. This issue of VLR was produced by the editors using InDesign software and was printed by Bailey Printing, Inc, Charlottesville, VA. Copyright 2007. No material may be recorded or quoted, other than for review purposes, without the permission of the artists, to whom all rights revert after the first serial publication. www.virginialiteraryreview.com
Poetry 9 / 10 / 13 / 14 / 16 / 18 / 22 / 25 / 26 / 28 / 30 / 33 /
Oracle Wellington Waking Up Chicken Dance Tree Cutting Subway The Post-War Towns Wrong Door The Unweaving August Fly Stuck in Winter The Gondola Dream I Was Once Rich in Minerals Too
Jocelyn Spaar Josh Rachford Tatyana Krimgold Brian Thomas Moon Lauren Palmer Liz Petit Ethan Matthew Scott Natasha Vaynblat Sarah Caroline Wade Jennifer L. Heliste Shi-shi Wang Sebastijan Jemec
Photography 1 / 7 / 8 / 12 / 15 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 24 / 27 / 31 / 32 / 34 / 39 / 45 /
Flip [Untitled] Harvest Bamboo Candelabra [Untitled] Hanging Laundry [Untitled] Wash Candy Cigarette [Untitled] Welding by Night [Untitled] Dolce Door County Windshield
Gennifer Munoz Emily Nelson Jason Hickel Kate Nelson Steve Gong Sabrina Ritacco Jason Hickel Brian Rice Gennifer Munoz Jenny Marceron Sabrina Ritacco Thomas Canu Will Williams Kendall Ann Singleton Emily Nelson
Fiction 35 / The Milk, The Stranger, The Bike, The Old Woman
Jeremy Wickman
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[Untitled] / Emily Nelson
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Harvest / Jason Hickel
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Oracle Jocelyn Spaar Skeletal scarecrow crouched full-lotus in the burnt brakepad stench of the Underground, shake your empty cup, your pallid fist. You haunt me like these oilslick Puddles crazed with fallen leaves, Patches of the sky, remnants Of heaven fallen, broken, near: Lessons we desire, yet hate to hear.
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Wellington Josh Rachford I The basement window faces nothing: metal basin, dirt, dead weeds, wet leaves. Sunlight snows in, breathing life into dust particles, shaping shadows in blanket forts. Panes too small to fit through, though my brother did it once, so now there are bars. II At the front door oval glass reveals the cul-de-sac, neighbors moving away or moving in or once even moving back, an old basketball hoop, a mailbox, broken pieces of sidewalk chalk. The doorbell rings: a delivery man, a petitioner, a locked-out sibling. Machine voice announcing “door open” a security system.
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III The window in the attic’s a lie. No rooms up there, just fearsome pink insulation, fiberglass waiting to cut lung, and empty boxes. The attic stairs are hidden, But through the forbidden panes you can see over trees, see everything: hockey ball rolling down the storm drain, mailman creeping house to house, cars’ lights around the corner, the sun in the evening and Orion in winter, the snow before it falls, nests clinging to naked trees, birds living lives without us.
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Bamboo / Kate Thompson
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Waking Up Tatyana Krimgold Light saws through my watermelon mind. wet, red, open, full of seeds, little dead dreams in their black caskets: a wake. i had been grasping on to the arm of a star, night’s cliff: clinging above the white hole of day
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Chicken Dance Brian Thomas Moon O Betty, how many smaller ends of wishbones do you have stacked in your closet? do you hear them rattle like wind chimes every time what-ifs come blowing through? do you see them in your sleep coming alive and turning into skeleton keys and unlocking every door you hoped for? do you wish and wish and wish that they could have been the bigger bones from that big break? or are they just laying there licked clean on your plate
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Candelabra / Steve Gong
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Tree Cutting Lauren Palmer I’ve fallen the branches of an oak tree, crashing each by each with a shudder-split of the trunk. It lurches and whips next to air, refusing the hack chop I put to it. My brother calls from the porch, pitches his voice against the grate of the saw, his open mouth barely visible over the red hydrangea bush. A question chasing a thick cloud; will I finish before the storm? Perhaps- It takes four hours to dismantle a tree. To cut it limb from limb into round log pieces until the pile is higher than a head. Those thorny bones will not budge easy if they’re alive on the inside you must snap them in the red October air. Crack wide open, exposing the soft cream inner, the last imprint of memory etched into smooth circles.
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The sky breaks. Rain smacks against the leaves, the last life pulls up from the tree’s dark moss skin. The haunt of an end that comes on the legs of rain. It marks you to be the drowned one who desires only wind to chase after the storm.
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Subway Liz Petit Still people. The missing block of concrete where rails lock wheels spark speeds that friction a smell of homeless broken tin can urine slickly shined gridding walls that hold earth dirt tunnels of shit with water, bones, broken, teacups, fingernails. Lives bisected underground by the whir Swaying people.
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[Untitled] / Sabrina Ritacco
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[Untitled] / Nichole Haake Hanging Laundry / Jason Hickel
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[Untitled] / Brian Rice
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The Post-War Towns Ethan Scott We shifted from one foot to another, gouged Elbows, watched each other and the walls As if the alarm weren’t ringing, indeed, getting louder. I had never seen so many beautiful girls that were ugly In so many ways: gapped teeth, bowed legs, flat chests. There were no evacuations. According to that self proclaimed ‘career Warden’, it was someone groping for a switch in the stairwell Or maybe someone stood naked and soaking Wrestling with the fire alarm. There was talk of false alarm, Burnt breakfast, but mostly of disrupted sleep. No one meant to get out And the sirens sounded like trumpets… I forget whether that hostel was a home Or a hospital first. It seems even cities across the ocean are carved By graffiti and endless traffic That I wait dumbly in front of. And I stayed out All night to find this! Staring blankly at a map And a sign that says “rooms to rent” in another language, But most of all hiding from the wind. Here, none of my calls Go through, here, foreign alarms are ringing. I gave a pound To an old man who needed a ticket home and I don’t even care If he was lying. Where are the taxis? Why is my language offensive? Even in this new city That goes back centuries, its people and industry Alive, mostly drunk, after a painful death, they say The river built us and now we must build The river. After a late bargain dinner, I do not mind the tenements, like tombstones, gouging The soaking sky. I guess you do what you’ve got to do
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When your city is full of the homeless, the starving, Of the unemployed. The urban charm of the ugly, the necessary. I climbed the ruins to reach the cliffs, centuries old dust falling In my eyes. If they tend these hills I want to see the fires that reshape them. I thought of those stone statues, always without eyes, Screaming up at the heavens, swallowing rain, Headless or armless or bare breasted, steel bars stabbing out From their plaster casts, the angel no one could tell Was either riding a lion or bringing it down. When they carry a corpse In the paintings, one is always looking up to god. Through the rain I hardly see the far End of the city goes on over these hills, and beyond that, men collect Where a collapsed house lay scattered, smoke rises From forests on the hillside, and I, awake, clean shaven, Feeling that familiar city coming back to me.
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Wash / Gennifer Munoz
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Wrong Door Natasha Vaynblat 1 things and their ways have too much to do with the ways of things 2 she nestled herself in the blanket given to her by her mother, who had rested in the blanket given by a lover, who had knit it for another, but dropped if off at the wrong door. 3 she: grey sweatery, sweltery with mascara he: finely combed, breathing through tight buttons the tea: blatantly steaming, somewhat bored 4 what I want to drop you is that after dropmonths of this drochinesep watdroper tordropture I drthinkop for my droppeace droofp drmopind and droopur water drsouppply you dropshdropould learn drhoopw drtoop dropturn off thedrop fucking faucet
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The Unweaving Sarah Caroline Wade
When I see her now – Laughing with my mother over the bread dough in that easy silver voice Or perusing the Scrabble board’s face Or beaming down the hallway like morning all over again – I can’t help staring through the paper veined forehead At the loom there, Weaving backwards. A glorious tapestry she owns Gleaming years over years, Teeming meadows of moments woven, All flecked with gold and optimism – Stitch by stitch, the loom tugging it back through the teeth To nip apart daintily, cruelly, those vibrant swirls. One more loop unknotted: She forgot to add yeast. At least not yet my name – but when? It pricks me to watch Her diminishing tapestry I dread seeing her A snarled pile Of thread.
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Candy Cigarette / Jenny Marceron
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August Fly Stuck in Winter Jennifer L. Heliste
brittle black legs woven into the mesh of my screen, barely distinguishable from the stiff threads that mark a boundary between the shell of his body and the skin draping mine brown wings, cracking away from his back offer no resistance to the wind yet the grotesque outline of his existence remains like a former lover still, in my bed watching me: clasping my bra buttoning my jeans re-applying lipstick I know with the flick of my finger or a gentle poke I could incite his descent down two stories body crumbling before the impact of ground
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but I keep the hollow of his body attached to my window I cling to an image of post-mortem reality as if it would wrap my own January body in stained sheets
as if he could, with an absence of pumping organs, give me his pulse
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The Gondola Dream Shi-shi Wang
I am barricaded inside my gunship, floating in a low, roofless vessel—it is not home as I imagined, or even just a clean, white bathtub. I left you a letter— a stinging, golden wasp. When the swelling goes down, pull it over your head, wear my remaining words. The weather is cold and something must be done. The dream ends with flatness in the sky, the sea and arid basin, and the river a red mud bank—neither one of us able to swim across.
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[Untitled] / Sabrina Ritacco
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Welding by Night / Thomas Canu
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I Was Once Rich in Minerals Too Sebastijan Jemec
red headed Lenin said comrades comrades comrades buckwheat and caviar warm lies and cold winters the back seat of a Lada is too short remember when you spent a year’s salary mining lignite It could have been Emeralds but the wall was higher then and its all the same anyways little Dmitriy had his baptism in the murky Volga as the ice floats watched
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[Untitled] / Will Williams
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The Milk, The Stranger, The Bike, The Old Woman Jeremy Wickman
I In a loud, smokeless room on the third floor of an aging house in northwest D.C., Charles Eaton was telling a story to Margaret Styles and Alicia Jenson—two of the prettier researchers present at the BM Syntek department party. The story went like this: It was late the other night, and Charles had been working for the better part of an hour on a recipe for chicken. He’d been hungry and had discovered a cookbook. One thing had led to another had led to an elaborate culinary procedure. The next step called for a half-cup of milk. Needless to say, he did not have any. But being too far in the process to simply surrender and go to bed, he decided to bite the bullet and pick up a quart at the local 7-11. An easy drive. Ride, actually—his car was in the shop, and Charles had to travel by bike. So he got to the store, which was empty except for a tired, Pakistani cashier and this white-haired, hunchbacked woman. Old—the kind of person that shouldn’t be out at nearly midnight. She was hovering beside the cold drinks section, tilting her thick horn-rims left and right like she couldn’t figure out how to operate the sliding door. Not suspicious or anything, just odd. So Charles strolled up to the cooler, pulled open the door and picked out a container of milk. Whole milk, the Vitamin-A-fortified kind. Next thing he knew, the old woman’s cold hand snapped into the air and wrapped itself around his wrist. No word of warning, just—snap! So Charles gave out a little yell and wrenched his arm away and asked what the hell do you think you’re doing? She mumbled something old, something about needing milk. Well, what was that supposed to mean? He gestured with his now-free hand to the cooler, where there were rows upon rows of the exact same kind of milk. Take one of those, he yelled. No, the woman insisted. The others would expire the day after tomorrow. Not the one in Charles’ hand. Aug. 31, it said. The others said Aug. 21. And Charles just stood there; looking into the dull, wrinkled lenses of
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this woman, whose wisps of hair fell across her forehead and danced with the blow of the air conditioning. The ridiculousness of the situation hit him. Why prolong this any longer? Who cares about the milk? Take it, take it, he said. Probably a typo, anyway. He shoved the milk into her bony hands. He took another container from the shelf. He brought it over to the counter. He paid the clerk, who kindly asked if everything was all right. Everything was all right, Charles told him. Then he went home and finished cooking the chicken. But the next week—the next week was the key. Charles was flipping through the Metro section looking for the weekend weather forecast when who should he see staring up at him from the obituaries page? The old lady from the 7-11. The glasses, the sparse hair, the low-set eyes. Elizabeth Boller. A retired schoolteacher living in Fairfax, survived by her three children. And when did she die? Aug. 20. The day after Charles met her. She didn’t outlast the unworthy milk. “No!” said Margaret, who had straight blonde hair and a pointed chin just like Julia’s. The slight indentation on the very tip was the most striking similarity. “Terrible,” said Alicia, with her thick red lips and straight, white teeth. “Did you say the other night, Charles?” said Edward Bidwell, a fat chemist who had emerged from the thick of the party to stand beside Margaret and Alicia. He waved his glass in the air like a metronome. “Because I recall hearing that story before…” “You haven’t heard it before.” “No, no, I think I have. Have you used it in your routine?” “This is new,” replied Charles, addressing Edward with his words while his body and eyes addressed Alicia and Margaret. They were, after all, much easier to look at. “I mean, it just happened the other day. I’m not making it up.” “Well, I’d doubt that. I’d venture that you created this little tale once upon a time and now you’re milking the story for all it’s worth.” Charles grimaced as the two girls laughed at the pun. Honestly—full, throaty laughs. Puns were meant to be noticed and acknowledged. A clever smile, at most. But maybe it was the wine or Edward’s delivery or another outside force, because they actually found the comment funny. Funnier than anything Charles had managed since he started talking to them half an hour ago. “Well, it did happen.” “Whatever you say, Charles. I’m familiar with your track record with these things. Some hilarious material, but not true material.” Charles thought about this for a moment, grasping for some definitive statement that would end the argument by not initiating a response. “Well, it is true ‘material’. But would it matter if the story were real or not? Does it lose its humor or morale? Life is absurd and you could expire any day, even before the milk you buy.” 36 / Virginia Literary Review
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“Life is not absurd, Charles. Life, as created by you, is absurd. I think you’ll find everyone else feels a little differently than yourself.” The last few words were garbled with a swig of wine. Then Edward burped, and the ladies laughed again. Amazing how a drunken intellectual could ruin everything. Whatever mood had been cultivated by Charles over the past half-hour was broken, and after a few more polite words, Margaret and Alicia excused themselves and disappeared down a nearby stairwell. Edward looked as if he were about to say something, then hurriedly followed suite, presumably to ruin the night of another helpless soul. Charles remained, propping himself up against a covered armoire. “Thanks Edward,” he said to no one in particular. And everyone else was too absorbed in each other and their drinks to hear him. There Charles was, surrounded by unfamiliar familiar faces—chatty coworkers of all shapes, dressed in semi-elegant dresses and business-casual shirts. Mostly in their mid to lower thirties, though a smattering of youth and age here and there filled out the entire spectrum of experience. Charles himself was thirty-one. Fit, but not muscular—a solid, thin frame that he attributed to riding his bike to work everyday while people like Edward floundered in their air-conditioned vans, complaining when their parking spot was more than an arm’s length away. Dim overhead lighting tinted all the colors inside the residence. Charles’ khakis became a dark tan, his white-collared shirt transformed into grey, and his normally lightbrown eyes and hair thickened to a deep brown. This hair, always cropped neatly to his forehead, had been slowly balding for about three years. When asked about it, Charles laughed, paraphrasing the first law of thermodynamics to his audience, whoever they were: “Hair, like energy, is neither created nor destroyed. So someone out there—some lucky someone—has my hair. I’m a forced philanthropist.” And this line never failed to settle the issue. Or at least to reroute the discussion to other topics—other elements that were probably rationed throughout the universe, like intelligence or height. Maybe the talk would turn to thermodynamics, if the audience was from Syntek. Was that what Julia meant about circumventing the real issues with humor? The hell with her, Charles thought. Inside the party it was hot, and droplets of sweat were forming on Charles’ forehead, just like during Amateur Night at Duffy’s when no one in the audience laughed at his jokes. And the room, despite its higher ceilings and lack of smoke, felt as stuffy as the comedy club’s dense atmosphere. It gave Charles had a headache. So he pushed through the crowd to a pair of closed glass doors that led to the narrow third-floor balcony. Throwing them open, he was greeted with a cool draft of air that seemed to lift his entire body. Charles shut the doors behind him and sat down on a lonely deckchair, raising his hands to cradle his head. Virginia Literary Review / 37
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The doors opened and closed again. Dale was now standing on the balcony. “I can’t believe we dragged each other to this,” he said, lighting up a Parliament with a skinny, silver lighter. “When did the Syntek crew become such a bore? Half are old, half are ugly, and the rest are out of my league.” “Ever consider that you yourself are old and ugly? Which would account for the lack of a middle-ground between ‘out of your league’ and ‘ugly’?” But Dale was neither old nor ugly. He was tall, with freckles and shiny black hair that made him appear in his early twenties even though he was just about Charles’ age. They had been good friends for six years, ever since Julia introduced the two. Charles had even helped him secure an opening as a Syntek lab technician a few years back. “Funny,” said Dale. “I overheard your little story.” “And how did you like it?” Dale looked up into the faint sky, obscured by the outstretched branches of a single beech tree that shot up alongside the rickety house. “I have a better one.” “Shoot.” II Long before his technician gig, Dale had worked in a summer construction crew with a group of southern rednecks. There was lots of down-time, so while the others got drunk and threw crates off buildings, Dale would sit to the side, eat his packed lunch, and read a library book amid the dust and rubble. Naturally, the others made fun of him. One day, Dale was midway through The Stranger when his co-worker, Phil, tapped him harshly on the shoulder. Phil was the oldest of the crew—mostly toothless, but still strong enough to haul cement. Dale expected a snide remark. But instead Phil sat down beside him. He said he knew the author. He said he had partied with Albert Camus long ago. And Phil was completely serious, lacking the pale taint of a smile that usually indicated when he was messing with you. Phil had run into Camus at a bar late one night. He was taking a break from his rigorous lecture circuit. A couple of Phil’s friends were familiar with his work, and they ordered the man a round of drinks and peppered him with questions and praise. It turned out that Camus’ sponsors were all horrendously boring, so he tagged along with Phil’s crew for the night as they hopped from bar to bar. The problem was, Camus was a complete ass. He wouldn’t stop talking about himself or his theories, and when the conversation turned away from these, he became sullen. Then he drove away all the women they met by hitting on them with depressing lines in that thick French accent of his. ‘Life is shit, so let’s go fuck’. That sort of thing. The drunken Camus was no fun to be around, and he was ruining their night.
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Dolce / Kendall Ann Singleton
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So they ditched him.
“That’s such bullshit, Dale,” said Charles, coughing from within the swell of smoke that Dale had sent in his direction. Now the cool, clear night was dotted with wispy, gray clouds. “And the moral is?” “You tell me.” “Stay away from the ‘life is absurd’ bullshit. It won’t get you laid.” Charles laughed. That was how he and Dale communicated—through stories with skewed morals. Through humor. They layered every feeling and thought like it was Syntek-brand medicine—which tasted like soap until someone in Division C pumped it so full of sugar that it took on the flavor of watermelon or strawberry or cherry or whatever was on the drugstore-box label. And the filter worked. Medicine was more enjoyable that way; life was more enjoyable that way. Julia never understood that. Their laughter died down, and what was left was silence interrupted by the clinks of glasses and jaws from inside the house. “Did you get an invitation to the engagement party?” Dale said it quickly—a passing comment that was too forced to have been said in passing. “Possibly.” Somewhere in the distance Charles heard the honk of a carhorn. Maybe the jingle of a bike bell, too. “Are you going?” Charles didn’t answer. He stood up from his chair and peered over the balcony. Below, guests were beginning to exit the party and spill out into the street, where they collided with groups of other stumbling drunks on their way home from a night on the town. “My mother died today,” he said. “Bullshit.” Dale said it almost immediately. Then he laughed, provoking a short smile from Charles. “Alright,” he acknowledged. “But my bike did get stolen.” Dale smiled back. “Now that’s plausible. Tell me what happened.” III It had been a bright day outside, the other day. Charles had skipped work and was riding his blue bicycle down a relatively deserted city sidewalk. It was two-o’clock, already past lunchtime. But he was still meeting Julia for lunch. He probably wouldn’t order anything. He wasn’t hungry. Cartal’s was a new place, built over the remains of a defunct Applebee’s. The
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name could be Italian or Spanish or anything, really. Julia hadn’t specified over the phone, and Charles hadn’t been in the mood to raise many questions. He asked for the directions and he asked if the route was bike-able. Now he was in the parking lot of a short, blue building with a recent paint job. Without a rack in sight, he leaned his bike up against the wall and walked through the restaurant’s revolving entrance. Inside, elegant sand paintings lined the walls, coupled with tens of dark brown tables, the majority of which were set for two. The room was lit by the bright outside, with short candle-lamps ready to be turned on when the evening fell. Charles was looking for a waiter to direct him when, far in the corner booth, a woman’s hand rose up and waved for him to come over. She had a pointed chin with a cute indentation on the very tip. Her long blonde hair gave Charles an indication of how long it had been since he’d seen her. The last time, it was much shorter, tied up around her neck by a short ponytail. Hello, said Julia, with a small smile that showed her charmingly irregular teeth. Charles also said hello. Then there was a long pause as a waiter laid down a menu in front of him. He asked if there was anything Charles would like to drink. Charles said no. What was his name? Charles asked Julia. Edward, she said. Charles had too many Edwards in his life, and told her as much. Wilson was his last name, if it helped. Julia Wilson would be a terrible name. Then she laughed. She used to laugh a lot. They even met at Duffy’s Amateur Night, after Charles had bounced offstage to a sprinkling of applause. She had liked his sense of humor—his stories that sometimes droned on, and were always a little more philosophical and absurdist than they were funny. He was not the best amateur, by far. He focused on what he perceived were the clever ironies and tricks of life: How he was growing bald, but still had to go to the barbershop. How bikers were treated with scorn, but were ultimately the solution to problems like global warming and traffic and urban sprawl. How unhealthy ingredients were used to make medicine—coming together in the end to heal something while apart they were dangerous. After staying at the club for the next performer, the two went to another bar for drinks. And the next week they went to a restaurant. Then another week and another restaurant, etc., etc. They were happy for nearly two years. But somewhere along the line things went sour or stale or some other decrepit flavor. What used to elicit laughter soon provoked accusations that he was distancing himself from her with humor. Not taking anything seriously—not addressing problems but merely pretending like they weren’t problems. When she was concerned that their relationship was becoming a joyless routine—he joked that mowing the lawn was nowhere
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near as much fun. When she questioned his lack of ambition—he told a story involving go-getting characters and their subsequent downfall. Now here she was, laughing again. It was beautiful. She told him that Dale had suggested she set up a meeting. He was concerned. Charles responded that Dale should mind his own business. Hadn’t Charles moved on yet? Charles hadn’t moved on. It was easy for him to make a woman laugh—harder for him to get farther than that. That was his nature. But he told Julia the opposite, and she could sense the lie. Still unable to be serious, she commented. Of course, said Charles. He could feel how quickly the old animosity rose to the surface. He wanted it buried. He just didn’t know how. Then she pointed to the opposite window. Isn’t that your bike? She asked. He swiveled around, and his pants made a groaning sound against the cushion of the seat. It was his bike. Blue—and riding away in it was a child that couldn’t have been more than thirteen. He wasn’t even pedaling fast. It was a leisurely getaway. Charles leapt to his feet and ran out the door, to the annoyance of the few other restaurant patrons. The thief had heard his footsteps, and was now speeding away down the long, wide street. Charles had no prayer of catching up. He cursed, loudly, and kicked the side of the curb like it was the culprit. Then he walked back to the entrance of the restaurant, where Julia was waiting with her head in her hands. I’m so sorry, she said. She thought this was a good neighborhood. Don’t worry, said Charles. It’ll make for a great story. You were always telling stories, she said. Can I tell you a story? Charles asked. “That’s it?” said Dale. His cigarette was finished now, but he pulled out another in optimistic expectation. The party noise had grown fainter and fainter in the background. “No,” said Charles. “Then I told her a story.” “Tell me the story.” “It’s not very good.” “Try me.” IV In a quiet, bright booth wedged in the corner of a new downtown restaurant, Charles Eaton was telling a story to Julia Bard, soon to be Julia Wilson. The story went like this: It was late in the night, and Charles had been working for the better part of an
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hour on a recipe for chicken. He wasn’t even hungry. He had been alone in his apartment, staring at the TV as the evening news flickered in front of him. Then he had noticed the cookbook, the one with the cover picture of a happy family smiling over a hot kitchen stove. He and Julia had sometimes done things like that together. For the most part it was boring, routine dinner preparation. But a couple of times, the first few times maybe, it had been exciting—cooking that spontaneously deteriorated into playful foodfights and lovemaking. Times of pure, unadulterated happiness for Charles. So now Charles turned on the oven to 350 degrees and thawed the chicken in the microwave. He rooted through the cupboard looking for everything he needed—flour, salt, pepper, onion, basil, oregano, peppers, mushrooms, broth. Then he chopped the vegetables, heated the broth, tenderized the chicken. He melted the butter. He brought out measuring cups and carefully sifted the flour, using a knife to smooth over the excess so that the recipe would be just perfect. And somewhere along the line he realized that Step Six called for a cup of milk. He had glazed over that one important ingredient. He did not have any milk. Now it was too late to turn back. For a moment he considered stopping for the night, continuing the next evening. But there was a hollow feeling in his stomach that hurt worse than being hungry, which challenged him to complete the task. He needed milk. So he hopped on his bike and pedaled towards the 7-11. The streets and sidewalks were empty—shiny and slippery from the afternoon rain. He arrived at the store, which was lifeless except for a tired, Pakistani cashier and this white-haired, hunchbacked woman. Fragile—the kind of person that shouldn’t be out around midnight. There was something horribly wrong and sad about that. So Charles walked over and asked if she needed some help. She would, if he didn’t mind. She needed some milk. He pulled open the cooler and asked what kind she wanted. Whole milk, she said. The Vitamin-A-fortified kind. So he gave it to her. And Charles just stood there; watching the old woman shuffle across the bright, clean floor with her last few white wisps of hair dancing behind her. He watched her lift the milk onto the counter with her bony hands. He observed her counting out a few bills and then hobbling, alone, through the swinging door that jingled because a bell was tied to the top corner. The clerk kindly asked Charles if everything was all right. He was just standing and staring, after all. Everything was all right, Charles said. Then he walked out of the door without purchasing anything. When he returned home, he threw the chicken and the flour and the onions and everything into a shiny metal trash can. He looked at his reflection in the metal—the
Virginia Literary Review / 43
Spring 2007 / Fiction
slowly receding hairline that would soon leave him with all but a few wisps of hair. Then he cried, because he could picture the old woman on the next day’s obituary page and he could picture himself on the next day’s obituary page and there was no way that any kind of slant could make the situation feel better. It was all just too sad. And Julia said she was sorry, through those charmingly asymmetrical teeth. She held out her hand, and Charles took it. She was glad Charles shared it with her. It’s a terrible story, replied Charles. He had to change it, and couldn’t she understand?
44 / Virginia Literary Review
Spring 2007 / Photography
Door County Windshield / Emily Nelson
Virginia Literary Review / 45
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