Most everything gleamed because gleam means clean and hospitals are supposed to be clean. I’d finished with the tests but my doctor wouldn’t let me leave. That’s a bad sign and he knew it but he couldn’t reel it back, so in some sort of med-school compensation he offered a nicer room. I jumped on the deal but the room, as hospital rooms go, was a bit bigger but not any nicer, so I went for a walk. He allowed it, but only after saying not too far. And the bad signs just kept coming.
I left to look for the cafeteria, not because I was hungry, just curious if it gleamed like everything else. In the hallway white scrubs jostled toward me and I asked for directions.…
...continue reading
When Mina scrubbed a dirty toilet bowl, she didn’t think: shit. When she changed sheets with islands of stains or tossed wastebaskets with snotty tissues and bloody tampons, she didn’t think: disgusting. She just did her job, her mind elsewhere—which was why, throwing open the curtains in one of the rooms at the end of her shift and seeing the parking lot covered with snow, the in-ground pool a large white postage stamp, she was only mildly surprised.
In the hallway, she asked Renata how long it had been snowing, and Renata, wringing out her mop, said, “You no see? All day long.”
Some of Renata’s mop water splashed out of the bucket. Her black eyes flared, lips flattened.
“Good night,” Mina said. “See you tomorrow.”…
...continue reading
Freedom tasted like chunks of strawberry ice cream sliding down our newly-licensed forearms onto the leather car seats we promised my mother we’d keep clean. You screamed every time you merged onto the highway, the exclamatory shape of your mouth ringed with sweet berries and cream. The volume knob on the radio turned sticky from our iced fingers turning up the music so we could shout cheesy lyrics at each other, letting songs about living while we’re young get lost in the wind. We would fight over who got to drive to our weekly ice cream trip, but I let you win most of the time. You looked better driving my mom’s old minivan anyways.
Irresponsibility was whirled into the rocky road ice cream I ate at the Fourth of July party to try to mask the cheap taste of vodka searing down my throat.…
...continue reading
On my way to the countryside, I pedaled through what’s known as Hollywood, a cluster of shacks at the edge of town. They listed to the side, had gaps between the sideboards and looked almost as if a stout summer breeze could flatten them. It was said some still had dirt floors.
As I approached the place closest to the street, I could see that the yard was a mess of weeds, patches of dirt and concrete yard ornaments broken beyond recognition. There was a mongrel with swollen teats and a guy sitting on a lawn chair. He had a cigarette pack rolled in the sleeve of his T-shirt and appeared to be soaking his feet in an inflatable wading pool. A young girl in a feed sack dress was playing hopscotch by a wash tub at the side of the road.…
...continue reading
He texted his landlord the lie that he had Covid, even though he knew Ben was away on a road trip. But Ben could come back at any minute. Maybe he’d grown a little paranoid. But the apartment had gotten that bad. In the kitchen, he had put out the apple cider vinegar and dish soap for the flies the night before. Weeks too late. There were dishes in the claw foot bathtub and compost in the kitchen sink. The drain to the kitchen sink didn’t work. But he couldn’t let Ben know that, of course, because Ben would have to come into the apartment to fix it and to let him in would be to get evicted.
In the main room, a sense of paper overwhelmed the eye.…
...continue reading
I took two pills and danced my way through Sunday swaying in the chapel. Life started here, she met dad in the basement by St. Marks stained glass votive. Bible study, 1956, two college kids in the basement of a church unable to tell cigarette smoke from incense. Fire in their psalms, tongues, and palms. Julie and I shared a moment there, half whispering prayers to a god you both deserted for the new lights in Missoula. We both left Montana, Julie and I, though we will always find it to be home. Sickly sweet small town kind of love. Everybody pours out of doors to head to the big things, weddings, funerals, baptisms. What they won’t tell you is how they peek out of windows for the little things, pregnancies, breakups, Lydia and Marie’s lavender garden.…
...continue reading
I didn’t reply to Jacob’s last text message to me, but I did show up to his funeral. I’d spent the entire morning deciding what to wear. A lot of the clothes that I once wore don’t quite fit me the way they used to in high school.
Is wearing black to a funeral mandatory? If funerals are truly meant to be a celebration of life, why can’t people wear something bright? I thought about wearing my orange polo, but I was worried I’d stand out too much. Maybe the key is to wear something somewhere in-between. So I went with gray.
A funeral is just a little bit different from a high school reunion. At high school reunions, you get to see who potentially has their life together and who doesn’t.…
...continue reading