Prose

Bruce Leiden

There was a thread loose on Bruce Leiden’s pants.  He had first noticed it on his way into work and had proceeded to spend the better part of the morning trying to figure out how to get rid of it without making a hole.  It had been a slow day at the office.  He had moved some files, created some meaningless spreadsheets and lost a couple dollars at online poker but mostly he had worried about the thread on his pants.  It had begun to bother him so much that he decided that at the end of the day he would just go out and buy a whole new pair. 

In the meantime he sat in his office watching the other employees bustle to and from the lunchroom with looks of smug satisfaction on their faces.  Linda, his secretary, would take an extra ten minutes for lunch and feel that this act of rebellion made the rest of the afternoon worth it.  Gary from accounting was on his way back from doing the coffee run and, like every day, had kept most of the change; one day he would save up enough of his coworkers’ money to buy himself a new television.  The IT staff all brought in their leftovers and sat at a table in the break room watching Antiques Roadshow for their hour.  And Bruce sat and in his leather chair, thinking about his loose thread and how glad he was not to be one of them.

There was a knock at the door and the face of his ever-eager boss appeared. “Hullo Bruce!” said Mr. Wainwright, “Got a spare minute? I know it’s your lunch but I’ve got a lovely young woman here with a whole lot of questions!”

“Sure thing,” said Bruce.  There was a shuffling noise, some quiet whispers, and an elderly woman timidly poked her head around the corner.  Mr. Wainwright beamed at her and placed a meaty hand on her shoulder, guiding into a chair facing Bruce’s desk.

“What seems to be the trouble today?”

“Well, um.  I seem to be unable to find my financial records,” the old woman mumbled.  She looked nervously at the two men.

“Have you tried looking at your personal account on our website?” Bruce asked.  This was his mantra.

“Well, um, you see no.  I don’t think I have a personal account.”

“How about I show you how to set one up right now? Then you can see them at home any time you would like.”  Old people exasperated Bruce.  He had spent the better part of a year making their online platform completely foolproof, or so he had thought. He failed to factor in the unwillingness of their older clients to simply try to find the information they needed on their own.

He beckoned the woman over and Wainwright mouthed thank you at him before rushing out of the room.  The woman pulled out a pair of pink plastic glasses from inside her purse and held them up in front of her the way Bruce’s mother often did.  Patiently he loaded the company website, created her a new personal page and asked to her to create some security questions.

“I’ll just get you to check – your name is Eleanor Vanhorn?”

“It is.”

“And this is your current address, telephone number, etcetera?”

“Yes.”

“Now I’ll just create some security questions in case you lose any of the information you need to login.  If you ever have any problems in the future we’re going to ask you these questions to make sure no one is trying to steal your identity. Understand? What was the name of your first pet?” he asked.

“Sugar.  No, that was the first dog. I had a cat before that but I can’t remember her name. Max?  No, that was the second one – “

Bruce cut her off, “You have to be able to remember the answer. We’ll try another one.  Mother’s maiden name?”

“Rogers. That was also my dear late husband’s mother’s maiden name. She always insisted that we couldn’t get married because our children would have two heads.  Didn’t stop her from marrying her first cousin, I noticed.”

“Alright. Rogers.  Name of first born child?”

“Humphrey. After Humphrey Bogart. Jack and I watched Casablanca on our first date.”

“Charming.  That’s that, I think.  Now you have a personal account.  I’ll just write down the username and password for you and you can access this from home any time.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I don’t have a computer at home.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t have a computer.”

“Then why did we set up a personal account?”

“Well I thought perhaps I needed one. But I can’t do anything about it from home. Can’t you just tell me the financial information?”

“Certainly, but what happens the next time you need to know how your money is doing?”

“I’ll come back. Or you’ll mail it to me.  You know there was a time when you could just walk in and they knew you by name?”

“I’m sure that’s the case Mrs. Vanhorn, however this is the digital age.  We work on the expectation that most of our clients have some access to technology.”  Wainwright was pacing outside the room and Bruce tried to catch his eye but his boss pretended not to notice.

“May I request that in the future you simply mail me this information?” Mrs. Vanhorn was still blinking through her glasses at the computer screen, unable to comprehend the website.

“We’re paperless now.”

“I don’t care what you are, I pay you money and I would like to occasionally see some proof of that.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and turn off the computer screen.  He could tell this conversation was not going to go anywhere so he simply told her that the Questions Desk in the lobby was more equipped to deal with a mail request.  They would send her to the secretaries on the third floor who would ask her to call in from home and they would mysteriously ‘lose her information’ but at least it would get her out of Bruce’s hair for the afternoon.  He gave her a signature fake smile and waved as she wandered to the elevators, slammed the door shut, and went back to inspecting the loose thread on his pants.  He was, he thought, the highest paid deflector in the entire business world.

Chelsea

Chelsea’s dreams are filled with butterflies, swallows, icebergs and Cartesian maps.  The fill the skies with their cries and swells, until the clouds turn pink and the rains fall like liquid gold.  It licks her skin as she dances naked through the backyards of her mind.  Her toes trace the mud that swims up her calves but she continues to spin, eyes towards the sky.

                  It’s no mistake that her gaze floats up, her skies are filled with light and melted gems to keep a smile coaxed upon her infantile face.  If her eyes should drop, the see the ground where dreams become her nightmares and her fears become the clay through which her mind moulds the figures in the gross.  Soldiers lie, their dead eyes staring back from behind a film that mists their view.  The blood soaks through cardboard cloth and tin-hard hats off-angle slip from paled foreheads. 

Once, long ago, Chelsea tried to close the eyes but in minutes they would snap to life and watch her as though behind a milky veil.  For every man she laid to rest, two more appeared in ghostly solid form upon her feet.  They are men, she says, without a soul.  They die for nations, prophets, who claim that after sacrifice comes glory, heaven, everything as some reward.  But it never comes.  Instead they wind up here, in the battlefields that plague the mind of pre-pubescent girls who can’t escape.

So she looks up, pretends she cannot feel their sobs, pretends she doesn’t know that in her Eden lie the broken promises of stories.  The lie as tales, of make believe and unknown claims.  They’re spun from liquid gold that falls from sky and sinks to earth as magic mysteries of life beyond the grave.  With every drop that races down young Chelsea’s cheek she spreads the word that everything is fine.  The gold drops listen, think she’s true, through lies she tells herself just to pretend that this is fake, she’ll be ok.  And every lie to save her mind becomes another lie to kill a man, a boy, prepared to save his soul.

Chelsea’s dreams are filled with butterflies, swallows, icebergs and Cartesian maps.  They rise above her, castle walls to shelter her from bodies.  But they watch her, judge her, even after eyes are closed and lies are said.  The skies are filled with light and so her shadows live upon the ground.  Alone in Dreamworld screams won’t work, her calls go empty, useless, echoes on the ice that utter back.  The butterflies all scatter with her shakes and shrieks, and the swallows take to wing like tiny airplanes course through the heavens no one’s ever found.  The maps are there, a drawn out picture, telling her that here is here.  Though she runs, she dances through her skies of pink, her rains of gold, she can’t wake up and she the world stays still.

 

Memory Based on a Map

This one is pretty raw - I'm too tired to spellcheck and I know that there were numerous re-writes done but I only have the original so unfortunately I can't include them.

I remember one of the lights in the store being broken.  We were stopped for gas, I in the passenger seat and Shavi outside in the hiemal air.  If the two of us had ever really spoken before, I could not recall it.  I was wrapping myself in the silence, keeping my eyes focused on the price that was rising on the pump.

                  I was certain he was about to kill me.  There was no knife, no gun, no overheard conversation, just a feeling that I was about to die.  I felt no fear, no anger, just resignation.  All I could do was wait in the drab fabric seats for his return and my death.

                  I jumped when he tapped the window.  His knuckles left smudgy prints on the glass.  I tried to wipe them off but they stayed, tarnished tracks that impeded my vision.  Not that a gas station provides much of a view.  Of course I realize now that one can’t clean finger marks from the opposite side of the window, but at the time I took it as a sign. 

                  The whole van sank as he got in.  The numbers still flashed on the pump.  $41.68.  I couldn’t help but stare at the unfamiliar man next to me.  He was unblinking, motionless, watching the road though the vehicle stood still.  Why didn’t he just get it over with? I thought, Why did he prolong the inevitable?  I became more anxious with every second that passed.  My life was wasting away in awkward silence and no one, not a single soul outside the van, knew what I was going through.  No one came to save me.

                  “What do you say then?” My thoughts were interrupted, “A little music?”  It was the first time either of us had spoken since I got in the car almost an hour earlier.  I said nothing so he took the dead air as affirmation.  I watched the spot on the window while he started the ignition and fiddled with the dials on the radio.  A woman’s voice filled the space between us.

                  “In other news today, a mine has collapsed in West Virginia leaving workers trapped with no way of contacting outside services.  It is believed that up to 15 men are currently unaccounted for. Authorities are not releasing an estimated time for when any survivors may be rescued.  Families are forced to wait for news on whether or not their loved ones are still in the mine.  We hear one wife’s story now...”

                  We never left the gas station.  From the outside all you could have seen were two silhouettes frozen in place through the dirty glass, each staring at the windshield.  Neither of us said a word, too immersed in the tragedy of the story.  Inside the store, another light flickered off.

                  “Next we have some light jazz!”  Her voice was chipper.  The car started with the music, death forgotten by the radio woman.  As headed out toward the highway, I watched the light, afraid that the death I had waited for had been transferred to them.  Shavi’s knuckles – those stupid, smudgy knuckles – were white with the force with which he gripped the steering wheel.  I wondered if he knew that their deaths had been our fault

 

Graveyard Piece

            In the Ross Bay cemetery there are several rows of simple gravestones.  Each bears the name and age of a child who died during the time when Chinese slaves were common in Victoria, BC.  They all have a single flower carved above the names.  This piece is based on the gravestones for two brothers who died within a few years of each other, neither one reaching the age of 3.

Mei’s eyes hung low as the box sank into the ground.  There was barely enough room and she heard the sound of two wooden caskets scraping together.  Two brothers had met.

Her mourning clothes were loose, her body having shrunk since their last use.  Men in suits flashed dark looks her way for making such a public spectacle but she could not hold back the sobs.  Each suited figure dumped a handful of dirt in the hole and Mei listened to each “thud.”

Masamachi had become nothing more than another name etched in another stone.  Each block of text some acknowledgement that they would accomplish nothing more.   Mei thought they were acknowledging her failure.

Her makeup ran down her face, foundation congealing with tears and gathering under her chin but she ignored it. Instead she focussed on ripping at the careful stitches that lay around her wrists.  Who cared about mourning clothes?  They were just some uniform that trapped her there, made her look the same as all the other guests.  One of the crowd.  But if they were all the same; why did no one else sob?  Why did no one else tremble?  Why did no one else see how perverse this ritual was?

Twice.  This was twice in two years that she’d stood before this empty hole and watched a box, a son, sink below the ground.  Just weeks before he’d been fingers, toes.  He’d been smiles and the month-old gurgles that only babies can perfect.  Just weeks before he’d been her little boy.

But now he was just a corner.  A pine corner of some wood shoe box that held nothing more than bones and skin and a tiny heart that would not beat.  One tiny corner fighting through the dirt.  She turned to her husband whose solemn gaze could not disguise his blame.

“What if he tries to get out?”

Her husband turned away, disgusted by her superstition and looked instead towards the priest who gave an empty speech.  One baby is an accident, but two?  Sudao had gone to sleep and never woken up.  Despite Mei’s shock at the ordeal, Akira had suspected but said nothing.  When Masamichi’s heart just stopped he wondered if her nightly tears were something more than mere stress.  Had something taken its toll on Mei?

As the others left, she knelt in the itchy stubble and watched each scoop of dirt, listening with an ear to ground to hear if his breath returned, if his nails began to scratch at the wood.  For the first time she felt an emptiness.  There was no pain, merely a sort of numb sensation.  She was not a mother.  Mothers give life.

As she stroked the black cloth around her belly she already knew what was coming.  She’d had the cramps, the swelling, the sick-to-her-stomach feeling that followed her through the mornings.  She found herself wishing that it would disappear, just to save herself from doing this all over again.

Checkmate

            I can’t quite seem to grasp why the boy and his mother are here, of all places.  How they got in, I’ll never understand.  The bar itself is packed, hoardes of over-eager males playing for the attention of uninterested women, and yet they sit in a corner playing chess.  I think he’s winning.  His tiny eyes are focussed, unblinking as he watches his mother’s hands.  The soft sound of the stone pieces hitting the board is lost among the hollers of drunks.  His face scrunches up in concentration, and his mother looks up from the game. 

            Her face lights each time a man passes their stools, only to darken once more when he is gone.  Her son pretends not to notice; instead he mumbles his next move to himself.  He takes a knight and quietly moves it close to her king. 

“Check,” I see him mouth.  She’s busy watching the inhabitants of the bar.  Out of spite, or perhaps just out of boredom, he moves his queen as well.

“Checkmate.”

The mother turns back quickly with a smile that’s a little too broad, a little too sudden. 

“Look at that!  Good job!”  At least that’s what I imagine she says.  Her son just nods, unimpressed by her affection.  He sets the pieces back on the board;=, rows of tiny men whose blank faces mock his own surely look.  The woman pretends to settle back into the game but her eyes are still wandering.  I have to wonder how long it’s been since the son realized that they have been stood up, and how long it will be until his mother realizes the same.

He tentatively moves a pawn but she doesn’t seem to notice.  He coughs slightly but this time she does not even feign amusement.  Instead she glances impatiently around.  Men look her up and down from her perch on the high seat, but she doesn’t pay attention.  Her son might, but he looks too young to fully grasp whatever their intentions are.  Instead he watches his mother watching the crowd, slowly swinging his legs to pass the time.

There is at least a two foot drop from where his sneakered feet knock against the wooden rail of the stool and sticky barroom floor.  I suppose he must have needed help to get up there.  Far belong him is a small, red backpack that’s stuffed too full.  A sleeve is hanging limp out from behind the zipper. 

Just under it is his name.  It’s written in poorly scrawled Sharpie pen and each letter looks forced, as though the boy has traced them from a pencil line.  The last name is crossed out three times.  It reads, “James Peterson? Ivanov? Chamberlin? Hendrick?” Below the name there is a slight tear, a worn patch through which it’s possible to see a flash of color.  A comic book, perhaps.  It’s got something drawn over it in the same black pen.  There’s a small travel tag on the side with the neon letters “U.M.”

Whoever the man they’re waiting for may be, the boy is equally anxious.  While he does not make so much of a show, weaving his neck around the room like a goose with its feet nailed to the nest, he flicks his fingers under the table where his mother cannot see.  He occasionally drums them along the knees of his tattered jeans to a beat other than the bar’s obnoxious tune. 

The mother, on the other hand, is oblivious to his irritation, his fear, his apprehension.   She’s applying lipstick for the third time since the chess game began, even though the first layer is still slathered on thick.  The tight skirt that keeps creeping up her legs looks expensive, but her shoes show years of shopping second-hand.

No child should see his mother this way, but the boy doesn’t react at all.  He reaches out to pack up the chess pieces with a tired look on his face.  He can’t reach all the pieces that are lined up close to his mother but she doesn’t offer a hand.  Any hint she showed early in the evening of wanting to play with her son has disappeared.  He snatches at the air with little success.  One of the stone pawns rolls over the board and onto the floor.  There’s a quiet crash that forces embarrassed tears to rise in the boy’s eyes and forces his mother to look up from her mirror.  He slinks off the chair to join his backpack on the sticky floor.

“Get up,” I think she says, “It’s filthy down there.”

He grabs the piece but doesn’t get back on the stool.  Instead, he curls his fingers around the knight and pulls his bag across the floor.  Putting it on his back, he turns and runs.

Now it’s simple fact that a little boy running through a bar with his mother shouting after him is bound to draw attention.  A woman with a drink in her hand stumbles over to him and asks a question.  He shakes his head and points his finger towards the door.  The two of them walk out, into the night.

The mother, stunned, looks at the door through which he exited, then down at his half-assembled chess board.  She’s like a burglar on a doorstep when the porch lights come on.  She throws her makeup into her purse and bolts.

I continue watching for a while after they’ve gone.  About ten minutes after the mother leaves, a man walks in.  He’s got the same hair as the boy but a glower that a child’s face could never hold.  He makes his way through the bar with the same searching look that the mother had.  He reaches the table in the dark corner where the chess set lies and sits down on one of the stools.

Someone comes over and tells him what has happened.  There are a lot of hand gestures and pointing towards the door.  The man’s shoulders slump and he rubs the stubble at the side of his cheek.  He doesn’t leave right away, though.  He sets up the board, one knight short, and proceeds to silently play both sides of the game.  He’s still there, playing boy and mother, when I leave.

The Truth About Heaven

I would have gone to the funeral if it had not rained.  In our town, when the summer showers come, the world grinds to a halt.  Empty plots in the graveyard fill with the sky’s frustration, dirt rising and spilling onto the cracked sidewalks.  It was one of these days when they held Her funeral.  At the service, some distant relative wearing stilettos caught her heel in the mud.  It sank into the hole in the ground and the woman was forced to hobble home on uneven legs.  The casket was eventually placed over the shoe and a Manolo Blahnik is now six feet under.  Or so the story goes.  How appropriate that Her days should end in a fable.

            All throughout Her life She told me wondrous tales of the world after death.  That’s what happens when it’s set in stone – when everyone knows that it’s coming.  If She’s right, She’ll disappear, but not the way most people believe.  Under Her coffin lid She’ll wake (as everyone is given a second chance), but the lock on the box cannot be undone by the arms of a child.

            When She falls asleep that final time, Her soul will ascend from the ground, floating away from the body that doomed Her to such an early departure.  A misinformed boy with pudgy cheeks and smashed glasses will be looking for an eclipse that night, one that will never come.  He’ll peer through a pinhole camera and there he’ll spot the rising shape of Her shameless naked form, dancing amidst gravestones on Her trip to the stars.  Or so She claims.

            On the “other side” awaits the Pearly Gates, judgement’s door to Heaven.  This is part of the story that She is unsure of; whether they will open and embrace Her with love, or cast Her below to Hell.  But I know that the gates will swing wide and envelope Her in that wet, sticky, infinite divinity. It will seep between Her toes and rush through Her hair like gritty sand, each grain clinging to Her scalp.  No amount of showering can ever rid you of the Happiness of Heaven.

            The Pearly Gates, She says, are made from the finest jewels an oyster can provide.  Twenty feet by twenty feet of glimmering hope, and each smooth drop reflects every one of Her perfections for the waiting line to see.  Somewhere, up there in Heaven, is a pool filled with oysters whose tiny bodies were wretched open in kamikaze to create the barrier to The Better Place. Those snivelling, slimy masses shiver in glee, each shake rattling the walls off their shells.  They sit there, happy as clams (though they hate the phrase).  There are no clams in The Better Place. The oysters remain the sole crustations in Heaven.  If not for their sacrifice, it would be clean.

            Every so often they find that the pearl of an oyster is not fit to place on the Pearly Gates.  It’s cast down to the mortal world, where it ends up in cheap necklaces to make the middle class look fancy.  That is why She always wore a string of them.  It was one such pearl that was fixed to a gold chain that sat, some thirty years ago, on the dresser of a nurse living on Bleaker Street.  She had spent the morning washing light fixtures, but a sudden call to the hospital left one lying alone on the kitchen counter.  Her daughter arrived home from a neighbourhood birthday party, her Sunday dress spattered with mud and the shine gone from her patent leather shoes.  In her hand she clutched a clear plastic bag containing a frantic goldfish.  A life given as a prize.

            The child spotted the glass dome and stood on tiptoe to shove it under a running tap.  The water sloshed onto the linoleum floor and left dark patches on her clothes.  She snapped the rubber band off the flimsy bag, dumping the creature into its new home.  The naive Pet hungrily swam to the surface to nibble at the dust that floated above him.  That would be his meal for the next two months.  For such a fish, death came easily.  The day it finally occurred all he could think was, “Huh!  I’ve never had my stomach in the air before.”  The fish, you see, was an optimist.

            But here we are in present day and he waits in his makeshift bowl.  Every so often, up there in Heaven, the fish will get bored.  Struggling against the life he led, he’ll try to flip over to see what lies around him.  The cruel clique of oysters watch his plight, their cases clacking together in a symphony of heartless laughs.  Their tiny feet stretch out from their shells with a shrieking, stretching sound and in unison they topple the fishbowl on end.  The tumbling creature lays right-side-up, trapped in his snow-globe-world.  Water drains through the sieve of clouds.

            It’s on these days, when the fish gets bored, that the sky fills with rain.  It’s days like these when the graveyard fills with the sky’s frustration and dirt pours onto the sidewalks.  And it was one of these days when they held Her funeral.  It was one of these days that I never went to say goodbye, the way She never did for me.