Maniac

The problem with apartments in this city, she had come to find, was that no one cared about anyone else. Sure, they made the appropriate offers to help move in or walk the dog while you're away, but for all they know, you could be just another relative helping yourself to the couch. Except she wasn't.

The door had failed to latch, the way it did 7 times out of 10, but who was counting? She was, of course. She had to. Home theft sure beat working minimum wage.

She watched them for weeks, learning the comings and goings of the young couple. They had a tiny dog. They both worked, she left first, he did after. Weekends they went for day trips- probably visiting family or friends. They took the pup with them and that took care of the only alarm system they were likely to have.

Walking in was like satisfying an itch too long unscratched. She took it all in: the humble seating arrangements, the thrifted couch, the handmade throw. At first it looked like they didn't have much, but then there was the flatscreen, the computer system, the Bluray collection...they scrimped to spend on other things. Time to get to work.

She knew to start with the bottom dresser drawer and work your way up and don't waste your time closing anything. To grab all of the jewelry first, validate diamonds later. To always keep a handful of Jehovah's Witness pamphlets in your purse- so when you case a house you have an alibi. To check the Holy Trinity: the dresser, the entertainment, the portable electronics.

She unslung her duffel bag and zipped its mouth as wide as it would go. She eyed the TV and decided it was too cumbersome, but the game consoles were money in the bank, adapters and all.

Closer inspection of the shelves revealed nothing but gold leaf, the trendy accent color of LA home decorators. Amused, she turned, searching for...chevron. In the kitchen. Of course.

She never bothered with desktops since they were much more complicated than the eight minute average she allowed herself. In, grab, out, was her second rule. Leave the passwords and the PINs to the pros. But the iPod charging under the desk? Money in the bag.

A few steps to the bathroom (once again thanking the tiny floor plans of the city's elite one bedrooms) and the medicine cabinet was hers for the taking. She hummed softly under her breath as she swept the orange tubes into her bag. On a wire between will and what will be...

In the bedroom she caught her breath, then let it out in a long slow sigh. Crap.

There, on the dresser- the first place any respectable thief zooms in on- was a tiny pile: folded fabric, a black and white photograph, a bow.

She picked up the cardstock, careful to avoid smudging the glossy surface. The curve of his forehead, a tiny snub nose and perfectly shaped lips. The onesie underneath proclaimed "Studmuffin" with a tiny muffin cartoon flexing biceps.

Debating one moment more, she upended the duffel onto the bed; plastic thunking and pills clattering all over the perfectly folded duvet. She let herself out, taking care to check the door.

Her number one rule? Don't steal from kids.

Guilty

The guilt was too much to bear, especially for one as sympathetic as Sammy. She felt smaller than usual, insignificant even, in a high school gym full of hurt and despair.

It was all her fault. 

Virginia's heat was sweltering- one of those summers that started early and left late burning the world to brown bits as the season ran its course. Days were spent inside, air conditioned and artificially cooled because the moisture had up and left. All of the creeks ran dry, all of the pools were closed, the backyard hoses gathered dust. Mimi murmured about droughts and kept a watchful eye on her herb garden, irrigated with rationed water.

Sammy stood barefoot in the backyard, dry wind in her dishwater blonde hair, shifting her feet to find a stance that didn't allow the prickly grass to poke her. She closed her eyes and lifted her hands as she had once seen Mimi do, concentrating, willing her wants into reality. The rustling of the weeds, the hum of the air conditioner, the comfortable weight of her sundress all fell away as she focused on her wish for water.

Mimi had always said to be careful about wishing- that women in their family had found a way to make wishes come true. Selfishness was not tolerated in Mimi's house because the consequences could be catastrophic.

All Sammy wanted was a little water, but when it welled from beneath her feet and fell squeezed from the sky, she knew she had asked for too much. No one told her when you grabbed water from the air that the molecules could dance and reassemble to form big fat rain drops that filled your palm, then your buckets, then the valley you lived in. No one spoke of a reservoir of water, filtered through the mountains over centuries and patiently waiting for a way out. A way Sammy hoped and wished into existence.

As Sammy looked around the room she knew what her selfishness had cost her. Dirty faces, vacant stares and mud smeared everywhere. The gym was full to the brim with families, rescue workers, nurses and volunteers. They were packed together, small spaces staked out, but the colors were all wrong: blue blanket islands on the yellow wood floor.

Sammy shivered. It was all her fault.

The water resisted all of her attempts to constrain it. It roared and frothed, exploding into life where it had previously been missing. It seeped up through basements and rolled through streets; it fell down in sheets, soaking everything in it's path. The townspeople could barely keep one step ahead of the rising tide as floods weren't normally a threat to house and home. They grabbed what they could: shoes, picture albums, computer hard-drives and waded their way to higher ground.

She wasn't cold, but her body shook uncontrollably. She clamped her mouth shut to keep her teeth from chattering, a reflex she had never quite conquered when faced with anxiety. She rose from her blanket island and wove her way through the displaced families, stepping slowly, trying to keep her anxiety from building. No one looked at the eleven year old twice.

She reached the megaphone on the other side of the room and picked it up, smooth and cold in her hands, surprisingly heavy. She had never used one, but it couldn't be too difficult. Just point and shoot, right? She flicked the ON switch and cringed when the machine screeched to life.

"Excuse me?" her voice bounced around the gym, off folded bleachers and hanging championship pennants and devastated townspeople grieving for homes lost.

"I just wanted to say...that I'm sorry."

Sick Day

 

I've never seen him like this. I'm not sure I've seen anyone like this, honestly.

He's lying in our queen size bed, arching his back and then releasing. What yoga pose was that? First the cat, then the cow. 

I've never heard a more heartbreaking sound. It's like the sound your dad makes when he's clearing his throat in the morning. The gross gathering of phlegm from the back of the throat, only Mr. E is gathering everything. He's summoning all of his muscles, all of his tendons and veins and arteries and lymph pathways for each push. He collects it all in order to expel it, but the effort exhausts him. And yet he does it again. And again, like clockwork or like breathing.

I was told, time and again, that this happened, so you can't say they didn't warn me. But in my naivete and with the confidence only the young and untried can have, I waved them back. It's all in his head, I assured myself. Somebody isn't doing something right, I preened. He wouldn't do that if I was taking care of him.

But here I sit, as anxious as he ever has been. I didn't think I'd have the stomach to face the contents of his. But I did. I didn't think the handsome strong man I married would be reduced to a shivering feeble mass, his eyes hollow and bloodshot. But he is.

And it's nobody's fault but an imbalance of pesky hormones, those tiny proteins that are known for things like sex and sports. So I'll sit here and wait for the next round because I'm too scared to move dishes or doors in case he's fallen asleep and the dog's head bounces on my wrist as I type because she can't let me out of her sight. Just like him and I.

Just Another Fruit

It surprised me when she started to talk. I was in the kitchen, my hair in its after-work bun, no make up, barefoot. I wasn't ready for guests in the house, evidenced by my college sweatshirt- the one I only wore without a bra.

"Hi," she exhaled softly, trying to keep her voice down. "I'm Leah."

I had one hand on the freezer side of our french-door refrigerator, the other on the grimy handle of the open fridge, trying for all the world not to fall in. It was the coolest place in the house at the moment and I wasn't about to let this hussy guilt me out of my own kitchen.

I faked a smile and shook her hand.

"I'm Becky. Nice to meet you."

It wasn't nice at all. There were a lot of things I would rather be doing with my life and pretty much at the top of the list was getting out of this dingy rental and away from my roommate and his constant parade of girls. This was the fifth in three weeks. 

He wasn't that bad normally. My boyfriend and I took him in partly out of pity, but also because he could pay rent immediately. He was a hipster at its finest: a grubby plaid shirt, an old beanie that sagged in the back and a back pocket iPhone that played haunting folk songs like his life soundtrack. He didn't have a car, his mustache was Captain Hook-esque and he crooned with his acoustic guitar as often as he could. But he seemed eager and willing and that was all we needed.

At first his story was sad: an ex-wife, a six year old son he never saw, a job in which he worked 10 hour shifts six days a week. But then it just got pathetic: the chain-smoking, the stumbling in drunk at 3 am, the phone fights with his ex, his mother and his son visiting for a weekend in which they nearly talked us out of house and home- all government conspiracies and medical problems.

And now girls we only recognized by the cars they parked outside or the distinct shuffle each one made as they slunk through the house the back way. We didn't talk to them and they made sure to avoid us.

This one seemed sweet, but honestly, I'd forget her name by the time I closed the fridge. I knew she would come around once or twice more but finally grow tired of his excuses- how the world was against him, his boss didn't like him or his wife wouldn't let him see his son. Considering the way he tried to hoard our dishes and silverware in his room until he had a full load for the dishwasher or how he never bothered to let our dog out when we were away,  I couldn't blame her.

"I love the way you've decorated in here. It is SO cute," she grinned.

I grabbed a kiwi and closed the fridge with my foot. Maybe this one wasn't so bad after all.

For Kids

They say necessity is the mother of invention, Nat remembered sullenly, blinking tired eyes. Her fingertips were raw and sore, imprints of metal wires and papercuts criss-crossed her thumb and forefinger. They don't mention a father. Guess he has other things to start.

What she really needed was a longer day. She didn't have time to invent that, though. Nat sighed and stretched her sore muscles, rotating her wrists and cracking her neck. Pipe cleaners littered the kitchen tiles, the wire and cloth frame of wings half-completed lay in front of her in a flickering pool of light, the concessions you make to support your kid.

Jake just would have bought the damn thing.

It was her wounded pride that made her blurt it out, unplanned, as they made the switch off after school. He was ruggedly handsome with his track suit and his fair-trade coffee, his SUV keys jangling in his free hand. "The Storybook Parade is next Monday, do you need me to..."

"I've got it," Nat cut in. "I'll make her costume. Thanks."

She loaded Maggie in the car without a backwards glance. Weekends were theirs and theirs alone, just like the years they had before Jake swooped in with his new wife and his new life.

When Maggie turned those beautiful brown eyes on her, what else could she do but acquiesce? Nat almost regretted it on Sunday night, stuck amid the growing pile of cotton scraps, dismantled wire hangers and googly eyes. She was a sucker for those eyes from the first time she saw them- a dusky navy, barely open until they gradually gave way to irises so dark you could hardly see her pupils. And always pleading for one thing or another.

"Please, Moooom?" the name long and drawn out. "I want to be a dragon!"

"Not a princess?"

"No, Mom. Dragons breathe fire."

So Nat sat. And sewed. And twisted. And bent and cursed and cried and tried to reinvent the wheel. Or at least, that's what it felt like. Because that's what she had always done for Maggie. Making Maggie happy was an addiction Nat never wanted to break. Research papers to write, rent past due, it all melted away in weekends full of exploring the world with her six year old.

She finished some time before dawn: multi-hued green scraps sewed and glued to shimmery webbing over wire bones and pipe cleaner joints. When Maggie shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen, she found her mother, arms crossed and face down before a hooded winged vest fit for a princess.

So, not sure when this happened, but I guess I'm writing now. Courtesy of Megan, I'm stretching my fingers (and my brain- remember the last time I did that?) and laying my thoughts bare for you. And for me. Because  if you're reading, we're in this together.

Dug Out

He dug himself a hole in the ground. The trees above him rustled like sails, swaying in the hot breeze. This was no day for yard work, but then it wasn't a good day to die either.

She looked on from the window, her face walled off and stony from weeks of watching that poor dog suffer. Laney was only 13, but small for her breed, abnormally so. People had thought she was still a puppy. Jessica had given up on the hope of puppies of her own years ago, content to adopt other dogs instead. Who needed the strain, the extra weight and worry of a high-risk canine pregnancy? She relegated Laney to old age instead, watching her wilt and buckle under the stresses of her diminutive stature.

He shifted the dirt pile automatically to the right, the way years of regimented training had taught him. Stab, shift weight, lever and lift. It wasn't all that different from digging trenches in Iraq, truth be told. Summer was summer, whether it was a middle eastern desert or the carefully cultivated front yard surrounded by scrubby brushes of the southern Californian mountains. You couldn’t escape from the suffocating heat. Just as you couldn’t escape the guilt that pulled you deeper, deeper, deeper.

He dug far longer than he thought he would, each shovelful of earth a commitment to his second chance. A chance he wouldn't squander. He'd been down that road before, each step taking him farther from the things he loved, a twisting turning path as narrow as his vision. The ground shifted and spilled beneath him, moving and adjusting as he continued to pick at it.

She came down to him, leaning slightly back to ensure a sure footing on the steep hill, her pedicured feet solidly placed, unmovable, unshakable. In her hand a plastic cup of water- one of those garishly purple Tupperware cups they could never seem to get rid of. She handed it to him and peeked into the hole, her hair a auburn tangle of waves and curls, what they called her house-hair, fell in front of her face.

"The vet said he'd turn a blind eye. He gave us the go-ahead," she had told him. They picked out the best view of the tilted yard, by the annuals Laney loved to lay in.

Now they both looked at the lifeless form behind him. A mass of fur and limbs, swollen with adipose tumors and a shaggy coat that had seen better days. She had hated the groomer.

Memories, unbidden, rose and caught between them. Researching dog breeds late at night as the kids were sleeping. The smile that caught her eyes when she picked out the puppy she wanted, thankful and hopeful and excited all at once. The vacation they biked around San Francisco, sans kids, towing the dog in the kiddie attachment like newlyweds, admiring the many-windowed buildings rising around them. Jess had always dreamed of visiting the city by the bay.

It was a decade ago that they had been that close. Somewhere in that time he had lost himself and his principles, given them up to someone else, a secret offering discovered. A dog's lifetime of mistakes.

It was no easy task to prove himself worthy again. Trust is hard to rebuild. But after two years of trying they still had this house. This home. He still had his wife. His kids. And this dead dog.

He broke the ground for her, but he buried the dog for himself.