I’m in a good mood

I’m in a good mood
for being spiteful. Tacos:
tongue and head-meat. I want
to feel a little cannibalistic
though not. It seems to me
if you’re going to eat
an animal, you should be
able to eat that meat
from cheekbone or socket.
Vegan yet? Eat that
muscle that makes words,
makes moo, moves cud.
Kiss the cow. Eat the kiss
chopped with onions,
cilantro, and both salsas.
Tonight, let the fat sizzle
on the coals and the smoke
flavor the meat. Nothing is real
I say as I eat tacos.
I also love cows.

This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Base Matter

 The boy was halfway down the stairs when he heard the door to Mamma’s bedroom open. He heard a man step onto the landing and Mamma murmuring from somewhere far away. The boy stood staring at his feet, waiting for something; he didn’t know what.

There was a sharp, echoing crack from outside.

He didn’t dare look up. He remembered the last man he’d seen, big and naked on the creaking landing. Curls of matted hair. Penis glued to a milky thigh. Milky belly shaking. No face. He remembered the grotesque mystery, born behind closed doors, something that should have stayed there.

Crack.

Jack bolted down the stairs. He heard the man's thudding steps cross the landing and the door of the bathroom open and shut. I better not tell Ben, he thought. In the living room to his left, Cora was splayed out in front of the television, limp and motionless as a doll. He poked his head through the door, waiting for her to turn. She did not.

“I was on the roof, looking at the dove’s nest,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“The Mamma dove wasn’t there, but her babies was fine.”

He’d taken one in the palm of his hand and tossed it off to see if it would fly; and when it didn’t, he threw the others with it, one-by-one, and now there were none left.

“That's good.”

“Yeah, I went up earlier.” Around the side of the house, he heard Ben going crack, crack, crack at his workbench. “That’s Ben. He been working all morning?”

“I guess,” Cora said, shrugging.

“Ben’s real strong, isn’t he? He’s getting big. I’ll bet soon enough he’ll be able to fight anyone.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t you care, Cora? Don’t you care about Ben?”

Jack went out the front door into the heavy summer air. He was wearing nothing but his drawers and a white tee that needed washing. The tall grass scratched his legs, flinging droplets of water as he waded through to the half-collapsed eave by the cellar, wincing as he padded across pools of sunlight. He was quick and misfitted, a creature from some dark, orderless realm.

Crack, crack, crack.

Ben kept his tools and scrap wood on the table he'd made a month ago, covering them in a green tarp when he wasn’t working. He was stripped shirtless, frozen with the hammer raised, and did not turn when Jack said his name. He struck the panel like a snake lunging to bite.

“Ben...”

His brother cast aside one board and picked up another. Last summer he'd built a treehouse that the whole neighborhood used, but now Jack could see no design or purpose to what he was doing, other than that it was a kind of primitive language for him, a ritual of brute articulation with which he called to or answered the clamor of a universe he didn’t understand. Jack didn’t understand. Why? Why does he beat the second board until it is splintered and then cast it aside too? He was better at building things than most grown men. At least, he usually was.

“What’re you doing, anyway?” Jack said.

Ben grunted. His body was sheened with sweat. When he lifted his arm, Jack noted a light, mossy down in his armpits and a shadow on his lip.

“What’re you doing?”

Crack.

“Wanna go to the quarry today? Wanna take Cora?”

Crack.

“I didn’t want to tell you, but she’s . . . even when they said she shouldn’t. Hell, what’re you doing, Ben?”

Crack.

“What do you want to do?”

Jack looked down the garden over the long grass and through the haze above the brook, then to the brown stacked buildings around the fields where they used to play before the city put a fence around them and some contractors dug a huge pit. Ben would make a good contractor. He was a better builder than anyone Jack knew, and not long ago he’d been best at wrestling and chasing and hiding on the fields around the forest. It was their forest, and Ben made sure nobody bothered them, not even the kids across the quarry; not even if it meant a bloody nose and all kinds of trouble. That wasn’t so long ago. Not so long ago, they were all together, and Cora was up on Ben’s shoulders, and they were wading ankle-deep in the stream after the spring rain, which made the water fast and heavy, in Jack’s mind a torrent unleashed by primal forces at once terrible and sublime.

“You think we should go out, Ben? Go somewhere today?”

Crack.

Jack examined his brother intently. His brother was the kind that seemed made for wherever he happened to be at any given time; as if he’d always been in just that place, doing just that thing, inextricably bound to it; you couldn’t imagine him anywhere else. He had stopped working and was wiping his face with a balled-up t-shirt.

“Where’s Cora?” he said.

“She’s just watching cartoons.”

“What time is it?”

“About ten.”

“It’s too early, is what it is.”

He pushed past Jack, round the side of the house, tossing the hammer from hand to hand.

“Are you angry, Ben?”

Mr. Spine stuck his head out the window, leering down as they approached the back entrance.

“How’s your Mamma?” he said, whistling through the gaps in his front teeth. “She never takes a day off, does she?”

Ben froze in the kitchen doorway with his head cocked, listening for a moment. Spine, evidently disappointed by what he perceived as indifference, spat into the yard and drew back savagely.

“Just make sure you keep down all that hammering and banging, okay?”

They went through the kitchen and into the living room, and Ben crouched by Cora, reaching out to ruffle her muddy blond hair. There was a thud directly above them. The man’s voice. Their mother’s voice. Unsettling laughter, high but mirthless. Jack looked up as if he half expected something monstrous to come collapsing through the ceiling.

“He was buck naked just standing there,” Jack said to nobody in particular. “He was real ugly. I remember the last time.”

He dropped from the sofa and scrambled towards the television. “What show is this?” he said. “What show is it, Cora?”

“It’s Charlie Rat.”

“Sure, but which one?”

“You know,” Cora said. “Quit teasing me.”

“I’m not teasing you,” Jack said. “I never tease you.” He prodded her arm.

“Leave her be,” Ben growled.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Stop bothering her.”

Ben took care of them both. Now, he was watching Cora closely, chewing on his bottom lip as secret thoughts moved darkly through his mind. Jack watched to see if he could catch a glimpse of them in the way Ben moved, in the fixed intensity of his eyes; they were like the strange fish he sometimes saw beneath the surface of the stream, creatures that seemed like they shouldn’t be real. Cora paid her brothers little mind. She sat cross-legged, gazing at the old television with such intent in her glassy blue eyes that she probably wouldn’t have noticed the room catch fire. And yet silently, without looking away from the cartoon, she’d taken Ben’s hand and was stroking his palm gently with her fingers. It was an entirely natural gesture. She could make it because she was five and love came effortlessly to her, and expressing it didn’t require thinking or desiring, or even needing anything more complicated than your attention. Jack tried to take her other hand. She pulled it away.

There was a thud from above, a muffled sob followed by the steady murmur of a man’s voice.

“I’ll bet that’s them doing it,” Jack said, looking at Cora and grinning.

“Huh?”

“It’s nothing,” Ben said. “Look what Charlie’s doing now.” He shot Jack a murderous glare.

“We could go to the fields,” Jack said. “We could all go to the river together. You never go anymore, Ben. We could swim.” He felt a strange sadness move through his bones.

Cora’s expression was ponderous, almost severe. She gazed at the screen. “I’m just watching is all.”

“She ain’t allowed to go to the river,” Ben said. “We’d just lose her.”

“You could look after her, though.”

“No.”

“We should go to the river.”

“No.”

Jack didn’t know anything. He knew nothing would go on forever. Everything real has a beginning and an end. I am getting older and Ben is older, and he’s bigger and stronger than he was, and his body is almost like a man’s, but not like the man that I saw through the dust on the stairs that time not so long ago. We’re all together now, and nothing goes on and on unless it isn't real. He started to laugh. I threw them birds off the roof, I did. He was laughing.

There was more muffled conversation from upstairs, then heavy footsteps, and a strange, shrill cry that beat and battered all the peace from the air. All those men. They knocked the ice around in their glasses and looked at Jack with small, wet eyes. They emptied Jack out and made him feel lonely. He was grinning. He could picture their small wet eyes, lined up in the darkness like the raccoons they saw in the garden at night. They were not supposed to —come—everybody said it. Aunt Sally said it. Mamma’s minister, Mr. Reacher. Even a doctor had said it, once. They weren’t supposed to come here. But she cannot help it, Aunt Sally whispered. She can’t help herself, the poor girl.

Ben stood. He paused for a moment, then turned quite calmly, quite deliberately, to the table next to the television stand, raising the hammer and then swinging it down hard with only a second’s pause before Jack could even open his mouth to form a hopeless protest. The blow sent a long-splintered fissure across the surface of the wood and a crack into the air. Picture frames fell from the wall, and a vase toppled, strewing wilted flowers. But it was not quite the robust sound that he’d managed outside, more hollow and vibrating this time, frail against the steady whirr of the house. He paused and looked at the ceiling as if he might get a direct, decisive answer from above.

“Why’d you go and do that,” Jack said, staring at the smashed picture frames, the limp, half-dead roses, like bodies scattered after an act of God.

“I don’t know,” Ben said, shrugging. “I really don’t.”

 There were dangerous fragments all over the grubby carpet.

“He was mad about something,” Cora said. “Wasn’t you, Ben? What was you mad at?”

“Nothing,” Ben said, examining the hammer as if he might find the answer there. He bent by Cora and stroked her soft, red cheek.

“You’re fine, aren’t you?” he said. “She doesn’t even notice.”

“I’m hungry,” Cora said, stretching her arms and yawning. “I didn’t get any breakfast.”

Ben tensed. “She didn’t get any breakfast. Nobody got her breakfast.” He stood, swinging his arms, the hammer moving like a metronome.

“I could’ve,” Jack said. “But I didn’t think to. You should’ve got her breakfast, Ben.”

“I ate an apple,” Cora said.

“She ate an apple,” Ben said. “Someone got her an apple, so it’s okay.” Jack watched as his brother drifted into the hall and began up the stairs, taking short steps, one at a time.

“What are you doing, Ben?”

They went up the stairs.

“What’re you gonna do, Ben? Are you gonna do something bad?”

His brother stopped abruptly, just as their heads were drawing level with the landing. “We could go down to the river,” Jack whispered. “Or, you can go up if you have to.” He was frightened and excited at the same time.

His brother was a step above, his body still shining with sweat. Light from the slatted windows made ribbons and pearls over his bronzed skin as if he were some cheap ornament on display. The light moved slowly as clouds passed across the sun outside.

“I don't hear anything now, anyway. He must have gone.”

Ben leaned over the banister, letting a long rope of spit fall from his mouth onto the dirty floorboards below.

“We can go up together,” Jack said. “I’ll have your back and you’ll have mine.”

Ben stared at him blankly for a moment, close enough now that Jack could smell his sweat, and the still-boyish loam of his flesh, the wet wood and grass.

“Why’d you come up here?” Jack said.

“What if I crack him?” Ben said. “What if I beat his head with this hammer, tell him to go away and not come back?”

They always came back.  It was a different one every time. They were dumb and loud, but it wasn’t their fault. And it wasn’t their mother’s fault, either. Jack didn’t know whose fault it was. They were just loud and stupid, or sullen and mean; but if she was busy with them, she wasn’t flying around wailing about the angels.

“You wouldn’t hurt Mamma, would you?” Jack said.

“Not her,” Ben said. “She’s just . . . Not her, anyway.”

“But Ben, you’re just a kid.” Jack felt a tightness in his gut, a strange heat on his hands. “Aunt Sally says we best just leave her alone. She told me once. It was a secret; she said that since Dad went to the Moon, Mamma needs space and time to…time to...” He couldn’t remember exactly what Sally had said. “Well, she told me we should just leave her be.”

“Fuck Aunt Sally,” Ben said. “Aunt Sally’s no better than us, and she knows it.”

“She said we shouldn’t upset her.”

“Aunt Sally’s a drunk. She thinks a lot of herself, but she’s really just a drunk. And our Old Man didn’t go to the moon, you dumbass; how stupid are you, for Christ’s sake? He’s two towns over with his other kids.”

“His other kids?”

Jack looked at the bedroom door again. The sound of whispered conversation drifted steadily into the heavy air, so low you couldn't be sure you were hearing anything. Ben took a breath and went onto the landing, striding down with the hammer held out in front of him. His thin lips were set in a hard line, and he was outside the door and about to open it, or hit it, or whatever else he had planned. He seemed too small on the landing by himself, smaller than Jack had ever seen, and at the same time filled up with something, like when it’s only drizzling, but the clouds are black and you know the sky’s full up with a storm. For a moment, he stood with his shoulders up and his whole body pulled tight, and Jack wanted him to go into the bedroom, and he did not want him to go in.

“What’re you gonna do, Ben?” he whispered.

Ben looked back, his face a mix of shame and rage, the rage tightening to a sharp point in his eyes. It was the way their mother looked when she was in one of her frenzies. He had her flat, delicate features, the intense blue of her eyes, the same wild, mercurial energy. He just held it in better.  He flung open the door and went inside, slamming it shut behind him. The silence on the landing was deafening. For a moment, Jack just stood. Then he ran to the bedroom door and pressed his ear against it. The sound of blood in his head made it hard to hear anything; just muffled conversation, a sob, laughter, another sob, a man raising his voice; the words remained as senseless as ever.  A long time passed. He heard one voice, then another, then the steady drone of three together. The door opened and Ben pushed past. In the dark bedroom, Jack could see the stranger sitting straight-backed on the chair by the window, a broad-chested man in black pants and a stiff white shirt. A minister’s stole gleamed around his throat like a colorless eye. He was watching Jack fixedly, his expression sour and somber, lifeless as if made from wax. Their mother sat cross-legged on the bed with her hand out for someone to hold.

“Is that Jacky, out there?” she said. “Come hold Mamma’s hand, Jacky. Come in, honey. Come to Mamma.”

“Come pray with your mother,” the minister said.

“I can’t,” Jack said, taking a step forward. “I can’t. It’s just stupid. Did Ben do it?”

“Come now, Jacky. Come to your Mamma.”

“Did Ben do it, Mamma? Did Ben pray?”

“My babies are still with me—you see, Mr. Reacher? They still come to see their Mamma.”

“I can’t do it,” Jack said. He shut the door and went to the top of the stairway. He saw Ben standing sullenly in the entrance to the living room, still carrying the hammer as if it were an extra appendage. But it had lost all its menace now; all the danger had drained away and it was little more than a toy. It made Jack want to laugh.

“Come outside with us,” Ben said to Cora. “Come on, you can’t stay inside all day.”

“I’m just watching,” she said.

“You gotta come out, Cora. It’s bad for your eyes to sit like this.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“Fuck the both of you, then,” he roared. “Fuck all of you—the both of you upstairs as well.”

He went into the garden, slamming the door so hard that another of the picture frames fell from the wall.

Jack went down and picked it up, shaking the glass from its face, brushing off shards from the faded image. There was a baby gathered in a woman’s arms with the ocean in the background and a strange smiling frown looking out from under her sun hat. It took him a moment staring at it to realize it was just the stock image that had come with the frame. Someone had just forgotten, or never bothered to swap it out. He tore the picture in two and bent by Cora.

“Don’t worry, he didn’t do nothing,” he said. “You don’t have to worry.”

She nodded, her eyes still not leaving the screen.

“You don’t have to worry.” He said, suddenly taking a handful of her hair and tugging it savagely so that her whole head snapped back and she was looking at him upside down. “I’ll be right here,” he said, his whole body shaking with senseless rage. “Ben’s too big now, and he has to worry about more important things.” He stood and stretched. What was there to do after all that? What should he do now?

He left Cora crying and went out into the garden. He saw Ben at the back, standing by the ditch where the polluted stream ran along a mossy gutter. Sometimes they would challenge each other to jump over it, one or the other, usually Jack, ending up ass flat in the filth. His brother's laughter would rake the air for a few moments before he jumped down to help. Then Jack would be crying. Then they would both be laughing, thrashing around in the mud.

He went across the yard, chased by Cora’s steady, but receding wailing. Everything was badly overgrown, and the grass went up to his waist, spiteful and scratching as he waded through it. He stood staring at his brother’s ropy back.

“What did he tell you?” Jack said. “Was it Mister Reacher, Ben? What did he make you do?”

“Nothing,” Ben said.

“Did he make you pray?”

 “He didn’t have a chance. I hit him straight away. I killed them both.”

“I saw, Ben. You didn’t. I saw it was just the minister.”

His brother spat savagely into the water. If he heard Cora’s wails, he was ignoring them.

"I really thought it was one of the other ones,” Jack said, feeling empty and angry and grateful inside. “I wanted you to hit him, but it was probably best you didn’t. You shouldn’t hit a preacher, should you?”

Ben said nothing.

"Would you have hit one of the other ones, Ben? Would you have done it? I’ll bet you would.”

The older boy turned, his features twitching, examining Jack as if he didn't understand what he was seeing; maybe just the raw substance of things, just the flesh and violence from which they'd both been divined, all of it laid out neatly for them to fail to understand. It seemed to confuse him and make him mad, and maybe a little afraid; all these feelings were happening on his face at once. It was nothing more or less than what they were, all just parts in a sequence of reflections that showed the same thing again and again. Blood makes blood, and there’s no escaping it.

Ben swung his fist hard and caught Jack square on the nose, sending the younger boy a few steps back before he toppled into the long grass. Only a patch of russet hair was visible over the stalks. There was an aching thunderous roar in his ears, then a protracted stretch of silence, disturbed only by a chorus of insects, which was, in its absolute unity, a kind of quiet itself. Ben took the hammer from where he’d dropped it, and stood over Jack, a black shape against the sky. He looked as confused as ever, even as he raised the hammer and held it against the branches above.

It was senseless and Jack couldn’t bear to think about it—the preacher in his mother’s room, the men, Aunt Sally, the way Ben smashed and splintered all those spare boards for no reason. Senseless. His ears were full of the sound of insects, turning his head to the side, looking into the long, rippling grass where a dirty beer bottle lay half buried like some forgotten monolith in miniature. It was kind of peaceful now, kind of like nothing had happened, like he’d just stretched out in the sun to doze. 

“You can get the next one that comes around," Jack said softly. “I’ll bet you can. You’ll be big enough to beat him up good.” The grass was long and yellow at the top, and dark and wet where it met the soil. It moved gently in the breeze and its depths were safe and dark. When he turned his head again, Ben was gone.

He lay gazing up at the arms of the trees that stretched across his body like mourners praying over a corpse. He felt the blood flow three ways down his chin and both his cheeks, and then dry and harden in the breeze. Some strange amount of time must have passed. He heard the birds playing in the trees, saw baby doves falling frozen from the roof, their wings too frail to beat their small bodies into flight. He lay peacefully, forgetfully. Then he heard the steady crack, crack, crack of the hammer beginning again, as if nothing had happened and no time had passed, as if it had all been just thoughts in his head. The sound no longer seemed entirely real.

This story was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Two Poems from “What the Hollow Held”

We’re proud to feature these two poems from Rebekah Wolman’s chapbook “What the Hollow Held,” which was selected by Valerie Smith as a finalist in The Headlight Review’s Chapbook Contest in the Spring of 2024.

Late Father as Lost Wax-Casting

People said "Sorry for your loss," suggesting
gone forever, suggesting never come back,
never get found, as in empty, as in without,
                                but it was something more
like transformation, the Dad-shaped space
inside my forlorn mind full first of shock
and fear for what he'd feel if he could feel,
                        alone and somewhere unfamiliar.

Then slowly what the hollow held, the chill
and numbness, began to melt; slowly
the cavity refilled. There he was again
in the place where he belonged—alloy
of his finest traits, rough spots filed. Still
himself but so quiet, so easy to be with.

The Two Cultures, with bursitis and arthritis of the knee

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists. . .Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
— C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution

Massaging my swollen knee to coax the built-up fluid
against the tendency of gravity and towards the beating pump,
I think about my father—his knee, smashed on a lacrosse field
in 1941 and what may have finally killed him if decades of aspirin,
even buffered, can kill a person. We're joined now, closer
than we were when he was living, by these joints not engineered
for wear or weather like expansion joints in dams and other structures
of his life's work.
                                But the high bridge over the gulf between us
remains unfinished, the span from his end reaching farther,
closer to a meeting point, than the span from mine. He read
George Eliot and Boswell's Life of Johnson, was better versed
in literature than I in how things worked. You live in a fantasy world,
he told me. His was the world of pumped storage hydropower plants.
In mine those reservoirs and turbines become a version of a heart.

These poems were featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Another Love

Never offer your heart to someone who eats hearts.
—Alice Walker

Not insomnia but horses
galloping in my night chest
in the low plains

your blood is drained
of iron the hematologist said
eat more red

meat

binge vampire soap operas
half-dream of sucking a slick
thrumming heart.

This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Blue

Was it April? I’d moved into that drab place
up Maple and you—remember this?—
came over with wine, with oysters, even,
snagged from the fish market past the canal.
Can you see it? I can:

We’ve spread our feast on the bare boards,
not a stick of furniture in there, no table
for any of it. Spring fingers of sunlight
go probing, lengthening, stippling
until all the tall windows blank out blue.

Remember how our bodies reached
and touched and tasted—arms, hands,
lips, how our limbs entangled
on the hardwood stretch of floor, how
our murmurs, then cries gave us back
their muted echoes from the high dusty
moldings of the ceiling and drifted down?

How the moments became one moment,
how they made one place where we
stepped out of time.

                           Too much later, how
blue time rushed in and mauled us,
holding us in its cruel jaw. Drove into us
the cruel blue of its tooth.

This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Dakota Russell

Renee

This piece, Renee, is a simplistic characterization of my own cat. It is a portrait of her within a forced perspective composition where the subject confronts the viewer. It is entirely painted out of gouache atop a 6x6 inch panel. During its creation, I felt lost as an artist and was struggling to understand the definition of my own art. This piece was the first painting I had created in years that was for my own enjoyment other than for my work and schooling. The use of color and further distortion of the room surrounding the subject was a key part of my experimental thought process.

Using my own cat as my subject evolved into a symbol representing a new spark and process of creating art. This simple piece not only helped me out of years of struggle within my practice, but opened up an entirely new world of art to me. With this, I can use my personal experience of making art exciting again by inspiring others to create as much as possible and reminding those how they define their creative process. 

This piece was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Letter from the Editor

In a recent debate on social media, many wondered if anyone reads little magazines. It started when someone posted befuddlement about a certain kind of nonstory story. You know the one, a perfectly crafted end table of a thing that serves to hold fine language, passable plot, and believable characters but offers very little else. These stories, she claimed, make up most of what’s published in our contemporary magazines. It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading these stories, the poster explained, it’s just that they don’t do anything, don’t make me feel anything, and they certainly don’t stick in my memory.

Others helpfully explained to our original poster that this kind of story is the fault of MFA programs, of careerist “portfolio building,” and of literary magazines like this one where, someone said, everyone has the best intentions, but no one really cares about literature. Clearly, the commentators agreed, no one actually reads this stuff, and, if they do, they’re dummies for wasting their one precious life. Call me a dummy, I guess.

To some degree, it’s true. This is the kind of attitude and literary culture that could only take hold after the MFA boom and the internet revolution, when we have more writers, readers, and little magazines than ever before. And, certainly, it can take real effort to find a memorable oasis in the sea of submissions—novice scribbling, well-crafted apprentice work, and the continued output of excellent writers who’ve not yet found mainstream success enough to focus on novels or screenplays or webisodes or whatever else the literati deem deserving of celebration this news cycle.

But to condemn this entire enterprise, as many glib commentators did, because it doesn’t produce enough remarkable content is to both misunderstand the purpose of the endeavor and to expose one’s ignorance of the many gems that have always sparkled in the little magazines.

Small presses, independent publishers, and little magazines like The Headlight Review are (and always have been) the substrate of literary culture. Like the rich loam from which the forest blooms, the little magazines offer what most beginning and even experienced writers will find nowhere else: sympathy, attention, effort, resources, and support. But more importantly, they offer an otherwise unknown freedom from the tyranny of conglomerate taste and the pressure of the profit motive. It is in the little magazines where writers and readers can explore the boundaries of literary form and explode the confines of oppressive community standards; where new authors can refine their style and locate their audience; where the undervalued work of the short story, the translation, and indeed the poem can thrive while the posters scroll by.

As to the quality of the literature published in these venues, I offer this, our most recent issue. With outstanding fiction, excellent poems, vivid new translations, and compelling visual art, this issue represents the culmination of a year spent reading, thinking, editing, and publishing by care undertaken by our exemplary guest editors, Melanie Sumner (fiction) and Gregory Emilio (poetry), and staff, especially Brittany Files, our managing editor, and Antwan Bowen. Thanks this month are also due to our Chapbook Prize judge Valerie Smith, who selected the pieces excerpted in this issue as finalists as well as our winner, Gail Griffin for her chapbook Peripheral Vision. Finally, we owe many plaudits to Zarek Lacsamana who completely redesigned and rebuilt the website over the summer of 2024.

I’m honored to report that the spirit and future of literary magazine publishing is alive and well here at The Headlight Review, and I know after reading this issue you’ll feel compelled to agree. Thanks for reading, writing, and submitting.

This piece was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Flu

Deep in winter, always Madame
Sosostris, hands paler than first light,

every reflective widow’s
blighted eye I pass as a ghost

might. The days hiding
underneath each wood plank, rats

gnawing through the piers,
beams, blind glass holding it all

together. The corridors,
waiting for the solstice to bear

spring tidings, promise that
warm winds will erase the stares—

back behind every mirror. Learning
to never ask about my future,

just as I have learned to love
with my mouth closed and words

unshuttered, love like prongs lending
another block of wood to a feeble fire.

When the snow softly beats the earth,
the woman who is known to be the wisest

in Europe whispers I love like the snow.
I pretend that she is not there

so that I may pretend that
I do not love at all.

This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Growing Mythology, or, To Turn a Frog into Something That Isn’t a Frog

Tuck islands in the lyric. Offer a watery spelling of light.
The disruption of stars in the blue-black oil

unearths a verb from its worm palace. Sing.
The green algae ribbons were just released on parole,

now the banks are becoming sentient. Whoa,
they’re really holding this place together.

Between two mirrors, a face becomes
prepositional. Under Hydra’s nose

it’s hard not to imagine animals
outside physical law.

Every inexactly green blink
brings you closer to amphibious

and you can’t stop believing
Robert Lowell died in a bog.

It was only the idea of a bog,
in the same way a question like

Need I move mountains to hear the sea?
puts us on our backs.

The cicadas are mythicizing everything
with their remarkable racket.

I so want to join, to chirp the orphic end—

In their language, the frog is the face of our moon.
Light sways, a little drunk.       An ancient body blooms.

This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Two Poems from “What the Hollow Held”

We’re proud to feature these two poems from Rebekah Wolman’s chapbook “What the Hollow Held,” which was selected by Valerie Smith as a finalist in The Headlight Review’s Chapbook Contest in the Spring of 2024.

Late Father as Lost Wax-Casting

People said "Sorry for your loss," suggesting
gone forever, suggesting never come back,
never get found, as in empty, as in without,
                                but it was something more
like transformation, the Dad-shaped space
inside my forlorn mind full first of shock
and fear for what he'd feel if he could feel,
                        alone and somewhere unfamiliar.

Then slowly what the hollow held, the chill
and numbness, began to melt; slowly
the cavity refilled. There he was again
in the place where he belonged—alloy
of his finest traits, rough spots filed. Still
himself but so quiet, so easy to be with.

The Two Cultures, with bursitis and arthritis of the knee

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists. . .Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
— C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution

Massaging my swollen knee to coax the built-up fluid
against the tendency of gravity and towards the beating pump,
I think about my father—his knee, smashed on a lacrosse field
in 1941 and what may have finally killed him if decades of aspirin,
even buffered, can kill a person. We're joined now, closer
than we were when he was living, by these joints not engineered
for wear or weather like expansion joints in dams and other structures
of his life's work.
                                But the high bridge over the gulf between us
remains unfinished, the span from his end reaching farther,
closer to a meeting point, than the span from mine. He read
George Eliot and Boswell's Life of Johnson, was better versed
in literature than I in how things worked. You live in a fantasy world,
he told me. His was the world of pumped storage hydropower plants.
In mine those reservoirs and turbines become a version of a heart.

The Painter

You sat with brushes in hand and the light flowing above and below,
the prayer like paper, the light illumined our sacred trees.
Somehow, we forgot our raucous and joyous past loves
when I asked you to listen for the screen door's slam
and the call to supper as I brought you the evening meal.

And then there was that folio of your recent sketches:
so many similar dark faces filled with joy.

I gazed at the rich, brown texture of a watercolor on the page,
a man’s tortured face, his beard, his tough bronzed skin.
You said it was a portrait of your brother,
who died overseas during a rain of fire in Viet Nam.

And you put down your brushes to confess
we were going to start life all over again
without waging the private wars that keep us together.

You painted your dead brother’s face
against a background of blue.

This story was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Tiny Metal Objects

Objects are often tied to memories – they strengthen each other in the elaborate pathways of the mind. Songs, smells, tastes: the list is endless. Nostalgia and reminiscence can become fused instantly; sometimes, the bond breaks like a weak weld, and other times becomes permanent.

For me, rings are wrapped around specific memories adorning the space of my lifetime. Maybe it’s

their intricacy

their uniqueness

their fragility.

No one else worldwide is wearing the same set simultaneously – my stylistic decisions make me irreplaceable. I value the concept that rings are constantly with me, right in view, closing around my fingers like tiny armor plates.

Maybe it’s the way they’re like temporary tattoos – meaning can also be far subtler than more permanent avenues of self-expression. Rings have the arcane ability to signify far more than meets the eye – silent statements that shout in their own way. Or maybe it’s because they can be

lost and found

lost and forgotten

lost and mourned.

Delicate rings are often prone to wander, even in the care of a vigilant wearer.

There’s a part of me that’s convinced that I’m overly sentimental and unduly attached to inanimate jewelry pieces. I hope the truth of it all is simply that I love wearing tiny metal objects.

All these feelings are genuine and unshakable: they define me far more profoundly than I previously realized. Looking into my jewelry box, a swirl of memories rises like a cloud.

I imagine the rings as tiny slivers of silver linings.

I revel in their diversity and the evolution of my taste and personality.

I see snapshots in time of places and people who were with me when I got them.

Sometimes, memories haven’t been discovered in ages, and experiencing them brings waves of poignant longing. Other times, it’s only been a few days since I smiled or laughed or cried at that moment when…

I think of the rings I was wearing as I held Grandpa’s hand in his last hours. There is an image that shines brighter than the others in my memory. It portrays a quiet moment when Grandma stepped outside his hospice room for an emotional respite.

My hands were clasped around his, and the light from the open door reflected off my beloved tiny metal objects.

On my right middle finger was the fishbone ring that caught on everything until I framed it with two other silver bands. That fish was a personal reminder to stand tall, straighten your backbone, and be strong, no matter the situation. It may seem like an odd association with a line of bones – of mortality, but it braced me through those fleeting final moments shared with Grandpa.

Next to the fish on my pointer finger was a ring comprised of many twisted golden layers; it was connected throughout the spiral but not on the ends like I’d expected rings to be. I wondered how it stayed on, but it did. Now I suppose that’s a metaphor for the worst life brings; 3 whatever the situation or circumstance, I will endure.

There was the silver left-hand pinky ring I’d slid around my finger last minute, only barely being held on by the joint as my finger’s volume shrank in the coldness of that palliative care room. I’m sure it was as comfortable as possible for my grandfather, but it was sterile and frigid for me. The Indiana winter yet to melt into spring was no match for that feeling of perpetual frostbite – I realized that was how death felt on the outside, to those only witnessing it.

Polishing the image has proven pointless. I’ve lost count of the other rings I see in that cerebral picture – simple tiny gold- and silver-filled bands stacked together like longtime friends. The differences in surface patterns could only be seen upon a very close inspection. Their variegation was meant for me; I knew where I’d gotten them and why I cared. Sitting there with Grandpa’s fading lifeforce, those moments of bliss were forgotten, slipping away just like him.

I shudder at the uncanny way those rings held the warmth of my hands, vividly scalding me as Grandpa’s own became cold. His fingers slowly transitioned in hue from red to blue, like a subtle watercolor wash or tide rolling in at nightfall. Looking down at those pieces of metal filling up my fingers, I realized that after he was gone, they would be there; they couldn’t leave me so easily. My hands were holding Grandpa’s, needing his firm, reassuring squeezes. To this day, I don’t know if those motions were more to calm my soul or his. It vexes my brain to try and answer that question still burning through it each time the memory loops back into salience. Perhaps actions truly do speak louder than words.

I remember his last breath and his strong grip on my hands suddenly slipping away. Searing realization of knowing he’d never squeeze my hands again and tell me I wore too many rings, that I’d be going off in metal detectors forever unfurled inside my soul. Silently, I promised Grandpa that I would never forget how life is transient, how it’s something to be guarded far more than traditional items of wealth. Over four years later, the sentiment still exists.

After moments lost in the vacant space of a heart no longer able to beat, Grandma removed the wedding band from Grandpa’s finger and closed her palm around it. With a stifled breath, she whispered the words of the vow that the piece of jewelry represented for almost sixty years. Grandma spent a few agonizing seconds trying to fit his ring onto any of her fingers and ultimately failing. With another ragged gasp, she held it to her heart and slipped it into her pocket.

Unsure what to do next, I rotated those many rings around my fingers. Mazed in a stormy sea of grief, I physically was unable to do anything other than fiddle with those tiny metal objects. I didn’t want to leave Grandma alone with her heartbreak and the body of the man she loved, but what more could I do? How could I provide tangible, empathetic comfort when all I felt was palpable emptiness?

After a time that seemed like seconds and years, I whispered to Grandma that I’d be outside. I knew she’d need some time to say her goodbyes privately. I’d imagined my own inside the room for days, not wanting to miss his last moment. But I paused in that physical threshold and whispered my final farewell, feeling as if one more was needed. The same cold of that hospice room followed me to the family waiting room and settled into my soul for weeks. I knew it wasn’t the rings on my fingers causing the sensation, but my hands felt chilled to the bone, like Grandpa’s as he took his last breath in this world.

The memory of that fated day still evokes pain; it slices through my heart and makes me shiver like unheated steel. I’ve learned that it’s stainless; the sting refuses to dull. Being a witness to the transition between this world and the next changed me; it forced me to consider in what ways youth is often wasted on the young. I wondered for months if my last remaining slice of childhood died with him. I felt older at that moment, far older than I’d ever felt while blowing out candles and making wishes.

It’s easy to see now that I had put on all those pieces of jewelry as physical reminders to strengthen my soul for the road ahead on the path of bereavement. The rings I wore the day Grandpa traded this life for the next told a story of all I’d survived until that point; all I hoped to overcome that day and whatever would follow after he was gone.

During my thesis defense – a week after his passing – I wore only the set of three rings with the fishbones at their center, futilely trying to curb the nervous habit I’d developed of playing with the plethora of rings on my fingers. I also worried twisting around the metal would be distracting for my committee, a deleterious habit that stemmed from the guilt of missing Grandpa’s burial and the chance to support Grandma simply to graduate. The sensation was as piercing as wearing too small rings, which make deep dents in the skin and feel like they’re squeezing the fingers into a permanent numbness.

Those rings etched into my memory of holding Grandpa’s hand are now lost; I had to take them off at work one day for manufacturing safety compliance, and they were never found. I mourned for days and couldn’t understand why at the time. Weren’t they just worn metal bands, some even desperately needing polishing? I see now it wasn’t the lack of physical accessories that deeply wounded me – it was the feeling of a complete loss. My last proverbial piece of Grandpa vanished along with them. Like his spirit, they’re somewhere else, perpetually out of reach. Now I think of his memory and must rely on my mind’s images alone. In a gold-plated moment mixed with grief and hollowness,

I got the fishbone ring remade.

It’s not the same.

It feels blasphemous to wear it.

Perhaps this is the reason I still wonder why I so ardently adore tiny metal objects. A month before the day that marked four years after Grandpa’s expiry, I knew which set of sixteen rings would be with me. My jewelry pieces weren’t hidden on a chain close to my heart like Grandma’s newfound home for their wedding bands. They were all in full view, showing me that I have many more memories to be made and experiences to be felt. And I am more than my experiences. I am as strong as carbon steel, unique as tooled gold, and extraordinary as polished diamonds.

On Grandpa’s Remembrance Day, I gazed into my jewelry box and considered what makes me select specific rings each morning. Was there something driving those visual decisions? While the concept of them becoming tactual shielding was important, the choosing of the rings is more subconscious than I could explain. I found I often start at my pinky fingers and work my way to the pointers, selecting rings I think together are aesthetically pleasing. Present-day favorites or newly acquired pieces always seem to make the miscellany, whether that was my intention or not.

It wasn’t long ago that I realized I still perform that unconscious exercise I did before holding Grandpa’s hand on his last day with us. I stack on the metal; I apply ring after ring when I want to remember I’m stronger than I feel at that particular heartbeat. Another compelling element discovered was that I always remove the rings when I return home – the action is one of the first I perform. I don’t need steeling in my sanctuary: I am content with letting the memories lie in wait for another dawn.

Serenity is a vital concept when considering my jewelry choices. Not all my retrospections tied to inanimate artisanal designs are laced with melancholy, sharp like metal improperly buffed. Quite a few are glimmering through my mind, like light reflecting off a diamond – sweet bursts of stars. Memories come in many sizes and finishes, after all.

I smile at the irony of the class ring I was so excited to get and couldn’t afford. I think of it now and wonder if it’s too late to purchase one, if it’s too ridiculous of a notion. My undergraduate college experiences have been tarnished by the marching of time – over five years have passed, bittersweet echoes blending into the realm of hazy nostalgia. I’m not even the person I was back then; I certainly don’t look like her anymore. Each day seemingly brings new waves of sterling silver hairs overtaking the auburn in my curls. But the concept of belonging to the class still gleams around the corners of my mind, unforgotten.

These days, my right ring finger is often filled with another object of adornment that would have to be evicted. The specific ring that would have to be laid to rest inside my jewelry box is a dainty silver bow, a reminder delicately tied around a finger encouraging the wearer – encouraging me – not to forget. And forgetting is something I never want to do. That delicate ring invites me to remember that I am loved, strong, and not nearly as fragile as I may seem. For a reason I can’t quite comprehend, I often need reassurances from tiny metal objects.

When I look back on those undergraduate years, I recognize that I filled that void of fitting in with the class of 2017 with other items of personal adornment. While not accessories directly tied to individual accomplishments, the rings I was wearing when I graduated shone like the pride I felt for myself and my peers. I remember their sparkle, their celebratory clinking as we repeatedly clapped to commemorate our achievements. To this day, I love applauding with fingers filled with metal. The twinkly sounds make the emotions sweeter, like the sound of clinking together champagne glasses in a shimmering toast. The sounds made me wonder if others feel a similar attachment to personal adornments; mercifully, the idea was something on which I did not long have to muse.

I reflect on the class ring I found in Grandpa’s things that wasn’t his. Grandma doesn’t know where he found it. Maybe it was on that Florida beach trip when he was mildly obsessed with metal detecting; maybe it was left in the space he used to open his model boat business. Grandpa kept it safe in the drawer where he kept his most valuable personal possessions, but he never told Grandma it was there. A secret unearthed after his body literally returned to the ground. Even though the ring was well-worn, places made smooth by unknown adventures; the green center stone still shone as if lit from inside its core. Enough of the engraving was left to determine the school and give my search a starting place. Although they were rather mundane designs like buildings and letters, the worn nature of the surface appeared more like mythical ruins and long-forgotten runes. Careful cleaning revealed more secrets to help decipher the ring’s original wearer.

Soon enough, the hunt led to a tangible clue. I found its owner through the initials on the band, KFS. Over fifty years had passed since he lost it, and he couldn’t remember where. None of Grandma’s ideas jogged his memory. He tearfully reminisced about the sadness of losing his class ring and the extreme wonderment of seeing it in his mailbox after so long. It was like welcoming an old friend after years apart, scarred yet familiar, mysterious in their transformation, yet instantly recognizable. Maybe this concept is why Odysseus has remained vital throughout history – his journey reveals how time and tide craft their own devices in the lives of mortals. Odysseus seems to be a metaphor for wanderlust, personal growth, and returning home. Perhaps Homer also kept or held onto objects as corporal ties to ephemeral milestones.

I envision the ring I hope to receive one day that will be tied to a new life chapter shared especially with another. A physical promise to be carried over the vein directly leading to my heart. Hopelessly romantic, perhaps, but the concept sparkles; maturity has yet to tarnish the idea. It will be built on a simple foundation of a golden band and platinum prongs, celebrating diversity through this mixing of metals. It will have three diamonds; the center stone will be slightly included, showcasing that perfection is overrated and impossible to achieve (yet still shamelessly trying to attain it).

Most importantly, it must match the other rings I’ll be wearing, the memories that shaped the woman receiving such a specific piece of jewelry – that shaped me. It must celebrate growth while respecting the process; it’s a lot to consider for such a tiny metal object. I understand I could purchase one of those unique adornments myself; it’s just a beautifully crafted thing, after all. But then, the concept of indelible promise is lost. The action

seems strange,

silly; unnecessary –

so very desperate.

The materials fashioning my future engagement ring will be timeless; unlike the wearer, they will lack an end date – I suppose all dreams should follow their inherent resolve. While a little verbose for the circumference, I think Grandpa would’ve found the sentiment the ideal inscription on his wedding band – a personal promise that life continues after the sand stops falling. He would’ve probably chuckled and said it’s an apropos pun that life fits along a circular track. Temporal time would be rather dull indeed without the luster laughter brings.

I laugh when I clean my rings and watch the gloomy hues become resplendent. They have been given new life: they’re ready for more adventures. Their cleansing makes them sparkle yet never removes the wear of time. My tiny metal objects frequently excite me for more experiences that will create mental souvenirs of their own right, in their own time. The future is bright, twinkling – incredible.

Memories come and go through the intricate passageways of the mind. Many are paired with stronger emotions than others and refuse to become worn or decayed. Metal is no different. Rings hold a sense of completion; start to finish. Combinations of physicality and abstraction are crafted to guarantee that all will be fulfilled. Some will even surprise their wearer and end up right back where they began

In Her Own Time

At least ten years ago now, I was sitting in Cafe Roma, one of the nicest restaurants in Cleveland, TN, waiting for one of my literature colleagues. We were hosting a visiting writer for the university where we taught, and the others of us were already there. I was the only one sitting facing the door, and I was paying close attention to when Susan would arrive. We were making that basic conversation one makes with somebody one is trying to make welcome, while also knowing we’ll never really see each other ever again, when Susan walked in. Since I was the only one facing the door, I was the only one who saw her fall.

Susan had been struggling with speech and mobility issues over the previous couple of years. When she first told our department about it, she pointed out that it wasn’t noticeable to anyone other than her. There was a momentary lapse between what her brain wanted to say and its coming out of her mouth. Not long after she told us about this development, though, we could all see that delay, in addition to the way it was spreading throughout her body. It took several years for her to get the diagnosis that she had ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, but, by then, we all knew whatever she had was awful, taking away an erudite woman’s voice, then her life. At the time, though, we weren’t sure what was happening to her, just that she was slowly losing the ability to do what she loved.

When I saw her fall, I calmly excused myself from the table and went to help her up. While I made my exit from the table as if nothing was wrong, I moved quickly from that point on. I was hoping to be able to help Susan get up before anybody noticed, as, somehow, nobody in the restaurant had seen it happen. The setup of the restaurant is strange in that customers enter through a side door, but there were still enough people facing that direction that I was surprised none of them had seen her fall. Or perhaps some people did, and they just didn’t want to draw attention to her. That was certainly my focus. Having been raised in the South, just like Susan, I knew that causing a scene is one of the many-more-than-seven deadly sins of Southern life.

I got to her quickly, knelt down, and began pulling her up. Even though she was having trouble speaking, I could clearly understand the one word she said: Wait. I didn’t, and I kept trying to get her up. She said it again. Then again. Then I listened. I stopped tugging at her and simply knelt there and did what she asked. I waited.

Susan was never one to rush anything. Though I was never able to see her teach, I heard from people who had that she could ask questions, then wait patiently for students to think deeply enough to come up with a more-than-superficial answer than they would give if she hurried them. She was the rare teacher who was comfortable with silence: her own and others’. Another professor told me a story about team-teaching with her early in his career. He described how she could stand in front of class and look for a passage, calmly turning pages until she finally found it. I remember being surprised by that ability, as I knew that I never did that. If I couldn’t find something after a few seconds, I would just explain to the students what I was looking for, then move on to something else. I felt like the energy of the class would flag if I didn’t keep the ideas flowing.

In the same way, Susan took her time getting up that evening. Even when the owner of the restaurant realized what had happened and came around to help, Susan continued moving at her own pace. It would be easy for someone who didn’t know Susan to attribute that to the disease that was taking away her ability to move quickly, as I’m sure the restaurant owner did. It was clear Susan couldn’t move as quickly as she once did, and it was clear something was wrong with her. However, Susan would have chosen to move at the necessary pace regardless of her health.

Unlike most of us, Susan was comfortable with who she was. She knew herself, and she lived her life according to that knowledge. It’s not that she didn’t continue to try to grow and push herself, but she did so from a deep awareness of who she was supposed to be. Most of us spend our lives striving to be somebody we’re not. Most of us chafe against the restrictions life has put on us. Most of us can’t honestly admit who we are, faults and all. Susan knew all of that about herself, and she lived her life trying to be the best version of that person she could.

Early in my time working with her, I was sitting near her during a faculty meeting. A professor who had taught at the school for decades was retiring, and he addressed the faculty. He made a number of comments I disagreed with, and it was clear there were at least a few of us in the room that was true for. When he finished, though, everybody gave him a standing ovation, celebrating his four decades of teaching there. I stood up, even though I didn’t want to. I told myself it was because I was new, and I didn’t want to draw attention to how out of place I felt there, a feeling that would become clearer with each passing year I stayed. Susan didn’t stand, nor did she applaud. She didn’t draw attention to herself, but she also didn’t join in. She just sat there with her self-knowledge, unwilling to stand, unwilling to let anybody else pull her to her feet.

Aimelie

When Rod mentioned Aimelie, which seldom occurred, people who didn't know her, which was most of the people he knew, thought he was saying “Emily”. Fair enough—that's what he'd thought when he first heard her name spoken. By then, he was already smitten. Not that he ever let on or said anything to her—or to anyone else—about his feelings for her. He was old enough to be her grandfather, for crissakes, and never for a moment considered alienating her and her family by declaring his feelings.

The problem—was it a problem? It could become a problem. Call it a problem—arose from an exceptional combination of characteristics: Aimelie was beautiful—Rod noticed that immediately, and, even though he recognized that an individual’s appearance has nothing to do with the person’s value as a human being, he could not help responding emotionally to beauty, whether in a person, a sunrise, a waterfall, a horse, a mountain, or anything else. Rod was a sucker for beauty.

Aimelie was not just beautiful, she was exceptionally intelligent—he'd discovered that over the ensuing two years and delighted in the quality her intelligence lent to their exchanges. But that was not all: Aimelie was also exceptionally thoughtful and . . . good, a wonderful person. Rod had learned early to share relationships beautiful women and with intelligent women and with nice women. He even learned to deal with those less common women who possessed two of those traits. A woman—or, for that matter, a man—possessing all three appeared so rarely, that he never got enough practice to keep from being overwhelmed, even if the woman was a teenager.

Rod had met Aimelie—at an equestrian event in which Rod's daughter and Aimelie's sister were riding—and been struck by her foudroyant beauty. Despite his intellectual recognition that beauty has nothing to do with a person's worth, he couldn't prevent himself from responding to Aimelie’s emotions. Aimelie's face, not in classical proportions but perfect in Rod's eyes, her almost-blonde light brown hair, her gorgeous eyes, her irresistible smile all stirred feelings in him that went far beyond mere lust.

Over the next two years, Rod encountered Aimelie in a variety of situations—equestrian, social, and academic—and grew to appreciate her other charms. He recognized early and appreciated her articulate and witty conversations. Later, he felt impressed by her extensive knowledge and wide-ranging interests, from the sciences to literature, the arts to caring for her family's many animals, politics to music.

People who knew Rod and his family called them “homeschoolers”. Rod didn't much like that term because school was the last thing he wanted to impose on his children. He thought of them—the kids, of course, but, for that matter, the whole family—as home learners. Rod observed that he learned as much as his children did in almost every activity they undertook together—not the same things, of course, but equally important. He learned about himself, about his kids, about kids in general, about ways of learning, and even about different ways of looking at topics he already knew well.

Both Rod and Ingrid, his wife, put a great deal of time and energy into helping their kids learn. Every one of the children surpassed the standard curriculum's expectations for their ages, the two older ones achieving excellent results more than a year ahead of their age cohorts. Nobody ever called them bookworms, though, because they all participated enthusiastically in many outside interests. Transporting the kids from their rural home to the various activities led Rod to refer to himself often as a full-time chauffeur

Because Rod genuinely—albeit covertly—cared about Aimelie, he adopted the habit of mentally throwing a protective blanket of love over the hill where Aimelie's family lived, every time he drove or rode past. He imagined casting a sort of imaginary cape over the hill to keep Aimelie safe and ensure she always felt, and was, loved. A scientist by inclination as well as training, Rod never took his behavior seriously but thought the whole idea nothing more than a fantasy. He was in love, though, and figured the fantasy couldn't do anyone any harm, so he kept on casting his imaginary magic cloak.

Rod didn't know, couldn’t know, that the magic seemed to work. Even after major family scenes or when both her parents rebuked her, which happened about as often as it does in other families, Aimelie never felt completely rejected. She always drifted off to sleep feeling loved and safe. And she was.

When Aimelie fell from a ladder because one of the rungs broke, she landed on the family's dog instead of the garage's concrete floor. The event left both her and the dog sore and unhappy but essentially uninjured. Had the dog not broken her fall, Aimelie would have suffered a broken hip or worse. OK, dogs like to hang out with their humans, so maybe his presence didn't mean anything—but he tended to share his presence equally among family members. That represents a one-in-seven chance or about fourteen percent or at least six-to-one odds against the dog's being there at that moment.

Or the time an enormous branch fell from a tree and crushed the tent in which Aimelie had been sleeping—she'd been in that spot almost nine hours and had gone into the house for less than five minutes. That looks like more than one hundred to one or about 0.9%. There were many other examples, but the odds of those two both occurring run about one in a thousand or 0.0013%—not impossible, but twenty times worse than the chance of a win at roulette. A rational observer might insist, perhaps correctly, on chalking those and many other episodes up to coincidence. Even so, calamity avoided Aimelie. She seemed to live a charmed life.

Not so, Rod. Oh, he avoided serious injury and illness, probably largely due to his cautious nature, as his children mostly did, too, and he enjoyed great relationships with all of them. The rest of his domestic environment, however, produced an enormous amount of stress for him and the kids. His relationship with his wife was volatile from the beginning, but he loved Ingrid and hung in for the long haul. After twelve years, the reason for the volatility came to light, when their family doctor referred Ingrid to a psychiatrist who returned a diagnosis of BPD. Or MDP, or cyclothymia—the formal term seemed to vary with nomenclature fashion or from practitioner to practitioner—“with comorbid anxiety and eating disorders”.

Over the ensuing six years, a series of MDs and psychologists prescribed benzodiazepines, Modafinil, valproate, Divalproex (under the name Epival), Olanzapine (under the name Zyprexa), Seroquel (under the name Quetiapine), armodafinil, Risperidone (under the name Risperdal), lamotrigine (usually under the brand name Lamictal), and occasionally Topiramate as an adjunct to other drugs. The one that worked most consistently, though, was lithium. Rod researched all the drugs prescribed for Ingrid and felt concerned about the listed side effects of every one of them. Because of the lithium's effectiveness, the doctors favored it over alternatives, but Rod worried about its possible long term adverse effects on Ingrid's thyroid and kidneys.

In response to Rod's concerns, one doctor prescribed a combination of lithium and lamotrigine, which seemed to be the most effective of all in helping Ingrid to keep herself stable. Fortunately, the doctor initiated the lamotrigine very gradually and thereby avoided causing the rash that can be a serious side effect. Even with the best of medications, though, their domestic life fell far short of any sort of ideal. Ingrid still subjected her family to explosive episodes, but they became less intense and less violent. Between those episodes, she often went around in a zombie-like state, always tired and not interested in anything.

The emotional closeness Rod sought and nurtured in their first years together, still tried to nurture but with less effect, seemed to recede ever further. Sharing—thoughts, ideas, cuddles, opinions, observations, activities—never seemed as important to Ingrid as they did to Rod, but now their sharing seemed mostly to revolve around which brand of chicken feed to buy for Ingrid's hundred-odd exotic show chickens or who was going to pick up which kid when. They never indulged in as much sexual sharing as Rod’s appetite preferred, and the medications did not help in that regard. Rod would have liked to share the joys and pleasures of intercourse at least daily, but Ingrid seemed to prefer a schedule—and she did like schedules—of ten or twelve times a year. Only Rod's enduring love for Ingrid kept him from finding another lover.

Did Rod love Ingrid more than he loved Aimelie? Difficult to say. He wondered about that himself sometimes but shied away from digging deep enough to find a definitive answer. He loved them both, it's safe to say, and his kids, too. People who knew Rod said he embodied a lot of energy, and he did. He embodied a lot of love, too, and usually expressed it. In the course of a quarter of a century, he figured out that, after the well-being of his children—and not unrelated to that—the two dominant motifs of his life were sharing and making people feel better.

Rod liked making people happy—the members of his family, his friends, his neighbors, acquaintances, total strangers—he felt gratified, felt he justified his existence when he made someone feel good. If someone felt sad, he wanted to—and usually managed to—make them feel better; if someone felt happy, he wanted to make them feel even happier. All of that mattered most to Rod in the context of Ingrid and their children.

Sharing seemed to Rod to be the essential reason for existing. The reason for a conversation: sharing. For making music: sharing. For making love: sharing. For writing stories: sharing. For making beautiful paintings or photographs: sharing. Why do we do what we do, Rod thought: sharing. He didn't share his disappointment at the decrease in physical and emotional closeness between him and Ingrid, but only because he didn't want to make her feel worse.

When Ingrid packed up and returned to her native Utrecht—not the city but an outlying community called Kerckebosch—Rod didn't want to add to her stress by trying to talk her into staying. At the same time, he wanted her to stay and didn't want her to think he wanted her to go. The conflict left him stressed and confused, almost disoriented, trying to figure out what to do, what to say. In the end, he told her about once a day but being careful to say it as gently and pressure-free as possible. His telling her made no difference: Ingrid’s mind remained set on returning to her childhood home.

The first few weeks after Ingrid's departure dragged slowly and painfully for the remaining members of the family. For the kids' sake, Rod pulled himself together—at least on the surface—after the first few days, although he still felt bereft and worried about both Ingrid and the kids. Betty, their eldest daughter, recovered first, even before her dad. She felt abandoned but knew intellectually that her mom's departure stemmed from Ingrid's own issues and was not about Betty. She recognized and accepted her grief and resentment but elected to accept the new situation and move on. Rod made the transition from pretending to be OK to actually feeling OK at least most of the time after about ten months. He recognized that his feelings included an element of relief.

Rod and Betty helped the others deal with their sadness and anger for the next several months until she left to matriculate at the state university. By then, the other kids were doing OK, and Rod was learning to be both dad and mom. He managed to carry on his usual work and other tasks and also to do most of the cleaning and laundry and meal preparation and all the shopping.

When Rod ran into Aimelie in the supermarket in town, he realized with a shock that he hadn't thought of her in weeks. Despite Aimelie's smile and friendly greeting, dismay smacked Rod in the face when he saw that a sling supported her left arm.

“Omigosh! What happened to you?” he asked.

“Rocket's girth snapped, and I fell off and broke my arm.”

Rod felt a chill run through him, although he hid it and offered conventional condolences. For the first time in four years, he had neglected to throw his mental cloak of protection over Aimelie and her home, and for the first time in four years, she suffered a serious injury. Coincidence? Probably, but Rod felt upset and guilty.

His love for Ingrid and pain at her departure notwithstanding, Rod loved Aimelie and wanted to protect her. From their meeting in the supermarket onward, he made a point of driving by her family's front gate, whenever it wasn't significantly out of his way, and casting his—imaginary?—mental cloak over their land and home any time he went anywhere.

Almost two years elapsed with Rod working hard at being both mom and dad to his kids while still earning a living for them all. He saw Aimelie and various members of her family a couple times a month and continued to cast his imaginary spell over their place. Rod felt relieved and gratified, and a little sheepish about those feelings, that she suffered no further significant accidents or illnesses.

Aimelie's impressive intelligence presaged her matriculation at a worthy university. In a conversation with her and her dad at an equestrian event, Rod learned that she and her family had begun making such plans weeks earlier. She applied to the “local” university—in the nearest city, only four hours’ drive away from their remote rural community—and to two prestigious universities overseas. Although more prosperous than most families in the area, Aimelie's parents thought they needed to base their choice at least in part on the availability of scholarship money.

Aimelie told Rod she didn’t have any strong opinions about any of the three universities and felt comfortable basing her choice on financial aid offers. Because Aimelie rarely put a great deal of effort into her schoolwork, her grades, while very good, did not place her at the top of her class. Fortunately, her SAT scores made admissions officers sit up and take notice, and all three of her chosen universities accepted her.

All three also offered her full-tuition scholarships, but only the relatively local one offered scholarship funding for accommodation and books. The choice occasioned many long conversations involving Aimelie and her parents, which Rod heard about in chance meetings with various members of the family. After a month of discussion, she decided, with her parents’ encouragement, to enroll at the one university she didn’t have to buy an airplane ticket to reach.

Rod learned of Aimelie's decision directly from her: he bumped into her in town early one afternoon and took her out for a smoothie. They surprised themselves by enjoying a delightful conversation that lasted more than an hour. As they parted, Rod permitted himself to tell Aimelie he’d miss her. She told Rod she’d miss him, too, but hoped to see him when she came home for visits.

He didn’t get to see Aimelie on her first visit home—he was swamped with work, and she spent almost the whole time with her parents and siblings—but hoped he might on her next visit. Mid-way through the second term, Rod heard from a friend of a friend that Aimelie had been admitted to a hospital in the city. He ’phoned Aimelie's parents in a panic and learned a taxi driver cut a corner too sharply, mounted the curb where Aimelie waited for the traffic light to change, and knocked her down. According to Aimelie's parents, she suffered only a broken arm but the doctors wanted to keep her overnight for observation in case of a head injury.

Thinking back two years, Rod experienced what Yogi Berra called “deja vu all over again”. Was this just another coincidence, he wondered. Could there possibly be anything real about the imaginary cloak of love and protection he cast over her home so many times? She seemed safe from all harm as long as he cast his imaginary magic spell over her.

Ron cursed himself for a fool, but felt an urgent need to move to—or at least near—the city in order to protect the woman he loved. Without explaining his real motivation for the move, he discussed it with his children. He told them they would eventually return to their rural retreat and persuaded them he could find a place near the city that they could enjoy almost as much. Rod’s skills made finding work easy for him, so arranging a contract consulting job in the city took little time. Before Aimelie returned to the university at the end of the mid-year break, Rod leased an older house on an acre two miles outside the edge of the urban area.

When he saw Aimelie in the course of her visit home, he told her about his family’s move and said he hoped he could take her out for a smoothie in city. She said she’d like that and gave him her address and ’phone number. After that, Rod drove past her dormitory at least once a week and cast what he thought of as his non-magic spell. He also took Aimelie out for a smoothie and lunch on the Wednesday of the third week of the term and two or three times a month thereafter.

Three-and-a-half years later, his bank account considerably enlarged by his working in the city for such an extended period, he sat next to Aimelie's parents at her graduation ceremony. In the meantime, she had attended the high school graduation—a short train ride from the university—of Rod’s daughter with whom Aimelie's sister used to ride in horse events. In the last several lunches Rod shared with Aimelie, they discussed graduate schools and her post-graduation plans. She said she intended to take a year off and travel before continuing to grad school.

Rod went into panic mode. My gawd, he thought, am I going to have to propose to her so I can be near her and keep her safe? He didn’t do that, of course, but he did worry. Should he tell her why he moved to the city? No, that sounded too ridiculous. But if he followed her overseas, she might think he was stalking her. What the hell could he do?

After almost four years of steady and lucrative consulting work, Rod could afford to take his kids on an extended overseas vacation—maybe even visit their mother, which she’d been asking him to do. If he bumped into Aimelie, though, she would probably think he was some kind of creepy wierdo. The alternative, skulking around as if he really were stalking her, did not seem an acceptable option. At his wits’ end, Rod decided to move himself and his children back to their rural home and then discuss the possibility of a vacation overseas with them.

Over the course of the summer, Rod got to take Aimelie to lunch-and-a-smoothie five times. The last time, he offered to drive her to the city, if her parents couldn’t get away. She thanked him but said they planned to take her. Two days before her departure, however, her grandmother—her dad’s mom—became gravely ill, and Aimelie's parents asked if she could get one of her friends to take her to the airport. She rang Rod, and they arranged for him to deliver her to the airport three hours before flight time to avoid any last-minute problems and allow time for him to take her to the other terminal for a bite to eat at the only decent restaurant there.

Rod persuaded Betty to look after the younger kids for the day and made a point of getting to sleep early the night before the trip. He picked Aimelie up before dawn, accepted her parents’ thanks, and set out on the four-and-a-half-hour drive to the airport. Once they reached the main highway, they made good time and enjoyed their usual wide-ranging conversation. As he drove and chatted, Rod wove an imaginary suit of love and protective armor around Aimelie.

An hour from the city, they came up behind a line of stopped cars—so long they couldn’t see the front of it. Having allowed a two-plus hour cushion, Ron didn’t feel especially worried. He turned off the motor, got out to ask what was happening, and learned that a fatal multi-vehicle accident three hundred yards before the next exit had led the police to close the city-bound lanes for at least an hour, maybe two. Knowing six miles of stopped vehicles sat between him and the accident severely compromised Rod's equanimity. He contemplated making a U-turn and heading back up the freeway to the nearest exit. He knew that from there he could take the old road to the next interchange and get back on the freeway beyond the accident. The concrete centre barrier meant he would have to drive twelve miles going the wrong direction on the city-bound side, so he and Aimelie waited.

The police opened the road ninety minutes later, and Rod proceeded as fast as the backed-up traffic allowed. Once the traffic thinned, he urged his companion to keep a sharp eye out for police and stayed ten clicks above the speed limit. They reached the outskirts of the city—not far, coincidentally, from where Rod and his kids lived while Aimelie attended college—with barely enough time to reach the airport before her scheduled departure. How they could manage the check-in, they didn’t know. As he drove, Rod suggested Aimelie ’phone the airline and see what they could do.

“I didn’t bring my cellphone,” she said, “’cause I can’t use it overseas anyway.”

“Here, use mine,” he said, handing the ’phone to her. “Explain the situation and see what they say.”

Getting through to a real, live human passenger agent at the airport took fifteen minutes, but that passenger agent proved as accommodating as possible in the circumstances. She suggested Aimelie ring her as they approached the airport and provided a direct number to call. The agent also told Aimelie how to find her and offered to escort Aimelie to the gate with her luggage—because all the other luggage would already have been loaded.

Rod drove directly into the expensive valet parking area nearest the departure counters and raced into the terminal with Aimelie. True to her word, the passenger agent spotted them and walked quickly with them to the security barrier

“We may be too late,” she said, “but we’ll get you out to the gate as fast as we can. They might still be keeping the doors open for you.”

Rod and Aimelie exchanged a quick hug before she passed through the scanners. He felt an almost overpowering urge to tell her of his love but instead said the same thing he had said for years to Ingrid and his children, whenever any of them went anywhere without him: “Please be careful.”

Aimelie held him in her embrace longer than he expected, then stroked his beard and looked as if she was about to say something. The obvious fidgeting of the passenger agent commandeered the moment and stole the opportunity, so Aimelie hurried to the scanner and stepped through. Rod waved to her, and Aimeilie waved back and blew him a kiss as she disappeared along the corridor with the passenger agent. Wanting to watch Aimelie's flight take off, Rod climbed the stairs to the observation deck.

Rod watched a tug pushing the huge ’plane away from the terminal building unaware Aimelie had reached the gate with the passenger agent only to find the aircraft’s doors already closed. He didn't know she, too, now stood watching the tug push the huge ’plane out onto the apron as she listened to the passenger agent’s apologies.

Rod stood by the glass walls upstairs in the observation area and watched the big bird taxi, hurtle down the runway, lift off, and retract its landing gear. Moments later, it looked like a miniature toy airplane climbing through the morning sky three miles away, when it suddenly disappeared in a bright flash. Rod thought perhaps the rising sun glinting off the fuselage had dazzled his eyes, but search, as he might the ’plane, seemed to have vanished. Fifteen seconds later the muffled “boom” of a distant explosion rattled the airport’s windows.

STENDEC

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, not the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. - Ecclesiastes 9:11

It is raining outside. It is nighttime. I hear the droplets hitting the windows. I do not want to look outside. I could lose myself, probably would lose myself, in the pattern of rain droplets on the parking lot and window. Here and there and there…spelling out a new theory of interpretation of Macbeth or a more efficient electric motor armature configuration. Instead, I sit at the table in this large wardroom, surrounded on three sides by grated windows. Even sitting here, head bowed, the sound of the drops is tapping out the structure of a new anesthetic. But I ignore it by humming to myself to mask the patter of droplets. Sometimes I would like to leave, not this room tonight, but the hospital. But that would not be a good idea. They would not let me leave anyway and that is to the best.

There are certain distinct moments in my life. Pregnant pauses, perhaps, or pivot points of possibility. Instants and instances of deep sight and deeper insight, flashed slices of ephemera in which the interconnectedness of things is revealed to me. After that is the consuming madness as I scribble and scramble to record it all.

I have tried to breach that mania but every attempt has failed. Once viewed the new truth must be recorded, in whole, before I can rest again. I become obsessive. Inside I move in a mist but to others I operate with a frightening focus that will not be denied. The last incident – a week ago - was the rocket nozzle – a new shape that only took three hours and some minutes to itemize. No food; no sleep; no urination; just tabulation and enumeration until the design is complete and recorded.

So long ago…I was twenty and walking a path beside Lake Ontario on a winter night. The lake was frozen over and the ice was snow covered in white that faded with distance away to black. And it started snowing, slowly at first, but quickly increasing. Big fluffy flakes fell with languorous grace, thousands, perhaps millions fading into the darkness over the lake. It was entrancing and hypnotizing. A man could stare at these flakes as he stepped off a cliff to his death. And yet, and yet, at the edge of understanding, just beyond intellect, the falling flakes spoke of a thousand truths, written in a foreign language, an Incan knot language, unreadable yet elegant. I shook my head and walked on.

I was thirty-five and sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. It was early morning and a school bus turned onto the main road I waited beside – the same as it had done yesterday. The same man walked by as the day before, carrying a cup of coffee, as before. Next would be a woman carrying an umbrella. That had not happened yesterday but it would today. Three cars go by. The next car is yellow. A small bird – a sparrow? – lands for seven seconds on the bus stop sign. I see my bus turn out of the university complex and back onto the main road. I stand and gather my packages.

I read once that of course the cure for cancer was encoded in the structure of the piece of cake you ate this morning. But you didn’t have the alphabet to read it. Imagine if you could. That is what happened to me. I imagined that I could and then I could. Now I see patterns everywhere and most reveal deep truths.

I cannot stop myself. I have tried. Once I see a pattern I am compelled to record it. This is a gift and a curse, a gift of knowledge to the human race and a curse on me. I live terrified of the theory that will be so detailed and extensive that I will die while writing it down. And that is why I am here. The staff in this ward will not allow that, should it come to pass. They will restrain and force feed me, if need be.

But that need has not arisen and perhaps it never will. The summaries and notes and pages of text contain shorthand and codes and these seem to indicate that no recording would ever take so long as to be fatal. But that risk is an existential danger and one I need not bear, and so here I am.

My evening medications are brought to me by Sarah. She is a pleasant nurse of early middle age with a kind demeanor and pleasant aspect. The medications are in a small cup and are mostly to help me sleep. I dare not look into the cup. I swallow it in one gulp. Sarah also brings me a small glass of orange juice and a snack. She changes the snack. Sometimes it is a piece of cake, or a small tart, or even a fruit cup. She helps me to keep a small mystery in this existence of perfect yet useless knowledge.

The snack always has a featureless surface. Texture and pattern are dangerous for me. I see light and dark and difference and I start decoding. I need a smooth surface. White icing works well. No chips or raisins in cookies. Monotonous and isotropic are the watchwords of my life.

The rain keeps on. I consider requesting the quiet room but I think I will be okay. A few minutes later I turn out the ward lights and retire to my private bedroom. The raindrops are muted here. The walls are plain and bland and cream colored. The sheets and blankets are monochrome. There are no varying colors and no patterns. For me patterns are dangerous.

I am a voluntary inmate. A foundation has been established that receives my notes and presents the insights and inventions for development. Frederick Banting led the project that discerned and purified insulin. He won the Nobel Prize. The purification of insulin turned juvenile diabetes from a terminal illness into a manageable condition. Imagine that – a death sentence commuted, life rich and full again - and long.

Banting wanted his treatment for diabetes to be available to all so he and his partners sold their patents to the University of Toronto for one dollar. I want the same. My notes are given in trust to various developers, business people and foundations. The charter states that they may make a profit but not profiteer. If I am able to improve the world it will not be for the bottom line profit / loss of a corporation but instead for the good of all.

I blow my nose and drop the toilet paper into the toilet bowl. I should have looked away. An insight lies in the swirls and curves of the wet toilet paper in the bowl but this one does not require pen and paper. The ultimate answer is 42. But what is the ultimate question? If we assume it has to do with existence, what is this all about, what is the meaning to life, why are we here, then 42 are makes sense.

The asterisk character, *, is used in various computer languages and applications as a wildcard placeholder. The asterisk wildcard is still used today in UNIX and Perl. Way back in MS-DOS, if one typed *.*, this would list all files on the selected media. However, c*.* would only list files that began with the letter c. Similarly, *a*.* would only list files that had an embedded ‘a’ character in their name, and so on. Therefore the wildcard character * meant, whatever is selected, or chosen or found – whatever is wanted. The asterisk is a user defined operator – as wished – whatever works. The asterisk is therefore the universal answer to any and all questions – whatever you want. And the number 42 is the ASCII code for the asterisk.

Carol visits me the next day. I struggle to stay focused and not be distracted. She has worn a single color blouse. The shades on the windows have been drawn. The lights have been turned down and everything is dim. There is minimal visual stimulus. All is very quiet. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

She still waits for me to leave the ward. She waits for me to come home. She still doesn’t understand that I never will. I have told her but not forcefully. As much as our shared life is over, I am weak and would be bitterly alone if she did not visit. So in my own way I string her along to keep her coming.

She stays several hours. We chat and visit and it is so good to see her. Sarah brings a featureless snack and a wan smile. We do not say it but I think we both know it is over. These visits are ghosts rising from the grave of our past life together. I stare at her, an idiot smile plastered on my face, it is so good to see her. I should let her go, drive her from me if need be, but it is so good to see her.

A few days ago I was visited by a military man so impressive that he had a staff that sat at a nearby table while we met. I do not know uniforms. I do not know which branch of the forces he was from. But he was obviously quite senior and privy to the fact of my existence by dint of his authorized classified status. And he used that knowledge and status to bring himself through the gates and metal detectors and to this locked ward to see me.

He sat glaring at me. His demeanor was hostile and he became aggressive. He had brought coffee and doughnuts instead of a cooperative attitude. The coffee was good. The doughnuts looked sugary. He did not ask for a cure for ovarian cancer; he demanded one. It doesn’t work that way. I told him that. This is not a vending machine. I do not get a choice of answers. I cannot pull a lever or press a button to select a solution. I see a pattern and I lose myself in the understanding of it until it is fully explicated. I do not get to choose.

“I don’t either!” he said.

“I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

He reached into his jacket, festooned with colors and medals, and pulled out an effective looking handgun. I don’t really know anything about guns but this one was sleek, dark grays and blacks, and compact yet imposing. It looked like a battleship or armored vehicle, an efficient machine for dealing death, a snug method of force. I burst out laughing.

He looked surprised. He was puzzled and a bit frustrated. His tool of intimidation had failed. I don’t think he was fundamentally a bully. I think he was desperate. I didn’t know what was going to happen but I didn’t really care. We don’t get to choose, General, or is it Admiral? Time and chance to all. All you get is now, this moment, right now, while your daughter lies dying.

Will you throw that away, be arrested, carted off to jail for killing a man who has done you no harm? You are my time and chance. I cannot stop you pulling the trigger. I cannot give you what you want. Be my hurricane, tornado my house to wooden splinters, a destructive force that leavens all.

His men at the other table are rising, realizing there’s a problem, moving closer. He points the gun at me. I don’t care. You, General or Admiral, have the comfort of grief. Mine is a life suspended, placed on hold, consigned to limbo because I cannot walk down a street without seeing patterns and patterns everywhere and everywhere and always.

But then I see that the muzzle of the gun is not open. There is only a tiny hole. His men have rallied to his side. He tucks it back inside his jacket, this realistic water gun. And his hand emerges with sugar packets. He tears them open, scattering the white grains onto the dark brown tabletop. I try to look away but it is too late.

“This won’t work!” I say through gritted teeth.

More sugar, scattered again, stars in his pocket like grains of sand, burning hotly, velvet white, on the vast dark tabletop of night, I see nothing, I refuse to see, I will not try. I will not be manipulated, galaxies scattering across the cosmos of the endless universal inevitable. And then, despite myself, there it is, a lock and key, an enormous polypeptide, a protein chain thousands of amino acids long. This will empty the wards, sending the mentally unwell home, clearing out the hospitals. This is a curative prion, one that will take a folded and spindled and mutilated brain and make it flat and new and creaseless again. I reach for paper and begin to write.

Chains and chains of amino acids. I write out the single letter codes. No J, U, V or X and Z. Every other word can be made, CODEC and KODAK. No RUBISCO but definitely NABISCO. I laugh as I scribble. The naming of that plant enzyme by a senior researcher in 1979 was done in very cognizance of Nabisco. No JUICY but very ICY. Without thinking I group the letters into words in those cases where they read as words. Not often, only occasionally, but words do jump out.

STENDEC, the last Morse message sent from the passenger plane Avro Lancastrian Star Dust before it crashed in 1947 in the Andes. For fifty years the fate of the airplane was unknown, until 1998, when two hikers near Mount Tupungato came upon the wreckage. Ever since the Star Dust disappeared people have puzzled over that last message. Perhaps one day I will look into an angry ocean or turbulent windy day and know the answer. Until then, STENDEC, in three letter amino acid codes, Ser Thr Glu Asn Asp Glu Cys.

The fugue begins. I do not lose consciousness but I become dissociated. I am detached and disinterested. I see all that transpires but I am disengaged. I do not care. After a great deal of time I see Patton and his minions rise and leave. I am scribbling away. My hand aches but I do not care. In a way, I do not exist right now. The scribbling goes on and on. I could not stop if I tried.

And finally, hours later, it is over. It is dark outside. The creases of my fingers bleed from where I held the pen. I feel the usual exhaustion. I can barely keep my eyes open. But it is not fully over – not yet. This is when I come back to myself. I look at what I have written, thirty-one sheets of letters, several hundred per page, describing three prionic proteins.

The first protein is quite short, a mere page and a half of amino acids. The other two are approximately equal in length and both quite long. The first one will prevent and even cure early stage Alzheimer’s. It can be taken by anyone without harm. Injecting one dose of this protein at age thirty will prevent Alzheimer’s from ever developing. It will be a universal preventive measure.

Once the dementia crosses a critical threshold, however, this proteinaceous prion will have no effect. The window of prevention will be permanently closed. Thus, anyone already significantly suffering is not helped.

The second one will cure Schizophrenia. Of the current cases, ninety-seven percent will be cleared by three doses of this protein, spaced ten days apart. This may be taken anytime in one’s life and twenty days later, hours after the third dose, the symptoms will start to clear and be totally gone eight days later.

However, it will not cure everyone. Three in one hundred will be unaffected. Again, like the prion that will cure Alzheimer’s, not everyone can be helped. But the odds are greatly in favor, so much so that there is no risk in trying it. Is this a good thing? I will improve the quality of life for many. Many more will be out of work, as their jobs in nursing homes and hospitals and other care facilities disappear. Is this a good thing?

I do not know what the third one will do for the average person. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps it is a poison. But for me, if I take it, a single dose, I will lose this ability, this blessing and cursing, and be able to live a normal life. I can go home. I can announce myself magically cured and go home, to normal life and to Carol.

And the world can go hang. I have done enough for a hundred lifetimes, I have been Banting and Haber and Bohr again and again. The very small royalty paid into my account would support fifty families at the height of luxury. That is more than enough for Carol and I to live a quiet and comfortable life.

I expect that in a week or two the first samples of these proteins will have been synthesized. I will explain what they are and what they will do, telling lies about the third, and in half a month I will have the option to be normal. But I will not take it. I will remain here, for the good of all, as long as Carol keeps visiting.

Belle of the Ball

“How about this?” Julia holds up an impressive stiletto—golden quarter with sheeny turquoise vamp, the heel at least four inches tall—and smiles mischievously.

“Hah!” Lina says. “You trying to kill me, bitch?” They giggle together.

“I know, right? I couldn’t even handle these.” Julia sets the shoe down and they amble to the next display.

It’s late morning in a small boutique on Fifth Avenue in Midtown. The store has a half dozen or so women in it at the moment, not counting the three saleswomen, one of whom happens to be the famous actress who owns the place and occasionally makes an appearance to chat with the clientele and introduce them to her new shoe designs. The two friends whisper to each other while splitting their gazes between the elegant merchandise and the other customers being helped.

“Just go up to her after she’s done with that lady,” Julia says. “I bet she’ll remember you. Everyone does, right?”

“Ugh, when you say it like that.”

“Oh, please. That supercrip thing is gold and you know it. I’m just living in your reflected glory, queenie.”

They laugh again, louder this time. Lina’s long, blonde hair jounces slightly. Her upper lip lifts and her pink, beetling gums with their nicely rowed teeth debouch into the world proudly. She edges past Julia to approach a kaleidoscopic wall of rear-facing heels. She walks toward the wall unsteadily yet with hard-earned assurance. She is pigeon-toed, the bottom half of her legs splayed like supportive rafters to steady her torso that cants forward while her rear juts backward just enough to reach equipoise. Her arms sway as needed for balance, akimbo in the air, her hands hanging like tassels. When she steps, the ball of her pensile left foot usually hits the ground first, brushing along briefly before finding its grip. Her gait is singular in a way that prompts the other customers to glance in her direction before tactfully pulling their eyes away.

Lina scans the display wall, chooses a shoe, then puts it back. She reaches for another near the top. A middle-aged woman browsing sequined flats on the next shelf turns and gives her the grandest of smiles. She asks, “Do you need help reaching anything, honey?”

“Thank you, but I’ve got it,” Lina smiles.

Julia suddenly appears on her other side. “Check out this bad boy.” She holds up a blackstrapped peep toe heel. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t slay in this tonight.”

“Ooh, that’s sexy. You think I can stay vertical in it all night, though?” Julia sighs emphatically. “You told me to come with you so you wouldn’t pussy out, remember? So here I am. Besides, what’s all that shit you’ve been talkin’ about that special CP Pilates class you’re in? Telling anyone who’ll listen how your core’s all strong now. Wearing bikinis and everything.”

“Yeah, I know,” she squints. “I don’t think I’ve fallen down in like a year. Haven’t sprained my ankle since that time at the High Line.” She takes the shoe from Julia, admiring its silky profile. “But look at this heel, it’s at least three inches. I don’t know...”

They stop talking as the shop’s proprietress walks over to greet them, her face brightening when she catches Lina’s eyes. “Well, welcome back!” she exclaims. “I helped you a couple months ago, right? With those lace-up oxfords?”

Lina beams. “Oh my gosh, yes! I can’t believe you remember!”

“Of course! So how are you liking them?”

“I love them. I’ve been out on, like, five date nights with my husband in them.”

“That’s so good to hear!” The three of them stand smiling at each other for an awkward moment before the actress speaks again. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I don’t remember your name.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s fine. It’s Lina. Lina. And this is my friend, Julia.”

Julia waves slightly and nods. “Nice to meet you. I’m a big fan. Lived here for almost ten years and I think you’re now officially the most famous person I’ve actually met.”

“Ooh, who have I dethroned?” she asks with mock intrigue.

“I ran into Mary Kate or Ashley down in SoHo once. Still not sure which one it was.”

“I still can’t tell them apart!” They all laugh, eyes gleaming. “So what brings you in today, Lina?”

Lina explains that she’s hoping to find a new pair of shoes to wear to a gala fundraiser that evening. “It’s for a non-profit I’m involved with,” she continues, “for kids with cerebral palsy. Very fancy affair: red carpet, big name emcee, silent auction and all that. Gotta look my best, right?”

“Of course,” the actress agrees. “I remember you mentioning last time that you worked with some charities. That is just so lovely, so important. To see someone like you, who’s overcome so much, out there just working it. So inspiring. And what an example for those precious kids!” She leads them to a beige loveseat, watching Lina’s easy, tottering shamble with a solicitous smile that seems to hold out invisible hands for her, just in case.

Lina sets herself down heedfully toward the edge of the seat and Julia sits next to her on a clear acrylic vanity stool with a thick cushion. One of the saleswomen joins them and the actress makes introductions. “Adrianne, this is Lina. She’s got a big soiree tonight and wants to be the belle of the ball. Let’s see what we can do for her.”

Adrianne had seen her when she came in. She smiles profusely and gently takes Lina’s hand. “So nice to meet you, Lina. So, what do you have in mind? I suppose we should start with your outfit; what will you be wearing?”

Lina looks at Julia. “Do you still have that picture from last week?”

Julia scrolls her phone for a few seconds and then holds up the screen. “Pretty killer, right, ladies?” They ooh and aah.

“We have some nice flats that would go marvelously with that dress,” Adrianne motions to a table nearby. “Or even a few kitten heels you might like.” She looks at the actress. “Maybe Divine? Or Spy?”

“Just what I was thinking.” She hears her name being called and looks across the store. “Excuse me, I have to go talk to them real quick. But I’ll come back and check on you, ok?” She grips Lina’s shoulder and pats it a couple times before leaving.

Adrianne asks for Lina’s size and goes to the back of the store. Lina turns to Julia, narrowing her eyes. “Shut up,” she says. “I’ll tell her when she comes back.”

“You better. ‘Cause you know I will if you don’t.” Julia punches her friend’s arm. “You gotta speak up for yourself!”

Adrianne returns with two boxes, sets them down and begins to open the first. Julia clears her throat and widens her eyes. Lina starts, meekly, “Um, these are beautiful, but I already have nice flats. I was hoping to maybe try some... some taller heels. Nothing too crazy, my balance obviously isn’t the best, but I like those Mary Janes right behind you.” She points to a little single-strapped number with an oval buckle sitting on the display table, shimmering there in silvery iridescence. “Could I maybe try those?”

“Ah, the Tartt. It’s one of our most popular. And it has a nice, thick block heel, so it should help with your…” she hesitates.

Lina smiles kindly, assuaging the other’s discomfort. “It’s ok to say it, I don’t mind. I mean, c’mon, it’s not like it’s hard to notice. I have cerebral palsy, in case you’re wondering. I’m trying to be more open about it, so it’s actually nice when it comes up like this.”

“That’s wonderful,” Adrianne gushes. “And so brave, I have to tell you.” Lina tries not to notice Julia’s slackened eyebrows and open-mouthed sneer. She keeps looking at the saleswoman kneeling in front of her. “I think you’re right about the block heel, too; more stability definitely won’t hurt.”

“Well, let me go grab them for you, then.”

As soon as she’s gone, Julia starts sounding off in whispers about ableism and paternalistic bullshit. Her sibilant rant ends midstream, though, when Adrianne returns. The attentive young woman kneels with her legs tucked under her and puts the shoes on Lina’s feet. Lina takes the hand that’s offered to her and is helped up.

“Let’s see what they look like in motion,” Julia prods from her stool.

Lina steps cautiously at first, testing her inner gyroscope. Finding it sound, she walks across the store, then back. Julia catcalls her with a slow whistle, making Lina laugh and even sashay a little, taken up in the moment. The actress returns jubilant with her arms thrown out.

“Lina, look at you! And those shoes! You go, girl.” By now most of the patrons have dispensed with discretion and moved their attention plainly to the uplifting scene. Lina hasn’t noticed the shift.

She lowers herself back onto the loveseat as her attendants take care of the shoes. They ask her what she thinks, if these are the ones. Flushed and satisfied, she says, “I love them, yes. I’m gonna get them.” She looks at Julia and continues with excitement, “And while I’m here, I want to try those red ones over there, too.” She points at the wall of heels across from them.

The actress and Adrianne look over for a second, then to each other. “You mean… the stilettos?” the actress asks. Her eyes go to Julia, then back to Lina. The gears in her face stop moving for a moment—“Are you… sure?” she asks—before her delicacy and expression return. “Pardon me, of course. Those are… lovely. Let’s, let’s give it a shot.” She runs to fetch them, Adrianne right behind her.

Julia leans over with an amused look. “‘Let’s give it a shot?’ You’re giving that poor little celebrity a heart attack, you know. She’s probably gonna make you sign a liability waiver!” “Shh-shh-shh,” Lina pleads under a faint titter. “Not so loud!”

They return in a procession with the box. The actress sets it down and takes a knee in front of Lina. She fixes the sleek, v-shaped stilettoes onto her feet, intent in the task. The others in the boutique have become sanguine onlookers, watching the event quietly. Lina glances around and some give her nods or reassuring smiles when their eyes meet hers. Two young women near the register whisper to each other.

“Do you need some help up, sweetie?”

“Thanks, but I think I’ve got it.” Lina stands erect, wavering only a moment, and begins walking several inches off the ground. Her dangling left foot skids gently as usual and manages to find its place with each step. Her bent arms extend out slightly more than before to shift some mass away from the newly reduced pivot point. The adjustments are minor and straightforward, but her ungainly, marionettish frame appears teetering to the audience, more precarious than before. They watch her like she’s a funambulist over a chasm and the wind has picked up. She jokes to Julia as she turns to come back, “Whew, this feels dangerous. Might get a nosebleed up here. But I think I got it.”

“Of course you do, babe. Never a doubt.”

Lina strides past and continues toward the door. She’s focused on the endeavor and doesn’t notice that all other activity has ceased; everyone’s eyes are on her. When she swivels at the door and starts back, the actress calls out, “Way to go, Lina! Nothing can stop you!” Adrianne lets out a small woo-hoo, pumping her fist in the air. Someone begins to clap, then another joins, and another.

Lina suddenly reddens and shrivels under the vitiating applause. In trying to hurry back to her seat, she shifts her center of gravity a touch too quickly and catches her toe on one of her last steps. Her ankle buckles. She jolts forward as though shoved from behind by a malicious classmate, collapsing onto the waiting sofa.

The spectators stop rubbernecking at once. They look to each other, or to the floor. The actress and Adrianne rush over as Lina pushes herself upright. Julia watches for a signal to help—she’s been there for numerous falls, she knows the drill—but, as usual, there’s no entreaty in Lina’s expression or bearing: only a serene, Good Lord, head-shaking private chuckle of selfdeprecation that follows after the reflexive flash of white hot dignity. She shakes her head calmly with eyes closed, then looks up at everyone. Finally, she burlesques a seated bow, “Ta-da!” They all exhale simultaneously and quasi-laugh along with her. “For my next trick in the show, I’ll be biting the head off a chicken. Stick around, y’all.”

The actress looks concerned. “Are you sure you’re ok, honey?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Lina says. “Happens all the time. I was pushing my luck with these beauties anyway. Guess they’re not meant to be.” She removes the stilettos and holds up one of the block-heeled Mary Janes, rotating it in the light. “But I love these ones. So sparkly. They’re gonna be perfect tonight.”

“I think so, too,” the actress says. An ushering, vaguely rushed quality enters her voice. “I’ll get them wrapped up and Renée over there can check you out. It was so nice seeing you again, Lina. You keep letting that light shine for the world to see, all right?”

They say their goodbyes, take a selfie together, and then Lina and Julia walk slowly to the register, half browsing a display case of purses along the way. “Never a dull moment with you,” Julia teases. “Maybe she’ll give you a part in something next time, huh?”

“Shut up,” Lina elbows her. “I’m just glad I tried them.”

“Me, too, Lina-bean.” Julia puts an arm around her and leans in, squeezing.

Lina pays for the shoes and is almost free before she’s hit with a parting shot. The cashier wears the familiar look—benevolent, charitable, obliterating—as she hands her an overfull bag. Seeing the extra box inside, Lina squirms and shrinks privately. She starts to protest, to claw back what is hers, but she’s silenced at once, pinned down by the kindness.

“Complements of the store,” the cashier smiles with all the sincerity in the world, nodding over at her boss. “She insisted.”

Lina lifts the lid off the box enough to poke aside the tissue paper and see the hard, red gloss underneath. She manages the feeblest of “thanks,” pivots carefully on her tender ankle, and pushes Julia out the door. .

The Scandal at Pebble Elementary

Ms. Stewart, our best fourth grade teacher, rushed to my office at Pebble Elementary School in the Bronx and stood in the doorway, a disturbed look on her face. “Ms. Zimmerman, I need to tell you something very important.”

The last time I saw her like this was four years ago when she learned that one of her student’s and the girl’s family had perished in their apartment. I looked up from my computer and gave Ms. Stewart my full attention. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Several of my students just told me that Ms. Raymond tried to get them to change their answers on the math test.”

I opened my desk drawer and took out the binder where I keep notes of conversations with staff and turned to a blank page. “Please sit down,” I said, motioning to a chair opposite me at my desk. “Tell me everything.”

“This morning when I went to my classroom, Ms. Raymond was there. I didn’t know why the other assistant principal was there. She told me that the principal had told her to oversee my students while they took the state math test. He’d also put in that teacher’s aide who always falls asleep as the second proctor. Got me out of my classroom by having me write answers for a student with a broken arm in Ms. Smith’s class. As you know, students usually test with their classroom teachers whenever possible because this helps reduce their anxiety, so I found my removal highly unusual, but I obliged, nonetheless.

“When the test was over and I returned to my room, my students were out of control, frantic to speak to me. Everyone began talking at once,” Ms. Stewart said, clicking the retractable pen in her hand. “I passed out paper and told them to write down what happened. Ifthey didn’t see anything, I said to write that. I wanted to hear from every student. In the meantime, I interviewed four of my most responsible students, one at a time, outside my classroom.”

I stopped writing and looked up at Ms. Stewart. “What did your students say?”

“Mohamed said Ms. Raymond told him to change question number four to C,” she said, pushing away her blonde shoulder-length hair from her face and reading from the notes on her yellow legal pad. “He said he didn’t do it because he knew his answer was correct. He said Ms. Raymond returned to his desk a few minutes later and again checked his answers. She pointed to additional answers and told him to change them, too.”

“Did Mohamed say Ms. Raymond told him which answers to bubble in?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “She did.”

“What did Mohamed do?” I asked, turning the page in my binder, and continuing to write.

“Mohamed told me he didn’t listen to her because he had checked his answers and knew they were correct. He’s an excellent math student. Always gets at least a ninety-five percent on all my classroom tests,” she said, proudly, as if he were her own son.

“Who else did you talk to?”

“I spoke to Samantha. This child is very smart, but she lacks confidence in her abilities. She said Ms. Raymond stopped in the aisle between her desk and Miguel’s, looked back and forth at both their answer sheets and pointed out three answers she said Samantha should change.” Ms. Stewart looked down and checked her notes. “Samantha said she was uncomfortable with Ms. Raymond’s help and re-checked her answers but didn’t change them.” When Ms. Stewart looked up at me, I could see the pain for her students in her bright blue eyes.

“Can you believe this? she asked.

“Did you speak to Miguel?”

“I did.” Ms. Stewart began to laugh. “I’m sorry, Ms. Zimmerman, but I found Miguel’s response quite amusing. He said he began to solve a problem in front of Ms. Raymond and explained his thinking, step-by-step. Ms. Raymond interrupted him and announced to the class that she hears talking, then reminded them that they’re in the middle of an examination and there should be absolute silence. Then Miguel resumed his verbal explanation, and Ms. Raymond put her finger to her lips to silence him.”

When Ms. Stewart finished, I shook my head. “As you know, this is quite serious. You’ve just brought an allegation of cheating against an assistant principal,” I said, standing up, trying to hide how upset I was, and walking her to the door. “Please leave the statements with me. I want to read all of them. I’ll speak to the teacher’s aide and get her testimony, too. Thanks for reporting this to me.”

After Ms. Stewart left, I reflected on what I had just heard. I don’t believe it! Cheating on a standardized test. This has never happened at Pebble Elementary before. There’s obviously no limit to what this assistant principal will do to see that our students score well. Now I know why the students at her former school were known for getting high scores on the state exams. Thank God Ms. Stewart has a conscience.

A few minutes later, the teachers’ union representative came in. I’ve known her for over fifteen years, when she was the union rep at my former school. Not only is she an excellent teacher and highly trustworthy, but she’s got a big heart, and advocates for the teachers and aides. She looked at me from behind her round tortoiseshell glasses, and I could tell from her facial expression that she was concerned about what she had to say. I watched her sit down in the chair in the corner, lean her head back and rest it against the wall.

“Ms. Stewart,” she said, “just told me what happened in her classroom during the math test. Wanted to know if she is going to be in trouble for reporting the incident to you. She’s worried about retaliation from the principal. I tried to reassure her that she did absolutely nothing wrong. Told her she followed protocol. You’re her assistant principal.”

“Well, we know Mr. Antonio’s going to be outraged that his name and school will now be under investigation,” I said.

“Since none of us are on the in with him, when he finds out we’re not letting this cheating allegation go away, I’m sure he’ll try to make our lives difficult,” the rep said. She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a bottle of water, unscrewed the cap and took a few sips. “I just got off the phone with the teachers’ union district representative. Said she’d inform the superintendent. He’s probably spoken to Mr. Antonio by now.”

No more Mr. Golden Boy

“Now what?” the rep asked.

“I’ll report the incident to the testing coordinator at the district. She’ll either tell Mr. Antonio to do an internal investigation, or she’ll report the incident to the Office of Special Investigations at the Department of Education, and they’ll investigate. But first, I must inform the principal. I’m going to his office now.”

As I walked down the stairs, Mr. Antonio came charging up with Ms. Raymond behind him. We nearly collided.

“Let’s go to my office, Ms. Zimmerman,” he said, turning around and touching Ms. Raymond on her forearm. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said and continued down the stairs with me following close behind.

When we entered his office, Mr. Antonio firmly slammed the door behind me as if he were closing the cell door on a prisoner. He removed his grey suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Then he sat down behind his desk and motioned for me to take a seat. He looked into my eyes, hard and cold.

“I heard you and Ms. Stewart spoke,” he said. “I talked to her, too. The incident ends here. Are we clear?”

“You know I’m obligated to inform the district testing coordinator of any alleged improprieties.”

Mr. Antonio sat up tall, elbows on his desk, hands clasped together hiding his mouth, and glared at me. “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time? I am the principal. I said, do not call the district. Ms. Raymond said she didn’t tell the students to change their answers, and she doesn’t know why they made up those lies.” He stood up, walked around his desk to the door and opened it. “We’re done.”

When I returned to my office, I put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door. Then I sat in my chair and closed my eyes. This is huge. Why did the superintendent bring Mr. Antonio to this district? He has no experience in administration and only one year of teaching kindergarten. Wants Pebble Elementary to become a showcase school but has no idea how to make this happen, except through unethical means. Does the superintendent know this? Is he planning to coach him in every aspect of running a school?

A few minutes later, I got up, walked to the bookcase at the back of my office anddistractedly rearranged the framed pictures of my husband and children. Mr. Antonio’s only been at Pebble Elementary for four months and he’s already ingratiated himself with various groups from the school body. Got a lot of people to like him. Probably thinks if they like him, they’ll do whatever he wants. They don’t know what really goes on here. Have no idea how he’s segregated the staff and the administration into the “in” and “out” groups. Ugh.”

~

Later that afternoon, after dismissal, Ms. Stewart and the teachers’ union rep returned to my office to report that Mr. Antonio had spoken to Ms. Stewart’s class. “He told them he heard about what they said happened during the math exam,” Ms. Stewart said, reaching for the squishy ball on my desk. She squeezed it a few times. “He told them that sometimes people make up stories to get others in trouble because they’re mad at them for something. Reminded my students that Ms. Raymond recently gave many of them detention, and she had spoken to some of their parents because of the fights and bullying during recess. Told them that the things they said about Ms. Raymond could get her into serious trouble.” Ms. Stewart took a deep breath and continued: “He tried to suggest that the students didn’t really see what they claimed they saw.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Mr. Antonio said he thinks it’s likely that Ms. Raymond pointed to their answers because she was trying to let them know that they skipped a question or bubbled in two answer choices for the same question.” She paused. “Of course, he shouldn’t have done that, either.”

At that moment, the rep stood up and hit the dome-shaped gadget on my desk. The robotic voice blurted out, ‘that was stupid.’ She hit it again. Ms. Stewart and I laughed, and Ms.Stewart continued: “Mr. Antonio told the students he knows that no one wants to see Ms. Raymond lose her job. Asked them to rewrite their statements and make sure to write the truth.” Ms. Stewart got up and started pacing. “It infuriates me how he tried to blame my students, to make them feel guilty for being responsible.”

“I understand completely,” I said, feeling sick at the wrongness of this. “I shouldn’t be saying this to either of you about a fellow administrator,” I said, looking first to Ms. Stewart and then to the rep, “but what he did was inappropriate, totally unethical. I’m sure he and Ms. Raymond discussed that if he put her in your classroom, allegedly to oversee the test-taking, she could give students the correct answers. Figured if she could get a whole class of high scores, the percentage of top scores for the fourth grade would increase and his school would look good.”

“I’m thinking the same thing,” the rep said. “Afterall, the state looks at the fourth-grade scores to determine a school’s status.” She stood up, took a cup, and helped herself to some water from my cooler. “I wish this was stronger,” she laughed. When she sat down again, she asked, “What did the teacher’s aide say?”

“Claims she saw nothing unusual. Said Ms. Raymond was walking around and making sure the students weren’t looking at each other’s papers. The aide did admit that she dozed off for a bit.”

“You know the teacher’s aide is one of his people, right?” the rep asked, pushing up her glasses.

“Of course. She was on the committee that interviewed him for his position,” I said. “She was very pro Mr. Antonio. And I think I remember that she also came from his old school.”

“He came to us with a lot of baggage,” the rep said. “The teachers tell me that the three teachers he brought with him can’t teach, and our teachers are afraid to speak up during teacher or staff development meetings because they think his teachers are Mr. Antonio’s eyes and ears. Everything goes back to him,” she said, fondling her wedding ring.

“I feel the same way about Ms. Raymond,” Ms. Stewart said. “She’s always in his office. I’m afraid to say anything to her myself because I worry she’ll distort what I say.”

“He’s duplicitous,” the rep said, then turned to Ms. Stewart, cocked her head, and suddenly became very animated. “You should call the district testing coordinator. Tell her you reported the incident to the assistant principal in charge of testing at your school, but you thought you should inform her, too. Can you do that?”

“I don’t want to get fired,” Ms. Stewart said, clicking her pen. “Mr. Antonio intimidates me.” She was quiet. Then, “I’ll do it. I must. Afterall, Ms. Raymond wanted my kids to cheat on a state test.”

The rep got up and hit the gadget again, trying to reduce the tension in my office. ‘That was stupid.’ We all laughed

“What Ms. Raymond did goes against everything I’ve been teaching my students this year about being honest and taking responsibility for their actions. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t do what I tell them to do.” She clicked her pen again.

“Thank you,” the rep and I said, in unison.

“By the way, what did the district testing coordinator tell you to do?” the rep asked.

I looked straight into the rep’s hazel eyes. “Mr. Antonio forbade me to call her. Said he’d take care of everything.”

~

The next day, during her preparation period, Ms. Stewart entered my office and sunk into my couch.

“Mr. Antonio got to them,” she said, her head down so all I could see was her hair. “My students changed their statements. All but six.”

“Are those the statements?” I asked, gesturing to the papers in her lap. “May I see them?”

Ms. Stewart stood up and handed them to me.

“The six are on the bottom.” she said.

I flipped through the students’ testimonies. “I didn’t see anything,” one student wrote. Another: “I am telling the truth. I didn’t see anything.” “Some kids said Ms. Raymond told them the answers, but they just want to get her in trouble. I didn’t see her do nothing bad,” wrote another. I read aloud a portion of Miguel’s statement: “During the math test, Ms. Raymond told me to change some of my answers, but I didn’t. I knew mine were correct. I tried to explain to her how I got the answer to a question, but she told me to be quiet. I’m surprised she doesn’t remember you gotta solve what’s in the parentheses first, when doing order of operations. That’s why she got the wrong answer.”

I read aloud a portion of Samantha’s statement: “Ms. Raymond stood between mine and Miguel’s desks during the math test. She told us to change some answers. I rechecked the ones she pointed to on my answer sheet, but I didn’t change them because I knew I chose the right answers.”

I started to laugh. “Ms. Raymond wanted to give the students the correct answers, but she actually pointed to the wrong ones, and she didn’t even know it.”

“She’s not too bright. Mr. Antonio brought her from their previous school,” Ms. Stewart said.

I shook my head. “The dumb and dumber duo.”

~

The following morning after the Pledge of Allegiance and the announcements, the math and literacy coaches, the grade leaders--teachers representing each grade from kindergarten through fifth—and I assembled in Mr. Antonio’s office for a meeting. He sat down behind his desk and stared ahead, a despondent look on his face. He was wearing the same white shirt and gray slacks he wore yesterday and had not shaved.

I have some very disturbing news,” Mr. Antonio said, running his hands through his greasy spiked black hair. “The superintendent called me early this morning. The Office of Special Investigations will conduct a thorough investigation of the cheating allegation. Many staff members will likely be called in for questioning. Unfortunately, Ms. Raymond has been reassigned to the district office for the duration of the investigation. Until further notice, I will supervise the teachers of upper grades. Ms. Zimmerman will be responsible for kindergarten through second grade

At that moment, surprised by the news, the teachers whom I supervise turned to look at me questioningly.

Mr. Antonio looked past me with that same despondent stare. “Ms. Zimmerman’s office will be across the yard in the mini-building with the kindergarten classes,” he said.

I briefly caught his eyes, glared at him, and shook my head, as if to say, what gives? The teachers and I now understood what was happening. Retaliation. Not only am I being isolated from the school community, but I now need to run back and forth between two buildings to service the grades I supervise.

~

I heard Mr. Antonio stayed in his office for several hours that afternoon. Maybe he was strategizing. If Ms. Raymond was removed from her administrative position and assigned to the district office so quickly, certainly he knows he is next in line. Even though he initially had the support of the superintendent, I’m sure the superintendent told Mr. Antonio he couldn’t risk losing his own job. I know Mr. Antonio has a wife, young children, and a house on Long Island. Surely, he’s worried about losing his job and license. He should be.”

At the end of the day, Mr. Antonio sent home a letter to the parents informing them of the alleged testing improprieties, assuring them that the allegations against Ms. Raymond are false, and telling them that this incident will not affect their children’s high-quality education.

~

I settled into my new office and soon acquired respect for the kindergarten teachers’ pedagogical skills. Although I didn’t know the curriculum for kindergarten, I quickly familiarized myself with the state learning expectations for the grade. I purchased a few stuffed animals so that the children who were brought to my office would feel comfortable.

The atmosphere in the main building at Pebble Elementary was very tense during the next week. Whenever I went there to visit my first and second grade classes and passed Mr. Antonio in the halls, he lowered his head. He excluded me from staff meetings, but Ms. Stewart and the rep visited me during their lunch periods and kept me abreast of everything.

“Everyone’s so on edge in the main building!” they’d exclaim whenever they came over.

“The teachers’ patience has become short, and they’re snapping at their students,” the rep said. “The dean’s office is filled with students whom the teachers would ordinarily not send to him.”

Ms. Stewart added, “Cliques are springing up everywhere, and no one talks in the hallways, anymore. Mr. Antonio comes to my classroom every day, stays nearly thirty minutes, and is always taking notes.”

“Does he discuss with you what he observes?” I asked, trying to determine if he was rating her teaching ability.

“Nope. Doesn’t talk to my students, either. Just plops down in a seat in the back and writes. It’s nerve-wracking.”

“I’m sure that’s his intention,” I said. “Retaliation.”

~

In the coming weeks, all of the staff members and students involved in the investigation and I were assigned attorneys and our statements taken. The rep told me everyone was nervous and fearful about what to expect at the hearing. She also said Mr. Antonio told her to inform the staff that he continues to believe in Ms. Raymond’s innocence and vowed to stick up for her in court.

On the day of the hearing, the courtroom was filled with students and parents, district personnel, and Pebble Elementary School staff eager to hear the outcome of the charges against Ms. Raymond. The Office of Special Investigations found the students’ testimonies credible, and the judge deemed Ms. Raymond’s actions egregious. During the cross-examination, the teacher’s aide who was in the classroom with Ms. Raymond admitted that she napped on and off, and the few character witnesses who testified on Ms. Raymond’s behalf could not provide substantive testimony. Ms. Raymond lost her administrative license and was banned from ever again working for the New York City Department of Education.

To everyone’s surprise, Mr. Antonio was nowhere to be seen, and a few days later, the superintendent reported that Mr. Antonio had resigned from the New York City Department of Education. I was not surprised when I encountered one of his friends at a meeting, and he informed me that Mr. Antonio had taken a job as principal at a Long Island school. It seemed to me that Mr. Antonio knew what was in store for him and decided to bolt before the probe began. The Office of Special Investigations cited Mr. Antonio’s resignation in its written decision and noted that he, too, is banned from ever again working for the New York City Department of Education.

With the support of the superintendent, I accepted the principalship at Pebble Elementary, and Ms. Stewart became my assistant principal. Mr. Antonio’s three teachers and the math coach transferred to different schools, and Ms. Stewart and I worked hard to rebuild and raise the school morale. Together, we analyzed the results of the state reading and math scores and devised ways to address the students’ deficiencies. Within three years, Pebble Elementary became a showcase school and we were proud of it.

Map of Matter

I could talk about the past like anyone else
about surfing the winds of childhood
to get here and the things I remember
as if the limbs of earth can be owned
by reminiscence
but that’s someone else

I don’t have a story to go back to
or a scenario to play out Everything
I’m from was made up by the Shaw Brothers
and their starlets under dramatic lighting
cat-eyes tinted lips mansions cocktails

Those were not the days and I didn’t live
through them as much as I slewed
across the surface of their rotten skin
because the decayed hand of the past reaches
for everyone not one finger of truth

Don’t lie. Don’t lie. My memory speaks in sleep. But be
creative and quick about it. Soak in the salt
of the world’s illusion. Deliquesce. Be true.

I can reassemble the dismembered limbs
of the past by ingesting them
then making a new body of history
and pining for it like a farmer weeping
for her country lost to flood and fire

I have total recall of the Belle Epoque the Age
of Innocence the Age of Anxiety the turn
of the century the Ways of the Swanns
by demarcating the borders reconfiguring the atoms
of my birth I’m born again
and again

In the movies in the library I watched and read read
and watched until I was entombed
with recollection molecules degrading in travel
in moves
from East to West village to city town to town

The spaces between I lit with candlelight of nostalgia
to illuminate the path of sequined shifts beaded gowns
satin shoes I wore them over my tattered t-shirt dirty feet

Once I moved on a flat space a blank topography
a village for squatters the homeless
not worth visiting or revisiting
in the dark in my telling it transforms
becomes the enchanted forest apples snakes gardenias
a place I find myself time and time
again then again In my telling (tell and retell)
I redraw the geography of slanted truth
and an ending happy
enough to last forever and ever
after that

A Basalt Princess

Pacific reaches for the valley.
In side glances see-throughs
in fuchsia dawns and hell fire dusks
with a latent thrust of impudence:
outer space beckons to the sea trench.

This once was her isle -
with quenching guava scrub,
manioc, taro fields, mango orchards,
decorous breadfruit trees -
glugging the sky
between Capricorn and Equator.

She delivers the shadows of her house to me.
Looks me up and down until
I ebb into remoteness.
Ninety years have streamlined
her down to timelessness.

Crowned with island rose and ivory.
Porpoise teeth inter-woven with buds
gleaming like mortuary relics.
Glory still nestles in the furrows
of her face smoked in tattoos,
a Brueghel blue of soot and thunder
from head to toe.

Her voice, a blast of surf,
a dark inclusion in a storm’s crystal.
I can see her as then,
draped in royal tapa,
one splendid smooth arm
fanning the dormant air.

Then my own time topples
when, suddenly clairvoyant,
she predicts that money
will devastate the world.

Luxury

Before the Florida roads were
bleached whale bones for barons
to pick their teeth
we had the luxury to flick
the fucking matches.
We stole fruit from laden
branches and stars
still tipped scales. Remember
the luxury of disconnected everyone.
Remember the luxury to walk where birds
hid in their tiny rooms singing. The luxury
to joke with clowns driving
tinkling trucks. The luxury to stand
on a beach without fish hooks
in our knees. Remember sticking
out your thumb because you could.
Remember when no one prospered.
Remember never knowing
who we might become.