by Golda Fried
She started to pace the floor with her combat boots at the crack of sunlight.
Westley had built his bed three feet from the ceiling that he covered in glow-in-the-dark stars. “Can I lie in your bed?” I asked him. He nodded and went to look for Burrita.
We heard he had fallen from his bed one night. His parents had to be called in from New York and looked over their son like he was a shattered coffee table.
º º º
Honeysuckle’s new boyfriend held up this box I had decorated for her birthday and twirled it around. Honeysuckle had gone out to walk the dog. He said, “So, Burrita told me you’re still a virgin.”
He got up when Honeysuckle sat back down on the couch. She said, “This is the place where we watch the news channel all night.”
I said, “Life got scary. I went out with my best friend and you went out with an adult! But it’s our time for life to be scary.”
But of course, I didn’t say that, I just made fun of the CDs in their music rack.
I was waitressing and tired and the supermarket was an extra bright place. Honeysuckle’s boyfriend was staring down the people who walked out. He grabbed the French breadstick from out of my shopping bag and said aghast, “It’s just flour and sugar.” I smelled liked restaurant. He was cracking the bread in his hand, “You can roll it up into a ball. For the same price, you can get a freshly baked one from the bakery down the street.”
I stared back. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry. Honeysuckle just got me to quit smoking. Carry on.”
I thought I’d make it out the doors but he hollered, “Why don’t you give Honeysuckle a call?”
“You wouldn’t believe how much of an upkeep a dog is,” Honeysuckle said, “and how many tickets I’ve gotten for letting it loose in the park.” We ducked into these apartment grounds with a pool and deckchairs and were a little nervous about getting caught. She told me a story about how her and her high school friends crashed this hotel pool and went skinny dipping.
“How could you let me live with Burrita?” I said. My tone made her call out insanely cute names towards the dog. She put her hand on the dog and gazed into the pool. She looked like she wanted to check into a hotel even just for a night.
She said, “I thought you guys would get along.”
I asked her if she still was friends with Burrita and she said, “Burrita is a high-maintenance friend.”
“She called me a pig,” I said. We both laughed.
“She thought I was a pig too.”
“But she wouldn’t call you a pig,” I said. No one was in the pool. “Burrita talks to me through this chalkboard she put on the wall.”
Honeysuckle said, “I miss though when she is caring and sweet like when she’d make me a whole lasagna.”
We hurried past the guard and were free. She chirped rubbing down the dog, “We’re going to go home now and make me a beautiful cappuccino.”
That day I forgot that I hadn’t drunk any coffee and ended up under a black veil in the Emergency waiting room.
Westley was there with a roommate who had fallen somewhere. Westley still had his casts on.
“Are you still living with Burrita? Have you seen her?" he asked.
“No,” I answered like I was dreaming. His casts were filled with signatures.
atlanta’s story
My dad is holding my hand carefully, and I’m looking straightforward into miles and miles of snow. I am like a small child with a large suitcase.
Dad starts patting his parka banging on the pockets. He finds a small box in the zipper on his arm. It’s like stuffing coming out. He says, “You should have an emergency food supply.”
The first time I go over to Marshall’s and every time thereafter, he is a snowfall of light questions. “Can I offer you some water?” “Do you want some cigarettes?” “It that chair cushiony enough?” “Can I make you some tea?” “Do you want to use the phone in this room?” “Who are you calling?” He says, “Feel free to crash into my place any time. Take advantage.”
Marshall is always in front of his computer. He calls me every time he saves a document.
For our first big show at my friend’s loft, Marshall foiled his hair. I thought he should’ve showed up with the tin foil still wrapped around the strands of hair. He’d be our shiny tin man. He’d be there standing in the large field when I was young, and I’d find nothing for miles and miles. But he’d be there, hand frozen in a wave.
My mother has never left the farm. She writes me long letters about the farm. The farm is protected and gated. The farm has watchdogs. She lets them loose at night to come find me with their drooling hungry snarls.
Marshall is on his hands and knees.
“Okay, you can see Tucker,” he wails. “Just don’t stop seeing me.”
“How do you know about Tucker?”
“Then I’m right. I knew it.”
“You’re going to have to lie down.”
“So I can look dead and reassure you. You told me I look dead lying down.”
Let’s say Marshall and I were to walk down the street. This is Coles Notes to Marshall. I should write Coles Notes for his next girlfriend because I can. First of all, be sure to see him. Comment on his eyes or how his suit looks that day. When you see a flower, you cannot just see a flower. You must both be seeing the flower together.
Tucker goes to the store to buy these cheap brand of cigarettes called Angel Dust. When he comes back, he catches me tying dandelions to the Family Wagon’s aerial. “We are not a sixties revival band,” he tells me. His cigarette, which I stole, fills my throat with cobwebs.
He has gone inside to make instant coffee, so I go inside to check my messages. Marshall’s called, he’s in his cage looking. The million errors on the screen like stars in the sky being eaten.
In the Family Wagon crawling through the suburbs, the street lights age giving off a raw egg ring. It had been a bad performance tonight. The girls in the front were screaming through all my slow songs. It’s like you can’t be pretty any more. At the end, I curtsied and thoroughly disgusted them.
The wide front window in the Family Wagon makes me feel pretty high up. Makes me feel underwater. The rear-view mirror rocking back and forth.
I feel like crying. Tucker reaches into his jacket, and I have this crazy idea he’ll pull out those plastic wrapped Kleenexes, the kind that old gentleman with fedora hats carry around. He pulls out a pack of Angel Dust.
Up ahead, a little boy is walking a cat on a leash, which might be normal but it’s three-thirty in the morning.
“Hey Tucker, isn’t that Rake’s brother? Stop the car. Stop the car.” I think only after that I’m hitting him pretty hard on the arm.
We catch up to the turd and Tucker runs and gets him and then we go to Jim and Rake’s.
They are in bed hanging out. I picture Jim wearing the bottom half of a fuzzy pajama set and Rake wearing the top half, but in reality, Rake is wearing some lingerie of mine that she borrowed a while ago.
Tucker and the kid climb into bed with them.
Jim sweeps up the kid’s cat. “Look, Rake,” he says. “We have a special guest.” Pat, pat, pat. “Hi, Pussy Fat.”
The kid takes Rake by the hand and leads her to the kitchen. The cat is pouncing on the beer tops scraping the floors. The cat is in the kitchen. “Stop stealing all my pens, you motherfucker,” Rake is screaming. She comes back in the bedroom for a cigarette. “Don’t worry, I’m usually nice to the cat in the morning.”
Rake and the kid eventually return with French toast. Tucker shovels it in and keeps giving me these crazed grins. He sprinkles sugar until he covers his plate. My feet are ice cold. I grab his hand and it has a fork in it.
Marshall is telling me he has made up his mind in an open green field. “I’m going to marry Miss Lovely Blue Eye Shadow Lady and you can have all the freedom you want.”
It sounds so final.
“You can’t do that,” I say.
“I
t’s done,” he says. “I bought the engagement ring yesterday. Unless of course you want it.”
The snow doesn’t come from the skies, it comes because someone is shaking the earth.
thanksgiving dinner
I picked out a dress that was two sizes too big, a ridiculous lemon colour with lace under the breasts and fishnet stockings. I had picked it up from a woman who clucked on the sidewalk, all her yard sale clothes hung up on a schoolyard fence. It was Thanksgiving and Chisler was boiling hot dogs, and I didn’t think it was very romantic of me to go to my aunt’s house without him but he said, “Go, kick up your heels.”
So I went. I went into my aunt’s bathroom. “The reason you are here,” I said to the mirror, “is because your dad can’t be here and he has installed some kind of feeble hope of family in you and later he is going to call on the telephone and it would please him so much for everyone to get along fabulously. And James’s girlfriend Annie is really not that bad and I’d probably like her if I met her in . . . Where else would I meet her? She rushes to people’s sides, it makes me very nervous. I can’t believe that I took the hour bus ride here and have to take it back.” I had gotten goosebumps all over my legs waiting. I thought it was warmer out than it was.
The washroom was off of the kitchen and my aunt said, “Oh, there you are. So tell me all about yourself.” Meanwhile she’s wrapping and unwrapping things, and if she stood still for a second maybe a coherent thought would come out of my mouth. She said, “You don’t understand, I’ve been seeing clients all day. I think I’m going to burn everything.”
I said, “‘I don’t think you understand how much of a shock it was to see Annie here after you told me I couldn’t bring Chisler.”
“Well, what if your father calls? I don’t want there to be any unnecessary tension.”
“You should have told me,” I said.
My aunt had been promising me for over two years that we’d see this movie together called Blue-Eyed Goodbye. Finally, Chisler watched it with me. It was like the day finally cracked and we were free. The Blue-Eyed Goodbye was about a girl growing up to be sensible saying good-bye to a guy with a little risk, and he marries another sensible girl only to leave the first girl with a thousand regrets.
I told my aunt, “I saw Blue-Eyed Goodbye the other night.” Now was her chance to say, “Oh, you should have waited ‘til we could see it together,” but she said, “Good, good.”
I said to myself, “This is the part where I wish the cardboard landscape around us would fall over and my aunt would look surprised.”
I went to look for my grandmother. She had raised my father so sweet and good. “He’s too soft,” she’d say with a knowing finger. So I’m on the piano bench watching my grandmother interview Annie calling her “dear” and touching her hair.
I used to take piano lessons but gave it up and that disappointed my mother and I moved away and that disappointed my mother and then I gave her the impression that my aunt took me under her wing. My aunt didn’t have a daughter. Perfect. We had tea once. My mother insisted I like my aunt more than her: “She has an active career, and she is talkative, and she doesn’t tell you what you can and can’t do. She always nods and says you can do everything.” My aunt stopped taking me out for tea because now I didn’t think she had the answers for everything. Now there was Chisler, and I had become difficult. She had a teenage son of her own.
My grandmother had marched into my first year residence and started drilling the girl who lived beside me, Kathy. Kathy was busy, beautiful, and always walked by me as if I wasn’t there. And in one second, my grandmother had pinned her to the doorway, and Kathy was saying, “Yes, your grandmother is very nice.” “Yes, this residence is okay, but noisy.” “No, I don’t have a boyfriend, I’m seeing about three guys.” “Yes, it’s too early for me to settle it down to one guy.”
Annie had rushed away to check on James, and now my grandmother was saying to me, “You’re so here and there.” No, I wasn’t. I was really with this guy, I was really with him. Then she started giving me some advice and stories about how she loved her parents.
Dinner was long. Annie was saying to my aunt, “Oh, this is really good soup, this is the best soup I’ve ever tasted. The table looks so beautiful.”
My grandmother asked Annie to pass a cup and saucer of tea, and the whole thing rattled like crazy as she passed it by three noses. Everyone became silent.
When it was over, my aunt gave me an aluminum dish, “Here bring some food back to Chisler.” The poor guy will feel like a dog. But the truth is we gorged on it and I was thankful he was there.
and it all went tremola
Jones probably is figuring that I am fixating on something again, and when he puts his arms around me, I can’t respond, even though my t-shirt is how I like it – paper thin.
In the morning, when I get to my mail, there are some guy friends of mine who believe in their continuous search for the new.
I avoid Jones when I’m not sure what’s going on. This is probably not good but it’s my last trip to Ottawa. I go to see my friend Clayton for the weekend. He lives in this place called the Glebe. Yeah, and like it sounds, he and his friends’ve ended up stuck to each other like the white rice they’ve been eating for the past four years.
I walk in and it’s a house instead of an apartment, and there are about eight people in the kitchen just talking pretty much and most of them are jokers. When Clayton offers me tea, there’s this plastic container with some magic maker writing on it pushed my way. It reads BROWN SHUGAH.
When I take off the lid, it’s filled with rice. White rice I’m scared they’ll throw on me if I mention the word Jones.
Leah hooks Clayton’s arm to go have it out for the fifth time that night on the front porch because she knows he won’t write.
They have a porch – the kind you want to sit around and flick things at that leaves and wait for your friends to come over . . .
Leah’s cut a square of linoleum off the kitchen floor and we’re all signing it. One of the guys gets up every once in awhile to go into the living room, making mixed tapes for a few people before they take off to various parts. Clayton asking, Is it a hurting song?
There are tickets to old bedrooms that are either chicken yellow or pink frilled.
Someone opens the back door not knowing. The whole back is pitted. Construction in a black sky.
All our eyes, stars instantly cast out there.
º º º
That last night they take me for a walk. It’s sticky. Everyone going into his or her own wounds. As soon as we slow down, we get screamed at.
Are you visiting someone? Are you looking for someone (Yeah, we’re looking for God.) Well, if you’re not looking for someone, I’m going to have to ask you to leave because you’re loitering and we have a policy against loitering. (We’ll just be a minute.) WELL, you’ll have to deliberate somewhere else because this is private property. You’re going to have to leave. Leave now.
I thought Clayton was going to say something hurting at the Greyhound station like I’ll write, meaning he wouldn’t but he said, What is this, be gone or be crushed?
crates of stars
I catch myself bringing a broken umbrella inside. Umbrellas mean nothing to me outside. I’d rather walk the streets proving the rain does not affect me. And this umbrella is crashing crimson. I hang it on my closet door like I gave my apartment a big kiss and wished it good luck in the beauty contest. And just maybe I’d come out looking like a star to certain people far away. Forever I despised red. It clashed with my orange hair. But now I relate it to boldness and lipstick and wounds. And besides, my apartment was all white.
I am pissin’ in the bathroom of the Cinema de Paris, really getting into the sound and this girl comes in blushing, amused.
“Do you always leave the door open when you’re on the can?”
I answer, “Well, never. I just thought I’d see what it was like.”
She had
three different lipstick utensils out by now, and I saddle up on the counter and overtly stare. This girl must really believe she’s in Paris.
“You must be on a date.”
“Well, if we’re getting personal,” she retorts, “tell me why do you cramp over the toilet seat and not sit down?”
“I’ve been doing that forever. And it’s faster. I guess.”
“You’re a real in-out, huh? Well, thank God I’m not going out with you.”
Well, I think I’ve spent enough time in the bathroom. I head for the door, and this girl goes, “Hey, I know I don’t know you and all, but do you think you could walk me home? I don’t live that far, and the guy I’m here with is really creeping me out. He seemed real energetic and full of passion when he’d talk to me in film class, but now I just don’t want him to know where I live, ya know?”
“Yeah, sure.”
And that is how I meet Christina.
º º º
Sandals through puddles. We’re marchin’ down the street under her umbrella in linked arms. I tell her I want to meet a sailor, and she drinks up her beer like a fish and all the seal-looking jackets in here are drowning. Who would’ve thought she was dreaming of Texas?
º º º
“Black gold.”
“What do you mean he’s black gold?” There is a guy in her local calls that feel all too long distance and a ghost in the room. “Is he some sort of superstar bumble-bee?”
“More of a dark star.”
And then we do the whole walk through of past relationships. But if this talk is a house, we only do hallways because the tour of Christina only takes you to the tea room. Her past is shiny. And with her platinum hair and red lipstick, she is a star herself.
And all Marilyn Monroe, she tells me she could never have a boyfriend that meant anything after James Dean. (Mark later told me that she finally said hi.) And then we get to me and who have you dated from Sunset Boulevard?
