Patchwork

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  She had lied to her father, and she had confessed, and she had been forgiven. Then later that night she had witnessed her father with Gisela in the foyer when she returned after midnight. Isabella could see them from the dining room. Armed with the truth, he greeted Gisela and held it in her face, swinging it like a lantern to illuminate her sin. She had turned out wild, he said. She had disgraced herself and the whole family by wearing the nasty dress to the Harvest Ball, and she had disgraced them all further by her behavior with a Mr. Pettigrew. The family could not abide her indiscretions. He went on and on, his face puffed and crimson. Isabella remembered Gisela saying, almost calmly—as if she were saying, “Pass the butter, please”—“I’ll run off and never come back again.” And she left. She departed with Mr. Pettigrew, a ferret-like little man, for Joplin, Missouri, and points beyond. She wrote home, but no one answered her letters, and eventually she stopped writing. Her last letter was from California.

  Isabella had always felt justified that her confession had helped push her wayward, disobedient sister out of the family. But now the tears that began flowing down her face were for that lost sister, for whom she had never before shed a tear, and for her sister Maud, who had suffered the loss without complaint. Isabella, eight years old, had believed she was being good. She hadn’t let herself care about Gisela. She had confessed to her father, whose mistreatment of Gisela was only one of his crimes. He had been a dirt farmer who forgot his raising. His children should have been brought up in a hillside tobacco patch, hoeing and gleaning like people in French landscapes, Isabella thought; but Silas Smith had had aspirations, marrying a lady from the horse-and-bourbon country and angling his way into the gentry with his artful real-estate ventures. Eventually he owned tobacco land in Cuba, and on that he claimed his fortune. There was really little fortune, and he was dispossessed of it during the revolution, but he denied his loss, still handing out fine cigars to business associates as if his wife had just had another baby. Again and again, those cigars appeared, and, she thought now, they may not have even been Cuban, but only show cigars, devised for the occasion.

  But Maud had always upheld his deceptions. Isabella was shocked by the vehemence she suddenly felt rising from her closed heart. She hated her father and resented Maud for complicity in Gisela’s exile. It was Maud’s own fault that Gisela had run away. She had told on Gisela when she should have lied as Isabella did. Instead, Gisela had been driven away, and Isabella had been bound to Maud in a little teacup-and-doily world ever since Maud’s Mr. Burnham died. She and Maud had never been anywhere and they didn’t know the world. Isabella felt she should have been like Gisela and run away! Instead, she had been tied down, tiptoeing around Maud all these years.

  The teakettle blew, and Isabella angrily splashed boiling water over some splints of sassafras root bark to steep. She selected another Blue Willow cup for Maud. It clattered in its saucer on the tray but did not break. The Reverend Brewster’s House of Glory card caught her eye. It lay on the secretary desk like a butterfly that had drifted in. When the black man had appeared at their table, his presence a dark silhouette like something jumping out of the shadows, it was as though a slit had opened into the past, where there was more sorrow than she could grasp.

  Maud was calling her, and Isabella rushed in to assure her that she was near and that the tea was brewing.

  But she would save the surprise she had for her. She was going to invite Brother Brewster to visit. She would not write another sachet notecard. She would select a different card, one bolder and more colorful. She turned back for the tray, the words forming in her mind already. Brother Brewster, please come to visit and to pray over my ailing sister, who is troubled in mind and has a lot to answer for. There will be tea.

  XVI

  Flash Fiction

  After exploring the past in the memoir Clear Springs and the novels Feather Crowns and The Girl in the Blue Beret, I wanted to settle down in the twentyfirst century. It was a time shift.

  In fiction of the eighties the popular use of the present tense offered the immediacy of watching movies. The writer seemed not to know what was going to happen any more than the reader did. I might note that in the present tense, making progress from A to B, or from one room to another, is a challenge. It is tricky for the writer, immersed in the moment, to skip ahead a year, or even an afternoon.

  Now, in the throes of attention deficit, we may experience a different kind of immediacy—the sudden splash of light or explosion, a flash of dynamite, a flashlight in a dark corner. I’ve never found poetry to be suitable for my sensibility, but flash fiction, what might have once been called prose poetry, is appealing, and in the last few years I have dabbled with this form.

  Ideally flash fiction attempts to be a poem that reads like fiction, or a story that has the intensity of a poem. Flash seems quick and easy, but it should be penetrating and difficult to shake loose. There are no precise definitions, and the form lends itself to experimentation and often absurdity.

  —BAM

  Corn-Dog

  Featured in the online journal New World Writing, Spring 2014

  Here he is—unmarried, fat, with few cravings, stuck in a stucco house waiting for parcels to arrive by UPS, waiting for anything to come out of the blue. Anything would be welcome—bill collectors, laryngitis, UFOs. But a letter from Laura would be nice. He really wants nothing else. On the sidewalk a neighbor walks her mutt, which resembles a carnival corndog. He saw a dog like that on Animal Planet. The necks of the neighbor and her corn-dog stretch similarly toward their mutual goal, the curb. She wears creased shorts that end just above her less than thrilling knees. Her hair is wispy, frothy, like something from a French bakery.

  The disgruntled old guy with asthma struts by with his fuzzy Standard Poodle. He imagines this old guy with a whiny wife who tries to make him eat goat cheese and arugula. The old guy must sing “Hallelujah” when he is out the door with the Standard Poodle. They march down the sidewalk, ready to spank any corn-dog that crosses their path.

  A wasp has sneaked into the stucco house. Trying to shoo it away, he is stung between two digits, and a welt arises. He doesn’t flinch. He stares at the sting stoically. He is stoic in his stucco house. Since Laura left he feels nothing but her absence. Yet now he searches for some sticky gunk to soothe his finger, for the wasp sting is not fake. It is a true wasp sting, and he feels it. The salve on his finger is like mustard spreading on a light crispy crust.

  The Canyon Where the Coyotes Live

  Featured in the online journal New World Writing, Spring 2014

  She lives near a canyon with four cats. The Post-it notes on the bulletin board keep track of the cats—their special needs, the diets, the vet appointments, little notes about their charming pranks and romps.

  Yesterday she recorded Annie chirping at a snail. Normally Annie chirps at the sparrows who bathe in a bowl outside the large window.

  Billy chirped at an invisible fly. He was leaping high into the air, reaching and chattering. Carrie and Davy have other hobbies—spiders and tiny furry fake mice, respectively.

  The cats do not go outside because of the canyon where the coyotes live.

  There is a husband around the house, too.

  “That sounds like a children’s book,” he says. “The Canyon Where the Coyotes Live, something written to scare children.”

  “But stories like that make them laugh,” she says.

  If there were children, she thinks.

  She would love to see the cats play outside, but the coyotes from the canyon come forth at night. Even in the daytime coyotes have been sighted. It would be delightful to see the cats on the patio stalking the sparrows, where the coyotes come to stalk the cats. It would be even more delightful to see a toddler pulling a cat’s tail.

  “Everything’s gotta eat,” he says, closing the refrigerator door. “Including me,” he says.

  “Have a Pop-Tart,” she says.

  “Pop-Tarts are for kids. Why do
we have Pop-Tarts?”

  Exactly.

  He works late shifts in the bottling industry. Often when he comes in late in the night he tells of a coyote crossing the road or an animal he can’t identify that always must be a bear or a cougar.

  In the night while he is gone the sounds are magnified, and the howling coyotes seem to be at the back door but may be across the canyon. She hears the cat at the scratching post, the click click click of the door lock when he returns—if it is him and not some mugger who has commandeered his car and made him drive home at gunpoint.

  Yesterday he said to her, “Don’t you see how nuts you’re becoming? Everything is fraught with terror and apocalypse with you!”

  “Fraught? I’m fraught with nothing.” Empty. Flat-bellied.

  “You’re afraid to let the cats outside because of the coyotes. If there weren’t any coyotes you’d find something else to be afraid of.”

  “They would get killed on the road.”

  “Right. See what I mean?”

  “It’s better for cats to stay indoors. They live longer.”

  The Pop-Tart is like limp pasteboard. He eyes it ruefully, then her.

  “Furthermore,” he says. “We are lucky we don’t have any kids. I see how you would be with them.”

  She snatches the Pop-Tart from his hand. “I’ll make lunch,” she says.

  She makes a salad with artichoke hearts and palm hearts. Her own heart could be the centerpiece, ripped out and posed on a platter like the head of John the Baptist. There is nothing to do but dance.

  Car Wash

  Featured in the online journal New World Writing, Fall 2014

  Hi, Betsy,

  Got here on Tuesday and had a job by sundown! They say the economy is in the ditch, but I’m just a lucky guy, I guess. I’m not pushy, but I can speak up for myself. I hit just the right balance.

  The job is at a service station with a car wash. It’s kind of upscale where people leave their cars to be cleaned. And they mean clean. There is a fancy waiting room with trays of cookies and cold drinks free. Little cubicles with TVs, La-Z-Boys. These are rich people, who don’t need free snacks, and some of them are so rich they don’t even bring in their own cars. Their “people” bring them, I never knew this but if you are a movie star out here you don’t have to get your own gas or a lube job or anything. Someone does all that for them. I guess if you’re famous you don’t want to be seen pumping gas or doing anything ordinary. They must think they live in a sort of heaven where they eat things with ginger and seaweed and can take a dump in the shag carpet if they’ve a mind to and somebody else will clean it up. Their people won’t tell who they are working for either, so we do a lot of speculating. Wednesday there was a vintage Corvette that belonged to George Clooney—and it was true because there was a book on the seat with his name written in it.

  Yesterday I had to clean out a car that smelled like puke. No real mystery there, the way these people binge, or so I’m told. I had to use four rounds of deodorizer on the carpets in that car. The leather upholstery wasn’t ruined, but it was borderline. Of course they can just have that replaced, or buy a new car.

  Today I cleaned out a glob of something chewy that had to be cut out of the carpet. I felt like a surgeon, trying to cut the fibers of the carpet so it wouldn’t show. I’m sure this is a skill that will be useful in a better job. I got the damned chewy stuff under my fingernails and had to use industrial solvent to get it out.

  But I like this job so far. Most of the other employees are Mexican and I wish I had paid attention in Miss Garrity’s Spanish class, but I can say amigo and that goes a long way.

  I’m sorry I left in such a hurry, but I hope you change your mind and come out here. You know I didn’t mean to slap you that way. I just get carried away sometimes, I know we could have us a fine time out here. I don’t see any way but up.

  Love,

  Mark

  P.S. I wrote this yesterday but haven’t mailed it yet. I don’t know where the post office is. This morning I had to clean up a car that had blood in it. The guy who brought it in said he had to deliver his sister’s baby himself on the side of a busy freeway, and he had to cut the umbilical cord with his hunting knife. He talked like he was a big hero. He said she would have died if he hadn’t been prepared. Like some pimply Boy Scout, I reckon. That was the guy’s story, but it sounded fishy. You never know what really happened when people are telling you things out here. So much out here is just stories.

  Cumberbatch

  Featured in the online journal New World Writing, Spring 2014

  “The Giant Pacific Octopus starts out as plankton, microscopic at first. Then it is the size of a grain of rice.” The schoolchildren sitting at my feet are disbelieving. Shrugs, but no astonishment.

  “This octopus is named Cumberbatch. He weighs thirty-two pounds and is not full grown. The Giant Octopus often weighs up to a hundred pounds. Right now you see him tucked into a slit in this rock. He can squeeze his body into tiny openings, like this soup can.” The soup can I am holding is open on both ends—a virtual vagina. I feel a little spin down there.

  “Listen carefully, kids. Be quiet. The octopus has three hearts. The extras are for oxygenating blood.” My blood rushes when I think of my exlover. If I had three hearts, perhaps I would have a spare, one that is not broken.

  “Cumberbatch can open child-proof medicine bottles and screw-top jars. He is smart as a cat. An octopus has a superior sense of taste, with taste sensors all over the body. Imagine that you could taste everything you touched. The bathroom floor. The driveway.” I tasted his liquid but I sneezed and it went up my nose and that gave me the giggles. What I would give to have that moment again! My worldly possessions? My precious cat?

  “Sometimes we put his food inside a Mr. Potato Head or other toy for stimulation and to keep him from being bored.” I was never bored. We had toys. He brought me lovely, velvety, rubbery toys, wiggly toys. I like this texture. I really do!

  “Children, do octopuses have tentacles or arms?”

  “Octopi,” says a kid, who is maybe fourteen.

  “Smarty,” says another kid.

  “No, they are octopuses, not octopi. That ending is Latin. Pus is from pod, the Greek, meaning foot, but are they called tentacles or feet or arms?”

  The kid who said “smarty” is smirking. “Arms,” he says.

  “The octopus can change color to blend in with his surroundings.” When I was with him I turned color, blushing all over. He painted me with kisses and licks. Red dribbles of his red-zinger drink.

  “Octopuses don’t live long. The octopus is a terminal breeder. When he nears the end of his life he is ready to mate. The female eats a lot while she is preparing to mate. The male inserts one of his arms into the hole on the side of her head. The arm has grown round and hard. It has changed shape, the suckers have stretched out and blended in. It is rigid and purposeful.” He thought I had an abortion. He thought he would never have to see me again. I bought a car with the money.

  “After inserting his spermatophore packet into her oviduct—it can be up to a meter long—the man octopus is spent and he dies.”

  Oh.

  A meter. A metaphor. A broken heart.

  “The mother accepts the spermatophore packet and she hides in her den, overloading on carbs. She waits a week before she punctures the packet and lets the sperm fertilize her eggs. She hangs her eggs on the ceiling of her den and cares for them. She sweeps them and aerates them for seven months. She stops eating during this brooding. After her eggs hatch, she has used so much energy that her body breaks down and she dies. She dies more quickly than the guy.” I am dying like the mama octopus brooding, fussing with her broom, sick with brooding, sick with thinking and wishing. Dying. A terminal breeder.

  A small pigtailed girl is asking, “About the thing going into the hole in the head. Where does it go—into the ear?”

  No. Into the heart.

  The Girl in Purple
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br />   Featured in the online journal New Flash Fiction Review, Spring 2014

  Near dawn, Dennis Moore saw the iron gate to the courtyard inch open and the wisp of a girl squeeze through, clanging the gate behind her. Two minutes later, on the boardwalk, she halted as if for an invisible dog, then resumed her dog-walker gait. He followed her down this wooden walkway, known as the Promenade. The surf, retreating as if pushed by the hurrying sun, murmured and slurped. The girl, he could see now, was dressed in purple, and she wore a thick long scarf twisted in an elaborate slip-knot around her throat.

  His thoughts wandered. The Auguste Macke poster of “Promenade 1913” above his mantel. Andy Kaufman wrestling women in the videos he had watched. Lisbeth Salander with the dragon tattoo. The nutrition facts on the back of the granola bar in his pocket.

  The girl in purple was coughing. She paused on the Promenade and coughed repeatedly. Something had gone down the wrong way. He knew the feeling.

  This was the right moment to grab her, but he felt dizzy and sluggish. He had to concentrate. She was lighting a cigarette, cupping it from the beach breeze. He saw that her scarf was a tartan. He thought of Scotch tape. Quietly, he tiptoed behind her along the bare boards. When Mark Twain steered the riverboat around the bend where the Mississippi meets the Ohio, he had to proceed very carefully. But he dumped Huck and Jim there on a flimsy raft in those dangerous waters where Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky come together to shake hands. Now Dennis Moore had to go very carefully, pitty-pat. He could not stop himself now. This time he would do it.

  A light bulb lit in his head. Fuck hen. Until this moment the spoonerism of Huck Finn had never occurred to him. That old jokester, Twain, was probably still laughing, wherever he was. The granola bar would taste good right now. Pay attention! She coughed again. The scarf was many shades of purple flashing in the sudden sunrise.