by Susan Tepper
“Somebody’s just moved it, is all.” He boots the doorstop to release the door. There, nestled in a dust bunny is the neon pink sign.
I wait for an apology.
Chad says, “You’re transferred to another ward for the rest of the day. How long ’til you fuck that up?”
Sure beats a needle for lunch.
2.00pm
Cyclades Islands, Greece
Marida
by Lyn Fowler
Kostas turns off the putt putt outboard motor of the dinghy and we glide towards the island with a man standing on a rock waving and beckoning us.
We pull up alongside a small jetty. The man reaches out with sinewed arms and knobbly hands to grab the rope that Kostas throws towards him. He ties the rope onto the buoy where his own boat is tied. He lifts his broad sun-lined face from under the black wool peaked cap. His blue eyes twinkle. Old man of the sea or not, he is fit and well. He grabs our hands and helps us out of our dinghy onto the jetty.
The old man leads us along a rocky path towards a house. Glazed blue ceramic jars line the front, whitewashed wall of the house. A large wooden barrel stands in front of an open door and blackened pots and pans hang from a wooden post. It is an outside kitchen. We all introduce ourselves and the old man, Sestos, invites us to follow him. On the sunny side of his house is a garden with tomatoes and cucumbers scrambling along the rocky ground. I lean down to take a closer look and Sestos hands me a wicker basket. I pick four tomatoes and a cucumber.
“Please take more,” he says, “you can take them home for eating later.”
Sestos washes the harvested tomatoes in a plastic bowl of water collected from the spring in the side of the rocky cliff at the back of his house. As far as I can see, the bowl is the only plastic article here. Sestos piles the tomatoes, a slab of fetta and some black olives on top of the wooden barrel so we can all help ourselves. Plates are not necessary; this is a picnic after all. The tomatoes are fleshy, firm and fluted. I segment one tomato and place a slice of briny fetta on top. It does not need anything else. It is the taste of the Greek islands. The islanders make fetta with the milk from the goats they keep. On this island, the goats clambering energetically up and down the rocks must make good milk.
From just inside the doorway Sestos brings out a small tin. He gently forks out small salted dried fish, locally known as marida, and that we know as whitebait. While we crunch on these morsels and nibble on black olives, Sestos ladles wine out of one of the blue jars into a ceramic jug. He then pours the wine into two pottery cups. We all share a few sips. The wine is white, sweet and surprisingly chilled. I feel blessed and euphoric and it is not just the wine. We are standing around a barrel lunching on the simple delights of the land and the sea.
As we are casting off Sestos’ island home back to our boat, he promises to bring fish for our dinner tonight.
7.05am
Belmont, Massachusetts, USA
Breakfast
by Gloria Garfunkel
This is allegedly my sixth day in the hospital and my fortieth birthday, Friday, April 24, 2015. That is what the nurse tells me over and over as I repeatedly ask her and then forget.
“When is April?” I say. “Is it before or after June?”
“Here, honey, so you can remember.”
The nurse pins the information to the wall, but the minute I look away I forget it. I could do this all day and it wouldn’t stick. I am unmoored in time and space, like I’ve fallen into a black hole.
I am attempting to eat breakfast but can only tolerate the orange juice and the soggy fruit cup.
The nurse harps on me to eat just a little more, like my obese mother harped my whole childhood. It only makes me want to eat less. When the nurse is gone, I wheel my hanging intravenous lines to the garbage can and dump the scrambled eggs and toast so she will leave me alone.
I see her inspect the trashcan when she returns.
She looks at me and laughs.
“You think you can fool me, girl? I’m up to your tricks. You’ve been doing this the whole time you’ve been here.”
“I have?” I say. “I don’t remember.”
“I know you don’t, honey. I know.”
“I’m a vegan anyway,” I say. “I don’t eat eggs.”
She brings me more ice water. That fills me up.
8.30am
a small town, upstate New York, USA
Bread and Butter
by Susan Tepper
Cooked food is no longer an option in our house. He cheated on me, he only gets a sandwich. On white bread. I would have bought Wonder Bread but the market carries Pepperidge Farm. It killed me. I wanted his sandwiches as gummy as possible. Because he is the sole income earner right now, me just having had a baby, my shrink said I have to at least feed him. How or what wasn’t discussed in the session.
I’m holding the baby to my side, red faced and squalling. A new baby, less than six weeks old living in a broken home. Too young to have a sit-down. A talking to. But this baby gets the picture because it never stops crying and fussing.
He comes in for breakfast wearing shorts and a T. “Are you fucking for real?” I say. “It’s probably about 35 fucking degrees outside.”
I now use fuck or fucking or fuck you, or some variation, in every exchange with him. Hate has a way of solidifying some things and breaking down others. I used to cook big dinners with all the trimmings.
I point at a plate on the otherwise empty table. “Here is your breakfast sandwich.”
While he was showering, I took two slices of white bread and buttered them.
“You didn’t toast them,” he says.
“Oh, you want fucking toast!” I put the baby in the carrier then pull the buttered slices apart chucking them into the toaster.
“Jeez, now the toaster will be all slimy from the butter,” he says. “Hi Baby.” Leaning down to stroke her cheek.
I press my back against the kitchen counter crossing my arms. “Well that’s a fucking shame about the butter.”
He avoids looking in my eyes that always smolder now. Puts the toaster knob down twice and manages to burn the bread. “Now it’s burnt,” he says.
“Well, I could smell it fucking burning, why couldn’t you?”
He actually looks hurt.
I sit down with my bowl of cooked steaming oatmeal pouring in the half and half liberally.
“Is there any extra?” He’s fixated on my bowl.
“Not a fucking spoonful extra.”
“Oh.” Silently he chews his burnt toast. “When are we going to name the baby?”
“Never. This baby will grow up and choose her own name.”
“Couldn’t that cause psychological problems?”
“You mean worse than the fucking psychological problems you caused? And continue to cause? Just by being fucking alive? Is that what you mean?”
After his breakfast sandwich, he goes down to his office in the basement where he operates an employment placement service.
I give the baby a bottle to quiet her down. Then clean up the breakfast table. I toss his dirty plate in the sink. Mine goes into the dishwasher. That’s another thing: I won’t put his plates in the dishwasher. If we run out of plates, well, no fucking big deal.
The Baby finishes the bottle and poops. I change her diaper then decide to vacuum. The noise blocks out her squalling, and other things I would rather not think about. Like the fucking that went on behind my back while I was cooking those gourmet meals and entertaining his stupid business-placement clients. The worst pack of losers I’d ever come across. If you can’t hold down a managerial position at McDonald’s, do you really expect to become a business success? Last I heard, the guy was doing the same job for another fast food chain.
8.34am
Lower East Side, New York City, NY, USA
Breaking Eggs and Calling Them an Omelet
by Walter Giersbach
The girl had been draped over the mailbox like Salvador Da
li’s Limp Watches, dripping down the blue paint. She was wearing a matching blue dress and he’d appraised her white buttocks, pushed out like two frozen supermarket chickens. Why was she on Hester Street imitating a pile of garbage bags at one minute after midnight?
“Hey!” He got no response, which worsened his already-foul mood. Mom’s funeral service had been a downer and the rain was getting worse. Would better times ever return?
He poked her, on her hip above one of the chickens.
“Piss off,” the garbage bag muttered.
“C’mon.” He’d tugged at her. There was no good reason for doing a Samaritan on this stranger, except leaving her at the curb like castoff furniture seemed uncivilized. Two teenagers standing in the shadows a few doors away had probably smelled fresh meat.
He hoisted the woman up, zombie-walking her limp legs over to Rivington St. She was good looking, even smelled good as he’d dragged her into his first floor loft. Very good looking. That was motivation of sorts. Save the good lookers, he’d thought laying her on his bed. He headed into the kitchen space, his heels echoing in the empty loft, to pour himself a whiskey.
Then he forgot his scavenged woman and began drawing. Drawing opened doors to salvation, helping him forget the memorial, the church full of aliens, his brother who had flown in from Minneapolis after dredging up a sense of duty. Forget death, the terrorist attacks, Russian invasions, and random acts of horror every day now. He’d immerse himself in the plight of Lucy Dingo. She’d make Saltzman sit up and say, “Damn, Mikey, I didn’t think you had it in you. A totally new slant on literature and art!”
His head had fallen to the drawing board and he dreamed of Lucy. There was trouble in Cambridge. Alexander, the fallen angel, was dead. The dwarves had freaked and run amok in Springfield. This was a job for Lucy. She wasn’t dead. Just hiding out until the time ripened and the fullness found her.
“Who the hell are you and where am I?”
Mike raised his head and looked at the woman in the blue dress. His wind-up clock said 8:34 and already he’d been asked two questions at once. “Um,” he started, “Rivington Street. I’m Mike. I rescued you. From the rain, the street where you were decorating a mailbox. And some teenagers that were eyeing you for dinner.”
“You want me to say thank you? My knight in shining armor?” She pointed at his drawing board. “You’re a goddamn starving artist. You guys can’t even rescue yourselves.” She sauntered around his loft touching shelves and tables, as though she had Helen Keller’s sensory input in her fingers.
“You have a name?”
She turned. “Calliope Katsanakis. Most people call me Kelly.”
“I’m going to make coffee. Want some?”
“What I really want to know is where’s my pocketbook? You go through it and then dump it in a trash can?”
“Purse? By the bed, I think.” He admired the fact that she didn’t look hung over, that the dress emphasized her curves, that her tousled bed hair looked sexy in a B movie sort of way. Her breasts under the tight bodice of her dress resembled ripe apples, perhaps Golden Delicious. Be interesting to sketch her portrait as a still life of fruit, as Lucy Dingo incarnate.
“Comic books!” She laughed. “You draw comics!”
“Hey, I’m not peddling my ass on the street. Should have seen yourself last night. Too drunk to stand up and looking like a ten-dollar hooker. You coulda got in trouble.”
“My ass is worth a lot more than ten bucks, buddy,” and she stuck her face a few inches from his nose. “My apartment costs two large a month, I got a bank account and a retirement account, vacationed in the Bahamas two weeks ago …”
“Excuse me for being a lowly artist, but I’ve published a graphic novel and even been reviewed in the Times.” He inhaled the scent of perfume or hand lotion, surprised she didn’t smell like a wet cat.
“Well, la-de-dah. So where’s my coffee?”
“You insult me and then ask for breakfast?”
“You owe me. You saved my life, so according to custom – Chinese or something – you have to at least feed me.”
He watched her wolf down bacon and an omelet, rip off pieces of toast, and wash down breakfast with orange juice and coffee.
“Thank you. Very good. So why’s a grown-up drawing kids’ comics?”
Mike drew a deep breath. “I said they’re graphic novels. Comics were Donald Duck walking off the cliff. Suddenly realizing he’s in mid-air, he drops a hundred feet and gets up with stars circling his head.”
She glared, challenging him to go on.
“I weave words and art together to unravel the stuff of dreams. I can capture a gesture, a glance, a suggestive nuance. Make anything happen. Start an earthquake. Bring a new character back from the dead. Only the readers change, and they pay twenty-seven bucks for a hard cover edition of Lucy Dingo. It’s an allegory of our dystopian culture – a better piece of reality, metaphorically speaking, than you give selling your ass.”
“My ass is not an eleemosynary institution. It pays my debts.”
Mike stared. “Where’d you learn that big word?”
“Bennington College. Twenty-six thousand bucks worth of college loans to prove it.”
He squinted. “What kind of name is Calliope?”
“More coffee.” She held out her mug. “The muse of poets, daughter of Zeus. Too much for your little brain? She taught Orpheus to sing, was the inspiration for Homer’s Odyssey.”
“So why are you hooking men when you have an education and” – he waved his hand airily – “could work in some ivory tower uptown?”
“I’m not a hooker. I’m a call girl. There’s a difference. But my daytime job is none of your business. Not going to have you stalk in with ink all over your shirt asking me for a date.”
“I don’t think I’d do that.” He considered the waves of paranoia that enveloped him each time he ventured north of 23rd Street. It was his agoraphobia, fear of the marketplace full of people, any place where anxiety overwhelmed him. “We’re too different. See, you’re taking the path of least resistance. Doing your nighttime workout knocking off out-of-town Johns to pay the bills. I’m trying to find deeper meaning. Categorize philosophical theses.”
“The old existential meaning-of-life-crapola?” She cupped her chin in her hand and scrutinized him as she might a slab of meat in a supermarket. “I used to think about that a lot – when I was fifteen years old. No, you’re ordering chicken nuggets at the banquet of life.”
“The ‘why me?’ questions never go away, Calliope.” He was snarling now. “My kid sister died of cancer last year. My dad ran off when he lost his job in the recession. My mom had a drinking problem and I was her go-to guy until the Social Security check arrived each month. Don’t give me shit about fantasizing. I just draw the story boards and write the lines, looking for an answer, hoping there’s someone out there who’ll say, ‘Yeah, I know what you’re saying. I feel that way myself.’”
“Sorry about all that, but it was that philosopher Bergson or someone who said ‘Shit happens.’”
“Thanks for your middle-class sarcasm, but I don’t need it.”
She stood slowly, ambled to the sleeping area and returned with her purse. Acting indifferent, she threw a bill on the table. “Here’s a hundred. Should be enough to pay for breakfast. Sorry I don’t do dishes.”
He closed his eyes. “Just get out of here. I don’t need your shit. I have stuff to do.”
“What’d you mean, your mom had a drinking problem?”
“Just leave. Please.”
She picked up her plate, glass and mug. “Know why I don’t do dishes?” She walked to the sink and tossed them in. Mike jumped as he heard china break. “Cause there’s always more where those came from.”
A minute later she slammed the door.
“Calliope,” he said to the empty room. Who was that Helen of Troy? Coming into his life and hijacking his artistic equanimity? Goddamn women. And now he was out of eggs and
juice, too.
8.35am
Belmont, Massachusetts, USA
Eating Disorder
by Gloria Garfunkel
A team of doctors arrive with their white coats and superior attitudes, prodding me like I am a specimen. I don’t even know what kind of doctors they are. I think they are psychiatrists, neurologists, and just plain physicians. One is a doctor from my insurance company, who keeps saying I look so much better which I know he’s just saying because I am an expensive patient and he wants me out of the hospital as soon as possible. He seems to be the only one who thinks this except for me.
“I want to go home,” I sob. “Please let me go home.”
“A few more days,” they say. “Just a few more days.” Then they do their quicky Mental Status Exam.
I try to guess what they are thinking, if I passed the test or not. I can’t answer a lot of their questions. I have trouble speaking, finding the right words. My memory is terrible. I can’t remember any of the strings of words they throw at me. I can’t remember the day or date, as this seems like one long day. They ask me why I keep looking at the clock, and not at them and I say the clock is the only stable factor in my unmoored reality. My brain has been eaten by moths.
“How’s the eating going?” one doctor asks. “The nurses say you are still hiding your food. We are thinking of sending you to an eating disorders program for two weeks after you are discharged.”
“I don’t have an eating disorder. I hate hospital food. And I’m … um ... vegan. I can’t count … what are they called … um … calories. I won’t be able to learn anything. You should send me to … um … a neurology day program. I need to learn how to think.”
