The Short End

In her bureau: letters from another woman.

In her bed: the man who read them first.

Wedding Ring

Eighteen karat gold and perfect. Of course. She didn't wear it for very long even if she did keep it for a lifetime. Her version of the story is her new husband didn't like her waiting tables and modeling stockings to help bring money into the household during the Great Depression. They had a child. She had to. He had no work. He was an immigrant and a ship builder and unemployed. Things couldn't get any worse. So she took the work, gave up her husband. Kept the ring. In a box for her entire lifetime. It came to me in a plastic Ziploc with her costume jewelry, odds and ends of which I was deemed worthy of holding. All that fraudulent beauty in one plastic bag. I wear that ring, my lost grandfather's gift to his bride. I wear it to remember no story is complete. There is always more. People lie. They keep secrets. Beat them to it, and never stop watching. There is always more. Talk to me about strangers. I will tell you about family.

The Last Campfire

Ever hour she awoke in a new room. Every hour the black dog with the splayed hips found her. His will alone propelled him forward, often working against the best efforts of his legs. And he curled up inside her, nesting himself in the cradle of her body and breathing in time with her breath. And then it happened of course that she up and left him there without even knowing it. Without even knowing it. Up and moved to a new fire--though there was no fire--where he would find her again. And claim her as home. She did not wake with the sunrise but beat it to that moment--precisely twenty seconds before the buzzer could shatter the dark peace. She lay their captive, wondering how it was the dog always stayed at the last campfire. How the dog knew.

Comeuppance

She was the trophy girl in high school. The boys wanted her the way boys want girls; the girls hated her for being the girl the boys wanted. She learned to watch the illusion of relationship. She learned to protect herself from adolescent male greed. She learned to be alone. For years she watched herself and her lovers reading from the script. Inevitably, the same conclusion: what the boy wants. She'd get there, and then she would burn the script, walk away.

High school taught her well.

Years later during a chance encounter: "Maura never liked the way you treated her friends." Those boys, and I was one of them, he meant. "And she wanted you to know that.”

She closed her eyes and saw again the glaring girls who hated her into solitude. She said nothing.

"Why are you blushing?" he asked.

She smiled; said nothing. She had learned well.

Why Haven't You...?

I was teaching my worst class--you know, the most difficult, obstreperous kids. They were at a simmer. I had them, but barely. The cell phone went off. I answered it--reflexively, you know? I mean, I never take the phone out during class, but this time I did. And I flipped it open and said, "Hello." It was not a question. Maybe I was expecting the call? I don't know.

The voice on the other end said, "I don't know why you haven't put a bullet through your head yet."

I looked around at the faces of the sociopaths. I said, "I don't know. I'll get back to you," an slid the phone back into my pocket.

It woke me up, you know? I was sweating. Sleeping on my belly, the sweat was all over me. I raised my body and it just tricked down to my underpants and rolled along the top of the elastic.

"I won't sleep now," I thought.

I didn't sleep.

When I got out the next day, I told everybody this dream. Not my kid, you know? She couldn't handle it. Shouldn't. She's a child. But I told others. I needed to. As if telling them would keep me from doing it. I felt like the Manchurian candidate in a way, you know? Like I was told to shoot myself in the head and I would and it left me feeling very, very tired. Though I wasn't the least bit annoyed, you know?

The voice? You mean on the phone? It was another teacher.

I don't know what it means. But I don't want to hear that voice in my dreams again.