Damaged Girls (revised)

Beth and Lacy started out as friends in the Ninth grade because they had to. Nobody else would have them. Beth was on her fifth city in ten years with her military father and reclusive mother while Lacy had been “re-zoned” into Lincoln high by a matter of ten feet on some city hall map and ripped away from the two friends she had in middle school who were now attending J.F.K. High across the Flathead river. They were both drifting around in unknown skies and during the second week of classes, like two solitary clouds, just came together as one. Lacy was sitting by herself at the lunchroom table, tray untouched with a spoon sticking upright in a mound of red Jell-O; she was writing furiously in pencil some unknown thoughts in a brand new blue spiral notebook. Although the outer cover was turned down out of sight it said at the top in bold black marker:

LACY FORESTER- OPEN UNINVITED AND FOREVER FEEL PAIN.
If found please call 555-5673- Thank you.

Beth had made her way out of the lunch line and with tray in hand surveyed the room. At fourteen years old new schools were old hat to her and she could read a room better than Bill Clinton. She had learned to stay away from the “popular” tables, the crowded judging eyes and fake laughter that only meant ridicule and pain at some point and was about to settle into a small group of girls in secondhand clothes and intelligent eyes when she saw this girl with soft straw colored hair and a long freckled neck totally alone and writing something in a notebook with a intensity that made Marcy smile. So she made her way over and stood on the other side of the table from her.

“Hi,” Beth said.

“Hi,” Lacy mumbled without looking up.

“Mind if I sit down?” Beth asked the top of the straw colored head.

Lacy picked her head up slightly and squinted at this intrusion. She stopped writing but the pencil remained in her white-knuckled grasp.

Her eyes gleamed with brief suspicion and then said quietly, “Go ahead.” At which point she returned to her notebook and continued writing but after Beth had settled into her seat Lacy added, “If ya want my lunch you can have it, I didn’t touch anything except the Jell-O, but it had something crunchy in it.”

Beth busted out laughing so loudly at that Lacy almost jumped out of her skin. She put her pencil down and looked at this crazy raven haired stranger across from her laughing like an idiot and then she started laughing too. From that point on, either in or out of school, you could rarely find one without finding the other. They had, at that moment friends always seem to do, found each other without even knowing it.

They rapidly learned everything friends need to really ever know about each other. Lacy hated this town and longed to get out of school and as far away as possible. Beth had seen too many towns and cities and one was just as stupid as the next as far as she was concerned. Lacy had broken her arm falling from a tree when she was nine. Beth had discovered her older brother’s dead body in the garage while the old dodge truck idled its poison exhaust into the air when she was eleven. Lacy had seen the ocean when she was six and still remembered the sweet salt air and light breeze that blew kisses at night. She thought that was where she might like to live someday. Beth thought that sounded like a wonderful idea. Lacy’s dad drank too much. Beth thought her dad didn’t drink enough. Lacy was a wonderful writer and her stories and poems made Beth cry and laugh; often at the same time. Beth was an exceptional artist and spent hours creating sketches and later, in their junior and senior years, paintings to Lacy’s stories and poems. They were friends in every way and their battles were united, their pain shared and their joy connected throughout the years.

One day towards the end of their freshman year they were sitting in the park by the river, arguing over why Reggie Anderson could or couldn’t possibly be the stupidest boy in school when Lacy said suddenly, “I’m so glad you moved here. I was so scared that all my friends were going to J.F.K. and now I don’t even miss them.”

Beth thought about it and said with sadness painted over with past truths, “Yeah, me to, but don’t get too used to it. My dad always says this is the final move and it never is.”

Lacy nodded understanding and said, “My dad always says he won’t drink anymore and he always does.”

They spent the remainder of the afternoon throwing rocks in the river and calling out every name of every coastal town and city they could remember, debating each in promise for potential future homes.

That first summer passed by mostly in each other’s company, with alternating sleep-overs and in the planning a tree fort that never was built and when their second year began in the fall the bond they shared was strong. It’s strange how two seemingly small, frail and somewhat frightened girls can be such a force when united. They felt older, wiser, maybe even better simply being in each others company. They weren’t outcasts with their peers but they weren’t popular either. They weren’t stoners or jocks or brainiacs or nerds. They were kind of tweeners. They preferred to float around in between all the lines of social demarcation and were neither loathed nor loved by anyone. Lacy hated gym class because she had no boobs and Beth told her she could borrow some of hers until she had her own. They both discovered pot around the middle of that sophomore year thanks to Randy Licklighter and would hang out with the stoners occasionally and get high after school. Sometimes they’d help the booster’s make up banners and posters for homecoming and dances and things due to Beth’s artistic ability but more often than not they preferred to just be with each other. They would talk or Lacy would write and Beth would draw and they would make fun of the world as they knew it.

The summer of their sophomore year only two things really happened. The first was when Beth showed up at Lacy’s door on a day so beautiful the meanest of men would crack a smile. She had a fat joint in her pocket and a little cooler with six beers swimming in ice.

“C’mon, let’s go to the park,” Beth said.

The river flowed by effortlessly and the sun warmed their hair as Beth lit the joint and sucked in deeply, then exhaled with forceful relief and as she popped open a beer and handed it to Lacy said, “My folks are splitting up.”

“What?” Lacy said wide eyed.

“Yeah, about a week ago my dad said we were going to have to move again and…”

What!” Lacy said.

“It takes months sometimes until we know for sure; I didn’t want to say anything until I was- so last night they start fighting about it. My mom said he promised no moves until I could go through high school. My dad started yelling about his career, about some promotion he’ll get for basically doing nothing except going to some god-forsaken place nobody else wants to go to… and then they started fighting about some lady named Carol my dad works with…and this morning they said they were getting divorced.”

“I can’t believe it.” Lacy murmured shaking her head and taking the joint from Beth. “What are you going to do?” She looked at Beth then hard and frightened, “You can’t leave.”

“Mom loves it here. Says she has roots; finally. That she has real friends and that she wasn’t packing up, pulling her daughter out of school and hoping a tiger would change his stripes…or something like that.” Beth opened up her own beer and lay down in the soft grass and watched the clouds overhead drift slowly in and out of each other. “I ‘m staying here with mom; I’m not moving, I wouldn’t want to- even if he wanted me to go with him.”

The rest of the day Lacy leaned up against a tree and wrote a story called Fearless and Beth sat Indian style by the river and sketched a drawing she titled River in Cloudless Skies.

The second thing that happened came slowly and neither one of them really ever saw it until about a week before the fall term. They had blossomed physically: Beth had boobs at an early age but had up to that point been lopsided with them. Like a child with too big a head they didn’t fit the rest of her but her hips had come that summer and her legs had grown long and strong. She was full, balanced; her mother said she looked voluptuous with both pride and worry. Lacy, on the other hand, had grown almost three inches and had now had the lean, athletic build of a swimmer. Her hair was full, lush, and flowed around her face like a blanket. Her mother told her she was beautiful; her father’s gaze, too often drunk with a strange love, made her uncomfortable.

They both floated through the halls into their junior year with a feeling of deliberate dedication to accomplishing… something. They both understood the cusp of decision approaching rapidly. They knew that the clock was turning towards the future and they both felt they were running full stride into its arms. Ready for whatever it had to offer.

Lacy read and read and wrote and wrote. She excelled in her English classes without effort and debated her teacher’s theories sometimes to the point of argument. Beth had graduated to canvass exclusively that summer and brought color and life to her trove of sketches she herself sometimes could not believe. Her grades slipped to barely passing in most subjects except Art and her mother, now alone, was consistently called into conference with worried teachers speaking of potential unrealized. They stuck together though, Lacy and Beth and before a blink of an eye found themselves on the other side of high school politics. They were beautiful but ambivalent. They were smart but unconcerned with clubs or gossip or parties. They had never really “fit” anywhere but suddenly found it difficult to drift between the lines of teenage order and were without warning or cause, alone.

“Let’s just go.” Beth said one Friday after school.

“He’s an asshole. His friends are assholes… what for?” Lacy replied

“It’s just a party.” Beth said. “Christ, my mom doesn’t even come home anymore until Sunday morning, we can stay out all night.” She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Uncle David takes care of her on the weekends.”

So they walked in through the beer can littered yard and into the house and mingled, and drank and laughed and smoked with people that would never remember if they were there or not. They found themselves later in separate rooms upstairs with two boys they had spoken five words to in three years. Making out and playing, and when it started going to places they didn’t want to go picked themselves up and left. They drove home together in the night laughing about the silliness of it all.

That Monday morning they were whores. They had screwed half the boys at the party it seemed and had become in an instant, without ever uncrossing their legs, the easiest girls in school. They didn’t tuck in like turtles after that though. They embraced the thought of it all and wore slippery clothes, winked at the cute boys and stared defiant at their empty-headed girlfriends. They decided that if they were going to have all this sex in the minds of so many they might as well have the fun along with the reputation.

Beth dated Jasper for two weeks, lost her virginity and a week later he asked Stacey Miller to the prom. Lacy “stole” the quarterback, Evan Novak from his student council girlfriend, fucked him twice with little pleasure and then, during the third encounter, before the boy could get his pants off, looked up at him quite seriously and asked him if he could please leave. When the school doors opened to start the summer they were damaged goods. Rumor usually becomes truth at any age but has no fury and permanence like it does at that age and they both reveled in the solitary comfort of being finally, utterly comfortable in their friendship and themselves.

That last high school summer Beth won an award for a painting she had sent in to a “Young Artist” contest sponsored by Coca-Cola- twenty-five hundred dollars and a life-time supply of Coke- which she didn’t even drink. Lacy received her first acceptance from the New Yorker on a story titled “We Only Live Twice,” and placed it on top of a pile of rejection letters bound by a green rubber band. She read the acceptance letter with a pounding heart as she walked into her house and found her father passed out on the couch with a bottle of scotch in his hand.

They wrote and painted that summer and put pins in a map Lacy had placed on her wall. All along the seacoast the pins went: red for absolutely, green for maybe and blue for if we have to. They wrote and painted and thought and talked and knew in some few short months the world would open up before them and were giddy about finally getting swallowed up by it all.

The final year was quick and silly. Beth did what she had to do to pass and Lacy forced her mouth closed to avoid arguments with her teachers and they went through the months. In the final quarter her advanced English class required a poem. So Lacy wrote it. The theme mattered little to her but she pondered and thought and squeezed out the best she could at three in the morning at the small desk in her room. It carried weight and benign deliverance and her teacher accused her of plagiarism. She said she had talent but this was beyond the scope of her age and gave her an F. An easy thing really to challenge that; “look it up somewhere.” is all she would have had to say but it somehow not only didn’t matter, but actually made her feel large and talented and full of promise.

The poem was called “Damaged Girls” and her teacher loved it so and after searching for the rightful author and finding none, framed it and placed it on her classroom wall where it still hangs today. Marcy took the poem to canvass with oil and created a living thing called “Without” which brought her some mild appreciation in the fickle world of art.

Graduation finally came and they took their diplomas to mild applause from their peers and proud smiles of Lacy’s parents and Beth’s mother and new boyfriend Bob. That month after packing their clothes and papers and canvas and brushes into Lacy’s beat up old car they moved to New York. It took some years as it always does but sometimes, thankfully, talent cannot be denied and Beth secured a publisher for a short story collection, Marcy found a sponsor and gallery for her art and they went about the business of doing what they were both, always born to do. They lived in a flat on the lower East side and dated sporadically. The boy’s and sometimes men they saw never managed to do anything more (with the exception of sex) for either of them that they already didn’t do for each other. Beth attempted one relationship that lasted a half year but found it distracted her from her work and the wall street wizard she had initially thought possessed a heart of gold soon discovered it was really more a heart of mildly splintered affection.

They both did well quickly and on a trip they took to Charleston discovered an old broad house streaked with sea sand and salt with a wide ocean facing porch and a widows walk perched on the roof. They remain there together today. So many years later; two damaged girls, writing and painting by the shore.

Secret Wish

Her rosebud cheeks and dancing eyes gleamed against the soft glow in the dark room. Hushed whispers of anticipation all around her and she sucked in with a mighty pull, hesitated briefly and then blew as hard as she could.

The room exploded with laughter and clapping but her face was troubled as the lights came on.

“Mommy.” She pleaded, glaring at the single candle still burning.

“That’s ok baby, her mother said. “Eight’s a lot; just keep the wish secret.”

“That’s right,” her father said. “You tell and it won’t come true.”

Then she opened presents from her parents and their friends and each gift came with a declaration from her father.

“Was that your wish peaches?” He would ask.

“No, but thank you very much Mr. and Mrs. So and so.”

Her mother was cleaning the party mess that evening when the door cracked and the air went dead and still. Her father always brought the air when he came alone. He talked to her in his evil softness and touched her leg and she pretended to sleep; all the while hating the lie of her mother. She hadn’t told a soul her wish, not even God.

Kirschbaum’s Folly

Kirschbaum placed the flowers on the bedside table closest to the window and pondered their varied, colorful life as he listened to the raspy breath behind him. The sigh from his mouth was deep as he turned and sat down to face the dying old man lying withered and sleeping in the only bed of this tight, white, and sterile room.

He felt stupid now; foolish really. The selfish thoughts early this morning seemed so petty but as he tried to pry them away from his mind they only dug in deeper. He had met his birthday morning with one desperate wish: if getting back at least half of his fifty years on this earth carried a price he would pay it smiling. Kirschbaum had sat drinking tea at his kitchen table wanting only the ability to peel back the errors in judgment, lost opportunities, things he had said or didn’t say, and roll them up like a tired old carpet and toss them in the dumpster.

These thoughts made the morning unique only for the fact it was the day of his birth and the wistful feeling he normally had when accounting all the misplaced steps in his past a fire-stoked fervor to truly make it so had replaced it. Kirscbaum had sat there drinking his tea with the lavender ’For My Loving Husband’ birthday card his wife had left for him tossed in the trash, and had come to one startling, undeniable conclusion about his life.

“The square root of fuck all,” he thought in his balance and ledger trained mind, is the very existence I open my eyes to each day. He rose up then, washed his cup in the sink and placed it in the strainer to dry and walked out the door.

He gazed now at the dry old face that slept deep before him and realized, with the clarity of an afternoon sun breaking through the last cloud, his folly. He looked at the familiar face and could almost see his lips moving, and hear the lightly winking voice of the man in his head. “Regret; useless thing to bother with, only thing it does is build more of the same and all you can do is carry it with you on your back.” Kirschbaum stared am him and since they were alone, laughed out loud and clapped his hands together with delighted guilt.

He thought then of the lavender card lying with mocking disdain in the trash and decided he would leave and get home early to get it out, dust it off and place it on their chest of drawers. He would, in fact, end this silliness today. This doe-eyed girl and motels paid in cash held nothing but further regret over him. If the square root of fuck all was his life then he would live it, and live it as well as he could, for as long as he could. And infidelity could not bring back a dead son.

Kirschbaum stood and after briefly brushing the fresh flowers with his hand, kissed the sleeping old man on the forehead thinking how strange it was to be the last walking, living person, with his name.

“I’ll bring Maggie with me tomorrow brother,” he said, “if you’re up for it, maybe we’ll play some checkers.”

At Your Service- Flash Fiction

It’s an old joke in Hollywood and I hate the fucking thing.

Meathead on the street: “So what do you do?”

Me: “I’m an actor.”

Meathead on the street: “Really, that’s great…what restaurant?”

Of course I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t true and fifteen years ago, when I came to town walking tall and assured of success and didn’t mind working at Salby’s; living off tips and a free meal every shift, I actually thought the joke was pretty funny. But that was fifteen years ago. And I’ll tell you riding the wave of artistic promise on a surfboard of poverty is one hell of a lot more interesting at twenty five than it is at forty! I’m not complaining though, not really. You get used to things. Noodles in a Styrofoam cup, dumpster diving for the last issue of Variety so you can read it on a sidewalk bench pretending to be idly unconcerned with money while urging the cell phone in your pocket to ring turns into habit; and the weather is always nice.

But I hate the fucking joke now and not only because I still work at Salby’s but because the bastards say it laughing with this snide look of ” Oh look, another wanna be movie star,” and then go back to their inspired lives filled with margin calls and debt to income ratio’s. Not that these people aren’t necessary. The world would, I’m sure, start turning counter clockwise if they weren’t around to keep everything greased right but they don’t have a fucking clue as to what I do or why I do it. I mean, when they say, “I’m an investment banker,” I don’t say, “Really, that’s great…what racist, tee-time making, tennis pro fucking country club?” I don’t judge is all I’m saying.

When they make their little joke I’ll try and recognize them and recall if it’s someone I had at table six, or nine or whatever and remember if I had to recommend a wine for them because they wouldn’t know a Pinot from a ping –pong ball or if they were a send-backer; one of those glorious folks that send back their meals mostly because they can and not because there was really anything wrong with it. I never reply back with anything really snippy though, even considering after fifteen years of hindsight I have about ten thousand pretty funny little comebacks to that particular joke. Nope, I just smile and work on one of my laughs, ( I have created over twenty-five types of laughs through my studies) and walk away knowing they’ll never know what being alive really is.

They’ll spend all their lives trying to figure out exactly who “they” are. Most likely just in time to avoid their third heart attack or write some boring memoir only their families will read, or after they watch their castles get repossessed when the deal of a lifetime goes south. Most likely they’ll still be searching for it when they jump off into the cold black nothing of nevermore.

So I let them have their joke as I spend my life zipping up into the suit of anyone else but me. I already know who the fuck I am. That’s why I walk up to their tables and say, “Good evening, my name is Trey (It’s my fourth name and my agent thinks it’s the best one yet) and I’ll be your server this evening.” And I’ll bring them their fillets and shrimp cocktails and listen to them call me “waiter” even though I’ve already told them my fucking name and wear a nametag on my pressed shirt reminding them for chrissakes!

I do all this so I can live. So I can crawl into the belly of the bum on the street, or the race-car driver, or petulant college student, (I’m really very much younger looking than I am) or disillusioned congressman with a deadly secret, or crazed painter on the verge of greatness. Their patronizing politeness and twenty dollar tip on a two-hundred dollar tab or stupid joke on their way into their corporate raiding, middle-class screwing job in some glass tower is a small price to pay for these moments of singular perfection, when I am completely submerged in the fictitious mind of someone I have only just met. After their dinners they will be entertained and remember me and I will not judge them because one day I may find myself inside their skin.

Super duper short fiction

Still playing around with this new form my marvelous, talented friend Heather Fowler (Blatent plug! http://www.myspace.com/fowlerhm) who writes like an angel, turned me onto. Not sure if it suits my natural, overwhelming love of my own voice but I’m giving it a go for awhile.

Two more very, very, very short pieces today.

Decisions

I asked her what she wanted to do now but she only stood outside the bathroom door staring at the plastic stick still wet with her own urine. Her eyes were wide as she looked at me and hurled the thing at my head. It landed with the single pink line visible in the clear plastic bubble. She closed the bathroom door crying and we spent the night mourning on opposite sides of the door.

Addicted to Hope

After pushing the thought away all day I finally called him and met him on the corner. He was greasy and happy to see me. Moments later- in the dark empty stairwell- I thought, “Last time…just a taste.” Then the needle poured out hope for tomorrow as I sank it into my pulsing vein…today.

Saving the Turtles

Leatherback sea turtles survived the dinosaurs, but they might not survive the next few decades of unsustainable industrial fishing unless we act to reduce threats to their survival immediately.

Submit your public comment today to support critical habitat designation for leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean!

The population of critically endangered leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean has plummeted over 90% in the past few decades, primarily due to sea turtles drowning in industrial longline and gillnet fisheries.

But there’s hope: several prominent conservation organizations petitioned the government to designate the waters off the coast of California and Oregon as critical habitat for leatherbacks under the Endangered Species Act - and the government has opened a public comment period to consider this petition.

We have until February 26th to submit official comments in support of this critical habitat designation. Let the National Marine Fisheries Service know you support designating critical habitat for endangered leatherback sea turtles!

Please take a moment and copy this petition link to sign the guestbook! Feel free to pass it along to others as well! Thanks
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/232904584?z00m=13718668

Micro Flash Fiction

Working In Hollywood

From behind his oak desk, with the towers of a city built on dreams behind him he said firmly, “Make him mid thirties, and white… and make her hate him.”

I borrowed confidence and replied, “The story is about his age, the projects and unrequited love… it’s what we cling to.”

“I cling to this contract you signed.” He said blankly. “My talent is white and pretends to still be thirty.”

“No sweat.” I said.

Full Circle

It is so warm in the womb. Life giving life and is certainly one of the best things they do. I think of this and struggle to keep warm in my cold, sterile room. My fingers leave imprints on the frigid stainless steel as I place them on the timeless slabs and latch the door. I fix his hair. Death is never warm but it is, every day, the best thing I do.

Taste- Flash Fiction

What a great day. That’s what I was thinking when we pulled up to the drive-through window at Church’s Chicken and pulled the order of leg’s, thigh’s and biscuits away from the pimple faced teenager and into the car. I handed it over to my wife and watched her as she happily picked through the order for accuracy. I drove away and before I could even take the ramp back onto the interstate she had plucked a crispy leg from the bucket and began munching away with her perfect little mouth. James Taylor came onto the radio singing “Sweet Baby James,” and I just couldn’t help thinking again what a glorious, beautiful day.

We had left the hospital an hour before. Everything on the ultrasound was in order. All the fingers and toes were there, and we all started to giggle when the nurse pointed out the tell-tale shadow that let us know a son was on the way. Six more months and we would be parents; I would be a father for the first time and I sat there grinning in silence and staring at my wife’s petroleum covered belly wanting to wrap my arms around her with all the love and pride a man can muster. If the nurse would have allowed it I would have tried to make another one right then and there.

Now we were driving, she was eating the chicken she absolutely had to have and when she said she had to have it I didn’t blink an eye. One of many things I had learned the last four months was not to ever mess with pregnant women’s cravings. Pure foolishness if you even tried to so we stopped at the Church’s that sat three exits from ours and ordered absolutely everything she wanted. With a diet coke. The problem was, even though I wasn’t pregnant, the damn chicken smelled pretty good.

“C’mon baby, gimme a piece.” I asked her.

“You’re driving.” She said simply. “Wait till we get home.”

But I pouted playfully and she handed over a drumstick, which I promptly dropped on the floor under the wheel.

“That’s my man, graceful as a hippo on skates.” I heard her say as I dropped my head and groped around the floor for the greasy leg.

I remember being pushed. That’s what it felt like; it felt like a big hand pushed me in the chest. And then I woke up.

I woke up and that day was five years, four months and twenty-two days ago. So I’m sorry for talking like this happened only yesterday, this wonderful day when the world was bursting with love and hope and a son, but for me it was only yesterday. At least it was two months and thirteen days ago; which is the amount of time that has passed since I came out of the coma I’d been in since the accident. It was strange when I woke up. My arms and legs felt like wet pasta and I knew immediately something was wrong. The first thing I remember thinking was that I tasted chicken. Looking back now it seems silly since I hadn’t even gotten to taste the damn stuff but that’s what I remember. I tasted chicken and I was lying in a scratchy white bed with tubes in my nose and I felt like I wanted to take a shower. I laid there blinking at a florescent light above me and a few minutes later a army of white coated people poured in through the door and a few hours later I found out my wife and son were dead. They’d been dead over five years and I laid in that bed and cried for five hours straight. And then the process of living began.

The physical therapy was intense and seemed continuous. They started me on a liquid diet and then after a few weeks moved me up to solid food which didn’t matter a damn bit because all I could taste was chicken. They brought pudding, ice cream, roast beef and cheeseburgers and it all tasted like chicken to me. The second week Dr. Tomlinson came in for his Thursday visit and said that was something that would pass. The sensation of tasting only chicken I mean. It was a product of the coma and memory and grief; and it would pass.

It didn’t though but I stopped saying anything about it and they eventually, stopped asking; I went through the endless parade of therapy (physical and mental) that would bring me back to the world I now live in. Her parents came last night to the hospital, picked me up and we went to their house for dinner. I am glad they did and appreciate the effort but we barely enjoyed each other before the accident and the conversation was limited almost exclusively to the forks and knives and plates. I was the sad reminder of a wound that would never heal and her mother asked me as I opened the front door to leave why I had not mentioned her name one time. “Why do you avoid them.” Was what she asked and I said I wasn’t sure yet; that I didn’t know. But I did know and I knew to try and explain it to them would be ruthless. I had watched a movie while this world of pain and confusion swirled around me the third or fourth night I had come back and it had mentioned a African tradition of not mentioning the names of the dead. The tradition stated was that once you could say their names aloud again you would then move past the grief of their passing. When I heard it that same feeling of a giant hand pushing me backwards came back and I don’t remember the rest of the movie because I cried for several hours. They wouldn’t understand that. I don’t understand that but I know they have had half a decade to grieve and I have had several weeks. I know I am not ready for names yet; just memories of what should have been and I never mentioned one time that the lovely dinner her mother had prepared; that dinner of Roast Beef, mashed potatoes, gravy and fresh sweet corn that I could smell so clearly all tasted like chicken when I put it into my mouth.

So here I am now waiting on corn bread and soup or pork chops and applesauce; or whatever- knowing all the while what it will taste like. Soon I will leave the hospital as long as the therapy continues to progress and my mind, as they see it, wraps around the reality of things as they are. I look forward to it, to the new beginning of a life without starchy sheets and blood samples and… and emptiness. When it happens I will be glad and I will move on but the fact that I now remain on this rock, with a dead wife and child and that everything will always, always taste like chicken will be with me forever.

Dust it Off and Donate- LA Residents

A fundraising garage sale supporting the ongoing efforts of Long Beach residents Matthew and Renae Kennedy realize their dream of adoption.

WHERE: THE SALE IS SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16TH AT 225 W. 37TH ST. LONG BEACH. 90807 (CROSS ST. PACIFIC AVE.)

Matthew and Renae Kennedy continue their efforts to adopt beautiful Valeria, a Colombian girl desperately in need of a loving family and home. The process is demanding but Matthew and Renae are committed to bringing their daughter home. She already resides in their heart and has since the couple first met Valeria through the Kidsave organization (www.kidsave.org) while the eight year old girl was on a sponsored trip to the United States from Columbia.

DONATIONS OF QUICK SELL ITEMS (FURNITURE, CLOTHING, UNIQUE ITEMS ETC) ARE NEEDED FOR THIS EVENT.

Volunteers to help with the sale are always welcome and appreciated. It will be a fun day of fundraising had by all! For drop-offs and/or to volunteer please email mediaHo@mac.com or call 310.388.7288 (Renae’s Cell).

For information on the organization and to see Matthew and Renae’s wonderful story and updates on the adoption processes please go to their website at www.KennedyAdoption.com.

THANK YOU so much for your support; the moments of time you invest will help bring a lifetime of love and joy to a little girl and her parents!

You’ll Smell Me Coming

The only friend I have, Jasper Millseed used to ask me all the damn time how I could stand it.

“How can you work in that stench? The fucking pain and suffering of those bastards K-Rock- how can you see that shit all day, every day?” He would ask.

Now Jasper’s about as bright as a glow stick running outa juice and he don’t smell all that good himself. Not that regular bathing is a real priority for most of the people living in this shit storm of peeling paint and crack heads they call “Low Income Housing” but more often than not Jasper smelt like open ass in the sun. Why he thought a few dozen burn victims would be that offensive I have no idea.

He was my boy though; helped me out with a ride and he’d listen to my shit from time to time and he kept his mouth shut. So one day I took him with me. Thought maybe it would interesting for him or something. So I picked him up on the corner at eight a.m. sharp and off we went to the hospital.

He lasted all of an hour. It was a bad day though, worst than most. A three alarm had went down that night and we had 4 brand new “crispers” on the ward floor. That’s what we called the really bad ones; the ones that were at least 60 percent third degree fried up on their bodies and had maybe 20 percent chance or so of lasting the next few days. We couldn’t really do anything for them the first day. The doc’s and nurses of course would keep them off by themselves, monitor their little bleeps and drips on the machines and of course keep them as morphed up as possible so they don’t go crazy with the pain. At least when they’re fresh like that they’re on ventilators so it keeps the screaming down.

But the cleaners like me couldn’t do shit with them yet so I was working on Mrs. Langer in room three. I was changing her dressings, going as easy as I could too and talking to her about random things; her little daughters school and how pretty her little girl was, how much I liked Pecan pie (Mrs. Langer liked baking), how she’d be as good as new before she knew it. Shit like that. I didn’t want to hurt her but it’s impossible not to. Her pus filled burnt skin would come peeling off right with those old bandages and whoosh! The stink came off with it.

The smell of decay and re-growth at the same time, the stench of, well of I don’t know what, I ain’t no writer but I guess the stench of something that’ll never be right again. No matter how bad you want it.

Now it doesn’t even register with me of course but Jasper starts gagging and coughing as he stood next to me in the scrubs I had gotten from Nurse Fowler that morning and then poor Mrs. Langer crying slowly and silently through closed eyes. It wasn’t from the pain either, that she was used to.

I put one hand on her forehead and whispered something nice in her ear and got up and pulled that dumb fuck outta that room by his arm.

“What the hell is wrong with you.” I said low as I pulled him down the cold white hall.

“Jesus K- I… I didn’t know it was gonna stink like that!”

I wanted to knock his block off but then I heard nurse Fowler say behind me.

“Kevin, what is the problem? Mrs. Langer is crying and unattended… and, her injuries are not properly cared for.”

Now I was really pissed. I liked Nurse Fowler. She’s the only one that worked in this whole hospital I did like. She smelled like peaches and always said good morning and good night and she’d let me, against normal rules and all, bring this dumb fuck of a friend I have into the ward with me. I’d told her he was my younger cousin and he was doing a school paper on burn victims.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” I said with eyes burning a hole in Jaspers face, “my cousin was having…trouble in the room and I didn’t want to upset the patient.”

“Well I’m sorry Kevin, but the patient is upset and your cousin I think just needs to go and get his information from the library like everyone else.” She looked at Jasper then and said, “Young man, if you have any specific questions you can call me here at the hospital and I’ll answer them for you. But I’m sorry you need to go so your cousin can perform his duties correctly… these are people who need specific attention.”

Jasper mumbled some half ass apology and I didn’t even watch him walk away, I just hollered after him to return the scrubs to the nurses’ station before he left.

“Kevin, please get back to Mrs. Langer right now.” She looked at me kindly on account of she liked me pretty well. “I should not have allowed your cousin in here.” She added,

“This isn’t a place for the unfamiliar…you have potential, please don’t put me in an awkward position again.”

Then she was gone in a starched white wind and I went back to room three feeling like shit. That’s another reason I liked Nurse Fowler; she was always telling me I had potential. She was wrong of course, dead wrong but it’s still nice to hear once in awhile.

I went back and finished cleaning Mrs. Langer, put new dressings and all on, and said she would be ok. They were doing her first “debriding” that afternoon- which is a technical term they use around here- but sounds to me about as pleasant as slowly getting turned inside out. Then she was getting the first round of grafts started, mostly from cadavers, the following day. She was freaking out in the quiet way that she did and spending a few extra minutes with her wouldn’t kill me. So I did and by the time I brought her back to her bed I didn’t feel so pissed off at Jasper anymore.

He was my boy after all, only one I had and knew shit about me, shit I’d never told anyone else; unless I had to.

The smell and the screaming patients and all the gross wiping and wrapping didn’t bother me and he knew that, he even thought he knew why but he didn’t. I’d never gotten used to the smell, never had to, it’s been with me for along while now. It’s been on my skin and in my nose ever since I sat wrapped in that blanket staring at the house shooting flames and sparks into the night with the scent of my parents, charred and dead, all around me as the paramedics brought me water and the police asked how I got out of that inferno without a scratch. Dumb fuckers never could figure it out. It’s part of me. Like the stink of a dead tooth rotting away in your mouth. Like the smell of dirt on a farmer even after he takes a shower and puts on fresh clothes.

That’s how my dad had smelled. He always smelled like dirt. I’d smell it when he came home from the fields and listen for the way he closed the door, trying to figure if he was pissed or just tired. I’d smell it while we all sat in fearful silence at the dinner table and I’d smell it when he beat my ass.

I was thinking about this when I went to the laundry to get some clean sheets and gown for Mr. Blaylock. He needed a sponge bath, new wraps, bedding- the full treatment- and when I was gathering up the linens I started thinking about my mom. God damn bleach always did that. She never smelled like dirt, just bleach. That shit’ll clean just about anything, get the dirt out like it was never even there. Smells like nothing I guess. I’d smell it on her as she did the dishes, and I’d smell it on her after she came home from bingo when she’d stumble in the door, dress and hair all fucked up and reckless. I’d smell it on her when she’d holler from the kitchen all soft and useless, “Jim…Jim… please, that’s enough. You’re going to hurt him.”

We all have a smell I guess. Mine happens to be something a lot of people can’t manage and after I’d finished up with Mr. Blaylock I stopped by Mrs. Langer’s bed to say goodnight. I was still feeling shitty about before. I just stuck my head in real quick and said goodnight and good luck tomorrow and she blinked real slow, twice like we had talked about, so I knew she was feeling better. Then I dumped my scrubs off at the nurses station, got me one final smell of peaches from nurse Fowler as she filled out charts- she said goodnight- I said goodnight- and I walked out through the schwoosh of the hospital doors with the thought maybe me and Jasper could go out and see what kind of trouble we could get into.