These days, the worse the weather gets, the more I am comforted. I could pad out to the kitchen right now, and I’m pretty sure Charles Wallace would be sitting at the table in faded blue Dr. Dentons, warming some cocoa on the stove. A grey fluff of a kitten yawns luxuriously in the attic. A strange woman knocks at the door. Anything could happen, and everything will be all right.

I’ve found that this whole “requiring first publishing rights” concept goes violently against the instincts I’ve honed over the developing years. My first desire when I really like something I’ve done, or if I’m not sure if I really like something I’ve done, is to smear it all over the internet. See what strangers have to say. Instant gratification! Hello, world! “Not cool!” say respectable publishers.

But seriously, I don’t know how I’ll handle that. So how about this: want me to email you a short story? You’d be free to email me back with comments, or say nothing at all. It will be just like a blog post (note to potential publishers: this will not be like a blog post at all): in your inbox. Baby steps. I’d feel so much better just knowing you saw it.

Email me or comment if you’re interested.

“Wait, what?” I said.

Sara and Miriam

They’re moving to New York today, two weeks after the baby was born — averaging four scattered hours of sleep every night since. “There has to be a prize for what you are doing,” I said. “Also, instead of helping you pack I’m going to get in the way and take pictures. Tricked!”

It spread slowly across the continent like hostile African bees. Little girls started saying “maw” and “paw” in offensively-imitated twangs. We layered our parents’ paint clothes to look like farm women from the nineteenth century. We hauled out plastic buckets and stirred stone stews, keeping an eye out for swarms of locusts. Laura Ingalls Wilder gave Ye Olde Rural Life its cult-following amongst the young ladies, and I blame her for my eager acceptance of Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman — and, thus, my discovery of sexy men.

My mom, sister and I had taken the Amtrak from Minneapolis to Little Rock to visit our Aunt Becky, Uncle Ken and two older cousins for a week or so. This was something we just did every so often, and the adventure was always met with great anticipation. Besides the awesome relatives, our cousins’ house was pretty rad for three reasons:

1. A small white pouf of a dog named Tinkerbell, who would chase any willing child relentlessly through the labyrinth of hallways. Tinkerbell never, ever tired of this game. Back and forth, up and down stairs. Barkbarkbarkbarkbark!

2. Back at our home, we had a VHS tape of an ’80s episode of The Price is Right. On it, our aunt and uncle could be seen jumping up and down, winning an entire living room and bedroom furniture set complete with self-playing piano.

It never seemed real to me. “That’s Aunt Becky?” I would say, not quite yet grasping the whole “people existed before you were born and have had adventures not including you” concept. I watched their eyes get wide, their hands go to their faces in shock, their heads thrown back in laughter as Bob Barker quipped caution. “That’s Uncle Ken?”

When we went to their house, we could roll on the Prize Waterbed. We would ask them to turn on the piano, and watch, enchanted, as it played on its own, just like in the movie.

It was as though Cinderella had just placed her slippered, Disney foot through the screen and stepped into their living room.

3. King’s Quest. Well, okay, first of all, they had a computer, which was crazy. But second of all, dude. King’s Quest.

My favorite was IV.

As usual, we arrived to find our cousins a little older, a little hipper. This visit brought admiration of make-up, Caboodles and scrunchies, a Garth Brooks poster gazing wistfully down the wall to a kingdom of stuffed animals on the bed. But Tinkerbell still chased us down the halls, Kings Quest still chirped chunky pixels of wizardry and flying apes in the basement, and the band played on. Essentially, it seemed, things were the same.

A few days into the trip, my sister plunked onto the couch and turned on the television for Doctor Quinn. I joined her. Our cousins followed. Then our aunt. And finally, even our mother — tyrant against all programming non-PBS, non-cooking-show, non-nature-adventure — wanted to sit down and watch Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman with us, for the first time in recorded history! It was like a slumber party. My sister and I moved to the floor to make room.

A television break came to an end. Chatter was briefly suspended. Everything felt cozy and familial. Then, one of the main male characters walked onscreen, and my life took a drastic turn.

“Ooo!” cried my aunt.

“Who’s that?” exclaimed my mom. They tittered from the couch. I looked up in alarm.

“That,” my sister patiently explained, “is Sully. He is a friend of the Cheyenne.”

“Ooo, Sully!”

“I like how his arms are always showing.”

“Yes, it’s nice when they show off their arms.”

“And he looks so concerned about her welfare.”

“I like when they’re concerned!”

They tittered some more. Throughout the show, points were elaborated upon, with some input from our cousins, on what was generally preferred in the male physique. Broad shoulders. Pretty eyes. Muscles were nice, but not too many muscles. Square jaws.

I sat resolutely on the soft carpet, examining this debate. I couldn’t put my finger on what I didn’t like about it. Maybe it seemed too formulaic for romantic love. Maybe it was pity for the men who didn’t fit that description, or maybe it was fear of those who did.

“I will never, ever, ever,” I vowed to myself then, “find that kind of man attractive.”

Surprisingly, this vow proved to be amazingly effective. I hit puberty determinedly crushing desperately on boys other girls found, for the most part, relatively un-noteworthy: boys who chewed their pencils certain ways, who tripped in hallways. Their diamond-in-the-roughness was key — if it seemed like other girls were picking up on said boy’s awesomeness, I was out of there. But I was never sure what drew me to them: a boy would do something in some amusing or desirable fashion and I would be what hello in love with them forever.* (*Some terms apply.)

I still remember staying after school for an art project in junior high: another student was working with me in the room, and his friend joined him. The friend was a little chubby, a little acne-prone, with very crooked teeth and a thick mop of black hair like a Beatle. He spoke entirely in a British accent.

When his friend left briefly, the other student rolled his eyes and noted that his friend wasn’t actually British.

“What!” I thought. “He was faking that the whole time?” Hearts spun in my eyes. The friend came back to grab his backpack.

“Wait!” I cried. “What is your name?”

“George!” he chirped back merrily. To this day, I’m not sure if he was lying about that, too.

Looking back on these years, my romantic inclinations seem almost idyllic. I was liking boys for who they were, not what they looked like. Yeah, go me!

Oh, and also, I didn’t find the male body generally desirable at all.

When I was kissed for the first time at the age of (nearly) 16 during The Truman Show, I pushed the instigator away and wrote about the trauma in horrific detail that night. It was our second date. I had been pining for him, and him alone, for nearly two years — I liked that he carried a copy of Inherit The Wind with him wherever he went.

Shortly after the attempted kiss, I broke up with him, repulsed by the fact that he seemed to want nothing more than more kisses.

“Maybe!” my parents said, “you’re gay.”

“I’m not anything!” I cried.

Obviously, my inability to feel chemistry with men changed, even just in the course of a few months. I was making out like a pro, and giving the experience a double thumbs-up. But I continued to distrust — nay, actively ignore — anyone in The Joe Lando Tradition. When my current boyfriend began hitting on me online two years ago, and asked if he could visit Boston for a roller-skating date, I nearly turned him down.

“What could we possibly have to talk about?” I worried. “Who could he possibly be, besides some hot dude?”

Turns out he could be a lot of things. Maybe Jurvis is the one responsible for all of this.

“I think,” I said to a friend the other day, “that I only just actually finished going through puberty. Now. At the age of twenty-five.”

“Uh, what do you mean?”

“Like, dude. Guys have nice bodies.”

“. . . yeah. And?”

“And I never really noticed that before. Like I’ve never found strangers attractive at all: usually they had to do something first, say something funny, demonstrate some uncanny ability, be cute in some other way. It was all carefully considered. I guess I needed romance first, before physical attraction.”

“Really? That’s weird.”

“I mean, it’s not that I’m tempted to cheat on my boyfriend or anything. It’s more like suddenly seeing in color. And really, this is just tons of fun.” I scanned the crowd on Newbury Street for an example. “Like, okay, dude . . . check out those arms, over there.”

They were indeed some nice arms. I imagined their owner saving me from a bear, and we tittered.

Tim,

You do find the most unusual stuff in your voyage thru the net. I liked the office site, but I don’t get the chick writing about the funeral. She must be one of those artsy-fartsy folks I do not relate to particulary [sic] well.

Interesting stuff, that.

Currently reading: Tuesday; An Art Project (Issue 3): “Grief And The Imaginary Grave” by Rowan Richardo Phillips

It may or may not have been raining at your funeral, but I knew that this is how I would remember it. It is always raining at funerals, the coffins typically made with a cherry-type wood.

I see damp sod, clinging to the edge of the earth. Your gleaming mahogany casket covered in, let’s say, roses. Slowly descending into nothingness. It’s much nicer this way; there’s a purer truth to the expected. In the rare event a participant does not herself recall the weather or the quality of casket-wood at a funeral, tell her how it was. Your description will fill in the blanks, manifesting it in her memory. Like dandelion seeds, taking root, making room — occasionally other, smaller truths are sacrificed, but such are the casualties of war in a paradigm-centered world. Now she retells the tale. In her story, from now on, there will be rain.

A slow, gentle rain, she’ll say. When it slid down the windshield it was reminiscent of tears. Like the car was crying. Plop, the trees are crying too. Plop, the gas station is crying. Plop the church-top tiles, plop the edges of our umbrellas, plop plop plop the whole world understands. As you can see, the specific volume and speed of the rain are key. Mist may have the appropriate sense of theater, but it lacks catharsis. Hail is overly surreal and besides we would have to move our cars which would be decidedly practical. Thunderstorms are possible at a funeral, but only if you are a demon; they are otherwise too aggressive or ominous and we are not here to tell ghost stories about you — in fact, we yearn for your spirit. We cannot stand you being away forever like this. There are so many parties we were going to invite you to. There are so many times we’d planned on crying in your arms.

Become a ghost. Please. Sift down through the grey clouds like flour and drift into our apple pies. Curl into a rain drop and slide down our windshields. Hover around like mist if you have to. I will conjure you now, with my Ouija board.

Figure 1: Acceptable Comments to Make Into a Microphone During a Funeral
1.) He was a good man.*
2.) His passions for mountain-climbing, bear-fighting, and endangered-wildflower-saving were quite inspiring.
3.) He loved to laugh. His laugh was memorable in some fashion.*
4.) He never said a thing he didn’t mean. He never meant a thing he didn’t say.
5.) I envied him his rubber boots.
6.) He will be missed, but of course, we are glad to see him out of his pain.*

* These comments may be considered the requisite attention-getters, theses, and concluding statements, respectively: and could, on a less original day, form the skeleton of your paper.

Oh hey, as long as we are on the subject of writing and putting down the record, let it be said that I don’t recall the first time I saw you. Or the second, or the third. You made no impression whatsoever in your newness, and you failed entirely to look familiar. What I do remember is the first time you touched my shoulder.

“Hey, wait,” you said. Your hand landed in a gentle grasp.

I turned around.

How would you appear to me now, my conjured darling? A softer, blurrier version of your previous self? Mere dust particles hovering in dark air? A glow, a feeling of coldness, a slamming door? You will spell things out for me and I will follow you to the ends of this earth.

Figure 2: Unacceptable Comments to Make Into a Microphone During a Funeral
1.) Well, no one really believed he could eat the whole thing in the first place. Am I right. Am I right!
2.) And other assorted brash jokes relevant to the cause.
3.) The other night I cried in the shower. The hours wasted away.
4.) Weren’t there others, he loved?
5.) And if so, where are they today?
6.) “Mortality or timelessness!” I finally thought to myself, leaning against the tile. “Choose your poison.”
7.) I turned off the water, grabbed a towel and emerged a remarkably clean woman.
8.) Which brings me to my central question:
9.) does anyone here know whether he loved me?
10.) There is dirt under my fingernails, there are sharp pieces in my eyes.
11.) But seriously, folks.
12.) The water is useless, it won’t rinse them away.
13.) Just before he left he shrugged. Don’t you even try to suspect I didn’t catch that.
14.) (Painful smile, a shake of the head.)
15.) Also, of course, he married her. Hey.

You may notice that the list of can-nots is always longer than the list of cans. Sorry, that’s just life.

In the memory, I sneak away from your funeral, cleverly using the terrain to my advantage. White skin camouflages against wet birch trees. Black-gloved hands like ravens, huddled atop angel statuettes and granite blocks. I skitter from tombstone to tombstone with few difficulties, until your procession is nothing but a parade of glum eraser-bits on the horizon. I throw myself behind some shrubbery, poke my head out from behind a frosty pine, and make a break for the back wall of a family crypt.

In my hand there is a clutch, and in the clutch I keep a tiny notepad and a tiny pen. I plunk down into the wet earth and I write you the letter I’ve always meant to write: the letter I have been composing in my head since the day you left. It takes me as long to write it as it did to live it.

I scrawl your name onto my paper bundle, and underline it with a girlish swirl.

What do you do with such a letter? Bury it, of course.

Conveniently, we’re in a cemetery.

Let’s end it with this possibility. I have returned from your funeral, and I am setting my things down in my apartment. Let’s say I live alone. Let’s say I am surrounded by ancient bookshelves and knotted rugs, let’s say there is a large marmalade cat making eager infinity symbols around my legs. I have said it all to you at last, and have no regrets: not about a single word in that letter, not about keeping them from you for one million years, not about hiding behind some poor family’s crypt and burying my confessions in their yard. Everything is quiet. I change out of my rain-soaked wool and tattered nylons, and put on a kettle of tea.

The rain stops.

“Your address is still current?” the friendly DMV lady chirped. I paused, and she looked up at me with big blue eyes.

“Correct,” I said. “Edina, Minnesota.”

My party trick was to single out fellow Midwesterners. They didn’t have to have an accent, and they could be complete strangers, observed from a distance: I just knew. I took this to be a sign from a higher power.

“You know what I just noticed,” I said to Jurvis’ family during a ride in Connecticut. “You guys don’t have any ramblers here.”

“What’s a rambler?” they said.

Ah, home! I found homesickness in a body of water, within the publishing house information on first pages, in phone calls and emails and Facebook updates. I scanned through Flickr groups and booked flights. Every reminder of Minnesota’s existence was a call to return.

The other day I was biking home from a day spent in Davis Square. And suddenly it hit me: we haven’t had a car here in nearly a year — and yet I’ve never felt so free to get where I need to go. I haven’t worked in an office in months, and yet I’ve never gotten so much done. I have my favorite places, my favorite routes, my favorite way to conduct everyday life, and it feels as though it’s all becoming ingrained as a part of me.

I stopped and glanced through a parting in the treetops, where the Boston skyline hovered.

Pass the picture of her mother in the yellow jacket. Proceed up the stairs dappled with carved chipmunk statuettes. Look for the giant silver harmonica in front of the fireplace. Enter gleaming lemon marble hallway. Sliding door, stove island with visible pilot lights, bio-lab variety hanging vent. Three stairs down, beige carpeted hallway, sliding door: bathroom.

“Do you know where Rachel’s bedroom is?” a passing boy sporting low-riding swimming trunks asked me.

“It’s at the top of the tower.”

“The tower?”

“Go up as many stairs as you possibly can.” Now was the time when I could have handed him some crumbs, said “make sure you pass the Renoir poster in the golden frame” or “at some point, the carpet changes color” but I’ve learned that these details are never really appreciated by the direction-seeking public. One woman’s crumbs is another man’s “why are you still talking.” He was already gone.

The next morning, Caro and I would sit at the stove island as coffee percolated, and designate which parts of this home would be allowed in our dream houses. Massive kitchen, check. Built-in bookcases, check. Greenhouse, check. But overall, we decided pragmatically, this would be a four, five-room dream house, max. None of this ridiculous excess. 

There was a swimming pool and pool table, a piano, several libraries, a workout room, several porches, stained glass windows, real paintings, a pond, three snapper turtles, two rowboats, a cabana — but most importantly, fifteen billion styrofoam floaty noodles, which served as the primary entertainment for the night. We would struggle to stand one-legged on them underwater, balance glasses of whiskey on their tabletop ends, straddle them like legless ponies to wander where the cannonball waves took us, and tie them into knots and circles which we would then dive into, tear apart.

There was a tree-house! It had four stories, a climbing rope, and a ridiculously high wooden swing. The surgeon had commissioned it from a patient who had the unfortunate distinction of recurring accidents, all involving nails getting hammered into his legs.

At some point, I found myself dancing in my bikini à la MTV spring break. Let me just say: this is entirely unprecedented. I don’t know how to walk in a bikini in front of strangers, let alone coordinate my limbs along to some kind of beat. I like to tell myself that this is a fault I needn’t concern myself with, there’s something not very classy about such skills, anyway, that it’s a little too College Girls Gone Wild for my superior educational background and interests. But there was a beat, and I’d just left the pool, and then a friend grabbed my hand and led me to my doom.

“Adrianne! How’s it going?”

“Oh, hey, you know. Pretty good. Um . . . trying not to look . . . awkward.”

Almost immediately, however, we found ourselves surrounded by ten more swimsuit-clad dancing people. I felt the irresistible siren call of music-video sexiness. Pool! Bodies! Beat! Bling bling! And self-consciousness, as it is wont to do, vanished with a song.

I take you home now watch me get you hot,
You’re just a parrot when you’re screaming and you’re shouting
“More crackers please! More crackers please!”
You want what you want, but you don’t wanna be on your knees –
Who does your . . . who does your hair?

We were possessed at this point with nine hours of straight debauchery and Doritoes, throwing ourselves around the slippery pool patio. Frankly it was a miracle no one died. “Linoleum floor, linoleum floor, your lyrics are dumb like a linoleum floor,” the speakers bemoaned. With no apparent plan or cue, we simultaneously threw our heads back and belted I’ll WALK ON IT! I’ll WALK ALL OVER YOU!, the volume of our own voices reverberating in our ribcages, bouncing off the roof some infinite distance away.

Walk on it, walk on it, walking one, two!

“Now would be an ideal time to spike the punch with about thirty hits of acid,” bearded-dude-with-guitar said.

“Nah,” our host replied, still dancing. “I always say, who needs drugs when there’s people like us around, doing whatever the hell we feel like doing?”

That night, we slept in tents beneath the tree-house surrounded by a tribal ring of tiki torches. It was the first time I’d been alone in a tent in half my lifetime, and I was convinced it would be lonely, cold and miserable. Shortly after I’d crawled into my cave and nodded off, I was awoken to cold water spraying all over my face, pillow, and sleeping bag. I let out an belligerent scream.

“Oh fuck!” someone cried. “The sprinklers are going off!”

Despite valiant efforts, there was no turning them off at this hour, with homeowners asleep in their beds. We resorted to zipping up windows and securing rain tarps. The sprinklers diligently watered us for the next few hours, their rotating showers becoming a nearly soothing — if somewhat loud — percussion. Chickkkachickkachickka-chik. Chickkkachickkachickka-chik. Anger was futile, and the ground soft. I snuggled into the depths of my mummy bag, ensconced in delicious warmth and protection from artificial elements. “Oh . . . my God,” I found myself thinking in surprise, shortly before disappearing forever into unconsciousness, “I am so happy.”

In the fresh air and dew of morning, I would poke my head out of the tent, tiptoe into the house to use the bathroom (the picture of her mother in the yellow jacket, stairs dappled with carved chipmunk statuettes, a giant silver harmonica, the gleaming lemon marble hallway, stove island with visible pilot lights, bio-lab hanging vent, beige-carpeted hallway, sliding door) and admire the sprawl of sleeping party, bodies draped on couches, chairs and rugs, the pool completely still, the whole house unmoving, quiet, very very quiet.

Currently reading: The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret.

They’ll play a Keith Jarrett disc and everyone will listen, they’ll play a record and nobody will feel sad. And the ones who are on their own won’t feel alone tonight, and nobody will ask “Milk or cream?” because by now they’ll all know one another.

In the dream you’re aware it’s a dream, but that only makes slumber all the sweeter.

In the dream you have never kissed or hurt anyone, and everyone you will ever love is in your backyard. They are pouring iced lemonade and handing it to you, smiling. The wind is in their hair, their teeth are gleaming white, and they are full of anecdotes from their travels. They are wearing their favorite t-shirts. They just discovered their favorite band. They want to tell you everything, and in the dream you are a wonderful listener. You hold each person’s hand as they speak to you. “Tell me more,” you say to them. “How high was the wall? Did you speak the language? Were the breads soft like cake, or tough, like tires?” You are unladen with the past, light on your feet, trusting, entirely lovable. You are eager to fall in love with each of them for who they are. You are focusing on their words instead of your own. They wink and laugh and the sound of the wind in the leaves is the most incredible thing.

You are listening and nodding and holding their beautiful hands, pale and olive covered in fine hair, convinced that from now on you will mean every word you say, that any goodbyes will be brief and to the point.

Real eggy.

An afternoon swim with watermelon.

Maple cookie button with heart imprint!

See all pictures from all kinds of fancy cameras here.