Eric Bennett
Eric Bennett lives in New York with his wife and four children. He loves trees without leaves and the silence between songs on vinyl records. His work appears in numerous literary and art journals including Fiction at Work, Bartleby Snopes, Ghoti Magazine, LITnIMAGE, and PANK.
Two Stories (February 20, 2009. Issue 15.)
Duly Noted
1 Udo Middleman’s appearance can be described in a word – ramshackle. He wears brown trousers, worn through shoes and a wrinkled flannel shirt that looks like it’s just been pulled out of the washing machine. His maw smells like a mackerel and he speaks with a braying voice, and as far as anyone knows, he never smiles. Udo looks like an old man shoved into the body of an even older man, grotesquely wrinkled and slumped dramatically. His eyes are furious with life.
Udo lives on Tugaloo Street in Tucson Arizona. His is one of a thousand single-story ranch houses, stony yard sloping down to the river of black asphalt meandering through the neighborhood. Every day is white hot and speckled with carrion crows that skirl and heckle anyone who ventures outside. Udo does not venture outside. Having lived alone the majority of his life he has an affinity for isolation. Udo permits no guests. No phone calls. He does not entertain Jehovah Witnesses or Cutco Knives salesmen.
Out from his living-room window, Udo’s eyes look up and down Tugaloo Street like a searchlight. And as every morning for the past two years he waits for the newspaper girl to bike by with the daily paper. He’s never actually met her but Udo calls her Lily – he likes the sound of the “L”s so close together: “Lllilllly.”
2 Udo orders seven cases of artificial spray snow. Stacked in the entryway, the cardboard boxes contain twelve thirteen ounce cans each and stand as tall as a six foot three inch Christmas tree. And though it may be logical to order artificial snow in Arizona, Udo has other appropriations for the aerosol flurries than festive embellishment.
The living-room window has thick rust colored curtains. Udo pulls the tatty couch under the window away from the wall and shuttles the curtains to either side letting the morning sunlight streak in. With circular motions, Udo sprays the surface of the window with artificial snow until the glass is covered. Then Udo drags his crooked finger through the synthetic snow leaving clean, clear trails. He writes: “Knock!” The next day he sprays snow over the previous message and fingers: “Come in!” The next day: “I am here!” And so forth, day after day after day.
3 Lily’s name is not Lily – it’s Lorie Geniste. Lorie’s soul is packed in eye-catching luggage: supple and bright brown skin, full lips and swivel hips. Her seventeen year old epidermis absorbs the Arizona sun making her warm to touch, luminous. And dark.
Lorie has delivered The Sun Times in this neighborhood for two years. And despite the occasional affirmation from the distribution manager, throwing papers has for so long devolved into a collection of lonely tasks. Lorie lives in a space of her own absorption longing for affirmation from someone that odd hours and the color of her skin seem to prohibit. So it makes perfect sense that upon seeing curious invitations scrawled on the window of a house on Tugaloo Street day after day after day that Lorie would venture to respond, tentatively rapping on the heavy wooden door. A hunched old man smelling like Santa Clause and chum opens the door gesturing for Lorie to come inside, his lips stretched as though smiling. She steps in looking back to check on her bicycle left in the driveway – the door snicks shut behind her like a wound closing over the space where it had been.
The Truth About Love
Kyon natters softly. His mouthful of little songs wakes Cho because it’s the sound of her son. She opens her eyes and gazes into his copper-coin face, her devotion the precise size and density of a four-year old boy. Uncurling from around Kyon, Cho flounders out from between lightly starched sheets – up and getting ready. Cho brushes the black wave of her hair and then slips into a cream colored camisole and nylons her skinny legs. A simple blue dress with long sleeves unifies her style into one appeal.
Finding matching socks for Kyon has eaten up years of Cho’s life. Every morning her hands become frenzied shovels scattering socks and misplaced toys in the dresser drawers until she finds a pair of matching socks and shoes. Then it’s, “Make the ears. Crisscross. Into the bunny hole. Pull them tight.” until finally, Kyon is socked and shoed and ready for daycare.
She collects her bags and then out through her brownstone door steps into the winter street. The sleet stopped in the small of the night but the morning is still shockingly cold. Cho’s scarf frames her quiet face, her wool coat an ocean in which both she and Kyon swim. They wait on the corner to hail a cab, every freezing minute stretching into the space of two.
The City is in Cho’s ears and the morning is all bang, bang, boom. Her impractical shoes make the shuttling of Kyon from taxi to the Tiny Years Daycare Center a teetering task. Kyon prattles all the while, his voice audible but not his words. Cho hands Kyon to an old woman with large ears, black eyes, and a “Hello. My name is…” sticker, but there’s no name written on the tag so it’s just “Hello. My name is… nothing.” Nevertheless, Cho trusts the nameless old woman to keep Kyon from a thousand accidents.
Cho jumps back into the taxi, her hair splashed across the back of the seat. She reaches for her scarf, bracelets sliding down her arm, and realizes it’s no longer there. How many scarves has she lost conveying Kyon from taxi to daycare, how many gloves, how many umbrellas, how many earrings? Really, I must be more careful, she thinks. But this is the last thought of Kyon she permits herself for the remains of the workday, rather, she concentrates on transforming herself into the dragon-lady of corporate advertising: frigid, bitchy and ready, if necess
ary, to use a Samurai sword to get her way. It’s not a role of Cho’s choosing, but it is a stereotype her boss expects her to fulfill. It is, after all, why he hired her – he likes Lucy Liu.
Stilettos punctuate Cho’s every move on the thirty-ninth floor of The Rockefeller Center with a fashionable snick. She fires the man with horse teeth. Snick. She lands a multimillion dollar account. Snick. She moves the deadline up three days. Snick. She abruptly answers her own phone because she fired her horse-tooth assistant. Snick.
“Cho Nahm speaking.”
“Ms. Nahm?”
“yes?”
“This is Mi-sook at the Tiny Years Daycare Center. I’m sorry. Kyon is crying.”
“I don’t understand.” Snick.
“Kyon won’t stop crying.”
“You called me because my son is crying?” Snick! Snick!
“I’m sorry, Ms. Nahm. Kyon has been crying for three hours. I’m sorry. I can’t make him happy. So sorry.”
“Are you asking me to come and pick him up?”
“Yes ma’am. I’m so sorry.”
Click. Snick.
Cho leaves the office in a flurry of snicks. And for nine blocks in the back of a yellow taxi, she is two schools of thought – corporate executive versus devoted mother. The corporate executive orders the cabbie to stop, the devoted mother asks the driver to keep the meter running while she gets her son. Cho enters the daycare center and the sound is suddenly overwhelming, like Grand Central Station, but diminutive. And there, there in the middle of it all is Kyon crying. He looks like an exhausted swimmer, red and drenched. Kyon’s relief gathers itself in his expression as soon as he sees Cho, who swoops down to hover like a hen nestling her egg. Together they become the still in the center of the room. Cho gathers the familiar shape of Kyon to herself, pressing kisses into the bend of his neck. She slowly pivots on her pointed heel to face Mi-sook who bows, hair draping. Then Mi-sook tilts her head upward and unexpectedly the bright look of discovery makes a sunrise of her face.
“His shoes are on the wrong feet.”
Cho looks at her blankly. Mi-sook doesn’t have the confidence to repeat herself, so she gingerly approaches Kyon’s feet, every mannerism a bowing apology. Quick, quick she unties one shoe, then the other. She juggles them to opposite hands and then quick, quick she ties one shoe, then the other. She looks up for approval. When Cho utters, “thank you,” it also means “I hate you.” And, “Write your name on the nametag, stupid bitch.”
Leaning against the cold cab window on the way home, Cho watches narrow alleys and the lights on in every apartment pass. She hides from the driver’s rearview eyes behind a curtain of hair and listens to Kyon breathing as a child will do just before falling asleep, deeply. The cab slows, stops, and then idles in front of Cho’s brownstone. The porcelain sky shatters just then and sleet clatters on the sheets of sidewalk ice and car glass. Cho collects her bags, her son, and dashes to the door, splattering slush up the back of her legs.
Cho’s coat on a chair, shoes slipped off, heavy wet nylons piled on the first step to upstairs. Kyon’s quilted coat drenched, little hat hung, and yawning. And then Cho notices a vacancy on her wrist – her bracelets missing. She rushes outside in her bare feet hoping to find the bracelets between the front door and where the taxi was parked. She tips on her toes searching in the pelting sleet, but the bracelets are not to be found. Cho returns to the house and sits silent, rubbing warmth back into her feet. She contemplates the significance of the missing bracelets, inventing meaning when it doesn’t become evident. Cho begins to feel that Kyon has ruined her life. His neediness, his mismatched socks, his culpability in her disappearing accessories. The sharp-edged toys on the kitchen floor, the sleeplessness, the forever sticky face and fingers – all of it making her forget who she is and what she ever wanted.
Cho’s eyes become a mystery to Kyon. Sensing an atmospheric change, he hoards himself – mouth closed in fear, chin trembling. In a quiet yet quick explosion of movement, Cho collects Kyon’s wet shoes and moves to him kneeling. Without words, she positions him on the floor, his soles directed at her. And then, like so many times before, she purposefully jams Kyon’s shoes on the wrong feet. She yanks the laces tight while Kyon mouths the words, “Make the ears. Crisscross. Into the bunny hole. Pull them tight.”
The truth about love is that it isn’t always good. And the particular places from which Cho’s fury erupt, makes her immune to Kyon’s painful pleading. All Kyon understands is that his feet hurt and somehow, it’s his fault.