Breadcrumb #127

MADELEINE HARRINGTON

Alice had never expected to be on national television, let alone hugging her own daughter in the middle of LAX airport. As the cameras circled their embrace, Alice became suddenly very self-conscious of the brown food stains on the sleeve of her sweater, which had overtime multiplied and settled into the patterned, sagging wool like a sky of ugly constellations. 

    Later, when she admitted her concern, the cameraman, who looked no older than eighteen, told her that was why Photoshop was invented. “We might even film it again. The producer might want you to cry. I’m not sure yet.”

     “I don’t think I can cry on command.”

     The cameraman shrugged, clearly already checked out of the conversation. “Then we’ll just get an actor to play her mom.”

     “But I’m her mother.”

     He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “No shit.” This was clearly his least favorite part of show business. 

     It was more than just the stains, however. It wasn’t only the stains, however, it was everything. After the divorce, Alice had developed an impressive reliance on Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies and Double Stuffed Oreos, vices she hadn’t indulged in since high school, yet were now stacked high in her refrigerator and cabinets like castles in a kingdom. Here she was, pushing fifty, stabbing soft, salty peas with a plastic fork, the glare of Grey’s Anatomy reruns reflecting onto her wrinkled face and exposing her in the living room darkness. She had gained thirty six pounds since March. She didn’t find out the exact tally until her annual check-up last week, but she knew she was expanding, mostly because of the lingering stares and even occasional smirks from coworkers and book club friends. One night, Alice saw a weight loss commercial on TV, where a young, attractive woman in a tight red dress strutted down a sidewalk, causing every man she passed to turn and look at her, many of them falling into puddles or bumping into mailboxes as a result. She didn’t envy the woman, but rather related to her, even though Alice hadn’t put on a tight red dress in nearly twenty years. She wondered, with great concern, if there was ever a way to not be stared at.

“After the divorce, Alice had developed an impressive reliance on Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies and Double Stuffed Oreos, vices she hadn’t indulged in since high school, yet were now stacked high in her refrigerator and cabinets like castles in a kingdom.”

     In addition to her weight gain, the outfit she had chosen for the four-hour flight, much like the uniform she slipped into every evening after work, valued comfort over national television aesthetic. Even though her daughter had reminded her numerous times that there would be cameras at the airport, Alice’s disbelief still lingered, perhaps stemming from her general denial of the course life had taken recently, and she had put on her grey sweatpants and oversized yellow t-shirt that morning with unwavering conviction. 

     When Wendy had first called to tell her the name of the reality singing show that she would be a finalist on, Alice recognized it immediately. Not only did she recognize it, but she had been watching it weekly, an essential staple of her television watching schedule. She thought the female judge was annoying and probably an alcoholic, but she found the male judges to be funny, and the British one sort of cute. Plus, she liked learning about the contestants’ personal lives, even though some of it was probably made up or exaggerated for ratings. It was comforting for once, to become invested in others without consequence, to care for them from a distance, so as not to run the risk of failure.

     Wendy had always been private and fiercely independent, but Alice couldn’t help but feel betrayed by her daughter. Alice had never even known she had auditioned, and now Wendy mentioned being one of the fifteen finalists as if it were a new haircut. Alice would have liked to be there for the audition, she would have made signs and brought Wendy’s brother, if she had managed to take the day off from work, and the thought that that’s not what Wendy wanted was more than she could handle.

     Had she not been the only girl in the airport surrounded by cameras, Alice was unsure if she would have recognized her daughter immediately. Wendy’s naturally curly hair was straightened, her make-up thick and glistening, and her purple, bedazzled blouse something she would have normally rolled her eyes at. Even the way she yelled “mom,” stretching out the “o” with rehearsed and inhibited grace, sounded eerily unfamiliar.

     For the shot of the embrace, Alice’s orange and green checkered duffel bag was replaced with a black suitcase on wheels. “It’s distracting.” A PA informed her when he saw the confusion in her face, pushing the duffel to the side with his foot.

• • •

Breadcrumb #126

MAYA MENON

here you see me clinging to this heated pillow.
it isn’t anyone, but it’s good enough
for now.
this pillow doesn’t talk.
it doesn’t remind me that it’s already 3 o’ clock.
it doesn’t accidentally punch me in its sleep or tell me to move over.
it doesn’t smell like him because it is new.
it is small, warm, and sufficient
for now. 
it’ll take my snot and my tears, my silent curses,
any other grumblings and soak it all up.
i don’t feel guilty about making it a mess
because this pillow is mine.
it keeps me company during these hard times.
i lay here in the lines of lonely loving
and muffle my miserable mumbling.
i might try to write crappy poetry to him later,
littered in shitty alliteration.
only this pillow will be here to listen.
i won’t have to ask anyone else
for now.

• • •

Breadcrumb #123

DANIELLE VILLANO

It would be a lie for Declan to say he had noticed her the first time she’d come into the bar. It was probably a Friday, and she had probably ordered a white wine spritzer. It was all anyone drank in the hot weather here, and sometimes Declan felt like he was getting secondhand bloat just from mixing up all those bubbles. 

    So on a quiet Tuesday night in September when she sat down at the bar and asked for a dirty martini, Declan had been struck by her auburn hair and the way her blouse hung on her shoulders, and he had asked “what brings you here?” in the Irish brogue that drove girls wild. When she said, “I’ve been here before,” he was shaken. He catalogued all of the possibilities that could have led to his temporary blindness on such a night, because there was no way he possibly could have missed her otherwise. A squeeze of lemon juice in the eye? One shot too many? Maybe he was below the bar switching out a keg. Stupid.

    He pushed the martini in front of her, and she had smiled and asked for change. He wished she had paid with a credit card so he could find out her name. At the register he had to stop and ask himself if he had put any vermouth in the martini, and from the slight grimace on her face he knew he hadn’t. Declan decided not to say anything to correct his mistake. He didn’t want her thinking he was an incompetent bartender. Confidence was everything, in this kind of situation.

    To his surprise, she slurps down the whole thing.    

    Eventually, a friend joined her at the bar, calling her Della.

    Normally Declan liked playing a game with the names he heard around the bar. What could the name mean?

    Nicola is an armchair created by a Swedish designer.

    Roland is a cough drop, a certain cut of turtleneck sweater.

    Meyer is already a lemon.

    If Declan had not been so taken with the auburn-haired girl at the bar he would have said:

    Della is a type of porcelain, or a thin-sliced Italian meat on a charcuterie plate.

Instead all he could think was: mine.       

     The bar where Declan works is called Maxwell House. This has nothing to do with the coffee, much to the chagrin of overtired tourists who come in seeking caffeine. 

    The owner of the bar has a deep love for English romances, from Austen’s tales of Pemberley to the upstairs and downstairs melodramas of British television. He wishes he had an estate of his own, one worthy of a grand name like Maxwell House. Instead, he has a pub. He was born in Queens, which has nothing to do with the British monarchy. Instead of servants he hires British waitresses and bartenders, and Declan, who is Irish, because there was an Irish scullery maid on his favorite television show. His shock of red hair adds a bit of color to the place.

    The women who come into the bar are smitten with Declan, with his funny gold beard and his wardrobe of rotating plaid shirts. It’s almost a guarantee that one girl will slur a bit about a trip to Ireland and tell him she “visited the Guinness factory once,” as if every person in all of Ireland lives in the Guinness factory, and on some nights he will be polite and flirt back. But Della’s been in the bar more frequently and he cannot help being distracted by the shine of her hair. Wasn’t there an O. Henry story about her? Should he buy her a set of combs? Did women wear combs nowadays?

    And the owner comes out and scold Declan for his poor customer service, telling him to give the girls he was ignoring a round of shots in the plastic medicine cups they use on busy Saturday nights. Declan swallows his displeasure with a shot of cinnamon whiskey, and the girls scream like the tea kettle whistling in some far-off British manor of our owner’s daydreams.       

_____

     “And who wants to be chased anyway, really?”

    Della stirs her dirty martini with a vigor, already bracing herself for the next burning sip. She doesn’t quite like the taste of this drink—and at this particular bar the bartender is always too light on the vermouth and liberal with the vodka, so each sip goes down like diesel fuel—but it’s worth it for the olive at the end. She likes when the olives have pimento or bits of blue cheese in them.

    Maybe that’s why it’s easy to confess to third-date Todd who sits across from her that she does not see the appeal in being chased when it comes to relationships. The bartender–the one with the red hair–presses a cocktail napkin in front of her without a word. 

    “A guy once told me—in bed, no less—that I wasn’t fun because I wouldn’t put up a fight.” A vague buzzing in her skull tells her it is uncouth to bring up past lovers on third dates, but she’s already committed to the point. Confidence is everything, in this kind of situation.

    “He told me I didn’t present a challenge,” she says. “Why would I want to torture myself? I see something, I want it, I go for it.”

    This statement causes Todd to peek up at Della, to shift his eyes from “polite listening” position to “actually listening” position, and Della can feel her cheeks flush with alcohol and pleasure. 

    “I think the exciting part is the actually being together, you know?” 

    And Todd, who is already half-in-love with her, nods his head.

_____

    Declan is listening, too, and he crumples the rest of the cocktail napkins in his fist. Two weeks ago Della had brought Todd to Maxwell House and they had conversed over the mussels special and drinks in a table off in the corner, and Declan had been in hell at the bar, listening to a young woman mispronounce “Claddagh” so horribly that he was convinced she was going to hock a loogie. 

    Todd had settled the bill. They had hugged goodbye at the door and walked in opposite directions, and Declan was able to breathe for the first time that evening. 

    The situation was this: Declan hasn’t spoken to Della after that first night. She is always in conversation with someone else, only speaking to him when she is ordering another martini, only making eye contact half of the time. He had started distilling meaning into mundane interactions, like dropping change into her palm. Each time he went out of his way to do something he wanted to pinch himself, to man-up and talk to her, growl in the brogue that all the other girls loved. But he was rendered mute, and the flame went out of his hair, until he only smoldered on the inside. 
    
    Todd is the name for those flimsy metal tabs on the backs of picture frames that hardly ever get the job done.         

_____

     Della heads into the bathroom after drinking three dirty martinis, and everything is bleary around the edges. She’s smiling the contorted smile of someone who is inebriated but also happy.

    “Your dress is nice,” one girl at the sink says to her.    

    “It’s called a bandage dress,” another girl says. “It hugs you in all the right places.”

    Della stares at herself in the mirror and thinks: bandage dress.

    She thinks: Am I hurt?

_____

    Todd is kind. He is an investment banker with an affinity for sushi and singing competition reality shows, which she finds charming. And maybe she blew it when she told him what she wanted. But maybe she didn’t.

“And maybe she blew it when she told him what she wanted. But maybe she didn’t.”

    Della takes in the Christmas lights and the vintage British advertisements for toothpaste and candies that decorate the walls. The bartender is looking at her and she warms at the eye contact and even gives him a little wave.

    “I’m a regular,” she thinks. Then she crosses back to Todd and swallows down the rest of her martini. When he touches her hand it feels like a promise. 

_____

    The owner is wearing cufflinks in the shapes of little golden castles. They do not go well with the rough green button-down he sports, but they make his night a little brighter.

    “Take five,” he tells Declan. “You’re scaring away all the ladies with that scowl of yours. There are dozens of other Irish boys who would kill for a chance to work here.”

_____

    From the corner of the room Declan watches as Todd helps Della into her coat, so eager that he nearly knocks her sideways. This time they do not part ways when they reach the door.

    Declan is a wool blanket, muted and heavy.

    It’s only when he’s back behind the bar does he realize the green olive in his hand. He pops it into his mouth and bites down. Warm. Salty. A bit of brine.   

• • •