Breadcrumb #179

SARAH VALEIKA

There were 12 unsubstantiated claims:
my children.
12 unsubstantiated claims on whom
sign here, ma’am,
I have imprinted my own proof and I call out
“See? You see them here,
don’t you?”
because I, too,
am young

my cheeks are flushed as I walk to the
coroner
without blinking, I ask about my own mother
whose body is not fit for me to see, anymore,
and they tell me to “focus on
my children”
who they as yet
deny--
who shall stamp on them that
lovely notice:
Belong to Cara Greenwall? 

The building had no answers for me.

• • •

Breadcrumb #178

RAINY HORVATH

There would be no services for Mr. Paterson. No flag-draped coffin strewn with roses, no white-robed choir singing Amazing Grace, no tear-choked homilies. For him, the road to perdition would be as quick and matter-of-fact as that of a lump of cookie dough rolling down a conveyer belt to the bake oven. Alone and unheralded, Mr. Paterson would meet his maker at dawn tomorrow when the Crematory fires reach 1100 degrees Centigrade.

    On the night of his death former neighbors gathered on the patio of the house that stood behind to his. Word travels fast in a small town, and one by one they drifted onto Mike Joyner’s breezeway trying to make sense of it all. They turned their chair backs to Mr. Paterson’s darkened windows and sipped Seagram’s VO on the rocks from squat crystal glasses, conversing in low tones. 

    “It’s true,” Mike was saying, “he was in his mid-80’s and beginning to show his age, I could see that.” Mike always spoke in low gravely tones. He rubbed the condensation off his glass with large construction-worker fingers and paused for a moment,. “But he really seemed to be doing pretty well, I thought. I was surprised as Hell when the Coroner showed up.” 

    Joyce, a faded hairdresser with stringy dishwater blonde curls who lived around the corner shook her head sadly. “I think he just gave up.” She frowned, gesturing toward his house, “Last winter he told me that he cared nothing at all for his mortal coil.” Her statement met with shocked silence. “Really, he did.” She gestured at the dark windows, “It was one night last October. We were talking about Margie and how everyone missed her. I know he was trying to move on but he was struggling. He sure didn’t expect to drop dead of a heart attack, though. Nobody does.”  

    Mike gestured angrily. “How can you say that, Joyce? That’s disrespectful.” He and took an angry a pull on his whiskey and looked away. 

    Joyce stood up for herself, “Well, he did! He did say that -- I’m not making it up. I never said he didn’t care about his life, I just said that he told me he didn’t care the trappings – you know, his mortal coil, that means his body. There’s a difference you know. I don’t think he’d care that he didn’t get all trussed up and have people come and stare at his corpse.”  

“I never said he didn’t care about his life, I just said that he told me he didn’t care the trappings – you know, his mortal coil, that means his body.”

     Adelle looked disgusted. A carefully dressed third-grade teacher from the end of the subdivision, she couldn’t keep he mouth shut. “Well I think everybody cares. He cared too, he didn’t mean that. He deserved more, you know. More respect for a life well lived. I mean, he’s just gone. It’s not right, he was our friend. I knew him and Margie for 20 years. I think he cared. He deserved more.”  She swatted a mosquito away, bangle bracelets clanking together dully. 

    Joyce banged her glass down on the ceramic tile table, “Hell yes he deserved more, but he didn’t get it, did he? I’m just stating the facts. I’m just saying maybe he didn’t care so much as we all think he did, what with Margie gone and all.”

     Adelle disagreed.  “I guess I just don’t see things the same way as you.” Silence again. Mike’s solar lights flicked on one by one as twilight crept over the gathering and softened the outline of Mr. Paterson’s empty house. 

     Rosie, a retired piano teacher from across the street, broke break the tense silence. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. He’s dead and gone now, and his wife Margie before him.” She crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “They didn’t have kids, no family to speak of, so what does it really matter?” She adjusted the top to her pantsuit.

     "It’s a matter of respect,” Mike grumbled, tapping his thumb absently on the arm of his plastic lawn chair. “A man who’s worked long and hard and done his duty deserves a little respect.” 

     Jack, the cable TV installer from the next block laughed, “I’ll drink to that, respect for the working man.” He raised his glass and threw back a swallow of VO. The oaky tang tasted sweet in his mouth.

     Rosie nodded, “When you don’t have kids, you don’t have anything.” She repeated, almost to herself. 

     Joyce looked sly, “Well, I wonder who’s going to get his money then. He must have had a bundle put away, who do you suppose he left it all to?”

    Jack laughed again, whiskey kicking in, “Not me, that’s for sure. Probably the Goddamned government will get most of it. They usually do.”  He pounded back more VO and held his glass up.  

     Mike rose and picked up empties, “Who’s ready for another?” He tallied nods and started for the back door, then stopped and turned around, “Oh wait a minute. I do remember someone. That young gal who visited a him few times, what was her name? She was here for Margie’s funeral, and then came back to see him a couple of times after that.”

     Rosie brightened, “Oh yes, I remember. A nice girl. Brown hair, quiet. A niece I think, I remember her now, what was her name, Jeannie? Janie? Janine?”

     “Jane.”  Jack jumped on it, “Yes, her name is Jane. Nice figure, I remember her because she helped me out with an insurance question I had about my boat coverage.” He looked around the group, animated. “She’s in insurance, I recall.”

     “Well,” Joyce hoisted herself to tired feet, “Good for her. She’ll probably get it all then. At least that’s better than the Goddam government.” She tugged at the back of her too-short shorts. “I wonder if she’ll sell the house. He was a good neighbor I’m sorry to see him go.” She peered into the gathering darkness at Mr. Paterson’s abandoned house and shook her head. “Well, I gotta go. Got a lady coming in early tomorrow for a perm.” She yawned and stretched, reaching each arm out to form a human Y. “Thanks for the drinks, Mike. Call me if you find out anything more, Sure is a shame about him. See you all later!” Joyce turned and shuffled down the driveway, flip-flops slapping blacktop. She waved over her shoulder and melted into the night. Lightning bugs blinked here and there in the darkness and a forlorn silence settled over the
little group.

• • •

 

Breadcrumb #177

ANDREI KOZLOV

oceanic zephyr           petrichoral
              and instant coffee    diesel tenor of
freighters in Manila Bay
our linoleum room is garlic and talcum
and the permeations of a never­closed window

hills around the city ignite
a thousand distant votives to commemorate
the nightly devastation of ever
being known again by darkness
you splayed above the sheets in my t­shirt
bathed in twelve floors of violet halogen
from the call centers and karaoke resto­bars

I will leave never knowing
the hills’ exterior gaze
a cataract of lightless water
eight empty trucks leave the city
a storm rolls through at last
in our kitchen the roaches thrive
despite our rituals of ammonia
and scattered laurel

• • •

Breadcrumb #176

MADELEINE HARRINGTON

None of us knew Dad even owned a gun until he walked across the lawn in his sagging boxer briefs, his stomach and bald head glistening like distant planets in the dewy morning light, and shot Phillip the Goose straight through the head. My older sister Rachel was the reason for the name Phillip. She was a vegan now, and believed everything should be given an identity: squirrels, blades of grass, even pinecones had a heartbeat. Phillip was the name of her sophomore year boyfriend who broke up with her for her roommate. She denied the connection however, insisting this goose just “had the vibes of a Phillip.”

    It was therefore to no one’s surprise that Rachel came bounding across the lawn seconds later in only a bra and panties (the McGaffey’s are not a pajama family) and, fat sloppy tears already leaking from her face, knelt in prayer position before the lifeless bird. “What have you done?” She cried out in a volume that carried down the street and throughout the neighborhood, chasing the echoes of the gunshot into the stratosphere like the timeless dance of predator and prey.

    The rest of us watched them from the kitchen window. Under other circumstances, Dad and Rachel would have been mortified by their public nakedness, yet Phillip’s death, for varying mystifying reasons, had shaken them so deeply that the issue of exposed lovehandles and hairy pale thighs were rendered momentarily obsolete.

    “Why is everyone naked?” My younger sister Grace asked as she waved her arms in windmill fashion for my mother to pick her up.

     “Not naked, just underwear.” Mom explained, as if this salvaged the scene some sanity. She lifted Grace into her arms and rocked her with a well-practiced maternal sway that Grace was getting much too old for.

     Still holding the gun we hadn’t even known about, Dad considered his manhood with great concern. He was a well-intentioned man with a generally awkward yet gentle demeanor who spent most of his spare time watching Discovery channel documentaries and reruns of antique shows. To kill an animal, particularly one that his daughter had developed an off-kilter yet perhaps touching affection for, was completely unlike him. Although he found her to be mostly annoying, Rachel was still his daughter, and for that he loved her unconditionally. So it pained him to be the source of her tears, however petty they might be. Yet at the same time, he felt the desperate need to cling to his perpetually slippery title of Family Patriarch, and that the only way to do that was to remain confident about his violent and dramatic murder.

    “Poor Daddy.” Mom said in the belittling yet transcendentally sympathetic way that people who have been married for over 20 years regard each other with.

    It’s important to note that no one else in the family loved Phillip the way Rachel did. Any love we felt for him was just spillover love for Rachel, who we all adored, even though she truly was very annoying. In the beginning we thought he was cute, at least as cute as a creature with a large beak in the middle of their face who omits loud unpredictable noises can be. And sure, we felt flattered, even special, that this animal had chosen our backyard, our deck, our garden of engorged heirloom tomatoes and wilting basil, as its place of solace. At the very least, he was a refreshing and much needed break from our mundane suburban lifestyle. We fed him and posed with him in photos that we then sent to our friends. But after a few weeks, when we realized how picky and ungrateful of an eater Phillip was, and when his beak started bearing a crusty layer of mud that made him far less photogenic, he became much less of a makeshift pet and much more of a constant irritation. We began to distance ourselves from Phillip, all of us except for Rachel at least.

“At the very least, he was a refreshing and much needed break from our mundane suburban lifestyle.”

     The past year had been a difficult one for Rachel. She had an unarguable abrasive demeanor, a “love it or hate it” vibe, as I had once overheard two mothers call it during our annual Christmas brunch. It seems that most students at her college had chosen the latter, and she graduated with a very small clique of unpleasant and abstinent girls and a crumbling sense of self. The timing of Phillip’s arrival was so perfect it was almost ethereal: something she could take care of, that would listen free of judgement, whose main priority was always her, exactly the way Phillip the Human could never be.

     “Mom, aren’t you pissed that Dad’s been hiding a gun from you this whole time?”

     Mom sighed impatiently, still rocking Grace on her hip. “It’s actually my gun, Nicholas.”

     I looked at her, feeling both betrayed and exhilarated. “Are you kidding me? How could you? For how long?”

     “Probably around when you were born and Rachel was three.” 

    “So we’re one of those families?”

     “Someone broke into my house when I was in my twenties. It was very traumatic for me.” She explained as if describing a mild day in March. “Here, take Grace, I’m going out there.” Mom handed over my sister, and with that, the argument ended. Together, Grace and I watched her walk across the yard in her bathrobe like a fed-up woodland nymph. 

    The three of them stood over Phillip’s body and argued. Or at least, Rachel argued, shrieking and gesturing aggressively while Mom met her every move with her signature calming voice, until Rachel’s voice melted into a defeated whimper. Dad was mostly silent, probably still busy conversing with his manhood. Finally, they seemed to come to a resolution, even though by then their voices were so low it was hard to make anything out. They hugged: Rachel desperately, Dad uncomfortably, Mom smugly. Two out of three parties wore only underwear.  

    “Gross.” Grace pointed out.

     “Very much so.”

     Back in the kitchen, Mom cleared her throat as if preparing to make a toast. I could tell she was having a “this is my family and I love them” kind of moment. “We’re going to have a funeral for Phillip.”

     Rachel was wiping her eyes dramatically and nodding in agreement. I turned to Dad, who was still holding our family gun.

     “That’s a joke, right?”

     “Nicholas, please.”

     “Dad, is this true?” I asked, desperate for an ally.

     Dad glanced at the two women next to him with subtle terror. “I think it would make your sister very happy.” While it didn’t make it more logical, none of us could argue with this.

     “Can we have cake?”

     “Of course, Grace.”

     “Chocolate with sprinkles?”

     “Whatever you want.”

     Grace shrieked and clapped her hands. She wriggled herself out my arms and ran from the room, feeling satisfied.

     The four of us stood in a contemplative silence.

     “When?” I asked finally.

     “Next weekend, so we have time to prepare.” Rachel explained while staring at the opposing wall. I tried to meet her gaze, to have the intimate exchange of eye contact only siblings are capable of that might pull her out of her insanity as it had many times in the past, but this time she wouldn’t budge.

     “Great. Are we doing open or closed casket?”

     Mom shot me a glance, even though I was truly curious.

     “Well, I’m going to go get dressed.” Dad announced, finally recognizing his naked body.
The four of us dispersed to pursue the rest of our Saturday. On the way out, I glanced at the clock. It was 9:37am.

• • •