see it all through a telescope
the way my sister tip taps goodnight into my back
in fingertips and softer breaths as she falls asleep at my side
yes i am way up there above the bunk bed
and things are small and simple
she exhales blue and dreams of a stampede of elephants
fingers tighten around me
we are closest in silence
when the house is all dark and sighs to itself
dryer rumble tumbling in the basement
and my mother sings lullabies to calm the youngest
two plastered walls away
i remember big friendly giants and the alphabet song
how words seemed less than important and everything at once
one summer i fell in love with a sentence
the period stretching on and on and never
ever stopping. at the window of a darkened room
i declined a kiss, and again at the porch stoop
the following evening. this was not my country
the dirt crumbled into zigzags i didn’t recognize
such dry heat – the best sunsets
the most unfamiliar stars
on most nights we dressed up as dragons for supper
to sit at long long tables in the hall that serves military men
during the school year. eating rice and unpronounceable oddities
but i recognized the texture of oatmeal in my bowl
and the way things just melt into one another
in the morning. maybe i’m still sitting beneath the tree
that fed me in spoonfuls. twigs and leaves and words that poured
into one another without breaks
the idea of leaves above and scratchy blanked below
and nothing to worry about but letters and pages
and how ever they might get together

—Devi Lockwood is a staff writer.

Walter’s in a heavy stew and he knows it, fit to trample daffodils and kick over wet-floor signs. In the shower he can feel it settling over everything in thick sullen spirals, from the dim prenatal glow through the curtain to the doctor’s office stink of antisepsis still clinging to his hair and skin. He scrubs his face tender with the limp brown washcloth, lingering back-and-forth on the ears but it’s no use. His knuckle has stopped oozing blood, thank God, but his whole right hand feels swollen and misshapen. In the vague distance beyond the shower curtain Marie is airing grievances mostly to herself. Making known the advancing hour. He gives himself a leisurely count to thirty before turning off the water.

Walter’s right knee is persistently stiff and he wavers for more than a second before making the final hop-skip over the side of the tub and regaining his balance, toes spilling off the bathmat to touch damp callus to the clammy tile. Drying himself means a long process that he doesn’t quite have the energy to complete, dragging a green paisley towel across his paunch and tired limbs. Dripping and pale he stands like a boxer keen for the fight, weight spread evenly, one arm slack by his side as he studies the hard kernel of molded plastic in his moist palm. A hearing aid’s a strange unnatural thing. Inert and synthetic but cast in weirdly human curves. It’s built to violate sanctities, to thrust into crannies never meant to be filled.

Marie comes bustling through the open door with red nails extended toward her perfume, heels stabbing click-click-click on the bathroom tile. He feels uneasy standing wet and naked next to her full evening gown getup and before he knows why he’s got it hidden tightly under bruised knuckles. She doesn’t notice and he heads for the bedroom. “Going to be late,” she says in half-accusatory singsong between eyeliner strokes. He doesn’t argue.

They are. He’s still combing down his hair waiting on the Andersons’ patio when Lily answers the doorbell, revealing the old bifocals-and-menopause crowd in full swing. She accepts the proffered cabernet graciously and embraces bubbly Marie but gives Walter the slightest skeptical look that immediately tells him she knows, that everyone must. Lily ushers them through the immaculate den and into the living room.

Ah, now. He ducks and rounds a corner after catching Jane Horovitz’s eyes needling him with silent loathing. Marie elbows his side to let him know he’ll hear about this later and floats out beaming and oblivious to join Jane’s circle. A damned small town. They should have moved years ago, he could have taken the job upstate. Thank God, the good Dr. Horovitz himself doesn’t seem to have been able to make it tonight. That eye must be swelling up pretty good by now. For support Jane has brought along the oldest daughter, home from college in England. Dalia? Dana?

Marie’s bewilderment and Jane’s hostility feed off each other. Walter can’t watch any longer so he visits the bar and then wanders. The Andersons’ is perhaps a nicer house than theirs—smaller but more modern, tasteful, Chopin spilling into the ambience from some other room. He runs through a few iterations of the same tired conversation but navigating these hostile waters only wearies him. This will be the first of many nights he ends up sitting alone very close to the stereo speakers, staring into his drink or leafing through coffee table literature. Martyring himself to save the party.

“You’re the man who beat up my father.”

It’s almost exactly Jane’s voice and Walter’s unthinkingly bracing himself to face the harpy herself, but of course it’s the daughter back from England, standing there plump and blonde and young with her black skirt and martini glass. He resists an absurd urge to get belligerent here, deny everything, explain it all away. “Well, I’m sorry.”

“No don’t be, don’t waste it on me, it’s my mother who wants to call the police right now. All I am is intrigued, I suppose. I expected someone younger.” The words spill out a little fast and she pops an olive in her mouth.

“I hit a doctor. Once. You exaggerate my exploits.”

“What made you do it, Mr. Marshall?”

“Please. Walter.”

“All right, Walter. Call me Deborah.”

“He didn’t say?”

“Daddy has a funny sense of privacy about these things. He wouldn’t even let Mother tell the Andersons why he wasn’t coming.”

She’s not pretty. There’s a bitter wit in Deborah’s expression but she has her father’s too-broad forehead and sad dark circles like third eyelids. He can’t keep his eyes off her. It’s not exactly sexual. Walter decides it’s her voice. He could cast radio plays and run phone sex lines with that smooth precision, that faint affected Britishness.

She’s still here for some reason and at last he works a moist hand into his pocket and fishes out the hearing aid. “It’s not cancer. It’s not even in my ear,” flicking his right earlobe, “it’s in my brain. Some sort of neurodegenerative disorder, I forget the name. He said full deafness in six months and white matter damage before that. Dementia within a year. Vegetative state likely in two. I asked him to stop talking and he wouldn’t. I don’t have a better explanation.”

Odd pauses in her syllables now. It’s clearly her first unscripted line. “Have you told your wife?”

Walter laughs, a raucous bark of more genuine amusement than he’s been able to muster in a while. He sees Marie’s face snap towards him across the room, flushed but at ease. He could swear she flashes him a smile. He smiles back. He feels as if a persistent pain has just winked out without him noticing. The Horovitz girl is tracing the edge of her glass now waiting for Walter to excuse himself and he obliges. He downs his drink and for the first time he manages to work the monster into his ear canal without wanting to vomit. Steps through the open backdoor hands jammed into pockets like an overgrown twelve-year-old and with that jaunt in his step he paces the Andersons’ manicured lawn. It’s a nice night. He thinks he says this aloud but maybe that’s just it magnifying the whisper.

As he works it out again Walter can feel the night sighing back to normal. The hum of the freeway fades with the hoarse cicadas and the tousled willows into a warm mellow summer sound vibrating in his feet and on his skin. He opens his hand and lets the breeze grab at his fingers tracing new circles in the air. He lifts a scuffed loafer and smashes it against the thing on the patio, again, an undignified wild stomping that leaves him off balance and panting, tugging at a chafing collar as his breath returns. He stoops with newly throbbing fingers to gather up the tiny wreckage of the thing. Plastic splinters and bits of wire are spread like a miniature plane crash on the flat warm plain of the Andersons’ terracotta. He wonders if the girl is watching through the doorway.

He walks back inside jacket under his arm and in a single motion casts his handful of junk into the waiting flowerpot and loops an arm around smiling Marie’s waist. She’s still laughing as Walter leads her firmly to the stereo and stoops with her hand still tightly clasped in his. Her eyes are prettier than he often thinks to remember, a sunlight-on-rhododendrons green that she tries to hide sometimes behind sunglass lenses as if embarrassed by the attention.

It’s late. Walter’s stiffest, puffiest finger is on the stereo volume dial and he starts it spinning clockwise at the moment he begins his speech so he can’t be sure where his words turn incomprehensible. But what he’s trying to say is that he has something very important if only she’ll let him explain, that there’s rough patches all around ahead and behind but just now is looking all right. Her smile has become tight-lipped and antiseptic and those green green irises are skating back and forth like skittish insects as she tries to pull away. He forces her fingers over his wounded knuckles in a manic attempt to make her understand. The noise rises like a flood and the evening’s eyes drift magnetically toward the Marshalls, Walter on one knee and standing Marie livid now, and the strains of Brahms swell to fill the house with a thunderous never-heard roar.

—Max Elias Schulman is a staff writer.

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