September 2012
25 posts
Truth
Truth was the only thing we had left, the only thing that could possibly hold us together and for once, I wanted us to all carry the same truth and not some warped version of the truth we used to console ourselves. J held my gaze and after a long pause she said, “Fine. Nothing but the truth.” She held her hand out, the palm upturned and it looked so soft and naked that I held her hand...
Rules
We went north in a cab, back to my neighborhood, and I knew why she was here. The same shit, all of it happening again, and this time J a part of it, not somebody pushing back against it. For so long that had been our thing. For so long, that had been what made us the same, twins or not.
I don’t believe in unconditional love.
I don’t.
Mothers get to leave and mothers get to come back, and they...
Stethoscope
“Sweetheart,” she said calmly. “It’s time to go. We need to find the others.”
“What others?” I stammered. I could feel myself blinking uncontrollably, struggling to bring into focus a face I hadn’t seen for nearly a decade. “Who?”
“The others who know what you…” her eyes flickered, caught in a momentary panic. “What...
Total Eclipse
We teach our children, someone wrote, one thing only. Annie Dillard. As we were taught by our parents, she wrote. That thing? To wake up.
Imagine another world, crawling with mothers. A planet overrun by swarms of mothers in hats with numbers on them, an endless catalog from which to choose. Oh, yes, number 246 looks good. Those cheeks! Such shoulders on which to rest my poor helpless head!
Mine,...
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Heart
There have been many moments in my life, especially in the past few years, when I wanted to hook myself up to a device that might keep my heart beating. Some days, I am so weary it is a struggle to breathe. I am exhausted—the tedium of my job, this life I’m pretending to live in a city that only wants to chew me up, the cruelty of everything, my mother, and how far her shadow casts...
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I Knew
I knew right away. I didn’t know how, or why, or what we would find when we got there, or if she’d be waiting for us, but I knew.
“Come on,” I said, handing her phone back to her. “Red line.”
We walked to Jackson in silence. Of course I had questions, more than I could think to ask, but a new flume of feeling had come up through me when I saw the destination on the map, a cold and hollow anger...
Watch“Fuck,” she muttered, staring down at her phone with contempt.
I couldn’t help but admire how confidently the cigarette hung from her mouth as she slid her fingers across the screen.
She seemed so much older than the girl I had squeezed goodbye in Dayton. That somehow those six months moved faster for her in my absence and that, despite all of my guilt and wine-fueled text...
One Small Memory and Another Imagined Michaela...
Growing up, our habit was to eat dinner early because of our father. One evening, we were six, I remember watching my mother reach for the water pitcher and elbowing over my father’s glass. He did not immediately respond, but did watch as our mother patted napkins onto the spill, laughing uncomfortably. J there with those eyes, forever open slightly wider than they should have been. I stared...
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“Do you even know where you’re going?” I asked.
“Why do you think I’m here? We have an appointment.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. J, stop for a minute. I need to rest. I need think. Somebody just blew up my building!”
“Only the 43rd floor and the damages, you will discover, are minor.”
Just then her telephone buzzed. She looked at it, then quickly deleted the text before I could read it.
...
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North
We gathered by the entrance but it was clear nobody was going back to work. A loudspeaker behind us announced that normal buses and trains had been shut down, and that cellular communication in the downtown Chicago area was going to be cut off in ten minutes for security reasons. We were to go home immediately. There would be buses leaving from the southern end of Millennium Park for suburban...
Mothers
Here’s the thing about our mother. She was the kind of woman who never wanted children and had them anyway because that seemed like the path of least resistance. Once we could clothe and feed ourselves, or at least, pour a bowl of cereal without creating a disaster in the kitchen, she started pulling away, more and more, until the only thing left of her in the house was the stale scent of...
Me staring, almost crying, waiting for her to write back.
All the people from my office milling around the sidewalks, Graham snickering at me from like fifty feet away.
I just don’t want him to see me cry.
The voice from the message echoing in my head.
And then:
where ru?
I puzzled over the question for a...
Remaining
We were hers, we were a fellowship, and we remained American. These facts could not be exploded and burned away. Nor could the currency of politeness. Please, Mrs. President said, and how wonderful to be reminded that we indeed had been calm, and all it took to carry on was remaining so.
Apocalypse, after all, was a kind of liquid state. We had been warned and threatened and steeled against the...
Only after I posted the letter on the Internet did I begin to wonder certain things about it. The letter meant a lot to me when I first read it, and there I was carrying it back and forth with me to work, like it was some kind of talisman. I wasn’t nuts; I knew Michaela hadn’t written me the letter, but it was hard not to feel important since, of all the people in Chicago, I had picked the letter...
The Best Words
I took to carrying the letter with me.
It traveled with me on the L every morning. Past the Medical District and into the Loop where I descended stairs to take an elevator up to LameJob every weekday morning. A financial risk firm owned most the building, but LameJob HQ was wedged on half of the 27th floor.
The job’s Craigslist post described the company as a national leader in Training...
Hearts
And that’s the thing about cities. They are never quite what you expect them to be. You have this idea, this amazing idea of a place and it grows and grows unti there’s no room left for anything but that idea and so when you finally get to a place and the truth of it bears little resemblance to the idea you’ve so carefully cultivates, that’s when you understand what it...
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Hi.
Yesterday I found a letter.
I was walking home from the Metra after another bad day at LameJob, so tired. Chicago. I don’t know. It’s not been so great.
And it seemed like the right idea last spring, all that excitement when I decided, when I told J it was time to change, and that Ohio was done with me, probably her too, and she was just like: yeah, maybe. I like Dayton though.
Me:...
The story begins on the twenty-fourth day of...
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