arnold

Arnold was no catch. He had a pear-shaped body that never did respond to running or weightlifting, much less a pilates class with Estelle at the “Fit Factory,” who had to tone it down after three people in her first week needed hospitalization. He had a bit of a lisp, which he hid rather well, and walked with a touch of a limp, not from an old football injury, but from getting his leg caught in a service elevator when he loaded bread trucks, downtown, while he was in high school. (Surgery should’ve been done, but wasn’t required.) Arnold wasn’t excessively bright and no one had taught him the finer points of satisfying a woman, nor had he learned on his own. But he was this: he was patient and kind and had a wonderful, calming air of gentleness about him. Not gentility, which is different, but gentle-ness. In a few hours, he would meet a woman driving a green Camry in the parking lot of the Rick’s True Value Hardware. He would fall in love with here, right there. On the spot. Like that. Like he’d sometimes imagined, if not dreamed. And he would spend the rest of his life loving her.

celeste

Her name is Celeste and she drives a green Camry. She has two children and a husband named Roger. The kids – Harry and Mary – are smack dab in the middle of middle school. They’re twins. Celeste has been fighting for weeks, now – no, more like months – this seeping sadness that her life is done, that this is it – Roger, the kids, the green Camry. She’s talked with her best friend Rosetta about this, talked the way women talk about these things, which is to say with a bluntness and honesty that would shock and appall and surprise most men, they acting just the opposite with their friends, unless three-quarters in the tank or having to confess something akin to the issue, like the greasy, unsatisfying roundabout they might’ve had with the whore-y waitress at Hooters named Jinnifer, all the while making it sound like a grand time was had by all. Rosetta told her it might be “time to move on,” but she’s seen other women who’d chosen that route and what they’d moved on to didn’t seem like much. So, worse than feeling sad and depressed, now, she felt stuck. Worse than all that? (Could it even be worse?) This afternoon, completely out of the blue, she would meet Arnold, quite innocently, because it was and because when you’re on your period the last thing, or one of the last things anyone thinks of, except, maybe, a husband, is romance. Messy sex, maybe, hormones being what they can be, but not love. And things would get even worse, because, now, Celeste would soon feel the need to make a decision, one that would affect everyone. But that would be later, today, for a start, then later this week and month. Now, she had to get their dog, Hazard, to the vet. He had worms.

prayer

The woman in the
red
Land Cruiser drives
with a rosary
hanging from the rear-view mirror,
Many do,
here. Even those
in the BMWs and
Jaguars.
The rosaries sway
and its beads rattle,
bumping into one another,
gently,
quietly.
My mother
never hung a
rosary, that I can
remember.
She gripped
it, instead, tightly, deathly tight,
especially at night, when no one else
was up,
when she prayed, often moments before dawn,
for more
penances, more chance to prove
her
heavenly worth. That’s
what she believed in:
punishment.
She
drove
an ’83
LeBaron.

i walk

I have become used
to walking along
the beach
alone.
I used to think that perhaps
someday, one day,
I would meet
her
walking the other
way, that she would
be looking for me,
while I for her and that we
would meet after our eyes
did.
Now,
I’m not so sure.
Now, I think
that that is what
a
young
romantic thinks,
not a
romantic like me
who
understands romanticism’s
tease and her truth.
So, I walk alone
and
expect nothing more.

sae whad?

He says – and with a straight
face, for that is of a modicum
of
importance, here:
"If it’s a fad, why is everyone
doing it?" It is of little
import, really, in the
grand
scope
of things, this little bit
of incredible stupidity. But it
does
strike
a cord, as he might
say. Doesn’t anyone
care, anymore, how
we
speak? He is a personality,
a TV one, so he will,
undoubtedly, be asked to speak,
someday, at some college graduation. We
can only hope
he doesn’t say to those assembled, “You’ve all done
good.” But
he
might.

aimee

The teacher asked her a question, but she had trouble focusing. All she could think about, still, was her father and how he got every night, late, what he became when he drank. Her name is Aimee and she attends the best school in the city, Catholic and college prep. She hasn’t told anyone about her father. How could she? What would people think of her? They couldn’t possibly understand. And what would everyone say to her brother and sister? And her mom? And of what would they accuse her? Complicity? Stupidity? No, she had to figure out a way out of this, herself. It was the only way. “Aimee,” the teacher said, her voice rising a bit, or at least inflecting. “Aimee.” More strident, now. “Yes,” Aimee says. “I’m sorry.” “I think you need to come after school. We need to talk.” Aimee nods, because that’s good. She doesn’t want to go home. And she likes Mrs. Munoz. A lot. She even figures that she might tell Mrs. Munoz about it all. She’s fooling herself, of course. She will go, after school, but she won’t say a thing and she will go home and do her homework and eat dinner and go to bed and wait for the moment, the one she detests, and even that word isn’t strong enough. But, she will be a “good girl,” for all of them. Again.

after

They are done. It is over. And she thinks, to herself: Is that it? Is that all? Why don’t – why can’t; why won’t – I feel more? His scent, at one point almost intoxicating, is now just sweat, old, cold. She doesn’t love him less, but does she love him more? And shouldn’t she? Or shouldn’t it be at least different? Shouldn’t it be something other than what it was before, even if it was just moments? She wants to talk with him, ask him if he ever has those sorts of questions, those sorts of doubts, but he’s already asleep. He works hard. He works long hours. He’s got other things on his mind. But this is important to her. Yet, she doesn’t ask, but she does wonder, to herself, about that, too: why doesn’t she ask him? Is she afraid of the answer? Or afraid that he will act as if, if not say outright, that she’s making way too much of nothing? So, she doesn’t ask, doesn’t speak. She just sidles in closer, hoping that his body will provide some warmth, the needed kind.