A Good Idea but. . . .

by Libby Malin Sternberg
www.LibbysBooks.com

When I started this blog, I thought what a wonderful idea it would be, to have short stories available every day for hungry readers, to have a place where talented authors could showcase their work . . .

And I still think it's a good idea. I just have so little time to keep up the blog the way I'd like -- to solicit great stories, read them, make suggestions for edits where appropriate. . .

So the blog has languished. I apologize. I wish I could promise that it will revive soon, but I'm not sure when my schedule will free up enough get it moving again. Don't give up on it just yet -- it might be humming in the future!

And now for a moment of promotional zen -- stop by my personal blog for interesting discussions on Jane Eyre, the Kindle and more.

Dust to Dust (Young Adult)

by Kelly C. Roell

The funeral was just stretching on and on that hot Sunday in the middle of the summer. I took a look at my long bony fingers, sweaty and clammy from the 90-degree weather, and ached to be splashing around in the creek behind the church. Daddy promised that the rain from Friday would cool everything down, but the sun just sucked up all the water the same as it did every year. All the women, dressed in black with funny-looking hats, whispered at each other and blew their noses into hankies as they fanned themselves cooler. Pastor Tom preached on and on in his booming voice like it was just another boring Sunday and no one had even died. Miss Patterson, my favorite Sunday school teacher, whispered ‘cross the aisle to Daddy that “It’s a cryin’ shame, ya know.” Daddy shrugged his big old coal-mining shoulders and said, “The good Lord knows what’s best.” I knew he wasn’t really sad because he was a “hard-hearted man with no sense and no decency,” like Momma used to say when he’d come home smelling like whiskey.

At the end of the sermon, which lasted around five days to all us pew-squirming kids, I finally got to get up and stretch my scrawny legs. “Chicken legs,” like Momma said. I spread my arms out to the side and yawned so wide my insides felt clean with the new air, muggy as it was. Daddy pushed me up to the front with a “Git movin’, Katie” and I sulked out of the yawn and made my way up to the casket. My silly frilly dress, made by Momma’s loving hands, scratched and bothered me into a tither as I stood by the coffin and pretended to like everyone hugging and squeezing me. I hated frills and foo-foo dresses, and hated sweaty people touching me just the same. I thought that just because someone died, I shouldn't have to be scratched to death by the dress and hugged like it was my own self that was dying.

Although really, I wouldn’t have minded.

At least then I’d get to see Momma again.

Momma had died last Friday from some sort of nasty infection. No one knew exactly what had finally done her in, but I thought with anger that it was Momma trying to please Daddy all the time, and not getting no thanks for it, neither. She was always trying to make him like her in some way or another. She would eat every bite of Granny Davis’s cooking even though everyone knew she couldn’t fix nothing tasteful. But since it was Daddy’s momma, Momma would eat her awful fixins anyway. She’d situate her long blonde hair up in some kind of twisty-do that I always liked, just to see if Daddy would notice. He never did. Then she’d go and fry up his favorite meal, pork chops with milk gravy, and bake some apple cobbler just to be safe. He’d just eat and never say a word of “please” or “thank-you” or anything else proper. One time, I even heard Momma whisper to Daddy that there was more dessert waiting in the bedroom for later, but I could never figure out just where she hid it, because I had looked, yesiree. Yup, Momma had tried too hard, too much, for too long and I was plumb furious that it had gotten the better of her this time.

I kicked the heck out of some pebbles as the whole church headed the mile down the road to Momma’s new home.

“Pauline! Didja see that one? It almost hit Pastor Tom!” I whispered loudly to my sister.

“Katie Sue. You better knock that off ‘for Daddy comes around her and beats your hide. You got that? ‘Sides, what would Momma think?”

I grumbled that Momma wasn’t here so how was I supposed to know, but quit kicking anyway. I shuffled my feet, cramped into those dang tight foo-foo shoes, and watched as dust circled up around my shins. “Dust you once were and dust you’ll be once ag’in,” was Pastor Tom’s sermon, and I wondered how long it would take to actually turn a whole 32-year-old momma into dust.

As the group of us circled around a set of some good climbing trees at the entrance of the graveyard, I thought back to the hour I found out Momma wasn’t gonna be around no more. Last Friday afternoon, the rain beat up against the windowpanes and made them rattle like a ghost knocking on hell’s gates. I sat in the middle of the floor, "dirty as a mud rat", as Momma would say, trying to make a hammock for my frog, Mr. Jim, out of Pauline’s brand-new training bra. I just finished tying up the hook side to the end of Pauline’s quilt, when Daddy came to the door.

“Ya done workin’ for the day, Daddy?” I jumped up, trying to look as sweet and innocent as my brand new baby calf. I shoved the bra, Mr. Jim and all, under Pauline’s bed and bit my thumbnail so he wouldn’t know what I was up to.

“Yup. I’m done for the day.” He walked with heavy boots over to my bed, and sat down sighing like the whole world had just been hit by a tornado.

“C’mere, Kate,” he said. I wasn’t smart, but I could figure out that him being there wasn’t good, so I got up, wiped my sludge hands on my blue jean cut-offs and went to Daddy.

That same night, I lay awake and listened to the rain and thunder pounding real hard on the windowpane. Somewhere, Someone was mad and I knew the feeling. I shoved off the old sheet I’d had since I was a babe in arms, and scooted out of bed to the window. The pane was cool and damp to my fingertips and I rested my burning cheek against the rattling.

“Why did Momma have to die?”

I jumped about four feet in the air at Pauline’s question.

“Why don’t ya just skeer me ta death, Pauline!? What the heck’s the matter with ya?" I whispered and tip-toed over to her bed. “Cain’t ya sleep, neither?”

“Not a wink. I keep thinkin' that Momma is dead and I’m still here, and Daddy don’t care neither way,” Pauline said into her ratty quilt as I squeaked down on her bed.

“Well, I don’t care about Daddy,” I said. “He ain't decent anyway. As for Momma, I’m just mad and sad because she done gone and left us to ourselves. I heard that fat choir lady talking, ya know the one who sings like she’s got a chipmunk in her skirt?”

Pauline giggled.

“Well she just had to say that the welfare people is going to come and steal us away. Well, no ma’am and nosiree am I going to go to some welfare place.”

My words made Pauline get some backbone for once, and she sat right up in bed looking all determined and such.

“Don’t you worry, Kate. I won’t let nothing like that happen, you got it? They ain’t never gonna take us away, even if Daddy wants us to go.” She grabbed me and squeezed the living daylights outta me, but for once, I didn’t even bother to wriggle outta her arms.

Pastor Tom was just finishing up the last words of the graveside speech as my mind came back to the here-and-now. He was clearing his throat, “hemming and hawing,” like Momma said, and everyone knew he was trying to finish his sermon off with something that would stick in people’s heads like they’d taught him in the preacher school. I stood just as still as a stone as Pastor Tom finally shut up and everyone fumbled away from Momma. They all tried to look busy, staring down into the hole at the casket, and finally stumbling around gravestones to our house for supper. Pauline grabbed my hand to go pay our last respects to Momma, but I would have none of it and snatched my hand back where it belonged. I watched as Daddy whispered something down into the grave and dropped some daisies on top of Momma’s casket, and I, real bold and such, marched right up next to him.

“Well, Momma, I’ll miss ya,” I said real loud and marched down the road, knowing that hell was on my heels for being so disrespecting. Pauline told me later that after I left, Daddy said she better “See about helping them women with the supper.” Then she said that Daddy walked home after her with his head hanging like a dog.

Fourteen hours later, in my estimating, all them ladies and men finally started to get the heck out of my house, smiling and saying, “God bless yer soul, darlin’” or “We’ll see ya real soon.” It was just in time, too because they were all about to get on my last nerve. The last lady left, just crying and carrying on, telling me and Daddy and Pauline that she “knew how ya’ll felt and would be ‘round when ya’ll needed somethin’,” and Daddy just said “Thanks so much.” After the last dish was wiped and the crumbs were swept off the floor with Momma’s old broom, the three of us stood eye-balling each other in the kitchen.

“Welp, guess there’s nothin’ left to do but go to bed, so ya girls git to yer room and git some sleep.” Daddy wasn’t fooling around, neither. “Got another busy day tomorra, too.” Me and Pauline went.

I tussled around in my sheets on the night of Momma’s funeral, just burning and aching on the inside. It felt like my blood was so boiling it was going to blister and pop and melt the skin right off my bones. The air felt hot and thick and wet and made my lungs feel as heavy as a bucket of mud. Pauline had cried for a while, then fell asleep just as easy as you please, but I could not empty my soul like that and forget that Momma left me and Daddy didn’t care.

A chair scraping against the floor in the kitchen pricked my ears and I sat up all twisted in my sheets. I wondered why Daddy was still fumbling around in the kitchen when normal people were in their beds, so I decided to see just what the heck was going on. I untangled myself from the bed and snuck into the doorway where I could just baaarely see into the kitchen. Daddy was out there, all right; I could just make out his figure in the moonlight peeking in from the window. He was sitting in his “head of the table” chair, and was holding something in his big, dirty hands. I crept down the hall real quiet, like a tomcat hunting birds, to see what he was looking at. I crouched down low to make myself real small, and peeked in the kitchen at his big old shoulders. He was hunched over the table holding something square with his right hand and his head with his left. What was it? He slumped back in his chair with a sigh, and I got to see just what it was he was looking so hard at: it was the wedding picture of Daddy and Momma.

And Daddy was crying.

I could not believe my eyes, and I guess I was real surprised like ‘cause I jumped up for some dumb reason and ran to my room. I knew I was in trouble ‘cause Daddy’s chair scraped backwards real quick. I scrambled into bed and threw my quilt over me just as fast as you please. Daddy’s heavy footsteps stomped down the hall, and stopped at the doorway.

“Kate?” he said.

I pretended to be asleep as he started into the room. I lay there just quaking, trying to look gone to the world, when his footsteps stopped at my bed. He sighed some big long, sad sigh and I could feel him staring at me pretending to be asleep.

“Well, Kate, I guess ya caught me,” he whispered with real tears all choked up in his voice, turned around and walked out.

I lay there quiet as a mouse after Daddy left the room. For the first time since Momma died, I felt happy and the feeling ran all through my body like that cool little creek behind the church. I knew it was wrong to feel so happy, but I couldn’t a cared less. I had caught him. Red-handed! I had caught him caring for something and he couldn’t hide it! He couldn’t even say it wasn’t the truth, because as Momma always said, “tears will tell.” I didn’t even know what all this caring meant; the only thing I knew, was that the air in my room was somehow cooler, and my blood wasn’t itching to boil out. He cared. At least for Momma. And maybe if he cared for Momma, he could care for me, too. I’d find out tomorrow, and when I did, I’d tell Pauline.

-----------
Kelly C. Roell is an aspiring YA author currently seeking representation. In the meantime, she's the test prep writer for About.com, a NY Times company.

Be Back . . .SOON!

Dear Readers,

After a hiatus, I'm getting ready to relaunch LUNCH READS. I might not be posting one story daily, but will try to keep fresh inventory up as much as possible. I'll be sending out notices to other blogs and loyal readers soon! Watch this spot!

And. . . thanks for your patience.

Best,
Libby Malin Sternberg

Deadlines, deadlines!

Dear Readers,

Well, I've probably disappointed you, not posting new stories for awhile. My excuse--suddenly, I'm swamped with shortened deadlines for writing projects. Freelance articles, manuscript revisions, editing jobs--they loom over me.

I'm not complaining about the work. I love writing and feel blessed to be able to earn money doing it. But these fast and furious job requirements mean no new Lunch Reads stories for just a little while. An eensy-weensy little while.

I promise to get some good tales up soon!

Best,
Libby

Stumbling Along

Dear Readers,

Lunch Reads is "dark" today and might be void of a story here and there as we stumble and sputter our way toward regular postings. I'm stocking up inventory but could use more stories -- so get crackin', all you aspiring authors! Mysteries seem to be a popular read, but we're open to almost anything.

Since there's no story up today, check out some of our past entries -- Jenny Milchman's "The Very Old Man" (a two-parter) is one of my faves. And oh yeah, I love my daughter's droll "Sheep."

Since I'm the moderator of this blog, let me put in a pitch for a longer read -- my recent humorous women's fiction, Fire Me, is a good summer escape.

Best,
Libby Malin

The Very Old Man - Part II (Genre: Suspense, Magical Realism)

by Jenny Milchman

VII

Concussion was on her mind when Denise crawled into bed. “Do you think we need to check on her in the night?” she asked as she tried to get comfortable.

“Kids fall,” Bill replied, beginning to stroke her. “Quit worrying.”

For a moment, Denise let herself enjoy the feel of his hand on her skin. Then she said, “She’s not a kid, she’s a baby. Besides, mothers are supposed to worry.”

Bill pulled her closer, easing down the strap of her tank top. “I don’t know if they’re supposed to,” he murmured. “I do know it can drive you crazy when they do.”

Denise hesitated. If they talked about Bill’s mother now, they’d never finish what he had begun. And she wanted to. For the first time in over a year.

But then Bill himself rolled away. It’s the nursing bra, Denise thought wryly. She had decided that nursing bras were the least sexy garment ever made for a woman. They beat out flannel nightgowns and granny underwear.

“Another big day tomorrow?” she asked.

“They’re all big,” Bill said, already starting to drift. “You can’t even imagine.”

Denise let the full sting of the comment penetrate. Then she sighed and turned over.

Her last waking thought was that the old man never would’ve gotten near Bill. Her husband didn’t loiter in the supermarket aisles, killing time; he strode down the lanes snatching up items, and throwing them into his basket with a flourish that made Bethany giggle.

VIII

Denise dreamt she was in a carnival funhouse. Everything had gone topsy turvy. “Because of the mirrors,” someone hissed from the shadows.

Denise knew, in the way of dreams, that the voice belonged to the old, old man. It was him – the cold vapor of him – that made it so opaque in here. Clouds floated like mist from dry ice. She tried to back away from the man, but when she did, she hit the mirrors. They were cold too, sheer sheets of ice that distorted everything.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Her breath melded with the rest of the fog. And still the man kept pressing closer, until Denise knew his aim was to rob her of all her warmth, to make her as cold as he.

She came awake with a start, the covers wrangled off her, although Bill still lay under them, protected.

That old man had really burred into her skin. Applying a few of the self-analysis skills she’d picked up from the psychologists at her old job, Denise wondered if her recent transformation – from working woman to stay at home mom – had shaken her up more than she realized. Who was she now? What did she see when she looked in a mirror?

IX

But the next day, Bethany took a second fall, and Denise knew this wasn’t just about her former life. Denise’s raptor eyes were on Bethany the whole time, and even Bill happened to be standing nearby at the exact moment of her tumble. And still neither was able to stop Bethie’s swift and seemingly impossible passage from inside the sling seat of her walker, up onto its tray, and then down onto the uncarpeted floor. Denise couldn’t get her head around the choreography of the incident. A nine month old couldn’t hoist herself. She couldn’t even climb.

Had she not been placed in it correctly? But Denise never would have made a mistake like that.

This time, the fall left marks.

Why did they have the damn walker anyway? The pediatrician had warned against their use, and even Bill had shrugged and agreed to put the contraption away. It was Denise who dispensed with caution for once and stopped her husband on his way to the attic. Denise’s father had sent the walker as a gift; the only contact he’d ever had with the baby.

Denise couldn’t bear the sight of the roses blooming on her daughter’s perfect flesh. She toyed with the idea of taking Bethie to the pediatrician until Bill stopped her.

She settled on a bath and early bedtime instead. Except that when Denise carried Bethie, warm from the tub, her flossy hair fragrant, into the nursery she saw that she couldn’t lay the baby down in her crib.

“Bill!” Denise shrieked. “Come here!” Bethany started to whimper. “Shh,” Denise begged. “I’m sorry, Bethie. We’ll get you to bed.”

But where?

Hearing Bill’s lazy amble up the steps, Denise ran to the doorway. “Hurry!”

“What is it?” he asked. His gaze traveled round the room. “Christ. How’d that happen?”

The entire wall behind Bethany’s crib was water-logged, vertically flooded, the rosebud paper turned brown and gone to mush.

“I don’t know,” Denise practically cried. “How did it happen? That’s our room next door. There aren’t any pipes in there. And it hasn’t rained in weeks.”

Bethany whimpered again and screwed her face into her mother’s shoulder. Denise didn’t look down at her. She was transfixed, her gaze pinned to the stain, the shape of which resembled some great, winged creature.

“Is it cold in here?” she asked, her voice quivery, unable to find solid ground. “It feels so cold in here.”

Bill didn’t respond. “It’s an old house,” he mused. “Maybe there was plumbing somewhere around here once.” He poked at the wall above the crib and his finger sank all the way into it, came out coated with the innards of the house. “Oh man. That’s pretty gross.”

Denise burst into tears, and the baby started to cry along with her.

Bill gave her arm a brief pat. “It’s OK,” he said, taking Bethie. “It’s a leak, that’s all.”

His air of ease didn’t soothe her, but Bethany began to quiet in his hold.

“We’ve got to get Bethie to sleep,” Denise said, rendered a little less wild by the call to routine. “Where can we put her to sleep?”

Bill handed the baby back. He swiped one hand across the crib slats. “This is fine. Not even damp. Put her down.”

“No!” Denise cried, causing the baby to lurch in her arms as if shocked. “Not in there!”

Bill gave her a funny look. “The problem is the wall, not the crib. We can move it over a bit.” He started to pull on the top bar and the crib slid on its casters.

But no way was Denise going to agree to that.

Bill let out a sigh and left the room. Denise stood in place, swaying back and forth to lull the baby. After a few minutes, her husband returned to the doorway, hooked his thumb and jerked it sharply. Denise followed him.

He’d gotten out the Pack ’n Play and set it up in the guest room. Denise was sure that Bethie would balk at her new sleeping environs, but the baby was so zonked that she didn’t even twitch when she was laid down. As Denise straightened up, arms suddenly free and light, she saw that Bill hadn’t stuck around to see if the arrangement had worked.

X

Denise could hear a faint shadow of voices downstairs, and wondered if Bill had managed to get a plumber out to the house already. She didn’t go down to check. Instead she backed out of the guest room, pulling the door to without latching it, in case Bethie woke up in the night and didn’t know where she was. Then she headed toward the nursery, approaching it as one might a menacing dog. Puckered all over with gooseflesh, teeth ground together to keep them from chattering, Denise walked over to the dresser and grabbed the Mother Hubbard bank. Holding it at arm’s length, she stalked downstairs. Without pausing to see who Bill might be talking to, she opened the back door, went out into the yard and unlatched the lid on the plastic garbage bin. She threw the bank and all its contents into the depths of the trash below. Then she dragged the bin to the curb.

XI

“There was a curse on that coin,” she informed Bill once they’d settled into bed for the night. She didn’t care if he refuted her.

Bethie was sleeping soundly in the guest room. Bill had gotten Harold, their next door neighbor and amateur fixit man, to come over and take a look at the wall. The guy had promptly prophesied the existence of an old pipe and suggested they go in and remove it. Denise had murmured something about getting a second opinion before hacking up their home; unbelievably, Bill had accepted the word of caution.

“My mother believed in that stuff,” he said now, shouldering off a sheath of blankets. “Crystals. Tarot readings. It’s all bullshit.”

Denise lay there without a flutter, she lay there like wood. She and Bill almost never spoke about their pasts. Bill’s mother had died before Denise ever met her. Absent parents, that was the one thing they had in common. Other than that, theirs was a connection of opposites.

Bill yawned hugely. “That quarter was just a coin belonging to some guy who wanted to connect to the life of the young. He didn’t have anything else.”

It struck Denise as an insightful thing to say, but still she didn’t fully buy it. Not after the nursery wall. “Even Maryann agrees with me.”

Bill chuckled, low. “Sure, Nise. Use the neighborhood crazy to bolster your case.”

Denise bit her bottom lip. So her days were trifling and her only current friend was worthy of ridicule.

Bill raised himself on one elbow. “Come on,” he said. “You don’t really believe it, do you?”

“Yes,” Denise said. “No. I don’t know what I believe.”

“Ah,” said Bill, a measure of humor in his tone. “That’s dangerous. When you don’t know what you believe, you can believe anything.”

“You’re really deep tonight, you know that?” Denise replied, beginning to giggle herself.

Bill lifted himself fully then, looming over her. Before Denise could even react, they were doing what had been postponed between them for so long, and it was at once novel and familiar.

Still, Denise couldn’t prevent an image from growing in her head as she and Bill moved. Of little work-shrunken creatures in some kind of warehouse, going back and forth, back and forth, between shelf and assembly line, assembly line and shelf.

XII

Denise decided to take Bethie out for a late afternoon stroll. The plumber – a real one this time, who emerged from a van with a logo painted on it, carrying a toolbox and everything – was occupying both their bedroom and the nursery, contributing an unpleasant buzz, punctuated by the occasional loud whirring, to the atmosphere of the house.

Something strange in the weather lured her out as well. It was unseasonably warm, the November wind blustery, but tepid as bath water.

She put the baby in her winter coat anyway, opened the door, and stepped out.

Of late Bethany had been refusing to be strapped into her stroller. She liked to sit forward so she could reach out, touch things as they passed. Denise never indulged this, forcing herself to tolerate her baby’s bubbling cries of fury.

“I’m sorry, Bethie,” Denise would say after the baby finally wound down, not daring to lean over the carriage lest she start a fresh barrage of tears. “But it’s not safe.”

Only today she was a little lost in recollections of last night, not the nursery wall, but the interlude between her and Bill, and she let herself forget to secure the straps.

Giddy with novel locomotion, Bethany managed to pinch a bud off a bush. She twisted in her stroller, holding the crushed bit of plant flesh out to Denise like an offering.

Beth smiled and nodded at her daughter, knowing the little girl would scream if she reached for the bud, that Bethie didn’t really intend an exchange. She wanted to hold onto the new thing for her own.

They entered the park.

Denise had been glad to find a house near a park, especially one whose layout was so perfect. An asphalt loop, perfect for jogging back in Denise’s pre-motherhood days, and for strolling now, circumnavigated an inner field. At one end of the field, a cluster of playground equipment mushroomed. At the other, a bridge hunched over a stream. Denise decided to give the stream a miss today, and struck out for the baby swings, cooing to her equally happy baby.

Benches lined the left side of the loop, which was the reason Denise always took it. Retired ladies with even more time on their hands than Denise had tended to stake out the seats, and sometimes one of them would summon Denise over. The retired men who belonged to them spent their time in the park walking.

Denise would give the stroller a little lift off the path, then nudge it across the grass until she was close enough to allow whoever had beckoned to gaze at Bethie, pat her dimpled fists, murmur compliments in singsong.

Up ahead now, Denise spied her favorite of the ladies; Denise thought her name was Natalie. Twice already, Natalie had found something in her purse for Bethany. A rubber frog on a string the first time. Then a Thumbelina bracelet. She must’ve planned for them to come; who would just happen to possess such novelties? Denise had been suspicious of the woman at first, but now she thought of her as a kind of low key fairy godmother. Not princes but trinkets.

Or maybe she was just a grandmother. Maybe that’s why she had things in her bag.

Denise gave the stroller a hearty push forward. “Who do we see, Bethie? Who’s that?”

Bethany raised her head obligingly.

Natalie was attempting to pull herself off the sloping seat of the bench, planting quavery legs on the ground.

“There’s that luscious little fella,” she said.

“Girl,” Denise replied, a little embarrassed. “Bethany. Remember? You gave her the frog?” She drew the stroller closer so that Natalie could peer inside.

“Oh yes,” the old woman said. “What a love.” She beamed up at Denise. “You must be so proud.”

“Yes, thank you – ” Denise began to say when her gaze was yanked by a figure walking further down the path. She spun around, momentarily letting go of the stroller.

Natalie turned slowly to look where Denise was looking.

Denise grabbed for the disappearing handle and Bethany let out a startled yawp, pitching backward. Denise had forgotten she was unbelted.

The old man from the supermarket was coming toward them along the asphalt trail. His pace was rather clipped; he’d lost that slow, deliberate quality to his movement, liquid almost, as if anything more sudden might shatter his bones.

His eyes sparked when he caught sight of the stroller, and he hastened on.

Denise began to back up. Natalie was scrabbling around in her shiny black purse.

“Wait a moment, dear, I have something for your little one here…”

Denise peered at the old man. He looked – but that couldn’t be, how could it be – not quite so old anymore. The ghostly moon chill of his face had altered, replaced by a rosier hue. The flesh on his arms, exposed beneath rolled up sleeves of sweater, shone with beads of sweat. That was the difference, Denise realized. The old man looked like he’d gotten – warmer.

Denise wondered if he’d started to get warmer the day he handed Bethany the quarter. Or the first time Bethany fell. Did their troubles, the infiltration of small fears into their lives, in some way restore and revitalize the old man?

“Baby,” he said, digging in one slack trouser pocket. “Something nice for the baby.”

Natalie smiled. She placed her hand on the man’s bare wrist, but Denise couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of longtime companionship, or if Natalie was doing her best to forestall something.

Denise thought of that heretofore nonexistent pipe bursting behind Bethie’s crib. If unreal water could ruin a wall, who was to say that the next time it wouldn’t invade the whole room? Send icy water rising up from the floorboards, to the bars of the crib, until it filled her baby’s mouth and nose –

“No!” she said aloud.

Hearing her mother’s distress – or was she somehow sensing the man’s true nature? – Bethany began to wail and squeeze her fists together.

Denise thrust the stroller forward, and started to run. But she halted as soon as she came to a far enough remove, feeling apologetic, silly. It wasn’t as if the old man could give chase.

Not yet at least.

Denise glanced behind her.

He was holding out a quarter.

XIII

Bill headed her off halfway through the brief walk home. Was it really five-thirty already? Today, the day had gone fast.

“It was a pipe,” Bill called out. “Just an old buried pipe!”

Denise came to a stop with the stroller.

“Wow, watch out,” her husband added, extending one hand, resituating their daughter on the seat. “Bethie can really wriggle around in that thing.”

***
Jenny Milchman is a New Jersey writer whose first suspense novel is currently in the nail-biting throes of submission. Her two-part suspense short story "Gone" was featured on Lunch Reads June 1 and 2. Readers are welcome to visit her website at jennymilchman.com

The Very Old Man - Part I (Genre: Suspense/Magical Realism)

by Jenny Milchman

I

The man looked older than God or the devil. Pale hair and missing teeth, pleated skin and what were surely almost sightless eyes. He came up to Denise in the supermarket.

Denise was strolling down the florescent lit aisles with nine month old Bethany, out not so much to run an errand as to kill some portion of the two hours between naptime and the absolute earliest she could serve dinner, and it was actually the baby whom the man approached.

Bethany sat in the cart, legs splayed so as to fit through the slots in front. She’d only just mastered that solid wedge, only just gone from weeble wobble to real, sitting girl such that Denise could trust her in the wagon. Denise gave her baby a look of pride, then reached for a box of dried milk. She added it to everything these days to up her calcium intake; she was still nursing. Bethany emitted her newest sound, a kind of squawk.

“Riyaah?” Denise said, trying to echo the sound. She turned to put the carton in the cart.

“Baby,” the man said, his voice reflecting his age. It sounded punctured, as if the full dose of air had long since been expelled, leaving only the faintest wisp.

Denise manufactured a smile and began to spin her cart around, but the man reached out and latched onto Bethany’s ankle.

Denise lunged for her baby, her mind blown instantly clear and focused.

As she started to tug Bethany free, the sight of her baby’s leg sliding through its keeper’s palm turned her stomach. Denise had the idea – and it was mad, of course it was, one of those post-post-partum glitches maybe – that the man’s flesh only lightly adhered to his body and would leave a layer of itself behind on Bethany. Like snakeskin.

“Let go of my – ” Denise tried. Should she scream? Summon supermarket security? Her husband would tell her she was overreacting.

In a slow exchange of motion, the old man switched his grasp from Bethany’s foot to her chubby fist. Bethany began her birdsong again.

Denise hardly registered the happiness of the sound. Her baby was being held captive by a stranger, a stranger who was surrounded by a cold wind, whose bowed form seemed to give it off as if his body had lost the ability to heat itself.

“Babies love this,” the old man said, and Denise saw he was pressing something into her daughter’s hand.

Snakeskin be damned. Denise swiftly extricated Bethany, backed the cart some distance away, and unclenched her daughter’s fist.

In it sat a dingy quarter, the eagle rimmed with copper-colored dirt. Denise snatched up the coin. What kind of person gave something small and round to an infant?

She tripped back a few more steps. But the man’s mouth was drawn into a smile, tissue paper creasing the skin on his cheeks, and Denise faltered, feeling silly. The old guy was harmless, ignorant perhaps, but well-meaning. Who was Denise to interfere with his desire to bestow a gift on her daughter? There she went again. When life handed Denise lemonade, her husband often said, Denise tried to get the lemons back out of it.

The man was now executing a slow, careful turnabout in the aisle. “Baby,” he said as he shuffled off. “I give it to the baby.”

II

The encounter with the old man seemed to have eaten up a chunk of the waning afternoon; Denise had no idea how so much time had passed. She hurried with the rest of her unnecessary shopping: spying out-of-season peaches and selecting two of them, adding a package of tofu she already knew she’d never turn into healthy servings of soy protein for her and Bill. She could see herself cleaning out the fridge six weeks from now and upending this very box to read its expiration date before dumping it in the trash.

“Riyaah, riyaah,” Bethany peeped, before dissolving into tears.

Denise positioned her last purchase – a plastic tub of some dip that could be thinned and used as pasta sauce for a rushed meal – in the cart before darting round to Bethany.

“Ohh, Bethie, are you hungry, I bet you’re hungry.” She ran for the bins of baked goods and grabbed a bagel. Taking time to tear a few miniscule pieces off, she rolled them into safe beads for the baby. Bethany gummed her booty just long enough to coat her mouth and hands with beige paste before reigniting her wails.

“No good?” Denise cried, steering the cart between shoppers as if they were on some kind of amusement park ride, earning looks that ranged from empathic to rueful to ticked off. “Not hungry?”

In the checkout line a good-looking man in his forties – probably childless, or what were they calling themselves these days, child-free? – indicated with one jabbing thumb that Denise should go ahead.

Bethany’s cries were ratcheting themselves into all out shrieks. Denise began to stuff her items – her useless, frivolous items – into bags herself to hurry up the process. But her jerky fingers allowed one of those baseball-hard peaches to spill out and roll beneath someone else’s cart, at which point the supermarket clerk said, “Let me bag, ma’am,” and the forty-something man got down on his hands and knees and retrieved Denise’s peach.

III

That night when Denise was stripping off her clothes, something dropped out of the pocket of her sweatpants and thunked to the carpeted floor. Crouching, Denise picked up a coin she at first couldn’t place. She never kept loose change on her; rather stowing it in the zippered pouch of the leather wallet that was the last vestige of her former workaday life. Denise had been an administrative assistant in a psychological services practice until she quit to become a mother, and boxed up her pantyhose and good purse and suits that could be mixed and matched.

Then she remembered. The quarter from the old, old man.

Denise rose with the coin calipered between her thumb and index finger. Lemonade, she was thinking to herself. It was meant as a gift, it’s lemonade.

“What are you doing?” Bill asked from the edge of their bed. He kicked one shoe off with his heel.

Denise knew how Bill was going to react, but she spoke anyway. “Something strange happened today.”

“Strange?” repeated Bill.

Denise told him about the supermarket trip, careful not to sound overwrought, leaving out her sense that the brief encounter had somehow eaten up too much of the snail-slow afternoon.

Bill rose in his bare feet. He took the quarter from Denise, then strode out of the bedroom and down the hall to the nursery. Hurrying to catch up, Denise cracked her shin on the edge of Bethany’s toy chest, and stifled a singing swear. She watched Bill navigate by nightlight to the Mother Hubbard bank perched atop the radiator cover.

The coin met its companions with a dull clink and Bethany stirred in her crib and let out a sigh. Denise froze, motionless, while Bill walked heedlessly over the creaky boards to exit the room. Despite the risk of waking the baby, Denise ducked down, reaching out to rap a painted pull toy three times in quick succession. Knocking wood. There was something about that quarter, now hidden, its singular identity concealed, which caused her to do it.

Was it cool tonight in the nursery, usually the hot point of the house? Deciding it was not, Denise crept out.

Bill was balling up his clothes. Before climbing into bed, he turned and met Denise’s gaze with his own steady stare. “Okay?”

It was as if he’d just done something for her own good and was checking whether Denise would be able to accept it as such. She drew on pajamas – their room was the cold one – and joined her husband under the covers. The lilting sound the quarter had made as it dropped home continued to play in her ear.

“Don’t want to check on the baby one last time?” Bill asked.

Denise heard humor in his tone, but ignored it. She sat up in bed. “Maybe I should.”

“She’s fine,” Bill replied, letting out a heroic yawn. “You’ll make her into a momma’s girl.”

“I think that only applies to boys,” Denise said, as she started to lie back.

Bill kissed her before turning on his side. “I have a pretty big day tomorrow.”

“Tell me,” Denise said to his back. “Remind me what it’s like out there.”

But she got no reply and decided that her husband must have already fallen asleep.

IV

Whether lemons or lemonade, the encounter with the old man was just too unusual to keep to herself, or even between her and Bill. In her mind, Denise likened the incident to witnessing a grisly car wreck on the highway. You wanted to describe what you’d seen. Plus, staying home day after day, Denise’s life had become somewhat routine. She didn’t often have tidbits to share.

Maryann came over every morning around ten after Bethany had gone down for her nap. Maryann called herself mommy to two golden retrievers; she didn’t like children. After all, she’d say, kids learned to walk and talk and feed themselves. Dogs needed you forever. They never did any of that. It was kind of the woman’s tag line; she’d say it to anybody.

Well, Denise often wanted to interject. They do walk.

She served her friend the last of Bill’s morning coffee, pouring it into a mug with a decal of a dog on it, which Maryann touched appreciatively.

Then Denise launched into the story of what had happened at the grocery store.

“Ooh,” Maryann said when she’d finished. “So the quarter’s like a good luck charm? What’d you do with it?”

Denise told her.

“You put the quarter in Bethany’s room?” Maryann asked.

“Yeah,” Denise said. “Or Bill did. In her bank. Why?”

Maryann shrugged. “I’m pretty careful with what goes into Meesha and Pogey’s rooms. No toys unless I’ve bought them myself. Who knows what kind of germs they might get?”

Your dogs lick their own anuses and drink from the toilet, Denise thought. But she just smiled and put on some fresh coffee. It was hard finding friends who agreed to stay away if they had the slightest hint of a cold, or who put up with dates that meandered in time based on when the baby finally woke up.

“But hey, you know me,” Maryann went on. “I love my girls with my life. Infertility my ass. Think any of those doctors has a heart as fertile as mine?”

V

The next evening Bethany fell down the stairs.

Denise was in the kitchen, fixing Bill a drink so he could unwind after his tough day. She’d called out instructions for him to watch the baby while she poured and iced and stirred.

The thuds came fast and furious, and there were a lot of them. An ax blade instantly cleaved Denise’s stomach in two. Those sounds could mean only one thing and the fact that they weren’t followed by the expected yowls of a tumble –

She raced for the stairs, inadvertently knocking over the green jug of gin, which didn’t fall to the floor and shatter, but instead rolled to the edge of the counter where it emptied its contents in one clear gush.

Bill was standing in the living room, cell phone still pressed to his ear. Denise registered the sight with a stab of anger as she dashed past.

Bethany lay in a curl like a shrimp on the landing.

How long had she been lying there like that, so still and silent? How long since the first of those gut jarring thuds?

Denise dropped to her knees, arms extended but frozen. Suddenly the hands that patted and stroked and felt for fever were as good as weapons. Should she touch her own baby? Or not move her at all?

“Call somebody!” she screamed at Bill in an animal snarl. Time drew out as long as taffy, stilled by a terrible awareness. I don’t love this man more than anyone else anymore. She wondered, if something happened to Bethany, would she and Bill survive? And if so, would it be together, or apart?

That was when Bethany started to cry, cry and roll over, nimble as a chubby gymnast.

Denise could only watch and sob as Bethie pulled herself up and crawled toward Denise’s lap, angry tears hiccupping in her baby throat.

Bill had dropped down beside her. “She’s fine, she’s fine.”

Denise turned to him, her anger swept away by a river of relief.

Bill passed a palm across his daughter’s round form. She began to laugh and bat at her father’s big hands. “Riyaah,” she squawked.

Bill laughed. “Gets her voice from her old man.”

Denise couldn’t respond.

Bill spoke again. “Sorry. I had a work situation.”

Denise made a conscious effort to suppress the endless moment on the landing. If Bethany had continued to lie there, she would have blamed Bill, she knew she would’ve. Bitter words – you and your hands off ways, I always knew you’d let my baby get hurt – had coursed through her mind.

“She’s not a beetle anymore, Bill,” she said instead. They used to call Bethany that when she was newborn. “Pinned on her back. Now she moves. She crawls.”

“I can see that,” Bill said dryly.

Denise stared up at him with a feeling of stark helplessness. “Something bad can happen any time.”

Bill turned to head out of the room. “Not if we knock wood about it, right?” he said, sarcasm a sludge in his voice. “Why don’t you just throw a little salt or something?”

Denise had been trying to hold him back; now she let her hands fall to her sides.

Bill stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I just think you’d be happier if you could relax a little bit. Enjoy Bethany more.”

“I couldn’t enjoy her more!” Denise retorted. “I love every minute with her!”

Something was repressed in Bill’s voice when he answered. “Then stop with the superstitious mumbo jumbo.”

Bethany let out a powerful riyaah at that moment and launched herself toward her mother. Denise swooped her daughter up in her arms, receiving a face swat in return. She would have to clip the baby’s nails, a chore she hated. How hard it was to get those pincers to splice the papery nail without squeezing the thin skin beneath!

Bill went off to deal with the lake of gin in the kitchen.

VI

Bethany stirred slightly, waking up, when Denise laid her down in her crib. “Nuh uh, Bethie,” she said softly. “Sleepy time now.” She navigated round the toy chest, sense memory reminding her of that thwack on her shin, then stopped to squint at a corner flap of wallpaper high up near Bethany’s ceiling. When had that started to peel?

Knowing it was stupid, that if the baby hadn’t been edging back to consciousness a moment ago, now she surely would be, Denise edged back toward the Mother Hubbard bank. She picked up the piece of pottery, trying to muffle its clang. Bethany rolled over and let out her own jingling cry.

Denise began to croon an automatic lullaby while she stood there.

The bank had gotten awfully heavy in nine months. How many coins were in it? And how many of them were quarters? She’d probably be doing away with a good fifteen or twenty dollars worth. And for what reason? Because Maryann had shamed her into it? Or had the accusation Bill hurled been true – was she just beseeching false gods?

Denise set the bank on the nearest surface at hand, and went over to rub Bethany’s back. But the baby had quieted down all on her own, although she wasn’t asleep. Her eyes didn’t react to her mother’s appearance, either. A shiver rippled through Denise, and she told herself that she must be as crazy as Bill said. Because the baby’s gaze looked for all the world as if it rested far across the room, by the top of the dresser, on her Mother Hubbard bank.

To be continued....stop back tomorrow for Part II

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Jenny Milchman is a New Jersey writer whose first suspense novel is currently in the nail-biting throes of submission. Her two-part suspense short story "Gone" was featured on Lunch Reads June 1 and 2. Readers are welcome to visit her website at jennymilchman.com