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Review 32 For Pushcart
Review 32 For Pushcart
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EVENING STREET REVIEW
PUBLISHED BY EVENING STREET PRESS
CONTENTS
POETRY
MIRANA COMSTOCK The Frailty of Beauty 23
ELIZABETH WEIR Migrant 30
On the Day the Pandemic
was Declared 31
JOHN LAMBREMONT, SR In the Breeze 35
THOMAS R MOORE Passing Through St. Petersburg 36
GERALD YELLE How I Identify 45
KEVIN D NORWOOD Matins 46
SUSAN JOHNSON City Trees 49
Boxes 50
Sacajawea Overheard Talking
To Herself 50
KIMBERLY LINDEMANN Grandma 52
Child of Bones 53
DORIS FERLEGER I Hid It so You’ll Never Find It 54
ED WADE “Dancin’ with my Baby” 62
PENELOPE BARNES THOMPSON Getting It Right 74
Will You 74
What May Not Be Discarded 75
VICKI MANDELL-KING Saving Grace 81
Rainbow Body 82
LUCIA HAASE Wildflower Field 83
WILLIAM SWARTS Semper Fidelis 96
MITCHELL UNTCH Essential 105
SETH ROSENBLOOM Shooting Squad, 1941 Lithuania 113
Unto Our Renewal 114
ELLEN GOLDSMITH Edging 118
Echocardiogram 118
Not Knowing 119
JBMULLIGAN some faith in man 120
CAROL GRASER The Adirondack Postcard 121
MARY ANN NOE Pressed Linen 125
Heat 125
The Day the Sky Froze 126
MARK SIMPSON Slide Hill 139
The O'Neill Dancers Are Dancing Today,
March 17 140
Toward a Practical Life 141
GEORGE J SEARLES Much Obliged, U.S. Gov’t Printing Office!
You Guys are the Best! 144
Workplace from Hell 145
ANNA CITRINO Sealed Up 158
Once, in the Basement 159
NONFICTION
RUTH KAVANAGH Diagnosis Day & Tackling Cancer
“Head On”—Pun Intended 31
MARIE G COLEMAN What Kind Am I? 51
JOHNNY L WOOTEN & RICHARD VASQUEZ What to do
with the Lost Boy of the Barrio 76
JAN SHOEMAKER The Difference 122
GALINA CHERNAYA The Court of the People 160
FICTION
CAT WYATT Aloha Girl 24
JAMES BRENNAN Can’t Say No to You 37
COREY LYNN FAYMAN Rambler Wagon 47
BOBBY COHEN Five Things 55
KATHLEEN ZAMBONI MCCORMICK Paying for College
Before #metoo 64
ESTA FISCHER Coffee 83
RUSSELL THAYER Combustion 97
BETH ESCOTT NEWCOMER Can These Bones Live? 109
KIM FARLEIGH On Being Mad 115
KATHIE GIORGIO Recipe 126
KAREN FAYETH The Violin, the Lion, and the Truth 141
ELEANOR LERMAN Murmansk 146
CONTRIBUTORS 169
6 / Evening Street Review 32
OCCASIONAL NOTES
PETER ARONSON
MY RECKONING
Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed pushed
me to do something. For a week or so, my family and I joined nightly
neighborhood protests near where we live, on Broadway in Morningside
Heights, in New York City. I wrote letters to congressional leaders urging
action, but my efforts soon faded. I was at a loss about what to do next,
but I felt an obligation to do something. I had lived a privileged life as a
white, upper-middle class person, well-educated, good jobs, loving family,
and financial security. I had been a longtime legal affairs journalist, then
a practicing attorney in New York City, and now I was writing again. I
decided I would write something about race, but I wasn’t sure what.
I began by reading. Over several months, I read books, fiction and
nonfiction, by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Jesmyn Ward, Toni
Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Isabel Wilkerson, Edward E. Baptist, Sven
Beckert, Ibram X. Kendi, Taylor Branch, Eric Foner, and Ida B. Wells,
among others, focusing on the Black people’s struggle and Black history
since 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. I
was looking for ideas and a way to approach and delve into my thoughts.
Among the books I read were several slave narratives, which recounted
the personal stories of enslaved Black people.
“I don’t like to talk a’bout dem times ’cause my mother did suffer
….” Minnie Fulkes, 77, told an interviewer in 1937 of her days in slavery
as a young girl in Virginia. “... [A]n overseer used to tie mother up in de
barn with a rope aroun’ her arms up over her head, while she stood on a
block. Soon as dey got her tied, dis block was moved an’ her feet dangled,
yo’ know (she couldn’t) touch de flo’.
“Dis ol’ man, now, would start beatin’ her nekkid ’til the blood
run down her back to her heels ...
“I asked my mother what she done fer ’en to beat … her so. She
said nothin’, other than she refused to be wife to dis man.”
I kept reading, knowing full well that while my ancestors and I
lived and benefitted from the well-advertised home of the “free and the
brave,” from the “land of opportunity,” this land was, in fact, the exact
opposite for so many millions of people who were not white.
This made me think about my own family. How my ancestors
lived in a parallel universe, like millions of other white, immigrant
families, climbing steadily upward, through work success, home
ownership, educational opportunity, increasing wealth, through the
decades of the 20th century, in contrast to the mightier struggle for many
Black families, a continuous and chronic struggle for equal rights and
equal opportunity, a chronic struggle for upward mobility and a better
8 / Evening Street Review 32
life—two parallel, unequal, universes. This was not news, but I was
forcing myself to think longer and harder about it.
Kendi, in his important book “How to be an Antiracist,”
emphasized that we all need to work harder—much harder—to be an
antiracist. Just being a well-meaning liberal Democrat and voting for the
right people wasn’t nearly good enough.
“Like fighting an addiction, being antiracist requires persistent
self-awareness, constant self-criticism and regular self-examination,”
Kendi wrote.
So I decided to write a self-reflection, a self-examination, a
reckoning about what I had missed all these years, to make me more aware
of the racism that was and still is around me. (I also decided to write a
short story, a fictional account, but that’s a separate writing.) As I read, I
began making a list—a chronological list that got longer and longer over
the months, a list of events involving me or not, events that occurred before
or after I was born, events that occurred in my community or elsewhere,
that all shed a personal light on racism in America for me. I was looking
for coincidences in time, intersections with my life, or just occurrences
that now, in retrospect, compel me to reflect and wonder.
The most shocking revelation was learning that vestiges of slavery
and historical racism existed in Edgemont, in the greater Scarsdale area
and in Westchester County, while I was growing up. And I was oblivious
to it all. The truth was, there were historic signs of slavery and/or
contemporary signs of racism almost everywhere I was in my life. All I
needed to do was look—and think about it.
Unfortunately, my obliviousness began and became rooted when
I was a young child. Until starting to write this essay, I had never really
thought about the fact that I, like millions of other baby boomers, was born
smack in the middle of the civil rights movement. I was born in 1956 and
my childhood, through King’s assassination in 1968, coincided with many
of the tumultuous and momentous events of the civil rights era. I always
knew the chronology, but I had never focused on it. I don’t recall ever
having one conversation with family, friends, or teachers about race, racial
injustice, or civil rights, or any of the historic or tragic events that took
place hundreds of miles to the south, such as school integration, lunch
counter protests, civil rights marches, or the violence in Mississippi,
Alabama, and elsewhere.
I was young and I lived far away from the epicenter, but I don’t
think that’s an excuse. I was oblivious. My father was our family’s leader,
a dedicated and hardworking businessman, a successful breadwinner. We
2021, Winter / 9
had a loving, supportive relationship. But neither he, nor my mom, ever
mentioned what was going on down South or in Washington. I don’t think
they knew any better.
My father was a businessman selling men’s neckties to stores
around the country. I knew that he travelled down South during the civil
rights era, but I had never thought about what he might have observed in
the 1950s or 1960s. Even in my teens or later, I never asked, and he never
spoke about it.
But now I know that my father sold ties to at least one store with
a racist past, with a notable role in civil rights history.
Thalhimers Department Store in Richmond, Virginia, one of the
more prominent stores in the South at the time, was a customer of my
father’s, according to Harvey Mallis, who worked for my dad starting in
the 1970s and was familiar with my dad’s work history and with
Thalhimers. Up until 1960, following the Jim Crow laws of the South,
Thalhimers did not allow Black people to eat in its famous Richmond
Room restaurant, instead forcing Blacks to eat in the basement at a
separate lunch counter. A sit-in protest by 34 students from Virginia Union
University in February 1960 would change that.
Now I wonder if my father knew about the store’s racist history. I
wonder if he ate in the segregated Richmond Room restaurant. During his
sales trips to the South during the Jim Crow era, he would have walked
past those infamous signs mandating separate facilities for whites and
Blacks, separate restaurants, separate bathrooms, separate hotels, separate
water fountains. He would have used the separate whites only facilities at
some places, at some times. Yet my father never mentioned Thalhimers,
never mentioned the Jim Crow South, not one word at home. My father
died in 2010. I don’t know what he knew or thought, but now I do wonder.
“He would have resented it,” said Mallis, who worked for my dad
for many years, referring to the Jim Crow South. He based this on the fact
that my father was a fair man who treated people of all races equally, he
said.
I observed the same thing in my father’s tie factory in New York
City, where my father employed a racial mix—Black people, Hispanic
people, and recent white immigrants. As a young boy in the 1960s, I
worked in his factory on Saturdays sweeping the floor. I recall his warm
relationship with several Black employees, Melvin, Queenie, and Connie,
their smiles, their sincere warmness towards my dad, and their friendly
banter with me.
But the fact that my father never talked about his travels to the
10 / Evening Street Review 32
wheel and always travel with a battery-operated tape recorder under the
front seat.” Graham said his parents gave him a long list of do’s and don’ts,
to make sure he stayed out of harm’s way.
My parents never had to give me such a list. Both Graham and
Clarke reminded me that there was racism around me as a child and I didn’t
even realize it.
Clarke said he saw racism at Edgemont High, some subtle and not
so subtle. He said there was evidence of racism and bias embedded in the
school curriculum and in tests given to students, explaining that he
believed they catered to white students.
I began to think more about Edgemont, the town I grew up in. I
thought about the fact that it was a wealthy town in one of the wealthiest
counties in the country—then and now. And I thought about my high
school class of 152 kids, 145-plus were white, a few were Asian and only
one was Black, a girl I didn’t know.
Now, my wife, Emily, and I talk about diversity issues all the time
with our two teenage daughters. We talk about the inequities, the crimes
perpetrated by white police officers on Black people, the importance of
the Black Lives Matter movement. But in 1970s Edgemont, race was not
on my radar screen, nor was it on the radar screen of anyone I spent time
with. We didn’t talk about those issues. We lived in a privileged white
world, with little exposure to Black people, except for the few Black
students at Edgemont High, the Black housekeepers some of us had in our
homes, or the Black opponents we faced on the basketball court.
Douglas Sarnoff, one of my longtime friends from Edgemont,
said, “Since there were basically no Blacks in the Edgemont community,
it was as if all was fine, and we just went about our lives seeing nothing,
doing nothing, and caring about what mattered to us—and the racial
problems certainly didn’t matter to us.” He wrote those words with
sympathy and regret, a feeling I shared.
I thought more about my hometown and I went looking. I didn’t
know until recently that homeowners living in what is now Edgemont were
involved in a well-publicized court case in 1937 that involved a commonplace
suburban racial issue: Efforts by white homeowners to keep Blacks out. I
was unaware that 25 years before my family moved to Edgemont, a mile
or so across town from where I would grow up, on Fort Hill Road, in what
was then called Edgemont Hills, a white woman had sued a Black couple.
The white woman asked a New York state judge to force the Black couple
to move because the covenant on their property stated: “No part of said
parcels shall ever be leased, sold, rented, conveyed or given to Negroes or
2021, Winter / 13
any persons of the Negro race or blood, except that colored servants may
be maintained on the premises,” according to the court’s decision in
Ridgway v. Cockburn.
It didn’t matter that the Cockburns had bought their property
before their white nemesis moved in, and it didn’t matter that the
Cockburns had built their own dream house on the property they had
bought. Instead of throwing out the case, instead of ruling that the
restrictive covenant violated the Cockburns’ constitutional rights, Justice
Lee Parsons Davis ruled that the Cockburns were, in fact, Black, that they
had violated the restrictive covenant, and had to move. It turns out the
verdict was never enforced, but still … in my hometown.
There’s more. I didn’t know that as late as 1950, these restrictive
covenants were still used in the Scarsdale area, even though the U.S.
Supreme Court had ruled such covenants unconstitutional in 1948. A letter
to the editor in the Scarsdale Inquirer on March 3, 1950, quoted a covenant
that was even more racially restrictive than the one in the Cockburn case,
prohibiting all “Non-Caucasians” from owning or renting property.
Apparently, this was, or at least had been, common in much of Westchester
at least in the first half of the 20th century. A 1947 study published in The
Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics found that in the 1930s and
1940s, developers of large housing tracts in Queens, Nassau, and southern
Westchester county used racially restrictive covenants 83 percent of the
time to keep Black homebuyers out of the community. Some of these
covenants remained on the books into this century.
The New York Times reported that in 2005 a lawyer doing a title
search on a house in Chappaqua, a wealthy Westchester suburb home to
Hillary and Bill Clinton, found a restrictive covenant on the property. “No
persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any
buildings or lot,” the covenant said. It had been redacted, but it was still
visible on the document. In 2005.
I wanted to find out what else had happened in or near my
community. I broadened my research and realized that the city of Yonkers,
the much larger and more diverse community just to the south of
Edgemont, the border less than a mile from my house, had a controversial
racial history dating back decades. In the 1980s it became embroiled in a
decades-long federal lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice
and the NAACP. Plaintiffs claimed in a class-action case that the city had
for decades discriminated against its Black and Hispanic population by
illegally segregating their housing and schools, by concentrating public
housing in a minority section of town. The suit was so contentious that at
14 / Evening Street Review 32
one time Yonkers was facing fines of $1 million a day. HBO even made a
mini-series about the case. In 2007, Yonkers settled the case by agreeing
to build and maintain 800 units of public housing in a mostly white,
middle-class section of Yonkers.
Then I read about the suit against Westchester County, a lawsuit
filed in 2006 in which a federal judge found that the county had committed
fraud by failing to comply with federal fair-housing laws. The suit claimed
Westchester County, after cutting through the legal jargon, had, in essence,
used exclusionary zoning to maintain segregated housing in the county. In
2009, the case was settled through a consent decree, with the county
agreeing to pay $62.5 million, which included funds to build 750
affordable housing units in overwhelmingly white communities in
Westchester. But the case, with the federal government as one of the
plaintiffs, remained contentious for years, with both sides disagreeing
about whether the county was complying with the consent decree by
making serious efforts to create integrated housing. In 2017, as the country
transitioned from the Obama to the Trump administration, the latter
concluded that the county had complied. The legal organization that
originally started the case, the Anti-Discrimination Center, located in New
York City, disagreed. “The unvarnished truth is that the various institutional
players have been unwilling to rock the boat; unwilling, that is, to insist that
the structural change to ultra-white existing residential neighborhoods [in
Westchester County] actually be carried out as contemplated by the decree,”
the organization stated on its website.
My hometown of Edgemont is still virtually void of Black people.
According to the recent census, 1 percent of Edgemont’s population is
Black. In Scarsdale, it’s 1.3 percent.
I didn’t understand as a child what segregation meant; that
segregation and discrimination in housing and education go hand in hand.
I didn’t understand, didn’t think about, what having only one Black
classmate out of more than 150 kids meant. I didn’t understand as a child,
or as a teenager, that segregation, discrimination, and poverty often go
hand in hand—where there’s one, the others often follow. And I didn’t
understand, didn’t think about, that sometimes some things don’t change:
In 1964, according to an article in The New York Times, the poorest
communities in Westchester County were communities with some of the
highest non-white populations in the county. They included Mt. Vernon,
Peekskill, Yonkers, and Port Chester. They remain today among the
poorest communities in the county, according to census and economic
data, and still have among the highest non-white populations in the county.
2021, Winter / 15
must be out of their minds. The evidence, to me, was overwhelming that
Simpson had committed the murders. I never once thought why my Black
colleagues were happy, why they could have thought a white detective
might have planted evidence. I never looked at the case from their
perspective, never even took a glance at how and why they thought what
they did. And I never asked, either.
But I should have known better. After all, I covered, for Court TV,
the Rodney King-police beating trial in Simi Valley in 1992. I was at the
courthouse when the shocking verdict was returned, when the four Los
Angeles police officers accused of assaulting King, a black man, with their
batons as he lay on the ground were acquitted of assault.
Then came 2000. As an editor and reporter at The National Law
Journal, I covered Bush v. Gore in Florida. I spent three weeks writing
stories about the various court cases that would eventually help decide the
election, and then I wrote a long story about a Bush lawyer who played a
prominent role in the case, until he got pushed aside at the end by more
prominent lawyers.
But again, even more so than with my crack story, in retrospect, I
believe I missed the story: How thousands of Black voters in Florida were
illegally disenfranchised during the 2000 election.
The New York Times and other publications reported that the
disenfranchisement of black voters almost certainly cost Gore the election,
since he lost Florida by a mere 537 votes.
“We did think it was outcome determinative,” said Edward Hailes,
acting general counsel for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which
investigated the disenfranchisement claim, as quoted in The Nation.
That was the story, that racist, possibly illegal disenfranchisement
cost Gore the election. But I missed it.
Perhaps the most disturbing coincidence I came upon during this
time of self-reflection and list making occurred a few years earlier. The
victim was the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author Isabel
Wilkerson.
In 1993, as a producer for Court TV, I flew into Detroit’s airport
and rented a car on my way to cover a trial. All went smoothly for me. I
got to my assignment with no hassle. Approximately around the same
time, not so for Wilkerson. The reason is because she is Black and I am
white. When Wilkerson arrived in Detroit to cover a story for The New
York Times, DEA agents stopped and questioned her. Where was she from,
why was she there? they asked. She explained that she was a reporter for
The Times, in Detroit to cover a story.
18 / Evening Street Review 32
racism and slavery than I, and perhaps the average New Yorker, would
ever think or want to imagine.
And that on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, my
clearest childhood memory is not of the American tragedy, but of my
father going to a neighbor’s house to get a gun, a gun to protect his family
in case rioting by angry Black people spread north.
And then there’s always the present, what’s around me now,
because my list continues, really, until I die. I wrote on my list: homeless
people and panhandlers in my neighborhood (Morningside Heights, near
Columbia University). The pandemic was in full swing, businesses were
closing, others partially shuttered, and the streets were getting dirtier and
filled with more and more desperate people. I always felt bad for people
living or begging on the street, an everyday scene in New York City even
in normal times. But now it was different. More people were desperate and
my thinking was changing. After George Floyd was murdered and the
Black Lives Matter protests, I began to pay more attention to the race of
these desperate people. A vast majority were Black. And I didn’t pass a
soul on the street without feeling bad and wondering: What had they been
through in their life? And what had their ancestors been through?
So this is my self-reflection about race, my personal reckoning. I
need to do better, I know that. I think we all do.
MIRANA COMSTOCK
THE FRAILTY OF BEAUTY
fine-boned
slim-limbed
willowy
or is a sturdier girl
somewhere in there
ready to shoulder these burdens
my smaller and smaller arms
can’t handle
Comstock
CAT WYATT
ALOHA GIRL
Academy, David came from a military family and had the manners to
prove it. He was a prankster, and Grace his special target, when he could
get away with fooling her.
Grace bumped her shoulder into Kenny’s ribs, the top of her head
fitting under his armpit. “Wow, that pig smells enticing.”
“Where’s Ted?” Gene asked.
Staring into the smoke rising from the pig pit, Grace pondered
which lie to tell about her husband’s whereabouts. Ten months they’d been
married. A whirlwind courtship—they’d met at the luau last year, Ted the
new guy in town. Six weeks later, they’d tied the knot.
Kenny jabbed her in the ribs, bruised from what Ted liked to call
“playing rough.” Later, he’d apologized. He always did.
“Earth to Grace,” Kenny said.
“Ted’s working,” she said. “Might swing by later,” she added,
though she knew he wouldn’t. “Where’s the girl?”
“Over there.” Gene nodded at the bar, where a woman stood alone,
a big tiki tankard in hand.
“Yours?” Grace asked.
“David’s,” said Gene.
As if viewing her for the first time, David squinted at the woman.
“Gotta admit, she’s a sturdy one.”
“A real porker,” said Gene.
“Pipe down, you oafs. She’ll hear you,” said Kenny.
The tradition had started innocently enough, when they were all
back in high school, the guys lamenting the fact that none of them had
dates for the luau. One of them—probably David—issued the challenge.
They’d drive to the city, fan out on Broadway, and see who could convince
the hottest girl to come eat pig with them. Somehow, perhaps due to their
age and general lack of prowess, the competition had morphed into who’d
bring the ugliest girl. Over the years, they’d streamlined the process,
drawing straws for which of them would make the trek down Broadway
to find a Pig Girl. It was all in good fun. The girl got a free meal and some
beer, and if they played their cards right, she was none the wiser.
David reached to touch Grace’s cheek, where she’d applied
coverup over a bruise. “You been un-Grace-ful again?”
She drew back, aware of Kenny’s gaze. “You know me. Clumsy.”
Gene slapped David on the back. “Better check on that pig.”
The pair drifted off toward the pit, leaving Grace alone with
Kenny. As soon as they were out of earshot, he asked, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.”
26 / Evening Street Review 32
ELIZABETH WEIR
MIGRANT
A Bronze Sculpture by Bruno Catalano
RUTH KAVANAGH
DIAGNOSIS DAY & TACKLING CANCER “HEAD ON”—
PUN INTENDED
When I was first told I had brain cancer, I felt…well, numb. It was
like my heart actually stopped beating. I am an incredibly sensitive person.
I’m actually considered to have a “hyper-sensitive personality.” Hence, I
can cry at the drop of a hat. There is not one single Disney movie where I
haven’t at least shed a tear or two.
Hearing that word “cancer” I cried, but unlike ever before. The
tears came so slowly. It felt like time had paused and then set to “slow
motion.” I couldn’t breathe fully. I couldn’t look at my husband, who sat
there next to me. Frankly, I couldn’t feel anything.
Writers are supposed to be able to put their thoughts into words,
right? Well, this experience—there really are no words in the English
language to truly explain the gut-wrenching feeling of learning your body
has, in fact, turned against itself and that cancer has invaded your brain.
I only learned my tumor was actually malignant after I had already
undergone brain surgery. To be blunt, how else can you get a pathology
report unless you crack open the skull and remove the tumor and tissue for
testing? Thus, when I was first told that I had cancer, I was still recovering
32 / Evening Street Review 32
from my surgery. Ya know how people like to use the phrase, “It’s not
brain surgery!”? Well, for me, it was, and it was not a pleasant experience!
It was hard enough dealing with the massive seizure that alerted
us to the fact there was a tumor in my brain, adjusting to all the medications
I was forced to now take, and having survived the surgery. Yet now I was
faced with the fact that the tumor was indeed malignant. I had cancer.
I was diagnosed with a Grade III anaplastic ependymoma. Try
saying that ten times fast! All brain cancer is rare. However, mine was
extremely rare, aggressive, and had a high probability of recurring. It was
all so utterly surreal.
***
Thankfully, I had one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. We
immediately bonded through our dry wit. Since he was the chief of
neurosurgery at my hospital, he paired me with an oncologist and
epileptologist (seizure doctor) he knew would properly care for me, and as
always, he was right on-point. Now I had an entire team of top doctors!
Despite the initial numbness and shock, quickly following the
official diagnosis, I felt hopeful. As an attorney, I suppose I tackled brain
cancer like a legal issue at work. I had the facts. Now we needed to take
those facts and find a resolution to the problem. So, looking back, I reacted
in a very clinical way.
I was also determined to remain positive, recover from surgery,
and just get through treatment. I wanted to get strong again and return to
an active, healthy life. I was convinced that I would be able to just look
back on those months after surgery and treatment, and see them as just a
tough bump in the long road of life. I was very wrong, but that’s a story
for another day.
Surprisingly, I never became angry or questioned, “Why me?” Of
course I questioned what had caused this, and I was frustrated to hear that
I would possibly never know how or why this disease had so harshly
attacked my brain, most definitely the strongest part of my body, ironically
enough.
I was an attorney. I was a perfectionist. I always needed an answer
to everything!
Nevertheless, I decided very early on that I would not let
negativity control my life. Frankly, negativity had subsumed so much of
my time and energy in the past. They were mostly petty, ridiculous things
too. While I had always lived a happy, fulfilled life, I struggled with
finding the positive in things. I tended to constantly focus on the negative.
However, after hearing the word “cancer,” I vowed that would no longer
2021, Winter / 33
be the case.
***
After I had recovered from surgery, the next step was to undergo
six consecutive weeks of radiation treatment. I could probably write an
entire novel on radiation treatment alone.
In short, the entire summer of 2014 was dedicated to my radiation
schedule. Monday through Friday I took the bus and subway alone to my
hospital for treatment. People could not believe I had the strength, energy,
and resolve to go every day by myself, but what choice did I have?
Radiation treatment, especially for brain cancer, is like some sick
medieval torture. You must first get a mold made of your face so they can
create your rigid, plastic, mesh mask. I know survivors who kept theirs.
They are stronger-willed than I. I couldn’t even look at that thing! The
techs place you on the table, put the mask on your face, and just when you
think, “Okay, this is relatively comfortable,” they strap the mask down
onto the table, ensuring you cannot move even an inch. It is like something
out of a science-fiction horror movie.
Thankfully, the treatment itself is very short. Nonetheless, you
still have radiation being beamed into your brain while you lie there like
The Man in the Iron Mask.
***
I am a person who needs structure. So I didn’t think about the
treatment itself or that mask. I simply viewed it like a job. It was my
routine and I just needed to get through it to move on with life.
Now, this was back in 2014. I pray they’ve changed the
terminology by now, but after those six weeks of treatment, everyone at
the hospital referred to the next month as my “vacation period.” If that was
“vacation,” I’d have been writing the owner of the hotel/resort nasty
letters, posting on every social media channel available, and especially
TripAdvisor, how utterly miserable this “vacation” was and be demanding
a full refund!
Once treatment ended, I had absolutely nothing to do. I was just
left alone with my own thoughts and that is never good. Things became
very dark. My anxiety became overwhelming. Everyone says, “Life isn’t
easy.” Yet no one ever told me just how easy dying could be. I sat at home
in the weeks after treatment so frightened that the tumor would come back
(which, of course, did happen a year later). I feared that the next time, the
tumor would be inoperable and that it would slowly eat away at my mind
and body. I feared I would have to undergo multiple surgeries (which, of
course, also did happen). Yet what plagued my mind the most was having
34 / Evening Street Review 32
JOHN LAMBREMONT, SR
IN THE BREEZE
THOMAS R MOORE
PASSING THROUGH ST. PETERSBURG
(cont)
On the Neva‘s bank, Matt, Jim, and I bask shirtless
in the April sun with the Russian men. Ice
chunks slide past. Are we being watched?
A comely girl in coveralls uses a round brush
to paint the railing on the bridge.
JAMES BRENNAN
CAN’T SAY NO TO YOU
The man I lived with and the man who gave me life had been at it
again. And I had to do something. Donny, pacing the kitchen with a beer,
talking over the radio, was giving me a blow-by-blow description. The call
to my dad to get more money out of him had not gone well. He stopped,
leaning against the counter where the radio was blaring the news. None of
it was good. He shook his finger at me, that way he did either to tell me
that something was all my fault or that he was about to give me what he
considered a profound thought.
“Do you know what I should’ve said to him?”
Most evenings he would feed me his latest plan to make it big for
38 / Evening Street Review 32
us while I gave our boys their dinner. When all was said and done, Donny
got a lot more said than he got done. I nodded while tapping Connor’s
shoulder so he’d sit back down. Macaroni with butter was the only thing
he’d eat, and he was throwing pieces of his dinner at his baby brother. I
picked a piece of macaroni off Jeremy’s tray and flicked it back at Connor.
It stuck to his head, making them both laugh.
“Well? Do you?” Donny was fiddling with the radio dial. All we
could get was loud or static, but I liked having it on when I fed the kids. I
needed to hear adult conversation. He kept fiddling away, like that was
going to change anything. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity?
“Do you know what I think the problem is?” Donny stood there,
his cue-stick calves—they looked funny because the rest of him was so
big—poking out of the cargo shorts he wore year-round, ready to play
amateur psychologist. “I said, do you know what I think the problem is.”
“The volume control?”
“I’m talking about your father. He thinks I’m beneath him.”
“I don’t think so.” My dad thought a lot less of Donny than that,
but there was no sense in letting that cat out.
I turned Jeremy’s spoon over and tapped it on his plate to dump
the carrots he wasn’t eating. I loved my little boys, but I had to get them
to bed. I needed to end this day. We’d been stuck inside again. Today it
was a freezing rain. I got up to make toast.
“You spoil them, you know,” Donny said.
“I’m going to make sure my kids eat one way or another.” I
plugged in the toaster.
“You know what I should’ve said to him?”
“What’s that?” This was more to let him know I was listening. I
really didn’t have a burning desire to know what he should’ve said that he
didn’t just say in the first place.
“I should’ve said, you might not respect me, but we should sit
down and have us a talk. A serious talk. You don’t want your grandkids
out on the street and starving, do you? That’s what I should’ve said.”
Donny had been a good provider before he got on what he called
a bad roll. He had all the work he could handle back then. When the slump
hit, he said this was temporary. But we got in pretty deep, and I think it
shook him.
When the economy started to come back, he still wasn’t getting
jobs. He told me not to panic, but my dad’s checks only went so far. When
he finally found work on other people’s crews—small jobs like scraping
off somebody’s old roof, hauling trash away—he said this was only until
2021, Winter / 39
Watching his father wear out the dull kitchen linoleum, Connor
said, “Daddy happy?”
“Let Daddy be,” I said.
“No. Daddy not happy.”
“Why?” Connor, so innocent and beautiful, looked at his father as
if there was a simple answer to all this.
“Because your Grampa is a—” Donny rubbed the back of his head
as if the word he was looking for was a genie in a lamp. “Never mind.”
Then, he got right in my face. “Are you going to do it or not?”
“Do what?”
“Come on. Will you please just call him and ask for some money?
Listen. I’m saying, please.”
“But he already told you no.”
“But he can’t say no to you. You’re Daddy’s little girl.” He walked
toward the den shaking his head that way he did like he was making sure
nothing had come loose. “Nope. He can’t say no to his little girl.”
I was sorry that I had ever told Donny what my mother used to say
to me after my dad had left. She would tell me not to worry about him
because he knew how to land on his feet. When I would still worry about
him—mostly about when I was going to see him—she would say, aren’t
you the little Daddy’s girl. Then, she would take the time to tell me all the
ways I was just like him. None of them nice. After getting all that out,
she’d go and grab her bottle of Smirnoff that she kept in the drawer with
the tablecloths we never used and shut herself in her bedroom. My brother
was already fending for himself, and when I moved out, it wasn’t soon
enough. For her or me. We don’t speak to one another still.
“Isn’t there some other way?” I said to Donny. “He’s had a lot of
people after him for money.” Besides paying my mother her alimony, he
was giving a little help to my brother. My dad had told me this, saying he
wasn’t complaining, just letting me know how things were.
Jeremy was getting fussy. I undid the towel that I use to tie him in
his high chair, then picked up my baby. “Come on,” I said to Connor.
“Let’s go in the den and watch some TV before bed.”
But Donny blocked my way out of the kitchen. “Just call him,” he
said.
He’d never done that before. I went to the sink to wet a corner of
the dish towel with some warm water to clean Jeremy’s face. I hoped he
didn’t see my hand shaking. “I can’t—”
He came over and leaned against the sink. It was full of dishes, but
he didn’t say anything about that. “I suppose you could get a job,” he said.
2021, Winter / 41
“How about you just ask for some money?” he said. “I think two
thousand should do it.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Come on. Last time, okay? I promise.
This wasn’t going to be the last time. “I need to think,” I said. “I’ll
think this through while I get the boys in the bath.”
“You do that. I’m going for a smoke.” It hadn’t been that long, but
Donny was sticking with his promise not to smoke in the apartment
anymore. I didn’t think it was good around the boys.
Jeremy was squirming. I slipped two fingers down the back of his
diaper and pulled it away from him to see if he had a little surprise for me.
But it was that trash bag that was stinking things up. “Could you please
bring that out? I mean since you’re going out anyway.”
Donny opened the cabinet over the fridge where he kept his
carton, then grabbed a pack of cigarettes. He looked at the bag. “Sure,” he
said, ripping open the pack.
After getting the boys down for the night and taking some aspirin,
I thought about that call to my dad. I sat at the kitchen table with a pen and
some paper so I could write down what I would say if I did call him.
Instead of writing, though, I picked through the pile of bills on the table.
Next to the pile were a couple of Donny’s gambling books. He said that
there’s a strategy to winning big. He was trying to find it in books like
Beat the Odds and You Have to Play Big to Win Big. There are no big wins.
Life is just little things lined up one after another. You keep doing the right
little things and maybe, after a while, you’ll get somewhere. That seemed
a stretch, but it was all I had.
With money you can do anything, Donny liked to say. What would
you do with a million dollars?
What would you do with a million dollars? I had said right back
to him one night when we were watching someone on one of his game
shows getting close to the jackpot.
He’d said he would buy one of those little sport cars, a sleek, black
convertible, and drive to Las Vegas where he would win big for us.
Now I was trying to figure out how much rent I could get away
with this month and which bills to pay. Quitting high school wasn’t the
smartest thing I ever did. But when we found out that I was pregnant for
Connor, and Donny said he’d make an honest woman of me. Well, how
could I say no? Jeremy came along after Donny had lost his business.
Dad’s money had been coming in like regular paychecks before we had to
start begging. Guess he was getting tired too.
2021, Winter / 43
Donny had said that we would use the money from my dad this
time to make just a little breathing room on these bills; most of the money
would go to fixing up the van so he could start the roofing business again.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I’d got up from the table
anyway. I hadn’t figured anything out and was frustrated. Donny was
already in bed. I pulled down the blanket and sheet on my side and lay
down without bothering to pull up the covers. I just had one of his old T-
shirts on, but felt like I was on fire. He had his back to me, and I hoped he
was asleep.
He rolled over, then put his hand on my leg. “Well? Did you call
him?”
“Not yet.”
“I can see where this is going.”
“I just need time.”
He moved up my leg. “Come on.”
“I’m exhausted,” I said.
“It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“Do you really think?”
Donny bellied on top of me.
He couldn’t see the tear streaming down my face.
Back in bed, I stared at the ceiling again. When I’d called Dad, the
first thing I did was apologize for calling so late. I said that we were in
trouble. He said he figured that. Then he said, how much are we talking
this time? I gave that a long, hard thought. Then I told him how much we
were talking. I said that I’d pay him back as soon as I could. He did that
little laugh he does, then said he didn’t know if he could do that much. I’ll
do what I can, he said. That’s the best I can do.
44 / Evening Street Review 32
I pictured the look on his face. Not the look he must’ve had at the
other end of the line, but the one he would have if he ever opened his front
door and saw the boys and me standing there. He’d always been at his best
from a distance.
“Uh huh.”
“And the radio’s playing nice and loud.”
“No static.”
“And have the sun shining on us.”
“Mm. Hmm.”
“And have the wind blowing through my hair.”
“Hmm.”
“And we just keep going like we don’t have a care in the world.”
“Going and going.”
Donny had gone quiet. I sat up and looked at him. “And don’t tell
me how it ends.”
GERALD YELLE
HOW I IDENTIFY
KEVIN D NORWOOD
MATINS
The sun had not yet broken over the mountains when the man
trudged down the dirt path toward the drizzling sound of the creek,
carrying a blue-speckled coffee pot. The enamelware pot had once been a
wedding gift, but it was now as old and battered as his love for the woman
who slept in the back of the rust-covered Rambler station wagon parked
by the side of the road.
This had always been one of his favorite places to camp, a rough
patch of Nevada highway on the road from nowhere to nothing, a cracked
asphalt ribbon running through God’s unpromised land, its night sky
untouched by the electrical mayhem of modern civilization. On either side
of the road lay a sunburned carpet of broken rocks, creosote bush, beetles,
and toxic dust. No one drove the old highways anymore, not even truckers
or highway patrolmen. Everyone had moved to the cities, surrendering to
the bright gleam of that faithless communal embrace.
The man tried to remember what day of the week it was, what
month. Late October, he decided, but not yet time for the carnival of the
dead called Halloween, when children dressed up as demons and knocked
on the door begging for treats. Halloween wasn’t for kids anymore. Adults
had taken it for themselves, like they took everything. Adults who were
children now, who spent their time playing with toys, hypnotized by the
flashes and beeps of electronic gizmos, filling their heads with vulgar
amusements that siphoned their souls away, second by second. Time was
48 / Evening Street Review 32
People didn’t take care of their world anymore, fearing the dark brilliance
in their souls. The world was run by computers and robots, on whispers of
inhuman magic fabricated by dull geniuses. This desert would be covered
in a great ocean one day.
He stared at his wife where she lay in the back of the station
wagon, silent and still. Sunlight broke through a gap in the flower-print
curtains that hung over the windows. He’d hung them there after his wife
had sewn them from a set of old sheets. A pale, yellow light fell across her
gray hair. The morning sun slid down her brow and onto her eyelids. She
groaned and turned onto her back. He could hear her bones creak. She
opened her eyes to the new day and smiled at him over yellowing teeth. It
was a fine morning, in spite of the darkness to come.
SUSAN JOHNSON
CITY TREES
BOXES
MARIE G COLEMAN
WHAT KIND AM I?
I love him too. I want to hike with him, and have him come and
go from our house freely. Only that’s not possible. I know that. He doesn’t
have a car any longer. He’s had many and lost them all.
With Covid-19 no one gets into my car except for Dan. Years
before the pandemic, I decided if PJ was riding in my car, I needed an
escort. He loves me. Yet on any given day, he might hate me, and even
threaten to kill me. This hurts like a gnawing toothache. The longer I live
accepting PJ’s illness as a reality, the more tolerable his words become.
Three days after our July 4th picnic I drove down the street where
my son lives. I don’t know if I chose that street because I wanted to see
my son. He lives a few blocks from a friend of mine. I’d just left her house.
If it was anyone else, I knew I’d have honked the horn and said
hello. Instead, when I saw PJ and the woman he lives with crossing the
street, I swerved the car into a gas station. I was rattled for fear PJ might
think I was stalking him.
So, what kind of mother does that make me?
KIMBERLY LINDEMANN
GRANDMA
but sometimes
I really wish my grandchildren
had a grandma
Lindemann
CHILD OF BONES
I dreamed of
a child of bones
shaking hands
dry, cracked skin
reaching out
staring up at his mother
(cont)
54 / Evening Street Review 32
with lonely
beseeching eyes
DORIS FERLEGER
I HID IT SO YOU’LL NEVER FIND IT
~
(cont)
2021, Winter / 55
BOBBY COHEN
FIVE THINGS
night, and my dad, who had a disability pension and stayed home to care
for me, never saw my tears. I was afraid they’d be disappointed with me.
By the end of the first week, I learned how to focus only on what
the teacher was saying, and could avoid the other voices. Doing that made
me a better student but also had the effect of isolating me from my
classmates. They said I was stuck-up and thought I was better than they
were. If they only knew how I really felt.
By the end of the school year, I had figured out how to hear some
voices while avoiding others. That control came too late for me to become
more popular with the other kids that year, but at least I could get a fresh
start the next school year.
Summer vacation made things much easier because I had fewer
voices to worry about—only my parents and two neighborhood girls that
I saw for short periods of time each day.
With each passing week, I learned more about my curse and how
to control it. By the time I was in junior high school, it was no longer a
curse, but a gift that I could put to my advantage. Knowing what people
were thinking, it turns out, made me not only a straight A student, but also
a very popular girl.
When I was twelve, my father died. Mom said he had a very sick
liver, and after many years of struggling, his body was too weak to fight it
anymore. I had spoken to him just before he passed, so I knew exactly
what she was talking about, but I never told her how that came to be,
although I suspected that, somewhere in her most hidden thoughts, she
already knew.
I had always been closer with Dad because Mom worked at night
and slept a lot during the day, while he was home all the time. I was able
to talk to him more, and eventually told him about my strange gift. He
accepted my story without comment, other than to say he loved me very
much and always would, but his thoughts told me that he knew exactly
how I felt and he couldn’t wait to share it with Mom. I was asleep when
she got home from work, but I knew later that she not only understood,
but somehow even expected me to be special. It was unsettling for me to
realize it was something that both of them thought about regularly, but
never spoke of to me.
I can never forget my last conversation with Dad, shared as he lay
on his death bed. He wanted to tell me about how he met Mom and the
source of my gift. As he rambled on, only half conscious from pain
medication, I could hear the whole story, the true course of events, from
what I heard in his memory, far more than from those last delirious words.
2021, Winter / 57
“Are you all right?” Braun said, his voice distorted by pain.
“I think so,” Joe said. He was preoccupied with grief and anger
over losing Matt, but barely had time to realize it.
“Good. Then get him out of there,” he chin-pointed at Stein, “and
climb in.”
Robotically obeying his skipper’s orders, Joe unbuckled Stein’s
seatbelt, pulled his body onto the deck, and dropped into his place. The
belt was shredded, the buckle torn half away from the strap, so he didn’t
take the time to try to re-buckle it.
“Is your head okay?” Braun said.
“I guess so. Why?”
“Because it’s bleeding. But never mind that. You’re going to fly
us home.”
Joe remembered hitting the left side of his forehead on one of his
pistol grips when the explosion came, but never felt the blood dripping
down onto his cheek.
The ship was way off course, never having completed its turn.
Through his headset, Joe got a quick flying lesson in a shaky voice from
Braun, and, his face blasted by the force of inrushing air from the hole next
to him, guided the plane out to the Channel, leaving the mainland north of
Le Havre. Joe looked through the glass and saw nothing but choppy green-
gray water. He turned to Braun only to see him passed out. If it weren’t
for the blood bubbling in and out of his nose, Joe would have thought him
dead. He’d never felt so alone, so filled with fear.
After an interminable length of time, during which he was sure
he’d strayed too far off course and would eventually crash into the
Atlantic, he saw coastline starboard-side. Praying that it was England and
not some hostile land, he ditched the plane as carefully as he knew how,
as it turned out, between Brighton and Southampton. When the plane hit
the sea, Joe, still beltless, smashed his left leg into the instrument panel
hard enough to shatter both bones below his knee. Somehow, the ship
stayed afloat long enough for Joe, Braun, Gibson, and the two tail gunners
to be rescued.
#
Two surgeries were needed to insert stainless steel pins in Joe’s
tibia and fibula, and to cut skin from his buttocks to be grafted onto his
shin. By the time he was able to get out of his hospital bed and move
around, the doctor told him he was lucky to be alive, let alone able to walk.
But walking was a painful process at best, despite his cane. It was a herky-
jerky motion by which he tried to relieve the pressure on his injuries, but
2021, Winter / 59
at the price of considerable lower back pain. That, in addition to the lower
leg pain, which was almost constant after the last of his morphine
prescriptions elapsed, would have confined a lesser man to a life without
physical activity. But Joe refused to become a “basket case,” as he would
say to anyone who cared to listen. His way of easing the pain was drinking
gin and taking aspirin, both of which were readily available without
prescription.
#
As soon as it became possible to walk far enough to leave the base,
Joe began spending his time at a nearby pub, The Quarterdeck.
Southampton, on England’s southern coast, was a seafaring town, and Joe
became absorbed in the stories that salmon fishermen swapped over their
beers, not to mention the green-eyed, red-haired barmaid who worked
there. Mary O’Brien was a perky lass with a turned-up nose and a set to
her chin that spoke of stubbornness, and before long she took a liking to
the dark-haired yank who walked with his head held high and a defiant
glint in his deep blue eyes, despite his strange limp. Though she was only
twenty, she could tell by the way he held his liquor, and the stolid front he
put up, that he had character. It didn’t take long for the soldier and the
barmaid to fall in love.
Joe arrived at The Quarterdeck every evening and talked with
Mary whenever she wasn’t busy. Long past the time when the alcohol had
lost its power of intoxication, he sipped his gin for the gentle numbness it
brought, which was his only means of tolerating the cruel trick life had
played on him.
Every night, when Mary finished her work, he walked her down
to the modest cottage near the coast where she lived with her father, a
retired seaman, and her grandmother. What little lovemaking that took
place between them was accomplished awkwardly and incompletely in
Mary’s front yard, on a wooden bench shielded from the house by an
ancient privet. When it became apparent to them that they would marry,
she brought Joe inside to meet her family.
Sean O’Brien was a tall, spare man with large features, his
weathered face a series of broad, flat surfaces, upholstered in wrinkled
leather, framed in a Lincolnesque, salt and pepper beard, and punctuated
by sparkling, ice-blue eyes. He sat in a cushioned rocking chair, chewing
on the stem of a curved meerschaum pipe, smoothed and yellowed, with a
patina that bespoke years of fondling. His white knitted turtleneck sweater
and blue denim trousers hanging from his frame like scarecrow’s rags, he
eyed Joe critically, unaware of the pain he’d endured to walk to this first
60 / Evening Street Review 32
meeting. Joe stood proudly before Sean O’Brien, wearing two ribbons
above the left breast pocket of his olive-drab uniform blouse, representing
the Distinguished Flying Cross and, though he disdained it because he did
nothing positive to earn it, the Purple Heart. Mary stood beside Joe,
clutching his left arm and smiling inanely at her father and his mother-in-
law, who sat sipping tea at a nearby pine table.
Sean looked at the old woman, bald save for a few wisps of silky,
white hair, her face a lumpy mass of wrinkles protecting a pair of green
eyes clouded from age. He spoke to her in a language Joe could not
understand, after which she glared at the soldier, pulled her grey, woolen
shawl around her bony shoulders, and took another sip of tea. Then she
spoke to her son-in-law, talking at length in the same strange tongue he’d
used.
Her father turned to Mary, removed the pipe from his mouth, and
said, “It can’t be done,” then clamped his jaw resolutely back onto the
meerschaum.
“I will marry Joe,” she said, putting extra emphasis on the “will,”
her chin jutting defiantly.
“You heard your grandmother,” he replied, removing the pipe
from his mouth with an unsteady hand. “There’s the curse. You can’t
marry the Yank.”
“What curse?” Joe said, his first words since entering the house.
“It’s not fair to me,” Mary said, interrupting Joe’s question. Her
petulance drew his attention from Sean.
“It’s not fair to the Yank, girl,” her father said, ignoring Joe’s
question.
“Excuse me, sir,” Joe said, his voice louder than he might have
wanted. “I’d like to know what you’re talking about. If something isn’t
fair to me, I think I should be the judge of it.”
Sean’s gaze flicked from his daughter’s defiant green eyes to Joe’s
determined blue ones, and back again. He sighed heavily, shrugged, struck
a match on the underside of the rocker, and held it to the bowl of his
meerschaum, sucking the stem and puffing smoke. All of these gestures
were performed slowly, deliberately, as if he were alone in his parlor. Once
he had the pipe going to his satisfaction, he returned to his daughter’s
impatient, but still respectful stare, which spoke of having endured similar
situations many times before, and said, “All right, then. Tell him.”
Mary grasped her lover’s hand and led him to a tweed covered
divan placed against the yellowed plaster wall. After a few seconds of
silence, her fingers fidgeting in her lap, she said, “There is supposed to be
2021, Winter / 61
a curse on my family that was put there hundreds and hundreds of years
ago by the Blue People.”
“Do you mean real blue people, like with blue skin?”
“I’m not really sure. I don’t know how it got started, but it had
something to do with Saint Augustine and the Druids, who were called the
Blue People.” She paused, reluctant to continue.
“And…?” Joe said.
Mary glanced at her father, who kept his icy eyes on her, pipe
clamped firmly between his teeth.
“They had magic men,” she continued, “who were supposed to
have somehow made themselves blue to frighten their enemies. They felt
it would make them more powerful. They were said to be able to use the
forces of nature and the change of seasons in their magic, and…and…it’s
all just superstitions and whatnot, you know, from so long ago.” She
stopped again, unsure of herself.
“Please go on,” Joe said.
“It has something to do with those converted by Saint Augustine
to Christianity. I’m not sure of all the details—don’t know if anyone is,
really, but the Blue People cursed those who became Christians. What it
means to us is that…that no sons are born into our family, only girls. You
see, no one to carry on the family name. I’m still not sure it has anything
to do with it, but my mother fell from a cliff into the sea many years ago.
She was eight months pregnant. It was ruled an accidental death.”
“I’m so sorry,” Joe said.
“It was long ago, but thank you.”
“So that’s it? No sons?”
“No, there’s more.” She looked back at Sean, who tapped his pipe
into the ashtray and refilled it, now avoiding her eyes.
“Any one of us born at the equinox, Spring or Fall, is cursed with
strange powers, witch’s powers. Those born at the solstices die by their
own hand. My mother was born on June twenty-first.”
Mary glanced at her father; his eyes squeezed shut as he puffed on
his pipe. Her grandmother, mumbling softly to herself, had also closed her
eyes.
“The curse ends only when one of us dies childless.”
“How could you possibly know all these things?”
“From my grandmother, who heard it from hers, and so on, back
into time.”
“It’s only superstition, you know.” Joe spoke softly, as much to
calm Mary as to avoid being heard across the room. “Certainly, your
62 / Evening Street Review 32
ED WADE
“DANCIN’ WITH MY BABY”
like a father
in a 50s sitcom
would after a hard
day’s work.
I need to know
about Kansas,
if the terrorist
was foreign
or homespun,
if targets were
cops or mosques
or if being human
was enough
of a mark.
But my baby,
she don’t care.
All she wants
is to be in my arms.
And for me
to spin a record,
one of them dusty
old numbers
about twistin’
or boogien’
or takin’ my baby
to the sock hop.
I keep my baby
in my arms,
and situate her diaper
in my elbow
until my knees
find the beat, (cont)
64 / Evening Street Review 32
When we dance,
somehow I can believe
it’s all gonna be groovy.
But my baby,
she don’t care.
All she wants
is to be in my arms.
Wade
what I have in the bank, my salary, the value of the house, and other things
that are none of their friggin’ business. So you can get the idea of applying
for ‘student loans’ right out of your idiotic head, young lady.”
Why? It wasn’t like we had money. I’d definitely have qualified
for financial aid. Mother later fumed that his growing up in total poverty
compelled Father to hide the meager amount he’d managed to save. “Your
father’s ‘poor man’s mentality’ always holds him back. And now it’s your
turn to feel it. God knows he’s made me suffer enough.”
How would I get to college? As a good Catholic, I resorted to
praying to the Virgin Mary for a miracle, which she obligingly presented
in the form of an announcement by Sister Lucille, my advisor, of a college
scholarship contest for “Future Catholic Playwrights of America.” It
turned out thousands of Catholic high schoolers all over the country wrote
short plays about a different feast day each year. These pieces were read
by hundreds of judges who determined which of the thousands would
advance to do “dramatic readings” of their work in competitions all over
the US until every state had a winner. The favored fifty then competed
until only four national finalists were left. It was a huge event. Or so I
surmised from Sister Lucille’s excited pronouncements. When Sister
explained this year’s topic was The Annunciation and the national prize
was $10,000, I found myself in a state of near ecstasy imagining becoming
free of Father, since the scholarship could pay for all of my college
education. (It was the seventies, and college back then didn’t leave you in
debt for the rest of your life like it does today.) The Annunciation was my
favorite feast day—a humble but brave young woman taking on a nearly
impossible task.
While Father always made clear he’d have preferred me to be a
boy, I never imagined he wouldn’t help with college. My “intellect” was
all he’d ever been interested in, and he even sometimes bragged he had a
“smart daughter.” In grammar school when national tests said I was
clever—maybe even a genius—Father created nightly homework reviews
where I had to unobtrusively teach him subjects like the New Math and
Catholic Missionary History so he could then quiz me on them. At first, I
welcomed his attentiveness, given his usual indifference. But as the
sessions went on, he found me increasingly deficient, so our review hours
lengthened until I grew sick with exhaustion. As Father castigated me
about fractions or reexamined me on spelling words I’d not gotten wrong
for months, I learned how to evaporate to protect myself. I heard the right
answers I was giving, but as if from another room. Away from him. When
Mother explained the lengthy reviews to our family doctor, he said they
66 / Evening Street Review 32
were “unnatural,” and it was her job to stop them. Which took months.
Years later, my psychiatrist said Father’s behavior wasn’t meant to benefit
me but was a type of emotional incest. Glad I didn’t know that then. I told
no one about my evaporations.
So, to the play competition. When I started thinking seriously
about what I’d write, it occurred to me that Mary, with her appearances
throughout history and all over the world, had always reminded me of
Doctor Who. And just like that, I had my topic. Here’s what I thought.
Mary probably negotiated with Gabriel at The Annunciation before
agreeing to be the Mother of God. What if she’d directly asked Gabe for
infinite time-traveling power (her apparitions, of course) and a body to last
for all eternity (her Assumption) so people could see her when she time-
traveled around everywhere—like Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, and all
those thousands of other places. I realized these thoughts were sufficiently
weird that at least I’d definitely stand out from other contestants. While
they could shock Sister, they might, if presented with reverence, also catch
an audience’s (and the judges’) attention because they’d present Mary
from a feminist angle using references everyone would get. I opened my
notebook and wrote: “If Mary’s a divine version of Doctor Who, the status
of all women’ll rise dramatically.” Not to mention what this play could do
for my own status and financial independence. As I continued writing, I
envisioned Gabriel played by a Dalek, waving his telescopic manipulator
plunger at Mary and shouting, “You will obey!” Which of course she
wouldn’t. “Resistance is futile!” But it wouldn’t be. Mary wasn’t so
humble and obedient as the Church implies. Why did she have to be
submissive and milquetoast with Gabriel? “Mary is persistent and brave,”
I wrote, “and only as-pleasant-as-needed-given-the-particular-state-of-
affairs, which makes her a perfect role model for girls entering our new
feminist world.” The words were pouring out of me, and I decided to call
the play The Annunciation Zone with a nod to Rod Serling, because, really,
what could better describe Mary’s life than The Twilight Zone?
When I told my parents about the contest at dinner and joyfully
explained the ideas I’d been developing, they were elated I could
potentially win a scholarship. But Father was aghast at my interpretation
of Mary and the whole Annunciation story. “Your ideas about Our Lady’s
negotiating to become a time traveler are deranged!” he sneered.
“Dad, you can write about anything so long as it’s related to The
Annunciation.”
“Of course, that’s to let all the daft people write something stupid
so they’re eliminated quickly.”
2021, Winter / 67
me feel inferior. The boys looked at the girls with a mixture of longing and
superiority. No one seemed to look at me.
Eventually the priest in charge got us to join a group of
ostentatious boys and their flashy coach. “Haven’t seen you guys here
before,” said the coach in a crisp and buttoned blue blazer after he’d been
directed to pay attention to us.
“No, it’s our—well, my—first time.”
“St. Andrew’s Prep’s been here since the contest started in the
forties,” he boasted. And as if on cue, four boys simultaneously started
singing what sounded like the school fight song. “Keep it down,
gentlemen.” Blue Blazer laughed. Then looking at us, he whispered,
“Can’t wait to get out of the starting gate. One of them is destined for glory
this year. St. Andrew’s had three state winners over the years, and one
almost got to nationals.” I didn’t like Blazer Man. Three might have
sounded like a lot, but if they’d been doing this since the forties, those
numbers weren’t that great.
“Hey.” One of the gorgeous girls tapped my shoulder and breathed
into my ear, “Are you wearing a Mary Quant?”
“Yes” was all I could manage, but I tried to stand a little taller.
“I mean a real one…”
“Yes.”
“…not like some homemade shit, right?”
“No,” I said, denying my mother, like St. Peter with Christ, hoping
I wasn’t going to be forced to do it three times.
“Well, my sister’s in London and sent pictures of her ‘Daddy’s
Girl’ dress, and it’s more creamy colored than yours. Mind if I look at the
label?” and she started to pull my long mop of hair aside to probe under
the back collar, where unfortunately she’d have found a “Made Lovingly
by Elda Flaherty” label. Years ago, Mother discover she could get mail
order “personalized labels” and bought about 100, which she stitched into
everything she sewed, knitted, or crocheted. I was evaporating with horror
as the girl started pulling on the neckline of the dress.
Sister wheeled around at Ms. Nosy Swish Hair, coming to my
rescue. “Hands off! You can’t just go around touching other people.”
“So-rry!” Swish Hair gasped in mock alarm and retreated tittering
to her cluster of other beautiful girls.
Sister pulled me aside. “Don’t fade away!” I was stunned she
understood what I was doing. My parents never noticed. “You can’t let
that hoity-toityness get to you. Remember, most of those overprivileged
kids won’t really care about the competition since they don’t need the
2021, Winter / 69
money. You, on the other hand, must really try to win that scholarship. So
stay focused. You won’t be judged on who you know, but on your play.”
And yet another miracle: I won the state competition. People
stopped not noticing me or Sister Lucille, who was always by my side.
Articles appeared in various local Catholic papers about the “dark horse
Massachusetts champion,” with a picture of Sister and me. I could swear
she started wearing a little makeup. As the national final approached, there
were more receptions and interviews. We met coaches, parents, fellow
contestants, newspaper reporters, and a whole lot of hangers-on who said
they attended the contest every year out of “personal interest.” One man,
unlikely though it seemed, suggested he was in the “production business,”
and gave me his card. “You know, sugar, I’m always on the lookout for
good playwrights and bright young ladies with talent.” I felt suspicious
and threw away his card immediately. Another said how impressed they
all were that “a longshot girl was coming up on the inside at the last turn.
All bets were off.”
The national contest was down South and I was the only girl.
When my parents, Sister Lucille, and I flew into Orlando, they gave us the
local paper, not a Catholic one, with the headline, “Upstart Massachusetts
Girl Tries to Win Catholic Playwright Contest.” The article could have
been written in the fifties. Boys need to go to college and become
successful, and girls must learn their place and grow up to support
husbands. It clearly implied that girls in the South understood this, unlike
“radical feminists from the Northeast.” Sister Lucille led my upset mother
in saying ten Hail Marys.
The competition occurred in an enormous hall they said held 1,000
people. On stage, the mayor introduced a bishop who introduced the
contestants before it all began. Everyone applauded politely when each of
the three boys shuffled nervously to their designated green X on the stage.
They looked petrified, just like Sister said they would. One of them even
had bleeding cuticles. When my name was called, I glided with well-
practiced poise to my X and smiled in an even more rehearsed “knowing
but not over-eager way.” Sister was right again. This walk and expression
made me feel more confident. But I startled when the audience erupted
into rowdy cheers. What did these people know about me besides what
they’d read in that embarrassing newspaper article?
The contest got under way. We couldn’t listen to one another, so
I had no idea how anyone else had done. I was more tense than I expected
and certainly didn’t give my best performance. But there were some
restrained laughs, and a few people guffawed at everything even remotely
70 / Evening Street Review 32
funny. When the boys and I were led onstage for the award presentation, I
told myself that coming in second—I didn’t even contemplate third—
would still give me a lot of money for college.
“And in fourth place is”—with a very long dramatic pause—
“Bridget Flaherty.” Last place? Stunned, I tried in vain to adopt Sister’s
“serene as a Saint” expression. Then, as if in slow motion, the audience
rose to its feet, clapping and booing simultaneously. They were chanting
something I finally recognized as “Dis-grace! Dis-grace! Dis-grace!” And
then, more stridently with some people stamping their feet, “She was
robbed! She was robbed!” How did they manage to be so coordinated?
The bishop motioned for me to come forward and collect my trophy, but I
just stared questioningly at the audience. “Bridget!” the bishop called.
“Get over here.” Before I moved, I gave the crowd my best smile and a
big over-the-head wave. Raising my chin, even though I felt like crying, I
walked to the bishop, accepted my diminutive trophy, and returned to my
place. The crowd was still chanting, and, probably to quiet them down, the
bishop said, “Doesn’t she have a winning smile?” which got them going
all the more. “Why didn’t she win?” called out one man in the back.
I was moved to have such support. Perhaps I’d done a good job
after all? Maybe those judges were influenced by the “upstart girl” article.
Or maybe they felt girls shouldn’t be in the competition. “Sexism at its
worst,” I could hear Sister Lucille saying. At least I’d won enough to pay
for my first year, and maybe, once in college, I’d discover how to get more
without Father’s help. I paid little attention to what was said or done with
the three boys, but the audience’s applause for them was short. There was
no chanting.
The bishop organized us to walk off the stage in the order of our
winning, so I had to go last. As I moved toward the steps, I could see a sort
of receiving line had formed. People were politely shaking hands with
each of the boys. I wiped my sweaty right hand on my dress. When it was
my turn, a group of men moved in tightly around me. They looked like
they all wanted to grab me. It was like I was being tossed from one to
another. There were whispers.
“We were robbed!”
“Demand a recount!”
“We all lost big-time today.”
One squeezed the back of my neck. A face was right in front of mine, bad
breath enveloping me. “You understand you aren’t the only one who was screwed
today, right, sweetheart?” I could feel my hair being mussed. A shout: “I lost ten big
ones on you. The same’s true for most of us who follow this contest every year.”
2021, Winter / 71
What was he saying? “Let me go!” I cried and dug my trophy into
his shoulder. The air was so close. I felt breathless and a little afraid.
“Don’t take it personal, baby.” Another took hold of me from
behind, his hands seeming to feel for my breasts. “We do it every year.
The contest is big money.”
“But this year,” a different one seized me, “was so much more
exciting because of you. A girl. I’ve got all your pictures pinned up in my
basement.” He rubbed himself against me, scrunching up my increasingly
wrinkled Virgin Mary dress.
“Yeah.” Another laughed. “Except those pictures are spoiled by
that stupid nun beside you.”
“Is that nun some kind of lezzie or something? She’s always got
her arm around you,” said a different one, putting his arm around me. My
hair had fallen half down. Some was in my mouth.
“But you’re no lezzie, are you? We saw you looking at each of us
from the stage with your ‘winning smile,’ showing us your true
appreciation. Here’s my appreciation,” and he rammed himself against me.
A man in a suit pulled me from him, held me at arm’s length, and
grinned. Was he going to get me away from them?
“Please… ” I cried.
But before I could say more, he clasped me with one hand,
fondling me with the other. “Don’t you remember me, sweetheart? You
seemed happy enough when we met before.”
I tried to twist out of his grip. “I’ve no idea who you are.” My
voice sounded odd because my mouth was dry. “Let me go. My parents’ll
be looking for me.”
But he squeezed me tighter. “You do too know me, darling.” He
laughed, rocking against me. He smelled of aftershave. “I gave you a card
saying I was in production and I wanted you to call me.”
I remembered that stupid card. “I threw it away,” I screamed in
his face.
“Now that’s a shame,” said another whom I was handed off to.
“We were waiting for that call.” He tried to kiss me. I flinched. “We’d
have loved to ‘interview you.’ So why didn’tcha call us? Huh? Huh?
Huh?” I wanted to slap him, but my arms felt like they were being held.
“You made the competition so much more exciting than usual,
being such a pretty girl and all.” Where were Mother and Sister Lucille?
Why weren’t they looking for me?
72 / Evening Street Review 32
Another one turned me around to face him. “They put all that BS
about you being greedy in the paper to put us off betting and influence the
judges so we’d all lose.”
They’d actually bet money on me? Tears filled my eyes as I tried
to shove through them.
I whirled in circles, holding out the trophy to hit anyone else who
approached me. These people never supported me. They booed and yelled
because they’d lost their money on me. Like I was a horse or a dog.
“Don’t feel bad, honey,” said another, trying to avoid the trophy.
“You’d have my vote if it was about something else.”
Who were these men?
Their faces blurred. Had they all bet money on me? I tried to
evaporate, to distance my mind from my body so I couldn’t hear them
anymore as they rattled on and on, grabbing and pressing and touching me
until finally Sister Lucille ran toward me and wrapped me in the infinite
layers of her long habit. I shook as she held me, and slowly came back.
“They bet money,” I sobbed.
“I know. We heard. Let’s get you out of here.” And she turned and
whisked me through the room to my parents, who were waiting at the back.
No one said anything. Mother was crying. Even Father looked hurt and
confused, his eyes so far back in his head.
We took a taxi to the airport. Father avoided discussing the betting
or the molesting that I’d just endured and focused on the contest itself.
“You should have heard those boys. They were so lousy. There was more
competition in the state finals.” It was like nothing had happened. They
kept talking about what a great accomplishment it was to make it to the
finals at all.
“You made up your mind, and you did it, and now your first year
of college is paid for,” Sister said.
Oh yes. Right. I felt nothing. Certainly not pride that I’d come this
far. Not even fear of the men now that I was away from them. I was just
empty. Distant. Outside, not only of my body, but of everything that was
going on. Their voices became faint. I had no thoughts. I didn’t exist. I just
evaporated more and more completely, turned into dark, night air. Into
nothingness.
I’d wanted to win the contest so much, to prove to Father I could
pay my own way with my own writing. Without his help. To convince
Sister I wouldn’t let the uppity people get me down. To show Mother, who
lived in such fear of Father and often it seemed of the world in general,
that when wearing the clothes she made me, I could conquer anything.
2021, Winter / 73
Sister kept reaching for my hand in the taxi and calling my name,
like she could keep me from slipping away. “Bridget! I know what you’re
doing. Stop it! Come back.” She didn’t understand that if I came back, I’d
only feel disgust.
“I’ve got a story for you. The story. And it’s all true. And you can
tell it and believe it and move forward,” she insisted. “Just listen to me.” I
turned away.
“You did an incredible job.” She kept looking at me until I faced
her.
“You’re one of an elite group of four. The judges were sexist.
Even the audience was disappointed. But now you’re going to college.”
Such a simple, uncomplicated story.
“It’s not the truth,” I hissed at her and pulled my hand from hers.
“What about the ‘upstart girl’? The betting? Those awful men?”
“None of that was your doing.”
“But it happened. To me. I experienced all of it. You can’t just
erase it because it doesn’t fit your neat little fairy tale.”
Why couldn’t she see that when all the shame isn’t allowed to be
spoken, it’s just left to live inside me?
We stuck to Sister’s official account. The school had a party for
me, and everyone, at least for a while, forgot they usually felt I was nerdy
for being so smart. They congratulated me again and again. My best friend,
Agnes, was over the moon and expected “people from Hollywood or
Broadway” to knock on my door any day. But the world wasn’t really
interested in a girl’s theories about how it would be a better place if
everyone thought of the Virgin Mary the way they do Doctor Who. After
all, that was such a different time. About a million light-years before the
#MeToo movement. Not to mention how inconceivable it was back then
that Doctor Who could be a woman.
But I went to college and got away from home and mostly Father.
When I told a few of my Catholic college friends about the scholarship I
had from “Future Catholic Playwrights of America,” they said how lucky
I was. I smiled and nodded, never revealing how much I had to pay for
winning that money.
74 / Evening Street Review 32
WILL YOU?
Is sending a 16-year-old to prison for the rest of his life the right
way to rehabilitate our youth? Science suggests that juveniles are more apt
to make bad decisions when surrounded by their peers. James Alan Fox
wrote in USA Today, “One of the distinguishing features to juvenile
murder is the dominant role of group dynamics. Based on an analysis of
FBI data for 2006-11, 35% of homicides implicating a juvenile offender
included multiple perpetrators, more than twice as high as the percentage
for adults.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/08/22/oklahoma-
teens-murder-column/2681477/
In May of 1993, Richard Vasquez was invited by his older brother
and two of his friends to go cruising around Oak Cliff, Texas. He was
unwittingly thrust into a carjacking which ended in Richard accidentally
shooting his older brother and the driver of the car they were carjacking.
Richard was certified as an adult at 16 years-old, charged with capital
murder and received a capital life sentence. Was Richard developed
enough mentally to discern what he was doing or was he just worried about
what his big brother and friends thought?
Richard’s story is all too common. The “Tough on Crime”
movement in the early ’90s led to a high rate of children being forced into
adult court. From gangs, drugs, fights and drinking, these juveniles are
taught the way of prison streets, trying to survive in a criminals’ world
when they don’t yet know what it even is to be a man. By the grace of
God, Richard was finally found in a cell on the Eastham Unit by the only
one that cared for him with a father’s love. This is a story of how that 16-
year-old child who was lost is now the 42-year-old man that has been
found. In a society where we are sending more and more of our children
to prison as adults, we should start looking at more compassionate
sentencing for our youth.
Richard’s Journey
“In May of 1993, I had decided to spend the day with Maria, a
beautiful Mexican girl I had fallen in love with. In my last day of freedom,
I cleaned my car while Maria got ready for our date. My brother showed
up with his two friends and, through my bedroom window, called my
name, waving me to come with him and his friends. At 16, my brother was
my hero and I couldn’t turn down the offer to go with these guys that I
2021, Winter / 77
society. A set timeline cannot and should not be put into place for everyone
because not everyone matures at the same rate.
Richard was incarcerated and will not have a chance at parole until
serving 35 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDEJ)
system. Allowing juveniles to be placed in a rehabilitative setting before
being placed in an adult prison would allow young offenders the chance
to be rehabilitated and possibly come up for parole in a lesser amount of
time.
Studies have shown that teenagers fall to peer pressure because
their brains derive pleasure from social acceptance. So just as Richard was
falling into peer pressure because he wanted acceptance from his big
brother and the Boys of the Barrio, he was vulnerable to the influences of
adult prison that did not have the purest of motives. Adult predators in
maximum security prisons have been exploiting the children placed in
their midst because of this “Tough on Crime” campaign.
A report by the Council of State Governments found that youths
in Texas had better outcomes with rehabilitative efforts when kept closer
to their communities rather than facilities away from home. The study
found that teens kept closer to home were less likely to commit additional
crimes. There they can get educational opportunities and more appropriate
rehab programs while they are close to home and family. Communities
across the country would also benefit from protecting fragile youth by not
trying them as adults, but providing such locally run youth detention
centers.
in immorality of all sorts, yet I found myself reading the Bible at odd
hours. I felt better and prayed more, believing that God was restoring my
family. Maria began to come visit although she was in a relationship at the
time. I was beginning to believe that all would be good as I moved to
minimum custody.
“It was in 2017 that things went from good to bad; so many
elements came crashing down on me that all I could do was get hit. My
cell was getting kicked in by the officers and at work all eyes were on my
activities. Looking back, the enemy was trying to get a very tight grasp on
my soul, and I was being destroyed. Maria fell off, no longer wanting to
communicate, and my parents moved to South Texas.
“During our annual lockdown in April of 2017, the breaking of
my heart and emptying of my wretched self crushed me. As my cellie had
gone to showers along with basically the whole block, I stayed back to
have some time to myself. I was tired of life, and how I was living
disgusted me. I sensed my life was a lie, a masquerade. It was at this time
that I sought something outside of myself. There had to be something more
to help me. I was wallowing in my own guilt and crumpled to the floor,
wanting to be set free. God granted me the grace of a Godly sorrow and
repentance that led to salvation.
“I beat the floor shedding tears of repentance for all the things I
had ever done. My whole life emptied out as I cried, moaned, and even
vomited on that cell floor. It was at this time that I heard, ‘Flesh or Spirit?’
“Whether from study or meditation, I knew what these words
meant and what I had to choose. No one had to twist my arm to choose the
Spirit and life. As I lay prostrated on that cold concrete floor, covered in
spit, tears and vomit, I found true peace.
“Though it seemed like eternity, it only lasted the length of time
for the block to go to showers and slowly trickle back in. As I got up,
glorifying God, the clouds and sunlight that morning were the first
glorious signs of my new life. Was it God’s sign to me or was I now seeing
the world with the eyes of a new heart? When the doors rolled, I ran out
into the arms of a friend and confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior,
praising God. As I knew him to be a Godly man, he knew me to be a
heathen. For him to hear praises come out of my mouth truly manifested
the work of the Holy Spirit. From that day to this writing, the fire has not
dwindled and my service to God has only multiplied. Being transformed
by the grace of God brought me freedom that surpasses understanding.
Even with a capital life sentence, I have a hope that will not diminish,
which grants me peace.”
80 / Evening Street Review 32
Compassionate Sentencing
In several Supreme Court cases (Roper and Graham) it was
established that children are Constitutionally different from adults for the
purposes of sentencing. Quoting Miller v. Alabama in 2011, “Their ‘lack
of maturity and underdeveloped sense of responsibility’ lead to
recklessness, impulsivity and heedless risk taking. (Roper) They are “more
vulnerable...to negative influences and outside pressures, including from
their family and peers”; they have “limited control over their own
environment” and lack the ability to extricate themselves from horrific,
crime-producing settings. Ibid Roper and Graham emphasized that “the
distinctive attributes of youth diminish the penological justifications for
imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they
commit terrible crimes.”
How do we determine a set of guidelines for when we sentence
juvenile offenders that have committed horrific crimes? Juveniles’
lessened culpability and capacity for change are among the many factors
that judges and juries must consider, along with their youth, lack of
maturity, as well as the child’s character. Punishment needs to be
graduated and proportioned to both the offender and the offense.
We do not need science and studies to prove that teenagers are
immature, irresponsible, vulnerable to peer pressure, uncontrollable in
certain situations and have undeveloped character. Just ask any middle-
American parent and they will tell you how they want to pull their hair out
when dealing with teenagers. But this does not mean that every teenager
has developed deep-seated patterns of problem behaviors that exhibit
evidences of irretrievable depravity.
Admittedly, yes there are those adolescents that commit horrific
crimes that are irretrievably depraved, but that is “only a relatively small
portion of adolescents.” (quoting Steinberg and Scott in “Less Guilty by
Reason of Adolescence,” American Psychologist, 2003). But what do we
do with the juvenile that is not irretrievably depraved? How do we mete
out punishment that will rehabilitate and eventually restore that juvenile
so that they may become a responsible, productive member of society?
Sending a juvenile to prison for life, even with the possibility of
parole after 35 years, shows a juvenile that society believes they are
irrevocable and have no value. Without considering science or studies,
society tells that juvenile they have no capacity for change and then throws
them in with “big brothers” that raise them up in deviant ways. Exposure
to deviant peers leads to increased deviant behaviors. As the Scripture
says, “Do not be misled, bad company corrupts good character.”
2021, Winter / 81
*June 2021: the bipartisan legislation was passed, then vetoed by the governor.
VICKI MANDELL-KING
SAVING GRACE
for MM
82 / Evening Street Review 32
RAINBOW BODY
Where the cornucopia spills,
there is heaven.
2021, Winter / 83
LUCIA HAASE
WILDFLOWER FIELD
ESTA FISCHER
COFFEE
84 / Evening Street Review 32
I
My mother loved coffee.
She drank several cups in the morning, and made a fresh pot mid-
afternoon. There were always three cans of Maxwell House on our kitchen
shelves. Middle class choices were somewhat limited: Maxwell House,
Folgers, and Chock Full O’ Nuts. Of course there were other more
expensive coffees, but we did not have a lot of money. My father was a
postman and my mother worked from home designing greeting cards,
which she occasionally sold. The Maxwell House was bought “on special”
whenever possible.
“We have expenses,” my mother told me, “but don’t worry,
Lorraine. There will always be something for you.”
Every morning I awoke to the aroma of brewing coffee, and I
loved the smell. But I was not allowed to drink it.
“It’s not for children,” my mother explained. “It has caffeine,
which will make you hyperactive.” She paused. “You’ll have too much
energy and you’ll run around the house,” she elaborated, realizing
“hyperactive” was not yet in my vocabulary.
I pictured myself running up and down the stairs of our row house.
It didn’t sound too bad. We lived in New York City in a house like all the
other houses on our block: kitchen, living room and dining room on the
first floor and three bedrooms and bath upstairs. My parents slept in the
largest bedroom. The next largest was my room. The smallest was my
mother’s studio, furnished with a drawing table, chair, an easel and a stool.
Her art supplies were stored in a dresser. In addition to the greeting cards
she did oil paintings, and there were always a few finished pictures and
blank canvases stacked against a wall.
She considered herself an expert on decorating, including
decorating me. Her idea of clothing was not so much a fashion statement
as to make me look like an appetizing plate of food or a proper birthday
cake. Clothes shopping was a tug of war. She selected dresses with
matching vests or puffy-sleeved blouses. I wanted the same clothes as my
classmates: plain skirts and pants and striped or solid tops. I envied the
neighborhood kids who went to Catholic school and wore uniforms, which
avoided the entire clothes battle. Hair was another point of contention. My
hair was straight. When I began high school I was encouraged to “do
something” with it. She suggested putting it up in large plastic rollers
overnight. I tried this, but after two hours of discomfort and no sleep I gave
up and took the rollers out. I was taken for a “permanent wave” but the
smell made me nauseous. I returned to my ponytail.
2021, Winter / 85
it.”
The first morning we had coffee, I recalled my mother putting a
splash of milk and one sugar in hers, so I did the same.
“Do you like it?” Barbara asked.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“What do you drink at home?” she asked.
“Mostly Maxwell House,” I said.
She made a face.
“My mother’s in charge at home,” I explained and shrugged. I felt
disloyal.
I drank my coffee and I liked it. I assumed that was genetic.
I called home at the end of my first week.
“So how do you like college?” my mother asked.
“I’m drinking coffee,” I said after checking that none of my
roommates were around.
There was a pause on the other end.
“Oh,” my mother finally said.
“It’s called Gevalia,” I told her.
Another pause.
“I don’t think I know it,” she said. “Sounds imported. So how’s
college?”
I was disappointed that she wasn’t more enthused about the coffee.
It was, in a way, her religion, and I had finally bought into it. I also wanted
to smooth over the arguments we had before I left for school. Clothes were
the major issue. What she wanted for me was too dressy, too fussy.
“Girls don’t wear that in college,” I said.
“But I want you to look nice,” she insisted.
At first I thought it was her usual artistic frame of mind. Then I
had a moment of clarity. I was being groomed to make me attractive to
college boys so I could find a husband, as that was the future I was meant
for. Until then, I hadn’t given any thought to my future. I hadn’t even
picked a major. College graduation was four years away.
“I’ve only been here a week,” I said, “so it’s too soon to know
how it is.”
“What about your roommates?” she asked.
“They’re nice,” I told her.
“Good,” my mother said. “We’ll talk next week.”
*
I came home for winter break a bona fide coffee drinker. I brought
a can of Gevalia, and with trepidation presented it to my mother.
2021, Winter / 87
“I don’t want to put it in my coffee maker,” she said. “It will change the
taste of the Maxwell House.”
I wondered if this was true, but I didn’t argue.
“So you’re the Gevalia Girls,” she commented.
It had a catchy sound but there was a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
And you’re the Maxwell House Mom, I thought but didn’t say.
At breakfast the next morning, she stood at the table, coffee pot in
hand.
“I guess you don’t want the Maxwell House?” she asked.
I hadn’t had any Maxwell House since that long ago sip.
“Yes, I’ll have some, please,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows but filled my mug three quarters. Milk
and sugar were on the table. I added my usual amounts. I sipped. I didn’t
look at my mother but sensed she was watching me. The coffee tasted
different from Gevalia. Not as strong, not as rich. But still coffee. I
couldn’t decide if I should make a positive comment so I just ate my eggs
and toast.
“You could buy a coffeemaker at the neighborhood housewares
store,” my mother suggested. “Then you could have your Gevalia while
you’re here. You could leave the pot and the coffee so when you come
home you can have your own coffee.”
I gave the idea a moment’s thought. If I bought a coffeemaker and
made the Gevalia, my mother could try it. But that could open up a further
line of contention. Or if I left the pot and coffee, my mother could try the
Gevalia when I went back to school. I pictured her sipping it. What if she
liked it better than Maxwell House? Would she admit it?
“The Maxwell House is fine,” I said. “Good breakfast.”
*
In the middle of sophomore year I decided to major in
architecture. I announced my decision over Sunday breakfast during
winter break. .
“Wow!” my father exclaimed. “I’m impressed.” He beamed at me.
“Isn’t architecture a difficult field? I thought you might go in for
teaching. With teaching you can take time off to have a family, and go
back to it later. Architecture could be very demanding,” my mother
pointed out.
88 / Evening Street Review 32
pay raise. Six months later my boss added a third coffee. He started calling
me Coffee Queen. I was tempted to tell my parents about my success. But
I knew this was not my mother’s idea of success. So I left my Coffee
Queen identity on campus when I went home for breaks.
*
My parents drove up for my college graduation and after the
ceremony we celebrated at a restaurant in town. The place was packed
with other grads and their families. A co-worker from the café walked by
and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hi, Coffee Queen,” she greeted me.
My cover was blown.
“Why did she call you that?” my mother asked.
I confessed that I’d been working in the café.
“I was their coffee expert,” I said, hoping this would put a positive
spin on the subject.
“Working at a café?” My mother frowned.
“It was just to make money for graduate school,” I explained. “It’s
not going to be my career.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” my mother demanded.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it,” I told her. “But I like it.”
“That’s not what we wanted for you,” my mother shook her head.
“You want! You want!” I spit out. “It’s my life.”
My father put his hand on my arm.
“Where’s our waiter?” my mother asked after a moment of
silence. “I need a cup of coffee.”
II
I came home after my master’s degree to clean out my room. I’d
taken a job in Boston and I’d already found an apartment in Back Bay.
“I thought you would find a job here in New York,” my mother
said. “That way you could stay with us. It’s cold in Boston.”
“It’s cold here too,” I pointed out, skirting the main issue.
“You could have your own coffee maker if you stayed here,” she
went on.
“This is not about coffee,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve already accepted
the job. And I’ve signed a lease on an apartment.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before you made these decisions?” she
asked.
“Lorraine is an adult, Mary,” my father said. “She’s able to make
her own decisions.”
“I know that,” my mother snapped. “But she could have asked us
90 / Evening Street Review 32
When we arrived at seven the next morning for the eight o’clock
opening a line of customers had already formed outside. As soon as we
saw our parents, we ushered them in and settled them at a table. I handed
them menus and told a server to get them whatever they wanted. Then we
began to let the customers in. We were giving free coffee until noon—
French Roast or Gevalia—and some people were there just for a take-out
coffee. Soon the tables were filled. I asked a server to keep my mother’s
coffee cup filled. And I wondered which coffee she was drinking but I was
too busy to check.
Suddenly a scream pierced the café’s hubbub.
“I’m burned!” a voice shouted, and I recognized the voice was my
mother’s.
I rushed to her table. Coffee had spilled onto the tabletop and
splashed onto my mother. My father was dabbing her hand with a napkin
and a server rushed over with more napkins. The customers were staring
in her direction.
“What happened?” I asked, although the answer was obvious.
“She accidentally knocked over her coffee,” my father explained.
“It’ll be fine.”
“I’m burned!” my mother insisted. “Look!” She pushed away the
napkin covering her hand. The hand was bright red.
“You need medical attention,” I immediately said. “I’ll call a taxi
to take you to the emergency room.”
We met both sets of parents for dinner as planned, my mother with
a bandaged hand. I’d spoken to my father earlier and he’d assured me that
the burn wasn’t serious.
“I’m sorry I spoiled your opening,” my mother told me as soon as
Greg and I were seated.
“The opening was fine,” I told her. “We did great. Anyone can
spill coffee.”
“It was an accident,” she continued. “And the coffee was so hot.”
Greg and I exchanged a look.
“Let’s order dinner,” I suggested.
*
Greg and I were finishing dinner at our favorite restaurant,
celebrating the one-year anniversary of Lorraine’s coffee when the call
came. My father was in the hospital: heart attack. The next day I flew to
New York and went immediately to the hospital. My mother was already
there, staring at my father, who was hooked up to several beeping devices.
“What happened?” I asked.
94 / Evening Street Review 32
WILLIAM SWARTS
SEMPER FIDELIS
RUSSELL THAYER
COMBUSTION
sweating girl in a tatty dress, her copper hair tied back in a loose ponytail.
The angry, desperate crowd surged from side to side, and the girl began to
slip to the floor. Without thinking, Cal took hold of her, one arm around
her back, as if they were dancing together. She looked at him with a
mixture of fear and gratitude, freckles high on her cheeks, blue eyes nearly
hidden in the shadow of his body. There was a sour odor about her as he
held her close, and he could feel her nipples through the thin dress, hard
against his naked chest. She turned her head away, closing her eyes, hot
breath on his shoulder.
Soon the crowd began to spill out of the building. Cal released the
girl when it seemed safe to do so. She disappeared without a word.
***
Cal and his father emerged from the makeshift cinder-block
shelter that had been hastily constructed as a crawlspace in the pungent
earth underneath the old hotel. Cal’s mother had chosen not to follow them
into the hole. No bombs had exploded nearby, and no breeze cooled their
dripping bodies.
It didn’t take long for Cal to notice the red-haired girl staring at
him from the second-floor balcony.
“Hey, boy!” she shouted down to him. Her accent was English.
“Come watch the fires with me.”
Cal looked up at his father, who nodded.
“Your mother’s angry. I’ve gotta find her,” he said. “You go keep
an eye on that one. Watch out. I’ve been told she’s a bit of a hellion.”
Not knowing what that could mean in a girl but happy for the
attention, Cal sprinted up a stairway to the balcony. The girl waited for
him against the railing, then took his hand and pulled him to a ladder
propped against the edge of the flat roof.
“I need you,” she said, climbing first.
“What for?” he asked, happy to help. She didn’t answer. He
noticed her bare feet and ankles as he climbed close behind her.
Fifteen or twenty young people had already gathered on the roof,
laughing, happy to be alive. Just like the girl, none of these people had
taken refuge in the shelter. Cal felt a little ashamed at having hidden there.
He suspected many of them were drunk.
The girl led Cal to some wooden beer crates that had been
arranged into a makeshift bench. He could feel the lingering heat from the
afternoon sun on the tar roof. Taking a seat, she patted the space next to
her. Cal sat down as she began to rub her foot.
“Some bloody fool in the hallway crushed my toes,” she said, her
100 / Evening Street Review 32
More people appeared at the top of the ladder and tumbled onto
the roof. Crates of rattling beer bottles followed them. Another explosion
resounded in the distance, sending sparks of metal and tongues of flame
seemingly into the stratosphere. Men shouted drunkenly. The girl slapped
at a mosquito.
A large man loomed suddenly in front of them, a beer in each
hand.
“Hey, ya little cockatiel. Let’s go for a walk.”
Cal looked at the girl, hoping she’d stay with him on the crates.
“Don’t come around me anymore,” she said to the man. “I’m not
a bitch in heat. This is my boyfriend, by the way. He’ll throw you off the
bloody roof if I ask him to.”
The Aussie laughed from deep in his belly. He was a strong,
handsome man. Cal’s father had told him that most of the Australian men
at the hotel worked as mechanics for Qantas Empire Airways. No planes
had come to take them home.
“Okay, you cheeky birds. Grab a little fun while you can.” He
handed them the two bottles he’d brought over. Once his hands were free,
he ran his fingers through his long hair, a calculated posturing. The girl
wouldn’t look at him. “I give us about a week before the Jap army comes
in force. Your boyfriend won’t be much use to you then.”
The girl did not seem to be affected by the ominous banter. She
drank from the bottle as the Aussie walked away. Cal decided she was
tough in her mind, if not her body. Then he studied her body in the thin
dress and judged that she was athletic, with strong calves and muscular
arms, like one of the lean Filipino miners who worked for his father. And
she frightened him a little bit, especially when she’d implied that he was
her boyfriend already. He took a sip of the beer.
She glanced sideways at him, then laughed at his reaction.
“It’s dreadful stuff, really,” she said. “Like swallowing your own
urine.”
“I suppose,” Cal said. “Why do you drink it?”
“I’ve been drunk a couple of times these last few weeks, and I
quite like the feeling. Rum is certainly delicious. A charming addition to
a Coca-Cola, if you can find either of them anymore. There won’t be any
102 / Evening Street Review 32
Each and every one of us bayoneted in the street, our blood melting into
the dust and gravel as our minds grow black and our souls evaporate into
the heavens.” She then hopped to the crate again, cursing and pulling at
something stuck into the bottom of her foot.
“Merry Christmas,” said Cal after helping her to sit.
“Don’t remind me,” she said, licking her finger and rubbing a spot
on her heel.
“We still have to go on, don’t we?” he asked with a shrug. “Even
in these hard times. Christmas makes me think of home.”
Maggie took Cal’s head in her hands and turned it toward her. She
brought her face close to his.
“Last Christmas, early in the morning, while we were still
refugees in Melbourne, my mother’s boyfriend did me over after a night
of heavy celebration. She snored through the whole episode, my mother
did. Right next to me on the sofa while he hurt me. Horrible woman. Awful
mother. Then she brought me here to get me away from him, and now I’m
going to be killed because of it.” She let go of his head, pushing it away
roughly. “So you can have your Christmas. And you can stick it in your
bloody arse.”
“No, thanks,” said Cal, not sure what else to say and a little
worried that he’d made her dislike him.
They sat in silence for a while, sweating while they watched the
flames. Cal thought Maggie might be crying as she picked up his beer
bottle and finished it in a series of gulps, but when he sneaked a look at
her eyes, he could see they were dry.
“Don’t worry, young man,” she said. “I still want you.”
Cal’s heart bounced again. A few times. Then settled nervously.
“Where’s your father?” he asked.
“He was killed in Hong Kong after Mum and I were sent away.
Beheaded in the street. I loved him more than anything in the world, but
he had a newspaper to run.”
Cal touched Maggie on the cheek with the back of his hand.
Gently. It was a gesture his father used, and his mother always seemed to
like it. Maggie’s shoulder leaned into his.
“Has that guy bothered you much?” Cal asked. “The Aussie. The
one who brought us the beer.”
“He knows I’m not a virgin. Men can tell. But I won’t go with
him. He’ll probably drag Lorraine to his room tonight. Poor woman.”
The mosquitoes had become intolerable, and Cal thought he’d like
to find relief under the mosquito netting in his own room, but he liked
2021, Winter / 105
sitting on the roof with a girl his age and not a parent in sight. It was
Christmas morning and the humid air was filled with a pungent mixture of
smoke and uncertainty. The world had changed dramatically for everyone,
the small village where he’d lived a fading memory under the weight of
growing up all at once. This dramatic girl was feeling the same feelings,
he guessed, but whereas he wanted to stay quiet, invisible, observing the
details as they passed under his nose, she seemed to want to knock the
world around, stretch her legs and arms, and shout at the night. He would
sit with her as she digested the two beers. He’d sit and listen to her bold
talk and make sure she got down the ladder safely when it was time to go.
MITCHELL UNTCH
ESSENTIAL
I am a grocery clerk,
an essential worker inside a pandemic
that will kill me if I return back
to the person
I was two months ago.
I circumvent crowded aisles,
estimate distances.
There are fewer and fewer spaces
for me to move into.
I wear masks and gloves that will keep me alive,
no longer recognize myself in the mirror.
No one knows who I am.
Truman had planned to take the long way home from school. He
wanted to visit the swans at that lake in Prospect Park on his way to
Flatbush. He’d saved the crusts of his sandwich to feed them. But it was
getting dark, and it was best he head directly home on the No. 2 train
instead of strolling through the park, else Auntie-Jo would surely have his
hide.
It was warm on the train, and he dozed off in his seat. He dreamed
he was back on the island again, lying on the sand, the sound of surf and
gulls in his ears. The colorful fishing boats all lined up on the beach at the
end of the day. The sun slung low. His mother calling him home for
dinner…
TRUUUUUUU-mahn.
Was that really her?
TRUUUUUUU-mahn.
No. It was not his name in his mother’s mouth, but instead the
screech of metal wheels on the subway tracks. In his nostrils, not the warm
Jamaican breeze, but a hot, dank wind that smelled of urine and burnt
brakes whooshing through the underground.
2021, Winter / 111
the door to the vestibule, carefully wiped his feet on the mat, and then
rushed into the kitchen.
He found Auntie-Jo sitting in her usual chair, back to the wall,
eyes on the door. He stood in front of her, unable to catch his breath, his
mind churning with questions.
“Auntie-Jo?” Truman held out the bird in a little nest he had made
with his cupped hands. “Can these bones live?” He fought tears but lost
the battle. He was supposed to be the man in this house of women and
children, and men don’t cry. But would it be okay now, maybe, alone with
Auntie-Jo? Could it be okay? Could it be safe to tell her the story, to ask
this kind of question?
Auntie-Jo peered over her glasses at the bird, then at Truman. She
spoke as if she hadn’t heard a word.
“Boy, you a vexing fool, not a wit of the sense God gave you,”
she said. Then she stubbed out her Newport, pushed her chair away from
the table, stood up, and walked to him.
“Give me that filty ting,” she said, and reached out to take the bird
from him. “We got ’nuff trouble round dis house without you bringin’ in
wild animals full of disease. Give it to me and go wash your hands this
instant! And mindya go back and wipe that city slime off dose feet before
you go upstairs!”
As if he had not wiped his feet!
The cleanliness of Auntie-Jo’s house was her one and only pride,
and in the four years he’d lived in her place, Truman had learned very well
the difference between clean and dirty, learned to make his bed, clean his
nails, say “please” and “thank you.” He loved his Auntie-Jo, but how was
it possible that all she saw when she looked at the little bird was a “filty
ting”?! He’d hoped for more from her. He must tell her the whole story.
He must ask her: What kind of world is this, really? Could it really be so
cruel?
True dat up here in Babylon, true dat, said the Auntie-Jo in his
head, like she said about all the things in Flatbush that made no sense. But
the Auntie-Jo who stood before him in the kitchen twilight had empty eyes
and said nothing. Just stood there waiting for him to hand over his treasure
so she could throw it away.
For the first time, doubts came to him: Auntie-Jo may have taught
him well about order and manners and respecting his elders. But wasn’t
there more to goodness than these things? What if goodness was a lesson
wrapped up in dirty, filthy, messy life? What if there was magic in this
wad of bones, in his tears and outrage, in his knowing and his visions?
114 / Evening Street Review 32
SETH ROSENBLOOM
SHOOTING SQUAD, 1941 LITHUANIA
Eggs cradled in a basket, one hundred and sixty in all, arrive with care.
Pillaged from the hen, requisitioned from a farm, trundled by caravan.
Each a step in a much larger plan.
Delicate fingers wipe each egg with a cloth before boiling in a dented
pot. They cool on beds of straw and harden before transport to their final
destination.
The eggs rest in wooden crates atop the ageless fallings of the forest.
They smell the ripe earth opened from the gaping trench nearby, they
listen as soldiers from the battalion take their places.
The operation begins. Lorries rumble, rifles point, dogs bark. The day’s
prisoners are unloaded in batches of ten. First the men, then the women
and their children.
Along a rough conveyance running through the trees, clothes are shed,
and valuables ripped from hems. Curious villagers come to the edge of
the woods and watch.
The now tired soldiers have grown sloppy in their task, firing their rifles
into row after row. Pale bodies pile into the pit. The ground heaves and
groans.
(cont)
2021, Winter / 115
Swollen from the morning’s work. Sun seeps through the pines and it is
time for lunch, which the soldiers take in a manner that is overdue.
Eggs crack in fists, against kneecaps and on felled trunks. The yellow
yolk is dry in the mouth and mealy to the tongue.
Unlike the whites, which glide whole from the lips to the back of the throat.
Rosenbloom
Give thanks
for the hot asphalt
healing holes in the road
KIM FARLEIGH
ON BEING MAD
eagle kid’s chest. Shhhhhhhshhing bullet kerrackt. The kid tried speaking,
jaws struggling, right hand reaching up. I captured his last second. He
knew his death could open eyes.
A kid whimpering: “Mahmoud, Mahmoud....,” fell to his knees,
mouth twisted, teardrops glistening on his cheeks. Photographing grief
was disturbing, but the people wanted Zionist savagery.to be revealed.
I stomped up the hill. Gun barrels emerged through rubber-ringed
holes in an arachnid’s hide. Fury evicted fear from my mind.
I screamed: “Open the doors!”
SS-style boots kicked open the back doors. Kicker’s peeved
righteousness bleached his eyes’ whites into outraged marble.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“What am I doing here? What the fuck are you doing here!?”
The soldiers, occupying boiling semi-darkness, were younger than
twenty.
“What do you care what happens to these people?” Kicker yelped.
“When this happens to you lot,” I replied, “I won’t give a fuck.
You’ll fucking well deserve it!”
“We could shoot you as well,” another one said.
He was short with broad cheeks. His black hair emphasised his
skin’s paleness. Smugness smeared his voice with assurance.
“Well, shoot then,” I said. “Then say you shot an anti-Semitic Jew.
Most Israelis’ll believe you. You idiots believe anything.”
“Look,” a third one said, “we’ve got a right to be here. This is our
land.”
A blond, blue-eyed American.
“So blond hair, pale skin, blue eyes and American accents come
from the Middle East?” I asked.
The dead kid had had olive skin, dark eyes, and black hair.
Another vehicle approached. Out stepped the company’s
commander; over six feet tall, black, curly hair, eyes oozing
reasonableness.
“Why,” I quipped, “it’s Captain Kid Killer.”
A gunshot shattered the silence my comment created, kids
scurrying back down the hill, legs flashing like fiddlestick pendulums, an
ambulance’s siren wailing.
“Reinforcements required?” I asked. “Because I outnumber them
one to six? (Someone was beside the driver.) The Israeli Damaging Farce
won’t act without a twenty-to-one advantage. Always use automatic
weapons against teenagers launching granite with their bare hands.”
118 / Evening Street Review 32
ELLEN GOLDSMITH
EDGING
ECHOCARDIOGRAM
1.
My heart. I watch it
during my first
echo. I love how
it never
stops.
2.
This time, I know something
is wrong when the tech
says she needs to consult
the doctor. Don’t leave,
she says. I don’t.
Heart beating fast,
I wait.
(cont)
120 / Evening Street Review 32
3.
A stiff heart,
aortic stenosis
in medical jargon.
Younger, my body
was so flexible,
a backbend easy as pie.
And now it’s my mind
that turns over and over
in a series of cartwheels.
Goldsmith
NOT KNOWING
(cont)
JBMULLIGAN
some faith in man
CAROL GRASER
THE ADIRONDACK POSTCARD
JAN SHOEMAKER
THE DIFFERENCE
difference, you will learn, if you can bear scrolling through the
commentary online, is so much Potato-Potahto. What we enjoy (and
uneasily hope to keep enjoying) is a representative democracy, which is
exactly the same thing as a republic. Both are systems, Eugene Volokh of
The Washington Post explains, in which, rather than voting directly on the
creation of every law and policy, people elect representatives to provide
this service. “Representative democracy,” Volokh insists, “is the only
democracy that’s around at any state or national level.” Which is not to
suggest that all democracies operate with an electoral college, which runs
such caustic interference with the popular will and vote. This “college” is
not our defining speciality: we share it with Burundi, Kazakhstan,
Myanmar, and Pakistan. So there’s that. Donald Trump, the greatest threat
to American democracy in the entire history of our sovereignty, was
elected by the electoral college, but not—and though we’ve all heard it a
million times, it bears repeating—by the popular vote. Trump lost the
popular vote by almost 3 million votes.
The difference between flammable and inflammable is—never
mind.
Butterfly or moth? These differences are rather easy to overlook,
like those between the two tribes in that old Star Trek episode who were
both black and white, but on different sides of their bodies. My, how they
hated each other for that. Butterflies and moths both belong to the order
Lepidoptera, so they are kin, but with some different habits, rather like my
sister-in-law Liz and me. Liz was raised in the American South, a
generation ahead of my own, and I’m from northern stock and terrain. She
was brought up to attend to the vanities of men; let’s say I was not. We
made a functionable pair when, for a number of years, our families shared
a cottage for a week in the summer, which always involved a lot of visitors
and a lot of big meals. Whenever our company included a man (and there
was one man in particular) who required a rapt and devoted audience, I’d
shoot Liz out of the kitchen and into the living room. She never failed to
nail it. She was the glittering social butterfly to my dusty indifferent moth.
According to the people at livescience.com, Lepidoptera differences
include the following: butterflies are diurnal—busy during the day, while
nocturnal moths are mostly out and about at night. A butterfly resting on
a flower will fold her wings discreetly over her back, her gentle manners
in line with crossing one’s human legs at the ankle, like Kate Middleton
has learned to do (but maybe not Meghan Markle). A moth has more early
Eliza Doolittle in her. She takes to her blossom with her wings opened as
wide as the knees as those infamous manspreaders everyone was
126 / Evening Street Review 32
complaining about several years ago, before so many more alarming things
presented themselves, almost daily, for our outrage. In another divergence,
moth caterpillars weave themselves silk cocoons while the pupa
of butterflies make their transformations inside chrysalises as smooth and
hard as patent leather shoes. Butterflies are as slim and hairless as models;
moths are furry and stout. Butterflies tend to be more colorful, which is
not to say more beautiful, as I think anyone who’s ever seen a Luna moth
would agree. Trump, a well-documented knee-spreader, is famously
diurnal and nocturnal, furiously tweeting lies all day and gorging on Fox
News all night. Cocooned among ambitious sycophants willing to degrade
themselves and dismantle our democracy for his odious approval, he
transforms in no way at all, but remains the nearly blind and flightless
creature he began. He has no place among the magnificent and malleable
Lepidoptera; they are entirely out of his league.
The difference between a novel and a book—and yes, we get this
at the bookstore where I moonlight—is that a novel is a piece of fiction
long enough to be more than a short story. The End. As ale is a type of
beer, a novel is a type of book.
Few people may care about distinguishing a cappuccino from a
latte since they are both delicious (I don’t care about the difference
between Extra-Fudge-Brownie ice cream and Deluxe-Fudge-Brownie ice
cream) but for the curious who do: a latte is a simpler creature, with more
milk in it. Both start with espresso. From there, a proper (which may not
be what we get from a 16-year-old barista with homework and a boyfriend)
cappuccino is a tiered affair with the coffee on the bottom, steamed milk
in the middle, and a luxurious foam on top. A latte is a glorious mix of
coffee and milk concluding with a military buzz cut of foam—though a
grown-out buzz cut, if you’re lucky. Even ignoring issues of taste and
character, Trump lacks the complexity of any decent coffee.
The difference between Donald Trump’s Lies and the
Misrepresentations of Every Former President is the difference between
Jeffrey Dahmer and people who eat things they shouldn’t at the holidays.
Appalling: his airtight narcissism. Mortifying: his absolute lack of
empathy and conscience. Insidious: his tyrannical ambitions. The
difference between a Biden presidency and a Trump second term is the
difference between freedom and totalitarianism. It is what we do in
November will make all the difference.
2021, Winter / 127
HEAT
The corn, their needy children clustered around them,
Curl narrow hands into calla lilies of prayer,
Raise arms in supplication, soft susurrations of sound
Murmuring along the rows.
The grove, hunkering on the far side of the field,
Dons dusty velvet, faded and out of focus from the sun.
Trees, aging dowagers, lean and whisper to one another,
Brittle voices crackling with speculation
And dreams of imminent relief.
But their suitor, their benefactor, the sky,
Remains indifferent, or at best, distant.
The scintillating light, like a migraine’s aura,
Forces the common blue into mere watercolor wash,
Pulling the sky to hover high beyond her offspring,
Cloudless, veiled in shimmers of heat. Noe
128 / Evening Street Review 32
KATHIE GIORGIO
RECIPE
Dottie never had ramen noodle soup until after her husband died. She was
sixty-three years old, and while she was a college graduate, the student
staple of brightly colored soup packages never caught her eye during that
particular four years, or for all the years after. In college, she stayed in the
2021, Winter / 129
dorms and the only time she didn’t eat in the cafeteria was on the
weekends, when she went out with friends, and then with the man who
would become her partner in all things for forty-two years. They ate at
campus pizza places or Denny’s. When they married one month past
graduation, he promised to give her everything wonderful. He did his best.
While there were weeks early on where supper was Campbell’s soups
purchased three cans at a time with the use of a coupon, and bolstered with
slices of white bread slathered with margarine, she never even noticed the
ramen packages when she searched for grocery store bargains. She
wouldn’t have thought to look for soup encased in plastic wrap.
Over the years, Gavin’s best indeed proved to be wonderful. Pizza places
and Denny’s dropped away to make room for fine restaurants every
Saturday night and every holiday, birthday and anniversary. But then
Gavin died. Not entirely unexpected at sixty-three. A month past his death,
Dottie came across a bin of ramen noodle soup on an endcap, just between
aisles six and seven in the Pick’N’Save.
Ten for a dollar! It was hard to walk away from what seemed to be a
bargain, though Gavin didn’t leave her poor, just as he promised. Dottie
swirled through the packages and noted the flavors.
At ten for a dollar, Dottie figured she didn’t have much to lose. If it tasted
horrible, she’d only be out a buck and she could donate the unused
packages to the food pantry. So she bought three of the creamy chicken,
two of the oriental, one beef, one pork, one chili, and two mushroom. She
wasn’t crazy about shrimp, and lime shrimp with noodles didn’t sound like
it would make her a convert.
Ten days later, Dottie came back for more. She was delighted to find out
that the ten for a dollar wasn’t a sale, but a regular price. The ramen was
good! She took to slicing and adding things to it – canned chicken, hot
dogs, ham, sausage – and it made for a high spot in her day. She sat at her
kitchen table, alone, but with a book open to her left, a glass of water on
her right, and a glass of wine waiting for the meal to be over, signaling the
official start of afternoon. She kept a placemat out in Gavin’s spot and she
glanced at it, from time to time set her hand upon it. The soup steamed her
face in heat and salt, reminding Dottie of a flavorful ocean, and the book,
130 / Evening Street Review 32
whatever it was, kept her company. She took to speaking out loud to the
characters, and sometimes, to the writer.
Dottie missed her husband. Without a doubt. But with the ramen on her
table every day at noon, Dottie felt her mind, and her grief, ease just a bit.
She worried about that, it seemed like maybe too soon, but the
ramen…well, the ramen was good. She still cooked well for supper, and
still cooked the meal for two; she just saved the second portion for the next
day. On Saturday nights, she still went out to very nice restaurants,
sometimes with a friend, sometimes with her younger sister, and
sometimes with her daughter. She never went alone. If no one was
available, she stayed at home, cooking a recipe that took a little more time
and that required higher quality ingredients, a better cut of meat.
“I can’t believe I never had ramen before!” Dottie said to her daughter.
“I’m having it at lunch every day.”
Her daughter looked alarmed. “Mom, the sodium! That’s just not
healthy for you!”
Dottie cut carefully into her prime rib. Queen cut. Rare. “Really?
Isn’t it an Asian staple? And don’t they live forever?”
Her daughter stared. Then she changed the subject.
After dinner, Dottie went home alone. She poured a glass of wine
and set out for Googleland. Dottie was no stranger to the internet; as soon
as everyone merged onto the information superhighway, as they used to
call it, she joined the drive too. Gavin told her it was fine, as long as they
went to approved sites and they stayed safe. She wasn’t clear on what was
safe and what wasn’t, but there sure was a lot to see. “Recipes With
Ramen,” she typed in.
Then she sat back and began to click with abandon.
****
SUNDAY BREAKFAST: In a medium saucepan, bring a cup of
water to a boil. Add a block of ramen (water should cover it) and then add
a layer of onion and tomato slices. Top with a whole raw egg. Put the
cover on the saucepan and cook until the egg reaches desired doneness.
Salt and pepper to taste.
always have her breath fresh for him, just in case he’d want to kiss her. As
the years went by, onions slipped in here and there, mostly when she
couldn’t avoid them, such as at friends’ houses for dinner, or in restaurants.
Dottie took care of this by always having a travel size tube of toothpaste
in her purse, along with a folding toothbrush. Never once in her entire
relationship with Gavin did she turn away from his kiss. Never once did
he find that kiss not sweet, laced with peppermint and the bubblegum wax
of Dottie’s lipstick.
And now, onions for breakfast. And tomato, and an egg, and
ramen noodles. A cup of strong coffee completed the meal. For her
daughter, Dottie added a glass of grapefruit juice.
Breakfast with Gavin changed over the years. When they were
first married, it was toast and thermosed coffee on the run, as they danced
around each after waiting until the last possible minute to climb out of bed.
It was a good dance, though, with plenty of trailing fingers and loud
smacking kisses. Slaps across the rumps. Promises for later. On weekends,
there were afternoon breakfasts in bed, and Dottie cooked omelets and
pancakes and waffles. When the children arrived, breakfasts transitioned
to mostly cold cereals, with hot meals reserved for special mornings out,
especially after church on Sundays.
Toward the end, past kids, past work, it was oatmeal for their
cholesterol. Now, Dottie looked at Gavin’s placemat and tried to
remember what oatmeal tasted like. Bland was what she remembered. But
the sounds weren’t bland. Gavin’s voice. The clinks of their spoons against
the bowls. And until the morning Gavin died, there were still the slaps
across the rumps, the slowly trailing fingers.
Now there was this ramen mixture. A ramen breakfast. With
onion.
Dottie scooped up another forkful. She brought her teeth together.
Oh, the onion bit. It flooded her mouth with the sharpness of
morning. The moment of opening the eyes and being stabbed, but infused
with sunlight. Bending the joints and hearing the snap of being drawn
upright again. The flame of awakening tendons.
That kind of sharp. Dottie chewed and she swallowed. She looked
at Gavin’s placemat, trailed her fingers across it. Then she scooped up
another mouthful.
She would brush her teeth, of course. But for now, she was
saturated in onion.
And tomato. Egg. And ramen.
She wished Gavin was there to taste it. She wished she’d eaten
132 / Evening Street Review 32
onions with him and had the sharp of it on their tongues when they kissed
after a decadent breakfast. But even as she wished, she enjoyed her
breakfast without him.
She wondered if it was too soon.
****
MONDAY LUNCH: Boil a ramen noodle block for three minutes.
Drain and place in a salad bowl. Over the boiled noodles, place one cup
chopped red bell pepper, one cup crumbled feta cheese, and one cup each
of chopped onions, tomatoes, green olives and black olives. Mix one cup
canola oil and one cup lemon juice to pour over your ramen Greek salad.
Dottie couldn’t remember ever in her life eating cold noodles.
Gavin eschewed summery pasta salads, claiming noodles were meant to
be hot, and bathed hotter in soup stock or extravagant sauces. As she
chopped the vegetables, Dottie felt a tad unfaithful. She glanced sideways
at the noodles, now drained and placed in a bowl. They weren’t soldered
in the ramen brick anymore, but sprawled in the most unruly way. Spiral
directions. Rebellious.
On the table, her book already waited, face down, open to the last
page she read. Her glass of water was ready too, and the wine was just out
of reach. It was a pinot grigio today, as a trip to Googleland told Dottie
that was an excellent match for a Greek salad. Dottie thought she might
miss the steam of the soup during her meal. She wondered if Gavin would
be proven right.
Greek salad with ramen soup noodles without the soup. What did
that make this meal? A mutt? Greek-Asian? Grasian?
Dottie laughed out loud alone in her kitchen. She listened for
Gavin’s appreciative rumble and then his laughter. Their humor almost
always dovetailed. But this time, the sound of her laughter had no
counterpoint.
Still, the tingle in her ribcage was there, the tingle that always
came after a good laugh.
When she finally sat down, she orchestrated the meal. The salad
was situated in the center of her placemat, and she set a piece of oven-
warmed Italian bread, thick with butter and sprinkled with garlic, just to
her upper left. She figured she was already eating multinational, so adding
in Italian wouldn’t hurt. She opened her book and tilted it against a stack
of books she still had to read. Books upon books made the nicest book-
holder, and it brought the page to a readable level.
When Gavin still worked and the children were still in school,
Dottie read at lunchtime. The other two meals, breakfast and supper, were
2021, Winter / 133
filled with family conversation, but lunch was Dottie’s alone. She
preferred to spend that time in mindful discussions with fictional others.
When the children grew up and Gavin retired, she set her books away from
the kitchen, leaving them instead in stacks on the end table next to her
recliner and on her bedside table. Now, with Gavin gone, lunchtime
reading returned. But she also kept the stacks in the family room and
bedroom. And she added one in the bathroom. She read short stories and
essays there. Sometimes poetry.
She enjoyed her lunchtime reading. But she missed Gavin.
Now, Dottie found where she left off in the book yesterday, then
raised her fork like a conductor’s wand and dug in to her meal.
In the sunshine of her kitchen, Dottie felt the bite of the onion
again, but this time, its teeth were gnashed with the bell pepper. The
tomato coursed sweet and Dottie felt the sharp softened in juices, then
blended with the salt and brine of the olives, the grit of feta. Through it all,
there were the noodles, which twirled cool and slim over her palate. They
were a surprise, Asian upstarts with attitude among the Greeks. Rebellious.
Dottie’s international conversants chattered in the sunlight and she
ingested it all. She spoke to them all and she listened to the characters in
her book and she discussed possible plot twists with the author. The world
spun through her kitchen.
Everyone fell silent for a moment, when she glanced at Gavin’s
placemat. She stopped chewing and her fingers rested at the corner of her
page, just about to turn. “You would have loved this,” she said out loud.
“Even the cold noodles.” And she knew him well. She knew he would.
She missed him. They shared so much, but not red bell peppers,
onions, tomatoes, black and green olives, feta cheese, and ramen. The
ramen was so good.
By the end of her meal, she was ready for the interplay with wine.
She raised her glass and toasted her book. She toasted her empty bowl.
Dottie wondered if it was too soon.
She toasted Gavin’s placemat.
****
TUESDAY DINNER: Saute one diced chicken breast in two
tablespoons butter. When chicken is done, stir in one cup chopped onion
and two tablespoons flour. Cook until deep brown. Add one cup water, one
tablespoon vinegar, one tablespoon snipped parsley and one teaspoon
each tarragon and thyme. Bring to a boil, simmer for one minute and serve
over hot boiled ramen noodles.
134 / Evening Street Review 32
sending sparks of leaves to the ground. In the cabinet, there was a twin.
Gavin and she bought the glasses on a trip to Door County a year before
Gavin died.
Dottie glanced at Gavin’s placemat, then retrieved the twin glass
from the cabinet. She filled it, clinked her glass to it, took a sip, then
propped her book on the book pile. She knew she would drink Gavin’s
glass later, after dinner. But for now, it stood sentinel.
He led her to safe places. He told her what was safe.
She was safe.
Scooping up a forkful of hot ramen noodles, sautéed chicken,
onion, vinegar, parsley, thyme, tarragon and flour, Dottie thrust it all in
her mouth. And then she chewed on the devil. She chewed until she could
swallow and then she washed the devil away with a swig of good wine.
It was warm in her kitchen, though the sun no longer shone. The
utilitarian round light on her ceiling did. The air was heady with onion and
chicken, vinegar and spices, and her mouth, if Gavin kissed it, would taste
of chardonnay. Dottie turned to the next page in her book.
She missed her husband. But she was safe. Still, she glanced at the
dark outside the window. She wondered if it was too soon.
****
WEDNESDAY DESSERT: Place three sponge cake dessert cups
on a plate. Top each with a sliced banana, one-third cup maraschino
cherries, a third of a package of fried ramen noodles and a cup each of
hot fudge sauce.
On Wednesday, Dottie invited her sister over for dessert. She
needed to divide and share the ramen dessert recipe she found. With three
sponge cake dessert cups, she and Margaret could have one and a half
each, and not feel too piggish. Dottie never could have eaten all three by
herself. Well, she could, but she wouldn’t.
Having her sister there surrounded Dottie with familiarity, with
the comfort of home, but a home well before this one. When she and
Margaret were growing up, their parents often had friends over for dessert.
They met in the living room and Dottie’s mother served coffee in a special
silver urn that sat on a silver tray, and the coffee cups were made of special
Italian glass. Dottie used to look at them through the window of the dining
room china cabinet. She used to dream of a time when she would serve
coffee and cake to her own friends, in that urn, in those cups, with her
husband sitting in a leather chair, holding forth. Maybe even smoking a
pipe.
Gavin never smoked. Dottie, as an adult, was glad of it.
2021, Winter / 137
Now, she served her sister. Her coffee pot wasn’t a silver urn, but
a nice decanter. The cups, however, were their mother’s. When their
mother died, Dottie kept the cups. Margaret kept the silver urn. The sisters
sat on the couch together, each grayed head turned to the other. In the
corner, the leather chair was empty, but Dottie turned on the reading lamp
every night. Even though she never sat there.
“This…is weird,” Margaret said as Dottie plated a dessert and a
half and gave it to her. “There’s ramen in this?”
“Yes.” Dottie went on to describe how she fried the ramen noodle
brick in a skillet. How the noodles turned brown and crispy, like those odd
chow mein noodles their mother used to serve with canned chop suey.
How Dottie ate one, and it was like a spaghetti-shaped potato chip.
As girls, Dottie and Margaret loved the canned chop suey. Their
father hated it, and so their mother always made it as a special treat when
he was away on business. For dessert, her mother slid a frozen banana
cream pie out of a box, then sliced it. Her father hated the pie too. Dottie
hadn’t had these in years. She made a mental note to look for each item on
her next trip to the grocery store.
After pouring coffee in the special Italian mugs, they each
gathered a forkful of dessert into their mouths. They crunched together.
Margaret delicately dabbed a bit of hot fudge sauce from the corner of her
mouth.
“It’s weird, but good!” she said.
Dottie agreed.
They alternated bites with sips of coffee and with memories of
home pulled up by the flavors. Mom and Dad and several of their
neighbors dancing to music on the new console, delivered that day and the
first in their subdivision. The record player had a special arm that held
multiple records up, dropping them one by one onto the rotating platter.
The music that came out of the speakers was lovely, but more fascinating
was watching the needle’s steady ride inward over the grooves, the arm
pulling up, a new record plunking down, and then it all started again. Their
parents didn’t even stop dancing. They just kept going, having faith that
the music would last forever.
Through each scene remembered, Dottie and Margaret smacked
their lips over the chemical sweetness of maraschino cherries, their teeth
turning pink. The tender squash of bananas and the rubbery solidity of hot
fudge. And there was the delicate snap of the fried ramen noodles between
their teeth. Their voices alternately clogged and cleared as they chewed
and swallowed, and their laughter at times made them choke. Margaret,
138 / Evening Street Review 32
totally undone, lifted her plate and licked it clean. Dottie, first aghast, tried
swiping up the remains with a finger, but then gave in and licked her plate
too. Their girlhood reflected in their tongued clean plates.
After carrying their dishes into the kitchen, Margaret and Dottie
hugged at the front door. “So,” Margaret said. “You seem okay. Are you
okay?”
Dottie shrugged. “Most of the time, I am.” But her eyes filled.
They hugged again.
Dottie locked the door behind Margaret. She left Gavin’s reading
light on. The others, she switched off. She darkened the kitchen as well
after starting the dishwasher. It took four days now to earn enough dishes
to run it. For a moment, she appreciated the steady rhythm of the jets,
filling her kitchen with ocean sounds and lemon scent.
As she left the kitchen, she slowly trailed her fingers over Gavin’s
placemat. Then she took a glass of wine with her to the family room, where
she settled down in her recliner with her book. Here, she didn’t need the
stack to prop the book at reading height. Her raised knees did it for her.
She found herself content in this quiet, with the ocean a kitchen
away. She felt she could hear the echo of her laughter with her sister,
wisping in from the living room. She could still smell the frying ramen,
and the new sharp of onion. Beneath that, still detectable, there was the
sound of the family room television and Gavin’s steady commentary, even
though the television was turned off and his recliner’s footrest was neatly
tucked in.
But she was content, despite the tears that swelled earlier. And
swelled again now.
She wondered if it was too soon.
****
THURSDAY SNACK: Mix together two packages of uncooked
broken ramen noodles, two cups Chex cereal, and one cup each pretzels
and peanuts. Melt a cup of butter and stir in one teaspoon season salt and
one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce. Pour over the noodles and cereal
mixture, stirring well. Bake in 250 degree oven for one hour, stirring every
fifteen minutes. Cool and serve.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, Dottie took a bowl of her new
ramen noodle snack out onto the back stoop. She also carried a glass of
iced tea, fresh-brewed, complete with a few squirts of juice from a plastic
lemon and a generous helping of sugar.
For her snacktime, Dottie didn’t require a book. She liked the back
stoop, the view of her yard, the trees in their varying styles of dress. Only
2021, Winter / 139
the coldest days kept Dottie indoors, and then she sat at a table by a
window, so she could still see the yard. During that frigid season, the trees
were draped in white and sparkled with ice, but the green always shining
through promised spring. Dottie liked to think that’s why the trees were
called evergreens; they embodied hope.
It wasn’t snowy now, though, but just the beginning of the
lackluster heat of summer. Dottie kicked off her sandals and wiggled her
toes against the coolness of the concrete steps.
During weekends and school breaks, her children sometimes
joined her here. After retirement, Gavin did as well. But Dottie thought of
it as a solitary place and so to be alone here felt routine and familiar.
Not all that was familiar was routine anymore. Normalcy, she
knew, was seeping into the rest of her new life as well. A new normal that
was not hoped for, not dreamed of, and certainly not welcomed. But it
came along anyway.
Dottie used her finger to stir the snack in the bowl. She filled her
fist full, trying to get an even assortment of noodles, cereal, peanuts and
pretzels, and she siphoned it into her mouth.
As everything snapped and popped between her teeth, giving off
random bursts of flavor and salt and Worcestershire, she let her eyes rove
the yard. In the center, there used to be a swingset. There were still two
bare oblong spots where the kids spiked their toes to gain momentum and
height, where they dragged their heels to stop. In the back left corner was
her vegetable garden. Gavin tilled it at the start of spring, then died several
weeks later. She hadn’t planted. She wasn’t sure then that she was strong
enough to handle a garden on her own. The separating of dirt, the
placement of plants and seeds. The constant weeding and watering. The
harvest and the putting up. Now, in this new familiar, she knew she was
okay. Even when her eyes filled. But it was too late, and she would have
to wait until next spring, when she would look at that plot of ground and
see a new sort of anniversary. She wondered if there were anniversaries
around death dates. She thought she would take herself, alone, out to
dinner at a fine restaurant on that night. Just as she and Gavin did for years,
for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and every Saturday.
In the other corner of the yard and along the sides of the fence
were her flowers. Many of them were perennials and so they grew and
bloomed without her, though she started offering up some care again. But
the annuals, the marigolds, the pansies, the begonias, were missing. She
never made it to the garden center. Now they were all sold out. Like the
vegetables, they would wait until next year.
140 / Evening Street Review 32
She missed him. She was content. She was safe and okay, even
when her eyes filled.
It wasn’t too soon at all.
MARK SIMPSON
SLIDE HILL
KAREN FAYETH
THE VIOLIN, THE LION, AND THE TRUTH
The Violin
Gina waited backstage, bouncing from foot to foot in the way that
adrenaline-fueled boxers often do before a fight. Pacing footwork was now
cellular memory from so much training. She wasn’t even aware she was
doing it. Fast feet, her trainer called it. “Hands up, fast feet, cover your
zones!”
Athletic from birth, there were few sports she hadn’t mastered, but
boxing was grueling work. She liked the odds against her opponent and
wanted to win. Okay, the fight wasn’t the main reason she was here, but
after all of the planning and hard training, she really did want to win this
thing. Both the fight and the investigation.
Gina was pure FBI, just like her dad. She had trained at Quantico,
one of the few women in her to class to graduate. Her cohort of all guys
had given her the nickname “The Violin” because, well, she was the only
member of the team with curves. She took it all in stride, and now her team
was on the hunt for gambling manipulation in undercard boxing matches.
She had every reason to believe her opponent was in on it. An embroidered
violin in the wrist of her glove held a tiny microphone, and her team was
situated around the room.
The Lion
Lisa waited backstage and was far calmer than her opponent. Both
more experienced and older, she knew about energy conservation before a
match. Instead of doing the amped-up boxer shuffle, she leaned against a
training table while her manager tightened the laces on her gloves. Her dad
had been a welterweight champion, and Lisa had grown up in the ring. He
gave her the nickname “The Lion” for how fearless she was, even as a little
kid. “You ever see a girl take a hit like that?” he would say to his buddies
when the little Lion sparred with (and beat) boys her age at the gym.
She wasn’t nervous about heading into the ring; she was nervous
about the other reason she was here. The Boxing League, along with the
FDA, had convinced her to help with surveillance. They were looking for
boxers who were using a new and highly undetectable form of steroid, and
her opponent was a prime suspect. No one was built like Gina without
help.
Her headband with a screen-printed roaring lion had hidden wires
2021, Winter / 145
The Announcer
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Obsidian Winds Casino and
Resort, home of silver dollar madness Thursdays! Folks, you are in for a
treat. We have two undercard fights tonight leading up to the big match.
Our first bout is between these two fierce lady fighters.
“In this corner, weighing in at one hundred and fifty-six pounds,
the challenger and newcomer, Gina ‘The Violin’ LoCoco. And in this
corner, weighing in at one hundred and forty pounds, the defending
champion, Lisa ‘The Lion’ MacAvoy.
“Tonight’s referee is Jimmy Roberts. You know, folks, there isn’t
a rule in the book that Jimmy doesn’t know. He’s a legend! And now, from
Obsidian Winds Casino, Antler Clash Auditorium, let’s lock horns!”
The Bout
“Your footwork is good. Your upper body is moving well, but
you’re leaving holes. Keep that block moving.”
Gina nodded, listening to her trainer. The first two rounds had
gone well, and she was holding her own in the match. Now that she was
more comfortable in the ring, it was time to do the real work on this so-
called Lion.
At the bell, both women jumped up, met in the center of the ring,
and resumed dancing, moving, jabbing, dodging. As if on cue, they both
saw a moment and lunged into a clinch.
Gina held her glove with the violin microphone as close to Lisa’s
mouth as possible and said, “Is the fix in on this fight? What about the next
one?”
Lisa tilted her screen-printed lion headband toward Gina and said,
“What?”
“You don’t have to do this. You are a genuine fighter. Tell me
what you know.”
“What I know is that you are awfully well-connected with Robust
Pharma. I must say, it’s working for you, but it’s illegal. Tell me the source
for your stuff, and we’ll cut you a deal.”
Gina pushed her glove closer, “Wait, what?”
“Okay, ladies, break it up. The audience came to see a fight, not a
waltz,” Jimmy said, wedging himself between the two spies, both chasing
the wrong lead.
Gina and Lisa stepped back and sized each other up, confused
146 / Evening Street Review 32
The Truth
“Hey, hey, Jimmy! There you are. Beautiful job on that undercard
fight tonight. Subtle but effective,” Hal Brady said, slapping a bulging
envelope into the veteran referee’s hand.
“Glad you’re pleased, Mr. Brady. Do you have next week’s list?”
“Not yet, but I like your enthusiasm. The Boss made a killing
today on that girl fight. That one looked real good. You kept it nice and
close to the end. That big Violin really has something, huh?”
“Yeah, she’s green, but she’s strong.”
“I’ll talk to the Boss. Maybe we let that Violin play a little
on the next one, huh?”
“You tell me, Mr. Brady.”
“Heeeey, what? I love a guy that follows orders. Okay,
gotta run. We’ll be in touch.”
“Sure, yeah, have a good evening.”
Jimmy slipped the thick envelope into his jacket pocket and heard
someone approaching from the other direction. His sideline was a hustle
every fight night.
“Hey, Jim. Hey, man, you got some for me?”
It was Lucas Landers, a fireplug of a kid with a brutal left hook
and a promising future.
“You got the cash?”
“Yeah, man, here,” Lucas said, handing him a wadded
McDonald’s bag filled with bills.
Jimmy reached into his duffel bag and withdrew a box of vials.
Handing it to the young man, he said, “Here’s the stuff, Landers. Go easy
on it, huh?”
“Yeah, man, cool.”
Jimmy watched the kid walk away and waited for his next
customer.
Another lucrative day of undetected grift.
GEORGE J SEARLES
MUCH OBLIGED, U.S. GOV’T PRINTING OFFICE!
2021, Winter / 147
schools opening up again, some in person but many online, Paul has made
use of his forty-year-old master’s degree in English (Not quite as antique
as Mary Shelly, Paul has thought more than once, but in the running), and
found work at the community college based in New Jersey where he is
now an adjunct professor. Paul has never actually set foot in the place. The
school was desperate for teachers and Paul was desperate for work.
Seventy minutes after the class began, Paul says good-bye to the
faces in the boxes onscreen—his virtual students, beaming into his
bedroom from beyond the Hudson River, across the towering cliff of the
Palisades that guard the Jersey shore. He makes some notes, sends an
email to one of the students who needs some extra encouragement. You’re
doing really well, Paul writes. Please let me know if you have any
questions about the book that I can help you with.
It’s late in the afternoon when he finally turns off his computer.
Then he clicks on the tv and switches around the channels to see what the
news is. Every channel seems to be running breaking news banners no
matter what time of day or night it is because everything seems a hundred
times worse than it ever was and one thing happens after another after
another: crazy politics, crazy weather, crazy people screaming in each
other’s faces, with or without masks.
He eats dinner, watches Jeopardy to assure himself that even at
the age of sixty-four, his mind is still able to range across a wide array of
subject matter (he knows the answer to a good number of the questions)
and then grabs his jacket and a six-pack of beer from the fridge and heads
up to the roof of his building. It’s a cool night but still mild enough to sit
outside.
Soon, the door at the end of the interior staircase that leads to the
roof creaks open and Paul’s friend Nat steps out. The two men wave at
each other, a half-welcoming, half-ironic gesture, because, after all, they
are adults, not playmates escaping from their family group to meet up on
the roof of an old tenement in an old part of the city.
In fact, this has become a regular routine for the two men who
were not close friends before the pandemic but probably are, now. In the
world of before, these two were mostly drinking buddies who knew each
other from hanging out a bar near St. Mark’s Place where, over the years,
they felt comfortable having a few beers now and then. But the bar has
been closed for months and rumor has it that it will never open up again.
Since they both live in the same neighborhood, getting together on the roof
of this building has become an easy fix, for Nat, for the tedium of only
seeing the other repairmen on the Con Edison street crews he works with
150 / Evening Street Review 32
and a welcome relief for Paul from being alone most of the time, except
for online classes and Zoom chats with distant friends. (The roof of Nat’s
building is inaccessible due to a double-locked door, which is probably
illegal but who is going to do anything about that?)
Paul is sitting in one of the pair of beach chairs he keeps hidden
up here, stashed behind a pile of metal struts left over from some long-ago
repairs to the water tower. Nat, a big, beefy fellow with several corny
tattoos (an anchor, a hula girl) from a long-ago tour of duty in the Navy,
lowers himself into the other chair and Paul hands him a bottle of Sam
Adams.
“Thanks,” Nat says, as the two men click their beer bottles
together. After that, good citizens that they are, they move their chairs a
distance apart, sitting separately but still feeling connected. Paul and Nat
know each other’s stories: Paul is long divorced, and though there have
been women in his life since that time, there is no one now. Nat is a
widower: his wife died of pancreatic cancer five years ago and though he
would like to move out of the apartment they shared for decades because
he still thinks he will see her walking out of the bedroom or the kitchen,
smiling at him, he is trapped by rent stabilization. He could never afford a
different apartment in the city, and neither could Paul, who has lived in his
small place for what feels like forever.
“It still looks the same, doesn’t it?” Nat says, gesturing towards
the cityscape spread out before them. From where they’re sitting, they can
see much of the East Village, with its mix of old tenements and new
construction—fabulously modern co-ops and condos with equally
fabulous price tags—as well as the East River, with Queens and Brooklyn
on the far shore.
“It does and it doesn’t,” Paul says, sipping his beer. “Or maybe I
just mean that it feels different. Emptier. And all those sirens—they wake
me up almost every night.”
“Yeah, right,” Nat says. “Last spring it was the ambulances, now
it’s the cops. Bang, bang, bang, every night. And there are so many gang
killings—gangs,” Nat repeats, for emphasis. “When did Manhattan
become major gang territory?” He really doesn’t expect Paul to offer an
answer that question, so he supplies his own commentary. “Everything’s
all screwed up.”
Paul nods yes, but wishes he didn’t really agree. Maybe he
doesn’t, entirely, because Nat left one thing out: the protests that managed,
for a while, to turn the city’s attention from the virus to the cause of racial
injustice. Paul joined in a few times because he’s an old hippie—at least,
2021, Winter / 151
him from Adam’s apartment, along with a few photographs and a faded
denim jacket with a Grateful Dead patch on the back that Paul remembered
his brother wearing. He didn’t intend to wear it himself: he just knew he
would like to see it hanging in his coat closet whenever he opened the
door, and he was right. He did.
Along with the radio, Paul also had Adam’s ham license, which
he had received at the age of sixteen after passing several arduous tests
and achieving the highest level of licensing available. He also had a
wooden plaque on which he had etched his call signal, KA6BLJ, with a
woodburning tool.
Paul had installed the radio on his bookshelf along with the
wooden plaque, but he packed away the antenna because he wasn’t sure
how to set it up and filed the license in with his other important papers. He
kept the microphone that was attached to the radio turned off because he
was only vaguely familiar with how to use the device to actually call other
ham operators and talk to them (what Paul knew was only what he
remembered from watching his brother when he was a kid), and besides,
his brother had once explained to him when he had asked if he could speak
into the mic, that only licensed radio operators were allowed to make
contact on the amateur radio bands, which reached across the globe.
Now, however, somewhat to his surprise, Paul has found that he
enjoys using the radio as a kind of scanner: he had gone online and looked
up the public service frequencies employed by the police and fire
department along with the air traffic overhead and the marine bands that
let him listen in to what men and women were talking about on the tug
boats and other working vessels sailing up and down the Hudson and East
Rivers. He likes listening to all this chatter and finds that it helps ease him
into the later hours of the night.
Pulling his desk chair nearer to the bookcase, Paul sits down and
turns on the radio. For half an hour or so, he listens to pilots of commercial
airliners talking to the control tower as they make their approach to
Kennedy Airport; their cool, measured voices fly down from the sky to be
captured by the radio. Paul closes his eyes and begins to relax.
Suddenly, the pilots’ voices fade away and all Paul hears on the
radio is a lot of static. Then there are some sharp clicks and an odd buzzing
sound; Paul leans forward to reach for the dial to try and tune in the
channel he was listening to, but just as he does, he sees the numbers of an
unfamiliar frequency appear on the radio’s screen. In glowing green, he
reads 145.7750 megahertz. He has no idea what that means.
He has his phone in his pocket, so he types in the numbers and the
154 / Evening Street Review 32
time difference between himself and his radio contact, who speaks with a
heavy accent but in perfectly understandable English.
“Well, good morning,” Paul says. “It’s not too cold here yet. Nice
fall weather. And for me, it’s still nighttime,” he adds.
After this exchange of pleasantries, Paul, who is still somewhat
dazed by the fact that he’s talking to a man who lives in what sounds like
a frozen city in the far north of Mother Russia, says, “Listen, Alexi. I’m
glad to be talking to you but I don’t know how we’re doing this. I don’t
have any kind of antenna installed outside my place and when I heard your
CQ, I was actually just tuning around my local public service channels. I
was listening to air traffic going into Kennedy Airport.”
Does Alexi know where Kennedy Airport is? Maybe it doesn’t
matter, because he doesn’t ask. “I have an idea about that,” Alexi says.
“We’re in a solar maximum period. In this time, we have high sunspot
activity, which is great for signal propagation. Some bands that are hard
to access are suddenly open all day and night. Sometimes, in these cycles,
communications are screwed up but right now, we are good.”
“Signal propagation?” Paul says, and thinks he can figure out what
that means. “You’re telling me that because of sunspot activity, somehow,
my radio was able to capture a very distant signal even without any kind
of antenna?
“I guess so,” Alexi says. “Perhaps we both just hit some sweet
spot in the ionosphere. All the ions dancing around up there are being
supercharged by sunspots so normal refraction is causing radio waves to
travel at an angle in the sky that transmits them much farther than normal.
They can go great distances, even transcontinental distances. That’s called
skywave propagation. Or else it’s just magic,” Alexi says, and laughs
again.
After receiving this information, only some of which Paul
understands, he isn’t sure what they should talk about next. He’s hoping
that Alexi will open a new line of conversation, but in far-away
Murmansk, the Russian radio operator has fallen silent, as if he’s waiting
for Paul to say something first. So, Paul begins with what’s always on his
mind these days.
“So, Alexi,” Paul says, “do you have Covid in Murmansk?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” Alexi responds. This is a port city. Not such
a big population—maybe 300,000 people—but the Russian Northern Fleet
is based here, so there is a great deal of back and forth between Murmansk
and other regions. It was inevitable that someone would bring it to us. The
outbreak is pretty bad.”
156 / Evening Street Review 32
some crazed violin. But the sounds coming out of the radio are too weird
and frightening to be produced by any real musical instrument that Paul
can imagine.
“What is that?” Paul asks when the sounds—the music?—finally
pause.
“It’s a Theremin,” Alexi says. “I built it myself. I got a little bored
with just working on my radio.”
Paul knows what a Theremin is, and even what it looks like: a box
with dials and a tall antenna. Sort of like a radio, he realizes. “I haven’t
heard one of those since back in the ’60s,” Paul says. “Rock bands used to
use them.”
“Yes,” Alexi agrees. “The Rolling Stones. Led Zepplin.”
He produces a few more eerie sounds on the Theremin and Paul
can picture what he’s doing: moving his hands back and forth in the air
between the tall antenna and another attached to the side of the box,
disrupting the electromagnetic field between the two antennas. The
controlled movement of the person “playing” the Theremin creates the
sounds it produces. Or something like that, Paul thinks, because what he
thinks he knows probably comes from the liner notes he once read on the
back of an old album cover.
“That was really something,” Paul says.
Again, that laugh bounces off the dancing ions and lands in Paul’s
brother’s radio, on Paul’s bookshelf, far away from where it originated.
“You didn’t like it,” Alexi says.
“I did,” Paul said. “Thanks.”
“You are very welcome,” Alexi says. “But now I have to sign off.
I have to go to work. Very nice talking to you Paul. And I hope things
improve soon—in New York City and here, as well.”
Paul remembers what Alexi told him earlier—that it’s morning
where he is, in Arctic Russia. He wants to ask Alexi what he does for a
living, wondering if it is something related to what this man—clearly a
master tinkerer—does in his spare time, but before he can, Alexi repeats
the call sign he gave earlier and then says, “Seventy-three.” After that, he
is gone.
The radio, now, is emitting only static, so Paul turns it off. Then,
on his phone, he looks up what “Seventy-three” means in amateur radio
lingo and finds out that Alexi has wished him best regards, a term that
originated in old telegraph code. Paul wishes he’d had the chance to say
the same.
The next night, after another Zoom class, Paul watches a little
158 / Evening Street Review 32
television but then, urged on by an impulse that he doesn’t try too hard to
contain, he goes back to his bedroom, pulls his desk chair close to his
bookshelf and turns on the radio. He remembers the frequency of the
Russian radio repeater that connected him to Alexi in Murmansk, but when
he tries to tune it in, all he hears is static. As Alexi had explained, their
connection might have been an anomaly, an ephemeral, one-time event
caused by unusual atmospheric conditions that cannot be replicated.
Perhaps if Paul knew how to set up Adam’s long-range antenna he would
have better luck—but that complex piece of equipment is currently packed
away in the closet, behind the Grateful Dead jacket. And besides, without
an amateur radio license, Paul shouldn’t be calling CQ anyway; he can’t
be broadcasting across the international amateur radio bands, trying to
reach a fellow in Murmansk who plays a Theremin—or anyone else, for
that matter.
So, as usual, he spends a little time listening to the public service
frequencies, hearing ambulance calls and half-empty airplanes circling
overhead and cops talking to each other in their flat, nasal New York
voices—always as calm as the pilots, always seeming to approach
everything from a minor fender bender to attempted murder by a crazed
man wielding a machete with the same level-headed attitude of stoic
forbearance.
Bored by all this, he begins to tune around the local VHF amateur
radio bands and he does pick up some chatter, but the ham operators are
talking about nothing that he finds interesting: a man in New Jersey is
asking another fellow in Connecticut about the best way to repair some
damaged tiles on his roof; two other voices in the distant suburbs of more
distant states are discussing the odd shortages that have been appearing in
their supermarkets: there is plenty of toilet paper now but they still can’t
find various cleaning products or—who knows why?—a certain kind of
instant rice.
Again, Paul tries the international frequencies but he hears nothing
other than the static that is beginning to sound to him like the hum of time
and space. That’s an alarming idea, he thinks, but deep down, he feels that
it is equally alluring. Or maybe not so deep down, a possibility that he
allows himself to consider.
He turns off the radio, goes to sleep, gets up in the morning and
teaches his class again. But during a short period of time when all the faces
in the electronic boxes on his screen are looking at their books or their
Kindles as they silently read a passage in Frankenstein that Paul will
shortly question them about, he begins to think about something else. And
2021, Winter / 159
what he is thinking about focuses on the radio that is sitting nearby, on the
bookshelf: he’d like to learn how to use it better. More expertly. He’d like
to figure out how to set up the antenna—which, perhaps, he could do on
his fire escape—and develop a better understanding of how the complex
radio equipment he’s using actually works, an area that he has zero
knowledge about. He also finds himself worrying that if anything goes
wrong with the radio, he will have no idea of how to fix it. The skills that
came naturally to Adam do not dwell in Paul: he is more of a dreamer, he
thinks, maybe more of an idealist and a lover of literature, which was not
an interest of his brother’s. And yet, these two men—two grown boys—
loved each other. Perhaps, Paul thinks, he has simply not yet discovered
what parts of his brother must be alive in him—asleep, in a way, but still
there, still available to be awakened. And maybe that’s what’s happening
to him, at least a little, because he feels a tug, a pull, a growing desire to
turn on the radio and make contact with people, to hear human voices
sailing towards him through the ionosphere, across the invisible radio
bands. He’d like to send his own voice up into the atmosphere, the circling
clouds, and be able to say Hello, hello, what’s it like where you live?
As the days go on, as fall grows colder, he and Nat continue to
meet on the roof now and then, bundled up in their jackets, still keeping a
distance because Nat is out all day, mingling with other Con Edison
workers who sometimes wear their masks and sometimes not, so there is
a chance that he will be exposed to the virus though so far—fingers
crossed—he feels fine. Paul has told Nat about talking to Alexi and one
night, he finds himself discussing the idea of getting his own amateur radio
license.
“Really?” Nat says. “Is it hard to do?”
“Maybe for me,” Paul says. “You have to take a test—well,
several of them for different license classes. I’m not the most technically
oriented guy in the world, but I think I can puzzle out the basics.”
“You know, I can probably help you,” Nat says. “After all, what
do you think I’m doing at work? Remember, Electricity is Us,” he says,
with a smile. “I’m sure I’d be able to help translate the radio jargon. Ohms,
megahertz, kilohertz—just ask me.”
“Thanks,” Paul says. “I might take you up on that.”
But will he be able to? Eventually—unless climate change really
sets in this year and decides to eliminate winter altogether—it will get too
cold to meet on the roof, where the open air provides a measure of safety
from virus transmission. If Paul and Nat get together in Paul’s apartment,
or Nat’s, they’ll both have to wear masks and how long could they both
160 / Evening Street Review 32
ANNA CITRINO
SEALED UP
New Delhi, India
that might let mosquitos in. Days later, workers had applied
the solution, placing a sticky foam over every window—
2021, Winter / 161
fixing each one to the outside wall. Not one window could
open. Insects, weather, geography, and human cultures—
stay inside and take our medicine, but at some point we need
to go outside, open our eyes, and learn from what makes us afraid.
Citrino
GALINA CHERNAYA
THE COURT OF THE PEOPLE
—Universal adage
Antonina Dmitrievna
posed a definite threat to the quiet life she had shared with the
elderly couple who preceded us. Standing there in the hallway, still
wearing our coats, we immediately went over the logistics of
communal living, including taking turns cleaning the common areas,
and the rules for scrubbing the bathtub and toilet. Tenants of a
kommunalka were expected to share not just living space, but the
same phone line with a single number, and even a single telephone,
which was usually placed in the entrance. Although this was the rule,
Antonina Dmitrievna and the previous tenants had agreed to have
their own telephones, although they share the same line. We, too,
readily agreed to this deviation from the rule, and confirmed that we
would get our own phone and place it in our room.
With this, our “meet and greet” came to an end and Antonina
Dmitrievna returned to her room, shutting the door behind her. I
could hear her turning on the television. I, too, went to our room.
Looking out of the window for the first time, all I could see were
dismal rows of identical gray buildings and piles of dirty snow. A
common saying came to mind: “Love makes a cottage a castle.” Ha!
I thought. We never should have left the dacha.
know how close she was to actually getting an apartment, but she
was damned if she was about to lose her place after all that time and
kiss her sole chance to live by herself goodbye. The opportunity
actually to see a housing list was a rare privilege—lists were kept
“somewhere,” but no one could request access. It was no secret that
they were manipulated through corruption and bribery, and that
nobodies like Antonina Dmitrievna were continually pushed down
by people with money and connections.
Since we were forcibly living on top of one another, learning
Antonina Dmitrievna’s habits and schedule was unavoidable. Every
workday she left before 7:00 a.m. and returned exhausted around
5:00. She cooked a simple meal of millet or buckwheat kasha and
meat, took it to her room, and stayed there watching TV until turning
off the lights around 9:00. On Fridays, she brought her work clothes
home to wash. I never knew exactly what her job entailed, but her
clothes were all stained with paint and smelled horrible. She soaked
them in the bathtub, then washed them by hand and hung them in
the kitchen to dry. Then she took a bath herself. Normally, bathroom
time was shared fifty-fifty by a two-household apartment. But
seeing that we had children, Antonina Dmitrievna was kind, and
Friday was the single day of the week that our family had no access
to the bathtub.
Antonina Dmitrievna devoted her weekends to TV. She was
a passionate fan of Soviet hockey, and springtime always found her
eagerly anticipating the World Hockey Championship. I never knew
her to miss a single game, and she vigorously rooted for the Soviet
team through every one of them, screaming at the top of her lungs
in front of the television whenever anyone scored a goal. As
excellent as it was, the Soviet hockey team of 1987 was not the
legendary squad that was inexplicably defeated by American college
boys at the 1980 Olympics. When the Soviets lost the 1988 World
Championship title game to Sweden, Antonina Dmitrievna was so
devastated that she cried inconsolably all night long.
Aside from watching TV, Antonina Dmitrievna’s sole
entertainment was eavesdropping. Most nights we could hear her
labored breathing as she pressed her ear against our closed door. Her
breathing became heavier yet whenever she heard us making love.
170 / Evening Street Review 32
To be continued.
CONTRIBUTORS
U.S., where they were admitted as refugees in 1991, settling in Princeton, NJ. She
now lives in Vermont with her husband and boxer, Ziggy.
BOBBY COHEN has taught at Temple University, Peirce College, and Holy
Family University. He lives in Richboro, PA, and is a longstanding member of
the Bucks County Writing Workshop. He is the author of three novels, and
numerous short stories, eight of which have been published. He is known
primarily for his dogged persistence.
MARIE G COLEMAN is a native New Yorker living in New Hampshire. She teaches
English at Nashua High School North. She holds an MFA from Lesley University. Her
work has appeared in Pangyrus, Every Day Fiction, Hippocampus and Gemini. She is
currently working on a nonfiction manuscript.
KIM FARLEIGH has worked for NGO's in Greece, Kosovo, Iraq, Palestine and
Macedonia. He likes painting, art, bullfighting, photography and architecture,
which might explain why this Australian lives in Madrid, although he wouldn't
say no to living in a French chateau or a Swiss ski resort. 181 of his stories have
been accepted by 106 different magazines.
COREY LYNN FAYMAN has done hard time as a musician, songwriter, and theatrical
sound designer, but still refuses to apologize for it. His hometown of San Diego, CA,
provides the backdrop for his mystery series featuring the guitar-slinging private detective
Rolly Waters, including the award-winning Border Field Blues and Desert City Diva. His
short stories have appeared in Forge, The MacGuffin and Mount Hope Magazine. “A
powerful new voice on the crime-fiction scene” (ForeWord Reviews).
KAREN FAYETH was born with the eye of a writer and the heart of a story-teller.
From her roots in rural New Mexico she is constantly evolving through global
experience. She has won awards for her writing, photography, and art. Currently, she
is working on a collection of her many short stories. Now living in the San Francisco
Bay area, she can be found online at karenfayeth.com
ELLEN GOLDSMITH’s chapbooks are Left Foot, Right Foot, Where to Look,
Such Distances, and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect which won the Hudson
Valley Writers’ Center 1997 chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in
Antiphon, Connecticut River Review, Dash, Earth’s Daughters, The Healing
Muse, Mount Hope, Off the Coast, Rhino, and Third Wednesday as well as in
anthologies. A resident of Cushing, MN, she is a professor emeritus of The City
University of New York.
LUCIA HAASE has been writing formal and free verse poetry for 20 years as
the direct result of a spiritual experience. Most of her work deals with nature,
human nature and spirituality. She has been recently published in several small
press publications and was recently named a featured writer at
nostalgiapress.com.
174 / Evening Street Review 32
SUSAN JOHNSON received her MFA and PhD from the University of
Massachusetts Amherst where she currently teaches writing. Poems of hers have
recently appeared in North American Review, San Pedro River Review,
Trampoline, Steam Ticket, Front Range, and SLAB. She lives in South Hadley,
MA, and her commentaries can be heard on NEPM.
RUTH KAVANAGH was born in N. Ireland. Although raised in the States, that
“fighting Irish” mentality truly defines her. She is a former litigation attorney, but
had to leave her career behind after her diagnosis. Yet, her motto is “turn your
pain into purpose.” Thus, she is writing a book about her cancer journey to help
and inspire others facing seemingly insurmountable life challenges. Every day
may not bring you roses, but just getting another day is even better than roses!
VICKI MANDELL-KING has written poetry most of her life, even during a
thirty-year career practicing criminal defense. She has three collections, titled:
Tenacity of Lace, Shrinking into Infinite Sky, Open the Gates. Her fourth
collection is Singing My Pockets Empty, Main Street Rag (2021). She and her
longtime husband live near their son, his wife, and their three lovely children.
2021, Winter / 175
JBMULLIGAN has published more than 1,100 poems and stories in various
magazines over the past 45 years, and two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross
and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as two e-books: The City of Now and
Then and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a
dozen anthologies.
MARY ANN NOE has been writing since she picked up a pencil, though that
early poetry should line birdcages. Subsequently, she published poetry, short
stories, non-fiction, and a novel. Her work appears in Wisconsin Fellowship of
Poets 2021 Calendar; in Fleas on the Dog; in Green Prints: The Weeder’s Digest;
and in Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women. She taught high school
English and psychology for many years. Now retired, she’s free to write more.
KEVIN D NORWOOD is the winner of The Porch Poetry Prize 2020 and has
poetry published or pending in Broken Plate, District Lit, Iowa Review, Nashville
Review, Natural Bridge, Tulane Review, Visitant, and elsewhere. He received
bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Virginia, where
he studied creative writing with Peter Taylor and John Casey. A corporate
attorney, he lives in Brentwood, TN, with wife Vicki and rescue pup Lily.
poetry will appear in a forthcoming issue of The Main Street Rag. He lives in
Seattle with his wife and son.
JAN SHOEMAKER is the author of the essay collection, Flesh and Stones:
Field Notes from a Finite World, and the poetry collection, The Reliquary Earth.
Her work has been anthologized, featured on public radio, and published in many
magazines and journals.
MARK SIMPSON is the author of Fat Chance (Finishing Line Press). Recent
work has appeared in Columbia Journal (Online), Third Wednesday, and Apeiron
Review. He lives on Whidbey Island, WA.
CAT WYATT, a self-described intuitive and eccentric free spirit, has never
turned down an adventure that involves sailing, boat racing, or shipboard living
on the Columbia River, San Francisco Bay, Mexico, or the Florida Keys.
Published in several periodicals, she crafts slice-of-life stories that explore
relationships challenged by adversity. Having worked in law enforcement and
trauma intervention, she lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her husband and
adopted cats—and she can still see the water.
GERALD YELLE has published in numerous online and print journals. His
books include The Holyoke Diaries, Future Cycle Press (2014) and Mark My
Word and the New World Order, Pedestrian Press (2016). He is a member of the
Florence (MA) Poets Society.