Ink-Filled Page

Winter 2011 Issue

The new Ink-Filled Page coeditors, Martha Byrne and Kori Hirano, are excited to share with you the Winter 2011 issue!

Within these stories, you’ll meet one young woman grappling with choosing an identity she has yet to explore, and another woman who looks back painfully on the life she has already led. A mother finds small doses of triumph when faced with everyday family challenges, while a grandmother comes to terms with grief in surprising ways.

Featured authors are Karen Levy, Wanda Morrow-Clevenger, Jan Priddy, and Anna Peerbolt.

Nonfiction

Americans

by Karen Levy

California, 1989

I can tell my mother is nervous because she has the airport look on her face, the “don’t speak unless you are spoken to, and let me do the talking” look. But this plan will only work until she and I are separated, and the man seated across the desk at the federal building will insist that I speak.

The day of our citizenship test arrives to determine if we are worthy of becoming Americans and ready to give up our Israeli identities after years of traveling between our two homes. So far the immigration building and its officials have done their best to make us feel like outsiders—drab walls and unsmiling clerks, unwelcoming to the handful of immigrants seated on hard plastic chairs in the waiting room. When our names are called, my mother grimaces at the mispronunciation of both. Her Jolanta sounds like the Hispanic Yolanda, and my Caren sounds like Karen, her own fault for choosing to spell it that way. For a brief moment I wait for her voice to correct the speaker, set the clerk straight by pointing out the error. But it does not come. She must want what is promised behind that door more desperately than her need to prove the bored employee’s ignorance.

The man behind the desk is polite, but all business. Between questions about the number of stripes on the American flag and what the Fourth of July commemorates, I try to read his face, but I fail. My time in the United States and my exposure to its men has been too brief to help me decipher masked Anglo expressions. Mediterranean men hide nothing, their emotions writ large for all to see. Teachers yell their dissatisfaction, bus drivers growl their stops, and strangers flirt shamelessly, their dark eyes following a young woman’s moves, desire licking at her heels like hungry flames. The blue-eyed official seems satisfied with my answers, making a few notes before surprising me by reaching across the desk to shake my hand and congratulating me for successfully responding.

Within days my mother and I are standing in a judge’s chambers, our right hands over our hearts, about to pledge our allegiance to this country that has opened its doors and welcomed us in. In a few years’ time, I will be almost indistinguishable from other citizens. My English will no longer be halting, my responses more natural, not scripted as I read passages I write out before making a simple phone call. I will learn to enjoy the quiet of a suburban afternoon without neighbors peering into our windows or showing up uninvited for coffee. I will remember to buy my swimsuit when the smell of snow still lingers in the air, quickly learning that the good ones are gone once summer sales arrive. One day I will sit on a grassy hill surrounded by other Americans, waiting for darkness to fall and fireworks to explode across the night sky. And I will feel the pride swelling inside me, understanding the words a roomful of newcomers are now repeating in various accents, some with tears in their eyes. I know it is good for us to finally be Americans. Our presence in this country will no longer be legally challenged, although my mother’s thick accent will always earn her impatient looks from those claiming they cannot understand her.

Yet I’m not certain I am prepared for the declaration we are all making—absolutely and entirely renouncing all allegiance and fidelity to the place from which we came. I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation…so help me God. But I do have reservations. And, which god? The one before whom old Jewish men in long black coats sway and rock, their prayers floating out the windows of the synagogue down our boulevard, while waiting children swing from the branches of the gnarled fig tree outside? Or the one all our American neighbors celebrate as they gather around twinkling, tinseled trees that are framed in windows of houses to which we have yet to be invited?

I’m not finished being me in the country I left; I haven’t had enough time watching older Israeli girls to see if I want to be like them. Despite our frequent leave-taking, and my familiarity with the view of its receding shores from behind the thick window of a plane, I love my country with the fierceness and absoluteness of first love and youth. And now I am expected to be American, simply because our green cards expired and my mother thinks the timing is right.

Not yet. Not when I still ache for the warmth of a Mediterranean beach under my bare feet, for the rosy sky of an Israeli sunrise as doves coo on my window’s ledge, and for my best friend’s laugh when I tell a joke in the language in which I still dream. Not when my father’s absence is welling up and filling my own eyes, here in this room, during a ceremony he is not a part of, and never will be.

I don’t know how to be American yet. Years still need to pass before I will adopt the easy banter and slightly drop the literary English with which so many nonnative speakers give themselves away. It will be years before being referred to as you guys doesn’t make me cringe and correct the waiter showing me to my seat. I refuse to use the word cool, and the beautiful cowboy boots my American husband will buy me one day do not grace my closet yet. I still believe the clerk at the grocery store really wants to know when she asks how I’m doing. And when the friend I just met says she’ll talk to me later, I wait for the phone to ring all afternoon before I realize I must have misunderstood.

In Israel I was a work in progress, watching others for clues to tell me who to be. Now I have a wardrobe filled with too many selves, and I don’t know which one to wear.

© 2011 Karen Levy

***

Mush Happens

by Wanda Morrow-Clevenger

Wafting from the dryer on a warm wisp of air when I removed the jeans, it swooped a pendulum arc before lighting on my foot. Unmarred, minus a wrinkle or two, the alien thing read: Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club Invites You to Also Visit Déjà Vu Showgirls, featuring Dream Girls and Little Darlings Totally Nude. I was genuinely shocked to see the XXX-rated object float out of my PG-appliance. But far more astounding was that the cocktail napkin remained folded and fully intact.

Long married and on par with average ball-and-chain couples, my husband and I persevered through every conceivable conversation to reach the grand pinnacle of each other’s point of view (though we are a few degrees off regarding in-laws and laundry). This realized, such is believable when I say finding a napkin from a strip club didn’t aggravate me nearly as much as his noncooperation with household chores. An issue persisted, unabated, for resident husband and his male offspring, regarding “not emptying pant pockets.” Once they drop-kicked the Lees to the clothes hamper, it was all on me.

Except for paper money, not much survives a round trip through the Maytag. Before Larry Flynt’s anomaly, I inadvertently destroyed scads of important papers in my reign as Mom, not to mention the irreversible damage done to a variety of leather wallets. You’d think after so many disasters the guys might have caught on. Seems some people have to learn the hard way.

My oldest son, Nate, holds the record in our household for most crucial document left in a pocket, and subsequently obliterated. His driver’s permit was baptized within a month of possession, going under faster than a repentant sinner at a revival meeting. I was able to salvage it after the first dunking—still legible, though badly faded and crinoline crunchy. A second immersion, however, produced slimy papier-mâché globs that even faithful hosannas couldn’t resurrect.

Citing an obscure rule, school administration refused to provide a new learner’s permit. I nearly turned blue holding my breath, waiting for the conclusion of driver’s education class. With fingers and toes crossed twice for luck, I prayed a cop wouldn’t stop the boy for any reason.

I apologized to Nate profusely for my part in ruining the permit, and I begged that he empty his pockets because I lacked the time (and inclination) in my laundry-laden life to sift through every article of clothing. In an effort to gently persuade compliance, I was mindful not to repeat a phrase perpetually echoing from my own teenage tenure: “I told you so.” Still, my requests fell on indifferent ears.

A set of deaf ears at the Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t assist my problem any better. I explained we had the required documents, except for the permit, due to its tragic, sudsy, potpourri-infused demise, and that the high school wouldn’t produce a replacement.

Motor Mama informed in monotone, “You must have all the documentation in order to be issued an Illinois Driver’s License.”

Apathy, heavier than a load of soggy blankets, hung in the air between Motor Mama and us. Nate’s hearing and comprehension now heightened, his eyeballs bulged into golf balls. He turned to me mouthing, “Wha–,” turned to her, again to me.

Wishing just then for a Titleist 909 Driver to sail her attitude far into the future, I logically reasoned, “But it went through the wash and turned into mush. I threw the mush away. Would you have accepted mush? Surely this has happened before.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Motor Mama deadpanned from her lofty, alternate universe where faultlessness exists.

Stunned, we relinquished our place in line to the next victim. I did have the last word though, if only in my head. Mush happens, sister. Your day will come.

Fifteen minutes later we sat inside the circuit clerk’s office while I detailed my son’s plight to the dapper constituent. I thought I detected a hint of guilt in the gentleman; he seemed to relate so completely. Could it be that he, too, once failed to empty his pockets and lost a wallet or worse to a washday debacle? I couldn’t know for certain. But now I wore the attitude when we returned to the DMV with an official, signed request to honor our mush.

Gleaning insight from this ordeal, I was determined to avoid a repeat incident at all costs, and so laminated my younger son, Nick’s, permit. When his turn came to hand over the hermetically sealed, mint-condition document in exchange for his sacred license, we were sadistically informed by another DMV droid that it was impermissible to laminate a learner’s permit.

They had poked the bear a second time.

Stifling a growl, I exaggerated a touch for effect. “You’re kidding me. I accidentally washed my other son’s permit and was literally put through the ringer getting the situation resolved.” This analogy was lost on droid-woman, but still I persisted. “I don’t want to go through that again. Why can’t you accept it? It’s all in one piece.” Three sets of eyes descended in unison to the plastic card on the counter, confirming the shiny fact.

Thankfully, I was shown more leniency this time around and Nick was given his license without courthouse intervention. The rigid but not entirely unfeeling hireling granted, “I can make an exception this time. But next time . . .”

“There won’t be a next time,” I interrupted. “I’m not planning on more children.”

Regardless, I drowned and baked countless field-trip permission slips, paycheck stubs, membership cards, wallets, sticky-note-scribbled phone numbers, sticks of gum, a love letter of sorts passed in study hall, and ballpoint pens. And yet, accompanying the whining, snipping, and shrieks (the gum incident), my family never computed that I just needed a bit of day-to-day pitching in.

Months later, on a lovely, sun-kissed day, one created specifically for hanging clothes on the line, I finally got their attention by fishing twenty singles out of the washer and clipping them onto hangers, saying, “I don’t know whose pocket these bills came out of, so I’m confiscating the lot.”

Our wash immediately became of utmost interest, second only to what was served for supper. And within a week’s span there emitted noticeably less laundry appliance clanking and clunking. Bless their blue-jean-wearing butts; it only took several decades and a smidgen of greed, but my guys finally stepped up.

As for Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club napkin—I eye-rolled this oddity as the tenacious marvel came in handy for cleaning the lint trap. What a dirty little darling it truly was.

© 2011 Wanda Morrow-Clevenger

***

Fiction

Shooting Range

by Jan Priddy

The cock pheasant rises out of the overgrown grass and flaps across the target. Just by chance I fire a little low and catch him—what my brothers would call a lucky shot. I tramp downhill farther into the ravine. It had not been part of my plan to kill anything, but steam rises from the wound and the bird is dead. Standing over the body, I flex the fingers of my left hand, blue and stiffening from the cold, and wriggle my toes inside my boots. Then I rest the rifle butt on the ground, the barrel against a tree. Even as a girl, I concealed my tenderheartedness—maybe that’s from having brothers—and I am determined not to cry, not to let it show even now. My breath blows out white and vanishes. Recently a house spider living in the corner of my shower crawled across the tile and washed down the drain before I could rescue it. Another accident. Probably a female spider—back in high school biology, Mr. Johnson told our class the larger ones were generally female. Mr. Johnson is probably dead himself by now. It was so long ago. I felt ridiculous, a grandmother of three, naked, wrinkled, towel around my middle, weeping for a dead spider.

And now this pheasant on the frosty ground.

After weeks of firing into a plastic target tacked to a tree behind my house, I worry all over again that someone might have heard—would somehow know about the pheasant—and wonder at my suspicious use of firearms. I rub my hands together, admiring the iridescent breast feathers. Dad called them Chinese pheasants. He said they weren’t native to Oregon but were deliberately released as game birds when he was a boy. He would approve of my shot and scowl at my plan to bury the carcass. I hear his voice: “You know better than to waste food, girl. Clean and cook it—it’s honest meat.” The words sound right beside me while I scratch the grave with a broken branch. I consider using the stick to shove the body in but that seems disrespectful. Instead I lift and cover it over, wipe my hands on my jeans, pull on my gloves, retrieve my rifle, and check the chamber.

Overhead, a moon glimmers between branches. I don’t cry on my way back to the house, and I don’t hurry, though I fear a knock at the door, a siren. But this is just paranoia—all my new neighbors work in the city, the ones living in the developments north of our twenty acres. They’re never home until after nightfall in winter. They drive away in their 4-wheel drive trucks and SUVs, their hitches unscarred and useless—all that horsepower and they never pull a trailer, never use their oversized pickups to haul feed.

•••••

For a few years after Sam and I moved to the countryside west of Portland we kept dairy goats—a crazy notion, but we were newly married, young and idealistic. Our first goat was a castrated male named Billy that we found through the local paper. Swine would have done a better job on the blackberries and brush, but we didn’t know. I put in a garden, grew too many zucchinis, long rows of sunflowers and sugar pod peas, four kinds of carrots. And I became fond of that goat. We built him a shed and then a barn, and found a Welsh pony for our son, Jeffrey. When Jeffrey developed a cow’s milk allergy, I got it into my head to raise dairy goats.

My first nanny never gave more than a quart a day, but soon I’d filled the barn with a dozen black-spotted Nubians. Sam was often called away for emergencies in those days, so I was the one who milked twice a day, who hauled milk to the co-op and experimented with fresh cheese, who tracked down those nanny goats again and again when they got through the fence, who called on neighbors to find out what to do about a kid dripping shit and bleating for hours. The local dairies had Jersey or Holstein cows; one kept huge brown Swiss. None of them cared much for goats, but they were generous, hard-working folk and kind to the doctor’s foolish wife chasing goats down the road.

Sometimes Sam would drive the truck and pick up a load of hay we’d unload in the dark.

“Look, Mommy, a star!” said our son, Jeffrey, one time, pausing in his loops around and around through the wet grass. He never remembered to tuck his pants into his boots.

Umpff. I dropped a bale and walked out of the barn to where I could see.

“What is that?” I said. A prick of light showed through the trees.

“Must be Ben’s new barn light,” said Sam.

“He has no business pointing it toward us.”

“Why don’t you sneak over and knock it out with a hammer,” Jeffrey said. “I’ll play lookout. Knock it out! Knock it out!”

“Hush, Jeffrey,” I said. I turned back to Sam. “I just mean he shouldn’t aim his spotlight out into space.”

“Yes, dear,” Sam said mildly. The goats crowded toward us, wanting to be in the middle of whatever was happening. He laughed. My enthusiasms, he called them.

“There’s such a thing as light pollution,” I said, still frowning.

“Yes, dear.” He picked up Jeffrey. “Time for bed.”

He would rather have his feet up in front of a fire instead of wetting his ankles in the pasture[A2] . But chores are easier with two people, and he always helped if he was home.

“Here we go,” Sam said and carried Jeffrey off to the house while I closed up the barn.

Most of those old dairy farmers, the Johnsons, the Peters, and Ben and Ethel Cochran, are gone now. Over the years, they retired and sold to developers, looking for easier lives. I gave up my dairy goats and their stupid good humor and lovely ears. I convinced Sam we should plant most of our acreage with evergreen seedlings, though we both knew there would never be a crop of Christmas trees.

Our son finished high school and went east to college. Jeffrey expected to become a doctor, but instead he returned to the Northwest to teach high school mathematics, bringing his wife, Meredith, who’d grown up in Rochester. They started a family.

Our grandchildren were afraid of the pony. Old and unridden, he got lonesome without the goats so we gave him away. I grew flowers along the doubled cattle fencing meant to keep in livestock, and hired a gardener to mow the remaining meadow behind the gate where speckled goats once waited to go out after morning milking and to come back for afternoon milking. Sam’s clinic found specialists to cover emergency care, so he seldom left in the middle of the night anymore. We stopped repairing the barn, the old rail fences tumbled, I let most of the vegetable beds go to weeds. We had more time with less to do. Sam resurrected our youthful plan to spend winters in Spain. Oh, no, I said. I couldn’t leave the cat, our grandchildren.

The first year or so after Sam, died people kept asking me what I was going to do now. Would I sell the acreage, move to town? Would I find someone else to sleep with, or take up charity work? Goals and plans slipped from my mind, and even books couldn’t hold my attention. I worked in the garden, sat inside during bad weather, and stared out at the rain.

•••••

Then a few months ago, I was washing up and looked north to the comforting darkness, but instead I saw lights. My mouth opened to say something about it to Sam, but I couldn’t do that, of course. An orange Milky Way burned through the trees, burning the very stars from the sky when I went out on the deck to see. How had I never noticed this before? Neighbors with lights on at two o’clock in the morning. Stammer, the cat, mewed at the sliding door, waiting for me come back in and hold him, but I went for a walk in the dark—something I hadn’t done in years—up the long drive and then north. Split-level houses rose like dragon’s teeth from bare soil: French chateaus and Tudor mini-mansions, thousands of square feet hemmed in by clipped landscaping and sprinkler systems. My overgrown Christmas trees had made it possible to ignore the new cul-de-sacs—porch lights, spots illuminating manicured lawns, massive houses facing one another with broad paved driveways and triple garages, everything lit up. Above, the darkness spoiled.

It seemed indecent to move to the country without enjoying the dark. Surely there were laws about such things. I called the city planning department, but even after I’d explained the trouble, they couldn’t help.

“You could visit your neighbors and ask them to put their lights on a timer.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. Thank you,” I said.

Awake in the middle of the night, I went out on the deck, searched again for stars concealed by nightglow.

I needed to see about a gun.

•••••

My brothers laughed at me when I first begged to go with them to the range, but Dad insisted they take me because I should know how to handle myself, he said. They talked me through everything, each of them eager to show how much they knew that I never would get right: holding the gun, sighting the target, squeezing the trigger. Keep your eyes open, stupid. They laughed. The noise bothered me—no one thought to wear really good ear protection back in those days. The next day I was sore sometimes, a bruise on my cheek if I’d used the rifle, an ache in my upper arm. But right from the start I was a better shot than either of my brothers. They were embarrassed that their baby sister could shoot better than they could. I guess spite got me out of bed each Saturday morning through my freshman and sophomore years of high school. They’d stand way down the line and pretend they didn’t know me.

My second time at the range, Jack Dressler walked over and stood behind me while I fired. “You’re cross dominant. Lotta women are,” he said. “Switch your grip. Get used to shooting left-handed.”

I was right-handed, but my left eye was dominant, so I’d been sighting with my left eye, aiming to the side of what I wanted to hit.

The weight in my left hand felt awkward at first, but after a few rounds I could site directly on the bull’s-eye. I thanked Jack and went home to tell Dad.

“That’s my girl!” he said. He was a lefty, but my brothers were both right-eye dominant, right-handed. They were annoyed when Dad handed over his own left-handed rifle, a light twenty-five ought six that neither of them could use because the shells flew out the wrong side—they’re hot immediately after firing.

It wasn’t long before I was hitting bull’s-eyes every time I stood on the line. When I gave up those Saturdays a couple years later, Jack Dressler was disappointed in me. He always wanted me to compete, but my brothers were the only ones I wanted to beat. I was a stupid girl, not the way my brothers said, but foolish the way you are when you’re young. At sixteen I dated a boy who never phoned me, flirted with my friends, and lost his temper when I beat him at Chinese checkers. He also got in trouble for using his rifle to shoot out lights at a shopping mall parking lot. That’s what gave me the idea.

•••••

It took longer than I expected to reacquaint myself with the sound and small kick of the rifle, to hit where I aimed in the woody ravine at the back of our property. The first time I went back to the house, cleaned the gun, and listened with all the lights turned off, my front door open to the road. The last of the old dairy folk, Jim and Paula with the place behind ours, sold and moved to Arizona. Wet winter nights, my new neighbors watched oversized televisions behind insulated glass, oblivious to the world.

•••••

Despite the crack of the gun, if anyone has heard they don’t complain, no one calls the sheriff. A pheasant dies. I bury it. My daughter-in-law calls to confirm our dinner tonight to celebrate my trip to Spain.

My son and daughter-in-law eat late, necessary because they both work long days. My grandsons have their own car to drive home from soccer practice and basketball, baseball in the spring. Matthew and Chris both play all the sports. I can’t understand where these boys come from. Jeffrey had been in Model United Nations, Chess Club, theater. He played French horn in the school orchestra and was an Honors student. After college both he and Meredith were invited to join Phi Beta Kappa. My grandsons’ grades barely qualify for college admission, they sport ugly tattoos on their biceps, and engage in minor acts of teenage terrorism—stealing essays off the internet, sharing answers via cell phones during exams. I love them, of course I do, but like the boys I once dated, they hang out the window of their car and take a baseball bat to mailboxes. I cannot imagine why they think I want to know these things.

“I’ve got a ham,” Meredith says, “but there’s vegetable lasagna, salad, dessert.”

I became a vegetarian years ago, but no one else in the family has followed my example. Meredith found my dietary requirements annoying at first, but after all this time, she’s resigned. She’s a good girl. A good woman, I should say. I agree to come at about seven, which [A3] means dinner will be at eight. This is my adjustment to Meredith’s schedule.

•••••

I have to do it now, no time left to dilly dally. I go out before five in the evening, early enough that people are still away at school and work. A little sunlight left from the sky will show my way home before the moon rises. I give myself forty-five minutes, long before the sheriff can arrive. After I am done, I will head for dinner with Meredith and Jeffrey and then skip town. My plan feels deliciously wicked.

I wear my husband’s oversized hooded raingear and my Bean hunting shoes.

The first and second shots hit a roof and pure air. I breath in, out, blink, smile, and site. After that I squeeze them off easy as I’d imagined. Lights go out, and I feel lifted as if by darkness, cool air brushing my face like a loving palm. I briefly close my eyes against tears and move on. Cartridges fly, and I don’t take time to collect them. I walk my path, stand sheltered by hedges or fencing, knock out flood lamps already blazing in the dusk, and site on the next light. I reload my dad’s Winchester and move on. By the time my watch timer goes off, night has taken hold and I’m walking down our drive, flashlight in hand, breathing hard, and laughing at how fast it happened after so much preparation, all over in minutes.

•••••

My grandsons aren’t at home.

“They’re all in a panic because their Spanish project is due tomorrow,” Meredith says. Twins, like my brothers. They do everything together.

I try not to stare at Meredith who has recently begun dyeing her hair. Is it safer to compliment the new shade or pretend I don’t notice?

“What have you been up to?” Meredith says. “You look all bright and shiny.”

“Looking at photos of Spain on the internet—”

“—Hi, Gramma. What-cha up to?” My granddaughter comes down the stairs. Suzy grins and doesn’t wait for an answer. She doesn’t think adults are ever up to anything. She plays sports all year, like her brothers, and has a belly button ring. Her mother drove her across the river to Washington because local tattoo parlors won’t work on anyone under eighteen. I try not to show disapproval. It’s a different world.

“Hi, sweetie. You’re home for dinner?”

“Uh-huh. My friend Cassi is here. You remember her?”

“Sure I do.” Suzy’s best friend went with the family on the Mexico vacation last winter. I convinced my son that I didn’t mind staying behind. There was no way Christmas would be easy. I put up a tree, hung stockings, watched all the holiday videos with Stammer purring in my lap. Sam had always wanted to go someplace warm during the winter, and I’d never agreed. Someday, I kept saying. Now I’m going. New Year’s Day alone in Barcelona, touring Gaudi’s cathedral.

During dinner, I ask Suzy and her friend about their classes—boring—what they are reading—nothing—what is their favorite subject—volleyball—what do they plan to do this coming summer—volleyball camp.

“We went cow tipping,” Suzy says. She giggles and watches for my reaction.

“No, you didn’t.” The lasagna is excellent, with fresh basil and something else I will have to ask Meredith to identify.

“They were asleep. We didn’t hurt them.”

“Of course you didn’t. Cow tipping is an urban legend. Cows sleep lying down.” I laugh at the image of a reclining cow being shoved over, how its feet would kick.

My granddaughter frowns. I smile to show I don’t mean to make fun of her, but she whispers to Cassi. I’ve hurt her feelings. Suzy is taller than her mother, who is taller than me, and played varsity volleyball this past fall as a freshman. I understand this is significant, that it fulfills her dearest ambition. If she didn’t have green eyes and wavy brown hair, I wouldn’t believe she is my grandchild.

Meredith looks up from her ham and asks about my cat, which is sweet since she doesn’t like cats. Stammer had gotten a kidney infection, but is better. Meredith won’t need to give him medication while I’m gone. What am I reading? Silas Marner again. Am I getting out? Both she and my son fear I’ve become too sedentary to travel alone.

“I’ve been walking.”

“Walking?” Jeffrey says.

“That’s good exercise,” Meredith says. I see a look pass between them.

“I went out for a couple of miles before I came.” All those shattered light bulbs. “But it’s the dark of the moon, so I needed a flashlight to get home.”

Suzy looks up from her slab of meat. “Dark of the moon?”

“A colloquialism,” I say, “for when the moon doesn’t show.” Suzy turns to Cassi. They stare at me. “The moon gets smaller each night until there’s no moon showing. That’s the dark of the moon,” I say. “Then it comes back.”

“Really?”

I think, Surely a science teacher has quizzed them on the phases of the moon. Surely they’ve learned this. But they live in the city. At night their sky flushes orange—streetlights make moonlight irrelevant. Stars have been invisible all my granddaughter’s life. I am momentarily speechless.

Meredith takes over. “When the Earth is directly between the sun and the moon, the moon is in shadow and reflects no light, so we can’t see it,” she says.

The girls’ eyes glaze over.

Dessert is a rich chocolate cake. I used to make a similar cake, a torte with ground almonds and no flour, glazed with dark chocolate. I ask if this is the recipe I gave her.

Meredith smiles. “I’ve added ground chipotle. What do you think?”

“Delicious. I would never have thought to add chili.” She’s improved several of the family recipes. People sometimes call me after dining with my son and daughter-in-law to ask for a recipe. She doesn’t like to give out other people’s recipes. I always share, but I warn them that they need to call Meredith back and find what she added.

My daughter-in-law has a master’s degree in computer science and works at Tektronix. They have someone who comes in to clean, and though Meredith is an excellent cook, the family mostly eats out or has take-out during the week. Everyone agrees that she’s a renaissance woman—a professional who also bakes, sings second soprano in choir, and doesn’t waste energy on vacuuming and windows. She tries to be patient with me. She sat with me for hours after the funeral, holding my hand, as people came to the house to pay respects. Before she left with Jeffrey, she insisted I lie down—I hadn’t even known how tired I was until she covered me with the afghan. I should be more grateful for her.

•••••

On the way to the airport Jeffrey grills me like a teenager going to her first dress-up party: Am I sure I want to do this? What will I do if I get lost? Do I understand my hairdryer won’t plug in without an adaptor?

“You and Meredith traveled all over Europe and to Japan without missing your hairdryer.”

“But you’ve never gone anywhere alone. Who will you talk to?”

“I’m all grown up, sweetheart,” I say. “I can manage.”

“Of course you can, Mom.” But he makes me promise to call when I’ve arrived.

I insist he drop me at the curb. I roll my carry-on bag through security, empty my pockets and take off my shoes, and all the while I think only about what I am doing, not what I’ve done.

Onboard, I press into the thick foam seat, allow myself to recall the shattered lightbulbs, and smile to myself. The perfect crime. A gesture of faith or pure madness. For hours I haven’t thought too much—I’d been over the plan so often in my mind that it felt instinctive, like mothering. Home before six, hot shower, load my bags in the car, drive into the city for dinner with Meredith and Jeffrey, on to the airport in Jeffrey’s car, and six weeks in Spain and Portugal.

I adjust the little plastic nozzle over my seat—someone always leaves the blower on. I feel chilled, though the air in the cabin is stale. I pull out my book and try to read. Otherwise I will have to talk to the men in the seats beside mine. It’s past midnight, but despite the hour, I can’t even pretend to sleep. I find my place in Silas Marner. One thing at a time, like a shopping list. Shoot out the lights. Dinner. Airport. Plane. I glory in my competence.

The Fasten Seatbelt light goes on. The passenger next to me shifts, raises his tray, and consults a planner. He is nice looking, probably about my age, but I keep my eyes on my book. I’ve read Silas Marner three times this year. Whole passages come to me without looking at the page. I begin a favorite section, where Silas runs to town, having found the golden-haired child asleep in front of his fire. What am I to do now? he wants to know, his gold gone and his life about to change. I relax into the story, the plane moves away from the terminal, turns onto the runway. I press my hand onto the page as acceleration presses me back into my seat.

That’s when I remember.

The map. I release a sound. The man beside me stirs, but I turn my face to the dark window. The map was still on the table when I headed out the door. Did I fold it when I returned? Did I put it away in my desk drawer? Oh god, oh god, oh god. I can’t remember putting it away. Was the green vase resting on the middle of it, or off to the side? I open to memory. No, oh no! The Winchester too. I left the gun right there in plain view. I sat before the map waiting, checking the clock. I set the timer on my watch, went out, walking fast to keep my time, completed my task, returned, locked all the doors—this quite clear—locked the doors, cleaned the cooled gun, showered, dressed, carried my bags to the car, and left the house. I remember cleaning the rifle and restoring it to its bag. But I do not remember returning it to the attic. I always did this in rehearsal. After every session in the ravine, I cleaned the gun, packed it, pushed aside the panel over my closet and placed the Winchester on the rafters. I never forgot to put the gun away, but today the pheasant died.

Evidence of my crime left in the middle of the dining room.

The intercom crackles and the captain welcomes us onboard.

Too late to go back. Below, the city sparkles with streetlights and porches. The man beside me pulls out his laptop computer. Even if I called Meredith, what would I say? Don’t touch the rifle on the table. Throw away the map, ignore the dotted path leading through the development, red-inked stars for each porch lantern and abominable driveway spotlight, notes about where a person might stand unobserved and reload—all of my planning, revealed.

Meredith will see everything when she feeds Stammer after work tomorrow. She’s a smart woman, observant and thorough. She’ll examine the evidence, drive home, and tell Jeffrey: “You need to do something about your mother. She has a gun. She’s shot out all her neighbors’ outdoor lights. I drove around and looked—driveways glittered with glass.”

The man beside me clicks his computer shut, leans forward to slide it into its leather case under the forward seat. I feel him looking at me, and I still my breathing. The man on the aisle reaches to twist an air nozzle back on.

I press my cheek against the window. Despair blinks through me. They will be repaired, all those electric lights I sited on and shot. Probably by the time I land in Spain, a man will have turned off the breaker in each house, replaced the damaged parts, continued to the next house. A good day’s work. I know this. A pheasant died for my foolishness. My throat tightens. City people will insist on dragging the light into the country. I understand the futility of what I’ve done. It can’t be forced. The world just spins on regardless—each of us reaching toward what we know, filling silence with familiar sound, fighting back darkness. You and your enthusiasm, I hear Sam say. I say it to myself. Look how far you’ve come, I think, and how far still to go. I cannot help smiling.

I breathe in the stifling air of the cabin, the soapy smell of the man beside me. This is what it means to get over grief, I think. You do something ridiculous and start noticing again the way men smell. I will have to call my son once I’m settled and offer to pay for repairs. What were you thinking? he will say, and I will make a joke of my foolishness. He’ll find a way to make it right. Won’t he? Somehow, despite my fears, it will be made right.

In different ways, we are all afraid of the dark, but it’s just us out there. Maybe when I’m home, I’ll campaign to bring back the night. Maybe some good will come. My dad was a great believer in good coming at the end. Sam too. And Meredith, I realize. Meredith too believes good will come. Young girls will play volleyball as if their lives depended on it, and their grandmothers will look out at the faded darkness and wish the world were the way it used to be.

I lean my forehead to the curved plastic window. Below, lights flicker. Lines of traffic and streetlights, parking lots and porch lamps, the foolish, optimistic blaze of civilization. We are all suspended in the air. Together—the man beside me and the man beside him—we are hurtling around the world toward the rising moon.

© 2011 Jan Priddy

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Mrs. Ellison Learns a Lesson

by Anna Peerbolt

In Mrs. Ellison’s opinion, sixty was too old to be looking after a three-year-old. Indeed, being sixty astonished Mrs. Ellison, who thought of herself as forty-one.

“What?” asked her husband, who was sixty-five. “You didn’t think you’d get old?”

No, she hadn’t. It had crept up like a thief from the shadows and stolen her figure, dark hair, flawless skin, and given her a turkey’s neck.

The Merrills lived four houses down the street and seemed to believe that because Mrs. Ellison no longer worked, she would be glad to babysit their daughter. When Jenny was a baby asleep in her bassinet, the Merrills would leave her with Mrs. Ellison for an hour here and there, and Mrs. Ellison would find excuses to pick her up just to feel the heft of her placid, malleable body. She was particularly delighted with Jenny’s baby clothes: footie pajamas and tiny coveralls decorated with floppy-eared bunnies and happy-faced daisies. She checked the labels and was satisfied that none were from Sears. Mrs. Ellison had no grandchildren, which embarrassed her. But she agreed with her son that he was not father material. He played backup guitar in various rock groups with names Mrs. Ellison could never get straight, and was away from home more often than not. And his wife was a corporate lawyer and freely admitted she didn’t like children. Mrs. Ellison, who had masked her own dislike of motherhood, said she was shocked. Mr. Ellison said it was none of their business.

When Jenny began to walk, staggering and falling down like a drunk, she was still a delight to Mrs. Ellison. But when Jenny began to run and sass her back, Mrs. Ellison told the Merrills she was no longer available. So she was surprised when they called to say they wanted to get away for the weekend and were desperate. Her inclination was to say no, but she’d been itching to see what they’d done with the renovation to their kitchen and she had never seen the upstairs rooms. She agreed on the condition that they return no later than five on Sunday.

Saturday morning the Merrills were waiting impatiently for her in the drive. They handed her a house key, kissed a squirming Jenny goodbye, and left. Jenny pulled Mrs. Ellison toward the backyard demanding pushes on her new swing set, then insisted Mrs. Ellison help her make castles in the sandbox. They didn’t enter the house until Mrs. Ellison suggested lunch.

The kitchen was a marvel in stainless steel and granite. The drawers slid out as if adrift and the smoky glass cabinets were lit from within. The sink backsplash was resplendent, glittering with iridescent green and blue hues. Mrs. Ellison was satisfied. The kitchen looked expensive, just as she’d thought it should. She made tomato soup and cheese sandwiches, which she and Jenny ate on the back porch.

While Jenny took a post-lunch nap, Mrs. Ellison unpacked her small suitcase in the upstairs guest room across from the Merrills’ bedroom and next to Jenny’s room. The guest room wasn’t to her taste, with its single bureau of light-colored wood, a bed without head or foot, and wide cranberry red-and-gray stripes on the walls. The bath, across from Jenny’s room, was better. It was cheery and large, its wallpaper decorated with dolphins and sailboats. She fingered the plush guest towels, pleased by their new softness.

After her nap Jenny demanded an ice cream cone. At Baskin-Robbins she chose cookie dough and dripped a good deal of it on her shirt. For dinner she agreed to hamburgers and only ate half. At bedtime she sucked her thumb contentedly as Mrs. Ellison read about green ham.

“And peas,” squealed Jenny.

“Yes, and peas indeed,” said Mrs. Ellison. By nine Jenny was asleep and Mrs. Ellison, exhausted, went to the guest room.

She awoke in the dark, at first confused because the window was in the wrong place. Then she remembered she was at the Merrills’. She checked her watch and saw that it was only four. The house was silent, the leaves of the tree outside the window lay still as if waiting. Mrs. Ellison felt a tugging unease and shuffled into her slippers, drew her bathrobe tight around her middle, and went to check on Jenny. She was asleep, one arm outstretched, the other clutching a stuffed elephant with beady eyes.

Mrs. Ellison sighed. For the past month, she’d been experiencing bouts of insomnia. Sometimes she got less than five hours of sleep. At home, she would often clean out a kitchen cupboard or iron a couple of Mr. Ellison’s shirts—anything to occupy the time.

She went downstairs, made a cup of tea, and drank it in the living room, staring at the desolate street dappled in moonlight. She looked around for something to read and found a copy of People magazine that she’d already read at the dentist’s office. A book lay on a table, and she picked it up and opened it at the marker. She read a few pages and shut it with a shake of her head. It seemed to be about a woman whose husband had left her and now she saw dead people.

“How could anyone read such nonsense?” Mrs. Ellison said.

She began to wander around the house, absentmindedly opening cupboards and closets. The Merrills seemed to have a lot of different-size wine glasses and a good many coats. She found a drawer crammed with old match books, pencil stubs, ballpoint pens, paper clips, different types of glue, and an empty checkbook with the stubs filled out. She thumbed through it, noting the paid bills and occasional memos for cash.

Finally, Mrs. Ellison climbed the stairs thinking she might try to go to sleep again, but at the top of the stairs she turned right into the Merrills’ moonlit bedroom. Across from the open door was a window flanked by an antique bureau and an upholstered armchair. It offered a view of the mountains. Mrs. Ellison gazed at the distant snow caps for a few minutes before opening the top drawer of the antique bureau.

Inside, stacked as if in a store, were two piles of silky panties next to six bras curled up like hedgehogs. She removed one of the bras and inspected the lace. The maker’s tag noted that it was a 34B. Mrs. Ellison smiled. She had guessed correctly. She rolled it up carefully and returned it to its place. The next drawer held light-weight cardigans and patterned T-shirts, many with ridiculous messages about happiness and peace. She refolded each shirt exactly as it had been and replaced them in the same order as she had found them. In the bottom drawer were two bulky sweaters, four pairs of shorts (one with a button missing), three bathing suits, and a pair of soft blue jeans with red piping on the pockets. Under the blue jeans was a large manila envelope. She tested its thickness between thumb and forefinger. It was thin. She looked around. She listened. She could have been in a cave underwater. She pulled the envelope out and took it close to the window where moonlight turned the white window sill blue.

There was no address on the envelope. She turned it over. The flap was loose. She opened the flap and looked inside, then sat down in the armchair and pulled out the contents. Pictures. Six large black-and-whites of the Merrills, naked and doing things to each other that made Mrs. Ellison gasp. She felt a tingling pressure in what she called her privates. Her face flushed, her breasts felt hot, her breathing became rapid. The pressure intensified and the muscles of her buttocks contracted and released, contracted and released. She moaned and let the pictures fall to the floor. For a long time, she sat and stared at nothing. She had been a virgin when she married, and it never occurred to her that what happened in the bedroom could be more than something to be endured. It seemed to make her husband happy and, she had thought, that was enough. Tears filled her eyes and dripped down her cheeks.

As a child, she’d find pennies, nickels, and notes from friends in classmates’ winter coat pockets. She’d never taken the money or used the information. Instead she hugged the secrets, warming herself. She discovered, as she matured, that most people left secrets lying about for anyone to find. She knew, for instance, that her friend, Eloise, never paid the electric company on time, that her daughter-in-law wrote angry poetry, that her hairdresser had been audited by the IRS and fined for unclaimed income. In her opinion, people were shockingly sloppy and stupid about their personal affairs. Even so, just before the moment of discovery, she always wavered, considering whether this time she should mind her own business, as her husband would undoubtedly say.

On Sunday, Mrs. Ellison woke with a headache and snapped at Jenny when she complained that her scrambled egg was runny.

“I won’t eat it,” said Jenny, crossing her chubby arms and glaring at Mrs. Ellison.

“Suit yourself.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“There are children in Africa who would be thrilled with these eggs,” said Mrs. Ellison, forking a mouthful from her own plate. She chewed slowly, aware that she was close to tears. She sniffed and pretended to blow her nose to give herself time to recover. But her throat and chest remained tight.

“All right,” she said, picking up Jenny’s plate. “Do you want pancakes or cereal?”

It helped to be doing something, anything to hide from the grief that had followed her to bed after she had put the pictures in the bottom of the drawer where she had discovered them.

The Sunday hours crawled forward like a wounded animal seeking shelter. The Merrills returned a few minutes after five. Mrs. Ellison and Jenny were waiting at the front door, and when she saw them turn into the drive, Mrs. Ellison picked up her suitcase and started off. She was halfway down the drive before they got out of the car.

“Did everything go well?” they called after her.

“Fine,” Mrs. Ellison shouted in their general direction. She managed not to look at them, sure that if she did they would know immediately what she’d done, who she was: a dried up, prying old hag.

When she got home, she brushed past Mr. Ellison mumbling about having to unpack and go to the bathroom. She wanted to disappear, flush herself down the toilet like an unclean thing. When she could no longer hide in the bathroom, she got out the vacuum and went at the carpets.

Around six thirty, Mr. Ellison asked if she planned to do anything about dinner. She wanted to punch him or scream that all he cared about was me, me, me, all the time. But she knew it wasn’t true. He was a good man who took out the garbage, changed the oil in the car himself, kept the lawn mowed and bushes trimmed, went to the kind of movies she liked, even when she knew he didn’t care for them. That night when it was time for bed, Mrs. Ellison said she wasn’t sleepy and would stay up for a while. Mr. Ellison checked the doors, turned on the outside lights, and trudged upstairs to their bedroom.

For two months Mrs. Ellison was able to avoid the Merrills by crossing the street or walking in the opposite direction as if she hadn’t seen them. But one evening they called asking if she could mind Jenny for an afternoon while they went to a wedding.

“No,” Mrs. Ellison said, the unwelcome memory of her discovery turning her cheeks fiery. “No, I don’t do that anymore.”

© 2011 Anna Peerbolt

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Author Bios

Karen Levy is an American-Israeli writer who came of age in two languages, Hebrew and English, and in two countries, Israel and the United States, creating a need to collect enough stock, so to speak, in both languages as to find her place and voice in the world. After her military service in Israel, Karen earned a BA in comparative literature from UC Davis, followed by an MA in English, creative writing from CSUS, where she teaches literature and composition.

Wanda Morrow-Clevenger lives in Hettick, Illinois—population 200, give or take. She’s a wife, mother of two sons, and new grandmother. She has sketched portraits, painted miniature vignettes, designed original lace patterns, worked in State offices, a bank, retail stores, a florist shop, and one small law firm. Beginning her memoir in late 2007, she enrolled at Long Ridge Writers Group in 2008 and graduated from their Breaking into Print course in 2009. Whether fiction or nonfiction, her work embraces the human condition, and she admits this embrace sometimes becomes ground-pounding retribution. Such is the way to successful self-help therapy.

Anna Peerbolt worked as a copywriter and journalist before turning her hand to fiction. Her work has appeared in Drunken Boat,Prick of the Spindle, Apollo’s Lyre, Aoife’s Kiss, and Luna Station Quarterly. She lives in Oregon with her husband, a cat, and a dog, and works as a web designer and bookkeeper in order to keep the left and right brains functioning.

Jan Priddy is a devoted reader and writer. She also holds two studio art degrees and weaves, knits, pieces quilts, and sculpts. In 1979 she moved to her great-great aunt’s home on the Oregon coast. That is where she became a mother and a writer. Jan spends most days working with teenagers and in the evenings, she enjoys reading, corresponding, and writing. She writes out of passion and pure, uncontrollable need—the only way she knows to get over the sea.

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Artist Bio

Nathan Lee Smith lives in Portland, Oregon. His work and coverage of contemporary photography can be found at blastchorus.blogspot.com.

Ink-Filled Page Winter 2011 copyright © 2011 Indigo Editing & Publications

Cover Design: Jon Wise

Cover Art: Nathan Lee Smith

Coeditors: Martha Byrne & Kori Hirano

Publisher: Ali McCart