Fiction Second Place, 2021 Doro Böhme Memorial Contest
To celebrate thanksgiving, they have commandeered the backyard. The weather’s warm, the air moist, the grass sticky. Sitting cross-legged, Toots looks straight into Jebby’s camera. She is nine years old, a jumble of arms and legs, her freckled face haloed by the sun. Her curly hair has been wrestled into two long braids. A smudge of black paint tattoos her cheeks. Their grandmother, perched in a plastic lawn chair, is a one-woman costume department. She has cleverly taken a tan pillowcase, cut out some arm and neck holes, and Krazy-Glued three rows of seashells. Standing next to Jebby is their neighbor Fat Eliot. Like Jebby, he is twelve years old. His job is to hold the cue cards.
“Maize,” says Toots. Propped in front of her is a wooden chopping bowl filled with fresh corn. “Come, my pale-faced friends. I will show you how to plant. How to grow. How to harvest. Then come November we will make a feast.”
Nathan at six is the youngest sibling. He speaks with a lisp, walks with a hop, and likes to grab his crotch. But he’s a quick study. He hits his spot and poses, follows the swoop of Jebby’s hand. Of course, most of filmgoers will recognize The Toy Story Halloween outfit. The pleather vest. The felt cowboy hat. The too small boots. But by God, that child can take direction. There he is with his chin up and his pistol ready.
“Thanks but no thanks!” shouts Nathan. Then he snaps the trigger of the cap gun Jebby has found on eBay. A flash and a kick and the smell of sulfur. And while the camera lingers on the pistol, Toots clutches her stomach and pops the bag of red dye.
“The Great Father will not be happy,” are her final words. Then she lies down, shaking her feet, wiggling her hands, and wobbling her chin.
“Cut!” shouts Jebby. “That’s perfect. It’s a wrap.”
The light. The sound. The special effects. When it all goes right, magic happens. For a few brief minutes, their worries are shelved and their fears erased.
It’s their grandmother’s job to oversee their schedule. Together they tear down the set and store the costumes in their old toy chest. Then Fat Eliot heads home as the sun sets. Afterwards, their grandmother steers them toward the kitchen, microwaves some fish sticks and tosses a quick salad. Then glancing at her watch, she barks a steady stream of orders. Homework! Toothbrush! Time for bed!
Once they barely knew her. Grandma Shirl was a card on their birthday, a Christmas gift under the tree. In their life Before Cancer—before their father left, before their mother got sick, before their world forever changed—Grandma called herself a Professional Volunteer. Meaning, she told the children, that she worked at the hospital and the homeless shelter. Miami doesn’t run by itself, she’d always say. We may be old and useless. We may be crotchety and long in the tooth! But the universe is a machine and seniors are the gears. That’s a fact!
Thanks to her supervision, the cogs turn seamlessly. Every hour of the day is accounted for. Of course, they’re permitted to run outside and play. But inside they tiptoe and whisper.
You’re tramping like a herd of elephants! Your mother needs her rest!
Their days are bookended by both the past and the future. On one end there are memories of their B.C. lives. Their mother teaching at the community college, dragging them to bookstores, reading her favorite poems to them each night. Her brown hair caped her shoulders, her long flowery dresses swirled. You never knew who she would bring home. A new student for dinner. A mangy dog she found wandering the street.
Their father, costumed in a suit and tie and the shiniest of shoes, as perfect at the end of his day as he was at the start, would walk in the door after everyone else had dinner. Then he’d say, you brought home what? You fed whom?
*
On cue, Toots starts running around the backyard. Her arms and legs are stiff, her skin painted gray. A mouthful of cottage cheese is oozing from her lips as she backs Nathan into the fence. As usual, Fat Eliot runs alongside them holding the cards.
“You’re awfully fast for a zombie!” Nathan screams.
Then clutching her brother’s neck in her hands, Toots opens her mouth and flashes her teeth. As planned, they both count to five while the camera pans in. Then Nathan turns to Jebby and sighs.
“I know your plan. Today I’m a kid juth like any other kid. But tomorrow I’m a brain-eating monsther.”
Then taking out the rubber knife he has hidden in his pocket, he stabs himself in the neck. “Well, I’ve got other plans.”
*
Jebby used to like school. His science project (Life on Mars! How the Movies Got it Right!) won an honorable mention. And his math skills were so advanced that they bused both him and Fat Eliot to Beach High for class. But now every time he closes his eyes the year 2021 A.D. comes into focus. The probable possible always looms, the undeniable likelihood of their mother getting worse. When he pictures the calendar pages flipping, he sees life After Death, a morbid montage of film frames, the stuff of nightmares come true.
The snapshots are fleeting but persistent. An empty bed. An abandoned crossword puzzle. A book that’s halfway read. People seem to disappear from their lives on a regular basis without even saying goodbye.
Once life was perfect, a black-and-white film with a shingled house and a white picket fence. Then one day when Nathan was a baby, their father took on a client in New York. I’ll only be gone one night a week, he said. Then one became two and two became three. After a few months, he stopped coming home at all.
Like the snap of a finger. Poof! Gone.
As usual, they take their respective buses to school while Grandma Shirl waves from the bus stop, coffee in hand. While Jebby walks down the corridors, the walls close in. Lockers are clanging and kids are shouting. The overhead fluorescents buzz. But it’s easy to go through the motions. All of his teachers know about his mother. The bone marrow transplant. The three months she spent in the hospital. Now another three months where she’s holed up in her room. Not to mention the endless list of rules she has to follow while her immune system rebuilds. No dust. No dirt. No pets. No kids.
Jeb, did you remember your homework? Jeb, did you study for the test? On and on his teachers drone, their voices floating up and over, bubbling cartoonlike above his head.
How he hates their compassion! The phony smiles. The fake concern. He skips assignments and leaves tests blank just to see what happens. He writes fuck you on Mr. Nadowsky’s science quiz and still they shrug him off. Poor Jeb. We understand. Things are rough at home.
*
Toots and Nathan bend over the giant footprint in the dirt beneath them. They’re clothed in khaki with pith helmets on their heads.
“It lookth like a Velociraptor to me,” says Nathan.
“Is a Velociraptor vegetarian?” asks Toots.
Fat Eliot is in charge of sound effects. While Jebby jerks the camera up and down, Eliot slowly bangs on a huge bass drum.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Against the fence, the silhouette of a dinosaur suddenly appears. Toots raises her hands to her face. Then glancing up, she screams.
*
Was it only five years ago? That first weekend they waited and waited for their father. On Saturday, Jebby had a basketball game and his sister soccer practice. Their mother piled them in the minivan and drove from one activity to the next, blasting the radio and humming along. Looking back, it was like she was trying to drown everything out. Their questions. Their anger. Their disappointment. Sunday morning, they woke up and found their mother asleep on the couch with an empty bottle of wine beside her. By instinct, they knew what to do. Jebby changed his baby brother’s diaper and made him a bottle. Then he laid out two bowls of cereal for him and Toots. Looking back, it was another snapshot, a peek into the A.D. future, the past and present toggling like a switch.
It was close to noon when their mother finally woke. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, glanced at her watch and blinked.
“We are going to the grocery store,” she announced. “And we are stocking our cart with every forbidden food we can find.”
Two hours later, the kitchen counters were covered with three kinds of whipped cream and every ice cream topping on the shelves. Jebby had never seen his mother so bouncy. Her voice was cheerleader perky, her hands like knitting needles darting here and poking there.
“Sundays are for sundaes,” she trilled. “Don’t you love Sundays?”
*
Nathan is wearing a tan fedora while a coiled bullwhip is clutched in his hand. They have pinned a large swastika onto Toots’ Girl Scout uniform. In one of her hands is the cap pistol. The other holds a silver wine goblet courtesy of Grandma Shirl. Toots has mastered a German accent for her role.
“It’s either you or me, Indy. Verstehst?”
Rolling his eyes, Nathan grabs a gun with his other hand. “Your cup runneth over, Doll-Face.” Then he shoots Toots square in the chest.
*
The following week, another incident occurs. It’s lunchtime and as usual Jebby is sitting with Fat Eliot in the school cafeteria. They both are swirling their French fries in ketchup, the ketchup figure-eighting the plate, spilling on the table, sticking to their fingers. They have stopped using ketchup for their films ages ago. There are red dyes on the market that are clearly a better substitute for blood. But ketchup is sweet and fun and sticky. Old habits die hard.
They have already opened a dozen squirt packages and still have a dozen to go when Mary Sue Bernstein shows up. Long blonde hair. A white sweater. Her brand-new sneakers gleam.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your mother, Jeb. My mother had breast cancer. First in one breast then the other. If you ever want to talk . . .”
Before she can get out another word, Jebby sandwiches a ketchup packet between his hands and squeezes. Eliot takes another. Whatever ketchup misses Mary Sue flies across the room.
*
Toots and Nathan are treading water in Fat Eliot’s pool. Buckets of ice cubes are floating on top. A piece of plywood is secured to three Styrofoam noodles. Toots, with a huge blue heart markered on her chest, clings to it and weeps.
“There’s room for us both, Jack. I’ve been dieting. Honest. You take one side and I’ll take the other.”
But every time Nathan tries to touch the plywood, Toots swats him away. Fat Eliot pushes a button on his phone. In the background, violins play.
“I can’t hear the muthic,” says Nathan. “Everything’s numb.” Then throwing up his arms, he sinks like a stone under the water.
*
They’re back at Fat Eliot’s house. Nathan’s swimming underwater with a snorkel. Attached to the top of the snorkel is a handmade shark’s fin. Jebby yells Action! while Fat Eliot plays the Jaws theme on his phone. Da dum. Da dum. Da dum. Soon a steady beat builds to a crescendo. It’s like a train speeding faster and faster. Tubas pulse and trumpets blare.
Then Toots, outfitted in sunglasses and a two-piece swimsuit, slowly dips into the pool.
*
By February, their mother still has not emerged from her room. It’s not that Grandma Shirl won’t discuss her prognosis. It’s just that Jebby’s too terrified to ask. He knows they go to doctor’s appointments while the three kids are at school. Wearing a mask and gloves, his grandmother knocks on their mother’s door, ferries her medication, brings her hot tea, feeds her some food. His mother’s alive. He’s sure she’s alive.
Meanwhile, school has become an out-of-body experience. His feet plod while his heart pounds in his ears. It’s hard to sleep, difficult to eat, and impossible to find a distraction.
Then Valentine’s Day happens.
The service clubs make tons of money by distributing heartfelt gifts. Chocolate candies. Red carnations. Tiny teddy bears. It’s all everyone talks about for weeks. They’re in the hallway. Right before Nadowsky’s class, Fat Eliot pulls Jebby aside.
“I’m thinking we should buy something for Mary Sue. You know maybe some flowers. I think she hates us. I know she hates us.”
Jebby has known Fat Eliot forever. When they were little, Eliot was a smidge shorter and a lot chubbier. Then a year ago Eliot shot up like a rocket. Now he’s six feet tall, at least a half foot taller than Jebby, with not an ounce of fat on him. But to the day he dies, Jeb will be Jebby and Eliot fat. No matter what some things just stick.
Jebby’s considering the options when the idea hits. It’s like a meteor has crash-landed in his head. Gazing into the stratosphere, Jebby appraises his friend. Then he glances from side to side.
“I’ve got a better idea.”
*
The setup is surprisingly easy. The morning of February 14th, Jebby and Fat Eliot get to school early and take over the small stage that sits on one end of the cafeteria. Nobody asks questions and nobody cares. Contacts at the drama department prove helpful. They’re lent a large wooden crate that doubles as a coffin. A papier-mâché pillar. The appropriate Elizabethan clothes. By noon, just as the first wave of students finish lunch and the next wave arrives, they are ready. Mary Sue is resplendent in a long velvet gown, her blonde hair swept up on her head.
“Perchance!” says Mary Sue. “I see my cousin’s ghost. He’s seeking out Romeo. Stay Tybalt! Stay!”
It takes a few seconds to get everyone’s attention. So Mary Sue improvises while Jebby adjusts the mics. “Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo!’
Soon their voices are bouncing off the ceiling, the floor, the walls. On a table sits a Costco-sized bottle marked with the word Ambien. Mary Sue holds the bottle in front of her audience, gulps a few pills, and washes them down with a glass of water. Then she faces the cafeteria once again.
“Romeo, O Romeo. I drink to thee!” Slowly she puts the bottle and the glass back on the table. Then she sinks into a well-rehearsed swoon, conveniently landing in the opened crate.
Enter Fat Eliot. Peering in the crate, he lifts Mary Sue’s hand and checks her pulse. “Arms, take your last embrace. And lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”
Lifting Mary Sue in his arms, Fat Eliot kisses her on the lips and lays her back down. Then he rolls up his sleeve and wraps some plastic tubing around his upper arm. A hypodermic needle and a bottle of clear liquid miraculously appear. Tapping the bottle, Fat Eliot fills up the syringe, gazes into the crowd, and pretends to inject the fluid. “Here’s to my love!” he shouts. Then he collapses.
By now the entire cafeteria is speechless. Not a single tray is banging, not a word is being said. Mary Sue, a natural with perfect timing, rises from her grave.
“Smack, I see, hath been his timeless end. O churl, shot all and left no friendly drop for me?”
Then she bends over and grabs the rubber knife from Fat Eliot’s belt. “This is thy sheath. There rust and let me die.” Then locking eyes with her audience, she shoves the knife directly into her gut.
Suddenly, what used to be a festive holiday doesn’t seem so festive after all. Two bodies are sprawled across the stage. Assorted drug paraphernalia lie scattered among the props. But the show’s a crowd-pleaser. Though the performance took only fifteen minutes, the applause lasts for five minutes straight. Jebby, Fat Eliot, and Mary Sue link hands and bow for a standing ovation. Teachers clap while the kids go crazy. For a few brief moments, their world is transformed. The ceiling seems taller, the floor cleaner, the air sweeter. And all at once Jebby feels tingly, like the use is coming back to a once numb hand.
But fame fades and glory is fleeting. An hour later all three are called to the principal’s office. They are told to pack their bags.
*
The wait in the anteroom is endless. Before you can see Principal Leibman, you have to make it past his secretary. Mrs. Diaz Balart Schwartzbaum is five feet square with an imposing five o’clock shadow. She’s a multi-tasker par excellence, typing on her keyboard, pushing buttons on her phone, and yelling at them simultaneously.
“You,” she says pointing to Fat Eliot and Jebby. “You two I understand.”
But then the finger shifts to Mary Sue. “But you! Is crazy contagious! Because there seems to be an epidemic going on!”
Mary Sue, to Jebby’s astonishment, is remarkably nonplussed. Whether it’s the remnants of her makeup or the buzz you get from a performance, Jebby can’t decide. But her eyes glitter and her skin glows. And when the door to Leibman’s office opens, she’s the first to go inside.
The judge and jury are already there. Fat Eliot’s mother is wearing her mad face. Two people are huddling in the corner, a man in a suit, a woman in a dress and heels. Jebby assumes they’re Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein. Grandma Shirl, wearing her sweatpants and sweatshirt, is wedged in a chair.
“This,” says Leibman. “This is serious.”
Leibman is hiding behind a large desk. Everything about him is round. An enormous stomach threatens to burst through a shirt. His face is chipmunk chubby. The finger he holds up is sausage thick.
“An unauthorized performance,” says Leibman. “The blatant use of drugs. I don’t know where to start.”
Instead of listening to the principal, Fat Eliot’s mom is staring at the three kids. Jebby knows that look. The narrowed eyes. The pursed lips. She’s shooting photon death rays one blast at a time.
“So it’s inevitable,” says Leibman, “that I lower the boom.”
While Leibman talks, the Bernsteins fuss and fidget. They look like they’re facing a firing squad. All they’re missing are the blindfolds and two smoldering cigarettes. The father speaks first. “This like . . . won’t be on her permanent record. Right?”
The mother’s backup. “I mean we wouldn’t want any colleges to get the wrong idea.”
If Mrs. Bernstein was sick, she doesn’t seem sick now. Opening her purse, she flashes her wallet and takes out her Mastercard. “Maybe there’s a charity we can contribute to. Buy the football team some new uniforms. Throw a fundraiser. Build a gym.”
Jebby peeks at his grandmother. She’s been taking her time, checking her watch and clucking her tongue. Then finally, she throws back her shoulders and lifts up her chin. Somewhere there’s a drum roll. From a slit in the curtains a cone of light instantly appears.
“You,” she says to Leibman, “You should be thanking these children. I’ve worked with the homeless, the downtrodden, the drug-addled. You think Just Say No! actually works? Serve some punch, print up a few bumper stickers, and there you go! These kids took a classic and made it relevant. It’s theater, Mr. Leibman. Performance. For a few precious moments your face is pressed against the glass, confronting your fears and fearing the truth.”
It takes three tries to hoist herself up. She splays her feet to get a firm footing. Then she turns to the door. “And whatever props were used, I guarantee were just that. Props.”
She doesn’t wait for a response. Why wait? The curtain fell and the credits were rolling. Instead, she ushers Mary Sue, Fat Eliot, and Jebby out of the office. She walks so fast it’s hard to keep up.
“Our getaway car is around the corner,” she blurts huffing and puffing. “The Cheesecake Factory is beckoning. I’m starving. You starving? I think it’s time for lunch.”
*
After a two-hour lunch of three courses each, Grandma Shirl takes a long, meandering route home. By now they have watched their performance multiple times on Jebby’s camera. The consensus is clear: the script needed work, the set was rudimentary, and Mary Sue was brilliant. Before dropping her off at her home, she is officially invited to become a member of their acting troupe.
For Jebby, the afternoon has passed in a haze. His brother and sister, he is told, have been chauffeured home by friends. Mary Sue can’t stop grinning. Grandma can’t stop yakking. Only Fat Eliot is suspiciously quiet. When they pull into the driveway, Eliot gets out of the car last. He looks vacant, shell- shocked, like one of those British soldiers stuck in a foxhole with mustard gas bursting around his head. Grandma and Jebby flank him while he walks home. Chances are he’s in trouble. Big trouble. They’re all relieved when his mother opens the door and smiles.
The day’s nearly over as they head back to their front yard. The moon’s a suggestion, the sun an afterthought sinking behind the clouds. Across the street, a neighbor is rolling in his trash can. Cats are screeching and dogs are barking. There are fathers, Jebby imagines, who are putting down their briefcases, taking off their jackets, hugging their families. Each window is a portal to normal, a film frame depicting happy people with carefree lives. A tear is wetting his cheek when Shirley speaks.
“They’re waiting for us,” says Grandma. “You better prepare yourself for a surprise.”
They walk into a house they barely recognize. Except for a single armchair, everything in the living room has been covered with white sheets. Stars sparkling with silver glitter hang from the ceiling. Somewhere a harp plays.
Toots and Nathan emerge with three folding chairs. Their eyes are wide, their faces flushed. “We’ve got some popcorn ready. You better hurry. The show’s about to start.”
Now it’s Jebby’s turn to take direction. He takes off his shoes. Puts down his backpack. Washes his face and hands. By the time he sits, Grandma has taken center stage. She is wearing their mother’s white graduation gown she has saved since college. Hanging from her neck is a sign that says Saint Peter. Glued onto her face is a long white beard. On cue, Jebby holds up his camera.
Grandma plops down in the armchair. Then opening a laptop, she frantically pushes buttons. Her brow is furrowed as she speaks. “Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Add to cart. Add to cart. Add to cart.”
Jebby hears his mother before he sees her. The kitchen door swings open as she bounds into the room. She is dressed in her tennis outfit. A white polo shirt. Shorts. Sneakers. Her hair’s as short as Jebby’s but she looks surprisingly good.
Shifting from foot to foot, she swings a racket overhead. “Busy, busy day, Pete. Satan’s coming for a rematch. I’ve got Mammon and Beelzebub begging to be ball boys. Like that’s gonna happen.”
Meanwhile Grandma’s still punching the keyboard. “Spam. Spam. Spam. Mail waiting to be sent.” Gazing up at her daughter, she sighs. “I’ve been working on my inbox. There’s this lady in Miami, for instance.”
Then taking a pair of binoculars from one of her pockets, Grandma scans the audience. “I see three kids. An empty classroom. A stack of unopened books.”
The hours she spent reading to them. The late nights grading papers. In another life, way back when she was in high school, his mother was on the tennis team. There were a million things big and little she was good at. And as she runs around the living room, pantomiming a forehand, blocking shots, and whacking a serve, Jebby can see it. The grace. The ease. The sheer joy of doing something done well.
There were so many things his mother did well.
“This lady in Miami is a fighter,” says Grandma. “This lady’s fighting with all she’s got.”
Finally, his mother stands still. But even Jebby can see that she’s unsteady. She’s swaying like she’s on a rocking ship. Gripping the armchair, she finishes the script.
“There’s no predicting where the ball bounces, Pete. But I’ll give it my best shot.”
*
Later, when he has a family of his own, Jebby will watch the films he recorded that year. Like most people, he has known both ups and downs. But happy endings, he has learned, do happen. And if you’re lucky, the happy endings balance out the bad.
And on some days, when the sun’s out, the clouds still float like cotton candy. And sometimes, if he listens, the trees bend to say hello. At night the moon will smile and the wind seems to whisper. Life is distilled to a perfect moment framed within the perfect scene. A lover’s clasp. A child’s laugh. Magic happens.
Marlene Olin was born in Brooklyn, raised in Miami, and educated at the University of Michigan. Her short stories and essays have been published in journals such as the Massachusetts Review, Catapult, PANK, and the Baltimore Review. She is the recipient of both the 2015 Rick Demarinis Fiction Award and the 2018 So To Speak Fiction Prize. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and for inclusion in Best American Short Stories.
SPOT IMAGE CREATED BY WARINGA HUNJA
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