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Two stories from Sarah's newly completed, Vacationland - sixteen connected stories linking various characters to the same remote resort. Destination I recommend clicking the PDF version - much easier on the eyes. At Miriam’s insistence, Estelle has scheduled her flight so they could meet at the concourse and cab into the city together. Given their mission there’s a likelihood one of them could back out, and besides, neither should be alone as they approach the business at hand, the crime. Estelle is the first passenger up the ramp, calf-sueded and cashmered with colorful dashes that complement the dyed fur trim of her coat. Up close, Miriam sees the fur is real, and sighs. It’s not as if they haven’t had this conversation. Estelle is practically a spectacle next to Miriam in her wool car coat, tan slacks and tan cardigan – an ensemble that could be tossed into a dustbin, should there be any need to dispose of evidence. Similarly non-descript replacements are in her overnight bag. The sisters bump cheeks and each quickly comments that the other is looking well. They turn down the vast concourse. For a dozen yards, Estelle watches her sister in the periphery. Miriam has faded some, Estelle thinks. Less like herself, more like a widow. Miriam can feel the deceptively soft gaze Estelle employs. She turns and they make real eye contact. “You hardly look the part, Estelle.” “What do you mean?” “I mean you hardly look like a killer.” It comes out much louder than intended. Estelle’s eyes swivel to the family of travelers just abreast – a couple with two beefy teens in varsity jackets with athletic patches on their sleeves that look like Oreos. She squeaks, “Well, neither do you, Miriam.” As the family moves ahead, Estelle sees the patches are embroidered hockey pucks, and though they pass quickly out of earshot, she attempts small talk, pointing out the many shops and kiosks along the concourse. “Airports were never like this back when Roger and I were traveling. They’re like malls now, aren’t they?” To Miriam, the airport seems identical to the one in Boston – the same Starbucks and Cinnabons situated on the same corners so that she must concentrate to place herself in Minneapolis. As they walk, she fidgets with the bangles that had set off the metal detector at Logan and wrecked her nerves for the morning. She hesitantly tells Estelle about her run-in with security. “Do you think getting rid of them might be more prudent than risking more trouble on my return flight?” Estelle picks up her sister’s wrist then drops it. “I’d toss them.” Miriam sniffs. “You would.” “You asked.” The silver bangles are souvenirs from a trip to Mexico with Dennis, but Estelle wouldn’t know that. Rearranging them, Miriam notices a new liver spot on her wrist and frowns – they are definitely multiplying in spite of the expensive cream she’d ordered from an infomercial. The guaranteed two-week trial period has already passed twice. Suddenly ashamed for her brief flight of vanity, she shoves her hands in her pockets, deciding to keep the bangles and throw away the cream. Estelle trawls for conversation, “Is that coat new?” “No.” Miriam stops. “There’s nothing about me that’s new.” “Well, you look fine, Miriam. Very nice.” The hairstyle could easily be fixed. “By the way, did you get my birthday present?” “I did. Thank you very much.” “Did you get the joke? The amount, I mean…a hundred for every year?” “Of course I got it, Estelle. It’s a lot of money.” Estelle shrugs, “Well, my kid sister only turns seventy once!” “I’m seventy-two. Since you started fudging your own age, you can’t keep anyone else’s straight.” “Oh. Well, remind me to send you a check for the difference.” Miriam inhales as Estelle starts humming her self-conscious hum. Kid sister. With her young face and lollypop voice, Estelle makes an unlikely elder to her and to Penny, the in-between-sister they’ve come to see. Miriam looks hard at Estelle – her skin is taut with procedures and peels, any worry lines buffed away – if her sister worries at all, Miriam thinks, it would be over the sorts of things other people only dream of worrying about. They will visit Penny. If it’s as bad as all that, if she’s doing that poorly, they will say their goodbyes. If things seemed stalled, and Penny really needs their help, Estelle and Miriam will fulfill the pillow pact and murder their sister. Miriam whispers, “Maybe.” “Pardon, Mir?” “Nothing.” Penny could live for weeks yet. Months. Her sons seem to think so, anyway. They move on, scanning open storefronts, making full stops to look at cleverly displayed bags of wild rice, plush loons, and novelty snacks. Estelle examines such items as if they are necessities, choosing packages of Gummy Mosquitoes and Viking bobbleheads for her grandsons, a flickering blue night-light shaped like a bug-zapper, and a pair of trout-shaped oven mitts for Francesca. A shop in the far periphery catches Miriam’s eye. “What time is it?” Coming from opposite coasts, each is hours removed from the other’s time zone. Estelle pulls back a fur cuff to reveal her Omega, “Only 10:15!” Miriam is out of the novelty store and charging toward the other shop – one that sells sleep number beds. She’s never seen such a store in an airport – in the window a mattress is sliced in half to show its innards slowly expanding and contracting as if breathing. She watches for a few huffs before heading inside to the next display, a fully made bed roped off against children or anyone else naturally inclined to lie down when tired. Miriam steps around the barrier to sit on the duvet. A lamp glows pinkly on the nightstand next to a water glass and digital alarm clock – she might be in someone’s bedroom. Appearing with her packages, Estelle’s her shoulders slump, “Oh no. Miriam, Really.” “What? I need a bed.” She lifts the price tag and makes a tiny noise. “And I have all that birthday loot burning a hole in my pocket.” As she lowers down onto the pillows, a groan escapes her. Not bad. Squeezing her lids to feign sleep, she can hear Estelle breathing and soon enough pacing commences next to the bed. Miriam is just beginning to drift along to the rhythm of footfalls when they stop. She opens one eye to Estelle staring down, very near. With a twinge Miriam realizes she is in the same position poor Penny will be in an hour or so – prone, trapped, and at the mercy of sisters – those who love but have no obligation to like. “I’m so tired, Estelle. I had a two-hour drive to Boston and two flights.” She pauses before adding, “Both in coach.” When Estelle sits, Miriam quckly shifts, believing her sister might kiss her forehead. But she only clucks, “You should have said something, Goose, I would’ve upgraded you.” Miriam rises to her elbows, suddenly fighting tears. “I really did not sleep a wink.” “Of course you didn’t. I only got six hours myself.” “I might not have the energy for this, you know.” “But Miriam, you said…” Miriam knew what she’d said. That she possessed the required detachment to do the Kevorkian thing, if it came to that. She’d actually had some practice over the autumn, albeit on a dozen easy victims. When the eaves of her house were invaded by the very squirrels she once fed, Miriam lured them with peanut butter into Have-A Heart traps purchased at a discount with her PETA membership card. In the beginning, she drove them to the next county and released them. But when the carpenter took her on a crawl of the attic and handed her the repair estimate, Miriam quit ferrying and filled a wheelbarrow with water. After lowering the traps in, she’d look away for the time it took, singing to drown out the bubbles of distress – usually something upbeat - Sinatra or Bobby Darin. Longer than always is a long, long time. Yes, Miriam could kill – squirrels, anyway. “You do remember it don’t you? That night we promised?” Estelle is staring at her. “The actual pact? No.” Miriam sees a salesman circling, working up momentum to either chase them off or begin his spiel. She sits up and quickly reaches for her purse. Pulling out a pocketbook she opens it and when the man nears, she presses a forefinger into the mattress, declaring, “I’ll take it.” She hands over her credit card, but when he begins to open his mouth Miriam shakes her head as if regretting he won’t be allowed to speak. He slowly backs away to get his forms and run her MasterCard through his machine. Blow up mattress – $1,979.00. She considers the look on Estelle’s face. “Priceless.” “What?” “Never mind.” “Miriam, stop doing that.” “Doing what?” “Mumbling things and then refusing to repeat them. It’s rude.” “Sorry. Where were we? Do I remember the pact? Frankly, I don’t. I remember being at the resort, at Naledi – and all the strange weather that year…but one particular conversation?” Estelle sighs, “Selective memory?” “No need to snipe. I’m not backing out.” “But you must remember something.” “That it was just after Mama passed.” “And precisely why we agreed to spare our own children that sort of awful death watch.” One evening thirty years before, between one highball and the next, back when they could put it away, Penny draped herself in a rocker on the porch that smelled of ozone and mice and came up with the pillow pact. Miriam tries to recall Penny’s words, tries to conjure her voice, but memories form stubbornly silent as old super-eight movies. She can see Penny as she was – tan and boyish in her Capri pants, one espadrille swinging loose from a toe as smoke from her Virginia Slims gave shape to her stories and dead-on imitations. Had Penny spoken the words of the pillow pact in her own voice? A born mimic, she seldom used her own. Penny loved to do the cranky Czech who ran the resort, and guests that arrived each Saturday to providing her with new material. That year there’d been a high-strung minister in number four who Penny imitated in stuttering, irreverent sermons. And the couple from Georgia whose fisticuffs always ended in noisy lovemaking, the husband squalling, “Who’s your big bear Sugar? Who’s Sugar’s big bear?” The dog-crazy opera singer from Ontario Penny did not try to emulate, preferring to wag her bottom like one of the soprano’s Dachshunds, yipping and howling the score of Die Fledermaus. “Miriam, are you even listening?” "Uh huh.” What words and phrases Penny spoke which Miriam cannot recall, Estelle is unable to forget. Conversely, Estelle struggles to remember Penny’s face, but not one feature will surface, she cannot envision the mouth that formed those eradicable words. Estelle begins again, nearly word for word, her voice enough like Penny’s to be haunting. “What if one of us was struck by lightening, stunned into a vegetable? What if one of us catches something fatal?” Miriam envisions Penny’s curls bouncing as she performed her Harpo act – the minute something physical needed doing around the cabins Penny would grow mute, concentrationg to teeter atop tables to change flypaper, leap to tennis-racket bats, or puff air into swimming mattresses. Penny’s cheeks always went apricot in the sun and she never wore a dab of makeup at Naledi. They called her Pretty Penny. To her many nephews she was Aunt Pretty and is called so still, when she’s decidedly not. Miriam’s vivid screen of memory blurs as Estelle insists, “You remember her saying ‘I’d do the same for you. If two of us do it together, like a firing squad – if two are pressing the pillow or feeding the pills…neither can really be responsible. That’s not murder.’” In the echo of Penny’s words, they turn to see the clerk frozen like a mime in mid-step. Miriam motions him forward impatiently and takes the papers. She fills in an address form, signs the delivery order and folds away her receipt. Once outside the shop, they roam to the moving walkways, glad to be carried along rather than rely on their legs. They falter some when approaching the ends, stepping off and on with trepidation, neither quite able to take the other’s elbow. “It’s discombobulating.” Miriam frowns. “Is that really a word?” “I think so.” Estelle squints. “I’d been searching for a word for us…for today. There are names for such things you know – infanticide or matricide. But what about a sister? Is there such a word as siblicide?” When Miriam doesn’t answer, Estelle looks up to discover they are gliding alongside a great span of windows, revealing her first glimpse of snow in years. It looks like plastic flakes swirling in a souvenir globe. At the taxi queue, a digital sign loops the time and weather. As they mine their bags for scarves and gloves, Estelle shakes her head. “Five degrees! It’s too cold for jewelry.” She pulls gold clips from her ears, wincing, “I’d be dying too if I had to live here.” Miriam secures her collar. “Is that your idea of humor?” After they give the driver directions, Miriam closes the Plexiglas slide. They are out of sight of the airport before she rallies the courage to open the overnight bag on her lap, tipping it carefully to expose the white zippered bag within. To her horror, Estelle plucks it out and opens it. Three syringes roll onto her palm, along with one of the vials. The liquid is a deep amber – the color of Penny’s stained fingertips. “Oh, my. This is how? I thought they would be pills. You mean we have to…?” “Inject Penny? Not directly, just her IV.” Miriam gently takes the vial and syringes. “You’ve no idea how hard it was to get all this. I had to drive to Quebec.” “For God’s sake, Estelle.” Estelle begins absently tracing circles on the glass. “Oh, Mir…I wish we could go back.” “Back?” Miriam considers her sister’s far-off expression. “Oh. You mean summer.”
The summer of the pillow pact, the sisters had nine children between them, all boys but one, ranging in age from ten to twenty. Estelle’s Max was the eldest, on break after his first year at Berkeley and supposedly keeping and eye on the younger teens. But by then the boys didn’t pose many dangers to themselves – all could dogpaddle and make their own sandwiches, and two had Red Cross certificates. Miriam’s daughter Lilith had a driver’s license and could be trusted with a grocery list. During these vacations, the sisters read fat paperbacks, boned up on their French listening to the Ontario stations, and played bridge. They made occasional forays through cabin kitchens to put away mayonnaise or sweep sand, and tossed coins to see who would venture to the lodge basement to launder beach towels in the shuddering aqua Maytags. For a full month they were happily idle. Sometime during cocktail hour – when supper either burnt or didn’t, depending on whose night it was – one of them would aim the binoculars toward the dock or the beach for a headcount of Lilith and the boys. One thing about Naledi, there wasn’t much trouble to get into. They learned differently only a few years ago, when Lilith, after her second stint of rehab at Hawthornden for dependence on codeine and Zinfandel, embarked on her twelve-step program with zeal, skewing Step Four to include others in her fearless moral inventory. She ratted out old digressions on behalf of cousins and brothers – revealing that all the boys had smoked copious amounts of pot and even hashish at Naledi. Max, in fact, had supplied his minor cousins with dime bags bought from a state employee who nurtured his crops among pine saplings in a DNR greenhouse. Such revelations were a bit of a shock to the sisters, but it had been decades ago, and boys being boys… They were a good bunch overall, and all had earned the requisite diplomas, married wives who produced mostly tolerable grandchildren and settled in acceptable neighborhoods of decent cities. The marijuana would have been water under the bridge, except for Max. Max, as expected, had progressed from golden boyhood to golden adulthood – Dean’s list at his law school, headhunted into a prestigious firm, and partnered by his thirty-fifth birthday. A few years later just as Max’s temples had prematurely silvered as if on cue, he nabbed a senate seat, where one of his first votes was against legalizing medicinal use of Cannabis, inspiring Lilith to tattle. Like any politician, Max adroitly deflected any culpability. Since stones were being thrown, he said, he had plenty on Lilith regarding those summers. He also suggested that Aunt Pretty was likely more angry that he’d run on the GOP ticket than over a little weed. Penny became incensed. Max, foolish and spoiled and smart enough to know better, had been dealing – selling to his underage cousins and others at Naledi – the Saturday maids, the dock boy who pumped gas, God knew who else… Estelle wouldn’t admit outright her son was a hypocrite, and Penny wouldn’t let it go. After Penny threatened to leak information to the press, the two stopped speaking. Initially Miriam was a neutral go-between, passing along pertinent news and family gossip between Estelle and Penny. But when Penny took ill, Miriam nearly scripted her phone call – smugly informing Estelle that one of the medications Penny most needed – the one that might help her keep food down during chemo, was difficult to procure and a crime to use, thanks in part to Max. “And you know she has glaucoma too, on top of everything else? Have you any idea how that might be treated?” “I’ve done my research, Miriam.” Both lean back, hands resting on the bags in their laps. Estelle sees Miriam no longer wears her wedding ring. Since Denny’s passing, her sister seems to have become more austere. She wonders if Miriam isn’t a bit relieved, as widows so often are. Her hands make small static movements. Of the three, Miriam is the bustler, nothing if not practical, especially now, when it’s easier to do than to think. Her nails are trimmed and clean and bare of polish. There’s a tension in Miriam’s hands that matches the held-in quality of her face – the skin over her knuckles has mottled with age spots, a sight that bothers Estelle more than it should. She makes a mental note that once back home she will send a jar of cream from that spa in Marin. Why is traffic moving so slowly? Estelle cannot remember a longer cab ride. Her own fingers, weighted with platinum, idly smooth over the leather of her shoulder bag. Miriam watches the slow movements of Estelle’s hands. She’s always found diamonds gauche herself, but realizes now just how well they suit cool, elegant Stella. It’s been a long time since she’d been called that – ages since the boys stood on the mossy steps leading up to the cabins and shouted Stelllaaahh in their best Marlon Brando voices. Estelle had pretended to hate that. Stella, Miriam shakes her head. None of it – nothing she owns, none of the ease or luxury she’s so accustomed to could have made those last months with Little Roger any easier. And Big Roger walking out so soon after, leaving Estelle to go it alone, just herself and Max and that pile of blue chip stocks – a period Penny crassly referred to as Estelle’s abject prosperity. Miriam sighs, no wonder really, that Max was so spoiled…
At the hospital curb they split the cab fair to the nickel, tuck pocketbooks away and gather their things. The pavement is icy, and they balance while watching the taillights recede into the snow until the car is too far to call back. Estelle minces several yards to the salted safe zone and turns, “Come on, Mir.” Remembering the unsavory phrase that Lilith utters when faced with something difficult, Miriam looks to the hospital entrance and straightens. She will. Just cunt-up and do it. The doors are centered by a statue of a saint run through with spears. When Penny was told she had cancer, she chose St. Sebastian’s for it’s proximity to her sons and for the irony – Sebastian being the patron saint of dying people, diseased cattle, and enemies of religion. “Perfect for an atheist, really,” Penny had joked to Miriam over the phone while making a doodle of an arrow, “Just shoot me.” Once through the revolving doors, Estelle inhales hugely, as if she cannot get enough hospital air. She breezes though the gift shop to buy a large bouquet of lilies and, inexplicably, two Mylar balloons that say Happy Today. She hands one over, “Here. One from each of us.” Miriam holds her balloon low, nearly stumbling on it as she trails Estelle and all her swinging parcels into the elevator. As the door seals them in, Miriam tisks at the mirrors on every surface. There is nowhere to look and not see a crowd of themselves. “Why? In a hospital, of all places…” Miriam maintains there are two kinds of people – the kind that will paint over a piece of tape rather than bother peeling it up, and those who do things properly, thoughtfully. She makes such distinctions so regularly that her sons roll their eyes before she can finish, no matter the topic. Kyle, her youngest and kindest, has observed that one’s defining traits tend to exacerbate with age – the nitpicker picks more nits, the self-absorbed become ultra-absorbent, and the mean become nasty. She resents the suggestion. It’s not that she’s judgmental, it’s simply that there’s no reason not to take proper care with things, including oneself. The Surgeon General warned Penny on every pack, but did she listen? It’s difficult for Miriam not to be angry when she’s supposed to help ease the way. And Estelle hasn’t begun to comprehend the seriousness of Penny’s illness, certainly not the finality of the pact. She’s brought fudge! The elevator bell tings, and for an instant gravity lifts the weight from their heels and a fleeting lightness rises through both sisters. Each looks quickly to the many reflections to see if the other has felt it, but just as suddenly they are set down again onto their bones and the doors chug open to slide their many images away. The hall is a tunnel of pistachio tile. At a station at the far end they find a nurse chewing a pencil, engrossed in the daily Sudoku. When Estelle says Penny’s name, the nurse straightens. She turns her monitor so they can’t see and taps her mouse. “Right. Dr. Bell’s patient…Lancaster, P.” “Lancaster, Penelope.” Estelle says firmly. “Yes.” The nurse comes out of the station, “You can follow me.” With an offer to find a vase, she takes the lilies from Estelle and leads them down another hall, remarking how the Minnesota weather can make traveling such a trial, as if knowing they’ve come from the airport. They are taken to a small waiting room. After shedding their coats and shaking their scarves, they pile their things in a corner and circle a table a few times before settlling in to wait. Who knows for how long? The nurse hadn’t even offered coffee. Estelle watches the door a minute before dragging her shoulder bag close. She pulls out a gift bag from a trip to London, embossed Marlbey’s Teas, LTD. Inside is a pillow-shaped package wrapped in tissue. “Tea?” Estelle lowers her voice, “Well, not quite.” She peels layers of tissue to reveal a large ziplock bag packed tight with smaller bags filled with a dried, green herb. “That’s isn’t…Estelle, that’s not?” Miriam’s stifles a yelp and her eyes dart to the door. “I should hope it is, considering what I paid.” “You carried that on the plane?” The package weighs at least a pound. Estelle shrugged. “I could have Fed-Exed it, I suppose. But since Penny needs it now, and since I didn’t have any trouble flying from Negril with it…” “Negril? Jamaica?” “Well, goodness, I wouldn’t know where to get such a thing in Palm Springs. I thought of Mexico, certainly closer, but Lord knows what sorts of things go on down there. I just decided to visit the Robertson’s – you’ve met Kitty and Earl. They have a winter place there, and their driver, Eddie is was such a nice young man, has those deadlocks though…” “Dreadlocks, you mean?” “As I said. How they keep those clean. Anyway, Eddie took me to a special plantation where a woman gave me some lovely tea, very relaxing, and sold me this.” She rewraps and stows the package. Miriam sucks her teeth. “Well.” Estelle leans back. “Well.” They look around, scanning the tank of lazy angelfish, the stack of Highlights magazines and the crocheted wall hanging shaped like a crucifix, just the sort of thing Penny would make fun of. Once they’ve taken everything in, there is nothing to do but wait. One of the Happy Today balloons ticks against the wall just above a heat vent. It seems an eternity, yet can be no more than a few minutes before the door opens. The nurse wordlessly ushers in a white-frocked woman and quickly backs out. They stand. “I’m Dr. Bell.” They shake hands and peer at the tiny letters on the doctor’s nametag until she offers, “Melissa Bell, Oncology.” She’s pretty, like Penny. Once they sit, the doctor wastes no time. She gives each of them a pinched smile and says in a voice of practiced succor, “Your sister took her own life this morning.” The air in the small room shifts and collects, thickening just over the table. Dr. Bell takes three empty prescription bottles from her lab coat and places them on the table. Two envelopes with their names written in Penny’s hand are eased from a folder and slid forward. “I’m so sorry.” Neither sister moves or speaks. The doctor presses a palm over each of their hands. After a full minute she rises. “I’ll be right outside, if you have any questions. Your nephews are waiting in the room, in case you’d like to view…” Both shake their heads and Dr. Bell nods, edging away, “Of course. I’ll have the floor nurse tell them where to find you.” The door bumps shut. Miriam and Estelle do not look up, do not acknowledge the pill bottles, or the envelopes, or each other. For the second time during the long morning, the sisters gazes settle on hands – this time their own, focusing on the flesh the doctor’s hands had pressed and warmed, now growing cool. Estelle blinks and stares at the facet of a large ruby, Roger Junior’s birthstone. She spreads her hand flat. Well, that’s that. Aunt Pretty’s coming to join you, RoJoe... She hadn’t thought before, but now she’s suddenly glad that Penny and little Roger will be together – that her boy will no longer be alone. That Penny won’t be. Just then the thing Estelle has struggled for all day comes to her with more clarity and vividness than seem possible – Penny’s face, her girl-face, bolts into focus. A scene fills in around her little sister. They are all on the porch of cabin two, she and Miriam are cross-legged on the floor and Penny is on her knees, laughing and pressing a raw hotdog through the mesh of the screen door. On the other side, Dandy, the old chocolate lab, frantically laps and scrapes his teeth against the metal. Sunlight carried from his tail flickers across Penny’s nose and chin. That face. That sight and even the smells come back to Estelle; scents of rain, of mice and hotdogs. Her eyes close like shutters to seal the moment. How could I have forgotten that? Across the table, Miriam is examining her thumbnails. On Dennis’ last night, she’d fallen asleep in the chair next to his bed. When his breathing had stopped she’d bolted awake to the lights of the monitor flashing along to each second of silence. Miriam cannot know what became of him, and now, she cannot know what will become of Penny besides ash. She doesn’t have Estelle’s faith, yet cannot quite embrace Penny’s lack of it. Just as she’s wondering, Miriam hears a shriek of familiar laughter – a shriek that pricks the cotton wool that has muffled any recall of Penny’s voice all day. Miriam hears Penny perfectly now, as if the volume from the past has suddenly swelled, as if her sister is next to her, snorting and hysterical. She can hear Dandy, too, the gross squelching noise – the rasps of tongue, muzzle and teeth. She can see and hear - all of it. Squatting in front of her sisters, Penny can barely catch enough breath for one small word, her exhalations are hooted out. “See?” Penny says, the pitch of her voice is high and nasal with allergies. She pivots toward Miriam and Estelle, her sneakers making rubbery squeals on the floorboards. The hotdog is gone now, the wax wrapper crinkled under Penny’s heel. Her palm is still on the screen, but she’s only teasing Dandy now, enjoying the tickle of each desperate lash of his tongue. She looks squarely at her sisters as if demanding an answer, insisting, “See?” Penny is eight years old, nothing important has happened to her – her big teeth aren’t even all in yet. Her legs are folded reeds with scabbed kneecaps and her eyes are fierce with this one moment. A bit of hotdog is caught in her bangs and tears of laughter lacquer her freckles. This is not a memory. Estelle and Miriam both see her clearly, hear her perfectly. Penny is laughing the pure kind of laughter that can make her wet her pants. She is helpless with it. It’s infectious. They can hardly help themselves. Jeweled and mottled hands reach blindly to link as the small, smooth pair slips from reach. [end] word count 5110 [end] Assimilation Another Vacationland story, Assimilation will also appear in Milkweed Editions Fall '08 anthology, Fiction On A Stick Veshko screws his ear closer to the television as the excited talk show guest erupts in phrases that are obviously offensive and perhaps even obscene. Veshko looks from Tyrone, excited guest, to Jerry Springer, wondering when Jerry might take matters in hand, but he only stands mute in the aisle with his arms crossed, cradling his microphone the way some men cradle a bottle. Jimmy, the brother of Tyrone, shrugs at the camera, basking in the attention as the crowd hisses and shouts. There is some trouble having to do with the fat woman seated between the brothers, but Veshko can find neither bonin’ nor ho in the Webster’s pried open on his knee. While watching television has only slightly improved Veshko’s English, an abstract sense of his new country is clipping into focus. Much livelier than those on Ellen, certainly more so than those on Oprah – many of Jerry’s guests are distraught, angry, and often related. They argue using words Veshko cannot look up fast enough – full sentences slip past his ear as if greased. Now they are trying to hit each other, these two brothers who have dressed in matching shirts for the occasion, but bald men in jackets emblazoned SECURITY press them back to their chairs. Tyrone and Jimmy glare at each other over the head of the woman, whose name is Anita. Anita is the colour of a sacher torte, with great painted lips and metallic moons of eye shadow that shimmer like her outfit. Nowhere in his new home of Squaw Inlet, Minnesota, has Veshko seen women wear such abbreviated clothing. Anita’s cleavage forms a holster of flesh deep enough to conceal a weapon. Ethnic Americans sometimes carry guns, Veshko knows, although the characters he has met on The Cosby Show would never. Or should he say would not? There are no black people this small Minnesota resort community, which makes Veshko suspect they must live in other places, like Chicago, where many talk shows are taped – a place he visited for several hours during his last layover at the airport of O’Hare, where he saw many different sorts of people, many colors. Still, America seems less like the melting pot he’d imagined it would be, and more like his own country, where people settle near their own and stick to their own. In America, immigrant groups even have villages tucked inside cities, such as the Chinese. This he has seen on cable reruns of The Streets of San Francisco, the program about two detectives, one handsome and young, and the other grandfatherly, with a nose resembling a penis. Veshko is amused by this program’s portrayal of uncorrupt police. Flipping pages he is pleased to recognize ska, a musical term he knows in English. Then his finger lands on what he is looking for, skank, which amid the many bleeps is the word Tyrone repeatedly shouts at the woman. He reads the entry and sighs, “Of course. A whore – a kurva.” He puts the book down and rises from the sofa, crossing through the dining room into the kitchen, where his footsteps land on linoleum squares in sync in with the chant, Jer-ry, Jer-ry. Yellow-green, yellow-green. He opens the fridge and lifts a can of Budweiser from the door – a beverage that somehow shares an identity with the real Budweiser. The beer is as pale and subtle as the people of his new home. He heaps cold meatballs and potato dumplings onto a plate, leftovers from his dinner at the Tuomala’s. Since coming to Squaw Inlet, Veshko has dinner each Sunday with a different family, alternating between the two churches that sponsor him. St. Heikki’s tiny congregation did not have the resources to get their own refugee, so they teamed with St. Birgitta’s to pay Veshko’s airfare and provide him a home. One Sunday Veshko has dinner with a family of Finns, the following week he is fed by Swedes. Oddly, the parishioners of both churches are so similar-looking he can barely tell them apart. They seem to make no distinctions themselves and greet each other mildly, as if any history between them is forgotten, though they are only a few generations removed from brutality. Veshko has observed that in America the past can be just water under some bridge, as they say. Squaw Inlet’s citizens mingle peacefully and have many bumper-sticker sentiments in common – many are pro-life and pro-war. They share other similarities; the housewives, for example, seem to have an aversion to spice yet embrace salt. He reaches for the paprika just as the microwave beeps.
Veshko fiddles with the rabbit ears, but no color emerges. Assuming there must be some problem with the dish, he climbs to the second floor, then takes the rickety steps to the attic where he forces open a dormer window. The satellite dish is anchored next to the chimney. He climbs out, clinging to the window sash and immediately experiences a wave of vertigo that tugs from diaphragm to scrotum. He attempts to get better footing, and once secure, hunkers down, breathes and looks out over the town. Spread before him is quite a view of the north part of the town. He can count seventy-seven houses, five bars, and three churches. There are two canoe outfitters, a bait shop, the IGA supermarket, three motels, the food coop, post office, and a windowless library that looks like a power station. A new Pump&Munch sits directly across from the Holiday Station on the piney road that leads south to the interstate that leads to the rest of America. Just as the freeway sign promises, much of what a person needs in life can be found in Squaw Inlet – Gas Food Lodging. But if Veshko wanted to buy a parakeet, or see an ophthalmologist, he would have to travel thirty-seven miles to the first large town. He looks down to the T of the clothesline pole where the red bicycle leans, his only form of transportation. Many roofs in Squaw Inlet have satellite dishes. Many yards have dogs, but the owners are either inside or gone, so that the animals pace yards fenced with metal mesh, or lay in hard hollows of dirt. The house next door has no dog, no dish, and a closed air, though Veshko knows his neighbor Pete is home because the back end of his Suburban sticks out from the garage not deep enough to house it. Pete works long days, and when he’s not out tending sled dogs, inseminating cows, or stitching up one or the other after a wolf tears them, he sits in what he calls his rumpus room, reading Larry McMurtry novels and drinking Dewer's from a coffee mug that says # 1 Dad. Pete is divorced, and dislikes two things, one is his job. When Veshko politely asks how was his day, Pete sometimes makes a certain gesture, wriggling his fingers and saying, “Up to my elbows in cow, buddy, up to my elbows.” Often he repeats himself for Veshko’s benefit. After a particularly harsh day he might say, “Mud, shit and blood, pal, that is how was my day. Mud, shit and blood.” If Veshko peers past the trailer park and its slope of spangled poplars, he can squint across the expanse of the lake and the horizon of water, where, if he had binoculars, he might glimpse the Province of Ontario. Balancing on his heels, Veshko feels the house shift minutely under him. Wind from the north scours his ears. He has taken in the highlights of Squaw Inlet, but has nearly forgotten his mission to check the satellite dish. The wires are connected and nothing appears to be broken, so he eases back through the window, shivering. Downstairs he watches the screen as black and white switches abruptly to color the moment The Andy Griffith Show breaks for a commercial. “I understand,” he says, understanding. After the commercial, a new episode begins. Now not only is Aunt Bea afflicted with some brand of anguish, so too is Floyd the barber. Ready to begin his practice, Veshko kneels near the coffee table, shrugs deeply and shakes his arms like a swimmer before a competition. He rhythmically shakes his wrists and quickly rubs and squeezes each finger before setting his hands on the torso lying on the coffee table. He presses his palms to the sternum and begins. He would prefer a living body, of course, but Jessica will have to do. It is no good for a masseur to let his hands to forget their trade. Soon after Veshko moved into the tall yellow house, he and his good neighbor Pete made the Jessica together. As they sewed and stuffed her, Pete pointed to the crotch and jokingly growled, “Est ist verboten!” and they discovered they had a language in common. While Pete’s German is an old dialect learned from his grandmother, it is adequate. Veshko is shamed by his own poor English, in spite of Pete’s encouragement. Besides German and his own language, Veshko can speak a few Serb and Croat dialects, Italian, and some Polish. Pete knows some Finnish from his father, and teaches Veshko words that are hills of vowels interrupted by the occasional brusque consonant. He learns a few unsavory phrases, mostly regarding sexual intercourse with ones mother or sister. The German conversations become more fluent as empty Bud cans accumulate on the carpet of Mrs. Kubich. Mrs. Kubich had abruptly passed the week before Veshko came to Squaw Inlet. Stroked out, he was told, but since both church committees had planned he would live with her, the family offered the use of the house until they could settle the estate and sell. On the day of Veshko’s arrival the old woman’s belongings were as they had been when she was removed by the ambulance – a load of delicates in the dryer and a saucepan in the sink. Veshko gently moved the support hose and cardigans and lavender sachets from enough drawers to put away his own things, then shut the doors of several rooms and settled in to live under the watchful stares of Mrs. Kubich’s people. They gaze from gilt frames hung high on walls or set on bookshelves that hold no books – dozens of sepia eyes watch over as he practices his massage, eats, and sleeps. They are Slavic faces with wide cheekbones and high foreheads, and he doesn’t much mind them, even feels an odd kinship, sometimes acknowledging them in no particular language at all. Veshko has not placed any of his own family photographs out for display, assuming they would only elicit curiosity from his few well-meaning visitors. He works over Jessica, kneading outward from imaginary ribs, his concentration breaking only when commercials blare and blast colour into the dim room. The dummy, which Pete has named, is fashioned from a leotard and several pairs of tights filled with flax seed. She has comically large breasts formed by bags of millet, with the knots centered to suggest nipples. As Pete sutured Jessica’s torso, Veshko confessed that Jessica Simpson was not known in his home country. Pete only shrugged and told Veshko his own wife, The Ex, had small breasts. The Ex lives in Duluth with his two children, and her new husband, Needle Dick. On the screen, Floyd the barber is now in full flummox. It turns out he has lost money Aunt Bea had entrusted him with. Aunt Bea won the money playing bingo, and feels guilt about gambling so has vowed to give her winnings to charity before her family finds out. But Floyd is weak and confesses to the men of Mayberry, who rally to help him. Floyd slumps dejectedly near an open cell in the sheriff’s office. The police in this program don’t even close the cell doors – they play checkers with their prisoners and serve them homemade meals with linen napkins. Veshko repeats what the big-eared sheriff says to the troubled barber, “Now, think, Floyd, think. Where’s the money?” “Sink, Flood, sink. Veriz za mawney?” “I uh uh . . .” Floyd hangs his head, “Oh, d-d-darn it, Andy!” The other actors speak in slow drawls he mimics as he massages Jessica’s calves and legs. She has no hands or feet. Veshko has considered filling pairs of Mrs. Kubich’s gloves and socks with flax to make her whole. Seeds in Jessica’s midsection make a faint scritch when he presses with his fists. Aunt Bea’s money is found and there are sly smiles all around, including a rodent-like grin from Aunt Bea herself, who had known all along that her money had been misplaced. When the program is over, Veshko changes the station and flips Jessica face down for her second hour. Her spine is length of plastic chain stitched into the back of the leotard – his hands move upward from imaginary coccyx to imaginary shoulder blades and to the wobbly neck and occipital ridge. Nova has a special on dingoes. At midnight Vesko turns off the lights goes to his bed, where the sheets smell of bleach and dust. Pastor Dan, the Swedish minister, was the first and so far the only person in Squaw Inlet to try to engage Veshko in a political conversation. At the counter of Pavola’s Cafe, Veshko was deep in his textbook, conjugating verbs, and Pastor Dan was reading his newspaper. The pastor rattled his page, then poked it with a finger, asking Veshko, “In your opinion, Veshko, where do you think Slobodan Milosovic should be buried?” Opinion. He was almost certain he understood the meaning of the word. Rising from his stool and closing his English book, Veshko slowly annunciated each syllable of his response, “I have not an opinion in this matter.” He smiled and left a tip for the young woman who’d brought his eggs and so much bad coffee. Once outside, he glanced back through the window to see Pastor Dan reach into his pocket and push several more coins across the counter to join Veshko’s. In the afternoon he finds a package in his doorway. It’s a video from Mrs. Jorge, the town librarian. There is a note, easy to translate. I haven’t seen this myself, but thought you might like it! The video is Welcome to Sarajevo. The incongruity of the title puzzles him. A travelogue? From before the siege, surely. He will watch it once he's figured out what’s wrong with the VCR. Pete comes after work with a twelve-pack and examines the machine, which turns out to be not broken. He demonstrates to Veshko how he need only switch the input cables, explaining that Mrs. Kubich must have let her grandchildren play Nintendo on the television. Pete begins to describe Nintendo but Veshko excitedly interjects, “I know this Nintendo! My nephews back home has it…had it.” Veshko repeats, “I know this video game.” He forgets Welcome to Sarajevo and goes to rummage through cupboards and closets, searching for the Nintendo, as if a child might leave such a thing behind. On Saturday Pete takes Veshko fishing. On a trailer coupled to the Suburban they pull an aluminum boat far out of town to a closed-up resort called Naledi, where, Pete explains, he once had a girl – in another life. Veshko asks if he believes in … the word takes a minute – reincarnation? He doesn’t. Pete expertly backs his boat trailer down to a narrow beach between two docks. Next to the dock is an old building for boats only, a water garage built on cribs. Pete takes a key hung under an eave and lets himself in. He comes out lugging an outboard motor. “This is not trespassing?” Pete snorts, “Hardly.” With the motor sputtering blue, they zoom from the dock and travel halfway across the lake at full speed. Veshko closes his eyes against the wind and feels his hair part, first one way then another. When the boat stops, it lowers itself like a big animal sitting. Veshko nearly asks Pete to do it again. They reach an island Pete knows, one large enough to have it’s own inlets and bays. Skirting the shore they turn into a narrow channel that leads to a marshy bay. Pete explains the water here will be choked with tall weeds by August, but for now, the bass swim under the boat in the new growth, begging to be caught. He catches two fish, one resisting so wildly he expects some giant by the time it’s pulled to the boat, but it is only a slender pike. Such fight in only an average fish, he marvels, asking Pete, “This is an American fish?” “I guess. You don’t fish back home?” “Sometime, in rivers. Not like this.” Pete catches many perch and three bass too small to bother with. They troll near the reeds for several hours, not saying much. Pete makes a few jokes about Veshko’s fishing hat, borrowed from the closet of Mrs. Kubich, a straw cloche, at least freed of its silk flowers. “I wouldn’t wear that on the street, pal…” Pete advises, “…that faggot down at the B&B might just ask you out dancing.” “Faggot?” “You know.” Pete flops his wrist. “Homo.” “Ah, yes.” Pete offers some history of the area, telling of the fur-toting Voyageurs, tough little bastards who were not always French; some were native Indians, some Russians and Brits and even Bohunks like Veshko. “The lot of them were called Pork-Eaters, manageurs de lard, so probably there weren’t many Jew paddlers.” “Nope. Constipation.” Since Veshko doesn’t know the word, Pete pantomimes, scooting his bottom over the edge of his seat to grunt and clutch his stomach before falling dead against the oar. By early evening the beers are warm, but taste better. Veshko discovers he can urinate off the bow while still fishing, simply by trapping the rod in his armpit. Hoping for one last fish, they troll the entire way back to Naledi. Approaching the land so slowly like this makes it feel like a real voyage. Veshko leans and watches the pines sway above the log cabins, and sees how late sun bounces from the lake to spray the resort windows with gem-coloured reflections, making even the saddest little buildings glow. In English, Veshko sighs, “This is one beautiful country, my friend.” Pete glances to where Veshko is looking and shrugs, “I ‘spose.” * * * Veshko realizes the networks that broadcast talk shows knowingly exploit personal dramas and anguish to sell commercial slots. Such commercials have expanded his vocabulary to include pattern baldness, incontinence, vaginal dryness, and erectile dysfunction, as well as names of major pharmaceutical companies and the attending cornucopia of alarming side effects. Still, he is drawn to the talk shows and has his favorite hosts. He knows instinctively not to trust small-eyed Doctor Phil, the propagandist, and half of the women on The View. He likes Ellen very much, an open-faced, seemingly humble person who Pete calls a carpet muncher. Pete has suggested Veshko should get out more, away from the idiot box. He invites him along to inseminations and sheep castrations. He politely declines, but takes the advice to heart. Veshko packs lunches and takes long bicycle rides. He recognizes the roads Pete had steered them over to reach Naledi. One day he made it the entire way. Though the bicycle is sturdy enough, the going seems more difficult the closer he got to the resort. When he arrives, finally, Veshko realizes the tires have leaked, one nearly to flatness. Huffing, he shrugs out of his Spiderman backpack and soaked shirt. Down the hill from the lodge is a little beach where Veshko wades in to wash his face and underarms. Splashing in the shallows he looks up at the few old buildings. Perhaps in one of them is a bicycle pump. He takes the key from the eave and opens the boathouse, where there are only boats and oars and cans of gas and a cupboard full of fishing gear. Other buildings also have keys in their eaves – one is a garage with a rusty truck and snow plow. There are a number of tires leaning against a wall, but no pump to fill them. He eventually finds one in the shed nearest the road, hanging from the rafters next to an old red Schwinn with no seat. After inflating his tires, Veshko goes back to the boathouse, where he borrows a rod. The two bass he catches from the dock are enough for a meal. He pierces his fish with long metal stakes that are perhaps from a tent and toasts them over a fire of smoking birch. He settles on the warm sand and closes his eyes, only for a moment. But his sleep is so instant and deep the moment stretches to hours and he wakes to see the sun in a different place, feeling the tight scorch of sunburn across his brow. Now he will have to hurry to get home before The Price is Right, which Pete sometimes comes over to watch with him. He carefully returns the few things he’s used – the rod, and pliers he used to unhook the fish, the tackle jig. In the dark boathouse, he imagines a voice and freezes in mid step. It is only water muttering against the metal walls, speaking in the same caressing tone as water everywhere does. He reluctantly backs out and locks the boathouse door. Once home, he abandons Jessica to massage his own calves and to spread butter across his pink shoulders. Veshko lowers his aching thighs to the couch cushions and is asleep before the anticlimax of the Streets Of San Francisco. He doesn’t hear Pete’s tap on the door or his footsteps retreating.
Pete ribs him about the new definition in his arms and legs, asks if he’s training for the Tour de France. “Only getting exercise,” he lies. By the end of August he knows the shoreline of Naledi and the islands well. A mile south is the Catholic summer convent, St. Gummarus. The bell that sounds for vespers is Vesho’s cue to row back and pedal home, which places him on Mrs. Kubich's couch ten minutes before The Price Is Right. A Saturday in September is set for the annual Swedish church supper. In the afternoon Veshko shaves and dresses with extra care. When Pete backs his Suburban into the driveway Veshko is waiting with Jessica under one arm and his portable massage table under the other. Pete makes room in the back, moving ropes and harnesses and cylindrical metal coolers that hold semen. They strap the dummy upright into a seat and Pete places mirrored sunglasses on her flat, drawn-on face. Veshko climbs into the cab, still vaguely uneasy in the vehicle which is the height of a military transport. On the way to the church, Pete sings along to Willie Nelson, thumping the steering wheel to the tune of Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. Heads turn when Veshko and Pete enter the church basement. Several young men hoot at the dummy and there is a ripple of laughter when Veshko reaches to readjust her blond wig. They leave Jessica slumped on the stage and line up for the buffet. After pirogues and wild rice hot-dish, Veshko nervously gulps his coffee. While people pour sugar and some sort of powder into their cups, he climbs to the makeshift stage and unfolds his massage table. When he sees Pete nod, Veshko clears his throat and waits for Pastor Dan to join him. After the pastor introduces him, Veshko announces to the crowd that he would like to show the generous people of this good American village what was his profession back home. The demonstration is the idea of Pete and Mrs. Jorge. When he and the Jorge family begin clapping, others join in a trickle. Pete unfolds the massage table. He rubs and kneads while he talks, looking up at the crowd often. There are sniggers from the back of the room where several teens are gathered, but under Pete’s glare those quickly cease. Veshko explains that many male athletes have sports massage, such as the Vikings that play American football for this very state. Veshko eases Jessica from the table and faces the crowd, offering, “I can do this to you. Who would like?” The parishioners grow still. Men at the long tables are faceless in the shadows cast by their billed caps. Since he can read nothing on these male faces, he looks hopefully to the women of Squaw Inlet. As his eyes travel the crowd, girls giggle and women shake their heads or look suddenly to their hands. One old woman points at him and laughs out loud. Only after it is apparent no one will volunteer, Pete steps up and bows brusquely to the crowd. There is relieved laughter as Pete approaches the table, peeling off his jacket. His face is red, as if he's swallowing something too large.
Paper casings for straws shoot across the tables where younger people are seated, and some women stand and begin to clear away dishes. The fates of three of his coworkers – his friends – he does not know, and the rest are dead. Stepan. Vanja. Zdenek, Carl. He is glad they will never know of this moment. Pete coughs and turns his head away from the audience, “Hey, Buddy. Not so hard.” Veshko eases his thumb from under Pete’s scapula. The crowd is the color of lake reeds, moving as stiffly, craning their necks in unison. Pete’s name is wrapped in words of joking encouragement as Veshko finishes his upper back. When he kneads his way down either side of Pete’s spine to his sacrum, guffaws ring. Veshko shakes his head and mutters so only Pete can hear, “Fuck you people.” “Yeah…” Pete whispers in agreement, “…fuck ‘em.” He suddenly hates each face in the church basement. Hates these people who have been so kind and giving to him. “Fuck you as well.”Veshko says to Pete. He backs quickly away from the massage table to face the parish, takes a short bow and smiles, saying in his own language, “You are not my people.” He heads for home on foot. After fleeing Sarajevo Veshko spent a year looking after his brother’s children in the country at the farm, the majur of his uncle. His days there were purposeful, taken up with finding fuel and growing enough food. At night he attended his orphaned nephews, whose dreams were perforated with city memories; bursts of smoke and people scurrying under the weight of water jugs, trying to avoid snipers. To add to the boys’ confusion, they had been told that those lying in the streets were asleep. Veshko had been more forthright. Often he woke to cries from their beds, wet with urine and sweat. He would cradle their small skulls and rub their temples and foreheads, hoping to lull them to a sleep with better dreams. Veshko traded vegetables and well water for enough gasoline to run a small generator so that Gregor and Milan could have Nintendo. They could play a few hours each day, happily exiled into the screen. Just when it seemed they might all go back, that things had settled in the city, he was contacted by the family of Veshko’s dead sister-in-law. The nephews were taken from the farm with only a few days notice so that good family might promptly adopt them. He’d returned to the city alone, but there was nothing left for him. The couple who’d taken his nephews emigrated to Canada, but Veshko was unable to determine what town or even what province they had gone to. He applied for emigration himself. Now he is here, in the United States of America.
When Veshko opens the porch door, Pete calls out, his voice gruff, “Hey!” pointing to the dummy sitting upright in the back seat. Veshko shakes his head. “You made her. You keep.”
Laced through the film are bits of actual news footage, some he recognizes. One he does not shows a victim being helped from a bombed storefront – an elderly woman carried by two men whose arms form a chair under her bottom. She is in shock, looking down to where her foot sways loosely from bone and mangled flesh, the ankle destroyed. Veshko stops the tape, re-winds it and watches the bloody dance of the woman’s foot in slow motion. He looks at her face. He plays the scene over. The only light in the house glows blue from the screen. More news footage shows heads of state and politicians making speeches about The Problem. When the face of Milosovic appears on the screen, Veshko launches forward so that his knees burn upon meeting the carpet. He ejects the video tape and reaches around the set. The cord is yanked with such force the television moves several inches. “Opinion,”he says, breathing hard. Opinion. “Yes. I know this word.” There are no lights on in the hall, so he moves by feel along the paneling to the foyer. Climbing, he counts the stairs to the second floor, and then to the attic, taking one breath for each riser. There are forty-two – his own number of years. Once in the attic, he pries at the window, stubborn and swelled from a recent rain. He digs at the casement with his fingernails. Suddenly it is urgent he escape the stale air. He slams the video cassette at the glass until the pane shatters. He reaches through and tugs the sash from the outside until it gives. A light comes on in Pete’s kitchen. A curtain lifts, then drops. The light snaps off. Vaguely aware of the blood running between his fingers, Veshko sits hard on the rough shingles. Welcome to Sarajevo is still in his hand, the cassette now cracked to expose its guts. He opens the plastic case like a book and brown tape loops to pool in his lap. Veshko pulls metre after metre of the tape, offering fistfuls to the wind. Tape billows and he watches it flicker and reflect streaks of moonlight, fluttering farther lakeward – farther north – with each gust. North. He thinks of Naledi – the quiet of the boathouse, where he will often sit in the rowboat that is neither red nor orange but somehow both – where light floats in on ripples and pricks through the corrugated tin skirting that is rusted like brown lace at the hem. When he closes his eyes he can imagine the slight motion of the boat and the lapping echo of water softly patting the hull. There is a small door on the lake side which offers Veshko the view of the outdoors as a room – a ceiling painted in blue daylight and clouds, walls papered in trees. The room is carpeted with water, like some Magritte painting. The end of the videotape requires a firm tug. Freed from the reel it sails up and away – he cannot tell how far in the darkness. Surely it will tangle on a tree branch or fall to some road or yard, but Veshko chooses to imagine gravity defeated; that the tape might be carried high over Squaw Inlet, over the bays and winking whitecaps to Naledi – perhaps even farther – beyond the wild shore of the Province of Ontario, where begins yet another country. [end] |
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