2021 PRIME NUMBER MAGAZINE AWARD
FOR SHORT FICTION

JUDGE FOR SHORT FICTION Dennis McFadden

Dennis McFadden is the author of Jimtown Road, winner of the 2016 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. He grew up in Brookville, a small town in western Pennsylvania very much like the fictional Hartsgrove of Jimtown Road. A graduate of Allegheny College and a retired project manager for the state of New York, he lives and writes in a cedar-shingled cottage called Summerhill in the woods of upstate New York. His stories have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Missouri Review, New England Review, The Sewanee Review, Crazyhorse, The Antioch Review, Prairie Fire, The Massachusetts Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and The Best American Mystery Stories. His first short story collection, Hart’s Grove, was published by Colgate University Press in 2010. In 2018 he was awarded a Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony.

FIRST PRIZE IN SHORT FICTION ($1,000)

“Black Cat” by Jacqueline Parker of Charlotte, North Carolina

RUNNERS-UP

“Gorilla Language” by Lisa Allen Ortiz of Bonny Doon, California
“While Her Guitar Gently Weeps” by Jim Roberts of Miami Township, Ohio

AND CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR FINALISTS

“All the World Isn’t Falling” by R.S. Powers of Tallahassee, Florida
“Don’t Worry” by Ron Dowell of Compton, California
“Loaded” by William Smitherman of Craigsville, Virginia
“Refugees” by Lisa Gornick of New York, New York
“Release at Fox Point Lighthouse” by R.S. Wynn of Dresden, Maine
“Road to the Bushveld” by Casey Fisher of Los Angeles, California
“Snow in Its Flight” by Nina Schuyler of San Anselmo, California

Black Cat

Standing in the doorway to her daughter’s room, Mac wondered at what point her life became a spaghetti western. Every day was a high noon standoff. Mac’s footfalls down the hallway, the metaphorical jangling of spurs. The desert whistle a—

“Meow.”

Mac’s six-year-old daughter, Emma, stared in defiance—a blank, empty gaze that was more stubborn than malicious—and snarled.

“Emma. I need you to get dressed. Please. We really don’t have time for this.” Mac held the black dress and tights in her hand like a paltry offering to an unpredictable god.

Her child’s stare deepened and she growled again. Hot tears stung Mac’s eyes as she fought them back. Through clenched teeth, Mac let out of a hiss of air. She would not lose her shit today. She wouldn’t.

“If you put on these clothes, you might get a treat.”

Emma’s eyes lifted and a small trill escaped her.

Up until recently, Mac had refused to employ bribery with her daughter. All the other mothers she knew rewarded their kids with ice cream and television for good behavior and it seemed to Mac that good behavior should be learned without treats. But that was before Bert, Emma’s grandfather, died two weeks ago and before Emma began speaking only in mews, purrs, and hisses like a feline. Now, left to navigate the icy terrain of her in-laws alone, Mac missed her husband even more. Even in the throes of parental loss, Matt would know how to console his grieving mother. Matt would know how to handle Emma’s weird anthropomorphic reversal. Matt would never bribe their daughter. Compared to even the ghost of him, Mac felt pale and superfluous.

Emma snatched the clothing in Mac’s hand and sniffed. The pressure in her chest lifted and Mac smiled. This was progress.

“Okay, I’m going to finish my makeup and then we can go. Got it?”

“Meow meow.”

“Thank you. Good kitty.”

Emma smiled and began humming in pleasure.

So what if she bribed her daughter to behave? It wasn’t like she was a stage mom parading her child in pageants or commercials. All they needed to do was get to the memorial and get back without incident, and if an ice cream sundae was what made it all happen, so be it.

~ ~ ~

Eschewing all tradition, Martha Hudson insisted that Bert’s service be held at Langhorne Estate. It had been a while since Mac had been to the family home, and the dense woodland that surrounded the property also surrounded their neighbors’ as well. Mac tried to recall how many driveways she had to pass before she got to the estate, but there was no need. A lanky teenager in khakis and a black polo stopped the sedan in front of her and pointed to a field full of cars. Of course, Martha hired attendants. The Lexus gunned it down the road leaving a smattering of mud on the boy’s pants. Feeling sorry for him, Mac fished around in her purse for a couple dollars, but the boy reached her first and rapped on the window.

“Hello, ma’am?”

In her hand, a fistful of pocket change. She couldn’t give him coins, could she? Mac rolled down the window. “Hi, I’m here for the….”

“Here you go.” The boy handed her a program. She cringed at Bert’s portrait framed in gilded roses.

“Thanks. I, uh… I don’t have any cash right now. I can—”

“It’s okay, ma’am.” He smiled but his eyes moved down toward his stained pants.

“I promise, I’ll hit you on the back end. Not like hit you, but you know what I—”

“Really, it’s nothing. Happens all the time. He probably didn’t even notice.”

A car honked behind her. Mac gave the driver the stink eye through her rearview and slowly made her way up the field.

“Maybe we can use our words today, honey?” Mac coaxed.

In the backseat, Emma pouted at the estate and whimpered in protest.

“Just once. For me? For Pop-Pop?”

Mac put the car in park and checked her makeup in the visor mirror. “We’ll just be a couple hours here. We can see Gramma, and I think your cousins will be here, and Uncle Derek, Auntie Kendra… we’ll say our goodbyes to Pop-Pop and then we can go home. Okay?”

Emma thrust out her bottom lip and uttered a sympathetic mewl.

“I know, kiddo, but we have to do this.” Mac opened the door and felt a cold squish as her heel sunk into a murky puddle.

Holding on to the top of the car door with one hand to steady herself, Mac extended her unmuddied foot onto drier land and stretched herself over the mud puddle. As she rounded the car to get Emma from the passenger side, she flattened her palms against the roof and exhaled.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please just be normal.”

~ ~ ~

The foyer hummed with somber activity. From somewhere in the house a violin bowed a dirge. She scanned the room for Martha. The woman was nowhere to be found, likely harping over the placement of canapes, no doubt. Associates of Bert—from his law firm or the country club, she couldn’t tell—milled around with plates piled with hors d’oeuvres while their wives huddled in corners eyeing those who didn’t belong. Mac glanced down at her shoe.

She felt Emma’s hand drop as she spied Martha emerging from one of the two dining rooms. Prim and gleaming, even in her mourning attire, Martha Hudson was ever the hostess. Not even her own husband’s death could stop her from exercising her own special brand of panache. The concertino, the personalized napkins folded under appetizer plates, even the program itself had all the markers of a rich widow holding onto her relevancy in her husband’s world.

As Martha snaked closer, Mac guided Emma toward the bathroom.

“C’mon, Emma. Mommy needs to rinse off this mud.”

Emma shook her head and planted herself firmly at the threshold to the bathroom. Not now, Mac thought. Not with the Hudson Family and Co. hawking around like grieving vultures. Martha was mere feet away. She couldn’t let Martha see her like this.

“Fine,” Mac said. “You stay here then, you understand? I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

The bathroom was a baroque shrine to Bert, which felt strange in both theory and practice. Flickering candles illuminated the ornate mirror that hung over the marble sink. A deep floral scent clung to the walls like a parade of perfumed ladies. A framed picture of Bert in a bowtie and his signature tortoise-shell glasses stood vigil over the sink and, uncomfortably, the toilet. She wondered if Matt would have aged to look like his father. She wondered if Emma would grow up to look like Matt.

Mac took off her dirtied shoe. Mud had seeped into her nylons, so she flung the affected foot over the sink and turned on the water. She could deal with a wet foot. The heel would survive.

In the mirror, Mac examined her reflection. Her makeup had been rushed, but it was enough to hide the dark circles from a full work week and the general frustration of having a daughter who only communicated in animal noises. It was only a couple hours. She would find Martha, let her coo over Emma for a while, and then they’d go. No need to fraternize with the extended family or make sweeping displays of sadness. She missed Bert, too, but she could mourn at home.

Emma knocked on the door.

“Be right there, sweetheart. Mommy’s almost done.”

Mac patted her cheeks to bring a little color up and shook off her jitters. The knocking continued.

“I said I—” Mac started as she opened the door, but Emma wasn’t there. Instead, Matt’s sister Kendra loomed in her way like a glamorous giraffe.

“Mackenzie! I didn’t think you’d make it! How lovely!” Kendra wrapped a manicured hand around Mac’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Kendra, hi. So great to see you. I’m so sorry about Bert. You know I—hey, have you seen Emma?”

Mac craned her neck around Kendra.

“Emma?”

“You know, my daughter? About yea high, black dress, little cat ears headband?”

Kendra shook her head. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere, probably playing with Derek’s kids. What’s she going to get into? Eat too many chocolate-covered strawberries? Get run over by crazy Aunt Peggy?”

“You’re right,” Mac said. “It’s just that she’s—”

“Hey, listen, I really have to go. Would you mind holding this for me?” Kendra thrust a lime-garnished drink toward her and had already closed the bathroom door before Mac could respond.

Absentmindedly she swirled the melting ice in the drink while waiting for Kendra. Mac eyed the sprawling initials on the corner of the napkin. The H for Hudson triumphed over the lesser B and E, reminding her of who she was: a Hudson by name only. A wet ring crept from the bottom of the glass, threatening to dampen the imprinted golden letters. When she looked up, a small Emma-like figure pounced across the room, and Kendra, who had long forgotten her drink, was flitting around the foyer mingling with guests.

The drawing room undulated like a sea of black. Mac found herself shoulder to shoulder with a crying couple who seized her arm and pulled her close to tell her that Bert saved their marriage. Later, an older gentleman called Uncle Doodle, Aunt Peggy’s fourth husband, claimed Bert was responsible for his good health. Others praised Bert for feeding the homeless, writing the U.S. Constitution, negotiating peace treaties with the French, and a number of other partially true but mostly outlandish deeds.

In the fifteen minutes it took her to zigzag her way to the opposite end of the room, she doubted half of these people knew Bert at all. She tried to remember what it was like at Matt’s service, but it was all a blur. What would Bert think now, knowing that his house was full of people mourning a man they didn’t even know? Exhausted, Mac leaned against the door frame and closed her eyes.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Mac smiled. “How ’bout a dollar?”

Derek laughed and scooped her into his arms. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

“Seems to be the theme. How are you holding up?”

“Doing fine,” Derek sighed. “It was Pop’s time. He was old.”

“How’s Martha?”

“Eh, Auntie M is holding it together. I’m more worried for the waitstaff.”

“She is relentless.”

“That she is. But you know her, Martha’s a tough old bird.”

A young boy ran by and Mac remembered her daughter. “Hey, you haven’t seen Emma around, have you?”

“I think she’s with the kids. Don’t worry about it, I’m sure she’s fine.” Derek motioned to her drink. “Whatcha got there?”

Mac looked down.  “I’m not sure. It was Kendra’s. Vodka, I think.”

 Derek wrinkled his nose, took the glass, and tossed its contents in a potted plant. He returned it to her with a few glugs of whiskey.

“Thanks.”

“So how are you holding up?”

“I’m okay. Bert was a good man. Emma loved him so much, I loved him. I mean, she loves Martha, too, it’s just that—”

“Bert was like Matt.”

“Yeah. They had that spirit. You know what I mean?”

They wandered into the foyer and sat halfway up the carpeted stairs that led to the second floor. She had an eagle-eye view of the room and the entrance to another sitting room where guests were filing in and out, moving like ants on their way to the queen. That must be where Martha was receiving guests.

“There they are,” Derek said. He pointed to a corner where Emma sat cross-legged on the floor with Derek’s twin girls. “She really does look like Matt.”

Mac’s shoulders softened and she reclined on the stairs.  “She has his stubbornness, too. Man, I miss that. Is that weird that I miss his bullheadedness?”

“Nah. It’s funny what you miss after someone’s gone,” he said. “Uncle Bert was like that, too. Stubborn as all get out.”

“I mean, she’s so obstinate. Lately I can hardly get a word out of her. She goes around making cat noises, wearing this fuzzy headband with ears on it. Won’t speak, just meows."

Derek nudged her. “It’s a phase. Matt went through something like that when we were kids. Actually—now don’t tell anyone, you got me?—we both did. Dogs. We’d crawl around on all fours panting like tired puppies. Drove mom and Aunt Martha crazy.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yeah,” he grinned. “One night we sat under the table begging for scraps while our meals were getting cold. Mom about lost it and then Uncle Bert got up and crawled under the table with us and started howling. The three of us howled so loud and so long you could hear the neighbor’s dogs howling, too.”

“So it runs in the family is what you’re saying.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “You know you’re part of this family, too.”

Mac finished her drink and raised her eyebrows. “Nah, not really. I mean, she is, but not me.”

“We love you and Emma. Don’t worry about what the others think.”

“And what do the others think? That I’m still out for his money? Christ, how long do I have to live under that? I didn’t take anything. Not a cent. It all went into a fund for Emma’s college.”

“I know that, I do. But you know how they are.”

“They think I’m married money. That I’m… I’m some poser.”

“You’re not though.”

“It doesn’t matter. They think I am.”

“Why do you care? I know you’re not, you know you’re not. It’s not like you to hold the opinions of a bunch of snobs with such high regard.”

“I don’t know. I guess I care for Emma’s sake. I want her to feel like she belongs in this family.”

“She does. And so do you.”

Mac rubbed her temples. “I’m going to get another drink. Maybe some fresh air,” she said. “Let’s make sure the kids see each other more. I think they’d like that. I would, too.” She bent down, tousled his hair and made her way into the crowd.

~ ~ ~

Langhorne Estate was nestled in the country woods, not too far from civilization, but far enough to hear the sound of birds and the rustle of the wind in the trees instead of traffic. Mac forgot how much she liked their visits here when Matt was alive. Before Emma was born, they’d walk through the fields and into the forest. It was here they talked about their dreams of moving to the country, starting a family.

Their visions for the future never involved him dying. The cancer was sudden, and time—like an invisible enemy crouching behind the bushes—sprang up and robbed them of their plans. Now all Mac had were memories that floated through the air like smoke. The tightness in her throat barely let a breath eke by.

She walked around the west side of the house and leaned against the wall behind a hedge. The fresh air would do some good. Out here she didn’t have to pretend, she could watch the clouds morph into cathedrals and tower over the earth with slow moving shadows that darkened the sun. Matt would love this. He’d say something clichéd but mean every word of it, like how every cloud has a silver lining or pots of gold could really be found at the end of rainbows.

Mac huffed a painful laugh and didn’t care that her eyes burned as she cried. God, what a mess. Here she was, mascara streaking down her cheeks at her father-in-law’s memorial thinking about his dead son and how people didn’t like her. Matt would be ashamed, wouldn’t he? He’d tell her to think of others and he’d say something like—

“Hey lady, you okay?”

Over a hedge, the young valet from earlier poked his head around the corner. She glanced up and giggled in low, ironic amusement. Her secret meltdown discovered by a teenager. When he saw she was crying, he patted his pants pockets and produced a cigarette. Mac hadn’t smoked since college, before Emma, but took it anyway. Lit the stick. Inhaled.

“You’re that guy from the driveway.”

“Benji,” he said.

“Benji, like the dog?”

“Huh?”

“Before your time, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Sorry about your pants.” Mac gestured at his khakis. The mud had dried and lightened into tan-colored blotches.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t do it.”

“Yeah, but still.”

Benji shrugged.

“Do you even get tipped?” Mac asked. “I wanted to tip, but I only have, like, a handful of change. That’s insulting, isn’t it? It is. I’m sorry.” Mac clumsily groped in her purse and opened her palm to show a handful of coins. There wasn’t even enough to buy a soda.

“It’s really not a big deal. We get paid all right and, besides, my girlfriend works for the caterer. She sneaks me food and a few of these,” he said, and wiggled a mini bottle. He tilted the small bottle of Jack Daniels toward Mac, who slipped the bottle into her purse.

“You okay though? Was he your dad?”

Mac choked on the smoke as she exhaled. “No, no… he was my father-in-law. My husband—his son—passed, too.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. It’s fine,” Mac said and waved him off. “Actually, I’m a train wreck. I mean, look at me. I stepped in mud, my feet are squishy, my mother-in-law hates me, my daughter’s a cat, everyone here thinks I’m a gold digger who pocketed my husband’s money, and—you know what?—I really fucking miss my husband. And I miss Bert, too, who was so good to me and he made me feel like I belonged. But I don’t. I just don’t.”

“Neither do I, lady. Just along for the ride.”

“No kidding.”

“Your daughter’s a cat?”

Mac threw her head back and let the smoke twist down her throat.

“Not a cat cat. She just acts like one.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.”

“About my daughter?” Mac wiped her eyes and stared at him.

“No, not about your kid, but about kids acting like animals. It’s a psychological thing. My girlfriend told me that. She takes a psych class in college. It means that they’re communicating or something, but don’t know how.”

“So instead of using the English language, my kid is talking to me in meows because she can’t express herself.”

“Could be a grieving thing. You know, old ladies knit, old guys golf, maybe kids… pretend to be animals?”

Mac nodded, giving credence to his theory. “Yeah…”

“Maybe she just wants to be understood.”

“Don’t we all,” she said, and squished her cigarette under her heel. “You know what? You might be right. Thanks.”

~ ~ ~

The weight of Mac’s misunderstanding was a punch to the gut. She needed to tell Emma that she was a cat, her father a dog, that if this was how she wanted to express herself then, okay, Mac would learn to speak cat.

Through the kitchen, the sitting room, and under a table housing the canapes, Mac searched everywhere for Emma but her daughter was elusive. As she entered the hallway, she remembered that Emma and Bert liked to play hide-and-seek from time to time and Bert often hid in his office. When he did, he’d leave the door ajar as a hint. Mac tiptoed down the hallway and paused at the door. Something, or someone, inside moved.

“Meow?” Mac held her breath as she inched the door open. “Meeeowwww,” she repeated.

“What in God’s name—”

After avoiding her for most of the day, Mac was surprised to see Martha. Her eyes were smudged with dark liner and her usually upright posture bowed in grief. It was like looking into a mirror.

“Mackenzie, hello,” Martha said as she dabbed a Kleenex to the corners of her eyes. “Were you meowing just now?”

“Uh, yes. Yes, I was.” She threw her hands up and walked into the room. “Emma thinks she’s a cat so… so, I guess I’m a cat.”

“Worse things to be, I suppose.”

Mac heard a quivering western jangle. This was her showdown. She was ready. If Martha wanted to criticize her for Emma’s upbringing or for her muddy pump then bring it on.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Martha said and opened her arms. An earthy scent of rose met Mac’s nostrils as Martha embraced her for the first time since Matt died. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere.”

“I didn’t know, I’m sorry. I’ve been looking for Emma.”

“I saw her earlier. She’s adorable. Little kitten ears and everything. Reminds me of Matthew.”

“She’s a lot like him.”

“Yes, she is.” Martha sighed. “I miss my boys, Mackenzie.”

“I miss them, too.”

There were times when the throb straining against her ribcage in the middle of the night felt like a phantom limb, as if perhaps her life with Matt was imagined. It was exhausting trying to hold it together when the gravity of loss threatened to grind her to dust. She saw that same deflation in Martha now. “Bert was a great man. The best.”

“He was. Wasn’t he? Always the good-time guy. Joke for everything.” Martha sat on the edge of Bert’s desk. “He loved you and Emma so much.”

“We loved him, too.”

“I know you did. Oh, he was pleased as punch every time you came over. He looked forward to family dinners more than he did golf.”

“High compliment.”

“It’s true. Said that a full house made a full heart. Hated when things got too quiet.”

“Well, look at how many people are here,” Mac offered. “I think you’re at max capacity.”

Martha dropped her head and traced her fingers over the desktop. “Bert would appreciate that. Thank you.”

“Of course. Should I go find Ken—"

“It’s just… all these people and none of them are Bert.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“This house feels so big without him.”

Mac understood the echo of silence in an empty home. For months after Matt died, her loneliness was a white noise that was ever present and intangible. Everything, from the car to the couch to the bed, felt too big for her and Emma alone.

“Do you know I’ve already had three offers on it?”

“Really?”

“Vultures.” Martha rolled her eyes. “Milling around putting price tags on everything, waiting for me to put this place up for sale.”

“Are you?”

“Heck no, no matter what kind of offers they make. I earned my place in this house and in this family. It stays with us.”

They sat on opposite ends of the desk in silence, their hands almost touching, their eyes shining in the soft light from the desk lamp. For now, they were just two lonely women in the dark.

“I want to scream.” Martha’s voice was ridged with anticipation like a pot bubbling over.  “Do you ever want to do that? Just… scream?”

 It surprised Mac, this glitch of vulnerability from her otherwise stolid mother-in-law, but it was bright and beautiful and honest, and a shame Mac hadn’t noticed it sooner. She pulled out the valet’s mini bottle and offered it to Martha, an olive branch for an invisible war.

“All the time,” Mac said. “You want to?”

Martha took a swig and chuckled. “That’s insane.”

“Nah. You’re Martha Hudson, you can do whatever you want. Let’s do it.”

“Really? Don’t you think we should—”

“What would Bert say?”

A smile inched up Martha’s face. “Fuck ’em.”

“Okay, then.” Mac held out her hands to Martha. “Let’s make it loud.”

Martha’s interlaced hands pressed into the tiny bones of Mac’s fingers, and they both opened their mouths.

It was hard to tell her own voice from Martha’s, but it didn’t matter. They melted into one rising wail that overflowed and spilled out of Bert’s office and into the hallways, out the door and into the field and rustled birds from their nests and pricked the ears of deer in the forest beyond.

They stood facing each other, still holding hands, and something between them felt tender and comfortable, like they were seeing each other for the first time. The reverberations inside them dulled to a gentle hum until a commotion outside of the room took their attention.

A high-pitched shriek came from the dining room. The violin screeched to a halt and a wave of murmurs rose and fell as the pattering of footsteps grew closer, then farther away.

“Aunt Peggy!” Martha cried and flew out the door, taking Mac along with her.

~ ~ ~

By the time they reached the dining room, a crowd had gathered around Aunt Peggy in a loose semi-circle. Across from her, hiding under a table, the reason for her outburst: Emma.

“Agh! Begone you devil!” Dressed in a lacy, willowy black ensemble with a veil and giant bejeweled rings, Aunt Peggy resembled a gothic version of Miss Havisham. Seated in her wheelchair, secured by Uncle Doodle, Aunt Peggy jabbed her cane in Emma’s direction and hissed.

“Aunt Peggy! Good Lord, what’s gotten into you?” Martha rushed over and knelt beside the wheelchair and tried to make sense of the situation.

Emma emerged from beneath the table and went to Mac.

“Oh baby, are you okay?” Mac asked. She got on her knees and wrapped her arms around her daughter.

Emma peeked past her mother and pointed at Aunt Peggy, who squawked in displeasure about bad omens. Mac and Martha shared a knowing look, the edges of their mouths curled in to keep from laughing.

 “It’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Mac rubbed the velveteen kitten ears of Emma’s headband and looked down at her daughter. “Aunt Peggy is just… well, you were so convincing as a cat that Aunt Peggy thought you were one.”

“Meow?”

“Meow,” Mac said firmly. “Meow. Meow meow-meow-meow.”

Her daughter, frightened and worrying the hem of her dress, gazed up and chirped.

“What the—” someone muttered in the crowd.

Emma nuzzled her head deeply into Mac’s chest before squaring her shoulders and crawling across the room. From behind her gauzy shroud, Aunt Peggy yipped a terrified warning. Martha patted the top of the old woman’s hand to calm her as Emma approached. The girl cocked her head left and right as she chirruped, a curious kitten-child wanting to provide comfort, receive love. She rubbed her head against the woman’s knee and, as light as a whisper, purred.

The groan that rose from Aunt Peggy surrendered as she passed her cane to Uncle Doodle and tenuously rested her shaking hand on Emma’s head.

At Aunt Peggy’s feet, Mac lowered herself to the floor and took, in one hand, her daughter’s, and in her other, her mother-in-law’s. It didn’t matter what normal used to be. What mattered is that this was normal now, here in a room full of confused mourners at her father-in-law’s memorial service making cat noises at the feet of a senile old woman.

“Meow,” Martha said to Mac.

Emma mewled and closed her eyes.

“Meow.” Mac’s was low and slow. Hers was an offering of understanding, a petition for forgiveness, a chance to make things right. It carried the burden of grief and the lightness of knowing. Together they might just make it.

# # #

Jacqueline Parker obtained her undergrad at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she currently resides with her boyfriend, Sam, and dog, Mabel. When she’s not writing or working at a local brewery, Jacqueline enjoys reading, baking, ‘70’s rock, and people-watching from her front porch. Her fiction often explores loss in its many forms, but occasionally she comes up with something funny. She was recently included in 805 Lit’s My Home Library series.

Judge’s comment: "Humor and pathos make for good alchemy. Throw in memorable characters, seeable settings, plot—actual damn things happening—and you have a winner. 'Black Cat' is a winner."

Gorilla Language

Ernesto was wasting time, leaning into his phone, watching the streaming procession of videos memorializing Koko the gorilla. The gorilla had died the day before at the age of forty-seven and with a vocabulary of more than one thousand words.

Ernesto was forty-two and still alive although he did not know the capacity of his vocabulary. He thumb-clicked his phone to sleep. The light was dimming, thrumming the dinner-cooking hour. He would make a frittata with basil, a salad of romaine hearts and parmesan. Maybe anchovies on top. He took the dishes from the dishwasher. He set out two plates.

Koko the gorilla was born in captivity in the San Francisco Zoo.

Ernesto was born at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City. 

Koko was born to a mother named Jaqueline and a father named Bwana. Ernesto was born to a mother named Erminia who never mentioned a father and Ernesto never felt comfortable asking. (Evelyn, Ernesto’s wife, found this lack of inquiry curious, indicative of either the entirety of the mother or the totality of the father’s absence.) Erminia worked as a housekeeper and raised her son near La Honda, in a fern-hemmed trailer off Highway 84. She lived there still, in the same trailer she raised Ernesto in—the whole time less than eight miles away from Koko the mountain gorilla, also living in a trailer, learning sign language, eating apple slices, and using with apparent comprehension words like: sad, stupid, and polite.

~ ~ ~

Evelyn came home late. The frittata shriveled in its pan, and the anchovies looked slick and brash on the wilting romaine, but Evelyn could kiss and talk at the same time.

“Oh this looks delicious,” she said. “I’m so hungry. You have no idea.” She popped the cork from a Pino Grigio. “It’s a total mess.”

She was talking about the new AI. Evelyn worked for a software start-up. The AI had been troublesome for months, and the head engineer Evelyn worked with refused to understand what Evelyn had tried to explain many times about machine-human interface.

“It’s the capacity for nuance that he just doesn’t get,” Evelyn said.

She ate and talked, and Ernesto ate and listened.  

~ ~ ~

In one YouTube clip, Penny, Koko’s trainer, said “When I look in Koko’s eyes, there’s an exchange of intellect and emotion. This is because she knows language. She wants to understand me, and I want to understand her.”

 ~ ~ ~

After dinner Evelyn and Ernesto washed dishes together and then watched TV from bed. Evelyn fell asleep with her arm across Ernesto’s middle. He stayed awake listening to her her skittish kitten-breath.

~ ~ ~

Koko the gorilla never knew intimate love although a series of suitors were presented: male gorillas from one zoo or another. They didn’t interest her.

Evelyn was Ernesto’s second marriage. He felt bad about this sometimes but also relieved, remembering Daycee and what she was like.

“In our family we make some mistakes,” Ernesto’s mother said wisely.

Lying in bed with Evelyn, Ernesto remembered Daycee’s skinny body, the little flower undies she wore, also the series of apartments that surrounded her body, the disarray, the overdrawn-account receipts, the way she stayed out so late. She had trouble focusing. She ate standing up. Now she had a baby. A boy. Ernesto had seen photos. Evelyn didn’t want kids.  Evelyn said Ernesto was her baby, and she was his.

~ ~ ~

Evelyn woke up early most mornings, 6:00 a.m.

“I’ve got to beat those machines, Nesto,” she said. She grabbed his belly with both hands, affectionately and as if to illustrate the difference between himself and a machine. She always looked sleek when she left to work, pressed and silky like she slipped out of the dry-cleaning bag. Ernesto made her toast with almond butter and honey.

 ~ ~ ~

Ernesto worked as facilities manager at Harmony House Assisted Living. The job had a regularity to it that he appreciated. One regularity was that the residents of Harmony House passed away. After a resident moved on, it was Ernesto’s job to ready the apartment for another resident to move in. He called the painter and the carpet installer, repaired kitchen cupboards, checked the heat and cooling systems.

“Ernesto, there’s a turn-over in 4140,” the Director of Harmony House would say, and Ernesto knew what this meant. Before the turnover, 4140 had rheumy eyes and a white beard. He had lived in Fort Bragg and then Moss Landing. He was a logger and then, when he quit logging, a sculptor who used chain saws to make driftwood logs into seals and dogs. Then he broke a hip and became 4140. Then he passed on.

~ ~ ~

Koko the gorilla famously wanted a baby, but she was given a kitten instead.  The kitten was killed by a car, and when she was told this news, Koko signed: frown, cry, sad, trouble.  

~ ~ ~

There were still gorillas up at the Gorilla Reserve on Skyline Boulevard, twenty minutes from the yellow bungalow in unincorporated Menlo Park that Ernesto and Evelyn bought together, the one with the yard in the back where Ernesto had been building an outdoor kitchen: a grill and sink, a firepit and an awning where one day they will plant grape vines. Ernesto knew there were gorillas still on the reserve up there, in the forested ridge he could see from the concrete pour of his back yard. He had visited the reserve website. Also on their website: a call for volunteers. He filled out the volunteer form, noting his skills and experience.

He had limited experience with animals.  His mother said dogs were messy and, although she loved cats, she was allergic. She would feed and sometimes name feral cats who lived around their trailer park. In return the cats would sleep on the green upholstered porch chair, leaving halos of hair.  Then a few years ago Ernesto and Evelyn ended up with a beagle named Howard. Howard was poorly trained and haunted by some loss or hurt. He would growl to himself as he wandered the house and jump up on the dining table, devouring any food left there. If the front door were open, he would bolt into the street, and then Ernesto had to drive around looking for him, calling Howard’s name out the car window.  Eventually, Howard would appear, chagrined or distracted, and Ernesto would coax the dog into the car.  One night after Howard ran out the door, Ernesto drove around until dawn. When he came home without the dog, Evelyn was already up and showered for work.

“Wasn’t meant to be,” she said.

~ ~ ~

For dinner, Ernesto made pasta with white beans and tarragon, and spinach salad with feta cheese. Evelyn was late, and so the pasta was coagulated and cold.

“You won’t believe what happened,” Evelyn said. “You know how I always thought something was sad and wrong with that VP of Marketing?  Well, his wife’s bi-polar. Today she had an episode at the office.”

Evelyn told the story which was long and complicated and culminated with the VP’ s wife spray painting her car in the company lot.

“She made these drippy blob shapes that she said were whales. She said that was why she was so upset—not because she had ruined her car and made a scene at her husband’s place of employment but because the whales were just shapes. She kept saying that: ‘They’re just shapes!’ We had to call the police.”

Evelyn threaded her linguine through the tines of her fork, making a pattern.

“It’s sad, really,” Evelyn continued, “the way a human mind can lose track of what matters.”

~ ~ ~

When Ernesto was a kid, he and his mom had a color television the shape of a cube. After dinner, they watched Animal Planet or Discovery. Now everybody has phones in their pockets.  There’s a game that can be played on your phone called Animal Crossing where you make a perfect world, and live in it, spending your days working in the garden, catching fish and digging up fossils. All the animals in that game talk, but Ernesto’s never played it.  

Woodside Road wound up past Skyline Boulevard. Past Harmony House, past Lumity, Cloudian and Absoulte Tech, past McDonalds and Peets and Subway and Tacos El Grullense, Ernesto drove until he was in a forest with elbows of branches and pin-pricks of vistas.  The driveway of the Reserve was rutted, and grass grew in clumps along the middle.

Ernesto recognized Penny the trainer, but he let her introduce herself. In online photos, the trainer was young, but had spent her life teaching a gorilla to speak.

Penny showed Ernesto the cages and fences, the screen doors and window panes, the steps and banisters, piles of debris, branches, pallets, bags of plastic bottles. Ernesto noted what needed to be done.

In one pen, a gorilla sat on a stump, looking at his hands. 

“That’s George,” Penny said.

George didn’t move his head, but Ernesto saw the gorilla’s eyes shift, looking at Ernesto sideways.

Penny signed something to the gorilla while pronouncing: “This is Ernesto.”

Seeing Ernesto glance at her hands, Penny said, “I didn’t actually use your name. I’m sorry. I told him: ‘This is the handyman.’ You see, George is learning the names of different professions.”

Then Penny showed Ernesto how to sign the word handyman—two eye shapes like goggles with the fingertips toward each other. Penny moved the eye-shapes up and around.

“Very good,” she said when Ernesto made the sign. She made the sign herself while also pronouncing: “Handyman.”

With his head down, George looked sideways again at Ernesto, holding goggle shapes with his paws. Hands maybe.

Ernesto thought of Howard the dog. One night in the kitchen they discovered Howard knew how to roll over. He didn’t seem like the kind of dog who would suffer the humiliation of trick-learning, but Evelyn was telling Ernesto a story that involved flip-flopping her hand, and Howard sighed, stood up and rolled over with a mollifying stare at Evelyn.

“Did you see that, Ernesto?” Evelyn said, and she flip-flopped her hand again and Howard rolled over again. She did this several times. Then Ernesto gave the dog part of an avocado.  Ernesto thought Howard looked like he might say: “You know who was tricked by this whole thing? Me? You want to see a real trick? You two get down here and roll over and I’ll throw you part of an avocado.”

But of course Howard the dog didn’t really talk. Ernesto just thought this speech. Ernesto made the speech up trying to imagine what the dog might have been thinking that day rolling over. Yet while Ernesto is remembering and inventing the speech, he is standing outside a gorilla cage, looking and being looked at.

“Handyman,” he signs himself.

The wire fencing of the gorilla pen had some weaknesses.  Yet this failing fencing was what kept George from leaving. If it was ruptured, George might lumber down the mountain through the forest. He would reach the town of Pescadero. He would wander through the lettuce fields east of town. He would pass by Harley’s goat farm. He would maybe sign hello or I’m a nice gorilla to the people in the lettuce fields, to the people at the goat farm, but who among them would recognize the signs?

“Why do you want to volunteer here, Ernesto?” Penny asked.

Ernesto noted all the repairs that needed to be made to the fence.

“I like to be helpful,” said Ernesto.

They were both looking at George who continued to study his hands.

“But why here?” Penny asked.

“I like gorillas, I guess,” Ernesto said. He did not know this about himself until he said it.

Above them, there was incomprehensible shouting, some altercation between a band of stellar jays.

“In my experience,” said Penny, “people are interested in this project and Koko because they are trying to figure out something about themselves.”

This did not seem to be a question, so Ernesto didn’t answer it.  But he felt uncomfortable inside, and they all stood quiet except the jays in the trees.

“Ernesto, what can be fixed, really?”

This was a question.  Ernesto looked at Penny and all the broken things around her. But it seemed rude to list all the things that needed fixing, as if implying that Penny hadn’t noticed. She wasn’t looking at Ernesto though. She was looking at the forest outside the cage.  She was thinking out loud, Ernesto recognized.

She said, “People think it’s wrong to keep gorillas in captivity, but mortality rates are much higher in the wild.”  Her voice had a trained quality as though reading out of a brochure.

She said: “Ernesto here’s a question for you: how far do we take this?”

This time, she looked at Ernesto as if this were really an interview. From his stump in the cage, George also looked at Ernesto, both of them apparently waiting for an answer.

“It seems like most people are trying their best,” said Ernesto. He was not sure if this was true, but it seemed like a polite thing to say.

Penny didn’t answer. If George responded, Ernesto couldn’t recognize his response. The gorilla looked as if he were scratching his arm, but it could be a word that he was saying, a whole phrase, something that was a proper answer, like the answer maybe Penny was looking for. The jays and crows were quiet.

“We don’t know what humans are like in their natural state,” an expert said on Fox News after Koko’s death, “We think and we know we’re thinking. The experiment that Koko was makes us wonder where the line is—between knowing and not knowing.”

Penny walked past George’s pen into a clearing in the redwoods and oaks.  Ernesto followed her, but he was not sure if this was still the tour related to the interview to volunteer.

Facing the forest, the trainer bent down and picked up a stick and tossed it toward the trees and sloping ridge. Then she squatted down and picked up rocks, dirt, grass clumps and started throwing them.

She stood still finally and pressed her hair back.

She said, “I should have just left them all alone. I made everything worse.”

Ernesto would have liked to cook something for the trainer—maybe spaghetti with peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic and zucchini. Penny turned away from the forest and back to the facilities, and Ernesto followed her. George signed the word handyman rather casually as Ernesto passed. In the trailer that served as an office, Penny gave Ernesto paperwork to fill out, and the two of them agreed on a schedule.

~ ~ ~

Ernesto made pinto beans and sautéed squash with cilantro. He charred corn tortillas over the gas burners. Ernesto decided to eat before Evelyn came home. He made her a plate of her own.

“Sorry I’m late!” Evelyn called and clanged through the door.

She popped open a Yellow Tail Chardonnay.

Ernesto was going to tell her about the Gorilla Reserve, about Penny and George and his decision to volunteer there, but he wasn’t sure where the story started.

“Guess what?” Evelyn said.

And she told him about the engineering team, how they were blamed for a mistake in marketing and one customer was billed for the order of another. (She left out part of the story. She left out the part that explained why she was late. She left out the part that explained the stain on her skirt. She didn’t describe the inside of the VP of Marketing’s car. She left out the captivation she felt in the presence of his turmoil, the way she was disoriented by his slick neediness, how she felt around him unmoored and hungry.)

After dinner they washed the dishes. Evelyn took her glass of wine to the bedroom and fell asleep, breathing, the way she did, like a kitten.

# # #

Lisa Allen Ortiz’s poetry collection, Guide to the Exhibit, won the 2016 Perugia Press Prize, and her poems and stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Beloit Poetry Journal, Dunes Review and Colorado Review. She co-translated The Blinding Star: Selected Poetry of Blanca Varela published by Tolsun Books in September 2021. She lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, and she loves apple trees.

While Her Guitar Gently Weeps

I don't talk to Mariela's ghost, sitting in a chair against the wall, brushing her long black hair and humming "Imagine." If her face appears in my coffee, I milk it out. If I hear our baby crying in the middle of the night, I don't whisper "I'll get him" and stumble down the hall for fatherly duty.

There is no baby, no Joey, the name we pick the day we run through a downpour to our car, sonogram photos in a gray hospital envelope tucked in my jacket. We sit in the car, drenched and howling with delight, inspecting the magical images. Look, an ear. An ear for God's sake! A mouth, a nose, a little pecker. Mariela is convinced it's a girl, and we'll name her Joy. But the pecker puts an end to that, so Joy turns into Joey.

We are in no hurry to end this glorious moment, so we talk and kiss and fog up the windows, listen to the rain turn into hail and mercilessly beat our car. A tornado watch lights up our phones, and we cackle at how neither of us can remember the difference between a watch and a warning. One's bullshit, the other kills you. We laugh at everything on this treasure of a day. We are twenty-five and invincible and so dangerously close to happy.

~ ~ ~

No one expects to die at Kroger. The media ran the surveillance footage over and over for days right after. Me pushing our cart, and Mariela, eight months pregnant, walking ahead. A dreck of a man shooting down each aisle. Mariela stooped over, reaching for a taco kit. Her body raking across the shelves before sprawling on the floor amidst a chaos of cans and boxes. Me? Not charging him. Not running the cart at him. Not throwing my body over her. Them.

The camera sees all this, but it can't see me praying. Praying to my parents’ God, the God of twice on Sunday and every Wednesday night and vacation bible school, summer after summer, a God I shunned since puberty. It's a cruel way to learn the truth of Granddad's cliche: ain't no atheists in foxholes.

What the camera doesn't miss is me ducking behind the cart, hiding and covering my head, curling up like a worm and letting a motherfucker murder my family without a fight. The world doesn't miss that:

Punk-ass p**sy coward—Hotdaddy45.

Bet that bro shit hisself—ScatmanTX.

Hey hidey-hole guy, warm & cmfy over there?—ZacTheRat

Dozens of bullets fly, but only one hits her. One fucking bullet. Mariela bleeds out before the police can arrive and take down the shooter. Joey's heart stops five miles from the hospital. Not a scratch on me.

That single bullet's a marvel of physics, a cosmic cleaving force, dividing time into before and after. Before, I had a life. After, I breathe and eat and move around between points A and B, and they don't, so in that sense I live. And they don't. They don't.

I'm alive, but I don't have a life. I pantomime one.

~ ~ ~

People think I have a job. Funny thing, if you stop going to work, they stop paying you. Who knew? You lose your little two-bedroom starter home. One night a shaggy guy with a barbed wire tattoo around his neck tows your car off.

My landlady, Glenda Sloan, thinks I still have a job. She calls herself Ducky. I owe Ducky three months back rent, but she hasn't mentioned it. I live in her attic. Ducky's late husband Rob converted it into a studio apartment a decade ago, when he was dying, to provide extra income after he was gone. Guess I'm screwing up Dead Rob's plan.

I try to sneak out past Ducky. Not just because of the overdue rent. Once she grabs me, it's almost impossible to break away. She wants to sit and have coffee. She wants me to replace some light bulbs she can't reach. Open a jar of olives. Figure out why her Wi-Fi is down. Wants me to wear Dead Rob's clothes.

"He had a lot of nice suits. It'd be a shame to burn them. Your generation doesn't dress for work like men used to," she says.

"Or you could give them to Goodwill," I say as I slip my arms into a navy pinstripe suitcoat she holds up.

"Perfect fit!" Ducky beams. "You remind me so much of Rob when he was your age."

I can't escape because Dead Rob's clothes do fit well, so she loads me up with a pile of suits and enough dress shirts and silk ties to open a haberdashery.

~ ~ ~

In the mornings, when she catches me leaving for my pretend job, sharply dressed, we "must have" breakfast. More likely, we just drink coffee. Well, I have coffee and she has coffee with gin. Ducky buys it by the gallon, and mixes it with anything. Anything. She calls her drinks ginevers, gin with whatever is handy. Coffee. Tea. Apple juice. Gatorade. Clam juice. I swear to God she put it in prune juice one morning.

~ ~ ~

I step off the bus near the downtown library, my hangout most days, and hear a brassy voice urging anyone in earshot to accept Christ. She goes by "Mary," but all the people gathered round call her “Jesus-Mary.”

"It ain't no fun in hell, y'all," Jesus-Mary shouts. "Don't nobody want to be there. And them that does, well you sure don't want to be around that kind."

She's wearing an ankle-length dashiki dress, mostly yellow with a crazy crisscross of random black-green-red stripes and polygons. Her make-up is heavy on eye-liner and red-orange lipstick.

"Ever body here, ever body who can hear ole Mary's voice, you already got a vacation ticket and you don't even knows it."

Some people listen and nod, bowing heads when Jesus-Mary leads a prayer or reads one of her favorite verses. A few raise their hands to the sky.

"You can vacation forever, sitting right there next to our beloved Savior. Sitting right there in a big ole La-Z-Boy, basking in eternal love. Eternal forgiveness. Might be sippin a lemonade. Maybe ice tea. The Good Lord is a wonerful host."

Many grin or chuckle in nervousness, not knowing what else to do. Cover their mouths and shake their heads, with that telling expression on their faces: Why do I feel uncomfortable and embarrassed? I'm not the one creating a spectacle. Is she a trans? Yeah, that’s a wig.

A school bus arrives to shuttle grade schoolers back to the suburbs from their field trip to the city’s main library. Their teacher—a short, chubby woman wearing a skirt and running shoes, looking all of eighteen—lines the kids up single file as they leave the library, and marches them to the bus. “Third Grade,” she calls to them, “manners!”

The kids walk right by me, each looking me over as they trip past, brilliant sponges absorbing the world, buzzing with life. But I don’t see a line of random kids; I see two dozen saucer-eyed Joeys. The Joeys of a lost future.

My throat knots. I can barely swallow. A compulsion pushes me almost to the point of reaching out to let each head pass beneath my outstretched fingers, like a farmer in his wheat. I want one of them to grab my hand and say, “Where have you been? Let’s go home.”

“Babies, babies,” Jesus-Mary says to the children. “The Good Lord keeps you from all harm. He watching over your life.”

Keeps you from harm? Tell that to Joey! Her cartoonish proselytizing knocks something loose in me. Deep in my chest, a chain flies off its sprocket.

"Horse shit!" I bark at her. Did I say that out loud?

Jesus-Mary freezes and holds me in a long stare. There’s an almost audible group inhale among the bystanders. Flashing Hollywood teeth, she screams, "God is love!"

"Crap," I say, but not so loud this time.

The young teacher hurries the last of her class onto the bus, her face ashen with fright.

"Ain't no way but through Christ!"

"Garbage!"

"For God so loved the world..."

“Horse shit!”

A bicycle cop arrives on the corner across the street from us, talking into her shoulder radio.

“Shows over,” the cop shouts, miming a parting motion with her hands, like a referee separating boxers. I skulk away toward the library entrance.

“Don’t pay him no mind,” Jesus-Mary tells the crowd as I disappear through the revolving door. “He don’t mean nothin.”

~ ~ ~

One escape strategy I try with Ducky is just blowing past her in the morning.

"Gotta run. Gonna miss the bus. Bye!"

"Wait! How about ordering Thai tonight? Sound good, sweetheart?"

"I may be late. Working on a major project for... Proctor & Gamble. Can't miss my bus."

"Are you ever getting your car back from the shop? What in God's name are they doing? It's been weeks now."

"The transmission needs re-flubberizing, or they have to rebuild the flux capacitor or something. It's a major repair for sure. They're having a hard time getting all the parts."

"For a Ford? Ridiculous! You want me to call them for you? I'll threaten to rake them over the coals on Facebook. Maybe Twitter them a new b-hole."

"Thanks, but no. I'll call them from work." I get one leg out the door, but she ropes me right back in.

"Oh, don't take that damn bus. Baby, you can drive my car."

I look at her for a beat or two, then burst into laughter, laughing so hard I have to lean against the door frame.

"Good one. Really," I say, drying one eye with my fancy Dead Rob shirtsleeve. She blinks at me in puzzlement, straight-faced. A flash of insult ruffles her brow and mouth.

"No, I mean it. You're welcome to borrow my car any time."

I stifle the laughing, but can't corral the gone-cuckoo grin she must be seeing.

"What's wrong with my car? It's not that old. Could use a washing, sure."

Ducky didn't hear it. She doesn't get it at all. The Beatles reference in what she said: Baby you can drive my car.

Mariela adored the Beatles. Worshiped them, actually, which I always thought strange since we were born twenty-five years after they split. Could play almost every song on guitar or piano. Kept a library of books about every aspect of their career. She taught music at Estabrook Junior High in the Greenhaven suburb of Cincinnati, where we lived before Kroger, and never failed to weave Beatles songs into her lesson plans.

She and Dad bonded instantly over music, especially the Beatles. He grew up with them, buying every album and learning every chord. When I brought her home to Oklahoma to meet my parents the first time—we were both freshmen at Xavier University in Cincinnati— Mom and I were left at the firepit while Dad and Mariela rocked out one Lennon and McCartney song after another in the garage, Mariela on lead and Dad on bass.

Dad gave Mariela an expensive twelve-string acoustic on her twenty-third birthday, and she could stop your heart when she played that thing and sang "Imagine." We'd drop in on open mic nights at pubs and bars all around the Cincinnati area where she'd bring the rowdiest crowd to silence in five chords. Almost to reverence. Yeah, that was the sweetest of the sweet.

~ ~ ~

Some days I don't take a direct route from downtown to Ducky's house, but jump a northbound bus to Kramer & Wilson Pawn in Blue Ash. There are pawn shops on my usual eastern route to Greenhaven, but I have a special attachment to K&W.

Today I’m in a window seat, head leaning against the glass. The bus is just beginning its slow roll into traffic when Jesus-Mary walks by, pulling a garden wagon loaded with homemade Jesus swag: stacks of handwritten flyers, bad photocopies of Christ ascending to heaven, a couple dozen brightly colored pocket-sized Bibles.

She looks up from the sidewalk and our gazes lock for a moment. She smiles at me, sparing not a single one of those sparkling teeth. I shoot her the finger. She blows me a kiss.

~ ~ ~

I take the bus out of my way to K&W Pawn to sell Morgan silver dollars my grandmother gave me before she died. I sell just a few at a time so I have an excuse to keep coming back. To keep making this detour north so I can stare at Mariela’s twelve-string.

I stand and stare at it like a gravestone. Mariela doesn’t have a marker anywhere because her parents spread her ashes on a beach in Mexico, not far from the village where she grew up. I come here as often as I can because one day I’ll walk in and it’ll be gone, dissolved back into the world like the ashes on that beach.

But it’s here today, still on display behind the counter, propped between an R2D2 ice chest and a bronze flying pig statuette. I stare. And listen.

Sometimes I can almost hear it.

~ ~ ~

Ducky catches me coming in from downtown and insists on dinner. Or if not dinner, then at least drinks. She has ginever of course, and I sip a Diet Coke and try to position myself where I can't see any of the always-on TVs in the house, because the second anniversary of Kroger is soon and you never know what video the cable pigs will run next.

"You don't drink at all, honey?"

"Not really, no."

"Is it a religious thing?"

"It just doesn't work for me anymore," I say.

Unless you count my vow to suffer for Mariela and Joey as a religion. To abstain from all salve or respite because I breathe and they don’t. Then yeah, maybe it is a religious thing.

Ducky drinks and talks and drinks and yaks non-stop, telling me things I can't unhear. Communiques from her Facebook posse. Things she's seen on YouTube or the History Channel. She tells me about a secret alien spaceport beneath the Pentagon. How spinach juice can cure colon cancer. That Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did land on the moon—that part is true, she says—but the hoax is, it wasn't really Armstrong and Aldrin, but Russian agents who'd had plastic surgery to look exactly like them. Apparently, Neil and Buzz were held for decades in a Siberian gulag where they died. I didn't know that. She's full of this stuff.

Without warning, she pauses a long while and inspects the ice in her glass, as if to decipher some meaning. Could be my chance to leave, so I stand.

"Rob had a second family," she says. "In St. Louis. I didn't know until a couple of years after he passed. A wife and twin boys. They're about your age now." She sips her drink detachedly, her face as still as if she's announced the grass needs mowing.

"Oh shit," is all I can come up with as I sit back down. "I'm sorry."

She sets her ginever on the copper coffee table and takes a deep breath and fights to hold herself in check.

"I try not to think about it. Them. The others," she says at last. "After this much time, I do an OK job of it."

There's no evidence in the house of rage or vindictiveness. A portrait of Dead Rob and Ducky and their two daughters hangs over the fireplace. The girls are teens in the picture. They’re my age now.

 "What else can you do?" I say, but each thing I say seems more stupid than the last. I don't have any experience with such conversations, the awkwardness.

"But I'll confess," she says. "There's one question I want answered. Well, I think I want the answer. One of those, 'be careful what you ask for' things."

I look away, at the fake flowers in the fireplace, away from her pain. We’ve never talked about Kroger. And I’m not ready to trade confessions.

"What I want to know— what I need to know—were me and the girls number one? Or were we number two?"

~ ~ ~

Ducky comes to the attic with two ginevers. They're both for her. She comes up here in the night to the place Dead Rob built—where his clothes live now. Where she can smell him.

Unlike our foodless breakfasts and sundown cocktails, there's no talking. She drops her kimono and gets in my bed, some parts of her warm and some cold. There’s muscle memory of skin-on-skin, hands sliding along. A curve of neck, the small of the back. An echo of old songs and lost causes. She comes to the top of her house in the night and we align our wounds.

I can’t share Kroger. That would be too intimate. But I can lie here with her, briefly dodging the loneliness, dark on dark.

Ducky snores for an hour before she startles awake and silently shuffles down the stairs as fast as plantar fasciitis will allow. In lieu of sleep, I stand by the window where moonlight splinters through the blinds and tattoos my bare chest with bright angled stripes.

Ducky says researchers in Norway have proven lack of sleep kills you. I sure hope so.

~ ~ ~

Today's Saturday and Ducky thinks I'm in the office grinding out overtime code on my fictitious P&G project. Instead, I’m downtown, sitting in Fountain Square, watching a peregrine falcon hunt for pigeons in the glass and concrete canyons.

The raptor dives and jets around a corner out of sight. I take a sip of coffee and spot a young woman with long black hair across the square, walking away from me, carrying a baby in one of those backpack papoose things.

Her size, the tilt of her head, the hair and hips and gate, from behind at least, is the twin of Mariela. I’m instantly enthralled, can’t take my eyes off her. And the baby is a little melon-headed beauty, a gem plucked straight from some trove of crown jewels. I have to see her face and get a closer look at the baby. I follow them. Stalk them really, feeling like a perv, hoping I’m hanging back far enough that she doesn’t notice.

One block. Two blocks. Onward. There were other people headed this way, providing cover, but now everyone has broken off and it’s just the Mariela twin out ahead, and me a half block back. I should stop, turn into a store or café, just stop! But I can’t, their gravity is too strong. They’re the sun and I’m a lost meteor, sucked right in. We round a corner and now I see her destination: Jefferson Park.

The first Saturday of each month is Flea & Fun Day at Jefferson Park, and the place becomes a cross between a disheveled Civil War camp and a busker's fair, with dozens of dingy vendors' tents, propaganda kiosks and food trucks. People mill in all directions, slurping lemonade and wielding foot-long corn dogs like greasy light sabers. They browse handmade jewelry and bad art and meticulously inspect weird useless junk no one buys.

The young mother I’m stalking dives into the festive swirl of the park. She’s on her phone. This is great. With a crowd of people around, I can close in without suspicion. I make my move. Just a couple of feet away now, the baby smiling at me, flapping its arms, melting my insides. She turns her face a half turn and I can see it’s not Mariela. Of course. I know it’s not. Of course I know.

She’s here to meet her husband. Boyfriend. Somebody. There’s a quick but tender kiss. I’m almost close enough to hear the smooch noise. He’s a damn good-looking guy with shiny brown curls leaking out of a Cincinnati Bengals cap. I hate his guts. Their baby reaches a fat little hand toward me and I have to turn away before I break down sobbing like a sad clown, ruining everyone’s circus.

Jesus-Mary’s clarion voice rings out from the festival’s "no vendor" zone in front of the bandstand. She’s set her show up on the steps of the bandstand and is earnestly hollering Bible messages. A mixed crowd is gathering: long-term neighborhood residents beside their hipster gentrifiers, and a sprinkling of suburbanites who drive in to Flea & Fun Day each month to gawk.

"Jesus Christ loves every human on Earth," Jesus-Mary raises a giant red heart she's rough-cut from poster board, lifting it over her head and moving it in a grand sweep from left to right in front of the crowd.

"Accept His love and live forever. Jesus loves you. Jesus protects you from evil. Though I walk through the valley of death..."

Bengals Man takes the baby out of its papoose holder, almost brushing the child against me. He lifts it high overhead and the baby squeals and flails. Then he cradles that gorgeous little coconut head to his chin. Mom snaps a picture.

See that? God? That’s all we wanted. Just that, no more. Was that too fucking much to ask?

The knot in my throat is back. But this time I know what it is. It’s rage. Blazing, incandescent rage.

Jesus-Mary spots me knocking my way through the crowd toward her. She lowers the big cardboard heart and points at me and sings out, "Oh, I sees you, Horsey. Welcome back!"

I make my way to the front, turn to face the crowd, and form a megaphone with my hands. I scream, "Horse shit!"

"The Good Lord loves you, Horsey!"

"When I say Horse!... You say Shit!" I stretch my arms toward the crowd on the horse, cheerleader style, and raise them high on the word shit. I get one or two callbacks on the first try. A few more on the second. Quite a few on the third. Good, it’s building.

"Horse!" I call. "Shit!" shouts my chorus. Got a dozen people with me now. They’re loud. Most of the others move back a step or two, either confused or appalled.

"Hey! Hey! I've seen that guy!" A hulk of a man in a black wife-beater and Harley boots is pointing at me. He’s bald on top except for a buzzcut of thick red hair around the sides.

"I seen you on Facebook. Yeah. It's you, ain't it?” Red says. “That dude from the Kroger shooting? I seen you in that video, man!"

His words knife into me.

“Hey Kroger!” Yet another voice booms nearby. “You ain’t worth a fuck!”

Needles surge from my gut, pricking up and down my spine, and my head loses all heft, ready to float off.

"You are forgiven, Horsey! Anything!" Jesus-Mary shouts.

“Horse,” I cry out to my faction. My voice fractures this time. Only a muted, half-hearted “Shit” comes back to me.

"Hor...," I begin again. The next horse is halfway out my mouth when something hard and swift thwacks the back of my skull.

I bend forward, covering my head. Stagger away from the blow. There's blood on my hand and seeing the blood woozies me out, so I drop to one knee and watch a blurred zoetrope of action: an old woman in dayglo Crocs and a Reds tee shirt standing over me, cane raised for another strike. “Heathen!” she cries. People scattering in a flurry of legs and flying corn dogs. A homeless man with greasy Einstein hair tackling the old woman to the ground.

A police cruiser sounds a woop-woop and the sweet, lush tone of Mariela's twelve-string fills my ears and I hear her singing "Imagine" and oh, Mariela, you know I’m not strong. I proved it. I’m not strong enough to imagine there's no heaven. Because without heaven, you and Joey have nowhere to go. And without hell, I have nowhere to be.

I blink through damp eyes and see nothing but a spiral of chaos and the red-blue strobe of the cruiser. That, and Jesus-Mary pulling me to my feet. She loosens a bright scarf from her neck and presses it to my bleeding head, then guides me toward the steps of the bandstand.

“C’mon, Horsey,” she says. “I gotcha.”

# # #

Jim Roberts lives in Miami Township, Ohio, and works as a consultant and data scientist. His fiction has appeared previously in Rappahannock Review. He is busy finishing a collection of short fiction titled Of Fathers & Gods, and researching a historical novel based on a purported “first flight” in rural East Texas that predated the Wright Brothers. Read more about his writing projects at jimrobertsfiction.com