Five Syllables

            She drank yesterday’s coffee.  He complained. That’s how it started.

            Small things. She left the cupboard doors ajar, drawers open, the dishwasher gaping. He hated the way she brushed her teeth, the splatters on the mirror, the snake of her floss in the trashcan.

            At night, in bed, she breathed audibly—too low to be called a snore—but he could never forget she was there. It was more than the hump of her body, her heat, the curl of her back, the tug of the sheet balled in her fist.

She suggested marriage counseling. Her idea like everything else, so he was rehearsing his part, making a list. He couldn’t rattle on mindlessly as she could, laying down a stream of words in no particular order, thought leap-frogging thought, so that when she finally stopped with that brilliant smile, he had no idea what she’d just said.

He wrote down: “That smile.” Top of the list. How to explain? That smile pulled him in the first day, lassoed him, made him pause at her table in the library, bend his head to her book where she was pointing at a phrase: The ineluctability of being, smiling and saying, in the voice of a siren—another complaint, the subversive rhythm of her voice—she was saying, “How do you say that and what does it mean?”

“Ineluctability,” he had said. “Seven syllables. You must say each one to get it right.” He pronounced the word again, and she stared at his lips, absorbing every movement, her hazel eyes almost touching him with their luminescence.

Should he add the disturbing eyes to his list?

No. Maybe that was the one thing she couldn’t change.

In-e-luc-ta-bil-i-ty. 

Her lips—oh, those lips—write it down. 

Her lips tasted every syllable, slowly, with his, and then again, a little faster, then in a rush—ineluctability— ineluctability—twice, fast—and then that laugh again, the laugh of delight. He was being fair. Her delight had delighted him, but it still felt like a trick, one of her tricks.

He wrote down trick.

“But what does it mean—ineluctability?”

“It’s something that can’t be avoided or resisted,” he had said. “Something inevitable.”

“Ah, I see,” she said. The laugh again. The eyes. The smile. “I perceive,” she had said, “the ineluctability of coffee with you.”

“Now?”

He crumpled the list. What was the use? They were together. Ineluctably. Five syllables.

Lonely

            It was too late to call so she got in the car and drove over there. The house was dark, but she knew he was home. She parked in the driveway, got out, locked the car—an automatic reaction—then unlocked it. What if she needed a fast getaway? She should have parked on the street. It would be more casual, less obvious that her destination was this particular house. But she didn’t know anybody else on the block—where else would she be going?

            She stood on the porch. The house was quiet—no sounds of anybody moving inside, no screen glow from any of the rooms, no water running from a bath or toilet. They were in bed, definitely in bed, possibly asleep.

            She should have called.

But, it was too late to call and if it was too late to call, it certainly was too late to drop by, to say she was just passing and wondered . . . wondered what?

            Well, she could borrow something. A cup of sugar. But she’d driven past two grocery stores and a 7-11 on her way over.

            Why was she there?

            To talk. A simple conversation, maybe a game of Cribbage, a glass of wine. She remembered his love of games, his competitiveness, that light in his eye when he dealt the cards or lined up the Monopoly money. He’d always loved games. Well, she did too. She loved games.

            Perhaps this was a giant game she was playing now. Drew the card that said Call Robert, don’t . . . Don’t what? Don’t drive over there.

            Well, it was too late for that. She was there, standing on the front porch, starting to tremble, although she preferred to say she was just shivering a little, got cold so early these days.

            She pushed the button to illuminate the dial on her watch. 11:45. Later than she thought. What the hell should she do? Ring the doorbell, say Hi, I couldn’t sleep and wondered if you had a cup of sugar I could borrow and would you like a quick game of gin rummy?

            That’s it. That’s what she’d say.

            He’d laugh. She was sure it would be he who would answer the door—and he’d say, sure, come on in. I’ll get the sugar and would you like a cup of tea to go with it? Which she surely would.

            They’d play gin. He’d win. She’d let him win. Then he’d put an extra blanket on the guest bed—he knew how cold she got—and take her car keys to move the car so he could get out to go to work in the morning.

            When she thought it through like that, she didn’t feel so stupid standing on the porch at quarter to twelve. It would be fine, just fine.

            She rang the bell.

©2012 Kathleen Coskran

Writing Lesson

She watched him before speaking, watched him quite a while in fact, stared at his head resting on his left hand, pen clutched in right, posed over the nearly blank page of his Moleskin journal, thinking, thinking, thinking.

“Just write,” she said.

He didn’t hear her or chose not to.

“Quit thinking and write,” she said again and leaned over the narrow table so he couldn’t miss her insistent voice or imperious green eyes.

 His chin lifted slightly at the second interruption, and his lips formed the word, what, but he didn’t speak.

 “You’re killing yourself with thought,” she said. “Just write. It doesn’t matter what.”

“Your eyes,” he said.

 “Contacts,” she said, “Emerald green contacts to get the attention of guys like you, over-thinkers, men who get stuck between could and should, god-damn perfectionists."

“You’re swearing."

“I know. Another attention getter.” She stood up. “I’m going,” she said. “Write.”

 He waited for her the next day and the next, sat at the same table, black Moleskin, Bic pen, nothing to say, nothing to write about but the green-eyed vixen with the imperious voice and lips like . . . like what?"

Watermelon? Too soft.

Ripe cantaloupe? His writing teacher said to go for the odd phrase, the unexpected.

Blood orange lips? That’s it! Dripping blood orange lips, lips you wanted to press against, eyes that speared your heart, then injected a serum into your very bloodstream, that melted cartilage, burned the fiber of your being until all you could do was write, write, write in the hopes that she . . .

“Well, praise Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, will you look at that? He’s writing.”

He finished the sentence before looking up, afraid it was some other shrew, not his green-eyed vixen. He wrote to the very end of the page.

“Writing crap, are you?”

He paused then, met her emerald gaze, nodded. “Yes. Only crap.”

“Good,” she said, and touched her fingers to her apricot lips. 

No. 

Persimmon lips. 

No. 

The dripping invitation of watermelon lips. 

No. 

The rosy hue of a ripe peach. 

No, not peach—and cherries were too cliché. He was back to the dripping invitation of watermelon lips, when she said, “Oh, for god’s sake. I’m waiting, and you’re still writing. You can’t get anything right.”

He knew she was gone by the scrape of her chair and momentarily regretted her departure, but she was wrong—he could get it right. Her lips were an invitation of moist watermelon, or pomegranate red rimmed with a hint of plum, ripe as a Georgia peach. 

Too cliché.

Ripe as a dangling peach.

Too much movement. Her lips were an invitation of moist watermelon, bright as a pomegranate, and soft as a slowly decaying Georgia peach.

Yes!

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

           

            

New Car

     The car was red and big, too big. She’d imagined something sleek and even sporty—maybe a convertible or something with a sun roof—an opening she could stick her hand out and wave at the gawkers as she made the turn into the school parking lot.

      No retractable roof. No sun roof. Hardly a window that rolled down all the way. The passenger window was stuck half open. Just needs oil, her father said. A little WD 40 will fix it right up.

     His answer to everything. WD-40, the all purpose lubricant. Well, WD 40 wouldn’t roll the roof back, wouldn’t cover the duct tape on the fender, wouldn’t buff the scrape along the door. Was it in an accident?

     Not necessarily, he said. Just shows a little wear.

     As he did. She looked at her dad, hair gone grey, what was left of it, thin cheeks, scrawny arms with broad wrists from 60 years of hauling, digging, climbing, hoisting. A man who’s a man has to work.

     Shows a lot of wear, she said.

     He nodded tentatively.

     Means it's been somewhere, she said. Done something.

     My point exactly.

     She read the relief on his face, the beginning of that smile that never broke open until he was sure how it would be received.

     She walked around the car one more time, kicked a rear tire to make him laugh, opened the passenger door—the one that showed less wear—let it slam shut. Sounds good, she said. Ran her hand along the dented fender. My favorite color, she said which was almost true.
     She paused, gazing at the car, not her father. I love it. Thank you. 

     Which was also almost true. She couldn’t look at him and say it, but she said it and loud enough for him to hear. Good enough.

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

The Event

   In the event of my death, bury me. Was that clear enough? Should she say no burning, no cremation, no urn. She didn’t even care about a marker or casket—a simple pine box cost more than a used car these days. Just bury me, that’s it, wrap me in a sheet, use that awful floral set Agnes gave us—it’s in the wedding-presents-we’d-never-use closet. The sheets are hundred percent cotton, bought before the wave of polyester swept through. They’ll decompose with the body. Dust to dust. Get it? Dust to dust.

            That’s all she wanted. Couldn’t say it more clearly.

            Mom, don’t be morbid. Her daughter.

            Whatever you want, Mom. Her son, the pacifier, not to be believed. He’d always done what he wanted, they all had, no change on the horizon.

            She could add a postscript. Bury me next to Ernie, but Ernie was now in a brown cardboard box, 12 by 12 by 12 inches, one square foot of Ernie 6 feet under. Wasn’t going to happen to her.

            It was a beautiful funeral. Her granddaughter, oldest grandchild, a dewy twenty, all legs, arms, and breasts, mostly showing, slid into a black tube of a dress for the funeral. You told me to wear a dress.

            Maybe it had been. Beautiful. Emma didn’t remember it, not at all, just a dream: music, people standing, singing, sitting, somebody sobbing, the minister who showed up in the pulpit the week after Ernie stopped going to church, talking about a man he never knew. What could anyone say about a man in a cardboard box? She hadn’t listened.

            What could anyone say? She had nothing to say to anyone. Nothing at all. Didn’t want it to happen to her. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

            In the event of my death . . . death as an event, a happening, a final action. In the event of my death. The words held it out only as a possibility, not as a sure thing. Just a prudent statement, the wise woman covering all the bases. Avoidable, especially if well planned for.

            In the event of my death, bury me. All she needed to say and probably not necessary. Might not happen.

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

A Day in the Life

The cat was bored. She lay in front of the window, not looking out, not caring if a squirrel patroled the sill inches from her face. They were old enemies, and she wouldn’t let a mottled rodent distract her.

She’d ruffled the throw rug, turned up the corner so her people would know her displeasure or depression . . . angst . . . profound ennui. What was it exactly? Those tiny yarn balls they were forever rolling in front of her had no appeal. The catnip toy? Well, yuck was the only word for it. Just a marketing ploy. She’d never met a cat who liked catnip.

She stood up at that thought—leapt up actually. She’d never met a cat who . . . When was the last time she’d met a cat at all? There was that pitiful black thing in a collar with a bell that sometimes hung around the back door when her people went out—trying to get in—but it had never made it and never would. She was proud of her people—too smart for a collared cat—the collar a sign of its dog-like intelligence. Nobody would ever collar her or even try. Her people respected her too much.

But to know a real cat, somebody more substantial that that ephemeral apparition that appeared in the mirror when she patrolled the tops of the dressers—a handsome feline for sure, but without true originality—always copying her. Imitation the sincerest form of flattery, but still.

No. When had she known a real cat? She paced at the thought, walked through the kitchen, licked the corner of her dish, jumped on the counter—nobody was home so she could explore on her own—wiped clean with an offensive chemical smell—nothing of interest—jumped down, went into the bathroom also smelling faintly of some soap or poison, peered into the toilet. At least that was pure. She hated it when it turned blue. She continued her survey of the house: rearranged the balls of yarn in the knitting basket, teased out her favorite big red one, batted it around until the unraveling started, then expertly propelled it to the exact center of the room where it belonged. Where she could find it when she needed the exercise. She was forever tidying up after the people. They hid things: the balls, the bits of string she favored, the kibble. What kind of person would ration food? Smoothing the rugs, patting down the bed they shared until it was flat and hard—gave her purpose in life—yes—but she was bored with that too. Same thing day after day. She needed a companion.

A familiar sound stopped her pacing. She would never admit it, not even to herself, but she didn’t know what that sound was—something mechanical, outside the house, where she’d never been, but she knew she’d hear a far away door open and close, footsteps, the house door open and her people, one or both, would be there.

She walked, not ran—didn’t want to appear too eager—and was at the door when it opened and the woman—it was the woman, oh happy day—stepped in, “Oh, Lizzie,” the woman said and stretched out her hand.

The cat lay down, then rolled over so the woman could caress her. The woman needed to do that, and the cat was all about accommodation where her people were concerned. It was enough. Another cat would just complicate things. The boredom fled as that sound she called her internal motor started up—purr contentment.

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

Boat Dreams

The old boat banging against the dock woke her. A dream, she thought—the old nightmare, somebody at the door or the window, battering it down, Naomi, it’s me. Let me in.

It’s I, she corrected automatically and woke up, smiling to herself. Saved again by grammatical correctness. She made a mental note to tell her students—perhaps another reason for them to think her odd, but remarkably correct. The teacher they’d tell stories about when they were 40. Precise. Careful. Deliberate.

The boat hit the dock again, broadside, more crash than thump, a sound that splintered something and broke. She got up then—not a dream—and pulled her robe closer, cold for May—and stood at the cloudy window at the front of the cabin.

The boat rocked and scraped in the waves. The last crash had wedged it under the dock so with every incoming wave, it rose and fell against the pylons. She could see that the paint was gone, and the dock was eating into the bare wood of the boat. A shame, really, but not her problem. Not her boat. She had refused the boat, wasn’t planning on using it or the lake or even going outside, but the boat came with the weekend rental according to Jill, the rental agent, Jill who gushed, Jill who was a waterfall of superlatives without antecedent or noun—best on the lake, quaintest, coziest, most fabulosis.—fabulosis? Cheapest was the draw and loneliest the consolation.

She got dressed. She ate breakfast: steel-cut oatmeal with toasted almonds, shredded organic apple on top, green tea, two cups, her weekend indulgence. She took the second cup of tea out to the square of deck tacked on to the front of the cabin like an architectural post-it. She smiled at her wit—the word architecture was unknown to the local handyman who had hammered the stumpy, squat building together.

The wind lifted her sweater, went right to her skin. She shivered.

The boat scraped against the dock with a sharpness that forced her to look at it. The boat that wasn’t her boat was tearing itself apart, self-destructing blow by blow. Perhaps she should do something. Free it. Or protect it—which might be the same thing. She put her cup on the floor of the deck and walked through the wet grass to the dock.

The wind blew. She looked back at the bare little cabin, then stepped onto the dock. It shimmied under the regular impact of the boat, and she could see chips of rotten wood—boat wood and dock wood—washing up on shore. Nothing she could do. It didn’t need her.

She stepped down into the grass and headed back to the cabin and to her tea. She needed a third cup today. Her hand trembled as she filled the cup—a teabag of green tea really didn’t stretch to a third cup—and tried to block out the battering that was starting to haunt her as powerfully as a nightmare. Maybe she was dreaming, after all, somebody trying to get in—or to get out. Maybe that was it—something wedged in tightly, held too close, too carefully.

She set her cup down and walked, then ran back to the edge of the lake, slipped out of her shoes, and waded in. The water was colder than she expected, but shallow enough that she could maintain her footing even in the wind and the waves. She sloshed around to the far side of the boat and pulled and pulled and pulled until it gave suddenly and propelled her backwards into the lake. The boat floated over her, free of the dock, and carried by the wind.

Her eyes were open. She watched the long ridge of the rudder pass over her. It took forever, but she had forever. She held her breath, waited as the boat passed over her, then rose just as slowly, rose from the water, wet, cold, trembling, and alive.

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

Chase Scene

“No more guy movies,” she said. “Pop pop you’re dead. Big boys playing cowboys and Indians all over again and getting mad when the guy who is shot refuses to lie down.”

“You forgot the chase scenes,” he said. He wasn’t listening, not really. The game was on, Super Bowl Seven Hundred and Twenty or some such thing.

God, the chase scenes. He was baiting her, pretending to listen while he watched grown men fight over a ball, all of them destined for the Alzheimer’s ward before they were fifty. She’d read the Malcolm Gladwell article. Gladwell had certainly never struck another man and probably only went to foreign films. She thought of mentioning that to Roger, but he hated Malcolm Gladwell, not that he’d ever read a word that brilliant man wrote, didn’t have to. The title was enough. Blink. Who the hell wrote a book called Blink?

“Every chase scene is the same,” she said. “Screech, crash, roll over, screech, careen, an improbable gun shot out the side window, a tunnel, a train, an old man pushing a cart of apples, apples up in the air.”

“You're wrong," he said. "They're not all the same."

The TV went dark, and he was out of the chair, across the room, after her.

She was halfway to the kitchen by the time he was up. She hit the table running, knocked the bowl of raisins soaking in rum to the floor, and kept going. He lunged, missed her. She headed upstairs.

“Why do they always go up?” he shouted as he hammered after her. One of her complaints. In on-foot chase scenes the pursued always goes up, up, up until there’s nowhere else to go. So predictable. She flattened herself against the wall at the top of the stairs and whipped down just as he lunged past her. Down the stairs and out the back door. Where to hide?

Gloria was on her patio next door watering the tangle of vines that engulfed her house. She didn’t look up. Mavis ran to the side of the house, listened for the thump of the door that meant he was out in the yard looking for her.

Waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Nothing. She could hear him in the house, pounding from room to room.

She smiled. Her breathing was almost normal. She’d won. At last she’d won.

He grabbed her from the other side. “Came out the front door,” he said. “Tip toed out. More than one way to choreograph a chase scene.”

“You win,” she said.

“Again,” he said.

Gloria looked up as he carried her over his shoulder into the house.

Next scene: X rated.

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

Red Letter Day

Her toenails were too red. She’d chosen the color—Something Bold—from the infinite rows of nail polish, more colors than God intended. That’s what she said to the elfin creature who stood patiently waiting for her to decide on a color. The nail girl was perfect with flawless, hairless skin, a mane of straight black hair that shawled her shoulders, eyes, nose, mouth from a teen-age girl’s drawing of the perfect eyes, nose, mouth.

The nail girl said nothing, didn’t smile at Audrey’s attempt at wit, but she waited in a way that Audrey knew meant there were right choices and wrong choices. Audrey wanted a right choice, so she turned away from the pastels and pinks—her instinct, therefore wrong—and chose a red: Something Bold.

The girl took it from her, led her to the vibrating chair with footbath and proceeded.

She spoke her first word twenty minutes later as she painted the last nail. “Nice?”

Audrey glanced at her toes—long as fingers—a family trait—and said, nice even though she was clearly looking at somebody else’s foot.

She walked out of the salon as if she were walking in somebody else’s feet—a bolder, younger sort of woman—and regretted not staining her finger nails with the same Something Bold.

She flexed her toes in her sandals as she waited for the bus. The sun glinting off each crimson nail was almost blinding. She couldn’t keep her eyes off her feet; she craned her toes up, slid them side to side, curled them—striking at every angle.

The bus came--# 5 going to the Mall of America where she planned to circumnavigate each floor, trying out her new look, like breaking in a new pair of shoes. She took the first seat, facing sideways. Nobody could board the bus without noticing her feet. A bearded guy across from her slumped in his seat, half asleep, his eyes in that half-mast position. If he opened his eyes, he couldn’t miss her toenails.

Somebody got herself a pedicure today. A voice out of nowhere. She looked around—nobody.

Made herself a pretty girl.

The bearded guy opened his eyes. It wasn’t he. The bus stopped. A woman with a small dog in a Baby Bjorn got on and sat down next to Audrey.

Beauty is as beauty does. Audrey was careful not to move her head, but her eyes swiveled left, right, and back again. She couldn’t identify the source.

The bus driver changed gears and pulled into the stream of traffic. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the driver said.

The bearded guy was leaning towards her, elbows on his knees, staring at her feet. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” he said, looked up, caught her eye, and smiled.

She slid her feet farther into the aisle.

“And red is the color of my true love’s lips.” Bus driver.

“Correction—hair.” The woman with the dog.

Her lips are like some roses fair! Shouted, not spoken.

Audrey pulled the cord—STOP REQUESTED—and stood up.

“She walks on beauty.” Bearded man.

In beauty.” Woman with the dog.

Like the night! shouted the voice.

Audrey descended the stairs slowly and walked—no, floated—down the steps.

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran

Breakfast

The toast was burned, the eggs dried out, and the bacon, well, crisp hardly described it. “It’s more cinder than bacon,” he said.

“A low fat recipe,” she said.

“Carcinogens for breakfast,” he said and dumped the plate in the trash.

She broke off a corner of toast, the darkest corner, globbed peanut butter on it, and bit in. “Not bad with p. b.,” she said.

He was standing at the sink, rinsing the charred remains of his breakfast down the drain. “You know,” he said, “we could have cereal for breakfast. I’ve always liked cereal.”

“Oh!” she said. “Me too. Especially oatmeal.”

He could see it already. Oatmeal crisp as bacon, hard to the touch, the blackened pot they’d eventually throw away.

“Or what about shredded wheat? That’s healthy.” She desperately wanted to be a good wife, to create an aura of domesticity. “My mom always served it with hot milk and brown sugar,” she said.

His tongue felt raw, singed, burnt at the thought of scorched milk, but he was careful not to react. No telling where she’d go in her desperation to be what she thought he wanted—French toast hard as a spatula, pancakes that bounced if you dropped them. He’d already told her he wasn’t much of a coffee drinker.

“Breakfast,” he said contemplatively. “Have I ever mentioned that my favorite meal out is breakfast?”

© 2012 Kathleen Coskran