LXX. A Story about Marco

Marco played center on the Water Polo Team. He drank all the milk from his cereal bowl. He twice fell asleep at an airport and missed his plane. When he stumbled into my office he was bleeding profusely.

Miss Worman…

He had taken off his shirt to press to his skull. Blood rolled down his forearm.  He went to pull the red stained shirt and I diverted his easy energy to a chair.

…a few of us were messing around. I’m sorry.

I don’t know why he was apologizing. I had never met him before. It wasn’t until years later when he started dating my daughter Margo. Perhaps he was pre-apologizing.

As a teenage couple Margo and Marco were adorably mismatched in size.

A Story About Chasing Waterfalls

Miss Annie eats the oatmeal every morning and night. Tonight she could barely hold the spoon to her mouth. I watched her shake. I watched her lose her eyes for food. She’s scared. She knows what’s next. No one wants to die on a full stomach.

Miss Annie found me wandering the alleys behind the bakery. She watched where I dug through the trash to find old bread. For a while she tried to steal the left overs out of my paws, but I was too quick. Then one day she came with a smell that no cats can resist. She left a trail of gutsplit ocean and held that pink piece of fish high in the air.

-Here Kitty Kitty Kitty.

I had no choice. I followed, sneaking up back alleys until I came to live with her forever.

Miss Annie checks the Barrel one or two more times. Tomorrow she goes over the falls. She runs her old fingers across the ridges, inspecting for holes. She doesn’t really know what she is looking for.

-We will eat like Queen Nefertiti. Fish and cheese and milk. Bowls of grapes. Platters of Pasta. A whole roasted turkey for you and me.

I circle her legs and press my whiskers as hard as I can against her boots. When I do this she smiles tiny yellow teeth.

-Time for bed then?

That night she tosses and turns. And like my feline mother taught me, before she abandoned me to the streets, I enter Miss Annie’s human dreams.

A Story about The Old House

Mom says the fort has to come down. The wood rotted. Uncle said he’ll do it on the weekend, but we don’t wait. I give Sean two hammer and tell him to follow me. My Great Grandfather planted this tree. It’s sturdy branches sweep low enough that I can reach. Sean watches as I pull myself up.

-Hammers!

My brother Sean is only a year younger in school but he looks like it’s two years. He pretty much does what I say. He stands on his tippy toes, even though he doesn’t have to. I take the hammers from him and put one in each belt loop. They stick out at uncomfortable angles.

-Now you.

Sean looks unconvinced, so I stick out my arm for him to grab.

-Come on.

He doesn’t realize how happy Mom will be when she sees we’ve smashed the fort with hammers. He stretches his arms in the air anyway. I clasp his wrist and twist pull him into the tree. He scrapes his elbow and whines. I did most of the work anyway. The wind picks up and the tree shivers.

A Story About Everyone I Knew in High School

Our past is a History Book no one would read but us.

We didn’t have cars, until we did. We had lockers and classes and unfolded ourselves to each other over four years. I don’t want to know how you are, really, but I like to imagine, and I hope you are great. It’s hard to be close, when I don’t know what that closeness is.

When someone says one of your names, your full names, it sounds to me like a bell, a perfect pitch I heard over and over and it means something exactly. Those years were just all those names and faces.

What would we say when we saw each other again. What does ten years look like on your face? What does twenty? Mostly, I’m okay with getting old, but I don’t know if I could take it if you did. Can’t you be the way you were forever, before we all had spouses and children and houses? But if you want those things I hope you have them. I hope you want, and have, all sorts of wonderful things. I hope the days turns to nights with ease and the mornings come with coffee or tea and, sometimes, your choice of pastry.

A Story About Stories

Homer and me waited by the door. Who knows what was out there? Not us.

We told each other stories about doing brave things, like how we almost got that squirrel or that time we jumped five feet in the air. We told stories until we felt tired and closed our eyes for a while.

Bang! Outside… a noise. We sat up listened. What was that? A monster, probably.  Probably one that was ten feet tall and stomped through parking lots and itched its butt on buildings. And then we imagined living the monster life…

We would awake in a new place every morning and wonder how we got there. We’d be curled around branches up in a tree with our skin turned to leaves for hiding. Or we would have squeezed ourselves into a drain pipe, and that’s why our back was achy. Or we would flatten ourselves out and flap ourselves over the entire roof of a house. Any way, we’d get up as soon as the sun would go down. We’d ring ourselves out, pop things back into place. If we were in a grumpus mood we might puff ourself up to fifteen or twenty feet or more. Enough that we could put an eyeball into second story windows.

We’d flump our feet through the forest, or down streets without lamps, sleepily walking no-where to see where it takes us. We’d think of breakfast and make sure we looked monster-y enough. We’d give ourselves shaggy fur or tusk-y teeth or maybe a hound-dog nose and ears like bats. Maybe today we’d have massive paw pads and claws and a slobbery grin. And then we’d hear it, calling us in the distance. Time to run.