I might not get around to it later, so before I get carried off by the whirlwind that’s the end of December, may all the yous out there have a happy and healthy holiday, whatever you celebrate. And Happy 2014!
On to business: anyone who’s had an extended conversation with me about fiction writing knows that short stories aren’t my preferred medium, as long form fiction and short form poetry are my preferred weapons of choice. That does not mean, however, that I haven’t written them here or there. Not long before I made the transition (transformation?) from writer of literary fiction to writer of genre fiction, I’d started amassing material for a collection of short stories. (It was the summer of ’09, I think.) The concept I’d had in mind wasn’t engaging enough for me to stick with it, but I did knock out a few stories that were useful literary exercises. I’m presently reconsidering the medium, given that two totally unrelated friends in the last week have sent me their short stories for review. Go figure.
Without further pomp or circumstance, here’s one of those exercises. I call it
“Philanthropist.”
Oceanus Procellarum:
I. (Mare Nubium)
“Dad…what’s a philanthropist?”
II. (Mare Nectaris)
She had completely forgotten about the map until the smell pulls the memory—all of it—out of an old file cabinet in her mind. She mimics the action within, and with her thumb and forefinger, she pinches the corner of the map and eases it from a casing that isn’t its contemporary, taking care not to drag the edges against the stiffness of the manila envelope.
She spreads the map out on the desk, pushing some of the stray papers out of the way and onto the floor. A passing impulse to pick them up seizes her, but she ignores it and dives, back straight and toes pointed.
III. (Mare Vaporum)
“It’s my birthday, that’s why,” Tessie says, her reason trumping his protest.
“Fine.” Lino agrees grudgingly, and he scoots over to the passenger side of the truck. “But I get to wear the motorcycle helmet. You can wear Dad’s helmet.”
“Fine.” Tessie tightens the chinstrap of the helmet and then climbs into the driver’s side of the truck. She checks her watch and says, “Blastoff in t-minus five minutes and counting down. Lieutenant Colonel Lino, are all your systems go?”
Lino fiddles with the radio, adjusting the dials with great concentration. “Aye, Captain Tessie.”
Tessie fastens her seatbelt and declares, “I’m not a Captain. I outrank you if I’m flying the ship.”
“You outrank me if you’re in the Navy, retard.”
“I’m gonna tell Dad you called me a retard on my birthday.”
“Whatever, retard. Not like a girl could fly a spaceship anyway.”
“Girls can too fly spaceships.”
“Not in this galaxy, retard.”
Tessie feels the tension rising in her neck as she struggles with angry tears. She knows Lino won’t let her live it down if she starts crying.
IV. (Mare Tranquillitatis)
Mrs. Fleming looks up from her lunch and calls for attention over the hum of the children in the classroom. “Tessie? Are you ready for your Show and Tell?”
Tessie smiles widely and nods.
“Please come front and center then.” Tessie stands and walks slowly to the front of the classroom. She catches Angie’s eyes as she passes her desk, and Angie gives her a bright grin for encouragement. “Boys and girls, you need to give your full attention to Tessie.”
Tessie doesn’t like standing and talking in front of the class, so she decides to look right at Angie and pretend like she’s just talking to her and Mrs. Fleming.
“What did you bring in?”
“It’s a rock. It’s…it’s my favorite rock in the whole wide world.”
“Why is it your favorite?” Mrs. Fleming is nice, and her gentle calm eases Tessie into explaining.
“I found it on my grandpa’s property. My brother Lino and I were playing bakery, and I found this one. I think it looks kinda like one of those donuts with strawberry filling on the inside, and after we stopped playing bakery with it, I put it in the rock tumbler at Grandpa’s house to get all shiny.” Tessie proudly holds it up for the class to see. The kids in the front of the class strain to look at it.
“Would you like to pass it around so the other boys and girls can see it?”
Tessie looks right at Bobby, who looks like he wants to chuck the rock right out the window. She sets her gaze to Angie, who nods furiously from her desk. Tessie looks to Bobby again, and then she decides to hand it over to Marcos on the other side of the room to pass it around first.
Marcos holds up the rock to the afternoon light coming through the windows, appreciating the deep red vein of sediment separating the quartz on either side of the rock. “It does kinda look like a donut! Or maybe a burger,” he says aloud. Behind him, Ricky pokes him in the back and says, “Don’t hog it! Lemme see it!”
Mrs. Fleming says, “Can you tell us more about your rock?”
Tessie watches Ricky hold it up to the light. “When I grow up, I’m going to be an astronaut and go to the Moon. And when I come home from the Moon with a real moonrock from the Sea of Tranquillity, I’m going to put it in my mansion right next to my favorite rock.”
V. (Mare Humorum)
“Stop calling me a retard, you asshole!”
Lino’s eyes widen, and he stifles a triumphant chuckle. “I’m so telling Mom you called me an asshole, RETARD!”
“Go ahead and tell Mom! You know she’ll be too tired to do anything!”
“Then I’ll tell Dad.”
Tessie wants to stop the tears, but she can’t. “Why are you being so mean to me on my birthday?”
Lino’s face betrays his internal division: part of him wants to keep needling her, but the greater part has enough sympathy for her on her birthday. “I’m sorry, ok? Can we just go back to playing spaceship?”
Tessie’s red, hurt eyes stare through him.
Lino says, “I’m really sorry. You can be Admiral of the Galaxy if you want. Ok Admiral Tessie?”
Tessie fiddles with the seatbelt, making sure it’s taut and prepared for spaceflight.
VI. (Mare Foecunditatis)
Tessie nervously eyes all the other children leaving the classroom. She’s certain that she did something wrong—Mrs. Fleming wouldn’t have asked her to stay after school otherwise—but she can’t think of what she could have done. She cleaned up all the paper from her collage and even helped Krissy clean up her share, too. She helped put all the bottles of rubber cement back in the cupboard and even took a note to Mrs. Orozco across the hall. She just can’t put her finger on what she could have done wrong.
“Are you ok, Tessie? You look really upset.” Mrs. Fleming rummages through a box, pulling out a map that she unfolds on the table at the front of the room.
“I just don’t know what I did wrong to stay after school. Whatever I did, I’m sorry I did it, even though I didn’t know what I did.”
“Oh, Tessie! I’m sorry! You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re always so well-behaved. I just wanted to give you something. Come here and take a look.”
Tessie picks up her bookbag and walks to Mrs. Fleming. Her present is stretched out across the most of the table.
“Do you know what this is?” Mrs. Fleming asks.
Tessie looks to the legend on the map, and it reads The Moon. “It’s a moon map, right?”
“It is! I’m throwing out a bunch of old things, and I thought you might like to have it.”
Staying after class has never been better, Tessie thinks. “Really? I can have it?”
“Yes you can! Can you find the Sea of Tranquillity on it?”
Tessie scans the darker portions of the map, and she finds it’s there, one of the darker patches near the middle of the map. “Yes! It’s right there!”
“You’ll need this map for when you get to the Moon. So if you’re stuck in the middle of the Sea of Tranquillity, you can sail back to the Sea of Fertility through this strait right here.”
“It’s not really a sea, Mrs. Fleming. It’s just a different color of sand.”
Mrs. Fleming chuckles and says, “No, it’s not.” She looks a little embarrassed for a moment. “Sorry. You’re absolutely right about that.”
VII. (Mare Imbrium)
Tessie checks her watch and looks at the second hand tick past the twelve. “T-minus one-minute to blastoff. All systems looking good, Lieutenant Colonel Lino?”
“Aye, Admiral Tessie.”
“And our navigation systems?”
“Oh no! I forgot the map!” Lino looks disgusted with himself. “I’ll run inside and get it.” Lino pulls off his helmet and tosses it on the floor to run inside.
Tessie shouts after Lino, as he runs back into the house. “Hurry Lieutenant Colonel Lino! If we have to delay the blastoff, it’ll all be on your head!”
Tessie stares at the dials of her dad’s pickup truck, and she mentally assigns a task to each of the dials. The odometer becomes the distance from Earth, and the speedometer is rechristened the altimeter. She meditates on the fuel gauge and decides that its function should remain the same.
Lino jumps back in the truck. “Navigation systems in place, Cap—I mean—Admiral Tessie.”
“Glad you could join us, Lieutenant Colonel Lino.” Tessie looks at her watch. “Blastoff in t-minus…ten… Nine… Eight… Seven…”
Tessie’s excitement seems to be propelling her forward. She starts to wonder if this is what spaceflight is really like. She’s even able to imagine the outside moving outside the truck.
“Six… Five… Four… ”
Tessie pauses for a moment. Something’s wrong. A flash in her peripheral vision agrees with the feeling that something’s wrong.
“TESSIE!!! WE’RE MOVING!!!”
The truck is moving. It’s slowly picking up speed as it follows the natural decline of the street.
Tessie panics astheworldstartswhizzingpast. She screams.
“PUT ON THE BRAKE!!!” Lino screams.
Tessie pulls herself back to look at Lino and hear his reason. She sinks down in the seat, trying to push on the brake with both of her feet, but her legs won’t reach. They’re too short, and she’s too small. “I CAN’T REACH!!!”
“PUT ON THE EMERGENCY BRAKE!!!”
The neighbor’s truck at the bottom of the hill grows closer and closer.
Tessie finds the emergency brake, but she can’t put her foot on it with enough pressure to make it work. It’s just as difficult a pedal as the regular brake.
She doesn’t see it happen. She just hears a gigantic, loud crash.
VIII. (Mare Crisium)
There’s no birthday cake. There probably won’t be any at all. Dad said they were going for birthday ice cream instead of birthday cake after dinner, but that was hours ago.
Tessie decides to risk opening the door to see what Dad’s doing. She puts her hand on the knob, and very carefully—silently!—turns the knob clockwise, and when it goes no further, she slowly pulls it toward her. It opens without creaking, and she carefully turns the knob counterclock wise, and when it stops again, the lock’s tongue sticks out at her again.
She peers out of a sliver-thin crack in the door. She can just see into the kitchen. Dad’s sitting at the table. He’s got his head in his hands. Tessie wonders if he’s been sitting like that since he got off the phone a few minutes ago.
There’s a loud crack, and she looks to the source. Mom’s come out of her room. Panic floods into the spaces she has left in her head for thoughts.
Lucky day. Luuuuuuucky day. Mom waddles past the door, supporting herself with her arm on the fridge when she gets into the kitchen.
Dad doesn’t seem to notice.
“What’s your fucking problem?” Mom says.
“We’ve got a kid with a concussion and a hospital bill we can’t afford. And we don’t have the truck anymore,” Dad replies, rubbing his eyes. “I’d consider those big fucking problems.”
Mom sits down at the table. “You should have punished them.”
Dad looks up at her. “I sent them to bed without supper. I think Lino’s been punished enough. Not much else I can do. It’s not like I can hit them up for the money.”
“Ask Joey for an advance.”
“Joey’s not gonna give me an advance because he advanced me last month, and the month before that—”
Mom interrupts with, “You don’t have to rub it in.”
“—and the month before that, and even the month before that. In fact, I have no way of getting to work now. I’ll have to see if Doug can pick me up on his way in and pay him for gas until we can afford to fix it.”
Mom just stares at Dad for a while.
“You’re rubbing it in,” she says.
“What on earth am I rubbing in? Can you tell me?”
Mom snorts and says, “You’re going to accuse me that I wasn’t there for my kids.”
Dad says, “Did I say that?”
“You were thinking it. Just because I didn’t take Lino to the emergency room with you and Tessie and Old Man Lawton you seem to think—”
“I never said that. We had to take Lino because he needed stitches—”
“—that I’m some monster of a mother who wasn’t paying attention—”
“—and we owe Dean Lawton a lot of thanks for taking us in his car because Lino’s cut was pretty bad.”
“—and you just think you’re the greatest father in the world because—”
“We have to wake him up every hour to make sure he’s ok because he’s got a concussion.” Dad gets up from the table to get to the fridge.
“—you make me feel like shit all the time.” Mom sits back in her chair, and she has to grab the sides of the table to steady herself.
Dad says, “This conversation is over. You know I can’t stand talking to you when you’re like this.”
“You don’t talk to me at all anymore.”
Dad doesn’t answer her. He just stares at the open fridge.
“I’m drunk all the time because I married you.”
“Maybe you should go back to bed, Dora.”
“I’m staying right here.”
Dad turns back to look at Mom, and he asks, “Did you even wish her a happy birthday?”
Tessie turns the knob counterclockwise, and the tongue retreats into the door. Mom never remembers her birthday anyway.
IX. (Mare Frigoris)
Mom and Dad’s bedroom door is closed again. Lino must be ok.
Mrs. Fleming uses the word famished to describe how she feels when she’s really, really hungry. That’s how Tessie feels right now. Completely famished.
She can’t sleep. Part of it is from being completely famished, and the other part comes from feeling completely horrible that she and Lino wrecked Dad’s truck and that Lino got hurt in the process. She’ll never play astronaut again. Never. Never ever ever.
Now that Dad’s gone back to bed, she can risk it. Her plan is simple: into the kitchen—silently!—and over to the cabinet. If the cabinet doesn’t stick, she’ll be in luck, and then she can get the out the crackers and a can of juice. Then she can run back into her room and, hopefully, go to sleep.
She turns—silently!—the knob and steps out of her room. The floor cooperates and doesn’t squeak when she steps into the kitchen. The lamp over the sink in the kitchen makes everything look as if it’s inside a grayish-greenish fish tank. The floor is barely visible, and Tessie tiptoes, ever so carefully, to the cabinets.
Tessie crouches down to the cabinet at her knees, and she carefully—silently!—pulls the cabinet door toward her. It lets out a small pop that sounds like the loudest boom in the world.
She stops for a minute to listen, holding her breath tightly in her chest. Quiet. More quiet. She lets out her breath and stares at the cabinet. Crackers. Juice. She reaches for them silently, and her hands close—
A loud pop interrupts her. Louder than the other pops she’s heard. Dad and Mom’s door crashes open against the wall.
Ohnoohnoohnoohno.
Tessie has to make a decision. She looks at the open cabinet. If Dad sees her here, open cabinet and all, she’s in superbigtrouble. It’s not like she’s going to the bathroom.
“What are you doing down there?” Mom asks.
Tessie’s mind freezes for a second, and when its ice shatters, she decides to start an explanation that she’ll just figure out when she gets to the middle of it. “I was just—”
“Hand me the crackers, will you?” Mom says.
Tessie stops explaining, and she obeys. Mom grabs the package and takes out a stack of them.
“Here,” Mom says, handing the package back to her.
Tessie stares at her, waiting for the punishment to come. She knows she’s in trouble. Knows it. Mom’s just trying to figure out what to say.
Mom says, at last, “Why are you up anyway? Go back to bed.”
Tessie feels like another crash has just happened: relief that she’s not in trouble crashes into a sense that she feels like she should get in trouble, like she deserves to be in more trouble for being out of bed when she’s been sent to bed without supper.
A few seconds later, Tessie turns her back to her and starts to walk back to her room. Mom’s voice stops her with, “That’s right. What the hell were you doing in the truck when you crashed it?”
Tessie turns back to her Mom. Mom’s got a cigarette lit, and the red-orange of the burning end glows brighter when she draws on it. The end’s light brightens her face for a second, and her eyes seem more disappointed than ever before. The answer Mom’s waiting for forms slowly. “We… we were just playing astronauts.”
Mom lets out a long, slow chuckle, and the smoke creeps out of the sides of her mouth in small clouds. “That’s pretty funny. As if either of you is gonna be a philanthropist. Go to bed.”
The glowing end of the cigarette separates from the cigarette, and it falls on the table. It glows for a second, and then it goes out.
Tessie walks slowly back into her bedroom. She would like to ask Mom what she means, but Mom’s clearly not up to it. Mom’s just really tired tonight.
X. (Mare Serenitatis)
Her index finger traces over the hole in the map. The edges of the hole are a deep brown from where the cigarette cherry fell on it. The burn eliminated part of a word, so that it reads Sea of ————y. The final letter Y doesn’t help, for there are a few that end in Y, and she can’t remember the names of all the lunar seas anymore. She forgot them all a great long while ago.
There’s another dark stain: Lino’s blood. There was so much blood.
She and Lino were so very small. So small. So very small with big dreams.
Taking one last look at the map, she folds it back into its compact form and stuffs it back into the envelope. Without a second look, she tosses it into the pile of things to throw out.
Teresa grabs another stack of documents to sort through. She narrows her very big eyes that look out of her very big self, coldly examining the records of her very small dreams.
♥ EAB