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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
Donations
Submission
Guidelines
Website
Stories
& Essays
...gone
tomorrow
_ By
jp Rodriguez
Barbie
and the Burn Scars
_ By
Dion OReilly
Bright
Lights
_ By
Nicole Exposito
Cricket Theory
_ By
Sophia Alev
Dieciseis
_ By
Kate Delany
Fines Double In Work Zone
_ By
Brian Stumbaugh
Guy and Doll
_ By
John P. Loonam
Lake
_ By
Erlynda Jacqui Chan
Lala's Diner
_ By
Nicole Exposito
Laundry
_ By
Allison P. Boye
Love Story
_ By
Cynthia Burke
Magic Bags and Forgotten Princesses
_ By
Ken Goldman
Squirrels
_ By
Benjamin Buchholz
Poetry
Baking Bread and Other Subtleties
_ By
Leland Jamieson
Corpus Christi
_ By
Taylor Collier
Early Cold
_ By
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
Ekphrasis at the Mall
_ By
James Owens
Games In Your Uncle's Den
_ By
Robin Stratton
My Spanish Rose
_ By
Jose Rivera
Northern Lights, Southern Soul
_ By
E.F. Kramer
Posted on Fifth Avenue
_ By
J.R. Salling
Sirens
_ By
Naiya Wright
Summer Sojourn
_ By
Cheryl Butterweck-Bucher
The Himalayan Sunset
_ By
Rohith Sundararaman
Time Decays, Clots
_ By
Kristine Ong Muslim
Turn
_ By
Terrance Schaefer
Where You Rest
_ By
Stephanie N. Barnes
Art
& Photography
Bissan Alhussein
_ Paintings
E.W. Hung
_ Photography
Papa
Osmubal
_ Drawings
Linda
Pakkas
_ Drawings
Anastasiya Tarasenko
_ Paintings
Filip Wierzbicki
_ Paintings
and Digital Photography
Nancy Xu
_ Paintings
and Drawings
_
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(Continued)
As the bridge workers
disappear overhead, their treads a slim blur on thin planks, you
remember that summer three years ago. Stew was going through the
divorce, so he spent many nights on your couch. You were going
through some rocky times as well. You had decided to go to
counseling. Actually, you both had decided to do counseling. The
discussion ran something like:
"Go or I'll
leave." The usual perfunctory opening volley.
"You won't leave,"
you countered, "you're too much of a coward."
"The kids are the only
thing holding me here. They're looking for IT people all over;
don't tempt me. Unless you agree to see Dr. Tomvitch, I'm
gone."
You went. Once. No, a few
times. It was hot (the air conditioning was off, something about
brownouts). Dr. Tomvitch, Leslie, presided over the background
information session that was your marriage counseling. She took it
all in, wrote it all down, empathized with the pain and anger in
the room, and closed by asking you each to examine your respective
backgrounds in order to ascertain any hidden information that
might be lurking below the surface, the bogey man that had and was
sabotaging your marriage.
And what was to come of it
all? Months of drudgery, of rehashing the minutiae of married
life, the little hurts and private disasters of time spent in a
marriage, with the only light at the end the possibility that the
two of you would separate. Too much risk, although you would never
let on that that was the true reason. So you both settled on
détente, a shaky resolution filled with silences and stares, but
little else. It sealed you up, sealed you both up. Life went on.
A month into the counseling
sessions, sessions that Stew was all too willing to attend, and
she was out the door. She dropped the bomb on him then, right when
their counselor asked them to open up and reveal what their
long-term goals for the marriage were. Stew had said that he
wanted to get back to the way things used to be. She told him that
she had never loved him, that the kids, while she loved them like
a mother will, were attempts for her to bring the two of them
together. It failed, she said, and she was lost. The man she had
been seeing on the side didn't matter, but the fact that he
represented freedom and change were the crux of her infidelity.
Stew bought it, stupid bastard. They were legally divorced the
next year. You would never be caught dead on that damn couch
again.
You said it was a big waste
of time. Leslie Tomvitch, you asserted, wasn’t able to help. You
knew it wasn't a consensus opinion, that it wasn’t what you were
supposed to say, but you persisted and prevailed. In the end, you
didn't go back. One try was enough.
Stew is back on, exhaling in
that loud, exclamatory way. "How come they always do
construction in the summer, when the tourist season is on? Makes
this drive a freaking monster. You'd think they'd try to get it
done earlier, so the bottlenecks wouldn't happen. I tell you, I
think I like the drive in January better than this." He gives
you a full look to emphasize the weight of the statement, and you
try not to smirk. "At least you can make it through the snow.
This work is brutal."
Ten miles later, you pass a
series of construction signs, signs like “Give 'em a brake...
slow down," which happens to coincide with the next section
of road work that the two of you encounter, and "Fines Double
in Work Zone." Stew sighs and begins tapping the steering
wheel with his left hand. When he had been married his wedding
ring would tap to the beat, but now, for the last two years at
least, he has had no ring. He also has no radio, now that he has
had to sell his Saab. The Taurus was second hand all the way, and
came with no radio, the weak air conditioner, and a mess of rust
and Bondo. It fit his new image: martyr.
You can never forget that
Stew wore his wedding ring for a year after the divorce was final.
It made you feel funny in public, dirty. He never really talked
about it, but he told you over cocktails in the Ramada the January
after the divorce that he was sure she would come back to him. He
had caught her with another man. Well, it wasn't quite so gaudy as
it sounds; it's not like he stormed into the bedroom and found
them together. He simply intercepted a few email messages, trailed
her to a few local bars, made one too many messy scenes in public.
Then came the counseling. Then came the divorce. All in all, it
was bloodless. All in all, it was horrendous.
The year he had the ring but
no wife was a year you remember well. Stew would work all kinds of
hours, sometimes well past midnight, and would expect his
subordinates to pick up the bug as well. He was putting it all
into the work. You felt for him. The loss of a spouse is
miserable, you think, but the loss of children, the ripping apart
of such little lives, would have to be unbearable.
Stew did not handle it
gracefully. One day, a Friday that was to start a weekend that
didn't include the kids, he sat in his office all day and cried
with the door open. The office was sticky with the careful
navigations around him. No one moved too near. Jerry sat on your
desk, shaking his head and peering into the darkened office, and
said, "You'd think the fucking world had come to an
end." You were stunned at his indifference and cold bearing.
He had apologized to you, something of the sort of "Oh, yeah,
sorry. That was kind of cold, wasn't it?" You just went back
to work while Stew sobbed into his desk blotter.
(Turn
the page)
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