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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)
That year Stew had started
to see a therapist. Donna was her name. He said that she helped
him when he was down, helped him ask questions, helped him dredge
out the muck of his subconscious. He even got a little better, you
guess. His thoughts would run to black sometimes, but he was at
least trying. You thought then that a man who gets screwed like
Stew did, in counseling, would run like hell away from any
qualified shingle hanger, but he dove right back in. Donna had him
so wound up in his own personal hurt that he lost sight of, in
your opinion, his common sense. He actually said that he was
feeling better about the divorce. Like it was some sort of freeing
experience. You told him that Steph was a miserable bitch, trying
to jog his memory, but he let it ride. Weird. Donna had him messed
up. Anybody who could forgive so quickly, you think, has had a
brain scramble.
"You know," he
says, staring off deeply into the bumper of the Blazer currently
ahead of you in line, "I thought at one point she would come
back. Then I thought we'd just settle for separate but equal. Two
single people, two kids, cruising through life on parallel tracks.
When she met Nate I thought I would die, just up and check
out." He smiles at you, the smile he gives when he lets you
in on company dirt. "You know, my kids talked all about them.
When the bastard was good to them I'd kick the shit out of my
couch. Donna helped me work that out, you know. I really got OK
with them."
"That's great,"
you say, although you catch yourself shaking your head and quickly
stop. Why the rehash now? You knew all of this. You had watched
him brighten lately, as much as Stew could brighten. At least he
wasn't crying, and he actually cut back to a fifty-hour workweek.
"She called last
night."
"Really?" You try
to cover your tone, but fail. Stew grins. It’s just that Steph
calls him once a week, her attempt to normalize their strained
relationship. Again, this is nothing new.
"Nate dumped her. Just
like that. Walked out on her."
This is new, and you
mentally perk up. Looking at this, you would expect him to be
happy, elated, or, if not happy, at least satisfied. It should be
a vindication for Stew. She left him for Nate, Nate leaves her,
Stew comes out on top. It's how you would have felt, you know
that. It is probably oversimplifying things, but you know that at
the very core it's how people think. Donna would probably tell
Stew not to transfer his anger onto Nate, that Nate was
symptomatic of outside forces in their relationship. His anger,
she said, would only cause excess stress that would slide into his
relationship with his children.
You never bought that line
of crap. People are easier beasts. Bite me, you think, and I'll
bite back. "And now?" You're curious how he'll react,
whether he'll actually take it like a champ or be a bit more human
and lash out.
"Now? What do you
mean?"
"Well, what're you
going to do?" You pretend to stare out the window, but catch
him eyeing you out of the corner of your eye.
“Do? Christ, you'd think I
was just waiting for her to be available again so I could jump in
line. Now? I could care less. I'm over her. The thing that's funny
is that you'd think I would gloat, but I'm just numb. I just don't
feel anything. Funny, but for a minute I almost was sad. Do you
believe it? After all the shit that she put me through, and I’m
blubbering over her loss. It’s just so weird."
You sip at your coffee and
watch Stew navigate. He squints and taps and frowns, as always.
You think he's about to launch into his usual tirade against
tractor-trailers and construction, but as he starts, he stops and
smiles. Something has been triggered in him, a consciousness. He
is still Stew, albeit a somewhat more enlightened Stew. You think
of Donna, what she must have said to him, what hocus pocus she
worked to fry his head. You think that somehow now he is flat,
unreal. He should be something, but sad? It seems that sitting on
that couch has deadened him to what is right and wrong. The scales
have to be balanced, you feel.
“Hey,” he starts,
glancing at you, “are you jealous?”
You pause, cradling the
coffee, weighing it out. It’s more like the testing of a bridge
after it’s made, to make sure it can handle the traffic. You
just want to be sure. “No,” you counter, and wait a moment
before continuing. It has to be right, this making sure. You can’t
take chances. There’s too much at risk.
As if sensing this, he says,
“Don’t worry, nothing will change,” and flashes a quick
grin, a moment of connection, while patting you on the knee, and
before refocusing on the road beyond the windshield. “Nothing at
all.”
Which leads you back to
therapy. You knew when you stopped that you were in the right,
that the risk was too great there. When you open up you can get
the old double whammy. Not only did Stew get taken for a ride, but
now he’s so dead that he can’t even revel in his win. Not you,
though. It all worked out. You're glad that you never jumped on
that train. If you’ve learned anything at all it’s that
problems go away if you let them, and that it's often better to
just ride along and not say a word.
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BRIAN STUMBAUGH is an aspiring writer who teaches English in Voorheesville, New York, a suburb of Albany. He received a Master's Degree in English from The College of Saint Rose, and has been writing for ten years. He lives in Latham, New York with his wife, two daughters, dog, and two cats. His story, "Lighthouse," appeared in the June 2003 issue of
Arbutus, and his story "Dreamers," appeared in the summer 2003 issue of
Square Table.
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