Archive for: Fiction

Susan E. Lloy
Flipside

She had a system. It had proved to be a useful tool throughout her life, which is near the closer end of finish. She had kept the same mundane job, which bored her to death, yet stuck to it because it had a skimpy pension plan. She settled in the same crap rental for countless years in order to harvest affordable living increases, even though the neighbours came and went, and with them her nerves. Continually adjusting to new inhabitants with their noises and particularities. Often, she felt like packing herself up in a box and mailing it off to some unknown exciting location.
           Now things will change. She is heading back east. A place she hasn’t lived for forty years. Sure, she has visited countless times; nevertheless she is wary of her homecoming. Hell, she doesn’t even know anyone there anymore. However, the sea beckons her.
           If one is from these parts the blue is hard-wired. Something that calls you back, something you can’t resist. Something so full of desire one can never resist its briny wet kiss. Now she’s left a place she has lived for most of her adult life and from years of hoarding, has been able to buy a humble abode in a place she has never been. The price was good and it has a sea view, but conveniences are far away.
           She was accustomed to have all that is necessary within walking distance. Great speciality shops, pharmacy, hardware to name a few. Now she is solitary amongst fog and multi-coloured Lupins, a large rambling yard that she knows will be too much upkeep and a lengthy driveway that will prove laborious with dense snowfall. She has put herself in surroundings that go against all before.
 
She doesn’t know a soul here and there isn’t even a shop to post a note for a handyman. She looks online, but small towns are far away. She is fussy when it comes to atmosphere and likes her things placed in aesthetically pleasing fashions. Still, things must be installed. She gets out her electric drill and begins organizing fifteen wooden shelves to be mounted on one white wall.
           They must be mathematically calculated so that they will be even and symmetrical. She grabs a few screw fasteners while standing on a stool and starts from the highest point. Each time she attempts to install a fastener, the old wall crumbles as if riddled by machine gun fire.
           Framed glass-encased photographs that she obsessively rearranges in order of history, sentiment and lost youth are strewn across the floor. These recordings of time make her feel less isolated as if she is enveloped amongst old lovers and friends. She eyeballs the frames and marks the wall with a thin pencil point, however once installed they are entirely uneven and another wall has been peppered with small nail holes.
           She lets out a slow moan looking in the antique mirror resting upon her great grandmother’s Mahogany bureau. Fuck, Izzy. What was in your head? Why did you come back here? But she has moved here and must make the best of it. All order blown away as if taken by the North Atlantic’s ornery winds and it is beginning to feel as if a bad omen has descended on her modest seaside home.
           Izzy never drove, but has maintained her licence by paying the yearly fee. She had been too nervous to drive in Montreal with its angry, aggressive drivers, but here she needs a car and hit Kijiji, buying one quickly. She naively took the word of the seller that it is, in fact, a good car. He was simply selling because he required a larger vehicle.
           The mileage is reasonable and he provided invoices of recent brake work and oiling. Even a set of winter tires, were part of the deal. She drives home taking the back roads to get comfortable with the car and, although she hears strange sounds from the engine, Izzy feels free, perhaps for the first time, in her life.
 
Winter comes early. November swooped in with all its gloomy might and with it—snow. At least twelve centimetres have fallen and no end in sight when Izzy looks out from her kitchen window. She hasn’t bothered to buy a shovel yet, and curses herself for procrastination. Her car is close to the house and she will need to sweep and grab a dustpan to be able to access the road, which will likely take hours. By the time Izzy has cleared the drive she is close to collapse. Totally surprised that she hasn’t dropped dead on the spot from a coronary. Imagining that someone would discover her in the spring half-eaten by maggots. A sad little tale that will stick to these shoreline folk like a starfish to a rock.
           She shakes the idea from her head and looks up at her house with its blue shingles and white vinyl siding melting into the snowy backdrop. She feels lonely here with only the wind nipping at her face. Her feet half frozen to the ground. Smoke from the woodstove rises above the darkened clouds as if trying to escape to an uncharted solar system. With her cold feet, she returns to her home realizing that the steppingstones she has journeyed were unsound. Isolating herself in this companionless part of the world.
           The home was to have been her haven, but it is a mess with tools, shelves and frames scattered across the rooms. She can’t even watch television or Netflix, as it will be another week before the Internet is connected. Never imagining in a thousand lifetimes this scenario when she was living in a city, far away. There isn’t one yummy morsel to eat. As she stands before her living room window she looks to the sea, ominous and unforgiving.
 
The following day Izzy drives to the nearest town to buy groceries, wine, beer, and a carton of cigarettes. On the return trip she hears grinding and clicking reminiscent of her father’s workshop with its drills and planers. Jointers and table saw. Lathe. Envisioning all the machines working in a furry as she drives along the coastline. Without a doubt, there is a major problem with the car and she curses the seller – wishing him erectile dysfunction and anal warts!
           She hasn’t been to the beach yet. Locals say it is the most beautiful beach in Nova Scotia. Izzy loves a beach, but then who doesn’t? She is especially drawn to the deserted ones at this time of the year with limited light and a sombre tone. She hopes the solitude will centre her. She wishes to touch her seclusion. Taste it. Try to decode her reasoning for immersing herself in these surroundings. Inhabiting a house full of messes and failed handywoman executions.
 
If she were in the city what would she be doing? Sitting on the sofa drinking one-too-many Coronas. Feeling her bloated belly jingle each trip to the fridge. Wasting her time flipping stations and fuming that HBO has become repetitive and boring and still expensive. Annoyed by the noises of her neighbours, their vacuums, televisions, music and sexual moans.
           Perhaps, she would have ventured out for takeout Thai to escape them or strolled the streets. Gazing in the windows of others. Imagining their conversations and decrypting body language. Questioning, why do I need to live here? Rereading The Andy Warhol Diaries before bed, which make her feel like a loser with her near non-social life. All the while, Andy and his consorts are whipping it up at The Factory or Studio 54 with one party after the next.
           She makes a grilled cheese sandwich and sits before the living room window watching the grey sky. She thinks back to her childhood that she spent with her parents, cousins, aunt and uncle. Swimming in lakes at summer cottages and before that, camping each summer. How she was always in trouble for mischievous behaviour.
           Izzy remembers running from a lake to the campground ahead of her cousins and telling her aunt, who was eight months pregnant, that her cousin, Lily, had drowned in the lake and her other cousin didn’t know what to do, so he was just looking at her body floating in the still water with a halo of reeds circling her head.
           Izzy thought this quite hilarious, though then she was very young. She upset everyone. So much, in fact, that her aunt, uncle, cousins and her parents packed up their tents and headed off to their respective homes. Izzy got seriously scolded and remembered a Wild Canary hit their windshield and died on the way home. Now, all her kin have passed and there is no one left to relive these yarns.
 
Izzy cranks the engine and hears an awful clamour from under the hood. Undaunted she turns the beast around the drive and heads to the main road, which leads her to the beach. The road in is plowed to a gate, but from then onwards she must walk. She pulls onto the flattened snow and parks. The engine rattles and protests until it finally quiets and stills. She takes the long path with mounds of snow softly rising on each side. As she approaches there are wisps of sea grass stretching towards the sky. Others are trodden down by damp snow. Along the shoreline, where the waves break the edge, a few seagulls peck the sand. There is a loon bobbing not far from shore and its lonely call seeps deep within her.
           She has brought a thermos of tea and a blanket to sit on. The wind is light, but there is good surf off a point at the far left section of beach. A rock outcrop, about a quarter mile, stretches beyond the last stretch of sand and to her surprise she spies a figure on a surfboard patiently awaiting a decent wave in the dark swell. The figure occupies all of her concentration as she watches, what she assumes is a man, riding wave upon wave. Izzy sits there until her tea is long gone and her feet feel frozen to the ground.
 
The surfer has vanished too. She picks up a few beach treasures along the shoreline before heading back to her car, yet when she arrives the engine won’t start. She curses her ignorance of motors or the inner workings of mechanics and Izzy begins to cry. She is raw and shudders at the mere thought of walking to the main road. The blanket she has brought is damp and stiff and has begun to freeze. She thinks to herself, Fuck, I can’t even call an Uber.
           As Izzy pounds the car with her fist and kicks the wheels with her near frostbitten feet she hears footsteps in the snow. A figure wearing a black wetsuit emerges from the path carrying a surfboard under his arm. He is covered in frost and a series of tiny icicles hang from his facial stubble.
            ‘What’s the trouble? Are you alright?’
           Izzy cries so hard she finds it difficult to stop shaking.
            ‘It won’t start.’
            ‘Oh, that’s nothing to be so upset about, now.’
            ‘You, don’t know the half of it. Everything here is shit.’
            ‘Come on, it can’t be that bad. Why don’t you come with me and get warmed up. I live very near to the beach. In fact, just up from the left side of the shore. I’ll give you something to warm your bones.’
           Izzy gulps back her tears and agrees to follow.
            ‘I never felt this cold in my life.’
            ‘I’m Bob, by the way.’
            ‘Hello. Izzy.’
           This is untrue, as she has felt miserably cold many times in Montreal with its horribly frigid, endless winters. She follows behind him on the narrow path. Up ahead stands a trailer with smoke rising from a narrow chimney pipe. She can smell the fired wood hanging in the twilight air. The sky is a deep teal and the stars have joined the night.
           There is an old battered sign mounted to a post in the ground, which reads
            ‘Barrels Or Bust’ on the entrance to the property and a broken-down-four wheeler with two flats parked to one side. A handsome fire pit made of beach stones rests just short of the trailer and one can catch a good view of the sea. Three surfboards are piled up against an outbuilding.
           As Izzy enters the door she feels at ease. Perchance it’s merely the warmth of the inside air from the wood stove providing instant comfort, like a tight long-felt bear hug.
            “Make yourself at home, Izzy. I’ll just get this surf garb off.’ Bob motions for her to sit at a table and pours a generous neat whiskey. He goes into some darkened passageway and draws a curtain. She hears snaps and assumes the quick stretch of rubber, then a shower running in the back.
           The trailer is rundown, but there is a homey atmosphere about it. Seashells and surf books align the living area. Pots hang from a hook on the ceiling. Bob reappears soon after with a flannel shirt and corduroy pants. He is of similar age and unquestionably attractive.
           ‘So Izzy, are you feeling your toes again?’
           ‘Sort of, I mean yes. The fire and whiskey help.’ He smiles at her. She notices many framed photographs of a surfer hanging on the wall and resting on a shelf. She sees an article Nova Scotia surfer ‘Surfer Bob’ wins again, in a framed clipping from a newspaper, and next to it, a photograph of a surfer gunning the barrel of a giant wave.
           ‘You surf! I watched you the entire afternoon. I’m amazed that you can tolerate the cold, especially at this time of the year. I grew up in Nova Scotia and even in summer its unbearable.’
           ‘One must love it and dress accordingly. I’ve surfed these waters since I was a boy. Can imagine no other place I’d rather be. This spot is serene and there aren’t many folk around, which suits me fine. Have you ever been on a board?’
           ‘No. No. Not me. When I think of it, I envision warmer waters.’ Bob pours Izzy another drink and tells her a little about himself.
            ‘We’ll look at your car tomorrow morning. I’m pretty good with engines. You can take the spare bed in the back.
           As she looks up into the darkness through the old skylight, flurries begin to fall. They drift slowly down joining her thoughts that have settled on this stretch of shore.     AQ

David Butler
Judgement

It was the awarding of ‘costs against’ that finished the old man. That the case might finally be lost was a prospect he’d gradually come to accept, as he’d once come to accept that mother’s illness was terminal. As the appeal drew near, Finley, the family lawyer, began to warn with increasing frequency and alarm; had advised again, on the very steps, to settle out of court, even though it would mean conceding the bloody point. My father was not the man for turning.

The case of ‘Cafolla versus Grogan’ began in the most trivial way imaginable. At the bottom of our drive stood a magnolia. This tree was mother’s pride, transplanted the very month they’d moved into the place. Ever since the chemotherapy had meant she’d had to quit being an English teacher, she’d become devoted to the garden. Gardening, and also bird-watching; these, she’d say, were her consolations now, because although she continued to write occasional poetry, the Muse seemed to operate increasingly at the whim of her noxious treatment.

At first the Grogans were sympathetic. The Grogans were builders, which is to say, Paddy Grogan was a builder, as his father had been. Indeed he’d built our place, all those years before, when there was nothing about but fields. I’d just turned two, so have no first-hand memories of how it was back then. I’ve seen the photos though, the rough field planted with improbably tiny shrubs and my mum and dad with their improbably long hair. Good fences, they say, make good neighbours, and sure enough, no sooner had he laid the foundations of our house than Paddy Grogan had had planted a row of leylandii on his side of the wire fence. The last point is not without its significance. The row of trees was on his land, not on ours. Also significant, that our property, which we held on a hundred year lease, lay to the north-east of that line of sombre monsters.

The years went by. The leylandii topped twenty foot, thirty. I entered secondary school. Then came mother’s dark diagnosis. I say dark, because of a poem she penned after her treatment began. She’d wanted it to be her epitaph, but for once father put his foot down. Alright, just so you don’t give my headstone any of your Cafolla photographs! ‘Malignant’, she titled the piece. I can still recite the punchline, which describes the dull ache abutting her ribcage: ‘an eyeless tuber grubbing the dark earth / to give birth to what Lilith?’ I never really got poetry, still don’t. Especially my mum’s. To my ear, it sounded like when she’d put on her telephone voice. I doubt my father got it either, any more than he ever really understood his Irish wife. But that one has stayed with me, down the years. Quitting her job was tough, but then, my mother was one tough lady, and before long the acre upon which our house stood became not merely her world, but a living sculpture.

She’d been on chemo about a year when one day one of Grogan’s trucks – they were forever going in and out of his place on weekends – took a few branches off the magnolia. Now as said, relations were still pretty amicable between the two families. They weren’t unsympathetic people, just so long as you didn’t cross them. Yes, there had been a spat about the tom that was continually fouling our beds and whose caterwauling on moonlit nights was the wail of a demonic infant. Several times, coming across a garland of feathers on the lawn, my mother had cursed the malicious beast. But he’d disappeared months since. I won’t say that my dad was directly involved; I will say he’d throw me a sly wink on any occasion the subject had been broached by Maureen Grogan.

But the magnolia was another matter. The affair caught Paddy Grogan at a bad time. There was all that business with the Riverside estate: the flooding and the backed up sewerage. And then, my father was never the most subtle of men, certainly not when it came to wording. As much as on her frail body, chemotherapy had wrought havoc on my mother’s nerves, made her prone to mood swings and fits of temper as though to make up for the long hours of lethargy and listlessness. Usually, she vented it on my hapless father. The morning she discovered the mutilated branches, she was coldly furious: pure fecklessness had devastated the great plant whose arms, she’d always said, stood like candelabra each March. I seem to remember a poem in which she compared it precisely to a candelabrum in the hand of Persephone, thrust up from the gloomy underworld to herald her return. Why, then, she entrusted the letter to my inarticulate father is anyone’s guess. I’m being unfair. I’ve no doubt he was articulate in Italian, or whatever dialect of Italian they speak around Palermo. After twenty years in Ireland he still spoke with a thick accent. But then, he was a computer programmer, and I guess interpersonal skills were not exactly at a premium in his workplace.

I never got to see the note he penned (and actually posted!) to our neighbour. Whatever it contained, it must’ve put the builder’s nose right out of joint. A couple of weeks went by, and then one morning a registered letter arrived from the firm of Bradley and McCoy, solicitors. There was some sort of a deposition; or a professional opinion (I was only fourteen at the time, and have never been entirely au fait with the legal shenanigans). In any case, an opinion was expressed, on National Road Authority paper, that the magnolia had become something of a hazard – both of our driveways gave onto a bend – and that it needed to be either removed or drastically cut back. The councillor who’d signed the letter was Grogan’s brother-in-law. Needless to say, mother was livid. Father, too. Something in his Sicilian blood must have been roused by the blatant chicanery of the move.

His first instinct was to go to law. Two can play at that game, he said (he had the love of cliché and saying of the imperfect speaker). Mother prevailed. She’d have a word with Maureen Grogan, first. They could take her tree after she was gone. Would it kill them, to wait? After all, she’d remind her, when the Grogans were looking for planning permission to put in that extension with the picture-window into their roof and the Farrellys had objected, which side had they supported? ‘But dear, we object was too high,’ shrugged my father. ‘Well it was too high! But we didn’t object outright. That’s the point I’m trying to make. If we had’ve objected outright with the Farrellys, there’d be no picture window now for them to look out of. That’s the point, Fabrizio. It’s as well to remind them.’ If that tack didn’t work, then we might try a countermeasure. In proportion as the leylandii had grown, so too had their shadows. By this time half of the garden was in perpetual shade, the lawn mossy and threadbare. ‘Go you,’ she instructed, ‘and have a word with Fergal Finley. Tell him what the situation is. If they so much as touch my magnolia, I’ll have them take down their precious leylandii so I will. We have a law in this country called daylight saving.’

At this time, as said, the Riverside estate was weighing heavily on Paddy Grogan’s mind. To that extent, as my old man repeated with glee, we had him over a barrel; the last thing he wanted was another lawsuit on the books from another disgruntled plaintiff. The upshot was, without any recourse to Finley, not only was the magnolia left intact; the builder even agreed to have the leylandii trimmed. But he wasn’t altogether the eejit. ‘I don’t mind doing it, Fabrizio, if it gives your missus a bit of pleasure. The only thing is, I think you’ll agree it’s only fair we go halves on the expense. Now, how does that suit you?’ My dad held the other man’s gaze, behind each of their eyes an entire ancestry of cunning. He too could be magnanimous. ‘And we forget about magnolia?’ ‘That’s what I’m saying to you. Have we a deal?’ They had, they spat, and they shook on it.

It took two full days to trim that hedge. Special machinery had to be brought in; a cherry-picker, two workers, a truck to take away the branches. A week later, the bill arrived. ‘The guts of three grand, are you mad?! Well the cheek of the man! He’s charging us for the hire of his own machinery, look it Fabrizio!’ Examining the invoice, this was certainly the case; even the two workers (on overtime) were employees of Grogan & Son plc. ‘You’re not thinking of paying this, I hope.’ ‘Over my dead body,’ declared my father. ‘You think I’m born yesterday?’ And that was when he was allowed follow his first instinct, to the law.

Fergal Finley had been the Regan family lawyer from time immemorial. Never mind the present house, it was Finley had signed the contracts on my maternal grandmother’s house, up in the village. It was Finley who’d drawn up, and seen executed, three generations of the Regans’ wills (a taxonomy of cancers had played havoc with my mother’s side of the family tree). But he was semi-retired now, all his life had been a small-town lawyer, whereas Bradley and McCoy were city solicitors. ‘Am I correct in saying there was no actual contract drawn up between you? The trees, d’you see, are entirely on his side of the boundary.’ He and my father were pacing the bald lawn to our side of the mutilated hedge. ‘No, is wrong. We shake on it.’ ‘Yes but Fabrizio, the point in law is that there is nothing in writing.’ They paused at the magnolia by the gate as Finley sized up his client. ‘Was there a witness, itself?’ ‘My son. He witnessed.’ Under wild eyebrows the lawyer eyed me. I shrugged, as much as to say, what do you want, that’s my old man for you! He’d have to find a tack more sensitive to Sicilian notions of honour.

The result, of course, was a foregone conclusion. It was round one to the Grogans. To be fair to Paddy, he’d tried to reason with us. ’Do yourselves a favour. It goes to court it’ll end up costing you ten times as much. There’s no one wins from these situations only the lawyers and with your poor missus the way she is, well…! Look, you can pay me back in instalments if you’d find that easier…’ He may as well have spat on Fabrizio Cafolla as add that last suggestion about paying by instalments. Perhaps that was why he said it; because as we were to find, that man had a vicious, vindictive streak in him. But then, as he was to find, where my father’s sense of honour was concerned, reason could take a back seat.

Still, things might have blown over if fate hadn’t intervened. A full year had passed since the affair of the damaged magnolia. Mother’s condition had deteriorated, and that week she’d been admitted to Castlebar for observation. She was due back out on the Saturday. It was early May, the month where promiscuous country roads have their hedges massacred, so that I wasn’t surprised to overtake a leaf-eating tractor as I cycled home from school on the Thursday. But the council truck pulled up at the foot of our drive was another matter entirely. I immediately phoned my dad, but by the time his car pulled up the damage was done. Mother’s splendid magnolia was no more. I followed the train of dark Sicilian curses to the Grogans’ front door. Now, it may well be that Paddy Grogan had forgotten all about the affair, as Maureen insisted. In all likelihood he had, for he had far bigger fish to fry. The downturn had left his business with a mass of debts and lawsuits. That’s as may be Mrs Grogan, the point was, from the moment he’d involved his brother-in-law, the councillor, he’d set in motion a process that had led to this crime. Yes, crime! And he must pay.
 
 
In proportion as mother’s condition worsened, father became more intractable. Perhaps it was his way of feeling he was fighting her disease; perhaps his way of not thinking about it too closely. One way or another, the less time my mother was able to spend in her garden, the more my father fought over every square inch and every legal scruple. I’m sure there’s an irony in that, but if there is, for my money it’s an admirable irony. Now, one unforeseen consequence of chopping twenty feet off the giant leylandii was that our house was now overlooked by the Grogans’ box window. Worse, it overlooked the patio, which was south-facing, and so was where mother liked to sit out, on her good days. ‘We should never have allowed them to build that monstrosity,’ she sighed one weary morning. And whether that was the germ that infected my father, or whether it was a campaign over which he was already sitting in brood, from that day he began to show up at work less and less, and to be seen more and more in the offices of Fergal Finley and of Castlebar Town Council.

Mother died that August. It did nothing to dampen his agitation. If anything, it poured fuel on it. The kitchen table was taken over by plans and blueprints. A land surveyor was called in, and for several days, our garden was host to all manner of tapes and tripods. Grogan looked on with sarcasm and derision. He’d fought his own losing battle with the banks, but he’d be damned if a crackpot Italian was about to get the better of him in his own back yard. And what it all came down to, in the end, was a matter of six inches. (I’ve endeavoured to be as accurate as I can in this, but Finley is an old man now, and from my father, of course, there can be no hope of accurate information.) At the time of the proposed extension, unlike the Farrellys who had lodged their objections in the strongest terms, our family had objected only to the scale of the affair. The plans had been modified, the extension completed in record time. All that was old history. The Farrellys had sold up years since. If it was out of scale, the window had never been an issue between our families. But, meticulous measurements were now revealing that, all along, the bould Paddy Grogan had flouted the new plans by a matter of three inches. ‘We have him!’ cried my father, his fist pounding the table. Finley wasn’t so sure, but they went to court on it.

It was thrown out. The judge, a woman, was not impressed. Fabrizio Cafolla was not impressed by the judge. By this time he was no longer an employee of Horizon Computing, and could devote all his energies to the niceties of the law. Finley he cajoled, bullied and begged, and between them they drew up an appeal. Justice Deirdre Brennan had ruled that the breach was trivial. That in itself was scandalous! No breach of regulation could be deemed trivial. There was a point of law to be ruled on. But then, added to that, my father had brought in a civil engineer, an expert on soil mechanics. He could demonstrate that, over the eleven years since the monstrous room had been added, there’d been a subsidence of a minimum of three inches. That meant that that the original breach, the original flouting of the law, was a matter not of three but of six inches. Six inches, minimum! ‘We will see that in this country there is justice!’ cried my father. This time, it was not on the table that his defiant fist came down. This time, it was on the headstone of my mother’s grave.

The appeal was dismissed, in even rounder terms. The old man still held out the hope that, in the matter of costs, the judge would be a Solomon. Surely he must understand that a point of principle was at stake. Finley shook his head, and the gravel voice of the law berated my father for wasting the court’s time with such trivial nonsense. Costs, in their entirety, were awarded against, and Bradley and McCoy, solicitors, did not come cheap.

The costs were ruinous. We would be forced to sell up. But that in itself wasn’t the worst of it. Two days after the Judgement, catching sight of Grogan’s smug countenance peeping through the leylandii, my father seized up a garden shears. He made it two-thirds the way across the lawn before a stroke felled him. It was the first in a series. These days he sits, hour after hour, in the nursing home, one side of his body stupefied with paralysis, his mouth depressed, his eye indignant. There are times, few enough, when I have succeeded in raising a spark in it. When I told him that the Grogans, too, had had to sell up, for instance. Or the time I told him that his father had died. Thanks to the small inheritance, I would after all be in a position to do a law degree.

Susan Lloy
End of Rapture

The gold-painted angel fell today. His ceramic limbs splayed all around. She should feel saddened by this, as it was given to her in a time of love when she lived in the Dutch capital. Handed to her by her former lover who had ripped it off the exterior of an Italian villa when he was playing there in a travelling quartet.

It has made her bitter. Staring at it year after year for more than thirty. She has many objects from Amsterdam strategically placed in her flat. Often a guest will inquire, ‘Oh, how lovely, where did you get it?’ ‘Amsterdam,’ she replied.

 
For many years she had boasted that she had lived there feeling like she had an edge up for the experience. She kept her Dutch language books on deck ready to brush up before travelling back more than twenty times, rolling her G’s and toning her tongue to Nederland standards. She constantly thought of her former lovers who became good friends, but of late, had wandered far from her.

 
Tourists always irked the Dutch. When she had inhabited its tiny streets more than three decades ago, they had annoyed them then. Yet, she had been able to blend in like an Amsterdammer. She remembered travellers that came for smack holidays. Seeing many a folk retching on cobbled streets. One doesn’t witness this now. On her last visit it made her nervous. Crowds tightly packed like little fish in a can. Tourists are more loathed now. Pouring into the small cafés, cluttering the squares. Boisterous Brits on bachelor stags.

When she had lived among the locals she had tried to absorb their mirth. Listening to them sing while riding their bicycles along the canals. Now bikes are full of danger. With cyclists roaring along texting, not a single eye on the road.

 
She felt a pride that she had retained her Dutch. And for the most part, Amsterdammers are happy to spar with her broken words. Still, during her last trip, when she sat at a small theatre café and left a decent tip, she had overheard the bartender turn the name, tourist, around like it was a cancer.

She has many framed photographs of her former lovers, but it pains her to hang them on the walls. They sit, hidden, in an old armoire waiting to be dismantled. Yet, she can never bring herself to complete this task. She immortalized them in print during their shared time in Amsterdam, but they never stole a peek.

So, when she looks around at hints of her Dutch past it is as if a knife sears her heart. She can’t imagine strolling the streets, sitting on a sidewalk terrace, seeing the ghosts of her past. And besides, she would be just another tourist in Amsterdam. AQ

Samuel Prince
Amsterdam Winklepicker Moon

He was looking into the wheelhouse. It was a man – I was sure of that by his size and definition, although his back was turned as he stooped to peer in the window. The lights were off, we’d locked the door and there wouldn’t be much to see in that cramped upper compartment, fit for a small table between two rows of cushioned benches and the steep ladder descending to the living area. It had begun to hail – a slight peppering as the first ice pellets fell, but growing ever more percussive and intense. I stopped in front of the splendid Spinoza statue and continued to observe the man who’d adjusted to a different pane, but still bent, seemingly peering intent into the cabin.

This was our houseboat – our weekend rental – and this was the last night of the booking. Only I would be staying and sleeping here after Rob had left for his early flight home, but check out wasn’t until the morning. Who was he? The owner? That was a woman, Brigitte, with whom we’d corresponded when making the booking. Her partner? A friend? An opportunist snooper – or worse? Nobody was home – the dark interior testified to that – so why would he be so inquisitive? Brigitte had our numbers, too – she said she’d call or text if she needed to get hold of us. The houseboat was intact, dormant, sheathed in shadow, moored alongside two others on this stretch of the Amstel – both unoccupied, it being late winter, but both similarly quiet and idle.

I could see now that he was moving towards the terrace on the deck. He took another, penetrative look in the wheelhouse through the windows from that new vantage, and then sat down on the wooden bench, facing the towpath. He was waiting, as the pitch of the hail further increased and the chill sharpened in serration under the vivid winklepicker-toe moon.

             *

I didn’t know as much about Spinoza as I’d have liked – but then, who couldn’t I confess that about? I’d once included his name in a list of writers and thinkers I meant to sample, to flaunt at least a cursory knowledge. However, this became another casualty of questing, adolescent ambition conflicting with my innate laziness and slack attention span. Gramsci and Breton were fellow fatalities, I remembered this – how I’d written those names and a ream of related books and titles in a bid to impress, but as to who, well, I wasn’t sure then, or now. That was, that is, the rueful truth of my life: the things I’d done as if somebody was constantly looking over my shoulder. A somebody I’d always be looking back to check they were still there, still watching. But there was nobody there. There never is.

             *

Rob had caught his taxi to Schiphol from the Green House Namaste Coffeeshop on Waterlooplein. Sunday evening, it had been mostly empty beyond the guy working the counter, who sold us a gram of pineapple kush and two wan lattes. He was sinewy and pallid in complexion, beneath his baseball cap, in a too-tight t-shirt and paint-flecked baggy jeans. The décor was a mishmash – some loose hung throws on the walls depicting mystical symbols, Western saloon-style doors for the bathrooms, a muted flat screen TV showing a compilation of snowboarding feats and mid-volume house music seeping from the speakers stacked in the corners.

We sat on one of the large, low slung, tan pleather couches and Rob prepared the joint while I sipped coffee. This had been our third long weekend away together in Amsterdam – it had become an annual fixture. Four nights on a houseboat and an itinerary of walking, talking, light drinking and heavy sinking into the brain-braised and blazed fug of the occasional hour or two in Coffeeshops. That morning Rob had received word that some unmovable meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the day after our flight back, had, in fact, been moved forward to Monday. He’d hastily rebooked his travel plans while we crossed on the ferry from Centrum to Amsterdam-Noord. This had meant I’d be spending the final night of our stay on the houseboat alone.

By the time we were mouldering in the Green House, Rob with his weekend bag at his feet, me in my fully-zipped anorak and slouch beanie, we were in a conversational holding pattern over the banalities you tick-off when a parting of the ways is imminent. Plans for and a recap on what our jobs held for the week ahead; coming football fixtures; a last sombre sweep of news on mutual or former friends. We were in the desultory drift and dredge of the kush and its effects – monosyllabic, deliberate of movement and sluggish in thought, semi-transfixed by the TV images of snowboarders shredding and searing down the Aspen slopes. I dwelt on the contrast of their speed and vim, the luculent mountain air and fabulous blue skies with my lassitude, smoke-tangled lungs and arid eyes.

             *

I couldn’t linger and pretend to be absorbed by Spinoza unduly. Not as the hail poured and ricocheted all around and over me. He didn’t seem perturbed by this as he sat in position in his mysterious vigil, hood-up, on the deck, but that only served to heighten my increasing concern. I wasn’t going to stand from this distance and stare back – what he wanted or represented, I didn’t know, and if he was looking for me, or Rob or both, I didn’t know either. The Amstel as far as I could see was deserted of cruise or passenger boats and the Amstelhoeck bar behind me was closed, so even if I wanted to slip in, find a table with a view of the houseboat and surreptitiously observe the watcher, I couldn’t. Besides, that wasn’t me. I wasn’t a man given to stealth or discretion and I feared I’d crack; that I’d wilt in such a stand-off, burst out of there and demand he reveal himself and his intentions. I had coward blood. I resolved to walk on, to walk by the houseboat, continue along the Amstel, past the Opera House, turn left on Waterlooplein and circuit back, but slowly, slowly, to check whether he was still there and if he was…? I’d rethink then, again in front of Spinoza.

             *

Rob and I had said our goodbyes and made an imprecise pact to meet up again in London soon. He heaved his bag over his shoulder, more elaborately, almost slow motion thanks to the kush we’d shared and the accumulative impact of all the others over the weekend. With a thumbs-up salute to the guy behind the counter, who raised his head from looking at his phone to acknowledge, he left to meet the driver who was less than a minute away.

I sat back down on the couch and contemplated the remainder of the joint perched like a fishing rod over the ashtray. I could finish it, descend ever deeper into the dappled daze, wallow in front of the snowboarding supremos, then perhaps roll a new one, all for myself, and see out the evening in a zoned-out bliss. But I was done with weed. My chest was crinkling with every in-breath, it was significantly less fun solo and, more pitifully, I’d never been able to roll a joint with any structural integrity. I left the remainder of the gram in its seal bag on my saucer and made to leave. I resolved to head back to the houseboat, hydrate, recalibrate and get an early night before flying back tomorrow. The temperature had plummeted and the forecast told of hailstorms – at least it would be atmospheric and dramatic on board. I could watch the moonlit river being assailed by the weather and make a memory of the moment.

             *

I affected a gait and stride that I thought best conjured cold and bothered but purposeful, with somewhere to go which categorically isn’t the houseboat this eerie figure is sitting on… I put my hands in my pockets and kept my hatted head bowed forward and made towards the mooring dock. Closer to the houseboat I raised my eyes and clocked the watcher, as he clarified from hail-obscured shadow to something more monochrome, but better defined in the glare from the lampposts. The snapshot glance I took told me he was wearing a long dark overcoat with a hood which shrouded his face and features, but he was gazing square in my direction as the only other player on the scene. The hail, as all hail must, had switched from sustained bombardment to a slighter strafing and some drizzle had now joined the downpour, but despite this he was prayerfully still and composed – a squat counterpart to Spinoza, who oversaw all.

The temptation flashed through me to confront, challenge, contest who he was and what he was doing sitting on my houseboat? Sheer fear has a way of rumbling to a boiling point of hot anger, but I’d never mastered the elusive cocktail of stern tone, authority and firm words when trying to be assertive, and this truth froze my tongue. Instead, I veered left, as planned, and quickened my pace, as if a fleeting look at a hooded stranger sitting on a houseboat in foul conditions was wholly typical.

             *

My first visit to Amsterdam was with my Dad in 2005. We’d never been on holiday together previous to that, and we’ve never repeated it since. It was an anomaly – a perfectly pleasurable anomaly, but an anomaly all the same.

I have a cachet of photos from that trip, somewhere in a box file with several others which survive the periodic purges of possessions I pursue to maximise space in my tiny London flat. These photos, they serve only to prove my relative youth – the glint and sheen of my early twenties – and my Dad before his hair turned a shade of ashpan and he still wore heeled shoes. There’s one of me in a duffel coat in front of a bicycle stand outside Centraal and one of Dad beaming on Nieuwmarkt with The Waag in the background. We had stroopwafel and oliebollen and bought little cigarillos which we smoked by one of the canalside bars. Tourists always feel obliged, compelled to visit national museums and landmarks. As if you can’t satisfactorily claim to have done a place until you’ve communed with and paid heed to its past. We got lost on our way to The Resistance Museum, which proved worth the confusion when we did eventually find it, while the Rijksmuseum, undergoing renovation, was overwhelmingly busy and neither of us knew how to appreciate Art. I remember queuing interminably on a staircase and suggesting to my Dad we could leave, and go to Vondelpark, if he wanted to, or the pub, which I knew he would and willed him to choose.

As I walked away from the houseboat, I thought of Dad, that weekend and how he might have reacted to the watcher. My Dad was mild-mannered, decent and unassuming. He barely had a temper or proclivity for indignation beyond the odd sarcastic retort to news readers on the radio, but there was also a deep-rooted hardiness and resolve, albeit I only saw simmer to the surface the once, when I was about 12.

We were waiting by a bus stop outside the back of one of the large department stores in our local town centre when a motorbike purred out from an alley next to the store loading bay, but instead of turning onto the road, mounted the pavement as a shortcut and accelerated towards, but then swerved by us with reckless abandon. I felt the sensation and airflow of him building speed as he cut past. I noted his khaki cargo pants tucked into large black boots, the crimson streak of racing stripes on his leather jacket and the chrome helmet, lustrous as a clairvoyant’s ball. Dad didn’t hesitate, as if something ignited within him. He leapt to his feet and yelled, but it wasn’t in protest, it wasn’t plaintive or pleading, appealing for reason or awareness – it was something guttural and splenetic that carried weight and righteous might.

The rider looked back, some 20 metres away, then abruptly braked to a stop. He waddled off his bike and then marched back towards the bus stop and my Dad, stood up with his arms held out wide like a spirit-possessed Baptist, stepped forward to narrow the distance between them. Motorbike man was shouting and unfastening his helmet strap at the same time, and when it came loose and he took it off, I could see his face contorted, his mouth snarling and shooting back at Dad. He had a close shaved head, covered with a membrane of sweat. He was all threat, bile and stiff-moving menace. Dad maintained his position, stood his ground and returned verbal fire, until the biker was mere feet away, his right hand plunged into his helmet as though it was a big bauble-esque boxing glove. I sat on the bus stop bench and marvelled at the exhilarating choreography as they went nose-to-nose.

             *

It had been 15 minutes since I walked away. I’d reduced my pace to a shuffle on Waterlooplein, heading north. The further I’d retreated from the houseboat, the more unsettled I became. It struck me that I wasn’t even sure how to phone the Police in Amsterdam, and even then, what was I going to report or ask for? A tourist calling for Police assistance because someone was sitting on their rented houseboat – a tourist who’d been in the Green House Namaste Coffeeshop not more than an hour ago – didn’t sound credible or without reason for skepticism. I considered calling Rob, who must be at the airport now and explaining the situation, but again, I’d knew he’d laugh, tell me I was hallucinating, paranoid, but that the kush was as premium as promised.

There were only few people on the sodden streets. The rain wasn’t abating and I was beginning to sniffle and shiver. Even if I did return and find the watcher had vacated his perch, was no longer waiting, I doubted I’d be able to endure the long night on my own. The houseboat was riven with creaks, strains and jarring sounds – and that was without the potential menace of a trespasser skulking on the deck whose potential footsteps and padding would be indistinguishable from the rat-a-tat of the rain that was expected until dawn. I toyed with the prospect of walking around Amsterdam and deferring the showdown until sunrise, but in the wet bitterness of a Sunday in February, the city didn’t feel heady, happening or accommodating to that whim. There was nowhere I wanted to go, or could go, other than the place I was afraid to face.

             *

My full navigation of the square was almost finished – I’d turned onto Zwanenburgwal, next to the Rembrandt Corner café. It was just shutting up – a man in a white shirt and serving apron was bearing the elements and stacking chairs outside in columns of four. Two women, the last customers, were leaving. One of the women made an exaggerated teeth-chittering sound to register the shock of the chill. They linked arms, laughed in unison, swaddled in Puffa jackets, gloves and woollen scarves, and turned right on Jodenbreestraat.

I began walking down Zwanenburgwal, helplessly nearing judgment time. In a few more steps I’d have a beeline on Spinoza, and once I was at his feet, I’d be able to see whether the watcher was still there, eyeballing my approach, waiting for me to stop pretending and come home. And if he wasn’t there? I’d be no better for his absence, spending the rest of the night in dread suspension.

Earlier in the morning, Rob and I had strolled down this street and the market which lined it during the day. I’d abstractedly inspected the stalls selling tulip seeds, ceramic windmills and Jenever gin and bought a black and white postcard of a canal scene at night. It depicted a small bridge, a shimmery river, a silhouetted lamppost with a bicycle leant against it. As I held the postcard to pay, I noted how my thumb also obscured a thin moon – a silver circlet or archer’s bow – in the top right corner. It occurred to me then, and came back to me now as some hail seeds returned to spike the rain, how I’d wanted the picture, without seeing it complete. I’d wanted it without spotting the essential detail which made it what it was. AQ

Jo-Anne Rosen
Family Again

The last time I saw my father I was six. He had driven from Miami to Flatbush for Christmas and was sleeping on a mat near the flocked tree. Mama was sleeping with her second husband, Eduardo Aguilar or Daddy Ed, a wiry man who tolerated my mother’s mood swings and visiting ex-husband.

For years afterward I confused my father with Saint Nick. He was round and jolly with a thick blonde beard and suitcase full of gifts. And then he vanished like smoke. We relocated to a hippie commune in northern California. Daddy Ed and Mama had two more children. Eventually they divorced. But Ed raised me, so he’ll always be my real father.

I was a smart-ass boy who rarely sat still. Mama would say I was going to wind up in the nut house like Daddy Jack. ‘He checked into Bellevue for six months,’ she’d say. ‘Watch your step, buster.’

‘Where’s he at now?’ I’d ask.

‘I have no idea. On the moon for all I care.’

Thirty-five years after that Christmas in Flatbush up pops an email from Jack Nelson. Subject: Family Reunion? He’s tracked me through the Internet. My grandmother has left a small bequest for me. (What grandmother? I was told she’d died before I was born.) He’s living in Oakland and would like to drive up to Red Bluff to see me. I reply that he might also like to see his two granddaughters. His next email is signed “Grandpa Jack.”

I phone my mother. She isn’t interested.

‘I’m a little curious,” I say. “Aren’t you?’

‘The SOB thinks he can buy his way back into your life,’ she says in that flat voice that means end of story.

My wife is more excited than I am.

‘I’m not going to work up a lather over this, Anita,’ I tell her.

‘But he’s your natural father!’

I shrug. ‘He abandoned us, remember?’

‘Blood is blood,’ she says.
 
Jack pulls up on schedule in a beat-up VW bug, its back seat piled high with bags and tools. He extracts himself slowly. He has gotten quite fat, his beard and hair white, his cheeks red-veined. He is wearing black pants, a black sweater and beret, and he walks with a cane. The two girls and Anita hang back shyly while we shake hands and eye each other.

I do resemble him physically. I see the ghost of Christmas future, my own belly billowing hugely. He doesn’t seem to be a lunatic though. In fact, he is a genial, witty fellow. There are gifts in one of the bags for the children, who warm up to Grandpa Jack quickly. He watches them through bifocals with a bemused expression. They are thin and dark like their mother.

Anita brings out dish after dish, and our guest eats it all with relish. We learn that he never remarried but has lived with several women and traveled widely.

‘I’m a jack of all trades and master of none,’ he says cheerily.

We stay up late drinking the bottle of cab he brought us and reviewing the past three decades, then on to film, books, politics, art. Our tastes are eerily similar. He likes Italian and French films, Tony Hillerman mysteries. We both have dabbled with painting and sculpture. He plays mouth harp, and I noodle around on a guitar. Even our voices sound alike.

When we are alone, Anita says, ‘So what about that diet, Andrew?’

I’m up early the next morning as usual. Jack is already in the kitchen drinking coffee, his imposing bulk still swathed in black; hair and beard damp, smelling of soap. He’s brought in the newspaper and filled in my crossword puzzle completely, in ink. Everyone else is asleep.

We regard each other cautiously across the table.

‘I should have tried to find you sooner,’ he says. ‘I did try once years ago, but your mother and Eduardo hid their tracks too well.’

‘I could have tried, too. But I assumed you weren’t interested.’

We are quiet, considering our next moves.

‘Were you ever really interested?’ I ask finally.

He looks at me intently. ‘See, I thought you’d be pissed at me.’

‘I never gave it much thought,’ I say.

‘Well, I’m glad I came,” he beams. “We can start fresh.’

I don’t reply.

‘So, you are pissed.’

‘Alright, I’m pissed.’

He chews on that for a while. Then: ‘Don’t you want to know about your grandmother? Do you even know her name?’

I shrug.

‘Louise. I wish you could have met her. She was a marvellous woman, and she never stopped asking about you. You had a grandfather, too, of course. He died when I was 16. You have an aunt and uncle, cousins.’

Upstairs a muted shout, the sounds of my family awakening.

‘The girls will want to know about their family someday,’ he persists.

I stare at him. Maybe there’s no getting away from him now. Or maybe he’ll vanish again, this time forever. Meanwhile, here he is, fat and sassy and in my face, and he’s ruined my Sunday crossword.

‘I was too messed up to be a father,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry it happened that way.’

‘Sorry?’ I repeat. ‘Really? Since when?’

‘Since now. I can’t undo what’s done. It was my bad luck, not yours. You turned out fine, as far as I can tell.’

No thanks to you, I almost say, but he seems so bewildered and downcast, I relent.

‘Do you play chess, Jack?’ I ask, instead.

‘Sure do.’ His face lights up.

I haul out my set. He picks up the ceramic pieces one by one, fingers them.

‘You made these?’

I nod. It’s from my cubist phase. The pieces have sudden sharp angles, clashing colors, weirdly juxtaposed body parts. The one-eyed bishop is a terror.
 
‘Nice work,’ he says. Jack anticipates my every move and vice-versa.

‘Damn,’ he says, looking surprised. ‘I’m sure I taught you how to play.’

‘What’s this, a recovered memory?’

‘I do remember playing chess with you, and by candlelight. A storm knocked out the power. I made all the pieces from wine corks and wire, I swear that’s true. Ask your mother. You were three or four, whip smart.’

‘Uh uh.’ I shake my head. ‘Daddy Ed taught me to play chess.’

‘Maybe he did,’ he says. ‘The second time.’

He stays with us three days. We play several games of chess, without talking much, unless chess is a kind of language. By the time he leaves I’m one game ahead, which seems to please him. Then the bags go back in the VW, despite Anita’s coaxing.

‘After all this time, you could stay a little longer,’ she says. She hugs him, and so do the girls, giggling because they can’t get their arms around his girth.

I offer my hand.

‘Let’s stay in touch,’ he says, pumping my hand, and then hugging me. ‘We’re family again, right?’

I want to believe him. But when I step back, a little dazed from the bear hug, his eyes are focused elsewhere, as if he’s already moving on down the road again and we are fading into memory. So I don’t believe him.

‘Bon voyage’ is all I say.

After he leaves, Anita begs me to stay in touch with him for the sake of the children.

‘Don’t keep them from their grandfather,’ she says, ‘just because your mom kept you from yours.’

I tell her Mom was wrong about a lot of things, but not about Jack. ‘He doesn’t really want a family. He wants another feel-good moment.’

‘How do you know that?’ she demands. ‘You’re not always right, either.’

‘Nor are you.’

She glares at me and stomps out of the room, muttering something about a stubborn asshole.

‘Alright!’ I shout after her. ‘If Jack stays in touch with me, I’ll stay in touch with him.’

I’ll bet that never happens. AQ