Author’s Note: I live just outside of Baltimore, in a historically blue-collar neighborhood surrounded by water and wildlife. Sometimes it feels like living in a novel Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Kurt Vonnegut could have written together: filled with the magic and tragicomedy of the universe. As people and animals were dying around me, I wrote this narrative meditation on the disheartening matter-of-factness of transience and finding comfort in tiny acts of kindness and each new day.

 

The Entropy of Little Things

PEOPLE GIVE US LIVING THINGS. Things I don’t know how to take care of. It is customary when one moves into a new home. A shamrock hibernates, I learned. It is also not Irish, but South American: people just call it “shamrock” because of how the leaves are shaped. The tomato plants love the sun: both of ours grew tall and bore fruit, which we heartily consumed in salads. The hydrangea is supposed to go to a shady spot in the ground. You can alter the color of the flower petals by adding different chemicals to the soil. The oak saplings, which were a gift meant to be a reminder of their centenarian namesake at our previous house, did not make it through winter. You have to pluck the dead flowers off a petunia to make room for more. The coxcomb rallied itself after wilting away at first. The orchid has not blossomed since I got it as a birthday present but has three keikis; getting it to bloom again will be my next challenge. 

I obsess over these things I don’t know how to take care of. The feeling of responsibility is overwhelming. 

We live at the end of a dead-end street, tucked away between two marinas, in the shadow of Bethlehem Steel and its blue-collar pride and mesothelioma. Marsh wedges through our property. A wall of trees, reeds, and honeysuckle surrounds us in summer, illuminated by fireflies; when the leaves are gone in winter, we can see the water and the boats. Our neighbors have roosters and guinea hens. Snapping turtles knock on our door in the morning, fighting our brooms as we gently coax them back into the marsh. Our home is a humbling battleground between human hubris and nature’s quiet, relentless patience. 

“What’s that swimming in the pool?” my Storyteller said. 

It was a rabbit. With no idea how long it had been drowning, he scooped it up immediately and cradled it in a towel. We spent the day taking turns nursing it and making sure the Domestic Long Hair didn’t notice. 

The Domestic Long Hair brings us living things. Things I don’t know how to save. The fledgling dove, accompanied by the mother as they walked carefully around the backyard looking for bushes in which to grow out of its adolescence, left as an offering at our front door. Countless mice, which served as toys before meeting their doom, beyond help. Multiple rabbits, still alive and injured in various places on their frail bodies, which we tried to patch up and nurse and release, but were dead and cold in the morning as I opened the door to the back bedroom where we kept each one. Domestic cats have a kill rate of 32 percent, and they only eat 28 percent of the kills. But to be honest, we haven’t really had a success story. 

I’m a country girl. I grew up on a farm, waking up to the sound of pigs being led to slaughter. I held chickens in my arms, tracing the bend of their wings with my fingers. When the time came, I watched my grandmother chop their heads off for soup. It was a treat to be given a boiled chicken foot as a snack as I ran around the yard looking for my next adventure. I plucked fleas off cats and popped them between my fingernails; picked full ticks off dogs and threw them in the fire (that’s where they go). Drank milk straight from the cow’s udder. Slept in a room with the top of the armoire filled with pickled vegetables, my hands smelling of dill and peppercorn. There is no perfume that could match the smell of horses for me. I understand the beauty and cruelty of life’s cycle. “We are all consumers,” a friend said recently. 

But I’m a country girl with a PhD, and I have never killed for sustenance. I didn’t have it in me to become a veterinarian. I don’t know how to grow food. I wrote a dissertation about ships and sailors, but I have never sailed. I drive past the Church Hospital where Edgar Allan Poe died on my way to work every day and study words for a living. 

Cottontails don’t burrow, I found out. They nest. If they are the size of a softball, they can fend for themselves. The best thing you can do for one is leave it alone or send it back to nature as soon as possible. 

The rabbit spent the day sleeping in a box. His heart was beating fast, and his breathing was shallow. He also became a “he” to us during this time. As evening approached, I realized we wouldn’t be able to release him yet, which diminished his chances of survival. We put him in the Domestic Long Hair’s crate for the night, snuggled in a new towel. I left baby spinach leaves in one corner and a plastic lid of water in another. He moved around, ate, and left tiny droppings all over the crate. He rallied. He would make it through the night, and we would release him first thing in the morning. 

“It’s a hard world out there for the little things,” my Storyteller said as we buried him next to the garage the following day. It’s Raising Arizona, but it’s true. 

I had found the rabbit’s little body cold and stiff in the crate, his eyes half-open. He had moved during the night and looked surreally comfortable, deceptively at peace. He had eaten, drunk water, left more droppings. An image of still life, the little machine with its inputs and outputs, the entire assemblage looked insultingly animated. The defeat was overwhelming. I had woken up hopeful, willing him to be alive, planning to release him back into the wild, all the while blowing raspberries at the Domestic Long Hair, “Some apex predator you are, oblivious of prey right under your nose!” 

We buried the rabbit as Storyteller’s Stepmother made arrangements for home hospice, in the shadow of her New England pride and multiple myeloma. Five years into stem cell transplant and chemotherapy, she took back the reins. She stopped eating and was seeing people outside the living room window, drifting between worlds. She was asking her spouse to come with her. 

My Storyteller is grieving. I have never seen him so sad. He believes in Yeatsian gyres and that the memory of one’s returns makes one better. I believe in physics. Bodies in space. Atoms repelling and attracting. Quantum entanglement. Any spirituality that can be explained with particles and waves, I will take it. 

But it’s the entropy that kills me. The tendency of the universe toward disorder. Of warmer bodies to get colder until the system reaches equilibrium. Life seems to be a permanent Redshift to me, a constant, irreversible moving away from one another. 

Ancient Greeks paid a lot of importance to how one died. The Iliad, I remember fondly, was little more than a collection of individual quests for the most noble, heroic death. It does decode one’s life in hindsight, doesn’t it? That first blood test, decades ago, when they told you there was a protein, element, or whatnot that would eventually show itself. The prophecy and its fulfillment. 

Should I not have fed him spinach? Or given him water— perhaps he was still suckling and I have no idea what size softballs are? Should we have released him right away? Or not had a pool in the first place? (We are not rich; it came with the house.) Different choices that in a different multiverse would have led to different outcomes raced through my brain as we both wiped away tears and Storyteller shoveled dirt on top of his little body wrapped in the towel in which he’d died. They are stress- ridden animals and can expire at the drop of a hat. There are many of them. There would be more. It’s the equilibrium of nature. 

The Domestic Long Hair kills for sustenance, but also for sport. We give him blues nicknames like Mudfoot and Waterbelly as he drags the marsh into the house. We also call him Mr. Murder. He doesn’t need us to survive, but he, too, is a little thing. There are so many big things out there that could hurt him. He will chase a rival cat up a tree and stare down a boxer three times his size, then hide in the closet at the faint sound of a lawnmower and meow frantically to be let in the house when Labor Day fireworks go off. 

That just might be the only thing I’m good at: taking care of apex predators because they take care of themselves. 

She never got in the hospital bed. She died in her recliner, with one of her cats in her lap. She wore jewelry to the last, shifting rings from the fingers of one hand to the other. As she passed, a bouquet of heart-shaped Mylar balloons in all colors of the rainbow floated from the kitchen, through the living room, and upstairs to the bedrooms. 

Jai Guru Deva, om
Nothing’s gonna change my world 

Nothing’s gonna change my world 

Nothing’s gonna change my world 

Nothing’s gonna change my world 

Two days later, I heard a familiar growl outside the front door. The Domestic Long Hair was wrestling another little thing, and I didn’t have it in me to look at the state of it. I did nevertheless—had to—with more instinct than anticipated: it was a baby rabbit, and it was still alive. I jumped, chasing the Domestic Long Hair all the way to the neighbor’s yard as he zig- zagged in front of me. (Storyteller was impressed by my speed.) In a moment of distracted growling at me, he let the rabbit go, and it ran away into the marsh. Our first success story. 

The Domestic Long Hair slept on Storyteller’s chest through the night, guarding him. One living thing left this world. Another got to spend one more day in it. 

I don’t know if that means that the system is in equilibrium. 

I’m a country girl, and I just want to be there for the little things. 

⧫

Martina Kado is director of publications at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, in Baltimore, where she serves as editor-in-chief of Maryland Historical Magazine. Researching maritime narratives for her PhD in English turned her life into a “traveling genre.” A Fulbright Fellow, translator, and flamenco dancer, she gets stir-crazy when exposed to only one language for too long. Her work has appeared in Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, Overland, and The Quill Magazine. Website: www.martinakado.com 

Delmarva Review, now in its sixteenth year, publishes the most compelling new prose  and poetry selected from thousands of submissions during the year. Designed to encourage outstanding new writing, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

 

#  #  #

Author’s Note: The poem tries to uncover the gnawing sense of loneliness and alienation that has become a characteristic feature of life in the cities. With every passing day, no matter how well we remain connected to the outside world through social media, there is always this sense of emptiness that devours us. This poem tries to capture that sense of angst and the problematics of belonging.

A Room Too Small for Sunsets

The toaster has thrown up.
The alarm that had been snoozed twice
And the coffee beans hard as immigration rules Lie scattered, waiting for
The perfect hangover
Before they walk toward
Their expiry dates.
In the room
Too small for sunsets
I sit by a window
And watch the city
Not on anybody’s map
Become a river.
The streets that play
Hide-and-seek with the traffic lights
Will come wandering inside my head
And set up tents.
In the end
I sleep with my fingers
On the zippers of the sky. 

♦ 

Sayan Aich Bhowmik is assistant professor of English at Shirakole College, in Kolkata, India. He is the coeditor of Plato’s Caves Online, a semi-academic blog on poetry, culture, and politics. His poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Indian Ruminations, Kitaab, Scarlet Leaf Review and Dust Poetry Magazine, among others.

Delmarva Review publishes evocative poetry,  fiction, and nonfiction selected from thousands of new submissions during the year. Designed to encourage outstanding new writing, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org 

Author’s Note: “Elm Trees” started as my memory of watching the daily removal of the last trees destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease. Period photos of Clinton County, New York show the damage to the landscape caused by the disease. Soon even long-time residents would have only a vague memory of elms. As I wrote each draft during the height of the pandemic, the trees took on a haunting sense of fear and helplessness. 

Elm Trees

One September I lingered in a town
with no intention
to stay. Twilight clung
to any warm breeze. On narrow streets
there were regal old houses in need of repair. 

Elm trees lined the narrow
sidewalks, their heavy limbs bare,
each trunk’s decaying girth
marked with a slash of white paint, one
crooked, careless X
warning of Dutch elm disease. 

      I waited for a job; the elms
waited for nothing
but to be cut down. Every day
there was a shrill of chain saws.
      At times that shrill
must have been no more
than a faint unease, a faint
whisper of failure, of falling, of absence. 

⧫

Michael Carrino is a retired lecturer in the English department at SUNY (State University of New York), Plattsburgh. He was co-founder and poetry editor of the Saranac Review, and he has had seven books of poetry published, most recently “Until I’ve Forgotten” and “Until I’m Stunned,” as well as individual poems in literary journals. He holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry,  fiction, and nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage outstanding new writing, the literary journal  is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, now in its 15th year. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from the Talbot Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org. 

 

 

Author’s Note: I started writing “From Here” years ago in Los Angeles, on the trip that the piece is about. I was processing a breakup, helping my sister move to a faraway place, and generally figuring out how to be alone. The piece is about gathering strength to live life for your own sake—and finding the courage to go forth into the unknown.

From Here

I’M TRYING TO DISAPPEAR. Trying to whittle myself down to a few basic things, and then to nothing. There is the warmth of my bare feet in hot sand. There is the ocean breeze off the Pacific on my skin. There is the static hum in my ears of the waves rolling in with power and indifference, splashing against shrieking families in swimsuits, lapping up on the sand to fill the moats of sandcastles and soften the surface of the earth, which drinks thirstily. Through my Jackie O sunglasses there is late August sunlight muted by the clouds, barely touching the water that is green then blue then navy as it touches the hazy sky and disappears into the next part of the world. The big waves roll up like wedding dress tulle; the small ones slide in like razors. Dots of birds soar in the distance and stern white seagulls strut along the beach, stabbing their beaks into the sand and jerking their heads at the disruptive sounds of people.

People are everywhere, the way people always are in the world’s beautiful parts, the way people are always claiming places. There are people in bikinis and swim trunks and soaked T-shirts running to and from the ocean. There are people under rainbow-colored umbrellas. There are people spread out on large aqua towels with sweaty arms around orange bags of Cheetos. Young families use neon buckets to shape wet sand into castles. Children run free and adults stand at the water taking pictures of the scene. 

I have people, too. If I squint, I can see them standing in the water, bracing for the waves. They are people I love. They are people I hope will stay in the waves because when they return, I’ll smile. When they return, I’ll feel myself burrow behind the mask of an extroverted personality that has been growing more obnoxious every day. 

We’ve just completed a family road trip from Minnesota to help my younger sister move from New York to Los Angeles, and each day of the journey I’ve more desperately needed a break from the person I’m being. I’ve been laughing too loudly, interrupting too often, talking too quickly. I’ve been hearing myself make jokes that cover a discomfort, snap retorts that protect a wound—the sound of my own voice like a ferocious dog barking at the border of its domain: Don’t you dare come any closer.

So I focus outwards.

Clouds break apart in one corner of the sky and sunshine falls like a single spotlight on the water. When I turn my head to stretch my neck, I see a lifeguard in a baby blue tower, and behind the lifeguard are brightly colored tents—red, white, blue, yellow, green—lining the back of the beach. Palm trees stand high on the hills in the distance, like strange tall animals dusting the sky. Up the coast, the land juts out into the ocean like a dark sleeping dinosaur. This is nothing like New York City, where the ocean was only a sliver of sparkles at the edge of compressed chaos; nothing like Connecticut, where the ocean shorelines were guarded and private and full of rocks; and nothing like Minnesota, where the ocean is unreachable.

I hadn’t planned to be part of this trip until the man I was planning to be with decided not to be with me. It was only then that the catharsis of the road beckoned, promising me this limit of the land, this space above the ocean—all the emptiness in the world.

FOR SO LONG, I’ve felt anything but empty. Life has been so full that I’ve felt myself squeezed into it as an afterthought. I’ve filled my time and mind with relationships, with work, with degrees, with worry about all of it, with perfectionism that wants to not only do but excel, and to excel is to obsess, and to obsess is to never be done. It’s the only way I know how to be—my mind so busy there’s no room for me. 

I met the man who was supposed to be with me when I lived in Connecticut for graduate school. A year after I’d moved back home to Minnesota, he professed his love, made arrangements to move for me, asserted his intention to be with me—to me, to my family, to my friends. Trusting him seemed like the expected thing to do. Him deciding not to uproot his life for me also seemed like a thing that should have been expected. But I hadn’t had enough room for both expectations, and so it hurt, and so life paused, and the pause revealed this emptiness.

Every day of the summer since has been spent waiting for the next one. Time has been a slow drag. I’ve been feeling abandoned. Feeling alone. Seeing just enough men to fill the space. I’ve been a passive and observant dater. I only want to learn about people, uncover the laws they have for their world and for mine.

After a while, it’s like the waves coming in from the ocean—some are strong, roaring with power, but others lap up to the sand, timid and small. All of them recede eventually. I am the land, the great impermeability, that sends them back.

After a while, I realize I’m only creating storms of minor dramas to cover up the pain. I realize it’s not helping to do this, but I’ll keep doing it for a while, anyway—to delay the reckoning, to make it so cloudy I can’t see where it hurts

I BURY MY FEET in the heavy warm sand, overcome with desire to bury my whole self in it. I bury myself up to my ankles, up to my calves, scooping the damp sand, piling it on and patting it down. I lie back in my denim jacket to see the cloudy sky through my sunglasses. I close my eyes to the sea breeze, the children’s laughter, the squawking gulls. The sun bears down through the clouds and the clouds part like a curtain opening to a new scene. I feel the appeal of disappearing under the weight of everything. I think about one of the men I’ve dated. “Let’s get into the dirt,” he’d said. “What do you want?” Getting into the dirt is enough, I’d thought. I only want to be covered in earth, to be disguised, to be distracted from anything digging might uncover.

“I don’t know,” I’d said to him with a light shrug, as if it didn’t matter. 

WHEN MY PARENTS DIVORCED, siblinghood became my only constant. My sister and I shared rooms and bunk beds and tears and car rides and goofiness and the need for everything to be okay. We fought and yelled and cried and regrouped and regrouped and regrouped. We were together, always. If I was going to my father’s for the weekend, of course she would be with me. If I was spending Christmas Eve with my mother’s family and Christmas Day with my father’s, she would be at my side. We were a package, moving through life as one. 

A week ago—after my sister spent a month in Minnesota between her east coast past and her west coast future—we filled my mother’s old Fiat with our bags and my sister’s orange cat, and we set off on the midnight road to our first stop in Nebraska. There was a storm on the first night of our drive. Before the rain came crashing down, clouds raced over the moon like someone was pulling a screen too quickly across the sky. My mother, an expert at journeying through darkness, was driving. I wonder, sometimes, of the strength it must have taken to file for divorce all those years ago—to uproot us and replant her life in new ground, knowing it would take time for the tree to become sturdy, for the branches to grow strong.

My sister and the cat slept in the back of the car. I sat, depressed, in the passenger seat. As the storm broke out, I lamented the loss of the relationship that had been broken by the man who would not be moving after all. My mother kept her eyes on the white flashes of rain and dutifully pointed out the friends I have, the people in my life who I can lean on during this feeling of loss. I didn’t tell her that this is not enough. I didn’t tell her that I want selfishly, that I crave intimacy like a drug. That without it, I do not know who to be.

She turned the radio up as she drove us through the storm, offering music as the only answer to the feelings in the darkness, to the branches that—if they do not get broken—only grow to become further and further away.

FROM THE BEACH where my legs are half buried, I see the tiny figures of my sister and her friend being thrown down by the waves and rising again after each fall. My sister is laughing, relaxed. It’s her first full day of being a reluctant Californian. She’s here because her job relocated her. Her friend moved here just months ago. He’s here because he wants to be. He, like us, lived and left a life in New York City.

The years my sister and I lived in New York feel like a strange dream. I moved there for school, and two years later, she followed. We lived our lives independently, but we’d meet for midnight pizza slices in fluorescent spots on Broadway, go on winter night walks after the sweaty heat of shows, spend weekend afternoons getting our assignments done in crowded coffee shops, and stay with each other whenever our hearts were broken or our dreams felt impossible or our presents unbearable. I could crawl under the covers of her dorm bed whenever it felt like everything was falling apart, and we’d lie next to each other in the middle of Manhattan like we were little girls in Minnesota again, this time watching old SNL skits on a laptop and eating a package of Oreos for dinner while her roommate slept three feet away and the distant Empire State Building sparkled out the window. It feels like a strange dream, too, the years I lived in Connecticut, when I could still take the train to Grand Central and the subway to Lorimer, leave my bags in her small yellow apartment above the pulsing gay bar, and we would go out into the Brooklyn night and we’d walk and walk and walk—always until our legs hurt, until we hit the water, until the skyline of Manhattan glittered before us, silent and constant.

I visited New York less when I met him—him and his house and his giant yard with the vegetable garden and the firepit and the American flag. I traded in nights of rumbling underground trains and alcoholic swirls of lights for the open air of dark rolling hills under bright starry skies and a quiet that was so clear you could hear the insects in the trees. Stinging all the while, there was a wrenching inside me that wanted to go home when I finished my degree, that knew we were a couple that would never be. 

MY SISTER AMBLES TOWARD ME now with her friend behind her. They are smiling, carefree, wet. Our mother stays out where the waves are, soaking everything she can out of this moment she can own—this one part of the trip that does not have to be about someone else, that does not have to be ruled by motherhood.

The two new Californians grab towels, catch their breaths, sit on either side of me and watch the changing scene. My sister’s friend is kind and good, a person I’m in awe of. He’s an east coast native who claimed sunny west coast happiness simply because he wanted it. I feel small in the presence of his ability to assert the life he wants. He asks me why I don’t go in the water, and I hear myself laugh—the ferocious dog is back, barking from the edge of my embarrassment. I try to explain my childish aversion to water, that I only like to be near it—watching it, hearing it, smelling it, disappearing under its open sky—but one step in and I would drown. 

The three of us sit propped against one another’s shoulders and take selfies with my sister’s phone, our faces lit with sun, the colorful umbrellas and thin palm trees behind us. We text one of the pictures to our father back in Minnesota, where he lives with the woman he married years ago, in the life he claimed after the one that made us didn’t work. “Looks like you are having fun!” he responds, proud of his children being out in the world—having made it out alive, having survived. I wonder, sometimes, of the strength it must have taken him to keep moving forward when reality changed, when life was unexpectedly filled with so much space, pushed open by so much pain.

My sister returns to the glowing waves to rejoin our mother. They look holy, like saints. The bright sun silhouettes them, glimmers gold in the waves around them. Her friend and I stay seated on the striped towels, sifting sand through our hands. He is shirtless and we talk about his tattoos. One of them reminds me of a tattoo on a scientist I’ve been seeing.

“So, you are dating?” he asks, aware of the summer’s drama.

“Yeah,” I say, dropping more sand onto my feet. “But I’m not really over anything.”

“How long were you with the guy?”

“Two years,” I say. “Sort of.” I explain that for nine months we were only a relationship with an end date, and for the first year I lived back in Minnesota we were long-distance friends, and that it was only for a flash of six weeks that we’d asserted we loved each other and planned how our lives would merge before he called one night—after the house, after the job offer—to say, “I can’t do it.”

“We haven’t talked since,” I say, the embarrassment still hot around my throat.

“Damn,” he says, scooping sand.

I pick at a skin growth between my knuckles that has been slowly growing for over a year, multiplying into more growths and expanding into a bubbling need for a dermatology appointment. I’ve been too fascinated by it to consider razing it, this problem born from my body. Skin that grows from skin that grows from skin and none of it is supposed to be growing at all.

It was during those six weeks of I-love-yous and life planning that my sister learned about this job relocation. From my exciting new vantage point of relationship security, I encouraged her decision to accept. I respected the boldness of sacrificing a home she loved for a chance to see what more she could be. It was the same thing the man I loved was doing for me. It never occurred to me that I felt anything but happy for her until one hot night in the middle of summer—after his final phone call, after the embarrassment of planning a future and living none of it—I had a nightmare about a terrorist attack.

In the nightmare, my sister and I were hurrying through a packed subway station in Manhattan. The exits were blocked by terrorists. People were crying and screaming and struggling to breathe. My sister and I were fighting, yelling and screaming at each other with the intensity we’d had as children. We angrily separated. There was a car abandoned in the middle of the chaos in the terminal, and I crawled into it to sleep, to get away from her. When I awoke within the dream, I was still in the car, the people had disappeared with the rescue effort, and my sister had left me to die.

When I woke in the morning, summer continued its slow drag onwards, and I felt myself feeling more alone, less alive, shrinking—and this aggressive, annoying personality began to cover for me, to replace me.

And, yes, I chose to leave her first, but maybe without thinking I thought she would follow.

ON THE BEACH, she and my mother grab towels and sunglasses and clothing. They sit. Saltwater drips from their skin. My mother is giddy. She’s hungry. She wants to drive further up the coast before the sun sets, buy watermelon from a fruit stand. She’s claiming this day as her reward.

“Are you okay?” my sister asks me when we’re out on the boardwalk, waiting for the others to return from the bathrooms.

I think about how we won’t be able to eat Oreos together the next time I feel heartbroken.

I nod, squinting against the lowering sun.

My feelings swim in darkness and their articulation feels impossible, which is why it doesn’t occur to me to say the words: I’ll miss you.

The glowing sky is gorgeous like a jewel. Down along the shoreline, people pack up their umbrellas and their towels, but the darkening beach remains, silent and constant. I try to memorize pieces of the scene to keep it with me, this California openness. But this will belong to my sister, only. As we grow older, we find more and more things that cannot be shared.

We leave the beach and I have not whittled myself down. I have not disappeared. I’m still here to contend with. I’m still missing my personality, still feeling like an empty shell of something lost. I can’t disappear when I already feel like nothing. I can’t whittle something away that does not exist to begin with. And yet, contrary to everything I feel, I am here.

The sun glows pink against the cliffs and dyes the ocean orange and sets into the horizon to leave us in darkness, and we buy fruit at the stand, and we drive on down the coast. We stop at a restaurant, and I drink too much wine. We drive back into Los Angeles, and we put Jaws on in my sister’s new living room and I fall asleep after the scene where they cut open the tiger shark and everything inside of it spills onto the dock. I have dreams about things that are so unreal—mountains that are larger than the moon, a moon that is so close I can touch it—that I scramble to take pictures of them, only to wake up and realize that the pictures, too, are not real. I continue to feel like I can’t hold onto things, like everything is slipping away.

Two days ago, my mother and my sister and the orange cat and I were in Utah. We slept in a hotel at the entrance of Zion National Park and spent the morning hours driving through smooth canyons and jagged mountains. The scenery was like wet paint, like orange brushstrokes curving and swerving across the landscape. As we drove deeper into the mountains and stopped for short hikes along their roadside trails, I felt the expected sensation of becoming smaller and smaller as the mountains grew larger and larger. But the bigger the mountains became, the smaller they started to seem as it became clear there would always be something even bigger. As this infinity began unfurling itself, I felt how I, too, belong to infinity, and therefore I, too, contain an infinity of my own. No matter how big the mountains are and how small I am next to them, I—miraculously—never disappear. I’m still here. My mere existence extinguishes the threat of insignificance.

How overwhelming it is, to be so little and so much all at once.

ON THE PLANE BACK HOME there’s lipstick smeared on my finger, the oil of salted peanuts on my hands. I’m finally alone, free of having to be anything. I text my father to let him know the plane will land on time. My mother stayed behind, hesitant to leave her youngest alone with the car in a new place too soon, memories of a sobbing first-day preschooler embedded in her bones.

I’m being watched by a curly-haired baby two rows ahead who dangles a plastic truck over the back of his seat. I nickname him “Velociraptor Baby” because of the piercing way he screams from time to time, the pressure of the flight hurting his head, his ears, his face—the giant world pushing in on him. I rest my head on the frame of the window and look out. The plane’s wings slice the clouds. The roads cut across the land. From here, it looks like razor blades were dragged across the earth. Maybe I’m not alone in my discomfort with space, in my need to fill it, to draw lines across it. Maybe it’s some collective flaw that we try to claim space by filling it with so many things that we don’t leave ourselves room to breathe. Velociraptor Baby screams again, and I think he understands.

I IMAGINE MY SISTER DRIVING around her sunny neighborhood with the red-roofed Spanish Colonial apartments, commuting to work on the 405 every day, having an experience I’ve never experienced. I think about the change I was expecting—cooking with him, drinking with him, hiking with him. I think about the meaning this togetherness was supposed to ascribe to me, how easy it all would be—like the feeling of control gained by drawing lines across the land.

I don’t want to return home to my minor storms of dating. Maybe I should just let the emptiness be—for a while, anyway. Maybe the dating has only been about needing someone to look at me and say: Here you are. To me, you are this. Or else I don’t exist. To break free of this need is to venture into a life I’ve never considered, into a space I have no idea how to fill. It’s a perfectionist’s worst fear to not know, to have to create something that cannot be exceled at, shared, approved—a life that is only for you. 

The pilot announces the beginning of our descent, and Velociraptor Baby awakens with the changing pressure. He looks pained again, lifted by a parent. He bangs his truck on the back of the seat and throws it into the aisle, frowning at all the tired faces watching him. The plane dips into a turn and he begins to scream. We emerge from the clouds over the land that is home, and it occurs to me that I chose to live here for no reason besides the same wrenching inside that tells me I’m alive. And maybe this is a start. And maybe when I emerge from baggage claim into the humid Midwestern air, looking for the familiar smile on my father’s face, I will not feel so stubbornly alone.

I take a deep breath. I glance around at all the other people crammed calmly into this vessel. An older woman catches my eyes as the baby screams and screams and screams. She shrugs as if to say, what can you do? and smiles. So, as the pressure builds, I shrug and smile, too, and I brace myself for the landing.

⧫

Lillie Gardner is a prose and screenwriter based in St. Paul, Minnesota. She studied creative writing at New York University. In addition to Delmarva Review, she has been published in Quail Bell Magazine, Long River Review, Funny-ish.com and more. She’s also an essay-reader for Hippocampus Magazine, a book reviewer for EcoLit Books and a contributor for Feminist Book Club. In her writing, Lillie explores Midwestern voices, family dynamics, and musical approaches to prose. Website: lilliegardner.com

Delmarva Review publishes compelling nonfiction, poetry, and fiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage outstanding new writing in the region, the nation, and beyond, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

 

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Author’s Note: “The White Egrets,” from my new book, Blue If Only I Could Tell You, reflects life in an isolated place in the country. The scene specifically draws on where I live in the upland regions of Hawaii Island, but other readers may recognize treasured places of their own. Here I am emulating the style of classical Chinese and Japanese poets like Du Fu and Basho.

The White Egrets

Who lives up there
      I wonder—on the ridge beyond us
XXXXXXXXXover the gulch?
The stream
XXXspeaks syllables in the night
XXXXwhen I go to my window and listen. 

No business of mine,
XXXbut I catch, at times, voices.
XXXXXThe wind blows toward me
XXXa cry of rapture,
XXXXXXXXthe laughter of children,
voices raised in anger on a difficult morning. 

What connects
XXthese lives of ours lived at a distance,
bridged by the air that separates and joins us? 

White egrets
XXXflapping home to nests in the sea cliffs
by threes, by sevens, by twelves,
XXXview from their altitude
XXXXXXour valleys and misty hillsides.

A feather floats down from what they know of us. 

⧫

Richard Tillinghast grew up in Memphis and was educated at Sewanee (University of the South) and Harvard. The prize-winning author of many books of poetry and creative nonfiction, this summer he published Blue If Only I Could Tell You, his thirteenth collection of poems. His literary travel books include Finding Ireland and Istanbul: City of Forgetting and Remembering. He lives in Hawaii and spends summers in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling poetry,  fiction, and nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage outstanding new writing, the literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from the Talbot Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Photography by Wilson Wyatt

 

Author’s Note: I used to play guitar in college with the late poet David Hickman. We’d workshop songs we’d written. And one day he told me, “Your song lyrics really suck as songs but they might make pretty good poems.” Turns out I’ve rubbed elbows  with a lot of musicians since then. Some had the chops to escape the bar scene. I was a hack and never would have made that leap. I had to make a decision and my focus shifted to poetry and fiction. This poem is the possible road not traveled by a failed singer-songwriter.

The Bratwurst Kid

never graduated
the bar scene 

think late ’60s rock band
playing high school gigs 

suffers from asthma
all those ciggies 

tinnitus
liver slowing down 

body spewing parts
like an Oldsmobile 88 

at a demolition derby 

⧫

Richard Peabody, from Arlington, Virginia, is a poet, teacher, publisher, and founding editor of Gargoyle Magazine. He was editor for the anthology series Mondo and runs Paycock Press. He has taught creative writing courses and workshops at St. John’s College, The Writer’s Center, Georgetown University, and Johns Hopkins University. His book of poetry, Guinness on the Quay, was published by Salmon Poetry (2019).

Delmarva Review publishes evocative new poetry,  fiction, and nonfiction selected from thousands of new submissions during the year. Designed to encourage outstanding writing from the region, the nation, and beyond, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author Note: I dreamed of being an actress since I was five. My grandmother took me to a production of Annie Get Your Gun at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. At some point in the play, the actors came barreling out on motorcycles, and I realized I wanted to do whatever that was. My quest for stardom took many twists and turns, some utterly ridiculous. “No Business Like Show Business” is one of those twists.

No Business Like Show Business

SOMEWHERE IN THE DEEP RECESSES OF MY MIND, something that sounds like a buzzer is going off. What is that annoying sound? Oh, my alarm clock. I must have dozed off. I’m always anxious when I have one of these ungodly early calls. I’m so afraid I’ll oversleep that I can’t sleep at all and instead spend the night tossing and turning. It doesn’t matter what I do. I took melatonin and valerian root, did deep breathing exercises, tried to meditate, and counted sheep; nothing worked. 

As I come into consciousness, the words of my disheveled, irate college English Lit professor, who showed up thirty minutes late to our 9:00 a.m. final exam, float to the surface of my mind. Incensed, he glared at the class through his bloodshot eyes and snarled, “Only ditch diggers and garbage collectors are up at this time of the morning.” I roll over and, through my blurred vision, the massive, illuminated red numbers of my alarm clock flash: “2:45 a.m.! Rise and shine!” Ugh. Is this happening? 

Barely conscious, I stumble out of bed because if I don’t, the second alarm clock sitting on my dresser across the room will begin buzzing as well. I always set two alarm clocks because I can’t be late. Lateness isn’t tolerated. If I’m late, not only will I lose the job, but casting will be called, and that will be the end of that relationship. Show business doesn’t comprehend forgiveness because time is money, and money is God. 

Staring at my bleary eyes in the mirror, I remember growing up as a Southern girl in the ’50s. From my vantage point, the only outlets available to me for my tremendous energy and passions appeared to be a teacher (boring), nurse (I detest the sight of blood), wife and mother (no thank you), or actress. If these were my options, my choice was clear. At about the age of ten or eleven, I began dreaming of being an actress. I’d sing my heart out and dance around our living room to my parents’ records of West Side Story, Carousel, and Subways Are for Sleeping. It all seemed so glamorous. Over the years, watching movies like Stage Door, All About Eve, and A Star is Born fueled my dream. I discovered Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn and wondered, Who are these fascinating creatures that live such exciting celluloid lives, and how do I become one? I imagined Broadway openings, with curtain calls and standing ovations. Opening night parties with everyone dressed to the nines in evening gowns and tuxedos, drinking champagne, waiting for the early-morning reviews. I dreamed of the accolades of being in a hit show. Acting was my way out of the provincial South and my alcoholic family system. But when I was dreaming of being an actress on Broadway, this wasn’t what I had in mind. Fighting through the disappointment and exhaustion, I remind myself, Today’s a new day. Anything can happen. You could be upgraded. An upgrade means you’re somehow magically selected by the director and go from being in the background to being a principal actor, sort of like winning the lotto. 

Back in my bedroom, the clothes I’m wearing to set hang neatly on my closet door. I always lay out all my clothes and pack my bag the night before, so I don’t have to think. Pulling on my jeans and T-shirt, I wonder, How did I even book this job? Oh, right, yesterday afternoon, I received a call from a commercial casting office. 

“Hi, Jill,” the cheery voice trilled. “We realize you auditioned for the principal part of the receptionist in this commercial, but we’re wondering if you’d be interested in doing background for us tomorrow?” 

I’m not thrilled by the prospect, but SAG extra work on commercials pays exceptionally well, and I need to earn as much money as possible to make sure I qualify for my pension credit and health insurance. Plus, I’ve got bills to pay, so I graciously accepted the job. Lots of actors disapprove of background work, but I never think of myself as an extra. I’m a trained actor, and I go to set as a professional ready to do my job. I show up on time, with the right attitude, and whatever wardrobe I’ve been asked to bring. For this particular day, I was told to bring the bathing suit I auditioned in. One never knows what conditions will be like on set, so I pack two robes: one full-length ivory chenille in case holding is chilly and a short cotton kimono with a colorful, pastel Hawaiian flower print in case it’s warm. 

“Be prepared,” the Girl Scout motto, rings in my head as I grab my bag and head out into the dark morning to procure a cab. This is a luxury for me. After years of lugging my wardrobe, traipsing through the pitch black to the subway hoping I’ll make it to set on time, I made a rule. At 6:00 a.m. or earlier, I treat myself to a taxi because public transportation, like most of New York City, is still asleep, and I prefer not to start my day by worrying about getting raped, murdered, or mugged in some deserted subway station. Money is tight, but I remind myself that traffic will be non-existent at 3:45 a.m. 

I hail a cab and make it downtown for my 4:00 a.m. report with two minutes to spare, check in with the PA, climb into the back of the van, put on my sunglasses, and close my eyes, trying to block out any extraneous conversations or light, which is impossible. Once everyone is accounted for, the van departs. I’m a little nauseous, so I don’t ask or care where we’re going. Twenty-five minutes later, we arrive at what appears to be a deserted office building somewhere in the hinterlands of New Jersey. 

After we drop our bags off in holding, we’re broken for breakfast, if you can call it that. Who can eat scrambled eggs, bacon, and oatmeal at 4:30 in the morning? After breakfast, the women are taken to wardrobe. I bring my bathing suit and chenille robe. I loan my cotton robe to another actress because a Girl Scout helps when needed. The ten or so of us head down the long beige hallway to wardrobe, where we’re handed a hanger. Attached to the hanger by a safety pin is a baggie. Inside the baggie are a nude G-string and a pair of pasties. I figure this goes on under our bathing suits for hygiene. Seems a little odd if we’re wearing our own suits, but at this hour, my mind is still in a bit of a fog, so I smile and take my hanger. 

The costumer points to the baggie like a flight attendant holding an oxygen mask and explains, “This is what you’ll be wearing in the commercial.” A hush falls over the room, but she’s not saying anything else. Is that the end of the sentence? Perhaps I’m confused? Did she say this is what we’re wearing in the commercial? I glance around for confirmation, then, as if action were called, all the women start yelling and screaming. 

“Are you insane? What are you talking about? We weren’t told we’d be naked!” Now everything comes into sharp focus. I rationalize, This is a mistake. A simple misunderstanding. She didn’t say or mean that. My mind’s racing, but I stand still and silent. This is my MO when trying to figure out the best escape route. The women continue their tirade. 

“We were not told we’d be in G-strings and pasties! This is outrageous!” 

Perhaps I’m still dreaming, and I’ll wake up at any moment. The women refuse to comply with the wardrobe instructions and storm back to holding, chattering among themselves. 

Once back in our seats, the men, sensing our distress, tentatively ask, “What’s going on?” 

One of the disgruntled actresses blurts out, “You’ll find out.” 

The men are escorted down the hall to wardrobe like the unsuspecting, clueless dupes they are. I can’t wait to see how they react. Upon their return, they sit and bow their heads as if in prayer. Not one word. Not so much as a peep. They appear shell-shocked. After a long silence, one of the ladies asks, “Well?” Turns out they’ll be wearing nude G-strings in the commercial, too. 

On the outside, I appear calm and serene, but inside, I’m railing. Are you kidding me? Is this for the porno channel? I mean, what the hell is going on here? G-string and pasties? I don’t think so. I’m not a stripper. Jesus, no wonder they kidnapped us at 4:00 a.m. and transported us to bumfuck New Jersey in an unmarked van before the birds were up! 

The panicked first AD (assistant director), trying to placate the disgruntled background players, informs us, “Since there appears to be some sort of mix-up, the director will be coming in to speak with you.” 

Silent as a stone, I stew and wait. The director rushes in like he’s late for an appointment, all smiles, and gushing hellos. 

“Good morning! Gosh, so sorry about the misunderstanding. Let me explain,” he continues. “The name of the commercial is ‘Naked,’ and it takes place in a brokerage firm. The clients, walking into the office, discover everyone is naked,” he says with a nervous laugh. “Not to worry,” he reassures us. “I’m looking for ‘real’ people, not models.” 

No shit, Einstein. Models? You’d have to pay models a shitload of money to prance around in the altogether. 

He reassures us, “Nothing will be shown. I’m going to pixelate, pixelate, pixelate,” he says, chirping the word “pixelate” as he moves his fingers over his chest and genital area. “Pixelate, pixelate, pixelate all your private parts.” 

No reaction from the hushed background actors, so he changes his strategy. 

“I give you my word,” he solemnly continues, “the set will be 100% private.” 

Oh, please, that means no one except the entire cast and crew, production, ad agency execs, assistants and interns, and any other miscellaneous folks who happen to be in the vicinity will be allowed on set. 

He glances down at the floor before saying, “If this is about money, we’ll gladly pay everyone an extra $100.” Still no response from the background. Like a narcissist pretending to care, he continues, “I understand if you’re not comfortable being naked. I’m so sorry, but I just can’t believe you weren’t told what you were supposed to be doing.” 

“Casting told us nothing,” a woman calls out. 

“We were told to bring our bathing suits,” I loudly clarify. The director, desperate to convince us, nods and tries another tactic. 

“I may upgrade people.” 

Aha! When all else fails, dangle the proverbial upgrade carrot. This is the oldest trick in the book, and actors fall for it every time. 

“Tell you what,” he says. “Why don’t you step forward one at a time and privately tell me if you’re willing to be naked?” 

I’m not sure if it was the pixelate, pixelate, pixelate, the extra hundred bucks, or the “possibility of an upgrade” that persuaded the actors to be naked, but many agree to stay. I and seven other actors flatly refuse. 

Those of us who decline to do the nudist thing are escorted back to wardrobe, and the women are given a nude-colored bandeau top and relegated to the back desks to sit or hide behind computers with our robes on. Once action is called, we drop our robes while everyone else is walking around in their G-strings. One actor passes out folders, another delivers mail, some make small talk, one pretends to repair the Xerox machine, while a much older woman washes the windows. I try to keep my eyes focused on my computer screen, but one of the principal actors, who looks about twelve but I’m sure is more like twenty-three, is standing right in front of my desk with his mail cart, and he’s so nervous he’s trembling. Maybe he’s just cold, but I empathize with him. 

After lunch, which is at 10:30 a.m., the eight of us who rejected the “naked thing” are told by the first AD, “Thank you so much, but your services are no longer needed.” After changing back into my street clothes, I try to return my nude bandeau top, but the wardrobe mistress says, “Please keep it. You’re the only woman who didn’t scream at me.” 

In the van back to the city, the actors are all abuzz with the morning’s events. Somehow, someone found out that another group of actors had been brought out here the day before, and as soon as they discovered they were supposed to be naked, they mutinied and refused to shoot anything. The entire group had to be paid for the day and driven back to the city. This forced production to shut down, regroup, and try again. Now I understand why we were abducted and driven to some undisclosed location before the sun was up, leaving us stranded with no way back to the city and no one to call because the SAG offices weren’t open yet. 

I guess I ought to point out this was a union commercial with all union actors. Honestly, if you want to walk around nude for an extra $100, I don’t care, but trust me, this is bullshit and there’s no telling where this footage will end up. 

The actors in the van continue their rants all the way back to the city, vowing, “I’m calling my agent.” 

“I’m going to give casting a piece of my mind. How dare they!” 

I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing even though I didn’t earn any overtime and wasn’t upgraded, next month’s rent is paid. I’m almost positive this job has qualified me for my SAG pension and health credit, and that’s all I care about at this point, except going home and crawling back into bed. 

Showbiz, ah, the glamour. I smile as I remember that hopeful, starry-eyed girl singing her “There’s No Business Like Show Business” heart out in the living room. 

♦ 

Jill B. Dalton is an award-winning playwright whose plays Whistle-blower and Collateral Damage were both semifinalists at the National Playwrights Conference (Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center). Her book, My Life in the Trenches of Show Business: Escape to New York – Act 1, is available on Amazon. Dalton is also an accomplished actress with performances in Saturday Night Live, Law & Order, and Wall Street. She lives in New York City. Websites: www.jilldaltonwriter.com and www.jilldalton.nyc   

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new  fiction, nonfiction, and  poetry  selected from thousands of  submissions during the year. Designed to encourage outstanding writing from the region, the nation, and beyond,  the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website:  www.delmarvareview.org 

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