Issue 03

Your Heart, in a Thimble and on its Way to the Thinnest Home in the World / Pat Foran

She didn't know what to do with her heart — not that you have to know, not that you ever have to know, but it was acting up, as her partner liked to say, acting up and making a mess of things — so she put it in a box to give it a place to chill. 

Not the heart-shaped box they sing about. Not the bankers box they make up nursery rhymes about. Not the funerary box they tell their troubles to. Not the confining one they put themselves in. She put her little heart in a thimble, which is kind of like a box, a lidless one, but still.

"It's kind of like a box, a lidless one, but still," she said to the man behind the counter at The UPS Store.

"It's cute," the man said. "I like it."

"Thanks," she said.

"What's in this lidless box?"

"My heart," she said.

"Where are we sending it today?"

"Home," she said, and she said it without thinking, in a sort of blurt that sounded like a hiccup.

"You want to send it home — is that what you said?" 

"Yes," she said. "I'm not sure why I said it, and I'm not sure what I mean."

"Where's home?" he asked.

Home wasn't where she grew up, a surfer town where surfing wasn't allowed, and cat-lashing laws were strictly enforced. Where dreams weren't your ticket out or sold on the black market. 

Home wasn't where she lived now, with a dog and a cat and a man and a mantel cluttered with photos of cosmic disturbances and Coney Island chorus girls in mother-of-pearl frames.

She wasn't sure where her home was, or where her heart was supposed to be.

"Maybe home is in the most delicate, and thinnest, of places — like the messaging space on my laptop," she hiccupped. "Maybe home is in the words and memes and emojis and misunderstandings of love from a man, another man, not my man but another man, who I think loves me."

Thin in its thimble, her heart trembled, skipped a beat, then stopped beating all together to lean in and listen.

The man behind the counter said he was pretty sure her laptop messaging space was not in UPS's delivery area. But the "thinnest of places" — there, UPS could go.

"There's this place — The Thinnest Home in The World," he said. "The Etgar Keret House in Warsaw, Poland. Thirty feet tall and thinner than a stovetop."

"That's pretty thin," she said.

"It is," he said.

They could get it there by rigging a little hot air balloon to the thimble and nudging the thin little package in the direction of Warsaw. After flitting across the Atlantic, drifting over the North and Baltic seas, the thimble full of heart would hang a right and hover across Polish skies. From there, a ring-billed gull masquerading as a carrier pigeon would guide the thimble to the Thinnest Home in The World, the UPS man said.

Her heart began beating again, still trembling, but beating, softly.

"Would someone be there to sign for it?" she asked.

"If you want."

If she wanted. What she wanted was peace. Heart peace.

"It's acting up, this heart of mine — you understand, right?” she said. “Who is this man I live with? Who is this other man who loves me? I say these things and I think about home ... how, sometimes, it's good to go home. Right? Wherever that might be. Wherever it could be. Right?”

“Right,” he said.

“What do you do, where do you go, when you've got a heart that can't read between the messaging lines because who the fuck can? When you've got a heart that needs. When you have an elusive, illusory feeling of home that leaves you hanging.”

"Home is anywhere you don't hang your head,” he said. “Right?”

“Anywhere your heart-in-a-thimble is?” she said. Right?"

Gentle as a meme of the morning moon, the UPS man picked up the thimble, minding the rhythm of the heartbeat, the thinning of the tremble.

Easy now, he whispered in white heart emojis, gently placing the thimble on the scale. Easy.

What’s Inside a Dandelion / Alexandra M. Matthews

Hazel held the pearl opera glasses with both hands. One foot on each couch cushion, she shifted her weight back and forth as she watched a cartoon with talking garden plants. The episode was about the life cycle of a dandelion. The pink tulip made a point of not calling the dandelion a weed.

I could see Hazel from the dining room-turned-workshop as I sanded porch spindles to replace the rotted ones. Hazel was six and Mallory, her mother, was thirty like me. We’d met at my mother’s estate sale, as Hazel peeled the price sticker off the opera glasses. They came to inquire about the room for rent. Mallory signed the lease that day.

I’d moved back into my mother’s Victorian in the suburbs so I could fix it up myself, and I was broke. In the city, female carpenters were rarely the first picked by contractors for a job. But classmates’ dads I’d known since childhood wouldn’t even hire me, though I didn’t lobby very hard. Maybe they, too, were haunted by the thought of how much it embarrassed my mother, that I did what she considered men’s work.

Mallory brought us each a grilled cheese. We’d started sharing groceries to save money.

“You’ll have to eat in the kitchen. You’re going to get the couch dirty,” she told Hazel.

“It’s fine,” I laughed. “It’s an ugly antique, anyway.”

I joined Hazel in the living room. She continued watching her show through the glasses, pausing to take bites of her sandwich.

“Should I move the couch closer?” I asked.

“No,” Hazel said. “The glasses let me see inside the flowers.”

She said the tulip was sad and worried about the dandelion, and the daisy wanted to help them both feel better.

“Can I look?”

Hazel passed me the glasses, greasy with butter.

“Your hands are scratchy,” she said.

“They’re calloused.”

“Do they hurt?”

“No, they protect my hands while I’m working.” The callouses would wreck them, my mother had said. No one would want to hold them.

“Oh!” Hazel squealed, clapping along with the parading plants.

I brought the glasses to my face. Part of me hoped that if I looked hard enough, I’d see the flowers did have inner lives they kept hidden, or a secret, untapped power.

All I saw were pixelated swatches of grainy color.

***

I watched Hazel on Saturdays so Mallory could pick up an extra shift at the diner. One afternoon, I brought out a box of neglected toys to keep Hazel busy while I stripped wallpaper in the master bedroom. It looked as if the purple lilacs had faded into tiny bouquets of brownish kindling, leaving burn holes where the paper had flaked off.

With children’s scissors, Hazel gently cut off the clothes of a baby doll, the string of a pink yo-yo, the rainbow-dyed hair of a plastic pony. I broke open a princess light board so she could remove the wires and circuits.

Mallory came home to Hazel surrounded by autopsied toys.

“You’ve ruined them, and they aren’t even yours,” Mallory said.

Hazel burst into tears, clutching the hairless pony.

Once Mallory got Hazel to sleep, we shared a beer in the kitchen. I told her it was my fault.

“I understand why she takes toys apart,” Mallory said, “but what if she does it at school? What if the other kids are afraid of her?” She squeezed the beer can, waiting for the dimples to pop before squeezing again.

“When I was twelve,” I said, “I returned from a week at my grandmother’s to find my bedroom redecorated. I didn’t care about the new paisley wallpaper or powder blue throw pillows. But things I’d made, the wooden box that held my rock collection, drawings I’d done of houses I dreamt of building someday, were gone. In their place were framed impressionist paintings and a crushed velvet jewelry chest. Holding me while I sobbed, my mother told me my creations were for children, not young women.

“Oh, Annie,” Mallory said. She placed her hand, wet with condensation, on mine.

After Mallory went to bed, I took another beer out to the porch. If my mother had kept just one drawing, I thought. Maybe my first sketch of our house, which I was so careful not to smudge, or the lopsided treehouse I’d imagined between the elms in our yard. 

She could’ve hung it in her bedroom closet, where nobody would’ve seen it.

***

For her birthday, Hazel and I built a step stool to help her reach the bathroom faucet.

We measured two L-shaped feet, two stair treads, and a backboard. Wearing work goggles wider than her face, Hazel watched from several feet away as I cut the wood with an electric saw. I showed her where to apply the glue and how to set the clamp. I guided her hands on the drill to make pocket holes. We sanded the rough parts until they were soft, then drilled in the screws. 

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Be right back,” she said and left the workshop. She returned with the opera glasses, handing them to me before climbing up the stool.

“I can almost touch the ceiling!” she said, arms stretched over her head. “Can you see me?”

Through the glasses, Hazel looked overgrown, like a wild flower.

“You’re so tall now,” I said.

I followed the line of her arms up to the alligatored ceiling. I’d planned to scrape off the cracked layer, then paint over it.

Instead, I thought, I could pull down the drywall, exposing the joists and beams. I expected the wood to be unfinished, perhaps warped. My mother would’ve called the exposed beam look trendy and crass. Though with a bit of restoration and trim work, the vaulted ceiling would allow more light into the room. There would be more space for me to breathe.

I’d cut open the house to see what was inside.

Amnesty at Last / Michael Colbert

Paula Doyle was headed to her neighborhood branch of the New York Public Library to return the book she’d held onto since 1983. Periodically, the New York City Public Libraries offered such amnesty days, when they’d waive the late fees on books to get back more of what belonged to them.

Paula was not the kind of person to keep a book so long. Well, she wasn’t until she realized that was precisely the kind of person she had become. This was something she had come to terms with. The book had hidden in the bottom of a cabinet behind her photo albums and her costume wig for that one role she had, so it was easy enough to move through her apartment and never remember that part of herself. In fact, she’d had to look hard for it on this amnesty day, so hard that it was already four PM, and she didn’t know how much longer she had.

Her apartment hadn’t always been a wreck. Her search for the book exacerbated it, sure, but she realized that she’d begun to live among her things, preserving relics for the lives she had not led.

She’d checked out the book on a lark, inspired by the call from her agent that she had an audition for a minor role in a Christmas movie. It was her first audition. Ecstatic, she went out for a bodega coffee, bacon egg and cheese and walked her city. She ended up at the library and checked out Housekeeping. Her older sister Kathleen had recommended it. Kathleen was a reader, a librarian herself, and she was always sharing book recommendations that Paula ignored. But now Paula would be the person who followed up with her sister. Paula would be the person who cinched the audition and ascended to fame. 

She spent days practicing her line. The role would have her sell the child protagonist a bus ticket, smacking gum in her mouth behind the glass partition. In her apartment, she chewed and chewed wads of cinnamon Trident, pacing, checking the leaves of all her plants for signs of over or under-watering.

She passed the audition. She toasted with her friends. She reported for shooting and saw herself on the big screen, blushing when she thought other theatergoers might realize, that was her! In the theater! The movie was quoted, referenced every which way. It became a cult classic, and her moment counted among its most memorable.

She waited for another call. In the meantime, the book had never been returned, never been opened. She couldn’t be a failed actress and face the librarian. So she held onto it for the time being. Soon she would have a plan in mind.

Now, the plan was to return the book before the library closed. It was Saturday, co-ed day at the Russian Turkish Baths. She knew which days of the week to look for gay couples, pink-cheeked at her diners and bodegas afterwards. At an intersection, clouds plumed from an orange and white steam tube, and Paula realized she’d gone all day without eating, so concerned with her search for the book. Bacon egg and cheese, that was the ticket. Her bodega was the only place that still had some at this hour. She dug in her pockets, in her pocketbook for change and only came up with a wadded dollar bill.

There was a CVS across the way. When her time came to cross, she darted ahead of the other pedestrians, weaving through plastic bags carried on the city’s breath.

She went straight to the register. There was no line. Today was her day! She snatched the first pack of gum she found and slapped her debit card on the counter.

“I need cash back.”

The cashier indicated the screen, so Paula tapped the button for forty dollars. The register cranked out a receipt, unspooling its mind onto the paper. The cashier caught the tail and folded the length into itself as it sputtered more and more. It was longer than Paula by the time he handed it to her, reading the top coupon. “You got the good one.” He held it to Paula’s face. Ten bucks back, she had, indeed, gotten the good one.

Stepping outside, she scanned the rest of the receipt to see if she could rip away any of its length. As wind fluttered its tail, she decided to keep it intact. It was really something, perhaps the longest receipt she’d ever received. 

On the news, she had read about a woman receiving a love letter from eighty years prior. The city tittered and found the children of its addressee. Perhaps this receipt would be the next New York thing, what would get her in the news, laughing alongside Savannah Guthrie in the morning. Maybe they’d recognize her and ask her to reprise her line from the Christmas movie, Where to, kid? 

Holding the receipt between her fingers, she unwrapped the pack of gum. Another gust of wind coursed down the haunches of the buildings and onto Paula. It snatched her receipt. The paper slithered in the wind, in syncopation, then twirling, nose-diving, rising up again along unseen parabolas. Paula realized she was running after it. She conjured the line.

Stop that receipt!

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a receipt!

Paula followed it for three blocks, but the wind was too strong, the receipt had risen too high. As if it heard her contemplating surrender, it vanished over the top of a building.

Paula spun on her heels to face the wind, pressing against the plastic bags and condom wrappers that were joining the throng.

The last time the New York Public Library system had held an amnesty day, Paula had had every intention of sliding Housekeeping across the counter with a meek apology. By a twist of fate, that day she heard about an open audition for a New York “Neighborhood Lady,” a tertiary character on a sitcom. She lined up first thing, the book in her bag. She would head straight to Tompkins Square and the library after. But the line never assented. She waited until an intern disbanded the crowded. She got pancakes at a diner and held onto the book to stick it to the man. 

But today she needed to let it go. She needed to know that she could let it go. Because her sister had visited her apartment and gaped at the clutter, said, Maybe you could get on a hoarding show. Because maybe someday somebody else would actually read this book that had only ever been an artifact in her home. Because maybe the air inside her cabinets would shift when she set it free.

She would make it. She felt herself making good time. It was one of those days when she knew exactly when and where to cross the street to maximize efficiency. The wind seemed to tow her along. The universe had sided with Paula and her endeavor to make good on her promises. On a breeze, she’d ride the magic receipt to the library, hopping off to dart in before closing.

When she arrived, the door wouldn’t give. She yanked each one. She checked her watch, 5:02. She thrust the book on the bench, assessing it. Maybe she could drop it in the slot and they’d honor the amnesty promise. Maybe she could leave it on the bench, claim it stolen.

She scooped up the book and dropped it in her purse. Cutting through the park, she eyed the gay couples clustered on the lawn.

If they knew her well enough from outside the Russian Turkish Baths, if they thought to watch her vanish down the block, they’d see her billow into her bodega, hope against hope that they still had what she wanted.

The Exceptional Lightness of Gullibility / Sally Simon

John Billingsworth III wasn’t the smartest person. His parents knew it. His teachers knew it. His friends knew it, and hell, even I knew it. But what he lacked in intelligence he made up for in good-heartedness. I suppose that’s why I thought he’d be the perfect sidekick to make a quick buck. God knows I needed one. I mean, no one wants to go into a sewer alone.

It all started when I was surfing the internet and found a want ad for NY White. The buyer was willing to pay big bucks, so I did some research. Turns out NY White is a rare albino strain of marijuana that grows in the sewers of NYC, a mutation of the weed flushed by panicked teenagers when cornered by uptight parents. Easy money. All I had to do as the brains of the operation was to figure out how to infiltrate the sewer system in the ideal spot and hatch a plan to involve Billingsworth without him suspecting what we were really up to. I couldn’t take any chances of him ratting me out. Within a week, we were ready to roll.

***

So here we are sitting on a cold, concrete ledge in one of the big mains near Newtown Creek Wastewater Plant, the streets of Brooklyn whizzing above us. Three smaller pipes empty into this area then take a larger pipe toward the Plant. It smells way better than I thought it would, so my surgical mask is hanging loose around my neck. We made it this far without major incident, but Billingsworth wanted to stop to check on his things. He slipped and fell in the last tunnel. He claims he’s fine, but he’s not sure his backpack is waterproof. He wants to take a short break and see. Who am I to say no? I brought him down here under the pretense of finding an infamous NYC sewer alligator, the least I can do is let him check his stuff.

His skinny body is swimming in his jeans, half-hidden by knee-high waders he took from his dad’s fishing closet. I throw my headlight onto his lap. His Iphone’s secured in a ziplock bag lying on his thigh, and he’s fumbling around in his backpack, mumbling. He pulls out something pink.

“Whatcha got there?”

“This here’s Porkers, my good luck piggy bank. Had him since I was a kid.”

“What the hell’d you bring a piggy bank down here for?”

“Like I said, he’s good luck. Besides, who knows? I might find some change down here. Gotta have somewhere to put it.” He gently puts both phone and pig in his backpack.

It’s about then I have second thoughts about dragging this doofus down here, but we’re in too deep. I angle my headlight to the far wall. “Why not? We can use all the luck we can get.”

I hear the zipper close, and Billingsworth stifles a sniffle. “I never said thank you, Gus.”

“For what?”

“For bringing me on this adventure. I know you didn’t have to. Some people don’t think I’m very smart, but I’m smart enough to know this here’s against the law, and we could both get in a heap of trouble.”

For Christsakes, what’s a man supposed to say to that? “Ain’t nothing. I just hope you’re not disappointed.”

“Nah, I don’t really expect to find a gator, but it’s fun trying.”

“Good attitude my man, but I’m not sure how much longer we should stay down here. They say the fumes can be dangerous.” I move my headlight along the wall sweeping it towards the far pipe, thinking I see a streak of something white clinging toward the bottom of the wall. “I’m gonna have one more look in that pipe. You can stay here, if you’d like, or go have a look down that big pipe over there.”  

“Sure, Gus. Yell if you see something.”

Making my way through a small stream to the dull bricks, my headlight dims. I do a double take, and, there it is--NY White clinging to the wall. I reach into my pocket for my pocketknife and start scratching the treasure into a baggie.

“You hear that, Gus?” Billingsworth yells, “a waterfall or something.”

“I don’t hear nothing.” 

“You check the weather forecast?” 

“Weather?”

“Yeah, these pipes flood when it rains. Everyone knows that.”

No, I didn’t check the weather. “Don’t worry, not a cloud in the sky.”  

“But don’t you hear----”

Thunder. 

“Look for a way out!” I close the baggie and stuff it into my pocket. My headlight is practically out now. As I spin around, Billingsworth grabs my arm and hurls me toward a ladder.

“Go!” he screams.  

I grab the first rung and climb as fast as I can. Midway, I turn but see nothing. I hear glass shatter, followed by the rush of water. “Billingsworth!” 

There’s a long pause before I hear heavy breathing behind me. It’s dark when we push the manhole cover open. The downpour soaks us as we run for cover under a tree. As far as I can tell, we’re in a remote parking lot of the Plant. Damn piggy bank was lucky.

Next thing I know Billingsworth is laughing like a hyena, hunching over his phone. “Hot damn, look at this!”  

There it is on the small screen. Almost complete darkness, only a ray of light catching a flood of water, a big open jaw and a pointy tail. “Thought I saw something riding that wave. Too bad I had to break my bank reaching for the phone.”  

Poor Porkers. “That picture’s your new lucky charm,” I sigh. 

“You think so?”

“Sure, Instagram will explode.”

Before I can stop him, Billingsworth throws his arms around me, giving me a crushing hug. The baggie of NY White falls out of my pocket landing on the ground.

Billingsworth looks puzzled, “Why do you have a baggie of wadded up toilet paper, Gus?”

Microwave Oven / Rick White

I’m in my high chair at the kitchen table, Charlie our Jack Russell beneath me on the linoleum floor, nibbling at my dangling chubby toes like pork rinds. Mum aims spoonfuls of mushed-up broccoli into my mouth while I bob, weave and squirm to avoid that rancid muck. Later she’ll rub a drop of whisky into my gums so she can finally get some rest and I will always be partial to the taste of a good single malt. And it’s Sunday lunchtime and the vegetables have been boiling on the stove for so long that condensation runs down the walls like a cabbage scented Turkish bathhouse. My sister and I fight over the wishbone of a chicken, she says I always cheat and pull before the count of three and she’s right, I do, I’ve got wishes I need to make. And I’m draining pearlescent fat from grey minced beef into the sink [pipework be damned] slopping a jar of bright red sauce onto overcooked spaghetti, hoping that Juliet will be impressed. And I’m baking a Victoria sponge for Alice’s birthday party, disguising dark bits with icing sugar and lighting five little candles. And I’m making Osso Buco for the whole family the way we learnt in Florence, sucking the marrow from the bone telling everyone it’s the best part and the Italians would agree. And after the funeral, there is a meagre buffet. The afternoon is warm and the food is going to spoil. Corners of sandwiches start to curl, cold cuts begin to sweat. Flies will get in and try to lay their eggs. And I’m standing in my dressing gown, bathed in the warm mechanised glow of the microwave oven. Looking through the honeycombed aperture at my meal-for-one being irradiated as the digital clock ticks down to zero. All those preservatives — sodium benzoate, sulphur dioxide. I picture my lungs floating peacefully in a jar of formaldehyde, backlit by laboratory marble. I won’t taste this meal but I’ll eat a few bites just so I can tell Alice that I have if she calls. The machine pings and the food is ready — four minutes to cook plus one minute to stand, barely any time at all.

And I’m listening to Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division on vinyl, drinking box wine out of a teacup, trying to cook Steak Diane. Juliet sits with her bare legs up on the kitchen table, wrapped in my jumper, smiling in the candlelight. And she laughs so hard when I singe my eyebrows setting light to the brandy that she almost falls off her chair. 

And I’m standing in total darkness warming up some formula in a bottle. I don’t need the lights on to know where everything is and it feels so good just to close my eyes for a second, feel the weight of my body disappear, suspended in a liquid solution of turbid nighttime. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I’ve barely slept all week but if you were to ask me, I’d swear I don’t feel tired. 

Faux Pas / Nadia de Castro

They are yacht-sailing-chalet-renting-croquet-on-the-lawn people, but this year they are at a cabin in Windermere. Julian's choice. Bless him.

Izzy and Pip arrive just as the day has begun but Julian is there already. Since Izzy can remember Julian has always arrived first to everything, he is the planner, the cook, the tidy-upper, the touchstone of kindness. He is seeing someone now, someone he adores, he says, but he wasn’t ready to bring her to meet his friends.

“What is wrong with her?” asks Pip. The squeak on the her makes him sound like that one boy at boarding school teasing all the others about girls when he has never been alone in a room with a woman that wasn’t his mother. 

“Nothing at all,” Julian replies. 

“What is wrong with us?” asks Izzy.  

Julian kisses her on her cheek, “Next summer, maybe.”

Julian has taken the smallest bedroom in the cabin. Izzy decides on the master, with the lake view punching through the window (Viv will make a fuss). She wonders if she will bring Alison. They have been together for a while now; far longer than Izzy had predicted, annoyingly longer than she had hoped for. At a different time, this would have been their bedroom, Izzy and Viv's, but Pip is her husband now and married couples tend to sleep in the same bed. 

Shaping a marriage out of fleeting passion and effortless intimacy has been a testing task. It feels foreign still to say Pip is her husband, hearing it out loud makes her stomach hurt. It is not regret. Guilt, maybe. For having left Vivienne to marry Pip, for marrying Pip when loving Vivienne. It occurs to her now that maybe she didn't have to choose between them at all, at the time it felt inevitable she would lose them both was she not to. 

Izzy’s brother, Lucca, arrives at lunchtime. He is looking more and more like their father and less like their mother; more English frailty than Italian blood. There is always an inherent harmony present when Lucca is in the room. Thank goodness he is here. She will take comfort in him, ask him for the reassurance that she did what she could, what she wanted, what was best for her, what was best for everyone. 

Vivienne arrives last, after lunch. Alone. Phew. She kisses them all on their cheeks but come to Izzy, she smacks her lips against hers. It lasts a second longer than it should, she is deliberately trying to get at Pip, and fair enough he deserves it. Hopefully, the two of them will not snap at each other this year.

Oh! They do. At the lake, in the afternoon, when Vivienne comes into the water holding a glass of wine he calls her an “Arrogant idiot”. 

“Shameless prick,” she throws back at him. 

“Dirty slut,” he replies. 

“Funny. Your wife used to call me that in bed.”

They stare at each other for a moment and suddenly—they must have remembered they are best friends—Pip breaks out in laughter and Vivienne splashes him, with wine first and water after. Soon enough the four of them are splashing each other and laughing together as Izzy watches them from the bedroom window. It is 1994 and here they all are, on the verge of turning into different people who care about different things. Having spent most of their 20s together, Izzy wonders what will come of their 30s and if one of these summers will be the last summer they all make the effort to spend together. 

Barely dry, the boys come to settle in the living room; Julian rests his head on Pip's chest and his legs on Lucca's lap. A visually striking trio, reassuring Izzy that they will, always, make the effort. 

She finds Vivienne in her bedroom and closes the door gently behind her. They both stay silent, studying each other. Then Izzy sits on the bed next to her and goes to touch her face but Viv grabs her wrist. She kisses her on the lips and leaves Izzy alone in the room—the less superior one, with the view of the wraparound woodland, not the lake.

In the evening Izzy comes down to Julian serving dinner, Pip setting the table, and Lucca opening the wine. Julian shouts "Dinner's ready!"

“Do you cook for your girlfriend?” asks Pip.

“No. She’s actually a chef.” Julian says. He then notices Izzy, “Your husband’s utterly annoying.”

There it is again, that sharp pain in her stomach. "Where is Vivienne?" she asks. Her chest tightens. Blood rushes to her cheeks. And Pip raises his head to her as if his heart just ripped through him. She realises she has not said her name out loud for the longest time and hearing it come out of her mouth shocked her as much as it did him. She knows what is going through his mind, she has seen that expression before, she saw it every time she jumped off his bed onto Vivienne's. 

"Having a ciggie," the words drag from Pip’s throat as if he is asking for help, but Izzy is out the door already. 

Outside, she pauses halfway, taken aback by sudden cinematic stillness. Vivienne, with her Harlow gold hair, blowing smoke by the lake, the swans floating by, the blue sky turning purple at its edge. Here’s life offering itself to her again, promising something else. 

Vivienne spots Izzy. For a moment it seems as if she is coming out to tell her it was all a faux pas (she would put it that way. She's one to overplay everyone's mistakes but underplay her own). She is coming to say the divorce papers are ready and beg her to take her back. But as the cigarette burns through to her fingers the fantasy breaks off with it. 

Izzy watches as Vivienne throws her cigarette on the floor and puts it out with her heel as if stomping on Izzy's body. To have lost her and for it to have been her own choice... Not guilt. Regret, definitely. Vivienne hates her, she can see it now in her eyes. Were she to drown in this lake, Vivienne would be the graceful swan circling her, watching her, letting her go.  

“Dinner's getting cold,” says Izzy. 

“I know,” says Vivienne.

Blue Earth County / Zach Murphy

In Blue Earth County, the winters are bitter, but the summers that yield bad crops are even harder to reconcile with.

Mary Anne has the broadest shoulders in all of Southern Minnesota. She wakes up and begins work before dawn even has a chance to introduce itself to the sky. After feeding the chickens, milking the cows, and making sure the tractors are ready to go for the day, she comes back with enough time to make breakfast for her son Rudy.

There’s still some sticky spots of raspberry jam on the white kitchen cupboards leftover from the same day that Mary Anne’s husband Don got swept away in the big tornado. Don leaving jam on the cupboards when having his morning toast was always her biggest pet peeve. Now she just wishes he was here to do it again.

Rudy rushes down the creaky stairs, rubbing the morning out of his eyes. “Hi mom,” he says.

Mary Anne sets a frying pan on the stove. “Hey sleepy.”

“I want chocolate for breakfast,” Rudy says.

“Eggs it is,” Mary Anne says.

After scarfing down his eggs, Rudy washes his plate in the sink and attempts to wipe off the jam spots from the cupboard with a wet rag.

“Wait,” Mary Anne says. “I’ll take care of that.”

“I can do it,” says Rudy.

“You need to get ready for school,” Mary Anne says. “I’m not letting you miss the bus again.”

“Fine,” Rudy says as he darts upstairs.

***

Mary Anne and Rudy stroll down the long dirt road toward the bus stop. At the end sits a rusty mailbox where good news doesn’t usually arrive.

Mary Anne kisses Rudy on the cheek. “No spitballs or fights today,” Mary Anne says.

“Mom?” Rudy asks. “When are you going to clean the kitchen cupboards?”

“I’ll clean them whenever my work is done,” she says.

After the Honeymoon / Linda McMullen

Shoehorning our wedding between the Superbowl and Valentine’s Day meant a mid-February honeymoon cruise with the worst fellow travelers imaginable:

• Fanny-packed Midwesterners enjoying an early Presidents’ Day / escaping blizzard-infested wildernesses;

• Retirees glomming onto under-50s to diversify their trivia teams, and

• Instagram influencers.

And my new husband – post-wedding, -bedding, and -forgetting – is currently marauding on the Lido deck, with his arms around two Ukrainian hostesses too polite to extricate themselves. Possibly some Tinder-origin romances *do* evolve into Princess Bride-style True Love™, but… well. I lurk aft, and consider the (remote) possibility that I’ve made a huge mistake.  

A blonde woman – beautiful in a 19th century consumptive fashion – approaches me at the rail. “Nice view,” she murmurs, glumly, as the sky’s sole cloud begins to sprinkle on our heads.

The receding Hawaiian shore is green-black, sinister against the horizon. “Sure.” Eager to avoid any third-act Gothic confessions, I inch away, then she says:

“I saw your husband – with –”

“Difficult to avoid, even if you’re trying.”

A faint smile. “Mine jilted me at the altar. The trip deposit was non-refundable. Decided not to waste it.”

Score: Me, 3; Tubercular Nymph, 10. (TN, I decide.) “You came with – a friend?”

“My sister. She’s discovered bingo.” She shudders delicately. “Those squelching stamps haunt my dreams.”

Involuntarily, I offer a hand. “Liv.”

“Alexis.”  

We pace along the deck, past *Slice of Heaven* (the pizza joint) and a mother chasing her sundae-faced cherubs. Then I glimpse my husband sloshing toward the bar, one hand on each of the Ukrainians’ heart-shaped sterns.

“The problem is, he’s my ticket to health insurance.”

“What’s he do?”

“Defense contractor.” I roll my eyes. “Six figures, security clearance, the whole nine yards.”

“Then,” TN says, “you need to get paid, as you get out.”

We both frown; thoughts muster slowly post-umbrella drinks. My husband-of-six-days catches the Ukrainians’ eyes, gestures leeringly toward the elevators.  

Which only go down.

Toward the cabins.

TN sighs sympathetically.  

A switch flips – or, perhaps, the faintest glimmer of a plan surfaces from the rum-and-juice pool. “Would you like to help me achieve middle-class stability amidst marital betrayal?”

“Sounds fun.” 

“Perfect,” I say. “Get your cell ready.”

We dart downstairs, reach the empty room. “We’ll need multiple angles,” TN says. We stuff spare blankets and pillows from beneath the bed in the closet. She dives beneath the mattress; I duck behind the curtains.

Not a moment too soon. Enter Ukrainians, pursued by husband.  Ensuing scene on bed: more Pornhub than Cannes. I lean in for close-ups – and TN, emerging from the far side of the bed, mirrors me with her phone camera.  

Amidst Ukrainian shrieks, husband (predictably) erupts in a Samuel L. Jackson-esque torrent. I shake my head, and name my price for keeping these blue-lit images to myself.  

At length, he concedes.  

“You can stay with my sister and me,” says my new friend, as we stride out. “If you want.”

“Alexis,” I say, “this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”