Hundred Word Stories

In an open field in Hungary on that cold January day, we stood on the frozen dirt, tall and stiff.  Leaning against the car, I cut pieces of a pear with a dull knife and looked over the flat land as peel slipped off the fruit to the ground. We didn’t talk very much; it was nice. A flock of birds at once stirred and took flight, peppering the sky in a twisted oval of small bodies hanging in the air before changing direction. For a moment they floated in space—individually, and as a group. Everything was in flux.

The moment after, the split second after the words came out of his mouth, I knew I should break up with him. My stomach churning, I knew it immediately. I was upset, and I was insulted. If that was his attitude six months in, he was beyond salvation. More than that, he was cruel. That joking tone juxtaposed with the jagged edges of his comment. We were in Montreal, in the Old Port, just after New Years. I liked a pair of amber earrings in a window. He smiled and said, “Don’t think I’m going to get them for you.”

I forget your lunch; the bus driver says she’ll wait, but doesn’t wait. She has thirty others to worry about. I race through back alleys, past private schools and renovations I can’t afford, and pedigree dog shit. I make it in fifteen minutes. The music teacher thinks I’m a pedophile, out of breath, carrying a kid’s lunch box. I hate his choice of “holiday” songs and brush past him. You look suddenly so young as I hand you cold pizza, protected by Spiderman. I am your father and when I fail you in some way, I will think of this.

I am an atheist. I believe that when you die, the process is akin to switching a light from on to off—and you don’t go to heaven. But I was once inside a Montreal church and there, I felt something. In a rear hall by the arched doorway it happened. While standing on the cement floor, something pushed my entire right leg up so to jolt me off center, sending me staggering backward to catch my balance. Shocked, I kept looking down at my feet. Now I know it wasn’t god because god doesn’t exist. But it was something.

A rainy, Monday morning commute. Passengers stunned by a wave of introspection and misgivings are startled as the bus jolts, or someone bumps into them. Time to reflect–on poor choices of clothing and careers, another failed diet, a perfunctory conversation with your spouse and child that was once whimsical and creative. I run into a co-worker; the conversation is predictably perfunctory and uncreative. I ask her questions since the answers I’ll provide are dull. She obliges, telling me about a stressful week ahead. I concur. “Pay it forward, help others” I repeat as a mantra. Satisfied, I move on.

Chris was from a rough part of Boston. Growing up, he and his friends played a game where they’d hold a $10 bill over their arms, take a lit cigarette, and burn through the paper. Whoever could last the longest got the money. His arms were scarred; he often won. He was tough. When he looked up at me, he blew smoke from his nose. A Bic pen jutted from a mess of curls above his ear. “Finished.” He was changing my car’s headlight. He then gave me a wide, gap-toothed smile. That was the last time I saw him.

My “coming of age” happened over the course of one island summer, in the company of two artists. They introduced me to gin, sex, and map-o-spread. They lived out in the country. I had a car, and was supposed to spend my time as a curatorial assistant ‘working’ with them. Work was road trips, bonfires on the beach, making art in the woods, feeling fuzzy-headed in the morning.

In the city, my family was falling apart publicly and gracelessly. In the country, through red embers and melted ice and thin cotton sheets, I was learning that everything would be okay.

As I’m about to thank him and let him out, the cable guy notices a Chinese scroll above my front door.

“Chinese,” he claims, raising the coil of cable in his hands to indicate what he’s referring to.

“Yes. My dad got it for me in China. It’s supposed to read ‘Joy.’”

No response. He stands perfectly still, eyes bright and darting between the two characters.

“Is this true?” I ask, to break the pause.

“There is no English word for this.” He turns, and draws the coiled cable tight against his chest. “It means ‘a quiet in the heart.’”

I wish I would have been listening to better music when my grandfather died. Now, when I think of him, I think of how he’d send me into the pantry to find sweets for the both of us. And how he’d smile conspiratorially and give me a loonie, building a cache that was ours and secret and special and going to grow forever. And how his veteran’s wooden limbs were hard yet yielding. But now, when I remember that phone call, and those small things that make up some universal, unspoken grandfather code, I also think of The Tea Party.

As night fell, the rain that had been driving down for the last few hours to turned to sleet, then snow. By morning there was a foot-thick blanket over sheet ice. The diesel had been left idling all night, now obscured, From the hotel, I called Calgary to say I couldn’t make it to Fort Nelson today. Snowed in. Drive on, they said. Take it slow, but go. So I bore blindly into the storm. Ahead in the wind-whipped white I could faintly see the taillights of the truck in front of me as it slid off into the ditch.