Author: Sandee Gertz

Vows

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Poetry.

There is something they don't tell you about all the vows.
Sometimes "for worse" comes first; sometimes it's a thread
sewn throughout. It's not always this clear block of time;
waking up in the morning you feel it: Oh, today it will be for 
worse, and for maybe a few months–
no, sometimes it's the day after your wedding and you
are alone in your house listening to the rain. Sometimes you make a
mistake so quick and beautiful that there is no
urge to forgive. Sometimes you sit quietly while
your honeymoon disappears like smoke in the air.
 
I have a husband again now. Sometimes it's a week
after your wedding and your husband can barely move.
Sometimes it's a week after your wedding and you
are making plans for the next trip to the 
hospital and how to rearrange
the living room so that your husband will not trip
and fall over all
this life

Can We Stop?

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Nonfiction.

“Can we just stop at the store? Please?”

My client, Tina, said this while we idled at a stoplight. She had just opened her purse and discovered an empty, crumpled cigarette pack. She held it out to me. The summer sun bore down hot and blinding through the windshield of my old Chevy pickup. My air conditioning had crapped out weeks ago. I needed the light to change so we could get going, so I could make it to my next appointment, so we could get some wind through the open window.

“I don’t know,” I said. We had just spent two hours at Tina’s doctor’s appointment. I had to drop her off and jet off to the other side of town if I had any hope of making it to my next client on time. I felt the first stirrings of hunger. I had the jitters from a supersized coffee. I forced a smile — ceaselessly polite, even with my anxiety hassling me beneath the surface, pushing me from the inside out. “I’m going to be late.”

I used my old piece-of-shit pickup for my job as a community mental health worker. My job title was “Service Coordinator,” though for years we were called “case managers” until someone realized it was unkind to refer human beings as a “case.” Most of my clients called me a ‘worker’, though, which sounded a little too close to prostitute. The same upper echelon that devised the term ‘service coordinator’ instructed us workers to call our clients “members,” which itself had an unwholesome connotation. Members — like they belonged to an exclusive country club with tennis courts and hot tubs, as if they didn’t need the services of a mental health agency. I carried through the days, months, years of this work calling my clients “clients.” Even the clients called themselves clients.

“Oh my God, you’ve got to understand,” Tina said. “I really need this.” She put her hands together as if in prayer.

I made shit money. I drove my clients to medical and therapy appointments, grocery stores, AA groups, to court, to detox, anywhere and everywhere in a ceaseless effort to help them gain a toehold in the mythic land of mental stability. I put some serious miles on my junked-up little truck – industrial green, dented and pocked, rusted in some spots and, on the truck bed’s door, an old peeling I Hate Mean People bumper sticker – it had appeared one day, applied, I think, by a stranger in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I never bothered to take my truck to the carwash or remove the detritus I let pile up in the space behind the front seat, the Dunkin’ Donuts cups, junk mail, yesterday’s dirty gym clothes.

My clients had the usual diagnoses – schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder. I imagined Tina saw between us a great gulf of experience and privilege, me a worker — self-actualized, employed, calm, centered, sage, content and healthy; she, a client – beaten down by circumstance and bum-luck neurochemistry. The gulf she saw wasn’t a gulf, but a tenuous line drawn on quicksand. I suffered my own biochemical and existential failings. I took Prozac and anti-anxiety medication, which left me with a fine, chronic tremor that made my head and hands bounce about. People often assumed I was either cold or nervous. It was me, this hot mess of a well-intentioned person who was supposed to teach my clients those good, God almighty “life skills.” Who cared enough to at least try. I often felt the weight of a chronic exhaustion; I was single and lived alone, fifteen hundred miles from my family. I longed for someone to take care of me for a change.

The cars around us idled, engines thrumming. Tina gawped at me and chewed on her fingernail, waiting for me to relent.

“Seriously, Tina. I can’t. I really can’t.”

She slunk deep into her seat. “I’m desperate, don’t you get that?”

She waved her hand in front of her face and said, ”It’s so damn hot in here.” She started digging through her purse again as if God himself might have heard her pleas, might have stashed a whole, pristine pack in an unexplored corner of her enormous, cluttered purse.

“Oh, God, God, God. Please?” She said.

Tina’s brown eyes, usually hard and suspicious, had gone soft. She was always scamming, needling, wanting. And I was always saying yes when I wanted to say no. There was no end to my desire to please, to fit together all the dangling participles of everyone else’s needs.

The light turned green and I stepped on the accelerator. The rushing wind cooled the back of my sweaty neck. Tina closed her eyes and stuck her arm out the window, opened her palm into moving air.

“Just this one time?” Tina asked.

We workers were taught not to disclose our emotions, reveal to our clients our vulnerabilities, to always put them first, their needs.

The sweat began to evaporate off my skin, and I felt my relief like a glittery tingle. It brought out in me a surge of abandon, a generosity of the sort that would prove untenable later when my next client carped at my tardiness.

“Okay, yes, okay. We’ll stop. But you have to be quick.”

“Oh, God, thank you,” Tina said, clasping her hands together and raised her double fist to the sky.

In truth, I liked Tina, a self-described former junkie, a woman with the kind of trauma history that could render Jerry Springer speechless. She was sweet, smart, crafty, her talents and kindness wasted on devising ways to make her pittance from Social Security last an entire month. She conned anyone in her orbit into her giving her stray cigarettes and loose change. I learned early on not to leave coins in my cup holders. Tina lived in a shithole apartment with a tiny Yorkie named Luna. She subsisted on methadone maintenance and credited it for keeping her clean, off heroin. “Gotta dress right and fly straight,” she liked to say. She was around my age but looked years older – deep lines set her eyes and mouth in parentheses. She had unchecked diabetes, COPD and walked with an arthritic limp.

I watched Tina now, her eyes still closed, her chest rising and falling with her labored breath, her arm still hanging out the window. No one ever aspires to grow up into an addict with a felony record and hair turned brittle and brassy from years of drugstore dye jobs. She had long ago lost all her teeth. But she had a certain panache, an ease with which she exercised her survival skills. We might have been friends growing up. I imagined her convincing me to duck out of third period, the two of us sneaking behind an old, abandoned strip mall where she’d pull a fat joint out of her backpack.

Tina lived one turn off a complicated intersection with multiple one-way streets radiating from one traffic light like the arms of an asphalt octopus. When we drew closer to her neighborhood, after we traversed ice-heave potholes left unfixed from the winter, when the rows of shabby multi-family houses came into focus, she said, “You’re the best.” She directed me to a convenience store on a side street extending off the octopus. Tina opened her door before I came to a full stop.

“Just don’t fart around in there,” I told her, smiling. She laughed, giddy, I imagined, at the prospect of fresh nicotine.

As she hustled her limp across the street, I noticed a group of ragged men next to the store, clustered tall and close like a clutch of dehydrated reeds. They conferred amongst themselves, tight and almost conspiratorial, didn’t so much as turn their heads as Tina pushed through the door. A Connecticut Lottery sign hung in the store’s window and, beneath, another sign — $10,000 Winner Sold Here! I thought about the rush of such a win, the realization that your luck has turned, the hope that it marks the start of a new beginning in life. I wondered if Tina bought scratch-offs, figured maybe I should, too. Weeds short and tall poked up through cracks in the sidewalk. The apartments had sagging decks, dirty siding, chain-link fences.

I lived on the outskirts of this rot in a tiny cottage house on a dirt-road right-of-way. After harsh winters, the snow melt turned into a soup of mud and garbage that always seemed to overflow from my neighbor’s trashcans and land in my yard. My bulkhead door was rusted shut and mice sometimes crawled into my house through a hole in my floor under the stove. Tina lived in the margin, and I rattled my cold bones in a neighboring but no less fraught margin.

When Tina returned, she yanked open my door and fell into her seat. I looked at my clock — I was well past late. A choice lay before me: take a series of turns up and down the one-way streets to land in front of Tina’s apartment or pull a U-ey. I scanned front and back, side to side, weighed the pros and cons.

“No one’s here,” Tina said while she slapped her cigarette pack into her palm and pulled off the cellophane. “You can do it. People do it all the time here.”

I made the U-turn and sailed through the intersection, made a hard left. Tina removed a cigarette, turned it over and put it back in the pack facing up for luck. As I eased off the gas and slid to a stop in front of Tina’s building, a razz and a whoop sounded behind my truck. Tina – again – opened the door before I stopped the truck. Another razz and whoop. I saw swirling red and blue lights in my rearview mirror. Tina left her door cracked open and settled back into her seat. She kept one foot propped on the door. “Shit,” she said.

“Fuck,” I said. “The U-turn.”

Tina, who had never heard me curse, cracked a quick grin that faded when the cop’s form appeared at my window. He held his hand over his holstered gun. I rolled down my window and looked up at him, his young face edged with baby fat, his sandy hair stiff with gel, carefully arranged, neat. His partner stood with a wide stance behind him and trained his unblinking eyes on me. He, too, hovered his hand over his gun.

“Know why I pulled you over?”

I shook my head.

Tina tossed her cigarette pack onto the dash, melted back into her seat and closed her eyes. Cars slowed as they passed us. The heat shimmered off the pavement in rainbow waves.

To me, the cop said, “License and registration.”

I pulled my license out of my wallet, fumbled through my glove box for the registration. Jacked up by adrenaline, anxiety, hunger, dismay, caffeine, my usual trembles escalated into a full-on quake. My hand bobbled as I handed my documents to the cop.

“Know why I pulled you over?” The cop asked me again.

“No.”

“You didn’t use your turn signal at the intersection,” he said. “You know that? That’s why I stopped you.” His hand still floated over his gun. “Why are you shaking? Nervous?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why you nervous?”

So it wasn’t the U-turn? I shrugged at him, wondering what this guy’s game was, what he was playing at, what answer he had expected.

He pointed at Tina. “ID.”

Tina opened her eyes. “I don’t have one,” she said. It was true. She had lost her ID, left it on the city bus weeks ago and tried to finagle money from my work’s petty cash to get another. My boss had told her no. All she had was her food stamp card, which she fished out of her purse – it was free-floating in a stew of crumpled dollar bills and empty cigarette packs. She reached over me toward the window and handed the card to him.

“I said ID,” the cop said.

Tina, calm and steady, said, “That’s all I got.” She didn’t look at the cop, but past him. She folded her steady hands on her lap.

“Why are you shaking?” the cop said to me. “You got something to be nervous about?” He bent at the waist, peered into my window. “What am I going to find in here?”

He scanned the filthy interior. He struck me as ultra-neat, his tidy hair untouched by the humidity, the fresh powder smell of his aftershave, his skin unblemished. He seemed like the kind of guy who ironed his jeans and made his bed every morning, the kind who saw pathology in clutter, who considered disorganization an unforgiveable character flaw. He narrowed his eyes as if he could see past my truck and into my house – had a direct line of sight to the dirty dishes piled in my kitchen sink, the mildew in my bathtub, the tumbleweeds of dust drifting across my hardwood floor when the air conditioner kicked on. Maybe he could glimpse my thoughts, my memories bare and exposed, my history, my mistakes, the tangled trajectories of all my bad choices.

Tina began humming a quiet, generic tune. I imagined she was, by now, well-versed in this kind of intrusion, her mind, home and history subject to the kind of search and seizure wrought upon her by people like me. Hospitalizations, arrests, substance use, children taken by the state, all of it exposed like an opened cadaver. Maybe she could see inside me, too, right into the white space of my depression. She understood, I realized, how it felt to dwell there.

The cop repeated himself. “What am I going to find in here?”

“I don’t know, junk, crap, trash.” I felt the hot acid of my anger slip through my clenched teeth. Tina placed her hand on my knee. She pushed her cool, thin fingers into my skin. She looked at me through the side of her eye, shook her head ‘no,’ mouthed the word ‘don’t.’

Another cop car, its sirens wailing, pulled up behind the first car. Two more cops got out. The baby-faced cop turned, lifted his chin in greeting, turned to say something to them.

“Jesus Christ,” Tina muttered, rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry,” she said to me, like she knew this would all end, like we had just gotten caught in a passing cloudburst. She leaned back. “Stay cool. This’ll be over soon,” she said, her hand still resting on my leg.

It felt odd, her touch, the unholy comfort of it – we “workers” had been taught not to develop personal relationships with clients, to maintain a physical and psychic distance from them, to keep physical touch limited to a handshake or a brief hug. I had, in fact, shied away from most forms of touch in my regular life as well, cringed when someone patted my shoulder or brushed by me in a crowd. Tina’s hand sat both light and heavy on my leg, easy and strong, almost electric.

The cop turned to face us again. “What’s back there?” He moved closer, stopped just short of poking his entire head through my window. “Why you nervous? What’s in here?” The three cops stood behind him like a bored firing squad.

“What am I gonna find on your record?” He asked.

“A ticket. From twenty years ago.” It was true. I lived a desperately quiet life.

“No, really. I’m gonna find something. What am I gonna find?”

“One ticket.”

“You got drugs in here?” The cop said. I didn’t drink alcohol – any little drop of it went straight to my head, made me sick. One glass of wine will send me bowing to the porcelain god. Weed did nothing but make me sleepy. The Percocet I had gotten from a long-ago surgery made me stupid. I had bottle of Prozac in my center console, legitimate, with a prescription. I pictured myself getting dragged out of the truck, getting thrown against the side, handcuffed, trying to explain it.

“I was parked by that store.” The cop said to me now, turning and gesturing at the intersection. “I saw those men standing in front of that store. I saw you talking to them.” I remembered that group of men I had seen earlier, those rangy men standing tight in their own private conference, the ones minding their own business, the ones who didn’t look up when I parked near the store, the men who didn’t flinch when Tina opened the store’s door right next to them. They’d had no interest in us.

“I didn’t talk to them,” I said.

“I saw you. You said something to them.”

“I didn’t.”

“They’re known drug offenders, those men. You know that? Yeah, you know that. What did they say to you? You got drugs in here?”

I felt so tired and hot sitting with Tina in front of that cop. I sat stiff, said nothing, leaned my head back and shut my eyes like Tina. This cop, he wanted me to relent, to confess, admit to some phantom pharmaceutical transgression.

I’d had enough. You want to search my truck, tear it inside out? Maybe you’ll find a stray Prozac in that space between my seat and the center console, the area I called the black hole because I was always dropping crap down there and couldn’t fit my hand in to retrieve it. Go ahead, officer, impale me with the ice pick of your judgement. But Tina’s hand, still on my leg – I felt the weight of it, the covalent-bond electricity of it. I realized that I owed him nothing, and so I gave him nothing. I said nothing.

The cop turned his gaze from me to Tina. “You got a record?”

“I’ve been clean ten years,” she said, shrugging. I’m clean, straight.” It was true. The methadone clinic tested her daily, would have called me bitching if she came up dirty. I saw, for the first time, this side of Tina, this ability to shrug off shit luck and bad circumstances, just keep going, keep moving, carry on with the business of survival. I pictured her hauling herself across town to the methadone clinic every day, sometimes hitching a ride, sometimes walking, no matter the weather.

The cop let out a snigger. “Yeah, we’ll see about that,” he said. He went back to his car, leaving his cohorts on the street outside my truck. They relaxed their hands from their guns, huddled together into a chit-chatty clique.

Tina exhaled. “What a dick.”

“Seriously,” I said. “A little-dick dick. It’s probably a useless nub.”

Tina snickered. “Nub,” she said. “I like that. Nub.”

That word, nub, it filled me with this lightness, the funny sound of it, like when you say a word over and over until it doesn’t even sound familiar anymore. I let out this carbonated laugh, felt myself get lighter, felt like I was almost floating above my seat, like only the truck’s ceiling stood between me and a lilting drift into the stratosphere. Tina took her hand off my knee. She looked impassive, her face relaxed. Her hand, which she had removed from my knee, rested lax on her lap. She looked ready to abide whatever the cop wrought upon us.

The cop strode back, his mouth a thin slash of a line. He handed us our documents. And then, improbably, this: He let us go. He waved us off, no explanation, just an admonition about using my signal – still nothing about the U-turn. I imagined his disappointment, finding our records and seeing nothing but wide swaths of blank space. Maybe he called his sergeant hoping to find some angle, some way to worm his way into my truck and dig for the buried treasure, those golden, mythical narcotics. I pictured that conversation, his pleas a series of “buts” ending with one resolute “no” from his boss. Tina patted my knee and stuffed her food stamp card back in her purse. The cops returned to their cars, turned off their lights and pulled away.

“See?” she said. “It’s fine, we’re okay.” She opened her door, unfolded herself from the car, clambered up the uneven, broken brick walkway and inside her apartment building, back to her dog Luna, back to life, because her work here was done.

House of Men, House of Women

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Fiction.

He was a boy and he lived in a house of men, or the house of boys, as his grandmother called it. He was transported between the two houses, his dad’s father’s house and his mom’s mother’s house because he wasn’t old enough to ride his bike to and from yet.

His grandpa “Pop” was Tom, and he taught college students economics, which wasn’t on his own school schedule, but math was on there, and Pop said it was like math, plus how people worked. His dad was Thomas, and he was an engineer, which had to do with math plus machines. The house of the house of men was large and had a decent-sized backyard.

Grandma and mom’s house was smaller and smelled like banana bread usually, unless she cooked something else and then it smelled like that for a bit before going back to banana bread. It was good banana bread, but you had to specifically request chocolate chips, otherwise you were going to get just plain banana bread.

The house of men was always cleanest on Tuesdays because that was when Lola came. She mopped and she vacuumed, and she adjusted the china so that it was just right. That was the only time the china was touched, so Tommy wasn’t sure why it needed to be adjusted. In the house of men, they often ate takeout on paper plates with plastic forks that all went into the garbage right after, which was nice because then there was no disruption to their TV watching.

They were outside on a warm fall night and Tommy knew he wouldn’t be sent to bed on time because there was no clock outside, and both their phones were inside, charging. Dad had his laptop with football on, and Pop was looking wistfully out into the distance, glancing at the game whenever he took a swig of beer. They were finishing dinner of take-out barbecue when Dad asked Pop about Thanksgiving. Pop was non-committal because he was sad. No Angie.

“But we’ll be here, and I was wondering what we should have for dinner.”

“I’m supposed to ask everyone what they’re thankful for – Mrs. Stanton said so,” interjected Tommy.

“I’m thankful for you buddy! And that you’ll be with us on Thanksgiving” said Dad in his Dad voice, ruffling Tommy’s hair. “What are you thankful for Tommy?”

Dad had a “Dad” voice for Tommy and sometimes Pop, and a regular voice for most other people and the TV when football was on. Both were good voices. Pop just had one voice, and Tommy liked that too.

“Ummm my parents and my grandparents and food and education and-“

“Is that what your teacher told you say,” said Pop wryly. “I’LL tell you what you should be thankful for kid – private property rights!”

“Private – what?”

“Private. Property. Rights. They’re the most important thing we have. Without them we couldn’t have an economy, we couldn’t build anything, we wouldn’t own anything! Anyone could just come to our house and say that it was theirs!”

“Ok, I’m thankful for private property rights. Because I like our yard and I like making fires,” said Tommy.

“And private property rights aren’t just about land – your stuff, your ideas are your property too,” said Pop, leaning in and putting down his beer so he could talk with both hands.

“Mrs. Stanton says we’re supposed to share our stuff with people.” said Tommy.

“WELL,” said Pop, “how would she like it if I just borrowed her car sometime? Yeah, I don’t think so. Also, if everyone just gave everything away all the time, it wouldn’t be worth anything. And then no one would ever bother making stuff again because they have no INCENTIVE, no INCENTIVE to work or invest their resources.”

Tommy just listened. He liked when Pop waved his arms around and talked loud like this.

“You tell the kids in school to be thankful for private property rights.” Said Pop, “No one can just take their stuff or just come into their house.”

Tommy nodded.

“I think it’s time for bed Professor,” said Dad in his Dad voice.

The house of men was done for the night. And they all went to bed with dreams of private property rights dancing in their heads.

The next morning Tommy went to school with his usual things packed since he was going to the house of women afterwards. And so he did, and grandma was there to greet him as soon as he stepped off the bus.

“It’s my Tommy!” She said, taking his backpack off his shoulders and carrying it over her arm after she hugged him.

“How was school?”

“Good”

“What did you eat for lunch?”

“A sandwich”

“What kind of sandwich”

“Ham”

“Just ham? Did you eat enough? Are you hungry? Are you tired, do you want to nap?”

“No”

“No not hungry? What about a nap?”

“No”

“No? Ok, let me know if you want a snack later.”

“Okay”

The questions stopped briefly as they walked inside and Tommy took off his shoes, because that what was you did in the house of women.

The house of women had many things in it that could break, so running space was limited. There were plates not used for eating, dolls not used for playing, and vases not used for flowers.

But there were also things you could touch, like a kaleidoscope and snow globes. There was always food offered to you and usually more cooking in the oven for later. Mom lived there with Grandma, who was usually home. Mom wasn’t there a lot because her job was to fly on planes but was almost always there when he was there. There were also lots of questions in the house of women – about how school was, and how Dad and Pop are, and how things are at their house, and if he washed his hands, and what the teacher said, and how he felt about all of these things, and if he felt sad about it or mad about it, and what he was looking forward to that week. Often, he did not know the answers or thought he got the answer wrong. Since there were so many questions in the house of women he preferred to go on weekends and not right after school, since that was all questions too.

He was doing his homework when Grandma asked if he’d like a snack, and if he’d like chips, and if he’d like potato or tortilla, and if he’d like something to drink with that and if he’d like milk or water and how his homework was going. He was brought potato chips and water and continued with his subtraction problems.

Once Mom came home, they would all sit together at the table for dinner. There was never TV during dinner at the house of women. Tommy sometimes missed TV, but Mom and Grandma sat across from each other so watching them was a bit like watching a show. That night was about Stephanie Winder who had grown up in the neighborhood and moved away and was now back with a family in tow, because Seattle was probably too expensive and her parents will need help in a few years, or at least her dad will, and the mother isn’t all there you know. After covering the news of the day, they would turn towards him and begin the interview.

“Did you finish your homework?” Asked Mom.

“Yep”

“Any tests or projects coming up?”

“I have to make a diorama.”

“A diorama? Of what?”

“Something from Alice in Wonderland.”

“Oh ok. We’ll figure out what stuff to get for it. Unless you’re already working on it at Dad’s?”

“Nope”

“Ok so he hasn’t bought anything for it?”

“No”

“Okay, well make a list of supplies.” Said Mom, very business-like.

Back at the house of men, Tommy was outside gathering sticks for a fire and came in to ask Pop when they could start it.

“Hi Tommy,” said Pop without getting up.

“Hi Pop!”

“Hey, I thought of something today – I don’t know what made me think of it – maybe it was that Whittaker Chambers documentary – anyway, here’s what you do if you get in trouble at school and they make you call your parents – this is what I did, and it worked like a charm. So what happens is, I have to go into the principal’s office to make a phone call to my mother because I got in trouble –“

“What did you do?”

“Oh, I don’t actually remember. Something. Probably pulled a girl’s hair. But anyway, I was-”

“Mrs. Stanton says you can’t do that – you need consent before touching people.”

“Yeah well, we didn’t have consent when I was growing up – and if a girl consents to you pulling her hair, watch out for her – don’t get serious with her, she’s crazy. Anyway, I was in school, and I got in trouble, and they told me I had to call my mom and tell her what I did. Me and another guy – Joey – Joey…Trupiano, short guy. So, Joey goes before me, and his mother picks up the phone and really gives it to him. Then it was my turn, so I dial our house, but no one answers. Well, I thought of this in the moment – the teacher was watching me and listening to me, but she couldn’t hear what was going on on the other side of the call. So, I pretended like my mother had picked up the phone and I was talking to her. I said what I did and that I was in trouble, and then I just made sure to pause long enough and say “yes mom” and “sorry” and it was a very convincing performance! I got away with it!”

Tommy was impressed. “But,” he said, “now we have voicemail, and if I called Mom and she didn’t answer it would go to voicemail, and then she would listen to the voicemail, so it probably wouldn’t work.”

“Damn, you kids have it tough. Even your dad could have gotten away with it on our landline if he got back fast enough to erase the message. I guess it would be hard to get ahold of your mom’s cell before she would see the voicemail,” said Tom with inquisitiveness.

They both continued assessing the problem and possible solutions in silence for some time.

Later that week Tommy was at the house of women waiting for Dad to pick him up for soccer practice. He glanced the clock in the kitchen to make sure he was ready, but not so often or so obviously that Grandma or Mom would notice and think he couldn’t wait to leave. This was especially important to avoid before being taken away for the entire weekend. It was crucial to get it just right – to be ready to go and to go without any perceived hesitation or worry, but to also not speed too fast towards the door. Mom could not be given a reason to say Tommy didn’t want to go with Dad, but also couldn’t have hurt feelings over him wanting to leave. It was best to simply happen to be near the door when Dad rang the doorbell.

But the doorbell didn’t ring. And this was a PROBLEM because now Tommy would be LATE for soccer practice. Tommy tried to explain to Mom that he wouldn’t be late yet, not yet, but she had other ideas.

“Let’s call him,” Mom said, whipping out her phone and handing it to Tommy, who was familiar with this routine.

“What.” Said Thomas in his regular voice.

“Hi Dad, it’s Tommy.”

“Oh hey Buddy, sorry, I’ll be there in 2 minutes,” said Dad in an extra Dad voice.

“Ok” said Tommy

“It’s NOT OK,” said Mom sharply, “tell him he’s making you late to soccer practice!”

No way out.

Then Dad said, “I’m gonna go buddy, because I’m driving – I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Three beeps ending the call. Tommy almost took the phone away from his ear but then paused. It would work, he thought, as long as Mom didn’t get too close to the phone and see.

“You’re making me late to soccer practice.” He paused, 4 Mississippis. “ok” pause 1 Mississippis, “Ok bye.” He handed the phone back to Mom who looked pleased. He almost smiled but kept it inside of himself. He was smart and wanted to tell Pop all about it.

His only fear was that Mom would notice what time her phone said the call ended and realize. They noticed everything in the house of women. Scrapes, scratches, undone buttons and shoelaces, frowns, and even spilled water, which is almost invisible.

There was no Grandma in the house of men, just like there was no Pop in the house of women. Both had died before he was born. Pop talked about when she won big at poker in Vegas, and when they visited Japan together and spoke about her softly to Dad late at night sometimes and usually on Christmas. There had been another woman in his life – or still in his life – Angie. Pop and Angie had been married before Tommy was born, but also split up, like Mom and Dad. Tommy only remembered one Thanksgiving with her there. There were lots of people and lots of food. This was before it had become the house of men, because she was usually there. She still stopped in and saw Pop, but not as much as he wanted. Dad said to just call her Angie.

“Angie, come on, please – I really want you to come…but why can’t you?…No, I won’t do that again, I promise…well, just think about it, please?”

There was a pause and then Pop defeatedly said “Okay, goodbye then.”

Pop put his hand over his face and then ran it through his hair, wiping off some of his look before speaking to Tommy.

“I don’t understand women!” He exclaimed, stuffing the phone back in his pocket.

Tommy thought this made sense. Pop and Grandma were different species. Same Kingdom, phylum, class, and genus, but different families and surely species.

Later that night Tommy woke up slowly to a song outside.

Ooo baby, I love your way, everyday,

He lay in bed, listening to a voice he knew but was different. Curiosity drew him out of sleepiness, and he went to the window. In the dark, Pop was singing out in the yard, pacing around in unpredictable patterns, holding his phone up to his mouth.

Shadows grow long before my eyes,

And they’re moving across the page,

Suddenly day turns into niiiiight,

Far away, from the city

But don’t, hesitate

Because your love just something somethiiiiing..

Ooh Angie, I love your way, everyday

Wanna tell you I love your way, everyday,

This went on until Dad came running out in his underwear and ushered Pop inside. He hadn’t really sounded bad, Tommy thought. That was probably a voicemail Pop actually wanted heard.

A few nights later at the house of women, Mom had just flown in and was having a late dinner. Tommy was playing on the iPad in the next room, intent upon reaching the next level of Flying Pickle Circus, but also listening to the dialogue because it was about Mom’s work, which was usually exciting.

Tonight’s dialogue was focused on people.

“He’s the worst pilot – not at flying I mean, just terrible with people. ‘Sorry you feel that way,’ he says to me and Mona, so rude.”

“But you’re supposed to look inside the first aid kit before a flight!

“Exactly, and he doesn’t listen when we tell him the protocol has changed. Says he has to “check on that”. So I told him that it’s not just seeing if the first aid kit is there, we have to go through everything in it and check off the list – and I would know because I’ve been doing this for eight years. And then he says, “You’re not going to be doing it a day longer if you don’t announce take-off in the next five minutes.”

“Terrible,” said Grandma, shaking her head.

“And later when he confirms that I AM right, he can’t even admit it, he says, “’sorry I was direct with you, I was just trying to get us moving.’” Said Mom, slowing down and speaking each word individually when she got to the pilot’s line.

“Men and their fake apologies. ‘Sorry you feel that way.’ How about, sorry I’m constantly a jerk.” said Mom, snorting and getting up.

Tommy wondered what the pilot was doing right now and he if knew he was the center of tonight’s dinner theatre. He often thought about being a pilot, with Mom up in the sky, making the announcements about when they would land. Perhaps he wouldn’t be a pilot now.

Mom came over and switched into her Mom voice.

“Hi honey, how was school?”

“Good”

“Good, any tests?”

“Just vocab.”

“Okay, what about the diorama? What do you need for that?

“A shoe box”

“Wait – I thought Dad already gave you one?”

“It was the wrong size.”

Mom made a sound that clearly conveyed annoyance.

“He can’t even give you the right box!”

“I didn’t know how big it was supposed to be,” Tommy said quickly.

“Did the teacher tell you?”

“Yeah, but I forgot.”

“Okay well…so the teacher told you to get another box?”

“Yeah.”

“In front of everyone?”

“ummm…yes?” Said Tommy, trying to think of how to describe the scene.

“How did that make you feel? Was it a hard day?”

He thought hard about whether it was a hard day, not wanting to get the answer wrong. Sometimes saying something was bad was bad, but sometimes it was good, and it was hard to know the difference.

“I don’t know…I guess I felt like umm…I brought the wrong thing.”

“Well, that’s not a feeling, but ok. I’ll make sure you have the right box.”

The problem was fixed, and the questions were over, and Tommy smiled at Mom.

Back at the house of men, Tommy was overhearing more phone calls.

“Angie, listen – ok stop for a minute – just listen, I’m sorry, ok? You know I wouldn’t drink like that at a holiday with people over, I mean come on! Do you really think – no, come on Angie don’t hang up, you don’t have to get so worked up over this, it was just a voicemail – hello? Hello? Angie! Hello?”

Pop cursed and Tommy heard a thud which was probably him slamming his iPhone down on the countertop.

It was quiet for a minute, and then Pop arrived with a soft stomp in the living room where Tommy was sitting at the table, pretending to do his homework.

“Women are just – I don’t know! Everything has to be such a big deal with them. You know what’s a big deal? Our country being a trillion dollars in debt, or China stealing our intellectual property or –“

“Don’t say a fake apology,” said Tommy.

“A what?”

“A fake apology. It’s when you…when you say sorry that they feel a way instead of saying sorry for what you did.”

“So you give advice on women now?”

Tommy shrugged.

“Well, I guess you’re around them more than I am these days,” said Pop, looking down at his hands.

After a pause Pop looked back up at Tommy. “You’re a chameleon, you know that?”

“A what?” Said Tommy, wondering if Pop was on the sauce again, as Grandma would say.

“A chameleon. You change with your surrounds. Chameleons – they’re kinda like lizards – they can make themselves look like their surroundings so predators can’t find them. They can go from green to purple to orange. Survival.”

Yes, he thought, he had been playing a chameleon all along, and now he had a name for it that he would think but not say.

The diorama was due in two days, as Tommy knew, and Mom knew, and Dad also knew. Dad had promised to fix the tree that the Cheshire cat would sit in. And he had! Tommy smiled upon seeing it.He had gathered the twigs and leaves and stayed up past his bedtime with Dad, trying to fashion a miniature tree out of these parts. But the glue wasn’t sticking no matter how long they held the pieces together. But Dad had done it. He showed Tommy the mess of wires and strings hidden by the leaves, explaining the principles of suspension.

“And here’s where the cat will sit – on this flat part of the branch,” said Dad, showing him a flattened ledge. Tommy wanted to touch everything on the tree and move away the leaves to see every detail, but didn’t want it to break.

Against the background Tommy had drawn, it all looked better than he ever could have imagined. The real tree stood out among the two-dimensional ones he had colored, with spotted mushrooms here and there as well.

Pop appeared with the deck of cards.

“Now you’re sure you don’t want to do that part with the caterpillar smoking the pipe? Because I have-“

“No you don’t Dad, you don’t have anything,” said Thomas firmly.

“Ok you need the queen too? Queen, queen, where is she? Yeah, that broad’s always bossing the king around, always looking over his shoulder if I remember correctly.”

“She’s always yelling ‘off with their heads!’” said Tommy excitedly, waiting for Pop to pull out the final piece of the puzzle from the deck like a magician.

The next day at the house of women, it was officially time to finish the diorama. Mom handed him an old plastic doll with blonde hair in a blue dress and a tiny white apron she had sewn herself. Tommy had offered to help with the sewing, but Grandma was too worried about him sticking himself with the needle. This Alice looked much better than he had anticipated, her hair was even tied back with the smallest blue ribbon he had ever seen.

“And look at your backdrop – You even have the tiny mushrooms on here – and one big one – the one the Caterpillar sits on?”

“Yep!”

“What great attention to detail!” Said Mom with a smile. “Ok who else do we need?”

“The Cheshire cat!” he said excitedly. “He goes on this branch – Dad made it flat, so he won’t roll off.”

“Oh, look at that,” said Mom inspecting the tree’s special branch closely. “This is really good actually, I wonder how he did that,” she said seemingly to herself.

“Wires and suspension,” said Tommy, looking excitedly at Grandma who had come over with an orange cat figurine. He was going to get to draw a smile on it, a thing that seemed so forbidden, he wouldn’t believe it until he had the marker in his hand.

But true to her word, Grandma handed it over. Carefully, carefully he extended out the whiskers on either side into a smile. Not a smile that showed teeth, but a smile nonetheless. The women praised his handiwork. And with Tommy ceremoniously placing the cat on the branch, it was complete – Alice playing croquet with the Cheshire cat, King, and Queen. Not really playing, but holding her mallet, looking at the cat, a buffer between it and the king, and the king, a buffer between her and the queen.

This thing that had come together, that he would present in class, was its own house, his small piece of property, carried carefully by him from home to home, then home to school and home again. He would just have to decide which house to keep it at. He couldn’t bring it back and forth all the time, it was too fragile.

Engorged

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Poetry.

Tart orange juice dribbles down,
it slips between my open lips
searching for a place to rest
between coffee and toothpaste.

Such cursive undulation
of damp drops are impeded
by a sleeve, where wandering thought
of prosciutto forms its nest.

Mellifluous screams / defiant
jazz tickles ear folds with hunger –
hunger. Wild carrots, curling
parsley, honey’s sweet sting,

each flirtation the mouth tastes
ripe and rotten, mental collapse,
crude like sprouting potatoes.
I tuck a napkin under my thigh.

Hunger, my melted will, my aching
agony erupts, help me –  help wipe
my mouth, my tongue, my snot, and 
tears. I find no rest in this place.

Smoke

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Poetry.

Even the night is like day.
Revelation. Crickets scratch
greasy strings. Hide and seek
in leaves spotted by a rot 
within as if the North Star
had any say down here. 
Polaris freezes light in vision
like ice crystals in windows
some too wintry morning.
Alter ego to the coloration
in a tobacco field, green parade
of day, when it’s a field
I’m not working. Bob had his
Stanley’s Crow Repellent. Saves
replanting. I had tin pie pans.
I had two rows and dirty arms
all the time. In and out of 
the house without a child.
The poet laureate of Zirconia
grew up around a scarecrow
noisemaker, something about 
a contraption of rusty gears
from an abandoned still staked
tight enough to screech,
squeak and squeal as if machines
were dying somewhere out
in a field steep as the garden
bottom where I set my rows
until their green blaze had
filled my mind with more 
than the memory of them.
Pinch succors. Case in. These
bat-like leaves curing,
dark-fleshed woodshed monsters 
hanging from tin roof rafters
as night covered like a cloak
where I, on the porch, lit
a burley leaf, green-pondering
the feeling, flame and smoke.

A Brief Career of Fire

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Poetry.

A daughter watches as her father
loads stovewood on a kind of February
day that itches for renunciating spring
as winter breaks and enters like a sting.
Dad rolls down his frame at his back.
His little girl standing by, watches
forming her thoughts. He lets slip
Lemme see, a thought with breathy lip
when considering stovewood as judge
of something. Stove door opens
coal warms his Lemme see echoing.
There might be something happening
to let him fit more pieces to pack it.
Some assurance. Hope in movements
after such a slight phrase for ancient
ritual—springhope that lags and fades
inside the chest. The cold won’t tire.
It urges on a brief career of fire.