Here's the winner in Middlebury Magazine's Fourth Annual Fiction Contest
By Caitlin Prentice ’05
Illustrations by Carmen Segovia
The best part about Christmas is the breathing. At the Candlelit Service, at the very end, when you’ve already sung all three verses of “Silent Night” and the reverend signals to do it one more time but this time without words and everyone hums in the yellow, flickering light. And by some beautiful biological coincidence, everyone needs to breathe at the same time. To pause, at exactly the same moment and for only one moment, from humming. To inhale, to draw in, to suck quickly and deeply in unison. In that moment, in that breath, everything is peace and calm and yet somehow on edge, teeming with possibility. In that breath, anything can happen.
After the breathing, things returned to Northwest Lower Michigan, Earth. Adults blew out their candles, sending up sensible quivers of smoke. Restless children licked their thumbs and forefingers and sizzled the wick between them, defying the rules of fire and their parents’ frowning eyes. Calmer children left their candles lit, mesmerized even as the fluorescent tube bulbs twitched on above, and they stared straight into their flames, quietly pressing the soft wax near the top into a more perfect taper. I plucked a strand of hair from the wisp behind my ear and dangled it closer and closer to the flame until suddenly it blackened and shriveled, recoiling upwards like a retractable tape measure.
“Mina.” Barbie bent to get the coats from under the pew. “Mina, stop that.” Barbie was my dear old mother. I stopped. We went for “Coffee and Conversation” in the basement. I was too old to sit under the folding tables and slurp hot cocoa sludge through red plastic coffee stirrers, but too young to be doing what I was doing, which was listening to Edna Korb and Elvira DeLorme discuss the advantages and disadvantages of wet pet food.
“Fancy Feast saved my Josephine’s life,” said Edna, placing her hand on my shoulder to emphasize the point. “She just didn’t have a stomach for the dry anymore.” Edna had a bald spot on the back of her head that only the rest of the world could see.
“But dry is better for the teeth,” said Elvira. She touched my other shoulder. “Since we switched to dry, we haven’t had nearly so much build-up.” By “we” Elvira meant Chadwick, her Great Dane. Did old people’s hands feel as fragile on their own bodies as they felt when they touched mine?
“Hello there, Barb,” said Edna.
Barbie tucked her head into the conversation.
Finally. Relief. No, she wasn’t staying. Just tucking.
“Have you two heard Mina’s big news?” said Barbie. Dropped it at our conversation’s feet like a dog with a squirrel for its master. Ducked away to refill her coffee. Congratulated herself on the ability to brag without actually being present, thereby retaining a socially acceptable level of modesty.
I didn’t wait for them to ask.
“I won an award for some photos. It’s not that big really. Just within the university.”
Here came the hands again, so frail, veins swelling. Oh, that’s wonderful honey just can’t believe how old you’re getting. Smile, nod, change of subject. Beyond the old women’s flossy hair, a father held his wide-eyed baby up to a potted poinsettia until the petals grazed her cheek.
* * *
Driving into town for Christmas dinner the next day I tried to breathe with the carolers on the radio.
“O, holy night,” (breath) “the stars are brightly shi-ning,” (breath) “It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth.”
Just wasn’t the same without the candles. Dry snow swirled in a hundred miniature hurricanes in front of the tires. Sky ridiculously cold and blue. Perfect rows of corn stalk stubs studding the white, silent fields.
I was going for dinner at my dad’s new girlfriend’s house. New as in they’d been seeing each other for months but I still hadn’t met her. New as in she had two young children, a boy and a girl still in elementary school, and my dad never dated people with kids. New as in Barbie was making me stop at Meijer on the way and pick up either:
A. A nice loaf of bread
B. Sparkling juice
C. Chocolate for the kids
or
D. Anything else that would make a good impression.
Even though they said not to bring anything.
Barbie stayed home, but not home alone. Our neighbor, Ellen Jameson, was coming to dinner. Ellen’s husband Walter died of cancer in October. I shot photos of him dying. Not the actual moment but the days before, when he stopped talking and just stared us all in the eyes and smiled. I came home for the weekend to shoot those photos. I drove back to school Sunday night. Walter died on Tuesday. I won an award for the photos. Apparently, they “captured an elusive beauty rarely associated with the realm of the deathbed.” Lately I couldn’t look at them without feeling nauseous. Ellen hadn’t seen them. So far, we had only talked about the low snowfall this year.
The Meijer parking lot was surprisingly full. Who goes grocery shopping on Christmas Day? I backed into a spot, a little too fast, maybe. An older woman in a matching pink beret and scarf sat waiting in the passenger seat of the car next to mine, lips pursed in disapproval.
“Fall on your knees!”
Come on, lady.
“O, hear,” (breath) “the angels’ voices.”
Breathe with me.
“O, night,” (breath) “divine.”
I turned off the radio.
“O, night,” (breath) “when Christ was born.”
I shut the car door a little too forcefully (it tends towards slamming). The pink beret-scarf woman made me suddenly and inexplicably pleased with the world. I waltz-skip-jumped across the frozen asphalt. At the entrance, the automatic doors slid open before me like the Red Sea for Moses, and I resisted the urge to throw my arms out wide and high and biblical at the magnificent display of clementine oranges that appeared on the other side. I bought E. All of the above. Sourdough baguette, sparkling grape juice, mini chocolate Santas. The woman at the checkout wore earrings like Christmas light bulbs that really lit up. How cheesy. How completely and utterly cheesy and wonderful and perfect.
“Happy holidays,” she said.
“I like your earrings,” I said.
Outside, the dirty ridges of plowed snow at the edge of the parking lot glowed pink like a mountain range in the setting sun.
* * *
“Mina, you remember Cheryl?” Remember? I’ve never seen her before in my life, Dad.
“And this is Faith.” Eight or nine, slippery blond hair and a red velvet dress worn special for this performance. A younger boy in Spiderman pajamas hovered behind.
“And Roger.” Roger? Faith and Roger?
I shook Roger’s hand first.
“Pleased to meet you, sir.”
Then Faith’s.
“Lovely dress.”
Then Cheryl’s.
“Hi.”
Dinner would be ready in just a few. I remembered the Meijer bag in the car but suddenly E. All of the above seemed excessive. We moved to the kitchen. It was one of these deals with the living room attached, a tongue of countertop and the border between linoleum and carpet dividing one big room into two. Dad and Cheryl returned to chopping and pouring and mixing at the counter. Faith and Roger returned to a bucket of Legos in front of the sofa. I stood in the middle, picking at the metal strip that divided linoleum and carpet with my stocking foot.
“So, Mina.” Cheryl grated a carrot over a salad bowl. “We hear you’re quite the blossoming artist.” I shrugged. Settled on carpet. Approached the Lego zone.
“Is that a castle?” I said. Faith nodded.
“It’s a magic castle,” said Roger. “And there’s two towers and a dungeon and a dragon lives down there.”
“Two dragons,” said Faith. “Or three.”
I sprawled out on the carpet and began to pick through the bucket, taking stock. Plastic blocks against plastic blocks chinked and pinged and tinkled as only Legos do.
“Can I have a six-dot?” said Faith. I fished a bit, handed her one.
“I need a two,” said Roger. I flicked it into his lap.
“Four, please,” said Faith. “Blue.” This was good. We had a system.
“Tell us about your photographs, Mina,” said Dad. “Your mother says they’re stunning.” Jesus. Jesus Christ on a bike. Was there something wrong with just playing Legos right now? Did I have to keep one foot on the linoleum?
“Oh. They’re of Walter Jameson. Our neighbor.” Half dead, Dad. Walter Jameson sucking up his last air. Shallow, quavering, half-dead breaths. Eyes rolling slowly towards the window because it took too much effort to turn his head. All the while, a sweet, rotten stench that lingered like frost in a ditch on a sunny November afternoon. Stunning, Dad, just stunning.
“Well, you’ll have to show them to us sometime, eh?” said Dad. He bent and disappeared behind the counter to check the turkey. Cheryl smiled.
“I’d love to see them,” she said.
“Is that a hamster?” I said. A five-gallon aquarium lined with cedar chips and newspaper shavings sat on the floor next to the fireplace. Something small and brown and furry made the wire wheel in the middle spin. I’d never actually seen a hamster use a hamster wheel before.
“Petey,” said Roger.
“He’s a gerbil,” said Faith.
I crawled over to the aquarium. I’d always wanted a pet rodent. The powdery food tablets and wire wheel and special water bottle with the drip-drip end. But Barbie said it wasn’t fair. Not to the rodent (sitting in a cage all day and night). Not to me. (Rodents weren’t really pets. Try to pet them and you’d get bitten.)
Petey paused from his exercise.
“And what a fine specimen of his species he is,” I said in my best snooty voice. Roger giggled. “Petey, you are the finest hamster . . .”
“Gerbil,” said Faith.
“The finest gerbil to grace us with your presence on this planet we call Ear—”
Petey tipped over. Fell. Landed heavily in the newspaper shreds, and they billowed briefly in the air like dust clouds above a lassoed steer under the bare white lights of a rodeo ring. Faith gasped. Petey went into convulsions.
“Mom. Mom.” Faith’s voice escalated to a scream. “Mom! Petey!”
Roger began to whimper in the way young children do when they sense disaster in the air but don’t really understand yet what’s hit them. Cheryl came running from the kitchen.
“It’s OK, it’s OK.” The voice that adults use when things obviously are not OK. Petey gave a final twitch and lay small and still and dead in the middle of the cage. A newspaper shred by his tail had a set of eyes along its narrow strip, and they stared back at us. Torn from the rest of the face, they could have belonged to the president or the pope or a tsunami survivor in Thailand. Michael Jackson had been in the news a lot recently.
“Noooo.” Faith was sobbing, hysterical, immediately aware of the significance of the event. “Petey, oh, Petey.”
Roger crumpled to the floor and wailed into the carpet, thumping it softly with his fist. This wasn’t good. This was against all the rules.
I slowly backed away from the aquarium, onto the linoleum, past Dad hovering awkwardly there, spatula silently gesturing midair.
“I forgot something in the car,” I said. Turned and sped through the entryway, pulling on boots and jacket midstep. Opened the front door, eased it shut behind me.
Outside it was almost dark and colder than when I arrived, and the first breaths stung my nostrils and throat, and I blew warm air up into them from my living pink gut to avoid coughing. It was either twilight or dusk. Twilight has connotations of sprinklers and porch swings and quiet conversations as the streetlights come on at the end of a loud, hot summer day. It must have been dusk. Spindly bare tree branches silhouetted against the fading blue of the evening’s last light, snow-muffled silence, and each step a jarring crunch. Crunches in rhythm building up a wall around me and suddenly that was all that really mattered. Left, right. Crunch, crunch. Left, right. Crunch, crunch.
I walked to the beach. Cheryl’s house was just a few blocks south of the bay and crossing the parkway was no problem on Christmas day. I waited for two cars to pass even though I could easily have made it. A pause in the crunches while I crossed the eastbound lanes. Crunch, crunch, crunch across the median Westbound lanes. Sickly yellow drone of bent-necked, high-stemmed streetlights. Down the embankment in a rush of crunches. Silence. Light steps out onto the sand spit extending thin and low into the water. Stillness.
It had been a warm fall. The sand was frozen but the water still liquid smooth and silvery as the pearly interior of a mussel shell. Thin waves curled at the edges like sheets settle over a mattress. I knelt to dip my fingers. I always tested the water, even when I knew it was freezing cold and had no intention of swimming anyways. It was freezing cold. I had no intention of swimming. Anyways.
Walter Jameson went swimming every single morning, Memorial Day to Labor Day. Every morning, until last August when he lay down on the special hospital bed in the living room and stayed there until October when I shot photos of him dying. The reason he kept rolling his eyes to look out the window was to see the lake. A pale gray void in the middle of so many yellow-orange maples. I shot photos and Walter smiled weakly and rolled his eyes to look at the lake. I captured the moment. Stole it, really. I stole Walter Jameson’s last unsteady breaths, and now they were on display at the university café, and people admired them over sandwiches and fancy coffee.
Crunches from behind. Unhurried, methodical (still holding the spatula?). Dad.
“Mina?”
I stood up. He stood beside me.
“Hi.”
I nodded. We stared straight ahead. City lights extended for miles into the darkness on either side of the bay, tapering off in the distance where the peninsulas ended and the main body of Lake Michigan began. When I was little and we drove along the parkway at night, I always rode on the side of the car that faced the bay to watch the lights stream by. If I squinted my eyes, they became soundless fireworks exploding over the water and in its reflection.
“I was thinking,” said Dad. I squinted. “Maybe you could call Grandma and Grandpa before you go back downstate. They’re getting up there, you know.”
I blinked. A thousand silent explosions.
“You mean they’re going to die.” The words dropped like smooth, heavy pebbles before I even knew what they were. I opened my eyes. Dad sighed. The fireworks were city lights again.
“Mina.” Dad paused. I hated that pause. It was the same one that came before “Your mother and I are separating,” “Don’t do drugs,” and “Walter Jameson died last night.”
“Is something bothering you?” said Dad.
“What do you mean?” I said. He drove his hands deeper into his pants pockets. It was cold. My toes were numb. We watched the bay.
“Well,” he said. “You’ve always been . . . steady. Optimistic.”
I shrugged. Now that he’d broken over the crest, he gained momentum and coasted into a monologue.
“We can always count on you. When things get rough, you keep your head, act like nothing’s wrong, and forge ahead.” He tried to gesture, but his hands were restrained by his pockets.
“God, remember when the Johansson girl drowned during swimming lessons? You took all the other kids to the locker room and played games in the showers while they tried to save her. Or after the divorce, when your mother was in such a funk, and you dragged her out of the house everyday to go shopping, walking, breathing some fresh air for Christ’s sake. You’ve just always been so . . . so steady.”
The silence that followed wasn’t silent at all. A car sped by on the Parkway. Whining truck brakes in the distance. Thin waves forever folding on the shore.
For someone who didn’t have a clue, Dad was dead on. I was steady. I acted like nothing was wrong. Like the divorce wasn’t violent and traumatic and sad. Rock-paper-scissors. I played rock-paper-scissors in the showers while Ariel Johansson’s body lay limp and waterlogged on the cold tile beside the pool. I shot photographs of Walter Jameson as he lay dying.
I’d spent my whole life acting like nothing was wrong.
What if it is?
Above the water, the stars came out. Clear nights were coldest. I touched my nose and it was stiff. For the first time, I noticed a single, washed-up boot on the empty beach.
“We should go back,” said Dad. “I’m sure the fuss over the hamster has died down by now.”
“Gerbil,” I said.
“Right. Gerbil.”
“They’re nice kids.”
“Mmm.”
We scrambled up the embankment and crossed the deserted parkway. Roads sometimes sit there for hours without a single passing car. Just pavement and yellow lines and stillness and not a soul to bear witness. Incredible.
Back in the neighborhood, Dad played tour guide. Did I remember the Frazer twins? They grew up in that house with the flat roof. Ever since they made the Michigan State basketball team, they weren’t allowed to shovel the roof anymore lest they throw out their backs or pull a basketballing muscle.
“Who builds flat roofs in Northern Michigan, anyways?” Dad chuckled. That sort of thing cracked him up, people building flat roofs in snowy climates.
All along the street, lit windows shone yellow in the night, and whole worlds existed within. A row of backs in matching red sweaters, paper plates with cheese cubes and grapes, heads thrown back together in what must have been laughter. Two doors down, an older couple eating at the kitchen table, glancing occasionally at the TV flashing blue and comforting in the corner. Across the street, a young girl alone in the center of the living room, twirling, sending her skirt billowing and rippling, alive like liquid spilling over the edge of a glass.
Back at Cheryl’s, the kids had semi-recovered. Faith put Petey in a shoebox surrounded by his favorite thing—toilet paper rolls—and we put it in the freezer to save until spring when there could be a proper burial. No one seemed to connect my presence to the cause of death, or had been instructed not to say anything. Cheryl reheated dinner. We sat down to eat and Dad made a toast.
“To Petey,” he said. “The greatest hamster who ever lived.”
“Gerbil,” said Faith.
“Right,” said Dad. “Gerbil.”
People crunching along the sidewalk outside could have peered in the front window and seen us, warm and yellow and together at the table, eating and drinking and telling knock-knock jokes as though nothing was wrong.
What if it isn’t?
About the winner
A native of Traverse City, Michigan, Caitlin Prentice graduated from Middlebury in 2005. She’s currently a student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where she is pursuing a Master of Letters degree.
About the judge
A 1994 graduate of Middlebury, T Cooper is the author of two novels, Some of the Parts and the recent Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes.