Author’s Note: “Sweet gum” celebrates the remarkable sweet gum tree; it also praises—well, praise, which it sees as another face of rage and mourning; it sees rage as also a kind of praise, praise of what could be and isn’t.  Some literature seems to suggest that to celebrate anything is to wallow in privilege and ignore all the world’s appalling misery, that misery and evil are inherently more real than joy.  This poem doesn’t agree.

Sweet Gum

       Liquidambar styraciflua

On the sandy track, a smashed squirrel boils
up fresh maggots when stirred with a hand,
refuse of the same old haste and waste,
while the bright October wind sifts down
sweet gum leaves over gray fur and crushed
flesh, reminding the springing squirrel-
mind that black gum leaves turn red, and sweet-
gum leaves—hanging among their caltrop-
seeds—turn purply-black; but that’s naming
for you in a life where we learn late
or not at all, and at least sweet gum
smells sweet, amber-sap native of a new
world which was always the same old world:
bite the sandy stem of a fallen
star-shaped leaf and you’ll catch myrrh-resin,
breathe up incense, even as you feel
its grit grate in your teeth and must spit
and spit. The same old world’s awash
in those telling the same old story:
the one where meat sliding into maws
of ivory worms is always more
real than the life that carried it here
on five-clawed feet, death never less than
appalling, the grit always harsher
than the sassafras-tang of the sap
is bright; where joy is so bourgeois
that they’re ashamed to own the fine
of these few minutes standing on sand
beside the dead, to gnaw the gritty
stem of a leaf whose life has sunk back
into its tree. But today, strangely,
you remember that in this sudden
second, you can pause, you don’t always
have to collude while that same old
story eats all the other stories;
that this wringing place has many names;
that another face of all the rage
and grief is praise. As these maggots praise,
curling like ecstatic toes in their first
first feast, refusing to waste anything.
As this gum tree praises, releasing
deep-purple five-pointed stars into
the shining morning, alligator-
barked being whose first name is sweet. 

⧫

Catherine Carter, raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, now lives with her husband in Cullowhee, NC, near Western Carolina University, where she is a  professor in the English education program. Her most recent full-length collection is Larvae of the Nearest Stars (LSU Press, 2019). In addition to the Delmarva Review, her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Orion, Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Ashville Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, among others. On a good day, she says she can re-queen a hive of honeybees and roll a whitewater kayak. On less good days, she collects stings, rockburn, and multiple contusions. Website: https://catherinecarterpoetry.com 

Over its 15-year history, Delmarva Review has published new literary poetry and prose by over 500 authors from 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 16 foreign countries. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Both print and digital editions are available from Amazon and other major online booksellers. The print edition is also available from regional specialty bookstores. Website: https://delmarvareview.org/

Author’s Note: “During the first year of the pandemic, with its horrifying death toll, life became local and confined. Yet my sense of the world and its accents had never been sharper. With borders closing and distrust mounting, language felt increasingly significant, a means of maintaining our humanity. All the words that have come to us from elsewhere were like pebbles found on the beach, solid and resonant, the mind, as always, left to sort and array them.”

Second Language

Harder to net foreign words, those slippery verbs
lacy adjectives, mulish nouns. Cognate to the old
but more porous, the child busily acquiring. Yet
we easily recall Arno, Danube, Limpopo, Yangtze.
Passport safe in a drawer, pandemic borders closed.
When my daughter asked how I lived with my fears
I couldn’t answer her. Unglamorous angst—
in any tongue so burdensome. Each day brings more
so that rain isn’t a mere slick of wetness on the cheek
but flooded bridges, farms; it is corpse and tod.
After all, here’s a syntax, a web, declarative system
by which we point and name. On the beach
lies a welter awaiting some coherence of the mind
or not waiting, in fact, the sea’s breathy vowels
opening, closing, a nudibranch pocketing its own gills.
Voices spill from tour boats to the pebbled shore
and the waves translate: copper, haze, restless tide.

⧫

In addition to the Delmarva Review, Carol Alexander’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, About Place Journal, The Common, Denver Quarterly, One, Ruminate, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain.org, Third Wednesday, Free State Review, Matter, Potomac Review, Verdad, and TheWestchester Review. Her most recent collection is Fever and Bone. She co-edited Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022). Alexander lives in New York.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, short stories, and nonfiction prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. Located in St. Michaels, MD, the literary journal has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide during its 15-year history. About half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “It can be nice to travel, or just to think about being somewhere else. But some days where we already live approaches perfection. It was a September day after a period of oppressive weather that spurred “A Letter from Here,” a poem that celebrates what is instead of what might be.“ 

A Letter from Here

The weather cleared today, although
it wasn’t expected, and now the sky
is a soft blue, a light breeze 

rocking the locust leaves, and it is
comfortably warm, not oppressively hot
as before. Days like this

it seems there is no better place to be
than here. Imagine, if I were elsewhere
I would not experience this, if

I were elsewhere, it might be raining,
or too hot or too humid, or both. If I were
elsewhere I could not write a letter from here.

⧫

Matthew J. Spireng won the 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize for his book Good Work (Evening Street Press). An 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body (winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award,) and five chapbooks. His poems have also appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Louisiana Journal, and Poet Lore. Spireng lives in New York. Website: matthewjspireng.com 

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, short stories, and nonfiction prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. Publishing from St. Michaels, Maryland, the literary journal has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide during  its 15-year history. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Editor’s Note: John Philip Drury’s personal essay is from his full-length memoir to be released in August 2024. Drury was born in Cambridge, Maryland, and now writes from Ohio, where he is professor emeritus at the University of Cincinnati.

Author’s Note: “This is the last chapter in Bobby and Carolyn: A Memoir of My Two Mothers, and it recounts a night my mother celebrated secretly for the rest of her life. She and Carolyn raised me together after my father left, calling themselves cousins in order to rent places together. When Carolyn died, my mother’s full name (not Bobby, her nickname) was engraved on the back of the tombstone they shared in Dorchester Memorial Park—like the marker shared by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Père Lachaise Cemetery, in Paris.”

Full Moon on the Water

ON JULY 31, 1958, the moon had just passed the point of being completely full, but it would have still looked full to my mother and Carolyn as they drove the Chevrolet Bel-Air from the gravel parking lot of Whispering Pines, strewn with brown needles, where they had just bought a fifth of bourbon, and eased down the single-lane Buck Bryan Road, with loblolly pines on one side and cornfields on the other. The road was named for the owner of the liquor store and led to his house on the shore of Bolingbroke Creek, which everybody called Bowling Brook. 

Their windows would have been wide open, since cars didn’t have air-conditioning in those days, and it was a warm, humid summer night. But a breeze was blowing off the water. The question was, did they pull into the woods in one of the clearings, or did they continue toward the water? How do I know, in any case, what they were doing on that particular night? 

My mother liked to keep records. I learned from her how to annotate receipts when I paid bills, but only when she was too ill to do her own and I had to take over. Once you start the habit, if you’re the slightest bit obsessive-compulsive, you have to continue, if only for the “tiny insane voluptuousness” that Theodor Storm describes in his poem on working at a desk, the pleasure of “getting this done, finally finishing that.” 

She liked to keep a datebook for each year, so I have a record of when she did this and did that. On July 31, she almost always remembered to write “CBD and CL” and “Anniversary” and however many years had passed since 1958. What were they celebrating? Why did my mother continue to commemorate the date? 

I didn’t know the answer until my mother died, when I went through a large plastic storage box she kept under her bed. I knew she had destroyed a stack of letters Carolyn had received, presumably from lovelorn suitors whom she had spurned. She claimed she had burned them, but that sounds like a lot of work and a sooty mess if you lacked a fireplace. She made a point of telling me that she disposed of the letters so I wouldn’t get them and use them as “material.” 

But she did not get rid of Carolyn’s green diary for 1958, the crucial year that was both annus mirabilis and annus horribilis for the two women and me. My mother kept it in a tin box, among her dearest treasures. Although the book said “Diary,” it was really a datebook like those my mother kept, except more elegantly bound. Carolyn had marked down reminders about which students had voice lessons when, which friends she was seeing for dinner, whose birthdays were coming up, which doctors’ appointments she had to keep. Every month, she wrote “CURSE” in red letters, presumably to indicate her menstrual periods. On December 18, she wrote “We Started South” when the three of us left Maryland and headed toward Texas, not knowing then that we wouldn’t get past Alabama. 

Here’s what she wrote in her diary on July 31, with the date underlined: 

Marito
e moglie
felice per sempre 

“Husband and wife, happy forever.” And then I knew how to put things together. My mother and Carolyn had exchanged vows, under a full moon, either inside or outside the car, near the water and the pines, by a side road where no cars disturbed them. My mother had told me she always liked necking better than sex and had declared that no one gave better back rubs than Carolyn, so exquisite that she threatened to cut off her fingers and keep them after she died, no matter how grotesque that sounded. Part of it may have been hero-worship, a fan’s adoration, a schoolgirl crush, but she was smitten—both of them were. 

Thinking about this privileged moment, this peak of intimacy, this private, secret, do-it-yourself wedding in the woods by the water, I imagined a motion-picture camera pulling back discreetly from the Chevy and slowly panning down the road between pines and cornfields, surging toward the creek and the Choptank River in the distance, settling on the rippling full moon on the water, accompanied by the sound of clanking bell- buoys, the slosh of waves, the low buzz of a johnboat trolling in the dark, a gull or a mallard ruffling its feathers and taking flight. And then, from the car, the sound of “Whither Thou Goest,” a hit song by Les Paul and Mary Ford, would emerge from the radio, with Carolyn singing along, the lyrics quoting from the Bible: “Whither thou goest, I will go.” My mother, the former Sunday School teacher, surely knew the passage from the Book of Ruth: 

Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following
1111111111after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and
1111111111where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall
1111111111be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried:
1111111111the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but
1111111111death part thee and me.

Before I actually read that lovely book from the Old Testament, I came upon “Ruth and Naomi,” a poem by Edward Field in Stand Up, Friend, with Me, the first poetry collection I was ever given, in which he describes how “Ruth and Naomi, lip to vaginal lip, / Proclaimed their love throughout the land.” Of course, I didn’t see any personal connection until much later, after I had started writing my own poems, had read more poetry, and had learned more about my mother and Carolyn, especially how to empathize with the predicament they faced every day: hiding and denying their intimate relationship, a love that deserved celebration, not concealment. 

Among my mother’s loose papers, the phrase “Whither Thou Goest” appears repeatedly, without explanation. But the words were a pledge, a promise that wherever one of them went, the other would follow, and despite the social pressure against their union and the combustible nature of their personalities, they would honor that contract which no one had witnessed, my mother not abandoning Carolyn in her final illness but tending to her needs, more devoted than any cousin could be, and ultimately following her to the grave plot they shared, with their names on opposite sides of the granite marker, taking her place next to Carolyn’s parents, forsaking her own family and declaring her love in the most permanent way she could. I’m pretty sure that Carolyn sang the words of the popular song and that my mother, her most devoted fan, responded both to the seductive music and the soothing religion it encapsulated. And the romantic, moonlit night by the woods and the water was an essential part of that makeshift, spontaneous, what-the-hell ceremony that bound them so tightly together. They were giving all for love. 

Carolyn’s green diary also contained a note for my mother that she had composed in shaky script on a small sheet of paper. It served as a bookmarker for the page that celebrated their marriage to each other. It may have been the last thing she was able to write: 

My darling I love you
ybeyond all measure
yThere is no separation
yAll I know is
yI love you more
ythan I ever could
ybelieve. It is a love
ythat knows no end
yLove me
yLove me endlessly
yI will wait
1111111111Your Carrie 

During one of the last nights she spent in her own apartment before entering the Western Hills nursing home, my mother was surprised when I seized that binder of notes about her life and said I was taking it home for safe keeping. I was afraid she would destroy those personal reminders, which included several references to “Buck Bryan Road” and “Whither Thou Goest,” those fragments toward an autobiography she could never manage to begin, just as she had destroyed the trove of Carolyn’s correspondence. She objected a little but then relented. She knew I was planning to write about her. “I just worry,” she said, “that we started too late, and I won’t be able to tell you all my stories, all my secrets.” But the point wasn’t to be encyclopedic. 

“That’s okay,” I told her. “We have enough.” 

⧫

John Philip Drury, a native of Cambridge, Maryland, is now professor emeritus at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Sea Level Rising (Able Muse Press, 2015) and The Teller’s Cage: Poems and Imaginary Movies (Able Muse Press, January 2024).  “Full Moon on the Water” is the last chapter in “Bobby and Carolyn: A Memoir of My Two Mothers,” which will be published by Finishing Line Press in August 2024. 

Delmarva Review selects the most compelling new nonfiction, poetry, and short stories from thousands of submissions annually. Publishing from St. Michaels, Maryland, the literary journal has featured new writing from more than 500 authors worldwide since its first issue fifteen years ago. Forty-one percent are from the Chesapeake-Delmarva region. It is available worldwide in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “Moving Out” recalls watching my son pack his bags to move to a distant state. It felt momentous and, at the same time, made me appreciate his deep attachment to home and family. I expected to face a cleanup job once he drove away. Instead, he startled me with a flash of maturity. Writing this poem made me remember Robert Frost’s advice for poets: “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”

Moving Out

a clingy baby, slow to settle, never one
to let go, he became a keeper of shells,
stones, clay-modeled frogs, chessmen,

a piler-up of dusty stuffed animals,
sleepless and sad for weeks that time
when some disappeared in a move,

his room still hung with old posters,
corners curling—Jimi Hendrix,
Green Lantern, Chaplin’s little tramp—

while into his car, he stuffs hiking boots,
skis, favorite pants, violin in its case,
then, from the doorway, looks back

at the mongrel piles on the floor—
I don’t want to leave you with this mess—
and returns to toss out tie-dyed shirts

from Quaker camp, drop diaries
and love letters into a box, and gather
me a caulk bouquet, six tubes

securely planted in a paint bucket,
caulk enough to patch all our cracks

Susan Okie is a doctor, poet, and former Washington Post medical reporter. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2014. Her first poetry collection, Woman at the Crossing, will be published in October by Grid Books. Her chapbook, Let You Fly, was published in 2019. She teaches patient-interviewing and clinical ethics to medical students at Georgetown University and to volunteers at a safety-net clinic for uninsured adults. Susan lives in Bethesda, Maryland. Website: www.susanokie.com

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. Based in St. Michaels, Maryland, the literary journal has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors since its first edition fifteen years ago. Over forty percent are from the Chesapeake-Delmarva region. The journal is available in print and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Editor’s Note: The brief personal essay is a powerful form of writing capable of building one’s understanding and acceptance of the feelings defining grief. Once the painful trip is made, publication can share the experience with a willing audience. . . often helping many.

Author’s Note: “When I lost my husband, I could no longer see, hear, touch him. But he lived on in my heart and mind.  Shortly thereafter, I lost my father-in-law to dementia. I could still see, hear, and touch him. But in his heart and mind, I no longer existed. After my last visit to his nursing home, I tried to put on paper my grief at this second loss, this second kind of death.” 

Please Remember

MY FATHER-IN-LAW NO LONGER KNEW ME when I saw him for the last time. Deaf, almost blind, and in the grip of dementia, he looked at me blankly as I stood in front of him. The nursing home aide leaned down and spoke loudly in his ear. “It’s your daughter-in-law. She’s come to visit you.” 

“Hi, Dad!” I said, waving my arms and smiling. He sat in his wheelchair and stared. I waved harder and said louder, “Dad, it’s me! It’s Tess, your daughter-in-law. I’m Richie’s wife. You lived with us in our house in Flushing.” Nothing. 

“Remember how you used to sit in the backyard all summer? And the hot dogs you loved every time we barbecued?” Nothing. House, yard, happy summers, and hot dogs were as forgotten as I was. 

Dad was my last living tie to my recently deceased husband. Desperate now, I went on. “Can you remember Richie? Your son?” Still nothing. 

Before his mind stopped working, Dad had greeted me each visit by saying, “Are you all right? Everything is on you now.” 

Everything was on me. Dad had outlived his family, including his only son, and I was now his legal caretaker. Dad was an old-fashioned gentleman, and I was fond of him, but I couldn’t help resenting his longevity. His only child, my husband, hadn’t made it to seventy-five, yet Dad was now pushing ninety-eight. Luckily for him, I had inherited my husband’s fierce sense of family loyalty; his mantle of caretaker now rested on my shoulders. He had always done the right thing by his family, and numb with his loss, I felt good every time I went to the nursing home in his stead. 

Before each visit, I felt guilty for having negative thoughts. But I did have them. Every time I looked into Dad’s warm brown eyes, so like his son’s, I resented the fact that those eyes were not his son’s. But despite my unvoiced bitterness, I always left feeling virtuous. I was doing the right thing, just as my husband would have done, and the link between us held. 

As Dad’s dementia progressed, the saddest phase was when he voiced his awareness that he couldn’t recall things, or people, properly. “I can’t remember right,” he’d say, shaking his head. At least you still recognize me, I thought, holding his hand and wondering if he’d know me next time I came. 

And now I did not exist at all in his mind. “Bye, Dad,” I said, as the aide wheeled him into the common room for lunch. He did not wave back. 

Numbly, I walked to my car. I thought to my husband, Well, at least we know Dad is being taken good care of. But, honey, he doesn’t remember me anymore. I don’t know about another visit. I hope you understand. And dear, if I’m lucky enough to join you someday in heaven, please… remember me. 

⧫

Terry Riccardi is a philatelist and freelance editor. She says that when not creating dark-hued tales, she can be found trying to bowl a perfect game, watching classic movies, and searching for lost jigsaw puzzle pieces. She hopes to be a world-famous author when she grows up. In addition to the Delmarva Review, her work has appeared in Newtown Literary, Corvus Review, Black Petals, and three literary anthologies. Riccardi lives in New York.

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new essays, poetry, and short stories from thousands of submissions annually. Publishing from St. Michaels, Maryland, the literary journal has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors world-wide since its first edition fifteen years ago. Forty-one percent are from the Chesapeake-Delmarva region. The journal is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

 

Author’s Note: “The most important information any Bay sailor needs is the weather report available on the VHF radio by the National Marine Weather Forecast. The wise sailor needs daily information about wind strength and direction, the height of waves, and the strength of local currents. From all this some proverbial advice has been distilled, not only small craft prohibitions but the wisdom of being at anchor by 4 PM in the afternoon when most Bay storms are likely to appear and the average length of most thunderstorms coming from the North and the West is an hour. After a sailor has been caught in high winds and waves, the relief of a safe anchorage and survival is often remembered with a drink and a pet or a friend away from windward.” 

A Bay Fisherman’s Meteorological Lesson

Good clouds flying west to east make no argument against
the planet’s breath while their horsetails banner the sky. 

If we meet in angry confrontation, it’s an offshore front
hiding the sun and landing in a tumbling punt 

with increasing frequency, gust after gust pushing us too close
to jagged rocks in rising oceans I’d rather not see, 

our innards twisted with vain hopes rocked by reality.
Everything turns in its motion at once, not just our homes 

but our fishing boats soaked by a two-ton punch
hitting the gunnels, throwing souls and stomachs up to the sky. 

As the pandemic of fear snaps free my gimlet eye awaits
a drop of courage to steer us safely by 

having left the sea for a cozy room with pictures of calmer waves
in a drowning town, a drink at my side and a cat to lee. 

⧫

Michael Salcman is a poet, physician, and art historian. He was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum. His poems appear in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Café Review, Delmarva Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, and Smartish Pace. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti, The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine, his popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors, patients, illness & healing, A Prague Spring, Before & After, winner of the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and Shades & Graces, inaugural winner of The Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems was published by Spuyten Duyvil (2022).

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. The literary journal is designed by its founders to encourage outstanding new writing for publication. The journal is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org 

 

Author’s Note: “As an archeologist I often think about what becomes an artifact. One morning I was walking along a cove on the Chesapeake Bay. I was by myself, yet realized I am never truly alone. My family and friends come easily into my mind, often when I see something in nature or art that reminds me of them. I wrote this while trying to capture how a physical object can connect you to a person.”

low tide

Boots at the high-tide mark,
bare feet on sand and shell-wreck.
Pick up an iridescent shell, think, her.
Pick up a smooth flat stone and think, him.
Find a tiny spiral fossil, think, her.
Fill the pocket, feel it weigh and start to drag, wish for more
pockets. Wish to want less. Walk and gather. 

Waves a steady hush unnoticed until the crab boat chugs by,
drowning out the sound of stone-shell steps. The waves
transform, they rush and gambol like children
hurrying to be first. Tumble and crash. 

Small mountain shapes, the waves’ leavings
undulate and measure how far the water has receded.
I think of my grandfather as I always do.

I am so often not lonely, yet yearn to be understood, heard.
I carry them all with me, weighted in my pocket, or hiding in folds
of memory. I’ve returned to my boots. My hands remember
just how to hold these heavy, unwieldy things.
There are easier ways. I know them. Today, I do not wish
to be else. 

⧫

 

Lara Payne lives in Maryland. She is a former archeologist and now teaches writing to children and, on the college level, to veterans. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner of the Moving Words Competition and placed on buses in Arlington, Virginia. Her poems explore the environment and the hidden work of women. In addition to the Delmarva Review, they have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Mom Egg Review.

 

“low tide” is from the fifteenth annual Delmarva Review, an independent, nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. It is designed by its founders to encourage the most outstanding new writing for publication. The journal is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org 

 

#  #  #

Author’s Note: “The germ for this story came to me one night when I drove past a woman working all alone in a largely glass booth. After thinking about how awful the job must be, it occurred to me that a literal and symbolic separation from the world might be exactly what some people desire.”

Booth

ANISE WATCHES THE WORLD through bulletproof glass. For nearly four years, five nights a week, she has been the lone sentry in an illuminated booth with acres of empty cars lined up behind her. Anise loves her booth. There is no time of the day, no place in her world, in which she feels more protected or more at peace. She knows every inch of the interior, finds comfort in each small dent in the metal countertop and each tiny scratch in the glass that she imagines only she notices. She doesn’t mind that there is barely enough room for one person. Not having to work with other people is the best part of the job. 

An SUV pulls up to the booth. Unseasonably warm air greets Anise as she slides her window open. The driver keeps his eyes on the electronic device in his hand while shoving his ticket and credit card in her direction. A stream of cold air escapes his air-conditioned vehicle. 

“Forty-eight dollars.” The price for a car to sit in long-term airport parking for four days. The man grabs his receipt, raises the window to reseal himself inside the car and is gone. 

It’s a slow evening, and Anise turns her stool toward Tyler Avenue and extends her legs under the counter. Panels of glass across the upper half of the booth provide views in three directions. To her left, rows of cars sit in amber circles of light under evenly spaced lamps; to her right, just beyond a column of cypress trees, cars quietly make their way up the on-ramp and onto the freeway. Directly in front of her, thirty feet of asphalt separates her booth from the street, and beyond that, a row of small businesses. From left to right, there’s the taqueria, a Quik-Stop, the 24-hour Laundromat, and Bernie’s Liquor. The neon signs that line the windows are so familiar that she notices when a light is out, like the pink and blue Coors Light sign at Bernie’s that tonight says “Coo ight.” 

A young couple leaves the Laundromat laughing so hard the woman has to set her armful of folded clothes onto the hood of their car before she can catch her breath. The man, barefoot on this warm autumn night, pulls one of her bras from a plastic laundry basket and acts as if he is trying it on. They burst into another round of laughter. It’s like watching television with the sound off. 

It is a perfect evening, safe and silent, when Anise feels a blast of hot air. Before she can react, a man has entered her booth. “Don’t move. I mean it.” He shuts the door behind him. His arm, damp with perspiration, brushes against hers as he ducks under the counter.

It takes Anise a moment to comprehend what has just happened. Desperate efforts to refute her senses—this is not what it seems—are quickly vanquished by the undeniable presence of a man crouching under the counter directly in front of her. She has a vague awareness that she is supposed to do something, but her ability to focus is battered by waves of panic. A dizzying minute passes before a lesson from her training somehow surfaces. 

“I have less than a hundred dollars in cash.” Just saying the words helps. “The rest I can’t get to.” 

The man lifts his head just enough to peek over the counter. He fixes his eyes on the stores across the street. “I’ll be gone soon enough.” The voice is raspy. “I don’t want to spend any more time with you than you do with me.” 

She rises from her stool, waiting for the right moment to bolt. She glances at the door and notices that it is not quite shut. How many times has she complained about that latch? Her manager promised to get it fixed weeks ago. And now look what has happened. She takes a deep breath. But just as she is about to make a break for the door, the man turns her way and grabs her leg. 

“Sit down.” His fingers dig into her thigh through the thin cloth of her uniform pants. “You’re not going anywhere.” 

He releases the leg and motions for her to get back in her seat. She settles onto the stool as far back as the booth will allow but still only inches from the intruder. 

He turns his attention back to the row of stores, and several quiet minutes follow. Slowly her breathing returns to normal; her mind stops spinning. The arrangement allows each of them to see the other person’s face reflected in the glass. Although he appears to be her age—early twenties—Anise can’t help but think of him as a boy. The harsh fluorescent bulbs that light the booth exaggerate the redness of his acne. His tee shirt is stained around the collar and too small for him, and the way his dirty hair falls in uneven lengths across his damp neck tells her that he cuts it himself. 

A police car pulls up to Bernie’s Liquor and parks across three spaces directly in front of the store. Two officers rush inside. 

“You robbed the liquor store?” The words are out of her mouth before she realizes it. She braces for his reaction, raises her arms into a defensive pose. 

“I tried to rob the liquor store.” He says this in a whisper and with a hint of regret, as if he were talking to himself. Nothing like the menacing response she was expecting. 

The police officers return to the parking lot and stare out at the night. The clerk, a thin man in a light blue vest, stands next to them waving his arms and pointing in several directions. 

“He had a bat.” He seems to be inviting her into a conversation. “A baseball bat. Under the counter.” 

“And what did you have?” She says the words cautiously. Who knows what might provoke him? 

“Nothing.” “No gun?” 

“I wanted him to think I had a gun.” 

It takes a few seconds to fully process his answer. No gun. Obviously, no weapon of any kind. He’s not a dangerous criminal. He’s just a stupid boy whose half-baked idea to rob a liquor store has blown up in his face. This changes everything. He’s the one hiding from the police, the one with everything to lose. She will not surrender her booth to this intruder. One of them has to go, and it won’t be her. 

“You need to leave.” She is encouraged by the strength she hears in her voice. “This is my booth, and it’s made for one person.” 

“I’ll be out of here soon.” 

A weak response, his words laced with uncertainty.

A car pulls up to the window. The boy crouches beneath the counter and rotates his body until he is facing her. They make eye contact for the first time. 

“Be smart,” he says. “I could hurt you.”

She does not believe him.

Anise slides the window open. Car exhaust and the din of the evening spill into the booth. She thinks about making some sort of gesture—raising her eyebrows or lifting a finger. Something to indicate that things are amiss. But the woman behind the wheel doesn’t look at her. Anise clears her throat to draw attention, but the driver only pushes her ticket toward Anise in a dismissive manner. 

“Thirty-six dollars.” 

She makes change from a fifty-dollar bill, puts the money away, and hands the woman her receipt. Silence returns as she slides the window closed. 

The boy turns his attention back to the scene unfolding in front of the liquor store. His presence fills the booth. He smells like damp leather and rotting leaves, and she can hear each raspy breath. A pulse of anger rises inside her. He has no right to do this to her. 

“Time for you to go,” she says. “Where’s your car?” 

“I don’t have a car.” 

“You thought you could just walk away from a robbery? What kind of plan was that?” 

“If I could afford a car, I wouldn’t be here.” 

“What about a partner? You got a partner, or did you think this up all by yourself?” 

He doesn’t answer. 

“Don’t tell me,” she says. “You have no partner because you have no friends.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“Now there’s a snappy comeback. Imagine a witty guy like you without friends.” 

“Fuck you.”

“You said that already. Why don’t you just leave?”

The police search the area around the liquor store with flashlights large enough to serve as weapons. One officer disappears into the alley behind the store. The other peers into a dumpster on the side of the building. 

“The cops will be here pretty soon,” she says. “This booth is an obvious place to hide.” 

“Just a few more minutes, and I’m out of here.” 

“On your way to jail.”

“I’m not going to jail.”

“You wish.” 

The police officers get back into their car and ease their way out of the parking lot. A searchlight on the side of the vehicle moves from target to target—a pickup parked on the street, cartons stacked on the side of the laundromat. 

“Definitely not jail,” he says.

“You been in jail before?”

He pauses several seconds before replying. “Not exactly.” 

A plane takes off on a nearby runway. Anise can feel the powerful engines—a deep vibration rumbling through the booth. But from where she sits, she cannot see the plane.

Her legs, tucked under the seat of her stool all this time, begin to cramp. She rotates her chair until she is facing the freeway and allows her legs to dangle freely. The onset of darkness has turned the cars into pairs of headlights that sparkle and disappear as they make their way up the on-ramp. She used to pass the time creating stories about who might be in the cars and where they might be headed. Always stories about escape. A teenage girl escaping the taunts and the teasing, the cruel comments and vulgar insults they knew she could hear. Escaping to a place where unattractive girls simply blend into the background, unseen and unreachable. A place where you can start over. Where no one sends hateful emails or pretends to find you attractive just to set you up for humiliation. A place with no one to disappoint. A place without evaluation. Without failure. 

She spins her chair back toward Tyler Avenue and finds the boy has adjusted his position on the floor and is gazing up at her. She has the sense that he has been watching her for a long time. 

“What are you looking at?” she says.

He stares another long moment before responding.

“I think you and me are a lot alike,” he says.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You probably think no one gets you, but you’re wrong.” 

“I think no one cares what you think.”

“You just let them win.”

“What do you know about anything?”

“I know I wouldn’t want this job.”

“Or any job, apparently.”

The boy steals another lengthy gaze before turning his attention back to the scene across the street. A man in a tattered olive jacket, bent at the waist and possibly homeless, drags his right foot as he approaches the liquor store. The clerk, who has remained in the doorway, blocks the man’s entrance. Their conversation is animated. The clerk glances around while he speaks, as if the thief might be within sight. 

“Tell me this isn’t a shitty job,” the boy says. 

“Maybe for some people.” 

“It’s dangerous, too, isn’t it? You sitting out here by yourself?” 

“No,” Anise says. “Actually, it’s safe. When the door latch works, it’s very safe.” 

“You ever get scared?”

“Not when I’m in here.”

The clerk steps inside the liquor store, leaving his visitor standing in the doorway. He returns a minute later with a brown paper bag. No money changes hands. The raggedly dressed man wraps his fist around the top of the bag and leaves. The clerk goes back inside. Except for the “Coo ight” sign, it’s almost as if everything outside the booth is back the way it’s supposed to be. 

“When did it first hit you that they had been lying?” the boy asks. 

“That who was lying?” 

“I was ten,” he says. “My mom told her boyfriend that I wanted to be a rock star. He looks at me for a minute, not saying anything. It’s like he’s trying to imagine me on stage or driving a fancy car or something. Then he says, for that to happen, I would need either talent or good looks. And that he’s heard me sing. So he says, from what he could tell, I was oh-for-two. Oh-for-two. He says it a couple of times, then busts out laughing. And all my mom does is slap at him playfully. Like he said something he shouldn’t have. Not that he was wrong, but that he shouldn’t have said it in front of me like that.” 

“Is this where I cry?” she asks. “You didn’t get all the love you needed as a child, and now look at you. A life of crime.” 

“I’m just saying. I learned something.” 

“So, what’s the moral of the story? That the world owes you?” 

“Just the opposite. I learned that the world doesn’t owe me shit. So don’t expect anything.” 

“Poor baby,” she says. “Maybe people get what they deserve. You ever think of that?” 

“Is this what you deserve? Hiding in this booth?”

“I’m not hiding. I’m working.”

“If you say so.”

She considers the boy’s reflection in the glass. His face is flat, his eyes a little too far apart. It’s the kind of face that is easy to ignore or, if you notice it at all, to dislike. 

“How long?” he asks.

“How long what?”

“How long are you going to stay here? In this job. In this booth. I mean, after a while, what have you got?”

“Don’t talk to me anymore,” she says. “There’s nothing about me you need to know, and there is nothing about you I want to know.” 

“Look what they’ve done to you,” he says. “Look at what you’re letting them do.” 

“The cops are gone,” she says. “This would be a good time for you to leave.” 

“Sure, I’ll leave.” The boy rotates toward her and adjusts his body into a position as close to sitting as the space will allow. “On one condition. I’ll leave right now, right this minute. If you’ll do one thing for me.” 

“You’ve got to be kidding.” She sighs loudly to indicate what a fool she takes him to be. “God, I should have known.” 

“Nothing like that,” he says. “What the hell is the matter with you?” 

“All right then, what? What is the one thing you want me to do that will finally get you out of my booth?” 

“Tell me that you’ll leave, too.” 

“Are you insane?” she says. “You want me to leave with you? And then what? Help you with your next attempt at armed—or I should say, pretend-to-be-armed-robbery?” 

“I don’t want you to leave with me. That’s not what I’m asking.” 

“What then? What are you asking?” 

“I just want to hear you say it,” he says. “I want to hear you say that someday, in the near future, you’re going to walk away from this job. Instead of hiding from the world, you’re going to get out there and face it. You’re going to tell them, ‘Here I am, and if you don’t like it, tough shit.’” 

“You are absolutely out of your mind,” she says. “Not to mention that you are hardly in a position to negotiate anything. So please. Just go and leave me in peace.” 

“Say it. Say it, and I’m gone. Tell me you’re going to walk out of here someday and not look back.” 

“And what would that do for you? Why should anything I say make any difference to you?” 

“It’ll make me feel better, all right?” he says. “Let’s just say I like to help people, OK?” 

“Let me get this straight,” she says. “You’re the one hiding from the cops, and I’m the one who needs help?” 

“It’s the first step. You won’t be saying it to me. You’ll be saying it to yourself.” 

She forces a laugh. “The first step toward what?”

“The first step toward living a real life.”

“A real life?” she asks. “You mean a life like yours? No, thanks.”

“I get that my life’s not so great,” he says. “In fact, lately, it pretty much sucks. But it’s my life, you know? And I do what I want.” 

“What does that mean? Are you actually stupid enough to try another robbery? The next guy is likely to have a gun under the counter.” 

“That’s possible.”

“Is that what you want? To die?”

“On the contrary. I want to live. And so should you.”

She can feel another plane taking off. She notices for the first time that her booth seems to rattle ever so slightly with the vibration. 

“I’m going to say this one last time,” she says. “You need to leave.” 

“Look, I know how it is,” he says.

“Just stop talking. Can you do that? Stop talking and go?” 

“You think you’ve got it all worked out, but you don’t.”

“I said stop.”

“You don’t have to stay here.”

“Would you please shut up?”

“Honestly,” he says. “It hurts me to see you like this.”

Now he has gone too far.

“And just who the hell do you think you are?” She is so furious she wants to slap his face. “I’ll tell you who. You’re the guy in high school who sat by himself at lunch, who couldn’t get a date for the prom. The prom? Hell, any date. No dates and no friends. Who would even want to be seen with the likes of you? You’re a stigma. Social poison. Worse than worthless. How am I doing?” 

His eyes widen, but instead of the anger she anticipates, she finds a quiet resignation. 

“You left some things out,” he says.

“Such as?”

He lifts his left hand above his head and slowly turns his arm until his inner wrist is facing her. She sees two scars traversing the width of the wrist, severe red lines intensified by the harsh light and his pale skin, jagged as if inflicted in desperation and leaving little doubt about the intent. 

“Looks like you were serious,” she says. 

“Senior year of high school.” He lowers his arm. “I was their favorite target. I’d avoid the corridors, walk around the outside of the buildings. Hide between classes. Hide after school. Ditch school. But they find you.” 

Now it’s her turn to stare. The buffoon who couldn’t even pull off a liquor store robbery is gone. In his place she sees a frail, down-and-out figure. Someone who has spent his entire life coming up short. The least favorite child, although no one would ever say so. Pummeled by social isolation and years of unrelenting banality. 

“It was pills, wasn’t it?” he says. “For you, I bet it was pills. It usually is with girls. Not as effective, but not nearly as messy. I guess they found you in time.” 

She responds with a slow nod. 

“The problem is,” he says, “once you start running away, it’s hard to stop. You can shut them out, build your walls, hide when you see them coming. But you’re just giving them what they want. I’m through with that. And you could be, too.” 

“Do what you have to do,” she says. “But leave me out of it.” 

“Come on,” he says. “Just say the words. You’ll be surprised at how they make you feel.” 

“Sorry. I can’t.”

“You owe it to yourself.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“I said no.”

“Please.”

The boy holds out an open palm. When she fails to respond, he gradually extends his arm, the hand moving ever so slowly in her direction. The sides of the booth seem to compress, and she has the sensation of being squeezed into a smaller and smaller space. Soon she is aware of nothing but the hand gliding toward her until it comes to rest on top of her own. She does not pull away. She stares at the rough knuckles, the stubby fingers, the cracked and dirty fingernails. On any other night, she would find this hand disgusting and repulsive. But at this moment, she is aware only of the way warmth transfers from his hand to hers. 

“You can do it,” he whispers. “You really can.” 

And for the first time, she allows herself to think that perhaps he is right. For the first time in a long time, she can feel the tug of possibilities, the stirrings of a long-abandoned hope that, in time, something good might emerge from all the shards and shrapnel. And she thinks, maybe. Just maybe. 

The police car pulls up to the entrance of the parking lot. 

“Damn,” she says.

The boy jerks his hand away and ducks below the window line.

The car’s searchlight runs across the base of the chain-link fence. Then the booth fills with an explosion of bright light. Anise squints curiously in the direction of the police. That would be her natural reaction, wouldn’t it? But she can’t help holding her breath. 

The car moves on.

“They’re gone,” she says.

“Now it really is time to go.”

The boy pushes himself off the floor. For the first time since he entered the booth, he is standing, which somehow makes him more real. A sense of urgency rises inside her. 

“You’re just going to walk right out onto Tyler Avenue?” she says. “Where the cops are?” 

“Better to be out there than in here if they come back.” He slides around her on his way to the door. 

“What about the guy in the liquor store?” she says. “Don’t you think he’s looking out the window every ten seconds? He’d be on the phone before you made it five feet. Or maybe he’d just come after you with his baseball bat.” 

“So, what then?” 

“Across the lot.” She points toward a flickering red light in the distance. “The employee’s entrance. It exits to Howard Street.” 

He grabs the door handle and pauses. “One last chance. Will you say it? Before I go?” 

She feels another plane take off. This one is more intense than the others. More powerful. For the first time, a little frightening. 

“I can’t,” she says.

“Sure you can. Just say it. Not for me. For yourself.” 

“I’m not ready.”

“Of course you are.”

“Not tonight.” 

“You can do it. Believe me, you can.”

“No.”

“Please. Say it. Say it now. We’re running out of time.”

“I can’t.” But she can feel her resistance starting to wane, distant traces of courage beginning to rise. And she wants him to ask one more time. Just once more, to see what will happen. 

And then he is gone. 

Anise stares at the closed door for a long minute before turning back to the familiar images on Tyler Avenue. The scene in front of her flutters like stuttering frames of film in a movie projector; the neon lights blur like melted crayons. After some amount of time passes, she is aware of nothing but her own reflection in the glass. 

Years later, when she thinks about this night, she will remember the boy as taller and older than he was. She will replace his odd features with a face that resembles a young George Clooney, a face she thinks she sees from time to time and one she may never stop looking for. Over the years, she will have reworked and replayed the conversation so many times that even she will recognize that most of the words are her own. But every once in a while, without warning, the feeling returns to her with absolute clarity. Like standing on a ridge and knowing that if she took a step forward, there was a good chance that, although she might not soar, she just might not fall. 

⧫

Jerry Burger’s short stories have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Harpur Palate, Briar Cliff Review, Delmarva Review, and in Best American Mystery Stories 2020. His novel, The Shadows of 1915 (Golden Antelope Press, 2019), explores the generational effects of the Armenian Genocide. 

This short story is published in the current Delmarva Review, a nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry  from thousands of submissions annually. It is designed by its founders to encourage outstanding new writing for readers. The journal is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org 

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