Dummy by Susan Tepper

This blouse I just love hangs in Dibly’s window. Ma laughs when I bring up the fact of its pretty silky material. And how that peach color matches my skin. So come Saturday I go to Dibly’s to get a closer look. The saleslady smiles and takes it off the store dummy. Here, hon, she says to me. Holding it out for me to touch. It looks lumpy in her hands like peach vomit. Seeing that window dummy without its blouse is strange. No thank you, I say. All of a sudden feeling shy. I look again at the naked dummy. Then turning away I run out of the store.

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Owl by Susan Tepper

All night until the owl starts braying they play Monopoly. Rudy wins Park Place and Boardwalk over and over like a mafia don. I am so tired. I just hang on the wicker couch in the porch. They play on in the living room under the dim chandelier until the owl. Porky counts six from the owl. He says it’s over and flips the board. Rudy punches him and my sister Alma shrieks. My cousin Blink says shut up! shut up! I want to sleep in the woodshed but the vicious dog from next door hunts rabbits in there. He could be in there right now snooping. All the bedrooms are occupied by elder folk. We kids are supposed to sleep with blankets on the floor. I won’t. Bugs creep along the floor at night. Mice sometimes. I will stay on this stinking wicker couch until my back breaks in half and everyone notices I am two parts.

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Calendar by Susan Tepper

By the time it was spring the kitchen still wasn’t cleaned up. Every dish and pot and pan and bit of silverware filthy with dried on food. Potholders and dish rags and dish towels filthy. The countertops and table. Even the window sills had crud. I saw something that might have been old spaghetti sauce splatters. I scraped at it then sniffed. It smelled like something not tomato. Blood? There was a murder in this kitchen right around Christmas. They came in while we were sleeping and shot Wulka dead. He was cooking meth he knew his days were scattered. He used to say that after he made us promise. Keep quiet or your days are scattered Wulka said. Tootie was afraid and used to whimper in his sleep. We shared a room up top the house. I was scared but being older couldn’t let it show. After they shot Wulka someone hung a cloth calendar of the new year. It could have been his mother. She’s crazy-mean too. Home Sweet Home that calendar says in fancy lettering across the top.

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Cold Front by Susan Tepper

On the eastern border of Siberia they say nothing grows. Not even a cactus says Tootie. Oh will somebody shut that kid up. I want to kill him. I hate the way he eats. He slops his food like a little hog. I would like to take him to Siberia. Lose him in a big snow pile. My brother says Tootie is something we have to live with. Why? Why do we have to? I have seen other things go by the wayside. The turtle we named Fastie, for instance. It was put on Gramp’s old record turn table and spun off into space. We searched the whole room. Fastie was gone like a snow melt.

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Green Carnations by Susan Tepper

Itchy and Squirmy were the two ugliest twins you’d ever want to see. Ugly, and dirty. Plus they had big feet. My Aunt Luna says you can tell plenty from a man’s foot size about his others. Well I don’t want to know nothin’ about their feet or their other parts either. For the prom Squirmy bought a girl a wrist-corsage of all green carnations. Who does that sort of thing? The poor girl. She was so mortified. Kept trying to hide her carnation wrist behind her backside. Useless. People were everywhere in the big gymnasium. Sooner or later someone would get behind her and make some loud wisecrack. I figured she had to be pretty nuts. Pretty nuts to even think of going to the prom with Squirmy. My best friend Abbie said the girl was new in town. And love is love. Even so I said. Even so.

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Corner by Susan Tepper

On the corner the man with the dog sells pencils out of a cup. They are lined up yellow and perfect. The erasers up and the point part down. Each with its pink unused eraser. The kind I like to chew. I’m dying to steal one. How will he know? I ask my brother Tom. How will he know he’s blind? Tom says the dog will know. That the dog is trained to protect the man. The noon heat is killing me. Fumes from the cars are thick. I’m not going to mug him I say. I just want a pencil. Then pay for it Tom says. No I’m thinking. I want it free. The blind man doesn’t need money. Look at his shoes I tell Tom. Real leather and shiny. We have sneakers. He has more money than God. Tom says he’s going to let the dog bite me. He says it will leave a large gaping wound. Probably in my leg. Will it scar? I say. Tom says for sure. For sure and then no one will want you Rachel.

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Gum by Susan Tepper

At the rim of the spaceship there’s a ladder and a rail. I don’t understand why because they won’t let us go outside. I don’t understand why because the spacemen went outside. They got to walk on the moon. We bought first class and we are stuck inside all day and night. It’s not good to be confined without fresh air. I mention this to Dad who just laughs and pats my knee. Well it isn’t. I know that for a fact. But Dad just reads his newspaper and chews gum. Every few hours a new piece of gum. Have some gum he tells me. I frown and look away. Gum gives me headaches. But he doesn’t know that. He’s just the Dad. My mom knows that but she stayed behind. She said she’d take her chances.

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V by Susan Tepper

For my birthday he gave me a necklace. A shell necklace that hangs just below the bones in my neck. At the V. He likes to kiss that part of my neck. He says only the really beautiful girls have the V. He says the fat girls have it but it’s hidden under fat. He says it’s a shame but their own fault. He says they should eat less. Now that got me to thinking. It got me to thinking about turning fat. I do eat quite a lot of food. What if I turn to fat? What if my V disappears? Won’t he love me anymore? I want to ask my Aunt Star. She has opinions. But Ma says she’s off with some man for the night. I go up and hang the shell necklace on my lamp shade. Then I go outside and sit on the porch. Grandpop is smoking and rocking. He passes me the pipe and I take a few puffs. I ask him if Grandma had the V. He said what V and goes on puffing. Then I go back up to bed. I look at my necklace on the lamp shade. It looks so innocent.

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Overcooked by Susan Tepper

At night Junie gets itchy. It starts with her back. Scratch it, will ya? she’ll say to anyone around. Sometimes we all ignore her and go on watching TV. She shimmys her back up and down the door frame. You got fleas, Buster said one night. It was the night Aunt May overcooked the spaghetti. She got into a big fight with Uncle Gil over plum tomatoes or fresh from the garden. By the time that spaghetti hit the table it had turned to mush. Uncle Gil got up and went to a bar. He didn’t say but we all knew. Aunt May sat alone in the kitchen and drank down the red wine decanter. Junie was hopping around trying to get a scratch from someone. Use this, Buster said, handing her a stretched out coat hangar. Just then Aunt May wobbled into the living room. She let out a shriek like a wild bird. We all stopped to look. Even Junie.

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Pie by Susan Tepper

When Lacey wants an apple her mother makes her bake a whole pie first. From scratch. The water in the flour, the kneading, the rolling of the dough, the pressing in the pyrex dish, the peeling of the apples, the sprinkled cinnamon. Then the top crust. The top crust breaks Lacey every time. She can’t get that top crust right. She gets holes and tries patching. Little dough squares that look like knee patches. Her mom starts yelling that the pie is a failure. Lacey covered in flour. She cries out and drops to the floor. Every time she drops to the floor and wails there. Just once I’d like her to stand up and wail. But, no. So the pie gets thrown away. Her mother cackles like the old witch that she is. And Lacey goes to bed without her apple. It’s time to run away, I told her the other day. Lacey looked suspicious of me. Well how many pies this week? I asked her. She shrugged; and continues to act like I am the enemy.

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Cold Cuts by Susan Tepper

Chenille was wrapping the cold cuts in Saran and it was horrible. She’s such a fucking retard, why do they give her jobs that are important? I like my cold cuts fresh. Chenille’s got the cheese wedged in crooked and not even fully covered. Look, I tell her mother Millie, you have to take charge of this. Millie gives me the high eyebrow then makes one of those go get fucked arm movments that were popular during the 70’s. I was a kid then but remember my brother Al doing it to his workers when they installed carpet wrong. It’s the same thing all over again with Chenille. They should put her in a facility Al says. That Millie keeps her around like a freak show. I think Millie gets off on people staring at Chenille. Otherwise she’d keep the kid locked in the house. Even when Chenille isn’t wrapping cold cuts she’s a train wreck. Her lipstick goes on crooked and one side is higher. It makes her look extra wacked. She’s got really thick black eyebrows that stick straight out. Al said that’s from all the shock therapy. Al said Millie should pluck the kid’s eyebrows. Al said that the other day.

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Puffing by Susan Tepper

Who woulda thought my wife Mabel woulda gone out to Sears & Roebuck and bought the same coat with brown flecks in gray wool that Janelle Stevens bought? Those two been arch enemies since grade school. One likes peanut butter, one likes jelly. One likes chocolate, one vanilla. You get the picture, I told Rudy. Rudy nodded and went about wiping down the oil from the paint shaker machine. For a hardware guy he shoulda known better. You put too much oil, I said. Rudy nodded and lit a cigarette. You can get cancer, I said. Rudy stubbed out the cigarette. Why d’ya pay attention to me? I asked him. You got the one I wanted, he said. You got Mabel Brady. I only got Janelle Stevens. Mabel Brady has the bigger chest. Well how ’bout that, I said puffing out my own chest.

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Tea Pot by Susan Tepper

After we buried all the large bills in her sweater bin under the bed, we put the twenties, tens and fives in her teapot collection. Annie didn’t want the money in her favorite one. It’s a teapot made to look like a lemon that we bought in Italy that time. While we were still getting along. The one that has a small ceramic lemon and green ceramic leaves sticking out of its lid. The one she uses for iced tea. That she used to use for ice tea. Before I cheated. When she still trusted me. When she trusted the water was safe for drinking. When she trusted the lemon peel was OK unpeeled in the pot. When she lifted the stove kettle without a pot holder. When she thought she was lovely. All that.

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Trading by Susan Tepper

After supper in the summer we traded baseball cards outside. My brother had the best ones and the other kids would give ten for his one. He was a cagey trader. I found it all rather boring. I only stuck around because there was nothing else to do. Plus I scooped up bubble gum that often fell from the cards to the ground during the haggling over the cards. My brother screamed loudest. He was stocky and strong. He brought Mr. Chips our German Shepherd along as mascot. If someone got out of line Mr. Chips growled. It kept a lid on things. Until the night Richie from the city came. He was visiting his cousin Louie for the week. We all stood under Mrs. Carney’s big tree. The spreading one with the caterpillars. Every so often a caterpillar would fall on the sidewalk or someone’s head or their back. We were used to it. Richie was afraid and started to screech and carry on. My brother screamed he should shut up he was spoiling the action. Mr. Chips barked loudly. I found a few more pieces of gum that were still nicely wrapped and tucked them in my pocket for later.

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Cans by Susan Tepper

Carl put two soup cans together by stringing miles and miles of cord. I lay on my bed watching him, my sandals kicked off, the moths beaming around the lamp light and the smell of Ma’s fried chicken. Daddy finally woke up from his drunk. He took a shower then went to the kitchen and pinched her ass. “Mother,” he said quite severely. He calls her Mother when he’s been bad. Lately his badness is on the rise. My Aunt Star says he’s got another woman. Ma just shook a hand at Aunt Star but I believe it. So does Carl. He told me not to worry that men do that sort of thing all the time. Right now he’s got the soup cans attached and he’s grinning. The tops and bottoms are taken off with a can opener. We’re going to loop them from my bedroom window straight across the alley to his bedroom window. Carl says this way we can do pillow talk. It’s some old movie we watched on the movie station. That movie’s a hundred years old Carl told me. Then rubbed near his zipper making me feel all nervous and funny.

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The Blanket by Susan Tepper

On the business trip to Calgary she bought one of those white blankets with the green and red and yellow border stripes. Henry calling it ugly when she takes it out of the suitcase and drapes it across the foot of their bed. It’s a famous pattern from that region of Canada she tells him. He kind of snorts then leaves her alone to finish unpacking. She kicks off her shoes and climbs on the bed resting her face against the blanket’s soft wooliness. Every night as they walked to dinner they passed a group of prostitutes. It was January and so cold there. The women stood on the corner near the steakhouse turning this way and that. Most of them had on very short skirts with short furry jackets. Cheap looking fur like rabbit. She wondered how they could endure. Their legs exposed in such frigid weather. She could hardly make it into the steak house. She rubs her face against the Calgary blanket. Thinking about those women rubbing their faces into the bodies of men.

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Crackers by Susan Tepper

Max buys Animal Crackers by the carton-load from e-bay. He tells you these are special, not the ones you get in the super (market). It bugs you how he always calls it the super. Anyway, the kitchen is stacked with unopened boxes from his last auction or however it’s done. You are not an e-bay kind of person, basically e-bay bores you. If you want a cookie you buy it direct. He is ecstatic over his latest e-bay acquisition of German Animal Crackers. He also bought Italian Animal Crackers, and in the spring there was a box marked Croatia. Now you tell him that Croatia is a vanished country. That these Animal Crackers could be a decade old. Max fights you on this point and becomes rather territorial. He stands next to the Croatia box and drapes one arm across it. Like you would steal or destroy it! My god you want to scream! Instead you boil some hot water for tea. Max asks what you’re doing. Boiling hot water you say. That seems to calm him. He nods. Then leaves you alone in the kitchen with the unopened cartons and a lot of fear in your heart.

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Fog by Susan Tepper

My head’s been wired for sound. I told the docs not to do this. I said I don’t want to hear ANYTHING. They said you have to. You cannot go around with your head in a fog. I like the fog I said. I like the color and texture. I like that you can’t see two feet ahead in really good fog. I like how it conjures up the living and the dead. I like to walk the mountain road in fog. It’s a low mountain, but all the same.

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Hydra, 1980 by Susan Tepper

At the harbor I notice a small boat that has a wooden hull and a tall wood mast. Reminds me of my boat back home. We’ve come here by ferry from Athens. No cars careen around this island. Hills dominate the landscape. Houses are stacked. We buy lace from an old woman in a shack near the water’s edge. Goats patrol the streets. That night we stay in the only hotel. One big room at the top of a square building. We strangers sleep together family style. It’s November. Warm enough to swim but I don’t.

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Bitch at Heart by Susan Tepper

Their kid was ugly. The mother was ugly and the father was ugly. What chance did the little kid have? People said what people always say: What a cute kid— stuff like that. The parents beamed. I could never bring myself to say it. My husband told me they would hold it against me. I’ll take my chances I said. On Tuesday we went to dinner at their place. What a mess. Newspapers from a hundred years stacked next to the cold fireplace. Junk strewn everywhere. The wife stirred things in a pot then stuck in her bare hand to fiddle with some string holding the meat together. Not even out of the pot and already I’d lost my appetite. My husband made a big show out of smacking his lips and making hunger noises. It got unbearable. I pushed the meat around my plate eating a few carrots. When we got home he told me off for not eating the meat and that started a big screaming match. The next day the husband phoned to say it was obvious I did not enjoy myself at their place. My own husband protested saying I had a wonderful time but was just a bitch at heart. And that they musn’t take me seriously

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Waking Up by Susan Tepper

There is soup in a puddle around you, an orange puddle like melted, but you don’t understand how it got there, or why. Accept this and move around the puddle you think. But you feel rooted there. As if a tree is under the ground ready to sprout like springtime, and the roots are pushing against the soles of your shoes. You worry they will stain your shoes orange, all this pushing and puddling. You want to bend down and lick the puddle, lap at it like a cat then find a corner to curl in. Of course this won’t happen. Outside your tent is the war and you are so tired.

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Legs by Susan Tepprer

Trey told me not to put on pantyhose. He said it gets in the way if he wants to get in right away. I felt dizzy after he made that speech. I was putting sugar in my tea and I never use sugar in tea. That’s how turned around he made me. The kitchen wallpaper has stripes and they were dancing. Well, wavering. Either way I left for work without my Chapstick and no pantyhose. I was cold walking to the bus. When I got to the bus shelter it was empty. I looked down the street and saw the back end of my bus, the dark smoky tail pipe emission that’s probably illegal. I sat down in the empty bus shelter. It would be twenty minutes to a half hour before the next one. My legs were freezing. I touched them and felt nothing. “This could be bad,” I said aloud to no one. “This could be the start of frostbite.” I stood up and started to move around the bus shelter, then I jumped up and down and bent in different directions. I stamped my feet on the ground. Nothing was bringing back the feeling in my legs. I could see the ER docs sawing them off then asking me if I wanted to take them home.

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Out by Susan Tepper

The landlord said we have thirty days to move out. He didn’t say move. Move I could live with. It was the out that upset me. I started crying the moment I shut the door in his face. He’d called the apartment a pig-stye. I felt that was over reaching reality. Sure the walls were a little tainted from all the pot smoking Ziggy did but in truth the place was actually quite clean. The dishes were always washed and put away. There weren’t dirty clothes lying about. I couldn’t help the cockroaches they came with the building. I told Ziggy I felt totally insulted. Ziggy told me to smoke a joint and I’d be less unhappy. I told Ziggy he has gotten us into this mess. I told him we are expected to return the walls to their original white condition. Ziggy laughed and said he doesn’t do paint. He said he was going to find Stéfano and get some really good stuff. That it’s garbage like this that blackened the walls to shit.

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Oasis by Susan Tepper

When you screw open the water bottle it rips the skin on your palm. There are lines in your palm there, but not your life line. That runs higher. The rip is in that fleshy part you call your oasis. You think about water under there, a whole city of date-palms and sand and low clay hovels with people squatting outside cooking on small fires. It bothers you to have this shallow wound puncturing your oasis. Your life line doesn’t seem all that long anymore. When you were younger it seemed endless like it stretched off your hand into outer space. Now you rub the wound with your other index finger. It’s bloody and slightly raised. When you get to the oasis, will there be a place for you to stay?

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Rug by Susan Tepper

You ask him to mail a simple postcard and he drops it in a puddle. When he brings it back to you it’s soggy like an old cracker dipped in salt water. Always this way with him. He doesn’t want to act responsibly. He doesn’t want to be your man. If you had one ounce of guts you’d pull up stakes and leave. You’d empty the kitchen of your Mom’s bone china she collected with A&P coupons over the years, the stainless steel silverware passed down by your aunt Rose, the linen tablecloth from a yard sale. The rest, technically, belongs to him. The couch and the two brown chairs, the coffee table, the lamps, the bed and dresser. The rug was left at the curb by someone who had no need of a rug anymore. You both carried it into the truck so technically it should be cut down the middle with a box cutter.

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Worn by Susan Tepper

There is a soft cotton handkerchief in my mother’s top dresser drawer that is so worn thin you can see through it. It must be fifty years old. Maybe more. She got it as a gift from her sister who was my aunt. The sister worked in a laundry and my mother who was a lot younger had to deliver lunch to the sister every day. In telling this story, my mother called the laundry a sweat shop. She said her sister sat outside on the curb and ate the sandwich and fruit my mother brought her every day. Even if it was 100 degrees outside, her sister said it was cooler than being in the laundry. I cannot visit a Laundromat or dry cleaners without remembering my Aunt. It can make me cry if I’m already having a bad day. My mother says that I’m too emotional. It’s all how you look at things I tell her.

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Angel by Susan Tepper

This girl Loretta comes to the house to clean up Grandma. She washes Grandma and shampoos her hair. Loretta tells me it took three or four shampoos to get all the white crud off Grandma’s scalp. They get that white crud when they get old she says. It makes me cringe and never want to be old. So I start to research death. So many ways to get it if you want it. I like the swallowing types of death where you swallow a pill or maybe a lot of pills, depending. Then you lie down looking normal and go to sleep. What could be more normal than that? I mention this to Loretta who agrees. She says all the real beauties died rather young. Then she rattles off names: Marilyn Monroe and Princess Di are two I remember her mentioning. You should do it Loretta tells me while she’s cutting Grandma’s hair in the kitchen. Sunlight pouring through the window. All the white hair on the floor is snow. When she gets done Grandma like a deranged angel.

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Freud by Susan Tepper

Neal is smearing mayo on his sandwich. I’m going to puke, you say, mustard goes on that Italian stuff. You’re on the down low, he tells me. I can’t be on the down low, I’m a girl. Girl-shmirl. He adds more mayo. Anybody can be on the down low. I don’t get you, I say. It’s mustard for cured meats and Italian cheeses. Who made those rules? he wants to know. The same person who made the down low rules. You have sperm aversion, he says. What do you mean? You hate mayo, you hate sperm. Who says? Doctor Freud. Doctor Freud hated mayo? How the hell should I know? This is getting confusing. Yeah, he says and takes a big bite. Oh, disgusting, I say. Yeah, want some?

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Two Graveyards by Susan Tepper

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The two small graveyards lay side by side like the bodies they covered. One had fancier tombstones engraved upon that told names and dates, a floral motif, or perhaps a Grecian style urn in bas relief on its façade. Some had sweet poetic verse about the dead person. The other graveyard was the slave graveyard with its decrepit unmarked slabs, many about to fall over or already down in the unkempt grass. We went to the graveyards each time we visited the island. This place of the dead— it called to us. It took an hour to get there by public bus. The first time we went was shortly after my dad died and both our families were decomposing. We rode the bus in silence aware of each other in a way that was different. Already, too soon, we knew time was thin. That first visit I found a tombstone with my birth date, and the person had my first name. She died from yellow fever. I thought about dying from fever in a hot tropical place without air conditioning, and what that would be like. Then my husband wanted to go get ice cream cones. So we left.

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Gift Wrap by Susan Tepper

The girl hears moaning from behind the glass partition. She has come to get her package wrapped, something pretty for the new mother-to-be, a girl they say, though this girl has her doubts. I think it’s going to be a boy she tells her own mother and her mother says you’re crazy, you’ve always been a handful. The girl stares up at the various choices of gift wrap. So many cute pinky papers for girl babies. But it is a boy, she thinks. It’s a boy nesting there. She wonders when someone will come around the glass partition and help her? The department store is crowded today with pre-school shoppers. All the little boys and girls getting themselves outfitted for the new school year. The girl remembers her mother giving her a perm one year just before school started. It turned out looking like a poodle and the girl cried and didn’t want to go to school. So many smelly chemicals and the perm solution burned her scalp. Her mother had laughed at the result. The girl taps the counter and thinks about calling out for help. Behind her a line has been forming and now it’s long. People are complaining. The girl hears moaning again from behind the glass partition. She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know if she should follow her instincts and get the boy gift wrap. She can’t remember the last time a boy kissed her.

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Ferns by Susan Tepper

So many ferns in bright porcelain pots and woven baskets. They seem to take the air out of the room. A narrow room with double doors— what people used to call a parlor. It seems to have lost its function in modern times, aloof and lonely in this house of other rooms, where people probably watch TV and listen to music and have snacks. Or maybe even read a book sometimes. This room is like an old Grandma left behind in a house full of screaming toddlers. You’d like to sit down on the wicker settee near the windows. It seems to be calling you, a voice unseen, a body not heard from, gone, not from you, yet gone all the same since no one can see or remember. You touch the fern leaves. Lacy, fan-like; recalling how he loved you back then.

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Mr. & Mrs. Pete by Susan Tepper

Mr. Pete is cleaning the knife with some kind of strong chemical. You don’t want your meat sliced with this stink on the blade. Yet how can you tell him so without aggravating him? Recently his wife died and Mr. Pete has been near semi-hysterical though it isn’t obvious. Not to the world at large. But you’ve known Mr. Pete since you were a little girl and he never before had a red face that looked combustible. You want to tell Mr. Pete that it’s OK to cry over Mrs. Pete. Her real name was Helga, but you always called them Mr. and Mrs. Pete. A leftover from childhood, and they liked it. When your dad was out of work that long time, Mrs. Pete would sneak an extra chop into the brown paper. Or Mr. Pete would sneak a few extra chicken pieces. Both thought they were sneaking from the other. You were little and could hardly reach past the counter but you saw, and your mother used to get teary when she’d open the meat and see the extras in there. Now Mrs. Pete is gone and he is alone with the knives and no one to sneak from.

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Two by Susan Tepper

Even on your anniversary you fight.  An argument over who will scan their credit card at the market register.  You say you need the mileage points.  You’re low on points and desperate to go on holiday.  He has lots of points, how can this matter?  He ignores you, as if you haven’t explained and pulls out his own card.  None of this lost on the check-out lady.  She smirks enjoying the entertainment.  You ask for the two cake slices in a separate bag.  At the last minute you had grabbed two slices of chocolate cake from the case.  He saw you, and wagged a finger.  Stood near the paper towels wagging his finger.  At first you pretended not to understand.  But you knew he was ordering you to put the slices back.  You wanted to scream out across the market:  This is our anniversary cake GODDAMMIT!   You held onto them, each in their plastic container, and moved toward him, silently mouthing: you want one too?  Tense-looking, he walked to the bakery case, poked around, then switched his slice to a darker more devious chocolate.  Dense-looking; no pores breathing there.  Then moving quickly he tossed the other food items onto the belt.  A woman checking-out in front of you sensed his aggression; looked startled; grabbing her bag of oranges she left.  You began feeling weak in the knees.  You watched the check-out lady putting the cake slices into a separate bag.  You always did it that way.  To avoid damage.

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Live by Susan Tepper

You spill ice cream down your front and he laughs and calls you a slob.  That isn’t exactly the way you thought this date was going to play out. “What kind of guy doesn’t reach for a napkin?” you say.

“We are not responsible,” he says quite matter of factly.

Now what kind of person calls themself we?

Another bit of weirdness, you’re  thinking, tabbing up five on his part.  Plus his name which is ridiculous for a grown man: Ricky.  Not Rick, or Richard, or even Dick (which you hate) but Ricky. 

“We?” You grab a napkin off the counter before more ice cream can slop down the cone.

He’s watching like you aren’t here, as if you are a TV show.

“I’m live,” you say and lick the sides of the cone.

“I don’t like strawberry ice cream,” he says.  “Reminds me of blood.”

“Oh yeah.”  You lick with more ferocity.  “You mean like period blood?  Is that what’s bothering you, Ricky?” 

You smirk at him over the cone.

He doesn’t answer.

“Ever fuck a girl during her period?” 

“Shut up, Wilma!”  He actually covers his ears.

“I’m live,” you say.  “I’m live and I’m bleeding.”

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Busy at Work by Susan Tepper

It’s hell working here in Jersey with that pervert Twitchy who sits behind the makeshift partition in this crummy little office.  I listen for sounds coming from him.  He’s dead quiet back there.  On the phone I whisper to my friend Jason from the New York office that I’m sure Twitchy is masturbating. Jason goes totally hysterical.  Says I have a vivid imagination. You think so?  I say, desperate to be back on Madison Avenue again.  This job transfer was one huge fucking mistake.  I tell Jason that Twitchy insists I have lunch with him in this hideous diner every day, where the hot roast beef gravy is gray.  He always smiles at me over the menu.  And he never stops, you know, twitching.  His eyes twitch.  His lips twitch.  His hair, thinning, twitches.  I don’t like thinking about what else might be twitching back behind that partition. Jason tells me I should knock it over like by accident.  Are you nuts?  I say.  Jason tells me then you’ll know for sure.

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Sleep by Susan Tepper

He buys you bagels and cream cheese and tells you to sleep more. How can that make you sleep? You want a pink blanket with a satin edge and a womb to curl up inside. It’s too cold out there. Icicles line the chimney making smoke impossible. But the fireplace makes you cough and summer is only a shadow with fangs. You want a dog, maybe a cat, you want things that haven’t been invented. It’s a lost world. The shape of things to come don’t match your mind. You dream of mountains flown over when it was exciting to see George Washington and those others carved into rock. Now there is nothing left to please you. Nothing but your fist against a wall. He comes in with the bagel on a tray. A single red rose in a water glass.

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Space Camp by Susan Tepper

There is muck in the creek, it snags your body and you are green slime when you climb back onto the float.  The sun is a yellow glob through the foliage.  You are sick of this shit!  You want to fly away to where it’s always between 60 and 72 degrees.  The sweltering summers and frigid winters have marked you like a cutter.  Once your skin had a sheen but now it’s ridged like they say the moon is. What do they know?  They have spoiled every dream.  This week they say don’t eat romaine from California.  Before that you had to chuck out the peanut butter in your cupboard— peanut butter that sustained you over a lifetime.  Soon the ocean will be O-U-T.  And forget those chilled shrimp cocktails, five hanging off the glass rim and the spicy well of red sauce.  Forget what you know and love. Buy a ticket to Space Camp.  All the commercials and roadside billboards say Reserve Your Place in Space Camp (before the slots run out).  Who ever thought… is there room for your bicycle on the thing-a-majig that will transport you to Space Camp?  Will you have to share an outdoor latrine like at Girl Scout camp?  Will they serve pork & beans?   Will you wear a silver one-piece suit like Star Trek?  Whatever… but one thing makes you happy:  they’ve promised a temperature that will remain a steady 60 to 72 degrees Farenheit.  Or was that centigrade?

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Fun by Susan Tepper

Spottie’s black spots are falling off from an allergic reaction. The vet proclaiming: “This is a very rare condition in Dalmations.” Like that would make me feel better.

On the patio next to the pool, our trainer, Ralph, is bent over studying the round pink flesh spots that used to be black dog hair. He throws up his hands having a conniption. “If we don’t get them back he’ll be disqualified!”

“Well you’re the trainer, Ralph, what have you done to my prize dog?”

“He sure won’t be weeening any prizes this time.” Though it’s muttered sotto vocé, Italian style, I don’t want Antonio’s point of view.

“Stick to cleaning up the rose garden!” I yell.

Antonio flicks those Sicilian eyes. But he doesn’t pick up his trowel and leave, either. Once you hanky-panky the gardener, there is no going back.

Rubbing the dog’s head I say, “What do you think, Spottie?” His tail wags.

“We can’t very well paint him,” says Ralph.

“Paint heeeeem!” Antonio holds his stomach rolling with laughter.

“Take a hike, Antonio!”

“You cannot speak that way to me.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I weeeel tell your husband.”

“He would never believe you.”

“He weeeel. When I tell him about your double neeeple.”

Ralph’s head jerks. “Your double what?”

“It’s a small mole, that’s all.”

“Double neeeeeeeeeeeeeple,” Antonio sings out across the patio.

Then Spottie runs around in circles from the fun.

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Stickers by Susan Tepper

So my sister hooks me up with this girl who just got out of the looney bin.  I’m not shitting you.  Lucinda, the girl’s name.  A situation straight out of a horror movie. Except my sister says she’s a very cool girl who got screwed by life.

Anyways… we make a plan to wear red T-shirts and meet near the sign outside Chuckie Cheese.

And she’s not bad from a distance, her blonde hair in a perky pony.  I wave and she waves.  But then we get close and she’s got these little stickers stuck to her face.  A few on her cheeks and three lined up across her forehead.

I’m reading some really small letters and numbers on them.  I’m wondering if they’re passes to get in and out of the looney bin— like they stamp your arm to get in a club.

She looks straight through me.  “Fruit stickers, if you must know.”

“What?”

She taps her forehead reciting:  “Lemon from Chile, Sun World Black Plum, 4038 California avocado.”

“You wear fruit stickers on your face?”

Lucinda smiles beatifically.  “I only eat fruits and vegetables.”

I scratch under my T-shirt cursing my sister for setting me up with this sticker chick freak.

“Um.  Do you think you could peel them off for the movie?”

She squints.  “Why should I?”

It is a good question.  I’ll give her that.

She’s waiting; her face looks hungry.

“I believe in meat,” I say.

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Swastika by Susan Tepper

It started on a whim when Henry got downsized from his Wall Street job.  He’d read in Fortune, or somewhere, about a bond trader turned baker.  Henry becoming enamored with flour and sugar. Now Henry isn’t a sharing person.  I buy a cake, he devours the whole thing while I’ve only had a slice or two.  That’s what made me think cupcakes. They can’t really be shared— so mistakenly I’d thought: no problem here. It’s a sweet little place, trés shabby-chic.  Henry bakes them, getting up early, as all true bakers do.  He’s the type of man who puts himself  fully to every task.  The cupcakes are heavenly, arranged on round glass pedestal trays with lace paper doilys.  Our shop is the most perfect little escape from reality. So why do we fight all the time? Today we fight over frosting.  I feel pink with sprinkled coconut would be a nice change from the typical white on white. Henry sort of pulls at his hair.  “Pink will turn off the men.” “What is this, a sports bar?  It’s cupcakes, Henry.  Cupcakes?” “I’d like to attract more of a mixed crowd.  Too many prissy-pots,”  he says. “Ok, we’ll do a beef-jerky cupcake with a swastika on top.  Edible or plastic?” “What?” ”The swastika.  Do you want it sugar or plastic?” “Now where would we find a plastic swastika?” “You’re kidding me, right?  Henry tell me you’re kidding.” Return to This Week’s Flash.

All Credit Rescinded by Susan Tepper

His ad in the personals specified female non-smoker.  So why was he lighting up?  I hate cigarettes, all smoking.

“Why are you smoking?”

“It relaxes me while I drive.”  He takes a long drag saying, “I hope you like seafood.”

Seafood?  Like shrimp?  Is the guy out of his tree?

I clear my throat.  “Have you been watching the news lately?”

“It’s a downer.”  He flicks his ash in the ash tray.  “I never watch it.”

Ah!  He uses the ash tray.  So this is a regular habit, not just from nervousness on a blind date, which he might have gotten a few points for.  All credit rescinded.

“What about the radio?”

“I’m a CD kind of guy.”  He laughs.

“So you are unaware of the oil spill?  That’s why you’re taking me to a seafood restaurant?”

“Hey, hon, isn’t that a tad paranoid?”  He takes the turn sharply.

I pull on my short skirt wishing I had worn something less revealing.  “Paranoid?”

“Yeah.  You can order lobster.  Or salmon.”

I give him a sideways glance.  He does have a point.  Lobster and salmon are available in seafood restaurants.   It was the smoking that started me questioning his motives.  And he did lie in his ad.

“You lied in your ad.  You specifically said female non-smoker who likes skiing.”

“Oh, that.  The newspaper mixed up the ads.  That was another guy.  Mine said a female who is up for anything and everything.”

“Stop this car, I’m getting out.”

Power Company by Susan Tepper

The little girl couldn’t look up from the ground.  The sunshine hurt her eyes.  She kept her face down and got to know all the cracks in the sidewalks, the white lines marked at the street crossings, tiny pebbly rocks in the cement curbs, the strange red zig-zags that looked like writing on the Chinese restaurant menu, but that her father said were markers painted on the road by the power company.
 
The power company, thought the little girl.  It sounded like a good place to go.  Like a hospital, or a house where you could get cookies and milk after school and nothing bad would happen. 
 
The little girl thought often about the power company.  Her father kept insisting she look up. 
 
“I can’t,” she told him.  He insisted anyway.  He smacked the back of her head and still she kept it down.  Chicken neck, he called her.
 
Finally, one day she began looking up.  And when she was able to do that, her shoulders moved up, too, almost at her ears.  “Put your shoulders down,”  her father said.
 
“I can’t,” the little girl told him.  He called her Frankenstein and said she would end up deformed.  That no one would want her.
 
Then I’ll keep them up forever thought the little girl.

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Real Eyes by Susan Tepper

He watched me through the lens taking shot after shot. He said, “You know, you’re very hot,” multiple times during the shoot. He was a pro. He knew saying those words would turn me on and he’d get his best work.

I had changed for the shoot in the next room, his bedroom. All my different tops were laid out across his bed. The hair and make-up guy had whispered at one point, “He likes you, he said you’re very clean, you wash behind your ears.”

“Well doesn’t everyone!”

“You can’t believe the dirty girls we get here for head shots,” the hair and make-up guy said.

When he finally put down the camera I looked at him, ready for anything. His eyes were dead. Flat and gray like an old fish. So totally dead. Still. I wanted the hair and make-up guy to get lost.

“Change into the black V-neck,” flat eyes said. “That sexy white throat and your clavicle bone…”

I stared closely into his eyes. Nothing. He’d almost talked dirty. It was discouraging. The make-up guy, paid by the hour, wasn’t going away so fast. He fluffed my hair, lifted and misted the top.

Back behind the camera again flat eyes said, “Lick your lips,” about four dozen times. Then, “Think where you’d like your lips to be. Yes, yes, yes,” he kept saying shot after shot.

His real eyes, the camera, brimming for me.

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Cookie Head by Susan Tepper

Cookie Head by Susan Tepper
 
 
Kyla opened the bakery strictly for cookies.  Sold by the pound or half pound.  A quarter pound only if the person seemed destitute.  She would not sell individual cookies. Like it said on the window of John’s Pizza on Bleecker: No Slices.
 
For weighing the cookies, she found an old brass scale with double trays in a pawn shop. 
 
Reggie, her pastry chef, sniffing his disapproval.  “That’s a fruit scale.”   
 
“Well it works for weighing the cookies,”said Kyla. 
 
“If someone needs one cookie, a little sugar rush, how can you turn them away?”  Then he straightened his high white pastry chef hat that always seemed askew.
 
Cookie head, she wanted to call him.  His strangely shaped head had inspired the opening of an all-cookie bakery.  Naturally he had no idea.  His big chef-ego would have balked and bolted.  Then she’d be stuck baking the cookies, too. 
 
She liked standing on Jane Street holding a tray of samples, smiling at passersby, chatting, offering a cookie.  
 
“You give away one at a time but you won’t sell one cookie!” Reggie was having a pissy-fit.  “It’s unbalanced logic.”
 
She’d just come back with her empty tray.   It was hot out there.  She mopped her forehead with a napkin.
 
He dumped a cookie sheet full of hot chocolate chips into one side of the scale.  It tipped  precariously.
 
“Why are you doing that?” said Kyla.
 
“It’s what I do best.  Terror.  Until you give in.”

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Soup by Susan Tepper

Mrs. Sensor was appalled by what she saw on Copacabana Beach. She’d spent her life savings on this trip. All around her, lying on towels, strolling toward the surf, playing games where things get tossed, were the naked, or near-naked of both sexes.

How can this be? she thought; wishing she’d stayed put in her tiny hamlet town in upper New England— a place where propriety still had a place! It was bad enough that she couldn’t turn on the television without people practically fornicating in the commercials! One commercial for soup had shown a couple on a bed locked in the throes of passion.

Mrs. Sensor tried making sense out of soup and passion. What could possibly happen in a bowl of soup that might end in fornication? She had eaten thousands of bowls of soup in her adult lifetime, soup from cans and soup homemade.

She pulled her sun-visor out of her beach bag and positioned it on her head. The sun on Copacabana Beach relentless as the bodies. Never once could she recall a bowl of soup having any effect other than temporarily warming her insides.

I am clueless about the world, she thought. Michael was right.

Trying to avert her eyes from the endless parade of tanned oiled bodies in such close proximity to where she sat on her hotel towel, she quickly dismissed Michael from her mind.

He’d been a mean sort of person, a bruiser; what did he know?

Lost by Susan Tepper

We always get lost on car trips. I’ve come to expect it. Ron does the guy thing— refuses to ask directions. We can go circles out of our way; miles without sleep is what I sometimes think, wondering if Robert Frost had similar problems on car trips.

So I go to AAA and buy a bunch of maps. That night I say to Ron, “Look what I got!”

He hardly looks. It’s his way of keeping the power. “Well at least we won’t get lost anymore,” I say.

“Who’s going to read them?” He’s dropping three lumps of sugar into his coffee one at a time. I listen to the plop plop plop.

“Whoever isn’t driving!”

Now isn’t that obvious? It’s obvious to me. I think it would be obvious to the world at large.

“Ceilia, I don’t believe your eyes are good enough to read the small print on a map.”

“My eyes are fine with my reading glasses.”

“Did you upgrade your prescription? Because you can’t read the dosage on your stomach pills bottle.”

Now I want to say: If I lived by myself I wouldn’t need stomach pills. I never needed stomach pills until you came into my life. I think a map is a beautiful thing to behold. It shows me all the places I can escape to.

I don’t say any of that. I look at him watching his three lumps of sugar dissolve, and know I’m too late to start a new route.

China and Afghanistan by Susan Tepper

“See my knuckles,” Teddy says making two fists. “What do you notice?”

A lot of people are milling about, it’s Times Square, 4pm in July. Hot. Radiator hot.

I shrug saying, “It’s just knuckles.”

I’m looking around the throngs of people for some place cool to duck into, an air conditioned Starbucks, anywhere. I hate winter then I hate summer. I feel like I wasn’t meant to live on this earth.

“Look closer,” he’s saying extending his clenched hands. They’re squeezed so tight the knuckles have turned a sickly yellowish color.

“Look,” I say back. “OK, you have yellow knuckles.”

“Janine, you need to examine life more closely.”

“It’s hot and ugly here. There’s fumes. There could be another truck bomb right on this corner, one that goes off this time. I want to go back to Kansas.”

He laughs then. “Kansas, huh? What are you, Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?”

That doesn’t sound too bad. A nice Kansas twister to lift me out of the hell hole of Times Square. As I’m mulling this over, a fat woman in an ugly T-shirt bumps me hard and doesn’t apologize.

“Come on, figure it out.” He’s still with those damned knuckles shoved my way.

“China and Afghanistan?” I say.

“I am clenching two little worlds. One holds everything you dream of, Janine, and one holds nothing. Which one has the ring you want real bad?”

Corn by Susan Tepper

He was one of those guys whose mother was too much in the picture.  He was cute, no doubt, but you could just see her showing up on the honeymoon, booking a hotel room right next door to yours— with adjoining doors.

Just at the moment… in she’d waltz, all sunny, making believe her sonny wasn’t screwing you in the big heart-shaped bed.

Yeah, so it’s corny.  But you always saw a heart-shaped honeymoon bed.   Love is corny, by its very nature.  When it stops being corny it turns scary.   Best to keep one of those corn-husky things tied to your front door announcing to all:  Corn is alive and well here.

So you went and got yourself a Mama’s boy.  Eeegad.  How did that happen?  Macho-men used to be around every bend in the road.  Did you tire of the forceful sex that that type demanded—  demanded compliance?

Could be.

So you got yourself a sensitive guy, all sweetness.  Then realized: there’s an awful lot of mommy in the conversation.

Not right now, you say when he asks to take you home to meet his mother.

This isn’t the right time, you say a week or so later.

I don’t think so, you say when he looks puzzled that you don’t want to meet his mother.  Ever.

Finally you tell him:  I’m a bitch.  Fancy me with a sweet woman like your mother. She sounds too sweet to endure me.

Ever Have Breadfruit? by Susan Tepper

Ever Have Breadfruit? by Susan Tepper

Ever have breadfruit? says your sister.

Like banana bread?  you say.

Think outside the box, says your sister.

Aggressive, you say.

Well I’m trying, says your sister.

It’s all those guys, you say.

A regular war zone, says your sister.

Weapons and tanks?  you say.

More like mean, says your sister.

Why do some men turn mean?

That one’s easy, says your sister.

They know they won’t be getting laid?

I’ve known a bunch like that.

Whole platoons, you say.

Peel a banana, says your sister.

For breadfruit? you say.