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The Secret is Jack & Other Pieces

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The Secret is Jack


The secret is Jack on This is Us. To be honest, I don’t know what this means. What I mean is that he is the secret. To life. To death. To all that stuff in the middle. Sometimes I am numb. I pinch myself. Nothing. Then I go over to Alana’s. Alana looks through her phone. Sometimes she looks up at me. None of this matters. What matters is that we’re going to watch the show. We watch it—Hello, Jack. I give him a little wave. Sometimes he waves back—Hello there, middle-aged woman. He may be waving at Mandy Moore. She plays his wife. I stick my tongue out at her. While Alana looks through Twitter, I give advice to Mandy; hey Mandy, be nicer to your husband. He’s so damn good to you. I watch him with the kids. He presses his hands on Randall’s face—a panic attack; Breathe, Randall, breathe. I press my hands against my own face, tell myself to breathe. Meanwhile, Alana’s on Facebook and my real husband is nowhere to be found.
Commercial—
I go use Alana’s bathroom. I look in the mirror and see Jack— Hello, sweet thing. He has that dark, tan skin. I want to crawl inside it, and I do. Jack holds me. He tells me to breathe. We do breathing exercises, together. He calls me his sweet thing. I tell him I am not sweet; I am sour. To prove this I lick myself. He says, Don’t be ridiculous, but the way he says it it’s more like, You’re so adorable—don’t ever stop. Finally, I come to. I’m in the bathroom. There is Alana’s soap. I splash some on. It smells like nothing. When I leave, Alana is still on the phone, and Jack is nowhere to be found.



The Secret is Jack, pen & ink, watercolor, 2019, Annabel Graham.




This is Us (plus one)


I want to get adopted by Jack and Rebecca Pearson and move through the TV. You are probably thinking—what? What’s up with Leonora this time? Here’s the thing—Jack and Rebecca are the perfect parents. They may live in the television and they may be fictional, but this is fine. Better, even. Non-fiction is overrated.

In my fantasy, I move in with them. One day I put up a sign: Wanted. Adoptive parents. The Pearsons are suckers for a thing like this; I wave at them. They look at me. There are the kids: Kate, Kevin, Randall. They say, Who is this weird old person and why is she wearing those socks; they don’t match. This is fact. If Jack and Rebecca Pearson were my parents, things would change. First item of business: get Leonora matching socks (sans holes). Second: make sweet love to her. Not in the sex way, in the mom and dad way. At night I would crawl in next to them; no, in between them. Jack would put his arms around me and I’d try to repress that strange feeling in my body, the one that wants him to be something else; but he isn’t; he’s Jack, perfect father and paterfamilias.
Rebecca is, too. Perfect—she says, I am here with my arms open. Her idea of open arms is not sending me to the deli when I’m old enough to get her cigarettes. Nor is it trying to compensate for this for years by stalking all my friends, calling them—Where is she? Have you seen Leonora? She’s like, 3.3 seconds late. Nor is it staying married to my real alkie father, who waits years to get his shit together, then dies. Who does that?
My new parents aren’t like that. They love me but give me breathing room, space: a perfect 7 inches. That’s how much distance there is between us. I measure it. I keep the tape measure in my pocket. If the gap grows wider I start to push. I say, Come here; I touch my new mother’s hair, which is Pantene perfect. There may be a stylist stage left. I wave.
Sometimes the kids come in. Kate, Kevin, Randall. They curl around me. They say, We don’t believe in distance, and tickle both my feet. I try tickling them back but then I stop myself—sometimes you do need to set some limits. We just lie there, and sometimes I spoon Jack. I breathe in his smell: pizza and Vietnam and something I can’t name. He takes my hand. We lie like that, together.



This Is Us (plus one), pen & ink, watercolor, 2019, Annabel Graham.




How to Make a New Mother for That Holiday


1. Use different things from different mothers—Felicia’s mom’s earrings, Linda’s curls. Your own mother’s Tori Amos cassette tapes because you like that side of her and want to keep it. When it doesn’t work (as it was bound never to do) call Hallmark. Yes, yes, I am calling about Mother’s Day. I think you should ban it, and if not ban it relegate it to a different calendar….I don’t know, I guess a farm team—but one for holidays. What? No, I will not hold.

 

2. Do a séance for your dead father. Conjure him. Wait for him to appear. When he doesn’t, go out for a smoke. You quit six years ago but you always knew it would be temporary, the way you always knew marriage would be, or daughterhood. It could last 20, 25 years, but its days were numbered—like life.

When your father appears act surprised. Hug him. Feel his breath in your ear. He wants to go to the Wok N’ Roll. Now Dad? Now. He’s wearing the same clothes. He’s all heat but he’s in that smoking jacket, the one he wore at all times. All times, documented: 1. Cheating on your mother 2. Listening to the Wu Tang Clan. 3. Loving you (even if it looked like he was really eating dumplings at the Wok N’ Roll).
Don’t explain this is to piss off your mother. That he’s your favorite parent. It will only make him cocky.

 

3. After dinner, go home to your empty apartment. Dad had to go somewhere. He said he was getting you a present, but you know; he’s at the bar. Stare at a wall. Google: how to summon the perfect parent for next year. It’s amazing—all the witches are ahead of the curve. They’re getting started early, for Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Business is booming. Spend six bucks for “The Perfect Mother.” Sweet and easy. Sit there in your tub. Take off your clothes like the spell says, then put them back on; it’ll be weird, sitting there naked with your mom.
Spend the night mixing shampoos and conditioners and lotions. Use up all the organic soap.

 

4. End up with all the mothers—but not your mother. You know you will know her when you see her. There’s a crazy woman in a cowboy hat who rides your dog like he’s a horse. Brenda Walsh’s mom from 90210—your favorite show—which may be a good thing, except she calls you Brenda. But I’m L., you say. Ok, Bren.
Your mother when you were born. When she loved you. Before she smothered you like some kind of mommy-loving monster, then abandoned you. It would be too difficult to explain. You don’t want to explain it. You want to sit here with this mother.
She’s younger than you. 27. She looks like you. You see your eyes in her face. She looks down and says, Where’s my baby? Then she disappears.


Other Mothers, pen & ink, watercolor, 2019, Annabel Graham.




Kevin!


My soulmate’s name is Kevin. I may not know how to do laundry, or wear matching socks, but this is something that I know.
One year I dreamed I was in a toy store and there was this boy there and he helped me find these Barbie dolls. Kevin.
In waking life I would look for him. At every toy store, every hot dog stand, every Barbie counter. But no. No Kevin.
Then one year it was Halloween. I had this feeling. I called this my Kevin feeling. It meant that he was near. Kevin!
We went to this haunted house. We stood on this line and there was a boy. Kevin.
We went inside the house and someone said, everyone hold hands now and we did, and he was standing in front of me, and we held. Michelle Romaro was very jealous. I said, I held his hand and she said, well you were standing in the front. This was true. But still. She was jealous.
On the car ride home I thought—I will have to wait a very, very long time to see him. It seemed impossible, an impossible amount of time. I couldn’t imagine it, wrap my mind around it, my heart. I already started counting the days—one day without Kevin. Two. Three.
I can’t believe I will have to wait so long to see Kevin, I said.
Who? Michelle said.
Years leapt. Actually no, they crawled. I asked every man who seemed promising—were you adopted and maybe have a different birth name?
No, they said.
Oh, I said, well did you ever go to this haunted house? Did you have to wait a long time and was there a girl there about 8 years old, and did you love her?
Uh, no.
Okay.
I called Michelle. I said, do you remember that boy Kevin?
What boy?
The one we met at the haunted house.
I don’t know, she said. I thought his name was Steve.
I once met a man who I thought was Kevin. He fit the profile. He

a) liked haunted houses
b) was taller than me
c) older than me
d) liked holding hands
I used to dream of you, I said.
Oh, really, he said.
Yes, I said, I used to dream that we were here and you helped me with these Barbie dolls and then you had to go.
Where did I go? he said.
Away.


He was very close to being Kevin; he was so close he almost was, but the difference between “almost” and “is” is an impossibility.

 

I married him anyway.

 

And every day he became less and less of Kevin. Until it was obvious. He wasn’t even taller than me. He lost height, years. Until one day he was just an infant, a boy, air.

 

He wasn’t air but it felt like this.

 

He was very much himself.

 

I would rather he was air.

 

But he wasn’t.
 

I thought—if I divorce this un-Kevin what are my chances of actually finding the real Kevin?
Next to impossible! the Magic 8 ball said.
Gee, thanks Magic 8.
You’re welcome.

 

I had dreams of divorcing him. Immediately after I would find the real Kevin, or he, me. Sometimes he would be the judge.
I thereby pronounce you un-husband and wife, and oh, my name is Kevin.
Nice to meet you.


Sometimes I didn’t have to wait that long. He was my attorney. Just like when Charlotte divorces Trey and her divorce attorney turns out to be her soulmate. It would be like Sex and the City—starring me.
Or I wouldn’t even have to wait—I would have an affair, a hot steamy affair, and his name would be Kevin.
Or it would be my brother. This was my fantasy—that I was related to this man, this Kevin man, and he had all my genes but the good ones, and he loved me.
Or he was trapped inside my dog. He was trapped like a flower inside my cocker spaniel. It was why he looked so mournful.
Or maybe he was a ghost. My soulmate died and had to haunt me, which is why I always felt slightly cold.
Or he skipped a life. He’s waiting for me in the next one. Is waiting now.
Hurry, he says.
But I can’t hear him.


Next to Impossible, pen & ink, watercolor, 2019, Annabel Graham.




Flotsam


Life would be perfect if only we could run away and live in the Haunted Mansion. But we don’t live in the Haunted Mansion. We live in Jersey. We live in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the most boring town in the most boring state on the most boring planet, ever. That is why I have to pretend Dirk is my twin brother Philip, who died pushed up against me in the womb.
Dirk is nothing like my dead brother. He is short and pudgy, with an overbite and a bad knee. He is the only 15-year-old I know who hobbles like an old man. You’d think this would give him dignity, but it only makes him look ancient. If Philip were alive, if he survived long enough to hit puberty, he would be tall and rangy, with thin, pale wrists. I tell Dirk to suck in his cheeks and pout his lips, I dress him in tank tops and wife beaters and skinny jeans, I spike his hair out, tell him to go Grrrr! No, not to actually say Grrrr! that would just be weird, but to think it, to think it with his eyes. Like this. Can’t you feel it? The anger? Smoldering like a Johnny Depp poster, like Johnny and Winona, circa 1993, or Marky Mark with his pants down, wrapped around Kate Moss. Like a heroin chic model, from the 90s. The 90s were the best time ever, with the 80s as a neck-and-neck runner-up. This is what my parents say. I never believe what my parents say, but I believe them about this. I’ve seen all the VH1 videos. But we don’t live in the 90s, Dirk says. We live in 2017, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
See, this is the problem. If Philip were alive we could live anywhere. We wouldn’t need to run away to the Haunted Mansion, to feel the walls pressing down on us so we could feel alive. We could live in Denny’s or IHOP or in the backseat of our parents’ Chevrolet. Sometimes I pretend we are there. In the backseat, acting out our conception. Philip sprawls on top of me. He cradles his chin with his fist, like Johnny in Dirty Dancing, like he is about to teach us something we have never thought or lived or dreamed. He whispers in my ear and calls me Baby; he smells like wine and roses. Like us, twisted in the womb.
In this world we are all flotsam knocking up against each other. That’s what my earth sciences teacher says. He says he doesn’t believe in this quantum physics crap; we don’t blend or bleed or mesh, we are our own atoms, atomized, we are floating like shipwrecks in the night. Like my parents, who live on opposite ends of Earth, at least in our house in the Jersey suburbs, in the attic and the basement. But me and Philip, we weren’t like that. In the womb, we knew what it was like to bleed, to blend, we knew the closest you can get to someone is not just inside their skin, but in their DNA. We curled up inside each other’s DNA, a perfect double helix, twisting forever, into infinity.
I try to go to infinity with Dirk. I steal my dad’s car keys and sprawl out in the backseat, I blast Phil Collins and have Dirk whisper the lyrics in my ear. I stain him with wine, with roses. I pretend we are the best incestuous siblings from history—like Chris and Cathy from Flowers in the Attic. I lock us inside my parents’ basement and pretend we are being poisoned with arsenic, that we are ravaged with hormones and have to turn to each other, since there is no one else to touch. I get undressed slowly, slowly, in front of the bathroom mirror, just like Cathy; I do ballet moves even though I am very clumsy; I tell Dirk to come up behind me and look ashamed. He has to look ashamed, since I am his little sister. But Dirk doesn’t look ashamed. He just wants to get into the kissing. I stop him. I can’t get off this way.
I dress us up like the characters from the Haunted Mansion, like Mickey and Minnie—I get us mouse ears from the Five and Dime, I pretend the world is coming down around us. You don’t know how to live unless the world is coming down.


Flotsam, pen & ink, watercolor, 2019, Annabel Graham.




Jersey


Never go on vacation with a swimmer. Or if you do, don’t do what I did. We went to the beach. It was the worst place for us to go.
Every day I would watch the broad swoowsh of his back. I memorized it. I watched it go to the sand and then the shoreline and then the sea. We were in Jersey. It wasn’t a romantic sea. It was black and polluted but we pretended that it wasn’t. We said, this is the best sea ever, and then we had hamburgers and French fries. We looked at each other. He said, I am going for a swim now.
I watched his back. He was my first relationship since my husband left, and I since his wife. We didn’t know what to say, but we knew that the saying was important. The silences, they had to be the right kind. They couldn’t be too full or too empty. When they became that way, he left. He went swimming.
I watched his back. There were three freckles in the shape of a half moon, and beneath that a smaller moon. When he walked it looked like the small moon was winning and then the big moon. It was hard to tell. When I told him about it later, he said, what do you mean by winning? I said, the big moon was circling around the small one, and the small moon was clapping hands. So the small moon won. He said he needed to take a swim.
Each day those moons got farther. From where I sat on the porch it didn’t look like either of them had won, they were moons and then stars and then they were just freckles, or dark matter lost to air. He wore red swim trunks. He had black hair and freckles, freckles everywhere, I kept telling him he should have been a redhead. I said this to the air next to me, I said, You would have looked great as a carrot top. I pretended he was Archie in disguise, the hero from that comic, that he was going to Riverdale to fetch the gang and would be back at any second. Sometimes I pretended I was Veronica and sometimes Betty, and by the end of the day I was so exhausted I had nothing left.
He came back from his swim. He came later and later and then it was dark. He watched my back. He watched it all night. In this way we took turns.


In This Way We Took Turns, pen & ink, watercolor, 2019,
Annabel Graham.




Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 8. View full issue & more.
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LEONORA DESAR’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in River Styx, Passages North, Black Warrior Review Online, Mid-American Review, Sonora Review Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Quarter After Eight, and elsewhere. She won third place in River Styx’s microfiction contest and was a runner-up/finalist in Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose contest, judged by Stuart Dybek. She was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize, is a three-time nominee for Best Small Fictions 2019, and has three stories forthcoming in the Best Microfiction anthology.