Tag Archives: Issue 3

7 January, 2016

Jon Pineda

Jon Pineda is the author of the novels Let’s No One Get Hurt, winner of the 2019 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction and the Emyl Jenkins Sexton Literary Award, and Apology, winner of the 2013 Milkweed National Fiction Prize.  

His poetry collections include Little Anodynes, winner of the 2016 Library of Virginia Literary Award, The Translator’s Diary, which received the 2007 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Poetry & Prose, and Birthmark, was selected by poet Ralph Burns for the 2003 Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry Open Competition. 

He is also the author of the memoir, “Sleep in Me,” a 2010 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.  

In addition to teaching at Queens, Pineda directs the creative writing program at William & Mary, in Williamsburg, VA.  

Pineda teaches fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry in our low-residency master of fine arts in creative writing program.

His website is www.jonpineda.com.

7 January, 2016

Water Theory

1.

If the moon’s surface was composed of waves

the way DaVinci thought,

sun reflecting moon ocean and our dark seas’

slow shadow,

borders might be in temperatures, in currents,

in light—the fish sustaining themselves in the cold rock,

the warped water, our planet at arms-length like a hot pearl.

2.

During red tide, the waves

bring small jellyfish clear as plastic bags.

A lifeguard washes stings with a spray bottle of vinegar.

On Cornish beaches, reports say Legos

wash up since 1997 when a shipment was lost.

Occasionally, a sea monster arrives—

a thirteen foot oarfish, a log covered in goose barnacles.

3.

Third graders learn about the universal solvent.

But there are always exceptions—

during the density experiment—in water,

oil and honey divide into colored rings.

In the Great Salt Lake, some tourists in their hats

bob like corks all day, all day in the green water.

4.

Have you seen the video of the zebra

attacked by the lion? The lion clamps on the zebra’s neck.

The zebra lowers her further into water.

Out of breath, the lion must let go.

What else might collect in water?

In paintings, Monet’s bridge over the lily pond—

a dark curve in reflection. In Sunrise, his bay—dashes,

blue and orange on a wash of faded violet.

7 January, 2016

Hero

On a forest hike, a man and son stop for lunch.

The boy lies back on a rock.

They’ve planned to go home

soon after tossing scraps.

But the man has forgotten the way:

the clouds peek over trees; the woman,

once his wife, has left with someone else.

In his hand, the father holds a tangerine

and a tuna sandwich that’s been stinking up the car.

Let’s wait until we see a bird or until

we see the first star, the boy says of a forest

crippled by bark beetles and in need of rain.

The father wants so much.

He wishes he knew more than what’s on the news—

more about nature so he might tell his son,

this grows only for a few days in the spring or

this many years ago, this mountain was flat.

He wants to say it before telling the truth

about the mother. Where is the strength

promised from faith? There is a ripple

in the trees standing next to fallen trees.

7 January, 2016

Jacqueline Balderrama

Jacqueline Balderrama is an MFA candidate in poetry at Arizona State University where she teaches and serves as Poetry Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review and Iron City Magazine. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and are forthcoming in Blackbird and Cream City Review.

7 January, 2016

My Last Splurge

May 30, ‘09. My last splurge in NYC was this 30-pound slab of wax. I paid $150 for it, and made this mystic writing pad. I thought I had enough trust fund money left to buy it, but I didn’t. Turns out I spent most everything on pastry trends: Bundt cakes, boxes of rainbow macaroons, cronuts, donut holes shaken with powdered sugar, pastel mini-cupcakes. I had an Etch-a-Sketch as a kid. It did the same thing as this $150 DIY, but my therapist practices in Brooklyn so I had to use beeswax.

July 5, ’09. What I write here will stick until I push the words back down into the wax and write something else. I sometimes tilt the wax all around, in different lights and at different times of day, to see if I can read what I wrote a week or month ago because I don’t remember who I was then. Mystic writing pads were Freud’s idea. I’ve already been assigned to read Freud six times at Sarah Lawrence, no joke. I get him because sometimes I have penis envy. If I had a dick, I could say a lot of bullshit in a low, gravelly voice, and idiots would be like, “Yeah! Wow! Your dick’s so smart!” I wouldn’t mind a following of idiots.

July 20, ’09. Dave is such an authentic and original writer. His selfhood, his soul are so accurately represented on the page! What he does is pure, unmediated, a true expression of his mastery.

September 8 ’09. Dave listens to a lot of didgeridoo music…

October 15 ‘09. My mom works as a registrar and all of the books on the bookshelves in her house are alphabetized. I think I should alphabetize our books, but we don’t have any bookshelves in our apartment because it’s tiny (Prospect fucking Heights). I moved in with Dave, why why why why? BECAUSE YOU LOVE HIM YOU TWIT

January 3, ’10. I haven’t gotten my period for two months. I cut out gluten and am doing a lot of Pilates. I think that might be why??

February 12, ’10. It’s still hard to believe that this is my life at 23. If you’d asked me a few years ago what I’d be doing, I would never have imagined that I was going to be a mom. But it is my fate. Dave and I did an Ayahusca ceremony in Harlem, and I had a vision where I felt my baby kick. I found out I was pregnant a week later. When I called my mom to tell her, I said that the Amazons had come to me in a vision and planted Chullachaqui in my womb. She said, “No, Caro. Dave did that.” That’s the difference between New York and Wisconsin. I’m about to graduate, I start work at this artisanal soap distillery in Bushwick, and then, bam: here’s Chullachaqui! (That’s gonna be her name). Dave suggested it. He says it’s the name of a Peruvian forest nymph. He put it in one of his stories. It’s beautiful.

April 2, ’10. I get bad morning sickness, and sometimes I listen to the sound of the ocean on YouTube videos. The East River smells like something dead. I listen to the sound of rain on the ocean because I’m so sweaty and my stomach flips around all day. Sometimes I stumble onto videos of other people’s dead, other people’s grandparents. My grandma’s voice is only on VHS at my mom’s house, speaking at Passover, at my fifth birthday, but my mom doesn’t have a tape player anymore.

May 8, ’10. I graduated from college today. I was so pregnant I just felt nauseous and couldn’t wear stupid cute pumps like the other girls.

August 12, ’10. When I read Wikipedia after I got out of hospital, I found out that Chullachaqui is the name of an ugly creature in a Peruvian folk tale, a masculine humanoid thing with one leg that’s shorter than the other. I guess Dave didn’t read the Wikipedia page or maybe Dave can’t read. Grandpa thought we were saying Chulla’s name was “Tchotchke,” and he couldn’t get over what a terrible name that was for a little girl. He kept saying, “Caroline, tchotchke means a tacky little thingamabob! Tchotchke! A tacky thing! This precious angel is not TACKY.”

September 2, ‘10. Now that I’m back home in Wisconsin for good, I’m not sure I want to leave. My mom is rich because of the grisly nature of my dad’s death (it involved a boat and the Mosinee River Dam), and she would have paid our NYC rent if I’d asked. But Dave was too proud to take a handout, so we took my mom up on her offer of a nearly-free place to live instead. This is how she sold it to us (we who were not too choosy in the first place), basically verbatim:

“It’s cheap considering you get a clean, well-kept home, furnished,” my mom said.

I was like, “Mom, I’m not disagreeing. It’s a great place. You’re very generous.”

“I was going to rent it anyway, but I’m picky about who moves in,” she said. “No riff raff.”

We, Dave, Chulla, and I, live in my mom’s mother-in-law apartment now, a place in her backyard that I used as a spy hideout when I was a kid. We’re supposed to pay $100 a week, but Mom’s so happy to have her granddaughter around that she’ll never collect. We don’t really have the money anyway.

September 10, ’10. Dave says he feels a fissuring between his concept of himself and the way that he inhabits this particular space. He’s like, “Brooklyn was my place.” OK, but he made like zero dollars as an adjunct, and only published one book in 1997 called A Natural Outcropping of an Internal Subjectivity, about sexy twentysomethings in crisis. The newspapers lauded him as a wunderkind. Dave says being a wunderkind was a terrible curse because he’s never published another book. I convinced him to leave New York because I wouldn’t raise a baby without green space in an apartment so tiny that even the stove was miniature. But Dave doesn’t like the Packers or Midwest kitsch or Midwest Gothic or fall leaves or parades or mock brick facades or coffee shops serving enormous frosted cinnamon buns or strip malls or regular malls. He also doesn’t like Pan-Asian restaurants because he can’t tell the ethnicity of the proprietors so he can’t say “Ni hao!” like he did in Chinatown. He said “Ni hao” to some Korean-American kids who were fucking jogging the other day.

September 15, ’10. My mission in Wisconsin is to show people that there are pencils that write so much better than the standard No. 2’s—ash pencils made from fallen trees taken out of the suicide forests of Japan that draw unsmudgeable lines, clay pencils designed in the 15th-century and made by the same Russian monk order they were back then. I’m selling Ludwig van Wodka pencils—Phillip Lopate’s favorite—for $100 apiece. When I open my pencil store, people will be able to write with these pencils, smell them, hold them. I don’t have a shop yet, just a cart that I wheel to the Saturday farmer’s market. A lady picked up the Russian monk pencil, let it weigh down her palm, and said, “It’s hefty.”

September 20, ’10. My psyche is easier to communicate now with now because, like Wisconsin, it is slow, calm, dull, palatable.

September 29, ’10. In Wisconsin, every sensation is new and precise. Pregnancy changed my eyes, I think, made them too demanding, made them expect too much of my attention. The leaves on College Avenue are crisp. They look like they stand still when I see them from certain angles, from too far away, from down the block and across the river. The dogs in my childhood neighborhood bark like they’re vicious, and when I see them, my eyes tell me that they’re moving faster than they should be, bouncing higher, even though my brain disagrees. My memories are exploding. I look at my high school and see my English teacher, the kids in my homeroom, the hairs I found twice in my lasagna. I see the first boy I ever kissed in the second-floor window of his parents’ house. I can see that the river is full of bodies and branches and car tires. I breaststroke through the stagnancy in my mother’s house. I puzzle over the pair of shoes I once threw over a phone wire. They are grey, not brown. They are Nike, not Adidas.

November 20, ’10. Dave was my writing professor at Sarah Lawrence, and when I took his introductory fiction course, he said that we were meant to be together, even though I was 21 and he was 43. I thought we should have sex, sure, but he thought we should get married, instantly, per the level of passion he felt. When I said, “Maybe later? Like, when I graduate?”, he clung to me, his fingers lingering on my arms and slipping down the sides of my shoes. He cooked me eggs and baked me lasagna, he drifted behind me with his hands on my shoulders, my back, my knees until I decided that his convictions could lift up my convictions until I had some. We didn’t get married, but I moved in.

November 27, ’10. Dave might apply at Lawrence down the street for a teaching job, but those liberal arts professors all have doctorates. He just has an MFA. If he did get the job, the girls there would probably swoon for him like I did at 21. I didn’t swoon, I guess, I coalesced. Midwestern girls might be easier to seduce because we’re, on the whole, fatter. It seems so insane that I have a boyfriend who lives in my old super-spy hideout with me and wants girls to cream at his thoughts and a little daughter who is named something unpronounceable and incomprehensible and an expensive writing pad that I talk about as a metaphor for my mind and a converted hotdog cart that I sell expensive pencils out of, but that’s the life I’ve got. Until I press my hand into this wax to make it go away, I guess.

December 4, ’10. Dad died almost 10 years ago and Mom is online dating. She is! We made her profile. She looks beautiful in a string of blue beads in her picture. She wrote that her three essentials in life are as follows: 1. Family 2. Food (guilty pleasures: chocolate and pizza!) 3. Long walks on sandy beaches. There are no sandy beaches here. “It’s winter in Wisconsin, Caroline,” she said. “I’ve gotta give the guys something to dream about.”

March 8, ’11. I told my mom about the pickers who had all gotten lupus in Apopka, Florida, about how they’d sued but the state wouldn’t pay them anything anyway. She said she knew that part of Florida, that it was rough there, that they were probably all illegals anyway.

March 17, ’11. Dave sometimes writes his stories with the suicide forest pencil, even when I ask him not to. He doesn’t think that I know he does it, but I do. He re-sharpens the lead with a penknife, but I can see the shavings on top of the apple cores and spoiled rice in the garbage can, and I can tell the pencil is getting shorter. I tell him to stop using it, but he always shrugs, grins by only lifting up his one side of his mouth. I think he thinks it makes him look like Harrison Ford. He’s always shrugging, grinning like someone who’s recently had a stroke. Always always always always He doesn’t look like Harrison Ford. Dave is probably writing with the pencil, his stories, his thoughts, on pieces of paper that preserve them, rather than on a piece of wax that isn’t supposed to.

April 9, ’11. Dave says that my work, like his, should be my heritage to myself, and our daughter’s life should be an expression of our essential beings, a continuous, reasonable, and natural outcropping of the truthfulness of our love and our union. Chulla is a little baby who clings to my sweater in a way that makes her feel like insulation.

June 21, ’11. Dave believes in relating the particularities of local experience and the specific to a larger cosmic order. “More precisely,” he said once as he put his fingers to his chin.

“I would label this concept ‘tradition.’” Chulla was asleep when he said it, and I just wanted to watch Gordon Ramsay yell at some poor schmo on the TV and discover new pencil brands on obscure, poorly-translated international websites. Just pencils, nice, precise, and easy. But Dave wanted to talk about the linkage between locally-based creations and universally-relatable lineages. Dave likes to pretend. He knows he’s really only interested in good food and malleable women, not in serious intellectual pursuit. Dave hates himself really.

August 11, ’11. Dave’s moving to California. I MUST I MUST I MUST he said over and over again like he was Juliette Lewis playing that retarded girl in The Other Sister. I must I must I MUST He says he wants a new place to write, a place that isn’t mired and stagnated in the traditions of the past. LOL. California’s not a place of its own, I don’t think, but at least he won’t be here. I bought a new pencil today. It has a white gold cap and is carved from repurposed wood from an abandoned country church on the Saskatchewan plains. The lead was mined piece by piece, separated from the dark mud of the Appalachian forests. The man I bought it from was a Christian, he said the pencil was supposed to make Jesus write through you. I laughed on the phone, but I bought it anyway. I might sell it at the farmers’ market this weekend. Or I might write with it myself.

7 January, 2016

Alicia Bones

Alicia Bones is a second-year MFA student at the University of Montana. Previously, she earned her master’s degree in literature from the University of Iowa. Her work has been published in Maudlin House, Spry, Hello Horror, Matador Network, and elsewhere.

7 January, 2016

Mend the Envelope

A One Act Play

CAST OF CHARACTERS

HENRY DAVIS ……………………. A man in his mid 30s

JOANIE DAVIS …………………… His wife; in her mid 30s

VOICE …………………………. Male

Time: Sunday morning; pre-dawn; the end of October.

Place: A small town outside Buffalo, New York.

Setting: A dusty, dismal one-car garage in a pre-dawn glow. A feeling of emptiness permeates the room and its furnishings. A few light bulbs with pull-strings hang from the ceiling. At right are a chair and a desk with a computer, drafting paper, pencils, a swivel light and a telephone. Various machines covered in white sheets and cabinets are around the grim room. One open cabinet reveals various spare parts [washers, screws, nails, pipes, etc.]. A large, mobile trash bin stands in the rear of the room in front of a series of shelves on a wall filled with tools, boxes, and awards. A banner falling off the back wall reads “DAVIATION Takes You Away!”. In a far corner sits a piano covered by a white sheet. At left is a wooden table with vices around the corners. A large container that continues offstage rests in front of the table.

The curtain rises to reveal HENRY DAVIS, a man of iron in his mid 30s, solemnly gazing down at a closed container. He is wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and a bandage on his index finger. He opens the container and takes out a portion of a hot air balloon- an envelope- and waves it about dreamily. He finds an area of the envelope that has been freshly repaired and begins, as if sewing it himself, to mend the tear. After a few threads, he begins to sing the Jewish funeral prayer, ‘El Male Rachamim’.

  HENRY

(Singing)

El maley rakhamim shokhen ba-m’romim ha-m’tzei m’nukhah n’khonah.

MAN

(V.O.)

We’ve tried everything.

Pause.

HENRY

(As before)

Takhat kanfei ha-sh’khinah.

MAN

(V.O.)

There was just too much damage.

Henry trembles.

HENRY

(Struggling)

B’ma’alot…

MAN

(O.S.)

I’m sorry, Henry.

His legs fail him, and he collapses to the ground, dropping the envelope. The lights change, revealing a wheelchair nearby.

HENRY

(Yelling)

Awwwww-aaaaAAAAAHHHHH!

JOANIE

(Far O.S.)

DANNY! DA—HENRY?! Henry where are you? Henry? Answer me!

Unseen, she runs through the house.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

(O.S.)

Jesus! WHERE ARE YOU HENRY?! Answer me! Answer—

JOANIE DAVIS, an exhausted woman in her mid 30s, appears at the door dressed in sweatpants and a shirt.

JOANIE (CONT’D) —me! Henry…? Are you—

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

What are you doing in here?

HENRY

Are you just going to stand there or—

JOANIE

Sweety…

She goes to him.

HENRY

You called out his name again.

Pause.

JOANIE

Let me help you.

She tries helping him into his chair.

HENRY

I’ve got it.

JOANIE

Will you—

HENRY

I said I’ve got it!

She lets go. He falls.

HENRY (CONT’D) What are you doing?!

JOANIE

If you’d let me help you once in awhile then—

HENRY

Stop teaching me!

JOANIE

I’m not teaching you, I’m—

HENRY

Just…! Give me a hand.

He lets her help. She notices the envelope.

JOANIE

What balloon is that?

HENRY

How many years and you don’t know it’s called an envelope?

JOANIE

Don’t snap at me Mr. Expert.

She puts him in the chair, then looks closer at the envelope.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

Is this— What is this doing in my house?

HENRY

Calm down and let me—

JOANIE

CHRIST ALMIGHTY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH THIS THING?

HENRY

Don’t blaspheme!

JOANIE

Why is this…?

She goes to the trash bin and pushes it in front of him.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

Get rid of this now Goddammit!

HENRY

What did I just say?

JOANIE

You don’t even believe in Christ!

HENRY

God is God. Respect Hashem.

JOANIE

I’m so sick of your quotes.

HENRY

He divided my light from my darkness. He—

JOANIE

Stop!

HENRY

He’s the only one who’s been getting me through it all.

JOANIE

Does God drive you to PT every week and stock up on suppositories?

HENRY

Don’t be crude.

JOANIE

Don’t tell me some invisible man is helping you when I’m taking double and triple shifts to pay for this, this…

HENRY

This what?

JOANIE

I don’t know what to call this. How can you have faith in anything that gives in one breath and takes away in the next?

HENRY

If you took the time to see that The Abundant One has—

JOANIE

The Abundant—

HENRY —blessed this house with our—

JOANIE

Blessed?! Are you out of your mind?

HENRY

Yes, we are blessed to be alive and we should be grateful to God because He is kind, and if you’d pray for forgiveness you’d see that—

JOANIE

Shut up… just shut your stupid mouth and stop making me feel guilty you—

The phone rings.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

Ughh!

She goes to the phone and picks it up. During the conversation, Henry tries to get her attention.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

Hello?! Oh, Mrs. Cooper, hi. Yes, yes, everything’s fine.

We’re just… cleaning. This early. Oh, that was a… hammer. Henry dropped a hammer on his— It’s funny, I didn’t

realize the walls were so— You know, it’s a mess in here and things are just— (To Henry, in a loud whisper) WHAT?!

He grabs the phone.

HENRY

Mrs. Cooper! Sorry to wake you, but we were just going through some things and— Yes, everything is A-okay! Huh? Me? Never been better. Yeah. I’m anxious for the unveiling. Sorry, the headstone unveiling. It’s a Jewish tradition when we dedicate the headstone a year after— Yeah. Well, that’s very kind of you. Thanks for calling. Sorry again. Bye.

He hands the phone to Joanie, who hangs it up. She looks at the envelope and back at Henry.

JOANIE

You’re anxious?

HENRY

Of course I’m anxious. It’s the first time I’ll get to see him. Next to Papa and Dad. You know, I need to thank you. For what? For following the law, even when it’s not yours. That’s special, Joanie. The headstone is such an important—

JOANIE

Let’s just stop talking about it.

HENRY

What’s the matter?

JOANIE

And why are you— Having this thing here—

HENRY

If you get upset again she’ll call back.

JOANIE

You think I’m upset now?

HENRY

Calm down.

JOANIE

Tell me how this got in here!

HENRY

Someone from the shop brought it over.

JOANIE

Someone?

HENRY

Yeah.

JOANIE

When did someone bring this over?

HENRY

Recently.

JOANIE

When recently?

HENRY

Just recently.

JOANIE

Why would someone bring this here recently?

HENRY

I needed to fix it.

JOANIE

For what?

HENRY

I’ll tell you later.

JOANIE

You’ll tell me now!

She moves the wheelchair so Henry faces her.

Silence.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

(Tenderly)

Henry. This isn’t healthy for you or me or this house, do you understand?

HENRY

It’s helping me.

JOANIE

Falling out of your chair in an empty, dusty garage when the sun is still down is not helpful. All of your accidents happen when I’m farthest away from you.

HENRY

No they don’t.

JOANIE

I came home the other day and your finger was gushing.

HENRY

I was trying to peel an apple.

JOANIE

With a steak knife.

HENRY

Accidents happen.

JOANIE

Stupidity happens, and you’re not doing yourself any favors keeping me as far away from you as possible.

HENRY

What’s that mean?

She starts to leave.

HENRY (CONT’D)

Hey!

JOANIE

I’m going to lie down and stare at the ceiling, and when I wake up this thing had better not be here.

She goes to leave.

HENRY

Well set an alarm because Steve is coming to get us at nine.

She stops.

JOANIE

Steve?

HENRY

Yeah.

JOANIE

Why?

HENRY

How else are we getting to the cemetery?

JOANIE

Henry—

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

I…

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

Already rented a car, so there’s no reason for Steve to—

HENRY

You did?

JOANIE

Yeah.

HENRY

How much did it cost?

JOANIE

Nothing too expensive.

HENRY

What kind of car?

JOANIE

It has a… big trunk for your chair. Plenty of—

HENRY

Big— What are you talking about? What kind of car is it?

JOANIE

What does it matter what kind of—

HENRY

If I can get a ride from my brother then I’ll do that instead of throwing money away on a big trunk.

JOANIE

Well, it’s already done.

HENRY

There’s a car outside?

Henry wheels himself downstage a bit to look out a window. He tries to lift himself up to see it, but fails.

HENRY (CONT’D)

We’ll deal with it later. Steve’s coming to get us.

JOANIE

Excuse me?

HENRY

That’s the way it is.

JOANIE

That’s not the way it is; you told me to take care of everything.

HENRY

I told you to take care of everything when I couldn’t, but I’m home now.

JOANIE

Yeah, and you’re calling The Great Steve when you should be asking to me about arranging things.

HENRY

You’ve got something against Steve now?

JOANIE

Yeah, him and his half-stories.

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

Nothing.

HENRY

What half-stories?

Silence.

HENRY (CONT’D)

Did- Did you talk to Steve?

JOANIE

…Yes.

HENRY

When?

JOANIE

Recently.

HENRY

Don’t pull that with me.

JOANIE

Don’t like your own game?

Pause.

HENRY

Was it yesterday? Was it yesterday?

JOANIE

When I was at work.

HENRY

What part of yesterday?

JOANIE

What does it matter what—

HENRY

Just tell me.

JOANIE

In the afternoon.

HENRY

Why’d you call him?

JOANIE

He called me.

HENRY

He— And what did he say to you?

JOANIE

That’s between me and him.

HENRY

Oh well, so now you’ve got secrets with my brother?

JOANIE

Come on…

HENRY

Well if you can’t tell me then it must be a secret then, right?

JOANIE

What’s—

HENRY

You can’t tell me?! Well then I guess you’re sleeping around with him?

JOANIE

WHAT?!

HENRY

What else am I supposed to think?

JOANIE

Oh come on!

She goes to leave.

HENRY

How long has this been going on?

JOANIE

Nothing’s going on.

HENRY

After the first surgery? The second?

JOANIE

I’m your wife you idiot!

HENRY

Yeah, and he’s not stuck in a chair with nothing working down here, you don’t want to tell me what you talked about so what the hell else am I supposed to think?

JOANIE

You’re— Ugh!

HENRY

He’s not even that good looking.

JOANIE

You want to talk about sneaking around, like you waiting for me to fall asleep so you could sneak in here?

HENRY

Don’t change the subject.

JOANIE

Then don’t accuse me of messing around with your brother.

HENRY

He had no reason to call you.

JOANIE

Yesterday he did.

Silence.

HENRY

Well…?

JOANIE

That’s between me and him.

HENRY

Oh yeah! Nothing’s going on! Right! Not a thing!

JOANIE

Do you have a clue what he’s been going through?

HENRY

What he’s been— What HE’S been going through!

JOANIE

He was shaking and pale as a ghost.

HENRY

You saw him?!

JOANIE

Yes, I saw him, and he was a complete wreck, but he—

She looks at the envelope.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

It was yesterday, wasn’t it?

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

You made him bring this over yesterday. That’s why he was—

HENRY

Why are you pretending you didn’t know?

JOANIE

Because he didn’t say anything! Why are you putting us all through so much shit? You think you’re the only one in that chair?

HENRY

I am the only one in this chair!

JOANIE

No, you’re not. Christ!

HENRY

Respect Hashem.

JOANIE

Do you know how much it hurts to hear you say something like that?

HENRY

I’m Jewish.

JOANIE

Not that you— You haven’t been out of the house since you came home last month, and I’m out so much of the

day, but how you can think that after everything? And what you’re doing with this garbage bag is—

HENRY

Papa made this garbage bag by hand and built Daviation from the ground up, and when Dad took it over—

JOANIE

Don’t give me the sales pitch.

HENRY

It’s about family, and you never understood that.

She goes to the sign and looks at it.

JOANIE

You’ve got a hell of a sense of family.

HENRY

It’s all I have.

JOANIE

It’s time get back to what you know. Your tools are all waiting for you.

He holds up his weak hands.

HENRY

My tools are broken.

JOANIE

Your fine motor skills just need to redevelop and then—

HENRY

Oh, they just need to— Do you listen to yourself?

JOANIE

If you don’t make some kind of effort then you have no chance of getting back to where you were.

HENRY

Yeah, I’ll be back on my feet in no time if I start telling my toes to wiggle.

JOANIE

You need to do something constructive.

HENRY

What about my eyes? Of course I’m bumping into things and knocking stuff over.

JOANIE

Wear your glasses.

HENRY

They’re annoying.

JOANIE

Then—

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

Tell your company to pair you with someone who will draw your ideas and that you’ll go on-site to manage things. It’ll be good for you.

HENRY

I hadn’t thought of that.

JOANIE

You see?

HENRY

I’ll describe building plans to someone else who will render them… and let my crew shit on me every day. You’re a genius.

JOANIE

They won’t shit on you. How many times were they over here in our yard for barbecues and… and birthdays…?

HENRY

How come none of them came to visit me at the hospital?

JOANIE

Everyone came. You didn’t want visitors. There are so many people who care about you, do you realize that?

HENRY

He cares about me.

JOANIE

Who?

HENRY

The God of Abraham.

JOANIE

Come work with me at the store and then I won’t have to be the only one supporting us.

With great effort, he wheels over to the shelf where the awards stand. Struggling, he reaches up, takes a medal, and shows it to her.

HENRY

You see this?

Silence.

HENRY (CONT’D)

Do you see it?

JOANIE

Yes, I see it.

HENRY

“The Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, 2003.” I am the youngest recipient since they started giving it out almost half a century ago. And these others…? No one’s got my credentials. I changed the skylines of Shanghai, Bangkok, Hanoi, Manilla—

JOANIE

God, your ego!

HENRY

You didn’t say a word when you were front row at any of those symphonies in Singapore or drinking twenty-five year-old Chivas on the roof of a club in the center of Shanghai.

JOANIE

That’s not import—

HENRY

So don’t tell me I can greet customers or stuff eggs—

JOANIE

Please…

HENRY

—and milk into shopping bags, and wheel my ass around the aisles with a price gun labeling cookies and diapers—

JOANIE

It’s work!

HENRY

—when you could’ve given me some steel and bolts and a cement mixer the size of a bowling ball bag and I could’ve built you an oasis in the middle of the Gobi Desert! DON’T TELL ME ABOUT MY PRIDE!

He lamely throws the medal, which does not get very far across the room.

JOANIE

Nice. Throw things around like a—

HENRY

Like a what?

JOANIE

An ass.

HENRY

That’s what you were going to say?

JOANIE

Yes.

HENRY

Are you sure?

JOANIE

I hate when you get like this.

HENRY

Like what?

JOANIE

Can it, will ya?

HENRY

Like at Shop ‘N’ Save?

JOANIE

Don’t step on what’s keeping food and treatment coming in!

HENRY

I can’t step on anything Joanie.

JOANIE

Don’t roll over it.

He laughs.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

Are you okay?

HENRY

Peachy keen jelly bean.

JOANIE

Oh my dear.

He wheels away from her.

HENRY

(Singing)

Oh my dear Joanie/ Mind me no more./I’m just your fool/Don’t you know it?

JOANIE

Hankie…

HENRY

(Singing)

Oh My dear Joanie/Mind me, won’t you?/ Don’t you see/ That I’m a fool for—

JOANIE

No songs.

He turns to face her.

HENRY

When are you going to start playing again? I bet all those kids in the cancer ward miss you. And your students at school. You should be back in the music room all day with your baton and your sheet—

JOANIE

No.

HENRY

They told you to take your time. Call your principal and they’ll have the janitor in there tonight cleaning all the music stands for first period Monday.

JOANIE

I can’t.

He wheels himself over to the piano. He partially removes the sheet. She turns away.

HENRY

Then do one-on-ones.

JOANIE

Cover that back up.

HENRY

You can earn so much more if you don’t want so many—

JOANIE

Cover it!

He plays a few notes.

HENRY

I always thought you were better than your mom, and she was something, huh? Roll this back in the living room and stick it where it was that first winter when we had music before we had heating. It would be so easy.

JOANIE

Uh-huh.

HENRY

You’re more able than I am to get back to what you know.

JOANIE

How can you expect me to play for another child when I can’t play for my own?

Beat.

HENRY

I’ve got one for you. There once was a lady who was tired of living alone. So she put an ad in the paper which outlined her requirements. She wanted a man who 1) would treat her nicely, 2) wouldn’t run away from her, and 3) would be good in bed. Then, one day, she heard the doorbell ring. She answered it, and there on the front porch was a man in a wheel chair who didn’t have any arms or legs. “I’m here about the ad you put in the paper. As you can see, I have no arms so I can’t beat you, and I have no legs so I can’t run away from you.” “Yes, but are you good in bed?” “How do you think I rang the doorbell?”

JOANIE

Is that supposed to be funny?

HENRY

From where I’m sitting, yeah.

JOANIE

What’s funny about your condition?

HENRY

My— Joanie, look at me. Can’t you look at me?

She makes a face.

HENRY (CONT’D)

What was that?

JOANIE

What was what?

HENRY

That face you made.

JOANIE

I didn’t make any face.

HENRY

I’m not completely blind.

JOANIE

I need to go lie down.

HENRY

I’m here! I’m in this chair! You see?

Beat.

HENRY (CONT’D)

How can you get off on humiliating me?

JOANIE

I don’t get off on—

HENRY

So you are humiliating me!

JOANIE

Stop twisting my words around!

HENRY

Then look at me!

She moves away.

JOANIE

I can’t because your face is his face and your chair is his chair, and I’m always going to be taking care of someone who can’t take care of themselves.

HENRY

I didn’t ask for this!

JOANIE

Did I?

Beat.

HENRY

We were happy overseas. Everything was there. Hop a flight and end up somewhere—

JOANIE

We had Danny here.

HENRY

I’m talking about before.

JOANIE

You were happy before, but not after we had—

HENRY

Don’t put words in my mouth.

JOANIE

I don’t understand.

HENRY

I’m talking about how we could have done things differently. We could’ve had him earlier or—

JOANIE

There’s no reason to do that when everything is set in its way.

HENRY

I can still dream it’s not.

Beat.

HENRY (CONT’D)

I dream of the whale sharks.

JOANIE

Whale sharks.

Lights and sound change.

HENRY

It’s a bright sunny day. Not a cloud over that island with the fireflies everywhere.

JOANIE

Henry…

HENRY

Just the two of us and the owner with the French accent. You’re sleeping on a bed of roses. I’m in a… sun salutation and then a mountain pose on that little piece of land that juts out above the lagoon. I walk…

He stands and walks away from the chair and moves with his story. At one point, JOANIE joins him. Lights and sound continue to change.

HENRY (CONT’D)

I walk down that staircase of sea shells built into the rock and go swimming while chocolate crepes and mango lassies are cooking. I swim out a hundred meters. Everything is so calm, so removed from the things that get in the way of enjoying life. Paradise. Then, something hard brushes up against my foot. I look down and the biggest fish I’ve ever seen—blue, with white spots and a mouth this big, surrounded by these small white fish with whiskers—is dancing beneath me, gliding through the water as if weightless in this bottomless ocean. I come up for air… and see the endless horizon… and when I look down there are three of them now, the unit. And as they swim they change—

JOANIE

Henry…?

HENRY

—into us. And we are dancing weightless. Maybe if you’d come up there with us we’d have this story.

JOANIE

Maybe I’d e in that chair? Or in the dirt? Or—

HENRY

That’s not what I meant.

JOANIE

Do you know what I’ve dreamed about every night for the last year while you’ve been dancing with whales?

Sounds and lights change.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

I close my eyes and see you push Danny into the basket and I smell the cotton candy and feel the sun on my face—

HENRY

I—

JOANIE

—and you’re there, in the basket, already lifting off and pulling the cord and the flame is shooting out and you’re going higher and drifting away and then the next thing I know is something sparks and there’s, there’s BURNING above you and Danny and, and I’m in the basket and—

HENRY

Joanie!

JOANIE

—the wind howls like a pack of banshees and I’ve lost control of everything and Danny is bawling because there’s a fire spreading and now we’re—

HENRY

I don’t want to hear it!

Sound and lights of sirens.

JOANIE

—dropping like a rock and the ground is flying at us and we CRASH the ground and the sirens are blaring from the distance and getting closer I’m lying over him and he’s not moving and you’re—

HENRY

I said enough!

JOANIE

I SEE IT! AND I LIVE WITH IT!

He sits.

Silence.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

How can you tell me if you could do it over again you would still go up there?

HENRY

There’s a plan for everyone.

JOANIE

Don’t tell me that there was a plan that included my husband being broken and my son dying because of his father’s stupidity.

HENRY

We were meant to go up and you—

JOANIE

No, YOU took our son with cerebral palsy up in this garbage bag, and—

HENRY

You let him go.

JOANIE

Don’t you dare, after so many years of listening to you go on and on and on about ballooning and Daviation and how beautiful and safe it all is! Do you know what expert even means?

HENRY

Joanie—

JOANIE

It means, IT MEANS that when something goes wrong you can handle the situation and nothing bad happens!

HENRY

You can’t blame me for—

JOANIE

Yes, I can blame you because you are the expert and I trusted you!

She pushes the bin into him.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

This is my house, and I say what goes. This goes.

HENRY

(To himself.)

Up, up and away.

JOANIE

Out. Now.

HENRY

(Quickly)

After Danny’s unveiling Steve’s taking us to the fair grounds and we’re going up.

JOANIE

What did you just say?

HENRY

(Deliberately)

I’m going to finish fixing this, and Steve will load up the truck in the morning, come on over to get us, drop us off, and while we’re at Danny’s grave he’ll be setting up the basket and filling this up so by the time he comes for us and brings us over—

JOANIE

Oh…

HENRY

—everything will be ready. By noon we’ll be up in that heavenly sky and we’ll eat Danny’s favorite strawberry frozen yogurt together and—

JOANIE

God…

HENRY

—we’ll look down on the whole town and keep rising til we see clear to Niagara Falls and we’ll finally be—

JOANIE

Stop! Listen to me: I’m going to wheel you out of this room, and I’m going to help you onto the bed, and you’re going to rest.

HENRY

Can’t you see the beauty in it?

She approaches him.

JOANIE

I see that you’re very upset, and you need to—

He grabs her hands.

HENRY

Stop talking to me like I’m a child! We have to go up there! It all makes sense. You were afraid, and God punished us for not keeping the family unit together at that critical, defining moment of a tradition. We should have all been weightless, dancing in the air, and we will be, but first we have a sacred duty to perform. I’ve been practicing the El Maleh Rahamim prayer, and—

JOANIE

There is no unveiling.

Pause.

HENRY

What?

JOANIE

(Tears in her eyes)

I’m sorry, Hankie.

HENRY

What are you talking about?

JOANIE

You told me to take care of everything, and I did. He’s on my family’s plot at St. Paul’s.

He starts to laugh.

HENRY

Oh! Oh! Holy— Oh, Joanie Melissa Thompkins Davis. You got me! I’d bow down if I could and kiss those wonderful feet of yours. Whoo! Bless me, Oh Lord, King of the Universe, I thought I was the funny one. Did I or did I not marry the right girl? Come here and give old Hankie a kiss.

She sobs.

JOANIE

We didn’t know how to tell you. I tried… but you, you were broken. Steve asked me what I wanted, and so that’s what we did, and it’s… been killing me.

HENRY

A good joke knows when its course is run.

JOANIE

Danny’s buried with my family in Eden.

Pause.

HENRY

He’s buried in Eden?

She nods.

HENRY (CONT’D)

He’s in… Eden?

JOANIE

I was just going to bring you there today. Just me and you.

HENRY

Steve told me everything is ready to— Danny’s next to Dad. The whole family’s coming tomorrow.

Joanie shakes her head.

HENRY (CONT’D)

No. My brother wouldn’t stand here and lie to my face.

JOANIE

People lie. Family does it the best.

HENRY

You promised me to keep it Jewish.

JOANIE

I’m sorry.

HENRY

He’s—Danny’s Jewish, and he cannot be buried in a—

JOANIE

Just stop pretending! You didn’t even know one prayer til you were three months into traction, and we only ever celebrated my holidays.

HENRY

You kept this from me for a year! He— That’s not the Eden that God promises to—

JOANIE

God isn’t there for people to latch onto when they’re desperate for something and you’re despicable for even thinking that I would—

HENRY

He’s not there to be thrown away, either, when things turn rotten!

JOANIE

Stop pretending you believe in anything beyond you. I’d be damned if I was going to let my son rest with your family!

HENRY

How could you do this to ME?

JOANIE

You bastard!

She lunges for Henry. After hitting him she picks up the envelope and begins tearing at it. He tries to stop her.

JOANIE (CONT’D)

You son-of-a— You damned him! You’ve damned him! You’ve damned him! You killed him!

HENRY

Stop it! Let go! Dammit stop!

JOANIE

You killed him! You killed him! You killed my baby! You killed my—

HENRY

Let go!

As the tug-of-war reaches its peak, the envelope tears and Henry is pulled out of his chair.

HENRY (CONT’D)

Ah!

JOANIE

I hate you!

They both wail. Then, Henry looks at her, the envelope, and around.

HENRY

Why? Why this?! It was just a second that I turned away to— Why did you let him pull the—… He pulled the…

because I turned and— Oh… God. I didn’t think anything could—

Joanie rocks in place.

HENRY (CONT’D)

Joanie…? Joanie…? I know it was my— Joanie? I held onto him and told him everything would be okay and not to look, but… he laughed. He had no idea what was happening, and just laughed and kept laughing til— I swear to you, he was laughing like it was the greatest thrill in the world. He was laughing.

She stands apart from him. Henry begins to cry.

HENRY (CONT’D)

He was laughing. He was…

Henry wraps himself in the envelope, brings his hands together and prays.

HENRY (CONT’D)

Baruch dayan haemet. Baruch dayan haemet. Baruch dayan…

Henry continues repeating “Blessed is the true judge…” Joanie is frozen. The cover over the piano slips off. After a moment, Joanie floats toward the piano, touches it and sits. She plays a song. Henry’s prayers quiet. As she plays, the lights change. Henry rises and floats over to Joanie. He watches her play. He sits beside her without her acknowledging his presence. At the end of the song, Henry rests his head on his shoulder.

Blackout.

The End.

7 January, 2016

Jason Lasky

Jason Lasky is an American playwright and actor. His plays have been performed on three continents.  He is the co-founder of Shanghai’s critically-acclaimed independent theater, 5th Wall Theater, and he launched J. Lasky Productions in 2014 with an international collaboration for the first Shanghai Soundpainting Ensemble, of which he is its live composer.   Mend the Envelope premiered at the Thespis Theater Festival in New York City in September 2015 ​and was remounted at the Midtown International Theater Festival in November​.​ A Chinese adaptation is currently being mounted for a 2016 debut in mainland China. He and his wife Svetlana are the ​​latest recipient​s​ of Theatre Communications Group’s Global Connections On the Road grant for their ​40 Days of Night project in Murmansk, Russia. www.jasonlasky.com

7 January, 2016

The Abandoned Houses

This is my hometown: Mansfield, Ohio, rated “Worst City to Live in North America” by Places Rated Almanac of 1996, the year I graduated high school. Population: 47,000, though that keeps falling. General Motors left. Before that: Westinghouse, Mansfield Tire & Rubber Company, Ohio Brass, Tappan, Armco Steel. My town is a town of abandonment, oxidized steel, broken and boarded-up windows, warehouses gone to fields, fields gone to seed. More stores are closed than open. More people flee here than are born or move here.

This is the story of a band of former manufacturing towns across the upper Midwest and Northeast. On maps, we’re often shaded in red, red for the net loss, red for the rust. What’s unique about the Rust Belt? Decay is a part of life. We’re used to it, the factories leaving and leaving their structures. We don’t always rebuild. Often, we don’t raze either, letting the old buildings get taken over by weeds and rot; time will do the demolition. It’s a striking combination: the rusted steel and the rural wildness—the land seizing control, running its course: trees sprouting up through the roofs of warehouses, mushrooms growing in the shells of old cars. Abandoned buildings, ruined houses, collapsing barns, weedy boxcars—the landscape here is so arresting, so beautiful and broken, an artistic phrase has been coined to described its rough beauty in photographs: “rust porn” (also referred to as “ruin porn”).

Is it unpleasant here? I remember the first time my former husband, a lifelong New Yorker, visited my family in Mansfield. He stared at the dead deer out the car window—the carcasses, in various stages of decay, along the side of the road, along many roads. So gory. Just left, left to rot. But I barely glanced at them, those carcasses. The bones and hooves and frozen blood were so familiar to me.

Part of this nonchalance is the product of growing up on farms or near farms. As children, my mother and her sisters used to play in the swept-out pig houses on a neighbor’s hog farm. Why were the houses, shelters for the hogs, empty at the same time every season? Where did the pigs go? They knew, my mother and her sisters. They knew—but they still played in those houses. My grown cousin, now a father, let his own daughter help raise a couple of pigs recently. The girl wanted to name them. My cousin said, “Breakfast and Dinner. Those are their names.”

I grew up knowing the dogs at the edge of my grandparents’ farm, half a dozen or more long-eared, baying hounds, were not to be played with, nor petted or visited. They were tied with chains to their wood-slat houses. Those dogs were for hunting. I grew used to the sound of gunshots—many times, in many seasons throughout the year—shattering the otherwise tranquil setting of my parents’ farm.

Certainly our Midwestern weather may be thought unpleasant: extreme heat and humidity in the summers, numbing frozen winters, and shorter and shorter springs and falls. In my early twenties, when I moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan (a place even colder than Mansfield) for a teaching job, one of my students reminisced about Halloween; as children, they always had to think of costumes that would be warm, that would include hoods and gloves, fur or plush. They dressed as sheep and tigers and bundled bears.

Our first class was canceled due to a blizzard that next quarter. Spring quarter. I remember trudging to my car after a night class. I was wrapped, almost to oblivion, in a puffy down coat, but it wasn’t enough. I was freezing, the winds howling up my sleeves. The snow blowing across that flat plain threatened to knock me off my feet. I remember thinking, please just let me make it to my car. Let me find my car.

Most winter mornings of my childhood, my parents stood beside the kitchen sink, waiting for the water to fill a bucket they could pour over the frosted windshield. My mother would drive my sister and me to the bus stop, and wait with us in the car when she could. But often, we had to stand out there, stomping in the cold. The bus was late; it was always late, especially on colder mornings when it too had trouble starting. Many mornings my hair, still wet from the shower, would freeze. I remember sitting on the bus, looking out the foggy window and breaking the ice off my hair, hunk by hunk. A Midwestern friend remembers her eyelashes freezing and sticking together while another friend once said that one of his clearest memories from his childhood in New York is never having a warm enough coat.

It was freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer, and there was nothing to do. In summer, we watched television all day or baked our skin on the concrete beside the county pool, jumping into the water when the heat became unbearable.

Winter was more complicated. The sun set at four. There was no movie theatre with more than two screens until I was in high school. The town roller rink burned down, possibly because kids used to smoke in the bathrooms. There was no skate park, no community center. The nearest music venue was an hour away in Columbus (Cleveland was an hour and a half). And no one came here. No band, no group with name recognition would ever come to Mansfield.

Where would they play? The auditorium at the Westinghouse factory?

I am not certain how my friends survived. One dropped out at sixteen. One got pregnant (that was something to do). Of my two closest friends, one spent more and more time at her synagogue; she eventually became a cantor. And the other, who was to win a scholarship to art school, worked on his paintings, spending long afternoons in his attic bedroom, his canvases tilted to the light. His room, where I occupied many hours watching him work or listening to music, had a single, peaked window which looked out onto fields, fields as far as you could see: yellow and nodding and endless.

My friend is gay, which I knew, but I did not know kids threw paintbrushes at his back in art class, mumbled slurs in the hall. He wouldn’t come out, not widely, until college. We didn’t know any other gay people, especially not any grown ups, not in Mansfield. There was briefly and tragically, a gay bar in town. (I’m trying to remember its name—the Alternative Night Club? The Alternative Place?) The bar occupied a small white clapboard building behind the Renaissance Theatre downtown where I spent much of my time.

Because that is how I survived while my friends went to religious services or drank or painted or got pregnant: I went to rehearsal. I pretended to be someone else. I pretended I was somewhere else—anywhere but here. The gay bar had a balcony, which was splashed with pink and blue and silver lights from the dance floor inside every time the door banged open. I remember, from my position in the parking lot of the theatre, waving to the men out on the balcony with drinks in their hands. They would always wave back. The bar was raided. Men were arrested. (For what? Lewd behavior? What excuse?) The bar closed.

We were far from the city and it always felt farther—far from enlightenment, far from ideas, far from music and first-run movies and art and anything decent to eat. We were virtually landlocked, isolated by miles. We were also the butt of jokes. The dominant perception when I was growing up, which persists today: Everyone is fat in the Rust Belt, fat from laziness, from too many Happy Meals. People whose legs work perfectly well drive Little Rascals around Wal-Mart where they do all their shopping. They vote Republican (if they vote at all). They own guns. They lease trucks. They are lazy, uncultured, illiterate. They are white. In high school, when I traveled to New York for a theatre conference, it was embarrassing to say I was from Ohio. Even the name of the state, the way my mouth had to stretch around the vowels, felt nasal, dumb. I felt dumb.

For the rest of the country, the Midwest—particularly Ohio—stood in for something. It was an indicator of naïveté, of ignorance and isolation. On television, if the character is inexperienced, wholesome, conservative and/or plump, chances are, she’s from Ohio. Wide-eyed girls moving to the city, bland well-meaning parents, earnest kids—all shiny white Ohioans, as an out-of-state friend used to say. Characters from Ohio who fall into these stereotypes may be found in the television programs: Glee, Greek, Clarissa Explains It All, Harper Valley PTA, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, 3rd Rock from the Sun and The New Normal—to name just a handful. In literature, Mary Ann Singleton, the heroine of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels, set in swinging 1970s San Francisco, is blonde, naïve—and from Cleveland. The Midwest, particularly Ohio, is a backwards cocoon of bland safety—and really, it’s best if we just stayed put.

And then there is the darkness of our landscape. Certainly, from New York to Illinois, the terrain is various, but all the states in the Rust Belt are marked by both rural beauty and post-industrial ruin. There are wildflower plains, wooded hills and small mountains. There are long stretches of farmland, patchwork green and yellow fields. There is space to breathe.

There are also industrial corridors or former corridors, where the factories loom, lung-colored and empty. There are ghost structures: abandoned asylums, abandoned schools, abandoned amusement parks, abandoned homes. Such a milieu seems primed for violence; there are simply so many places to hide.

In Mansfield, shadows clung to us to like mud, like that “Worst Place to Live in North America” label. I had questions, which no one would answer. Why had the lake been drained? What was under the railroad bridge? What happened to the girl who dropped out of school? What happened to the man in our neighborhood who dressed as a woman? I wondered; I couldn’t help my mind wandering to these darker places, even if—or maybe especially because—as a child, I wasn’t physically allowed to go there.

So many stories of my own childhood, I wonder about: Did this actually happen to me, or did I see it on TV, one of those long afternoons when my sister and I lay stomach-down on the family room carpet in front of a glowing, lie-telling machine?

I had difficulty distinguishing real life from fiction, a fact my parents discovered when I began to tell them about the twins who had murdered each other. What twins? Where? It was soon discovered that my babysitter watched—and I with her—soap operas all day.

How is truth and truth slippage particular to the Rust Belt? It’s not—except we have been fed lies all our lives. The water is safe. The factory is fine. Mining is a good job.

In 2012, I opened the Mansfield, Ohio newspaper to read a story about the old, shuttered GM Plant. It was the cover story, the headline huge and bold. The factory had sold to a development group! This was true. The group had an interested party! Not true. The interested party was bringing in one thousand new jobs! Really, really not true. My father worked in local business development, and I turned to him as he shook his head: I don’t know where they came up with that.

We want to believe things. We want to cast them in a light, which is not so unbearable.

Looking at subjects in a new way; looking beyond an object, into its past and its future—this is the way we see. We see our towns. My middle school had once been a parts factory for NASA, and so the building was one story and had no windows. Sometimes, the old factories were razed and turned into sheet metal, sold for scrap, and bare muddy fields. But often, the factories were left, just left, and we looked at them, day in and out, remembering what they were, watching them rust and decay and change, and managing to find the loveliness in it. Or something in it.

People have a saying about the weather in the Midwest, particularly Ohio: If you don’t like it, wait five minutes. Yet the whole region is changeable, in flux. My old high school friend moved to Columbus, and driving down his street one day, I saw many of his neighbors out: an African American woman working on her lawn, an Orthodox Jewish family walking to services, a gay couple holding hands—all on one street, one spring afternoon. The diversity of the Rust Belt is dizzying, if mostly unremarked upon by the country at large, and it extends to the landscape. There are factories and farms and warehouses and stores and scenic downtowns and row houses and roundabouts and hills and mountains and long, flat plains. How would you began to describe such a place, such a various place?

Traditionally, the term “Rust Belt” refers to a swath stretching from upstate New York to Chicago, but even these boundaries are fluid. Some would include parts of Wisconsin in the Rust Belt, or Maine, or even New York City. Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, Pittsburgh, Gary—those are the main cities that come to mind when discussing the Rust Belt. But Youngstown, St. Louis, Akron,

Albany, Dayton, Mansfield—these cities, smaller though they may be, have been hugely impacted by the decline of manufacturing, the loss of jobs, the loss of hope. It could be argued that these smaller cities feel the impact of a closed factory more than the metropolitan areas because their economies are smaller, more fragile.

Perhaps the Rust Belt is not even a place or group of places so much as it is a set of socio-economic conditions. Perhaps any area now in decline may be said to be Rust Belt. Perhaps “Rust Belt,” then, is not a geographic designator but a constructed one more than anything, a blanket term: of absence, of abandonment. So much has happened and continues to happen here, so much destruction, abandonment, failure and waste. Also: waiting, striving, persisting and hoping. So much change in lifestyles and lives.

The economic conditions that conspired to create the Rust Belt may, of course, be found in more and more locations as the economy has tanked. Since 2008, what town doesn’t have a closed factory, a street or two (or five or ten) of abandoned houses? Perhaps the Rust Belt is not a spot with clearly designated borders so much as a patina. Not a place, so much as a persona—always a persona. When we go to a dark place; when we skitter off the subject; when we lie; when we obsess; when we still find the beauty, the hope, the potential in our busted lives and our broken towns, maybe we’re performing the Rust Belt. Maybe, no matter where we live or call home or write from or about, maybe the abandoned houses are all of us.