| Featured Book |
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| Just West of Famous |
| Charles Baxter doesn't pull any punches when he answers Lisa Coutant's questions in this month's author interview.
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| In this issue: |
An encore poem from Gol McAdam
Claire Litton's amazing Authenticity Leads
A collection of poetry from Craig Kirchner
New fiction from Maria Pollack and Josh Stewart
Plus great poetry from Corie Feiner, Gary Wilkins, and Sherry Pasquerello |
| Coming Next Month |
Anne Frasier has some fresh ideas about how to boost her book sales,
Ron Hogan is the ultimate literary insider - and next month he's going to take the Picolata Review into his world for an exclusive look around.
Plus:More great poetry, short fiction, and features. Enough great writing to satisfy any literary palate.
Want to submit to The Picolata Review? Send your submissions and queries to submissions@picolatareview.org
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| The Picolata Review |
Managing Editor Mark Pettus is a full time journalist in St. Augustine, Florida, and author of the novel, Transit Gloria
Features Editor Lisa Coutant is a consultant, former writer for the Philadelphia Theatre Review, and a fiction writer. She is also Vice President of the professional writing group, Pennwriters.
Poetry Editor Andy H-H., is a poet who lives in the beautiful countryside of West Yorkshire
with his partner and a menagerie of pets (a sheep occasionally stares in through the kitchen window), in a home surrounded by literary history. Ted Hughes was born there, Sylvia Plath is buried nearby, and first Emily Bronte, then Kate
Bush, made a certain stretch of desolate land five minutes' walk away very famous indeed.
Fiction Editor Serenity Banks's day job is as an industry magazine editor. She also writes an online sex-advice column, and is trying to find an agent for her latest horror novel.
The Picolata Review is a monthly online publication, and a place to find emerging writers and poets. We welcome you, and hope we'll see you again. If you forget our address, look for us just a little west of famous. |
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| Volume 1, Number 2 August, 2006 |
| Flight Plan, by Maria Pollack |
Nick came down the hallway, and when he rounded the corner, he could see his four-year-old son asleep on the living room carpet. Surrounded by his matchbox cars and trucks in their rainbow array of candy colors, Joey sucked his thumb and dreamed.
Nick checked his watch. It read 10:15, long past the little boy's bed time. He felt the rhythm of his heart change, the way it did sometimes when he over-exercised, running ten miles instead of his usual five, or when he argued, which was quite rarely, with his best friend and business partner David. Where the hell was Sarah?
He stepped around his son and snapped off the television, but still Joey didn't wake despite the overwhelming silence that suddenly filled the house. Nick bent down and lifted the boy up against his shoulder. He carried his son up the stairs to his bed without having to turn on a single light since they were all blazing. Nick had noticed that long before he'd even pulled the car into the driveway.
When he eased Joey down onto the bed, the boy turned on his side and, without even opening his eyes, reached out and grabbed his penguin, Mr. Dithers, as Sarah had christened the black and white stuffed toy wearing a red bow tie.
Nick pulled off Joey's sneakers, socks, and jeans. To keep from noticing how much smaller and younger the boy looked just dressed in his t-shirt and Spiderman underpants, Nick quickly pulled the covers up around his child. He flicked the night light on in the corner of the room, turned off the bedside lamp, and quietly shut the door behind him. He went immediately to the master bedroom.
But Sarah wasn't there. She wasn't in the shower, or the office, or the guest room. She wasn't anywhere in the house. He went back downstairs. There was no note on the kitchen table.
***
He was supposed to be home by seven-thirty, but because of a line of thunderstorms his take off had been delayed for over two hours. Even before the delay, he'd had plenty of time to call home after he'd filed his flight plan, but he didn't. Instead, he got himself a cup of coffee and read the paper. He knew Sarah would be pissed off no matter what.
Recently, despite the fact that Sarah was doing so much better, something had shifted between them. When he called home at the agreed upon hour, Sarah almost always had a reason to cut their conversation short - Joey needed his bath, dinner was almost ready, her best friend Carol had stopped over for a drink, she was going to be late for yoga class. When he made it a point to call later, she complained that she was tired or that she was painting.
And when they were together, they fought about everything. He hogged the blankets. She didn't put the laundry away. Ruining her plans for a family breakfast of French toast made from thick slices of challah bread and fresh squeezed orange juice, he slept away entire Saturday mornings while she could never once stay beside him in the morning, their warm flesh keeping company, even when Joey spent the night at his grandmother's. He snapped at Joey. She coddled their son. But, really, it was all about his taking the job in New Mexico.
"Jesse told me the business was in fine shape, and you didn't need to even take on this new group." Sarah poured herself a glass of merlot but didn't offer Nick any.
"How the hell would Jesse know?" Nick, leaning against the counter, folded his arms and looked directly at his wife. "All Jesse knows how to do is spend David's money. Why doesn't he get a job and mind his own damned business?"
"Because David doesn't want him to."
"Oh, that's bullshit."
"Why is that bullshit? Just because Jesse and David are men?"
"Oh, God. Sarah, don't give me this crap again."
"I'm not arguing with you about that. I just don't know why you were so gung-ho to take this job."
"Because we need the money!"
Sarah's eyes--those amazing watery blue sapphire eyes flecked with what he always thought of as tiny green jade bits--flicked away from his face.
He moved across the room to take her in his arms.
"No, Nick. No."
***
Nick had fallen in love with Sarah the moment he saw her. He knew it sounded stupid and impossible, but that's exactly what happened. When they met, she was nineteen and he was thirty-four years old. She was a student at the university where he and David taught before they had set up their own architectural engineering company. He'd come across her sitting on the steps of the library and weeping.
"Are you sure this isn't just about nubile undergraduate flesh?" David asked him. He stabbed a piece of chicken piccata with his fork, popped it into his mouth, closed his eyes, and swallowed. "Absolutely delicious, Jesse."
Jesse smiled at David and then turned his attention toward Nick.
"Well, is it?" he asked.
"No. It's not about sex. In fact, we haven't even had sex yet."
David lifted his wine glass and took a sip of his chardonnay.
"No sex!" Jesse exclaimed. "That's got to be a first for you, Nick, or so I've been told."
Nick looked over at David and could see the bright red stain raising along his throat, the same stain that came out at confrontational department meetings.
Nick would never forget that first time. Sarah was above him, her long hair cascading down around her shoulders. Her skin was so white it seemed to glow in the moonlight that spilled in from the open window. She bent forward and kissed him, and he could taste the chocolates he'd given her and the wine they'd sipped. And when he came, she arched her back, opening herself wider to him. That night he watched her as she slept. He'd never done that with any other woman before.
He'd sat down next to Sarah on the library steps and handed her the clean tissues he pulled from his pocket. He didn't ask her what was wrong. He didn't tell her everything would be all right. He just let her cry.
Afterward, he drove her all the way to Poughkeepsie to the hospital where her father had been taken. He waited outside the room while she went in with her aunt. At first it was quiet, but then he could hear her sobbing and the older woman making soft, sibilant sounds. He felt the sweat under his arms and on the back of his neck even though the hallway was as cool as a late fall afternoon.
He made David come with him to the wake. He promised his friend he'd take him out to dinner afterward. Besides, he knew David wanted to talk him about going into business together, but up until that point Nick had tried to avoid the conversation.
The room they entered, although quite large, was overly crowded. People were lined up to greet Sarah as if they were waiting to buy long coveted concert tickets. Nick had even noticed photographers outside and wondered if in this small city all suicides received this much attention or if it was just the fact that Sarah's father had offed himself in such a spectacular and gruesome fashion by slitting his own throat.
Sarah wore a dark blue velvet dress reminiscent of those special dresses he'd seen little girls wear to mass on Christmas Eve at his mother's church. He watched as she greeted people, received hugs and kisses, smiled. But then she recognized him in the line. He saw her bite her lip and turn to her aunt to say something. The silver-haired woman looked over at him, taking him all in--his dark suit, his crisp white shirt, his polished shoes--and then she smiled.
When David and he finally reached her, Nick took Sarah in his arms. Her head fit just beneath his chin. Her face was pressed to his chest as if she were listening to his heart beat. When she pulled away, she wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
During dinner, Nick couldn't concentrate on what David was saying. He heard the phrases "won't quit our jobs immediately" and "at least a year to get off the ground," but all Nick could do was nod. David signaled the waiter to bring them another bottle of wine. He smiled at Nick, and Nick realized they must have agreed on something.
When Sarah returned to school, Nick took her out to dinner that first weekend. They went to Emperor's Palace where he ordered vegetarian dumplings and shrimp in honey-walnut sauce. He had his usual--crab rangoons and chicken with broccoli in garlic sauce.
He told Boshen to bring them each a Tsing Tso beer, but Sarah only drank a quarter of hers, seeming to prefer the tea. Each time she picked up the silver pot to pour the steaming brown liquid into her cup, he couldn't help but notice how slim her wrists were, how long her fingers, and how white her skin.
She told him she was an art major but was thinking of dropping out.
"I'm flunking English and Calculus II. The only thing I get good grades in are my art courses." She shrugged. "And, really, after my father what can any of these professors teach me?"
And that's when he recognized her last name--Faulds. Her father had been the famous painter who had stunned the art world into submission just a few years earlier with a series of over 200 nudes he'd kept hidden from the public for years and years while he worked on them.
Remembering all those paintings hanging on the walls of the Met, Nick felt a stinging at the back of his eyes as he looked across the table at Sarah and recognized that her own father had used her as his model.
On those canvases, there had been the curve of her cheek, the long lashes, and the amazing eyes. There was the hollow of her neck and her delicate wrists. However, in the paintings, there had also been the blue shadows underneath firm white breasts, the rose bud nipples, the long legs, the curve of smooth thighs, and the dark triangle.
Nick took a sip his beer and calculated that her father must have started painting her when she was about fourteen years old.
He let Sarah keep her secrets. They never even once talked about her father's suicide. Nick realized early on that Richard Faulds must have schooled his daughter in silence, so he waited for her to tell him things.
In fact, they had been living together for almost a year when she told him she had no idea who her mother was.
"Can you imagine that?" She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him. She placed her hand on his chest and threaded her fingers into the thick golden hair.
"I can't." He stroked her shoulder.
"Sometimes, I think I would've liked my father to tell me about her."
"He never spoke of her?"
Sarah shook her head. Then, she leaned down and kissed him on the lips.
The same month that he and Sarah got married he handed in his resignation. They bought a house, a big old brown-stone that needed rehabbing, right on Washington Park.
It was on Willett Street, not far from the river. This meant Nick could incorporate part of the Corning Preserve, the urban park along the banks of the Hudson, into the five mile loop he ran each morning in every season. He always enjoyed watching the changes in the river from its murky and mysterious green in midsummer to its frozen white expanse in the deep cold of January.
As for Sarah, she told him she liked living in the city.
"It's too lonely in the country," she said as she touched her rounded belly.
While the bathrooms were being redone and the old lead-based paint scraped off the walls, they moved in with his mother, and Sarah began to paint again. Right after the baby, she'd been sick, unable to get up, to eat, to even take a shower. It seemed like forever to Nick until the medication began to take effect, but David pointed out to him it really wasn't that long.
"Four weeks is standard," David said as he turned on the light over his drafting table.
"How would you know?" Nick put his coffee cup down.
"My sister. She suffers from depression. She's had it forever. You wouldn't think it, would you?"
Nick shook his head. He'd known Ellen for years. He always met up with her at the parties David and Jesse were famous for throwing to celebrate the Fourth of July, Halloween, and New Year's Eve. She and Nick always sought each other out in the crowd of people. Finding a quiet corner in the study or in the garden, they talked about favorite books, movies, and composers.
Ellen was a cellist with the Albany Symphony Orchestra and had a number of private students. She was David's twin and had the same soft brown eyes and half-smile as her brother. Nick had liked her the first time he met her.
"When she was about Sarah's age she was hospitalized for almost six months. And it was bad. But Jesse was great. He visited her every day even when I couldn't stand to go anymore. That's why those two are so tight." David smiled. "Sometimes, they go out to dinner together and tell me in no uncertain terms that I should just order in a pizza for myself and watch the ball game."
Nick imagined Jesse and Ellen sitting together at a table in one of the trendier restaurants that both he and David despised, the kind where the food was called nouveau cuisine and neither she nor David could ever find anything they really wanted to try on those overly pricey menus.
"Nick," David said as clapped his friend on the arm, "why do you think I told you to think twice about marrying Sarah? She's a lovely girl, but. . ."
"I know." Nick abruptly turned away, being sure to cut David off, and flipped on his computer, for at that moment he realized it was Sarah's fragility that had made him love her.
Sarah's paintings sold quickly, and at first she was happy. But then she stopped sleeping. One afternoon when Nick came home from work, he found that she'd shredded the most recent canvases she'd finished--commissions that she'd already been partially paid for. He didn't say anything. He called her clients, told them she wasn't well, and refunded their money.
She went away to a place in the Berkshires to study yoga. His mother, of all people, had suggested it. It was almost funny this suggestion coming from his mother who had always been a staunch Catholic, but he realized that just showed how bad things actually were.
"She needs something, Nick," his mother said as she drained the spaghetti she was making for Joey. "Martha Stapleton's daughter teaches there. You remember Raya and how wild she was. Martha says she's an entirely new person. No drugs, no men. None of that anymore."
Nick drove his wife to the center on a clear blue sky July day. During the ride as they passed the white clapboard houses, stone walls, golden fields, and dark pockets of forest, they talked together about Joey and his love of bananas, the neighbor's dog Simpkin, and the tricycle Nick's mother had bought him.
When he kissed her good-bye, she told him, "I love you fiercely."
She'd cut her hair, her long shimmering chestnut hair that she let hang down around them like a curtain when they made love.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"Lovely." He put his arms around her and held her tight.
The next time he came to see her at the center, he brought her the long dangling earrings made of dark blue sapphires and white gold that Jesse had helped him pick out. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror when she put them on.
When she finally came home, she slept through the night. She woke early in the morning to meditate before taking Joey off to preschool. She bought watercolors, brushes, and pads but didn't go into her studio where her oils and canvases had gathered a thick layer of dust.
Sometimes, when he came home late at night, he'd find one of these paintings on the table, like a gift just for him. There was Joey, with his Yankees cap, holding Simpkin in his lap. There was the green of the tennis courts in the middle of the park that was awash in reds and golds. There was his mother, at the stove, half-turned toward the viewer, caught in the middle of an animated conversation.
His desire for his wife became overwhelming. Even though by this time they'd been married for six years, he found himself at work thinking about Sarah and the way she looked directly into his eyes as he held himself above her.
But winter came, and she no longer got up early. Nick began to take Joey to preschool and the little boy's grandmother picked him up afterward.
After Nick called the police, he went into the dining room and took out a bottle of vodka from the sideboard cabinet. He filled a water glass three-quarters full with the clear liquid and then he began drinking. He wanted to sleep, to forget. He turned out all the lights and climbed the stairs.
He'd found Sarah's wedding band in the kitchen cabinet in the crystal ring holder where she always placed it when she was doing the dishes. The sapphire earrings that she always wore were right there on the counter by the back door as if she'd remembered, just before she left the house, one more thing she wanted to leave behind.
He went back in and sat down on Joey's bed. Joey had kicked the blankets and sheets off. Nick looked at his son's pale legs and he could feel something lodged at the back of his throat. The room was stuffy and over-heated.
Nick went over to the window and lifted it open, and that's when he could smell the river. He knew on that night the water, so recently released from the ice, flowed black and cold.
Maria Pollack has had her work published in The Detroit Jewish News, The Little Magazine, The Loyalhanna Review, Wings, Quantum Tao, Art Times, Urban Desires, Lily, The Angler, The Green Silk Journal, The Oregon Literary Review, and The Ghost in the Gazebo: An Anthology of New England Ghost Stories.
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