Off the Grid

My parents sent me to this stupid camp. Wooden cabins, steel spring bunks. You can’t bring phones. No internet. Nothing happening here anyway.

That’s why they did it. I live my life online. They say I’m missing out. “Swim in a lake, hike, pick up rocks and learn to skip them along the shore,” they said. “Breathe fresh air.”

It did get fresh, I’ll admit that. There’s a boy’s camp close by. My friend and I snuck out one night. We played board games in the moonlight. Who knew the counselors did bed checks? What did my parents expect?

A Widow Twice

Shelly never could explain herself. Not as a teenager when her mother asked her where she’d been so late. Not as a young mother when her husband left her a widow. Fifty years later, a widow twice, it was her strong belief that she could get along without a man.

Dry eyes, a straight back, Shelly stood at the graveside. Her bottle black hair, a concession to old age, matched the dark raincoat wrapped around her spreading waist. Her daughters each had someone. She couldn’t explain why she envied them the happiness they had found with men who adored them.

In Cold Blood

A moth fluttered from the folds of my favorite silk scarf. Seeing multiple holes, I shrieked. It was down to tenting the house or murder. I chose murder. Moth murder.

Once committed, it became an obsession. Scanning the walls for tiny oblong specks of black, I stopped for every one. A trail of smudges showed my progress through the house. I averaged ten a day.

But a spider’s web had trapped many more. I had planned to dust the corners soon but I’m keeping the spiders. Though they bite me at night, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Key Deer

Tent packed, sleeping bag in the car, Sophie set off for the Florida Keys where, at fifteen, she had ducked through mangrove channels, oars pacing past leaf littered roots and crowding branches. With the divorce final, Sophie needed a vacation.

Drenched in sweat, she would breathe the soggy air, gathering the constituent parts of herself that had withered in a confining relationship with a man she still loved. She would smile at deer flashing their white tails as they sped away.

Water sheeted the windscreen. Sophie pulled over, the car rocking, the wind howling. Wet noise covered her inevitable disappointment.

She’s Not That Into You

Mother Nature announced that her nephew, Dorian, was limbering up for a run along the East Coast. Not known for her empathy, the goddess told an AP reporter that she’d be cheering him on.

She mugged for the camera. “Don’t you love my new look,” she asked pointing to her melting ice caps. “Things are so fluid now.” She held a towel, maybe longing for a hot bath or a long shower. “Global warming has changed my whole look. So many insects, forest fires, new algal blooms.”

She ended the interview saying, “It’s a new world. Get used to it.”

Space Trash

Insects buzzed in Angie’s ears. The air was cooling, the way it did during her afternoon soaps.

Something outside announced itself with a booming jet plane noise. Ted ran through the living room, onto the patio. The object he found was small, less than two cubic inches, but heavy.

After toing and froing past the telly, he showed Angie a piece of debris clutched in an oven mitt. It was a burnt toast color. “Space junk. Like the magazine picture.”

“Sure ’nuff.” She motioned Ted away. “Better save it. Call up the museum to collect it later, after my shows.”

Alone

You back out of the driveway, past the “For Sale” sign, into the same roads you sped over in high school. Some blacktop. Some gravel. All deserted. No one caught on and you never got caught.

You know you can drive fast until you get to town. Then slow to a crawl. Wave at Mrs. Brown. Pull up to the undertaker’s where your honor student persona worked ages ago as a receptionist. A job where straight white teeth counted.

When you said good-bye, locked the door on that past life, you never intended to return. But now, alone, you’re back.

‘Til Debt Do Us Part

When the Titanic sank, it was accompanied by the strains of the orchestra playing Nearer My God to Thee. The music calmed survivors and doomed alike. Maybe the musicians thought there would be enough lifeboats to get away at the last minute. They clearly felt an obligation to provide art as a bromide for the fear of imminent catastrophe.

Once the damage was all sorted out, the musician’s families received bills from the ship’s booking agency for the tuxedos that went down with the ship. Come hell or high water, they would collect what was owed them. Business as usual.

She Had a Natural Talent for Clowning

Anastasia’s body joked in broad gestures while her face screamed wry. With a tilted head and a mincing clown step, she could amplify a joke into a stand-up routine. The final requirement to fulfill for matriculation was choosing a name.

When Anastasia asked her mother for suggestions, Clotilda was inscrutable. She frowned and shrugged. “Finding a name is a singular quest.”

Anastasia left the house in a huff. Children playing outside imitated her strut, parading behind her. She walked backwards, raising her arms like a majorette or a policeman directing traffic.

And then the name popped out. “Boza Boza Boom.”

Aces Low

In the kind of stunning reversal the president is famous for, Trump declared that he will be going back to Germany, where he came from. Pouting, Trump said, “No one appreciates my genius. I made America what it is. The Dems broke it.”

It’s not the first time a Trump fled their country. Trump’s grandfather came from Germany as an economic migrant. His grandson would have kept him out. Friedrich dodged the draft in Germany, so they didn’t want him either. Like his grandson, he was not a patriot.

Trump might decide to stay here. Germany might not have him.

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