Four Inches of Atlantic by Susan Tepper

Hilton Haven Motel by cardboardamerica@gmail, flickr

Things went off kilter during the renovations. We no longer sleep together. I’m in 3A, he’s off somewhere else in this motel. Possibly doing several of the chamber maids. Possibly at the same time.

“You’re too conservative.” He flung that one around about everything from our sex life to selecting a mini-Palm species to line the driveway. The Florida Arms. A motel we purchased fifty-fifty off E-Bay.

“Never trust a photo array,” I’m telling Rhonda over the room phone. “All my money sunk into this place. What did I know about toxic mold?”

Rhonda is my younger sister and she’s pragmatic. “Can’t you sell your share?” When I don’t answer she screams, “Hello? Hello? Hello?”

“Still here. Unfortunately.” I’m still here.

Along with the mold, the unfinished garden, a cheating boyfriend. More than half the rooms needing paint and refurbishing. We hired the sniffing beagles for a room by room bed-bug snoop. It wasn’t a good outcome.

“We bought a white elephant,” I tell her.

“You mean dump.”

“Basically.”

“But it’s near the water, right? The ocean.” Ocean sliding off her tongue. As if I own half a slice of heaven.

Through the smudged window, my eyes travel the width of the two lane road. Not likely to see a Beemer, Benz, or Bentley whizz past this stretch. “It’s not South Beach,” I tell her.

 

“How close to the ocean?”

I pick a dead fly out of the dismal orangey color drapes. “Close enough to drown myself.”

Across the road, a line of dark water is visible. If measured in actual inches, using my thumb and forefinger, I would estimate approximately four inches of Atlantic can be viewed from right here.

“Rhonda, can you hold on a minute?”

“You need to pee? I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Just for a sec, I want to increase the air conditioner. This room is broiling.”

Unfortunately, the unit is already set on the coldest number. The air coming out feels murky to lukewarm. “Fuck.”

It’s going to be quite the Christmas season. Billy wants to string lights along the building. Big ugly bulbs in every garish color. I suggested small white twinkle lights: Veto Veto Veto.

My neck feels sweaty behind my ponytail. I sit on the bed and the springs pop. “Sorry. Where were we?”

“You know, I never trusted that guy. Billy. Why not Bill or Will or even William?”

“How should I know? He’s caught in a time warp.” I run my hand over the tired-looking bedspread, a diamond pattern in turquoise and coral. “I think he’s doing several of the maids.”

Rhonda lets out a snort. “Old hippie asshole jerkoff. I bet he’s under-endowed. Is he? So what are you going to do, just stay there and paint rooms and suck it up? Is he?”

I lie back wondering if he’s used this room for sex? “No, he’s endowed. I have to come up with a plan.”

“Maybe one of his maids can buy out your share.”

“If you’re going to offer advice, at least make it logical. Where is a chamber maid going to come up with that much cash?”

“Sister dear, you are a tad naïve. They’ve all got their little trade on the side. I’m sure those ladies are set up fine. The maid gig is their cover. I mean, give me a break.”

I scratch my shoulder that feels bumpy, hoping the bed bugs haven’t found a path into room 3A. Rhonda is stuck on that series Weed starring Mary Louise Parker in the role of drug-dealing housewife.  “You got that idea from watching Weed, right?” My throat feels dry. After the asbestos removal, a lot of microbes still hang in the air.

“Hold on a sec while I check the mini-bar.”

“Again! I told you I’m in a hurry.”

One dented can of Ginger Ale. I despise Ginger Ale. It shouts old people Florida. I pop it anyway, swig, spitting it on the carpet. “Flat!” I’m yelling now but who cares? The few guests we have here look like Vegas losers detoured on their way to nowhere.

Someone is pounding on the door. I ignore this. Then it opens and it’s Billy holding a level. “Shut the damn door you’re letting my cold air out. What there is of it.”

He steps in slowly, a stealth look on his face, eyes roaming the room. A bleached out blue, those eyes – I used to find them so appealing. “What do you want?” I say.

“Who’s on the phone?”

“One of your bimbettes. Tracking you down. No beagles this time, strictly bloodhounds.”

Unfazed he says, “This room only needs cosmetic.” He’s wearing the usual paint-splattered shorts and a surfboard logo T-shirt that partially melted in the dryer. That’s another thing— the whole building needs re-wiring.

“Are you for real? This room is a gut-job.”

When a room is particularly disgusting, he says we need to gut it. When it’s just gross he calls it cosmetic. He’s kneeling, lining up his level under the window edge.

“Call you later,” I tell Rhonda but she’s already hung up.

“Who was that?” he says again.

“Look, I’ve been sleeping in here and I would say this is a gut. The walls are cracking. The glass shower doors are glopped with black mold, they’ve got to go. The toilet tank is broken along the edge. Who sells toilet parts in desert brown these days? Huh? The whole world wants white and fresh. Granite if you’re really going to do it up right.”

He doesn’t even glance my way.

“Take that air conditioner – it’s a joke. It’s like an artificial plant. Well what do you want, Billy? I have things to do.”

He grins and tosses his level onto the chair. “You wanna fuck for the season?”

Susan Tepper is the author of six published books. Her newest is a collection called ‘dear Petrov’ that will be released this winter by Pure Slush Books. http://www.susantepper.com

 

 

 

 

Florida Flash: A Christmas Anthology, vol 1

“Cocoa Beach Christmas” by Meg Sefton

“Little Bitch” by Susan Tepper

“Somewhere in the World I Have an Implacable Enemy (A Christmas Story)” by Jason E. Rolfe

“Dinner, please!” by Ndba Sibanda

“Christmas Past” by Chella Courington

“Do You See What I See?” by Jeanen McBrearty

“Becoming Real” by Elizabeth Westmark

Christmas in July! by Paul May

 

Welcome back to our Florida Flash: A Prompt-Based Christmas Anthology! We’re rolling again and ready for your submissions.

While you are thinking through your submission for the upcoming holiday season, we have a little something to get you in the mood: Paul May’s “Christmas in July” mini-sculpture, an artform echoing our writing in miniature, all of which goes to show that great things come in small packages. We are going to interview Paul about his little creatures and men called “Boogermen.” What a treat! Get ready. The extravaganza is about to begin.

This zine is about fun. You don’t have to be of any particular religious persuasion or have a religious belief to participate. The only requirements for consideration of your submission are the following: it should be a flash piece, approximately 1500 words or less; it should take place in Florida, the more infused with the atmosphere down here the better; it should take place around the holidays and have something to do with the holidays; it should require so little editing so as to be the effort-equivalent of me lifting my pinky while drinking my Christmas hot toddy.

Much as one picks out the Christmas presents to put under one’s tree, I will perhaps from time to time have to pick one story over the other, but I’m pretty democratic. The sky is literally the limit. Give me realistic, surrealistic, magically realistic, absurdism, bizarro, noir, paranormal romance, Southern gothic, horror, sci fi, slipstream, steam punk, minimalism, micro. Prose poets are welcome. Even give me young adult or children’s stories. Who does not want to indulge in a children’s story during the holiday season? I am open. Just make it good. Set it in Florida. Make it about the holidays. Read the guidelines.

Submissions open September 1 and close November 30 at midnight EST. Stories will begin rolling hot off the press as soon as a good one appears. We will keep the party going through the New Year.

 

 

“Cocoa Beach Christmas” by Meg Sefton

Daddy drove us nine hundred miles to Florida the Christmas after Mama passed. It was just me, Daddy, and my little sister Lulu. Daddy said there wasn’t anything in Florida that wasn’t all around the world and that was Christmas love and reindeers and Santa. He didn’t want to see snow, he said, or get a tree or eat turkey. These things reminded him of Mama and he needed a break from feeling sad. He said she would have wanted us to go to Florida for Christmas. In fact, he said, she probably knew what we were up to right now and it made her happy.

When I wasn’t keeping my sister occupied with books and games of eye spy, I was watching the landscape change from naked trees and gray skies to thick grass and fat palms and I was watching for Mama to see if she was watching us drive to Florida. Maybe she was traveling beside us, just outside the window. I looked for her in the shadows of green. I looked for her in the marshes beside the freeway. She would wear her white linen gown, the one with the satin bow I had learned to tie when I was three years old. She would wear her hair long, like she did before the sickness took it. She loved the outdoors. It made sense I saw her a few times, walking along in the trees, touching the head of a tall white bird in the marsh, a place she would sink if she were a real person and not a ghost.

The camp was a place called Cocoa Beach. I had wondered if that meant the water would be made of chocolate. I had visions of me and Mama and my sister rolling in waves and waves of cocoa. Dad would be sitting on the shore, reading his paper as usual. We would bring him cups of cocoa and he would pretend to drink it just like he did at our tea parties. He would finally join us and mama would flee away, not wanting to cause him pain because she was a ghost and it seemed like ghosts knew everything.

We camped in a spot surrounded by twisted trees and bushes with red berries. It looked like God put his finger down and stirred things up, but it was really the wind and soil that made them the way they were said Daddy. While he set up the tent, he let us go to the beach and put our toes in the water which was not cocoa. The sand was crushed shells and scratched my feet but it didn’t hurt. When a wave crashed, bits of shell rubbed up against my legs. My shoulders felt warm from the sun. I put my diving mask on and dunked my head under the water, looking for Mama. Not far away I saw the tail end of a white gown flowing in the water but then a wave took me down and by the time I stood up, I could see no one. I went under again and all I could see was the strange grey green sea.

Lulu was scared of the water and so I had to hold her like Mama used to, on my hip. She could swim but I knew it was the moving water that worried her and she clung tight. When the waves started slapping her bottom, she kicked and screamed. I took her back to the shore and held her hand while we walked back to the campsite. My stomach was all in knots because I thought she might cry to Daddy about the waves and spoil things but she just sat on the picnic bench and sucked her thumb. I brought a towel and wrapped it around her.

That night by the camp fire, Daddy read about the baby Jesus. All I could think about was whether Mary would get cancer and leave Jesus. Then I remembered Mary weeping for Jesus on the cross. I didn’t feel so sorry for him that he was poor and there wasn’t room for him in the inn. And I didn’t care about Easter and Jesus dying. This was Christmas. I kicked some sand into the fire.

“Katherine Elizabeth,” daddy said like he does when I’m in trouble.

He sent me to the camp restrooms to get ready for bed. There was a lady in the stall beside me who had blue veins running through her feet like Mama did right before she died.

“Where is your campsite?” I asked her when I came out of my stall but she just kept washing her hands over and over. I couldn’t see her face. Her hair hung down like Mama’s used to hang when she let it free. “Are you Mama?”

She looked up at me then. She had dark eyes and a face with deep lines around her mouth. She only wiped her hands on a roll of cloth that went round and round through a machine.

Daddy was silent in the tent. He didn’t sing to us like Mama would have. I knew I shouldn’t say anything about the lady and about whether Mama was in Florida. He promised Santa would find us no matter where we were but of course I knew Santa was a made up story. But how come so many grown ups believed you would never die? Was Mama an angel now?

When Daddy and Lulu were asleep, I slipped outside the tent. The moonlight made our campsite white. Little puffs of air blew against my face and the shadows moved with the trees.

I spoke with Santa then. I asked him for my old Mama back – the one who could still lift Lulu on her hip, who could sing us to sleep without stopping to catch her breath, who made us fried chicken and biscuits. I asked Santa if my Mama was here. I asked him these things even though he was supposed to be a story for children.

There was only the sound of the crashing chocolate waves. How Mama would have loved that, that I imagined them as cocoa. She would have played along, filling up a pot and putting it on the fire, doing magic and making real chocolate. She would have kissed me for my dream of the dark, sweet, milk sea. There was a sea somewhere like that and Mama was waiting for us, with Peter the wolfhound who died soon after she died, heartsick my dad told us. He was licking up the ocean. She had gone there to prepare a place for us. We would never be apart again and Daddy would watch over us always.

I stuck a dried up flower from a palm tree in the sand. Daddy said people didn’t really notice the flower of the palm but he said the most interesting things come and go in secret. I put some rocks around the base to hold it up and then at the top I tied the ribbon Mama had given me. It was white and satin like the ribbon in her gown. The dried up palm flower looked like a Christmas tree. I would leave it out all night, just in case.

Meg Sefton’s work has appeared in Best New Writing, The Dos Passos Review, Dark Sky Magazine, Connotation Press, Dans Macabre, and other fine journals.  She received her MFA from Seattle Pacific University.  She lives in central Florida with her son and little white dog Annie and they all love making trips to the beach, especially in winter.

“Little Bitch” by Susan Tepper

She’s shoplifted from back when she was a brat growing up in a swamp town built on land fill in the Everglades. Told me how she stole stuff, nail things mostly, the silver metal files, clippers, polish, polish remover, bags of cotton balls she stuck under her shirt and smuggled out of the five and dime.  A woman shopper once asked her how many months dear assuming the soft bulk was a baby on the way.  She said she knew then and there it would be the only baby she’d ever carry; that there wasn’t time for a baby, life was too short. 

 

“Well, yeah,” I told her.  “If you’re busy stealing things it does use up time.”

 

Shifting the conversation just enough to take off the heat she said, “I’ve always been a biter.”

 

Her nails bitten down to the nubs.  A grown woman and she has to bite.  She chews up those nails like she’s taking something down that needs destruction. 

 

It is a problem.  ‘Cause I like my back raked during fucking.

 

And now she’s escalating— sweaters in the seven hundred dollar price range. A purple leather skirt marked down to fifteen-hundred!  Stuff we will never afford in this lifetime.  Not on my cop salary.  I found these and other items shoved in the back of the closet.  Price tags still dangling.

 

What does she need sweaters for, it’s been one hell of a hot December.  Yet she’s out there, right now, every day on that beach, coming home baked in the afternoon. 

 

I decide to walk the one block to the ocean.  See for myself what’s up. The number 50 sunscreen tube in the medicine cabinet is looking untouched.  I slap some onto my arms and chest and legs.

 

The sun is blazing down on my neck and shoulders.  Small fisherman shacks in a line are quiet.  In one a cat slinks past a window.  I step onto the boardwalk ramp that leads to the sand.  Not too many sun worshipers during the height of the day. Yet there she is, little bitch, and hardly wearing a stitch (black thong and pasties bikini), her skin looking every inch brown-orange. A shade only she and the idiot surfers find very cool. 

 

“Hey!” 

 

“Hey Man-Fred!”  On her belly she twists her neck around. 

 

Fuck.  Right away she’s got me.  I grin.  Man-Fred is my Achilles heel.  What the heck, I’m thinking looking at her ass curving upward toward the sky.  “Whatchu doing?”  I say.

 

“What’s it look like?”

 

Oh, boy.  It’s gonna be one of those conversations. 

 

I kneel on the end of the bed sheet she brought to lie on.  It looks new and unfamiliar.  White with swirling dotted rainbows.  I trace the arc with my finger. “Did we ever sleep on this sheet?”

 

“Why?”  She’s squinting, little lines fanning out from her blue eyes.

 

“You got eyes bluer than the ocean.”

 

“The ocean is gray-green.”

 

“True, true.”  I squint that direction making like I’m checking it out, like I’m actually interested in what fucking color the ocean is, was or ever will be.  “So what do you want from Santa?”

 

She flips onto her back and sits up braced by her elbows.  “I want you to go get fucked.”

 

I can feel my eyelids quivering.  “That’s a joke, right, that’s meant to be a joke?”

 

She digs her heels into the sand and I’m thinking it has to burn.  But maybe not.  

 

“Nope.”

 

I clear my throat saying,  “I don’t follow your line of thinking.”

 

She stands then, hands on her slim hips, smiling down on me. You’re gonna end up dry as a handbag, I want to say.  Like those crocodile designer bags you’re bound to rip off.  Sooner or later.  While I’m thinking this, one of the pasties slides and her nipple is out. 

 

“You’re exposed,”  I tell her.

 

“You found my loot?”

 

“No it’s your tit.  Your tit is…”  Then I shut up just looking at it.  So small and lonely.  Screw the loot.

 

She laughs in an easy way like she’s been waiting for this moment all her life: her tit, her loot—  all out there for the taking.  She clasps her hands in prayer mode saying,  “Cuff me, Man-Fred.  Take me in.  Get it over with, will ya.”

Susan Tepper is the author of five published books. Her latest title, “The Merrill Diaries” (Pure Slush, 2013) is a Novel in linked stories. Tepper is a named finalist in story/South Million Writers Award for 2013, and the recipient of nine nominations for the Pushcart and one for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

“Somewhere in the World I Have an Implacable Enemy (A Christmas Story)” by Jason E. Rolfe

Anna once said she could only endure depression up to a certain point, after which she had to find some element of pleasure in the world, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, in order to go on living. After she died I found it increasingly difficult to see the paltry pleasures in life. Christmas in particular. Christmas was always her thing – her cozy, fireside, curl up and read a good book thing. When she died she stole that coziness from me, and while I’ve spent every Christmas since on thirteen miles of white sandy beach somewhere between Saint Augustine and Vero Beach, Anna’s presence still haunts me, a Dickensian ghost I’m bound to by the chains of Yuletides past.

The land beyond the beach originally belonged to the Timucuan Indians who, if I’m not mistaken, didn’t celebrate Christmas. The town’s founder, a Scottish doctor named Turnbull probably did, but I’m less certain about his wife. She was born in the Turkish city of Izmir, then known as Smyrna. The history doesn’t matter. Not now. Not after Anna’s death. But when I first began plotting my escape it made New Smyrna sound far more exotic and interesting than it actually turned out to be.

So here I am. A Canadian in Florida. Can you imagine?

“Somewhere in the world I have an implacable enemy,” Anna says. No one else can hear her. Nobody can see her, but I know she’s here. So I search the world around me for hints of pleasure. I see Snowbirds and surfers, treasure hunters searching for rare coins and jewelry, and anglers (like me) who insist that surf fishing is the only way to go. The lifeguard tells me I should watch out for rip currents. Rip currents are channels of fast-moving water that can pull swimmers from shore. “If you’re caught,” the lifeguard says, “don’t fight the current. Swim parallel to the shore until you’re out.”

He sounds like a therapist counseling his melancholy patients. If you’re caught in depression’s current, don’t fight it. Just stay above water until it lets you go. He doesn’t see Anna sitting in the sand beside me. He doesn’t see the needle in her arm. He doesn’t really care. “I don’t know his name,” she says. “I don’t even know what he looks like.” She picks up a dead palm branch, breaks off the end and plants it in the sand. “I don’t know anything about him, and because I don’t, I can’t trust anyone. Literally. Not a soul.”

“What are you making?” I ask.

“A Christmas tree,” she says. She gets up and walks off in search of ornaments.

Later, she brings me back an advertisement. It says:

Faithful to Charles Dickens’ original tale, this adaptation of the beloved Christmas classic tells the story of miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. The cold-hearted Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, who comes to warn him about the consequences of living a life of greed and materialism.

Over the next three hours, Scrooge is visited by three spirits who attempt to convince him that his selfishness will be his downfall. Can their efforts make the old miser change his ways?

The curtain opens at 8:00 pm. 2:00 on Sundays.

She kneels and begins decorating her Christmas tree. “I know that I’m doomed,” she says. The words are hers – I know they are because I read them the very morning she’d written them. I’d read them too late, of course, which is why they’ve stayed with me all these years. Her voice, though, is vague and empty. It says, “I won’t fight it. I can’t anymore. I’m only writing this down so that when you don’t see me anymore you’ll know that my enemy has finally won.”

“Watch out for jellies too,” the lifeguard says.

“And don’t overdose on heroine,” I add. I don’t see the beauty in jellyfish, and when I turn back around I no longer see Anna. I only see the tree she left behind – a dead, shell-covered palm branch propped up by sand and warmed by Florida’s December sun. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s not a cozy, fireside, curl up and read a good book thing.

But it’s my thing.

______________

For Anna Kavan

Somewhere in the world, Jason E. Rolfe also has an implacable enemy, which perhaps explains his appreciation for the work of Anna Kavan. If depression ever had a voice, it was hers.

“Dinner, please!” by Ndaba Sibanda

A woman was sauntering to her beautifully furnished residence

when she decided to stop by, unannounced, at her son’s house.

With this- after- all – this -is –my- son’s- house audacity, she knocked

once on the door before marching in.

She was shocked to see her daughter-in-law lying on the couch,

wearing nothing else but nudity itself. What filled the room was

some captivating soft music, and the aroma of some exotic

perfume from a land only furnished with romantic souls.

‘What the heck are you doing?’ she burst out.

 

‘I’m waiting for Justin to come home from work.’

The daughter-in-law answered in a calm and collected voice.

‘ But you’re na…!’ the mother-in-law exclaimed.

‘This is my love dress,’ the daughter-in-law chipped in.

‘Love dress? But you’re totally na…!’

‘Justin loves to see me tucked in this dress,’ she bubbled

over with a smile.

 

She added,’ Every time he sees me in this dress, he instantly

becomes romantic and ravages me for hours.’

 

At that point, the mother-in-law pouted her chunky lips and banged

the door behind her as she darted out.

 

When she got home she undressed, showered, crooned `l Wanna

 know what love is`,

 

Slowly she put on her best perfume, kissing the air, she dimmed the lights.

She darted across the room and put on a romantic CD, and lay on the

couch waiting for her husband to arrive. ..

 

Finally, her husband came home. Her knight in amour.

 

He walked in and saw her wriggling childishly, provocatively on the couch.

Lol!

 

‘What are you doing?’ he inquired, doffing off his eye-glasses as if to convince himself that he was not hallucinating. Had his wife gone crazy? Bananas!!

 

‘This is my love dress, my man,’ she whispered, slowly, sensually.

`Honey, that one definitely needs some serious ironing!

What’s for dinner?` he said with an air of finality.

Ndaba Sibanda says:  I am a published writer, former National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA) nominee, a writers` association chairperson, an English lecturer, an international ESL and EFL teacher and tutor , book editor ,conference producer and researcher, and more recently, a freelance journalist . In 2005, my nationally acclaimed book, Love O’clock was published. In 2006, I edited a poetry anthology, IT`S TIME…In 2007 I was in a team of young writers` editors/mentors on a British council project, Echoes of the Young. 2010 saw me contribute to an international edition -Poems for Haiti, a South African anthology.

“Christmas Past” by Chella Courington

Tom was sitting near the artificial Christmas tree untangling lights. As Adele squeezed by, her elbow hit a glass ornament that fell and exploded, red glass spread in an imperfect circle. This was their first Christmas in the new house they bought in Santa Barbara, their first Christmas without parents. Her father dying shortly after his mother last spring, and now they had no one to visit, no one to invite.

“Oooh,” she said.

He heard her and thought, she must be bleeding. Cut. But all he saw was her looking at the shattered ornament.

“Are you ok?” he asked.

“That was my dad’s.”

He tried not to sigh or say anything or make a gesture because he knew a storm might come and somehow he would be implicated by thought or deed or lack thereof. He stood and carried the lights to the kitchen table. When he came back, she was sitting beside the broken ornament, staring at it.

“Do you even miss your mother?” she asked.

He sat down across from her counting out Mississippis. “Of course, I miss her.” And he did miss his mother decorating every room of the house with tinsel and bells and baking cheese straws, hiding them in a tin until Christmas Eve.

“Why don’t you ever talk about her?” Adele asked

 “I do sometimes, but she’s gone. It always comes to that,” he said. He remembered shortening phone calls and visiting less often after his father died, leaving his mother too much to her own choices. Couldn’t understand her needs.

“Do you want to forget? Adele asked, looking at him as if he should say something more, do something. The way he should have done something for his mother.

 “Are you warm?” Tom asked. He opened the sliding glass door and picked a chocolate, the pound box on the coffee table, waiting to be emptied. He sat next to her this time. “We have our lives, you and me. We have tomorrow.”

Adele pushed the glass fragments into a neat circle, then a smaller circle, and an even smaller circle. Glass dust stuck to her fingers reflecting light.

Tom left her to get the dustpan and broom.

Chella Courington graduated from the University of Florida and now teaches writing and literature at Santa Barbara City College. Her recent work appears in The Los Angeles Review, Gone Lawn, Gargoyle, The Collagist and SmokeLong Quarterly. In 2011 Courington published Paper Covers Rock, a flip book of lined poetry; Girls & Women, a chapbook of prose poetry; and Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, an e-book of linked microfiction.

“Do You See What I See?” by Jenean McBrearty

 

The last place I wanted to spend Christmas was Buffalo, New York with my drunken parents and pot-head brother, but my ‘95 Camry needed brakes and the Student Loan People taught me the meaning of forbearance. Maybe they wouldn’t fight and throw turkey legs. Maybe they wouldn’t scream “Get a job or move!” at Joey. Maybe Jesus did walk on water.

Jacob-my- Jewish-roommate agreed to drive me to the airport on the 23rd and I agreed not to wake him when I came home after the Tri-Delta 10th Annual Miami Beach Bash.  So far, so good. Then Alan called and said he’d forgotten to order the keg, and all but twelve people had taken early flights to avoid the holiday crush, and the bash had turned into a cook-out, and could I bring three packages of weenies and, oh yes, twelve wire coat hangers?

I went to Winn Dixie and Sally Ann, bought the weenies and twelve, twenty-five cent T-shirts (which I immediately re-donated) to get the coat hangers. Just in case Alan forgot, I bought three packages of buns, three fireplace logs, and two six-packs of Bud Lite when I stopped for gas. The tri-Delta girls brought enough wood—broken down end tables from abandoned sorority house bedrooms—to keep the fire burning for two months, but otherwise I’d made a good call. Alan brought mustard and his appetite.

Two hot-dos and two beers later, we six couples huddled at the cook-out ring listening to the waves tickle the sand and watched the lacquer peel on the table legs. I thought we looked like the anywhere-but-home Christmas Club, but no, Alan told how he got the puppy he’d wanted forever from Santa and it touched off a round of “My Most Memorable Holiday Gift” stories filled with homey, happy memories. Michelle related waking up to a new baby sister her mom and the midwife had placed her under the tree wrapped in a white blanket garnished with a red ribbon. Hence, the name Noel. Chris told about how his Dad came home minus an arm from Afghanistan, and how his mom almost fainted with joy when he walked in with his sleeve pinned up. I excused myself to take a piss.

“We’ll wait for you,” Alan said.

“Naw, go on. I never was the sentimental type,” I said and walked down the beach until I couldn’t hear them, until I was as alone as I felt inside, as alone as the guys who sat at the back door of Sally Ann waiting for the staff to bring them sandwiches.

I took off my sandals and waded in the surf, wanting to feel that superiority that comes from being warm in winter when it was minus four in Buffalo. As if my choice of Florida International made me a genius. No, I wasn’t smart, just lucky for someone with a thirst for the beautiful.

I sat on the sand and drank it all in. That gentle endless sea as a wavy desert sound, the palm tree silhouettes , the sky so clear I could see Venus and chart the constellations. “It came upon a midnight clear,” I heard someone say and looked behind me. The stranger sat down. “Do you know that one?”

“I never learned many carols,” I confessed.

“Well, the melody is great too.” He started humming, then filled in with words after the first go ‘round.

 “I do know a little of Joy to the World.”

“O-kay. We’ll give it a go.” We struggled through it, with me missing some of the phrases, but he said, “Good. Good,” when we were done. “Do you have a favorite?”

I thought about the mall and the little girl in a red satin dress trimmed with white fur standing by a piano outside the music store. Beside her was a Sally Ann kettle and after she’d finished singing, I’d stuffed a dollar into the red pot. Imagine me giving away some of my brake fund money. “I think it was called Holy Night or something.”

“Did it go something like this?” And he broke into the sweetest words about the world laying in sin repining until he born and then people felt their worth.  I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel very worthy. When he got to the part about the night being divine, I noticed the sky had turned a soft gold color, and seemed to glow brighter and brighter as he sang. I wanted to say, “Good. Good, no perfect,” when he finished, but before I could speak he stood up and walked towards the water. I thought maybe I was more buzzed than I knew, that he’d disappear then, but he didn’t. He turned to me and then back to the sea, stretched out his arms like a conductor and there were thousands of beautiful beings, draped in white and gold and singing more wondrously than I’d ever heard.

“What are you staring at?” Michelle said, and when I looked at her I knew she hadn’t seen or heard any of it. The once-gold sand was now the color of shadows again. But it didn’t matter. Next year, I’d have a memorable Christmas story to tell. The one about how I stopped chasing maybe Christmas wishes.

I went back to the fire ring with her, told them the lie about the sleek 10-speed Schwinn I always wanted and found standing by the tree Christmas morning, and remembered the one at Sally Ann—the one with two flats and a little rust around the spokes. I could fix it up. Buy a new seat too, with what I had in my brake fund. I’d send the airline money back in the prettiest card I could find. Every cent. And mean every word I said about wishing them all a wonderful holiday and hoping god would bless them. I am blessed. It’s warm enough in Florida to ride a bike in winter.

Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, a former community college instructor who taught Political Science and Sociology, and is finishing a certificate in Veteran Studies. Her fiction has been published in a slew of print and on-line journals including Cigale Literary Magazine, 100 Doors to Madness Anthology, Mad Swirl and The Moon, and her poetry has been accepted by Van Gogh’s Ear and Page & Spine. Her photographs have appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Journal and Off the Coast Magazine among others. Her novel, The 9th Circle was published by Barbarian Books.

“Becoming Real” by Elizabeth Westmark

Jill drove around the parking lot of Joe Patti’s Seafood for ten minutes before she found a narrow space on a ribbon of smashed grass out by Main Street. Seemed like half the town was there. It was mid-afternoon on a hot, sultry Christmas Eve in Pensacola.

She edged sideways through the motley crowd and took a number from an off-duty deputy sheriff. Number 99 was 28 numbers away, so she backed up against a freezer case and surveyed the boisterous throng.

Cream of society types who looked like they had just left their grand homes in East Hill mixed with poor folks from the Westside, bright-eyed Asian children held close by their parents, beach rats with tattooed fat hanging out everywhere, and old people who looked they were already half-embalmed leaned on their walkers and pointed bony fingers to choose ingredients for a holiday gumbo.

You couldn’t stand there without smelling the people, especially the pickled ones whose pores oozed wheaty hops. Fat women paired with ectomorphic men so stretched out and thin they were strangely attractive until you were hit with a full frontal of missing teeth and dead eyes.

“Ninety-nine? Ninety-nine? Jill nearly missed hearing her number. She squished and squiggled her way to the counter, ordered shrimp and cocktail crab claws from a rough-looking woman with a Russian accent wearing a Santa’s Elf hat, then took her basket to the cash register, paid, and left.

Ben would be home soon, and there would be a crowd for dinner. She had met his son and daughter once, but not their spouses. How old was the little grandson? Three?

She left her first husband because he steadfastly refused to even consider starting a family. And now she was about to marry a man with grown kids and a shiny new vasectomy

Jill could feel her small car sway in the wind when she reached the mid-point of the Three-Mile Bridge. The sky didn’t fall all at once. It became uniformly gray and she could see red and green lights on houses across the sound. The rain started with a few giant splats on her windshield. One more bridge to go.

Sailboats strung with lights in Little Sabine Harbor danced in the gunmetal waves. Jill drove slowly past their house, then picked up speed as she headed into the teeth of the storm on State Highway 399 toward Navarre.

White sand blew across the narrow two-lane road. Jill knew she should turn around, but some wild call urged her forward. Up ahead she saw a beach access parking area and pulled in, turned off the engine, found her rain poncho and opened the door. She steadied herself and walked from boardwalk to beach.

The storm came ashore in huge, undulating waves. Jill didn’t know if she was dying or being born. There was nothing meek or mild about this Christmas.

She lived for a decade in an antiseptic marriage in a bed that barely looked slept in; so pristine she could scream, like living in a whisper.

When she met Ben, she was a dehydrated sponge and he her bucket of water. He wrapped and unwrapped her; wanted her with him every moment to talk to and love in his exuberant way. With Ben, she was juicy, louche. But he came with a caravan: adult children, a grandchild, aging mother and aunt, and of all things an ex-wife who blew hot and cold.

The storm roared. Hard slantwise raindrops pelted her face, mixing with her tears and inchoate cries. She could barely stand. It felt like the end of the world. Thunder and lightning drove her back to the car. She sat, breathing hard, wriggled out of the soaked plastic poncho and started the car.

Sweet piano music filled the small space. Jill cocked her head. A woman’s mellifluous voice spoke and the music faded. “Once there was a velveteen rabbit and in the beginning he was really splendid. . .” Meryl Streep. My God. When the Skin Horse explained to the Velveteen Rabbit how beings become real, Jill leaned in. Her skin prickled. “It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily or who have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you.”

And when the Velveteen Rabbit said how at first he found sleeping with The Boy “rather uncomfortable,” because The Boy “hugged him very tight,” Jill felt something loosening in her chest. She thought how she chose her first husband because he barely hugged her at all, and Ben because she realized she would die if she didn’t finally let someone in all the way.

Jill looked at her watch. She jumped as though awakened from a sleep.  Ben! The kids. The old ladies and the ex-wife and the little boy. What would they think?

She pulled out of the parking space and turned eagerly toward home. The front had passed over the island, and she saw a hint of sunset gold on the water.

She pulled in to their driveway and raced up the steps. Halfway up, the front door opened and a little boy spilled out.  “She’s here!” he shouted. He grabbed her around the knees when she reached the landing and she kneeled down to pick him up. His little heart beat so fast against her own. He looked at her in that big-eyed way of children. “I’m Cody,” he said, pointing a finger at his chest. “And you’re my Jill.” He touched her breastbone with his small finger. Jill fell her heart stop. Reconfigure itself to this new reality.

“You’re home!” It was Ben, wrapping them both up in his long arms. “Come in here, girl, before you freeze.” Sure enough, the weather had turned.

Elizabeth Westmark’s essays have appeared in the Boiler Journal, Brevity, Prick of the Spindle, Girls with Insurance, Road Trip Journal, The Binnacle Ultra-Short 2009, Camroc Press Review, and Dead Mule, among others. She writes from her home in a Longleaf pine preserve near Pensacola, Florida, where she is working on her first novel.