Keyhole Magazine

I.

Saturday afternoon & I am at my field, a field of colors. I tell the girls OKAY, & they sprint down the slope. The ribbons tied to their hair wave back to me & say HELLO, or GOODBYE. They are my girls for the week & they spread the field, collecting rainbow shards off the ground into baskets normally reserved for easter egg hunts. My youngest finds a rainbow stick & sucks on it like a candy cane & says to me later in the truck that rainbows taste just like pancake syrup & can she have some more before bed.

I tell her YES. YOU CAN.

II.

I am back at my field, a field of dismembered bodies. There are human parts & there are animal parts strewn about. There are flecks of rainbow in the grass, the colors of yesterday. My girls sit in a circle & construct a new species of animal. Part monkey tail & zebra head & baby elephant body. Killer whale teeth in their ladle cupped palms. They name their pet in the making Australia & when they are done they will ride Australia & conquer mountains & stomp out desperate tigers. They will rope in lovers & bound them tight & never let go. They say WE WILL DO THIS. Then challenge my eyes to disagree.

III.

My girls sleep in their beds & I return to my field. I park on a hill & stay in the cab. Windows rolled down. Radio friendly murmurs. Darkness taking on different shapes. I remember driving Aimee here most nights. When we were younger & cared less. We listened as my field shifted. We made guesses & wrote them on the back of our hands. She was the winner, once. A field of singing sunflowers at daybreak.

I come but no longer play the game.

IV.

They say BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FIELD? WHAT WILL WE MISS WHILE WE ARE AWAY?

I tell my girls ONE DAY THERE WILL BE A FIELD OF RABBITS. RABBITS THE SIZE OF HOUSES. THEY WILL RACE EACH OTHER IN ZIGZAGS & BARREL THROUGH FORESTS. THE NEXT DAY THERE WILL BE A FIELD OF VEGETABLES. TO FEED THE RABBITS.

They say WE DO NOT LIKE RABBITS. WE HATE IT WHEN MOMMY FORCES US TO FINISH OUR VEGETABLES.

V.

The days pass. A change in the weather. My field is unattended. I do not know what goes on there.

VI.

I tell my girls KEEP WATCH FOR CUTTING EDGES & CORNERS. We are at my field, a field of blank white paper. My youngest wants to color but I have no crayons for her. My eldest calls everyone together & teaches origami. She says THIS IS HOW YOU FOLD A CRANE. THIS IS HOW YOU FOLD A ROSE. NO, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

My girls grow in front of me. Their voices carry loads. I fold paper planes that will never know flight. They sit in a line, waiting for takeoff. My girls come to me & say THIS FIELD IS BORING. CAN WE GO BACK HOME NOW? When we reach the truck they say NO. OUR OTHER HOME.

VII.

My girls live with Aimee for the week & I am alone. At my field. A field of chairs. I sit in every one.

VIII.

It is early morning & no one yet exists. I am at my field, a field of heavenly things. Only my youngest visits with me. She plays the angel & wears five halos over her head & they do not fall out of place, even when she goes tumbling on elbows & knees. The halos are unlit & metallic-looking & I wish I could somehow reignite them with fire. I would use them for headlights & banish the night. My youngest adds a sixth halo & tells me not to worry because there’s no weight & that wearing them makes her head feel empty inside. She says EMPTY BUT IN A GOOD WAY. Then touches my face.

this story was originally published by mlp

Solange Knowles, Haylie Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Ali Lohan and most of the Baldwin brothers have formed a girl gang that admitted a few boys. The lesser Baldwins are proud to call themselves members though the girls remain skeptical. The sign on the door of their clubhouse just beneath the Hollywood sign reads “No Boys or Really Famous People Allowed.” In their Hollywood Hills hideout, the girls and the lesser Baldwins come up with secret handshakes (hold a latté in your left hand, a large handbag in your right, shake your hips twice, air kiss, air kiss) and elaborate plans for comebacks, endorsement opportunities, vengeance and recruitment. They flag colors. They have rules—serious rules—and consequences when those rules are broken. Nicky Hilton and Jamie Lynn Spears are being fiercely courted. Gang membership is serious business.

To join the club, initiates need to pass a test and the test is simple—release a juicy tidbit to the press about their better siblings—the more salacious the secret, the higher their position within the gang. The lesser Baldwins wormed their way in by letting it slip that Alec had unkind things to say about his daughter though they would never admit their indiscretion in mixed company. For Solange, it was by no means an accident that the paparazzi knew when and where her sister was married.  All the gang members understand that gossip is power. They know where most of the dirty laundry hangs. It is a comfort.

Each member of the girl gang has her (or his) personal (public) demons. Ashlee spends most of her time sitting in her corner rocking back and forth like she’s davening with a rabbi, cursing the day she ever agreed to appear on Saturday Night Live. She is haunted, at night, by the memory of the awkward little jig she did as she exited stage left. Looking upward, looking for answers, she often grabs her hair, careful not to damage the extensions, and cries, “Why isn’t Papa Joe obsessed with my breasts? Why does my husband wear more makeup than me? Why wasn’t my nose job enough?” I’m the skinny one, she often reminds herself, when she’s feeling particularly low. Ashlee’s fellow gang members listen to her cries sympathetically but have little to offer in the way of comfort. They have their own crosses to bear.

Ali likes to comfort herself with reruns of Living Lohan and listening to her favorite tracks of her Christmas album though when she stares at herself in the mirror…when she takes a good hard look at herself, she’s forced to admit that the whole thing is awkward. Her mother is a bit much and she needs to do an Ashlee Simpson on her own nose if only her drug-addled father would sign the consent form and then there’s her sister everywhere Ali looks and always getting everyone’s attention. Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey. It makes her sick to her stomach.

Ali comforts herself with artificial skin pigmentation. There’s something soothing about the cool mist of toxic chemicals. When she’s being sprayed down, Ali exhales deeply and thinks, I am ever more beautiful. I have not yet peaked. Ali’s fellow gang members have devised a warning system. They worry. When her skin takes on the appearance of rotting aged leather after a particularly vigorous spray tan session, they stage mini-interventions reminding Ali to embrace her pale skin, to just say no. She knows they’re trying to help but she ignores their warnings. She believes in better living through bronzer. That’s the secret to living Lohan.

She always wanted to be one of destiny’s children, but much to Solange’s chagrin, such was not her fate. She stomps around the clubhouse in impossibly high heels and the hand-me-downs designed by her mother that her sister doesn’t want, occasionally glaring at her toddler and wishing that she had been given a chance to be a Survivor so she could pay her Bills, Bills, Bills. She keeps a notebook, and in it she writes, over and over, May the House of Dereon Burn. The more she writes these words, the more euphoric she feels and when she’s done, she often finds herself flush and sweaty. Feeling good, she runs through Destiny’s Child routines for her friends who enjoy the free entertainment and plots her seduction of her sister’s husband. He’s a man, she’s a woman, and she’s willing to do things her sister won’t. That is a comfort too.

Haylie knows she had a bright and glorious moment with her work in Material Girls. She carries the DVD wherever she goes because it comforts her and reminds her that she has a career. She is fabulous. She is. She is. Haylie tells her fellow gang members that she is different. She loves her sister. They’re BFFs. Her friends know she’s lying. She knows they know she’s lying. Once in a while, someone mistakes her for her sister until they take a second look—notice the longer face, the straighter line of the nose, a hint of wrinkle at the temples. To face their disappointment as they realize Haylie is the sort of next best thing eats at her like a cancer. There are days when it is more than she can bear. She’s the older sister. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. At their daily meetings when the gang congregates to commiserate, Haylie is known to lament, “Where is my Disney deal? I have fucking family values.” She’ll look plaintively at her friends, want them to nod in agreement, and they’ll do so because when you’re in a gang, you have each other’s backs.

Reality television. That is how the lesser Baldwin brothers console themselves. So long as reality television exists, they will be fine. As long as they have reality television, they won’t have to think about Alec and 30 Rock and his Teflon reputation that nearly cost them their membership in the gang because their news leak didn’t ruin him. The lesser Baldwins like to think of themselves as royalty—perhaps diminished in bloodline, but royal nonetheless. Daniel enjoys a solid working relationship with VH-1. For once, his addiction issues are a blessing, Daniel will say to anyone who will listen. Billy has to face every day knowing he made the movie Fair Game. He wears his shame nakedly and in doing so, spends much of his time mutely trying to muster the strength to make it from one moment to the next. Stephen has found God. He has found God and he loves God. He prays a lot, pacing the clubhouse clutching his designer bible. He has tasked himself with the gang’s salvation, has deemed himself their chaplain. The gang members mostly ignore him.  They’re from Hollywood. They know there is no God.

On their good days, of which there are few, The Lesser-Known Siblings Girl Gang (that let in a few boys), will get dressed up in their best hand-me-downs and loiter in downtown Hollywood, just beyond the periphery of the hotspots their better known and more deeply loved siblings frequent. They’ll often be followed by one or two sad, frightening paparazzi, halfheartedly snapping away in the hopes that one of the better-known siblings might breach the awkward constellation of failure that follows the gang. On their good days, it is enough.

He arrived home from school, and entered the house, into its dead feeling. The hall as usual littered with purple Post-Its that had lost their stick. The first of his mother’s notes read “EAT,” followed by a sprinkling of others darkened with arrowheads that pointed to the kitchen.

On the fridge, a new note read “Milk’s off. Don’t toss. I’ll use for my tea.” The note below it read “Turkey’s good. Not sure about chicken, your call.” On the stove the note in red marker read “Don’t touch.” He sat at the kitchen table, lining-up crackers and the jar of peanut-butter, and moving aside the note that read “After snack, homework.”

In the living room, the yellow Post-It on the TV screen read: “Don’t you dare.” In his bedroom, on his desk, she’d written on a ruled-sheet of yellow paper: “Check your homework twice.” On his DS: “Only if you’ve done everything else.” In the bathroom, on the toilet lid her faded scribbles read “Flush. Wash Hands.” Stuck to the front of the soap dish: “Count to 25 50. Slowly!”

On her bedroom door: “Stay Out.” His father had walked-out on his mother when she was pregnant, hadn’t even waited to see what she’d give him. Lately, she’d taken to calling the boy “The Man of the House.” Under his bedcovers, pinned to his flattened Paddington Bear that he’d had since he was a baby another new note read: “Time to toss this.”

He returned to his mother’s bedroom door, sniffing from between its cracks her face powder and spicy perfume, taking it in. At six o'clock, when he heard her car pulling into the driveway, he reached for the pile of Post-Its on the kitchen counter, choosing one from the orange stack.

When she stepped through the front door, he stood waiting, Paddington Bear clutched to his stomach. She stopped short. On the Post-It pressed to the boy’s forehead he’d written “Free–Please Take.” He pushed out past her, trembling, and took-up position on the street.

It rains all over them. Their hair and their clothes droop. Their bare feet touch the pavement. Droplets cling to their noses. They don't duck and run. These kids. Even their underwear is soaked. The place reeks. Manure and corn dogs and Tom Thumb Donuts. Wet belly buttons and Tiger Boy and diesel fuel and cows. Beer and the breath from Tiny Tina's nostrils. The one boy's hunched over, trying to light a cigarette and the other says man, that's the saddest thing I've ever seen. And the exchange student says, Ya! The other boy lugs a large stuffed Homer Simpson whose yellow bleeds onto his shoulder. Look at us, the girl says, we're so unkempt and sorry. We need mothering. The boys laugh, but the girl's mom said it to her all the time. She remembers her mom's bed in the dining room, under the chandelier and after she was gone, her dad sitting next to it, eating a tenderloin out of a white bag. I’m on empty, she says. I want something good. Also, that cigarette looks like a tampon. They’d spent all their money on the freaks and skee ball and pooled their tickets for the Homer Simpson. The other boy plops him onto the plastic cow outside Estel Hall and leaves him sitting there, slightly askew. The others look at him. What? he says. He was getting heavy. See that shows what kind of friend you are, the one boy says. He flicks the cigarette and wipes the rain from his face. A lousy fucking friend. Inside the Exhibit Hall the 4H-ers play Crazy Eights and Snap. They're sitting on their coolers full of pop and candy bars and sandwiches. They tip back their caps and laugh. Fans blow and the animals sprawl and blink and fart expansively. The girl says, I'm cold, let's go in there, but the boys don't listen, except the exchange student, who says Ya! She stands on tip toes, holding his cow-like head in her hands. Let's go in one of the shops and take something. You could get away with it, you're a foreigner. (They all want a dog. The one boy has a cat, but he wants a dog. The girl wants a dog you can carry in your purse and the other boy wants a real dog and he wants the dog to have balls. If they had a dog they wouldn’t be here, they’d be someplace better. With their dogs. The exchange student looks at their faces and nods. Dogs!)

A Text Derived from James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek. He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:

O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME,
DRINKING WHISKY, BEER AND WINE!
ON CORONATION,
CORONATION DAY!
O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME
ON CORONATION DAY!

He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:

GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD. WHAT’S BRED IN THE BON CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLYAND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE!

He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries. He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay. On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. THE MONSTER MAFFEI DESISTED AND FLUNG HIS VICTIM FROM HIM WITH AN OATH. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank. The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery. That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung open. He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point. He flung the pages down. A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. She did get flushed in the wind. The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. On that mystery and not on the Madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. And gold flushed more.  All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'TWAS RANK AND FAME. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and Cuffe's prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun. In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. The NEC and NON PLUS ULTRA of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for her sake. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. And just now at Edy's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold her equal. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her cheeks. He flung his wooden pen away. Come on, you doggone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! THE NAVVY, STAGGERING FORWARD, CLEAVES THE CROWD AND LURCHES TOWARDS THE TRAMSIDING ON THE FARTHER SIDE UNDER THE RAILWAY BRIDGE BLOOM APPEARS, FLUSHED, PANTING, CRAMMING BREAD AND CHOCOLATE INTO A SIDEPOCKET. (THEY RUSTLE, FLUTTER UPON HIS GARMENTS, ALIGHT, BRIGHT GIDDY FLECKS, SILVERY SEQUINS.) A DOOR ON THE RETURN LANDING IS FLUNG OPEN. (HATLESS, FLUSHED, COVERED WITH BURRS OF THISTLEDOWN AND GORSESPINE.) MRS DIGNAM, WIDOW WOMAN, HER SNUBNOSE AND CHEEKS FLUSHED WITH DEATHTALK, TEARS AND TUNNEY'S TAWNY SHERRY, HURRIES BY IN HER WEEDS, HER BONNET AWRY, ROUGING AND POWDERING HER CHEEKS, LIPS AND NOSE, A PEN CHIVVYING HER BROOD OF CYGNETS. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, IN A BOWKNOTTED PERIWIG, IN COURT DRESS, WEARING A STAINED INVERNESS CAPE, BENT IN TWO FROM INCREDIBLE AGE, TOTTERS ACROSS THE ROOM, HIS HANDS FLUTTERING. HE SITS TINILY ON THE PIANOSTOOL AND LIFTS AND BEATS HANDLESS STICKS OF ARMS ON THE KEYBOARD, NODDING WITH DAMSEL'S GRACE, HIS BOWKNOT BOBBING. THEY ARE IN GREY GAUZE WITH DARK BAT SLEEVES THAT FLUTTER IN THE LAND BREEZE. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many LIAISONS between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic CONVERSAZIONES during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have…I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible to be more respectful…I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles…

My daughter has taken to hugging the bread at WalMart. Loaves of it. I don’t know what this means and try to let it worry me as little as possible. I pick up around her, let her take one that she kisses and snuggles and pets. Her mother died before she could be aware of the loss and I have to believe that I have offered the appropriate amount of physical affection. Still, squeeze squeeze, like a pig-tailed Mr. Whipple. I don’t try to stop her. It is, no doubt, an expression of her creativity I don’t yet understand. “Cah,” she says to me, walking ahead of me, almost goose-stepping. She’s two, my Vickie, and I’m still learning her strange baby language.

She’s a genius. She ignores the fractal wood-block jigsaws, a Malibu Barbie that speaks Hindi and the Periodic Table See-N-Say that I bought last Christmas. They don’t intrigue. She doesn’t have time for my French flash cards, my constellation maps, my time explaining the ups and downs of the Dow. My attempts at educational stimulation have all failed. But these are my failures.

Her mother was so much smarter than I am. I know I can do this right. I know.