short stories

Being with Georgette #8

Rick Mallery18 Comments
“Speeding Automobile”, 1912, by Giacomo Balla

I was the only one around the day Georgette’s mother died.

Georgette was away at her private school, which would be in session for another week, while my public high school had already let out for the summer. Georgette’s father and my mother were both at work.

I was mowing our front yard and had waved to Mrs. Jaynes when she passed by on her walk.

Only when I made a turn and was mowing back toward Georgette’s house did I see Mrs. Jaynes lying broken in the middle of the road.

***

She was still breathing when I arrived.

“I’ll go call the ambulance.”

“Don’t leave me here,” she said.

“I shouldn’t move you.”

“Don’t let someone else hit me.”

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #422

Delving Yardbarker6 Comments

The skin for the win with verve swerved into the banks of the Euphrates River in denial of glib vials of ancient history.

The mystery resolved itself without a big reveal revealing the tater tots and boisterous forms of disbelief suspended these eighty-thousand years since the dawn of ancient moons. Fortune flavors the cold drafts under the other side of the pillow at night in the night of all nights and the flight of all plights. Phlegmatic specimens of entire donor classes cleared the glasses under foot like that anxious scene in that Bergman film in black and white and red all over technicolor feeder rights. Contrary to popular belief, relief was just a motion away in the way of Steve Gadd and of all flesh, hanging like that portrait of Florian Hay, but a little too late for such reunions.

The verve dissipated and peace descended on all nieces, wheezing from April pollen and May fallen. 

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Being with Georgette #7

Rick Mallery24 Comments
“Interior With Ida in a White Chair”, 1900, by Vilhelm Hammershøi

The letter sat on the kitchen counter for three days before Georgette opened it.

When I deboned the chicken, the letter was there. No return address.

When I trussed the chicken roll, the letter was there. Georgette’s name, with the last name from her first marriage, was scribbled in a sloppy hand; the rest of our address was precise enough.

But when I pulled from the oven the roasting pan with the ballotine and vegetables, the letter was not there.

Georgette had come in while I was cutting the vegetables and asked if I needed any help. I hadn’t. She had wrapped her arms around me and kissed the back of my neck as I sliced the carrots. She laid her head on my back and held it there for a moment, and then she must have taken the letter with her when she left the kitchen.

***

Georgette was not in the house. I had checked every room. I had checked the basement.

I put on my garden shoes and rain jacket and went out into the gloom of the rainy twilight.

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #301

Delving Yardbarker2 Comments

A calamity of clams calmly made the grievous error of consulting the vat of cocktail sauce, indeed and exceed.

Futility marked the foretold wealth of the nature of blisters and scallions–asleep these three thousand years–monstrous in all malingering. Half-placed drums and quarter-barreled trumpets committed the cardinal virtue of sparing the tilted banquet of affordable sands and Swiss health. Surrender, but don’t forget who’s taking you home to first base while I know steals the third path to merry second. Exceeding annihilated essence of preternatural nature, a gallon of formaldehyde is worth an ounce of prevention–at least if you know what you are trying to prove and especially if you are trying to prevent something miraculous.

That’s what the clams would say anyway in the way clams say what they say in the face of a nuanced calamity.

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #678

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Cary pulled the thread, but he did not know the thread was attached to a magic carpet, so he was unprepared for what happened next.

The next-best thing to happen to Carrie was Cary giving her a ride on his magic carpet, but the following week she called to arrange another ride, and Cary never answered. Enter the next-to-last best thing. The fleas of counting sheep kept Carrie awake all night long–ever since the partially fateful magic carpet ride with Cary. But what really threw Carrie for a hoopla was when the sheep started counting her. She asked them how high they would count, and they said they would count until she fell asleep. Carrie said do you believe in countable infinities?

Cary realized he had slipped into the world of uncountable infinities and that it would take an infinity of lifetimes to train his sheep to count until he fell asleep, so the last best thing never happened again.

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Being with Georgette #6

Rick Mallery19 Comments

Georgette stood on the small bridge over the outlet of the lake. The fall wind rippled the water’s surface. It fluttered her skirt and wisped her long brown hair. She pulled my red and black checked flannel shirt tighter around her shoulders and leaned forward against the railing as I approached.

The wind at my back brought me closer to her with each stroke of the paddle.

Georgette smiled a smile full of teeth. She glowed like a reluctant angel unable to resist some unexpected charm.

I’ve been working on such spells since she returned to me this time, although her spells remain stronger than mine.

***

Georgette helped me pull the canoe up on the sandy beach just down from the bridge.

As I stoked the fire, Georgette said, “This shirt is permeated with smoke.”

I said, “It’s part of the standard-issue uniform they give you when you move up here.”

“Maybe I’ll just keep this one.”

“It looks good on you.”

She poked at the fire with a stick and said, “Did you catch any fish?”

“No.”

“Did you try?”

“Only enough to remember being here with my grandpa.”

***

And like that, Georgette was going away from me again.

The canoe wobbled as she shifted her weight to turn around and smile at me. She grabbed the gunwale until her world steadied.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and she blew me a kiss.

Georgette fumbled with the paddle at first but soon found a smooth rhythm, and she set off across the now entirely placid lake.

You couldn’t tell the difference between the jagged, abrupt mountains and their reflections in the mirrored water except where Georgette’s wake revealed the substance of their dreams.

***

Beauty takes many forms and is often in the eye of the beholder. But absolute beauty also exists, and this scene is exhibit A.

As I tended the fire, it took all the magic I could conjure–and I had to borrow some of hers–to hold that world together until Georgette returned to me once more with her smile.

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Originally published March 30, 2020

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #238

Delving Yardbarker5 Comments

Yellow fronds of lily ponds devoured the least innocent end of the dark side of the rainbow.

Or as Ginger believed, in the last thrill of George’s comical pill, obnoxious to the end, the beginning, and through to the end all over again. Great lumps of pirate dust scattered across the false steps of the gloomy universal universe, universally. Contrary to unpopular opinion, the gates of chicken wings closed a moment too late, and the buffalo sauce fled into the pedal of permafrost across the contemporary fluids gathered in a congregation of misbegotten hobgoblins. The poem ends where the novel begins, which is why the language of the music of the spheres stopped in their tracks the moment a momentous occasion flattened into the eye of the beholder.

George gave Ginger a bouquet of yellow fronds, but they wilted in her everlasting glory. Abruptly.

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #467

Delving Yardbarker7 Comments

Martha’s crystals, barren like the surface of a surfing surfactant, joined the long legs of prosperity to the enthralled thimble of everlasting castles in the tower of destiny.

Hours passed by the station like a flashlight on a Pullman car, knowing not how to pull off the spontaneous simultaneity because Albert was watching a little too closely, and thinking a little too dearly. Yearly auctions satisfied Martha’s falsely emergent behavior, narrated increasingly as a licensed modification concerning the salient point sticking out a little too far for everyone’s comfort. Kings foretold of Martha’s brother, who would bother to send an innocent accusation into the hearts of traitors everywhere and devise devices that avenged the verdict of thunder and the clemency of gold for blushing mutinies of the spirit.

Duty drove Martha to the station to collect the barren crystals, but the wishful thimble had lost all frame of reference.

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Being with Georgette #5

Rick Mallery23 Comments

The tempest had passed, and Georgette had finally gone outside to air her grievances to her sunflowers. She always says they listen better than I do.

The rain had not yet stopped, but it had slackened to a drizzle.

I hesitated before entering her studio, but someone had to face it sooner or later, so I went in.

Canvases were torn and strewn about the room. Paint brushes were broken into two and sometimes three pieces. Paint oozed from crushed tubes.

One painting remained intact. On the easel was my favorite so far, the one with the dog under the tree by the lake.

A palette with fresh globs of paint remained untouched on the table by the easel.

The rest of the room was in shambles.

***

You need to make her clean it herself. You need to hold her accountable for her actions.

But she is not a child. She is who she always has been, and you’ve always accepted every part of who she is. You believe in grace and mercy and compassion.

***

I began cleaning the room.

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #638

Delving Yardbarker2 Comments

Certified embankments embarked on a journey of self-discovery into a long day of nights, at least as far as Toni was concerned.

Toni filled the abyss of meaninglessness with paper clips and Styrofoam packing peanuts–unshelled of course. Enter sandman’s alter ego and that sets everything right. Contenders contended for the contentious prize, lollygagging and loitering with harmless bowls of soup and nuts, like Toni with her packing peanuts. Guilty meditations on the shores of the Mediterranean looked with foolish eyes at the bacon on the platter, supine and relaxed with an angle of repose even Stegner would admire clumsily, measuring distances with the malice and villainy of a weeping droid-turned-drone.

Toni embarked on an embankment of Jill’s last sweater, but the warmth of the local tide warmed all boats.

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