By Maureen Mancini Amaturo

It was all dancing and socializing and traveling and friends and fun. Life was a party until Aging showed up, like an unexpected guest. 

Of course, I expected Aging would be here at some point, just not so soon. And I didn’t even see him coming. For someone uninvited, he quickly made himself at home. He moved in and put his feet up — settling into my bones, joints, and other places, and Aging quickly got to work. Behind my back, Aging drank the color from my roots. When I was asleep, he actually stole a good amount of strands leaving me to wake up to a thinner mane. Speaking of thinner, Aging put an end to that. When Aging arrived, he did a great job of hiding all the baggage he brought with him — one suitcase filled with less activity, a weekender stuffed with increased appetite, a tote filled with thyroid slowdown, and a sack full of slow metabolism. Tucked somewhere inside one of those carryalls, this unexpected guest hid a cosmetic case holding a pouch of sagging and three kinds of wrinkles.

Not sure how long it’s been since Aging arrived. I’m more forgetful than I was before he got here, and I know who to blame for that because I saw something that said Memory Loss sticking out of one of Aging’s carryalls. Thank you very much.

How did Aging sneak all that by me?

I would throw that uninvited guest out by the seat of his pants if I could, but I can’t. Grasping things is harder since Aging arrived. It seems my joints — especially in my fingers and hands — have become painful, distorted, swollen, and stiff. Coincidence? I think not. I am 400% certain Aging has something to do with this. Wouldn’t be surprised if Aging is responsible for my knees, too. 

Well, that’s the thanks I get. I let Aging move in, and I give him the best years of my life, and this is what I get in return. Not happy about this. So, I had a sit-down with this squatter. I told Aging just how I feel about what’s going on right under my nose — which was the perfect time to mention my collagen loss and thinning lips.

Aging put his hand on my stiff shoulder and said, “You’re all wrong. You don’t see what’s happening here.”

The nerve. I’m sore, dying my hair to cover the grey, can’t digest lentils anymore, and Aging is telling me I don’t see what’s happening?

“Relax,” Aging said. “Look, if I weren’t here, you wouldn’t be either.”

“What?”

“It goes like this. If you wanna stick around, spend more time in this life, it’s gonna cost ya — a few extra pounds, couple inches of smooth skin, some mobility. But hey, small price to pay.”

“Easy for you to say,” I told Aging.

“Really, would you rather be dead or living with me?”

I thought for a minute. Well, they are making a sequel to one of my favorite films. I’d like to be around to see it. And my granddaughter is just turning one. I ‘d love more time with her. Aging had a point. Who cares about thin lips when I can have more time with my granddaughter? 

“I give up,” I said. “You win. Take the 27-inch waist. Take the smooth skin and functioning thyroid. Paint all my roots grey, if you want. But promise me, please no post-menopausal bleeding.”

Aging sighed. “I can’t make promises. Anything can happen.”

Not much of a deal from my end, but whatever. Waking up in the morning still will get me more than healthy finger joints. 

So, Aging and I are roommates now. We try to stay out of each other’s way, but with both of us in this one body — though it’s a much bigger body now — it’s hard. As with all relationships, it’s give and take. Now that Aging is a permanent resident, we are learning to live with each other. And some days, he lets me amuse myself with memories of what it was like before he got here.

*   *   *

Maureen Mancini Amaturo, NY-based fashion/beauty writer with a Creative Writing MFA, teaches writing, founded and leads Sound Shore Writers Group, and produces literary and gallery events. Her more than 100 publications globally include fiction, essays, CNF, poetry, and comedy. Maureen was nominated for The Bram Stoker Award and TDS Creative Fiction Award and was awarded Honorable Mention and Certificate of Excellence in poetry from Havik Literary Journal. Her work was shortlisted by Reedsy and Flash Fiction Magazine for their Editor’s Choice Award. Funny Pearls UK named her work as a best short story selection. A handwriting analyst diagnosed her with an overdeveloped imagination. She’s working to live up to that.

By Charles Rammelkamp

Your older brother Gary knew it was odd, too, but he pretended that nothing was out of the ordinary.  This was the clue, actually, Gary pretending to be absorbed in the sports page.  Who’d won, who’d lost.

Later, when the man left, you noticed his scuffed shoes and the way his belt was too long, circling around the right side of his waist a second time, the end waving around like a loose antenna.  Standing at the door with your father, sharp in his lawyer duds, he seemed diminished somehow, but you knew that in his own world this guy with the smudged eyeglasses and clip-on tie wielded his authority like a cop his billy club.

“Oh God,” your father sighed when he closed the door, but he only rolled his eyes when you looked the implicit question at him.  “These school administrators,” he muttered, dismissing it all, but knowing some sort of explanation was required.

Later, when your sister Sharon came home, Gary avoided looking at her, and only when you heard her shrill voice in a distant room and the soft, reassuring mutter of your father’s next to it, like two cups together on a shelf in a closed cupboard, did you realize you thought your father was still in the dining room, still talking, maybe to the invisible ghost of the man with the clip-on tie.  There were secrets too big and too adult for you, and that man with the clip-on tie was not somebody you wanted to know, ever.

                                                                         *   *   *

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? was recently published by Kelsay Books, and another collection of persona poems and dramatic monologues involving burlesque stars, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, was just published by BlazeVOX Books.

A Memoir by Linda Perlman Fields

The sun warmed the ground, returned life to the water and new growth to the trees. A slight breeze nudged the pond to shimmy and the leaves to dance. Our breadcrumbs lured the feathered divers and dabblers out from marshy pools. Their backsides waddled while they barked happy notes. I giggled and skipped along as Maria held my hand and pointed out petite delights: a papillon hiding among the reeds or le lézard who dared to scuttle under our feet. She told me stories of her life in France, when she rode a motorcycle and her German shepherd ran alongside like an accoutrement. She made me want to dance through life.

Maria was ninety when she died and when I found her book of catechisms. It was old, well-worn and bound in black leather with her initials embossed in gold on the front. Scribbles of lines and circles decorated the inside front and back covers. I imagined her at age seven or eight with this book on her lap and a pencil in her hands, finding a canvas to ease the ennui while preparing for First Communion. There it was, so many years later, still in her possession. I picked it up and opened to a random page. What happened next will forever be a remarkable moment—one I’ll never forget. A small piece of white paper lived there, folded neatly. I carefully unfolded it and saw a child’s handwriting.  To my astonishment, it read: “Dear Maria, I was a bad girl.” I signed it with love. I don’t remember writing it and wished she were there to answer the inevitable question. 

More than an au pair, Maria lived with me, my parents and two sisters, a Jewish family that wouldn’t exist if my father hadn’t escaped the holocaust. We never talked about the war when I got older, and I sometimes wondered if Maria was part of the resistance in France. I remember her railing against the hypocrisy of religion, perhaps a sentiment that grew over time, but I felt she always had a deep connection with the Catholic Church.

She was a widow with a son and granddaughter in France. Never remarried, she made friends in America and would spend time with them when not with us. I always imagine Maria as a young and willful femme fatale riding the country roads in northern France, waltzing with lovers and dealing with setbacks, never complaining, but taking matters into her hands, starting over in a new country on a new continent. I miss her, but I’ll always have the French nursery rhyme she taught me that day at the duck pond— about a dance performed on a bridge in Avignon… and a few French curse words.

*   *   *

Linda Perlman Fields has returned to her first passion: CNF, poetry and fiction following a career as a Peabody-winning journalist in New York City. Her work has been published in anthologies and online publications including One Art, The Sunlight Press, Front Porch Review, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Poetica Magazine, and others. Nonfiction has appeared in New York Magazine and in regional newspapers. More at http://www.LindaPerlmanFields.com

By Noreen Todd

Sunday. Wake early. Shower. Primp hair. Scrutinize every inch for wrinkles. Tie an apron over the dress before frying the bacon. Rouse the kids and ignore their complaints about itchy clothes and missed games. Pile them into the car and say prayer it makes it to church without sputtering to a stop. Regret stuffing your toes into those shiny new heels. Grin through the bunion pain. Find a shady spot and praise yourself for getting here early enough to succeed. Herd the kids into the church and resist the urge to curse the committee that turned down the air conditioning project again this year. Smile sweetly at the little old widows giving you the once over. Try to maintain Christian thoughts when acknowledging your husband has volunteered for the Sunday shift at work again. The organ pumps and wheezes and the loud chatter fades as the choir lines up in back. Church begins.

But that was last week. I lay in bed eyeing the alarm on my phone preset to 7 a.m. every Sunday. I hit the stop, not snooze, and roll over. My husband mutters and resumes his snores. I scootch out from under the covers and slip my feet into my favorite mules. My big toe finds comfort in the familiar worn spot. I tiptoe down the hall. Let the kids sleep. I cringe as the front door creaks and softly close it as I feel the sun warming my face. I lean against the railing and breathe the warm moist air. Another hot one was brewing. My face reddens but not from the heat. I can’t push away the memory of last Sunday.

The minister strutted back and forth like a tom turkey. His saggy throat waggling like one too. Praise Jesus and Amens echoed in the pews. He was fired up about the local election. Pleading with us to go to the polls and vote out the hellions who were approving of the smut in our schools. He rattled off a list of books. These had been my best friends and mentors of my youth.  My daughter’s eyes flashed anger as she shot me a look accusing me of complicity. My son kicked the pew. He pinched my leg, but I didn’t flinch. My jaw clenched. I felt a fire in my gullet. I looked around. Didn’t anyone else hear him? Feel the hate? 

I stood. Heads swerved. The minister smiled but his eyes darkened when I spoke. “Come on kids. We’re out of here. Let’s go to the store and buy some of those books he mentioned while we still can.”  

Horror, shock and then joy swept over my children’s faces. They scuttled out of the pew. Grins wide.

“And then maybe we can go get some ice cream. It’s too hot in here.” I leaned down and whispered. “Don’t look at anyone. Hold your heads high.”

*   *   *

Noreen is an emerging writer of poetry and prose. Retired from a career in healthcare, she now spends her days writing and playing the guitar, ukulele and violin. Published in Guidepost magazine at an early age, she never lost the dream to write her first novel. She is working on the final draft. She lives in Connecticut.

By Patricia Schultheis

The Irish troubles in their fourth year, Robert Keelty could take no more: his wife Margaret refusing to return from America with the kids; reporting the latest blast for the paper; and all Belfast choking from foul suspicion.  Now, Sunday, endless Sunday, with only Molly and Mayve, his quarrelsome cats for company, and the evening ahead a choice between a cup of tea with the old widow downstairs, or elbows on the bar down the street.

The paper’s art critic — a miracle they still had one — called the exhibit of the American Mathias Randolph’s paintings at the museum, “sentimental” and “over-wrought.” But Robert was desperate in the way lonely, forty-six-year-old men get and went anyway.  

Only a bow-backed woman with a walker and two red-headed lads were in the first gallery, where Robert found the American’s paintings neither “sentimental,” nor “over-wrought.”  Instead, he thought the stark landscapes with their incidental people were honest and hazed with longing.  The one of a solitary man in a green knit cap trudging up a treeless hill especially moved him.  “Harvest” in the second gallery reminded him of the landowner Levin working beside his serfs and harvesting the wheat for winter in Anna Karinina. The third gallery was empty except for a woman in a raspberry-colored jacket looking at a painting of a tattered lacey curtain blowing over an open, four-paned window with a distant view of the sea. Robert made himself study “Nightfall,” then “Barn Supports” before standing beside her. 

“How he captured the movement of that curtain, amazing”— a hackneyed remark, he knew, but nothing else came to him.       

She spoke with an Eastern European accent and low voice.  “I wasn’t really thinking about the curtain.”

“What, then?”

“Whoever’s passing that window.” She made a vague gesture toward the painting.  For a long-boned woman, her hand was surprisingly plumb.  “This is someone else’s viewpoint; not the painter’s. It’s as though Randolph created a fictional person who’s just passing this window, like they’ve done thousands of times before, and we’re seeing the scene through that person’s eyes, whoever they are.”

Her comment’s novelty played in Robert’s brain — once he and Margaret tickled each other with remarks like that, but then the children and the troubles came. “Who do you think that person is?”

The woman looked at him full on now, deep knowingness in her brown eyes. She smiled.  “Oh, I don’t know . . . probably a middled-aged woman.  Who do you think?”

“Why a middle-aged woman?”

“Whoever’s passing that window, they’ve got a sense of hurriedness about them . . . a dozen things to do . . . no time for window gazing.  The lot of middle-aged women everywhere.”

Her perfume reminded Robert of the one a lover wore before he married Margaret, when he was just a young reporter in Bierut.  Aya was eight years his senior and favored musky scents and silk — those afternoons of gull cries out her open window—Aya. 

“Would you care to join me for a drink, then?  There’s a bar half a block down.”

The woman turned to the painting, then back to him.  “I know the place . . . so, yes then, but . . . . ”

“But?”

“Give me twenty minutes, will you?  I’ll meet you there . . . twenty minutes.”

“By the way, I’m Robert.” He held out his hand.

She held out hers.  “Clara.”

“Twenty minutes, then.”  He initially thought she wanted the time to give him the dodge perhaps or to call her boyfriend with some excuse. But by the time he’d reached the bar, he’d conjured a sweeter explanation: their flirtation was as delicate as a spider web flecked with dew, and she didn’t want to tear it with something mundane like a splattering sneeze, a need for the loo, or her handbag slipping awkwardly off her shoulder to the sidewalk—he’d noticed hers was large and well-crafted. No, she wanted to collect herself and in twenty minutes, she’d come through the door. 

The bar was the sort that required its employees to wear nametags pinned to flimsy black vests. When the lad served Roberth his single malt, he remarked about the lad’s name. “Conan, my own boy’s name. He’s in America with his mum for the time being.” He hoped small talk would quash his urge to check his watch, but he failed to engage the lad, so he pulled back his cuff— nine more minutes.

 Then the bomb went off.

 The blast wave ripped through the museum and into the bar, shattering the glass in the display of swords behind Robert, throwing him into cascading weapons, a 1900 cutlass nearly severing his right ear, and robbing the air from his lungs.  Then blackness. 

When he opened his eyes in the hospital, Margaret was at his bedside, holding his hand and gazing out the window at the harbor. Her longing face gave him to know she’d left the children in America. He squeezed her hand. She turned to him, bent, and pressed her cool cheek against his, their secret, wordless sign. 

The authorities, of course, interviewed him several times: Why had he gone to the museum?  Did he notice anything suspicious?  Why was he alone?  What about the two red-headed lads?    He hadn’t stayed long, now why was that?   A woman was there, what about her?  Robert played confused and gave them the woman with the walker.  He never knew what became of the woman who had asked him to wait twenty minutes.   

In the fragile peace that came years later, the questions would come, mostly at night.  Then, careful not to wake Margaret, he’d get up, pour himself a drink, and look through the parlor’s lacey curtains at the starry Belfast night.  Twenty minutes.  Had she given him time to save him?  Or had she left, too, by some other exit, and gone to the place she was meant to be all along?     

*   *   *

Patricia Schultheis is the author of Baltimore’s Lexington Market, published by Arcadia Publishing, and of St. Bart’s Way, published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House and A BalanceLife, published by All Things That Matter Press The author of nearly 40 published, she is the recipient of numerous awards.

   

 

A Memoir by Malia McCarrick

Anyone who has ever put on pantyhose will tell you that nylons were obviously created by men who hated women. But I sure would like to know who is to blame for the wetsuit. Both men and women have been struggling for decades to get inside these wonders of underwater warmth, but have you ever actually stopped to watch someone put on a wetsuit?

The other day, my wife and I decided to go shopping, a favorite activity, and one we engage in several times a week. Kukana and I both share the shopping gene, which forces us against our will most times to search out the best bargain in any store. So often I’ve found the perfect shoes or shirt, only to be reminded by Kukana that to pay full price is synonymous with heresy. Thankfully, she directs me to the clearance racks and saves me from myself. It was on such a redirection that I found myself wandering about a local store, Marshalls, trying to spot the coveted red clearance tag, when I spotted treasures in the sporting attire aisle: Wetsuits!      

Since I’d recently bought a suit for myself in a dive store, I knew they came in several brands and thicknesses, all of them costing well over a hundred bucks or more. Imagine my surprise then, when I found several name-brand suits sitting in the bargain bin at Marshalls! I did a U-turn with my overflowing cart and headed back to clearance lingerie to find Kukana, who at the time was covered in black teddies and Minions pajama bottoms, all still on hangers and draped over her body. She’d run out of room in her cart.

“Oh my GOD!” I shouted, ramming every other hapless shopper in my path, and losing a few pair of Clarks and Birkenstock sandals along the way. “You’ll never believe what I found! WETSUITS!”

Now, Kukana is not a scuba diver; I am. And the chance of her ever taking a certification course and plunging into the depths to examine a sea turtle up close is about as likely as her walking on the moon. But if there are toys and equipment to be had, she simply cannot stand to be left out. She mumbled something under the ring of bras around her neck that were quickly engulfing her face. Her big blue eyes filled with tears as I showed her suit after suit in varying sizes and colors. The sobbing began when she saw the prices. More than half off! Dabbing her eyes with a Minions pajama pantleg, she pulled herself together, then threw bras into the air, exclaiming, “I’m taking it all! Let’s try them on at home!”  

After single-handedly stimulating the American economy with her purchases, Kukana directed me to carry the bags (yes, I realize I’m being used as a pack mule here) to her BMW convertible.

“All these packages aren’t going to fit in the trunk and in the backseat,” I cautioned. Always having an answer for everything, Kukana assured, “Don’t worry – I’ll just open the top!” and soon we were happily flying down the highway, Kukana safely seat-belted into the driver’s seat and singing along to ABBA on the radio, while I lay sprawled over sixteen bags in both the front and back seats to keep them from becoming airborne.

Upon arriving home, Kukana couldn’t wait to start trying on the suits. I warned her that putting on a wetsuit wasn’t like trying on regular clothes. “It’s sort of like trying to fit your body into a koozie,” I counseled, suggesting that it might be better if she tried on one a night, but she would have none of it.

“Don’t be silly,” she disregarded, systematically hanging each wetsuit over the bridge between master bedroom and the rest of the second floor. Soon, the entire upstairs looked like a dive shop fashion showroom. Shaking my head, I wandered over the bridge and into the office, where I awaited the chaos to come. Sure enough, it came.

“Honey?!?”

Kukana’s voice called to me, the know-it-all tone replaced by a whimper. I walked out the door to find my scantily clad wife trying to waddle towards me, up to her knees in neoprene rubber.

“Oh for heaven’s sakes!” 

We came together in the middle of the bridge.

“It’s like putting on pantyhose,” I explained, “You have to work the suit up from the legs. Pinch and pull.”

Well, this would have been excellent advice had Kukana started the scuba fashion show with a medium or large suit, but she opted to try on the extra small first. At this point, her feet were turning blue, and we hadn’t even gotten the suit up her thighs yet.

“NO!” Kukana wouldn’t hear of it, explaining that somewhere, written in a sacred text, there are rules for the way one must try on clothes. Always start with the smallest first and work your way up.  

“Help me!” she winced. 

The challenge began. I pulled. I pinched. I prodded. I hiked. I whipped Kukana around like a rag doll, tugging the suit with such fervor that we soon found ourselves on the bedroom floor. On a mission now, I vowed to get the suit over her hips. She clung to me for dear life as I struggled in vain to hoist the neoprene over her sweaty skin. 

“I’m so hot!” she gasped.

“Of course you are – that’s the point of the suit!”

We both transformed ourselves into acrobats, first in one unflattering pose, and then another. Anyone looking into the bedroom window would have thought we were either engaged in wild sex acts or murder. I knew we’d finally reached the breaking point when I had a moment of clarity and realized I had lifted Kukana onto her head, her butt in the air, feet off the ground, while I stood behind her and tried to shake her into the suit. All the blood flowed into her face and she couldn’t breathe from laughing. 

“I’m going to wet my pants!” she cried.

“Oh dear God, no!” I immediately let go in a panic, sending Kukana into a lump. Well, I reasoned, it is part of a rite of passage for all divers to initiate their wetsuits by peeing in them, but usually we wait until we’re actually in the water.

Kukana managed to catch her breath and refrain from a personal plumbing incident in the nick of time. I talked her into trying on the small suit rather than the extra small. This time, getting the suit over the legs and hips was easy. Now we had to conquer the breasts. 

“Just push them in!” I cried as I struggled to edge the suit up over her national treasures. 

“They keep bouncing out!” 

Finally, with everything God gave her miraculously tucked in, I zipped the back of the suit up, terrified of the image flashing through my mind of the zipper giving into the pressure and leaving us both deafened in the aftershock of blown-apart neoprene.

“For the love of God don’t move!” I advised. 

Time to try the medium. But first, we had to get the small suit off. We tried peeling, prodding, and pulling. Kukana lay on the floor, her legs in the air, while I gripped the suit and started walking backwards. The suit stretched to its limits when the neoprene suddenly gave, turning me into a human slingshot. I flew out the bedroom door and onto the bridge, the suit in my hands, while Kukana kicked her free legs triumphantly. By this time, sweat poured from both of us, my heart raced, and I felt sure Kukana would need hospitalization from laughing so hard. Bouncing up from the floor, Kukana grabbed the medium wetsuit.

“I’m taking a hot shower!” exclaimed Kukana.

“Listen little missy, this is no time for relaxation!” I scolded, but Kukana explained she would put the medium suit on in the water, hence getting both the suit and herself in a similar wet state. Perhaps this would help the donning process.

“You adjust the water while I start putting it on,” she directed, and stood in the tub with the suit that still had the price tags on. 

“Sweetie, I don’t think you can return it if you take a shower in it. The tags will get wet,” I thought aloud. 

Kukana tore off the tags and tossed them in the trash. “Oh look!” she stated innocently, “The tags have gone missing.”

The addition of water did indeed make the suit go on more smoothly than the others, and I’m pleased to report Kukana now has her very own wetsuit at the low low price of $49.99. I, on the other hand, have a strained back, two broken nails, and post-traumatic stress syndrome from the threat of wetsuit implosion. They say fashion can be torture.

I rest my case.

*   *   *

Malia McCarrick currently lives in Germany, teaching college writing to active-duty US military members, veterans, and their families on bases in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Her music and martial arts pieces have been published in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in creative writing and is currently working on book-length works of both memoir and fiction.