Conclusions by Iris Rosewater

Eva was a newcomer. She moved in just as the trees were losing their blossoms. Her manicured lawn was sprinkled with tiny white flowers which fell lightly from their branches as Susan walked up to the front door earlier that day for the first time, their symmetrical petals sauntering in the unseasonably hot breeze and swirling around her ankles. Several of them managed to find themselves nestled between the chocolate chip cookies on the plate she carried. Susan shifted her weight and looked around uncomfortably after knocking on the freshly painted red door. That was supposed to mean something, wasn’t it? Good luck, maybe? A white-painted wrought iron set of chairs and café table sat in front of the bay window, beneath the covered porch, looking like a picture she’d seen of France. Susan had never been to France. Something told her that her new neighbor probably had. And, when the red door opened, she was sure of it.
The interior of Eva’s house was unbelievable. There was no possible way that this woman moved in only days before. It was impeccable. And so was Eva. She answered the door in a pair of grey trousers and a pink silk blouse. It hung delicately around her small frame, the v-neck plunging low enough for Susan to count a few visible ribs splaying out from her chest bone like butterfly wings. The pink hue was rosy against the pallor of her skin. Eva had the kind of face that must have stunned men. High cheekbones, icy blue eyes, a thin pointed nose and petal-pink lips. All of the striking features were softened by the onset of middle age. Shallow lines marked the edges of her eyes, the ghosts of old laughter and sentiment. Her face was pulled into a bright smile even before she saw who had come to visit. Immediately, Susan regretted waiting on the doorstep. She kicked herself for not writing a little note and leaving the plate on the welcome mat, instead. It would have been easier. Who knew what her children were probably up to next door and what destruction awaited there upon her return. Jimmy was asleep, she was sure, having been up vomiting all last night. Susan also regretted not having yet taken a shower. It was a miracle that she’d gotten the stupid cookies made, having been interrupted ten times by the girls quarrelling and the baby eating the puppy kibble. Her smile wilted when she realized that she’d also forgotten to comb her hair.


Like the lady that she was, Eva politely invited Susan to come inside, gushing about how wonderful the cookies looked and carrying them to the kitchen. Susan lingered in the entry way, tucking a loose curl around her ear before setting a tentative foot in the house. It was like something out of a Home and Garden magazine. Not a single pair of shoes sat by the door. The wood floors shined, un-scuffed. She looked down at her ancient Reeboks which she’d transformed into slip-ons after stuffing her feet inside hundreds of times without bothering to untie the laces. Should she take them off, revealing her sweaty feet? Eva returned, still gushing. The gushing was a little much, Susan thought. They were just cookies, after all. She kept on her dingy sneakers and followed her new neighbor into the sitting room. The walls were vertically striped an airy blue and chocolate brown. A couple of ficus house plants sat companionably next to the leather sofas and a furry area rug. Everywhere she looked were artifacts of world travel. Photographs, souvenirs, maps… mostly of glamorous places. Paris, London, Rome… Susan hadn’t been any further than Disneyland.


Eva asked lots of questions… how long had they been in the neighborhood? How old were her children? Did she work? What a stupid question - she had four children! Eva laughed at her silliness, placing a tiny hand against her butterfly sternum. She acted overly-enthralled by Susan’s humble world, punctuating her answers with an occasional “Hmmmm.” “How about that?” “Really?” “Wonderful.” Susan found herself begging her facial muscles to hide the irritation that began its own kind of gushing. “What do you do?” she asked, turning the subject from her own less glamorous lifestyle. “Oh, I retired early. I really just mull around these days. I used to be a business woman. Boring stuff… you don’t want to hear about it!” She laughed again, playfully dismissing the subject. Susan laughed along, less playfully. The way Eva moved bothered her. How she fiddled with the hair at the nape of her neck. The way she uncurled her lips from her white, even teeth when she smiled. Her legs crossing and uncrossing, toes bouncing circles in the air. The gushing over Susan’s admittedly mundane life. She was too much, perched gracefully on her sofa, the leather beneath her devoid of any ice cream drippings or kool-aid stains, pretending to care. It was insulting, really. Eva sat in her beautiful home, surrounded by momentos of her thrilling history, living comfortably in retirement and looking like a goddess while Susan (who could only be a year or two younger) sported a marsupial pouch of skin thanks to four pregnancies, rarely showered before noon or uninterrupted, refereed siblings and scrubbed crayon off of her dingy walls. Sue stood finally, making an excuse about the baby waking from her nap soon and acting regretful that she had to leave so abruptly. She bustled to the door, off of the cool skin of the sofa and the plush carpet, stepping lightly on the waxed pine.
“Please be sure to bring the children next time!” Eva called after, following her to the porch. Susan imagined her children playing with the little English phone booth and Eiffel tower and half-smiled. “Sure…” she answered, as the door opened and a wave of heat rushed in. (“Yeah, right.”)


That night, Susan picked through her irritable feelings. It was impossible to say what particular thing Susan detested about Eva. Probably the whole package, she decided finally, rolling over in her oven of a bed. That day had hit a record high. It was the hottest in eighty-seven years. Susan blamed the heat some, of course. It made her lay in bed agitated after a long uncomfortable day, pajama top pasted to her flushed skin, locks of frizzy hair dripping with sweat. Sue imagined Eva lying in her cool sheets under the gentle breeze of her air-conditioning vent… waking slowly in the morning, stretching her rested limbs and smiling through the last moments of her dream. Susan’s bedroom window opened to the teasing hum of Eva’s air conditioning unit. Off and on it grinded its motor through the long, sticky night, startling Susan out of her light sleep. Around three a.m. she found herself fantasizing about passive-aggressive revenge: shining strobe floodlights into Eva’s bedroom window, blaring the Mexican radio station at random intervals throughout the night… and she imagined with satisfaction as she fell into the strangeness of dreams, her perfect neighbor suffering from one imperfect night’s sleep.


Eva laid in her four-poster bed, fighting the nausea that came as an unpleasant side affect of the medicine that was supposed to buy her time. She contemplated the value of it - extra time to live - hugging her bony knees to her frame to keep warm. The air conditioner was still on, blast it, and bile rose in her throat every time she made the slightest motion to get up and turn it off. So she stayed very still, her teeth clattering, adding up her life. She found herself thinking of her new neighbor’s visit that day. Susan had such beautiful children. They laughed and chased each other around the front yard. How wonderful it must be to make a person, she thought. To see yourself in your own child’s face, in their expressions and mannerisms, while discovering with them their own uniqueness and identity. She had put off family. Men were a nuisance and she distrusted their shallow attraction to her. She’d been too busy, anyway. Work had been her family, her love, her reason for getting up every morning. She’d filled all her holidays with travel, seeing the world solo. Having been forced into early retirement after the diagnosis, she found fewer and fewer reasons to get up lately. Everything that needed doing was hired out by her old personal assistant. Even the house plants had an employee to take care of them. It would feel nice to be needed by someone. Now, her body was too unpredictable to rely upon for much. How lucky, she thought, that this morning she felt good enough to make herself look decent. Susan was so kind to bring that plate of cookies. So thoughtful. Alone and shivering, the sharp edges of consciousness were smoothed by the thought of someone so gracious living right next door.

Ladybug Summer by R.F.

My eleventh summer was one of my best. Fifth grade at a new school was behind me, along with much misery. My best friend had moved from a nearby town to only five minutes away, and my dad had bought us passes to the local Country Club pool. Life was good!

The fenced in pool was surrounded by a golf course, and several green bushes lined the fence. Bugs of all sorts managed to find their way into the pool, usually discovered long dead. My friend and I mourned their passing, as we tried to love all of God's creatures. But one particular day as I surfaced from from an underwater tea party, I noticed a ladybug floating on the water. I scooped it up and put it on the warm concrete by the pool ledge, only to notice another ladybug swimming unhappily along. And another; and another.

“Look at all the ladybugs!” my friend shouted from across the pool. There were hundreds of the red and black creatures, floating on the water's surface, doomed unless my friend and I came to their rescue. We began hurriedly scooping them and depositing them on the dry ground, yelling excitedly at each other when one looked good or flew away.

“Where did they come from,” I wondered to myself. Perhaps a recent hatch on the nearby bushes? The amount made me think that someone had deliberately dumped them into the pool, but who could be so cruel? As I looked around, I realized that no one at the pool that day could be. Nearly everyone there had joined my friend and my crusade to save the ladybugs. Fathers and their water-winged children scooped and deposited; teenagers in colorful bikinis put down their bottles of tanning oil and leaned carefully over the pool's edge; grandparents in their permanently-pruned skins pointed out the bugs to whoever was nearest. The entire pool community, mostly unknown to one another before, had joined together that day to rescue the tiny, helpless ladybug victims. I had to pause to soak in the scene, my heart swelling with gratitude and pride.

After all the ladybugs were rescued or laid to rest, my friend and I sat on our beach towels, basking in the warmth of the sun, and also the feeling that we were heroes. Perhaps no one's life had been permanently changed, but for that brief hour several strangers had come together and done something good for the world.

Salt 6/1/1996

in the wintertime i forget.
the snow and icy chill bock all emotions:
pain, joy, everything.
you can see me if you look carefully.
i'm the one with the stone face
and a perpetual twitching frown.
i tried to inhabit your icy lake
but i forgot how to read your
"DANGER!" signs,
and i slipped under
through a crack in the ice.
all through the re-birth you'll watch me
hopelessly flail my arms
and kick my aching feet.
so when summer burns your white skin
mine will be wet and pruned.
my exhausted body will shut down
and i will drown in your waters.
leave me there
with the sand and the salt.
yes, your freshwater lake is no more.
i've cried the dead sea.

~Rachel Nicely

Farewell Nonage 1/10/1995

The last look came
and went
No long goodbyes
No tears or aching hearts
I travel on
Leaving behind things too quickly forgotten
Looking ahead to only a few
bright lights
Why aren't they as bright as they were
When I longed to touch them?
I look back
And watch shadowy hands wave
goodbye,
Then fade away forever.

The Appointment by Iris Rosewater

Amy was not running late to her appointment. She found herself, however, in an anxious flurry - fumbling with the hangers in her closet, looking wildly all over the apartment for her left boot, only to find it after ten minutes sitting innocently in the middle of the living room floor. She tried to look at her face without seeing herself as she applied make-up, drawing shakily around the rims of her honey-brown eyes with charcoal eyeliner, rubbing the mascara-smudge with a wet Q-tip. She met her reflection in the mirror and hesitated. A mixture of excitement and fear arranged her features unnaturally. She stopped and sat on the edge of the bath tub, forcing long, deep breaths through her short, shallow ones.

As she waited for Gabe at the doctor’s office, Amy distracted herself by looking around the waiting room. The walls were a soft orange sherbet color, with a floral wallpaper border. A table water fountain bubbled musically in the corner next to some oversized house plants with broad leaves that sprawled out and weaved between the legs of the seats beside them. The phone rang softly behind the secretary’s desk, and she answered each time using the same generic greeting, her voice rising and falling with the same melodic inflection. Otherwise, it was very quiet. Amy was glad to have made her appointment during a workday morning. The waiting room was sparsely filled. The patients sat with a comfortable number of empty chairs on either side, some thumbing through outdated Parents magazines or reading books they’d brought with them. Several women had large round bellies, all of whom seemed to smooth their hands over the protrusions absently. Amy looked away, as memories of her last visit to this office flooded into her mind.

When Amy found out she was pregnant, she was ecstatic. Gabe bought her pickles and chocolate to celebrate. They bought piles of books about pregnancy, marveling over the photos of zygotes and embryos, pouring over what to expect from week to week. They said goodnight to the baby when they went to sleep and Gabe kissed Amy’s belly good morning before he got up for work. They couldn’t wait to bring home a fuzzy black and white glimpse into her womb. When the day came for her very first ultrasound, they held hands as the technician dimmed the lights. She watched the monitor intently, searching with untrained eyes for a feature she could recognize… a hand, a curved spine, a silhouette… the flutter of a heart… but, it was over very quickly. She saw only for a few moments a small curled figure - still and white. The technician said something Amy didn’t hear and excused herself. And then the doctor returned alone. “It looks like this is a miscarriage. I’m so sorry.”

It rained that night, and Amy laid awake in her bed long after Gabe fell asleep. Her thoughts overtook any chance of rest. She wondered what she had done wrong… if maybe she shouldn’t have jogged in the mornings, or taken the cold medicine before she knew… as if it mattered now. Those questions quickly gave way to bigger ones and she stared at the shadow of her window on the wall, water splattering and smearing down the pane, evaluating her life. They were good people, weren’t they? She had felt so strongly that this was the right thing… maybe she had been wrong, and she was somehow unworthy of motherhood. Through the long night, sorrow gave way to anger and she felt cheated. Why would she be given a life only to have it snatched away? How stupid and silly of her to have believed this was real when it was only a cruel joke. She touched her belly, which entombed her deceased child and wept to the sound of the rain chiming against the dark glass.

It was seven harrowing days before the bleeding began, and it came so heavily and painfully that she felt faint. She realized distantly, crumpled and groaning in bed, that this must be what it feels like to give birth, and then almost laughed through the misery of it, because she also realized that she was.

For weeks, the public was a brutal place to be. Everywhere she went, she was surrounded by what was denied her. Pregnant women seemed to congregate at the grocery store, leaning back uncomfortably, looking flushed and exasperated in the summer heat. Babies chewed on their chubby little hands, babbling and cooing with gorgeous round eyes at their mothers, who seemed always to ignore them. The jealousy was consuming. In her mind, Amy judged them for taking what they had for granted. And what they had was everything… and what she had was nothing… until Christmas came.

On Christmas morning, Amy felt a bit “off” again. The celebratory brunch made her stomach churn just smelling it as she walked through her parent’s front door. Nibbling her toast (and breathing through her mouth discreetly) she ticked off the days since her last period. She was terrible about keeping track, but it had been irregular since that Summer, so she had stopped paying much attention. The numbers added up like a punch in the stomach and she politely excused herself from the table, grabbing her purse and keys on a hunt for an open drug store.

As Gabe arrived at the office and they kissed hello, their tension met and multiplied. They were much more guarded this time, unwilling to believe that it was real, afraid to dangle their hopes at the altitude from which they had previously fallen.

With sweaty hands clasped, they watched with unbridled emotion, the tiny black and white strobe of their baby’s heart.
　

Better By Iris Rosewater

She is an angel

(my better self)

She watches from the outside
In the inside
Of my head
And shows me
How she would have done it
Better

The control she would have kept
Over her emotions
During that argument

The perspective she will keep
Through the trials

She observes my mothering
And chides with righteous patience
That a glass of juice
Spilled on the floor
Is really not so terrible a thing
To happen

She disregards the build-up
Of juice cups spilled
And diapers
And directions gone unheeded

She lets each go
And starts fresh at every fiasco

She forgives
Everyone but me.

I have yet to learn
What her role is
In my life
If she were meant
To plague me
Or lift me up

But she feels a heavy burden
Teetering at the top of
The load I carry

Maybe she is not
My best self

Maybe she is inhuman
And I do myself
A disservice
Comparing the two of us
As if I were really
Capable
Of meeting
that measure of goodness.

Or…

Perhaps she is my true self
Whispering reminders

Buried under the shrapnel of guilt
I choose to bear
Rather than rising to the glory
Of what I was made
To become.

Beginning

On the first day of Lilly’s new life, she was driving. Her ’08 Subaru wove its way through the gorge, following the curvy highway that ran along the columbia river. The landscape started green, with lush forests rolling up beside her. Heavy grey clouds hung above blanketing the sky, mingling with the tree tops and obscuring any view of the sun. As she pressed east, the scenery made gradual changes. The trees thinned… bare rocks exposed themselves in the earth… and then the clouds lifted and lightened, having lost the strength to carry the darkness and the rain to the other side of the Cascade mountains. And the sun broke through.

Native Portlanders were appalled at Lilly’s choice of location. They called it barren. They said it was too hot. They couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to leave the beautiful backdrop of varying shades of green that covered every un-developed square inch of earth. Lilly, however, was not a native. She grew up in the desert, naming every cactus and taking pictures of the particularly breathtaking sunsets. She preferred her mountains jagged and bare against blue skies. She could not imagine anyone wanting to stay where the rain weeps nine months out of every year, hiding the sun with layer upon layer of indigo-gray clouds. By the time she decided to leave, her least favorite colors were grey and green. She only lived there in the first place because Mike had gotten a job there. And, now, it didn’t matter where Mike worked. If he were a color, it would be grey. She was done with him, too.

As she made her descent into the dry country, the view opened into a panorama. Just two hours ago she had been hemmed in, her vision barricaded by giants knit tightly together, stretching the mountainsides higher into the thick wet clouds. And now they released her into vastness… endless blue sky with miles and miles of warm brown. She recognized immediately that it was different from the desert she knew. Rather than tall mesquite and creosote bushes, it was covered with low sage brush, and not a single cactus gnarled its prickled hands against the backdrop. The sand was even strange, covered with thin, honey-colored grass. There were no craggy mountains - only rolling hills that seemed alive to her, the wind moving the grass like a high desert sea. Three-armed windmills dotted the hill tops, turning slowly. She glanced in the little child mirror attached to her rear view to point them out to Eden, but saw that she was already asleep, along with her little brother, Mason. Lilly turned down the Debussy she’d been listening to and listened to them breathe in their dreams, pulled into her own quiet reverie.
Mason’s face was pale and freckled with deep-set green eyes, like Lilly’s. Eden looked like Mike. So much that Lilly wondered at first if she had a single dominant gene to contribute to the pool. It felt strange to be able to love so dearly the feminine version of a face she despised. Of course, it hadn’t always been that way…

When Lilly met Mike, she was a photography major in college. They frequented the same poetry readings and bookstores. And, finally one day, he struck a conversation with her over the Cummings collection she flipped through as she sat on a winged chair by the coffee shop. She remembered thinking he bore a vague resemblance to e., glancing down at his picture on the back cover. She liked that. They were so similar, everyone said. They started to share the same mannerisms. They sincerely enjoyed each other’s company, whether they were lazing around reading, or walking to class together, or studying… their college life together had been fantastic. She tried to remind herself of that now. In the beginning, it was good. When Mike asked her to marry him, hiking together (though neither of them were outdoorsy) to the top of a mountain that overlooked their university town, she didn’t have to think about it. She had made that decision a thousand times, listening to his laugh… catching his glass-blue eyes staring at her while she wrote… brushing her cheek along the bristles of his beard… he had asked with each gesture, and each time her heart said yes. It wasn’t until after the fairy-tale wedding and graduation and the move to the Pacific North West that the souring began.

The first time Lilly became pregnant, they were thrilled. They decorated the nursery together, and Mike had filled the baby’s bookshelves months before she was born. Lilly fantasized about their family life with a baby, and Mike made promises to change his schedule so he could be home with them more. Mike was a committed man, which was usually a good thing. He excelled at everything he pursued. Entering the business world, people recognized that and moved aside for him to rise. The firm he worked for demanded long hours which he gave them willingly. Lilly, on the other hand, did not hand him over quite as easily. She rarely saw him. He promised it would only be for the first couple of years, until he could prove himself to the company, but the higher he ranked, the longer his hours stretched. He missed most of Eden’s infancy, coming home long after she had gone to bed and leaving for work before she rose for the day. At first, Lilly had longed for him to be with her… but, after a while, she dreaded his homecomings. She pretended the deepest sleep when he came into bed and reached for her. Some nights, held her anyway… and then he stopped trying… both relieving Lilly and breaking her heart at the same time. Their waking hours together were busy, filled with Eden’s diapers and demands. She was a beautiful little thing. Those blue eyes took Lilly’s breath away. Mike’s, too, on his days off. But, Eden didn’t know Mike very well and preferred her mother. Mike bought lavish gifts for both of them. He surprised her with a new car. They moved to a house so big he hired a few cleaning ladies to help her with the daunting amount of upkeep. With every gesture, the look on his face seemed to both beg for her approval and demand it.

They had agreed that one child was enough for the moment - and then, a few weeks after their anniversary, Lilly discovered the addition of one more. Mike was not so happy this time. His architecture firm had just taken on a major international client, and he was supposed to be out of the country for the entire month after the baby’s due date. She told him to go anyway… and, when Mason was born, she hardly noticed he was gone.

As passionately as Mike threw himself into his work, Lilly threw herself into Motherhood. She read stacks of books to them. She took them to the duck pond and the children’s museum and swimming lessons, snapping albums of pictures at every turn. She tried to be the other half that was absent ninety percent of the time. Every mother knows she will fall short no matter how hard she tries to replace the father of her children… but it doesn’t stop her from working desperately to fill in the gap.

The dissolution of their marriage came on just as naturally and gradually as the creation of it, like the decrescendo at the end of a composition. The intimacy that once bound them slackened and unwound day after day… until in one moment, with one look, they both knew it was over. Mike came into the bedroom around two in the morning and peeled back the down comforter. Thick, drizzly raindrops pattered on the roof above them. Lilly opened her eyes and looked into his. Dark circles hung beneath them and they were bloodshot. Lilly noticed for the first time that his hair was beginning to thin. They stared at each other for a long time, as if across a chasm that could not be bridged. They had both made their decisions.

It seemed rash for Lilly to move to “nothing” and she knew it. The truth was, she had only been to Richland once, to visit an dear friend she’d known since childhood. But, she loved it instantly. So, when she and Mike signed the papers, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to her to go there. She would leave the memories and disappointment on the other side of the Cascades and cultivate a new life under the blessed rays of the sun.

The children awakened in time to see the town as they drove to their new home. They pointed out horses and cows excitedly, and Lilly acted just as in awe as they were. The house she chose was an old red-brick bungalow on an acre lot ten minutes from town. The white paint on the shudders was chipped and faded. The flower garden was dying and choked with weeds. It needed work, obviously, but so did Lilly, so she figured they could do it together. While she created business cards for her photography business on her laptop, she mentally renovated the kitchen.

After the children chose their rooms and wore themselves out running around the yard, they ate a feast of delivery pizza and went to bed early, exhausted. Lilly sat on the back porch in her rocking chair and watched the sun for a while. In the southwestern desert she knew, the sun was heavy, falling in a stunning spectacle of blazing orange behind the mountains in the space of an hour. This new desert was not in any hurry to surrender her. She hung, gathering pink and gold on the horizon, saying goodbye to every curve of the land below, kissing it goodbye and promising to come back in the morning.