And the door swings open. And the door swings open and open again and never shuts all the way. All sorts of things come in through the door. People. Ideas. Gifts. Tombstones. R.I.P. this. R.I.P. that. Give to the poor, say the young men in white suits and purple hats with feathers. It’s not that they aren’t welcome, but there are so many of them. There are women wringing their hands because their husbands lost their jobs and they have two kids and a dog. That’s during the day. At night there are people who want to have sex with you. They dance around you with scarves and it embarrasses you. There are fathers and mothers who come in and cook you meals. Barbecued pork and new potatoes. Apple pie for dessert. It seems excessive, but they take pleasure in feeding you. Sometimes you have cravings for bowls of crunchy salads and sometimes the opposite, macaroni and cheese. Sometimes pancakes.
You were sitting down to coffee and the newspaper when music began playing loudly. A troop of folk singers were slowly filing into your kitchen. You thought immediately that you must hide the carelessly piled recycling and greasy meatloaf pan that your roommate had left to coagulate for three days.
They are as they would have been forty years ago — worn dungarees, button-down work shirts and fisherman caps. They are pouring their hearts out. They are strumming and clapping. And holding hands. When they finish you applaud and ask if they like pancakes.
You’ve always wanted this. Friend/musician/bohemians sitting down to breakfast in a sun-filled kitchen. Luckily you have a full pot of coffee and you fill a mug for everyone. It’s not so strange. They’re all well-known musicians, particularly to you. You notice that Violet Ray and Joe Samson are on opposite sides of the room. Someone strums a guitar quietly and everyone chatters. They ask you questions about what you like to do, your plans are for the summer. You notice for the first time that Cory Velasquez is holding a skeleton on his lap and using him as a puppet to ask all the questions. So you ask him,
“Cory, how’s your novel going?”
The skeleton answers, “What novel?”
“I understand,” you say.
Where Joe Samson felicitously executed his mystery, Cory Velasquez poured gasoline on his body, set himself on fire then hid his burning body behind a sheet. When you glance up from the griddle, his skeleton is smoking a cigarette.
You set a steaming plate of pancakes piled high on the table. Everyone takes a fork and stabs. Some of the pancakes tear into pieces and there is a near food fight. By the time the plate is empty, you have fresh pancakes to pile back on it. You feel like you could keep them in your kitchen forever as long as you keep making pancakes.
Cory requests a plate for his skeleton. You take a break from the stove and sit down next to him, flashing a big grin to let him know you are friendly.
“Stop,” you tell yourself, “you’re trying too hard.” You are trying too hard. You should be playing it cooler. You ask Cory what the skeleton’s name is.
“Franz,” he says.
“Why do you give him food?” you ask.
You don’t know if he will pretend to be offended because you aren’t willing to take the ruse at face value. Or will he come up with a joke, something absurd? Something absurd, you think, almost definitely. So you are very surprised when he takes a moment before answering.
“Tell her, Cory,” says Joe.
Cory turns to you and says, “Some people make offerings of the food they eat to their god first, to show appreciation and respect to God for providing for them. I don’t worship a God. I think of all humanity as holy, the dead are most holy because they came before us and they have something to teach us. So I offer food to Franz as a show of respect for all who’ve come before.”
Violet bursts out laughing, “Jesus Christ, Cory,” and leans over to me. “He stole him from the NYU biology department. He thought it was the best prank ever. He took a picture of he and Franz eating a candle-lit dinner together and sent it to the head of the department! What did you write on the back, Cory?”
“I was being serious, Violet.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what did it say on the back of the picture?”
“‘He’s in a better place.’”
Violet laughs loudly and claps her hands together. Joe smirks and takes another drag of his cigarette. It is at this moment that you realize Joe hasn’t eaten any pancakes. He hasn’t eaten anything. You haven’t spoken to him yet and you are very nervous. But you lift the plate that still holds two pancakes and say,
“Joe?”
He waves his cigarette-smoking hand at the plate and smiles.
“Joe don’t eat,” Cory grins, “he just pop amphetamines.”
“Fuck off, Cory,” Joe sneers and stands up to look out the window.
You didn’t know that Cory would die in a motorcycle accident when he was still barely a newlywed. You didn’t know that Violet would ash away, her voice turning from richness to smoke. You didn’t know that Joe would change a hundred times, so that you would never know him. You felt, though, that you knew him. In that moment. As he stared out the window. You knew what he was staring at. It was that time. Every day at that time. The little old neighbor woman walked out her screen door with a very small dog in her arms and set it down on the top stair. She watched as it scampered down. Then, slowly, straight arm bracing the railing, she followed it, looking ahead as she descended. Performing this final duty of love, so weary, almost unable to walk, but alive because she had to.
Sarah Moon is a writing professor and playwright. She facilitates the community writing and performance project Write Your Roots. Her creative work has been published in Ampersand, MeThree, Rosebud, and Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics. She lives in Coventry, CT.
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