something new

With one hand holding back strands of her hair, his hand pressed against the small of her back as he waited for her to make her inevitable escape. He was instantly aware that here in these moments, he assumed that he could literally, physically hold her back. With two hands now clasped behind her back, he tried using the energy behind his eyes to hold her focus.

“Genie, I’m not going to be mad, just tell me where the pictures are”.

His face had melded into the most sincere expression he could muster, convincing himself as always, that he could hold her with his eyes or the softness of his features. She sensed everything. So much that he had grown overly aware of his actions; analyzing every minute detail of his face at every moment, knowing that the wrong reaction could send her away for weeks or even months. And when she returned, she would be different, clearly affected by her extended solitude and endlessly destructive behavior that still remained a mystery to him.

Her expression was much less calculated. Her eyes remained in their comfortable downward stare but it was her lips that moved with every thought. She twisted them back and forth from right to left while simultaneously catching the skin from her bottom lip between her teeth and pulling on it until her tongue was covered in pungent, salty red. Her bottom lip would quiver for a moment and she would sharply turn her head to the right but within seconds she would face her again, pursing her lips in defiance of her own rising tears. Every few moments she would begin breathing in short, quick breaths, which escalated into a fit of hyperventilation as her head shifted from side to side. He would clasp his hands behind her back and tighten every muscle in his shoulders as she would push her shoes into the wall behind him, crushing his stomach between her legs but he remained silent and stable, his interlocking fingers being the only obstacle keeping her from disappearing inside herself.

“I can’t”

a tiny sound seeped from her clenching lips as she struggled to break free.

“I would never get angry at you for this. You can tell me. Whatever it is.”

In a moment, he could feel her back relax and her head collapse into his chest. He knew better than to let go of her back, well experienced in Genie’s manipulative methods of escaping. She was silently shaking. He knew this moment. She would lay there shivering for a while, maybe an hour and then she would tell him that she loved him, kiss him on the forehead and then she would leave when she felt she’d adequately convinced him that he would see her again the next morning. And he would let her go, accepting that there was a limit to how long you could clasp your fingers around someone before you had to let go. He would give into sweaty knuckles as they slid apart, drying an overworked set of palms on dirty jeans.

His mind was in the midst of replaying moments identical to this one on the screen behind his eyes, looking down at the strands of brown sprawled across his grey t-shirt. And in his nostalgia, he realized that nothing had changed for her. He had become an older version of the same boy pressing clasped pre-pubescent fingers into her bony spine, leaning against the back of his garage with misquotes swarming their salty foreheads. He had gone through all the motions between then and now, everything it takes to make you an adult, everything that makes your parents proud, everything that made him look back on his childhood and believe that he had learned something. But she had remained the same. The same hair strewn across his chest, the same biting lips and downward eyes. The same fear, repeated and manifested in the same ways over time. She would forever be 11 years old, with the eyes of an infant looking up at him, waiting for him to read her “a story about people”. She wanted to know, but never experience, she wanted to see, but never touch, she wanted to live outside of her life.

She shifted her head for a moment and as air reached that spot on his chest where her head was resting he felt a dampness and looked down to see his grey t-shirt, now black in one spot which was growing bigger with every tear that dropped from her eyes, slightly elevated above him.

He had never seen her cry and now, as she moved her head closer to the crease in his neck, he became suddenly aware that he had no knowledge of what came next in this scene he’d grown so used to.

His mind flashed to the orange leather chairs in their high school therapist’s office. His hands were pressed uncomfortably under his thighs between his jeans and the sticky leather of the armchairs that always smelled like Lysol.

“Owen, I called you in here today to talk to you about your friend Gene. It is important as her only real connection with the outside world, that you understand the types of actions necessary for Genie to feel comfortable as we continue to treat her. Does Gene ever get upset or scared around you?"

He responded to Mrs. Slitzer with nothing out of loyalty to Genie. She hated these people prying into her life so he continued to bore holes into grey speckled linoleum.

“It’s alright if you feel uncomfortable Owen. I know you and Gene are very close and I’m here to help you help her.”

Silence.

“Alright, well I’m going to give you a few bits of information about Genie so that if she ever becomes fearful you are aware of how to help her calm down.”
Silence.

“First of all, if she ever gets scared applying pressure to her head will help her calm down. See, with children who are autistic, they become very fearful when they feel they’ve lost control. By pressing your hand on the top of her head, she will begin to feel like there is some control in her emotions within the comforting pressure.”

He silently stood up and walked out of her office. Genie wasn’t autistic. He knew this because she told him every day.

He began fluttering his eyelids, hoping to blink away the memory of Mrs. Slitzer and the sticky orange chairs. But as Genie’s visible tears had escalated into audible ones he found himself raising his hand, running his fingers through the part in her hair and pressing his palm into the top of her head. He felt his eyes water as her breath released into his collarbone and within moments, her tears had ceased.

She sat curled inside clasped fingers with her legs wrapped around him as he felt the backs of his knees go numb against the hardwood floor beneath them.

In a while, she looked up at him, directly into his eyes and stared for moments, or maybe hours. She pushed herself up to meet him at eye level and with a few latent tears dropping from her cheeks she leaned towards his ear.

“Maybe I’m crazy”

She whispered almost inaudibly.

He sat for a moment. Contemplating her statement.

“Maybe you are.”

He felt her shaking again, air bouncing feverishly inside her chest and her breath quickened once again. But this time, a quiet giggle, which grew increasingly louder as her laughter began filling the room. His lips turned up slightly as he wrapped his fingers behind her ears and pulled her head to meet his eyes again. He studied her face, a complete mess of salty cheeks, watery eyes, crooked teeth and grinning lips. He pulled her close, tackling her to the ground and joined her in uncontrollable laughter.


When their stomachs ached and their smiles tired they found themselves lying face up on the floor, arms spread out beside them, their minds dulled for a moment following the blades of his ceiling fan.

She looked to her left.

“The pictures.”

“Yes..”

“I burned them in my sink”

“I know.”

In a nearly empty room, she sits silent. Her tiny frame wedged between two boxes, just short enough to rest her elbows on. Looking down at an all too familiar picture of scraped knees sliced by wispy strands of blonde dangling in front of her face, she lets out a tiny puff of air once and then twice, and then giving into apathy as the strands remain, allows her head to drop completely as her eyes slide shut. Black gives way to a miserable array of colors. As each neuseating shade swirls to meet the next, each becomes harder and harder to distinguish and with increasing speed, they’ve unified, and she’s returned to black. But this black is different. No longer is black the nothingness that appears behind eyes in the youth of sleep, black is now a color, thick and brooding, smothering her daytime dreams and suffocating the life of her only escape. With one swift breath, she is brought to her feet once again. She counts under her breath the boxes that remain. Ten. Ten more boxes and a closet full of clothes and this would all be over. With an air of distain, she makes nine trips, up and down three flights of stairs and outside, balancing each box on a bare knee while desperately jiggling a tired key into the trunk of her ’98 Honda Civic, nearly axfixated by mid-July heat. Leaving one last box behind, she begins slinging clothes over her arm. And with metal hangars drawing tiny dots of blood on her forearm, she makes five more trips. She takes on the steps back to her unit, slides her key into the door one last time and takes three steps into her one room studio before collapsing on the floor. Using a final ounce of energy to turn herself over, she stares up at the white stucco ceiling and spreads her arms out perpendicular to her body. She can feel small bits of dust tickling her arms and catching in between strands of her ponytail as beads of sweat drop to meet them. Forcing her eyes open to avoid familiar neusea, she lays waiting for a moment where this would feel natural; when leaving all this behind would begin to feel like a willing change of scenery.

* * *

“There is no shade of blue as bright as the blue in your eyes”. His words had followed her into the airport yesterday. They sat beside her as she pushed half-edible chicken back and forth through watered down gravy. They recited themselves monotonously as she stood, barely awake, listening to the low murmer of the baggage conveyer belt and then down the escalator and outside into the taxi where she sat now, gazing in apprehension out a fingerprinted window at urban fluorescence. She began to question the blue in her eyes as her reflection melded with the city lights. Jet-lag prevailed as the muscles behind her eyes ceased and her vision blurred, smearing multi-colored electric letters and the colors of her face into the most beautiful shade of blue she’d ever seen. She closed one eye and then the other, switching frames between the lights of the city and their reflection in her own tired shade of blue. How foreign it seemed to see her own face reflected beside something so alive.

Her faded map of Chicago showed she was nearly eight blocks away from her hotel, but she demanded they stop despite. Slinging her old basketball duffel bag over her shoulder and balancing it on her back, she maneuvered three large suitcases on the handles of a smaller suitcase on wheels. Bending down and throwing one hand over all three to make sure they didn’t fall, she grasped the handle with her free hand. The one in the middle began to slip and, as she reached for something to catch its fall before creating a scene in the middle of this foreign city, her pinky slid into the loop of a tag tied to the end of the zipper. ‘Jessica Nicole Marshall’. She wiped her thumb across the frosted silver plate with her name engraved. The corners of her mouth slipped as she realized this was the first time she’d ever used this luggage. She’d received when she was five as a gift from her grandfather. A five year old has little use for brown leather luggage and she found a more proper use for it by curling her bony frame around itself and zipping herself inside of it. Her relatives laughed uncontrollably for several minutes before unzipping her, pulling her out and informing her that this was a suitcase to put all of her things in should she ever decide to travel to another place.
“What is travel?” She asked.
“Travel means that you get on a plane or into a car or onto a train and you can go anywhere you want in the whole world, Jessi”.
“Really?? Well then one day, I’m gonna put all my leggos inside this suitcase and I’m gonna zip it up, and I’m gonna get on a train and I’m gonna go over the ocean and I’m gonna play with the sharks in the water and then…and then….and THEN… I’m gonna build castles with the Queen of France!”
Despite snickering from her parents and sister, she proceeded with this dream for several months; performing bows to her mom at various moments throughout the day, rehearsing her etiquette for the Queen of France. She’d become accustomed to curtseying before dinner and drinking juice from a plastic jug with her pinkies raised high:
“This is how the Queen eats her peanut butter and jelly and juice, ya know”.

As she began to grow out of her days of boundless imagination and into the harsh reality of suburban childhood, her restlessness had been replaced with her own sense of comfort. She became safely settled in her ranch style house with a backyard as far as the eye could see. Within a few years, she had forgotten about leggo-building tea parties with the Queen of France and her hand-made Italian leather luggage had settled quite nicely in a far corner of their attic. After college, while most of her close friends were itching to leave their small country town to pursue jobs in big cities all over the country, she desired nothing more than to stay in Missouri with her family, pursue a hometown career, and remain happy, comfortable and settled.


She used the remaining strength she had left after 12 hours of traveling to lift the stiff suitcase back into its place in the strategic stack of her condensed belongings. She walked with her body hunched over towards the glass door and then, stretching her back tall and pushing her shoulders back, she stood in front of it for a moment.
“Chicago Diner: Open 24 Hours”, was lit up over her head in fluorescent pink. She pressed her hip into the glass and maneuvered her way inside, pausing only for a moment to take in the sound as she entered. Her eyes moved upward as she noticed the bell above the door and she felt the muscles in her back release the slightest bit. This was the sound of home. As she felt the door move slowly shut behind her, she took a moment to glance over her shoulder at the foreign sight of blinding light in the middle of the night, swarms of people yelling and laughing in the streets when the world should’ve been asleep and the sound of muffled base bellowing from clubs and bars up and down State street. Snapping her head around to a much more familiar sight in front of her, she was led to her very own stool at the bar by middle-aged woman in a red and white jumper, white reebock’s and a hairnet.

A long stream of breath left his nostrils as his eyes veered towards a rolling silver cart in the corner of the restaurant.
“Cake? Would a piece of cake make you feel better?”
She began to let the corners of her mouth rise as her eyes rose to meet his.
“Yeah? Cake? Alright, we’ll get you some cake. Chocolate or vanilla?”
“Strawberry.”
“Excuse me sir, could you tell me how much a piece of strawberry cake is?” He flagged down a waiter.
“We don’t sell strawberry cake by the slice, sir. If you want to buy the whole cake, I can sell it to you for $43.00”.
“Thank you, we’ll talk it over”.
Both of their eyes returned to picking out the colors mixed into the speckled carpeting under their table.
He reached across the table and pulled her hand closer to his. Wrapping his index finger and thumb around her ring finger, he pulled off a sparkling golden gem and slipped it into his pocket.
“Woah.. what are you doing? That’s my mom’s ring!”
She reached across the table to grab it from him but was stopped by his hand in her face. He flattened his fingers over her nose and stretched them out between her cheek bones as she began to giggle and struggle to pry his hand away.
He smiled and let go after a moment. Leaning in and whispering to her he said,
“You’ll get it back, I promise”. And he winked.
She settled back into her chair and folded her arms in front of her.
“I’m going to use the washroom, don’t flee the country before I get back”.


In the moments before he returned from the bathroom, she’d contemplated several rational things and several irrational things. Rationally, she made the conscious choice to improve her mood. This being the only day of the week that she left her house, she began despising herself whenever she ruined it with her terrible mood swings. Only a moment ago she was laughing at Owen’s impression of the man who lived above her. She began wondering what type of person can decide that life isn’t worth living within seconds of doubling over in laughter.
Probably crazy people.
Irrationally, she began wondering what type of windows were in the bathroom of this place. Had she ever been to the bathroom? Yes. She’d been to the bathroom but the windows were the kind with glass blocks that made her face look like it’d been mashed in. Those were cemented to the wall. But maybe if she stole a blunt object from the kitchen on her way in, she could smash them in and climb out. She began blissfully imagining her escape home with sweat dripping over her eyebrows and her heart racing in her chest. She would leap over the bushes in front of her building and turn the same key in both front doors, flipping it upside-down for the second door and slam it behind her. And pressing her sweaty back against the door she would let her head fall back against it and light a cigarette. She would breath it in deep and exhale, watching her reflection in the mirror by the door become engulfed in a cloud of smoke. As the smoke cleared, she would see her lips grinning and her eyes calm and serene.

“Excuse me ladies and gentlemen!”
She could hear Owen’s voice booming from the opposite side of the smoking section as every table fell silent. While every patron shifted themselves to face this scruffy looking, long haired boy, Genie began emptying the contents of her bag onto the table as she began feeling vomit rise in her chest.
“I’d like your attention please on this most special of days. If you’ll look towards the window you will see a girl sitting alone. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the love of my life. She’s beautiful isn’t she?”
Genie’s face flushed immediately. She felt nothing but hatred.
The entire restraunt began ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’.
Owen’s grin remained as he walked slowly towards her and her eyes bore holes into his forehead.
“Ladies and gentelemen, I want you to know that you are about to witness the most important thing that I will ever say to anyone. Genie, here, this beautiful, delicate flower…”
Her eyes began to tear up out of utter distain for him.
“…is the absolute love my life. And I am quite sure, at this moment, that there is no one else in the world I would want to spend my life with. Forever and always, Genie…”
He lowered himself on one knee.
“Will you marry me. Please…be my wife, my love, forever.”
The entire restraunt fell completely silent as they stared at her.

Her mind drifted for moment. These people knew nothing about her or Owen. For all they knew, he could be an abusive heroine addict who runs over squirrels in the street. But they all sat there in anticipation, assuming, for their own romantic satisfaction, that Owen was the most wonderful boy in the world and knowing that, without a doubt, she would remain forever in their minds, a horrible, heartless bitch if she denied his pure intentioned offer. Every person in this room, no matter how they denied it to themselves, had been drilled since the start of their existence to believe in this hoaky nonsense. Any man proposing to any woman in a public place instantly becomes their “knight in shining armor” and the woman immediately becomes his “damsel in distress”, finally reaching the moment in her life where she has been rescued by his terribly romantic proposal. Furthermore, if she said yes, this would become their story for months to come. They would get all misty-eyed while telling everyone they encounter of the true act of love they had witnessed last Saturday. “We were just sitting there eating and then all of a sudden…” they would say, as if it happened to them. This was their reassurance, their hope that this sort of cinematic moment actually existed in the real world. None of them would know if they ever went through with the wedding or if they’d gotten divorced six months later, and none of them would want to. These people were only concerned with this single moment, the moment where whatever ordinary conversation they were having had been interrupted by a moment of, what they believed to be, extraordinary beauty.
However, none of this was relevant because she was sure this was Owen’s idea of a joke. His face remained sincere but his eyes were doubled over in laughter as they looked up into hers that were contemplating throwing her drink in his face.
“Please Gene, make me the happiest man in the world”.
She shifted her eyes to the door, planning the quickest maneuver out, and noticed their waiter from before standing by the host’s podium, his face illuminated under a flicker of candle light. She looked back at Owen and he winked at her.
“Yes. Yes I will. I’ll marry you.”
The entire restraunt stood up and burst into cheering and clapping as the waiter arrived at their table. Owen embraced her, lifting her off the ground and spinning her around, kissing her mouth for effect.
“We’ll have this in a box please, we’ll eat it when we get home”. He grinned at the waiter as he turned to leave.
They ran out of the restraunt holding a large paper bag with the guests inside still applauding their engagement. Without a word, they crossed over clark street and rushed across the bridge.
“Meet me down there”, he said.
But she waited outside as he ran into Corner Bakery.
Clutching two sets of plastic flatware, he followed her down the winding cement staircase that framed the Chicago River and lowered himself down to the second stair next to Genie, who had already opened the box. And there, as the sun began hiding behind buildings behind them, Genie and Owen sat silently, sliding plastic forks into strawberry engagement cake.

here.

Pressing the tips of her fingers delicately into the wooden frame of the table one at a time she let her eyes drop down to focus on them. Each motion was satisfying in itself with every light sensation but combined, equally reassuring as pressure became part of a series of controlled behavior. Deliberate monotony. Her hands moved towards each other as her fingertips, now pink, slid over the crevices in her knuckles. She had just barely allowed herself to succumb to the engulfment of her own nervous distractions when a light pang of metal on linoleum shifted her focus. Her eyes jumped slightly to her right and suddenly she was uncomfortably aware of the half empty coffee cups surrounding hers. Scanning the table without looking up, she caught glimpse of three familiar fingers rising from her right and setting a silver spoon down on their table, the remainder of the coffee dissolving a pile of sugar. Her right hand very slowly found its way to the tiny silver saucer of creamer in front of her.
“Would you like some more cream?”
He looked up as if he’d forgotten she was there through the shadow of a hand cupped over his eyes. The corner of his mouth rose slightly.

A month ago he would have grinned and said,
“I’d love some”
and he would lean in in the most playful way and watch intently as her eyes lit up at the sight of a tiny saucer with a handle made for an infant. Although she knew he despised cream in his coffee, she would pour drop by drop until the saucer was half full. He would then place his hand on hers and lower it back to the table, saving some liquid in the saucer for ten minutes later, when she would be once again enchanted by it.

His hand rose from his forehead and he opened it in front of his face.
“no thank you”`

She continued to hold the saucer over his half sipped coffee cup, waiting for him to change his mind. The waitress returned

“ You guys just gonna stick with coffee or did you want your usual strawberry waffles?”

He looked sideways at her across the table for several minutes, teeth slightly separated as if to create dramatic effect, ignoring perplexed eyes from their waitress as she awaited an answer. The girl facing him returned to her fascination with her fingertips, hoping he’d suddenly find endearment in her quirks once again. After taking a moment to allow repeating reels of scenes like these to flash behind his eyes, he turned to the waitress confidently.
“Let me ask you something. How much would you charge me for this silver saucer?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not for sale..”
“I’ll pay you anything you ask, if I can just buy this saucer”
“Okay fine, I’ll sell it to you for $5.29. That’s a dollar more than we pay for a replacement.”
His smile widened as he fished fifteen dollars out of his back pocket and handed it to the waitress.

Upon her leaving the table, he slid the half empty saucer across to the girl as she smiled at him, relieved, and she began pouring the remaining cream into an empty cup of water, never tiring of her fascination. Moments later, looking up from her cup, she saw nothing but the growing crack in the plastic of their now empty booth.