I made out a hunched figure swaying strangely in the night.

He had twiggy fingers and a misshapen torso.

I squinted my eyes repeatedly to try and get a better look at him.

I couldn’t.

He remained seated on my window waiting.

Waiting…

What is he waiting for? What does he want?

I violently shook my head and slammed my curtains together in front of him

But having him out of sight didn’t assuage my fears

It didn’t relax me

It frightened me more.

Is he still there? Is he still staring at my window waiting for the perfect moment to steal me away into the night?

I ran back into bed to shield myself under my covers.

I sat there for a few minutes, collecting my thoughts, but one thought consumed me; Is the man in the window still there?

Has he moved?

Is he in my room?

I mustered up all of my remaining courage and ripped off my blankets as I beelined towards the window.

“What do you want with me?” I yelled

No response.

“What do you want!?”

Nothing. Not even a whisper.

I slowly pressed my ear against the curtains of my window hoping to hear a response

Nothing.

“I said, what do you want!!”

I moved my ear under the curtain, so it was pressed firmly against the glass.

I sat there for a minute, like a complete fool, waiting for some sort of noise.

Nothing.

In defeat I retreated back to my bed and placed my hand against my rapidly beating heart.

Did I imagine him?

Am I going crazy?

Is he still behind the curtain?

I lay there for hours feeling my heart beat aggressively as if it was trying to escape its rib cage prison.

Is the man still there? Is he just waiting for the perfect moment to grab me and kill me?

My left arm ached as I reluctantly made my way back over towards the window.

I was now sweating profusely and experiencing severe pain in my ribs.

I turned away from the window and walked over towards my dresser to find some Advil.

“Christ where are the damn things?” I muttered as I ripped contents out of my drawer.

Finally, I found a bottle and immediately swallowed 4 of the pills.

Clutching my chest, I made my way back over towards the window.

“What do you want!?” “I know you’re still here!”

He said nothing.

Sweat was now pouring down my face onto my shirt, and my chest felt like it was on fire.

“Who are you!?”

With his stubborn silence, I decided to try and rip away the curtains and face him man to man.

I grabbed the curtains, but suddenly fell to the floor as I was about to rip them away.

My chest was now in unbearable pain, and my eyes began to roll back into my head.

As I took my last breaths I heard the loud shattering of glass where my window was

And next to my tremoring body fell a large tree branch.

I laughed like a mad man until my heart beat its final time.

Humanity died fast when the list appeared.

First came the suicides. When you see yourself at the bottom of the list that supposedly represents all of humanity, it’s hard not to lose hope.

Then came the murders. Of the people who had discovered the list. The people who kept it running. Some decided that the list was fake, and that anyone who believed in it deserved death.

Eventually, we stopped. Killing and fighting and tearing each other apart. At least for a while.

I was born with a number on my hand. I don’t remember what it was. No one can tell me, because you can only see your own number. But right now, my number is 3,425,007. Out of the eight billion people on the earth.

That’s one of the better numbers. My mom told me once that her number had dropped to 6,331,909. I thought she was kidding until I heard the gunshots. One that took my sister. And one that took my mom.

I don’t know why my mom killed my three-year old sister. I don’t know why she killed herself. And I don’t know what the number on her corpse was. Because as far as I know, your number stays with you forever. Even when the only one who can see it is dead, it lives on.

I’d like to imagine my little sister was 1 on the list. Maybe 2, for that time she killed my fish by pouring too much food into its bowl. But other than that, she was perfect. I can’t understand why the cosmic power that decides where we stand would put her at anything less.

No one else understands, either. Everyone has their own idea of the list. I guess that before it showed up, people were content with their own views of right and wrong. But now that someone is deciding for us, we’ve gotten desperate.

A few streets from my house is a church. The sign outside says “God forgives all-Numbers are warnings, not punishments”. The church three blocks away is telling me to ignore the list entirely, that it’s a construct of the devil made to deceive us and turn us away from God. And the synagogue on Bailey Cove promises a way to move your number up the list, and a better understanding of why you were ranked where you were in the first place.

My mom and I went to a church back in our hometown that told us we had to be honest with our numbers and share them with the world. The next church we tried told us the list was a gift from god, to tell us when to repent. My mom loved that answer, but I wasn’t sure. I stopped going to church as soon as I could, and mom’s death didn’t do anything to persuade me to return.

I’ve always wondered who’s at the top of the list. You’d think they’d be on the news all the time, sharing their five-step plan to being a good human being. But only one person has ever claimed to have 1 embedded in their skin. Anton Icara, famous actor, TV personality, and philanthropist. When the first rape allegations came, the woman who had submitted them had been completely ostracized. After all, this man was the pinnacle of human decency. No accusations could ever stand up to that little number on his hand.

Security cameras don’t see your number, though. All they saw was Anton’s fifteenth murder. The same woman who had tried to tell the world what he was really like lay dead on the floor, a knife in her chest.

I wonder sometimes if he really was the best person on earth. If our own view of morality fell apart somewhere along the way, and he wasn’t lying when he told us that he was the only person who understood what perfection was. It seems plausible. When I was a kid, I wondered why the Bible banned so many things that sounded perfectly moral to me. Maybe the list works the same way. Maybe that’s why giving to charity didn’t move my number up the list, but watering my houseplants did. Anton Icara might have been right.

Then again, if he was lying, why did we all believe him?

I don’t know why the number on my hand is there. I don’t know what it means, what it wants from me. I don’t know who decides our numbers. And I don’t know what will happen when I die.

All I know is when this bullet goes through my head, I won’t be looking at the number on my hand.

I live in Hemingway country, the area where he and his family the spent the summers of his youth. It's a beautiful area of lakes and trees and was the setting for some of his stories. I've had drinks in the bar he used to frequent in Petoskey Michigan but of course not with him. But my favorite author with Michigan ties is not Hemingway. It is Jim Harrison who died in 2016. Mr. Harrison wrote many novels and poetry but he also wrote a food column for Esquire and other magazines. In 2001 he compiled these columns and published a book titled The Raw and the Cooked. This is no cookbook. Jim Carvalho of the Tucson Weekly said "Calling The Raw and the Cooked a book about food is like calling the Old Man and the Sea a book about fishing". I reserve it for reading during summer evenings on my deck facing what is called around here, Challenge Mountain, a ski hill for handicapped children. Also I'll only read it when the wind is just right to keep the insects at bay while not being too strong to flip the book pages. I must have my favorite cabernet within reach. That's essential. Reading these columns without accompiment of wine would be doing a disservice to the essence of what they portray. I'm not sure if Mr. Harrison intended these columns to stand in for his physical presence after his death but for me they do. I feel like I'm having a drink with him right here in front of me as he tells the stories that prove there is more to food than just eating and there is more to drink than just drinking. I only met Mr. Harrison for a mere moment at a book signing after an evening of him and two of his good friends in the round at Michigan State University which had been enormously entertaining. Now I read and re-read this book and feel he remains very much alive as one of my favorite drinking buddies.

They say I have amnesia – retrograde amnesia, to be exact. I cannot remember anything that happened to me before waking up to sunlight on my face and a boy screaming. They say he is my brother; I don’t remember.

Someone slipped up one day, a guy around my age named Elijah. He was telling me how we were friends and that I lost my memory because of an ischemic stroke. I had tried to interfere in a fight between my prom date and my ex-boyfriend, Oliver, – “Classic Alice,” Elijah had said then – and my ex had shoved me out of the way a little too hard. That was when I collapsed, though it wasn’t just from the shove. I had started speaking ‘gibberish’ before the fight broke out, but it had all happened so quickly that my friends didn’t have time to be concerned. I stumbled between the guys before the coincidental moment.

Because it wasn’t my lack of balance or inability to speak that had me brought to the hospital, it was the blood streaming down my split lip. I was lucky that Oliver had shoved me, otherwise it would have been longer before I had gotten help.

I’m lucky; I know I am. I have only been in the hospital for six days and I can already remember traces of the confusion I felt during the fight. The feeling of my feet floating in air before being grabbed back to the ground. The people dancing around me in a circle.

The thing is: that’s not all I remember. I have had brief flashes of an angular face yelling at me, grabbing my arms so that red crescent moons were left behind on pallid skin. Dark hair – my hair – flying around my arms only to be pulled behind me, yanking on my scalp.

I may not remember everything right now, but I know that I don’t want to. I think something bad happened before prom, and I’m not certain anyone else knows, except for Oliver. Because, it is his face that I see (according to the pictures brought to me), and, as desperately as my family and Elijah want me to regain my memory, I can’t bring myself to want the same. People bringing in pictures from before makes my situation worse – because it’s helping. This current guilt is nothing compared to the pain from the past.

The more my memory comes back, the more I treasure my amnesia. It doesn’t make any sense except to say that I am beginning to believe that I am too weak to handle the truth of my life. I am terrified, and I can’t remember feeling a similar emotion except for in my lost memories that are beginning to not feel so lost.

"An idea is the most dangerous parasite in the world. It spreads through the mind like cancer consuming its host. An idea is resilient and once it takes hold, it feeds. Think of what truly powerful ideas have done: changed lives, altered histories, shaped the world.”

- Captain Christopher Monroe

* * * * *

Insanity, it is said, is the repetition of the same process expecting a different result. As I unsaddle Ulysses, I cannot resist re-defining the term for I feel madder on the nights I fail to repeat what has become an addictive routine. As the weeks persist in their forward march, so too do my midnight rides to the Bohemian’s Tavern. It becomes difficult to admit that I feel more normal discussing fiction with academics or reading poetry with piss-poor students than passing my time in the so-called comforts of home.

Do I have the courage to fuel my heart’s flame? Or will I recognize the chink in my sanity if I continue playing the role of the politician’s daughter? These are the questions I ponder when I slip into the manor house by the back door and notice that I’m being watched. Even by the dim lighting, I can see Father’s beak-shaped nose cast upward, his condescending expression reaching me from down its crooked curve.

“Is this my punishment?”

Of the legion of questions with which I expect to be cross-examined, this one catches me off-guard. Yet, it shouldn’t have surprised me because it places the Almighty Mr. Darling center stage in someone else’s drama. I don’t know how to tell him the script of my life’s production has no part for him.

“You give yourself too much credit,” I answer. “Not everything I do pertains to you.”

“Does it not?”

I have seen Father upset before, but the tension in his clenched jaw suggests he is seething. When he rises from the upholstered chair and takes a step toward me, it sends a shudder down the small of my back.

“When you eat, it is only because I feed you. When you put on your pants to go riding God knows where at this unseemly hour, it is because I clothe you. When you recline in the library and poison your mind with liberal ideas about self-expression, it is only because I give you the roof under which you do so. Everything you do pertains to me because I am your father and…”

“Father, I never asked…”

My attempted interruption ceases with the generous force of Father’s hand. The initial impact stings my cheek, but it grows into an incessant burning as the shape of his palm brands my face. I touch the edge of my lip and pull back a crimson-tipped finger.

“Your wanton disrespect will no longer be tolerated. You were taught better, but despite my pleas, you continue to embarrass your family with your thoughtless actions.”

“What are you talking about?”

The desperation in my eyes betrays my ignorance.

“You insult my intelligence, Stella. You expect me to believe you’re not fleeing your home to attend your inflammatory writing workshops? If not that, then perhaps some gentleman caller. Whatever the reason, not only do you disgrace yourself, but your behavior implicates the family name. I will not continue having my name slandered by your carelessness.”

“Father, I swear I’m not…”

“We’ve asked very little of you in exchange for the comforts you enjoy. But you’ve made your contempt for us painfully plain, Stella. Your mother and I are in agreement. Henceforth, you are being disavowed. We’ve arranged for transportation to America, where you will stay with your mother’s sister. After you disembark, your life is yours to live however you please. You can tarnish your own reputation without damaging ours any further.”

I hear the words and yet my first thought is not of losing family or any young girl’s dream of the perfect doll’s mansion for a home. It is of a modest tavern with a leaky roof somewhere in a countryside I will never see again.

* * * * *

The boat drops anchor in New York Harbor on the last day of 1969; the thematic irony couldn’t have escaped my poet’s heart if it tried. With nothing to my name but the two suitcases I carry off the boat, I trudge all over the docks searching in vain for an aunt I’ve never met. After the disembarking crowds dissipate, it becomes easier to take in the American portside. Narrow brick shop fronts litter the docks like toy soldiers. Vendors cry out sales pitches in muddled accents, attempting to drown out the bellowing horn blasts of docking ships or the constant whistling of nearby factories. It seems like every decibel of the general din is competing for the attention – and pocketbooks, it must be said – of every casual passerby.

It isn’t a sound that arrests my own attention, but the sight of a decorative wrought-iron sign hanging from one of the brick shop fronts. Outside a bookstore called Inkwell’s, I see a motley gaggle of people watching what I assume is a street performer. When I get closer to peer through the wall of pea coats, I see a solitary figure performing some kind of dramatic reenactment.

The actor is a whirlwind of energy. It isn’t his youth that gives him that advantage, but the vulnerability of his performance that makes my heart flutter. He is reciting the conclusion of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities and perfectly executes both characters in the work’s final installment: the condemned seamstress and the martyr Sydney Carton. He manipulates his voice expertly between a high-pitched Cockney and a husky baritone eerily close to Father’s tone. Once the seamstress’ death is nigh, he dramatizes Carton’s famous monologue, left unuttered in the novel. The soliloquy is captivating.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

As he bows his head, the audience is left in suspense, waiting on tip-toes to see if there is more. In those moments, I cannot hear fog horns or factory whistles or aggressive salesman. I am locked into the sincere delivery of one of literature’s most famous concluding sequences. I can see how much the actor believes in the words, how they fuel his white-knuckled fist held frozen over his heart, how they pulse in the crow’s feet radiating from the corner of his closed eyes.

When he finally lifts his head, I remember to breathe. Despite a thin glaze of tears over them, his eyes seem to grin in the satisfaction of having done the words justice. I wonder if I’d ever be the same. Every individual applauds fervently, some whooping and hollering, while others remove dollar bills from their pockets.

His performance was magical.

The young man removes the bowler’s hat from his head and shakes the hands of those who fill his coffers. He displays such charisma, such sincerity, such joie de vivre. As he works through the crowd, I can’t control my racing pulse. No man back home ever elicited this kind of response in me, despite several having tried, probably motivated more from a desire to impress Father than to win me over. My saliva evaporates and as his grinning eyes find my fluttering ones, I wonder if I’ll survive the encounter with his bubbly ease. He is so…American.

“You look like a gal worth meeting,” he says, offering his hand. “Enjoy the show?”

His accent is coarse and unrefined, nothing like the characters he had been impersonating not two minutes ago. But those grinning eyes held me prisoner. I don’t have to ask to know this man was worth meeting.

“I’ve read it half a dozen times,” I reply, trying to conceal how taken I am. I shake his hand and go to pull it away, but he tightens his grip. “Though hearing it performed aloud does give it a life of its own.”

“Fresh off the boat, huh?”

“Pardon?” I can’t help placing my palm on my chest.

“That accent ain’t from this side of the Pond. London?”

My cheeks flush and I nod.

“I knew you were worth meeting,” he says. He kisses my hand before letting go.

“Is this how you make your living?” As the words float in the air between us, I realize they are tinged with a hint of judgment, involuntary though it is.

“Dickens got paid by the word, my fair lady,” he answers quickly. “It’s no coincidence his entire first paragraph is one sentence. Check again if you don’t believe me, but why shouldn’t we profit for saying the words he got paid to write, every cent of them?”

“I suppose I never…”

“And acting is simply a passion project. I work…here.”

He points to the wrought-iron sign hanging outside Inkwell’s.

“A bookkeeper?” I ask, trying to choke down the laughter bubbling up my throat. A chuckle hiccups out of my mouth and after that, it is beyond my help.

“Something funny?”

I can only respond after composing myself.

“My family disowned me for my love of literature,” I explain. “Father found my poetry inflammatory. His socio-elite sensibilities were easily offended. It’s quite ironic that the first American I meet works at a bookshop.”

“I knew you were worth meeting, Miss…”

“Stella,” I finish his sentence. “Stella Darling.”

“Darling indeed,” he replies. “Can I let you in on a little secret? Bookworm to bookworm?”

He beckons me closer and I lean my ear closer to his lips.

“I’m not a bookkeeper. I’m Inkwell’s resident playwright.”

I can’t help but flash a smile to the leaden sky above us.

“Well, your passion for the written art shows in your performance,” I say. “It was lovely to meet you, Mr…”

“Leaving so soon?” he says, without providing his name.

“I’m staying with my aunt, but I can’t seem to find her.”

“Then, let me cook you a warm dinner. I live in the loft above the shop. If you join me for dinner, I’ll give you my name and then we won’t be strangers anymore. Please, I’ve never met someone quite as…ladylike as you.”

He knows before I can utter a word that he has vanquished my resistance and I follow him to the loft. The actor’s attempt at a roast beef stew leaves much to be desired, but the conversation is delectable. Hearing him describe the written word as nourishment of the soul makes me feel weightless and triples the distance between me and my old life across the Atlantic. He speaks of chasing dreams and his addiction to ideas and how his writing aims to change his audience fundamentally. It’s all music to the ears of an impressionable young poet.

After hours of animated discussion, I find myself yearning to know every ounce of him. I was his from the first moment I saw his grinning eyes. So, when he kisses me, my fate is cinched as I let all inhibition melt away. We give ourselves to each other in the waning moments of the 1960s. After, we lie in his cot, half-covered by a pile of clothes when I hear fireworks explode somewhere in the distance, signaling the turn of the decade.

“You owe me a name, young man,” I say, trying to lather him with a forced coquettish air. I expect to be swallowed by his grinning eyes and am instead met with a pallid, mournful gaze that looks alien on his face.

“Life is so cruel, Stella,” he says. “I am so very sorry.”

He rocks my head off his chest and finds his pants strewn over the bedside. As he searches his pockets, I feel scared that I had been too trusting and wonder if I am in legitimate danger. But all he removes from the pocket is a folded piece of yellowish paper. As I unfold it, he caresses my cheek.

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, Stella. You have to believe me. I promise I didn’t mean to take advantage of you. But when I saw you, I couldn’t help my gut feeling that you were a gal worth meeting. My Lucie Manette.”

I saw the picture of an old Uncle Sam whose point is screaming, “I Want You!” William Richards had been conscripted to the United States Army to assist in the escalating conflict in Vietnam.

“What does this mean?” I ask, feeling every blow in the battle waging inside my belly between sadness and shame.

“I report for duty in two days.”

“When will you be back?”

I saw two answers hover between his lips, but much like Sydney Carton’s prophetic last words, they were left unspoken. I could see the words nonetheless. He didn’t know when he’d be back. But he also didn’t know if he’d be back. Ah, how fleeting feels can be. Despite the near freezing temperatures outside, I throw on my clothing and haul my suitcases down the stairs, hoping no one would look twice at my disheveled state. Despite the wisdom that the docks after midnight is not an ideal place for a young lady, I run as far as my legs will take me.

I remember New Year’s Eve 1969 not as the day I arrived in the United States, or as the turn of a tumultuous decade, or even as the first time I gave myself to a man, my life changed forever.

It will always be the day I met, and then lost, Billy Richards.

1934

The paper-thin slices of carrot cake did nothing to quell the hunger gnawing at every guest’s stomach. Nevertheless, the little white church, situated right in the middle of an Ohio corn field, was full of laughter and love. With their hands entwined and their families and friends around them, Elizabeth and James didn’t care that they did not have a single penny saved or even curtains on the windows of their tiny house. No, they had each other, and that was more than enough.

Months later, when the baby started growing inside her and James started working longer at the automotive factory for less and less pay, big-dreamer Elizabeth began to detest the bare walls of their modest home.

“I wish I had a palace for my family to live in,” she thought wistfully, picturing a storybook castle. “It would have rooms upon rooms of beautiful furniture and fancy decorations.”

But buying ritzy fabrics was just a dream when affording two bags of flour a week was living in luxury.

The fresh bride eyed the half-empty sack laying on the kitchen counter. The blue, flowered fabric wasn’t silk or brocade, but it would be more than enough.

Several months later, Elizabeth struggled to work the pedal of the Singer sewing machine while simultaneously feeding the coarse cotton through the presser foot. Her swollen belly proved a constant obstacle. But the persistent mama-to-be was tired of undecorated windows. Soon enough, she had blue flowered curtains proudly fluttering in the breeze.

James arrived late that night, eyes drooping and dirt smeared across his brow. His lips quirked into a smile as soon as he noticed the brand-new additions to his home.

“Well, you’ve been busy, haven’t you, darling?” he exclaimed, pressing a feather-light kiss to his wife’s temple. He gestured to the scraps of flour sack in a neat pile on the table. “You even have enough left to make yourself something special!”

Elizabeth spent the next day stitching together the leftover cotton into an apron. She tied it proudly around her waist, struggling to knot the ties herself, before scraping together carefully rationed butter and the garden’s first strawberries of the year into a simple pie. It was the first pie of hundreds she would bake in the trusty floral smock.

1972

Joy watched Nana’s knobbly hands grip the wooden rolling pin and push the dough thinner and thinner against the counter. When she had rotated, rolled, rotated, rolled enough times to form a wide circle, she set down the pin with a clunk and brushed her hands on her apron, dotted with cornflower blue daisies.

“There,” she declared proudly, smiling at her granddaughter. “Pumpkin, can you get the pie plate for me?”

For eight-year-old Joy, climbing up the white metal step-stool to reach the cabinet and delicately balancing the ceramic dish was one of the biggest responsibilities she ever had. The little girl treated it as such, slowly gliding over the tile floor to her awaiting grandmother.

“Perfect.” Nana took the dish and carefully covered it with the pastry dough. The small girl gazed in awe as leftover bits of dough were expertly trimmed away from the rim, Nana’s skilled fingers quickly pressing ruffles into the top edges of crust.

Standing on tiptoe, Joy grabbed the rolling pin off the counter and held it reverently in her palms. “Why does it take so long to make pie, Nana? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just go to the supermarket and pick one up, like Mama does?”

The older woman let out a long, hearty chuckle, continuing the pattern of making ridges in the dough. “It would be easier, but not nearly as satisfying. A good pie is made with love, and that takes time. You can’t rush these things. If you don’t roll the dough enough, you won’t have enough to cover your pie pan.”

“And then you wouldn’t have enough crust for pie!” Joy gasped, horrified.

“But, if you roll the dough too much, it will be too fragile and will rip when you try to move it.” Nana finished fluting the crust and gathered the scraps together, pressing them between her palms to make a small ball.

“Come here,” she said, untying the apron from around her waist. She dropped the floral garment over the smaller girl’s head and looped the ties around her torso twice before tying it secure. “Let’s give it a try.”

Joy awkwardly pushed the pin against the dough, barely smashing the ball. She tried a few more times. Her handiwork looked nothing like Nana’s smooth crust.

“All you need is a little more pressure, that’s all.”’ Nana placed her hands on top of her granddaughter’s and pushed the pin back and forth, back and forth until the dough flattened into a small circle. “See? Not so hard after all.”

Nana ducked down and rummaged in a drawer, her gray curls spilling out of her bun. She straightened back up with a groan, a miniature pie pan in her hand. “We can make a second one, just for you,” she said with a grin. “Just don’t tell that Mama of yours I let you eat it all.”

1982

Joy couldn’t fight the lump rising in her throat as she watched her peers, all clad in billowy white gowns, march triumphantly off the stage into the waiting arms of their beaming parents and grandparents. Mimi and Papaw, Dad’s parents, couldn’t afford the flight from Florida, Mama’s dad died in World War II when she was just a girl, and Nana… Well, Joy couldn’t think of Nana without a tear trickling down her cheek. She brushed it off with the back of her palm and adjusted the square cap poised atop her teased locks.

Her plastered-on smile lasted all the way through her graduation party. Once the last cousin had been rounded up and sent off with an exhausted Aunt Millie, Joy and her parents let out a collective sigh.

“I’m glad I only have to do that once,” the new graduate quipped, kicking off her towering pumps.

Mama delivered a towering slice of store-bought cake with a bone-crunching hug. “I’m so proud of you, hon. I have one last gift for you, up in your room.”

Mama winked mischievously. Joy dashed up the stairs and into her bedroom, discovering a foil-wrapped, square package sitting on her bed. She removed the paper gingerly, taking off the tape first like Nana always did. “Waste not, want not,” she had said.

Joy held her breath as she opened the cardboard box and pulled out a familiar floral smock. The tears that had been threatening to spill all day flowed down her cheeks and onto the apron as she held it tight to her chest.

“I wish you were here, Nana,” she whispered, squeezing the cotton like she wished she could squeeze her grandmother one more time. She always thought that there would be one more time, but the leukemia had other ideas. “If you were, we wouldn’t have had store-bought cake.”

As the community’s favorite budding baker, Joy didn’t leave the house to go to a social function without the well-loved apron. Whether it was a church potluck or a cookout with friends, she could count on being called on to whip up a batch of cookies or a pan of brownies.

That’s why she had it stored with her toiletries and pajamas in her duffel bag on her passenger side seat on the way to her best friend’s house for a sleepover… and why she was so devastated when she returned to her car after a quick stop for dinner to find her bag missing.

Missy dashed along the sidewalk in the shadowy evening, the hot pink bag slapping against her shoulder as her feet thumped against the pavement. She reached the shelter out-of-breath and tucked her find under her jacket so that the leering men in the lobby wouldn’t force her to turn over her spoils.

Back in the safety of the women’s quarters, Missy dumped the contents of the bag onto her cot. The clothes looked like they would fit well enough. She scoffed at the hairspray, the days when she would spend hours primping in front of her vanity a hazy memory. The bag didn’t hold any baby clothes, but the new mother knew that hope had been too optimistic anyway. She cast a glance at the cardboard box holding her slumbering son: the best crib the shelter could provide.

Taking a flowered apron from the tangle of clothes and cosmetics, she swaddled her child in the cotton fabric as best as she could. Only three months old, Henry just seemed so fragile. She was sure she was going to break him. She never did anything right. Mother and Father thought so, too: they told her as much, seconds before they slammed their front door in her face, leaving her in the cold Ohio winter, pregnant and alone.

As she gently placed the bundled babe back into the makeshift crib, her eye caught on a fluttering advertisement tacked on the “Jobs and Opportunities” board strategically placed to remind the women in the cramped room that the free roof over their heads was designed to be a temporary one. “Try your hand at culinary school,” the poster read, bearing a picture of a rotund, mustached man displaying a plate of spaghetti. “Free night classes offered weekly.”

Missy placed a chaste kiss on Henry’s forehead before climbing under the threadbare covers on her cot. She dreamed of homemade pasta and another life, one with no worries of where the next meal would come from or of letting others down. She dreamed of Paris and London and finding a love who would never leave her. She dreamed.

2000

With Henry settled in at Brown University, on a full ride nonetheless, Missy finally allowed herself to travel the world. For eighteen years, she had done everything from bussing tables, scrubbing dishes, and managing dramatic, hormonal teenage drive-through workers to catering for upscale weddings-- all to give Henry a roof over his head and a chance to succeed. And succeed he had. It was time for Missy to live her own dreams.

She packed up her belongings and left everything but a single suitcase in a storage unit before boarding a one-way flight to Europe. Just one cardboard box remained in the apartment, forgotten in a dusty corner of a closet.

The new tenant, a twenty-two year old entrepreneur who was determined to be the Midwest’s next multi-billionaire, discovered the disintegrating box when he was hanging up his suits. He barely glanced at the cookbooks and dirty apron inside before tossing the contents into a plastic bag, to be delivered to the neighborhood Goodwill the next day.

The apron, flowers now a faded shadow of the original bright blue, hung on a wire hanger between a black smock emblazoned with the peeling words “Grill Master” and stained with barbecue and a frilly child’s pinafore for six months. Mrs. Moore didn’t look at it twice as she pulled it off the rack and tossed it into her cart.

When Mrs. Moore had volunteered to be Drama Mama for her daughter’s school play, she had expected that the other mothers on the costume committee would actually sew the dozens of aprons the middle-schoolers-turned-villagers needed. Instead, the dozen women sat around the lunch room and gossipped about gym memberships and who was having an affair with whom and which kid was going to get a scholarship to Harvard. Mrs. Moore had sewed all of six pinafores herself before calling it quits and heading to the thrift store.

The thirteen-year-old girls were ruthless as they fought over the handmade aprons. Susie even left a long scratch on Amy’s arm as she snatched a hot pink paisley smock out of the other girl’s hands.

“This matches with my complexion,” the blonde, ringletted girl snipped, clutching the bright fabric to her Aeropostale t-shirt defensively. “Plus, I don’t think it would fit you anyway.”

Susie and her possy snickered as they skipped backstage, brand-new aprons in their hands. The other girls grumbled as they sifted through the pile of second-hand costume pieces. Amy hung back, nursing the angry red mark on her arm as the words “You’re too fat. You’re unwanted. You’re worthless” screamed in her mind. She heard them every day at home and in the hallways, so it was only a matter of time until they crept into the theater, too.

Once the rest of the cast had disappeared into the changing room, Amy trudged to the basket and pulled out the remaining apron. She was surprised at how pretty it was: vintage floral print, a gentle blue that matched her eyes. It was soft, too, she noticed as she slipped it over her head and knotted the ties around her back: no need to worry that it wouldn’t zip, like all of the itty-bitty dresses in the costume closet.

“Well, aren’t you the prettiest villager our stage has ever seen!” Mrs. Moore quipped proudly, picking up candy wrappers and empty soda bottles the students had left strewn backstage.

Amy’s cheeks colored. “You’re just saying that because you’re the Drama Mama.”

The older woman placed her hands on the tween’s shoulders and squeezed, smiling down at her. “I’m saying that because I mean it. When that curtain opens, it’s your time to shine.”

On opening night, Susie let every other middle schooler in the cast know that she had both sets of grandparents attending in the front row and that no less than thirty-four adoring classmates had sent her flowers. Amy didn’t have a single person supporting her in the crowd and her hopefully-brought vase remained empty, but she confidently strode out on stage nevertheless. The limelight may have washed out the faded flowers on her costume, but it made her smile gleam all the brighter.

2018

Lizzie slid her fingertips along the various dresses, suit jackets, and sweaters crammed into the small costume closet, the only space the school designated for the drama department. Letting out a sigh, she took several renaissance-style dresses off their hangers and tossed them into a blue plastic bin. The wrestling team apparently needed the room to store their practice mats, so all of the costumes and prop pieces needed to be transferred to storage boxes and stowed under the stage. If Lizzie had known that the previous director had quit because the administration “just didn’t have any appreciation for the arts anymore,” the new teacher wouldn’t have been quite so eager to take on the theatre program. Especially if she would have anticipated the hours spent condensing the decades-old collection of assorted stage paraphernalia.

The exhausted woman tucked a curl behind her ear as she tossed a few more garments into the bin. As she went to stuff a tulle 80’s prom dress on top, a piece of floral fabric caught her eye.

“What do we have here?” she whispered to herself, tugging on the cotton. She held the blue-and-white apron in her hands for a few moments, tracing the fraying edges and makeup-stained bib. It was practically falling apart, but it was more than enough.

“Well, you’ve seen a long life, but I know just what I want to do with you,” she told it gleefully before shoving it into her purse. Her stomach knotted, slightly guilty and yet thrilled at her small act of theft.

Lizzie disappeared to the basement craft room as soon as she got home, She googled detailed quilting instructions and worked well into the night hunched over her sewing machine. Four cups of coffee, three pricked fingers, and two troubleshooting Youtube videos later, Lizzie proudly possessed a patchwork pillow made from the apron’s fabric.

“I can’t wait to give this to Mama,” she thought to herself, hugging the repurposed flowers to her chest. “They match great-grandma’s curtains perfectly.”

Lizzie could picture her mom’s eyes twinkle, the words of thankfulness that would pour from her too-kind mouth when she received her handmade gift. And maybe, just maybe, she thought, Mama would make the family recipe strawberry pie in return.