A Perfect Life nd Other Stories
Read A Perfect Life nd Other Stories Online
Authors: Elaine Burnes
Also
by Elaine Burnes . . .
Wishbone
A
Perfect Life
and
Other Stories
by
Elaine
Burnes
© 2016 Elaine Burnes
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
978-1-943837-36-6 paperback
978-1-943837-37-3 epub
978-1-943837-88-5 mobi
Cover Design
by
“The
Gift,”
Khimairal Ink
, April 2010
“Lily Gets a Flu Shot,”
Venus Magazine
, Vol. 2,
No. 1., Febru
ary 2012 (Fiction Contest 3rd place)
“Tracy
Arm,”
Khimairal Ink
, January 2011
“The
Game,”
Best Lesbian Romance 2011
(Cleis Press, 2011)
“Forget-Me-Not,”
Khimairal Ink
, July 2011
“A
Certain Moon,” First published in
Wicked Things
(Ylva Publishing, 2014)
(2015 Goldie winning anthology)
“The
Stranger,”
Read These Lips, Take 5
, 2011
“A
Perfect Life,”
Skulls & Crossbones
(Mindancer Press, 2010)
“Auto Repair,” 2015 Saints and Sinners Short Fiction
Honor
able Mention
GusGus Press
a division of
Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company
Fairfield, California
http://www.bedazzledink.com
Call
it happily ever after or a perfect life, it’s a universal destination we all
hope to reach. Lily plays out the anxieties of her freshman year while standing
in line. Lin, wanting only to be left alone, watches a stranger waiting on her
porch. Denny flies tourists around an Alaska mountain, hoping to forget, while
Alice embarks on an adventure to remember. Tate and Emily, friends since
childhood, team up to play out the pirate games of their youth, only this time
it’s not a game. From North America’s highest mountain to that quirky town at
the end of the hook of Cape Cod and well past the stars beyond, Burnes explores
the hopes and fears that drive us all. With eight previously published stories,
and the all new “Auto Repair,”
A Perfect Life and Other Stories
is the
first collection by the author of
Wishbone
.
For
Dejay
My
friend and trusted reader who has encouraged me every step of the way and read
and critiqued all these stories. Peace.
Contents
MORNING GLEAMED LIKE a poem as fat snowflakes spiraled past my
window. I like how snow silences the world, a cold compress salving the fevered
pace of life. This was the first of the season. If it didn’t turn to rain, as
forecast, I’d have to deal with it, but for now, I enjoyed the view and savored
the warmth of flannel sheets, the weight of the comforter, and the delicate,
floral scent of the woman curled against me. The furnace came on with a
comforting “oomph” down in the basement, and soon creaks and groans accompanied
the hot water expanding the heat pipes along the baseboards.
My companion shifted. Her left hand, cupping my bare breast,
squeezed, not with any intent to stoke desire, but with a dream. I smiled and
kissed her curls.
I sighed. What could be better? Freshly fallen snow, a beautiful
woman, new love. My breath caught. Holy . . .
“Shit.”
“Hmmm?” She stirred. “What’s wrong?” she mumbled, sleepily. It
came out more like “Whiz’ong?”
“Nothing, hon.” I combed my fingers through her hair until her
breathing settled back into its sleepy rhythm.
My heart pounded. I stared at the ceiling and held my breath,
willing myself not to hyperventilate. My stomach churned, a different sensation
from last night, when I was full from Abby’s amazing dinner—her roast turkey,
special cranberry sauce, apple pie, and stuffing—oh, the stuffing. A
Thanksgiving feast fit for Pharaohs.
What followed Thanksgiving and snow and
falling in love? I closed my eyes and breathed out slowly.
Christmas. Christmas meant presents. Presents meant buying
something for Abby. The first big gift-giving event of our relationship. Make
or break time, yet I hardly knew her. Sure, we’d been together three months,
and I had moved in last month, but that wasn’t enough time before the First Big
Gift. Not nearly enough.
Oh, why did I have to fall in love in the summer? Why couldn’t it
have been January? January would have left me a whole year to get to know her.
Wait, Valentine’s Day would be worse than Christmas. March. Let me have met her
in March. Maybe there’d be a birthday along the way, but that could be tossed
off with a simple dinner out. But Christmas. Jesus H. Christ on a raft.
FOR THE NEXT week, I racked my brain. Had she dropped any hints?
None that I could recall. I resorted to asking her directly.
“I only want you,” she replied with a hug and a kiss. Sweet, but
not helpful.
What could I buy the lesbian Martha Stewart? That wasn’t a
rhetorical question. I really needed to know! She managed a gift shop, for
Christ’s sake. Plus she had her own catering and interior design business. She
was the expert everyone turned to for gift-giving occasions. Where could I
turn? We had no mutual friends—she wasn’t from my lesbian inner circle. I
didn’t know her family at all. Besides, you shouldn’t have to ask someone else
what to buy the person you love. Right? Desperate, I went to my best friend,
Roz.
“Does she like to cook?” Roz wasn’t known for her power of
observation.
We stood at a butcher block table, under a forest of hanging,
gleaming copper pots in a kitchen that while not large, looked as though Abby
had walked into Williams-Sonoma, held out a credit card, and said, “Outfit me.”
This was Abby’s kitchen. Our kitchen, she was always saying since I moved in. I
still didn’t know where the butter knives were. Hell, I didn’t know what a
butter knife was.
I closed my eyes and steadied myself. “You have no idea.” I pulled
a fat cookbook off the shelf and slid it toward Roz.
Potluck Potpourri
.
Abby’s face smiled from the cover as she held up a steaming casserole. The
dimples and blue eyes were real, and realistically cute, although they had Photoshopped
her teeth whiter. “A fucking bestseller on the
New York Times
list for
eighteen weeks.”
Roz stepped back as though the book might explode. She looked up
at me, her eyes narrowed. “You hate to cook. So why are you two together?”
“With her, I don’t have to, which is probably for the best. I’d
hate to compete with her on anything.”
“Is it the sex? Is that why she likes you?” Roz strained to keep
from grinning, but her eyes betrayed a mischievous crinkle. “I always suspected
you were really hot in bed. Those muscles . . .” Her eyebrows waggled
suggestively. Everything was about sex to Roz.
“Yeah, and the dirt under my fingernails. Sandpaper skin’s a real
turn on.” I rolled my eyes. “Focus, Roz. I need help here, not therapy.”
Roz, being a mere mortal, did the only thing she could. She took
me to the mall. Not just any mall. The Burlington Mall. The biggest, baddest
mall in the Boston area. So generically American, it’s where they filmed
Mall
Cop
. Roz drove, suspecting, correctly, that I’d have no idea how to get
there.
We went early on a Saturday morning, while there were still
parking spaces available. As she took the exit from the highway, the building
loomed like a mutant queen bee, surrounded by acres of pavement that was
quickly filling to capacity with drone-like cars, their occupants in a frenzy
of feeding the beast with currency and removing the endless waste products.
Maybe more like a parasite, a giant fat, sucking leech, bleeding—
“Get a grip, will you?” Roz said as she pulled into a space. Had I
said that out loud? “It’s a mall, not some allegory for the destruction of the
planet.”
See? No power of observation.
Freezing rain and sleet coated the cars as we stepped out into a
thin layer of slush. We began at Sears, which, in retrospect, I thought was
brilliant. Roz soon saw the error in her plan as I stood, mesmerized,
surrounded by garden tools. I reached for a gleaming blade.
“Step away from the wall,” Roz said, firmly grabbing my arm.
“But . . . bypass pruners.” My gaze danced along the display.
“Loppers . . . on sale . . .”
Without letting go she dragged me from the hardware section. Still
somewhat dazed, I let her lead me through the store. She muttered under her
breath as we passed racks filled with garish dresses in orange and lime green, blew
by shelves of handbags the size of seat cushions, and wove among the preppy
Land’s End displays. “Nah. Uh uh. Nope.” I looked at her, puzzled. “C’mon,” she
said. And we headed into the maw of the mall.
The clamor of American commerce hit me like a shock wave. Bells
jangled, Muzak warbled, children cried.
“Over here,” Roz said, raising her voice to be heard.
We retreated into a jewelry store. A hush fell over us. The harsh
fluorescent lights of the mall gave way to subdued, dramatic presentations over
glass display cases filled with the shimmering result of Third World slave
labor. I wandered among the glittery goods. I didn’t wear jewelry other than a
watch, a Timex I usually had to replace every couple of years because I forget
and reach into a bucket of water or run it through the laundry by mistake. Here
were rows and rows of watches, for ladies, gentlemen, and even Disney
timepieces for little princesses. More rows of necklaces, bracelets, and rings
with stones of astonishing shapes, colors, and sizes. Diamonds, rubies, and
sapphires. I felt like Dorothy, stunned by the Emerald City.
Overwhelmed, I turned to Roz. “Help me out, here. What would you
buy Zoey?”
Roz spun a rack of gold and silver necklaces. “God, kid, we’ve
been married for eight years now. We don’t even buy gifts anymore.”
I looked at her in horror. “What? Why are we here? This was your
idea, remember?”
She smiled innocently, but if we had been anywhere other than a
fancy jewelry store, she’d have stuck her tongue out at me. Betrayed, I turned
back to the display case.
“May I help you?” A young woman materialized behind the counter.
Her pale face gleamed, her shiny blonde hair pulled tight into a ponytail. All
the better to show off her elaborate dangling earrings and a shiny necklace draped
over deep cleavage revealed by the plunging neckline of her simple black
blouse. A gold, plastic nametag identified her as Isabella. I wondered if that
was really her name. She looked more like a Wanda.
“Just browsing,” I said, trying to avoid staring at her cleav—,
er, jewels. Roz pinched me.
“We’re looking for a nice gift,” Roz said. “Earrings, bracelet . .
.” She looked at me for some guidance. I shrugged.
For the next hour, Isabella presented assorted sparkly things.
Each time, she carefully set the item on a black velvet mat accompanied by a
look that said, touch this and you die. I remained unimpressed.
“I don’t know what she likes,” I protested.
Isabella arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Mother, aunt?”
“Girlfriend,” Roz said, engrossed in a brooch. I felt myself
blush. Not because she’d just outed me, but because I still wasn’t used to that
term. I had a girlfriend. I sighed. That seemed hopelessly high school.
“Ah,” Izzy cooed. I felt the nickname appropriate for someone I
was spending so much time with. “How serious? Diamond serious, gold serious, or
just silver serious?”
I stared at her. “I didn’t know there were categories.”
She smiled enigmatically.
I cleared my throat and glanced down into the case at neatly
aligned rows of diamond rings. Tethered to each was a small white label. Most
were face down, hiding the prices, but I spotted one flipped over. It lay
upside down and was handwritten, but clearly showed four digits.
“I don’t think I can afford diamond serious,” I said quietly.
Roz shook her head. “Unless you’re ready to propose, stick to gold
or silver. And no rings. The size of the box alone will give her ideas.”
My stomach clenched. Propose? Ideas?
I settled on a gold chain, more to reward Izzy for her patience
than from any confidence that I’d found The Gift.
Roz and I headed back into the mall and made our way down the main
thoroughfare. In the time that we’d been in the jewelry store, the place had become
vastly more crowded. Harried mothers pushed strollers, bored fathers carried
sleeping children and bursting shopping bags, clutches of teenage girls walked
together, texting or chatting into cell phones, each deep in her own private
conversation, maybe to each other. The noise rose to ear-splitting levels as
music poured out of stores and through the mall sound system—nonreligious
holiday tunes, classics, and remixed oldies.
I couldn’t help but notice that most shops sold clothing geared to
a form of female unknown to me. Skinny pants, skimpy tops, and pink, everywhere
pink. Kiosks displaying cell phones, watches, earrings, sleep apnea
machines—sleep what?—and sports memorabilia dotted the aisle, altering the
course of foot traffic like boulders in a river. I felt like a salmon swimming
upstream, convinced success would mean my ultimate demise.
“How about music?” Roz asked as we stopped outside an electronics
store.
“I know she likes Enya.”
Roz rolled her eyes and continued on. “Explain to me again why you
two are together?”
I ignored her, mostly since I couldn’t answer her question. What
was it that brought people together? Roz had been my best friend for eons, long
before she met Zoey, yet we’d never hooked up. Was she that different from
Abby? And if so, why did I like them both?
A powerful stereophonic beat pulsed from a Bose store. Hmm. “What
about a stereo? Her CD player skips.”
Roz shook her head. “You can’t afford Bose. Trust me. You only
work half the year.”
“I work year round,” I protested.
“Snowplowing doesn’t count.”
“It does, too,” I said. “Depending on the snowfall, I can do
better than in summer.”
“Yeah, ‘depending,’” she said, making little air quotes with her
fingers. “And with global warming, you’re in a dying profession.”
“Not the summer work!”
“Yard work doesn’t count, either. Does she know you mow lawns?”
“I do not mow lawns.” I turned so she’d see the back of my
jacket—Ecological Landscaping Services. Powered by People, not Petroleum. “And
of course she knows. That’s how we met.”
Roz sneered. “Yeah, catchy tagline there. Just how many ‘people’
you got working for you?”
I made a face. She knew it was just me. “It’s a new business. It’s
growing.”
She laughed. “No pun intended.”
I smiled. The only reason I let Roz rag on me was because I knew
she didn’t mean it. After all, she designed my logo and my website. There were
plenty who did mean it, though, like bankers denying loans because they didn’t
understand my niche. I specialized in natural landscaping. Get rid of the lawn
and put down native groundcovers, perennials, and shrubs. You saved on gas,
fertilizer, weed killers, water, and you attracted birds and butterflies. Roz
and Zoey were my first customers. Roz even took the photos of their yard,
before and after, that I featured on my website. Still, she was right about my
finances. Bose was not in the cards, or the wallet. We moved on.
Soon we made it to the heart of the beast, or, to keep with my
earlier metaphor, the center of the hive, where we found the meaning of life.
Or at least of life at this time of year. Santa Claus. Surrounded by a white
fence and blankets of fake snow, a path curved toward a gilt throne where sat
the jolly old fellow himself, looking perhaps a bit thin and bored, as dozens,
maybe hundreds of children and their parents, or whichever grownup the parents
could cajole into taking on this chore, lined up to list their demands. We gave
the whole scene as wide a berth as possible.