Failure
"If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn."
Well, that was a lie. Dorothy Parker most certainly DID give a damn, but she also knew that failure is inevitable. So she made her peace. In this issue, our writers delve into the annoyances, soul killers, doubt creators, and heart breakers that stand in the way of success.
A Dog’s Life
Word Count 1540
For his 25th birthday, I gave my husband a dog.
A puppy to ease his depression, get him talking again, hugging, playing with the baby.
He’d say, I like a sleeping baby! Our little Kevin, not yet two, was a sturdy, sweet child, but he didn’t sleep all that much, and he was noisy. Sometimes I felt George wished Kevin and I would disappear.
Our last year at the university had been a horror. Convinced he wasn’t going to pass orals, George stayed up night after night at his desk. He stopped talking. He poured over his piles of papers and note cards, and when the baby cried, he’d yell, Can’t you make that kid shut up? A little later, he’d get up, touch Kevin’s wispy blond hair, so like his own. Sorry sorry sorry.
Frozen
Word count 1187
On a bright morning in early March, I sat in the waiting room of my gynecologist’s office, rehearsing how to describe the way my body had begun to betray me. Each month, a few days before my period, a familiar shadow crept in. What I had once dismissed as simple moodiness had thickened into something heavier—low, pressing gloom that edged uncomfortably close to sleepless depression. I blamed the hormones, of course. Four months earlier, I’d had the Nexplanon implant removed from my left arm. I watched it slide out, streaked with blood, hoping my moods would steady once it was gone.
Life Saved?
Word Count 1127
While taking a nap in the call room, my beeper sounded. STAT. TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM FOR A NEWBORN. I snapped awake, pulled on my shoes, clipped the beeper to the waist of my scrub pants and grabbed my white coat, its pockets holding lip gloss, a stethoscope and The Harriet Lane Handbook: A Manual for Pediatric House Officers.
I headed for the stairs, faster than waiting for the elevator. Adrenaline swam through my body, driving away the last vestiges of sleep.
Suzanne Takes You Down
Word Count 1087
Suzanne might say that I had it backwards—that she didn’t break the rules so much as they broke her. In her native Virginia Beach, a sailor’s town, girls (she’d argue) were supposed to be pretty, and she wasn’t. Even in her mid-forties Suzanne would call herself ugly. She’d bemoan her looks and point to them as the root of her despair. Whenever I questioned that connection, Suzanne would wail, “You’re pretty. You can’t understand.” But peering at a picture from her twenties, I see a wiry badass wedged between two giant burnt sienna stones in an Arizona rock climb, her thick sun-auburned hair pulled into a ponytail, her long pale face facing the camera. Her tongue peeps out to swipe her upper lip, a kid pleased with her efforts.
Okay, so you’re ugly, I wanted to hurl back countless times. I never believed it, but there was no convincing her otherwise.
Birth in the Squatting Position
Word Count 475
In the final trimester of my first pregnancy, I developed an outsized faith in myself and the power of my body. Throughout my pregnancy, my New Mother friends regaled/tortured me with their stories about their gruesome long labor stories and how they’d cursed out their husbands and peed and shat themselves. Despite this plethora of unwanted information, I anticipated my own birth experience as a spectacular example of my personal Olympian-level feats, an amazing act of self -deception considering that my obstetrician, a short, balding man with kind eyes, ominously repeated at every visit while eyeballing my pelvis, “You’re small and your baby is big.”
Gardening 101 and 102 and 103
Word Count 1050
Recycled spaghetti sauce jars hide in the corner of my vegetable garden filled with the bloated bodies of dead caterpillars. If friends knew the extent of the infestation they would not dine at my summer table.
Other gardening fails are obvious. Approaching my antique cape from the street one is greeted by a grub infested lawn, a crammed row of hostas and a burning bush the size of a small truck. My neighbors, on the other hand, showcase snappy boxwoods, peewee hydrangeas and symmetrically shaped dogwoods. It’s not like I don’t try; I am constantly beheading dandelions before they blow. Cars parade by and see me bent over picking, picking, picking.
Time to Care
Word Count 2042
Only a few hours post shoulder reconstruction surgery after a fall, my 85-year old mother could not get out of bed on her own or walk to the bathroom. My vibrant mother had fallen while packing in a New York City hotel to return home. She and my father had spent the week traipsing through museums, riding the subway and walking the city streets. Just as she reached to close her luggage, she suddenly blacked out, crumpled to the ground, landed on her side and cracked her shoulder bone, which then protruded angrily against the skin threatening to break through. A dangerous situation that required surgery and now had left her uncharacteristically frail.
Dumpster Ire
Word Count 1600
During the 14th spring in my neighborhood, I noticed the trees had finally gotten tall. Their leaves —unfurled and broadened — provided canopy over a narrow intersection and my view finally matched the artist rendering I fell in love with years ago — the watercolor vision of urban infill living that I hastened to secure with our life’s savings.
But the artist didn’t render the southeast corner of my view, where the street dead-ended into a large apartment building. Next to that apartment, there was a fence, and within that fence, dumpsters overflowing with post-mortem IKEA furniture and unsutured bags of trash. The gate had been broken, the dumpster view, wide open.
Mother
Word Count 701
My favorite story is how you had to leave the farm at age thirteen and move into town, into a boarding house, because you wanted to go to high school, and five miles from home was too far to go in a horse-and-buggy. How you had to get a job and found one at the movie theatre.
Usherette. How it was the Golden Age of Hollywood with blondes like Jean Harlow and Mary Pickford and Marlene Dietrich and Mae West. And how, from them, you learned about class and flirting and fashion and all the feminine wiles. And even though you were a hillbilly girl and only had one dress, handmade by your mother, and had to wear it every day to school, you still attracted the attention of the new gym teacher, with his nice shoulders and flat belly, his college education and his two fists, perfect for earning extra money in the boxing ring in the winter and the carnival circuit in the summer, the man nobody could stay in the ring with for thirty seconds.
A Key to the Asylum
Word Count 503
Auckland, 1975
My shoes tapped along the long echoey lino corridor as I headed for the psycho-geriatric ward that I’d been assigned to. The featureless passageway was empty, no one to be seen until I reached an external door where a young woman was mopping the entrance way. When she looked up to return my greeting we recognised each other. ‘Naomi’, I exclaimed, then ‘What are you doing here?’ It was an old schoolfriend, bright, pretty, full of promise. We’d lost touch when I moved away.
You’re Fired
Word Count 1584
My heart thumped as I read the invitation to a 9 a.m. meeting with my boss. After months of rumors, whispered conversations at the microwave and clues in the cryptically generic messages put out by executives, I knew the day had come when all would finally be revealed. Would it be me who was cut, or the people I managed?
It was both, as it turned out. My position was being eliminated and two-thirds of my team would soon be in the same situation.
I called my husband from the stairwell. “It’s happened. I’ve been fired.” My voice cracked on the last word and tears began to flow.
Hunting For Boars
Word Count 1655
Gianni shows up at our door at a quarter past one. He’s still wearing his work clothes—a white smock over loose striped pants. Tucked under his arm is a leather bag presumably filled with the tools of the trade.
“Buongiorno,” I greet him, shaking his hand. “Thank you for making this exception.”
“Of course, of course.”
My father lives in a small town on the southern coast of Sardinia—if 4,500 souls even qualify as a town—where doctors still make house calls, where everyone knows everyone else, where barbers are your friends.
“This way.” I lead him toward the master bedroom. “He’ll be happy to see you.”
When Gianni catches sight of my father, nearly buried under the covers, he falters and a tiny gasp escapes his lips.
It’s Not You, It’s Her
Word Count 995
“Yvonne” and I met three or four years before covid, while working together part-time in a high-end, home furnishings store. I worked there for the employee discount and the experience of working in a setting that was novel to me, while continuing to teach at a university. Yvonne was on SSI-Disability, which allows recipients to work part-time without losing their benefits. Being into style and design, home furnishings was Yvonne’s passion, and she was great at selling. Yet, she called out sick frequently and was a high-maintenance diva, tending to aggravate rather than calm irate customers. Knowing that we became friends, managers and associates asked me, off record, for insight into Yvonne. What can we do to prevent her from going ballistic?
Seven Red Flags and a Couch
Word Count 1325
It was an impulse buy, that couch made of logs and branches. It sat in the window of a futon shop, and once it caught my eye, it wouldn’t let go. I didn’t stop to consider how out of place it would look in my ranch-style home. One friend said it belonged in a log cabin. Another said it looked like it was straight out of The Flintstones. But I lived with it, just like I lived with the tiny mounds of powder that collected underneath it every few months. I vacuumed the powder up and told myself it was just residue from the dried-out anti-slip pad between the futon and the frame. No big deal. If the powder was out of sight, it was out of mind. Until it appeared again.
The Balloon
Word Count 630
I was six months into a new job on Pepsi's public relations team when I had what seemed like a very good idea. I have a history with those.
It was 1990, and the MTV Video Music Awards were being held at Universal Studios. Coke was sponsoring an outdoor press conference before the show and Pepsi had no presence there. But the Cola Wars being the Cola Wars, Pepsi wasn't about to sit quietly on the sidelines while Coke got the cameras. We had recently signed the rapper MC Hammer and needed to generate buzz.
I Do Not Fail People
Word Count 598
Every adult failed me as a child.
My mother was unstable and addicted to drugs. My father ruled with fear, volume, and rage.
My parents failed me.
I do not fail people.
Not even the dead.
Queen Dido
Word Count 857
Catherine and I squeezed our desks together, one book between us. At sixteen, we traveled from elated to distraught at any provocation, and that day Virgil had upset us.
After five years of studying Latin, we finally knew enough to make our way, line by line, through the Aeneid, where Dido had thrown herself on the funeral pyre she tricked her beloved sister into building and, as if that weren’t a sure enough way to die, she was stabbing herself with Aeneas’ own sword.
We translated the words, searched each line for the verb, located the direct object and its string of matching modifiers.
The Fading Light
Word Count 303
In my house are many books.
I can no longer read the books that line our shelves. Not those patiently waiting, not those well-thumbed and scribbled in. My vision is deteriorating. Failing. The print swims across the page, the individual letters indistinguishable, doubling or masquerading as other letters, the words they create incomprehensible.
I tell the books, I can still love you, your material selves, your words so carefully encompassed, though I can make little sense of them. I can still say, You are welcome in this place.