Section 130 Read online

  As the plump, but pretty thirty-something year-old untangled her legs and skirt from the car seat, she looked around the yard for signs of the magic that she remembered. The once glorious garden plot was an overgrown mess. Just one brave zucchini plant and single stray tomato bush jutted out between the weeds trying to produce. A con- fused jumble of mismatched blooms and unwanted interlopers stuck out at all angles from Aunt Gladis’s prized flowerbeds. Long faded strips of varnish flaked off carved Bavarian window shutters that used to give the house a cozy look. All traces of enchantment seemed to have drained away, leaving behind a cold lonely home just this side of derelict. As Lil headed to the back door, still faking a smile, she reminded herself it would only be for- ty-five minutes and then she could leave. She and all the local cousins agreed to take turns visiting Uncle Gus after Aunt Gladis passed. Gladis and Gus had six children of their own, but they had

  long ago moved away. Far away.

  Lil had always been the kindest of the cous- ins. She looked exactly as she was: sweet, warm, and soft. For the most part, Lil was the only one of her brothers, sisters, or cousins who actually showed up for her scheduled visits to make sure Gus was eating, keeping up with the house, and generally getting by. And because Lil didn’t have a backbone, as much she hated it, she often ended up getting bullied into making other family member’s visits as well.

  Lil timed this visit before her Thursday Bunco group. This gave her a good excuse to keep the visit short and if the visit went sour as things tended to with Uncle Gus she might at least have fun at Bunco afterward.

  As Lil tapped the sliding glass door she felt something crunch underfoot. She looked down and saw a row of tiny cups and platters fashioned out of leaves, twigs and little pieces of plastic. The makeshift dishes contained berries and water and other little bits of something. She leaned down for a closer look as the door slid open. Gus took one look at what Lil was looking at and shot out a slippered foot, scattering and destroying whatever it was.

  “God damn fairy trash,” Gus grumbled. “So you’re here. Did you bring cookies, the ones with double stuff this time?”

  Lil wanted to piece together what had just happened, but she was not one to ignore a direct question from anyone, so she looked up and nodded.

  “Well, come in then.” He gave another little kick and sent some of the strewn sticks and leaves skittering further across the patio.

  Lil followed Gus toward the gloomy living

  room.

  “What did you mean by fairy trash?”

  “I mean god damn fairy trash. Those damn

  fairy farts leave their junk around trying to butter me up, get me to like ‘em, but I know what they re- ally are – nothing but pests. I wouldn’t touch their crap if you paid me.”

  “There are fairies in your backyard?”

  “The yard, the woods, what’s left of the gar- den, all full of ‘em. Your fool aunt encouraged the stupid buggers and now I’m left with a god damn infestation.”

  Lil wondered if Gus was cracking, but she had seen the little dishes herself. Was someone playing a trick? A joke? A smile and a blush spread across her bubble of a face revealing two deep dimples in her cheeks and one in her chin.

  “Oh, you had me going there, Uncle Gus.”

  Gus scowled. “You don’t believe me? You think I’m kidding? You never saw ‘em Lil? All those times you played in the back with the kids. Maggie and Bridget never showed ‘em to you? Not even Gladis? You never saw them once?”

  Lil couldn’t count the childhood hours spent in the backyard with her cousins. It was a big yard with a small wooded area behind, a kid’s paradise. She did recall an inordinate number of fairy circles, the mushroom rings said to mark the locations where fairies danced. When they were little, they talked about the fairies all the time and pretended they were there, but she had never actually seen one. It was just child’s play.

  “The whole back is filled with ‘em. You wanna see one?”

  “Do I want to see a fairy? Sure.” Truthfully, she did, but she thought he was nuts or maybe, hopefully, joking, no matter how strange the joke.

  Gus shuffled over to his cluttered, ancient desk and jerked open the lower drawer. He pulled out a small box, walked back to Lil, now seated, and shoved it toward her.

  It was a shadow box, the kind collectors use, with a hinged see-through lid. It reminded Lil of a butterfly box. Lil reached to take it and looked inside, but she did not understand what she was seeing. The box contained seven tiny people, each about the size of her thumb, each suspended above the backside of the box by a long silver pin through the middle.

  Lil looked at Gus in disbelief. “These were alive and you killed them?”

  “They’re nothing but vermin. I trap ‘em just like moles. After I trap ‘em I put ‘em in my box there. Pin ‘em down and just let ‘em go ‘til they’re gone.”

  Lil tasted bitter bile creeping up her throat. Uncle Gus had fairies in his yard and he was torturing them. He had always been mean. As kids, they had all been afraid of him, but this was way, way beyond belief.

  Lil had to leave. She couldn’t think straight or breathe. She fought the urge to full on barf. She tried to push the box back toward Gus, but couldn’t control her hand. Her now iron grip shook like crazy. Then to Lil’s complete undoing one of the fairies opened her eyes. The shaking must have roused it. In whatever part of her brain that was still operating on rational, Lil guessed this was the most recently captured. If Gus had filled the box as one might expect from top to bottom, left to right. She held a box of captured fairies and one of them was still alive.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the semi-conscious fairy. It reminded Lil of the cherubic girls that used to be on toilet paper packages. Its pale, chubby face was surrounded by a mass of light brown ringlets. The peaks of two papery wings poked through the curls. The fairy’s eyes rolled upward so only the whites were visible under the fluttering lids. She must be in agony.

  Gus chuckled from his recliner. “Come on Lil, calm down, they’re nothing more than flying turds. They deserve it. Trust me.”

  “Why do you hate them?’

  “People are all the same, no matter the size. You just can’t trust ‘em. They act like they care, but I know. I know how they really are. How about a snack?”

  That’s how these visits usually went. After small talk Lil typically served up whatever she had brought and they’d split a grape pop.

  “How about a snack?” Did he actually say that? This man was cruel and crazy. None of Bar- bara’s life coaching tips prepared Lil for this. Faking it, for one, felt really out of the question. Lil’s frantic brain groped at how she could possibly get herself and the fairy out of the house, and how she might help all the others in the backyard.

  “Lil, cookies?”

  “Sure, Uncle Gus. Just a sec.”

  Without letting go of the box, Lil turned and scooped up her purse and the plastic grocery bag she had brought with her. She stood and aimed herself toward the kitchen, still shaking so hard she barely made it.

  Lil dropped the purse and bag on the counter and tried to control herself enough to lay the box down gently. She pulled back the lid and took one of the deep steadying breaths that Barbara had taught her.

  As a kid, Lil had accepted a D in biology because touching frog guts was scary and confronting her science teacher was even scarier, but she knew she could not be squeamish now. This she had to do. She placed the pointer finger and thumb of one hand on the fairy’s chest and legs and pinched the pin head with her other hand. Then she pushed down on the fairy while pulling up on the pin. Without thinking, she shut her eyes, but they popped back open when she heard a tiny faint shriek. Lil looked down and saw the fairy looking up.

  Gus didn’t say anything from the other room.

  Hopefully he hadn’t heard.

  Lil unscrewed the lid from a pop bottle and filled it with tap water. The fairy weakly took it and drank it straight down. After three
more capfuls, the fairy poured the fourth over her pin wound. Then she just stared at Lil with helpless, soulful eyes.

  “Are you hungry?”

  The fairy nodded. All Lil had brought was Oreo cookies. The fairy seemed dubious, but broke off a little piece and nibbled at it. The fairy’s puckered expression revealed an internal war between revulsion and hunger as she choked the crumb down.

  Lil looked through the fridge to see what else she might offer. A jar of maraschino cherries seemed to be the closest thing to the natural kind of diet Lil guessed a fairy might have. It would have to do and fortunately it did. The fairy actually appeared to like it.

  “Are you going to bring in those cookies, or what?” Gus hollered from the other room.

  “Um, coming.”

  As Lil dumped the Oreos onto a plate an internal voice she didn’t recognize, but that Barbara had been insisting was there for months, spoke up. Could she serve cookies to this monster like nothing had happened? Like he didn’t have a troop of real-live fairies in his backyard, that he was systematically hunting down and murdering? No, this had to stop.

  Lil placed a paper towel next to the fairy. “Do you trust me? Will you step on this towel so I can put you in my purse?”

  The fairy stepped on without hesitation. Lil carefully wrapped her taco style and lowered her into the purse.

  As a rule Lil avoided confrontation, but to- day she stormed up to her uncle and jammed the plate of the cookies into his surprised face. When he didn’t reach out to take the plate, she let it drop in a messy pile on his lap.

  “What is wrong with you? How can you be like this?” Lil demanded.

  “There ain’t a thing wrong with me, Missy. It’s everyone else. You know what? Why don’t you just leave? Get on outta here. That’s what you all do, you all just leave…”

  Lil couldn’t bear to look at him another second, so she turned and left as Gus rambled on.

  “Yep, just go on and leave too. Don’t pretend you haven’t wanted to since the moment you got here. Go on and just ‘git. Leave me alone. That’s what you all do anyway. Just go on and leave.”

  Lil walked out to the farthest reaches of wood beyond the backyard before she removed the fairy taco from her purse and carefully laid it on the ground. She signaled to the fairy to wait a moment as she scrawled on a sticky note. Then she got down on her hands and knees in an attempt to get her face close to the little fairy.

  “You can’t stay here. You and your folk have to leave. It is not safe here. Do you understand me?”

  She showed the writing on the note to the fairy. “This is my address. Do you understand? It is a safe place. Not as nice as this, but I have a rock garden and a birdbath. You could be happy there, and no one will trap you or hurt you. Oh, I hope you understand. Please leave this place.”

  The fairy smiled, giggled, leaned forward, and kissed Lil on the chin. Then she tucked the sticky note under her arm and ran off, disappearing into her surroundings.

  ***

  A week later when Lil didn’t show, Gus hob- bled around the backyard checking his traps. All were empty. As he picked the last one up he felt lonely and thought about his final hours with Gladis.

  “You’re going to have to be nicer when I’m gone, old man,” she told him.

  “I can’t, old woman. When people leave me, it brings out the mean.”

  Gus stared into his trap and thought about

  it.

  Then just to confirm what he already knew

  he went out to the biggest of the fairy rings, the one they discovered the day they bought the house, back when he and Gladis were young and in love, surrounded by their kids, and full of hope. Today, a solitary decaying toadstool was all that remained.

  He had been right all along. He knew they were no good. He knew it was just a matter of time before they left him alone.

  Just like everyone else.

  Offending the Senses

  “Maria, get out here. There are dolphins swimming around the boat.”

  She hadn’t heard that excited, child-like tone from him in a long time. “Just a minute. I’m looking for my suit.”

  She was searching for her one-piece, because she just didn’t have the body anymore for the bikini sitting on the top of the clothes heap that she had optimistically thrown in at the last minute.

  “Forget the swimsuit and get out here,” Ivan called. “This is a once in a lifetime thing. Let’s just skinny dip with them before they’re gone.”

  Maria felt torn. They had come on this trip to try to fix their marriage, rekindle the spark that seemed to have gone out, and what could be better for that than swimming naked with wild dolphins? On the other hand, she had really let herself go over the last couple of years and Ivan hadn’t.

  Maria and Ivan lived in Hollywood, a place where even the non-performers like Ivan who sur- rounded and supported the beautiful people needed to look the part. Ivan worked out for two hours every morning with a personal trainer before his long days as a soundtrack composer. Maria on the other hand, put on a good twenty pounds beyond the perfect size four of their wedding day some twenty years before. She worried that her poochy belly next to his sleek six-pack would undo the magical Mediterranean moment unfolding around them.

  “Maria, they’re amazing. I think I count eight of them. Come on, you don’t want to miss this, and I don’t want you to. We should be enjoying this together. You’re my Puerto Rican water baby, so get out here and enjoy the oceano with me.”

  He’s really trying she thought. The sex the night before had been okay, not great, but it was better than the long no sex streak they came here to break. She had to try too, so she swallowed hard and burst onto the deck bare-naked. She jumped into the water quick, concealing her all-too-prominent muffin top under the waves.

  Encouraged, Ivan peeled the last of his clothes and dived in after her.

  They splashed and frolicked with playful porpoises and each other.

  It was more romantic than any candlelight dinner, bouquet of long stem roses, or gushy poem Maria could recall. They romped in the ocean together and made passionate love on the deck after.

  Maria felt hopeful. Maybe they could find a way to repair their marriage, even with everything conspiring against it – the empty nest, for starters. Their one and only child recently moved halfway across the world to go to college. Ivan coped by throwing himself deeper into his work, and Maria turned to lattes and pastries, which led to weight gain, which led to self-loathing, which led to mood swings and outbursts that Ivan didn’t know how to handle. But worst of all, the proverbial straw, was Cricket, a twenty-year-old, pseudo-rock star musician whom Ivan worked with frequently. Cricket relentlessly pursued Ivan. She sent him shirtless snap chat pictures, wrote love songs about him, and open-mouthed kissed him once in studio in front of fellow musicians. Even though Ivan repeated- ly turned her down, he came clean to Maria that Cricket had hit on him and that he had been tempt- ed. Maria went berserk, declared the marriage over, and went on a serious flan and rice pudding binge. It took the combined forces of Ivan and a marriage counselor to convince her that they could work it out and that this trip would be a good start. Now, here they were, lying together, holding each other, and sharing pillow talk.

  They reminisced about the past, the day they meet on La Posita Beach near her hometown San Juan, their first date at Pinky’s, the night their beautiful Camila was born, but they also spoke of something they hadn’t in so long – the future. He told her he thought his current project might earn him another Emmy, but this time with him as the lead composer. It was a dream project that excited him. She told him she felt ready for the kitchen re- model and new landscaping they had been putting off forever. She also divulged that their friend Sofia approached her about a part-time job that she wanted to accept, teaching Spanish to preschoolers. He said she’d be great at it. They discussed where they should go for their next getaway. Maria had forgot- ten how happy looking forward together made her. She snug
gled closer to him and let herself remember everything she loved about him.

  Maria snapped out of her reverie when, out of nowhere, the dolphins started whistling and breaching in a frenzy. Curious, Ivan and Maria got up and went to the rail to take a look. The dolphins swam in a circle counter to a swirling whirl- pool that appeared out of nowhere. As the couple watched, a form rose up from the center of the vortex. A striking, pale-skinned, nude woman, with long, luxurious, golden hair ascended before them. There was no doubt she was Venus – she stunned them with her elegant, curvaceous looks, and stood on an enormous half-shell.

  With a radiant smile, she floated toward Ivan and Maria and landed gracefully before them on the deck. Her hair continued to float around her head, though the air was still. “My dear, sweet, supplicants, you awoke me from a very long slumber.” Feeling very uncertain, despite the ‘dear,

  sweet’ part Maria decided to assume this was bad. “Sorry.” She offered with a puzzled shrug.

  Venus laughed and it sounded like the most harmonious, beautiful music ever performed.

  Something in the melodic laughter caused Cricket to spring into Maria’s mind.

  It was an awkward situation, the three of them standing naked on the bow of the boat. Maria glanced down and became even more uncomfortable when she saw that Ivan was tremendously, enormously aroused. Her eyes went wide, she blushed, and swallowed hard, looking away.

  Ivan cupped his hands in front of his crotch in a lame attempt at modesty and blushed furiously. Venus threw back her head and laughed even harder. “It’s not your fault, Ivan. I am the Goddess of Love, the very embodiment of desire and sex. And it has recently come to my attention that you,” she poked him on the chest, “are a very passionate

  man.”

  Ivan was at a complete loss for words, but Maria felt defensive and asked, “Have you been spying on us?”

  In her serene, lyrical tone Venus answered, “Quite the opposite, my dear. I told you, the two of you awoke me from my slumber. A deep and long one at that.”