Jenna

Jenna was a friend of mine then,

not because of a shared history in classrooms or on softball teams

or mutual interests, like favorite bands or movies,

but she was my roommate in the eight-week French study abroad program,

and we didn’t know anyone else well enough at that point

to find our destined place in a smaller clique

among the fifty or so students in the program.

So when Jenna asked me if I wanted to go with her somewhere,

I said okay, and we had a good time together.

We had nothing from the past to refer to,

so our fleeting relationship was entirely focused on the present moment.

Look at that pretty building!  Look at that dog!

Are you hungry?  Let’s get a drink here.

She was much taller than me,

with light brown hair spilling all the way down her back.

She wore long flowing multicolored skirts

with white tank tops and multitudes of cheap plastic bangles

and ugly Birkenstock sandals.

She probably showered like every three days,

and picked her nose when she thought no one was looking,

but she never lacked for suitors,

both among the clean-cut American boys in khaki shorts,

bewildered by European apathy in customer service situations,

and among the locals and other tourists.

She complained of grabby hands on the train, on the bus,

in the theater, and on the public square.

Certainly no one was trying to grab me,

so although I was outwardly sympathetic,

I was also a little jealous.

Anyway, maybe a week before she met her new best friend

and three weeks before she found a Belgian lover,

to the chagrin of the program director and probably her parents,

she asked me to accompany her to the grave of her favorite poet,

no one I had ever heard of.

Jacques something?  I don’t remember.

But when she asked me to go somewhere,

I said okay,

because I didn’t have any other plans

and didn’t feel like doing homework alone in another country.

So we rode a train out of the city, which,

although encouraged by program staff and fellow students,

felt like we were breaking the rules somehow.

Then we took a small bus

and were dropped off about three blocks from a tiny, silent church.

I couldn’t imagine any parishioners had worshipped there in years.

It was a hot day, and Jenna complained about blisters on her feet,

but there was nowhere to buy bandages.

And we wandered around this noiseless, forgotten graveyard,

no birdsong or chattering squirrels to be heard,

my face burning in the sun,

my back wet with slick sweat,

trying to read the faded inscriptions on the light grey granite headstones.

Occasionally we’d marvel at a particularly old birth or death date—1742!

But we wandered that small graveyard for about half an hour

and could not find her tragic poet.

Maybe this is the wrong graveyard, she mused.

Or he probably died in poverty and didn’t have a marked grave.

Still, it was nice to get out of the city for a bit, wasn’t it?

An old man squeezed her ass on the bus ride back to the train station

and winked at her in response to her incensed glare.

I looked out the windows at the green countryside speeding past me.

For the rest of the ride home, we were both lost in our own thoughts,

lonely in each other’s company.

Gainfully Employed in 1995

Back when I was looking for summer jobs,

I put in applications for places where

I would probably rather shop than work.

Back then, if I tried to imagine a dream job,

besides “famous writer,”

it usually involved spending cold, rainy days

surrounded by novels and travel guides

and movies and CDs

and cookbooks and 30-day self-help solutions

for problems you didn’t even know you had.

Probably some big chain bookstore with leather couches

and a coffee shop or café,

filled with teens killing time before a movie,

laughing too loud at a dumb joke,

or an awkward couple on a first date.

After all, I have always been a creature of the suburbs.

Anyway, I didn’t get called for those types of jobs.

The only place that deigned to hire me

was a dry cleaners drop-off location

in Highland, Indiana, next to a Subway.

They hired my mom at the same time as me,

and they taught us how to sort and tag the clothing.

There were different colored tags for each day of the week,

special tags for delicate items, like silks,

special tags for same-day jobs, and

special tags for suedes and leathers.

If you collected a pile of men’s dress shirts,

you needed to mark how starchy they wanted the collars.

If a blouse had fragile shell buttons,

they needed to be covered with foil so they didn’t break.

All this tagged clothing needed to be put in the correct bins.

It was shockingly easy to mess up,

which my mom did too often,

and she was rather brutally let go.

I should probably have quit alongside her in protest,

but I needed the money and felt an obligation

to see this through the summer,

my first summer job.

There is nothing that upsets me more

than being yelled at,

and this job involved a lot of scolding.

There were customers who yelled at me,

in particular, the man who was disappointed

that I had failed to tag his clothes as “same day.”

He lamented that he would be forced to wear

“mismatching shades of black.”

My manager yelled at me too,

with her raspy cigarette voice,

when I inevitably made some mistake or other.

I could never rectify the situation;

the clothes in question were always still at the plant.

Nothing to do but apologize and promise

it would never happen again,

a promise I broke repeatedly.

One day my manager,

whose name I can’t recall,

but it was some kind of Region Lady name

like “Pam” or “Barb,”

felt that my white summer dress

I had bought at one of those discount stores

was inappropriate for work

and forced me to wear some black button-down shirt

over my dress,

like a nun’s habit draped across the shoulders of a slut in training,

and I felt shamed and wronged.

I had coworkers with curly permed hair and teased bangs

and adult problems that I didn’t understand,

like children and ex-husbands.

And always the baking bread of Subway

perfumed the air,

and I both hated it and greedily desired it.

I made minimum wage then,

$4.25 an hour, I believe.

So when I did break down

and get a Subway sandwich after work,

it represented an hour of drudgery

buried in clothes on wire hangers

and covered in clear plastic.

I think my manager was sad to see me go

at the end of the summer,

or maybe that’s just how I remember it.

But I was relieved,

as though a death sentence had been commuted,

thirsty for freedom

and my freshman year at college.

The History of Humankind

One day, an ape picked up a small stone tool,

became a human, turned into a fool.

The humans harnessed flame and made the wheel,

built many weapons of iron and steel.

Made wars, explored, crowned kings, beheaded queens,

built cities with industrial machines.

Wrote books, freed slaves, built schools—we’re not so bad.

Sent rockets blasting off from our launch pads.

Always connected, never once alone.

Now lonely dumb apes, glued to our smart phones.

Why Kevin Ultimately Stayed in That Horrible Marriage (A Fictional Love Story)

Because of his two kids, one of whom had just turned three

Because he was pretty sure Lauren would turn the kids against him if he left

Because they still had $300,000 left on the mortgage

Because they had $80,000 in credit card debt

Because they still owed $25,000 on one of the cars

Because they had already booked that nonrefundable vacation

Because Lauren cried every time he brought up divorce

Because he cried every time Lauren brought up divorce

Because his mother wouldn’t understand why

Because what was he supposed to do, go home to some empty apartment every night?

Because Lauren was drinking more wine than she should

Because he was tired at the end of the day and didn’t want to think about it

Because his sister would flaunt her perfect goddamn life in his face

Because they started making appointments with some pastor for counseling

Because at the end of the day, he likes me a lot but doesn’t really love me

Because after that pregnancy scare, he felt really trapped

Because he’s worried about our boss finding out

Because he’s worried about Lauren finding out

Because I got drunk that one time and made fun of the Dave Matthews Band

Because I’m still young, and there’s a lot I just don’t understand about life yet

Just Cause for Termination

He read the email, scarcely able to believe his eyes.

“Oh, this will not stand!  This will not stand!”

He immediately began his reply,

tapping the faded keys furiously,

the invective appearing on the screen

but then being deleted for a more cutting turn of phrase,

like bubbles exploding in a pot of boiling water.

He had been working in this company far too long

to endure such condescension from some

23-year-old consulting associate named Debi

with her pouting mouth and blue eyeshadow.

She and the other 23-year-olds in the office

squealed in the hallways about Justin Bieber concerts

or whatever these young people talk about.

She didn’t even bother to cover up the harlot tattoos

covering her forearms and peeking out just above her breasts.

It didn’t take her long to learn all the infuriating phrases,

“Just checking in!” and “Going forward…”

He would have to explain to her in detail,

while copying her manager and his manager

and the vice president, for good measure,

exactly who he was and his status in this company.

There was a small voice in the back of his mind,

who warned him that his status in the company

was actually more that of a rodent in a kitchen,

who, having so far evaded capture and death,

was more or less tolerated,

as long as he remained invisible and silent.

This voice told him to let the whole matter go,

ignore Debi's patronizing tone

and comply with her request.

Defying this voice of reason,

he clicked on “send” with a flourish

and a pounding heart.