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Esprit Fall 2008 Home
Awards
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Contents
Front Cover:
gone
Inside Front Cover:
Metropolis
Windowed World
Sincerely, Holden Caulfield
From My Wanderings
Untitled
Meeting Marge
Volume IV
Mosaic Reflection
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Untitled
Whitman's Words
Metacliché
Stagnation
no school today
"Where's the Beef?": A (Very Close) Critical Reading
Untitled
Cranberry Sauce
Cast
Broken Muses
Majestic
Astigmatic
Inside Back Cover:
Verticalité
Back Cover:
Sprite
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Cranberry Sauce
Alison Swety
Maggie’s family cleared the table. Her
mom plastic-wrapped the leftover chicken, her dad loaded the
potato-smeared plates into the dishwasher, and her sister sealed the
lone Pillsbury biscuit in a Ziploc bag, then unzipped the bag a few
seconds later for a post-dinner snack. Maggie sat on a barstool and
slid the remainder of the raw vegetables closer to her. She
didn’t struggle to finish them, the way that she and her sister
used to drink their glasses of warm-from-avoiding-it-all-dinner milk;
she just happened to enjoy raw broccoli.
The girls’ parents walked down the steps into the next room as
Maggie’s sister crouched low to the ground, spinning the lazy
Susan in search of E.L. Fudge cookies or the Chips Deluxe with
multicolored candies inside. Maggie continued to nibble her dessert in
silence while her sister sighed noisily and wondered why Mom
didn’t buy anything sweet during her last grocery trip.
Maggie’s sister stood up and walked a few steps to the utensil
drawer, pulled it open with a clang-clang of silver, and selected a
spoon. She reached for a jar of peanut butter from the above cabinet,
peeled back the never-been-opened seal, and scooped out a large
spoonful. Maggie’s sister leaned her elbows on the countertop,
facing her sister. She licked the spoon and tossed it into the sink.
Maggie, having finished the broccoli, now picked at her short,
paint-chipped fingernails.
“You have something on your shirt,” Maggie’s sister pointed out.
“I think it’s cream of mushroom soup. From the chicken,” Maggie replied,
apathetic about her T-shirt and appearance.
“Real attractive,” her sister said caustically.
Maggie shrugged, flipped through an old newspaper’s inserts, and rippled
with laughter over a glossy advertisement.
“I love that a chain of stores dedicated entirely to window blinds exists,”
she gurgled.
Her sister puffed out a burst of a laugh and gave in to a smile. She
looked at Maggie and marveled at her demeanor, a kind of sagacious
simplicity.
A bird crashed into the side of the house with a strange and loud
clack. Maggie’s sister stared out the window as the bird dropped
a few inches then flew away, flapping its green-tinted black wings. The
yard was still there, as she remembered, but with a few apparent
changes. The swing set had been plucked out of the ground some years
ago and moved to a neighbor’s yard. The sprawling, cluttered
woods that had provided a mystique to her childhood was partially
demolished, replaced by parking lots and a volleyball court. It would
be easier to get to the creek now, she thought, although the challenge
to find a walkable path was always a part of the charm.
The lull in conversation gave the quiet radio an opportunity to make itself known. Both girls caught the song in time to chant, When you change with ev’ry new day, still I’m gonna miss you. Maggie’s sister wondered if she’d rather hear the quick blip of the end or nothing at all.
She looked over at her younger sister and thought about an autumn day
when they had brushed their way past the criss-cross of plants and
trees to the creek. She had brought a journal to record fifth-grade
thoughts, and Maggie had dragged a long stick, her makeshift fishing
pole. Whenever they entered their woods, Maggie’s sister thought,
the whooshes and beeps of city traffic faded away into a world of deer
tracks, fairy games, poison ivy and homemade forts.
Maggie’s sister pictured the piles of rocks on opposite sides of
the creek. She thought of boys and girls at a grade school dance; not
lined up against two walls perfectly, the way they showed in movies,
but separated into whispering clusters of friends. Maggie’s
sister had always imagined the rocks as little floating islands, as
turtles hiding everything but their shells underwater, the sunken
halves replaced by their just-as-lifelike reflections.
Maggie put the newspaper on the counter, hopped off of the barstool,
and squeezed past her sister toward the cabinet. She grabbed a glass
and pulled open the refrigerator door. Maggie pushed a few of the
juices and condiments aside and claimed the grocery-store-brand iced
tea with a quiet yet triumphant, “Aha!”
“Pour me some, too?” her sister asked, tossing Maggie an
extra glass. Maggie sloppily dispensed the tea and sponged up the drops
that missed their destination.
“What are you up to tonight?” her sister asked.
Maggie sipped the tea and answered, “Nothing.”
“That sounds really exciting,” her sister said dryly.
“Yup,” Maggie replied matter-of-factly. She put the
not-quite-finished drink on the counter and wandered out of the room.
Maggie’s sister exhaled loudly and strolled out the kitchen door. She
slouched into one of the green, metal patio chairs and glared up at the
far-away sky. The girl thought about the creek. When she had stared at the
reflection of clouds and trees long enough, she stopped seeing the rocks
and bugs and water and instead saw only sky below. Those clouds had
always looked distant, although the water was close enough to dip her hand
into; but when she looked for the rocks that she knew should be there, she
wouldn’t see the clouds at all.
The water had remained still unless a bug or leaf disturbed it, which
would cause circles to fringe from the disrupted point outward, only to
resume harmony half a minute later. The girl remembered a comment that
she had scribbled in the upper-right corner of her journal: “When
you poke the water, the ripples look like indentations in tin can
cranberry sauce.” She thought about the peculiar image and how a
can always shaped the jelly into its form, like a pearl. Maggie’s
sister recalled that after recording her observation, she had perched
on a particularly flat rock. Maggie had climbed onto a thick tree
branch that seemed super-glued to the glassy creek, leaned forward, and
stretched her stick into the water.
“And she fell in with it,” Maggie’s sister muttered
aloud. She swung her legs onto the patio table and pushed her palms
against her closed eyelids. Maggie had reacted calmly, yielding, like
the water itself; she hadn’t noticed her shattered reflection and
seemed to connect with the water rather than struggle aggressively. The
girl breathed in anxiously. Maggie had gracefully emerged from the
shallow water, her right hand in search of a misplaced pair of glasses.
Before her sister had stumbled to the edge of the creek, Maggie had
clamped her hand under the water and produced the pair. She had shined
them on her damp shirt and slid the newly lustrous frame onto her face.
A light rain began to trickle slowly, like drips from a maroon-stained
shirt on Thanksgiving. Maggie’s sister tilted her head and let
the drops touch her cheek before she drifted back inside the house. She
pressed her hands to her ears to hear that noisy silence, like the
churning of the creek.
When the girl opened the screen door, she saw Maggie at the kitchen
counter again. Maggie sat Indian-style atop a barstool with her eyes
closed. She didn’t flinch, speak, or seem otherwise disturbed by
her sister’s entrance. The older sister stared at the younger and
craved to know what thoughts hid behind Maggie’s unfathomable
eyes. Maggie’s sister pulled out a neighboring barstool and sat,
joining in the quiet.
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