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Flash fiction and non-fiction essays by author Rebecca Handler, author of Edie Richter is Not Alone.

Mother-In-Place

I still shop at my local grocery store, even though there are more rotisserie chickens than avocados, and small stickers on every mediocre apple. Ever since my store was purchased by a larger chain, it has felt more Disney than Indie, but I’ve known the butcher for twenty years, and one of the baggers for ten.

Several years ago, I happened to see one of the checkers on his last day. He and his wife were moving to Las Vegas. I told him that for about a year, when I had a newborn and a toddler, I came to this grocery store every day so I would have a reason to put on pants. I told him I appreciated the way he always told me funny stories about his customers. He said he would find me on Facebook, and he did, which is how I learned of his passion for guns. 

For the next few weeks, to slow the spread of the coronavirus, San Francisco residents are supposed to shelter-in-place except for essential errands like food, drugs, and outdoor exercise. Older people have been instructed to stay inside. Last night, my mother requested canned soup (“nothing fancy”), eggs, and white wine, so I drove down the hill to my store. I was expecting a crowd, but it turned out, there were more rule-followers in this city than I would have guessed. The few shoppers included a young woman wearing a mask and a black beanie, an old man with a scarf wrapped around his face, and a woman in yoga pants with a turtleneck sweater pulled over her mouth. It looked like everyone just had nose jobs, or someone had just farted. 

They were out of canned soup so I got three packets of gourmet ramen which my mother would probably hate. There was still plenty of wine left, and a million cartons of eggs for some reason. I stood in line behind a woman buying miso, aspirin, and wilted celery. This particular combination made me sad and I turned my head. The man behind me was staring at my basket of ramen and three bottles of pinot grigio. 

When the checker greeted me, I noticed he was rewrapping his hand in a cloth towel. I asked him what happened, and he said he cut it earlier but hadn’t gotten around to getting a bandage. “It’s not that bad,” he said. Miso and I looked at each other. I wasn’t sure where open wounds ranked among contamination concerns. In my purse I had two Band-Aids that I handed over to him. “I owe you a coffee,” he said. I shrugged my shoulders and said I’m a mom. He scanned my items, one by one, with his bandaged hand.

I arrived at my mother’s house and promptly washed my hands. I didn’t sing Happy Birthday. Mom had canceled all of her social engagements and had a stack of books on her coffee table. We sat across the room from each other and drank wine. She wore a pretty purple lipstick and black jeans. She was trying to change the subject to the presidential election, but we kept coming back to the fact that she shouldn’t leave her house. “Except to walk the dog,” she said. “Thank god for the dog.” We looked down at the elderly deaf dog with big brown eyes and a bark that sounded like a sea lion. 

Mom’s right. We don’t need fancy soup. 

Conflict Resolution

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The worst thing Vanessa ever did was steal a man’s laptop. And jacket.

She often went to the café with the stained-glass windows in the late afternoon, after her shift at the halfway house. Today she got an Earl Grey tea and splurged on a raspberry scone. The man was already sitting at the next table over, working on his laptop. He nodded at her as she sat down and made no effort to help her with the pile of things she was balancing: her purse, a steaming mug of tea, a small plate, the newspaper, and her red cardigan slung over one arm. It would have been nice, she thought, if men were still pulling out chairs. 

She discovered the round table was wobbly, so she ripped out an ad page in the newspaper, folded it into a perfect square, and slid it under one of the legs. “Smart,” the man said. Vanessa nodded. He continued, “Originally I was sitting there. But then I moved over here.” Vanessa said nothing and turned to the crossword. His comment was what Vanessa’s mother would have described as “non-information,” something Vanessa’s father was full of apparently.

It had already been a long day. Unlike her average workday which consisted of folding laundry and playing boardgames with adults with schizophrenia, today Vanessa attended a conflict resolution workshop. It was led by a man with a distracting mustache and a woman in a pencil skirt that prevented her from taking regular-sized steps. Vanessa learned about empathetic listening and different kinds of conflict styles. Hers was Avoidance, as determined by Moustache. Three other people also got Avoidance, and so they all stood around a poster board and wrote things down like, “Don’t enjoy fighting,” and “Choose my battles.” 

After the lunchbreak, they had to role-play conflicts from their own lives. A woman with a nose ring had a boss who didn’t check in with her enough. A man in a Golden Gate Bridge t-shirt felt ignored at management meetings. A woman organizing a social justice event was not getting enough help with outreach, and a man retiring at the end of the year hated his board of directors. 

Vanessa’s conflict was that a coworker made too many boob jokes. She had not confronted him about this. In the role play, she played the part of Boob Man, and Nose Ring asked her if there was any conflict at work he wished to discuss. Vanessa/Boob Man said, “No, everything is great at work.” Everyone laughed and Pencil Skirt said, “You were supposed to come with an example where both parties are aware of the conflict.” Vanessa and Nose Ring spent the rest of the exercise talking about shoes, and the recent Planned Parenthood debacle.

Now, at the café, Vanessa had finished her scone and was trying to think of a seven-letter word for renegade. The man next to her stood up suddenly, put his phone in his pocket, closed his laptop, and said, “Watch my stuff? I gotta tinkle.” Vanessa nodded.

As a regular, Vanessa knew that the bathroom was down a long hallway, out a side door, and down an alley. She also knew that no one over the age of three should use the word tinkle. She looked around. There were a few tables of students from the Jesuit college around the corner working on homework. 

She stood up and bussed her mug and plate. She put on her cardigan, slung her purse over her shoulder, and nonchalantly slid the man’s laptop into his black backpack. She grabbed his brown leather jacket from the back of the chair, and the backpack, and quickly exited the café. She knew this would be the last time she’d come here, so she inhaled deeply as she left, logging the smell. 

Outside, Vanessa’s eyes widened, her heart raced, and she began to run. Her purse bonked against her side and the man’s bag jiggled up and down her back. She clutched the leather jacket against her chest. Glancing over her shoulder, she didn’t see anyone following. She ran two more blocks and turned the corner to the bus stop. Just her luck, the 40 was approaching. She boarded and walked straight to the back of the bus, past people on their phones paying attention to nothing. 

The ride home was quick. By the time she ran up the three floors to her studio apartment, she was breathing heavily, and her back was sweaty. She ripped off the backpack and tossed it on the couch with the jacket. The cat was desperate for food so she opened a can. She filled a glass with water and chugged it in the middle of the kitchen, staring over at the bag and jacket.  

It was dark outside before Vanessa felt ready to unzip the backpack. She pulled out the laptop and slid it under the couch. She found a notebook with just two pages filled in. Meeting notes. He was preparing for a presentation on sales numbers and forecasting. In the middle pocket was a banana, which Vanessa peeled and ate in three bites. There were two pens, a news magazine, a granola bar wrapper, and a folder from a real estate company containing fliers of homes for sale. Vanessa reached down to the bottom and felt around. There, amidst the crumbs, she felt something small and round, with rough edges. It was a pretty shell, white on one side, and mother of pearl on the other. She put it on her coffee table, next to her Ruth Bader Ginsburg action figure and a book of places to visit before you die. 

Vanessa showered and changed into sweatpants and her Warriors t-shirt. She put on the stolen brown leather jacket and looked in the mirror. It was huge on her and smelled of cigarettes. Leaning in to stare at her reflection, Vanessa said in the creepiest voice possible, “I gotta tinkle.” She burst out laughing and fell to her knees. She rocked back and forth with laughter, smacking her palms on her thighs. Before today, the only thing she had ever stolen was a 99-cent bottle of silver nail polish when she was 12. Now look at her. One conflict resolution workshop and she’s a criminal. She kept laughing until she got hungry and made some pasta. 

Instructions: How To Collect Urine From A Dog

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You have just been told to collect urine from your elderly foster dog. Do not panic. You can do it! With these few helpful hints, you will be gathering pee like a pro. 

First, ask your children to do it. Remind them of the 3,000 school lunches you have made (you have done the math). The child who volunteers will be the same one who once scooped up a dead possum with a shovel and dropped it into a garbage bag. This child is unfazed by disgusting tasks. 

Wake up before the dog and get your own pee over with. Greet your child. Do not take it personally when she growls at you because it is still dark outside. Tell her to put on shoes and latex gloves. Carry the dog outside and place it on a patch of dirt or grass. 

While you wait for the stream to commence, sing a verse of a popular 80’s pop song. Laugh when your daughter refers to George Michael as, “the Harry Styles of Wham!” 

Waiting for someone to pee is an exercise in patience. You have done this before, with very young and very old humans. As the dog begins to urinate, you will want to exclaim, “Hallelujah! For the love of God!” Rather, in a calm voice, so as not to disturb the peeing chihuahua, say to your daughter, “Now.” She will crouch down and slide a purple plastic plate from IKEA under the dog. 

Now there is a plate of pee on the ground. Instruct your child to carefully carry it into the house and place it on the counter which you have covered in newspaper. 

Here begins the challenge. Transferring the plate pee into a small container requires patience and a syringe. Slurp is the wrong word here, but you know what I mean when I say slurp up the pee with a syringe and spit it into the small container. This will take approximately two minutes. During this time, it is important you fill your mind with pleasant images like a bright red door on a cabin in the woods, or a school of silver fish swimming through seaweed.

Seal the container of pee and dispose of everything else: the purple plate, the gloves, the newspaper, the daughter. Just kidding. Hug that daughter tight because you love her. You will remember this moment five hours later when you are with her at urgent care. She will fall down at school and gash her hip. It won’t require stitches, only bandages and three episodes of Brooklyn 99. 

Collecting pee from an old dog is easy.  

Half

I was barefoot running across a cricket field. A woman in a red headband grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward a pen filled with cute black puppies. “Half Saint Bernard, half Man,” she explained. She said it was a new breed and tried to sell me on the perks. Much smarter than a regular dog. Still snuggly, just more opinionated. Less of a pet, more of a peer. 

I woke up to the sound of the ceiling fan whirring overhead. I was on vacation in Perth, where I used to live, and where it was summer in January. 

Over coffee, I told a friend about the dream. “Sounds pretty disturbing,” she said. I told her that maybe one of the dogmen would escape but sadly wouldn’t be able to live free from exploitation. “Like Daryl Hannah in Splash,” she said. Outside the café was a large poodle mix tied to a parking meter. 

After saying goodbye, I decided to walk through my old neighborhood. It had been eighteen months since I lived in the brick house with the long corridor and broken bathroom mirror. I inferred from the car in the driveway and the punching bag on the porch that the house was occupied. Standing in the harsh sun, I waited for someone to appear. I could have knocked, but what would I have said? This is where I used to live? And then what? Was I expecting to be invited in to see my old house without my television, my high-speed blender, my children? 

A few days later when I returned to the house, I noticed the overgrown weeds. A fly briefly entered my mouth which caused me to cough. I kept coughing, in hopes someone would hear me and open my old front door. No one did.

The third time I walked by the house was my last day in Perth. The car was gone but the windows were open. On my tiptoes I could see bathing suits drying on the clothesline near where I once observed one spider capture another. Something shiny in my peripheral vision caught my attention. There on the sidewalk, sitting upright, was a lone, round Christmas ornament. I leaned over to pick it up. Covered in silver glitter, it sparkled in the sun and felt like sandpaper on my palm. This is not my house anymore, I thought. I put the shiny ball in my purse and walked away. Later that night, I tucked it in my suitcase between bars of chocolate and a pair of red socks. The ball now sits on a shelf in the kitchen, in my home in San Francisco. My children were born in this house. Half him, half me. 

The Shark Net

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My husband of 17 years had an announcement. 

“Astronomers are saying that one of the stars in Orion is fading and will explode sometime soon.”

We were looking up at the sky after a delicious dinner in Western Australia. Our home for several years, we are currently back for a short visit and trying to hit up our favorite spots. This one is perched on a hill overlooking the bush. Once we saw a mob of kangaroos jump by, but not tonight.  

He continued, “It’s been fading for a few months and is going to supernova.” He was carrying a box of wine that we had just purchased and was now balancing it on one knee while digging in his pocket for the car key. 

I imagined Orion weaving his belt through and missing a loop. Also, I didn’t know whether or not supernova could be used as a verb and decided I would look it up later. But I never did, because the minute I opened my laptop I began to reread the article about the shark net. 

The only thing that appears to have changed in Perth over the last 18 months is the addition of a black and yellow shark net at Cottesloe Beach. Like the Salesforce tower in San Francisco, this addition is unnerving. What is that doing here? Made of thick plastic tubing, the barrier extends from the seabed to the surface to protect swimmers from sharks, and also to catch tourists when they drift out to sea.

I find the net surprising, and my family is sick of hearing me talk about it. Australians are brave, nonchalant, risk-takers. The net feels like a betrayal, an unexplained submission to common sense. What’s next? A temperature warning on fish and chips? 

Cottesloe Beach is a milelong stretch of west-facing white sand and turquoise water. The shark net covers a relatively small portion of the ocean, which means it is still possible to swim directly next the net, unprotected. When faced with the question of where to swim, my teenager recommended inside the netted area. “I mean,” she said squinting at the water, “now everywhere else looks dangerous.” She was right. A previously picturesque beach, Cottesloe incessantly reminds us it is a death trap. Two swimmers have been killed by sharks in the past twenty years at Cottesloe, and my guess is more people have been killed crossing the beach parking lot. But now it feels like another attack is imminent, like sharks had to be shooed off in order to install this net in the first place. 

The shark net is the reason I am staring off into space lately, and the reason I can’t think too much about the evolution of the night sky. And anyway, Orion’s star is very far away. There is the possibility that it has already exploded, and we just don’t know it yet.

Big News! I Didn’t Win!

I entered a 53-word story contest and convinced myself I would win. I did not win.

This is not the first time I have deluded myself. I once applied to Stanford Business School and was shocked when I didn’t get in.  At first, I assumed it was a mistake, that my name must have ended up in the wrong pile. After rereading the letter several times, I understood that, in fact, there was no mistake. I thought about writing the university a rejection letter. We received hundreds of rejection letters, and unfortunately, yours was rejected. Rebecca looks forward to attending Stanford this fall.

I suggested to my daughter that she run for office at her middle school. She has lots of ideas about how students can learn more, and how teachers can share classes. She asked me if I ever ran for anything and I told her I ran for sixth-grade president with the catchy slogan, Handler Can Handle The Job. I have clear memories of making campaign posters and taping them to the gym wall, but I do not remember the election result. Both she and I find that odd. 

In my twenties, I was a waitress at Legal Seafood in Boston. I sold the most bluefish and won a brunch at the Ritz-Carlton. I brought my dad. He was very proud of all the bluefish I had sold. When we clinked our mimosa glasses together, he leaned in and asked, “How’d you do it?” I told him what I had told the customers. That the bluefish was the freshest fish that day, and that they shouldn’t bother with anything else. After brunch, Dad and I smoked cigars on Newbury Street and he asked me more questions. 

Many years ago, I tried to win a trip to Australia. A local radio station was holding a contest that involved quickly translating Aussie slang into American English. Dog & Bone equals telephone, that kind of thing. I made it to the finals, and my time slot was immediately following the funeral of my husband’s grandfather. While grieving guests were in the living room swapping stories, I was hunkered down at the kitchen table furiously trying to remember if knackered meant drunk or tired. I did not win. 

Recently I bought some almond milk that tasted off. I wrote to the company and one week later I had coupons for two free bottles.

This is my 53-word story inspired by the assigned theme, majority:

The raven-haired girl asked the new boy, “Truth or Dare?” The boy fiddled with his shoelace while the other children giggled in anticipation. “Truth,” he whispered. She sneered, “Do you want to kiss every girl in this room?” He raised his eyes and stared bravely into her beady blue daggers. “Most,” he replied. 

. 

Can Someone Change That Much?

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A former white nationalist is sitting at the table next to me, reaching for a miniature fruit tart. I want to tell him he is a goddamn motherfucker and doesn’t get to eat a miniature fruit tart. But I am at an anti-racism event and this man is no longer part of the white nationalist movement. He is now trying to help. He reformed because in college he made friends with Jews who presented him with research that showed that white people are not smarter than anyone else and holy shit is he reaching for a second fruit tart? 

I drive home from this strange event and my stomach hurts. I stop at the Middle Eastern grocery store to buy some beans and hummus and the woman at the counter asks me how my day is going. I tell her that I am having a strange day. She asks why and I tell her about the reformed white nationalist. She peers at me over her reading glasses, and says, “Can someone change that much?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He was homeschooled by racists so he was basically raised in a cult.” My voice trails off and I feel my stomachache return. 

“I don’t think he can change. No way.” 

I pay for my food. “I guess I like to think that people can change.”

“Maybe like someone who used to be allergic to peanuts. But not a racist.” She sighs and hands me a receipt. “Do you need a bag?”

I shake my head. “The whole thing made me feel weird.”

She laughs. “That’s because it is weird.” 

I go home and eat carrots and hummus while finishing up something for work. There is an email from the event organizer. Thank you for helping move the conversation forward. And then something about talking about things is better than not talking about things. 

A hummingbird is outside my window, fluttering in place. Its brightly colored feathers make me think of the delicate miniature fruit tarts, and the way his mouth opened and closed around them. 

To The Man At The Café Talking On His Phone

Even before you said, “I can’t move their cheese too fast,” I suspected you might be someone who lacks self-awareness. You are on the phone at a café and your voice is too loud. 

I am trying to read the news. A sixteen-year-old girl with Asperger’s is angry about adults’ disregard for the environment. She travels by boat. 

I think about asking you to stop talking so loudly but instead run through a variety of scenarios. You might be hard of hearing. You might be under a lot of pressure. It is important you keep this client otherwise your business will dissolve. Your husband has cancer and this is a brief moment away from his bedside. All of your friends died in a van accident. You need this money. You are running out of money.

This café charges five dollars for a latté. 

You slam your fist on the table to emphasize your point, and I wish you would take up less space.

Grown men are angry at this Swedish girl for loving the planet. Her straightforwardness has touched a nerve. She must be a poster child for the left-leaning liberals. She has braids for goodness sake. Braids!

You have now used the expression “pressure points” four times in the last 15 minutes. You look up from your laptop to glance at a younger man who has just entered the café on an electric unicycle. You don’t seem alarmed by the man ordering an oat milk cappuccino while balancing on a circus apparatus. Adults have confiscated all the toys in this city. Where are the children?

Recently I admitted to a friend that I find it hard to get worked up about the environment when there are homeless people and guns. She said she couldn’t talk about global warming without crying. I told her I felt ashamed. Since then, I have wondered why I never cry thinking about the planet. I don’t even get choked up. In fact, I go days without thinking about greenhouse gases and the increase in tropical storms. 

I wonder what you think about climate change. Maybe you are in the business of saving the planet. Your booming voice might have an opinion, and I might ask you about it if you weren’t on the phone. Or, we could beat our chests, walk on our knuckles, steal all the unicycles, and ride off the edge of the world.

If I Had Wings

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“The girl was brought to school with very little paperwork, by her great-grandmother, who was showing signs of dementia.”

We leaned in, clutching our jars of water, wanting to know more. We were at Book Club, but as usual, the conversation had veered in another direction, because we stalk stories like hunters.  

“She was non-verbal for several years. She wears a big bow in her hair, like a girl from another century.”

The water was served to me in a jar because we were at Helen’s house, and her home has houseplants, beautiful art, homemade galette, and water served in jars. Tonight, there were also tiny cucumbers that looked like dollhouse watermelon. 

“She sometimes gets angry and throws things. The school’s emergency plan is that the teacher takes the other students out of the room and leaves the girl alone. Then someone comes in to talk to her.”

I held my breath for a few seconds too long and coughed. That morning I had seen a coyote gnawing on a squirrel, and now the day was ending with another strange story. 

The girl was instructed to finish a sentence that started with, “If I had wings.” She wrote, “If I had wings, I would fly everywhere and look for my mom who is living in a car.”

I could have been a girl who didn’t speak, who wore bows in her hair, and ripped a television off a wall in her classroom. I could have been the smallest cucumber, or a great-grandmother with dementia. I could have been a squirrel minding my own business. I could have been a winged superhero, locating all the mothers living in cars. 

Instead I am a person in a book club with women who drink Sauternes and talk about resilience. What will happen to this girl, we wondered, and decided it could go either way. Our silence was a collective prayer. A prayer for the great-grandmother, that she will hold on long enough to see this girl through. A prayer for the girl to learn to live with her anger. A prayer for more nights like this one. 

Big Dog

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My eleven-year-old and I were trying to decide between two foster dogs. One was a calm, half-blind, small Boston terrier, and the other was an eighty-five pound longhaired mutt who lived for years as a stray in a forest outside of Istanbul. “Let’s foster the terrier,” my daughter said. “She’s so sweet. Look how cuddly she is. Take our picture.”

“No,” I said, “Let’s get the big one.”

“He’s huge,” my daughter said. “Wouldn’t the terrier be easier?”

“But he lived in a forest. How cool is that? Plus, you and your sister always get to choose. It’s my turn. And I want the big one.”

“But I don’t want him.”

“What if I buy you some Skittles?”

“Ok.” 

The dog refused to get in the car and I had to send my daughter back to the shelter for assistance. Once he was safely in the backseat, I put the windows down and blasted Cyndi Lauper. Finally, I was a person with a startlingly large dog. It was like driving a mascot to a football game. I couldn’t see out the back window, which made me feel giddy with rebellion. 

As we were heading up Market Street, the dog threw up all over the seats and my daughter. “This is the most disgusting thing in the entire world,” she said quietly, staring out the window in a state of paralysis. She hates vomit. Sometimes she wants to be a doctor but “only the kind that never has to deal with vomit.”

“I can’t stop now,” I said. “Let’s just get home.” In the rear view mirror was a panting, drooling, brown and white face the size of a computer monitor. He looked like a full-grown man in a handmade, poorly fitting, Bernese Mountain Dog costume.

The dog threw up some more which made the car smell like airplane beef stroganoff.

We made it home and I told my daughter to run in and shower. My older one stayed outside with the dog while I cleaned up the car. The vomit had leaked down the back of the seats and got all over my hand as I reached down into the crack with a paper towel. My older daughter called out, “Oh my god Mom, this is the biggest poop I have ever seen.” I cleaned that up too. Looking back, the dog was getting himself into fighting shape, ridding himself of unnecessary weight.

“He’s just nervous,” I said, rubbing his soft head and staring into his beautiful brown eyes. “I mean, he lived in a forest. Did you know that?”

“You said that already, Mom.” She used a small towel to try and remove a piece of poo from the dog’s hair.

“In Turkey!” I shook my head in disbelief. I tend to get carried away with the history of dogs we foster, regardless of accuracy.

The younger daughter was clean now, in pajamas. She was sad that we couldn’t stop for Skittles earlier due to the vomit situation, and asked if we could watch TV. I ordered pizza and we settled in with the dog to watch Parks and Rec.

We ate quickly, on edge because the dog had started to pace. Also, he had discovered that if he got up on his hind legs, he could reach any surface. I moved the plums and lemons to the fridge, and the leftover challah to the pantry. I also put the phone chargers in a drawer, and the jar of pencils in a cupboard.

It was time to feed the cat. My younger daughter emptied a can of creamed chicken into the cat’s dish and within three seconds, our house turned into a National Geographic episode.

Apparently, while I was putting away pencils, the dog attacked the cat. There was screaming, and blood, and it was awful. In a heroic feat reminiscent of Mother Lifting Car Off Toddler, my younger daughter, who weighs less than the dog, yanked the beast off the cat, and then the older one, wisely, lured the dog outside. My children instinctively and bravely addressed the disaster while I was organizing office supplies. It was like peeking into a future where I am sipping Ensure through a straw while they balance my checkbook and interview home aids. 

I brought the dog back to the shelter that night. And then I threw myself into the arms of my husband, who was finally home from work. He told me it sounded like everyone did the right thing, and his understatedness was both a breath of fresh air and a nuisance. I put my head on my younger daughter’s lap and sobbed. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have never brought that dog into this house. I forced it on you and I bribed you with Skittles.” She patted my back, told me it wasn’t my fault, and reminded me that the dog was very gentle with people. “He just shouldn’t be in a home with cats,” she said sensibly. I wiped my face on my sleeve and told her how strong she was.

Her older sister relayed, in vivid detail, the way the younger one had pulled the dog off the cat, and told her she was the bravest person she knew, which made me cry even harder. I complimented her on quickly removing the dog from the house, saying, “I don’t know what I would do without you.” She told me she didn’t know what she would do without me either. And then she said this will make a good blog post. 

Our cat, who survived nearly four years in Australia without being attacked by a single snake or spider, appears to be fine. And our new foster, a Chihuahua, was found as a stray in the East Bay.