Rebecca Handler

o n e w o m a n p a r t y

Fiction

Welcome to 2021: A One-Woman Show

by

The stage is dark except for one lit candle poking out of a blood orange, balancing on a card table. The second movement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is blasting and it’s the frenetic strings part that sounds like rats running across a roof. A woman sprints down the center aisle of the theater and leaps onto the stage. She is wearing a hot pink cape and matching leotard. Barefoot, she begins to twirl. When the music stops the woman calls out, “Shepherd? Where is my shepherd?” She leaps through the air, back and forth across the stage, exactly six times, before putting out the candle with her thumb and index finger. At this point, a chandelier is lowered from the rafters. The fixture is made of dinosaur bones, bicycle chains, and battery-operated tea candles. It represents how far we have come, and how much further we have to go. The woman sways her arms overhead and starts singing “The Promise” by When in Rome. When she gets to the line, “I’m sorry but I’m just thinking of the right words to say,” she begins to cry. She pulls the candle out from the orange and throws both of them to the ground. Standing directly under the chandelier, she looks out to the audience and stage-whispers, “It didn’t have to be like this.” 

The crowd goes wild. 

Darling Dearest

by

Darling Dearest was very good at taking care of herself, which is how she ended up living all alone on a houseboat. She used to live in an ordinary house with her parents, until the government told everyone to Stay Where You Are. The night of the announcement, Darling Dearest packed a small bag filled with only the essentials, crawled out her window, and walked down to the dock.

Darling Dearest loved many things about her houseboat. It had wooden floors that she liked to polish until they smelled like lemon. The kitchen had the most delicious smoothie ingredients like bananas, frozen raspberries, and hemp seeds. On the counter was a magical blender that cleaned itself. 

A rope ladder connected the kitchen to the upstairs room, which was filled with books, toys, and beanbags. When sat upon, each beanbag made a different sound. The red one whistled, the one with yellow polka dots sighed, and the blue one farted. Brightly colored lightbulbs were strung from one corner of the ceiling to the other. The lights responded to Darling Dearest’s moods, and, to cheer her up, turned brighter on the days she felt sad. The only time she ever felt sad, however, was when she finished a really good book or took the last bite of chocolate cake. The rest of the time, Darling Dearest was happy.

Her houseboat had a green, checkered couch that turned into a waterbed when Darling Dearest squeezed a fuzzy pom-pom attached to the side. She had a TV with many channels including one that only showed episodes of Adventure Time and Full House. The TV was voice-activated, and when Darling Dearest came back from a swim, she could call out, “Play the one where Stephanie starts kindergarten.” 

Most of all, Darling Dearest loved her balcony that circled the top level of the houseboat. She liked to recline on her lounge chair with an orange popsicle and feel the sun on her belly. When she got too hot, she’d spray herself with cucumber water from her glittery spray bottle, and when that wasn’t enough, she jumped from the balcony into the cool water below. Darling Dearest read many books on her balcony, and often had dinner there while watching the sun set. She always made a wish on the first star. Sometimes it was hard to think of a wish, when she felt that she had everything she ever wanted. At those times, she’d make a wish for the world. 

One day after her swim, Darling Dearest was on her balcony enjoying a quesadilla with extra jalapenos and a cup of black coffee, when something flew out of the sky and hit her on the head. “Ouch,” she exclaimed, “What was that?” She put down her quesadilla and licked her fingers. She looked down, and there, next to her white plastic chair was a large, brown, hairy coconut. “Where did that come from?” Darling Dearest said to no one in particular. She often spoke aloud, but not because she wished for someone to answer her, but because she enjoyed hearing her voice, which was medium-pitched and singsongy. She reached down and picked up the coconut. It was heavy, like a small bag of groceries. She plopped it down on the table next to her plate. 

Darling Dearest had never seen a coconut in person, but she had read about them in The Encyclopedia of Fruit.

She took a bite of quesadilla, and stared at the coconut. She took a sip of coffee and stared at the coconut. Finally, it began to roll from side to side. Darling Dearest was not scared. She knew that the best surprises often came in the form of interruptions. 

The coconut began to speak. “Hello!” it said. “Nice to see you.” The voice was low-pitched and friendly sounding. 

Darling Dearest adjusted her sunflower hair clip and leaned down to speak to the coconut. “Hello!”

“Would you mind letting me out of here?” 

“Do you want me to cut you open?” Darling Dearest asked.

“Yes please. I’ll stay to one side.”

Darling Dearest told the coconut that she’ll just be a minute, and went to the upstairs room where she kept her machete in a leather case hanging on a wall hook. 

“I’m back. Are you on the right side or the left side?”

“If you’re looking at the coconut, I’m on the left.”

Darling Dearest gave the coconut one strong whack and it split right down the middle. There, standing on the left half was a tiny man wearing a brown three-piece suit and a red necktie. He smiled and waved. “Well isn’t this a glorious view?” he said. “Would you mind helping me out so I can get a better look?” 

The tiny man gracefully leapt into Darling Dearest’s open palm. He dusted himself off and small white flakes blew off his body into the warm air. He stood on his tiptoes and looked around. “It really is spectacular,” he said. “I can see why you love it here.” His voice was loud, given the size of his body. “Are you drinking coffee, Darling Dearest?” he asked, craning his head over his shoulder, staring at the table. 

“How do you know my name?”

The tiny man took a deep breath and said, “I am your grandfather.” 

She leaned over and stared at his miniscule bushy eyebrows and chin dimple. “Grandpa! Why are you so small and how did you get inside of a coconut?”

Her grandfather rested his hands on the tops of his thighs, took another deep breath, began speaking and did not stop until the coffee was cold and the sun had set. He told his granddaughter what happened after the government told everyone to Stay Where You Are. Many people got sick from the virus and some people died. Darling Dearest’s parents had both gotten sick, but thankfully recovered. He spoke of Darling Dearest’s grandmother, who smoked clove cigarettes and wrote rhyming poems about nature. He said their love was like a pavlova, sweet and filling without ever feeling like you’d had too much. The tiny man’s tiny eyes filled with tears when he described the moment of his wife’s death, when he held her hand and promised he would always love her. 

“And that’s when the shrinking began.”

Darling Dearest wiped her tears and said quietly, “The shrinking?”

“Soon after your grandmother died, I began to shrink. Slowly at first, but then very quickly. Soon my wedding ring fit my wrist.”

Darling Dearest had read many books but never one about a shrinking disease. “Were you scared?”

“Yes.” The tiny man held his index finger up towards the sky. “Until I remembered my coconut collection.” He smiled. “Do you collect anything?”

“Shells,” she said softly, “And duck figurines.”

“Did you know that coconuts stop people from shrinking?” Darling Dearest had not read this in The Encyclopedia of Fruit.

Darling Dearest looked around at her balcony and inside to the upstairs room with the rainbow lights and the farting beanbag. She could not imagine living inside of a coconut. 

“But you’re ok? You don’t have the virus?”

“I’m more than ok, Darling Dearest. Never been healthier. And you. Look at you. You have taken good care of yourself, being alone on this houseboat. I am proud of you.”

She was happy her grandfather was here. At night, he slept next to her on the couch, curled up on a bamboo coaster.

In the morning, they both noticed his feet were hanging off the coaster and his vest was tight around the middle. After a breakfast of coffee and scones, followed by a refreshing swim, Darling Dearest stared at her grandfather. Crouching down to look into his eyes, she declared, “I think you’ve grown, Grandpa.”

He smiled. “I also noticed this, Darling Dearest, but I didn’t want to say anything until after our swim. Indeed, I have grown nearly one inch since I arrived yesterday. I think it is because I am no longer sad.”

The next several days were filled with storytelling and smoothie making. And all the while, Darling Dearest’s grandfather kept growing. 

“I don’t think I need to live in a coconut anymore Darling Dearest,” her grandfather announced one afternoon, after an episode of Adventure Time.

“You wouldn’t fit in one, Grandpa!” They both laughed. 

Darling Dearest had also noticed something changing within herself. She had really enjoyed living on her own for quite some time, but her grandfather’s arrival had made her realize there was nothing quite like the company of someone you love.

“Grandpa?” Darling Dearest said, placing her hand on his. “Would you like to stay here with me?”

“I would like that very much,” he replied.

Darling Dearest sighed with happiness. And then the two of them played backgammon. They didn’t even notice when the first star appeared. 

Conflict Resolution

by

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. 

The Run-In

by

I ran into myself today. She was waiting for the bus, wearing a floral print baby doll dress, a black ribbon choker necklace, and clunky black shoes. She had a pixie haircut, deep purple lipstick, and had just recently turned twenty. Black leather bag slung over one shoulder, she was reading the bus schedule posted next to the shelter.

I pulled over and popped on my hazards. I slammed the door and walked towards her. “Hey!” I called out.

She looked over and seemed annoyed and not at all surprised. “Hey yourself,” she said, glancing at my white sneakers. “Or myself. Whatever.”

She smelled like clove cigarettes.

“What are you doing here?” I said, jamming my car keys in the back pocket of my jeans. “You’re not supposed to be here.” I had left my sunglasses in the car and was now squinting at her.

“Well I’m here.” Me at twenty was snarky. She was also chewing gum.

“But you don’t live in San Francisco yet.” I lived in Boston in my twenties.

She scowled. “I’m visiting.”

“Visiting who?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Of course I did know, once I thought about it. “Philippe,” I said finally, shaking my head.

Philippe was a French exchange student I had met earlier that year, in Boston when I was nineteen. He and I worked at the same Tex-Mex restaurant until he moved to San Francisco on a whim, at least it had seemed that way at the time. Of course it wasn’t a whim. His French girlfriend was in San Francisco and he moved here to reunite with her.

This me standing in front of me didn’t know this yet. She had had dinner with Philippe last night. They kissed in the car and he told her he loved her. Then he went across town to fuck his girlfriend but I didn’t find this out until tomorrow.

“He’s not worth it,” I said to my younger self.

“Maybe not,” she said, shrugging. At this point, she was already regretting flying out here for a long weekend to visit Philippe from La Caverna. Tomorrow he will call her, sobbing, saying he’s still in love with Anne-Marie, Anne-Margaritte, Anne-Something. I won’t cry because I won’t be shocked. This was never a real thing. I just wanted to hop on a plane and chase after something.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” I asked her.

“I guess you know that I do.”

We got in the car and she held up my New Yorker magazine that she had found on the seat. “Really?” she said and laughed. “Is this what you’re into?”

“What we’re into,” I said, putting on my sunglasses, suddenly self-conscious.

“Whatever,” she said reaching in her bag for a slip of paper. “Ninth and Judah. I’m going to Ninth and Judah.”

Grace’s apartment. Holy shit.

“I forgot Grace lived there,” I said. Grace was my best friend for fifteen years. “Have you met her roommates yet?”

“Nope, first time.”

“You’re in for a real treat,” I said sarcastically. Grace lived with two supreme slobs who played video games all day. One of them peed in a Snapple bottle in his room instead of walking eight feet down the hall to the bathroom.

“It’s annoying,” she said, propping up her foot on the dashboard and wiping the corner of her mouth where her dark lipstick had accumulated. “How you know everything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, honking at the car in front of me. The driver was distracted and the light had turned green. “It must be really annoying.”

“You must remember this, yeah?” she said.

“Remember what?” I said, turning on Lincoln Drive.

“Running into your older self?”

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Wondering when it was that I ran into you. Or me. Whatever. It’s weird being on the other side now.”

We drove in silence. I glanced over at her occasionally but she was staring out the window. Her haircut showed off her neck, long and freckled, and her choker was held together by a gold clasp wrapped in scotch tape. I loved that necklace and wore it months after it had broken, peeling off the tape at night and attaching a new piece in the morning.

Younger me scratched her thigh aggressively. I was still having eczema breakouts, hadn’t yet sorted that out with the shea butter and the avoiding wheat. I opened my mouth but decided against saying anything. She’ll figure it out.

I thought about Grace. How we were still close at that point, before her mental health veered into a dark pit. Now, as a forty year old, I hadn’t spoken to her in nearly ten years. She called when my mom died. She was married to a banker and living in Westchester. She had recently spent three months in a locked ward following a miscarriage.

Our mom died. I looked at younger me, and blinked back tears.

“I think it’s that faded pink one on the right,” she said, after glancing at her paper with the address.

I pulled into the driveway.

“Thanks,” she said, looking at me. It startled me how unremarkable she seemed to think all of this was. Later, she’ll tell Grace and the slobs, and they’ll gasp and convince her it was a remarkable coincidence, running into her future self. They’ll think it’s crazy she didn’t ask me a single question about my life, our lives.

She slammed the door and rang the bell of the four-story apartment building. She was bouncy, even in her clunky shoes. As I started to drive off, I watched her and Grace embrace. As I caught a glimpse of Grace’s smile, a lump formed in my throat. Before she fell apart, years later, before her shadow took over, her smile was radiant. It could have saved the world.

Fatal Bear Attack In Wyoming

by

The article read, Fatal Bear Attack In Wyoming. A man’s body had been found outside of a cave in Bridger-Teton. Most of the flesh had been ripped from his bones. The man’s name was John Lister.

When I was at university, I spent Australia Day with a girl named Lauren Lister at her family’s house in country Victoria. Lauren and I have since drifted apart, but back then we were close. Her childhood room was very girly, with lace curtains and yellow rose wallpaper which she used to peel back to write the names of boys she liked, as well as anything else she needed to get off her chest. Harry, Lucas, Mum is annoying. I slept on the bottom bunk and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark adhesive butterflies.  

Lauren had a brother named John who was still in secondary school and lurked in doorways. He was the kind of person who would have hidden behind a tree at someone’s funeral. I got stuck sitting across from him at dinner, and had to watch him gnaw on a chicken leg until it was bare, at which point he deposited the large bone beside his plate on the faded purple tablecloth and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

He leaned over and whispered to me, “I can’t wait to get away from all this.”

I hadn’t expected him to speak. I don’t think I had heard him say one word since we arrived the previous night. “I don’t know what you mean,” I responded, scooping more corn onto my plate.

“This is bullshit. All this luxury,” he said, rolling his eyes. I looked over at their father who was emptying a third packet of sugar into his coffee. The older couple on either side of him kept interrupting each other as they talked about a local politician they had run into at a bowling alley. Lauren was in the kitchen helping her mum defrost a store-bought cheesecake.

John continued. “When I graduate, I’m selling all my stuff and flying to the states. I wanna drive cross country and have time to think, you know?” He gestured at the devoured leg. “Gotta stop eating meat. This stuff is disgusting.”

“You looked like you enjoyed it,” I responded, wiping my mouth with a paper towel, which I then crumpled and held in my fist under the table.

“I did,” he shook his head. “That’s what wrong with everything. Humans just take whatever they want. We don’t even have to kill for it. We just go to the shops and buy dead animals wrapped in plastic for a holiday commemorating the slaughter of millions of Aboriginals.”

“I don’t think it was millions,” I said. John glared at me.

Lauren came back to clear the table. “Hey Kate, wanna help?” As we stood at the sink scraping remaining food into the bin, she apologised for her brother. “He’s such a creep. You should see what he writes in his diary.”

“You read his diary?” I asked, stacking dishes in the dishwasher.

“Only once,” she said, “when I thought he might blow up the school.”  

John ended up doing exactly what he said he’d do. Two weeks after he finished school, he flew to Boston, bought a used Honda, and drove west with a large duffel bag and a gas stove.

The article said that park rangers shot and killed the bear they thought was responsible for the attack. They weren’t certain this was the bear that had ripped John apart. But they killed it anyway. They had to do something.

****

This is a work of fiction and was shortlisted for the 2018 Peter Cowan 600-Word Short Story Award.