Amy Souza
photography
Inspiration piece

Overcast
By Kamika Cooper
Response

“What are you doing here?”

Gretchen sat cross-legged, making swirls in the sand with her fingers. She had been sitting peacefully at the ocean’s edge for the past hour, the currents and birds providing a soundtrack for her brooding.

Jack looked down at her, trying to quell his excitement. “I came to be with you, maybe take you to lunch.”

“This is where I need to be right now.”

“I get it.” He sat next to her, wanting to put his arms around her. Instead, they sat in silence, the ocean mist kissing their faces. For him, the news was cause for celebration; This is what he wanted from the moment he laid eyes on her.

Gretchen looked up with tears in her eyes. “I cannot believe I allowed this to happen. I can barely take care of myself! What am I going to do with a baby?”

Jack wanted to respond and reassure her, but he remained silent. She had been distraught since taking the home pregnancy test. She came out of the bathroom, handed him the positive test stick and walked out the front door.

“I am no one’s ‘Mommy’. The very thought of it is absurd. I did everything right. I didn’t miss any days of birth control, we used extra protection… I just don’t understand. I can’t explain it, but I know that I am not meant to have kids.”

As far as Jack was concerned, Gretchen had simply under estimated herself and he was going to help her to see things differently. After poking holes in condoms for the past five months, his dream was coming true. He was going to be a father, have a family. He was thrilled and knew that Gretchen would come around.

“I know this is not what you wanted and the timing is bad, especially with your new job. But I love you and I am going to take care of you and our baby. We can get married, be a family.”

“Married?!” She laughed through her tears. “Listen, I love you, Jack. I enjoy what we have had over the past year. But as I told you when we met, I am not the marrying type and never will be. It is not my intention to hurt you, but I am no one’s wife or mother.

“So what, are you planning to abort our baby?”

She went back to making swirls in the sand. “I don’t know.”

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“Your Dog was Dead.
You, Likewise, Were Almost Dead.”
Response

Another Day
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Minute upon minute, the days creep. It is not so much that looking out my window occupies me or that counting the cracks in my ceiling is wearisome as it is that sighing has become tedious.

More exactly, neither my cuckoo clock nor the mirror in my main hall resounds akin to the once rushing footfall of my elderly dog. That beast would lick my cheek, or, in the least, would sit on my feet while I used my keyboard.

“Bed,” to that critter, was wherever I was stationed. If I fell asleep on my window seat or on the toilet, Old Max would stand guard. If he drifted to sleep, the slightest change in my posture would rouse him to his sentry duties.

Whether I was robed in a housecoat or a fancy dress, that canine would look upon me with admiration. I could be surly. I could be grim. No matter: he’d make sure that I was never abandoned by him.

Anyway, on a day devoid of sunshine, when merely a handful of flowers had dared to bloom beneath my windowsill and when the birds sang angrily, only the newly hatched cicadas announced that they were thrilled with life. Timothy chose that point on my calendar to come calling.

Old Max had barked when Timothy had repeatedly dropped the front door’s knocker before letting himself in. Growling, my dog ran down the stairs, toward my home’s entrance.

“Madame,” Timothy had intoned as he presented me with a parcel. “I believe this was delivered for you.”

I stared at the sack containing beans, eggs, sausages, and mushrooms. That breakfast almost smelled good. “Thank-you for porting. Just lay it on the sideboard, please.”

“It will spoil.”

“That’s of no matter to you.” I arched an eyebrow at Timothy, hoping for a stout affect.

Instead, that square-jawed man shrugged and placed his bumbershoot in an appropriate receptacle. Rain was boorish. Foul weather, in general, was boorish.  Sir Timothy was the most boorish of all elements.

“Dear One, it has been so long since I laid eyes on you.”

It had been exactly three days.

“I beg you, please join me for a stroll.”

The man was daft, truly, entirely preposterous. I liked my room. I liked the home in which it was located. I liked my dog.

I did not like inclement weather. I did not like Timothy. In fact, it could be said that I despised him.

“Your breakfast is losing its heat.”

“Yes.” If only the same could be said about that man. With every word, he looked at me in a seemingly increasingly licentious manner. I was no pious vestal, but I did and still do despise men who assume that good looks and kind gestures will warrant them to draw closer. Besides, he had not cooked my breakfast, but had merely picked up what the delivery service had left on my stoop.

The rain within cast dark skies that were opaquer than the rain without. It was all I could do to feed Old Max and to take no notice of my visitor.

“Then I shall eat it.”

“Then you shall.”

Unfortunately, Sir Timothy failed to leave after taking possession of my breakfast. Rather, he made himself comfortable in my dining room.

I shrugged, walked into my kitchen, filled Old Max’s bowl, and took a somewhat stale pastry to the table.

Timothy continued to stuff spoonfuls of marmalade onto toast. The service had been thorough in its meal preparation.

“I thought you had a cook.”

“Indeed. A maid, a butler, a liveryman, and a gardener, too. None, however, are pleasant companions, unlike you.”

I harrumphed, shoved the rest of the pastry into my maw, and gestured for Old Max to follow me. “Let yourself out when you finish. Also, please tuck all of your waste papers into the bin.”

“My lady?”

“…is retiring. Good day, sir.” It seemed like hours, albeit it was only twenty minutes, before Sir Timothy shut the front door behind him. I watched from my window to make sure that he had left. Thereafter, I descended the stairs and threw the bolt across the door. It would be better to eat the bits and scraps left in my kitchen than to chance another encounter with that man.

Be that what it may, hours later, the knocker sounded again on my front door. For reasons known only to fey and demons, I screamed and continued to scream until the knocking stopped.

Old Max howled in response to my shrieks. It was of no surprise that the birds in my yard stopped chorusing.

Sometime later, I fell asleep on top of my duvet. Old Max lay curled at my feet.

I awoke, however, in a hospital ward, strapped to a bedframe. One of my wrists was enveloped by a cloth bandage.

The other residents of the ward were either laughing manically or crying shrilly. None of the women in that room seemed to understand the utility of silence.

After too much time had passed, a uniformed nurse, all starched apron and attitude, approached me with a tray of pharmaceuticals.

“What?” I muttered.

“Your brother thought it best.”

“Timothy?”

“Yes. He signed all the necessary papers.”

“That blackheart! That quisling! Eating my breakfast and making eyes wasn’t enough.”

“Dr. Norton will inform you of her assessment. Meanwhile, Lambie, please take your medicine.”

I would have hit the tray from beneath and watched its various pills and potions fly had I not been encumbered by restraints. That good nurse, in the meantime, fed me one capsule after another. I don’t remember much after that.

That same day, or, perhaps, the next, a woman with bright yellow hair and wondrous blue eyes came to my bedside. She seemed impervious to the cacophony in the ward.

“Sara Utive?”

“Alive, not, apparently, well.”

“Your brother was worried about you. He found you unresponsive and your dog dead.”

“Falsehoods! That wazzock depends on my income to maintain his fancy life. No greater mingebag exists. What do you mean my dog is dead?”

“Respiration ceased. The veterinarian’s report indicated starvation. You, as well, almost passed on from lack of nutrition.”

“Balderdash! Restore my liberties this instant! I want to return to my home and my dog.”

“Your home has been listed for auction to pay for your stay here. You dog has died.”

“I’m leaving, instantly. What’s more, my home is paid for, is not in arrears, and Old Max licked my face just his morning.”

“You are a danger to yourself. Your brother was right in bringing you here.”

“I have no brother. Sir Timothy is as nothing to me.”

“I’m sorry. Perhaps, if you become more peaceful, we can release you from your fetters.”

“I will sue you and my ‘brother.’”

“You may do anything you please when you are of right mind.”  Dr. Norton left.

In her place was the shepherdess to whom all patients were barnyard young.

A few days later, I was allowed to have my wrist belts loosened. A few days after that, my ankle bonds, too, were taken away. I was thankful to be able to use an actual toilet.

A long span of physical therapy, occupational therapy, group therapy, and individual therapy followed. Much later, I was permitted, under the supervision of a full-time care provider, to return home. I called Old Max.

My manager sighed and suggested that I take off my coat and scarf and seat myself in the dining room while she prepared our food.

I again called Max. There was no response. Could I really have been spelled? I sat at the dining room table. Cooking smells wafted in from the kitchen. As ever, I had no appetite.

On the table was an envelope addressed to me. It was from Timothy, who, it seemed was neither a knight nor a gentry of any sort. At least, his handwriting was legible.

“Dear Sara…” began the letter. I put it back in its envelope. Not only was there no response from Old Max, but there was neither the calming cry of my garden’s turtledoves nor the enchanting sound of its whinchats. The only noise that reached my ears was that of my attendant banging pots and pans in my kitchen.

I went upstairs, to my bedroom. It was musty; the window had remined closed for a long time. No Old Max waited there, either.

While upstairs, I changed into my favorite sweater set and skirt. Homecoming needed celebrating.

Downstairs, my place was set. A bowl, a cup, and a plate all were laden with attractive offerings. My keeper, though, was not in sight.

I peered out the front door, thinking, maybe, she had taken a smoking break. Only trees and flowers greeted me. The patio next to the side door, which was off of the kitchen, likewise, was unoccupied.

I sat down, again, and lifted a forkful of the scramble that she had made toward my face, but watched those bits tumble back to my plate. Similarly, I stirred the broth that my appointed guardian had left, but other than trying to force that liquid to go against the Coriolis effect, I left it alone. Just the tea called to me. I ought not to have sipped at it, though, given that I felt compelled to sleep after it was finished.

I woke up to Timothy’s face. It had lost its lecherous quality. He had pulled a chair near the sofa upon which I had slept. I glanced from the sofa to the ding room table. The bowl and the plate had been emptied, but not returned to the kitchen.

“Did you shoot my dog?”

“No, he was dead. You, likewise, were almost dead.”

I propped myself up and gazed at my shoes. It was a pity I had fallen asleep in them. Probably, my sofa was soiled. I next gazed at my wrist. There was a pucker where a fresh scar had formed.

“Did you read my letter? I am very unhappy that St. Martin’s was the only address.”

“You’re no ace. From this time forth, if I go to pot, leave me be.”

A tear dripped off of my brother’s non-aquiline nose. He blinked as more water filled his eyes. “You’re all I have.”

“You mean, I’m all that’s between you and the debt collectors.”

“Not true!”

“You tried to sell my house.”

“The hospital bills were outrageous. A salary advance, though, solved that problem. Notice that we’re in your home?”

“Where’s Old Max?”

“Dead.”

“Where’s Old Max?”

“I wanted to hire a private nurse, but you fire all of the employees I engage.”

“Like the newest warden?”

“She’s also lost?”

“I suppose. No loss; her cooking was appalling.”

“It’s been a long time since you voluntarily tasted food. Wait! I thought the hospital had helped you.”

“No. They helped themselves. They ate up my money. I ate up very little. End of story. Dr. Norton drives a fancy care. The head of the Nursing Department like gemstone rings. It’s a pity that you paid them. Why not just let me fade and then inherit my ‘fortune?’”

“You’re my family. If I could, I would restore you to health. You used to be vivacious, fun to be with. I don’t need your money. I have a good job.”

“Old Max used to be alive.”

“Regrettably, Richard Taylor also used to be alive.”

“?”

“Dr. Norton said you might never remember. That man. No, that depraved, vile, corrupt, pernicious lout…”

“You’re none too fond of him.”

“Sara, he raped you.”

For years, I had long wondered about the scars on my legs and had written them off as residuals from my having tried, somewhere, at some time, to climb through brambles.

“So why hospitalize me? You’re supposed to be a gallant. Why not hire the best lawyers or pay the police? For the right amount, they’ll perform unlawful acts.”

“It was horrific enough that you were hurt.” Timothy leaned forward me to hug me, but I shoved him away. I don’t like men (or women). He ought to know not to try touch.

“Sister!”

“Whatever. Please find Old Max and then return him to me. I miss him so very much.”

“After I ring up the agency and get you on a new minder. You’re not yet ready to be alone.”

“Whatever.”

My new minder’s name is Samantha. I bonded with her. After a few days in my home, she rolled up her sleeves and showed me the scars on her wrists.

She and I never discussed Richard Taylor. We say nothing of his forced intercourse with me nor of his death in a holding cell at the hands of other inmates. Instead, Samantha and I sit for hours listening to bird song. Sometimes, we take walks around the neighborhood.

Over time, I’ve learned to eat. I’m still underweight, but I can, now, put solid foodstuffs into my mouth, swallow them, and then keep them in my body. Under Samantha’s care, I’ve gained a stone.

Timothy doesn’t come around so much, anymore. He’s working full-time as well as has reenrolled in university for a graduate degree. He says that he’s begun to date, too.

I’ve accepted that Old Max died. I’ve accepted that I killed him from neglect. Still, most nights, I cry over him. Like me, he was an innocent. In his place is Petunia, a pit bull terrier with fawn and red markings.

Timothy says I should stop pretending that my furry companions are breeds of dogs forbidden by the Dangerous Dogs Act. Contrariwise, Dr. Norton, during a recent family consult, scolded my brother, suggesting to him that it doesn’t matter whether I own a “Bichon Frise” or a “Pit Bull.” After all, she thinks that Old Max was a “Papillon,” even though I knew him to be a Great Dane (my doctor’s still money-grubbing as well as delusional.)

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“Things Weighing on My Mind”
Inspiration piece

The Weighty Decades of Yehudis Blau
By Channie Greenberg
Response

Yehudis sighed as she pulled at her cuticle. When she was a child, she used to chew that flexible bit of her flesh until her mother started doctoring it with Tabasco sauce. Later, as a teen, she became a nail-biter. Unfortunately, that latter behavior, i.e., her nipping at the flattish horns on her fingers, did less to alleviate her anxieties than had her former one of tearing the nonmineral covering situated at the base of each of her nails.

It was of little wonder that adolescent Yehudis felt so much tension. Her older brother, Asher, had drafted into the IDF as a lone soldier. Mere months after his enlistment, the Six Day War had erupted. Despite Israel’s air supremacy, too many soldiers died defending the Holy Land. Yehudis, like her mother, became very upset.

Providentially, at the time, Shlomo Errel was the chief of Israel’s navy. During the Battle of the Rumani Coast, he was instrumental in sinking of two Egyptian torpedo boats and in preserving the lives of all of his men. Shlomo was smart. He was confident. He was a great strategist. He was also Asher’s mentor.

In 1968, Shlomo retired from the IDF and moved to New York, where he studied at Colombia. Asher, likewise, left Israel to relocate to Gotham.

Shlomo married Sara, who birthed their children, Gilia and Udi. Asher married no one and fathered no children.

Rather, Asher applied to work at the help desk of Barnard College’s Information Department. Notwithstanding his acquaintance with many of that school’s collegians, he remained a bachelor.

On balance, Asher used his free hours to manipulate the school’s large, mainframe computer. When, in the early 1970s, Barnard invested in an Intel 4004, a state-of-the-art microprocessor, Asher was among the limited number of staff members permitted to use it.

Elsewhere, Yehudis aged. Her mother kept increasingly pressing her to marry and to produce the family’s next generation. Little was said about Asher’s singlehood. Contrariwise, Yehudis’ mother asked her to relocate to The Center of the Universe since the selection of “nice, Jewish boys” in New York, purportedly, was better than was the selection of “nice, Jewish boys” in their “out-of-town” city, Pittsburgh.

Yehudis set aside her mother’s protests and stayed put. The profit that she made on some stocks and bonds enabled her to leave her dull, management position at Westinghouse Corporation’s headquarters and to open a flower shop on Squirrel Hill’s main street.

To her great joy and her mother’s chagrin, Yehudis’ business became a terminus for party planners and locals. Her shop provided ambiance for bnai mitzvot and weddings, as well as for baptisms and confirmations—then, as now, Pittsburgh was largely a Catholic metropolis.

When Yehudis reached thirty, her mother hired a shadchan, i.e., a matchmaker. Whereas their family wasn’t Orthodox, Asher had been spending more time in hospitals, where he sought drug cocktails and other treatments for his recurring HIV complications, than in Barnard’s budding Information Technology Department. While, with great hoopla and little enthusiasm, Yehudis had at last agreed to date Boaz Haddad, then Netanel Weiss, then Hirsh Levy, and, finally, Shay Efron, Asher’s CD4+ count was hovering in the low 200s. An AIDs diagnosis seemed imminent. Thus, unless Yehudis soon wed, her mother would have no grandchildren.

Yehudis married Shay, but their union produced mixed mazel. On the one hand, he planted two sons and two daughters in her womb. On the other hand, their children grew up with a father who leaned on a cane, then relied on a walker, and, in the end, couldn’t ambulate unless someone pushed his wheelchair. Initially unbeknownst to Yehudis, two decades prior to their nuptials, Shay had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The man who, in the past, had carried her over their apartment’s threshold, spent the remainder of their shared decades in decline.

In the first part of her and Shay’s time together, Yehudis and her children rallied, aiding him with eating, dressing, and using the bathroom. As those offspring grew into teenagers, all the same, that arrangement stopped working. One son flew off to Israel to enlist like his uncle had earlier. Another entered a graduated program on the West Coast. As for the girls, they objected, rightfully, to having to continue assisting their father with his bodily needs.

The younger daughter sought a “safe” escape. She applied for and was granted early admission to college. The older one moved to the commune that had been suggested to her by her Uncle Asher.

In due course, Yehudis hired aides. She drained all of her and Shay’s savings, investments, and other monies to paying for his care.

Within a season of her selling their house and moving them into a rental, Shay died of a pulmonary infection. At only sixty, Yehudis was widowed. She had no home, no nearby kin, and no flower store (her business, as well, had been sold to pay for some of Shay’s medical bills.)

Yehudis weighed moving to a senior community in Vallejo or sharing an apartment in West San Jose with a junior roommate, but the Bay Area’s cost of living, the lack of jobs being offered by eBay, and the commute between either of her dream locations and Stanford University forced Yehudis to give up on living near her son. Instead, she retired to Cape Coral, Florida, where she parleyed the accounting skills that she had developed as an entrepreneur into a part-time gig with the Fort Meyers branch of the IRA.

Yehudis spent over two hours getting to and from work, daily. In spite of that time sink, she reveled in the beauty of her canal-laced city, was happy when walking along Cape Coral’s beaches, and was thrilled by the Caloosa Bird Club’s activities. So, she stayed put in her light-filled, nearly affordable studio.

Her apartment stopped being within her means, however, after she underwent a hip replacement that necessitated her paying for help and after her insurance provider refused to cover the cost of replacing the items that had been stolen by her nurses. Yehudis began to contemplate her younger daughter’s suggestions that she return North to live in the unit adjunct to her daughter’s house. All that Yehudis had to do in exchange for the use of that residence was to babysit her five grandchildren every day, cook dinner on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, and serve as the family’s laundress every Monday and Friday.

At the outset, it appeared that Yehudis had no better alternatives. Her son at Stanford was busy with postdoc research. Her once commune-bound daughter, that child who had meanwhile served in and then left a Peace Corp position in agroforestry, in Africa, was occupied building Earthships in New Mexico. Yehudis’ youngest had stayed in Israel. He had made aliyah, married a girl from Holon, and was pursuing a Technion degree in Education in Science and Technology (like his brother, he was proficient in math.)

What’s more, Yehudis’ mother was dead, having hung on long enough to behold great-grandchildren, but not any longer. As per Yehudis’ brother, Asher, he was still very much alive, still very much employed by Barnard, and still very convinced that his sister and his lifestyle ought not to intermingle.

Yehudis picked at her cuticle, again. Mandatory retirement had, essentially, been abolished by the ADEA. Even so, employers preferred to hire less expensive, less experienced kids than grandmas like her. Perhaps, in addition to her part-time IRA work, she could become a greeter at the local Walmart Supercenter. Perhaps, she could teach EFL online. Perhaps, she should take a short walk into the ocean during high tide.

Yehudis actualized none of those options. Equally, she did not move to the unit attached to her daughter’s house. In lieu of those schemes, she decided to get remarried.

Much as women considerably outnumbered men in her cohort, in the local dating pool, Yehudis successfully spent time with Barry Zangwill from Pine Manor, then with Yossi Felman from San Carlos Park, then with Yitzi Zander from Fort Myers Beach, and, eventually, with Avi Steingart from Burnt Store Marina. She hadn’t intended to swipe right on Avi as, unlike her other suitors, he was a divorcee, not a widower, but something about his self-description had made her smile.

Avi had referred to himself as “bald, aging, and possessed of a quirky sense of humor.” He had, moreover, indicated that regardless of the reality that his assets were generous, two sets of alimony payments left him with relatively modest day-to-day means.

Yehudis reckoned that anyone living in a yachting resort couldn’t be objectively poor. She agreed to date him, anyway.

During their House of Omelets first date, Avi stated that his wealth had been made from “investments,” e.g., from Topps Chewing Gum baseball cards. Later, he had progressed to buying precious metals and real estate. His last dealings had been with CDs and TIPs. Venture capital had never been on his radar. Further, he no longer dallied with his resources as he had no incentive to become richer.

Avi brought Yehudis to The Trading Post, for ice cream, for their second date. For their third date, he escorted her through the Imaginarium Science Center. For their fourth date, he joined her at Harbor View Gallery. For their fifth, he invited Yehudis aboard to sample galley-sourced cooking. That night, he proposed.

Subsequently, neither of them thought it necessary to seek their children’s permission to marry. Equally, they felt no need to delay their ceremony; they were getting more and more elderly each day. Their simple service involved a civil servant, and, as a witness, a pal from Yehudis’ birding club.

After a few kisses and cocktails, they returned to Avi’s boat. To create a fresh start for his new bride, Avi had had his vessel moved to a berth at Sanibel Marina. Correspondingly, he had given Yehudis an allowance to redecorate it. Its interior walls sported blue paint, not white. Its floor, which once had been covered with cork, was now carpeted.

For her part, Yehudis quit her IRA job; Avi deserved her full attention. She learned how to rub the cricks out of his neck. She learned, too, how not to complain when he asked her to dress and cook the fish he enjoyed catching.

A few months into their marriage, the pair made a trip to Israel so that Avi could meet his younger stepson and so that Yehudis could meet her newest grandchildren. Shortly thereafter, Avi was felled by a heart attack.

Following Avi’s death, for almost a decade, Yehudis lived alone on Avi’s yacht. Because venturing out meant the possibility of encountering the snakes that the local government had encouraged to breed, to reduce the area’s rodent population, she relied on delivery services for food and other staples. Likewise, Yehudis paid an excessive amount of dollars to have her garbage and gray water carted off and to have her tanks topped.

In the interim, Yehudis met and became friends with both of Avi’s former wives. Those ladies sincerely thanked her for befriending the man whom they had loved but had found impossible with whom to live. He had never been a womanizer, a drunk, or irresponsible with money, just extremely unconventional.

Neither of those other women had appreciated his insistence on using only complimentary medicine or on wearing only Hawaiian shirts. Additionally, each of them had detested his lack of involvement in local galas, specifically, and his refusal to sell his boat to live life ashore, more generally.

All things considered, the differences between Rachel and Sara, and Yehudis were unimportant. Rachel, Avi’s first wife, brokered peace between Yehudis and her now food forest-championing daughter. Avi’s second wife, Sara, coaxed Yehudis’ older girl to visit Florida unaccompanied by her husband or children. At Yehudis’ funeral, that offspring wouldn’t stop babbling about the wonderful, solo vacation that she had taken “at her mother’s behest.” Those triumphs aside, all of Rachel and Sara’s attempts to reconcile Asher and Yehudis failed.

At least, those three ladies enjoyed their cross-country trip. Together, they drove from Florida’s West Coast to Stanford and back.

In California, two truly proud aunties, Rachel and Sara, oohed and aahed over Yehudis’ boy’s accomplishment. They plied him with contact details for their friends’ daughters and for their own nieces. A few years after Yehudis’ death, that fledgling scientist married one of their nieces, a gal who had been working as a software engineer in Palo Alto.

Toward the end of Yehudis’ life, Rachel and Sara took turns supervising her nurses. Cancer had made her frail. At the same time as those women detested Yehudis’ home’s rocking and pitching, they loved her. In fact, both ladies were at her side when hospice care said it was time for “Viduy.”

Asher came down from New York for Yehudis’ funeral. All of Yehudis’ children and all of her grandchildren, too, made themselves present. Discretely, Rachel and Sara photographed her family.

Ultimately, those two silvered-haired ladies bought Yehudis’ boat from her family. After a long wait, they had found a good use for their stockpiled alimony payments.

They would remember Avi. They would remember Yehudis. Over and above those veracities, they would embark on a final adventure. A call to a nearby drugstore would supply them with dimenhydrinate and cyclizine. A call to a sea recruitment service would yield them a pilot and cook.

Before the ladies set sail, Asher asked for and was given a few of Yehudis’ stuffed animals and some of the vases that she had saved from her flower shop. Yehudis’ sons and daughters picked out paintings, tea towels, and other, miscellaneous bits and bobs that reminded them of their childhood. Weirdly, the four of them fought over the catheter that had been left over from their father’s care and that had been discovered at the bottom of Yehudis’ footlocker.

Conversely, none among them laid claim to Yehudis’ fingernail scissors or to her yellowed picture of Commander Shlomo Errel.

For that reason, Rachel and Sara donated those items and the rest of Yehudis’ effects to Good Will. They arranged taxis to shuttle her kin to the airport. Then, they opened a variety of nautical charts.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.