Skating on the Vertical: And Other Stories by Jan English Leary

Author:Jan English Leary [Leary, Jan English]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9781944388249
Google: eyJCswEACAAJ
Publisher: Fomite
Published: 2017-08-14T18:30:00+00:00

7

Rabbit’s Foot

George stabbed the broom at his ceiling, snagging a spider’s web, which stretched out and then bounced back, leaving filaments on his bristles. He shook the broom, waving the tail of wispy, cotton-candy thread and wondered if the web had been spun before he rented the apartment, three weeks earlier. The day after Celia learned about his brief, foolish affair with a colleague, she kicked him out of their house, and he moved into a studio apartment near the Sheffield El station, a monolithic, brick building populated by young singles and older people on fixed incomes.

After a cooling-off period of a week, George called Celia to try to negotiate a peace.

“You have incredible nerve to think I’d want to talk to you!” she said. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that. You haven’t changed.”

But I have, he thought. Just give me a chance to show you. During the last attempt to talk though, he’d noted a hint of a thaw in her icy attitude and was hopeful that he could start to make amends. There were many mistakes, he knew, even beyond the affair, but he wanted to show how he could change. He missed Celia, the fragrant air that trailed a foot or two behind her, her peach-tinted fingernails raking through her bouncy hair, her arm curved over his chest while they slept.

If the separation from Celia made George feel thick and swollen, the absence of Megan, their six-year-old daughter, was a searing stab of pain. Just prior to the breakup, Megan’s first loose tooth hung by a thread, but she refused to pull it. George had tried to convince her to give it just a tiny tug. Not even that.

“You’ll swallow it and the tooth fairy won’t be sure you really lost it,” he warned her.

“The tooth fairy will too know,” she said, tears brimming. Now the thought of having hurt her make him ache. A few days ago, when he’d called, she’d answered sounding older already. He was afraid she’d grow up and stop needing him before he could come home again.

“Meggo. It’s Daddy. How’s that tooth?”

“Oh, it came out when I bit an apple. I spitted it back on the plate, and Mom found it for me.”

“Did the tooth fairy come?”

“Yeah. She left me a dollar under my pillow with a note.”

“That’s awesome. What are you going to buy with it?”

“I don’t know.”

What had Celia told her? Was Megan angry with him too? He wanted to tell her it wasn’t his choice to be away. George wished he could be there to see Megan’s wide, proud, gap-toothed smile.

For the first few days away from Celia, George staggered home from work and fell onto his futon and slept, dreaming jagged, chaotic dreams. Since then, his legs ached, his stomach was sour, and he was having trouble focusing his eyes. The outer edges of his vision were fuzzy like with a migraine, framed by an aura of zigzaggy light. In the last day or so, he’d

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