SmokeLong Quarterly

But there is always my sister Morgana in this frame and others, names like Ted, Saverio. And animals, names like Boots, Baby Jesus, in the home, and Leo, Rex, and Cassie, in the barn or the confines of a canvas. Uncle Ted dropped me off at school and gave me a peck on the cheek. I didn’t wipe it away like I did my parents’. I was on the third floor and had a good view of the entrance to our dormitory and could see the hunched young women coming and going, or straight-backed ones too, optimistic and smiling like idiots.

I think I hear your voice here, says a professor.

Someone is wheeling around someone somewhere. I hear things, so did my sister, and saw things we never told anybody, so what do we owe now? What are we owed?

Maybe this is a graduation for one of my cousins so we go to a fancy-for-us place. I was hoping for some vanilla ice cream.  I’m at a round table, like they have at weddings and award ceremonies. Getting married isn’t the same as getting an award, at least it never is for me. Either way, lots of planning goes into the music and making sure it doesn’t rain and the mosquitos stay away. Theremin, accordion, trumpet. Whether solo or ensemble, alone or in public, music has a calming effect, or it should. Let it. There are plenty of Italian restaurants around here and everywhere, the tables in this one are too close together. I don’t like being so close to elbows. Because it’s a special occasion, the room is unusually crowded and I know most of the elbows.

Everyone or most everyone knows I made/I make up my own religion so they’ve asked me to come up with ice-breakers for the after-party. I hear things, so did my sister. So I devise a game about hearing voices. There is proof in our heads of angels, if nowhere else. We used to practice for hours every day. Just me now, but I include my sister by dressing up one of the dogs in a farm bonnet that belonged to grandmother. Morgana is around somewhere, we just don’t know where. If she is around somewhere, perhaps she’s in the old place, sitting under the pear tree, or cutting paths and laying planks across streams. Like our parents did during their nature walks before we came along to spoil everything. I often read the words she scrawled in the margins of my notebook. I called it my dream-book during the years she stayed after I had left home it turns out for good.

When I was about 11, I used to go with my father in his delivery truck. We didn’t talk much. A lady at one corner store used to give me bananas. That cardboard smell is gone now, of gasoline, bread, sweat, summertime. But it gave rise to deep questions and allowed me to save a few dollars to buy records and fantasize about getting a life or a boyfriend, some center of gravity. Questions such as: Who is your wholesale God?  What does he eat for breakfast? At what moment does spring become summer and what happens if you miss it? Where’s the so-called back door to happiness?

I don’t say it enough but my sister Morgana was born several years after me. We have no siblings to mention. Sometimes it seems like others were supposed to be there, kids like us, but damned if we knew where they’re hiding. When we were younger we tried to care for lots of baby praying mantises and counted mushrooms and practiced our air guitars in the woods.

 

The pink northern sky is glowing, a joy and a sorrow and a shame, reaching into this festive space. It’s a plague and might have frogs, might predict sleep. No frogs here in Teresa’s, the fancy-for-me restaurant. They have prosecco. I’m in the tiny bathroom and exit one of the two metallic stalls. A woman’s standing in front of the sink washing her hands. She keeps washing her hands. Washing her hands. Looking down at them, slowness. Sometimes she applies soap from the gilded soap dispenser. She keeps washing her hands. Perhaps she is connected to the local university, she doesn’t seem to be associated with my special occasion. I haven’t seen her at the local university but our town is known for having one. She’s wearing scarlet and purple and appears to wish she were someone else. I hope not me, I step up and can see my face in the slanted, copper-outlined mirror. She doesn’t look up. Maybe the rounded, youngish woman was just telling her family, I’m a hugger not a hater, rewriting history. The woman washing her hands starts to dance, like a bandleader, eyes closed. Inviting the saxophone player to pick up the thread and for the drummer to increase the tempo.

My psychologist friend Sharon, always curious, pops out of the second stall (not the one I’d occupied). The woman finally starts, looks up and says, I’m sorry, so sorry, the water was so nice and warm.

Some say a mirror means a look at the past. But if there are turkey vultures, say, nesting in an abandoned chimney, it might be cause for concern or at least a mention to your curious therapist friend, someone like Sharon, if you have one. Birds fly off, on a rescue mission or at least flying off right up against the moment of rescue. In the special occasion space (room?), plenty of pictures are being snapped, and I’m in one leaning, headless. My sister used to say, everyone’s life is a soap opera, but hers was more an opera opera. This set menu would appeal to her. It has all kinds of fish. Glorious singing with a slight echo, off stage, or back in the kitchen, even further back than that. I can hear it can you hear it?

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“Special Occasion Italian Restaurant” is the third-place winner of The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction 2025.