Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Tricia Callahan

I’ve stopped staring at the shoes and signs on the subway. I flat-out stare at people’s faces. That’s where I am in my passenger etiquette timeline. Famous people use these trains, you know. I know because I’m actively aware now. Just the other day who’d I see but Larry from Perfect Strangers! Texting and walking on the West Fourth Street platform! Stars! They’re just like us!

No, they’re not. Not really. Not up there. But down here, sure. The stars are innumerable. A man turns a crate upside down, recites poetry. A man and a woman turn buckets upside down. Drum. A student carries a stool with him. And his cello. Runs his bow back and forth.

Their audiences bend back the spines of magazines and rock on the soles of their feet.

And what happens when someone breaks the fourth wall, trips over their open cases of collected quarters, kicking their earnings across the platform, makes a mess of their moment? I watched it happen while you played Mindsweep. The singer didn’t break.

The quarters went sailing.

The woman kept singing.

The coins. They rested.

Bless you, she then said, to the fascinated couple who bent to pick them up. Bless you, she said, to the man who did the same. Bless you, she said, to another man, doing nothing but staring. And then she picked up where she left off.

by Tricia Callahan

In her robe she bends to feel the pricks of grass in her garden. That’s all she’s got growing so far, but yesterday you’d watched her root round wire structures in that brick-bordered plot of dirt—a good sign, hope of vegetable vines, maybe glassy green bulbs of fruit. One day. But for now, just a plastic garden gnome that her daughter had brought her.

She’s retrieved the paper from the foot of the drive but hasn’t yet eased off its blue sleeve. You’ve already read yours; yours has already been refolded and recycled. So you saw before she did.

It was brief, but carried facts you never knew: He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. They had family in Maine and in Texas, but only the one daughter. He was a great cook who loved to read. You shared a birthday with him.

She’s done running her bare hands through the dirt. Holding the paper at her chest, she stands. Morning is giving itself over to the day, it would seem; the sun is high and blurring her eyes. On her way back inside, she relies on the railing to help her up the stairs, pats the top post twice and hesitates before her front door.

You’ll introduce yourself.

Soon. One day.

by Tricia Callahan

Boy on the subway, hair newly combed, eyes wet, cheeks glowing, nose running. Shoelace loops large. His feet barely hanging over the edge of the seat. One hand on the tiny backpack next to him; the other, blotting his damp face.

Mother in slacks, kneeling to eye level, asking him what is the matter.

Here is what we all expect: I hate morning. I hate leaving you. I hate that I’m hungry. I hate sitting next to my sister.

Instead: “I… I wanted… I wanted to take… the R.” Pauses are not for effect; pauses are where he takes deep, shuddering breaths through tears.

Sister who knows everything: “He likes their benches.”

His mother brushes his hair back with her hand and rises. Tells his sister to sit back. Asks if she remembered her lunch.

But there’s more to it than that.

“Mom?” Tentative. “Are we—” He takes a series of quick breaths, his bottom lip sucked toward his top teeth. “Are we on the,” the dread in his voice unmistakable, “G?”

Oh, dear lord, you can practically hear the surrounding commuters all think in unison—the nine-to-fivers that live and die by the clock—dear lord, no. We are practically hysterical with relieved laughter. And, forgive us oh G train, just like that we find ourselves smiling on a Monday morning.

by Tricia Callahan

But the editors? It’s their job to know more than writers. And my current editor . . . knows just about everything. And I mean everything. He’s a guy who goes into a Japanese restaurant and orders in Japanese, and then converses casually with the wait staff in Japanese. And he isn’t even trying to get laid. —Susan Jane Gilman, “The Sieve at the Lit Trivia Showdown,” PowellsBooks.blog, March 24th, 2009.

It is time for lunch. So he takes stock of the fridge (a Frigidaire, the first to refrigerate electrically), and it is full. But so is he, still, from breakfast, which was not one of champions, alas, but was one of greats: coffee with a splash of champagne and a dab of mustard, this is how Fredrick the Great was known to have his coffee made. (“Mustard?!” a Mad Hatter—a Disney Mad Hatter—is saying somewhere.) And a doughnut, a full doughnut, not a hole, not a popem, but a ring, as they’ve been made since the year 1847 when—it is fabled—Hanson Gregory first tore out the center of the fried cakes that he baked. Which is what they were called then. Not doughnuts. And what the little bald-headed man who served the Bobbsey twins tea and doughnuts called them: fried cakes. But wouldn’t you know, the most widely eaten fruit in America is the banana? So, being in America, of course, he had a banana. He could tell you that there’s no such thing as a banana tree, and he could tell you how there are no bananas in the film Bananas and that is Woody Allen’s reason for titling it Bananas. He could tell you how in one year, an American, if they’re average, might consume twenty-eight pounds of bananas. To know this might make one full for not just the morning, but for the entire day, no?

The refrigerator is full, and he is full, but it is time for lunch. And it’s not that he has lachanophobia, and we’re thankful that he doesn’t have logophobia, but recalling how two million sandwich combinations can be created from Subway’s menu, today he might have a little decidophobia. So he shuts the fridge and peels another banana. He’ll have it fried on some bread with peanut butter, a lunch of legends.

[Please note: the preceding is a creative work, and is not based on any statements by, actions of, or encounters with the subjects described. The author appreciates their forbearance and regrets any confusion.]

by Tricia Callahan

The system is to ignore. That’s how riding the subway works.

What’s impossible to ignore: ladies and gentlemen, it’s show time, and a stereo being set face up in center aisle. These three boys, young enough to make you wonder, are cracking knuckles, waiting for music to start. About to break-dance, here, while train is in motion. I watch the handful of commuters flatten in seats and brace themselves in doorways—the man seated next to me is no exception.

Underground is a place of shoes, of hands, of bags. Keeping them to yourself. It’s not for eyes. No one wants to stare. Everyone watches each other not watching, before returning to newspapers. My distraction: the thumbnail of the man next to me. It’s bruised blue. He’s tapping through his iPod. His distraction.

What’s harder to ignore: a stereo not playing music, but humming with static. And maybe the kid who swings his foot at it to get it going. Banging it. The static crackles. Now it is a place of eyes.

And voices. The boy points at one of the others, blaming him. Loudly. As they fight, the third drops to fiddle with the iPod connection.

I’m embarrassed. The woman across from me is embarrassed. Her eyes tell me this before flitting back to the dark window as the train rocks and the kids need to grab hold of the pole to steady themselves. A couple appears amused, possibly relieved. I return focus to the man next to me.

Would he use a hammer? He’s ironed his khakis almost to a fault. Maybe he caught his thumb in a door. It’s hard not to watch the bruise as his thumb wheels his iPod through categories. It stalls. “Hip Hop” is highlighted on the screen. He taps and there is a single song listed. A single song.

He doesn’t press play. Instead, he leans toward the kid on the floor and shows him the screen.

Do you know this?

The boy doesn’t, clearly, but shrugs and says he’ll try it.

It’s decided: I will skip my stop for this.

But we don’t get to hear the man’s song. Just static. The boys unplug and return the iPod. And that is that.

The train slows and we return to our private lives, including the man, who’s finally plugged in his ear buds. At the next station, the boys exit unceremoniously against the new wave of bodies shuttling in and whatever song the man had offered is leveled to an indistinguishable buzz from his earphones, a murmur in the wash of white noise. He taps his thumb to the beat.

by Tricia Callahan

Nothing against Ms. B., but when she read aloud to us, her head wobbled. And she licked her thumb to turn pages. Nobody checked out the book that she read aloud during Library hour.

Again, nothing against her, but she smelled like both hair spray and a wet sponge after you clean a knife of peanut butter. Also, every character’s voice she did sounded like an imitation of someone doing an imitation of her doing their voice, if that makes any sense at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Tricia Callahan

Picture a canvas painted all black but for a stretch of stenciled lines printed in silver. It would remind you of exposed radiator pipes, of skywriting smoke, of incisions. This is the first piece of art that she lays on the table. And to her, they are just lines.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Tricia Callahan

“It’s tough being a stickler for punctuation these days. One almost dare not get up in the mornings.” —Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves

It is time for bed. So she turns on the oscillating fan; with a pat to the pile of today’s worn clothes, she places them in the laundry bin. Then she tilts the fan’s face back, directing the airflow in a pattern that, as she sleeps, will make the curtain tops sigh, notes pinned to the bulletin ripple and titter, the book open on her desk flip-flop between pages, as though it were continually going back, checking the
facts, connecting the dots; her blouses on their hangers slightly sway in the most apologetic way. The fan scans the room. It hesitates before scanning the room in reverse.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Patricia Callahan

In the middle of this coffee house sits a mother with her baby who was crying but is no longer. The baby’s back now soundlessly rises and falls underneath the running of her mother’s fingers. Entering from outside with a tiny girl—who can say things and demand and run them in circles—must be the father, must be the husband. And the father says to the mother, bobbing the baby in her arms as she dances in a shushing rhythm, the father says, want me to hold her. And she lets her go. Places her in her father’s arms. And the other one—the little girl—dizzy with excitement about the outdoors, and the peanut butter and jelly still on her lips and in her teeth and the leaves skittering on the street and the traffic and that she’s with her father and they were playing a game she’s made up, she’s reporting everything she sees and that she doesn’t want and that she does want, and there’s jelly on her cheek and two bobby pins in her head, and next thing we know, she’s whirling back outside, and the now bobbing father is close behind her. And that mother. She is now with a few moments to herself. And she crosses her legs and tears a piece off of her sandwich. The turkey and lettuce between two slices of whole wheat with a few potato chips. She eats and bites and chews and looks at the wall, at the clock, and the fan, outside at her husband and all the loves of her life. And she takes these few moments to fill herself up and in and the coffee is lukewarm, but that’s how she takes it these days, and from over here, it looks like that’s ok with her.