Spring 2009, Volume 6

Fiction by Sophia A. Morales

The Apex of a Spear

It was this day that I finally confessed to myself that I wasn’t just baking cupcakes anymore, I wasn’t scouring the newspaper for a new recipe every day, I wasn’t frequenting the store enough for the bag boy to know whether or not I wanted paper or plastic. I was fighting; I was in the midst of a war. A war that for some reason I thought chocolate cupcakes could win. Or damn good sugar cookies. Or even a thick pot roast.

And it wasn’t until I frosted the last cupcake that I realized my kitchen wasn’t my domain or sanctuary, but rather, war trenches full of green armored men with black faces, bent over and eyeing the front line. I sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the disaster. A confectioner’s sugar bomb had gone off, the blast radius stretching in wide circles, reaching the side of the fridge, in my apron pocket, and across my face.

I turned on the faucet and I looked out the window as I waited for the water to get hot. When the steam rose in billows in front of my face, I saw my husband Mark pull into our driveway. He had taken off his tie and was too late for dinner. Another battle was beginning. I winced as I put my hands under the scalding water, but I kept them there under the real and lucid heat until I could hear his swoosh through the side door. He used to come in tired and happy, now he was too hurried to even properly close the door. I looked down at my hands, the water cascading through my fingers and splashing at the base of the sink. My skin began to burn.

“Dinner is in the fridge. You’re late you know,” I said. When he said nothing, I could still smell him, a mix of sandalwood and airplane, so I turned around. My hands had become balls of red, hot muscle. He was looking at me. His eyes, lacking the luster they had in college, were dull, more gray than blue now. His face was worn, lines around his eyes and a mouth that fell, a calla lily drooping heavy with rain. His hair had faded as well and I knew he was dyeing it to hide the grays.

“You should go say hello to your children; they’re in the play room. They’ve been waiting for your flight to land all day.” Mark just stood there, looking at the cupcakes.

“I can’t spend my day off with them this month. There’s an emergency with our sister company in Italy.”

“I thought the sister company was in China,” I said, turning around to put my hands under the hot water and pretending to wash dishes.

“That dessert?” he asked.

“Yes, new recipe.” I answered. He came up behind me, his breath on the back of my neck, his body almost blanketing mine. I could feel what he was feeling all of a sudden, guilty, hungry. But he said nothing, and walked away, leaving my back bare to feel the cold that we had both created in the room.

“It’s called Chocolate Devil. Want one?” I called to him as he walked out of the kitchen. I turned off the water and listened to his footsteps, past the living room, up the stairs, and away from the playroom.

I turned off the faucet, walked towards the heat of the oven and stood in front of it. The warmth reached my thighs and collected on my skin. My daughter Helena ran in, with her headless Barbie. She stood at my side, a mere three feet. She was crying.

“Markie threw her head out of the window,” she said. Her blonde hair was twisted in her own version of what she called “Hollywood hair” which meant half her head was braided and the other half she pulled together with rubber bands and pipe cleaners.

“Tell him to come here,” I said, not moving from the oven. She ran off. A pipe cleaner bent into a curly Q fell from her head. I bent down to pick it up and peered down at my legs. They were red. I pressed my thumb to my skin and watched as the color turned from white to pink to red again. Markie came in, his facial expression like that of his father’s: annoyed and unmoved by me. Helena followed behind, triumphant because I was going to demand he get the head back.

“What?” he said to me with his seven year old arms crossed.

“What do you mean what? Your sister’s doll head?”

“But she stepped on my Lego house.”

“Dad just got here,” I said.

“Where? Where is he?” they both began to yell.

“You really want him to see you both acting like this?” Helena shook her head and wrapped her arms around her poor doll. Markie didn’t reply and ran off upstairs to see his father.

“Alright, go on,” I said to Helena. She scooped up her pipe cleaner that had fallen on the floor again and ran towards upstairs.

Mark used to take it upon himself to keep track of the kids’ height. Every year on their birthdays, he would take them by their sticky hands, wipe off the cake smeared like makeup across their faces and make them stand with their backs to the wall in the kitchen. Every year was a different colored marker. We were half way through the rainbow with Helena, red for the first year, orange for the second, and finally yellow on her third birthday. Markie was already up to violet and when he turned eight, we were going to start all over. It made them happy. It made me feel proud.

But then two years ago, it all just stopped. Mark would say he was stuck in some meeting or business dinner with some CEO of some foreign company discussing some tremendous deal, unable to make the birthday party. And then he started working abroad. The children, ignorant of what was happening, kept growing and wrote letters to their father, which for Helena usually consisted of a picture she tore out of her coloring book and covered with pink crayon. I sent them every Sunday to wherever he claimed to be: Hong Kong, Madrid, Chicago, mostly Italy, but they always came back returned and I hid them away, in the closet behind my wedding dress, where neither of the children could find their rejected gifts.

“And no one would ever know the truth behind the golden book, that it was both the bringer of life and the potential end of all humanity. So with the last heave of his body, Leo covered the cursed book with earth and there it lay deep within the layers of time, waiting.” I closed the book and looked down at Helena’s face, eyes still wide open, mouth gaping, her cherub cheeks flushed with the excitement brought on only by fairy tales.

“So does Leo ever marry the princess?” she asked.

“You’ve heard this story many times. What do you think?”

“I think the Princess is better by herself. Leo is crazy,” she said.

I sat there looking at her, thinking about the type of five-year old it takes to realize something like that.

“Time to sleep,” I said. I pulled the covers up to her chin but she pulled them back down, her white hands clenched around them.

“Can Daddy do it?”

“I’m sorry sweetie…” There were no more excuses I could give her, so I became silent.

Her eyes fell and I could see she was giving up the fight she used to have in her. I couldn’t tell if she was maturing or simply accepting it. I cleared my throat, ran my hand over her tiny head and kissed her cheek. Then I picked the last pipe cleaner from her hair and left the room.

I wanted to go to Markie’s room, but lately he had abstained from my nightly visits and instead would close his door before I got there. It was quite the prick in my heart, but my psychiatrist simply said it was his way of showing independence.

Independence.

Independence was when Mark and I refused the check my parents had given us as a down payment for a house. Independence was when Mark took the Executive Consultant position without talking to me about it. Independence is a funny word that speaks volumes about a person’s intentions. For me, it was a joke. The truth was, as it had been for the past two years, Mark was seeing more than just the world.

“Those reports were sent via Fed Ex on the 5th, I mean, I’m looking at the confirmation that’s in my hand right now, Mr. Takade.” Mark had a headset around his ear and was pacing the room in his bath robe. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then checked his watch.

“Mark,” I said. I sat on the bed, wondering why I was trying to get his attention in the first place, fiddling with the pipe cleaner in my hand, wisps of thin, blonde hair still tangled in it.

“I’m sorry sir,” he continued. “It’s just that the Jin Kwon Investors aren’t completely happy with the 2008 numbers and I thought that it was my job to fix that.”

“Mark,” I said again, this time more frantic.

“Of course, of course, I completely understand, Mr. Takade. The Kwons won’t know what hit ‘em,” he laughed, a loud scoff. “About 8 o’clock over here actually. Yes, night and day for me, sir.”

“Mark,” I couldn’t recognize the sound of my voice anymore. I got up and walked to him and stood right in front so he could look me in the eye. “Mark, do you know what this is?” I showed him Helena’s curly pipe cleaner.

He stared at me, looked through me rather, and put his hand to the ear piece to push it closer.

“If you don’t know what it is, I’m leaving with the kids. I know about her,” I said louder. I felt now that there were two strangers in the room, two people with the same paths that somehow led to completely different places. He took the pipe cleaner from my hand and I felt smaller without it, as if I had been wielding it like a sword.

“Likewise, sir, have a wonderful rest of the day,” he said. Mark took the ear piece off his head and placed it on the mahogany desk we both picked out at Crate and Barrel. Mark was still holding the pipe cleaner in his hand and I was standing there with my arms limp at my sides.

“This,” he held up the piece of wire to my face, “is a fucking pipe cleaner. Why the hell would you interrupt an important call like that for this?”

“It’s not just a—”

“Who? Who do you know about?” he started towards me, at first his voice was low, concerned, but the look in his eyes told me the answer to that question was no more than inconsequential. Because, in all honesty, we said the same things to each other every night before bed and at this point in the script it was my turn to drop the conversation, to be the loser.

“Nothing. I’ll be in the shower,” I said.

I turned away and felt his eyes on me as I walked, defeated, into the bathroom. I leaned against the door and stared at the tub. Its wide mouth, a welcoming descent into oblivion, gaped at me and I began to de-clothe. I leaned over to turn on the faucet and waited until the steam floated like smoke around me, until the heat made my face warm and soft. I stepped in, the water not nearly high enough in the tub to fully cover my body, and I sat down with my legs held tightly to my chest. And as the water level rose, the burning of flesh did little to prevent the tears.

If you don’t know what this is, I’m leaving with the kids. I whispered it into the dark as I lay there next to Mark. His back was to me and I could hear his breathing, heavy and quick, like he was dreaming. He didn’t even breathe the same anymore. I got out of bed, careful not to shake the mattress so as not to wake Mark, and went towards his cell phone that sat in the drawer of the bedside table. It was his global work phone, a Blackberry he had gotten himself for his birthday last year. That night I was determined to call her this time. I wanted so badly to have the courage, for once, to hear her voice. To hear the highs and lows, any accent she might have, if she stuttered or was eloquent.

I went downstairs, the house quiet except for my footsteps. Me, a soldier fighting for what I believed in, creeping around in camouflage and war paint. I put my back up against the wall, my neck craned around the corner to make sure the area was clear. Affirmative. In my hand was something more important than any battle. It was what was going to end this war. If you don’t know what this is, I’m leaving with the kids.

Finally, on light tiptoes, I got to the kitchen, the home base, and sat at the table again and placed the phone in front of me. Analyzed it before touching any buttons. Was it wired to blow up if I turned it on? I looked around and saw nothing in the dark except for the tall shadows of my appliances, my fellow comrades. At last, I turned on the phone and went to the Contacts list, on it, in all caps was a name that I had known of for almost a year now. IRENE. IRENE had called four times. IRENE had texted him, emailed him. IRENE loved him. IRENE lived in Italy. Of course Italy. I dialed her number, heard it ring five times, thought about hanging up, then someone picked up. The voice was raspy but feminine, upset that it had been awakened.

“Mark?” she said. I sat there with the phone to my ear.

“No, not Mark,” was all I could say.

“Who is this? Why are you calling me from this number?” she was alive all of a sudden, wild but sharp. She sounded young, perhaps in her late 20s, and foreign. Good English, and with a European accent.

I said nothing.

“Hello? Who is this? I am going to call the police,” she said.

“You are the other woman.” I said quickly, my voice wavering at the end as if I couldn’t

catch my breath. “Do you know what that means?” I started again. “To be the other woman?”

“Oh…” she said, then we were both quiet, an understanding grew across the phone line. I hung up. The next phone number I dialed was my mother’s who lived an hour away in Simi Valley.

Markie was mad about being woken up so early, but Helena was excited, we were going on an adventure she said. Markie got to use his new hiking backpack and Helena was going to walk around in her Little Mermaid pajamas. They understood, at least that’s what I’d always tell myself. Maybe Markie would look me in the face, have some pride left. Three years was long enough. IRENE wasn’t a stranger the way I was, or the way Mark was.

I went upstairs before we left in the cab and peered behind my wedding dress in the closet. Mark was still fast asleep. I took out the shoe box I had hidden in the back and dumped the contents out, next to the sleeping stranger. The letters and pictures spread across the length of the bed and some spilled on the floor. Mark stirred and I froze. I looked at them all, casualties of war. Bleeding pink crayon. They clung to the bed, filling the chasm between man and wife. The wedding dress, I left in the closet.

And it wasn’t until I frosted the last cupcake that I realized my kitchen wasn’t my domain or sanctuary, but rather, war trenches full of green armored men with black faces, bent over and eyeing the front line. I sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the disaster. A confectioner’s sugar bomb had gone off, the blast radius stretching in wide circles, reaching the side of the fridge, in my apron pocket, and across my face.

I turned on the faucet and I looked out the window as I waited for the water to get hot. When the steam rose in billows in front of my face, I saw my husband Mark pull into our driveway. He had taken off his tie and was too late for dinner. Another battle was beginning. I winced as I put my hands under the scalding water, but I kept them there under the real and lucid heat until I could hear his swoosh through the side door. He used to come in tired and happy, now he was too hurried to even properly close the door. I looked down at my hands, the water cascading through my fingers and splashing at the base of the sink. My skin began to burn.

“Dinner is in the fridge. You’re late you know,” I said. When he said nothing, I could still smell him, a mix of sandalwood and airplane, so I turned around. My hands had become balls of red, hot muscle. He was looking at me. His eyes, lacking the luster they had in college, were dull, more gray than blue now. His face was worn, lines around his eyes and a mouth that fell, a calla lily drooping heavy with rain. His hair had faded as well and I knew he was dyeing it to hide the grays.

“You should go say hello to your children; they’re in the play room. They’ve been waiting for your flight to land all day.” Mark just stood there, looking at the cupcakes.

“I can’t spend my day off with them this month. There’s an emergency with our sister company in Italy.”

“I thought the sister company was in China,” I said, turning around to put my hands under the hot water and pretending to wash dishes.

“That dessert?” he asked.

“Yes, new recipe.” I answered. He came up behind me, his breath on the back of my neck, his body almost blanketing mine. I could feel what he was feeling all of a sudden, guilty, hungry. But he said nothing, and walked away, leaving my back bare to feel the cold that we had both created in the room.

“It’s called Chocolate Devil. Want one?” I called to him as he walked out of the kitchen. I turned off the water and listened to his footsteps, past the living room, up the stairs, and away from the playroom.

I turned off the faucet, walked towards the heat of the oven and stood in front of it. The warmth reached my thighs and collected on my skin. My daughter Helena ran in, with her headless Barbie. She stood at my side, a mere three feet. She was crying.

“Markie threw her head out of the window,” she said. Her blonde hair was twisted in her own version of what she called “Hollywood hair” which meant half her head was braided and the other half she pulled together with rubber bands and pipe cleaners.

“Tell him to come here,” I said, not moving from the oven. She ran off. A pipe cleaner bent into a curly Q fell from her head. I bent down to pick it up and peered down at my legs. They were red. I pressed my thumb to my skin and watched as the color turned from white to pink to red again. Markie came in, his facial expression like that of his father’s: annoyed and unmoved by me. Helena followed behind, triumphant because I was going to demand he get the head back.

“What?” he said to me with his seven year old arms crossed.

“What do you mean what? Your sister’s doll head?”

“But she stepped on my Lego house.”

“Dad just got here,” I said.

“Where? Where is he?” they both began to yell.

“You really want him to see you both acting like this?” Helena shook her head and wrapped her arms around her poor doll. Markie didn’t reply and ran off upstairs to see his father.

“Alright, go on,” I said to Helena. She scooped up her pipe cleaner that had fallen on the floor again and ran towards upstairs.

Mark used to take it upon himself to keep track of the kids’ height. Every year on their birthdays, he would take them by their sticky hands, wipe off the cake smeared like makeup across their faces and make them stand with their backs to the wall in the kitchen. Every year was a different colored marker. We were half way through the rainbow with Helena, red for the first year, orange for the second, and finally yellow on her third birthday. Markie was already up to violet and when he turned eight, we were going to start all over. It made them happy. It made me feel proud.

But then two years ago, it all just stopped. Mark would say he was stuck in some meeting or business dinner with some CEO of some foreign company discussing some tremendous deal, unable to make the birthday party. And then he started working abroad. The children, ignorant of what was happening, kept growing and wrote letters to their father, which for Helena usually consisted of a picture she tore out of her coloring book and covered with pink crayon. I sent them every Sunday to wherever he claimed to be: Hong Kong, Madrid, Chicago, mostly Italy, but they always came back returned and I hid them away, in the closet behind my wedding dress, where neither of the children could find their rejected gifts.

“And no one would ever know the truth behind the golden book, that it was both the bringer of life and the potential end of all humanity. So with the last heave of his body, Leo covered the cursed book with earth and there it lay deep within the layers of time, waiting.” I closed the book and looked down at Helena’s face, eyes still wide open, mouth gaping, her cherub cheeks flushed with the excitement brought on only by fairy tales.

“So does Leo ever marry the princess?” she asked.

“You’ve heard this story many times. What do you think?”

“I think the Princess is better by herself. Leo is crazy,” she said.

I sat there looking at her, thinking about the type of five-year old it takes to realize something like that.

“Time to sleep,” I said. I pulled the covers up to her chin but she pulled them back down, her white hands clenched around them.

“Can Daddy do it?”

“I’m sorry sweetie…” There were no more excuses I could give her, so I became silent.

Her eyes fell and I could see she was giving up the fight she used to have in her. I couldn’t tell if she was maturing or simply accepting it. I cleared my throat, ran my hand over her tiny head and kissed her cheek. Then I picked the last pipe cleaner from her hair and left the room.

I wanted to go to Markie’s room, but lately he had abstained from my nightly visits and instead would close his door before I got there. It was quite the prick in my heart, but my psychiatrist simply said it was his way of showing independence.

Independence.

Independence was when Mark and I refused the check my parents had given us as a down payment for a house. Independence was when Mark took the Executive Consultant position without talking to me about it. Independence is a funny word that speaks volumes about a person’s intentions. For me, it was a joke. The truth was, as it had been for the past two years, Mark was seeing more than just the world.

“Those reports were sent via Fed Ex on the 5th, I mean, I’m looking at the confirmation that’s in my hand right now, Mr. Takade.” Mark had a headset around his ear and was pacing the room in his bath robe. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then checked his watch.

“Mark,” I said. I sat on the bed, wondering why I was trying to get his attention in the first place, fiddling with the pipe cleaner in my hand, wisps of thin, blonde hair still tangled in it.

“I’m sorry sir,” he continued. “It’s just that the Jin Kwon Investors aren’t completely happy with the 2008 numbers and I thought that it was my job to fix that.”

“Mark,” I said again, this time more frantic.

“Of course, of course, I completely understand, Mr. Takade. The Kwons won’t know what hit ‘em,” he laughed, a loud scoff. “About 8 o’clock over here actually. Yes, night and day for me, sir.”

“Mark,” I couldn’t recognize the sound of my voice anymore. I got up and walked to him and stood right in front so he could look me in the eye. “Mark, do you know what this is?” I showed him Helena’s curly pipe cleaner.

He stared at me, looked through me rather, and put his hand to the ear piece to push it closer.

“If you don’t know what it is, I’m leaving with the kids. I know about her,” I said louder. I felt now that there were two strangers in the room, two people with the same paths that somehow led to completely different places. He took the pipe cleaner from my hand and I felt smaller without it, as if I had been wielding it like a sword.

“Likewise, sir, have a wonderful rest of the day,” he said. Mark took the ear piece off his head and placed it on the mahogany desk we both picked out at Crate and Barrel. Mark was still holding the pipe cleaner in his hand and I was standing there with my arms limp at my sides.

“This,” he held up the piece of wire to my face, “is a fucking pipe cleaner. Why the hell would you interrupt an important call like that for this?”

“It’s not just a—”

“Who? Who do you know about?” he started towards me, at first his voice was low, concerned, but the look in his eyes told me the answer to that question was no more than inconsequential. Because, in all honesty, we said the same things to each other every night before bed and at this point in the script it was my turn to drop the conversation, to be the loser.

“Nothing. I’ll be in the shower,” I said.

I turned away and felt his eyes on me as I walked, defeated, into the bathroom. I leaned against the door and stared at the tub. Its wide mouth, a welcoming descent into oblivion, gaped at me and I began to de-clothe. I leaned over to turn on the faucet and waited until the steam floated like smoke around me, until the heat made my face warm and soft. I stepped in, the water not nearly high enough in the tub to fully cover my body, and I sat down with my legs held tightly to my chest. And as the water level rose, the burning of flesh did little to prevent the tears.

If you don’t know what this is, I’m leaving with the kids. I whispered it into the dark as I lay there next to Mark. His back was to me and I could hear his breathing, heavy and quick, like he was dreaming. He didn’t even breathe the same anymore. I got out of bed, careful not to shake the mattress so as not to wake Mark, and went towards his cell phone that sat in the drawer of the bedside table. It was his global work phone, a Blackberry he had gotten himself for his birthday last year. That night I was determined to call her this time. I wanted so badly to have the courage, for once, to hear her voice. To hear the highs and lows, any accent she might have, if she stuttered or was eloquent.

I went downstairs, the house quiet except for my footsteps. Me, a soldier fighting for what I believed in, creeping around in camouflage and war paint. I put my back up against the wall, my neck craned around the corner to make sure the area was clear. Affirmative. In my hand was something more important than any battle. It was what was going to end this war. If you don’t know what this is, I’m leaving with the kids.

Finally, on light tiptoes, I got to the kitchen, the home base, and sat at the table again and placed the phone in front of me. Analyzed it before touching any buttons. Was it wired to blow up if I turned it on? I looked around and saw nothing in the dark except for the tall shadows of my appliances, my fellow comrades. At last, I turned on the phone and went to the Contacts list, on it, in all caps was a name that I had known of for almost a year now. IRENE. IRENE had called four times. IRENE had texted him, emailed him. IRENE loved him. IRENE lived in Italy. Of course Italy. I dialed her number, heard it ring five times, thought about hanging up, then someone picked up. The voice was raspy but feminine, upset that it had been awakened.

“Mark?” she said. I sat there with the phone to my ear.

“No, not Mark,” was all I could say.

“Who is this? Why are you calling me from this number?” she was alive all of a sudden, wild but sharp. She sounded young, perhaps in her late 20s, and foreign. Good English, and with a European accent.

I said nothing.

“Hello? Who is this? I am going to call the police,” she said.

“You are the other woman.” I said quickly, my voice wavering at the end as if I couldn’t

catch my breath. “Do you know what that means?” I started again. “To be the other woman?”

“Oh…” she said, then we were both quiet, an understanding grew across the phone line. I hung up. The next phone number I dialed was my mother’s who lived an hour away in Simi Valley.

Markie was mad about being woken up so early, but Helena was excited, we were going on an adventure she said. Markie got to use his new hiking backpack and Helena was going to walk around in her Little Mermaid pajamas. They understood, at least that’s what I’d always tell myself. Maybe Markie would look me in the face, have some pride left. Three years was long enough. IRENE wasn’t a stranger the way I was, or the way Mark was.

I went upstairs before we left in the cab and peered behind my wedding dress in the closet. Mark was still fast asleep. I took out the shoe box I had hidden in the back and dumped the contents out, next to the sleeping stranger. The letters and pictures spread across the length of the bed and some spilled on the floor. Mark stirred and I froze. I looked at them all, casualties of war. Bleeding pink crayon. They clung to the bed, filling the chasm between man and wife. The wedding dress, I left in the closet.

BIO:  My name is Sophia Amanda Morales, and I am a recent graduate of Cal State, Long Beach, with a B.A. in Creative Writing. My passions have always been reading and writing. I enjoy a wide range of literature but must admit that my favorite authors are Toni Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anita Diamant, and Candas Jane Dorsey, just to name a few. I am hoping to return to Cal State in the fall to begin working on my M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Fiction. I was born and raised in Long Beach, and although I will always love this rich, artistic city, I one day want to move to Costa Rica, learn Spanish, finish my novel and a collection of short stories, and enjoy a little of the Pura Vida.