"Everyone likes grilled cheese", "Everyone went on like nothing happened", & "Need" by Eirene Gentle

Everyone likes grilled cheese 

Especially Monday with its loose pants and stage fright. And Wednesday with its moon goth glow and poison arrow shoved by wind under the cushion of the roadside chair free to a good home that pretends to be a bookmark so the hands that find it, a little scaly with misuse, wonder what page it kept and what happened to the book, is the author buried somewhere in some other cushion and bam, Thursday clatters in, barges but in its sweet, doofus way filling dark, seamless places with hot, greasy bread and vegan cheese gooey with non-discrimination that lingers on the tongue all the way to noon and by then Thursday’s busted out, already at the station, all single bag, fake leather, sunglasses in hand because it always dreamed of riding a train. Especially through mountains. Air is so crisp there. Everything flies.

Everyone went on like nothing happened 

A minor god lived in the cherry tree next door for 400 years, then grandad’s ghost moved into the pine out of spite. “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone” he yelled at his third wife, not my grandmother, and she hollered “I can’t wait you skeezy bastard.” 

She didn’t have to. He died the next day and lightning lit that pine up like a sparkler. Wife No. 3 screamed like a scalded thing and left with everything she could carry in that little red car. She even took the cat but it leapt out at a stop sign. 

I barely knew grandad. Mom raised me alone after dad left to study the effect of eclipses on migraines or something. But her job blew away and anxiety threatened to devour me completely, which was fine with me, I was up for the devouring but mom dragged us to grandad’s house first. It was old, big and shambling like him, with plenty of rooms to get lost in while he and wife 3 held roaming battles from the kitchen to their separate bedrooms. Then he died and hurled all that spite at the cherry tree, like a petty thug. 

The cherry was at a loss. I was called out as a mediator. 

“Why me,” I asked from the corner bed where I’d huddled for 156 days. 

Still, I tried. I even brushed my teeth but it was complete silence from both sides. 

“Forget it.” I felt ridiculous, stuck between a pine and a cherry, ghost and god, lost and more lost. I tried to go back in the house but neighbours blocked me, some with old pipes and shovels. Even the kids threatened me with bright plastic bats.

“Fix this. Your grandfather’s ruining everything.” 

**

Four hundred years is a long time in a tree, even for a god. It’s easy to forget things. By the time I got there the cherry was more tree than god and trees don’t have much to do with people. We pester them, pull branches, pluck fruit, carve stuff in their bark. Eventually we cut them down. As god or tree, the cherry wanted nothing to do with us. So it said, more or less, when it finally found words. 

A mediator is supposed to be neutral. Each side loses a little and gets a little. Even if one side is wholly wrong, that’s how it works and why I hate everything. But I felt, desperately, the cherry’s desire to be left alone. So I went back to grandad. I gave it all I could.

He hurled needles at my hair it took all morning to pick out.

**

Neighbours gathered to debate the situation. Three camps emerged. One knew the stories of gods and didn’t want to live it. “Get out the fucking pine, George,” they said. Another resented their small, human lives and saw death by a tree god as glory and the third carried seeds of ruin in them like bombs. They looked ordinary enough but I couldn’t understand them. I wanted to pull blankets up and go far, far away.   

Everyone suspected everyone else of ruining peace, or glory or wreckage. Two separate militias guarded the cherry day and night. Grandad got even more spiteful. People found pinecones in their pillows and needles in their breakfast. Resin coated everything. We scraped it from our eyes and gums. 

Small irritations became arguments, then feuds. Even grandad got scared when a fight between two former friends almost tore off his boughs. But he wouldn’t back down. 

“What’s done is done,” he said. 

**

We were all surprised when the third wife came back. “I forgot something,” she said but walked straight to the pine. They just watched each other but that night grandad laid a mattress of needles for her to lie on. 

“I’m sorry,” she said to the pine. “I was afraid you’d leave me.”

Grandad said, “I was just mad you didn’t believe in me.” 

Mom froze in the doorway with two coffees in her hand, her mouth a drooping oval. This was her father? She gave wife 3 a mug. Steam whirled between them. She took the other and knelt on the earth around the pine, pouring it in a slow circle. I don’t know what she wanted. An apology? An admission? But nothing came out. Grandad sucked up that coffee like the greedy bastard he was, then he and wife 3 hauled out with the cat into the little red car and left. 

The pine tree was just a pine again. Everyone was stunned. Deflated militias stumbled home or fell where they were like leaves. Then everyone went on as if nothing happened at all.

The cherry’s bark was rough against my spine, the ground soft and damp. Mom brought me a thick, silty coffee I shared with the old god, who was barely a god, but something better than a god. When spring came it would bloom for the 403^rd time.

Need

Lisa needed that doll. Nothing else. Just that doll with the blue-black hair soft as a dog’s ear. She needed it to love and be loved. And to show off, especially to Nina who brought her new doll to the playground. Raspberry haired, smelling like store and clutched in Nina’s dumb hands.

Doll, doll, doll was all Lisa thought. Or said until the household hung in a plastic standoff, uncomfortable for everyone. Perseverance above grade level, her parents told themselves, desperate to cave but mom was laid off and dad on the frontlines of payroll purges that ruined lives every quarter. He dreamed of sleep, death or a cabin far away. 

The household tripleted.

Lisa: doll doll doll

Dad: cabin cabin cabin

Mom: fuck fuck fuck, right hand stuffed deep in a pocket so it wouldn’t pull the whole sandcastle down. 

Christmas rolled around, or maybe it was a birthday. Lisa clawed the wrapping from the box and there she glossed, “the most beautiful doll in the world.” She flung bony arms around her mother’s knees and named the doll Anila. She ate with Anila on her lap. She whispered secrets in her tiny doll ear. 

In the morning she streaked in purple PJs to breakfast with Anila tangled in sheets, already forgotten. 

Lisa needed to be Hannah’s friend. That’s it. Nothing more. She sketched cat claws on every surface, like Hannah. She wanted a boyfriend like Daniel, Hannah’s boyfriend, straight-backed and tall with coffee bean hair. She joined volleyball like Hannah, put the same sticker on her laptop. Sometimes Hannah put a casual arm around Lisa’s neck and it felt warm. When Hannah asked to eat together Lisa ditched her old friends. Hannah had a secret smile Lisa practiced for 10 weeks straight. 

By the time she perfected it Lisa and Daniel were a couple. Hannah’s perfect face caved in on itself. 

“All I need is you,” she told Daniel from the spot between his ribs and hip. He smiled but sometimes he pushed her away, saying he couldn’t breathe. Sometimes he didn’t show up, he had a part-time job as well as school and you know how it is. But sometimes he smelled like shower and grass and Lisa remembered why she wanted him once. 

Soon Lisa’s eyes slid past him at school. 

Neither said hi.

Lisa just needed to be Leisa. That’s it. Nothing more. She was sick of Lisa, pathetic in this place with the busted wall where mom or dad hurled something before door-slamming out. The apartment stank like something pale and reedy. 

Liesa could go to university without a scholarship. Or Liesa would be smart enough to get a scholarship. Liesa would drive a vintage car and have smudged eyes and a secret she wouldn’t talk about. 

Lisa begged mom. “Just sign the forms, let me change it officially.”

“Wait a year and you can change it yourself,” her mother said from across an 18-month deadlock.

Liesa’s new ID was the most precious thing in the world. She said ‘hi, I’m Liesa, L I E S A,’ wherever she went. But Liesa didn’t get a scholarship or go to university. 

“It’s just a name, Lisa,” her mother said. 

“Liesa,” she corrected, but they sounded the same.

She moved in with a friend but they ditched her owing rent. She got a job and was hit on in ways HR never sees. Then she was laid off.

Her dad took her for drinks. They got trashed, gave the cab the wrong address by accident and slumped against the ivied brick of the botanical gardens. Lilac drifted into their sleep and hair. In the morning they walked burr-eyed home where her mother made coffee, everyone at the table like they’d drowned.

Liesa needed to quit. Nothing more. Permission to lie down, forgotten. Tap out and stop trying. Close her plastic doll lids.