Teague von Bohlen
The Rule of Monsters
Mabel sees her on the steps leading up to the screened-in porch first. Mabel has just come from the bank downtown where she changed a twenty into four crisp $5 bills to include with her grandkids’ birthday cards over the coming summer. She hasn’t seen them in over two years now, not since that Christmas right before her husband passed and everyone was all at once there and then gone. And they don’t come back, Mabel has found. So the cards suffice for contact, but it’s not the same. Mabel is thinking this--it’s not the same--when she sees the woman sitting on the concrete steps.
The woman looks familiar. She’s heavy and sweating, but in a way Mabel recognizes like an old television program in black and white. It’s only May, but it’s warm in the sun, and there’s a darkness to the creases where her stomach and sides fold under the rayon top she’s wearing. Armpits too. Her straw hair is long enough to mat against her shoulders with the perspiration, and her tan capris end in puffy ankles. But Mabel can smell the Chanel from here, which gives her some comfort, and the woman is smiling like maybe Mabel knows her. And Mabel wears Chanel too, though for whom she admits she doesn’t really know anymore. "Hello," Mabel says.
"Morning," the woman says, her voice drawing out the vowel sound in something almost sing-song.
Mabel pauses, but something inside her kicks in, her mother’s voice: ladies are welcoming. "Would you like something?" Mabel asks the woman, and then instantly wonders if this is a terrible mistake. You must invite monsters in before they can enter. This is the rule of monsters.
"Maybe some water?" the woman asks, and when Mabel brings her out a tall glass with three ice cubes, the woman has moved from the stoop to the porch, where she’s sitting on the bench swing. The woman pats the seat next to her as though to ask Mabel to sit, and Mabel does, thinking at first what a kind gesture and then wait, it’s my porch, and then I want some water too. But she waits for the woman to say her piece, to realize that she’s perhaps overstayed her welcome, that Mabel might have things to get to, like laundry and cards to children that only know her as sources of occasional income.
"How’re you feeling today?" the woman asks, rocking the swing a bit. When the woman drinks, Mabel can see her teeth magnified through the clear glass, larger than they should be. Mabel can’t decide whether the woman is youngish but has lived hard, or older and working not to be. It could go either way. Mabel begins to sweat too, under her arms and in the small of her back and under her breasts. "Sure is warm," she says, because she has to say something. Quiet when one is alone is a gift. Quiet in the company of a stranger is a threat.
"Maybe you should get yourself a glass too," the woman says, and holds up her water, swirls it around to clink the ice. "Cool off a bit."
Mabel doesn’t know what else to do but nod. She gets up to get herself a drink, wonders about getting some of the lemonade she made yesterday, but decides against it because then the woman might want some, and she doesn’t want to start anything. Mabel does see some blueberry mini-muffins on the counter—she thinks she picked them up at the church social on Sunday—and grabs them almost out of habit. When she heads out of the kitchen, she sees the front door is open—had she left it open?—and the woman is now sitting on the living room couch, still drinking from her glass. The woman’s smile widens when she sees the plate of muffins, and she waves Mabel over to join her on the couch. "Thank you, sweetie," she says. Mabel wonders who this woman is to call her anything, and then sees her eat a muffin in a single bite and reach for one more. Mabel realizes she’s made another mistake. She fed the stray. She remembers her father poisoning a mongrel dog that was killing his chickens, leaving out a plate of laced hamburger, kind and deadly, a deliberate last meal. Mabel’s only real memory of it is the body of the once-ravenous thing in a sack, like shucked corn silk and naked cobs. Useless. Burned in the trash barrel. The woman on her couch has stopped at two muffins. "Are you all right?" she chirps.
"Can I help you with something?" Mabel says again, and this time, she feels brave for doing so. She’s battled monsters before in her life, god knows, but she feels suddenly defenseless, like she’s forgotten how to fight. She gets the feeling as though she should know something, something important. The monster seems unthreatening, but that’s the way of some monsters, isn’t it? Mabel fears that unlike her children and their children, this woman will stay. She and her swollen ankles will stay and eat sweet cakes and ask questions and keep smiling. The sun is burning more brightly outside, and water isn’t helping. Mabel doesn’t know this woman. Doesn’t think she does. And she won’t stop smiling. It’s a toothy thing that says it’s all right and it’s all right and it’s all right.
Or is that Mabel saying that? Mabel doesn’t know anymore.
About Teague von Bohlen
Teague von Bohlen is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Colorado Denver, where he also serves as Fiction Editor for the literary magazine Copper Nickel. His first novel, The Pull of the Earth, won the Colorado Book Award for Fiction, and his most recent book, Flatland, is a collection of flash fiction and photography set in the great American Midwest. He may live in Denver and been schooled in Arizona, but his corn-fed heart never left Illinois. He can be found on the web at www.teaguevonbohlen.com.