So We Can Glow Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2020 by Leesa Cross-Smith

  Cover design by Jennifer Heuer. Cover photograph by PhotoAlto/James Hardy/Getty Images. Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  These stories originally appeared in slightly different form in the following publications: “The Great Barrier Reef Is Dying but So Are We” previously appeared as a Platypus Press Digital Short, 2018; “Low, Small” previously appeared in Blue Fifth Review, 2016 and was a finalist for Best of the Net 2016 and Best Small Fictions 2017; “A Tennis Court” previously appeared in Storychord, 2016; “Tim Riggins Would’ve Smoked” previously appeared in Literary Orphans, 2013; “Surreptitious, Canary, Chamomile” previously appeared in Lime Hawk Literary Arts Collective, 2014; “Fast as You” previously appeared in Synaesthesia Magazine, 2017; “Bearish” previously appeared in NANO Fiction, 2014 and was a finalist for Best Small Fictions 2015; “All That Smoke Howling Blue” previously appeared in Cheap Pop, 2014 and was republished in Best Small Fictions 2015; “Knock Out the Heart Lights So We Can Glow” previously appeared in Gigantic Sequins, 2013; “Get Rowdy” previously appeared in The Collapsar, 2014; “Re: Little Doves” previously appeared in The Offing, 2018 and was a finalist for Best of the Net 2018; “Out of the Strong, Something Sweet” previously appeared in Paper Darts, 2016; “The Lengths” previously appeared in Counterexample Poetics, 2014; “Small and High Up” previously appeared in Nib Magazine, 2013 and was republished in Miracle Monocle, 2016; “Bright” previously appeared in Monkeybicycle, 2013; “Rope Burns” previously appeared in Folio, 2014; “The Darl Inn” previously appeared in Synaesthesia Magazine, 2014; “You Should Love the Right Things” previously appeared in Blackberry Lit, 2012; “Crepuscular” previously appeared in Wyvern Lit, 2014; “Two Cherries under a Lavender Moon” previously appeared in Synaesthesia Magazine, 2017; “When It Gets Warm” previously appeared in Counterexample Poetics, 2014; “Boy Smoke” previously appeared in Counterexample Poetics, 2014; “Dandelion Light” previously appeared in Atticus Review, 2015; “Downright” previously appeared in Split Lip Magazine, 2016; “You Got Me” previously appeared in WhiskeyPaper, 2014

  First Edition: March 2020

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cross-Smith, Leesa, 1978-author.

  Title: So we can glow : stories / Leesa Cross-Smith.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019041859 | ISBN 978-1-5387-1533-8 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5387-1532-1 (ebook) Classification: LCC PS3603.R67945 A6 2020 | DDC 813/.6-dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041859

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-1533-8 (hardcover); 978-1-5387-1532-1 (ebook)

  E3-20200210-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  We, Moons

  The Great Barrier Reef Is Dying but So Are We

  Unknown Legend

  Low, Small

  A Tennis Court

  Tim Riggins Would’ve Smoked

  Surreptitious, Canary, Chamomile

  Winona Forever

  Girlheart Cake with Glitter Frosting

  Fast as You

  Chateau Marmont, Champagne, Chanel

  Bearish

  All That Smoke Howling Blue

  Pink Bubblegum and Flowers

  Knock Out the Heart Lights So We Can Glow

  Get Rowdy

  Re: Little Doves

  Out of the Strong, Something Sweet

  The Lengths

  Small and High Up

  Some Are Dark, Some Are Light, Summer Melts

  Bright

  Dark and Sweet and Dirty

  Home Safe

  Teenage Dream Time Machine

  Rope Burns

  Get Faye & Birdie

  The Darl Inn

  You Should Love the Right Things

  And Down We Go!

  Crepuscular

  Stay and Stay and Stay

  Two Cherries under a Lavender Moon

  When It Gets Warm

  Boy Smoke

  Dandelion Light

  California, Keep Us

  Cloud Report

  Downright

  You Got Me

  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

  A Girl Has Her Secrets

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Inspirations

  About the Author

  Also by Leesa Cross-Smith

  For your (girl) eyes only, from Eve until the end

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  We, Moons

  We’re not depressed all the time, some of us aren’t even depressed sometimes. We’re okay, our hearts, dusted with pink. When we cry in bathrooms together it’s about men or our mothers or our fathers or our bodies. We are resilient, none of us have attempted suicide, although we do at times imagine what it would be like to have never been born. Is that sadness? Is that regret? We love men. We are ashamed of this attraction. We, the ones who aren’t lesbians or asexual, wish we were; we fantasize about lesbian communes or asexual communes. We take the curse of Genesis 3:16 to heart. Isn’t it a curse to want a man? Didn’t God intend that after the fall? We feel cursed. We are Eve. We develop crushes on men we’ll never meet, men in magazines. We prefer our men to remain onscreen where they cannot hurt us. We, protected by those alien-beams of light, that space glass. We envision those men down on their knees before us, looking up at us, smiling. We pat their heads and call them good boys. We use them. We crave and desire them. We leave them whether they want us to or not. We wear their clothes because they smell like them and we let the sleeves hang long past our wrists. We swear to one another we won’t call or text them during our Girls’ Weekend. We try to keep our word. We try really hard. They call us, they text us, they send us pictures of the flowers they’d have delivered to us if only they knew where we were. We are in the mountains or on the beach or at a grandmother’s home; the grandmother has passed and left it to us, left us her journals and her cake recipes, left us the blankets and sweaters she knit, the quilts and tea-stained books she read when she was young like us. We are not young, but we are younger than our grandmothers. We are young enough to still have our periods. We bleed together when the moons are death-darked and new, ovulate under the full ones. Their fierce, primal, ancient names connect us to the women who came before and all those who will come afte
r: wolf, snow, worm, pink, flower, strawberry, buck, sturgeon, harvest, hunter’s, beaver, cold. If we had been in charge of naming the moons, we wouldn’t have changed a thing. Some of us are mothers, some of us have miscarried, some of us have no desire to bear children in our dark and starry wombs. Where do we go for emotional rescue? Where do we go to feel safe? Where do we go to escape the men who would rape and murder us, the men who would kidnap us, the men who would torture us, the men who would, the men who, the men. We are complete without them but we want them anyway. We love them but we want to hide from them. We drink champagne and wine and whiskies and stay up too late smoking. We eat dark chocolate brownies and coconut cakes and wake up and fry eggs with butter and chilies. We lock our doors at night and keep our secrets. We howl at the moon and paint our toenails with glitter and make promises, free before we leave. We return to our homes and our children and our jobs. We return to those men, the ones who keep us, the ones we are afraid of, the ones who would never harm us, the ones who protect us. We know they desire us, they are cursed with wanting to be inside of us. We are wild and cannot be tamed. They are cursed with wanting to tame us. They want us to be witches so they can burn us. They burn with lust for us. We use our own lust-flames to fuel us and keep us warm. We are better at this than they are. We read and write our books, sing our songs, scream our screams, and fall easily into the arms of a God who loves us. We fight a God who loves us. We beg for forgiveness for we know not what we do. We know what we are doing. We run away and want to be found. We want to disappear. We want to be seen. We search our breasts for lumps so our breasts won’t kill us, our cervices for tumors. We scan our bodies for poison, never knowing. We feed our babies with these bodies and offer our bodies to the men we desire and the men take and take and take and we give and give and give. We are handmaidens and helpmeets and neither of those things. We are created in the image of a God who can be both man or woman or neither. No empty vessels; we are achingly full, spilling over. And when we die, our souls pour out like water.

  The Great Barrier Reef Is

  Dying but So Are We

  Minnie and her husband Adam were unusually quiet on their way home from the theatre. Adam was the actor, the star. Adam had to kiss his costar Caitriona during the play because it was in the script.

  “Did you want something to eat?” Adam finally asked.

  “I don’t care,” Minnie said, staring out the window.

  “Chinese? Greek? Maybe a burger?” Adam asked, pointing to the restaurants as they passed them.

  “Well, too late now. There they go,” Minnie said, fussily flicking her hand and waving to the restaurants, their signs. Shadows of people. Lurking. Waiting. Too hungry or too full.

  “I can go back,” he said, tapping the brake gently. Slowing.

  “Nope. I’ll eat something at home.”

  “Are you angry with me?” he asked as he let off the brake, gunned the car forward.

  It was late. A Thursday night hinting at a stormy early morning. As they’d walked out of the theatre, the sky had been a black-violet dream. The diamond stars, out just long enough to evoke wonder, were now hidden with the moon.

  Minnie went into her purse, felt for the cool chunk of rose quartz in the little zippered pouch. Right there next to the earrings she had taken out after they got too heavy. Right there next to her three favorite lipglosses. The colors made her hungrier. Grape. Tomato. Peach.

  “I’m going to practice downstairs when we get home. I mean, sorry if you need to sleep, but I need to learn this piece,” she said. Minnie played cello in a string quartet. She was playing a wedding tomorrow night. Her best friend, Stella, one of the violinists, had composed a new arrangement of a Nat King Cole song for them to add to their repertoire. It was the summer wedding season and the next four weekends were booked.

  “That’s fine. I understand,” he said.

  She wrapped her fingers around the crystal, loving the weight of it. The flats, the points.

  “I know you get upset sometimes when I have to kiss Caitriona—”

  “It’s your job, right?” Minnie snapped.

  “Yes. It is my job, but I don’t want you to be upset—”

  Adam spoke softly, came to a full stop at the sign before turning right. They were ten minutes from home.

  “What does her mouth taste like?” Minnie asked, looking over at him.

  Adam made a noise. Not a sigh. Something wearier.

  “Minnie, I don’t taste her mouth. It’s a stage kiss. It’s a totally different thing,” he said.

  “I know what a stage kiss is,” she said.

  “Okay, then you know it’s not like a sexual thing. We are pretending to be lovers. Caitriona plays my wife. That’s all.”

  Minnie’s stomach growled so loudly it hurt.

  “But the two of you dated before, so it’s not all pretend,” Minnie said, using air quotes around pretend. She was effectively annoying herself and could only imagine how Adam felt about her at that moment. He probably wanted the car ride to be over like she did. Adam ran a yellow light, which endeared him to her. She could never be attracted to a man who would stop as soon as a light turned yellow.

  “Twenty years ago, Minnie. Cat and I dated twenty years ago and we didn’t even sleep together. You know this. We’ve been over this. It’s exhausting,” Adam said.

  You’re exhausting is what he meant. And she’d never believed they hadn’t slept together anyway.

  * * *

  Adam and Caitriona had dated in the nineties and that was what made Minnie the most jealous. Caitriona had known him then, when Minnie hadn’t. There was a picture of them Minnie had pinned to the walls of her brain, couldn’t untack it even when she tried. Adam, with a red-plaid flannel tied around his waist, his black-framed glasses not unlike the pair he wore now. Caitriona, next to him in her flowered Doc Martens and ripped jeans. They were at a Pearl Jam concert and Adam was smoking because he smoked back then. Caitriona was wide-mouthed, surely laughing at something Adam had said. Adam was funny in the nineties and Adam was still funny now. But now Adam was forty-five, not twenty-five. Now, Adam was a father and an AP History teacher. He and Minnie had a twelve-year-old daughter, a thirteen-year-old marriage, a thirty-year mortgage. He and Minnie had met right as the nineties were dipping out and Y2K fears were slipping in and every time she thought about that picture, she felt like she’d missed out on something in his life before her. Caitriona had known Adam when he was a smoker, when he had beery breath, when he tied flannel shirts around his waist and listened to music, not just NPR. Caitriona had known Adam when they were both learning the lyrics to RENT, when Adam had played Roger in the local production. Caitriona had played Mimi. While Adam was living his superstar-laidback-local-theatre life, Minnie had been in school, getting her music degree with a cello emphasis.

  Cat. Minnie hated when Adam called Caitriona Cat.

  Minnie was cultured too. One of her cello teachers had called her a rare talent once and Minnie had almost wanted to get it printed on a sticker and slap it across her orange hard case.

  * * *

  Minnie felt mousey in the passenger seat. She glanced at Adam. He looked tired. They’d go home, pay the babysitter. Adam would have a small glass of whiskey and ice before taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, falling asleep on the couch watching one of the West Coast baseball games while Minnie played her cello downstairs. She was angry with him and knew how ridiculous that was. She still wanted to have sex with him. Minnie’s stomach growled again.

  “So, you’re on hunger strike because I get paid to kiss Cat every night? You think I don’t ever get jealous of you and Connor going all over the countryside together, playing at these romantic events like some kind of…sexual troubadours?” Adam asked, pushed his glasses up.

  “Sexual troubadours? Really? Wow,” Minnie managed to say before laughing loudly.

  “Absolutely, sexual troubadours. You and Connor drinking wine and rambling through the forest!”r />
  Adam stopped at a red light and looked at her.

  “Rambling through the forest? With a cello? Adam, for the love, give it a rest. Oh and don’t forget there are two other women with us…it’s a quartet!”

  “More like a duet,” he said.

  “Really? You think we, what, use a time machine and go back to the High Middle Ages every weekend?”

  “Caitriona and I have been working together for years. You know her. I barely know anything about Connor.”

  “You know plenty about him!”

  “I know the guy plays the viola, that’s all.”

  “He’s been to our house, you’ve met his wife.”

  “I don’t taste Cat’s mouth when I kiss her,” he said as the light turned green.

  “You’re exhausting,” Minnie said to him, before he could say it to her.

  * * *

  Adam paid the babysitter and did everything Minnie knew he would do. She went upstairs, changed into her pajamas, came down and sat on the other side of the couch, put her arm around Ivy who was nursing a small mug of chamomile like an old woman. Adam had the ballgame turned down low and sipped at his whiskey. Minnie had reheated last night’s ziti and cheese and finished it, standing in the kitchen. Adam had made himself a roast beef and cheddar cheese sandwich, the crusts bordering the small plate he’d balanced on the arm of the couch. Minnie looked at her phone, saw a text from Connor. A question about the new music. She put it down without responding.

  “Daddy, who are you for?” Ivy asked. Her voice was sleepy. She sat on Minnie, snuggled up to her even tighter. They’d been attachment parents, Minnie slinging Ivy wherever they would go when she was a baby, breastfeeding her until she was two years old. Ivy had slept on Minnie exclusively until she was five months old. Because of that, Ivy tended to sit on Minnie or Adam, like she was hatching them. Minnie felt a bit guilty being overstimulated by it and made sure she set aside some time at night to let Ivy sit on her, knowing it wasn’t Ivy’s fault they’d raised her that way. Ivy especially loved perching on Minnie when she was sleepy.