this is such a rough draft that needs sooooo much help Paper Wings and Halos Jacob and Abigail

He hovered. He hovered over his desk. As if there were a family of interestedness lying right there-- amongst the dissecting tools and computer equipment taking up the mass of it. He rarely smiled, at least not at his desk, though he enjoyed his work, or at least, that’s what he would tell those that he chose sometimes to surround himself with. And those were the lucky ones he would say. Not really—he would never really mean something that conceited, but he liked to act sometimes. To act sometimes like he didn’t care that much, about what people thought, and about what he thought of other people. But he really did. He really did care, about everything. About everything sometimes, but himself.
His name was Jake—Jacob Aaron by birth and according to his mother when anger or simple irritation ruled over the louder decibels coming from her. She rarely screamed though—even rarer now that he was living alone, finally, after 21 years. She’d call sometimes, to wake him up at 5:30am when she knew he would have overslept, like on Sunday nites. Sundays spent staying up late painting miniatures and canvasses and creating wardrobes for imaginary characters he would never have the chance to be. Never have the chance because his so-called nine-to-five job took up the entire week and the weekends were spent catching up on projects his mind thought he had left behind. Sunday nites especially—and he always seemed to wake up Monday morning to his mother’s slightly shrill “Jacob Aaron, its time to wake,” and he’d roll over out of bed and fall into place as usual. But mostly, it was just the slightly shrill “Jacob Aaron” and really nothing more. No screams, no yelling, no “clean up that mess.” So really, the only loud noises he heard now were those coming from the factory inside which he worked. An occasional siren or factory malfunction. He wasn’t ever behind those noises—he was always hovering over his desk. He hovered over needles and pinchers and scissors the size that little fairies might be able to use to mend their wings, and yet, he used them to mend and fix and create grafts that would eventually make it into organs that, again, would eventually make it into a human body that needed them. It was meaningful work, he once thought, but now, it was just ritual. Ritual only because he had been doing this job for nearly three years (he was 23 now) and the nine to five was wearing on something. What he wasn’t quite sure of yet.
An interruption.
“Jake, did you uh, get that, umm, memo?” the interns voice was shaky behind him, while her grasp held tight to a stack of yellow Xerox copies, slowly moving up and down. If Jake was indeed the student of the human condition that he always seemed or liked to act like he was, he would have realized long ago the amount of fear he put into his coworkers with his hovering antisocial behavior—but he didn’t. So the student status was definitely questionable.
“Yeah Stacy, I got it yesterday,” and his answer seemed to fit directly with his attitude, that attitude that seemed to always go with the dark clothes, dark hair (but lite blue eyes) dark mind, that just went with Jake.
“Thanks. I just have to, ya know, ask everyone, just in like, case,” he let her voice filter off, just like he did everything else in his life. Pushing them away by building walls that he refused to acknowledge existed.
She sat upright. She sat upright, keeping her legs crossed. Underneath the half desk that colleges like to act will hold an entire student’s notebook, but really will only hold an elbow on lazy Monday mornings and occasionally a pencil, maybe two. Hers was home to two palms of a hand crossed over one another as if she were posing for a senior picture that she missed out on in high school—which she had, simply because she missed out on everything in high school. Missed out because she spent the time sitting in the corners watching everything around her go by, not taking part in, but at least watching, she always thought. But, that missing out in high school led her to exactly where she was now—sitting upright and trying to take part in the now—college. Which also meant that those two crossed legs hanging below the rather empty desk were of course swinging back and forth in full anticipation, at full attention, with full assertion. They occasionally kicked the desk in front of her, pure accident of course. She would never disturb another student on purpose—she would never draw that much attention to herself without planning the whole thing out ahead of time. And since she didn’t plan each kick of her nervous twitched calves in front of her, a whispered ‘I’m sorry’ would follow the nudge and a nod from the stranger in front of her.
Her name was Abigail—her momma always told her it was after ‘Dear Abby’ because she and her daddy had been having some problems before she was born and Ms. Van Buren had finally answered their prayers. Of course, those prayers weren’t answered for long, Abi would think, because a mere seven years after a divorce ensued, and then the custody battle from hell. From hell because Abi was of course a daddy’s girl but daddies never get their girls and hers was no exception. Abi learned she was never really the exception—to the rule or anything else. And she began to like it that way—thinking it was only fair, only right, only . . . the only way. And the only way was for her to be here right now—sitting in a classroom amongst her peers her momma would tell her, at a school only hundreds of miles away. Only hundreds of miles because she’d turned the other schools down because they were almost thousands and momma always wanted her baby girl close to her, but just far enough away to learn, she would say.
An interruption.
“Miss Callahan? Can you tell the class your rationalization for Milton’s characterization of Satan in Paradise Lost?” the professor’s eyes were focused on her, they often were since she was usually the only one sitting at attention in this class; Literatures spanning the 16th century, but really surpassing.
“Well, I think he just wanted to challenge his society’s view of the story that they’d been fed since birth,” she always kept it short and sweet and to the point. To the point didn’t really ever mean the right answer, but it was her opinion and for some reason, that professor somehow always accepted it. Maybe just because she was the only one smiling—or sitting upright. And she still did, still kicking every fourth or fifth kick the seat in front of her, the stranger in that seat smiling at her apology each time following.
“Thank you Miss Callahan. Now class, let’s get into groups and discuss the fault that gets placed upon the shoulders of Adam, and those of Eve. Actually, I want you to choose sides—who should receive the blame and why. Ok, let’s separate—groups of three or four,” as his voice made its way through the aisles of dozing off students, Abi began to turn her seat around to join those behind her. Her legs finally uncrossed themselves to circle the desk around, now home to only one palm, her permanent smile slid across the room in semi-circle form.
A Day
He hovered again, over his desk where photos of his mother hung pinned up by yellow and green thumbtacks. Thumbtacks were somehow a symbol of the respect he had for her, whereas, the framed photo of his father was not. Not, because the respect for Mr. Hunter was not out of Love or admiration, but just pure fear—the same fear the bumbling intern felt from mere feet behind him earlier. The fear wasn’t something either of them counted on or meant to have, but they did. The fear is what caused Mrs. Hunter to change her name back to Gauze, and get the documents allowing her to do so (another nasty divorce in the statistics for the Midwest) taking Jacob Aaron with her. And as he hovered, his hands moved slowly yet rapidly across the projects in front of him, the projects that meant nothing to him, but everything to the someone who would get them. He’d squint his eyes and concentrate on the smallest intricacy and his almost mammoth sized fingers somehow allowed him to do so. Jake was always good with his hands. Tying the smallest of knots, and getting the biggest of them undone. And when he did, get the smallest of the knots untied, or vice versa, he’d sit back for a moment and look around—to take it all in he would say to himself. Whatever there was to take in. Sometimes, a woman would walk by (he seemed to only work with women) on one of these American Beauty moment stretches and he would try to smile his smile and let the fear out of them—like hot air in a balloon. But mostly, they barely smiled back, thinking he was just trying too hard, or sometimes not enough— Nonetheless, he very rarely received the reaction he really wanted. Which would, in his mind, just be a simple smile back that meant something—a smile from the heart he would say, not the smile out of obligation, not the smile out of pity. Real. Genuine. True. Only Fran, a twenty-something (actually, a few years younger than Jake) with three kids and a husband, a thick Southern Kentucky accent and legs for days, would smile back—almost genuinely. They’d lunch together sometimes . . .
Every class, day in and day out, hour after hour, Abi would sit legs crossed just right, back straight and true to form. The same notebook always lie an arm’s length away from her crossed legs and palm atop palm. It was black and white—a 99¢ composition notebook from Wal-Mart. And in that simple 99¢ composition notebook she kept every story she’d ever written (or at least an idea of it), and every quote from a random person on the street (or in the hallway, over the phone), and every poem and every thought, and every journal entry. . . every ticket stub from every movie (for the past year at least), stubs from concerts, receipts from dinners and grocery stores or visiting State Parks and having to pay the flat fee when she was only driving through, fortunes from The Grasshopper and cutouts from magazines that she for some reason felt attachment to, photographs (just a few) of family (of dad mostly, before the divorce, one of momma, that’s all she needed), a dandelion from a special event that she sometimes had to think hard to remember, a candy wrapper with much the same history. . . and so much more. For a hundred-page notebook that little guy had his work cut out for him, and she kept him close by just because of that. An arm’s length, sometimes less.
And so, as she sat there, listening intently, or so she’d like to think, to the professor in front of her rattle on about one great author or another, her gaze would fade away to the notebook sometimes—thinking about when she would add something new to take up the last few places, because his time was wearing thin. Wearing thin because graduation was approaching, and that meant something to someone. To someone only because it just meant more pushing for Abi. Pushing to where she didn’t know, but somewhere—she always knew she was going somewhere. And when she’d think about that somewhere, and wonder if it would fit in her little guy too, a tear would sometimes make its way down her reddened cheek in the middle of class—forcing her to excuse herself early and take a little break . . .
A Smile
Fran walked in a head of him, he slouched behind her in a way—a skulking walk like that of a gorilla. She bounced, her unruly red hair making it through the door before both of them, and her hands talking a mile a minute for her. Her mouth was moving too, but he didn’t listen, only watched those hands that seemed to talk for her, and get the same idea across. The same idea because everything in Fran’s mind was on her hands, and nothing really any deeper, which is why lunch with Fran was a relaxing event for Jake. No deep thoughts he would think to himself, just lunch with a near genuine smile.
“Jake, so yeah, Mr. Jurgis wouldn’t give me the day off to watch Lizzy’s recital. I know I asked late. I know,” she shook her head in a bit of punishment to herself, “I should have asked weeks ago. But how was I s’posed to know he was going to be an asshole about it. Like my job is so important I can’t get A day off. I got three kids and Larry. This shit’s hard. Larry’s just as bad, thank God I have you to talk about it,” she turned to look at him as they joined the line forming in front of the register at the local café they frequented on these days. Jake still stood, looking down at her hands and thinking, no deep thoughts, no deep thoughts, remembering what work he had left to do when he got back and how early or late he could clock out, to make rent with this weeks check. Thinking about if he stayed late he wouldn’t finish his latest creation, but then thinking, really, what’s the point anyway. He shrugged.
“Jake?” she nudged him and smiled that half-genuine smile of hers, showing her semi-crooked teeth behind her thin red lips. He looked up and smiled,
“I’m sorry Fran, I was just . . . thinking,” he laughed a bit to himself, and returned his glance to the floor and her hands. The line moved forward, Fran kept talking, Jake kept watching.
Abi carried her notebook on the fleshy part of her arm, facing toward her as she walked to break for the day. Break because tearing up in the middle of class midway through her senior year was becoming much too frequent and she needed the space. The space to think because she never allowed herself much—of either, thinking or space. And the space she wanted was one full of people, so she could hear them talking about the places they were going, and going there on their own accord and how they were getting there. A space where she could hide in the corner and not have to sit upright in the front row, palm on palm, an ‘i’m sorry’ and a nod every five seconds. A space that she really had yet to find, so she walked, until she did.
Three blocks, four blocks, a neon sign—no. Five blocks, the library, the antique store, hardware store—“where am I going?” Six blocks, seven . . . a cardboard cut out, a little corner of a building with ten stories, a window in front—a corner seat (most important). Finally, she thought.
“Yes, I would like. . . hmmm, let’s see. Can I just have a bottle of water, a slice of lemon. . . and, well, maybe a little slice of that biscotti would do,” her voice was confident, yet, not.
“That’ll be $2.35.” She smiled an awkward smile while counting out quarters (laundry money) to pay the blonde behind the register. She bit her bottom lip and said thank you, and hurriedly rushed to the corner booth. She slid in feet first beneath the black ankle-length skirt that clung to her lower body—folding up beneath her, laying the notebook carefully on the table in front of her. He was it—that notebook lying there on that table. He made it home, she thought. And as she opened him up, leafing through pages that were already full, some half, some over, memories flashed back at her. Memories of the dandelion and why it was only half there (daddy had taken the other half) and in the following page, the bald previously seeded dandelion that she’d blown for a wish—a wish that never came true. She ran her fingers across a letter from her mother telling her that she was doing well and what classes she needed to take for her final semester and quickly turned the page. A face stared back at her—a sketch she’d made months and months ago she thought. A face hovering in mid air with no body, no station, just flying there. A face, with the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen—teeth and all she thought and smiled to herself in that awkward inside joke way. And then she heard a voice that made her look up, and over, and around.
“Jake, now come on. Talk to me honey. Something is wrong, why ain’t you talking today,” Fran was on it today, and she wanted Jake right there with her. But he was more concerned with the pattern on the back of her chair than her conversation.
“Jake!” she spoke a little louder to break his concentration, on what, she didn’t know. He looked up, barely. Apologized, again, and then let his glance go back to the pattern. It was checker, but red and orange checker, not black and white. It reminded him of fire and he wondered to himself why they’d chosen that colour. The colour just reminded him of being burned, and so he stared at it, blurring out everything else, picking at the plate lunch he somehow had accumulated thanks to Fran. She reached over his plate and grabbed his fork from him, pointing it at his nose and talking, but he not hearing. Until he spoke.
“Fran, I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like talking today,” his voice was so fine, so deep and so full of something that no one had gotten a hold of yet, “I just want to sit here and eat my lunch and listen. I want to listen Fran. I want to hear them washing the dishes in the back, I want to hear the coffee brewing and the cash register beep and ring and do whatever it does. I want to hear that old man sitting at the bar cough up a lung and I want to hear the rattle of his newspaper as he does it. I want to hear the cars rushing by on Poplar Street and the sirens outside of that, and anything outside of that, but not this. I don’t want to talk, because Fran, I have nothing to talk about. Nothing. Just, listen. . . ok?” He swallowed hard and took back to analyzing the fiery checkering and Fran sat there wide eyed, and silent.
Abi smiled to herself and blushed a bit at what she’d overheard. She never felt right when she overheard, when she was caught eavesdropping really, at least by herself. but that voice—that voice just drew her in. And what he had to say reeled her in the rest of the way. So to see the catch, and keep from turning completely beet coloured, she slowly rose to her knees in the booth she made home, peering through a glass divider and over a checkered seat cover. To see a boy hovering over a plate lunch of meat and potatoes that reminded her of her daddy. And she smiled again. Smiled and retreated back to the notebook to write it all down.
She scribbled away sentence after sentence of what the stranger boy had just said, followed by descriptions of his appearance (curly black hair, thinning, big hands, slouching), and his name (Jake she had heard and wondered if she could call him Jacob, in her mind), and the way he moved after the now infamous in Abi’s mind conversation (he fidgets, circles his fork around in his mashed potatoes but doesn’t let them leave their perfect circle in the middle of his plate, takes his thumb to play games of tag with the condensation on his soda bottle, then runs it (his thumb) across his lips, bottom first and then top, and then middle and then done).
An interruption.
“I’m real sorry to bother you, but could we borrow your salt and pepper?” Abi looked up slowly in reaction only to look back down much more quickly in utter horror at the enormous JACOB she had scribbled into the opened page of her notebook. He was smiling that smile at her horror and red cheeks while she attempted to close the notebook and reach for the condiments of his asking. (All she could think was, who’s we and why didn’t I recognize his voice.) They slipped from her grasp and across the table and her hands were shaking and sweat was beginning to from across her forehead and places that stress tends to not alleviate.
“I’m sorry miss,” his voice the same as she had remembered it only moments ago, having locked it into permanent memory. He smiled, a genuine smile looking for another, and as she looked up in defeat, losing both glass bottles of salt and pepper to the floor, she saw that smile, and those eyes. And smiled back.
Smiles Widening.Fading.Growing
He lie in bed—blue t-shirt sheets covered his semi-naked body underneath, while she typed away at the computer across the room. One paragraph at a time she would type, and then take a few steps over to the bed. Walk over to him to kiss him awake, to see if he would rise, to hope that he would not, but then again, to nudge him into doing so.
“Honey, you have to go into work today,” she would say, living out the dream of the suburban housewife while still in college, while still having everything given to her on a silver platter, or shoved down her throat.
And he groaned and moaned and rolled back over in bed, covering his head in the various sizes and shapes of pillows that covered her bed . . . his bed (now for three months).
“I’ll fix dinner and we can rent a movie if you want. I’ll even let you pick. Whatever Jackie Chan movie you want,” she giggled under her breath and waited for him to throw a smaller pillow at her head, so she could rescue it in time to save it from knocking down numerous knick-knacks that called her desk home. She especially guarded the miniatures he’d painted for her after their first official date—they stood atop her monitor and toppled over occasionally when she shut the drawer too hard. She looked up to them and wondered how she could fit them into her notebook and smiled, thinking she would never have to.
“Honey,” her voice got more stern, and she checked the clock, and typed another sentence. (Her final paper due in less than three hours- the last one she would turn in before she walked down that aisle—the graduation aisle that is).
“I don’t wanna go. I’m tired,” he whined in his half awake voice, raspy and deep and a complete aphrodisiac to Abi. But she resisted, curled her feet up beneath her while she spell checked her paper and looked over to him. All he wanted to do was stay there forever, his head under pillows that smelled like her and no deep thoughts and no awkward fake smiles. When he was with her he didn’t have to think—he didn’t have to wonder or plan or concentrate on fiery checkerboard that framed her. Only her. And it was easy for him. To just lie there and know that the noises he heard were just her typing and that she would never leave, that she would always be there. That after a few minutes she would join him again and kiss his forehead and run her fingers through his curly black hair and then go back to tip-tap-tapping on the keyboard a few feet away. He knew, and he liked knowing.
And she knew that when that boy had his mind set on something—that was it. Done. He wasn’t going in to work today. But what else was she there for but to push him into it—it was too bad that she knew that. And so, Abi pushed print and watched her last college paper gather in the tray beneath. Thought to herself the symbolism in this next bold move, smiled and sighed, and then jumped onto the bed they’d been making home.
“Get up!”
Genuine
Three months—only three but Love.
Time was relative.
Jake got a raise and a promotion and just about everything else he needed to convince him to stay where he was forever. No one had put him where he was but himself, but he didn’t even want to be there. He thought all the time where he wanted to be, where he should be and where he could be, but the thoughts were just emotions in a head that could never make sense of up or down. To go back to school but to major in what—psychology for twelve years or engineering for four, maybe five, education for four but education in what—to move out of his hometown and away from the comfortable, but to where—to dad a city or two away where it was just another kind of comfort, and a different kind of fear (instead of stability), to anywhere but here, away from high school and badly made choices, but away from her (but did her really matter). Indecision, no, lack of motivation caused the wavering of the emotions in the head that could never makes sense of up or down. That gave way to the hovering over a desk in protective disorder of something, anything perhaps, that was only rightfully his—but always knowing he wanted something more. Needed, the shove.
“Jacob . . . where are you going?” “What do you mean, I’m right here silly,” his eyes were focused on the area between her belly and her breast, lying in bed, covered and uncovered in unwashed sheets.
“I know that. I mean, after this. After all this is said and done, where are you going?”
“Said and done?”
“You know what I mean. I’m leaving soon. And you’re here, and we’re here, now. But will we still be here,” she touched the place where she imagined her heart to be, “if we both keep on this path,” her eyes focused purely on the greyish purple in his—still concentrating on her area of flesh.
“Abi,” he looked up to her, but looked back down almost immediately, lost in the patterns again of skin and wrinkle and skin, “I’m comfortable here. This is where I am, it’s where I want to be,” and he lay his head down and closed his eyes.
“No,” Abi sat up in bed, insisting that he follow, “Jacob Aaron you’re not going to stay here for the rest of your life. If you want me, you have me, but you have to do something. You’re comfortable—that’s it!” Abi never raised her voice. He listened.
Time was relative.
Abi would be graduating in less than two weeks to go into a world she’d been preparing for since birth. Her mother had planned it, she thought, since conception, and now it was follow through time. And for the past few semesters Abi was feeling that, that follow through time pressure about being somebody her mom was molding her into being. Feeling that force that crossed her legs and made them twitch and kick the seat in front of her every fourth or fifth kick, that made those palms sit one atop another a foot away from the notebook she would call her life, and her mom would call a hobby. Feeling.
“What are you going to do after next month Abigail,” Jake asked her, thinking too much about a future he never wanted to have, or thought about having. Scared of the answer. Everything just happened to him, he’d thought once, and he hoped, Abi would somehow, continue happening to him.
“Momma wants me to apply at this office in Chicago. She has a friend up there that says I can do copywriter work and work my way up, figure out what I want to do with this degree I guess. I get to live in the city and get some life into me, experience momma says,” it was a cookie cutter answer, one without thought, one given to her.
“Oh.” He was silent.
“Jacob, I don’t wanna go. Tell me not to go. Tell me to stay here with you and be happy, right here, right now, in this moment forever,” she held him close to her like a teddy bear and a two year old and he smiled under her weight, but nudged away. He looked into her eyes, away from the fleshy part between her breast and her tummy, and smiled.
“No. I’m not going to tell you what to do Abigail. I’m not that person, I never have been,” his voice was shaky but serious, and she could feel his heart beat beneath his shirt.
In the end
Time was relative and so was Love.
Abigail graduated but stayed around to research herself, on her own account.
Jacob enrolled for fall classes and moved hundreds or more miles away.
And they said their goodbyes in their own forced and unforced decisions.
And they smiled.