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CleavageAuthor(s): Steve SparksSource: The North American Review, Vol. 286, No. 3/4, Annual Summer Fiction Double Issue(May - Aug., 2001), pp. 32-33Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25126608 .

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N AR

STEVE SPARKS

Cleavage

In my childhood, there were innumerable beliefs I was unsure of, Santa Claus,

angels on high, the tooth fairy, but the one thing I was absolutely certain of was the

indisputable beauty of my mother. In my rational brain, I know my favorite photograph of her is in

black and white, but in my heart, I see it in the old-quilt familiarity of hand-tinted hues, with a

rosy flesh color

the most pronounced: my mother's publicity shot from 1961 when she was a

radio singer in Kansas City, right after Chuck Berry and Elvis made it unfashionable to stand

in blue-silver dress, the indescribable color of the sky reflected in ice, displaying a thawing hint

of cleavage,

perched, like a masthead, in front of the tuxedoed brass of Barclay's Big Band in a

Ricky Ricardo

nightclub, and torching out "Someone to Watch Over Me." She kept that picture secreted away

in dresser drawer along with photos of me brandishing new gaps in my smile, my sister

parading annual Easter

dresses, and my father posing with dead animals. At about age 12,1 swirled into the uncomfortable chaos

of finding the photo, tucked away like a Tijuana postcard, and momentarily, feeling the itch of attraction

before the complex slap of recognition awakened me to find myself mid-soliloquy in

Oedipus Rex.

After the operation, my mother tried to ease our discomfort with ghastly attempts at gallows humor,

tasteless jokes about grapefruit prosthetics and a part-time carny job in the freak show

as a hermaphrodite. One in particular sticks out that I can't quite make

myself remember,

something to do with her truly having cleavage now, making reference, I think,

to aspects of her surgical disfigurement that she had no reasonable choice but to laugh at.

There was one garish Polaroid, my mother in hospital bed, giving the camera

the finger,

wearing clown make-up?red nose, rainbow wig?but at the top of the

hospital gown, a silver glint of surgical staples shines from the top of the blue antiseptic

bandage.

I threw that picture into the fireplace on the day I packed up my mother's memorabilia

in cardboard boxes, and stored them away. Now it's either the sexpot photo with

32 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW May-August 2001

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STEVE SPARKS

the guilty cleavage that I think of when I conjure up mother's image; that, or her in paint-lichened jeans,

formless sweatshirt,

standing in front of a sink full of dishes, suds on her yellow latex gloves, belting out

in satin tones

how September's days have dwindled down to a precious few.

JENNY BRANTLEY

The Lineman in Coming Winter

Wisconsin 1998

Blue sparks shoot from the transformer

on the corner, tiny azure lights following a line in the darkness of a late autumn night.

I call NSP and they send a solitary lineman, his bucket a vague outline against a winter storm

black-black sky in the north, wind whistling around my husband and me, waiting on the porch,

cradling drinks in our hands,

watching a single savior battle wind and fire.

Electricity off for 2 hours, he yells to us,

get ready. We crank the heat for a final 15 minutes,

light our candles, call the elderly woman next door, then are plunged into black, the winter storm clouds even darker, larger, bringing us ice, snow, wind.

This is the night winter arrives.

We stand and watch him, bucket up, bucket down. He blows on his fingers, throws switches, mending a lifeline.

We turn on all our lights, even the Christmas lights outlining our porch. When he flips the switch

we cheer and our house lights up like a prairie train town.

It starts to snow and the temperature falls twenty degrees.

The lineman walks into our yard, holding melted metal

like a communion offering, and we three stand, light at our backs,

facing the coming storm.

May-August 2001 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 33

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