Gabriella Brand

Please check out my most recent short story “Deliberately” which appears in Constellations, volume 12.

http://www.constellations-lit.com/

 

Or read it here:

 

                                                Deliberately

Callie didn’t know what to do with the Swiss Army knife. She didn’t want to return it to Sid Boynton, but she didn’t want to bring it home either. For the time being, she kept the knife in her desk drawer on the twentieth floor of the Universal Insurance Company,in downtown Hartford.

If she brought it home, she knew her husband would question where she got it. And then he’d wonder why one of her co-workers thought she needed a big red knife with three blades.

When Sidney Boynton had put the knife on her desk, unwrapped, Callie was taken aback. Sid was quick to explain.

“I thought you should have one for the woods,” said Sid.

Callie had mentioned to her colleagues that she had recently joined a hiking group. Each Saturday morning she and a few other middle-aged women trampled through State Forests.

“It’s good to have a knife. What if you found some fiddlehead ferns? You could cut them and bring them home. Fry them up. Share them with Joe.”

Joe was Callie’s husband. Fifteen years older than his wife, Joe was overweight and arthritic. Having retired early, he now spent most of his days flitting through news channels, napping,and doing Sudoku.

“I don’t think so. Joe’s a pretty conservative eater,” she said.

“Well, then, I suppose if you got lost, you could use the knife to cut kindling,” said Sid.

“Lost?” said Callie. “It’s Connecticut, not the jungle.”

“I’m just looking out for you,” Sid said.

Callie wasn’t sure what Sid meant.

Sid then demonstrated all the knife’s features: scissors, wrench, and corkscrew.

“And you just stick your thumbnail in the groove to pull each one out,” he said.

Callie feared breaking a nail trying to do that. She looked down at her fingertips. They were long and shiny, varnished in a shade called Oyster Bay.

Then she saw Sid smiling at her.

“Trust me, this knife is gonna be your new best friend,” said Sid. “Just like me.”

Callie gulped. What a strange thing for this young man to say.

She hadn’t known Sidney Boynton very well, but she’d always considered him an odd duck. On the one hand, he was a highly respected mega-analyst for the industry. On the other hand, he reminded everyone of an overgrown Boy Scout. His office was decorated with large color photographs of the Serengetti (he’d taken them himself) and a framed quote from Thoreau…I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” nicely matted. There were rocks on the bookshelf. No family photos. Just rocks. He’d collected them on his travels.

One night Callie and Sid were fine-tuning a project, working late in the conference room. Just the two of them and neither had eaten since noon.

“Do you like Korean food?” Sid asked suddenly.

“Actually, I love Korean food,” said Callie. “We don’t get it very often because, well, Joe won’t eat anything exotic.”

“Let’s order take-out,” suggested Sid.

The food arrived hot and fragrant and the office air became pungent with cabbage and spices.

“Where’d you learn to use chopsticks so well?” Callie asked, as a way of making dinner table conversation.

“Japan,” he said, “I went there after college to study, um, funeral customs.”

“Funeral customs?” asked Callie.

“Yes,” said Sid. “I had been an anthropology major. I thought I might become an academic, but obviously I took another route.”

Callie nodded, “You mean, corporate America?”

Sid laughed. “Well, there’s an upside to it,” he said.

She assumed he meant financial rewards.

Sid smiled, took another careful mouthful of Janchi guksu, but said nothing further..

Callie realized that Sid had an unusual way of listening and responding. He didn’t just assert his opinion or express his point his view. He chewed on ideas and digested them.

Callie could hear the housekeeping staff pushing their carts through the sparkling chrome and glass office spaces.

“I majored in film,” said Callie, intent on keeping the conversation afloat. “Not very practical.”

“Kind of like anthropology,” said Sid.

“I suppose so. I made a few short, amateurish films, then I needed to get a job.”

“But you’ve done well,” said Sid “It couldn’t have been easy.”

Callie didn’t know exactly what Sid meant. Was he talking about the disappointment of giving up filmmaking, or the challenge of being a woman in a male-dominated field?

“I came to Universal Insurance at entry level, just desperate. They paid for me to get another degree.”

“That wouldn’t happen in today’s economy,”said Sid.

Callie suddenly felt conscious of the age difference between them.

They ate together for a while without speaking.

“A film major and an anthropology major, both in the sterile heights of Universal Insurance,” said Sid, after a while.

“Is there something wrong with that?” asked Callie.

“No, of course not. We’ve adapted, obviously,” said Sid.

“But I like the work, don’t you?” asked Callie.

“”I’m good at it, but I suspect that neither of us – deep down -really belongs here.”

“I belong here,” said Callie. She could tell she sounded defensive.

Every once and while, as they sat there working, she stole a glance at Sidney’s face – his clear blue eyes. his aquiline nose. He was actually quite attractive.

Oh my god, what’s gotten into me, thought Callie. I’m almost fifty years old, he’s what…maybe thirty-five?

In all the years of her marriage to Joe, she’d never really been unfaithful. Not even when Joe’s vigor diminished. Yet now, as the weeks went by, Callie found herself thinking about Sid. Callie couldn’t deny that she and the young man had things in common. He also had an aesthetic sense that pleased her. When she went into his office, she often stared at those photos of the Serengetti on his wall, and admired the composition. The crooked neck of the wildebeest, the same shape repeated in the lone tree.

Once he told her to live deeply and suck out all the marrow of life. Only later did she realize he was quoting Thoreau.

He had spent last summer in Norway, taking photos, hiking, and collecting rocks.

“You went alone?” asked Callie.

“No, with a friend,” said Sid, offering no details.

“Uh huh,” said Callie, curious, but embarrassed to ask anything further.

Soon she started picking up rocks on her Saturday morning hikes. She would leave the best one on Sid’s chair on Monday morning.

“What did you do this weekend?” she’d ask, and Sid would tell her about his attempt to make kombucha, or fishing in the Shepaug River, or his lute lesson.

“Lute? Isn’t that like from the Renaissance?”

“Yeah,” said Sid, “it’s beautiful, but it plays basically like a guitar.”

She thought about Joe alternating between CNN and a Sudoku page.

“Is there anything you’re not interested in?” asked Callie.

“Yeah, actuarial tables,” said Sid, with a grin.

“I think he’s becoming my work husband,” Callie confided in her friend, Brianna.

“Well, that’s okay, isn’t it?” said Brianna, who had a social work degree and a tendency to dissect whatever Callie said.

“I suppose,” said Callie, “But it feels weird, like an affair.”

“It is kind of an affair. It’s just not physical. I assume it’s not physical, right?”

“Well, there’s some kind of chemistry, I just don’t know what it is,” said Callie.

“Do you think about him?” asked Brianna.

“Yes, a lot,” admitted Callie.

“So, see what I mean? It’s not just a friendship. You don’t think about a friendship everyday. It’s definitely a kind of affair.”

“Maybe,” said Callie.

“Affairs don’t require sex,” explained Brianna.

Callie laughed a little, but Brianna’s tone grew serious.

“Sometimes the sex-less affairs are more dangerous,” said Brianna.

“Dangerous, how?” asked Callie.

“They can be life-changing,” said Brianna.

 

A few days later, Callie and Sid had to work late again. He had suggested that he put together a picnic.

He opened up a container of chilled asparagus soup and poured some into two green pottery bowls. He cut up a baguette and some aromatic cheese.

“This is delightful,” said Callie. J

Joe would be micro-waving a Hot Pocket by now.

It was springtime and, although it was nearly eight-thirty at night, the sun above Hartford hung high in the sky until well after they were done eating. The golden rays traveled across the wall and up their forearms.

To Callie, the meal felt pleasantly seductive.

“Nice orange light,” said Sid.

“Yes,” agreed Callie.

“I’d call it Cara-Cara orange,” said Sid, “It’s paler and pinker than a Navel orange.”

Callie agreed. It was a lovely evening. She felt relaxed and coddled by the sunset and the food and the sound of Sid’s voice.

Sid was leaning back a little in his chair and smiling. Was it an inviting smile? Was he waiting for Callie to say or do something?

Maybe it was time to make things clear.

Abruptly, she stood up and placed her fingertips on the edge of the table, as if she were getting ready to close down a meeting.

She cleared her throat. Sid stopped leaning back and looked at her.

“I guess we should get back to work,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Uh, well, actually, I wanted to….I want to return the knife.”

“The knife?” asked Sid, looking around as if he had left silverware from the picnic on the table.

“You know, the Swiss Army knife,” said Callie.

“You want me to return it?” asked Sid, “Is it defective?”

“No, I mean….I want to return it to you,” she said.

“Why is that?” asked Sid.

“Um, because…I just don’t feel that ….well, I just haven’t brought it home because…I think that Joe might wonder why I had it, and….”

Sid looked puzzled.

“It’s for when you’re walking in the woods,” said Sid.

“Yes, I know,” said Callie. “But…”

She wanted to say something further. There were so many thoughts running through her mind. She knew herself to be assertive, bold, capable. And surely, at her age, and with her experience, she had the guts to interrogate Sid, to question his motives, to even help him to admit something…if, in fact, there was something to admit. But what could he admit? That he was attracted to her? That he was her friend? That he actually gave her the knife to force his way into her life?

“Never mind,” she said, disappointed in her own cowardice.

Sid shrugged his shoulders. His boyish face was as calm and inscrutable as ever.

 

A few months later, Sid casually announced that he was getting married. His fiancée’s name was Allyson. She’d been in Africa – Birkina Faso, to be exact – studying crop blight for the past two years. But now she’d taken a permanent position. Up until recently, they hadn’t been sure of their future. So he’d be leaving Universal at the end of the year and joining her.

And that was that.

Afterwards, Callie continued to do her job, bur more and more she found herself resenting the early mornings, the manicured nails, the business comportment, the visual dullness of corporate insurance.

Sid and the knife had meant something, after all.

Maybe sometime soon she would take the Swiss Army knife and go cut some fiddlehead ferns, just as Sid had suggested. And she’d fry the ferns up for herself. Out in the woods, unafraid, a bit disheveled, dirty even, maybe with broken fingernails from opening the sharpest blade.

Sometimes, in looking out the windows of Universal Insurance, she saw the cumulus clouds, the far off hills, the Connecticut River flowing to the sea. If she worked late enough, the setting sun would bathe her in that soft light that Sid had described as Cara-Cara orange.

She imagined the scene as a background for the opening credits to a film, a personal film, a deliberate film, the best film she would ever have a chance to make.

 

Also, I’ll be talking about my publishing journey in a special OLLI program at the University of Connecticut on January 24th at 11 AM. See here to register: olli.uconn.edu