The Unmade World
Steve Yarbrough
Unbridled Books
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
Unbridled Books
Copyright © 2018 by Steve Yarbrough
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Yarbrough, Steve, 1956- author.
Title: The unmade world : a novel / Steve Yarbrough.
Description: Lakewood, CO : Unbridled Books, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034089| ISBN 9781609531430 (softcover) | ISBN
9781609531447 (e-isbn)
Subjects: LCSH: Life change events--Fiction. | Grief--Fiction. |
Guilt--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3575.A717 U56 2018 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034089
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Book Design by SH • CV
First Printing
For Jill McCorkle
I have been so dislanguaged by what happened
I cannot speak the words that somewhere you
Maybe were speaking to others where you went.
Maybe they walk together where they are,
Restlessly wandering, along the shore
Waiting for a way to cross the river.
David Ferry
CHRISTMAS IN KRAKOW - 2006
“You’re lucky I love Ella Fitzgerald,” his daughter says. She’s standing on the chair he brought in from the kitchen, and she’s just positioned the angel atop the tree. They bought that ornament this morning at a stall in the enormous Cloth Hall, which dominates the market square, and they bought the tree yesterday outside Galeria Krakowska, and then he dragged it ten blocks through the snow and up five flights of stairs. He was still jet-lagged, and though he goes to the gym twice a week and is in decent shape, he had to pause on each landing. Somewhere between the third and fourth floors, in the offhanded manner in which the most contented among us entertain such notions, he realized that his wife, who’d grown up here with her brother, had been right a few years back, warning that one day he’d wish they’d swapped it for a flat in a building with an elevator. He doesn’t have that many regrets, but the lack of a lift may become one.
Anna cocks her head, looks hard at the angel, then reaches out and makes an adjustment. “We’ve listened to this same CD three times since we started decorating. Did you realize that?”
“It’s a short disc.”
“Not that short.”
“And it’s the greatest ballad album ever recorded.”
She tosses her blonde bangs. “One could argue.”
“If one did, what might one propose as an alternative?”
“Dexter Gordon’s Ballads. Clifford Brown with Strings. The Intimate Ellington. Alternatives do exist.”
He’s having fun. He always looks forward to decorating the tree with her, but never more so than this year. They flew six thousand miles for the pleasure. “We started with Ella,” he says, “so we’re staying with her. It’s important to maintain continuity when doing something as momentous as decorating your first Polish Christmas tree.”
“This tree came from Norway.”
“How do you know?”
“The sign above the booth where you paid for it said, ‘Norwegian Wood.’”
“I didn’t see that.”
“You weren’t looking.” She puts out her hand, sticky from sap. “I’m finished,” she says. “Help me down. I’m too mature now to jump.”
He opens his arms. She steps into them, and as he lowers her to the floor, he gets a whiff of the scent she started wearing back in October after developing a crush on a kid who sits beside her in the string ensemble. She’s no longer a child. She has breasts, for Christ’s sake. “What do you weigh these days?” he wonders aloud.
“I would’ve hoped that by now you’d know not to ask a person of the feminine persuasion such a question. But I’ll answer it anyway: a hundred and eight pounds, give or take an ounce.” Gently, she pokes his stomach. “What do you weigh?”
“About a hundred and five kilos.”
Like many musicians, she’s also a proficient mathematician. “In other words, two hundred and thirty freaking pounds? Truly?”
“It sounds a lot better in kilos.”
“You need to take it easy on the pierogi, Dad. Not to mention the goose-liver pâté.”
A shade over six three, he’s got broad shoulders that suggest he might have made a good linebacker in his youth, though the only competitive sport he ever played was baseball. He can carry a good bit of weight. Yet he can’t deny that not long ago he had to let his belt out. He’s been eating and drinking a little more than he should. The last few months have not exactly been stress-free.
He covers Central California for the Los Angeles Times. He’s held that job for more than two decades, the only break coming seventeen years ago, when his Polish fluency brought him here to report on the revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe. Back in September, the Times’s publisher was ousted after protesting cuts proposed by the parent company. Then just last month, his editor-in-chief, a close personal friend, had also been forced out. What do you do if you can no longer do what you’ve done your entire adult life? Until recently, he hadn’t thought he’d ever have to ask himself that question. Even now, he’s not overly concerned. Still, when they return to Fresno in January, he’ll send out a few feelers, just to stay on the safe side.
Julia Mirecka Brennan: she’s forty-six, a year younger than he is in December of 2006, her hair as dark as their daughter’s is light. Her eyes are large, brown, and mildly convex, and they often roll out of focus when she’s on top of him and an orgasm ripples through her. During their years together, she’s taught Richard a great many things, one of which is to walk on her left, cantering along beside her like her personal Saint Bernard. If she decides to make a left turn, either to go around a corner or enter a shop where something has captured her attention, she drops her shoulder and nudges him in the proper direction. The single time he remarked upon it, she said, “What’s a person my size to do when walking with someone like you?” He told her she could just say, “Hey, let’s go in there,” or “Why don’t we walk down that street?” She responded that she liked how her approach was working, and he abandoned his inquiry because, basically, he did too.
Back in the ’80s, when the country was under martial law, she had carried an extra toothbrush everywhere she went in case joining a demonstration led to her arrest. She has never been fainthearted, nor has she ever been one to conceal her opinions. There’s a particular way her mouth twists when she thinks you’re full of shit. He doesn’t see that expression very often these days, but it’s definitely on display