The Master of Sugar

by Claudia Monpere

Jeton Bajrami

In a cottage in the woods lived a man and not even the green-eyed princess could cheer him. Not even his two children who lived nearby with his wife could cheer him. The ruby rhododendrons and azaleas, the sugar pines, the grandfatherly oaks, the bamboo fountain that trickled in his yard while he stared at the stars: no.

The Wife

Where is the wife in all this?

Did she crank events in motion like Mousetrap, that game he loved as a child, gear turning, pushing the lever, hitting the swinging boot, kicking the bucket, Zig-zagging marble, chute, bathtub, seesaw, diver. Finally the cage, falling.

What color is rage? (No, red is never enough.)

A shouting voice approximates to 88 decibels. The loudest human voice belongs to teacher Annalisa Flanagan from Northern Ireland whose shout of 121 decibels is the equivalent of a jet engine.

Stove

I stand before the stove frantic I’ve left a burner on and my children will die in a fire. For months the cold coils hiss, blooming to red, the knobs turned to off. I check and recheck. Drive home to check again. Claw-screech, gut-snout, butcher-trussed dread.

The Wife Speaks: Something is Hungry

Dark brown, pig-skinned, brass locked, bulging like botulism in a can of corn, your trial briefcase swallows every morsel with its massive belly.

Crunch crunch. Our family after Mass, Starbuck’s logo blazing, madeleines on a white plate.

We turn our backs on the sky.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a cake, lawyer man, write me a brief as fast as you can.

We are gentle with the cupcakes. Drive drive drive your car to the wholesalers to pick up vats of green beans and pasta, hams as pink and shiny as children’s cheeks. Our children wrap the BINGO prizes: cologne, socks, marigolds. Merrily merrily merrily merrily.

We serve dinner to hungry people, our children making small talk with the woman drying tea bags. The man with the red beard hunches over his food. So slowly he moves his knife and fork, he might be a jeweler, brazing bits of gold.

The Tower

For years the sad man sat in his lonely tower into the wee hours, spinning rough depositions into legal documents. The castle was fortified with 24/7 security guards and high-tech sensors, an underground garage. Stocked with vending machines and law books, mahogany conference tables. Gold bricks to block his river of dread. But that river kept flowing. It was in him, an oil-slicked cascade ablaze with fury. He was in it, rapids bashing his limbs, whirlpools sucking him under. But work grit worked magic. Perseverance that cut through titanium producing brilliant wins: scrolls of briefs, complaints, interrogatories. Endless pro bono work. Partner in the firm. President of the County Bar Association.

Garden Scene

CHARACTERS

Police Officer 1

Police Officer 2

The Wife

Police Officer 1: It’s the girlfriend’s hair, right?

Police Officer 2: Looks like some of this incense has been burned. The candles, too. And these scraps of paper. Huh. This is some weird writing.

Police Officer 1 : Yep, some kind of witchcraft.

The Wife: No, it’s a shrine. She made a shrine for him.

Police Officer 2: I don’t know. Is this some kind of secret message?

The Wife: They wrote poems to each other.

Police Officer 2: Poems?

Police Officer 1: You’ve been separated over a year, right?

Police Officer 2: Has this kind of stuff happened before?

Mountains, Lake

The sad man tried to conjure Bass Lake: emerald bowl, granite slabs for sunning. Scent of ponderosa, meadows of sweet peas and bachelor buttons, their straw blooms of pink, purple, periwinkle blue. The tiny cabin he and his father built. He willed himself to think of the one week each year when he hiked the Willow Creek Trail with wife, son, daughter. When they linked hands, wading, when they lay on their backs at dusk watching bats flicker in the trees. He willed himself not to dwell on the bridge glowing reckless outside his tower window. 23,000 feet of cantilever, truss, suspension.

Clothes

I find myself for the third time not wearing what I thought I was wearing.

The Wife Speaks the Ways She Tried

Tryharderapologizeunderstandhisdemandingworkapologizebecalmandcheerfulunderstandhisimportantworkmakenorequeststryharderdonothaveneedsapologizeapologizeapologize.

The Wife Speaks Again. No. Maybe She Should Shut the Fuck Up.

Parties Have Jointly Retained a Neutral Family Law Mediator

Bank accounts, son, daughter, twenty-three years, broken shale. The documents hold the family. The bay holds smelt and perch, centuries of stones honed by interspousal transfer deeds. Husband shall forthwith deliver to wife: gum ball machine filled with quarters, summers coiled in a cypress box. Have made a full and complete disclosure of how many ducklings they counted that year. Shall share joint custody of minor children, plastic dinosaurs, spelling books, Winnie the Pooh. Billable hours were at an all-time high which is not to be expected in the future due to cash flow restrictions. Not to be expected — that particular way you sat with the children sharing your lap, reading Ferdinand the Bull, drawing out the story — taffy, the colors stretching, stretching, and you, the master of sugar.

The Plea

I want to move back home.

No, I said.

Please. Cancel divorce proceedings.

Please I just want

Cancel cancel cancel cancel —

I said no.

Thinking

The sad man couldn’t stop staring at the bridge outside his tower window. Around every bend he imagined ruin: serious illness, loss of job, homelessness. Abandonment. The princess, too, would leave him. He drove to the Bay Bridge, back and forth all night.

Exhausted, he went to his old home. His wife was doing the wash and getting ready for a date. He couldn’t keep track of her. Up and down the stairs she went. Was she hiding from him? The children did arithmetic and spelling. He fell into a deep sleep on the couch. A magic bird appeared, blue feathers brushing against his cheek. No, it was just the cat. When he awoke his wife insisted he phone his psychiatrist. He did. Asked to be seen. You’re not going to do anything stupid are you? the psychiatrist asked. No, nothing stupid he answered. The psychiatrist decided he didn’t need to be seen. It was Sunday, after all.

Coast Guard Report

Possible jumper west of the Bay Bridge Fireboat Phoenix launching Strobe light with life ring dropped 200 yards S. of Charlie Span Vehicle found with keys and wallet inside Person most likely in water 45 min. before CG arrived To determine drift of PIW based on tides and currents Visibility: 10 Wave Height: 2 Wind Speed: 22

Active search suspended. Weather: clear

Every Summer the Bass Lake Bats Skim the Trees at Dusk

Once there were windows and windows. A red kayak carrying clouds. A lake with mica-studded granite. Children with their warm, sticky touch. Breathless, barefoot. Damp bathing suits stiffening in sun. Windows open to the clean white ribs of birch. Open to buzz, flutter, chirp, croak. Damselflies iridescent in reeds. Moon’s early, languid game. Place the man and his wife on the dock under the diamond glint of stars. Across the lake, Goat Mountain. Shaggy ghosts browsing on manzanita. Once wife once husband there were, watching the water, quicksilver. Wait. She will push him in, laugh, leaping into his splash this spilled August night.

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Claudia Monpere’s fiction and creative nonfiction appear in Trampset, Split Lip, The Forge, Craft, SmokeLong Quarterly, Atlas and Alice, Milk Candy Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her poems appear in such journals as The Cincinnati Review, Plume, Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, and Hunger Mountain. She received the 2023 SmokeLong Workshop Prize and will appear in Best Small Fictions 2024.