Milk Candy Review

A locket shaped like a book, metal pages empty, tarnished black ovals where someone—my parents?—should have been.

The All New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook, published 1962. In that same book, shoved between Jerusalem Artichokes and French-Fried Asparagus, a recipe card. Title in my mother’s cursive: “Green Walnut Preserves.” The rest, blank.

The satin heels I wore to prom, coffined in tissue paper.

My father’s funeral program, October 1988.

A letter my younger brother sent from summer camp in western New York, August 1988. From its folds, a curlicue of paper, soft with smeared graphite, falls to my feet. My brother always enclosed sketches. Birds, mostly: chickadees and yellowthroats. My mother pinned them to the cork board in the kitchen. Sometimes I’d catch her there, feather duster or garbage bag or limp rag in hand, eyes roving over the strokes of my brother’s pencil.

More sketches. I call to ask if he wants them.

“I don’t want any of her junk,” he replies.

That summer it had been my job to reply to his letters. My mother only learned English as a teenager; her grammar mistakes embarrassed her. “When you write him,” she enjoined, “don’t mention the news.” The sour smell of my father’s skin, the hard plastic of the kidney-shaped basin by his bedside. “I want him to have his camp.”

I gashed my drafts with red crosshatch, excising tumors until the page was blank. None made it to the mailbox. My mother has to break the news on the drive back from camp. We park at a rest stop. I sit up front. In the rearview mirror I watch my brother’s face curdle, his birds recast as evidence of exclusion from familial crisis, the first of many grievances to come. In a few years he will throw a platter at my mother and shout that he hates her. But now we pass the rest of the trip in silence. My mother drives the speed limit exactly, brakes before every turn—the slightest jostle could crack us apart.

***

Catherine Swanner is a writer in Michigan. She studied history at Rutgers University, and works as a UX researcher. Find her online: catherineswanner.com

We recently published Holly Pelesky’s charming “Working Class Date Suggestions.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love these dates. These are wonderful dates. I want to go on these dates. Have you gone on any of them? I also want to go on these dates! The only one I’ve had with a romantic partner is Dan did break open his aloe vera plant to rub its goo onto my sunburn once. Although I haven’t gone on the rest of these dates as romantic dates with a potential partner, I do have a friend who is up for anything who has indulged me in some of these details. She and I have this enormous respect for each other that I would like to have with a partner one day; she is a catalyst for me to dream of the biggest love. 

2) Though we never really meet the characters here, we get a sense of their fondness for each other through the description of the dates they could go on. Do you think they will last? (I hope they will last!)  Oh they will definitely last. To me this is a construction of a very close couple, one who admires and desires each other. These two people live in the world together. They are not threatened by what it could bring their way. 

Let’s eat banana splits at the Dairy Queen that used to be an Amigos and let’s quarrel over whose better at quarters and challenge the other to a game, not because it matters at all but because we want to watch each other’s hands work.

Let’s dangle our feet in the pool while a quiet rain begins and we’ll riff off each other’s thoughts and birth deeper and more considerate ones together, the water whooshing between our toes as we swirl patterns into the water, the quiet rain landing on our skin delicate as sleep.

Let’s roll up a joint of Gouda and see how it inhales.

Let’s go to a diner and eat greasy eggs and suck down cokes and talk about what your tattoos mean, whose been to jail, what we never got caught for, the stupid drugs we did, the shady characters we knew and were and then let’s forgive ourselves and get tattoos that mean nothing and everything.

Or we could just eat quesadillas and watch sour cream drip down each other’s face.

Let’s meet at the coffee shop, share a scone, and make up stories about every person who walks in, shared in hushed excitement.

Let’s get high and listen intently to song lyrics while holding hands, commentate on the secret desires of these characters, our secret desires revealing themselves through the stories we tell each other.

Let’s go sit on the river bottom and watch the foam float by us while the moon brightens and the sun dims, wondering whether the motorboats speeding by are owned or stolen, crafting the particulars of how we’d pull off a boat heist.

But if you can’t swim, you should get in my car instead, turn up the music. We’ll sing along to every song—let’s see how far we make it until we run out of gas.

You’ll need a life vest if you were serious about the boat heist.

Let’s get high and write postcards to everyone we love, lick stamps and slyly leave some on each other without us noticing until we take our clothes off and there they are, little 51 cent I love yous, little you send mes.

Let’s lie naked together and listen to songs until they course through our bloodstreams, touch each other in just that way until our bloodstreams feel like just one, coursing through us both.

Let’s break open your aloe plant and smear the goo on our sunburns, it’s so cold, my skin is electric underneath your fingertips.

Let’s get corndogs and strawberry limeades and dip our feet into the river. I know it’s rising and there’s a flood warning but think what it would feel like to watch the banks fill to the brim like that next to me, both of us all hopped up on pheromones—everything more and more and more.

If you’re still squeamish of water—even after that time you were almost swimming—let’s sneak a charcuterie spread into the movie theater, spread soft cheeses on pffts of bread while we watch a story unfold on a screen, slide rolled up pieces of prosciutto into open mouths, lips wet with want to discuss the plot and dialogue and acting after—you are my favorite critic.

***

Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction and poetry. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. Her prose can be found in CutBank, The Normal School, and Roanoke Review, among other places. Her collection of letters to her daughter, Cleave, was published by Autofocus Books. She works as a librarian for her first job, in a college writing center for her second. She lives in Omaha with her two sons and their indoor/outdoor cat. She is not dating at the moment, but vouches for all these ideas. 

You must remember these few things if nothing else. Pay attention. You are always drifting away.

Do not leave the house without a basket of fresh pastries. Stop to pick the flowers, but not if you’re wearing a short skirt. Bring a friend when you’re headed into the forest. Or at least set your phone to share your coordinates with others. 

Trust your instincts. If that guy seems to be a wolf wearing shorts with suspenders, keep moving. Look at his feet. Is he barefoot? Does he have claw-like toenails?

You should already know not to talk to strangers. Do you not pay attention at all? Where does this willful naivety come from?

You want to believe in magic, and maybe in your experience, a fairy godmother has appeared at just the right time to turn the mice infestation into a carriage and footmen, your rags into a gown, your knotted hair into a swooping bun with wispy tendrils. Don’t count on magic to save you. If you want out, make a plan that does not involve you singing and gazing out of the window. If you are stuck in a tower (and who of us has not been stuck in a tower), don’t focus on how long your hair is, and don’t, you know, throw it over the window for any old woodsman to climb up. Aside from being dangerous, that is so bad for your scalp.

Let’s face it, you have a tendency to fall in love fast, we know this about you, so take a step back, and ponder, Do you love him, or do you love how much he loves you? And does he love you or is he smitten by your beauty and kindness and beautiful singing voice? Your tight bodice, your locks of gold/black/never brown? The enchantment doesn’t last, my friend, so be sure before you accept his hand in marriage under the cover of night, hustled away by your father, lest you find yourself alone in a drafty stone bedroom with musty smelling sheets and an animal curled around you in the four-poster bed.

Consider the stepmother. We know she’s jealous, though if we could take a moment here: ask yourself why. She’s got your father as her husband; she’s got the house—what is her problem? 

On the other hand, you should also be wary of the witches, those with the shiny red apples. Someone should have taught you—there’s poison inside.

And what about these men? Yes, they can chop down a door with two swings of an ax, setting you free from the wolf’s stomach or the witch’s oven, but just because they saved you doesn’t mean you owe them anything more than a curtsy. Of course, they also have the castle, and probably horses (we know you like horses).  But they can be moody and mysterious, secretive, giving you access to all their riches save one room. 

Why is it you must always long to see behind the locked door, when you have everything else you could ever want?

You are meant to be more than simply a house cleaner for small miners. You are more than a figure for bluebirds to perch on. You don’t have to lie and say you can do something (spin straw into gold), be something (a princess instead of a house maid) or see something (clothes on a ridiculous man) when you cannot, are not, do not. 

Take stock. You’re young, strong, possibly brave. What other things might you want despite the man, the apple, the candy on the windowsill, the secret behind the door? 

You think it ends with “happily ever after,” but life continues. Your feet start to hurt in those shoes. It gets difficult to smile. You have thoughts—dark ones, mean ones, jealous thoughts, hope for bad things to happen to happy people. You are in danger not just of aging and dying, but of feeding those thoughts so that you become the stepmother or the witch.

Do not be only good, pure, thoughtful. Be also ruthless, greedy, cunning. 

Look to the wolf. What does it do? Follow the creature’s lead. In that way, you may prosper. 

***

Aimee LaBrie’s short stories have appeared in the The Minnesota Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, StoryQuarterly, Cimarron Review, Fractured Lit, Pleiades, Beloit Fiction Journal, Permafrost Magazine, and others. Her second short story collection, Rage and Other Cages, won the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize and was published by Leapfrog Press in June 2024. In 2007, her short story collection, Wonderful Girl, was awarded the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and published by the University of North Texas Press. Her short fiction has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize. Aimee teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. 

AS A BABY, his mother is the only one in history not to ponder the punishing freedom of the possibility of their child’s death. At thirteen, Jesus oscillates between becoming a great whittler and being the son of God. As a side hustle, his stepfather hawks animal sculptures at bazaars; the pufferfish—his prized commodity. At nineteen, Christ carves John the Baptiste a pufferfish, the latter holding it aloft with such amorous wonderment and gusto; even with all the miracles, this is the best it got. Years later, he makes the other John a pufferfish; John responds by asking if it is a prefigurement, an allegory. Make me understand, he implores. At twenty-seven, he makes Mary—not his mother, nor Magdalene—of Bethany a pufferfish, a rhinoceros, a honey badger, a perfume bottle with her initials, and a wallaby. Bathing in the sea with Mary, he resolves to give up whittling, God—to marry her, but he thinks too long of his father, how God made her, her little mouth, her nipplefruit breasts, how he’s seen her this way, too, and that is enough. During the crucifixion, Christ marvels at the monstrous ingenuity it must’ve taken to first design this thing. It is someone’s masterpiece. Since Christ was already perfect in the Militant realm, he is the same in the Triumphant. Jesus watches his Mary for a long time, then she dies, and he does not find her again. After his mother’s Assumption, he does not like seeing her—just the two of them body/soul with God nowhere/everywhere—a once absent father now gone. As saints become a thing, his mother finds a vocation. There are rocks and wood in Heaven if you want them. Jesus whittles pufferfish and little Mary of Bethanys, thinking This is what life could’ve been.

***

Nicholas Finch is a writer and teacher in Florida. Most recently, Finch’s translations of the Croatian poet Josip Pupapcic were published by Faultlines.

He was the one who performed the grandest tricks, climbed the tallest trees, vaulted the steepest rooftops, annoyed the most dogs at night bouncing like a firefly with the light of his GoPro always filming, always posting, garnering the most likes from subscribers, garnering the most frustration from neighbors who called him crazy, called him a hooligan, the one who wished he’d hadn’t been filming, hadn’t been posting for likes when his girlfriend lost her balance, lost her footing, the one who wished knew how to swim, how to act, how to do anything but stare dumbfounded like the other onlookers at the clifftop, pointing, shouting, insisting someone do something as he begged the helicopter to hurry, the one who later took swimming lessons at the Y, the one who climbed to the tallest tree the day of the hurricane, the one who vaulted across his neighbors’ rooftops in the downpour, the one who spotted his neighbor George in the rising water, the one who pulled George to higher ground, the one who insisted the helicopter leave, insisted there were more survivors, the one who the mayor called a hero, the one with the news segment that went viral, the news segment he would never see, the news segment that garnered the most likes from his subscribers.

***

Jennifer Lai has fiction in New Flash Fiction Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Scribes MICRO, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington state.