Our scenes were electric. We climbed Everest, found hope and lost it in the trenches of the Somme, and broke up more times than we ever got back together. We smoked enough imaginary cigarettes to give a blue whale stage IV lung cancer. One time Basil cried when Chet stole his imaginary bike. We gave him a standing ovation next to the pool. The following week he handed me a letter from his wife. Basil’s never been happier. He’s been signing exclamation points.
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction
Hinoki
I rejected my dad’s call and dialed a different number. The man who answered the hotline described a few of the girls to me. Candy was a blonde, Sugar was a brunette, and V shaved her head. I picked V. When I was transferred, a breathy voice said hello. I told V my name was Pistachio, that I swam the butterfly every Thursday and spent my childhood living and working at an amusement park. She asked me what I was wearing. I said shorts and got back to my story.
“I polished the bell on the high striker every Saturday.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Hammer and bell. The strength test.”
“Are you a strong man?”
“What kind of strong?”
“Enough muscle to toss a girl around without breaking a sweat. That kind of strong.”
I think she was flirting now.
“Tell me what you look like,” she said. “I want a picture in my head.”
“I’m missing my left canine, I’m balding, and I can’t remember my childhood.”
“Shame about the tooth, but our hair will match soon. And you just told me about the amusement park, honey.”
“That’s the story, not the truth.”
“Why give me a story? Why talk at all?”
“Aren’t you paid to listen?”
“You want to know what I’m wearing?” she asked.
“What do you remember about being seven? I think seven was a special age for me. Something important happened at seven.”
“Goodnight, honey.”
“Please.”
She lingered for me, her nails tapping on something hard. I pre-paid for her pity.
“Fireworks. Ones that sparkled and faded, the colour of rust. I don’t remember celebrating anything.”
“But isn’t it nice, just having it?” I asked.
“A little colour doesn’t make a painting. Don’t call back, Pistachio, unless you want to hear me moan.”
V hung up. I microwaved mac and cheese for dinner, ate in the dark, and let my dad’s calls go to voicemail. The first one was weak, he called me champ and wished me well. The second asked me if I wanted to get waffles. He was crying during the third. I think he meant it to be a piece of evidence—proof that he was human. I deleted them all except the last one and went to bed.
§
The motel was called The Royale because every room had a king or queen bed. Maybe it was to make up for the fact that we got internet a decade after the rest of town. Our pool was more a body of green slime than refreshing summer basin. Seagulls shit on everything but the faded blacktop. The ocean hummed behind the lot like a broken white noise machine. Our soda dispenser was brand new. We had a bulletin board in the front office; 6’ by 8’ cork on a wall of its own. Locals advertised their nanny services, algebra tutoring, evening language courses, and even phone sex.
My improv group arrived at room 107 at twelve sharp. The perks of being the only handyman was that management let me use the more isolated rooms whenever I wanted. The actors were enamored by the motel room design. Cheap, glossy wood nightstands so slick they felt wet. A round coffee table for two. Art you’d find in a mental asylum. A loveseat with firm, brown cushions. And the extra chair in the corner, facing the bed. It was all a stage. It was all waiting for us.
We met every Sunday at the motel. Chet was thirty and fat like a shaved Orangutan. Tina was in her forties, a vacuous mannequin with crepey skin, and always chose characters with ex-husbands. And Basil was a mute 67-year-old Greek man with caterpillar eyebrows who took deep belly breaths that made him look like he was drowning on land. Our scenes were electric. We climbed Everest, found hope and lost it in the trenches of the Somme, and broke up more times than we ever got back together. We smoked enough imaginary cigarettes to give a blue whale stage IV lung cancer. One time Basil cried when Chet stole his imaginary bike. We gave him a standing ovation next to the pool. The following week he handed me a letter from his wife. Basil’s never been happier. He’s been signing exclamation points.
Sometimes I woke up at night and wondered if I was on my way somewhere, like everyone else in The Royale. The thought died quick. There was nowhere to go. Nostalgia doesn’t exist when the past is wiped away. My home was everyone else’s pit stop. Even Basil had his own kitchen and a fridge that came above his waist. What would he tell me if he could talk? You’re a fine actor. It’s a shame you live here with the mold.
Today we started with an exercise called memory box. Everyone had to picture a box in front of them, its dimensions, material, colour, texture, everything. I let them sit with the box for a few minutes, scanning its exterior. Chet licked his lid, shook his head, and spat on the carpet. Tina’s lips quivered. Basil held his eyes closed, traced his bloated fingers around the phantom edges.
“Open them up and see something from your childhood,’ I said. “Tell me what you see.”
Chet sucked in his mouth. “Lasagna and Nintendo 64.”
“Divorce papers.” Tina slammed her box shut.
Basil grabbed his mini white board and scribbled frantically before flipping it around: twelve frogs in the rocks of the Eurotas river beside my home in Greece.
“Good. Carry that image and feeling with you. Now let’s all be cousins on a cruise ship. Actually, Basil, you be the captain.”
“What about your box?” Chet asked.
“I don’t remember,” I lied.
The group stood and Basil scrawled on his white board. Let us be your box. Start talking.
I led with a feeling. Broiling sun, windless blue sky, a kind of warmth that starts from within.
“There’s a beach inside, and a parking lot,” I said.
Chet swirled his arms in what I imagined was a mime for waves.
“Are you alone?” Tina was on the floor now, prostrated between the foot of the bed and the TV stand, maybe a parked car or a seashell stuck in the sand.
My sternum started to hurt. It remembered something my mind couldn’t.
“Someone is there with me. It’s a happy feeling, but it ends quickly, like a brief reunion. I can’t see them now.”
Chet and Basil stood face to face. They stared at each other for thirty seconds then Basil tried to hug him, but Chet turned away, opened a car door, and disappeared into the bathroom. Basil watched him go, lips mouthing useless shapes. I think they nailed the ending.
Without any further questions I launched us into our cruise ship scene. Tina was a private detective looking for her ex-husband, Chet was my nephew and Basil was a fine captain. I didn’t want the cruise to end. On the deck above the bow, I stared out past the smoke-stained blinds and watched the asphalt turn to water and sand. Everything faded when a black Cadillac pulled up to the office across the way and a stout, cherub-like man with a shining bald head stepped out. It was time to talk to my dad.
§
None of the beach vendors had waffles, so we ate corndogs and Korean shaved ice while standing in the shade of a palm. Dad was in a black suit, pale blue shirt, and a navy tie. There was so much sweat on his forehead that his skin shimmered like a mirage. He finished eating before me, patted my gut, and sized me up.
“Bigger than your old man now, balder too,” he said, patting his grey flattop.
“I’m older. How’d you find me?”
“Does it matter? It’s good to see you.”
I cleaned the meat off my corndog stick.
“You don’t still blame me, do you?” he asked.
“About what?”
He brushed the sweat from his head and leaned against the palm tree.
“It’s been years, surely you can understand by now?”
“What? I don’t remember anything,” I said.
He hugged me. It was awkward, heavy, laboured with breaths on each side, as if we had to remind ourselves to breathe through the discomfort.
“You did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong,” he said. “Sometimes things end, people leave, and the only person who knows why is the one that walked away.”
“What are you talking about?”
He said something. A word or name or title. I only heard the first syllable before I lost my mind.
§
I stopped running when I got to the coke machine. Dad didn’t follow. He got in the Cadillac and crept out of the parking lot without trying to say goodbye. Chet, Tina, and Basil were crawling like army men next to the pool. I went to my room, closed the blinds, and picked up the phone.
“I recognize your voice, memory man,” V said.
“Something came from the past today.”
“Something else can come too, if you want.”
“I had a reunion at seven. I saw her for the last time.”
“Your mother?”
“How did you know?”
“You wouldn’t be on the line if your mother was still around.”
“She left, then came back to say goodbye, then left for good.”
“And now it’s everything and nothing. You forgot, pushed it away, now it’s here to stay. Do you want a distraction? Do you want me to tell you what I’m thinking about?”
“How much extra to meet in person? I want you here, at the motel.”
“You already rented a room?”
“It’s my home.”
“In that case, I charge extra for house calls.”
§
V arrived in under twenty minutes. Shaved head, rose-tinted aviators, high waisted bootcut jeans with flip flops and purple toenails. She only wore a bikini top. I think she wanted to show off the ferret tattooed between her breasts. Her nose was tiny like a robin’s beak and her eyes were massive and bulging beneath the glasses. She was a chameleon with nothing to hide.
“I thought you were all talk,” she said, offering me her hand to kiss. I gave it a loose shake instead. She was wearing perfume that smelled like wood.
In room 107 they had set up in a circle. Three chairs, the small loveseat, and the foot of the bed completed it. Basil sat tentatively with his whiteboard. Chet chewed his fingernails and crossed and uncrossed his legs. Tina looked jealous when I enter with V.
“Have a seat,” I said, pointing to an empty chair.
“You know the more people you add the more it’s going to cost you.”
“We’re going to discover my mother, together.”
I did a vocal exercise, touched my toes, twisted my trunk, and forced myself to picture my mother’s face. She was wrinkleless the last time I saw her. Maybe her freedom kept her young. Maybe regret made her sag now. She was a blonde, I think. Her clothes seasoned with hinoki perfume. I kept my eyes closed, spun in a circle with a hand outstretched, only stopped when I started to feel sick. I landed on Chet.
“Hello son,” he said as I opened my eyes.
“Next.” I turned to Tina.
“My, how big you’ve gotten,” Tina sucked her cheeks in, tried to pout in an artificial way that V did naturally.
“Next.” I turned to Basil.
He scrawled like a man possessed and flipped his board around. He was already crying. I left you because I was afraid of you. What you might do to me.
There was some heat there. I gave Basil a thumbs up and closed my eyes again, did a lip trill, clenched my jaw, and swirled the lines around my mouth.
“V, come stand here and be my mother. Nothing sexy, just love and hate.” Her flip flops slapped against the carpet-covered concrete.
She hovered before my face. We had the overhead light on in the room, glowing warm through my eyelids. A facsimile of the sun back when I was seven, back on the beach, back with her.
“I’ve come to say goodbye, keep your eyes closed. Also, I still don’t know your real name.” V’s fingers grabbed my wrist, rubbed the fat of my hand, sent a current through me.
“I’m Peter. You and dad named me Peter.”
“My little Peter, do you remember me?” V’s voice lost its luster, became soft like a boiled egg.
It started with Chet. He whispered remember. Tina joined him, singing remember over and over, solemnly, like it was “Silent Night”. Basil did his best too, grunting in three syllable sets.
“Remember, Peter?” V kissed my cheek, squeezed my hand again and I was seven years old.
The beach was by a lake, not the ocean. Dad brought me here for a surprise. He was sitting in the dodge, resting his forehead on the steering wheel.
“Just stand by the picnic tables and you’ll get your answer.”
She came with the sun on her back. Jeans ripped to shreds over her thighs. A backpack with a strap cinched up around her belly. She was barefoot. Once she was in front of me the first thing I noticed were her toenails. They were painted with weird pink and white accents at the base, near the skin.
“They’re teeth,” she said before smiling and pointing at her gums. “Same shape, like waves, right?”
“Are you coming back?”
She dropped to her haunches, took a handful of sand in her palms, and blew it away.
“I love you, Peter. But you need to know something. Mommy is like the sand and the wind. I stop sometimes but then something blows and sweeps me up and sends me away.”
The kiss she gave me was weightless, untethered. She didn’t say anything to my dad, just waved at him from the beach. She walked on down the coast, never looking back. I cried in the car, ceaselessly. I only remember dad saying one thing:
“You might remember this day forever, or maybe you’ll forget, and that’s okay. Your body will choose which one it wants. Maybe it’ll change its mind down the road.”
I opened my eyes.
Chet, Basil, and Tina had all gone outside to smoke or linger in the waning light. V remained, right in front of me. She’d taken a blanket off the bed and wrapped herself like a queen in furs.
“That’ll be $250 for the gas, the hour of service, and the emotional epiphany.”
I handed V my wallet. She opened it and took every bill I had without counting them. I thanked her at the doorway, and she kissed me on the lips.
“On the house,” she said, stuffing my bills into her bikini top. “I always wanted to kiss a puritan.”
When she left, the actors returned. Basil took his marker and wrote something down, slowly, with great care. He flipped the whiteboard around.
Who are you, now?
Chance Freihaut is a writer living on Vancouver Island. His work explores the relationship between identity, memory, time, and death. His work has been published in This Side of West and The Imagist in addition to being a finalist for the Writer’s Union of Canada Short Prose Competition and Exile Quarterly’s “Best Canadian Short Story.” In 2024, he won PRISM international’s Grouse Grind Lit Prize for V. Short Forms. He’s currently pursuing a degree in writing and philosophy at the University of Victoria.