The Benefits of Breathing

Foreword

It’s all about love, isn’t it? Under all the emotional geology, under all the subtle narrative layers of Christopher Meeks’s stories, love is lurking. Love sought, love missing, love wrought with difficulty: love tangled and unfathomable, love lost and found.

Not that there isn’t plenty of the rest of life written about in these tales—engaging life, approaching death, the struggles with economics, entropy, and expectations: the pursuit of perfect happiness that always seems just out of reach. But love is like water. While water may not be on our minds at every moment of our existence, we know we can’t possibly live without it, or at the very least the hope that we can find it, clarify it, hold on to it for dear life….

There’s another current, too, in these stories, the sense that everything we feel is mixed with everything else, the weather, the sunlight on our skin, encircling places and people, a fly on the wall, the scent of the grass.

The contexts are perpetually modern, carrying the reader forward in a streaming nowness. The protagonists are a lot like our quotidian selves, generally middle class, but not without financial anxiety – resilient in coping, but with vulnerability always front and center. Here are the pushes and pulls we all experience: head tangling with heart as in his novel, Love at Absolute Zero; rootedness vs. dislocation, as in I’d Rather Die than Move to North Dakota; separation vs. staying together, as in You Wreck me, Baby.

In whatever territory he covers, Meeks is sure-footed. We have been there. We have seen these people. And in a sense, we become them as we read.

With this collection we see a truly American voice emerging from a suburban landscape, inching toward greatness, turf that Meeks will undoubtedly inherit.

--Roderick Clark, Editor/Publisher

Rosebud Magazine

Joni Paredes

The steel doors of the hotel elevator opened with a whisper, like the wind rushing through the cracks of a marble mausoleum. With her dark shoulder-length hair bouncing, Joni Paredes stepped out and strode down the hotel’s elegant hallway as if she owned the place. Put on a smile, put on a smile, she told herself. Athena would be a beautiful bride but was probably going nuts. Joni knocked at the right door.

Mom? came the voice, higher than usual.

It’s the Easter Bunny. Too ironic? Joni added the word Honey.

The door swung open, and her daughter, Athena, gorgeous, thin, and far too young, charged at her in a flash of white and hugged her. Joni wasn’t a huggy person generally, but for her daughter, anything.

I didn’t think I’d be so nervous today, Athena said.

Joni smiled as they hugged. Her daughter just didn’t know herself.

Joni glimpsed at the room that Athena and Glen would share that night. The king-sized bed was angled toward a view of palm treetops and greener Pasadena. Fresh red roses stood in a clear vase on an antique writing desk. A painting of a bowl of fruit hung on the wall by the heavy blue-and-gold window side panels. The money Joni was spending was worth it.

Athena pulled back and gazed, now aghast, at her mother. You’re wearing that dress today?

Joni frowned. What’s wrong? It’s a nice dress—a dress worthy of my only child.

It’s red! As usual, are you trying to take away my spotlight?

As usual? What?

Red?

It has flowers on it, Joni said.

Bold Georgia O’Keefe flowers.

It’s okay. You’re just nervous. Joni straightened the shoulders on the gown. You probably want to get out of this—don’t want to wrinkle it yet. Then let me take you to breakfast.

Can I be in charge for once? It’s my day.

What do you want to do?

Go to breakfast, not in this dress.

Joni threw her hands in the air and said, Are you listening, God?

Don’t be that way, said Athena. At least give me the illusion I have choice.

You’re marrying, aren’t you? That’s your choice.

Athena started pulling off her gown, and Joni stepped behind her to help.

You said you loved Glen, said Athena.

Of course I do, said Joni.

You accept him, I think. Love? That’d be a stretch.

Now you’re telling me how I feel? I’m very fond of him.

Yeah. That’s what I thought, Athena said, sounding disappointed.

A feeling, an odd rumble, hit Joni in the pit of her stomach, something she hadn’t felt since she slept under a staircase at sixteen, having run away from home. Panic. She pushed at that feeling, demanding it leave. Athena, come on. Let’s have breakfast.

I’m not going to be like you, said Athena. Glen and I are for keeps.

Really? Joni wanted to spank her—something Joni hadn’t done since Athena was two, when she wouldn’t stop crying about a French fry that had dropped on the ground.

Athena pulled the last of her gown off and tossed it hard on the bed. This is exactly why we have to talk. On my twenty-first birthday three weeks ago, we got those damn wolf-head tattoos on our butts to match each other. What was that, a cattle brand for me?

You thought it was a cute idea!

I know you wanted it—ten whiskers on my wolf’s face, eleven on yours, to make twenty-one. Cute. I did it to prove you aren’t losing me.

What? Just because you were a psychology major doesn’t make you Freud.

You love ‘em and leave ‘em, said Athena. You never even take their phone calls or texts after you decide it’s over.

My dates?

Yeah. Your Match.com guys. You’re like a presidential game-show host: ‘You’re fired.’

Just a couple cases, and they weren’t my type. The image of her late husband on the bed with all that blood flashed in her mind. "Can we not talk about this? Don’t ruin your day."

Joni had dated a yoga teacher once for three dates. She couldn’t stand his analyzing what she ate. All that meat, he’d said, as if it were some strange psychosis, especially the pork. Still earlier, he had explained his breathing technique in beginning yoga. First breathe so air fills the lower belly, then fill the lower rib cage, and move up into the throat and nose. He’d called it ocean breathing, which sounded like bullshit at the time, but then when she was alone in bed, inhaling and exhaling through her nose, it did have an ocean sound. She found it helped her control any flare of anger, especially as she focused on the air in her nose. Now, as Joni made herself busy by hanging the dress in the closet, she breathed, starting at her belly and moving up to her nose.

Once calm, she said, Is this Slam Mom Day? If you want me to change my dress, I’ll go home. I have plenty of others. Blue? Is that acceptable?

Can’t you listen to me for once?

Joni turned sharply. What has gotten into you? You don’t want to marry Glen?

Of course I do! Athena said, poking the air for punctuation. You think you’re losing me, right? You’re not. But Glen and I are going to move to another state.

What? Where? I can’t just up and leave.

Seattle. And you’re not invited. Glen got a job there. I’m going to get a graduate degree in psychology at the U of W. I’m good at psych. That’s how I can see into you.

Joni waved it off, then straightened her collar in the mirror.

You made sure, when I was a tween, said Athena, that I knew about birth control. You sent me to the best schools. You’ve been a good mom, yet the way you run your life with men, you don’t think I notice?

I’m just picky. I can be picky, can’t I?

That’s what you call it.

What do you have against me today? said Joni. I do everything for you.

Are you going to give me the speech about birthing me at seventeen? My cocaine-addled father?

Honey, honey, calm down. It’s your wedding day.

I know you think I’m too young.

We’re not going to get into this today. Today is for fun.

"You married at twenty-one," Athena said.

And how well did that work out?

So you’re ‘fond’ of Glen.

Listen, I’m going to meet you in the Terrace dining room in a few minutes, okay? With that, Joni left.

Back in the hallway, Joni found herself shaking. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe fucking deep. Only Athena could do this to her, and Joni didn’t like being this way. Joni was a person who could control her feelings, and, frankly, she needed to keep doing that.

Glen, a thin young man, had recently landed his first job out of college in Los Angeles as an insurance actuary. He helped calculate risk assessment and figure out insurance premiums. He stood on the lawn with Athena under the wedding arbor. Was he going to work for his same company in Seattle? He’d been a math major at UCLA—what calculations had he done in getting into Athena’s heart? As Joni stared at Glen in his tuxedo next to Athena, the sun revealed a red hue in his closely cropped hair.

Who dates a math major, especially one so skinny? Joni wondered. She sat in the front row of the ceremony, which had just started—on a white chair on the green perfect grass of the grand hotel. Why had Athena been attracted to him? Was it because Glen was a type that Joni wouldn’t have selected? In the last four months on Match.com, Joni had seen two men, an airplane pilot and a columnist from the business section of the Los Angeles Times. Both had been nice, but they started falling in love with her too fast. They’d probably be too emotional, like her late husband. She didn’t need that. They didn’t get beyond a handful of nice dinners, a concert in one case and a flea market in the other – plus a few evenings of sex, which hit the spot each time.

Didn’t Athena understand that she, Joni, left men the way she did because it was clean? Joni was dignified and emailed them. They’d realize she was not their soulmate. Once Joni could see the futures they projected on her, and that was not what she wanted, she left. She was a doer, and she had most everything she needed in life: a good car, no debt, and a great kid. Joni was still young, thirty-eight, so no need to rush into anything.

As Joni watched Glen put the ring on Athena’s finger, she thought of his pure devotion. Joni liked that about him and wondered what she would do if she found such a match. Either of those two men she’d recently dated could have become devoted, but it was a man’s world, and she didn’t need a man telling her what to do. If she could only find the right guy who wasn’t that way.

The wedding continued without a hitch with Reverend Jim from the Church of Good Luck officiating. The man was a friend’s father, someone, as Athena explained, who had a great sense of humor and loved collecting old-fashioned pinball machines. When Joni had met the reverend, she asked him why one needs a whole church for good luck. He said, It’s to increase one’s good fortune and protect the luck you have. Have you had good luck?

Do you call having a bitch of a mother whose boyfriend burned my hand over an open flame when I was seven bad luck? Or my running away and getting pregnant at sixteen bad luck?

So you’d been victimized, Reverend Jim said.

No. I’m in control of my life, not luck.

We’re talking the same thing, he said with a smile. I like you.

From that instant, she liked him.

Now Joni was at the head table in the Georgian Ballroom across from Reverend Jim and next to one of Glen’s uncles, a man who was a professor of filmic something at USC’s School of Cinema. She guessed he was ten years older than she, and he was half a head taller, with wonderfully dark thick hair and a charming smile. He mentioned he was divorced.

Did Athena place him here purposely? Joni glanced at Athena, who chatted with her bridesmaid, Monica, the girlfriend with great white teeth. As if feeling the stare, Athena glanced over at her mother and smiled. Joni smirked, shook her head at her daughter, and turned back to this Stewart something-or-other.

Have you ever seen anything by Stanley Kubrick? Stewart asked. "Such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Full Metal Jacket?

I don’t go to movies very often, Joni said.

He looked down as if he’d sat at the wrong table.

I don’t mean to be negative, she said, but movies just seem a great way to use up time and money.

He shook his head and said, Someone must have treated you wrong.

Why would you say that? said Joni.

Movies are just stories, he said, but stories help us live. Until the printing press, most stories were passed down orally, but they were vital to people. The Vikings told the Icelandic tales through the dark winter. The Greeks passed along Helen of Troy.

She held up one finger to interrupt. "And everyone talks about Game of Thrones now, as if it were a real thing. I’m sorry, but it’s just made up, all to eat up our time."

He smiled broadly, wildly shaking his head. You’re missing out. The Bible stories are just metaphors, otherwise made-up, so—

Watch it, she said with a laugh. I’m Catholic.

"Most of the Bible didn’t really happen, but it’s illustrative. The Greek myths didn’t really happen but they absolutely show how people are. Same with all of Shakespeare—same with even Spiderman movies and The Dark Knight. The point is we need stories to live, and movies and TV, the best of them, help us."

That’s a lot of power you’re putting into movies, Joni said.

It’s no different from your dreams. Your dreams are your brain working out problems, and while most people don’t analyze what it means, dreams work on a subconscious level. Same with movies.

"I did see 2001 at the Cinerama Dome. Incredibly weird. I liked how the guy overcame HAL the computer. I remember HAL. I didn’t get the ending. I didn’t get the metaphor."

Few people do – but think of Odysseus returning home, said Stewart.

Okay, she said, not knowing who Odysseus was.

"It’s the journey’s end, is all. Like the end of The Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like home."

She laughed and said, Oil can, oil can, with clenched teeth like the Tin Woodsman. Okay. Maybe I’ll see more movies. She liked the guy.

He smiled again and looked right in her eyes. I’m sorry. Are you Athena’s sister? I missed the connection.

I’m her mother.

He looked astounded. You look so young.

I had her young.

Glancing at her nametag in front of her place setting, he said, Is there a Mr. Paredes?

You don’t dither around, do you? Mr. Paredes died four years ago, she said.

A widow then.

That stopped her for a second. I guess so. I never think of myself that way—seems for older women. But, yeah, he died young—a nice guy otherwise.

Sorry for your loss.

She nodded, looking appropriately subdued, even if she thought of her dear hubby as a chickenshit for shooting himself in the head after she left him. She had left saying she loved him, but he had to stop drinking. It had been his big weakness. His gun turned out to be one way to stop.

Joni noticed Stewart staring at her bracelet, a yellow gold Bismark-link bracelet with a lobster clasp that she had found at Macy’s once. Matias had noticed her looking at it and then he’d given it to her on a Valentine’s Day. It was one of only two things she still had from him. Everything else, she had thrown out.

That’s a beautiful bracelet, he said.

My daughter gave it to me, she said and looked over at Athena. Stewart looked, too.

Nice daughter, he said.

The best.

Again he looked in her eyes, as if trying to look into her soul. She couldn’t remember the last time someone did this.

I’m glad Glen put me here, he said. What do you do for a living?

Gosh, I feel I’m on Match.com.

I didn’t mean—

Kidding. I have my own real estate and property management company. I specialize in selling apartment buildings as well as managing some buildings for owners. I have a staff of twelve.

You’re self-made then?

Yes—from single teenage mother to computer programmer to being my own boss. I love it.

Impressive.

Thank you.

Plus you have a great smile and voice.

Who was this guy? He made her smile.

After dinner, a live band took to the stage and the singer, a woman with an Irish accent, said, We’re the band The Blesséd Union—great name for a wedding band, right? And we have a first song request from the bride, Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here,’ in memory of her father.

Stepfather, actually, she told Stewart. But they were close.

I love Pink Floyd, he said.

Did my daughter tell you to say that?

No, why?

I love the band, too.

The band leader said, We learned this song for tonight, took out the long guitar solos, and we have a beautiful version. It’s danceable.

Want to dance? she asked Stewart.

He looked surprised and said, I was getting up the nerve to ask you.

You don’t need to be nervous around me.

I’m not so sure about that—and I’d love to dance.

They started apart, but the song was tender, written about a missing band member, yet the words could fit many people, talking about fears and years and souls and bowls, and it was so loving and smooth, and Joni and Stewart found a groove. They came together and held each other at the waists, smiling whenever their eyes met. It was nothing she could explain. She hadn’t planned on meeting anyone at the wedding. The only plan she had had was to make sure the wedding planners were doing their job. Now Joni didn’t even think of them. She did what she did rarely, just let herself go and see where the tide of time took her.

When Joni caught Athena smiling at her as Athena danced with Glen, Joni smiled back. All was forgiven.

At the end of the night, after the dancing, the toasts at the cake cutting, the flower toss, and the good-byes to the hundred guests, Stewart said, Joni, thank you for the pleasant evening.

Do you think we could meet again? she asked.

Like a Match.com date, you mean?

She nodded. No online emailing necessary. Let’s just go have fun. What do you like to do for fun?

Do you bowl?

I’m terrible at it, she said.

Me, too. Let’s do it!

She pulled out a pen from her small clutch purse—she wasn’t a big-purse woman—and she wrote down her phone number and home address on the back of her business card for Pine Crest