Megan’s Journey Through the Labyrinth

She’d searched for Ford that day and met Benedikt instead; at the end of the afternoon they shook hands…

—It was nice meeting you—

…but it didn’t end as Megan had hoped, because the following week she met Benedikt again. She’d been on her way to a quiet, empty table at Café Nikotín. She’d held a small stack of post-cards: for Mom and Dad and for a whole gaggle of friends. One significant postcard was going to Chris: she loved him, but didn’t know if she wanted to go on with the relationship. A trip into the cockles of Europe, she’d thought, might have clarified something.

“Hi,” Ford had said smiling from his seat at a buffed aluminum table centered with the pole of a green umbrella. “Care to join us?”

“It is good to see you again,” Benedikt said.

“You’ve met?” Ford asked.

“Last weekend,” Benedikt offered.

“Then you should join us.” Ford smiled. “We’re old friends it seems.”

And later, midway through her white coffee, Ford had turned the course of their halting, polite small-talk. “Have you been to the Labyrinth?” he’d asked. “We were heading there in a bit.”

She’d never been to the old stone-work maze, but it stared up at her from the face of a postcard: it was as ancient as medieval bloodshed, and as dark as this city’s history of alchemists and syphilitic, absinthe-addled poets. Romantic and spooky: it was just the kind of place that might shadow her nightmares for any long stretch of future decades, but she liked Ford’s eyes and the way his skin made her think of buffed pecans, so when he’d asked if she wanted to come along, she’d said yes against every bone-deep desire to avoid that part of the city. But it couldn’t have been such a great risk—could it?—with Ford’s skin color, and Benedikt’s off-kilter jokes and the invitation to drink škóy with him and with Ford. Though she couldn’t fathom the depths of Benedikt’s uncanny glacial gaze, she’d considered the invitation, because it would be a chance to be with Ford, to watch the movement of his hands, and imagine them touching her. If the Labyrinth was in a dicey part of the city, neither of them seemed especially worried about going there.

“You know the story of the Labyrinth?” Ford had asked

“No.”

He’d shrugged. “It’s simple, really. Once you enter the Labyrinth, the only way back out is the way home.”

She’d scoffed the idea of stepping into that maze and stepping back out in Cincinnati.

But nothing was ever as simple as it seemed: reality and symbol were different things in this part of Europe.

The Labyrinth was ancient stone and mortar cemented in patterns that only a mason might have understood. Now, she picked her way—alone—through narrow, switchback corridors of stone-work walls and flagstone footpaths. Last week, Ford had told her it was best to walk through the Labyrinth with bare feet, but she’d kept her shoes on. She cringed through the memory of Benedikt stooping down and unstrapping his sandals. Though lean, there was something stocky in his manner, as if he spent his days at work, strangling bulls with his naked hands. His toes were blunt, rounded, and dusted with scant, bronze hairs. Ford, beside him, had kicked out of his shoes and pulled off his socks and for just an instant, she couldn’t tell them apart.

She was alone, now, following the path they’d taken—together—one weekend ago.

The walls of the Labyrinth were stone and mortar, but the square heart of the warren was heavy with grapevines and earwigs. Here, she saw last Saturday in her mind’s eye: Ford and Benedikt standing together and laughing at some small joke. Though they’d done their best to be nice and to include her, the Labyrinth—as Ford had said—showed her something else. And maybe the Labyrinth remembered her this evening, because it was showing her Benedikt’s gray gaze with shimmers of blue in it.

Benedikts’s eyes, last weekend, had been spooky and unreadable; she couldn’t find the personality at home in them. Now, some unnerving phantom of Benedikt held her attention with a subtle smile tugging the corners of his lips. A breeze fondled his ragamuffin hair and he raked it back with splayed, pale fingers. She flinched, glimpsing Ford at home inside of Benedikt’s eyes, staring out at her. Benedikt smiled and reached forward, touching her face with the warmth of his fingertips.

“Ford’s your boyfriend.” She felt the words spilling before she could bite them back. “And you followed me here to tell me that.”

Saddened understanding flared in Benedikt’s gaze. “I’m not here. I’m at home with Ford. But you’re here looking for something….”

“I’m not—” but she stopped.

“Home isn’t a place,” Benedikt said. “It’s the one right person who’ll miss you when you leave.”

“I don’t even know if I want to stay with Chris.”

Benedikt shrugged and touched her shoulder, softly. “I see how you look at Ford, but you can’t live in his eyes. You have no choice but to return to the one you sent that postcard to. You are not finished back there. An affair with Ford cannot make you happy, but Ford and I can be good memories for you, if you want us to be.”

She closed her eyes.

Benedikt leaned close and planted a kiss on her forehead. “It is nice that you came back to our Labyrinth, but now, you should leave. If you want company before you go, you can come to our apartment; we’re not so drunk yet. You know the way there and we’ll hear you at our buzzer.”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“You won’t.” Benedikt smiled.

“Okay.” Megan blinked; Benedikt was gone.

As quietly as she came, she turned around and fumbled her way out of the silent, ancient maze.

All the way to Cincinnati, she thought, hesitating before stepping out of the Labyrinth completely. 

Written by: J.C. Howell
Photograph by: Victoria Ostrzenski

The Tour

“This is it,” he says, opening the bedroom door. He flips on the light switch and steps out of the way, allowing me to move into the room. A small twin-sized bed is pushed against the wall, with a plaid comforter tucked military-style around the corners of the mattress. The room is bare—as if someone never slept in it. The mirror is clean and unblemished. A single comb and a tray of coins rests on the dresser. No photographs on the night stand. I turn to look at him. He shrugs, leaning against the door frame.

“This is my room.” He flicks off the light switch and nods toward the hallway. “The tour doesn't end here.”

We walk past the kitchen, and I notice a rotary phone mounted on the wall. “No one has those phones anymore,” I say, immediately regretting it. It’s as fixed as he is.

He leads me to the back of the house, toward a wall of tall, wide windows facing the back yard. The tree line is deep, and after sunset, the houses in the distance fade from view. The overhead lights cast our reflection on the windows. We look spectral. I see myself in the reflection, see this ghost woman move as I move. She sits down nervously on the sofa, and a man sits next to her, polite, and afraid to move.

My ghost self looks so calm and womanly, but I feel so small sitting in front of him for inspection. I can feel him wrestling with age and time and space all at once. He frowns.

He pulls a photo out of a book resting on the coffee table. The photo is cropped and faded. A young man sits on a picnic bench at a wooded campsite. His long, tan legs stretch out like tree limbs from his khaki shorts. He wears a bright blue collared shirt that pops against the green background. The young man's hair is thick and dark, pushed to the side of his face. A new beard grows around his giant grin.

“I wish you met this man,” he says.

We both wish a lot of things: that we aren’t forty years apart, that I am not just a young girl trying out womanhood, that he wasn’t married to the wrong woman for the last thirty-five years. We have a lot to wish for, and nothing can change.

I feel heavy, like I am starting to drift underwater. He is talking to me, but he feels far away. I can see the current pulling the ghost in the window down. I see her body start leaning toward the floor, and I realize I am falling into his lap. Those lean knees from the photo are no longer there, but instead they are knotted and gray like roots. I feel my heavy head drop to rest on his thighs.

I want to tell him that our situation isn’t real, couldn’t be real. Earlier, when he had come to pick me up, we stood in my kitchen. I was barefoot, my high heels strewn aside. I struggled with a bottle of wine, chipping my front tooth as I tried to pry the cracked and broken cork out of the neck. New to wine, I drank too quickly, choking down something more bitter than I'd expected. I was afraid for this man to look into my home, to see my childhood relics.

Would he notice the photos of friends on the fridge? Would he notice my diploma framed on the wall? The cat toys and women's magazines littering the living room? I thought of these things as marks of my new independence, but as his eyes moved around my kitchen, I felt young.

Now the wine from earlier catches up with me. All my nerves reveal themselves once more. I run my tongue along my front tooth, feeling the new jagged edge where it chipped. I lift my head, overwhelmed and too warm. I can’t see the ghost in the window anymore. Pulling myself from the couch, I stumble down the hall and toward the bathroom he showed me earlier. The bathroom he said belonged to his wife.

I lock the door behind me, hearing a rattle against the door. I look up to see hooks, each one shining with long strands of necklaces. I stand there, my feet sweating through my stockings. I peel off my tights and absorb the coolness of the tiles. I pull a long strand of beads from the hook, running my fingers over each section like a rosary. How many sins am I committing by being in this woman's home? How many sins am I committing by tempting this married man? What am I doing here?

The swirling in my head returns, and I drop the necklace, lowering myself to my knees and bowing my head over the toilet to vomit. I try to keep quiet. The wine is too much.

I flush the toilet, close the seat, and pull myself up against the counter. Opening drawers, I poke around looking for mouthwash or breath mints—something to take it all away. I pick through toothbrushes and combs and make-up. I find an old tube of lipstick; it looks familiar, one that maybe my own mother might have used. The dust on the cap leads me to believe it hasn't been touched in a while.

The ghost woman catches my eye in the mirror. She is pale but not sickly, but she looks tired, or is she older? I lean toward the mirror and pinch my cheeks—an old trick to add color to my face. I smooth the lipstick onto my lips, blending the color by rubbing my lips together. I reach for the necklace on the floor and wrap it around my neck twice. I clear my throat, inhale and walk out of the bathroom and into the den.

“Are you okay?” He stands up from the sofa, still holding the photo.

“Fine,” I answer, walking toward him.

“That's a beautiful color,” he says. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Written by: Whitney G. Schultz

Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
 

The Submarine Life of Cacti

I am seeing cacti everywhere these days: an Instagram feed, foregrounding the frames of the TV show, Breaking Bad – and finally, in a sunlit glasshouse at the Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh. I should perhaps now amend my statement; it was after my memorable encounter with them at Phipps that I have begun to notice them everywhere.

Having explored room after room of luxuriant, almost obscenely green, tropical bushes and trees, it was somewhat a relief to encounter the cacti's austere beauty in the Conservatory's Cactus Room. And even though I had wholeheartedly admired the bonsai trees' micro perfection, the iridescent orchids, and the cocoa tree with its fat gold pods, embryonic chocolate bars nestled within them, I could not help thinking afterwards that the Cactus Room was undoubtedly my favorite one.

I wonder if it is because it appeals to my inner desert girl. Until recently, I grew up and lived in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman; the majority of its terrain is indeed a textbook dune desert, although I happened to live upon the fringes of its gravel desert. There are no cacti in Oman, but the flora is similar: minimal leaves, spare sculpted bodies, and a tenacious will to survive. Incidentally, desert also inhabits my bloodline: I belong to Rajasthan, India, which too is a desert and whose landscape does happen to be dotted with spiny, gray-green cacti. This combination of genes and happenstance probably explains my simultaneous inclination for both maximalism and minimalism; having been surrounded by minimalist landscapes, I naturally gravitate towards a pared down beauty and - yet, also occasionally and intensely crave fertile, lush bursts of color and texture.

As I roamed through the Cactus Room, I could not help but think about my first encounter with them when I was thirteen years old. It was during a pan-American trip, involving a detour through Arizona. After weeks of witnessing the glorious summer green, I felt as if I was meeting a familiar friend as the coach trundled through the desert: I thirstily absorbed the arid, fantastical wind-eroded rocks, the cerulean blue skies, and the garden of cacti. Even if the cacti themselves were unfamiliar, they looked familiar simply by the virtue of inhabiting a similar looking landscape. And in the Cactus Room, as I examined with interest this desert in miniature, admiring a succulent cheekily masquerading as a flower in bloom, I realized that these transplanted cacti had transplanted me back home...once again.

As I photographed the cacti – round and spiny, long and tapering - I idly imagined I had wandered into a fossilized ocean, the water long having receded and left behind these specimens in its wake. When I was a child, I would often go rock collecting in Oman, which is widely recognised to be a vast geological garden of sorts. As I sorted through the rocks, I would often discover ones bearing imprints of fossilized shells or plants or marine organisms: I realized that I was literally standing on an ancient sea-bed, the ocean having vanished millions of years ago as a result of plate tectonics choreography. For years, the rocks I collected accumulated in a corner of my backyard, becoming a pyramid of sorts; however, although even when my rock mania died and the pyramid disintegrated, I never forgot about those submarine fossils.

A few weeks ago, I had gone snorkeling for the first time in the waters of Florida Keys. I had swum just beneath the surface of its brilliant blue waters, cobalt blue and yellow-hued fish inches away from my face and peering down at the fecund coral garden blooming below. Growing up in Oman and regularly haunting its numerous beaches, the sea and the beach had always called out to me, defining me in a way that no landscape ever could. Even if I lived in the desert, I yearned for the sea. And yet, for all those years of frequenting the ocean, this was the first time that I had actually explored the depths of its interiors, seen and swam with its creatures and – understood it. The essence of the ocean was ultimately this submarine theater. And it was an ocean continents away that taught me that.

Standing in the Cactus Room, I felt a similar sensation to that of snorkeling beneath the ocean. After years of living in the desert, I had merely begun to see it as the desert, rather than composed of a mosaic of eccentric, intriguing characters and elements. But this is the thing about leaving home: you can only begin to define home once you have left it. Reflecting on the multiple homes that I had inhabited: Australia, India, Oman, United Kingdom and America, by way of birth or heritage or education or marriage, each journey and the subsequent new place I called home led to constant recalibrating of what home represented to me. Home, I realized, was no longer just a set of coordinates on a map: it was a sensation, elusive and ephemeral as a scent but just as palpable and memorable.

Here, in a doll-house desert transplanted in a glasshouse surrounded by an arctic Pittsburgh winter, I was conjuring up home: the desert as the ocean or vice versa. As I saw and experienced it, the two landscapes most familiar and dear to me had perfectly mashed in the cactus room at the Phipps Conservatory. As I walked around, soaking in this submarine and subterranean theater, I felt at home.

My wanderings in the Cactus Room brought me to an enormous yellow and green striped succulent and vibrantly hued, spiny cacti surrounding it. In my vision, it metamorphosed into a mutated octopus reigning over the ocean-floor: it looked as if it was in deep slumber with its sea-urchins and coral courtiers protectively guarding it. I knelt down, took its picture, and then left - lest it woke.

Photograph and Words by: Priyanka Sacheti

Drive

"Just start the car and drive," she said to herself. Her hands were trembling. She fumbled with the key, nearly dropping it before she managed to jam it into the ignition. "Just start the car," she chanted. "Just start the car... just start the car... just start the car."

A twist of her wrist and the car shuddered to life. The throaty rumbling of the engine momentarily startled her. She hadn't expected it to start; it was old and she was used to things not working. She gripped the steering wheel, knuckles burning white.

"OK. Now," she instructed, "just drive the car. Just drive the car. Just. Drive. The. Car."

She stepped on the accelerator. The engine roared, but the car remained stationary. First, panic - "No. No… No… NO!" - then, relieved realization; she hadn't put the car in DRIVE. She cursed her own stupidity and shifted the gear stick. It settled into place with a clunk. The car lurched forward, churning up a thick, brown cloud of dust. At the same time, she felt the weight of doubt, like a ball and chain, holding her back. But, no. It was now or never. She had to go. She had to go or she would be stuck here forever. She had to go or she would die here, without ever having lived. She couldn't look back. She mustn't look back.

She glanced in the rear-view mirror.

"No… No… NO!" She yelled, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. She scolded herself for being weak. She must never look back. It was over. Over. From now on, this place was dead to her. It was no longer home. For the time being, she was homeless. She thought of all the trite sayings she'd heard over the years: ‘Home is Where the Heart is.’ ‘Home Sweet Home.’ ‘There's No Place Like Home.’ She considered the meaning of the word 'home' - A place where one lives? A place where one feels safe? Yes, she had lived here, but no, she’d never felt safe.

Salvation was a small town, the kind of town outsiders often saw through the rose-tinted glasses of romanticized nostalgia; a town forgotten by time, with white picket fences, unlocked doors and friendly locals. But the reality was far less idyllic. The white picket fences needed painting and repair. The unlocked doors and the so-called friendly locals – residents who felt it was their business to know everybody’s business – made Salvation a gossipy, judgmental community, one completely devoid of privacy and personal space. In her opinion, there’d been far more suitable names – Stagnation, Suffocation, Strangulation – but she’d always kept those to herself, until this afternoon.

“This place, it’s killing me. I have to get out. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe with all these hands around my throat.”

The memory replayed. It clouded her mind - a stubborn storm of thought, a tempest she couldn’t shake.

“What did you say?” he slurred, grabbing another beer from the refrigerator - his fifth of the hour. He popped the metal cap from the bottle and flung it at her face. She flinched and turned away. The cap bounced off her head and clattered to the floor. He scoffed. “Pick that up,” he said.

But she didn’t move.

“You hear me? I told you to pick it up.”

She felt the burning heat of his glare and thought, ‘If you do this, life will never be the same. If you do this, there’ll be no going back.’

She returned his glare. “I heard you,” she said.

His eyes narrowed and he stepped close. “Then. Pick. It. Up,” he hissed. Spit flew from his lips with each punctuated syllable. His speech was slow, shaky, angry.

‘If you do this…’

But she already knew.

‘Life will never…’

She was going to do it.

‘No going back…’

She straightened up, looked him firmly in the eye and said, “No.”

The pain from the blow was momentarily blinding and she crumpled to the floor. When her vision cleared, she saw him standing over her with clenched fists. She reached up and fumbled for the edge of the countertop, finding it with the pads of her fingers. Using the wooden surface as support, she pulled herself to her feet. She was dazed, but determined, and when the second blow came, she was ready.

She ducked and grabbed the kettle – heavy and full of water – and swung it at him. The rounded metal connected with the side of his head, making a musical, watery gong sound. To her surprise, he fell straight to the floor. She hadn’t expected it to work; he was strong and she was used to things not working. But he was sprawled on the floor, out cold. She knew she had to act fast. She grabbed some money, a change of clothes and the key to the car.

Now she was on a long, empty road - tires crunching over the gritty surface of the tarmac below, sky stretching, blue and wide, above. She rolled down the window, letting the wind play with her hair, and she thought, ‘This must be what freedom feels like’. She breathed in, deep, and briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she caught sight of something in the rear-view mirror. In the distance, in the middle of the road, stood a girl - a vision of herself – a girl with the same face, clothes and hair. The girl looked panicked and distraught.

Her heart lurched and she gasped, slamming on the brakes. The car stopped. She considered turning around and going back. But then she thought, ‘You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. You can only save yourself.’

She took her foot off the brake and pressed it down on the accelerator. As the car picked up speed, she glanced in the rear-view mirror. The girl was gone.

She fixed her eyes on the road ahead and never looked back again.

Written by: Angela DeRay

Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Small Things

“Where to?”

Emir’s passenger was dressed in a handsome light grey suit. It fit him well. Emir owned a suit too, but his jacket sat too broad on his shoulders and fell too far down his thighs. He only wore it on special occasions.

“Chase Manhattan Plaza,” the well-dressed man replied. “So, where are you from?”

Emir glanced at his rear-view mirror, smiled and replied, “Istanbul. Turkey.”

He enjoyed chatting with passengers, but never initiated conversations himself.

“I’ve never been to Turkey. Went to Israel a few years back, but that’s the closest I’ve ever been. You miss it?”

“Oh yes, of course.”

“I respect men like you. My grandfather came here from Italy without so much as a penny to his name, but managed to put my father through college and business school. Whenever I visited him as a kid, all he could ever talk about was how everything was better in Italy.” The man in the grey suit paused before continuing, “I can’t imagine having to leave New York City, let alone the States.”

He was looking out the window as he talked, watching Bleecker Street slowly pass by.

“What would you miss about it?” Emir asked.

“The City? Everything. The people, the sounds. But I think, most of all, I would miss having amazing pizza on every corner. I’m not even kidding. New Yorkers don’t realize how good they have it here. And believe me, I know. I’ve been all over the country and the world for business. No other city compares.”

“I think your Italian grandfather would disagree,” Emir joked.

The man laughed, “You’re right. He would’ve. What about you? What do you miss most about Turkey?”

Not a day passed that Emir didn’t think about his home country. He thought about Turkey because he was terrified of forgetting. It was only five years ago that he left Istanbul for New York City, but the haze of time was already setting in.

When is mother’s birthday? His little sister, Azra, was usually the one to remind him. What was the name of that sweets shop near his old school? He wasn’t even sure he ever knew the name of that shop, even though he had frequented it nearly every day.

Sometimes Emir closed his eyes and imagined his younger brother, Derin, working the family’s chestnut stand on the darkened, cobblestone streets of Istanbul. He imagined his father sitting by Derin’s side, reading his newspaper, making small talk with the patrons, and making sure Derin didn’t overstuff the small paper pouches that held the chestnuts.

Emir could hear their conversation.

“Go home father, I can handle the chestnut stand on my own,” Derin would plead.

His father would reply, “Home? And what will I do there? Listen to your mother scold me for leaving you here by yourself? At least here I can read my paper in peace.”

Emir would imagine this, and the sweet, nutty scent of the roasted chestnuts would fill the stale air of his apartment as if he were right there, cobblestones beneath his feet.

“Emir,” his father would say, looking up as he approached, “you know what I mean, tell your brother I would rather die than stop working.”

Derin would roll his eyes and ask, “This is working?” He’d point to his father seated next to him, newspaper open in hand. And Emir would laugh.

That’s how Emir reminded himself, “This is what life was like.”

Turkey was a part of his history now, and he often took the sadness of that fact out on his adopted city. He felt jaded by the people whom he thought too rude and the streets that he thought too crowded.

He shared a small studio apartment in Sunnyside with two others, cousins of cousins of cousins or something. They slept on mattresses strewn lazily about the studio floor and erected makeshift room dividers from salvaged garment racks and old curtains. They bonded over their shared longing for Turkey and lamented over the irony that, in a city so large, they could feel so lonely.

Emir already knew the answer to the man in the grey suit’s question, but he thought a moment before replying. “The smell of roasted chestnuts,” he responded. “My father owned a chestnut stand. I worked there with him until I was a teenager, but I never forgot the smell. My father came home smelling of it every night.”

The man chuckled, “Nostalgia’s devious isn’t it? We always long for the sweet honey of it, but we always forget about the sting of the bees. You’re here in the States for a reason right? I can’t imagine making a living off of chestnuts was easy.”

That evening, before returning home, Emir stopped at his favorite Turkish restaurant in Sunnyside.

“Emir!” Toprak, the owner, shouted as he walked in. “Where have you been my friend? Is it just you tonight? Where are your cousins?”

“I’ve already eaten, I just want to order some roasted chestnuts, to go.”

It was in Turkey that he had his last roasted chestnut. After eating them for years from his father’s stand, it felt unnatural to pay for them.

He didn’t go home right away and, instead, found an empty bench underneath the 7 train overpass just a few blocks from his apartment. As he peeled back the warm, woody shells of the chestnuts, the 7 train rumbling overhead, he took in the neighborhood. It was late, but the storefronts and food carts still illuminated the streets. The early autumn evening was still alive with activity, a chorus of traffic, conversation, and laughter hanging festively in the air. To Emir’s left, down the block, was Jeremy’s bodega where he bought coffee every morning. Just beyond that was a hookah bar where he often passed the time chatting with his two cousins, his friends, about nothing at all.

For the first time in five years, as Emir ate his roasted chestnuts, New York City was transformed. He was home.

Written by: Sam Chow
Photograph by: Becky Lee