Prose by Minh Thư Nguyễn

Edited by Daniel Perez Pichardo & Olivia Mondragon

On some days that are now old, shooting stars began dusting the alpine meadow along the trail that Jerry frequents on his way to and from the lake. They glisten at every swaying breeze. Funny to think that he notices only now. He never really did make many stops on his way. A long time ago, he would have done a quick glance and scanned through for an opportunistic meal, but the flowers themselves were not his interest. 

Having all eternity to look at them now though, they’re rather awkward-looking flowers. Their stem bends at their ends, pointing downward toward the ground they worked so hard to grow away from. Perhaps looking down on the shorter lilies, asters, and columbines that share the meadow. The lavender petals, weighed heavy with raindrops, disagreeing with such haughty life decisions, spear defiantly upward toward the sky. 

Jerry spends this morning gazing at shooting stars, never reaching the lake. Once he senses a colder air drifting upon the field, breaking some flowers, his eyes follow fluttering petal that flies toward clouds that drift closer from the horizon. Looking back down at the shooting stars, Jerry thinks Duy should see these. Using a paw to hold them still, he uses his claw to gently cut the stems off some flowers. The water drops from last night’s rain slide onto his bear paws. With slightly damaged flowers in hand, he awkwardly ambles on his hind legs and makes it toward Midway Avenue.

Death is strange for Jerry, and it has been for a while. About some summers back, there was a thunderstorm unlike any other sweeping through the valleys and forests, it pounded and poured with violent howls of wind that bent pines centuries-old and crumbled boulders centuries-older. As he makes a turn near a steep slope that is marked by some snapped trunks, his ears prick toward a faint pleasant running stream. Though he could not see past the slope, Jerry knows the lake is larger not just by yesternight’s rain but also by the new countless waterways that traverses through the valley from the newly jagged mountain carved by that storm.

It was a few days after that summer’s thunderstorm though, that he made friends with Duy Huynh. Duy said that he and his wife, Michelle, had recently moved into town. He had only arrived very recently, and was still waiting for her to come with the rest of their things so that they could finally settle in. If Duy and Jerry is an unusual friendship, the ornately-framed wedding photograph atop the coffee table in the living room of the Huynh-Lam residence is only all the more ordinary. 

The couple is younger in the picture. A lanky man with dark sharp eyes and a sharper sense of style, his tailored suit jacket rests on his shoulder the way his practiced smile rests on his face. Duy told Jerry with a laugh that he spent hours in front of the mirror beforehand to make sure Michelle swoons over him when she looks back at the photos. Michelle though, with a barely contained laugh on her face, had one arm hidden behind her groom, two bunny-ear fingers peeking through the top of Duy’s head. 

Jerry and Duy often sit in that living room, and as conversations ebb and flow, Duy’s eyes usually drift toward the photograph. There’s not much else in that room, most of their belongings are still unpacked from the move into Midway Avenue. The walls are undecorated, a large window with curtain rods but no curtains brings in light on a clear day, and the lights cast skyline shadows with the towers of boxes. Jerry thinks the Shooting Stars will make the room livelier. And maybe, it will finally get Duy in a decorating mood. 

Finally nearing town, Jerry delights in peering down upon the rows and battered boxes of houses that dot the landscape, a slight cool drizzle starts hitting the top of his fur from the overcast sky. He can make out Midway Avenue from here, all the fallen buildings and collapsed roofs. Meandering down the raised hill, he makes out Duy’s still-standing house and lifts his claw to tap the window, grunting loudly.

As he hears Duy unlocking the door, he sets down the flower and relaxes on all four legs. His friend grins widely at the sight of him, “Heeey buddy, wait-” Jerry shakes his fur to wave, and also to dry off, “Hey- hey!” Duy stands unamused and drenched, glaring at him.

Jerry exhaled a laugh through his nose and lumbers in. 

Duy sighs. He moves to close the door, but his eyes catch the flowers on the ground, “These for me?” He picks them up gently, hands thoughtfully brushing the petals.

Jerry turns his head back to grunt, before making his way to the living room and plopping down. As he lies on the floor, he lets out a satisfied purr, closing his eyes but keeping his ears facing Duy. Duy sits on the floor, his back on Jerry’s stomach, eyes still on the flowers as he twirls them with his fingers, “Funeral flowers, huh?” he laughs. “You’re late for that, buddy.”

Jerry raises his head from resting on the floor. Letting out an annoyed huff, he shakes his head. “No?” Duy arches an eyebrow. Jerry turns his head around the room, before straining his neck toward a side table.

Duy stares blankly at the side table, finally taking a guess, “Decorations then?”

Jerry nods his head. His eye remains on Duy holding the flowers. He watches as Duy looks around the room, finally aware that it is only towers of boxes and two tables. Getting up, Jerry hums as he taps the side table with his paw. 

“Alright alright, I hear you, Jerry,” Duy places the shooting stars down, but his hands move to rub his chin in thought. “Y’know, people put flowers in containers. A vase is best, but-” he turns to a box tower next to the table, “I don’t think we have that.”

Jerry vocalizes a specific grunt with a raised pitch at the end, a sound just specific enough for Duy to guess, “a mug?” Duy lets out a tired sigh, “I don’t think I want to unpack right now. Not with this weather.”

The man usually puts on a facade of energy when Jerry is over, reminiscing about life as if he died an old grandpa instead of a guy in his early forties. Jerry can forgive this rainy weather if it makes his friend more honest about how he feels being dead, but right now it only draws his annoyance. It would be very easy for Jerry to pass on, but then what kind of friend would he be to leave Duy behind? He taps the flower gently with his paw but lets out a guttural growl. 

“I appreciate the gift, I do! It’s just-” Jerry immediately knows where this is going, he turns away from Duy and sits down facing a wall. “Hey! Look, I know that you’ve been dying to know what’s in these boxes but it’s a lot of work and it’ll be a mess.”

Jerry huffs. Duy chuckles and bops Jerry’s head, “Besides, there’s not much point to opening them.” Duy sits down next to Jerry, and Jerry does his best to find the uneven paint on the white wall as interesting as possible to ignore his friend. “Half of the stuff isn’t even here, and it’s not going to be.” The two sit with a slight bitter silence between them, at least for a moment before Duy continues, “And it’s no good for me to open anything when I’m not going to be doing anything.”

Jerry keeps his head facing the wall, but he glances down at Duy. In better weather with better moods, Duy likes talking about crispy fried eggs over rice and how he missed things like going to a grocery, which is like a lake where there are more eggs and other food. He also talks endlessly about a show called Bachelor in Paradise that he was watching with Michelle, which is watching people but the people are in a box that is apparently different from the boxes in the living room. Duy never got to see if people in the TV box got together with each other, so he tells Jerry about what he reckons might have happened.  

Remembering all that though, Jerry doesn’t really care to talk with Duy in the living room with boxes. Perhaps if he is alive, he might want to try the crispy fried eggs over rice that only needs soy sauce to taste good, and he might want to meet Victoria F and Johnny D in the TV Box and ask them if they’re together now. He might jump into a grocery and catch a good fish and maybe catch a crispy fried egg too. He might even want to try drinking instant coffee with a mug before placing the flowers in them. But Duy doesn’t want to do anything. All he ever does is stand on the porch watching the corner of Midway Avenue or mope inside when the weather is bad for standing on the porch. 

Growling to himself, Jerry gets up and saunters over to a box on the side. He places his paw on top of one box and eyes Duy with an irritated look. 

Duy only stares back. Jerry makes the specific sound again. 

“No, I’m not unpacking everything to look for a mug.”

Jerry taps the top of the box with his paw again. Duy only shakes his head. Jerry walks to another box and taps it.

“You want a mess around here huh?” 

Jerry nods. 

Laughing, Duy gets up and looks at the box Jerry placed his paw on. At a sudden silence, Jerry feels bad for pushing the topic. His friend has a distant hollow look in his eyes, and Jerry watches as Duy walks to the window and looks left at the corner of Midway Avenue. The rain falls against the glass, and Jerry can see his friend’s complicated expression in the reflection. Duy’s eyes fixate on the corner, as if hopeful for something to show. After a low rumble of thunder, Duy breaks away from the window and lets out a deep sigh. He puts on the practiced smile that Jerry recognizes. 

“Alright.” He walks back to Jerry to lift Jerry’s paw with both hands, “I’m doing a handshake.” Duy raises Jerry’s paw and drops it, in an up-and-down motion. “This means that we’re opening these boxes.” Jerry’s ears cocks forward, and he gapes his mouth.

“But it’ll be tomorrow morning.” Jerry’s ears fall, and he lets out a whine. “Buddy, it’ll be an entire day all day long tomorrow. The weather is still bumming me out, so shake on it before I take it back.” 

In a panic, Jerry raises his other paw to close over Duy’s hand and does the up and down motion as quickly as he can. “JERRY I’LL DIE AGAIN,” is one coherent noise that escapes Duy’s mostly incoherent scream as his arms hold onto dear life. 

As the rain splatters the world outside with a steady white noise, the few lights that pierce through the heavy clouds escape toward the horizon. The end of the day draws near as Duy and Jerry’s usual time with each other wraps up, but Jerry is still giddy at the prospects of tomorrow. As he climbs up the hill, he turns his head back to see the distant figure of Duy waving him goodbye. He tries to keep his gaze as steady as possible, prolonging the anticipation as much as he can. In the next blink of a second, Duy is gone and the Huynh Lam House can barely be recognized from the other battered boxes of Midway Avenue. Jerry turns his head back toward the hill as he makes it toward his hallowed tree to rest. It will be tomorrow morning. 

---

With Duy holding onto Jerry’s right paw, his claw cuts through the packing tape with an easy glide. “Ha, imagine having to peel tapes with your-” Duy hangs a moment for the effect, “bear hands!” Jerry doesn’t react, only curiously nudging the cardboard flaps to sniff the inside content.

“Very embearrassing for me,” Duy sighs, creasing the flaps open so that Jerry can thoroughly examine the content without getting hit by the cardboard. The two have been making good headways through the boxes, there is now a gray-clothed loveseat with a matching barrel chair framing the coffee table, and various paraphernalia of photobooks, wires and chargers, stationeries, and other ordinary items are strewn about. Next to the wedding photo on the side table, a translucent glass mug holds some water that keeps the shooting stars fresh. Two layers of curtains also now hang on the window rods: a translucent sheer cream-white layer that breaks the outside harsh sunlight into a light glow and a solid Oxford blue layer that breaks the evenness of the blank walls. 

Inside a particular box are various kitchen utensils. Some varying sizes of pots and pans, though they are all part of a set with the same logo embellishment. “Good ol’ reliables,” Jerry watches as Duy holds up a sauté pan, “Can’t taste anymore but at least I’ll have these as an expensive reminder of food.” 

As Duy carries the utensils over to the kitchen, he tells Jerry while pacing back and forth about all the meals he and Michelle had to cook to outshine their relatives in the family events: the Thịt Kho finely braised pork belly that falls apart in a glossy salty savory and slightly sweet sauce during Lunar New Year, the Cà Ri Gà chicken curry with a thick aromatic base and savory peppery seasonings for Christmas, and Michelle’s famous Bún Riêu spicy seafood tofu noodle soup with flavor-packed crab pounds full of love only for date night. Duy was delightfully defeated every date night.

Jerry has no idea what most of the words that came out of Duy’s mouth mean but hearing them brought fond memories of Salmon to his stomach. “Oh yeah, you usually went fishing at the lake before huh,” Duy remembers. Feeling deeply guilty for making his friend arrive so early, Duy opens the fridge to spot the eggs and leftover rice still there from before Midway Avenue got washed away. “You up for a Duy breakfast special? Maybe you can still taste food.” 

Jerry gives a pleasant affirming trill, making his way over to sniff the ingredients. With approval, he opens his mouth for Duy to put the food in only to have Duy bop his nose down, “No, it’s crispy eggs,” he places a frying pan on the stove, “I’m going to be cooking, like when you change your food so that it tastes good.”

Jerry exhales an annoyance through his nose, not entirely understanding why food needs to be changed. His annoyance soon fades to fascination as the stove turns onto a high heat, and Duy pours oil to cover the pan. Jerry moves closer to observe the blue flame, but Duy sticks out an arm to block him, “Don’t. Crispy eggs are dangerous. You have to respect the egg,” Duy warns as he cracks four eggs into the oil. 

The two of them immediately step back as it spatters and sputters with popping noises much like the flashes of lightning that Jerry knows. Jerry stands back on two legs, barking in agitation from how volatile the crispy eggs are behaving, but his nose is at odds with the rest of his being. A delicate, piquant aroma wafts through the air. Duy steps back toward the stove to baste the top of the egg with the oil as the spatter dies down.

Within a few moments, Jerry wolfs down soy sauce over crispy eggs with rice, savoring on the textures of the lacey crackly golden-brown edges and the soft runny center. Duy eagerly watches Jerry eat, his sharp eyes watching in anticipation. “Well, how does it taste?” 

In truth, Jerry had become quite accustomed to the flat taste of everything he once loved. He remembers that for weeks after his death, he continued catching fish and foraging berries out of habit instead of hunger. Eating the eggs over rice with soy sauce though, the experience of trying something new with a friend, it fulfilled his stomach in a way that he had known while alive.

Jerry flicks his ear and grunts in delight at Duy. Duy’s jaw slacks, “You really tasted something?” Jerry shakes his head. Disappointed, Duy sighs and moves to grab the bowl, “Ah well, it was worth the-”

Jerry, not done with his meal, pushes away Duy’s hand with his paw and continues eating.

Duy widens his eyes, watching Jerry with great surprise. A small lopsided smile soon tugs at the corners of his lips, before a genuine chuckle escapes his mouth. “All right, bon appetit.” He sits down next to Jerry, leaning his back against the wooden kitchen island counter. Jerry enjoys his lunch break while Duy continues to reminisce about sharing meals with his family. 

The next box baffles Jerry, and Duy cracks up when he sees the content inside: “Michelle’s conspiracy boards!” 

Each corkboard contains a fair amount of characters from The Bachelor franchise, multi-colored index cards with descriptions of personalities, jobs, personality assessments, and her opinions, all pieced together with different yarn colors signifying the different types of relationships. Her immaculately neat handwriting only makes the boards seem all the more surreal. 

“Oh god, I remember this,” Duy laughs as he shifts through the multiple boards for the earlier season, “She had to make these so that I can keep up with the show when she wants to talk about it with me.” 

Ah, good to know that it is normal for Jerry to wonder why Johnny D is torn between Victoria F and Katie M even though Victoria F has been nothing but too good for him since day one. 

Duy excitedly carries one board to the hallway, hanging them on the wall, “What do you think? Really compliments the area right?”

It looks terrible, but Jerry isn’t going to tell Duy that. He only nodded his head, because Duy loves this show. Even if the people on these boards are making bad life decisions somewhere in a TV box, Jerry thinks those life decisions could not have been that bad if Duy and Michelle had gotten so much joy out of it.

And so, the conspiracy boards line the hallway from the living room to the bedrooms, turning the area into something straight out of a police-procedural investigation room. “It looks as though someone died here,” Duy elbows Jerry.

After unpacking all the boxes, Jerry walks around in confusion. Half of the house is essentially empty, the two bedrooms only have beds in them, and the only room that is truly decorated is the living room. And even then, there’s not much there either. Seeing Jerry look from boxes to empty boxes, Duy explains, “this is everything, buddy.” Jerry turns to look at him. “At least, a little less than half of everything.”

Patting the loveseat couch for Jerry to lie on, Duy stands up and moves toward the window. Jerry collapses awkwardly upon the couch, he is obviously too big but the armrests and throw-pillows hold his head and legs rather comfortably as the rays of the evening sun shine through the sheer curtains. He watches as Duy pulls open the curtain, he squints from the harsh change of light as he sees Duy sink into the barrel chair. As his eyes adjust, he can see that Duy is looking at the shooting stars that rest in the mug. He closes his eyes.

The two of them laze in comfortable exhaustion, worn out and enjoying the atmosphere of Midway Avenue through the window. The white walls wash aglow with varying flourishes of orange, red and purple; speckled with fractals of the setting sun’s lights that scatter through the glass mug. The kaleidoscope of lights against the colorful wall creates a daylight starscape, one that continuously changes and moves at every second as the sun sinks lower and lower.

“Thanks.”

Jerry lifts his eyelids to look at Duy.

“I know you have been waiting a long time, I really appreciate that. I just,” Duy paused, turning his eye toward the photograph, “I need more time.”

Jerry turns to once again admire the flowers, and as if sensing him, Duy’s eyes also follow his, “I do like them. The flowers.”

Jerry closes his eyes, prolonging the most of today as he can before he opens them again. Tomorrow morning can arrive later. 

---

Artist’s Statement:

There is a moment between grief and acceptance that’s rather boring, I think anyone who has lost something meaningful to them might recognize it. Or maybe more likely, no one remembers that part in mourning. I feel like it’s always a bit strange when the world goes on when tragedy happens because it always seems so meaningful in stories. But in real life, there is just that moment where I fold laundry, go to class, or wait for the bus.

 So if ghosts are real, it must be very awkward when they are at the end but it doesn’t end either. In that sense, a ghost is that specific moment between grief and acceptance. The cold lingering of loss, to stay where you are because you are holding onto something. Call it a haunting, a wish. 

For this story, I invite you into a flooded valley, where the story starts and ends within that ghost of a moment. As my protagonist brings his neighbor a housewarming gift, I also hope you find comfort in the home of your warm memories.