The Eyes, the Sky, the Nakedness
Essay | Jesse Pesta
One day a few years ago, around the time when Covid started hitting the city hard, I went for a walk and saw a doll in the back window of a parked car.
The eyes, the sky, the nakedness. The little toy seemed so defenseless and adrift, and weren’t we all? I could relate to that, so I snapped a photo.
It was the start of a brief time I’d call walking to stay sane.
New York City’s fever dream of empty avenues and all-night ambulance sirens was suddenly a new normal. The change happened so fast, was it even real? Can I believe my lying eyes?
Meadow Path
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
‘Waiting for That Cut’
Essay | Jesse Pesta
Dhanbahadur Shresta is a country doctor in a remote village in Nepal. He had just pulled someone’s tooth and was reassuring his patient that the pain wouldn’t last too long when the earthquake struck.
His stone building collapsed, burying patient and doctor alive. Pinned beneath rubble, Mr. Shresta said, he decided: “Death was certain.”
Reading Material
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Boredom
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Condensed Life Histories
Comic | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Moving Day
Short Story | Abigail and Jesse Pesta
In the kitchen, Dad’s sitting on the linoleum floor, cussing at a vacuum cleaner. The piece that’s supposed to connect the top to the bottom doesn’t quite fit. It’s August and the apartment is boiling hot.
Sweat’s running down the back of his neck like a fountain drink at Taco Bell. Dad looks at a pigeon on the windowsill. The window is open. The bird is watching him with a creepy pink eye.
“God, give me a break,” Dad says for the sixth time. “Just one break.”
He’s so mad at the vacuum cleaner, he’s hissing his words. “Jussst one sssingle break. Is that so much to ask, God?” he asks. The pigeon blinks.
Daydream
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Blue T
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Is Your Signal Clear?
Photo | Jesse Pesta
The Mystery of the Hat
Short Story | Abigail Pesta
I met Emma at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Houston, and we sat for a few minutes on a bench outside the deserted basketball court. It felt like the coldest day of the year. The black city sludge at the curb was frozen rock solid. Overhead a bitter wind whipped the branches of a tree, hopelessly tangled with plastic bags.
But none of this mattered to Emma, because she was in love and wanted to spend the afternoon telling me about it.
She looked radiant and pixie-like, wearing a striped knit cap with a fuzzy ball swinging on the end of a piece of yarn. “I am so in love!” she said.
Oh please. Hearing those words, I drew the obvious conclusion. The relationship is already doomed.
Street Sweeper, Udaipur
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Driver
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Wait
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
For this painting I used as a reference a photograph from an old family album. The girl in the photo was me.
As I looked at the old photo, time collapsed for a millisecond. The little-girl self was looking into the future. She could see me, now. I had that feeling. And the present-day me was carried back to that birthday party.
Waiting for the guests to arrive, a pensive moment. Would they all come for sure? Window blinds shielding me from the hot August sun.
Something Made Me Stop
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
“Hi, Margaret. Laurie Stanton Carter added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to confirm that you know Laurie in order for you to be friends on Facebook. Thanks, the Facebook Team.”
Laurie? Laurie of 60 years ago?
Once upon a time you met, played Wild West cowboys in your backyards, and went your separate ways.
Today that little girl gallops out of the past, all grown up and scaring you again.
* * *
We lived next door as kids, in brand new homes with the lingering fragrance of pine boards. All sorts of construction materials — planks, scraps of lumber, empty plaster bags — lay piled at the edges of our treeless, crabgrass yards.
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August Morning
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Lean
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Travel Diary of Foods
Comic | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
The Real McCoy
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Just before Christmas last year, Vernal and I made our annual trek through the holler and down to Millport bottoms to buy a tree. It’s always a project, buying from a tree farm, but we get a nice, fresh-cut pine, just like the old days, sort of.
Mr. Bell, the owner of the Christmas tree farm, has only one arm. He lost his other one in a horrible farm accident — not a Christmas-tree-farm accident, mind you. Although he’s handy with the chainsaw I always feel we should be helping him and not the other way around.
As we picked our tree, he patiently wandered around the farm with us. And after he cut it down we lugged it across the field to the barn to the tree-shaker machine. “Set ’er up here an’ hold on good and tight,” he said, as Vernal and I hoisted it up and into the shaker.
Nightmare Lamb
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Traffic Jam
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Guardian
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Dear Sir or Madman
Short Story | Abigail and Jesse Pesta
I needed the job but there were red flags during my interview at Magma Ltd.
For starters, the interview lasted just five minutes, during which time the boss, Nell, told me her four rules of employment. “To work here, the rules are, obey the dress code, be punctual, get along with other people, and have fun!”
She stressed the word “fun!” by slapping her hand loudly on the desk. The noise startled a bird perched on a bookcase a few feet away. It flapped its wings and squawked a word that sounded like “turtleneck.”
The interview was being conducted in the middle of a vast, open loft space in London’s East End. All across the room, not a head turned.
Prince’s Terrace
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Pudding Waiting
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Chapter 1: ‘A Woman In a Cast’
A Note From Maureen, Abigail and Jesse
Here’s the first chapter of “Safely Buried,” a novel originally published right here on this site by John “Dad” Pesta in 2006. There’s a story behind that.
John had decided to write a mystery, one chapter a week, and publish it as he wrote it. He figured the deadlines would force him to get the thing done.
It worked. He wrote 37 chapters. That’s 37 weeks of cliffhangers.
What happened next was that “Safely Buried” was not adapted into a movie starring Adam Driver.
But in the life of John Pesta, this book was a true Hollywood success story. He sold nearly 10,000 copies, wrote a sequel, wrote another novel and signed a three-book deal with a publisher.
Here comes another cliffhanger …
Studio in Winter
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Doubt What You Believe
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Pets We’ve Known
Comic | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Welcome Home
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Karen kicked snow chunks from her boots at the front door and fumbled in the dim porch light for her key. Roger stamped his feet on the mat.
It had been a long day. Ahh, good to be home. She pressed the latch and nudged the door open with her shoulder, brushing against the big, evergreen Christmas wreath hanging on the front door. Setting her purse and keys on the table, she flicked the light switch.
Then it began, the flapping.
Karen and Roger froze at the sight: A panicky bird circling in the living room. Flap, flap flap, swish, thump. Into the lampshade. Against the wall.
Following his initial shock, the bird landed on a cedar paneled wall. His feet dug in, tail twitched up and down. Glaring, taking stock.
Karen psyched herself up for the effort that loomed ahead.
Daycare, Phnom Penh
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Backstage
Photo | Jesse Pesta
An Evening In Shanghai
Short Story | Abigail Pesta
The night we got to Shanghai, Marcy and I were so tired that all we did was stay in the hotel and watch “The Sound of Music” on TV.
Never mind that it was dubbed in Chinese which neither of us spoke.
So the next day, we promised ourselves, we’d have an adventure. Which is how, 24 hours later, we found ourselves standing next to a creepy hearse-like limo at midnight, trying to decide how stupid we’d be if we actually climbed in.
I mean, lace curtains?
Napoleon, in a leather jacket, leather hat and Mao collar, did look like someone trying to play the role of a mob kingpin, albeit a short mob kingpin. I could take him in a fight. Question: Did I want to?
Sure I wanted adventure, but this wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I’d imagined an weekend of strolling through street markets and eating delicious snacks. Club-hopping with tough guys six inches shorter than me? Not in the plan.
The limo was piloted by a pair of twentysomething barflies we’d chatted up. Now they were inviting us out for a night on the town. Their names, Jimmy and Napoleon.
“Hop in,” Napoleon said. “We’re going to a nightclub with movie stars.”
Hmm, sounded suspicious. For starters, yeah this was back in the 1990s, but who says “nightclubs”? And what 25-year-olds drive around Shanghai, or anyplace really, in limos that look like this?
Walking Man
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Sisters
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Sigiriya
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Junior Achievement
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
I was fourteen when Dad said it was time I learned something about business.
The “office,” that was Dad’s world. Office attire for a computer salesman in the 1950s meant starched white shirt, dark suit, necktie, and felt hat with grosgrain trim. No wonder, then, that when Dad got home at night, we were supposed to give him space.
Space to smoke a pipe and read the paper. Space to recuperate after an exhausting day of talking to customers and looking reassuringly dependable.
“Yes, it’s important to learn about business,” Dad said. Then he dropped the bomb. “So your mother and I would like you to join Junior Achievement this year.”
Other
Photo by Jesse Pesta
City Girl
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Boy’s Memory
Charcoal | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Bus Ride Home
Short Story | Jesse Pesta
Riding home on the school bus, the twins are having a fight about which is better, John Deeres or Massey Fergusons.
I shouldn’t even be on the bus but I missed my stop. The driver says he’ll drop me off on the way back, but first he has to finish the route.
The twins are punching each other and saying “fuck you” about tractors. The bus slowly empties out.
I live back near town. By missing that stop I gave the twins an opening. They’re just waiting for the right moment.
We stop at Trisha’s trailer. “Bye!” she says, and hops off. The bus pulls away with a roar, kicking up a cloud of gravel dust that soon enough will settle back down on her sunbaked trailer and the cornfield next door. I look back and see her trying to cover her mouth with her Trapper Keeper.
International Gossip
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Wire
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Tribute
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Air Travel Anxieties
Comic | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Toast for Breakfast
Short Story | Abigail Pesta
I started getting these dizzy spells, so Dad suggested that I buy a toaster.
If you have a toaster, you see, you’re able to eat more toast for breakfast. Breakfast cures everything, Dad says.
I didn’t want to blame breakfast for feeling dizzy, I wanted to blame Hong Kong. The tiny apartments, tiny people and tiny refrigerators all conspired to make me feel like big, lumbering Sasquatch.
The city’s narrow sidewalks turn the shortest stroll into a game of human pinball. Even the lampposts are cruel, with their loud, staccato crosswalk signals constantly warning that the light’s about to change with a rapid-fire ticking noise. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick! You can hear them for blocks, machine-gunning the masses with this message: Quit wasting time.
But I digress.
Wedding Parade
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
This is from a photo and a memory. At dusk in the city of Udaipur in India I had stumbled upon a wedding parade of carts and a camel-drawn wagon heaped with speakers blaring music.
At the back of the procession were a dozen or so kids, each carrying basically a chandelier. The lights were wired to a generator on another cart that was so old-fashioned, it would fit right in at the county fair if someone slipped it into a display of engines from the 1920s.
A huge flywheel spun lazily. A few of the girls struck Bollywood poses with their lights as we passed. The camel had seen it all before. Eventually the whole thing meandered down a narrow lane.
Orbs
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Paint B 4 Eating
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
The Kitchen Arts
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Okay, so this is where we’re headed today, Nan said to herself earlier, after the mailbox blew up. Evidently a firecracker delivery had happened after the mail delivery.
One of the rural facts of life is that kids like to blow up your mailbox with cherry bombs sometimes. Fair enough.
But why today?
She already had to deal with Melanie, who was slumped on a stool at the kitchen counter, her cheeks streaked with tears because she had witnessed a snapping turtle devour a painted turtle down at the pond.
Melanie was dabbing her eyes, and the kitchen was already like a sauna because Nan was boiling huge pots of water in preparation for the mashed potato project.
Art Appreciator
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Sailor
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Belly Button
Photo | Jesse Pesta
A Gift From Heaven
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
My mother was pulling out all the stops for First Communion Day.
A white organdy dress had arrived from a store back east. So did the veil and tiara. It was time to welcome Jesus into my heart, as Sister Angela taught us, an occasion to be dressed properly.
But the white leather shoes, with their dainty straps and open toes — that was my favorite part of the whole outfit. I could hardly wait for the moment to arrive that I could buckle on those shoes.
That’s because the shoe salesman had diagnosed me with weak arches. I had put my feet in the big metal device in the shoe store, with its eerie green radioactive light, and I had seen the bones inside of my feet.
Yes, it was an x-ray machine, right there in the shoe store.
Woods In the Holler
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Flying Pants
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Beach Walk
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Rural Life
Photo by Jesse Pesta
Cockroach’s Revenge
Short Story | Abigail Pesta
It was destiny. The cockroach and I would meet again.
I never would have guessed it when our paths first crossed, many years ago, that steamy evening in the tropics.
The light was fading over Wan Chai, a neighborhood of mossy skyscrapers and girlie bars, when we locked eyes, this bug and I. We sized each other up in my apartment, and while I don’t presume to speak for my adversary, I think it’s fair to say that both of us were surprised to meet.
But as soon as I made a break for the can of bug spray, our epic battle began.
I blasted the creature out of my kitchen with a steady, lethal gusher of Raid. The roach galloped across the living room and toward the bathroom, fleeing as poison sluiced from beneath my angry fingertip.
Shale Creek
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Negotiating With a Cat
Comic | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Early Morning Tango
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Apostolos the Landlord
Short Story | Abigail Pesta
Another day, another charming letter from my landlord, slipped under the door. “I noticed that you have flowerpots on the windowsills. Make sure you don’t leave rings of dirt behind,” this one read.
The little notes were arriving with increased frequency, ever since I told him I’d need to break the lease. I had a good enough reason. I was being transferred to Hong Kong by my employer. My time in London was up.
To soften the blow, I’d even found him a brand-new tenant for the apartment, so he wouldn’t lose a single cent of rent.
Still, he couldn’t quite wrap his brain around it. He thought I was getting away with something.
From the moment I told him, he was suspicious. “A company does not just MOVE someone like that,” he said.
When I explained that I’m a journalist and that believe it or not, newspapers do that sometimes, he replied: “You’re going by yourself to Hong Kong? Without a husband?”
Then he announced that he would be keeping my enormous security deposit.
Skyscraper
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Fran, at the Ocean
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
The Long Embrace
Photo | Jesse Pesta
What Would Buddha Do?
Short Story | Abigail Pesta
Can there be any more enlightened way to start the new year than by going to a Buddhist brunch?
My friend Cecile invited me to one on New Year's Day, and I said yes. It sounded like the perfect chance to regain some dignity after a night of drinking, lunacy and self-reproach. Plus there would be finger food.
I didn’t know what exactly to expect at Cecile’s party. But one thing’s for sure, a Buddhist brunch raises the stakes on the hostess gift. Lots of opportunities for bad karma.
So on the day of the party, instead of buying the usual lazy bottle of wine, I decided to make the extra effort to find something classier at the museum shop at the Met.
Stone Carver, Red Fort, New Delhi
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Church Clown
Photo | Jesse Pesta
The Holiday Spirit
Short Story | Abigail and Jesse Pesta
I rolled out of bed on Christmas Eve feeling uncharitable. As usual, I’d put off my shopping till the last minute. And the city was sure to be a zoo after the subway strike.
Like everyone else in town I’d wasted a week’s worth of psychic energy trying to find ways to get back and forth to work or really just get anywhere.
No time for gift-shopping, no bill-paying, not even time to do laundry. Which meant that on top of everything else, I was out of underwear.
But none of this would deter me, for the simple reason that it was now or never. “Today I am going to successfully shop,” I thought, steeling myself for what I imagined would be bitter cold and bitter people.
Penguin in Tibet
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Story Inn
Pastel | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
You Need to Have a Plan
Short Story | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
The world is divided into two kinds of people. There are those who will smash a snake with a shovel the instant it shows up in their front yard. Smack! Snake problem solved.
Then there are the others. They want the snake to go away, too, but their strategy is more subtle. It doesn’t go nuclear right out of the gate. It involves flowerpots, cardboard boxes, cinderblocks and self doubt.
Leann belonged to the second group.
* * *
She first spotted the snake the morning of the day she was hosting the bridal shower. It was coiled under the front porch, fat and happy.
Tourist
Photo | Jesse Pesta
Congratulations, you’ve reached the end, or the beginning, depending on your perspective.
Back in 2004 the first thing we posted was “You Need to Have a Plan,” the short story above. Years later I (Jesse here) came back and added this to create the impression we’d kicked things off with something other than not having a plan.
It’s a photo of a friend visiting the Empire State Building. Or is it all of us, looking at the world? For now let’s go with that.