Sabrina & Corina: Stories

The narrator, Liz, opens by stating that she told her manager at the Los Angeles bank where she worked that she was returning to Denver because she “missed her mother and the mountains” and because “California […] was too crowded and expensive” (119). However, when she later gets in her car to drive away, she thinks of the true reason she is leaving and cries.

Liz grew up in North Denver with her mother and father: “I admired them—my outgoing mother with black 1960s Hollywood hair and my father with his gentle green eyes and a confident work-boot gait” (119-120). However, she also recalls that her father once threw a bag of groceries at her mother’s face, and many other instances of his physical brutality against her mother: “It’s not his fault, [her] mother would tell [Liz], painting a picture of his childhood in Detroit, where one night his schizophrenic father shot his mother and then turned the gun on himself” (120).

When Liz was 13, her father abandoned the family to be with another woman. Both she and her mother became inconsolable. Six months later, they moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a view of Cheesman Park. Although Liz’s mother instructed her to think of the apartment as their home, Liz never warmed up to the space. At 19, she relocated to California “with the hopes of modeling or doing commercials—people often said [she] possessed striking ‘exotic’ features” (120). However, those ambitions did not pan out and she got a job as a bank teller instead. She began frequenting bars and nightclubs and going out every night, and had many unstable romantic relationships with men. She began to wonder about what, exactly, would become the most convincing reason for her to return to Colorado.

The scene switches back to the present moment. Liz has returned to the apartment she grew up in after leaving Los Angeles. She finds her old room mostly untouched. Her mother is sternly telling her to keep herself busy and find employment. Liz writes, “[My mother] was a woman who adhered to order. Life had a schedule. Things needed to be cleaned. Rules needed to be followed” (121).

Liz reveals the reason that she left Los Angeles. She had been sleeping with a man who was engaged. While his fiancée was away on a trip, she and the man had gotten into a fight. She writes:

Leave her, I said while he choked me as he always did during sex. He said nothing and I bucked, drawing blood from his face with my nails. A lamp broke. The room went dark. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, but then it was. He slapped my face into the wall, chipping a tooth and breaking my nose. I heard the brittle crack replay again and again as I staggered outside (122).

Later, after she had driven herself home to her own apartment, she called the police to report the crime and immediately regretted it: “It’ll be tricky, [the detective] explained, especially since you weren’t technically dating” (122). That detective, after looking at photographs of Liz, also asked her if she was Spanish and told her that she could be a model. She didn’t pursue any further legal action.

Back in Denver, Liz says that she spends most of her summer mornings listening to her mother’s routine as she prepares to go to work as an academic counselor at a community college. One evening, she is on the apartment building’s roof when she spots a woman near its north ledge. The woman has brown hair and wears several silver bracelets and a thin blouse that billows in the wind. Liz coughs and the woman turns to face her, saying that she hadn’t realized anyone else frequented the roof. She introduces herself as Monica. In conversation, Liz learns that Monica, although appearing no older than 25, is recently widowed. She was married to her husband, Bruce, for 6 years, and they spent their time together living in an apartment in the building. She also tells Liz that she’s glad Liz was up on the roof: “Because I was going to kill myself. Only the roof didn’t seem high enough,” she says (124).

The next day, Liz’s mother asks what Liz’s plans are. Liz waffles in her answer, and her mother chastises her about finding a job and having too much time on her hands. Liz leaves the apartment at midday and goes to the park. There, she passes by a homeless man whom she knows sleeps underneath a spruce tree in the park’s pavilion: “I saw him most days under the branches with his rootlike hands and ancient face” (125): “It’s going to rain, miss. Make sure you grab an umbrella,” he tells Liz, who thanks him (125).

Liz also runs into Monica, who is sunbathing in the park. She’s slathered in oil and wearing oversized sunglasses that remind Liz of Audrey Hepburn. They begin talking, and Monica tells Liz that Cheesman Park used to be a graveyard: “The headstones were moved, but hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies were left behind. Mostly the poor, people without family, that kind of thing. They say it’s haunted,” Monica says (125). When Liz tells Monica that she’s currently looking for work, Monica offers to pay her to help her clear her apartment of her husband’s belongings. Liz agrees.

Later, Liz comes over to Monica’s apartment. It is a three-bedroom unit that also has a patio: “On the brick walls [are] many framed photos of a husky white-haired man in his mid-fifties and his pretty young wife, Monica” (126). Monica tells Liz that many people assumed she was a gold digger, but that she genuinely loved Bruce. She describes him as “The kindest man [she] had ever met” (126).

Monica and Liz do not do much of their task that day. They instead spend the time chatting and getting to know each other. Liz learns that Bruce owned a local downtown jazz club named the Mermaid Room. She listens as Monica details her wrenching grief, and offers some stories from her own life, and her relationship with the man who brutalized her. They discuss the bruising on Monica’s face, which is still visible: “You have two things to look forward to. Someday it won’t hurt anymore. And someday he’ll be dead,” Monica says (128). Liz realizes that it has been a long time since she last spent an afternoon with a female friend.

The next Sunday, Liz meets her mother after Mass. They take a walk through Cheesman Park. They discuss Liz’s new friendship with Monica. Then, they watch as a feral dog nearly attacks a woman who is nursing her baby. Liz’s mother runs to shield the nursing mother and yells at Liz to find someone to help with the dog. The homeless man emerges from his place beneath the spruce tree and runs toward the conflict. He yells and makes a show with his arms and legs until the dog is sufficiently scared and retreats. The woman thanks Liz’s mother, but does not acknowledge the homeless man, who also retreats. Later, as Liz and her mother enter the apartment building, Liz says, “He’s a nice man […] He cares about other people […] Most men don’t know the pleasure” (130).

On another day, Liz and Monica are successful at clearing Monica’s apartment of Bruce’s belongings. Monica continues to tell Liz many intimate details about herself and Bruce, and their life together. When all of Bruce’s belongings are packed up, she asks Liz to deposit the boxes in a dumpster, because she never wants to see any of them again. While they are loading the boxes into Liz’s car, Monica invites Liz out to the Mermaid Room. Liz says she can’t because she has dinner plans with her mom, but Monica tells her to bring her mom along.

Liz waits until it is dark to dispose of the boxes in a dumpster at the park’s western edge. When she gets back into her car and looks in the mirror, she notices that she has sweated much of her makeup off, and that her bruised face looks monstrous.

Liz’s mother agrees to go to the Mermaid Room, on the condition that she will not be staying for very long. Once there, Liz’s mother admires the talent of the female singer on stage, and lets her eyes linger on the charismatic and glamorous performer. Liz and her mother do not stay for the singer’s second set, however, and they head home while a storm gathers in the sky.

That night, Liz listens to the pouring rain and realizes, for the first time since her return to Colorado, that her mother must be quite lonely. She falls asleep and dreams of going ice fishing with her father. In the dream, she carves a hole in the ice. Her father reaches into the dark water and becomes “snagged like a fish caught on a hook. The hole [grows] larger as he [screams] and [Liz fears] that when it [is] done with him, that darkness [is] coming for [her]” (135). She then wakes up and realizes that she has five missed calls from Monica. When she calls Monica back, Monica convinces her to take a drive with her.

During the ride, Liz tells Monica that she enjoyed the Mermaid Room. Monica continues to tell Liz intimate details about Bruce and her relationship with him. She tells her that he used to beg her to give him a child, and begins to cry when she says that her dearest wish is to have him back. She then gives Liz a flask and commands her to drink. Liz writes, “I could be anyone, I thought, and [Monica] would still say these things. Monica didn’t want help or comfort. She wanted to be seen” (136). With a rising voice, Liz tells Monica to bring her home. Suddenly, all Liz wants is to be back in bed, to go to sleep and awaken to her mother’s company. Monica only continues to cry.

Then, Liz sees a man sitting on the curb in the rain. His posture is slumped and he is wearing a gleaming leather jacket. She tells Monica that the man shouldn’t be out in the rain. Then, Monica gets out of the car and approaches the man. Liz, following her, realizes that the man is the homeless man from the park. He drunkenly lifts a bottle of liquor to the two women, offering them a swig. Monica dashes the bottle from the man’s hand, and then roughly pulls on his arm: “This is my husband’s jacket […] You dug it out of the trash […] Like a dog,” she screams at him (137): “Stop, miss, please. I wasn’t causing you harm,” the man replies (137). Then, as Monica’s face goes suddenly blank, Liz recognizes something in her gaze that she had seen many times in her father’s eyes.

Monica savagely attacks the man, kicking her with her pointed heel wherever she can as he screams. Liz begs her to stop and finally lies, telling her that she gave the man the jacket: “I saw him at night without a coat. I had the boxes in my car. I wanted him to be warm,” she says (138). This successfully compels Monica to stop beating up the man. When Liz leans down to offer what she knows are empty platitudes to comfort the man, he sees her face and says, “Someone hurt you […] They hurt you bad” (138).

Liz closes the story with a memory which occurred right before she left Los Angeles. One day, her mother called her and told her that she had been looking at old photographs of herself. Her mother said:

I can tell how sad I look. It’s something in my eyes. There’s this dull light inside them. I’m starting to wonder if it’s always been there. If I looked that way before your father, when I was a teenager, or even a little girl (138-139).

Liz unsuccessfully tried to console her mother, telling her that she simply had dark eyes, but her mother insisted on her sentiment. She also asserts that the sadness in her eyes eventually changed. When Liz asks her how this change came about, she replied: “The world [changed]. It became less urgent, somehow bigger, and I didn’t worry so much about being loved” (139).