Sluts Like Us: A Loosely Bound Indictment

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4-19-2017

Sluts Like Us: A Loosely Bound Indictment Sluts Like Us: A Loosely Bound Indictment

Devan Collins Del Conte

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SLUTS LIKE US:

A LOOSELY BOUND INDICTMENT

Devan C. Del Conte

A Thesis

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

Major: Creative Writing

The University of Memphis

May 2017

Abstract

Sluts Like Us is a collection of ten stories that explore perspectives on loss and

abandonment. Several of the stories are connected through thematic elements of plant-life, water,

and subterranean exploration as well as through recurring characters. In these stories, children

face the loss of their parents through death or abandonment; they navigate worlds in which they

are not privy to the most critical information and must form their own stories; newlyweds

discover and, bound by tragedy, ultimately ignore the vast gulf that lies between them; mothers

grapple with their frustration and lack of connection to their children, their subsequent

disconnects from day-to-day life; grown men struggle to enact into reality their own latent

maternal instincts. The title story, “Sluts Like Us,” begins the collection: it deals most directly

with the undercurrent of stigma perpetuated and transformed through language, and the first

person narrator of this story serves as a proxy author for the nine stories that follow.

iii

For Adam and Caitlin,

who have always been the rest of me

and for whom I’d gladly leap

into a fiery vortex of energy

in order to save the world.

Table Of Contents

Sluts Like Us / 1

Dust / 35

Rare Vacancy / 44

In Which Phoebe Does Not Make Things Harder / 60

Vieques / 72

Ramsey Baby / 86

Ambler, Pennsylvania, 1963 / 98

On Rivers / 109

How to Leave a Mark / 123

Angiosperms and Other Deal Breakers / 139

SLUTS LIKE US

I. Things That Can Sting

My older brother Mason gets home tomorrow. That’s what this is all about. But it’s not

about him, it’s about me and my world and him coming back to it. My name is Phoebe and I am

twenty years old. But maybe that much you knew.

Truly important things to know about me are these: first, I love the taste of words like

phlebotomy, sphygmomanometer, and promontory. I roll them like marbles in my mouth then

spit them out and line them up neatly. Second, I live close to my body. I live in the pores of my

skin — they echo everything I hear, regular, scooped-out miniature caves. Last night I noticed

these wispy white hairs down the sides of my boobs, and I didn’t like them so I plucked them

one by one, twisting to see in the mirror of my compact, watching how I changed shape, making

room for echoes — it took me most of the night so I haven’t slept too much.

This is also about sleep and getting it. It’s about inventories: for instance, the big toe on

my left foot is bleeding where I tore the nail off, and my right eye has started twitching again.

My hair is still brown and cut straight at my chin. My eyes are grey, and I have a wide scar like a

smile under my left knee from falling on the train tracks when I was little: I found a hole under

the fence at the back of the field where Mason’s soccer games were, and I was trying to have an

adventure, and I didn’t know yet how to be afraid. This is my favorite scar.

Right now I’m on my bed, watching night fall through my window: my roommate and I,

we decided to keep the Christmas lights strung on the porch even though it’s summer; she insists

on the floodlight outside the garage because she’s afraid of home invaders. I haven’t told her it

keeps me up all night because living with someone else is about compromises. These lights

brighten as the sun goes down and paint the patio with flame and shadow.

My brother Mason gets in tomorrow early in the morning, and I may or may not go to the

airport. That is up to me; brunch is not optional. My dad called me this morning and woke me up

— just after I finally fell asleep — to tell me all the numbers of Mason’s flight and brunch and

driving times. My dad likes to call me, I think, and hear my voice shoot across town, but it’s

easier for him when there are numbers. Mason has been living in South Korea the past four

years, being a photojournalist (or just a man with a camera, I don’t know for sure). I don’t know

where he lived the year before that because he didn’t tell us. Maybe he was in California. Maybe

he was downtown, squatting in a warehouse by the river. Who knows? My mom always said he

was meant for more than he would find in Memphis.

Mason is six years older than me. In Korea he found a wife and a three-legged dog and

sent postcards on holidays; he made the postcards from his own photos and they weren’t at all

holidayish. Anyway the wife didn’t work out and something happened with the job or the

government or visas, so he’s coming back and bringing the three-legged dog with him, which

I’m sure is costing dad a fortune. He’ll live in his old bedroom at my dad’s house which has

been, in the meantime: a gym, an office, and a storage room for my dead grandma’s knick

knacks. Mason’s books have always stayed on the shelves.

My shrink Karen worries about his return and how it will affect me. I mentioned to her

that I have historically liked writing letters and stories, and she said, Yes, great, it’s good for you,

and added it to my homework. I bought a fancy pen and a binder and some good heavy paper and

here I am. I don’t have to tell you the truth or anything at all; that’s up to me. It’s Friday and I

need toilet paper and macaroni and cheese and to kill the wasps that live outside my bedroom

window. They find cracks and in they come — heavy and throbbing. Get a job, I tell them. I hit

them with rolled up copies of The Memphis Flyer after I’ve read my horoscope, and they stain

the classifieds with their insides. If I get stung, I swell like something rotten in the sun.

Mason and I were very close when I was little, or at least I thought we were. He used to

give me journals on my birthdays, and read the stories I wrote at school and tell me I was

someone special. But once my dad moved out of our house and into his first shitty divorced-dad-

apartment, Mason got smaller. We tiptoed around each other and wore silence like magic capes.

When our mom left us, the spells all broke and it was chaos. I was twelve, Mason eighteen, and

we both started wearing too much eyeliner.

Our dad bought a house and we moved in with him even though Mason was old enough

to get his own place, and I asked him to do that and take me with him. When I was fourteen

(almost fifteen) I cracked up a little — I lost track of things and spent time in a hospital. That’s

around when Mason disappeared. This is an inventory so it has to be a little boring, and I’ll be

honest, I’m boring myself now. Maybe the details aren’t important, but late at night, they’re

where I get lost.

The point of this, Karen says, is to help me keep straight and sorted. I wrote this first

chunk because Karen asked me to consider the past and consider my fear. I hope to write at night

when normally I lie in bed staring at the fan and rubbing my legs together like a mute cricket —

touching my thumb to my fingertips in complicated patterns, waiting for the sun to rise. Maybe

I’ll show this to Karen at our next appointment and she will ask me to explain where the fear is

— that’s the sort of thing she asks — and I won’t be able to find the right words and in my head

I’ll say: Fuck you, Karen, where’s your fear?

The Kroger’s open until ten tonight so I have time to walk there and get the things I need,

which is a nice way to pass the night anyway. My roommate Laney just got in — she’s not a

quiet walker — and I’m being still so she won’t come in my room.

I am sitting on a curb on Mendenhall Avenue which has very little traffic right now, and

I’m writing on the back of my receipt that’s a thousand feet long because of all the surveys and

coupons for things I’ll never buy — I’ll copy this into my binder later since I always lose

receipts. When I was leaving the Kroger, a homeless man sitting on the display patio furniture

told me he’d never seen the ocean, so I gave him all my pennies. He had big kind eyes and ratty

shoes and he wanted to talk so I listened because I would guess people rarely do. But eventually

I had to walk away and he was still talking, and I’m sure he kept talking when I was down the

street and out of sight.

I imagined this:

The homeless man I met in front of the Kroger used all but one of the pennies for bus

fare, rode to the gulf and waded into the surf until his ratty sneakers were heavy and

waterlogged. He lay his last penny on the rolling waves where it floated and grew. Abraham

Lincoln melted; a smooth shining sheet curled up at the edges and turned into a copper boat.

The man smiled. He got in the boat and the tide carried him away to an island where he

could see all his family waiting on the shore, drinking coconut drinks with umbrellas in them and

waving at him, and he thought, Great, yes, I’m home.

Except. What if then, everyone wanted him to take them back to the mainland, because

life on the island wasn’t as good as all that? What if they swam out to him, holding their coconut

drinks over the waves and paddling their feet like duck-feet, and they climbed on board until the

boat was too full and it tipped over, while they fought to get back on? Everyone drowned except

the original homeless man I met in front of the Kroger. He’s left treading water in the middle of

all those bodies. His boat sinks. What then? My hope is: he buys a hot dog instead.

When I got home from the store I found a pixie in the kitchen: a teeny tiny blond girl in

moon boots and a long fur vest. She was staring at the blue gas stove flame. A red kettle I’d

never seen before sat on the burner. She noticed me in the doorway and hugged me too hard, told

me her name is Gabby. The kettle whistled before I could decide whether or not to hug her back.

She offered me tea and I said yes because everything was weird and happening very fast.

I put my groceries on my shelf in the pantry and she poured hot water into mugs and

covered them with saucers. She talked at me.

Apparently she is a friend of my roommate Laney’s. Something dramatic happened with

her stepdad that I didn’t follow, and now she’s staying in our detached garage. The garage has a

real room, with air conditioning and cable, an old boxy tube TV and cracked leather couches our

landlord abandoned. Laney told Gabby she could stay with us as for long as she needed to, but

then, as soon as Gabby got here, Laney gave her some sheets and a towel and left to sleep at her

boyfriend’s house, which is, I think, pretty rude.

Anyway, then Gabby picked up both our mugs and said, You wanna come back to my

room for a while? Like she’d always lived there, and I said yes again and followed her. My

feelings about Gabby are: she should have a pet wolf that’s bigger than she is and that she should

always be holding a stick of smoking sage and that she should live in the woods and not in my

garage.

All she had in the back room with her was Winston, her vacuum cleaner, a small bag of

clothes, a blanket to cover the one high window, and the red tea kettle. Winston is her dog, a

black terrier. He’s old and blind and mean and apparently has an anxiety disorder which is why

Gabby has to cover the windows with the blanket and feed him Klonopin every day. (Her pupils

were huge and I think Winston probably shares his drugs with her — she keeps them in the

cabinet under the TV.) The vacuum, she told me, has a lot of sentimental value that I didn’t

really follow. She cleans houses as a job and is emotional about it I guess.

We got to talking about her work and she mentioned Mason’s friend Emmy, and that is

how we found out we have Emmy in common and by extension Mason, and perhaps her coming

to my house right now is more than coincidence — I didn’t say that to Gabby. Gabby cleans

houses with Emmy, and also she and Emmy know each other from school even though Emmy is

seven classes ahead of us. That’s how Memphis works: everyone knows each other, especially

the slutty girls because those names get spread around like loose change. In fact I am beginning

to think I heard stories about Gabby back in Freshman year.

Emmy is someone I love. She used to come to my house when I was little and my parents

were out of town, and she talked to me like I was a person. Sometimes she made me pancakes

shaped like hearts and let me wear her lipstick. She made art, photographing dead lab animals —

special-ordered — that Mason said was visionary. She fucked a lot of people in my parent’s bed

which later became just my mom’s bed, and I thought that was funny. She lived briefly near the

town my mom moved too and sent me an email saying it sucked because she’s thoughtful like

that.

Gabby’s ok with me because talking to her is like talking to someone through saran wrap

or a waterfall, and my horoscope said to be open-minded this month. After I was in her garage

room for an hour or so, I told her I was diabetic and needed to go check my blood sugar. I did

this because she wouldn’t be quiet or still and it was making me exhausted. I think it’s fine to lie

for the sake of expediency; that’s something else you should know about me. There are now

three wasps in the far corner of my room, crawling on the window sill and nodding their heads

yes like they have a plan, but I’m too tired to deal with them. (Really there are only two wasps

but three’s a nicer number.) Did you know, there is a kind of wasp that lays its eggs in

caterpillars, and the caterpillar becomes a zombie incubator for wasp larvae that sprout from its

back like tentacles? But the caterpillar doesn’t die—not right away. I worry about this.

II. Communion

Mason’s plane lands any minute now. I am sitting in the living room in the corner of the

sectional sofa. Laney’s blocking the doorway that leads to the L-shaped hallway where our

bedrooms are. She’s speaking to Gabby in her calm voice that goes down at the ends. Gabby, in

the hallway, screams and throws books at Laney — I think the books are mine — but she’s so

small and her voice is so high it’s like a mosquito having a tantrum. It’s hard to take her

seriously. I said a couple helpful things when Gabby first got going, but now I’m irritated and

staying out of it. What happened was, Winston’s Klonopin is missing and Gabby’s losing her

mind — for some reason she thinks Laney’s boyfriend took them, or that there were spirits here

— apparently she’s rather psychic. Really, I took the Klonopin when she and Laney went out for

breakfast earlier, and I have them in an aspirin bottle in my sock drawer. I don’t feel bad because

those pills cost like two dollars and I need them more than the dog does.

I said no to breakfast with Gabby and Laney, and I got out of going to the airport to pick

up Mason because of the horribleness of sitting in a car, but I still have to go to brunch in a

couple hours. I’m exhausted from digging through the closet all night looking for I’m not sure

what (a pastime Karen said is ok, but not productive) and doing therapy worksheets she gave me

that do not work and have horrible advice like: “Snap a rubber band around your wrist!” I fell

asleep for a little bit right after sunrise and woke up to an email from my dad full of articles

about data processing and the potential for high-paying careers. I don’t think he understands that

that makes me want to actually gut myself, which makes me think of how a knife in my stomach

would feel (a dull burning ache like when you hold your breath underwater too long and become

desperate) and then I just think about knives, sharp edges. He worries about my future.

Laney has fixed things now — it didn’t take too long really. Gabby cried and Laney

hugged her and now they’re on the leather couch across from me watching the Kardashians and

Laney’s brushing Gabby’s fluffy blond hair that’s matted in the back. If anything, I made them

closer.

Brunch at my dad’s went like this:

I got to the house five minutes early because I know that to my dad that means on time. I

sat in my car in the driveway for ninety seconds exactly with the radio turned up loud.

I let myself in the front door and went to the bathroom right away and ran the water in

what was once my half of the jack and jill bathroom Mason and I shared. I snorted only one and

one half of Winston’s Klonopin off the mirror that was still in the drawer to the left of the sink.

That was fine. It was acrid and burning in my nose and throat but a warm blanket on the higher

parts of my brain—it was the old woman in the chair from Goodnight Moon whispering shhhh….

and hoping no one questions why she’s a rabbit. I stared at myself in the mirror and tucked my

hair behind my ears and wished my eyes were blue instead of grey and that I could go home.

Then I heard my dad calling, Phoebe, and I wiped my nose and met him in the hallway and gave

him a hug and asked, Where’s Mason? And he said, Come help — set the table.

So I did. I left my dad in the kitchen and went back to the sunroom and I laid the nice

plates and real napkins on the table like he asked. I put out glasses and filled a pitcher with ice

water and wondered, Who are we trying to impress? And then Mason walked in. His eyes were

crusted, hair greasy. He was wearing a sweat-stained T-shirt and boxers and he looked like shit. I

ran and hugged him and he hugged me back and patted my back, and then all the sudden we

weren’t hugging anymore, just standing there with our arms around each other, having both

realized we are strangers.

I let go first, and went to the kitchen for orange juice saying, Be right back.

I passed my dad in the hall and said, Maybe you could suggest he put on pants, sausage

isn’t on the menu, and walked away quick before he could grab my arm. In hindsight that

probably set a bad tone for the morning.

In the kitchen, I splashed water on my face and the back of my neck and did deep breaths

while leaning over the sink and imagined all my feelings as a shiny blue rock in my throat that I

could ease down with my mind until it was back where it belonged: deep in my stomach, right

over the baby maker. I didn’t learn that in therapy, I made that up myself and it was free.

When I shuffled back toward the sunroom I heard their voices from the hall, a back and

forth thrumming that felt like time travel, and I had the sensation of walking through water.

I sat at my regular seat at the table and got a bagel even though it wasn’t what I wanted

because the basket was closest to me. I tried to catch up on the conversation without interrupting

my dad because he hates that. It was some news story about a couple of American guys getting

arrested on their way to Somalia to join a terrorist group that attacks other Americans. That’s

what my dad was going on about, and Mason was nodding a lot and watching his fork. He didn’t

say anything except the encouraging noises people make to show they’re actively pretending to

listen. He shoveled eggs into his face and nodded, even when dad starting sounding, to my

untrained ear, pretty fucking racist.

I thought to Mason, Who are you, even? but on accident I said it out loud and loudly.

My dad glared at me. I shredded the last bit of bagel and lay it on my plate with all the

other pieces. Dad started talking again, holding his knife like a baton and conducting himself,

and Mason darted his eyes at me and shoveled a bite of eggs into his mouth and went back to

being no one. My dad said something about towel heads but it was just a joke just a joke, and

still Mason stared at his plate of eggs — which by the way he never would’ve eaten before

without asking if they were cage free? Grass fed?

You’re such a hypocrite, I said.

My dad banged his knife onto the table, pointed it at me like a compass needle.

Enough, Phoebe, he said. That’s enough.

It wasn’t though, not even close. We didn’t talk about Korea. We didn't talk about

anything. Oh and Mason’s dog was there the whole time, curled up on the couch that dogs are

not allowed on and dad acting like that was fine just fine while the dog went to town on his nads,

slobbering all over the upholstery.

My dad doesn’t even let me eat in his car.

After brunch, I went up to my old bedroom and searched under the bed and in the closet

and found a box of old diaries which I’m too scared to read and also a packet of letters which I

did eventually read because I remembered most of what they said anyway. And I found a box of

home movies on VHS that I will watch in Gabby’s room later because that is where the VCR is.

III. The Things That Fall Apart

Dear Mason,

What do you remember about your last night in Memphis? I found the tape I watched it. I

remember and can guess enough to piece something together and fill in the gaps with my own

cream filling, a little marshmallow fluff. Here’s the summary: You went to Emmy’s with your

buddies to help her with some film project that was so important that she never even finished it.

Even though I was fourteen and alone and scared and you knew it — you said you’d come back

that night but you didn’t, and when you got home the next morning I was bleeding in the bathtub

with my wrists laid inexpertly open, which thank god is not your fault right? That’s what dad told

us, that’s what Karen told me — don’t even worry Mason, it wasn’t your fault. Or mine it turns

out and definitely not dad’s, so everybody’s blame free, go figure — you get the story you pay

for.

On the tape I found, you walk in and out of the frame maybe three times, past a table of

random crap — visionary art. There are long gaps where the night gets darker and a streetlight

goes out then comes back on and a lightbulb flickers and buzzes and dies. Each time you show

up I can see you’re more and more fucked up. I speed it up it looks like slapstick. What was it

worth? When you found me, you called the ambulance and you called dad and once they said I’d

be ok, you got the fuck out didn’t you? Too much too much. We’ll blame the drugs, let’s do. I feel

sorry for your dog.

Sincerely,

Phoebs

Gabby watched the tape with me. It was late. After brunch I went to Fox and the Hound

and sat at the bar reading and watching the bartender with the blue eyes wipe down bottles and

move things around. I slept for a long time when I got home, and when I woke up Gabby was in

the kitchen boiling water and eating my Cheezits, and I asked if I could use the VCR and she just

didn’t leave. She didn’t understand what we were doing but she held my hand in her lap. She

closed one hand around the scars on my wrist and ran her fingertips in circles over my palm.

That part was nice. When the tape was done, I dried my eyes and wiped my nose on my sleeves

and felt embarrassed. She kissed me — which surprised me — and her mouth was shockingly

soft like the undersides of leaves or that spot all dogs have behind their ears. I lay down in her

lap so she would pet my hair. Winston growled in the corner. After a while, Gabby fell asleep

and was snoring a little and I went inside.

Today the sun’s out. Gabby and Laney went to Kroger this morning and came back with

three hibiscus trees in plastic buckets and they’re blooming like crazy. The trunks are braided,

the flowers gross and gaudy and I love them. When they brought the trees home, I named them:

Philip, Seymour, and Hoffman. Laney thought it was funny. Gabby picked a flower and tried to

wear it in her hair, but it was as big as her head and wouldn’t stay. This all made me smile for a

little bit. Truly though, I feel like a hedgehog, rolled up and waiting. I feel I will stay in this

house forever.

When it got dark last night we went to Fox and the Hound, Gabby Laney and me. At the

Fox, there are sports fans yelling every ten minutes about a ball that was thrown well or wasn’t,

and the drinks are overpriced and so is giant Jenga, but they never look twice at our ID’s and it’s

very close to the house. I remember Emmy told me when I was little that it’s not drunk driving if

you only have to make three turns or fewer. I’m not a very good driver, but I told that saying to

Laney, and she took it to heart.

There are three main sections of the Fox, all lined up with windows in between. When

you go through the front doors you’re in a middle area with the bar straight in front of you and

some tables in the middle and booths to either side. Through a doorway to the right there are

pool tables and high tops and TVs mounted in the corner. To the left there are regular tables and

more high tops and a stage for karaoke, and I hate that side because I hate karaoke. We went

right to play pool because that gives me something to do with my hands.

I broke and landed the nine ball in the corner pocket which was great because I like to be

stripes and the clean click-clack satisfies me. When I looked up, my eyes leveled over the cue-

stick, and straight through two panes of glass I saw Mason and Emmy, sitting at a table across

from one another on the karaoke side of the Fox with their heads leaned close and her hand on

his. Emmy had her hair dyed the same as last time I saw her: one side pink the other blue,

swirled into matching buns like nothing had changed. Mason looked cleaner than he had at my

dad’s. His curly hair was blond again instead of the dishwater color it turns when its dirty. He

had a half-full pint in front of him that he spun in circles with his free hand, his mouth moving

and his eyes watching — I can only guess — the swirl of condensation on the waxed wood.

Gabby knocked two of the balls off the table and they clattered and bounced — rolled

across the floor. Several of the sports fans turned to glare but then saw her, laughing and

wobbling, her stomach bare and the bottoms of her tits peaking from underneath a cutoff T-shirt.

Their looks changed. Laney ran after the balls, picked them up, and apologized to a few random

people, touching their shoulders with her fingertips as she passed and speaking to them in her

mom voice, and after a while everyone turned back to their screens, glancing at Gabby over their

shoulders like spies. Laney put the balls back in their approximate places and chalked her cue

and when I looked back through the windows between the rooms, Emmy and Mason were gone.

Take my turn, I said to Laney. I gotta go pee.

Gabby hopped off her stool, stumbled and made to follow me. Whoops, I said, and took

her by the elbow, half lifting her back onto her seat. Here you go, I said, and quickstepped

through the doorway, scanning the crowd for Mason and Emmy.

I caught sight of them through the portal windows of the front door: Mason sitting on a

metal slatted bench and Emmy standing beside him. I pushed past the girl with the shiny black

ponytail who was checking IDs. Sorry, I said, when my shoulder bumped hers. I opened the door

and was surprised by how cool the air was, it being almost July, and thought: You can’t rely on

anything.

What are you doing here, I said to Mason and he looked up but his eyes didn’t focus.

Phoebe, said Emmy, and in my head I said: Yes, right, two gold stars, it’s me, and: What

are you doing here, drinking with my addict brother at a bar full of people half your age, or at

least several years younger?

Out loud I said: Hi, Emmy.

What are you doing here? asked Mason. How’d you get in?

I realized I was still holding the door open. The girl checking ID’s was staring off into a

corner trying very hard not to be listening to us. I let go and the door eased closed, blocking out

the noise from the bar. I was surprised Mason knew how old I was and for a moment I wanted to

sit next to him and rest.

We all stood there not looking at each other’s eyeballs. In the expansive lot of concrete

behind Mason and Emmy, the Clark Tower was lit up like an ugly Christmas tree, and I could

hear the fountain beside it flowing, and everything stood out of the darkness, artificial and over-

bright.

Who you here with? Emmy said, pulling a pack of PallMalls from her purse and holding

it out to me.

Mason stared at his cigarette and tapped his foot on the paver stones.

Gabby Schultz, I said. I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward Mason. She’s my

roommate, I said, claiming her. Fuck you, Emmy, I thought. You can’t have all my people.

I bet your friends are missing you, said Mason.

I looked at him in the way he used to tell me was like punching someone in the face with

my eyes. He was proud of me for how I could do that; it made him laugh.

I’m gonna go pee, said Emmy and she swung the door open and the noise rushed out and

then faded again and Mason and I were standing there, smoking shitty cigarettes. We stared past

each other at the sad bar and the sad parking lot full of tacky lights and bullshit.

I’m sorry I didn’t call more, said Mason. I can tell you're pissed at me. He looked at me

with big eyes and put his hands on his knee — he wore a look that I recognized from our dad

that says: Are we done? Can we be done?

I burned him with my cigarette then. I leaned forward to say something to him and the

words wouldn’t come so I just did it a little: The cherry to the back of his arm — smell and recoil

of singed hair. He hissed and pulled away and put a hand over the blister but didn’t make much

of a fuss and moved kind of slow so that’s how I knew. Fuck you, I said. I don’t know why I’m

even talking to you, you’re loaded.

I went inside into the rush of voices and hot recycled air and smoke and the yells of

sports fans. Gabby was standing on the pool table swaying to the music in her head, and a big

bartender was trying to get her down. Emmy was standing by the bathroom door with a hand

over her mouth, shaking with laughter, and Laney had her purse clutched under one arm and her

hands clasped in front of her chest and was talking to the pretty blue-eyed bartender very

earnestly. I went and said some things to him too and he recognized me and Gabby climbed

down and it was all fine.

I thought that was the end of the night but it wasn’t at all. The three of us got home and

spilled out of Laney’s giant Yukon and went through the back gate into Gabby’s room because

she doesn’t mind if we smoke back there. (I don’t know when the garage became so firmly hers,

but it has happened.) We melted into the leather couches and Laney packed a bowl and Gabby

held out an orange pack of Pall Malls, same as Emmy’s. I took one and we turned on the TV,

muted it, and put on some music. It was nice. Then Gabby was on her phone tapping her thumbs

so fast over the screen you could hear her raggedy nails clicking against it and then boom, she

conjured Emmy and Mason out of nowhere like magic: the gate clanged open and they were at

the door.

Winston scooted under the couch, growling and shivering, just his little black fan tail

sticking out and Emmy was so loud I was afraid he was going to pee from fear and Mason trailed

behind her like the fish at the end of a line. I hoped Gabby had been able to refill Winston’s

prescription and started feeling pretty shitty and wondered if I could sneakily go to the house and

get one of his pills to feed him, surreptitious like, but then if he were already dosed I could very

well kill him. So I just sat there, chain smoking until my lungs burned and my mouth tasted like

garbage, and I felt overall stuck in a shitty situation. Today, my fingers are gross and crusty from

where I tore my cuticles and they bled. So quick, everything changes.

What are we doing, Emmy said. She’d sat next to me so our thighs were touching and she

put her arm over the back of the sofa, basically pinning me on the end next to the big overstuffed

arm. Then Gabby sat down on the other side of her and Emmy scooted toward the middle and I

could breathe again .

Chillin, Gabby said. She smiled a blurry smile and pulled her legs onto the couch, curling

them up.

Emmy took Gabby’s cigarettes off the coffee table and lit one. She pushed back her

stringy cotton candy hair that was falling out of its buns then crossed one leg over her knee and

wriggled to get a plastic baggie out of her back pocket. She held up the baggie, powdered on the

inside and a thin layer of crystals at the bottom like fairy dust, and asked if we wanted to get

high. Laney got really stiff and went to the house to get everyone water. Gabby shrugged. I

glanced at Mason from under my hair and he was sitting with his hands on his knees, tapping his

feet fast and nodding his head to the music, just missing the beat.

I always thought meth was a drug for people who lived in the middle of nowhere and got

married when they were sixteen and had nothing to do but look at all the empty space: big dirt

fields swirling with dust and the big open sky above them full of twinkling stars and the sucking

gaps between them.

But I didn’t want to say that so I said, Yes, please.

Emmy put the powder on a little folded up pocket of tin foil and held a lighter under it

and we all sucked up some smoke through one of those wide red Sonic straws that had been cut

down to size. It was terrible and it smelled like burnt plastic and lighter fluid and I hated it, but

Gabby rocketed off to some other world, lit and glass-eyed, little white teeth shining. She kept

touching everyone and everything in quick succession.

I held Emmy’s hand and squeezed and talked very fast and waited for it to be over and

kept smoking weed hoping that it would help. But it was just like a thousand icicles hanging over

my brain, radiating cold and falling every now and then, needle sharp and freezing, aching — the

weed just floated fog around the icicles so I couldn’t see them coming.

It was like that for a long while and then we realized Laney had never come back.

Emmy went to get her and when they came back Emmy had the red kettle and mugs

whose handles she’d looped her finger through. Laney had a big pot of cheesy rice and a handful

of plastic spoons. She put everything on the table on a folded dish towel and told us not to touch

the pot. Even though no one was hungry I sat on the floor and ate tiny bites right out of the pot

because she’d given it to us like she was sure it would help everything. I sipped some tea hoping

to melt the icicles in my brain.

That’s when Mason got up and walked outside. I stood to follow him and my blood

whooshed around my body raising a ripple of goosebumps that felt something like courage.

He leaned against the garage under the overhang where we keep a row of stools. I

climbed onto one and folded my legs and almost fell. I touched the wall to balance. With one

arm crossed over his chest and his head down, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, Mason looked

like a sad imitation of the Marlboro man. There was a neat shiny red circle on his arm from my

cigarette, and the hibiscus flowers had browned and drooped because we forgot to water them.

So you’re just never gonna talk about it? I said.

What do you mean?

Why you left.

Not much to say. She kicked me out and filed for divorce. My job went to shit. It would

have been more trouble than it was worth to deal with immigration. He flicked his cigarette away

and I watched it burning on the concrete and wished he’d stomp it out.

That’s not what I mean, I said.

He sighed and put the heels of his hands to his eyes and stood up straight. I hopped off

my stool and moved so my body was between him and the garage door.

What do you want? he said.

Just tell me what happened.

He made a groaning in the back of this throat that he’s done since he was little when he’s

frustrated at something. Haven’t you ever needed to get away? he said.

I thought: We were all carriage horses. Strapped in between those poles and lugging

dead weight. Until you bolted and left me standing there with splintered wood and double the

load.

I didn’t say any of that about horses or blinders but I wish I had. What I said was: You

completely fucked me over.

Mason said: Grow up, Phoebe. You could’ve called me. You could just call Mom if you

wanted to, you know? You’re gonna be fucking miserable your whole life if you just keep

moaning about everything.

I opened my mouth to answer but he beat me to it, he said: I left you, you’re right. You’d

be better off if you left for a while too.

Then he went inside, and the wood door into the garage crashed shut behind him, shaking

on its hinges.

My brain’s a stunted peanut rattling in its shell.

My legs hurt and my eyes might fall out of my head.

For some reason, I keep remembering a party I went to in seventh grade where I let

Jordan Thomas finger me by the pool and thinking that is probably when everything fell apart

irrevocably. There’s a wasp crawling over my desk, and I keep trying to hit it with this copy of

Scientific American my dad gave me and missing, and the smack when I hit the desk hurts my

head. I see the fireflies coming out through my window, and I may just go to sleep now if the

buzzing in my nerves will quiet. It’s too bad that it can’t stay twilight forever and not get full

dark.

I haven’t talked to Mason in a week. I ignore my dad’s calls. I saw Karen early this

morning and it was like this:

She says, How are you doing? and I say, I’m fine, I’m doing fine, mostly the same. And

she says, What does that mean, the same? Same as what? And I think Fuck you, Karen.

I say: I mean I have been following all your rules. (This is a lie, Karen’s rules are

ridiculous.)

Good, she says.

Then forty-eight more minutes. Of her asking me questions and nodding at the answers

like they’re foregone conclusions, the next step in a flowchart on the shrink-clipboard she

doesn’t even have. It goes on like that. The whole time, I play with one of those toys thats like a

plastic tube of goo that’s always slipping through your hands. It’s frustrating and satisfying and

kind of erotic and I like how it’s more than one thing.

How has it been, having your brother home? she asks.

I stare at the sparkly green goo and let it slide through my hands and fall to the ground.

I watch her scribble mental notes on her invisible clipboard.

I pick up my goo tube. I consider asking Karen about the dearth of framed pictures on her

desk. Where’s the husband, Karen? I might say. The baby, the high school graduation? Where’s

the smiling dog that fills the empty nest, hmmm? Her desk bears a permanent kind of emptiness

that we don’t ever talk about because that is not the dynamic my dad has paid for and it would be

inappropriate.

She asks to see my journals.

No.

Why?

Can I see yours?

Phoebe, she says.

Karen, I say.

The goo falls through my hands again and rolls under the couch.

A timer on her phone goes off and we’re done.

I went to the Fox yesterday by myself and ended up going home with the bartender with

the pretty eyes. Later he texted me and asked me what I was reading. He told me he’s reading a

book called Secret Life of Plants and I should read it too and so I found a pdf online and read it

and its all about how plants are conscious and respond to our thoughts and intentions and how

basically — I’m saying it better than the author did, I won’t lie — we aren’t equipped to measure

or study this because since we are dealing with conscious life: it is a social science which is

already muddied and inexact when dealing with human sentience, let alone something that

operates on a completely decentralized and novel biochemical basis. If I didn’t say it better, I at

least said it quicker. It was too long; that was the problem with that book.

That’s not even the point, the point is he kept asking me about what I was reading and

acting like he really cared, and that made me angry and here’s why: all he knows about me is that

I drink Miller Light, and I love to wear my own skin. When we were at his place he didn’t ask

me what movie I wanted to watch or if I liked the movie we were watching (I didn’t — some

documentary about The Beatles). He didn’t introduce me to his friend who stopped by to buy

weed, and I had to remind everyone I was there which I hate, but it’s better than sitting there like

furniture and starting to believe it. So even if it turns out he really likes me once he gets to know

me, and I like him or get confused and think that I do, it’s all going to be colored by his initial

impression of my nice ass and willingness to let him come on my tits and the impressive way I

sucked his weird crooked dick, and then, time will pass and my tits will sag and I will get

wrinkled and, if at that point I still care what he thinks at all, I’ll become jealous of the way he

looks at other women and this will lead me to behave in ways I do not wish to behave and that he

will find unattractive, and by this point, due to years of indentured servitude, I may very well

have become someone who cares deeply about what he does and does not find attractive even

though I have become long since repulsed by his stringy ponytail and crooked dick that hardly

even gets hard anymore. We will destroy each other.

I told him I was reading There Eyes Were Watching God, but I wasn’t. I was re-reading

the fourth Harry Potter because that is my favorite one and I always cry when Cedric Diggory

dies. If he thinks he can have my secrets he is wrong. I will not see him again.

III. Sweet Dreams and Goodnight

Once upon a time there was a pixie who lived with a nameless wolf in a great hollow tree

in the middle of a forest full of great big trees. Wide spaces gapped the trees; trunks rose like

shining silver columns in a shaded hall. The pixie lined her hollow tree with furs, and left bowls

of fruit juice to lure the giant fireflies that lived in the woods in vacated beehives, and if you

walked through that forest at night you’d see her tree glow from a long way off.

Pine needles carpeted the forest floor even though the trees weren’t pines. That’s just the

way it was. The trees had floppy leaves as big as cafe tables and soft as velum and they fell only

every ten years, drifting to the ground like heavy lone wings, landing with a flump. The trees

bore tiny fruits like muscadines with fatty seeds inside, and the fruit tasted like how the ocean

should, but sweeter.

The little pixie didn’t have wings, but she could scale the tree trunks by means of special

boots that gave her traction. She harvested the fruit at night by the light of giant fireflies — stuck

plump round fruits in a canvas bag she wore over her shoulder, and that was all she ate. Her

sharp white teeth pierced the skin, and juice dripped down her chin and over her hands. She

licked them clean.

In the daytime she rode the wolf along secret paths through the trees that only they knew.

She looked for fallen leaves and when she found them she stopped where she was and painted

stories on them with paint she made from crushed red stones and the oil from the seeds of the

fruit. She carried the paint in her canvas bag along with brushes she made from split twigs from

the great big trees. She always felt better when the painted stories were finished. She left them on

the forest floor to rot or be read or whatever. She never slept.

But then something happened and the fruit stopped growing. Day after day the pixie

climbed, higher and higher to where the branches grew thin and far apart, and her arms and

legs shook when she tried to crawl across them. But she found only a few pieces of fruit, and

those were rotting on their stems: pecked by birds, hollowed by worms, angry insects buzzing

around them. She grew weak and hungry, but what she really worried about were the seeds and

how now she had no oil to make her paint. She tried to mix the crushed red rock with water, but

it didn’t hold: the color was thin and runny, and the stories that wanted to be painted were all

caught inside her, pressing on the backs of her eyes and blurring her vision, filling her head with

frantic music that dribbled out her mouth but never sounded like song.

One day she found a sharp piece of rock by the stream that ran through the woods and

she cut the tip of her finger and used it as a brush, and it eased the pressure in her eyes. She let

out a sigh. She turned all her fingers to brushes til they ran dry, and then she laid open her

wrists and dipped her fingers in the springs and let the stories come hard and fast until she

slipped away. She crumpled on the pine needles, and the wolf ate her because he knew that’s

what she would’ve wanted.

All those leftover stories lived in the wolf and didn’t bother him too much except to make

him a little twitchy in his sleep because wolves are less susceptible to these things. He spent the

rest of his life in the hollow tree, waiting for someone who wanted the stories that he held for his

friend. No one came. The stories coursed through his blood and into his skeleton, and if you were

to dig up his bones — he’s long dead, of course — and look with a magnifying glass, you’d see

them told in pictures, etched in the grooves where the tissue knit together and hardened: a little

tiny pixie climbing great big trees in a great big forest, looped by the mote of a great big river; a

village miles away where wolves are slaughtered and eaten, and up in the sky, on the thickest

cloud, a clutch of blackbirds, eating stolen corn and laying golden eggs, teasing water vapor into

nests. Those were the things she’d wanted to show before the fruit all died and the paint ran out;

simple things worth seeing, or not. Now you know.

THE END

Today I saw Karen again even though it wasn’t time yet — my dad said I have to go to

family dinner tomorrow, and I called and called Karen’s office until finally she called me back

and said: You’re in luck, I have a cancellation.

When I got to her office, my brain felt like a wrung sponge and I tried to explain to her

what was happening in it but she said I wasn’t making any sense and she looked bored, like she

wasn’t even writing on her mental notepad.

I played with my green goo toy and squeezed it hard until Karen said: You’re gonna pop

it. I replaced it on the table and pulled a pillow into my lap, picking at the edges. I just worry

about the gaps, I said. The soft edges of things. I plucked at the piping until a thread came loose

and I tugged on it but it stuck. Do you know what I mean? I asked her.

Not really, she said. Can you say more?

I shook my head. That little blue stone was stuck at the base of my throat and wouldn’t

go up or down no matter how I breathed.

When the buzzer on Karen’s phone went off and I left without saying goodbye. I sat in

my car in the parking lot for a long time, listening to a CD of waves and whale songs. I’m

supposed to write about my mom, Karen says. I don’t have much to say. She left when I was

twelve, and she lives in Arizona. She is married to a man she met at a self-help seminar, and they

have a lot of dreamcatchers and crystals and they keep chickens in their yard. I visited once, a

year after she left, and for the few days I was there, I gathered the eggs in the morning when they

were still warm. The eggs were all different shapes and sizes, little blue ones and big brown

ones, but they all tasted the same. She came to my high school graduation and gave me a

sparkling gold bracelet with my name on it. She always showed up like that, in flashes, with

nothing in between. I cared about these things very much once.

In an effort to distract myself from the impending family dinner, I took Gabby for tacos.

We shared a big cheese dip, and she talked about her family and how much she misses her mom

and her stepdad but that she won’t go back, and I didn’t want to pry, but also I didn’t want her to

think I didn’t care, so I kept saying half-things like: Do you think you’ll…? or Did he ever…?

And that seemed to be enough to keep her going. We were having such a good time I invited her

to family dinner.

So she came to my dad’s house and we all ate together in the sunroom and it was very

pleasant. Gabby talked about art and consciousness and everyone pretended to follow along, and

my dad was clearly torn between liking her for being so pretty and tiny and looking down on her

for being so flighty — not a good influence on me, potential-wise. After all, I cannot become any

tinier or prettier by association. I need friends with work ethics. But he was nice, it all went well,

and she and I ended up staying after we’d all finished dinner and carried the plates to the kitchen.

I washed while Gabby rinsed and Mason dried and dad wandered around checking the level of

our wine glasses and saying wise things until his eyes got heavy and he sat at the kitchen table

for a few minutes, munching on a bowl of peanuts and finishing off his glass. Then he said, I’m

beat like a drum kids. He got up real slow in a way that made me remember that his sixtieth

birthday is coming up, and then of course, later, he’ll die.

So he went to bed and we put away all the dishes we could figure out where they went

and stacked the rest on the counter because it seemed better than guessing at where things belong

in someone else’s kitchen. We went back to the TV room and watched a documentary about

animals that evolved in caves so their eyes got covered in thin white skin, and they just creep

around in all this sulfuric acid water with their giant blind eyes. Maybe bumping into each other

every once in a while. Maybe not. Gabby didn’t want to leave when I was ready and she told me

to leave her so I did.

Gabby came home this morning and thanked me for sleeping in the garage with Winston.

I expected to be angry at her but I wasn’t. I still acted like it a little because I had that card to

play and I was bored. Gabby took me out for breakfast to make up for it and told me Mason farts

in his sleep and has nightmares that make him kick, but she kind of likes him. If she were a

planet and most of her were atmosphere (which is what Gabby would be: a miniature Neptune or

something like that), she seemed this morning like her clouds were held more firmly to the core

than on most days, like she was losing less and less to the vacuum. I’m happy for her.

IV. Sweet Dreams and Goodnight: An Addendum

I guess really this raises the questions that some of you may be asking yourselves right

now: why exactly did the fruit stop growing? (To be sure, there are other questions: why couldn't

she carve the stories into tree trunks, why couldn’t she ride the wolf to the village and ask to

borrow a pencil, why couldn’t she pace herself with the blood, and actually would blood make

very good ink anyway?)

The fruit stopped growing because in the village outside the forest on the other side of the

great mote river that just flowed round and round swallowing its own tail everyday, in the

village they were fucking everything up.

When the village was first settled they had chosen the spot based on a heavy thrumming

buzz that one of their children heard from a long way off and followed through the trees that

were the children of the trees of the great big forest and were not so very big. The sun shone

through their spindly branches and cast polka dot shadows around their big frumpy leaves that

hung from them like the awkward outsized limbs of teenagers. The child followed the thrumming

to a clearing where a hive hung from a bent bow, and all around it droned heavy throbbing

wasps, flitting in and out of the hive, taking turns at the door and darting about their business.

The child, having no experience with wasps, got stung and died because it was allergic and this

was far away from and well before Epipens. The child’s parents were leaders of the community

and they didn’t want to leave the body and they didn’t want to move it from where it fell because

this was a custom among the people — the belief that the soul left slowly (not as slowly in

children, but still not a thing to be rushed) and that if you moved the body too far from where it

fell you ran the risk of tearing the soul and messing up it’s chances of moving on, whole. Best to

leave things where they fall.

The parents spoke in hushed voiced under the thrumming wasps nest. They walked hand

in hand in a widening spiral around their child, and their last circle brushed them tangentially

against the great mote river. They said wow what a great place for a village, lets stop here. But

they moved a few miles off from the bank because of the great towering trees on the far side of

the water and the red eyes they saw gleaming out of the darkness when the sun began to sink.

They went back to their people and said, Look, it really looks like this is how it’s

supposed to be. Between the heavy thrum of the wasp, and the collapse of our child, and the

freshwater and the spiral path we felt compelled to walk all day, well it really seems we are

meant to build here. These things are signs.

I guess that doesn’t explain the fruit, does it? Maybe the parents went on a revenge wasp

killing spree and it turns out the wasps were the pollinators. I don’t have the answers here. You

have to wait for things that sometimes never come. Stop listening to static. That’s another thing

that Karen told me the other day. I have explained the way I get lost in my head in loops like the

narrowing base of a tornado, and I see in her eyes that she is disappointed in me. She thought I

was going to be a genuine crazy person, something to write home about, but I’m just a regular

person, it turns out, who can’t handle regularity with poise. Stop listening to the static, she told

me. She got that line from a TV show but I let it slide because I could see she was proud of

herself and I figured one of us should walk out of there feeling good. I’m trying to do my best.

So ok. My mom was fucking this guy, she left us for him and stayed gone. There. It was

when she left that I got more scared all the time, and it was after I got more scared all the time

that I started imagining voices from not enough sleep and too many thoughts and drugs and it

was after that I tried to die, and Mason left, and I got better for a while, then I went to away to

college and got unbetter and came home and now here I am.

That’s causality — it’s critical — but it’s not the same as fault. Plus my mom made me

smocked dresses when I was little and homemade halloween costumes and she poked holes in jar

lids so I’d have a safe place to keep my bug friends and she came to all the kid stuff at school.

She was great and then she was gone. I don’t know. If I were four and she were to read this she’d

say, Good trying, Phoebe. She’d write a note telling Karen I had done my best.

I guess Gabby and Mason are fucking regularly now. She stays over their most nights and

I sleep in the garage with Winston because he and Mason’s dog don’t get along, and as much as

Winston hates everybody, he hates being alone most of all. He can’t come in the house because

the windows aren’t covered and the noises aren’t contained. I watch the TV on mute while

Winston sits hunkered in a corner growling at me until he goes to sleep in his little donut bed

with his head over the edge and his whiskery jowls spread under his face. He is growing on me.

Gabby left a roll of butcher paper and a set of finger paints behind and I figure those are

fair game so last night I made a picture of the solar system and gave all the planets and the sun

big smiling faces. I painted Winston out on Pluto because I imagine he likes to have space, to

feel big, and to look down on everything from an angle. I looked at him in the corner and told

him: I’ll try to get them to send your ashes there when the time comes, but I wouldn’t count on it.

I tried to pet him and he bit my hand.

V. Reckoning

Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a waiting room. Say at Autozone, say you’re waiting to

get your oil changed. And there will be another guy waiting and we’ll call him Bill. Bill want’s

to talk, he’s really sad and he needs someone to listen, and he tells you all about his failed

marriage and his troubled childhood and the general emptiness and desperation that fills his day

to day life.

You feel the walls closing in because all you want is to read Vogue and for Bill to please

shut the fuck up because he is a claustrophobic bummer of a man, and you cannot help him.

No one can help you, Bill, if you will not help yourself.

Then, let’s say, it’s been thirty minutes and that’s what Autozone prides themselves on,

the thirty-minute oil change, but the guy working on your car walks in, wiping his hands on a

greasy rag and says, Well, we found a problem with the gastrofilter gauge (let’s say that’s a car

part), and you have to get it fixed because you’re taking a road trip the next week — you really

need to get away — and you realize you will have to sit in this room with Bill for some untold

amount of time and you panic.

It was sort of like that. I didn’t want to die. I was just stuck in that room with Bill, but the

kicker was I also was Bill, in generic khakis and full of generic sadness. I was just trying to get

out of the waiting room, but Mason dragged me back, locked the door and took off with the car. I

don’t know, does that make sense?

Once, a long time ago, I was maybe twelve or thirteen, I saw this woman give a talk at

the Dixon Gallery about the art she was exhibiting, and most of it was about rivers. She took

hollow doors from home depot and sanded them down and sliced them into two layers, then

secured the door layers an inch or so apart from one another and jigsawed their wiggly river

paths, leaving a snaking negative space behind — the shadow between the two sides. Then she

painted the riverscape around it. It was all about scope and scale. After her talk, I stared into the

grooves of the rivers and imagined water swelling out of them — that pregnant moment before

the surface tension broke and it spilled over the panel — water filled with salt and grit and sand,

and flecked with beads of plastic.

I didn’t fill the bathtub that day because I wanted to see the blood run like that, the

moment when the tension breaks. I’d say that’s why I lived but the truth is, I just didn’t do a very

good job at the whole thing. Anyway I got naked and I got in the tub and I laid my veins open

longways like you’re supposed to and felt my hands and feet going numb and it hurt and when

Mason got there I was dreamy but I remember it. I remember floating in the corner above the

bathroom door and looking down on myself and thinking: I look like those paintings should

have, like rivers overflowing. I was beautiful. He tied hand towels around my wrists like bows.

These smears of moments. I don’t know. Does any of that make sense to you?

I texted the bartender from Fox and the Hound and asked him what he was reading and

he called and we talked for a long time. It turns out he started a local production company and is

big into the art scene here — he sent me pictures of his paintings. He has house parties that are

also canned food drives and just basically does all this shit to try to make the world better. He

asked me what I do like it was just a given that I do things, so I gave him a bunch of stories I had

from Mason and his friends when they were in high school and hoped this guy didn’t know any

of them, and if he did he was polite enough not to say and to pretend he believed me. I told him

what I’m reading; it’s The Awakening which I had to read in high school, and which he said he

has not read. It’s very French I told him. Very French and very sad. With water. He asked me to

get lunch with him at Holiday Ham.

But as it turns out: while I like the bartender’s only-ok paintings, I don’t like his voice or

the smell of him — old spice and chlorine — or the way his skin feels on mine. The paintings

made things confusing for a second but I’ve figured it out.

My mom sewed our clothes by hand. She spent months making Mason a bat halloween

costume and then the week before Halloween he tried it on, looked in the mirror, and howled

because he scared himself. She took him to Party City and bought him a clown wig. I don’t

remember this but she used to tell the story a lot; she thought it was hilarious and no hard

feelings. She made delicious homemade bread and loved for everything to be ok. She’d bend a

lot of different ways to make everything be ok; a contortionist she was, thriving in the abstract.

She now has a shop on Etsy making soft children's toys: mermaids and octopuses and bright

yellow giraffes with limp limbs. She’s out there in the world with a skein of yarn and a crochet

hook but when she comes up (she doesn’t come up much) we talk about her like she’s dead. No,

I don’t know why she left. I believe she was very sad, and one day she realized it, and the all the

lights blinked out at once.

Finally a Postscript: Hello and Goodbye.

I haven’t written in a while. I told Karen I’m going to send this to you, and she said I

should think on it, but so far as I can tell, thinking on it has been my problem all along. I already

have everything nicely typed and one of those “If it fits it ships” boxes ready. Don’t worry if you

didn’t feel like reading it — if you didn’t get this far. It’s yours to do with as you please and that

includes confetti. Dad is fine I think, and Mason swears he clean. Gabby moved out. One

morning I came out of my room and the red kettle was missing from the stove and Winston was

missing from the garage. I haven’t seen her, but maybe Mason has. He and I don’t talk much and

have realized we have very little in common that doesn’t sting. I told dad I need a break from

phone calls and family dinners and he was sad but it’s been ok. I have been spending time with

Emmy, and we talk carefully around Mason, but it makes it feel like he’s not all the way gone

from me. She and I go on hikes in the day time, and sometimes Laney comes. When I can’t sleep

Emmy comes over and we smoke cigarettes in the garage and talk about everything until the sun

comes up. We watched a movie last night that started with how big the solar system is, the

galaxy, the space between galaxies. What I’m taking about is most of everything: the vast

amounts of empty space with tiny lights sprinkled around that flicker and fade in an instant. It

kept zooming the picture out and zooming the picture out and we all blurred and disappeared (in

my head I mean — on the screen we were never even there), and I held my breath the whole

time, thinking we never really see anything directly, just glimpses into the past, everything

hopelessly removed. Emmy felt me not breathing and reached out and held my hand. I’m a cliche

and so am I. We all should have given up after Einstein but the lights are so pretty, like fireflies,

like flickering ghosts in the woods. Anyway, I’d like to thank you for the good times, and for

hair that doesn’t get frizzy when it rains.

Yours,

Phoebe

DUST

A Texas sun burned in the sky above the show grounds. It beat down on the parched land

and on the sagging fences and it heated the rusted gate panels until they were too hot to touch.

Everything baked beneath it and nothing stirred save the drifts of silty dirt that wore down the

rims of hoof prints and filled them in. But as the shadows lengthened and the air cooled, the

show grounds came awake for the night, blossoming like a cactus flower. The arena lights

hummed to life, wild kids in cowboy boots kicked up the dust, and nervous horses danced at the

lengths of their leads. It was the first show of the season.

Thomas patted the pony’s neck and kneed her in the gut, knocking the extra air out of her

belly. “It’s about that time, little lady,” he said, yanking the girth tight and knotting the leather.

The pony heaved and coughed but not from the girth. There hadn’t been a drop of rain all

summer, and dust seethed from the ground in great clouds that coated the horses and dulled their

coats. It burrowed into your lungs and lodged there until you hacked it out in a ball of gritty spit.

Thomas had taken up smoking because it tasted better than the dust. He was almost thirteen, and

he figured it wasn’t anybody’s say so but his own. The first time his father saw him with a

cigarette he'd shaken his head, turned away and sighed. That was all, and that suited Thomas

fine.

The announcer's voice crackled over the loudspeaker: Pony equitation, get ready at the

gate. She called the numbers for the class, racing through them like an auctioneer.

Thomas heard his father call a goodbye to someone, his drawling baritone impossible to

mistake. Then his father stepped from behind the battered trailer opposite theirs and made his

way toward Thomas, a beer can sweating in his hand. He moved like he spoke, heavy and

unhurried.

“Who you talking to?” Thomas said.

His father stood looking at the pony. “You really gonna do this?” he said.

Thomas fussed with the bridle. “Do what."

“You know what. Go in there with all them little kids.” He sipped his beer. “There’s

plenty of other classes y’all could place in.” He stared at Thomas. “You’re gonna embarrass

yourself.”

The pony twisted her head around and tried to rub her itching eyes on Thomas’s shoulder.

He pushed her away, tossed the reins over her head and swung himself into the saddle. "Drink

your beer," he said, and booted the pony into a canter.

The thudding of the pony’s hooves worked on Thomas like it always did, calming his

heart, his head, and he settled into her rhythm for the short ride to the arena. He passed kids

sitting sideways on dozing old horses, using them like furniture. Men leaned against their

trailers, lips bulging with tobacco. A woman in an embroidered show shirt swept dust off the

sleek hind end of her quarter horse. Plenty of the faces had changed, but Thomas wasn’t

surprised. It had been two years since he’d been here, two years since his mother had gone

missing. He and his father stayed put on their place outside town; Thomas taught himself from

books when he felt like it and he talked to the horses for company; he told himself stories about

his mother coming for him and then hacked at the undergrowth in the paddocks with a machete

until he sweated himself out and his breath came in ragged sobs.

He joined the crowd of younger kids on their ponies milling outside the arena gate, and

his father’s words returned to sting him. He sat up straighter in the saddle. Once Thomas turned

thirteen he wouldn’t be able to ride this class anymore, and he wanted his last ride, his easy win,

for things to be like they’d been. He wanted that moment when he’d come round the bend and he

could believe — if just for that moment — that his mother was back where she was supposed to

be, at the rail waiting for him. Besides, he thought, it was his own damn choice.

On his left-hand side a boy tried to keep his pony still, an appy with a roached mane and

a scabby chest. The boy’s name was Jackson. Thomas used to play with his older sister, Kayla.

Yellow-haired with freckles across her nose and knobby knees like a colt. They’d ride their

ponies in the no man’s land between their farms, pretending to be bounty hunters, or fugitives, or

just themselves fleeing from home for reasons they left unsaid. Then that summer came. His

mother disappeared, and everyone else slipped out of his life with her.

“He’s got allergies,” the boy, Jackson, said defensively, and Thomas realized he’d been

staring at the sores on the pony’s chest.

The little appy was crow hopping and snorting. The boy tugged sharply at the pony’s

head and yanked its face around so its muzzle touched the boy’s boot and it couldn’t move

except in tight stiff circles. Thomas cringed.

“Need a hand?” he asked. “We can walk a ways off with you ‘til they call us.”

The boy screwed his face up, staring down at his pony as it huffed to a standstill beneath

him. “I’m fine,” he said. “He’s just bein a real piece of work tonight. Still young.”

Jackson couldn’t be more than nine or ten years old, Thomas thought, probably seventy-

five pounds soaking wet. He would fight that pony all night, and they’d both go home exhausted

and angry.

“Well, good luck in there,” Thomas said. He turned his body to the right and the pony

spun on her hind end to face the gate. She pricked her ears forward while they waited, and

Thomas patted her neck. The announcer called their numbers again, and Thomas trotted in

behind Jackson and his pony. Track right, the judge called from the center of the ring, jog trot.

Thomas sat back and lifted his reins, and the pony fell into an easy gait, her head bobbing a few

inches above the ground. They churned the sand beneath them and Thomas imagined they were

at the bottom of an old sea-bed. He barely heard the judge’s droning voice.

When they rounded the bend, he glanced at the crowd and wondered if Kayla was out

there, if she’d see him riding in this kiddy class and stick around to give him a hard time about it.

He'd seen her once more after his mom was gone. In those first few weeks people brought food,

and Kayla had brought a sloppy cherry pie. Sat her pony on the packed dirt of his driveway and

held the pie down to him and muttered kindnesses she’d probably rehearsed with her mother.

Thomas asked her to stay and ride, but she didn't seem to hear him. She had that scared excited

look in her eyes. Everyone’s saying— she began, and stopped.

Everyone’s sayin what, Kayla? He could handle it from the rest of them, from the folks in

town—who cared what they thought? But not from her. You wanna talk about family? he’d said.

Let’s talk about your daddy then. The words leaping from his throat before he could stop them,

and then his father had come out on the porch, the screen door cracking shut behind him like a

pistol, and Kayla had wheeled her pony and galloped down the driveway. She’d yelled

something over her shoulder and Thomas thought it was, I’m real sorry, Thomas, and before his

father could take the pie from him he'd dropped it face-down on the dirt.

Thomas heard the judge’s voice call out through the dust and clouds of his thoughts, and

he nudged the pony to the inside, pushing her to a gallop. She snorted and raised her head.

Thomas worked his inside rein until she brought her head back down. She flicked one ear back

toward him and he crooned nonsense to her, Good girl, pretty girl.

Ahead of him, Jackson’s pony balked and skittered. It reared up and pawed the air.

Thomas reined his pony toward the center of the ring and tried to decide if he should pull up and

help, but then the appy came down on all fours and bolted toward the gate. Thomas’s pony shied

from the other pony, ducked sideways and gave a burst of speed, and Thomas felt the world rock

beneath him. His pony’s legs tangled, she went down on one knee, and Thomas tumbled over her

head. He felt something give in his ankle with a pop and a crunch and a spreading heat. He heard

his pony scream.

He gasped as his breath tore back into him. When he sat up she was lying on her side,

panting and wide-eyed. A shaft of bone peaking through the torn and purpled meat of her front

leg. The saddle had been knocked onto the upward side of her ribs and Thomas thought, Good, at

least she’s not lying with a bunch of junk pressed into her side. At least she’s lying on the soft

sand.

They cleared the arena of everyone but Thomas, the judge, and the pony who, but for her

sides heaving, lay still. Thomas sat in the sand, in the welter of dust, waving the judge away with

his hat. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just need to catch my breath.” His father came in and Thomas

swatted his hand away, and his father stood back. His father and the judge tried to haul the pony

up and lead her out, but she went right back down, hard, and Thomas yelled for them to stop.

The two men spoke quietly to each other, and Thomas’s father turned to go back to their trailer.

"Hey," Thomas said, and his father stopped, turned back.

"Be quick," Thomas said, and his father nodded and went on.

Thomas watched sweat soak through the pony’s coat in black streaks. Her eyes glazed,

and her lashes fanned over the curved, glassy surfaces, open close open close, alien plants over

dark water.

His father came back, and the announcer recommended in a cracking voice that maybe

now’d be a good time to take the little kids on a walk to somewhere else.

Thomas held the pony’s head in his lap. He watched her pulse flutter in the soft skin

under her jaw. “It’s alright, Marzi,” he whispered. “Hush now, it’s alright.” She twisted her neck,

lifting her head off of his lap, and flailed her good front leg, then fell still with a huff and a

groan. The sun was dropping fast. Red light bled across the horizon and blushed the haze of dust

over the grounds. Thomas gave the pony’s face one last pat and scooted to sit behind her. When

they shot her he didn’t shut his eyes. Her blood spread across the sand like an oily lake through

the desert. Her muscles slackened, and urine spilled toward Thomas in rivulets. The smell was

harsh and familiar and mixed with the earthy tang of blood. He pushed himself away from the

puddle and his ankle screamed, and he must have too, because his father grabbed him under his

arms and hauled him to his feet.

He didn’t notice the quiet until he'd broken it.

Someone tossed a tarp over the pony. A few people cried. Thomas saw Jackson peering

at him from behind the announcer’s stand, his face pale, and then Kayla stepped from the

shadows and tugged her brother’s arm. For a moment she and Thomas locked eyes, and hers

widened like she’d been slapped. I’m real sorry Thomas, and she was gone.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Thomas told his father, and his father scooped him up as if he were

a small boy again, and Thomas managed not to vomit until they left the arena.

In the office behind the announcers stand, his father talked to a man behind a desk. They

spoke in low voices and passed sheets of paper back and forth. Thomas sat in a chair in the

corner. He sipped water from a Styrofoam cup and watched them. The man behind the desk wore

a tan uniform and a scruffy beard. He looked like the officer who’d come to their house two

summers ago, and he gave Thomas the same pitying look. Thomas wondered if he’d have to

answer any questions. When did ya’ll see her last? the other man had asked him. What was she

wearin? Would anyone have wanted to hurt her? And Thomas’s father going off about some

cousin up north and she was a restless woman and give her time. The officer had taken Thomas

outside a minute and offered him a stick of Juicy Fruit. Did they fight, your folks? I mean really

fight? — and he’d answered the cop dutifully but incompletely, sickened by the questions. After

that, not a word more about it. Two years and not a phone call, not a postcard. All her clothes in

boxes in the attic and people whispering when they went into town. Dollars to donuts he knows

exactly where she’s at. Whole lotta dirt in this county. I'll tell you what...

Thomas tasted bile in the back of his throat, and tried to clear it out without making

noise. His father looked up.

“Thomas, head on back to the trailer. This is gonna take us a little while.”

“What are they gonna do with her?” Thomas saw her eye again, round and dark and

reflecting the lights, flecks of dust sticking to the surface but she didn’t blink, and she didn’t

blink. His father scrawled his name across another sheet of paper.

“Can we take her home?” Thomas’s voice caught in his chest and he felt the blood rush

to his face. Don’t say another word, he told himself.

“We’re figuring it out.” His father turned toward him. “I’ll meet you at the trailer.”

Thomas didn’t move. Finally his father broke his gaze. He sighed. Then he opened a sliding

panel between the office and the announcer’s stand. “Ma’am,” he called. “Could you help my

son here back to our truck? Bum leg, can’t manage it by himself.”

Thomas sat on the curved fender over the trailer tire, smoking a cigarette. Holding his hat

and staring at nothing — the glow of the arena. The drift of dust through the light like seawater.

His father strode into view, his boots raising more dust. No sign of the tarp-covered pony. They

would haul her somewhere and burn her. Thomas had known all along that they would.

“Thomas, I— “

“You killed her,” Thomas said. He twisted his hat in his hands and thumped his boot heel

against the trailer tire. He looked his father in the eye, hardening his guts against the cold and

shallow blue of them. “I know it,” he whispered. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

His father scratched the back of his neck. Searching Thomas's face.

"Thomas..." he said, but Thomas looked away. Across the lot, in the long shadows of the

artificial light, Kayla was waving Jackson's pony into a trailer, the appy’s hooves ringing

hollowly on the aluminum. Kayla swung the door shut behind it and clanged home the latch, and

Thomas watched to see if she would look his way but she didn't. Down in his boot his ankle

pulsed and burned.

His father cleared his throat. “I did what had to be done, Thomas.”

Thomas shook his head. He tossed the cigarette butt into the dirt and put his hat on,

firmed it down good. He would not cry. He tried to stand and his ankle gave out and his father

caught hold of his arm and pulled him up in a painful grip.

"I can walk," Thomas said, but his father kept his grip on his arm and like that they

walked back to the truck.

They bumped down the pitted road toward home without a word between them, static

buzzing through the radio. Thomas watched the scrub land fly past them in the wash of the

headlights, the prickly pears and chollas, the desert behind them like crumpled paper. The truck

jolted over a pot hole and his father cursed, swerving onto the gravel shoulder, the empty weight

of the trailer swinging behind them.

RARE VACANCY

Maggie had left her Memphis home two nights ago with her eighteen-month old in tow.

First she’d ditched her cellphone and paid cash for an old green GM truck off a lot in Desoto

County. Then loaded up on a Thursday evening while her husband Andy was still gone, working

on a construction site in Alabama. She’d driven through the first night, fueled by gas station

energy drinks and the hot coiled anger in her ribs — she went east. Friday night she and her

daughter Tirza slept in the parking lot of rest stop off I-80 — Maggie had felt the need to shoot

north for a while and it had something to do with geese — they had curled together on the bench

seat in the back of the cab. Today they’d drifted back south and Maggie entertained thoughts of

the coast: a second cousin in Miami who might be safe, or maybe a campsite on an island off the

Georgia coast. For tonight she just needed a break.

She passed by a slew of hotels for one reason or another: their signs flashed in and out of

her headlights and each left her with an off feeling she couldn’t ignore. Maggie’s eyes were

giving way to the tunnel vision, her truck drifting and singing over the rumble strips. She talked

to the baby to keep herself awake. A red and yellow sign rose, glowing, from the dark thick of

trees: Roadside Inn. The name appealed to her, and a half mile later Maggie guided her truck

onto the exit ramp. She made the hairpin turn off the ramp and into the driveway and felt a wave

of unease: the tight turn rocked her body, the yellow “Enter” arrow glowed yellow, traffic roared

by on the overpass and the driveway snaked between its concrete banks. She though of maze

games she played when she was a kid: a ball rattling through twists and turns until it was

swallowed by the lidless eye of the target hole. In the backseat Tirza babbled and banged a

plastic toy against her carseat. Okay, Maggie said. Okay, we’re almost there.

Maggie pulled into a space by the sliding front doors and put the truck in park: the “n” on

the Roadside Inn sign blinked on and off in time with the Cicadas’ drones. She looked out her

window at the lone car parked to her right, scabs of paint flaking off it. Her eyes felt gritty and

her hands ached from gripping the steering wheel and she couldn’t quite bear to think of the odd

squiggling loop she’d just driven when she’d swore she’d swore she’d fly straight, out and away.

She turned to Tirza in the backseat. We’re here baby, she said.

Tirza looked dully back at her. She held a plastic deer in one hand and a foil pouch in the

other — applesauce smeared over her face and jacket, caked into her eyebrows.

Shit, said Maggie. Just one second and we’ll get you cleaned up. The thought of a hot

bath and soft bed and full night’s sleep made Maggie’s teeth ache. Enough to dampen the heat in

her ribs telling her to keep driving, to head east until they hit the water. She unloaded her single

suitcase and the diaper bag and lowered Tirza from the carseat to her unsteady feet — they made

their way inside.

Maggie dipped her fingers into the running water and adjusted the temperature once

more. She plugged the drain and dried her hands on her jeans and sat on the side of the tub to

look at her arm where she’d scalded it in the too-hot stream, the milky bursts of mountain water

that had gushed and sputtered from the tap. The underside of her forearm now featured a red

splotch that spread like a continental map over blue river veins. Or like highway maps, she

thought, like old roads winding through the mountains. She grabbed the complementary lotion

off the sink and rubbed some cream into her skin that smelled like jasmine and rot.

Maggie paused in the doorway. Tirza was on the floor beside the heavy hotel curtains.

She lifted the flap of Maggie’s empty suitcase and held it with both arms high over her head until

it flopped open on the ugly green carpet. Then Tirza maneuvered one soft round leg over the

edge of the suitcase, followed by the other, and stood in middle of the main compartment. She

sat, and smiled at her folded hands. She looked up and saw Maggie watching her. I help, she

said.

Bath time, said Maggie.

Bye, Tirza said. She lay down and disappeared under the edge of the suitcase. Maggie

lifted her out and set her on the bed and Tirza cried, her eyes red and overtired, her face flushed.

Tirza’s pitched her screams higher and Maggie thought about the sound rippling through the thin

walls, waking people who would remember and complain. She though of the creepy unblinking

man at the front desk picking up a phone and dialing. Police lights flashing in the parking lot and

the single whoop of a siren. Andy peeling in behind the cops in his shiny new black work car and

hurtling out to pull them into the backseat and shuttle them home.

You are not cooperating, Maggie said to Tirza. Hush, she said and flicked Tirza’s earlobe

— Tirza shrieked and screamed louder. Maggie pulled Tirza’s t-shirt off over her head and

worked one thrashing leg then the other out of too-tight leggings. The diaper, still dry, went on

the bedside table for later. When Maggie picked her up, Tirza collapsed onto her shoulder and

settled there with her thumb in her mouth.

Maggie set Tirza gingerly in the tub to make up for the flick. She undressed and looked

over her shoulder into the mirror above the sink and flexed the muscles in her back. Then she

turned to the side and relaxed her stomach and cupped a hand over the soft bottom of it. You

used to live right here, she said. She climbed into the water. Tirza turned onto her belly and

dipped her face in the water then came up with a gasp, hair trailing over her eyes. Maggie leaned

back against the cool edge of the tub. She settled low until her breasts and her arms and the

frayed ends of her hair floated. Her floating fingers reached out and a let a strand of Tirza’s hair

slip through them. They would be fine here, Maggie thought, for a few days at least.

Maggie startled awake the next morning. Her eyes darted around the room, trying to

place themselves — then she remembered everything: the flush of her pills down her and Andy’s

bathroom toilet, the sharpening of light, the heat in her body that pressed on her brain and pushed

her out of town to ride highways like thermals. Tirza snored, sprawled sideways on the opposite

side of the bed with her toy deer tucked under her arm. The clock on the bedside table said ten

past six. Maggie had dreamt of Andy and of the ocean. At the end of the dream, a snake came

out of the water and onto the shore where she stood frozen and naked under a full moon. But

now the particulars of the dream flitted out of her head like summer moths.

Real was the grimy carpet and particle board furniture: the dresser with the TV on top, a

desk, a soft chair, the queen sized bed they lay in, the closet outside the bathroom where she’d

stowed her suitcase and the comforter from the bed. A print on the wall of two blurred figures in

a canoe at sunset. Maggie got up and scooted Tirza, still sleeping, to the middle of the bed; she

propped pillows all around her. Then she pulled on yesterday’s jeans, grabbed the key card of the

desk, and eased the door open. She held the handle and inched the latch back in place so she

wouldn’t wake the baby.

As she walked toward the elevator bay, Maggie made a game of following the green

serpentine pattern of the carpet like a balance beam. Bright red fire extinguishers in glass cases

marked the beige walls at intervals by and a faint chlorine smell permeated the air. She could be

anywhere, Maggie told herself. She could be anyone in a hallway like this with green snakes

glowing up under her feet: a little girl again in a double wide in Byhalia Mississippi: dogs and

horses in the yard and Tirza just the tip of grain a rice riding high in her belly, safe. She took

three deep breaths and sank under her skin to where a fire burned beneath her ribs: a nest of

flame tendrils that tempered her. She might be anybody. She punched the down button on the

elevator.

Goo-oo-od morning, the man at the front desk said to her. It was the same guy as the

night before: same high greasy forehead, short black hair that stuck straight up, wire-rimmed

glasses and a mouth too narrow for his face. He reminded Maggie of someone she had seen in a

TV documentary about Ted Bundy. The brass name tag on his shirt said, “Keith.”

Morning, Maggie said. She walked to the shelf of maps and brochures. There was a table

set up with a coffee maker and foam cups, a basket of creamers, and thin red straws. She poured

a cup and held it to her face: burnt.

First time in Rock City? the man said.

Maggie made an indeterminate noise and kept scanning the brochures: cave tours, taffy

museums, a booklet of Papa Johh’s coupons and maps of local roads.

You come in late the with the little girl, said Keith. I remember. It’s a great town for kids,

plenty to do.

Maggie nodded and kept her back to him.

I been here all my life, and I still love it. Been working doubles to save up and buy my

own place, he said. He drummed his fingers on the counter. You gals on a road trip?

Maggie looked up and smiled at him, then grabbed a handful of brochures. Thanks, she

said and headed for the stairs.

She opened the door to their hall and walked the swaying green pattern on the carpet and

told herself: I could be anyone at all. Was it strange that he was still here after working all night,

name-tag Keith? No, she told herself. Working doubles, he’d said. But why volunteer that? Did

he seem too ready with an answer? She passed the fire extinguisher cased in glass and thought

about fractures and the tinkling songs of things breaking; she heard the thin mewling coming

from down the hall.

Maggie opened the door to their room and felt a thump and Tirza’s mewling turned to

wails. The baby had been standing on the far side of the door and Maggie had knocked her over.

Tirza’s face was wet and twisted, her hands clasped in front of her chest. Maggie hoisted her

onto her hip, closed the door and slid the chain in place. She carried Tirza to the chair by the

window. When they sat, Tirza tensed and tried to roll over. Shhhh… Maggie said, and gripped

her more tightly. Maggie patted Tirza’s back with her free hand, the little shoulder blades like

malformed wings. Tirza reached up and grabbed Maggie’s hair, mashing it in her fist, and

sighed. Maggie felt her body soften.

Did I ever tell you, Maggie said to her, about the very first time I felt you move? I was

four months pregnant and it was just a little flutter, like moth wings. Like a silver, velvety moth

with curling antenna and coat tail wings. When I told your daddy that night, he pressed a speaker

to my belly and played you all his favorite songs and we waited, but you didn’t move again that

day. Or the day after that. Eventually I told him I felt you in there so he’d stop looking so

worried, but I knew the truth; I knew my little moth had flown away. That night though —

There was a knock at the door. Tirza twitched in Maggie’s arms and Maggie looked

down to see her half-closed, dreamy eyes, thumb in her mouth, her fingers still worrying a hank

of Maggie’s hair. Maggie patted her back and kissed the top of her head and waited.

Hello, said a man’s voice from the far side of the door. He knocked again. A pause and

three more sharp raps. The voice said: It’s Keith… from the desk.

Maggie stood, Tirza slumped over one shoulder, and went to look through the peephole.

Keith was bent, his already large forehead distended and shining through the lens. He rocked

from foot to foot and blinked too much, like he was practicing. Maggie took the chain off and

opened the door partway: she positioned herself between him and their room and angled Tirza

away from him.

Hi, she said.

Oh, said Keith. He smiled, a half a beat off. Hello. You forgot your coffee. He held up the

foam cup.

Maggie reached out and took it. Thank you, she said.

Keith rocked from foot to foot and put the hand that had been holding the coffee cup into

the pocket of his khakis then took it back out. Did you find the brochures helpful? he said.

I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet, Maggie said.

Oh, said Keith. Well. Let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks, said Maggie, and started closing the door. Keith grabbed the edge — Maggie just

stopped herself from crushing his fingers, slamming the door over and over until they were

flattened and flopping at the end of his arm.

Sorry, he said. He pulled a card from his pocket and held it out to her. If I’m ever not at

the desk you can reach me here. If you need help with anything. Maggie nodded. He cleared his

throat. We like to make sure our guests have everything they need to enjoy the town, he said.

She took the card, closed the door, and slid the chain back on. She turned TV on, set

Tirza in a nest of pillows on the bed and handed her the remote. When Tirza whimpered and

reached for her, Maggie grabbed a pack of raisins from her purse, opened the box and handed

them over. What had she done to make Keith come up here? she wondered. She couldn’t afford

to have people poking their heads in on them for no reason; asking questions and forming

impressions, remembering little details that could be their downfall. But then again, not

answering the door would’ve been suspicious. He knew she was up here with the baby. He may

have heard her talking to Tirza from the hallway. Yes. She’d done the right thing.

She tossed the coffee cup in the trashcan under the table and rummaged through the

drawer where she’d put her clothes away. She found an old grey sweatshirt and put it on, then

pulled her hair into a ponytail and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and

practice looking forgettable. She heard shouting in their room and lunged through the doorway

— just the TV. She snatched the remote from Tirza and turned the volume back down, switched

the channel to PBS and set the remote on the desk. Her heart galloped against her ribs. She sat on

the bed beside Tirza and the pile of brochures and put one hand on Tirza’s narrow back.

You flew away little moth, and I was afraid you were dead, Maggie said. But later that

night, in a dream, something came to me: rivers of flame all tangled up and you were inside

them, flapping paper wings and flitting around, until you fluttered out and back into me. Maggie

spread the brochures in front of her. What should we do? she said, running her hand over the

glossy pictures.

By the time they pulled up to Fairyland Caverns it was close to eleven, and the parking

lot was already packed. Maggie parked her truck at the back of the lot and grabbed the umbrella

stroller from the bed before getting Tirza out. They wound their way through the lot: Maggie

kept a vigilant eye out for reverse lights and paused frequently to let minivans overloaded with

kids and harried parents back out of their spots. Tirza, in the stroller, babbled and waved her deer

through the air. Maggie had bought the deer at a Pilot station on the drive last night and Tirza

was in love with it.

They wandered through the man-made caves filled with dioramas of sinister gnomes

playing out already horrifying fairytales under black-lights; Tirza was delighted. She squealed

and reached for red-hatted monsters and waved her deer at them; she twisted and grinned at the

children on either side of her. Then she strained against the straps of the stroller.

Maggie imagined letting her go and Tirza racing into one of the stone hollows like

Maggie’s dog used to race into the woods. All Maggie would see of the dog was a yellow streak

leaping between distant trees, further and further and further away. That dog came back every

time until it didn’t. She pictured Tirza shrinking to fit among the gnomes, navigating their tiny

furniture and animating their frozen lives, small forever.

She set the brake on the stroller and took a step back to keep herself from snatching Tirza

up and running out of their full throttle. She reminded herself of the empty hotel room waiting

for them; the precious twenty-three dollars in crumpled bills she’d shelled out at the entrance to

this place; the long blank afternoon already stretching in front of them. And this might wear

Tirza out enough that she would nap on the hotel bed and Maggie could spend some time in the

lobby trying to figure out their next steps. She could do a quick search and see if their was any

news out of Memphis, if Andy had the cops looking for them yet. Maybe if it had just been her,

he would’ve let it go, at least for a few days, a week even. But when Maggie took Tirza with her,

she had changed the game. Of course he was looking for them.

Maggie did her trick: she sank beneath her skin to the place where a flame nest glowed.

She let the flames burn away the bad thoughts like wildfire clears brush, and when she was ready

she took the brake off the stroller and they moved on.

Maggie pointed out the gnomes and crystals pressed into the rock and lifted Tirza so she

could see more clearly.

Tirza fell asleep in the car when they left, and when they got back to the hotel, Maggie

unbuckled her gently, eased her arms through the straps. She loosened the fist that held the deer,

tucked it safe in her purse, and draped Tirza over her shoulder to carry her inside.

Maggie was relieved to see a woman with permed hair sat behind the desk; the woman

smiled and held a finger to her lips when she saw Tirza sleeping. Maggie smiled back and took

the elevator to the third floor — she did not trace the carpet pattern because she could not be just

anyone with Tirza asleep on her shoulder. She dug the key card from her purse with her free

hand and let herself into the room. After arranging Tirza on the bed and watching her for a

minute to make sure she was sleeping soundly, Maggie slipped back out of the room.

Ya’ll have a computer I can use? Maggie asked the lady at the front desk.

The woman pointed down a hall at right angles to the elevator lobby. Maggie thanked her

and followed the signs, the smell of chlorine thickening as she went.

First Maggie searched their names. Nothing. She checked the Amber Alerts, scrolled

through looking for Tirza’s name. Was he not even looking for them? Panic flooded Maggie’s

body, a wave of shame close on its heels. They had been gone three nights. No warning. No note.

Andy hadn’t even notice anything was wrong until he found Maggie’s pill bottles in the

recycling bin last week, and they’d had a blow-up fight but even that wasn’t so unusual. The

topic wasn’t new. They fell into their rolls of policed and policing with ease, well worn grooves

in their marriage. But she’d never left before. And she didn’t want him to find them, but the idea

that he wasn’t even trying…

The door to the office opened behind her and Maggie pulled up a new tab. She cleared

the browser history and logged off. All yours she said, turning to leave.

It was Keith. He leaned against the desk opposite hers with a foam cup of coffee

steaming in his hand.

Oh, Maggie said. Hi. Do you need… she stepping back from the computer and pointed at

it.

No thanks, said Keith, and smiled. Just saying hello. Did you girls find something fun to

do?

We did, said Maggie. Those fairytale caves. Actually, I hated it, but Tirza was obsessed.

Tirza, said Keith. What an unusual name. And you’re Maggie?

A stocky man in a too-tight button down opened the door to the office but came up short

when he saw the two of them. The room was small and already felt crowded. Sorry, said the

man, I’ll —

No, said Maggie. I was just leaving. Goodbye, she said to Keith.

Maggie took the elevator to the fifth floor and walked along the snaking pattern of the

carpet to the far end where she took the stairs down one level and repeated to the opposite end of

the hall, down the stairs, into the third floor hallway, she wound her way back to their room.

Why had she said Tirza’s name? It didn’t matter, she told herself. She’d had to use a credit card

to book the room anyway — they wouldn’t take just cash Keith had said; the hotel had to at least

hold the card number for contingencies. No one had any reason to be interested in them.

Tirza was till sleeping soundly on the bed, her padded bottom stuck up in the air and her

arms tucked underneath her. Her cheeks smushed together and puckered her mouth. A rush of

affection flooded Maggie and she rushed to the bed to smooth Tirza’s hair back and kiss her

cheek, fighting the urge to gather her close and squeeze until they pressed back together. She

kissed Tirza’s head and breathed in the sour smell of her hair and reminded herself to use

shampoo tonight, to scrub the road grime off Tirza’s hands and massage lotion into her skin

afterward. She would pick them up a pizza and let Tirza eat peanut butter straight from the jar for

dessert. She locked the chain on the door.

Maggie unlocked the safe in the closet and pulled out an overstuffed leather billfold.

There was a mix of bills: crisp new hundreds, twenties so old they looked counterfeit, rumpled

fives and ones. Before she left Memphis, Maggie had pawned a bracelet made of linked antique

coins. She also sold a ring with a large square cut emerald, and an ancient laptop Andy had

forgotten in the bottom cupboard of their spare bedroom. It hadn’t come out to as much as she’d

expected but she added it to the cash she’d been squirreling away in her sock drawer for reasons

she never named to herself. She had taken out a new credit card without telling Andy, and that

was in the wallet too. Tirza grunted and burrowed her head deeper into the pillows and Maggie

watched her sleep, sitting just outside the closet with the pile of money on the carpet in front of

her.

The room glowed a thick burning gold in the afternoon sun. Tirza flopped onto one side

and threw an arm over her eyes. Maggie thought about waking her up so she’d sleep tonight but

decided not too. She felt the ground spinning her up to face the sun head.

Her mouth was bone dry and hanging open; her hands clenched each other, cramped and

white. The clock said 4:30.

Maggie rubbed life back into her hands and turned her eyes to the money, finally sorting

it and counting it as she’d intended. A little over a thousand dollars. She pulled out a twenty for

dinner and set it aside. They could stay here another right or two: Maggie could spend tomorrow

focusing. Find them somewhere less expensive to stay or maybe seeing if she could find a job…

but what would she do with Tirza? She saw them: camping on a beach stealing food from nearby

houses at night. She saw Tirza dressed in feathers running flat out away from her, snakes coming

out of the sea to swallow her up. They could pack up and head home; she could gloss this whole

thing over — Andy would forget and move on. How easily could she run into a dead end with

her eyes wide open? She’d been sitting on their old couch in their old house while Tirza stacked

blocks in the corner, that’s when it had happened. Maggie had drifted off for just a minute and

the fire had come up from belly, snaked through her throat to behind her eyes and when she

woke up she saw: it was like the moment as a child when she was watching TV and all the

sudden she became irreversibly aware of the cameras; the set; the unreality of it all. When Andy

got home that night Maggie played her part and watched him for signs of what he knew: looking

for tells.

A knock came at the door. Maggie stacked her money and stuck it back in the billfold and

put the billfold back in the safe. She looked through the peephole: Keith again. He was a

harmless character, she decided. Maybe a little pathetic. She opened the door, blocked his view

of the room with her body. Hi, Keith, she said. She smiled a little the same way she smiled at old

men at the park who watched her too long but whose legs looked to fragile to chase her.

Hi, he said. He cleared his throat. I just got off and since I didn’t know when ya’ll might

be leaving town I just thought I’d see. I was gonna ask you downstairs but then — Do you

maybe wanna come out to dinner? You and the little girl?

Well, said Maggie, she thought of the dwindling money in the safe, the twenty precious

dollars tucked in her pocket. Sure, she said. I”ll wake Tirza up and get us both dressed —

No rush, said Keith. I’ll be in the lobby. Lots of little things I can take care of down there.

Take your time. He walked briskly down the hall away from her and didn’t look back. End

scene.

Maggie was drunk. She didn’t know how it had happened but she was and when she got

drunk, Maggie lied. She told Keith about how Andy. About how he had controlled her. About

how he never escalated to full on violence but there were moments when he’d grab her by the

shoulders or when he’d stand, his thick body blocking a doorway, moments that felt — off.

Tilted — his weight sliding toward her like a crushing force. All of those things had happened.

They happened just like she was telling them — but they happened a thousand other ways as

well, that was the problem, and the lie was, the lie came for certain when she said that those

incidents were why she left. When she said she worried for Tirza’s safety. That was another kind

of lie. When Tirza got older Maggie would explain it all to her in a way that would make perfect

sense. In their camp on the beach sitting on mats of woven feathers Maggie would explain it all

and Tirza could make her own decisions.

That makes perfect sense to me, Keith said. He was looking down at his plate where his

steak knife sawed a dry tough chicken breast. He took a bite and washed it down with a sip of

white wine.

It does?

Why sure. You gotta do what’s best for your child. And the fact of the matter is that if

you’d’ve done the whole thing properly the courts would have given her to you anyway. They

always want the mamas to keep them. You just sped up the process and cut down on his

expenses, when you boil it right down. Here’s one thing we could do, he said. He took a roll

from the basket and broke it into thirds, opened a packet of butter from the bowl on the table and

smeared the inside of one chunk of roll and chewed it thoughtfully, taking another sip of wine.

You could stay with me and my mama, the both of you. Until you can figure out a way to get on

your feet. If you find a job, my sister can watch the baby. You’ll pay her what you can when you

can. She could use something to do.

Maggie turned to Tirza who spooned mashed potatoes off her plate and into her already

full mouth. Tirza worked diligently, mechanically, the toy deer shoved between her belly and the

rungs of the highchair, and Maggie was feeling guilty about how they’d eaten the past few days

— and maybe before that, maybe she could’ve paid better attention to what she fed her.

That’s really nice of you, Maggie said. But I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable. And it’s

hard to imagine what living with a baby is like. You’re offering an awful lot and on your mom

and sister’s part too.

They’d be happy to have you, said Keith. But of course no one’s forcing you. He finished

his roll and poured the remainder of his wine down his throat. Okay. I got another idea. I don’t

like to tell people this, but it’s my mama that owns the hotel, and I bet we could work something

out. I’ll talk to her. I bet we could work it out so you and the little girl could stay there for free

for a time. Maybe work it off. I’ll do whatever I can to help is I guess all I’m saying. I know

what it’s like to feel stuck.

The deer fell from the high chair. Tirza looked at Maggie and thought about crying.

Maggie grabbed the toy off the floor and handed it back, spooned a mouthful of potatoes into

Tirza’s mouth. Thank you, Tirza said, in a voice only Maggie could understand. Okay, Maggie

said. Let’s see if we can work something out.

For four hours, Maggie pretended to sleep. She and Tirza were back in their room: Keith

had walked them up and helped her with the key card but she’d shut the door behind her quick

with promises to check in in the morning.

Maggie splashed cold water on her face and rinsed her mouth. She packed their clothes in

the suitcase and cleared the safe in the closet. She took out the credit card and cut it into pieces

with the tiny scissors from the complimentary sewing kit, burying the pieces in the bathroom

waste bin. She glanced now and then, as she moved around the room, at the figures in the boat in

the painting over the bed, feeling their eyes on her.

Once everything was packed and waiting by the door she lifted Tirza, still sleeping, and

slipped out and down the hall to the elevators, rolling the suitcase behind her. Out the back door,

not turning to look down the hall toward front desk.

She threw the suitcase in the bed of the truck and buckled Tirza with trembling fingers,

shushing her when she stirred and tucking the deer in the carseat beside her. By morning they’d

be in Georgia. They’d buy a tent and take a ferry out to the islands. There would be tree frogs

and summer moths, and at night she and Tirza would watch from their camp: the real moon

glimmer on the water.

IN WHICH PHOEBE DOES NOT MAKE THINGS HARDER

Phoebe was practicing being blind. She was nine years old and all alone in her Asheville

hotel room. It was supposed to be fun, but it wasn’t. There was no under-the-bed in which to

hide, in case of a knife-wielding intruder. The closet was too obvious. If the hotel were invaded

and they cut the lights, Phoebe wouldn’t know how to get out of the room and to safety.

Bobbed hair tucked behind her ears, she squeezed her eyes closed and reached her arms

in front of her, swept them to either side. If the lights blinked off, she’d remember this slope of

chair-ridge, the whisper of the bedspread against her thigh, her hairs rippling like antennae. Here

was the sharp edge of the wall where the room narrowed to what her mom would call a foyer, her

dad a hall. She rubbed the Braille on the safety map and realized she should learn that too.

Phoebe opened her eyes and traced the halls of the hotel on the map. In case of fire she would

use the stairs. In case of a knifer as well. She could leap the bottom five steps and land on her

feet no problem.

She wished her brother were there so he could tell her they wouldn’t be invaded. Even

though she wouldn’t believe him all the way, even though she’d know deep down it was a

distinct possibility, his confidence created a nice balance. Mason couldn’t come with her and

their dad to Asheville because of work, he said. Or maybe because of his friends with dark

makeup and chains hanging from their pockets. Because of the thin fairy scratches of poetry he

wrote for a girl named Emmy. Maybe he hadn’t come because he had better places to be.

Phoebe sat on the bed and folded her legs under her. She flipped through the channels

and glanced at the alarm clock. Her dad said he was getting a drink in the lobby while she got

ready for bed, and then he’d come tuck her in. That had been an hour ago. She had brushed her

teeth and changed into her nightgown, the one with the scalloped hem and little brown flowers.

She liked nightgowns because they were all one piece and so required only one decision. In

fifteen minutes, she would go check on her dad. While Asheville was a very safe city (or so he’d

told her) it was still possible he had been abducted.

A laugh track from some sit com filled the room, and Phoebe climbed under the covers.

She hated the sound of the polyester fibers rubbing against each other, that swish swish with an

under-sound like nails on a chalkboard.

There were a lot of pillows on the bed. If she burrowed into them, no one would even

know she was there.

One week earlier, back home in Memphis, Phoebe’s family gathered in their kitchen.

Spindly wood pressed into Phoebe’s spine, and she pulled her legs onto the chair, wrapped her

arms around her knees. Her dad stared over her head and out the window. Mason looked down at

his folded hands, his nails black-tinged at the edges from the polish that their dad had made him

remove the night before.

We’re getting divorced, their mom said, palms pressing into the table top.

Their mom looked at Phoebe like it was her turn to talk, but Phoebe just turned away. She

curled in her chair and watched her brother through the fringe of her hair. Mason didn’t look up

from his hands, but his too-long fingernails were pressed into his palms and Phoebe could see the

red around them, imagined the little crescent moons they’d leave behind.

Later, in her bedroom, Phoebe looked in her closet and realized she’d forgotten how to

match her clothes. She pushed them all to the side, hangers screeching across the metal pole, and

hid in the corner where she’d stuck glittery stickers of horses and sharpied a rhyme she found on

a bathroom wall. If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, wipe the seatie.

Her dad called her name.

The click of the doorknob, footsteps, brown loafers and the cuffs of khaki pants

approaching her.

Phoebe, come on out and get dressed, he said. I already found an apartment. I want you to

come with me to look at it. We can get ice cream.

The khaki legs shifted back and forth.

You’ll have your own bedroom, and you can get bunk beds, he said.

I don’t even care about bunk beds. Phoebe rolled to face the wall.

What’s Mason get? she asked.

Phoebe, her dad said. Come on. Don’t make things harder than they already are.

In the hotel elevator Phoebe realized she’d forgotten shoes. She hit L for lobby, but it

stopped on the second floor, and a man came in and smiled at her. She stared at the snaking

pattern in the rug and felt naked under her nightgown. She worried about foot fungus.

Hello, dear, the strange man said. How are you doing tonight?

She looked up. She’d been told the gaze of her grey, heavy-lidded eyes was unsettling.

I’m fine, she said. Just going down for a night cap. She covered one naked foot with the other.

I’m in town on business.

He laughed and nodded — pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and punched the

buttons. The doors parted, and the light from the lobby filled the elevator. Blue and purple bulbs

shone from tracks on the ceiling, bounced off the smooth stone floors. There were glass coffee

tables and chairs shaped like hands that held you. Phoebe stepped out and tugged at the hem of

her nightgown. She looked around for her dad.

The bar was in the corner, sunk in red light. Her dad sat at a small table smoking a

cigarette with a woman Phoebe did not know. He cupped a glass that sparkled and prismed light

across the dark tablecloth. He leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t looking at the woman, but

Phoebe saw he talked and talked and talked and his hands moved through the air, trailing smoke

from the cherry-red end of the cigarette. Phoebe had never seen him say so much, not in her

whole life. Tomorrow, when they got back to Memphis, her dad wouldn’t live with them

anymore. No one said that, but it was true.

The elevator man touched her shoulder to move her out of his way, and the doors dinged

shut.

She turned and pushed the up button, because her dad didn’t smoke and she shouldn’t

make things harder than they were.

They went right, Phoebe said, right there!

Mason swung through the turn, his sneaky black car hugging the curb. Phoebe adjusted

her sunglasses and kept her eyes pealed. They were being secret agents, and their target was a

red Toyota.

Shouldn’t we try to follow someone who’s at least going the right direction? Patrick

asked from the backseat. The dollar store’s the other way.

Phoebe twisted in the passenger seat to look at Mason’s friend. She slid her sunglasses

down her nose. Patrick, she said, don’t ruin the game. She opened the center console and dug out

a pair of yellow plastic sunglasses that were missing a lens. Here, she said. Put these on, or they

might recognize you.

I think they got away, Phoebs, said Mason. We’ll pick a new target on the way home.

He circled the block and headed back toward the dollar store.

Phoebe stared sullenly out the window. It was one of the first cool days of fall, and they

cruised past the old houses of Central Gardens, the deep front yards and winding driveways. The

boys had no sense of commitment to a role. Mason had his window open, and she kept having to

yawn to pop her ears, and Patrick probably thought she looked like a stupid fish. She reached for

the sticky volume dial and turned up the Korn album Mason had chosen. The car speakers

popped and crackled, and Phoebe mouthed the words, hoping for a curse one. She was allowed

to curse if it was in a song, her mom said. She’d been rolling the f-word around in her mouth for

weeks, waiting for an opportunity. They pulled up to a red light, and she saw Mason looking at

her from the corner of his eye. She huffed and propped her feet on the dashboard.

The light changed and Mason gunned it, tires screeching. Quack! he yelled, the code

word for “target acquired.” He pulled up behind a blue Nissan and stopped short, a few inches

between their bumpers.

Phoebe smiled and tasted the lipstick on her teeth. She turned to Patrick, who had put his

sunglasses on. He winked at her through the empty frame, then checked out the rear window to

make sure they weren’t being tailed. He looked very nice in that Pillsbury dough boy t-shirt.

They let the distance between their car and the Nissan grow, then Mason rushed to catch

up. He weaved back and forth across the road, moving between imaginary cars. Phoebe flipped

down the vanity mirror and spread more lipstick across her wide mouth, smearing it as the car

rocked back and forth: Mason was in charge, and he said makeup was ok.

When’s your mom getting back? said Patrick. Can I crash at your place?

Mason turned the volume down. Phoebe huffed, and he flicked her ear lobe.

Nah, man, said Mason. She’s leaving Nashville when she gets up, so she’ll be home

before ten. I’m supposed to be strictly chillin with the Phoebs.

Phoebe nodded. He was right. Their mom’s fake conference was only one day long.

Phoebe didn’t know whether Mason believed in the conference or was just playing along, and

she was too scared to ask. If she called her mom a liar, she didn’t know what would happen.

Thinking about it felt like when she played Supermario and tried to run Mario off the edge of the

map. He just ran up that hill and slid back down, hit some hard piece of sky and —

She thought of her dad and his hotel lady and how sad sad sad he’d looked. Her stomach

clenched. Phoebe had been practicing unhearing phone calls and unreading letters because each

one fed a lightning storm behind her eyes. It made it hard to look at people’s faces or get out

from under the covers, and she didn’t have an emergency plan for that.

At the dollar store they got a shiny stuffed lobster and plastic beetles with air bladders

under their carapaces. When you squeezed a little hand pump, they’d jump. They got silly putty

and mini donuts, pizza rolls and a plastic alligator that swam when you wound it. They wore

their sunglasses in the store and peeked around the end caps of aisles, checking for the enemy.

Quack.

We’re gonna go chill in my room, Phoebs. Mason was already headed up the stairs.

They’d had pizza rolls for dinner with no vegetable, and they hadn’t washed the dishes. Patrick

had spun Phoebe around like a helicopter and let her share his turns at MarioKart.

Can I come? Phoebe twisted in the corner of the couch and looked at him with her sad

eyes on.

You watch the movie, I’ll come tuck you in when Patrick leaves, ok?

She can hang, Patrick said. You’re cool, right Phoebs?

Phoebe nodded and smiled — looked away.

No, said Mason. You stay put. I’ll be down in a little while.

Phoebe turned her back to him and pulled the blanket to her chin.

She turned up the volume on Muppets in Space. Gonzo looked like an idiot. Who even

thought that nose was a good idea? She considered taking this time to explore the basement, the

damp boxes and whatever made that smell that was so dirty and cozy.

Phoebe had recently taken up snooping. In the low-ceilinged and winding closet of

Mason’s attic bedroom, she’d found magazines with pictures of spread-legged girls, one of

which she took and hid under her mattress. Behind her dad’s record bin, she found a carved

wooden castle filled with shells and scraps of paper with illegible writing. She’d also snooped in

smaller nooks: desk drawers and closed books, corners leaking whispered phone calls. There had

been plenty of good finds.

She’d already seen Muppets in Space a million times.

Phoebe got the cordless phone from the kitchen and dialed her mom’s cell phone. It rang

and went to voicemail.

She dialed again. Voicemail. Probably, her mom had died in a tragic car wreck on the

way to her fake conference. If she’d lied about the hotel too, or, god forbid, the city, who knew

how long it would take them to locate the body? Her dad was riding a bike in Utah and didn’t

have a phone.

Her mom answered on the third try.

Hey, Mama, said Phoebe.

How are you? her mom said. Are you and Mason having fun together?

Yeah, we went to the park today and made Nana’s meatball recipe for dinner. I cut my

finger chopping the garlic.

There was a rustling and static on the other end of the line. That sounds great sweetie, her

mom said. I miss you guys, but I’m glad you’re getting some good brother sister time.

How’s the conference? Phoebe plucked at the piping around the couch cushion. She

could distinguish every piece of furniture in the house by the how the edges of the cushions felt.

If they were invaded, she could get out of here in the pitch dark, no problem. There wouldn’t be

time to warn Mason, but that’s what happened when you split up. Everybody knew that.

Oh, it’s all right, her mom said. Long day, but I ordered room service for dinner, and I’m

thinking of getting an in-room movie.

Phoebe threw the cushion on the ground and paced around the downstairs, down the

hallway, past the radiator and the alarm that had never worked (irresponsible), back into the den

where the muppets chattered in the background.

You know anybody there? she asked.

No, her mom said. But I met a nice lady from Atlanta. She has a daughter about your age,

so we bragged to each other about how great our girls are.

Phoebe clicked off the TV.

Cool, she said. I have to go, Mason’s waiting for me to watch a movie with him.

Ok baby, tell him I said hello. Love you both.

Red light shined under the attic door and over the dark polished wood. The railing of the

staircase cast spoked shadows. Phoebe stayed close to the wall and crept up the creaking stairs.

She smelled sweet smoke, the incense Mason always burned mixed with cigarettes. He and

Patrick had abandoned the Korn album for a recording of humpback whale songs, and the

mournful, eerie sounds flowed under the door with the light and pooled on the top step.

She leaned over and tapped on the door. The feathers of her boa tickled her nose and one

of her eyes squinted closed where the liner had gotten in it.

The door opened a few inches. What’s up, Phoebs? asked Mason.

I wanted to show you my dance I made up, she said. A lava lamp glowed on the bookcase

behind him; all the smells were heady and close.

I thought you were watching the movie, said Mason.

It’s boring. She heard Patrick coughing, and the whale songs got quieter. I can do the

dance to the whale song, she said. You don’t even have to change it.

Just let her in, man, Patrick called. She’s not gonna narc.

Phoebe, it’s almost ten o’clock, said Mason. Go to bed, I’ll come say goodnight when

Patrick leaves.

The door shut, and the whales got louder. Im not gonna narc, Phoebe said.

She leaned on the door and knocked harder. It fell open and she stumbled into the room.

A girl on one of Mason’s beds, lying on her back with all her limbs spread, a dazed smile on her

face. She propped herself up on an elbow and wiggled her fingers at Phoebe.

Hey, kiddo, the strange girl said, her words flowing into each other like the whale songs.

She sat all the way up and picked up a cigarette from a dish on the bedside table, sucked it and

the tip glowed red. Patrick sat on the floor at the girl’s feet, playing with one of the beetles from

the dollar store.

Mason grabbed Phoebe by the shoulder and pushed her back through the door saying

Out, and Now, but she stumbled and slid down the stairs to the landing. She banged her hip on

the rail and her leg went numb and tingly, and even though it didn’t exactly hurt she cried.

Mason looked at her for a minute. Sorry, he said. You need to listen to me though. Go to

bed.

When she woke, the house was dark and quiet except for traffic whooshing by outside her

bedroom window. She looked at her clock. 2:30. She was wide awake, and her bed was hot. Her

boa was choking her and her hip felt hot and achey. Feeling her way through the dark, Phoebe

stripped off her clothes and pulled an oversized t-shirt over her head.

She felt her way up the attic stairs and eased the door open. Mason was sprawled across

one of the twin beds, on top of the comforter and still dressed. Patrick and the girl were gone.

Phoebe tip-toed to the other bed, climbed in and fell asleep.

In the morning, Mason helped Phoebe change the sodden sheets. They reeked of sweat

and ammonia, and he didn’t say a word about it.

He led Phoebe to the bathroom. Hot tears fell down her cheeks, and she licked them from

the corners of her mouth. She took a shower, and scrubbed her face until it hurt. There were

black half moons on her washcloth where her eye makeup had rubbed off.

She chose a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and striped leggings.

In the basement, Mason showed her how to measure the laundry soap and turn on the

washing machine, and they washed the sheets and her pajamas.

It’s not a big deal Phoebs, he said. Accidents happen.

She limped up the basement steps without answering.

After they’d eaten their cereal and put their dishes in the overflowing sink, Mason took a

soggy and rotting grapefruit from the fridge. He took Phoebe’s hand and led her outside.

What are we doing? she asked.

He came to a stop in the middle of the driveway. The morning was cool, and a breeze

rattled the leaves of their Magnolia tree. The cat that lived under the garage clung to its trunk,

staring at them with its aquarium eyes.

Throw it as high as you can, he said.

Why?

To see what happens.

Phoebe held the grapefruit in two hands and bent over, holding it between her legs like

when they went bowling. She jerked up and threw her hands over her head and sent the

grapefruit flying up and over. It plopped down behind her, and the impact opened a gaping slit

across its face.

Cool, said Mason. Wait here one second.

He disappeared into the kitchen and Phoebe stood staring at the grapefruit. It smelled

sweet and bitter and faintly rotten. She nudged it with her toe, and it rolled so its mouth was

facing her, a big fleshy grin.

The screen door cracked, and she looked up at Mason. It’s gross, she said. She folded her

arms across her chest and swiped at her eyes with her sleeve.

He picked up the grapefruit and uncapped a black sharpie with his teeth, scribbling across

the dimpled pink flesh. He handed it to Phoebe, who admired the wide eyes and the curved ‘c’ of

its new nose.

Mason dug around in the litter beneath the magnolia tree and came up with a handful of

twigs. He stabbed the top of the grapefruit a few times, piercing the mushy skin. He fitted the

twigs into the holes for hair and set the whole thing on top of a fence post, facing up the

driveway towards the street.

There, he said. What should we call him?

Phoebe scuffed her bare foot across the driveway. Maude, she said. It’s a girl.

Mason nodded. Maude is a specially trained grapefruit agent, he said. She’ll protect the

house.

Phoebe wiped her eyes again. She stared at Mason for a moment. Ok, she said. She

reached up and patted Maude’s cheek. She imagined an invisible forcefield around her, that only

let the good guys in, then kept them there.

VIEQUES

The ferry chugged away from the coast of San Juan, and the captain’s voice came over

the PA system: they would arrive in forty-five minutes. Leslie and Alec were on their way to the

island of Vieques. Alec scooted back on the slick plastic chair, trying to ease the ache in his

lower back. He edged away from Leslie and shrugged his shoulder. The ferry smelled faintly of

gas. The chairs were bolted in a series of long blue rows that reminded Alec of his middle school

cafeteria. Leslie clutched his arm, moaning complaints about her nausea. This was the moment

Alec knew for sure: he did not love her one bit.

Alec was thirty-three years old and two days married. It was the first day of his

honeymoon. They sat at the end of a row of seats in the muggy interior of the ferry and Alex

watched the water out the window, a clear and glacial blue. He thought about how this same

water may have flowed in the currents around the shores of his hometown in Georgia, hugging

the sands where his father’s old house stood. Or down the Mississippi that rolled past his and

Leslie’s Memphis condo. That was miraculous to him, and he thought of saying so; but he could

imagine Leslie’s response, her tacit, unenthused but qualified agreement.

Jenny, on the other hand. Jenny would point out that miraculous was an imprecise

descriptor, that it failed to do nature justice. They would have a conversation about ocean

currents: upswells and longshore, the deep sea conveyor belt that fertilized Antarctica, and of

course the havoc of climate change.

Yeah, Leslie would say, Miraculous, she would say, staring him in the eye for too long

and smiling like a child.

Alec had done a lot of research for their trip. Vieques was five miles wide and twenty

long and still quite pristine: more or less untouched until three years ago. It had been a testing

sight for naval missiles in a past life, he knew. He prided himself on his thorough preparations.

He held a trifold brochure open with one hand while Leslie squeezed the other. He shook

the brochure flat: a bright map with outdated clipart showed dirt roads snaking the length of the

island, branching off to beaches marked by smiling suns.

There had been plenty of moments he could have acted, called the whole thing off,

scratched that itch of uncertainty in the back of his head. When Leslie had the flu a few months

ago and kept asking for orange juice. Reeking of sweat and vomit, her hair clumped with grease,

she’d reminded him of a clogged shower drain. I’m dying, she’d whined, and he’d wondered,

with mixed emotions, if she might be. But then his father died, and in the blur of the following

months, Alec proposed.

The word forever echoed in the back of his mind. He tried to recall a positive memory

about their relationship (an exercise he’d learned from a worksheet on intentional empathy—a

page from a book given to him by his father nine months ago with the inscription in his father’s

shaky hand, Make it work), and what first came to mind was an image of the dip in the center of

his mattress.

They docked and unloaded.

A man met them at the station to hand off their keys and their rented Jeep. Leslie, still

pale, her face shining with sweat, talked to the man in cheerful, broken Spanish.

On the way to the house they took a wrong turn (left at the Green Market, but somehow

Leslie had never mastered her lefts and rights), and they spent twenty minutes wandering; there

was a lot of hopeful pointing.

Alec, babe, Leslie said, straining against her seatbelt. Horses!

Two nags had parted the trees and trotted out of the jungle: a grey and a chestnut, both

powdered with road dust. Did you know there would be wild horses? Leslie said.

Not wild, Alec said, pointing at the brands on their haunches: horseshoe-shaped scars

with indiscernible letters inside. See, he said. They’re marked.

Should we try to find their owners? Leslie said.

Alec shook his head and explained that the horses had owners but were allowed to

wander the island to save money on boarding and feeding them. This was exactly the sort of

thing. He’d sent her probably twenty links with the pertinent information for this trip and he’d

bet she hadn’t read one of them. Twenty-six years old, she still acted like she was twelve: relying

on him to manage everything, explain everything. When they first met, (she was his doctor-

recommended chiropractor — he had a mild case of scoliosis) her childishness had been

endearing. Now the charm was lost.

They crept down the road behind the horses. Then two boys, Alec guessed them maybe

eight and twelve, brothers from the looks of them, came jogging down the road toward them.

Alec braked and tapped his fingers on the wheel.

The horses ambled over to the boys. The older boy slipped rope halters over the horses’

ears. He grabbed his brother around the waist and hoisted him up to lay across the grey’s back;

the little boy swung his leg over and leaned forward to grab the lead rope dangling from the

halter. The older brother grabbed a hank of the chestnut’s mane, and mounted. He looked up and

waved at the Jeep.

Hey, Leslie said, waving back, beckoning the boys over. The horses trotted over to the

passenger side of the Jeep, the grey snorting and tossing his head. Alec recalled riding with his

father around their property when he was a little kid. His dad would toss him onto an old gelding

and they’d ride side by side, his father ponying Alec’s horse, holding it so close that their boots

brushed together. He listened as Leslie spoke to them in Spanish and the older boy pointed up the

road. She must be asking directions.

Gracias, said Leslie and the boys wheeled their horses and vanished into the jungle.

Amazing, Leslie said.

Oh yeah, said Alec. Really something. He patted her on the thigh, shifted into third and

picked up speed. The Jeep bounced over the uneven road, and Leslie told him it’d ride smoother

if they went faster. He nodded but didn’t speed up, and Leslie recounted the boys’ instructions.

Ten minutes later they jolted to a halt in their driveway, the seat belts catching them. Alec

shifted to neutral, pressed down the break and let the engine idle, staring at the orange stucco, the

unfinished wood steps to the front door. It looked like a house a child would draw. He hitched up

a smile and turned to Leslie.

Home sweet home, he said. The trip was already paid for, but he would end it when they

got back to Memphis. He would call Jenny and take her to dinner.

On their third night, Alec and Leslie jammed themselves into a van with seven strangers.

The vinyl seats were slick with their sweat. Another vehicle loaded up behind them, and chatter

spilled through the cracked windows.

A tour guide climbed into the driver’s seat and turned to them and smiled, teeth shining

out of his dark beard. He clapped his hands once.

Hokay, he said. Let’s roll. He turned up the volume on the radio, and Mariachi music

crackled through speakers. Leslie’s damp leg rested against Alec’s. They trundled through the

woods and the moonless night, the trees crowding in from either side. They were going to the

Bayou Bay, an inlet where tourists could paddle around in bioluminescent plankton. They came

to a stop and flooded out of the van with the others.

The dark clearing was thick with filmy insects, and Leslie whined and swatted her at legs.

Alec helped unload the kayaks and he and Leslie got separated in the quiet jumble: shifting

bodies and swinging ends of boats. The guides lined the kayaks at the shore and pushed them off

in groups of threes and fours, slipping them into the black water that glowed when you churned

it. Their prows etched green arrows across the bay.

The guide with the beard and bright smile held the edge of a kayak while Alec climbed

in. The guide shoved the boat with an outstretched leg and said, Enjoy yourself! Alec rocked

back and settled into a slow paddling rhythm. The glowing water was crowded with other boats

and dinoflagellates. A good word, Alec thought. He imagined microscopic brontosaurs churning

their legs through the water, glowing like the stars he’d plastered over his childhood bed.

Then her voice, snaking its way between the whispered conversations of the other

paddlers.

Alec? she called. Babe? Alec?

He bristled. How did she expect them to find each other out here? He steered to the left,

trying to follow the echo of her voice across the water. No point starting a fight, he thought.

Might as well make the last days count. He heard her call his name again and twitched, rolled his

shoulders to loosen the tension. He tried to conjure a good memory: at their condo in Memphis,

Leslie sometimes cooked for him naked. She didn’t actually know how to cook, but she stirred

pots of pasta water and made break-and-bake cookies: breasts spilling out around the bib of her

apron, the view when she bent to open the oven. Sitting at the kitchen table watching her, Alec

felt pretty lucky.

Something thumped against Alec’s kayak and spun it, leaving an arc of glowing water in

its wake.

Shit, said a woman’s voice out the darkness. Sorry. Still getting used to steering.

Alec strained his eyes. He couldn’t make out her features, but when a man beside them

slid into the water with a gentle splash and dove beneath the surface, the woman’s blond hair

caught the glow. No problem, he said, and gave her a quick, friendly lesson on how to hold the

paddle. She laughed at him and paddled off.

Alec, Leslie called, Alec? Babe?

Back at the house Leslie called him into the bathroom. She shut off the lights and closed

the door behind them. In the darkness, her fingertips slid under the waist band of his swim

trunks. She slipped them over his legs, and they fell to the floor in a puddle of nylon.

The water came on and when Leslie stepped under the stream she lit up like a fairy: a

thousand green-white sparkles cascading down her slick black hair, outlining the curves of her

body, swirling around the vinyl floor and down the drain, glowing plankton headed back to sea.

Alec stepped into the shower and pulled her close.

Leslie curled in bed beside him like a little pink shrimp: spent. Alec wondered about the

blond girl from the Bayou Bay: was she here with someone? Had she moved here to get out of a

bad situation? Maybe she flitted from place to place, globetrotting and never putting down roots.

Leslie’s breath whistled through her nose and Alec tried to dredge up some emotion for her.

There was the time when Alec’s dad was sick: he had been straining to take a shit, passed out

and never woke up. Two months in the hospital. Brain scans and feeding tubes and tickling his

feet; asking him questions; watching the twitching of his hands for answers. Nine days in

hospice.

Leslie was there for it all. She mopped the old man’s lips with a sponge on a stick and

never told Alec that he might wake up. For that, he’d loved her.

The next morning, Alec padded into the living room after his shower, toweling his hair

dry. The fine layer of sand that covered the house crunched under his bare feet.

I have an idea, he said

Hmm? Leslie didn’t look up from her magazine.

Tonight, let’s each do a scouting mission. Find a new place on the far side of the island

that we think the other would like. Leslie looked up at him and he smiled widely and raised his

eyebrows.

I guess we could do that, she said. Isn’t that kind of weird though, going off alone on our

honeymoon?

Who cares? he said. If it sounds like fun to us, we should do it.

Leslie stared at him. Yeah, she said. Sounds good. She looked back down at her

magazine, and pulled a blanket over her lap, a dusty rose color that matched the decor. It was the

same blanket Alec had seen in every hospital room he’d ever been in. The same one his father

had been lying under when he died. It wasn’t even cold in here. Alec wondered, almost guiltily,

if Leslie had sensed his thoughts in the past days. She was no intellectual, but she did have a

scary knack for reading people.

He flopped into a chair across from her and looked at the cover of her magazine.

Celebrity bullshit. She probably hadn’t read a book cover-to-cover since high school. Alec liked

a good scandal as much as the next guy, got a real kick out of Nancy Grace filling him in on the

latest murdered or missing tots, but Leslie had no balance in her consumption. No taste. A good

memory: there was their first threesome. A friend of Leslie’s, Charlie-short-for-Charlotte —

worked the front desk at Leslie’s chiropractic clinic. Then when Leslie had been in China for two

months for some alternative healing workshop, she’d found them a girl on Craigslist back in

Memphis and had Alec Skype her so she could watch him fuck Craigslist Jenny. When they were

finished, Alec and Jenny watched Nancy Grace, and Jenny made some pretty insightful

comments about their judicial system. They’d seen each other sporadically after that, meeting

over lunch breaks, at motels. Monogamy wasn’t for her, Jenny had told Alec. But who knew?

Who could say what would happen when he got back to Memphis.

Well, Alec said, I think it’ll be fun. He stood and threw the towel over his shoulder and

petted Leslie’s hair when he walked by.

That night Alec called for a cab. A local in an unmarked Toyota pulled up and honked his

horn twice.

Alec pecked Leslie on the cheek. Love you, he said. Try to find us some place good. Her

smile was tight; she waved goodbye.

The door clicked shut behind him, and Alec climbed into the passenger seat. He hesitated

between Hola and Hello and settled on a nod and a smile, then asked the driver to recommend a

good restaurant toward the North shore.

They drove a little ways inland, and up in the hills, and the trees grew close. The cab

rolled to a stop at the top of a steep drive and Alec gave the driver a handful of crumpled bills.

Gracias, Alec said under his breath.

He climbed the steps to the wrap-around porch and asked for a table outside. The

restaurant was built on stilts: dark wood and jungle and pink drinks, palm fronds hanging over

the porch rail. It seemed like a place where there should be hammocks.

Alec ordered a drink, and then another; he made small talk with the waitress.

He watched a woman smoking at the bar: dyed blond hair, curvy frame. He took a sip of

his punch, nosing the umbrella out of his way. An orange cat stalked down the rail past Alec’s

table and he stroked it. He and Leslie had a black cat named Juniper, and once they tied a cape

from Leslie’s teddy bear around Juniper’s neck and watched her race around the house. It had

been pretty fun.

Alec gulped his drink and watched the blond girl. Was it the girl from the Bayou Bay?

Why not? he thought. He wouldn’t ask though. He’d know from her voice and she’d know from

his and why had she laughed at him anyway? Digging his straw around the ice, he slurped the

last sips then went to the bar for another. He leaned casually next to her and asked for a cigarette.

A few drinks later. A handful of small talk. A casual graze of her thigh.

Then Leslie saying, Hey, and sliding into a seat across from them, her face blurry and

quizzical. Alec didn’t move away from the blond girl but tried to rearrange himself from the

inside out — subtle platonic shifts.

Hi, he said. We picked the same place, he said.

Leslie stared at him, her eyes working to focus. She held her empty glass to a passing

waiter.

I’ll give you two a minute, the blond girl said. She walked back to the bar and lit a

cigarette.

Alec and Leslie stared at each other; he chewed the tip of his straw. A warm breeze

rattled the trees.

I found us a third, he said. What do you think? He tried to gage how fucked up Leslie

was. She got quiet and still when she was wasted, but same for when she was pissed: who could

know? She stared at him with flat eyes and then at the blond girl perched on a bar stool.

The three of them naked in the king-size bed, on their knees and slurping at each other’s

faces and necks, a wriggling fleshy tripod. One of them pushed Alec’s shoulders and he fell onto

a pile of pillows, groaned and shut his eyes; he buried his fingers in the hair of whoever had her

mouth wrapped around his cock.

Leslie was staring at Alec, her eyes dark like the water of the Bayou Bay. Alec looked for

the little dinosaurs sparkling in there while she moved him like a mannequin: posed him over the

blond girl, wrapped his hands around her neck, arranging his fingers, her nails flashing blue.

The blond girl smiled dimly up at him, her hands tied to the bedposts.

Alec woke but didn’t open his eyes. He kept his face buried in the sheets that smelled like

sweat, like sex and piss. Blurs and empty patches from the night before. The restaurant; fried

strips of avocado; the three of them snorting something off a toilet tank. His body was sore.

When he opened his eyes it was still dark out, but a shaft of light from a streetlamp

shined through the window and made his head ache. He was cold and threw an arm out behind

him, feeling for Leslie, and his hand closed around… something. He rolled over and the blond

girl’s eyes met his, fixed and unseeing. The light from the window lit a path over the floor and

onto the bed, across the lump that must be sleeping Leslie. It lit the blond girl’s hair; her dark

roots; her shiny dead eyes.

He pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. No, he thought, his hand going cold and

empty; his head pounding; her eyes impossible and blue like a picture Alec saw when he was

eight: Earth from four billion miles away, a faint blue star. He remembered looking at it and

thinking: my lunchbox is in that picture somewhere, little blue star, eye slitted—staring, her

mouth open, the tip of her tongue showing between her teeth like the cat’s when it slept. In his

head, the dead girl shrank to fit on the tip of a pin—a spinning music box girl with snow white

hair and blue Earth-eyes tilted at the corners and a mother who grew her like fruit. He saw her,

spread open beneath him, spread open like the frogs from seventh grade science lab limbs

snapped and held to the table with map pins heart still pounding in her chest—

Alec squeezed his eyes shut and rolled away, clutching the sheet to his chest. He heard a

soft mewling sound and realized it was him.

The tile was cold beneath his feet; sheet wrapped around his shoulders, head between his

knees, he took three deep breaths. On his way to the living room he grabbed Leslie’s arm and

pulled her our of bed and, stumbling, behind him.

They sat on the sofa and Alec stared out the window. Somewhere, a rooster crowed. A

thumbnail moon hung in the purpling sky and Leslie sniffed.

Alec said: What do you remember?

Leslie pulled her knees to her chest. Heels of her hands pressed to her eyes, she shook her

head. Just little snatches, she said. Not…

Me neither, said Alec. What did we take? Do you remember?

Leslie shook her head again, clasped her hands around the back of her neck. Her eyes

were smeared with makeup and she looked very young in the soft light. It must have been hers,

she said. I didn’t bring anything.

She has bruises, Alec said. On her throat, she has bruises, but I don’t think —

Oh god, oh god. They’ll think you —

Me? They’ll think I…?

Leslie shook her head. Tears and mascara shone on her cheeks. The first fingers of

daylight crept into the house and across the floor, firming the shadows. The droning of motors

from outside, whoosh and fade of passing traffic. Alec lay his head in Leslie’s lap and she

tangled her fingers in his hair. Alec knew they were thinking the same thing: the image in his

mind flowed out of his head and up Leslie’s fingertips, through the thick nerves of her arms and

into the base of her skull to splash across the back of her brain. They saw the blond girl curled

and staring in their bed, her neck puffed and blackening. Her limbs beginning to set.

They decided on Playa Grande and they were silent while they worked. Alec swaddled

the dead girl in the soiled sheet and then once more in the woven blanket, tucking the dusty rose

cotton in on itself. He propped the bundle in the corner by the back door, beside the mat where

they kept their hiking boots.

While Leslie cleaned the bathroom, Alec pulled the Jeep around back.

He hoisted the dead girl over his shoulder and hurried back down to the car, wondering

where she would fit. The sky was shifting pink at the edges, rolling round to morning, and Alec’s

ears pounded and rang. The Jeep was open on all sides, kayaks strapped to the roof, where would

she go? Even through the blanket he could feel every inch of her. The firm weight of her on his

back.

He balanced her with one hand and stepped onto the nerf bar — peered into the yellow

cavity of one of the boats. That would do. He positioned a hand between her shoulder blades, the

other under her thigh and shoved her hard up and over his head. Her neck barely wobbled,

already freezing in place; she was awkward and unhelpful. He maneuvered her legs, shoving

them to the front of the kayak, bending her knees to fit. He heard—felt—a deep chiropractic pop.

He found a bungee cord in the shed and strapped her down. The door latch clicked and

Alec started, then turned to see Leslie standing at the top of the porch steps. She had changed

into loose linen pants and a tank top. She came to stand beside him and squeezed his hand.

Alec walked around the car, checking to see if anything was visible: the blanketed mound

of the blond girl’s head showed over the lip of the boat. He piled snorkeling equipment into the

other kayak to distract from it. Rearranged a life vest.

Leslie drove. She drove fast and they skipped over the road like a boat skimming waves.

Alec was grateful for her. He knew it couldn't happen but he feared a hand getting jounced out of

the kayak and dangling — waving at passing motorists. They glided over the empty road.

Left up here, said Alex, pointing. Leslie braked, almost missing the gap in the trees.

Deep water, heavy rocks, a landmark moment.

When it was done, they paddled back. They climbed out in knee-deep water and pulled

the kayaks onto the firm sand of the shore. Leslie had been weeping when she climbed into the

boat, arranging her legs around the corpse, its head resting in her lap: a body beyond all

adjusting. Leslie was quiet now.

They walked up the beach and collapsed on their backs in the pillowy sand. Alec closed

his eyes against the sun and his breath heaved in his chest.

When we get home, he said, opening his eyes. Let’s look for a house, a fresh start. He

heard Leslie start to cry again and reached for her. She sat up and folded her legs, held his hand

in both of hers. She leaned over and rested her head on his chest. Alec listened to the waves slosh

over the shore, heard them crash against a rocky outcropping.

After a while Leslie sat up and brushed her hair out of her face, and Alec wished that

she’d come back.

Don’t you think that’d be good? he said.

Alec? Leslie said, her voice thick but steady. Babe?

He opened his eyes and turned his head to her.

Her eyes were fixed in the distance.

What? Alec said. He turned and searched. Some twenty yards back, the beach was

abruptly overtaken by jungle. The leaves rustled and through a screen of trees, Alec saw him: a

boy, the younger one they’d seen in the road on the day they arrived. The boy sat astride the grey

nag. He met Alec’s eye—then wheeled the horse and disappeared, crashing through the jungle.

RAMSEY BABY

Ramsey stared down an obstacle course that existed only in his head. This is what he

imagined: he stood at the back of a fenced-in lot, scabbed with grey grass. A long trench of water

filmed with plant scum and insect eggs was dug into the center of the lot. Barbed wire hung at

intervals over the water’s surface, secured to pegs of weathered wood that equally weathered

hands had hammered into the ground years and years ago. Past the water, an angry stallion

pawed furrows into the ground with shining muscled legs. In his head, Ramsey wriggled under

the wire and half swam, half crawled the length of mucky water; he arched his back and lifted his

head, turned his mouth to the side, wary of snagging his hair on the barbs and catching a piece of

his scalp. He climbed to his feet. Spit and sprinted. The horse bared its teeth and pinned its ears

and ran huffing and snorting after him. Ramsey vaulted the fence at the far end of the lot and

stared down the road: flat dirt the color of his skin in the summer. The road was empty in either

direction except of course for the hotel directly across the street where he was going now for the

second time in as many months to see a whore named Yoyo.

The hotel and Yoyo, they were real. The thought of them sharpened the world and

cleared the fog of Ramsey’s daydream: asphalt, slick with grime and rainwater. Litter melting in

the gutters and rain splashing down in fat pellets. He stood across the street from the hotel. His

boots were soaked from walking through the overgrown grass by the curb. Unremarkable houses

lurked outside the grounds of the hotel, which sat on a lot that was generously proportioned for

downtown Memphis. The hotel was a repurposed plantation home that had been stripped back

and rebuilt and amended until nothing but the bare bones knew its full history. Refurbished

wings whispered stories of eras gone by, and rumors passed back and forth between increasingly

tight-lipped guests.

Ramsey had found the hotel in a message board on a gentlemen’s forum, and had been

brought clear to ecstasy by the age-old light in the photos and by those descriptions penned by

the forum’s leader. He’d sat at his kitchen table on his clunky old laptop scrolling through the

pictures for ages, his clock collection ticking in the background. Ramsey carried a print out of

the page in the pocket of his Tractor Supply uniform shirt for months before he worked up the

courage to go. The obstacle course, that was a visualization that made him stronger; he’d read

about it on the same site under the Tools For Improvement section.

Ramsey always parked a few blocks away from the hotel and psyched himself up, rather

than just parking his Buick in the drive and moseying up the front steps, sun in his eyes and hat

in his hand. No, this way he could stomp up the back stairs leaving big wet familiar footprints

behind, and when the girl who worked in the kitchen opened up, she’d recognize him and he’d

say, I need a room with a big bathtub. Yoyo would be an afterthought he’d ring the front desk

for: Yes I seem to have forgotten my razor at home, do you carry spares and also would you send

Yoyo up at her earliest convenience? Ramsey had had a girlfriend once called Alma, who came

in to the store on the third Thursday of every month to buy chicken feed and rope toys for her

dog, but she hadn’t lasted.

He walked around the house and knocked three times on the yellow door. A girl

answered. Ramsey felt her eyes on him: he dripped on the welcome mat and worried that his face

drooped more than last time she’d seen him. If she even remembered him at all.

Room number 3’s open, she said, before he could even mention his bathtub needs.

He handed her a fistful of cash.

Wait here a second, she said, and disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open

behind her. She returned and handed him a key attached to a square of wood with a careful 3

painted on it.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor hall where colorful hangings on the windows

filtered the light, and Turkish rugs covered almost every inch of the floor. Number 3 was on the

left and there was a brass knocker shaped like a unicorn with a dangerous spiral horn. Ramsey

didn’t knock because this was his room and he’d paid for it. Last time he had stayed in room 1,

which was small, just the bed and a wardrobe, a tiny table passing as a desk with a stool tucked

under. Room 3 was spacious and rich and Ramsey wished he’d brought more things to fill it. A

chaise lounge sat expectantly under the window and a tangled plant hung from the curtain rod.

The half-drawn drapes caught the sunlight in their folds and let it go in ripples. Ramsey opened

the giant wardrobe and set his wet hat inside.

He stepped into the bathroom and stripped naked, hung his clothes over the cool radiator,

turned on the shower and stepped into the steam. He ran his hands over his face and shook

imaginary ditch water from his hair.

Later he called the front desk and asked for Yoyo. She’s out with a cold, the bellman told

him, but will most likely be back tomorrow, and would he like to try Maura who’s sweet as Irish

Cream? No thank you, said Ramsey, I’ll wait. He got dressed and wondered what was for dinner,

envisioning veiny hunks of venison and blood sausage, a roast, spitted on a sword.

He descended via the front stairs and took his time, enjoying how his polished boots sank

into the thick carpet. He hoped Yoyo wasn’t too sick. He thought about mentioning to the man at

the desk that if she wanted to come in and just sleep in his room, he’d still pay. He’d bring her

cups of tea while she rested on the chaise lounge and maybe if she started to feel a little better

she’d ask him to sit with her. He’d scoop her up like a doll and settle her against his chest while

she took dainty sips. She’d get all warm inside and ask to be taken to bed. Maybe he’d just

mention that to the bellman: that he didn’t mind her just sleeping there.

Ramsey’s foot slipped over the slick carpeted edge of the last step and he stumbled, just

catching himself with a hand on the wall. When he looked up there was an older man in a three

piece suit sitting on the sofa in the parlor, watching.

Hi, Ramsey said. Hello there.

The man nodded and smiled with his mouth closed then looked back at the magazine he

was holding. Ramsey wondered what he was reading: if it was about finances or opera or how to

pick your next boat. His ankle hurt where he’d landed funny at the bottom of the stairs. He

looked at the old guy and wondered what he’d do if Ramsey snatched that magazine right out of

his hand and threw it on the ground and told him, Pick it up.

At dinner Ramsey sat next to a woman in a purple blazer and hiking boots whose cheeks

sagged even more than his own. On the other side of Ramsey, the man in the three piece suit

spoke about a movie playing later that night at the Orpheum, and Ramsey wondered if they let

the man take a girl out for the night, if he was getting special privileges. Then his mind wandered

to the possibility of taking Yoyo for a walk by the river. She might slip her own small dry palm

into his while they walked the water’s edge and listened to the cicadas sing and breathed in the

wet mud wet grass smells of summer. Maybe she’d lay her head on his shoulder.

Should be a fine night, said the man in the fancy suit. He was scooping up bites of meat

and peas and potatoes and shoveling them into his mouth. Ramsey watched as he constructed

each bite with precision.

What movie’s playing again? Ramsey said.

Gone With the Wind, a classic, said the man in the fancy suit.

In his head Ramsey said to himself, Be Assertive. To the man he said: I’d love to join

you, if you don’t mind company.

The woman in the purple blazer coughed and excused herself.

Of course not, said the man. The more merrier. And the clothes you have on are fine. He

winked at Ramsey and went back to his dinner.

Give me a minute, Ramsey said.

He scrawled a note for the bellman on the hotel stationary and left it at the front desk with

instructions to send up Yoyo if she felt better. In his room he opened the wardrobe and stared at

his damp hat. His other change of clothes lay limp over the radiator, and when he picked up the

empty sleeve of the shirt it was clammy and damp. He splashed water on his face and combed

his hair back with his fingers and said to himself, You Look Great. and, This Will Be Fun. On

his way out the door, he got his hat.

The man in the fancy suit — Charles, he introduced himself, of course he was a Charles

and probably a III or IV — was waiting on the sofa in the parlor. They stepped out of the dimly

lit front room that glowed like jewels and old brass, and into the night. The dark was patched

here and there by a lit window. Neon signs and streetlights in the distance. They walked down

Gayoso toward Front Street, passed two alleys filled with dumpsters and loose trash. Ramsey

walked in the strip of grass beside the sidewalk.

You smoke? he asked Charles.

I do. Charles pulled a cigarette case and a flimsy pack of cardboard matches printed with

a flour de lis and lit one for himself before handing them to Ramsey.

Where do you and your wife live? Ramsey asked.

I don’t like to talk about my wife when I’m in the city, said Charles.

Oh.

You married?

Nah. Almost. Once. We should hurry, Ramsey said. I want popcorn.

Ramsey followed Charles to the side balcony of the theater and filed in behind him. They

settled into rigid and creaky seats, and the angle screwed with Ramsey’s view.

Ads for the concession stand played on the screen but Ramsey watched the crowd below

him. There were a lot of children in fancy clothes whom he imagined would fall asleep halfway

through the show. His ex girlfriend Alma had had a kid, a little girl three years old, and that’s

what she’d always do. Fell asleep all over the place, all the time, and then Ramsey would carry

her. She melted warm against his shoulder and he bet that’s what these kids would do to if their

parents or nannies didn’t mind rumpling their nice clothes. If they’d sat down there, Ramsey

would have offered to let one of those kids climb in his lap if it couldn’t see, and then it might

fall asleep against him like Alma’s daughter used to. He could carry the child to the family’s car

for them and lay it in the back seat, and it would wake up warm in its own bed the next day not

knowing how it got there. That would be nice.

Want a splash? Charles asked. He tipped a flask toward Ramsey, indicating the cardboard

cup of coke that sat at his feet. Ramsey said, Please.

It was Ramsey who fell asleep. Movies always bored him, and when Charles shook him

awake his neck was cricked at an odd angle. He examined the fancy crown moulding and the

gold leaf paper that sneaked from under it. He tried to remember where he was. His back was

wrecked.

Oh, he said. It’s over.

Yeah, said Charles. The North won but we march on.

Ramsey rubbed his furry tongue against the roof of his mouth.

Charles gathered his things. He took a swig from the flask and stowed it in his jacket

pocket, then organized his trash in a tidy pile beside his chair.

What is it that you do? said Ramsey. For work?

Commodities, Charles said. Pork bellies. Imports and exports. You?

A farm, Ramsey said. Soy beans. And, in a sense, this was true. Ramsey lived very near a

farm. Several, in fact. He worked the register at the Tractor Supply and stacked feed bags one on

top of the other. He could talk crops with the locals and help yuppy girls find cowboy boots to

match their slutty little skirts. Plus Ramsey read a lot about all sorts of stuff. He figured he could

be almost anything, if he only put his mind to it. Just say it with confidence and Make It True.

He realized Charles was already disappearing down the stairs and rushed after him. They

squeezed through the crowd in the lobby where, sure enough, there were babies melted over their

parents shoulders, being ferried to the cars and to their beds. The sight of them made Ramsey

feel heavy and slow. He considered going back to the hotel, but Charles’ coat tails were

disappearing through the door and down the street, and Ramsey trotted to catch up with him.

They sipped gin in a candlelit basement bar. The game: it’s prohibition time; gin’s the

only choice and no electricity. Ramsey dripped sweat and craved a beer. He never cared for

history.

A friend of mine’s singing next, said Charles. You’ll like her.

Ramsey spun his stool to face the stage in the corner and waited to be distracted from the

heat. The crowd clapped and someone climbed onstage. It’s Yoyo, he thought. But no. Just

another dark head on a small frame. The eyes were all wrong and this one’s front tooth was

crooked where Yoyo’s was straight. A microphone dangled from one of her hands, and she

smiled through the black curtain of her hair. Ramsey thought she looked him in the eye, but then

thought he’d imagined it. She brought the mic to her lips and said, Hello.

She sang some jazzy songs that Ramsey didn’t care for. When she tried to walk off the

stage Charles called for just one more so she sang just one more. Then she lifted the hem of her

skirt and walked off the stage, watching her feet on the stairs. Her crooked tooth smiled and a

laugh shook her shoulders like wings. When she got to the bar she said:

I hate this shit.

I know you do dear, Charles said, and tugged on a loose piece of her hair.

She smacked his hand. I hate when you do that, she said.

Donna, he said. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Ramsey this is Donna, Donna

Ramsey. Ramsey’s in town for a couple nights. On business I believe?

Ramsey held out his hand to shake Donna’s, and her hand was fine-boned but damp.

Dirty feeling. That’s right, he said. From Mississippi. I’ve got a farm. Soy beans. Ramsey

coughed into the back of his hand. Scuse me, My wife and the kids stayed home. He coughed

again, twisting so it wouldn’t be right in Donna’s face. Was all I was saying.

Donna laughed at him. All right, she said. Let’s get out of here and get some food.

You sang really well, said Ramsey.

Thanks, said Donna, and laid a ten on the table for their drinks.

Ramsey sat in a booth across from Charles and Donna. The table was sticky, the seats

cracked, and the light came through faux tiffany shades and from the buttons on the jukebox. A

mostly empty basket of onion rings sat on the table and Ramsey couldn’t remember where they’d

all gone but he wanted more. He held the basket out to a passing waitress who stepped around

his outstretched arm and gave him a dirty look.

How long you here, Charles, Donna said

Just the night. I’m headed back tomorrow before dinner, got a lunch meeting down by the

river.

Donna snorted and lifted her glass, covering the bottom of her face.

Commodities, said Ramsey.

That’s right.

Pork bellies. Ramsey lit a cigarette. Imports, he said.

The waitress, passing their table, said, You can’t smoke in this section.

Did Charles tell you we work together? Donna said.

He may have mentioned it, said Ramsey.

Donna trailed a finger over Ramsey’s arm. What else did he tell you? she said.

Stop it, Donna. I didn’t tell him anything, said Charles. You’re drunk.

Donna came around the table and slid in the booth beside Ramsey. She put her hand on

his thigh and leaned over to whisper: Did he tell you what we import? She caught his earlobe in

her front teeth.

Enough, said Charles.

Ramsey felt Donna’s hand rubbing his thigh under the table. He wondered if she and

Charles fucked. His head was starting to hurt and he thought of the warm bed in his big room and

jewel light and the cotton sheet that he’d kick off in the night when it got too hot. In the morning

he’d eat a fried egg and go for a walk and maybe read a book. After tomorrow’s dinner he’d sit

in the front room with a nice snifter of something maybe. When he went to bed Yoyo would be

waiting in his room and they would go to sleep together. Then he would go home for another

month.

Donna hummed and drummed her fingers on the table and Ramsey swirled the dregs

around the bottom of his glass. He wished they could all finish their drinks and walk by the river

and Charles could tell them about his wife and his kids and the warm weight of them when they

fell asleep in his lap after dinner. Ramsey could tell about Alma and the little girl and he could

change the ending: he could give the three of them a house on a farm with fields of soy beans

and a yard for the dog to run in. He’d erase the day Alma had taken her toothbrush and left,

switched feed stores and everything, saying he liked the kid more than her, saying it was

unnatural. Creepy. He’d tell the story right and he and Charles and Donna could all sit on a

bench and watch barges pass while the sun rose.

We should go, said Charles, he pulled two twenties from his wallet and laid them on the

table.

The light still shone from the horse lamp on the porch of the hotel, but Ramsey’s fingers

and his head were thick and he fumbled with the keys and dropped them.

I’ll get it, said Charles, moving Ramsey out of the way and letting them in.

It was cool in the front room. The light behind the desk was on but the rest of the room

was dark and the sofa and the Queen Anne chair and the andirons by the fire place, they all

looked dead or sleeping. Shhh… said Ramsey.

Can I crash in your room, Charles? said Donna.

Can’t find my key, he said. Must’ve dropped it in the theater.

Come up to my room, said Ramsey and led the way upstairs.

The door to his room swung in and knocked against the wall and Ramsey flinched at the

noise.

His bed was unmade. The blankets all rumpled. They moved, a little hand reached out

from under the top and an arm followed and stretched.

What—

Who’s this? said Donna.

She must’ve felt better and come in, said Ramsey. I guess the bellman sent her up.

Sent who up? said Charles.

Shit, said Donna.

Yoyo was sitting up in bed now with the sheet pulled to her chest.

What’s the problem? said Charles. All the girls like you.

You’re not that stupid, said Donna.

Maybe we should have this conversation somewhere else?

She doesn’t speak English. Anyway, I’m leaving.

What’s going on? said Ramsey.

Go to bed, said Charles. Enjoy yourself. He winked and followed Donna.

Ramsey closed the door behind Charles. His hands shook. He turned the bolt and slid the

chain. When it clicked into place, a little noise came out of Yoyo. He unbuttoned his shirt. Took

it off and lay it over the back of the chaise. He stepped out of his pants and shook the wrinkles

out and folded them carefully. He put his clothes in the empty wardrobe and his hat on top of

them.

Yoyo had her legs over the edge of the bed like she was going to get up and Ramsey

shook his head. He went to her and picked her up like a doll and settled into the bed holding her

against his chest. She was stiff and pointy and not cooperating. He kissed the curve of her neck.

Slid the strap off her shoulder and kissed the little indentation where it had been. He bit down

until she whimpered and tensed. No, he said. With his free hand he stroked her arm, just grazing

with the tips of his fingers and watching goose bumps spring to her skin. Shhh… he said, and

rocked her back and forth. I’ve got you, he said.

AMBLER, PENNSYLVANIA: 1963

Lotti Perkins died on a Wednesday. It happened shortly after she finished her last cup of

morning coffee, and just about three months ago. No one in town — except for the children —

felt anything like bone-deep shock at the news of Lotti’s death. For, while Ambler is a quiet

town, and whatever violence blooms in the homes here tends toward the ordinary and contained,

accidents do happen, and Lotti’s husband always had a nasty reputation. The single and notable

exception to this attitude was found in Dorothy Marinucci, who, after Lotti died, wilted. She

stopped grooming: herself or her child or her home. She grayed.

In the weeks that followed, you could catch Dorothy at odd hours gazing out her front

window, her eyes refusing to catch yours, or — rumor from the children had it — if were you

playing in the sparse woods that abutted the Marinucci’s backyard, you might see her propped

against the glass wall of the sunroom like an ailing palm. Those same little whisperers swore

they’d seen her outside: only by night, digging in the garden under the midnight moon with a

vigor you’d never think possible. Of course, no one believed them, and everyone had other

things to worry over.

In the immediate aftermath of Lotti’s death, her husband managed to disappear, leaving

in his wake their two boys and a slew of questions. These days, folks linger beside one another in

Frank Marinucci’s store: they send their children down the aisle and around the corner for some

item or other and sift through their minds for a detail of Lotti’s death and its prelude that the

others haven’t yet heard:

It was her boy Danny who found her, one will say.

Her bag was by the door and the key to the Chrysler in her hand, another answers.

They agree: She never stood a chance. And they’re right.

The rumors have spread and fitted themselves into a less than satisfying story: an early

morning argument fueled by last night’s whiskey; Lotti’s threats to leave and take the boys with

her.

But what snapped him? People yearn to know. They’ve glutted themselves on

speculation, contradiction, the sparse handful of facts; they’ve teased out versions of events for

examination. Then, last week, Dorothy up and disappeared herself and set everybody scrambling

again.

The most interesting version of all this, to me at least, has its origins in the halls of the

grammar school, this version passing back and forth in its construction between a handful of

small children before being confiscated: straightened like an untidy room and handed off to the

masses for consumption and alteration.

In this version, Lotti’s head struck the hard edge of her kitchen table around half past

nine. Her teeth came down on her tongue and a gush of warm earthy blood filled her mouth, just

as a matching bleed spread like groundwater around the base of her brain.

Here entered Lotti’s final stuttering thought: it was not of her sons, or her husband, her

long dead mother, or the laundry left unfolded at the foot of the stairs. Rather: the crystalline

image of Dorothy Marinucci’s quiet, open hands, and the usually downturned corners of

Dorothy’s mouth, lifting.

At that moment, Dorothy herself was safe at home: mouth pinched, her fingers closed

around the glass neck of a bottle. She knelt on the kitchen floor and pulled wood polish and

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vinegar from the cabinet beneath the sink. As she stood, her head struck the edge of the counter

and her teeth clicked together, nipping her tongue.

She rubbed the back of her head, then fluffed her hair where she’d flattened it. A glance

at the cuckoo clock mounted on the wall; Lotti came each Wednesday at noon for their painting

lesson, and Dorothy wanted the house spic and span by then. Dorothy envisioned, first off, a visit

in the kitchen over a light lunch and a glass of wine. The midday light through the picture

window would play over Lotti’s face: it would shine the pink, unpowdered skin of her cheek and

the dark puddles of her eyes, while she listed the week’s events and spun each droll item into a

masterpiece of nuance and intrigue. The woodgrain of the tabletop would gleam with a matching

richness. Dorothy would slip her foot out of her shoe and run her toes over the smooth clean tile

and feel that settled weight in her belly that she waited for all week. When she was a little girl,

Dorothy had gone to mass. She had covered her head and knelt and taken deep breaths of

incensed air; had stared wide-eyed at the Madonna’s open palms and downcast eyes and dreamed

of reaching up to touch that haloed face. But one day, all of the sudden, the warm bubble inside

Dorothy that held her faith slipped of out her mouth and floated clear away. Now, she cleaned

for Wednesdays, with fervor and reverence.

When the time came, she and Lotti would slip effortlessly down the basement steps;

they’d glide to the corner where Dorothy set up her easel. Lotti would plop down in Frank’s desk

chair and point from one glossy tube of paint to the next, murmuring instructions in her low and

lovely voice; she’d stand occasionally and guide Dorothy’s hand with her own. Before Lotti

married Louis, and moved into her tidy brick house across town, she had gone to college for two

semesters and lived on her own, and Dorothy coveted the pregnant weight of Lotti’s private past:

through the years, she eased out its secrets one by one.

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Dorothy stowed the dog’s food bowl under the sink and delivered a dish of water to the

bathroom, where the dog bounced and skittered and napped all day. She gathered her supplies

and began cleaning the sunroom: the radiators and shelves of plants, the streaky bottom windows

that her son Sal smeared his fingers over no matter how many times she told him not to. She

dusted each broad flat leaf of the philodendron and moved the tendrils to catch the sun. She

plucked a yellowed leaf from the soil and considered whether the plant needed repotting.

Dorothy knew what it meant to be cramped. Years ago, when she and Frank had moved into their

home and arranged their few pieces of furniture, she found herself butting against the walls,

finding unfinished places. So she sketched additions and priced out construction: the sunroom, a

spare bedroom that eventually became Sal’s, a formal dining room for guests who never came.

She helped the house to realize itself, to spread like fungus.

She sometimes imagined tunneling out of the basement or through Franks garden beds,

carving winding passages beneath the city and into the Pennsylvania countryside. The tunnels

would pop up through hidden trap doors into garden sheds and abandoned barns, into the lives of

people far away. She’d wear a scarf to keep the dirt from her hair.

Next, Dorothy mopped: wet swaths gleaming across the tile, back and forth, back and

forth. She surveyed the room from the doorway and felt content. The windows looked out on

Frank’s garden; a distant line of trees; the low picket fence that defined the pen where Sal and

the dog used to play. She and Lotti would have coffee in here afterward; they’d take in the view.

Dorothy would serve Madelines, the ones dipped in chocolate. It was an anniversary, a small one

anyway, whether Lotti knew it or not. She and Lotti had met, four years earlier, dropping their

sons off at kindergarten: another morning where Dorothy dressed Sal in crisp, pressed clothes,

slicked back his unruly hair and marched him the half mile to school. From a block away,

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Dorothy noticed Lotti: she leaned on the iron fence and shooed her boy into the play yard,

toward the kind-looking teacher. Lotti’s clothes, wrinkled. The hem of her shirt half untucked

and stained with paint. None of other mothers stood near her.

Dorothy had ushered Sal through the gate and toward the smiling teacher. Sal walked

stiff-legged away from her, glancing back only once. Dorothy wavered, feeling the pull of her

home and solitude, the stack of receipts from the store Frank asked her to sort through, the dog

scratching at the paint in her bathroom.

She walked over to Lotti, braced herself against the fence and said, Hello. It was a start.

Yes, that day wakened an unnamed thing that grew in Dorothy’s fingertips and the deeps

of her belly and stirred her in the night to wake and wait, buzzing, for the sun to rise. In the next

weeks, at the schoolyard, she snatched impressions of Lotti’s life. At home she did her best to

stitch them together and see the whole picture. She grew restless. A few months after they met,

she asked Lotti about the paint stains on her clothes, and would she like to come over for lunch?

A world opened up. Once, after a whole day spent demonstrating to Dorothy how to mix perfect

shades of grey, Lotti shrugged on her coat and a new bruise showed under the shifting cuff of her

sleeve. Dorothy glanced at it and then away and said: If you ever need somewhere to stay, you

and the boys…

But what she meant to do was explain about the tunnels: about her plan to spread beneath

the ground and carve the city’s foundation into a froth of earth and stone, about her willingness

— desire — to take Lotti with her. Lotti pulled the corners of her mouth up, nodded, and left.

Well, nothing to be done about it now.

Sal’s pen in the backyard was the very last thing Dorothy had built, almost seven years

ago. Sal was a difficult baby and a fussy toddler and she’d thought it would sooth him, to have

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somewhere of his own to play. It hadn’t worked. Then one particularly rough day she’d driven

him the three hours to the shore. She hoped to lull him with the bumps of the road, listen to the

shushing of the waves. He toddled and fell in the surf and chased ghost crabs. He stopped crying.

On the way home, they’d passed a man selling puppies out the bed of his truck. Moved by some

unfamiliar feeling — a compulsion — Dorothy stopped and let Sal pick one to take home. It was

the only moment between her childhood mornings in the vaulted nave of the church and now, in

her friendship with Lotti that left her with the feeling of being propelled, guided. She revisited

this memory frequently and imagined Lotti with them: Lotti would have run in the surf with the

children and they would’ve laughed the whole drive home.

After they got the dog, Sal played in the pen and rolled in the grass and didn’t cry as

much. He looked for pill bugs under the pavers and fed them to the dog. He seemed happy.

Dorothy went to the kitchen for a fresh dust rag. She dampened it and draped it over her

hand, then knelt and wiped the baseboards, fitting her fingers into the grooves. The hands were

the hardest part, Dorothy though, her mind turning to her painting. There was always a stray

shadow of bone, a twisting of perspective that gave the whole thing away. Lotti told her she was

doing better now, her best work yet. Don't touch it until I come back, she told Dorothy. Don’t get

impatient and do something stupid. So every night this week, once Frank was asleep, Dorothy

crept to the basement and stared at the half-finished painting. She waited.

The phone down on Frank’s basement desk rang. Dorothy rinsed the rag and hung it over

the tap. She dipped her hands into the running water and dried them on a dishtowel. By the time

she got to the phone the ringing had stopped, so she climbed the stairs back to kitchen to finish

cleaning.

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Once she’d washed her face and changed clothes, Dorothy opened a bottle of wine. She

switched on the radio and turned up the volume. Down the hall, Sal’s dog pawed at the bathroom

door — his claws muted by the strip of plastic sheeting tacked to the door. Dorothy pulled out a

chair and sat at the kitchen table. She shifted and crossed her ankles, tucked her hands under her

arms and stared at the cuckoo clock. Lotti was late. Maybe she should just go take a look.

Dorothy padded down the basement steps, cold seeping between planks and through her shoes.

The basement was spacious and sterile: black and white tile floors, strips of fluorescent lighting

stuck to the ceiling. Frank’s massive desk hulked in the corner, papers heaped across it and the

phone balanced atop one of the piles. Dorothy pulled a photograph from her dress pocket. She

fished pins from a dish on Frank’s desk and stuck the photo to the wall beside the desk. She

crossed the room and passed through a dark doorway where the floor turned to concrete.

In here, laden shelves lined the walls: ring boxes, resealed packages from Sears Roebuck,

manila envelopes crammed into letter boxes, and one shelf full of canvas-bound books with

shiny embossed lettering. Frank’s business.

A bare bulb hung from the ceiling and Dorothy pulled the chain. In one red-dark and

cobwebbed corner was a hooded hair dryer and beside it a crate from which Dorothy collected

her paints and a palette and a roll of brushes. A canvas and folding easel leaned against the wall.

Dorothy moved it all to the main room and set it up. She cleared some space on Frank’s

desk and unrolled her brushes. She lined them up straight, unfolded the easel and set the canvas

in place, then waved a dry brush through the air in front of it, broad experimental strokes.

The phone rang and Dorothy jumped at the sudden noise. She lifted the receiver from the

cradle.

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“Hello?” she said. “Danny… Danny, sweetie slow down…”

The brush fell from her hand and her head filled with a ringing whistle.

“Go outside,” she said sharply into the mouthpiece. “Now.”

Sal threw up after his friend Danny Perkins punched him in the stomach on a dare. Danny

got sent home early from school with a note for his mom saying what he did, and since it hardly

seemed fair that Sal should have to stay, he whined to one of the pushover teachers and she let

him call home. Sal called the house and no one answered so he called his dad at the store and his

dad told him, sure, go home, what’s the difference?

Sal walked in the gutter with his gloved hands crammed in his pockets and kicked rocks

to watch them click over the asphalt. It was cold and bright out, and Sal’s face and stomach felt

raw. He’d have a snack, he thought. Maybe, after he watched the Twilight Zone, he’d go down to

the basement and study. His dad quizzed him in the evenings because: The schools don’t know

what they’re doin. And maybe if they finished early, Sal could go to Danny’s house after dinner.

Danny had stolen a pack of cigarettes off his dad last night, and he said he’d share.

Sal turned onto his street and waved at the lady from next door. She paused in wrapping

burlap around her rose bushes and waved after him. When the neighbors moved in, Sal’s dad

took him over to welcome them with a bottle of homemade wine. They all shook hands, and the

lady, glancing toward and away from Sal’s dad, took the bottle from him and offered them both

cups of water with lemon wedges on the rim. His dad was good at stuff like that and Sal hoped

he’d be good at it one day too. His dad kept a notepad in his pocket with a list of all the folks in

town who came into the store: first and last names in one column, nicknames in the other. He

was always smiling and everybody was his friend.

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When Sal reached his doorstep, he pulled off his gloves with his teeth and hurried to get

the key in the latch before his fingers went wooden in the cold. The glass of the storm door

rattled in its frame til the sticky deadbolt gave.

“Mom?” he called, wiping his boots on the doormat. He sat down to unlace them and set

them by the wall. The kitchen radio was up too loud and Sal turned it down, then walked down

the hall and peered into the empty den.

He let Buttons out of the bathroom, picked him up and kissed his fawn-colored head

before Buttons wriggled out of his arms and hopped to the ground. Buttons’ nails click-clicked

on the wood floor as he followed Sal to the kitchen. Once, Sal’s mom had put little homemade

boots on Buttons so he wouldn’t scratch the floors, but Buttons chewed them off, and Sal was

glad. He liked the company of the noise.

Sal got a cheese and a half a soppressata from the fridge. He cut thick slices from both

and put it all on his favorite blue and white plate. The salty smells made Sal’s stomach growl.

He had three hours until his dad got home. Plenty of time for everything fun and then to study

the books in the basement. Or maybe to rifle through the envelopes and boxes, old letters from

girls who were not his mom.

Buttons made a weird whimpering sound and Sal looked down at his feet to hush him but

then saw Buttons wasn’t there: he was standing at the basement door, his snout pressed against

the crack, woofing. Sal turned off the radio and went to join him. There was the whimper: a

keening animal sound that wound up then cut off.

“Go outside, now,” he heard his mom say, and Sal tensed, thinking at first that she sensed

him standing there on the far side of the door. “Now, Danny, get your coat and go wait outside.

I’ll — someone will be there soon.”

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Sal heard the dial whir round and his mother speak in a low and careful voice, and then

nothing.

Sal waited but the basement sounded dead. His head felt foggy and his fingers tingled and

he realized he was holding his breath. He picked up Buttons. In the den, he built a circle of

pillows on the floor and turned on the TV. He sat right in front of the screen. Buttons squirmed

for a minute but eventually settled with a sigh against Sal’s chest, in the tight circle of his arms.

When the den got dark, Sal got up and stretched. He was trying to wait for his dad to get

home but he’d watched all his shows and still felt weird and worried. He tip-toed down the hall

and eased the basement door open. Then, staying close to the wall so the wood wouldn’t creak,

he crept down the stairs. Halfway down he crouched and peered under the railing. His mom

stood with her back to him, her shoulders slumped. She was wearing a ruined work shirt of his

dad’s, rolled at the sleeves and splattered with paint. One of his dad’s books was propped open

on the desk to a glossy illustration of human anatomy.

On the easel in front of his mom was a painting in black and white: a woman in a high-

backed chair. She had jet-black hair and a secretive face, her legs hidden under a flowing skirt,

arms folded across her body. A little girl stood beside her, resting one arm on the chair, her

fingers just peaking over the back.

They stared straight out of the frame. The little girl's mouth was set and serious. She wore

a short dress and held the hem in her free hand. Past her wrist, the flesh had been stripped back:

shining muscle with white threads running through it, binding it together. It was ugly and

twisted, had the look of something built from spare parts. The girl’s nails were broken off and

the fingertips smeared with shiny black. At the little girl’s feet, a misshapen hole opened in the

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floor, shining the same black as her fingertips — a black so dark you could almost fall in just by

looking.

A brush hung loosely from his mom’s fingers.

Sal stood to go back upstairs but the stairs creaked and his mom turned and saw him.

“Mom,” Sal said. He felt like crying and his sore stomach clenched, his food churning

acidly. He kept his eyes off the painting like he would have if he’d walked in on his mom

changing clothes. She looked at him like a stranger.

Sal opened his mouth, but whatever he had hoped to say rolled back down his throat like

a marble and stuck there.

His mom gestured at the painting and turned away from him. “I rushed,” she said. “I just

got impatient.”

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ON RIVERS

Jimmy sees a great cypress tree that could just be their savior: a hundred yards

downriver and to the East. The tree’s base is a complex fold of roots, wide as the length of their

canoe. The trunk doubles itself on the glassy surface of the river and Jimmy’s head swims with

the ripples. He aches with thirst; it radiates from his stomach and into the deadened ends of his

limbs.

That one, he says to his wife Claudette and points to the tree. It’ll help if we have a focus.

We’ll row to it, tie up and wait for help. Claudette’s face shines with oil and sweat. A patch of

acne blooms along her hairline. Her dark eyes are reddened from crying, which, Jimmy told her,

was a waste of water. She rubs them with the heels of her hands and turns to Jimmy’s Uncle

Nelson.

Nelson, she says. How about you come sit up on the bench and help us sort this out, help

steer?

Nelson sits on the floor of the canoe and ignores her. He peers over the edge and hums

low. Mister engineer, he sings. Let a poor man ride the blind; said, I wouldn’t mind it fellow, but

you know this train ain’t mine.

He’s not listenin, says Jimmy. Let’s move.

No, says Claudette. I’m done followin your instructions. She wipes at Nelson’s forehead

with a napkin from yesterday’s lunch. I’d say you’ve done enough, she says.

They’ve been out on the water, lost, for a full day and night. It’s Jimmy’s fault. He knows

it, of course it is. It was him who got them tangled up in the maze of the Mississippi’s end:

winding floodplains, soggy vegetation masquerading as dry land. Jimmy turns away from

Claudette. He wraps one hand around the knob end of his paddle; adjusts his seat; sinks the

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blade into the water. He aims for his tree. Then Jimmy feels the boat turn to cut across the

current: Claudette steering. What else could she do? he wonders. Doesn’t like his plan, he

thinks. Fine — give us a plan, then. They pull through the water, together.

Three evenings earlier and in a different world altogether, Jimmy sat on the porch with

Nelson in the creaking wooden rockers they bought the summer before with Jimmy’s employee

discount at Felix Arthur’s store. Just outside the screen door, an old record player sat quiet,

trailing its cord into the house. A milk crate of records beside it. He and Nelson rocked and the

gloaming faded to night: stars spun up over the river, and the few lights of Bohemia, Louisiana

burned against the cobalt sky. Jimmy loosened the focus of his eyes and breathed deep. He

smelled paint. Magnolia blossoms and low tide. There was the chorus of insects, Claudette

singing in the kitchen, dishes clinking and the hum of water running from the tap. Salt and damp

had warped the wood of the porch but it shined with the fresh blue paint he and Nelson applied a

couple days ago and touched up this evening. Soft eyes, Jimmy said to himself. He took his mind

to the periphery: Nelson’s guitar propped against the metal sculpture of a waving frog; the old

coonhound curled at his feet; a juice glass of gin on the porch rail; Nelson’s smacking gin-slick

lips and his sparse hair fluttering in the breeze from the ceiling fan.

Blue looks nice, said Nelson.

Mhm, said Jimmy.

You remember when me and your daddy built this porch?

I remember.

What were, you, six, seven?

Jimmy grunted. Four, he said. I was four when he left.

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Your mama kept telling him he could sleep out here once he got it built. Nelson chuckled

to himself. A funny lady.

I don’t remember that, said Jimmy. I remember you and him singing. And when he

busted his hand hanging the joists. Fallin down drunk.

Naw, said Nelson. It wasn’t like that.

The fingers on his left hand never went straight again, Jimmy said.

You were only little. It wasn’t that bad. Just an accident.

I remember. You’re right, Jimmy said. The blue does look good.

Nelson picked up his guitar and bent over the neck, fiddling with the pegs even though

he’d tuned it earlier. Mister engineer, he sang, let a poor man ride the blind, said I wouldn’t mind

it fellow, but you know this train ain’t mine. Nelson’s singing rasped at something in Jimmy,

something bitter and almost ugly, stirred it like silt on the river’s bottom. The house, this porch,

his uncle’s songs and stories, they flowed and swelled and melted into Jimmy’s body, were

folded into his being. And it wouldn’t last. Jimmy pictured the little pockets of blood that were

even now seeping into Nelson’s brain, drowning him out bit by bit. Jimmy breathed deep and

softened his eyes.

He listens to their synced breath, the pounding of his pulse in his temples. The slosh of

wooden blades cutting the water. Nelson hums, his foot tapping a tattoo against the sun-warmed

wood. Jimmy and Claudette paddle until their shoulders ache and their breath comes ragged in

their chests. They aim for Jimmy’s tree, but the muscling current sweeps them along and past it.

Better that they tried something anyway.

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Jimmy lays down his oar. I don’t know what to do, he says, not for the first time. He turns

to face Claudette, and squints. Sweat burns his eyes and he wipes it away. His fingers are

cramped into claws so he stretches them, pulls his blistered skin tight and looks at it shine,

stretch over his bones like an old man’s skin. In the distance, the half-sunk trees and cattails and

spangles of leaves look to him like land. But between the trunks and around the islands of plants

Jimmy sees only more trees and more river, flood plains spreading and spreading and nothing

else in sight. If they could reach something solid, tie up and wait — but wait for what? This is

not the river that Jimmy knows. This is a world swallowed whole: netted in by water and him

wandering aimless through the weave.

I suppose, Jimmy says, looking at Nelson, we’ll have to think of something else. He leans

forward to lay a hand on Nelson’s arm, but Nelson flinches — swats Jimmy away and stares into

the distance.

Claudette cracks her knuckles and rubs one hand with the other. I can’t fuckin believe

you, she says. Said you knew this river like the back of your hand, dragged us out here…

Jimmy’s world wavers through a haze of heat. He’s too tired to fight. His mouth’s too

dry. In his head, he does the math. Thirty-four hours they’ve been on the river: a curled tentacle

of the gulf that’s hooked them and reels them in by its sinewy length, slowly, slowly. And Nelson,

eyes closed, knees curled to his chest — how many more hours will he last?

Jimmy did this. He fucked up, and he knows it.

Claudette pushed the screen door open with her hip, a beer can in each hand, and the door

swung shut behind her with a crack and a rattle. She handed one can to Jimmy, popped the other

open and drank deep. Jimmy raised his beer to her in thanks.

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Why’d you stop playing? Claudette asked Nelson.

Song was done, he said and sipped his drink. He patted his leg and the coonhound rested

its head on Nelson’s thigh.

Jimmy shifted and resettled himself, the chair creaking beneath him. He didn’t like when

Nelson was quiet, worried about where he was going in his head. Could be it was Claudette who

made him edgy? Two years Nelson had known her. No memories buried deep enough for

comfort. He imagined Nelson watched the waves of his song drifting away in the cool blanket of

air over the water, and hoped that he was thinking pleasant thoughts. Jimmy stood and flipped

through the bin of albums they’d brought outside and picked one out. Dropped the needle on the

record player.

Tell us a story, Jimmy said. The music started up, guitar twanging tinny and thin, a weak

ghost of Nelson’s music, still better than silence.

Did I ever tell you about the sea monster? Nelson asked.

No, said Jimmy. I haven’t heard that one. Jimmy straightened up to listen. Since

Nelson’s fit a couple months ago, he started repeating himself, working himself into panics and

rages. Mini-strokes the doctor called them. Seizures. Multi-infarcts dementia. What it meant in

the end, Jimmy realized, was the time for new stories was drawing to a close.

Not too many people around here talk about it anymore, Nelson said. It didn’t used to be

that way. Used to be one of the tales folks told their kids at bedtime, twisting it every way to

teach a lesson or plant a special fear. The stories eventually erased the real thing and then faded

out. Of course, that makes it all the more dangerous. The Rookin, it’s called, and I’m probably

one of the only men living that’s had a real good look at it.

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Nelson crossed one leg over the other; the dog huffed and let its legs fold under it. Nelson

picked at his nails and Jimmy thought maybe he could hear him humming, real low.

What’d it look like? Claudette said.

I suppose it looked like a shark, Nelson said, if it looked like anything. But there was no

mistaking it for a shark. Like water come to life. The color of sheet metal and the shape of a

nightmare and you don’t know what you’re looking at until it’s too late.

For the thousandth time, Jimmy’s eyes scan the bottom of the boat, checking for water,

for something useful he may not have noticed. Just an empty red cooler, a couple fishing rods.

They don’t need fish, don’t need to be eating anything the way the sun’s sucking them dry. He

stretches his aching hands and thinks of weekends out here as a kid. Nelson took him every

weekend after Jimmy’s mom passed and his daddy left them. Jimmy can still feel the pull when

his line went taut — the flash of a six inch sun fish came flapping and shining out of the water:

the first fish he ever caught. Nelson had smacked the back of Jimmy’s head to get him to reach

out and grab the damn thing already. Jimmy was surprised by the spiny-ness of the fish, how it

stabbed at his hands.

Something bumps the boat with a wet thump, knocking them all a little sideways. Jimmy

grabs his bench and the empty cooler clatters across the bottom, lid flapping like a mouth. He

and Claudette look at each other but don’t say anything. Nelson moans. When Jimmy twists to

look behind them, he sees a length of rotted wood pleating the water. It was nothing, he says.

You hear me, Nelson? Just an old log.

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I was with Lyle when I saw it, Nelson said and Claudette caught Jimmy’s eye. Jimmy

was four when his daddy Lyle found Jimmy’s mama dead on the kitchen floor: a heart defect no

one ever caught. Jimmy was four and six months when Lyle left for good, and here is what

Jimmy remembered of him: a grey checked cap with a brim that snapped itself in place that,

when Lyle drank himself to sleep, Jimmy would ease off his head and balance on his own. He

remembered thinking his mama must have bought Lyle that hat before she died. Thinking he

could still smell her on it, the soft petal-skin of her hands. The summer before Lyle left, when he

smashed the fingers on his left hand, he made crooked shadow puppies for Jimmy with his

crooked hand: twisted, ugly things cast by the porch light onto the side of the house. Jimmy

pretended to laugh at them.

We were down in the Gulf with Felix, Nelson said. You remember him, Jimmy?

I know Felix, Jimmy said.

Felix had just gotten a real nice boat — fiberglass, it was a big deal — and we were out

there fishing and getting piss drunk. I was about your age, Jimmy, so Lyle couldn’t have been

more than eighteen. We were having a good time. Didn’t catch hardly a thing, but the sea was

calm and we had just enough clouds not to cook. Dove in every once in a while to cool off. We

came to a sandbar and your daddy and I got out to wade around. No real reason. When you’re

young you don’t need reasons. We were probably looking for shells. Lyle liked shells.

The needle of the record player caught in the lock groove, hissing static that spread into

the silence. Jimmy wondered if the noise fuzzed up Nelson’s thinking. Claudette cut it off and

slipped back inside the house, and he said a silent thank you to her. He was gathering Nelson’s

words to himself and tucking them safe away, alongside a checked cap and his first pocketknife,

the smell of lavender when his mother held him. The fan clicked overhead, the crickets

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chirruped. Fireflies blinked on and off in silent conversation. A charge ran through the wet night

air and rippled over Jimmy’s skin.

Who knows, said Nelson. Maybe nothin happened at all. But I guess I know that’s not

true. Lyle wouldn’t ever talk about it again. Not a word. Felix swore he never saw it. Not sure he

could have. I got the sense it was something you needed to be tuned into to get a glimpse of, you

know what I mean?

Jimmy nodded.

He felt it though, said Nelson. No way he didn’t. Never took us out on his boat again. I

believe he thought we were bad luck.

Jimmy leaning forward in his seat and wait.

It came from under the boat, Nelson said. Never seen anything move that fast. Knocked

Lyle clean off his feet, and was gone just as quick. The water out there’s murky, a thing doesn’t

have to go deep to be out of sight, so we panicked, knew it could still be right nearby. Lyle was

thrashing around in the shallows, too scared even to stand, Felix shouting at us from the boat.

Me, I froze right there on the spot, the water burying my feet in the sand, waves tugging at my

legs, my hands buzzing — tingling all over. Then it came back. Slower this time. Just swam

around us, watching. Eyes like bullets. Skin that sucked up all the light. I felt it tugging at

something in me, teasing it out and swirling it round the water in its wake. Fear like that, it does

something to you. Takes you from yourself. And I know fear. In the war I saw men, friends of

mine, swaying peaceful under their chutes, floating to the ground, their guts dangling from their

boots like kite tails. I saw plenty.

The coonhound stood and whined, put its face in Nelson’s lap and nudged its nose under

his hand until Nelson stroked its head.

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This was worse than all that, Nelson said. I wasn’t nobody. Not a bit of Nelson Barrow

left. That’s how the Rookin gets you. He sipped what was left of his gin and set his empty glass

on the rail with a hollow thud. It’s not a storybook monster. And not a shark that tears you limb

from limb and has done with you. It’s the sort of creature we’d rather not think about. Drinks you

from the inside out and lives outside our words.

Anyway, Nelson said, it left. Just — swam away.

It’s hot. Jimmy is hunched below the edge of the canoe. A muscle in his shoulder spasms;

he grimaces and rolls it in its socket, feeling it crunch. Claudette lies with her head on his thigh

and Jimmy rests a hand on her hair, matted from sweat and wind. Nelson is quiet now, staring at

something only he sees. Jimmy watches the water lap at the accordion folds of distant cypress

trunks, the single dark band above the water line slashed evenly across every tree. He wonders

if there were ever houses close by. If there were, he thinks, they’re still down there, sunk in peat

and murky water. Catfish lurking under porch steps, swarms of baitfish flying through open

windows and the shadow of the Rookin gliding over the sandy bottom like a storm cloud.

Any ideas, Nelson? Jimmy asks.

Leave him alone, says Claudette.

It’s better if he talks. He’s not doin himself any good, or us besides.

Neither are you, Jimmy. Leave the old man alone.

Jimmy’s thirsty and the air tastes like salt.

Jimmy put another record on and left Nelson alone on the porch. Nelson was done

talking, it seemed; the story finished.

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The house was dark, but a light burned in the kitchen: Claudette finishing the dishes. He

went to her.

He okay? Claudette said.

He’s fine, said Jimmy.

Jimmy drummed his fingers on the counter.

I’d say it was a pretty good night, he said. He wondered what Nelson was thinking about.

Jimmy worried about the dead men dangling from parachutes, about sea monsters, shadows

lurking behind his uncle’s glassy eyes. He thought of Lyle, thrashing in the shallow water, not

thinking to put his feet beneath him.

Claudette scrubbed at a stubborn spot of grease on a casserole dish.

He gave me an idea, said Jimmy.

Claudette kept scrubbing.

We need to get him back out on the water, Jimmy said. Take him fishing. We got that old

canoe and I’ll have Felix leave the car downriver.

Claudette sighed. I could hear him through the window, Jimmy. Didn’t sound to me like

he was trying to get back out there in any kinda hurry. She rinsed the pan and handed it to Jimmy

to dry. Plus what if he gets bad while we’re out there? she asked.

He’ll have his bad day on a boat, Jimmy said. Painting the porch was good, I think. It

helps him, having something to do. Jimmy watched Nelson through the window over the sink: he

sat in his chair bobbing his foot to the music and the coonhound lay on the blue planks, legs

sticking straight out.

You thought at all about going back to work? said Claudette. I know Felix could use you

at the store.

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I hate when you do that, said Jimmy. I’m talking to you about something, Claud. I’m

trying to have a goddamn conversation.

See, I don’t think that’s quite what you’re doing, she said. You’re talking about taking

him away from what’s familiar. A man who's sometimes scared of his own shadow, of us, of the

dog. Claudette stared at Nelson through the window. Yesterday, she said, he told me bout how he

feels like he’s all alone on the top of a mountain in the middle of a storm and he shouts and

shouts but nobody can reach him. Crying so hard he could hardly talk. Day before that, he told

me calm as could be that he was thinkin about jumping off the roof. She shrugged. Today, he

wants to get drunk. He tells stories. He fades in and out. Best thing you can do is take what you

can get.

Jimmy fought the urge to throw the dish he was holding. He set it down and pressed his

palms to the scarred maple countertop. More to the point then, he said, controlling his voice. He

raised me, Claud. He gave up plenty.

Claudette opened the cabinet and stacked the clean dishes inside. Can’t tell you what to

do, she said. Think it over. The screen door slammed.

Jimmy watched the kitchen door, but Nelson didn’t come.

Goodnight, Jimmy called.

The stairs creaked, and then the floorboards above them.

I’m gonna give him every good moment I can, said Jimmy.

Afternoon fades to evening: sunset silhouettes the trees, and shadows reach like fingers

for the canoe. Jimmy watches a pelican swooping lazy circles through the air downriver. It folds

its wings and plummets down down down; the splash carries across the water. It’s then that

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Jimmy sees the fisherman. He elbows Claudette and raises his hand to point: a motorboat,

bobbing in the thick of plants downstream from a copse of trees. A man hauling his anchor up.

Claudette smiles and the skin of her lips cracks into white scales.

Hey! Jimmy calls. He waves his arms over his head. The fisherman looks their way and

raises a hand.

He thinks you’re saying hello, says Claudette. Help! she calls. She hooks a life-jacket

onto the blade of her paddle and holds it up. Help!

The canoe lurches. Claudette drops the paddle and life-jacket overboard; she catches

herself on the edge of the canoe, and they tip so they’re almost level with the water. Jimmy falls

to his knees, trying to sway against the boat and balance them. He tips forward and stares into

the water and sees it: a large smear of shadow darting under the surface. Claudette crouches,

one hand on the middle bench. The lost life jacket tumbles along with the current.

Sit the fuck down, Claud, Jimmy says.

Claudette sits.

Jimmy peers across the water where the fisherman pulls the cord on his motor. He’s

coming, Jimmy says. Jimmy doesn’t know what he saw, but here is what his mind tells him: a

shadow moving like a storm cloud, the color of sheet metal and the shape of a nightmare. He

turns to Nelson. Everything’s fine, Jimmy says. That man’s gonna pick us up and before you

know it we’ll be back on the porch with your nasty old dog and you’ll have another story to tell.

Uncle Nelson looks at Jimmy. His eyes, clear — sharp and sad. All right, Jimmy, he says.

The light is fading fast, but the fisherman’s out there, moving against the current and

closer every moment. Jimmy waves his paddle in the air to feel like he’s helping; they wait for

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seconds that feel like hours. The droning of the motor grows louder and Jimmy says, Here he is,

here we go.

Jimmy keeps his eyes trained on the thickening darkness and reaches out, squeezes

Claudette’s hand. The boat heaves again, more gently this time. A splash. Jimmy will not think

about what’s in the water.

The fisherman’s voice calls hullo and Jimmy catches a length of rope thrown from the

motorboat. Claudette screams and screams and tugs Jimmy’s arm. He turns and sees Nelson’s

shoes on the floor of the boat. Nelson is gone and ripples spread over the surface of the river,

bubbles breaking through their center. Jimmy dives: the water’s cool and his clothes billow

round him, his shoes are lead weights and his hands reach and reach.

They left at first light. Fog lay over the water and sunlight dappled the riverbank; woody

roots and tufts of grass sprouting from the mud. Shallow water lapped the sides of the canoe.

Jimmy tucked the cooler and the tackle box under the benches. He lay the rods on the floor of the

boat. Nelson whistled the old coonhound over and tied it to a length of rope hanging from a live

oak. Scooted the water bowl closer.

What’d you decide? Jimmy called up to the porch.

I’m coming, said Claudette. She turned the bolt in the front door and put the key under

the frog sculpture. When she got to where Jimmy waited, she hugged him. Jimmy squeezed her

shoulder and smiled.

The three of them climbed on board and Jimmy pushed them off the bank. Mister

engineer, Nelson sang, Let a poor man ride the blind. Said I wouldn’t mind it fellow, but you

know this train ain’t mine, you’s a cruel fireman, you’s a lowdown engineer.

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There is no burial for Nelson Barrow because there is no body to bury. Jimmy has a

plaque engraved and laid on the ground beside his mother’s. He does this in private and without

ceremony. Felix Arthur comes by the house a few days later with a bunch of lilies and a stiff-

armed hug.

Nice of you to come, Felix, Jimmy says.

Of course, Felix says. Of course. He shakes his head and shifts from foot to foot. You

feelin okay Jimmy? Claud said you had a pretty close call out there.

Do you remember, Jimmy says, a fishing trip you took with Lyle and Jimmy years back?

The time ya’ll saw a shark down in the gulf?

Felix meets Jimmy’s eye and wrinkles his forehead. No, Jimmy, he says. The three of us

never made it to the gulf together. And the closest thing I ever saw to a shark was an outsized

catfish.

Jimmy nods, then makes excuses; he hurries Felix out. The old coonhound skulks around

and finally settles underneath the porch.

When evening falls, Claudette and Jimmy sit in the rockers and watch the stars spin up

over the river. They play records and let the thin ghosts of songs drift away downstream.

123

HOW TO LEAVE A MARK

(For the Record)

(On Tape)

It goes like this:

It’s 2005 at the drive-in theater, and Emmy’s outside by herself. When she plugs the

floodlight into the extension cord, a yellow beam pours over a card table. On the card table is a

cookie sheet, and a giant wine glass that catches the light and throws it back. There’s a bucket of

baseballs sitting on the gravelly pavement of the sidewalk and a lumpy plastic bag beside it.

Emmy walks around and touches everything, and in her head she says, This is how Ramona

touches her hair before she leaves for a date, a charm to hold everything in place. Emmy’s

stomach tightens. Lately, she’s been having strange dreams about Ramona. Behind Emmy’s set,

a bare bulb flickers over the door to the women’s restroom and Emmy makes a mental note to

unscrew it before they film.

Emmy’s Nana sold the drive-in theater almost a month ago and moved from Memphis to

an assisted living center in Louisiana. The apartment above the theater lobby has been Emmy’s

home for fifteen years, the fields of barren asphalt, the projection reels and sugary food that left

her sick and buzzy and always a little pudgy.

She’s glad her Nana will get a rest. Much-needed, Emmy tells herself. She remembers

being a little girl, watching her Nana open plastic compartments in the morning and scoop pills

into her mouth: tablets and capsules with bands of colors and numbers like secret codes. Emmy

would watch her, and then she’d swallow hard candies whole and pretend they were her own

medicine. She’d watch her Nana nap and try not to blink, telling herself rules for making sure her

Nana would wake up: do not touch the phone in the office; do not hide behind cars to hear the

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wet sounds of teenagers kissing; do not climb the ladders on the sides of the screens; do not

undress without putting plastic tea cups on the winking glass door knobs; do not talk about Mom

and Dad; do not talk about Wendy. Sometimes Emmy has nightmares: thick violet pulses of light

and sound that ache in her eardrums — the smell of turpentine, her Nana’s voice.

Emmy adjusts the camcorder on a tripod to the right of the floodlight. She will drive to

Louisiana tomorrow to see her Nana. Then twenty hours to Tucson where she’ll teach art classes

to high school kids. She’ll find somewhere to live with clean white walls and empty, odorless air.

She looks at her watch, an old Timex of her dad’s. It reads nine forty-five.

The door to the theater lobby is sticky with years of sweat and sugar. They didn’t ever

clean much. Emmy runs her hands across the handle and pushes it open. Mason’s behind the

counter and he asks if she wants popcorn.

“Please.” She goes behind the counter and slides open the glass behind the concession

stand and pulls out a box of Zours. All the food was packed up when the theater closed, but she

and Mason went to Walgreens earlier and stocked up on the theater boxes. They brought the

microwave down from the apartment and set it up in the lobby.

A bag of Orville Redenbacher whirs in circles in orange light. Emmy stares at her

reflection in the door. This morning she braided her hair and piled it into two buns on either side

of her head, one blue one pink like candy floss. For years, she’s been cultivating an aesthetic that

she terms homeless-rainbow-chic, and she wonders how it will translate out west. In her head she

sees adobe. Suguaro cacti and ground squirrels. She printed pictures off Google onto glossy

paper, dipped some of them in vinegar and silver nitrate, imposed her face on top of them and

stored them in a sealed manila envelope.

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In Arizona the air will be dry; it will suck the spit from her mouth. She pulls a gold bobbi

pin out of her hair and shoves it back in at a better angle. Outside, it starts to rain.

“Where’s Ramona?” Emmy says.

“On the way.”

Ramona is always late and Emmy suspects she changes her clothes a lot. “Kevin?” she

asks.

“He’ll be here ten thirtyish, when he gets off work.”

“I was kind of hoping he’d bail.” Emmy pops another Zour in her mouth, sucking the

candy coating off the gelatin capsule. “It’s good I guess though. He’ll probably be fine with

being the processor.”

“Why don’t you just tell him you’re done with him? He has to sort of know anyway.”

“Doubt it. Kevin is a hopeless romantic,” says Emmy, “with a limited imagination. He’ll

figure it out once I’m gone.” Mason comes to stand beside her and she leans on his shoulder,

pushing his blond curls out of her way with the crown of her head. The rain ripples down

windows and distant thunder rolls across the lot. When it rains, the musty smell that permeates

the air grows stronger. Emmy practices missing it.

The timer on the microwave sounds.

“Let’s get started without them,” Emmy says.

(Or maybe it went like this): Ramona was getting ready to meet them at the theater

because it was Emmy’s last night in town, but more because Mason had asked her to come and

the truth was that while Emmy was great — Emmy was fun and things happened when you were

with her, but she was also selfish and, let’s face it, kind of a bitch — Ramona loved Mason from

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the soles of her feet to her eyes that brimmed and overflowed when she saw life lay him low —

in a way that was embarrassing for everyone, she knew. But she still wondered if he might look

at her in the early dark of tomorrow morning, in the taillights of Emmy’s moving truck, like he

had when Ramona climbed out of her parents truck and moved into the house next door to his.

They had been nine then, colt-thin and clean.

Ramona’s family had just moved from the outskirts of Philadelphia to Memphis, and

Ramona was skeptical about what her cousin had told her was the rotten heart of the bible belt.

Ramona did not know what that meant but the sentiment hit home. When she stepped out of the

cab of the truck the air filled her lungs like warm mist and stopped her short. Surely this was not

how it would be all summer. Damp settled over her face.

The house was a cottage with an off-kilter porch and it was larger than it looked from the

front. Quaint, her mother had said when Ramona showed her the picture. Next door, a boy was

squatting over a sprinkler, the spray billowing up around his shorts. He must have felt her

watching him because he looked up and caught her eye.

“It’s hot,” he said. There was a toddler sitting in the grass nearby.

Ramona got her duffel off the front seat. She tucked her pillow that smelled like car ride

under her other arm and climbed the porch steps.

“It’s hot,” she said, when her dad came out of the kitchen. He hit the power button on a

window unit. It rattled and a wave of musty air whooshed over Ramona’s face.

“Mom’s house has central air,” said Ramona.

Her dad nodded and walked away.

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Ramona brushed mascara across just her upper lashes — subtlety was key — and she

slipped her legs into black cigarette jeans, pulled a sweatshirt over her head and let it hang off

one shoulder. She glanced in the mirror on her way out the door and tucked a strand of hair

behind her ear.

In the car, she listened to anthems from the good old days when she and Mason were still

young enough (just barely) to stay over at each other’s houses, falling asleep on the floor side-

by-side in the ghostly glow of the television, and sometimes they’d wake just a little closer than

they’d started, limbs touching or once — just once — twined together. Those were in the days

before he met Emmy and gave up on peeling back life’s layers — settled for a cloak of pills and

cynicism.

Ramona flicked on her windshield wipers. They needed to be replaced and she could

barely see through the smeared rain. She waited for traffic to pass, wondering what it was exactly

that she was supposed to be doing tonight. All she knew was that Emmy needed to sort through a

bunch of video tapes before she left. Some unfinished project from art school that just had to be

completed in Memphis if it was going to be “authentic,” if it was going to have “a localized

center of gravity.” Emmy had told her so in paragraphs-long texts. But no real information on

what that meant Ramona had to do, which was typical: Emmy didn’t frame things in terms of

other people.

Ramona drove down a sad back road to the driveway, a pole with a marquee at the top,

the letters disarranged, a model Volkswagon spinning at the top.

She wound her way down to the gate. The robotic arm had been left up for her. That, at

least, was thoughtful. Ramona idled past the empty ticket booth, covering the brake with her bare

foot and peering inside. There was a clean square of vinyl where the register had been, a pen

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with no cap that had probably dried out already. Emmy used to bring them here when she was

sixteen and Ramona and Mason were thirteen, and they’d smoke stolen cigarettes and huff glue

out of paper bags and Ramona associated the booth with nausea and growing loneliness. Emmy

had always had the run of things, since the first day she’d followed Ramona and Mason home

after school, planting herself in Mason’s living room like she’d always been there. Her

grandmother wasn’t up for much parenting after Emmy’s folks died. Emmy had come in like a

storm and made Ramona boring.

Ramona drove down a chute of aluminum siding that led to the different screens. The

chutes creeped her out, like a shanty town labyrinth, big red signs labeled EXIT pointing

directions in which you couldn’t actually drive. As soon as you got on the property you drove

into a fog of stink that filled your eyes and mouth but for some reason never clung to your

clothes once you left. Ramona couldn’t imagine growing up here with just an angry sick old

lady, stranded.

Ramona parked. The orange and white face of Emmy’s Uhaul stood out against the dirty

brick of the lobby, the blue paint of the awning faded to grey, a flickering lightbulb with moths

fluttering around it. The smell was stronger here. There was a camera set up outside and a table.

Ramona wrapped the sleeve of her sweatshirt around her hand and pushed open the sticky

lobby door.

“Hello?” she said. The door hissed closed behind her. The lobby looked like a body after

an organ harvest: everything stripped to the shell with messy pieces left behind. Faded linoleum

like greying skin. A few boxes of candy collapsed onto their sides under the counter. A

microwave, door hanging open, perched on top of the popcorn machine like a parasitic twin. A

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few movie posters leaning against the walls like they thought they were going somewhere when

Emmy left. Like they thought they weren’t disposable.

Ramona reached behind the counter for a box of milk duds (her favorite). There was a

post-it on them with Emmy’s handwriting on it:

“Eat me.”

Emmy’s room upstairs is empty except for a few lawn chairs, a beanbag chair, a cooler,

five white milk crates lined up against the wall, and a TV. A ceiling fan with brass fixtures spins

and clicks. For fifteen years, Emmy has fallen asleep watching that fan, the glow from her lava

lamp glancing off the brass, her watch ticking lazy seconds in her ear.

The walls and floors are covered in red carpeting that tints the light and stands out

through the white diamond weave of the milk crates. The crates are filled with VHS tapes, strips

of masking tape stuck to their sides, labeled in neat black print.

“Where do you want to start?” Mason says.

He’s jittery, rubbing his hands together, making Emmy nervous. “Second crate,” she

says. “Then move left. I finished the first one last night.”

Mason flips through the tapes, and grabs one labeled City Thrift 3/1995. “How long did it

take you?” he says.

Emmy plugs in the TV — white with rabbit ears and a built-in VCR. She got it for her

ninth birthday. I know you miss them, Nana had said. She’d given Emmy a box of home movies

of her with her parents and sister and left Emmy alone the rest of the night. Emmy had watched

them through once then crushed them, put the pieces in the lobby trashcan. Years later, she’d still

find little shards of black plastic behind her bed.

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“I guess twelve hours?” Emmy says. “I lost track of time. Watched a lot of birthday

parties.”

“Find anything good?”

Emmy shakes her head. “There was one lady nodding behind her kids piñata. Eyes

closed, totally wasted. It wasn’t right though. No way to tell where they were.” Emmy has been

collecting video tapes from thrift stores and garage sales for six months. She’s rummaged

through cabinets in strangers’ dens, gone hunting at parties like she’d once dug through

bathrooms for percs and lortabs. She was looking for a perfect, immortalizing moment. Then

Kevin would eat the film, shit it into the wine glass, and she’d finish the project that Memphis

College of Arts had vetoed: the thesis of her Memphis life. When she’d drawn up the plans her

professor had handed them up with a scribbled note: You are not as clever as you think.

Mason nods, turns the lights off and slides the tape into the TV. Static scrolls down and

around, over the picture: a polar bear in a scarf, his paw wrapped around a glass Coke bottle,

guzzling sugar and bubbles. There are footsteps on the stairs outside Emmy’s room and the door

opens; a wedge of light shines into the room and there is Ramona, backlit and rail thin.

“Hi,” Ramona whispers.

Emmy holds a finger to her lips and Mason points at the lawn chair beside him.

The screen goes black and white credits play. Joe Cocker sings, I get by with a little help

from my friends. A montage of the moon landing, a kid in his backyard, choppers in Vietnam.

The fan above them rattles and shakes.

“It’s The Wonder Years,” says Mason. “Series finale.” He pulls a pack of cigarettes out

of his jacket pocket, shakes one out and lights it. “Fast forward?” he says. “I’ve seen it, there’s

nothing good.”

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“You can’t smoke in here,” Emmy says, as though it matters anymore. Mason flips her

off and pulls a pill bottle out of his back pocket, chews up a white tablet. Emmy holds out a hand

for one. She pushes the little arrow button below the VCR slot and the show jerks past, then into

a Star Trek episode and then just static.

Mason fishes a beer from the cooler and cracks it open.

At first, Emmy didn’t want to fast forward at all, but she changed the rules when she

realized how many of the tapes were just recordings of old TV shows. Nothing original. She

needs to find the right moment before she leaves and the theater’s leveled.

The screen goes blue, and the rewind hums on.

“How many of these have you watched?” Ramona says.

“That was the first,” says Emmy.

“The first of the night,” Mason corrects, holding up his drink in a one-sided toast. He

hands Emmy another tape.

“It really wasn’t the virgin thing,” Emmy says. They’ve gone through five tapes, half a

pack of smokes and a six pack a Pabst. “I could handle the no sex, I think, but Kevin’s kind of a

pussy, and he’s really into healthfood. We’d go to bed, and I’d want him to leave so I could

watch porn and eat candy.” She opens another beer. “Plus he kept calling me an angel.”

Ramona snorts and lights a cigarette. Emmy’s lying with her head in Ramona’s lap while

Ramona combs her fingers through Emmy’s hair giving her neck shivers. Emmy remembers the

photographs of Arizona, and thinks about adding Ramona’s face to one of her cactus pictures.

“I think,” Mason says, “you have a problem with intimacy.”

“Mason, what’s the closest relationship in your life, the most meaningful?” says Ramona.

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Emmy tightens up when she hears this because it is getting close to something she’d

rather not talk about. They all know Mason’s little sister is a little off.

“Max. Max is my closest friend.”

“Max is a Lhasa Apso,” says Ramona. “If your best friend is gonna be a dog at least get a

lab like a normal American.”

Emmy hates these conversations like she hates talking about other people’s weight or

boyfriends. Ramona just making noise, not even thinking about what it means. “Have ya’ll heard

of Marina Abramovic?” she says.

“Not ever once,” says Mason.

“Of course you haven’t,” says Emmy. “When she and her boyfriend broke up, they

walked from opposite ends of a big chunk of the great wall of China. They met in the middle,

and hugged.” She takes a drag of her cigarette and she taps ash onto the carpet. “And they never

saw each other again.”

“There!” says Ramona. She hits the faulty pause button a few times, then rewind.

Emmy hasn’t been watching the screen and she sits up, a wave of heat washing over her.

The picture shudders and slides backwards, a man scuttles across the bottom of the

screen. In the background a carousel spins in reverse, a dragon bobs up and down and some kid

sucks his words back in.

Ramona hits play and ups the volume and calliope music plays.

“Why does this look so familiar?” Emmy says.

“It’s Liberty Land,” says Mason. “Look, there’s Alpine Slopes.” He points at a ride

barely visible in the background. “I loved that ride. It, uh, would go backwards and your stomach

would like—” He holds out his arms like he’s bracing himself.

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Emmy watches Mason watch the screen, the light reflecting off his eyes.

“What’s Liberty Land?” says Ramona.

“We used to have an amusement park,” Mason tells her, not taking his eyes off the TV.

“They tore it down a couple years after you move here I guess.”

Emmy thinks: It’s the carousel. Gold enamel, pink seed-bulb light, a zebra’s bared teeth

and turquoise reins, candy-slick and shining. But no, it’s the boy on the dragon, hands white-

knuckled on the golden pole that juts from the base of the dragon’s spine. The man tracking

across the screen, grim-faced and cut off at the chest, tonguing cotton candy off a paper cone.

“Yeah.” She drops the butt of her cigarette in an empty beer can and looks at Mason who

remains transfixed by the screen. “It could be this.”

A knock at the door, and Kevin comes in, his khaki jacket splattered with rain, bangs

plastered and stringy across his forehead. “What’d I miss?”

“Should we put it in food?” says Ramona.

“What do you mean?” says Emmy.

“Like, mix it with some peanut butter or something to help it go down?”

Mason shook his head. “I think he’ll choke. Max always chokes when I give him too

much peanut butter.”

“I don’t have any anyway,” said Emmy. “Just ball it up.”

They’re standing outside, squinting in the harsh floodlight, breathing the musty not quite

urine, not quite mold smell.

“Are you sure it’ll pass in time?”

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“No,” says Emmy. “Well, I’d bet by morning it will for sure. I’d rather it still be dark. I

think this’ll help.” She holds up the plate of steamed veggies and a jug of juice she brought out

with them.

“So what’s the plan here exactly?” says Ramona.

“He eats the tape, shits it out into the glass and then we fill up around it,” says Emmy.

She got the novelty wine glass off Ebay. She’d wanted something bigger but time was a factor

and apparently people weren’t in the habit of making fifty-gallon glasses — it had to be glass.

“Fill it with what?” says Ramona.

“With whatever.”

“Can I jack off in it?” says Mason.

Kevin frowns and steps back. Folding his arms over his chest, he leans against the door to

the women’s restroom. He tries to catch Emmy’s eye, but she avoids it, making sure the glass is

centered on the cookie tray. She filled the glass halfway earlier and Sharpied on a hash mark, and

now she turns it so the line won’t show on the tape. “Please do,” she says. “Literally, whatever

you want. And then we can top it off with the hose to the halfway line and hit it with the

baseballs until it breaks.” The light will wash them all out. She doesn’t think the tape will show

too much clearly, except the glass breaking. She tears a plastic bag open with her teeth. It’s full

of pink, naked king cake babies. She spreads them in the cookie sheet at the base of the wine

glass. “They’ll be inundated.”

Ramona leans against the door to the lobby next to Kevin, folding her arms. “I don’t get

it.”

“That’s fine,” says Emmy, heaping some of the babies into one corner of the tray. In her

head she says, of course you don’t. Her skin doesn’t feel like the right sized skin. She motions

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with a finger for Kevin to come over, and hands him the wadded up strip of magnetic tape from

her pocket.

He drops it into his mouth like a pill — gags and snorts, then coughs it back out. “I

can’t.”

“Here,” says Emmy. She hands him a half full beer. “Try again.” She’s pretty sure she

snipped out the carousel section of tape. She hopes so.

Kevin chokes it down. His eyes fill and water. “And now?”

“We wait,” says Emmy. In Kevin’s gut, the carousel and the dragon and the little boy and

the grim-faced man are churning, beginning to dissolve. She wonders if they knew each other, if

the man had gotten cotton candy for his kid and was on his way back to him, about to hitch on a

smile when the camera cut off. Emmy’s fingertips tingle. “Let’s climb one of the screens,” she

says. She hands Kevin the tray of veggies. “Get this down first though.”

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” says Kevin.

“That could work too,” says Emmy. “But it’s not my preference.”

The rain has slowed to a drizzle and the rungs of the ladder on the side of the screen are

coated with slick grime, like roads wetted after a draught.

“Is there a ledge at the top like with billboards?” says Mason.

“We’ll find out,” says Emmy.

“I feel really sick,” says Kevin.

Emmy pats his shoulder and tells him there’s Sprite in the apartment if he wants to go

back for it. He shrugs her off.

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The climb is pretty easy. Ramona slips once but catches herself. She asks what exactly

they’re doing and Mason tells her to shut up, but he sounds uncertain too, and Emmy starts to

feel itchy and agitated. They hoist themselves onto a ledge at the top of ladder, Mason gripping

Emmy’s hand and forearm, pulling her up behind him. They sit. They catch their breath.

Emmy can see the interstate and the flashing colored lights of Gold Club gentleman’s

club. A back street that dead ends into a Baptist church. The scent of the drive-in doesn’t reach

this high. Instead it smells like rain and gas fumes from the traffic roaring by, looping the city,

their taillights melting into a red-yellow stream.

“It’s sort of beautiful,” says Kevin. No one answers. Mason pulls the pill bottle from his

pocket and Emmy hears him crunching. She turns her head as far as she can in either direction,

scanning the panorama, back and forth, back and forth, until her vision blurs and the world tilts

and she remembers spinning in the front yard of her first house, hands clasped around her sister

Wendy’s, both of them leaned back, their faces the only clear thing in a nauseous swirl. Kevin

grabs her shoulder, and she lists to one side, bumping shoulders with Mason. “Stop it,” Kevin

says. Emmy tries to remember if Kevin has any brothers or sisters. Which direction his house is.

Water hangs in the air and sinks into their clothes, clings to Emmy’s eyelashes.

Without talking about it they start back down, Kevin going first and complaining of

stomach cramps, Emmy following behind, then Mason, then Ramona. The rain picks up as they

climb, and Emmy worries about Mason, who’s gone glass-eyed and wobbly.

Ten feet from the bottom Emmy feels a reverb through the ladder and hears Kevin’s land

with a yelp. “Shit,” she says. She wonders if the fall will make him puke and climbs down a few

more rungs then jumps, landing beside him. “Are you ok?”

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Kevin sits up, ashen-faced. He holds his left arm across his chest. “I think I broke my

arm,” he says.

Ramona and Mason come up beside them and Ramona tells Kevin to hold his arm out for

her to look at. She has lifeguard training, she says. She takes his arm in her hand and asks him to

do different things with his fingers and they all watch his face go grey. “He needs to go to the

ER,” Ramona says.

“I can’t leave,” says Emmy, looking from one of her friends to the next, feeling the

desperation on her own face. “I don’t have enough time.”

Ramona glares at her and Kevin avoids her eye. Mason rubs the back of his hand over his

nose and sniffs, rocking from foot to foot.

Ramona stares at him for a second like she’s hoping he’ll meet her eye. “I’ll take him,”

she says. She heads back to the lobby, tells Kevin she’ll be right back with her keys. Mason

offers to help Kevin to Ramona’s car but Kevin waves him off, struggles to his feet and walks

away.

Mason snorts and hawks a pasty loogie.

Look. It’s like this: Emmy watches Kevin walking slouch-shouldered and head down

through the parking lot, his clothes wet and patchy, the yellow spotlight of the parking lot

wavering over puddles. And a year later she’ll be home for a wedding and see him and his kid

(that she didn’t know about) at the grocery store and they’ll nod at each other, Emmy’s hand

frozen on a box of Easy Mac. And this moment — the parking lot, Kevin’s splotchy receding

figure, her dim sense of Mason wavering beside her, and the warming knowledge that Ramona

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was inside, in her home — it will slam into Emmy like a crashing wave and when she gets back

to her friend’s shabby apartment, she’ll cry and she won’t know why.

Kevin’s by the car, looking like he might puke and Emmy turns away from him. And the

lobby door opens and closes and the bathroom light that Emmy forgot to unscrew flickers and

dies. Ramona stalks past her and Mason without saying anything. She helps Kevin into her

Honda.

Emmy wipes her nose and swallows down the bitter taste in the back of her throat. She

stares at the Exit sign and thinks of Kevin riding away with her carousel, and her stomach

clenches with regret. She wonders how long it takes for the film to be digested, what it looks like

during. Gone, all at once? Or a creeping dissolution, a filigree of moments, attenuated till they

break?

“I guess I should get going too,” says Mason.

Emmy turns, stands on her tip toes and kisses Mason’s head, tucks a strand of hair behind

his ear. “No,” She tucks her face into the crook of his neck and feels his pulse flutter against her

nose. “Come upstairs,” she says. “Stay here.”

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ANGIOSPERMS AND OTHER DEAL BREAKERS

The day before the cave-in, Leslie talked to the waving man for a record thirty minutes.

She took a seat on the courthouse steps and petted his collie’s long pointed head while the

waving man told her stories. He rambled about the good ole days, when a squirrel could treetop-

leap from Overton Park to Germantown and never hit the ground. Leslie nodded. I know, she’d

say every once in a while, or, Mmm, mhm. She considered buying a brush for the waving man’s

dog and offering to clip the mats behind its ears. The courthouse steps were pleasantly warm and

Leslie leaned against a column of smooth stone while she listened to the waving man. Cars

inched passed them down Adams Avenue and people in medium-nice clothes filed out of the

courthouse, down the steps, and across the street, keys jangling. Everybody else was ready to get

home, but in the weeks since her husband Alec died Leslie had made a habit of pausing here on

her walk back from work, lingering.

The waving man lifted his hand to the passing cars and bodies and sprinkled in Hellos at

a reasonable rate. He’d done this for years, was a fixture here as much as the courthouse statues

on their big stone thrones. There had been a special homage to him in the Commercial Appeal to

celebrate his eightieth birthday. Last week he’d asked Leslie to please start calling him Glen.

Do you even have any idea, the waving man said now, what this place was like before the

epidemic?

Hmm, Leslie said. Mhm.

When the sun sank behind the courthouse and orange light seeped around it and between

the buildings, Leslie stood, wiped her hands on the black polyester of her work skirt and said to

the waving man: Goodnight, Glen. On her way home, she stopped into the corner grocery and

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selected a box of frozen chicken piccata. Last minute, she grabbed a discounted and fading

philodendron from the stand by the window, thanked the clerk who checked her out, and swung

the door open, the little bell ringing goodbye to her as she made her way to her empty condo.

Leslie could not say for certain when Alec’s trouble had started, when his body had

started unraveling, but it had announced itself five months ago in the form of a paralysis of his

right eye — one day it froze up, stuck aiming dead center. Half of the world blurred to blackness,

or so Leslie imagined. Leslie had gone to the eye doctor with him, a doctor who left them

waiting for what felt like hours in a room with stale air and silence, then come back in and said,

I’m sorry, I won’t be able to help you, and referred them to a neurologist. The eye doctor

scribbled something in the chart that Leslie leaned forward and tried to read but couldn’t quite

make out. She imagined it said: Chronic lack of focus; recompense. They made an appointment

with the neurologist and bought Alec a patch from Walgreens. Later that night when he fell

asleep Leslie stayed up Googling. She clicked one link after another until she ended up on a site

about astral projection and forgot what she’d been doing. The neurologist provided them a

sympathetic smile and handful of analogies and a list of possible names for slow and

unpredictable degeneration, demylenation diseases. Alec’s nerves were shedding their clothes

and going rogue in a synaptic bacchanal. It was the next day things started getting wiggy: Leslie

watched Alec’s form shake and blur in front of her and reform itself into withered limbs and dark

angry eyes. She kept quiet. They relegated his diagnosis to the great swaths of their short past

together that neither of them spoke of. They ran errands.

Tell me how we slept at the La Quinta, Alec had said to her one night.

What? said Leslie. She pulled a yellow leaf of a plant on the counter and tossed it in the

kitchen garbage.

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The time in Atlanta, when we first started dating.

We slept facing each other. Leslie picked off another leaf. With your arms around me. We

woke up in the same position we fell asleep.

You used to like it, Alec said. Telling me stories about the beginning. Leslie looked at

him. His gut pressed against his polyester golf shirt and his hair was grey at the temples. His

cheeks had sagged when she wasn’t looking. She looked at his hands, holding desperately onto

each other. The ridges of his fingernails and his torn cuticles. She saw, in her mind, the air wave

and quiver and his hands tremble, turning ancient and liver-spotted, gnarled bird bones draped in

crepe paper. She turned away and ran cold water over a bowl of frozen chicken breasts, then

filled a glass and poured it over the dying plant. She heard Alec thumping up the stairs. A muddy

trail oozed from underneath the planter and over the edge of the counter. Leslie stared at it for a

moment then went and lay down on the couch. She dug the remote from between the couch

cushions and settled with her head on her arm. She turned the TV to the gem shopping network

and watched a manicured hand turn an amethyst from side to side, catching the light like a

hypnotist. The hand shook a little like early stages of Parkinson’s.

The morning of the cave in Leslie was running very late for work and she didn’t notice

the ground rumbling like a waking beast beneath her feet as she hurried down the sidewalk. She

held her phone close to her face and shielded the screen against the glare to read the anxious

messages from her receptionist, Pam, about the ranting of Dewey Carver, her eight am

appointment who suffered from chronic back pain and a fragile ego. Dewey was apparently, at

this moment, taking great limping strides around the waiting room and threatening to sue if

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Leslie didn’t show up soon. She was still three blocks from the building that housed her

chiropractic clinic, about to cross the street in front of the courthouse.

Leslie glanced up at the crosswalk light, noting the little white walking man in the box

and a crowd of police at the courthouse steps, then looking back down at her phone. In her head

she drafted an excuse to Pam; her thumbs hovered over the screen, and she stepped into the street

to cross, and someone shouted: Back! Get back! Leslie looked up and saw a jagged lip of asphalt

eight feet in front of her, a gaping hole in the middle of the street. At the bottom of the hole lay a

pile of rubble and the glancing mouth of a tunnel that ran beneath the street. A thin stream of

water flowed out from under the rubble, into the chute of concrete and away into shadow and

darkness. She skirted the hole widely and crossed the street, drawn by instinct to the crowd

already waiting there.

Men in uniforms moved Leslie back, onto the sidewalk and away from the curb. They

strung yellow caution tape between lampposts. Leslie craned to see into the hole: there was no

telling what was down there — a secret buried city beneath the living one, alive with ghosts and

puffs of air scented from the world above. She caught sight of Glen, alone at a spot of sidewalk

by the curb, prime real estate for hole gazing: Leslie maneuvered through the waiting bodies to

stand beside him. A cop walked to the edge of the hole and dropped a rock in, watching it fall.

Leslie listened but she couldn’t hear the rock land over the voices of the crowd. A hallway under

the city, Leslie thought, with big curved doors that opened into secret labs or closets full of

costumes or torture chambers.

Storm drain caved in, said Glen.

Oh, Leslie said. Anybody hurt?

Don’t think so.

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Where’s Trixie?

Died, said Glen. Some kinda stroke.

Leslie reached out and took his hand, staring into the tunnel. Sorry, she said.

What can you do? said the waving man. She was an old dog. I just wish I could’ve taken

her to see the ocean first is all.

Leslie squeezed his hand and felt his bones slide under his skin. She said: I should get to

work.

Leslie walked back the way she’d come and called Pam at the office. She told her she

wouldn’t make in today — food poisoning, she said. Tell Dewey she’d comp his next two

sessions, and if that didn’t work threaten to call security. She called Alec’s cell and left a

message on his defunct voicemail, telling him about the cave-in.

Under the midnight light of the gibbous moon, and the gleam of streetlights in front of

the courthouse, Leslie stared into the hole, her eyes following the diluted beam from her head

lamp. She rubbed the slick nylon climbing rope between her thumb and forefinger, like she’d

done with the silky edges of her blanket when she was little. Her stomach fluttered like she was

on a first date.

She tied a rope around a concrete lamp pole and tugged, satisfied with the tension and the

muted snapping in her palm.

What are you doing?

Leslie jumped and turned around, still holding tight to the rope like she might fall. Alec

hovered just outside the sphere of light cast from the streetlamp. He wasn’t really there, she

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knew. He was in bed. He was deep underground in a crowded old cemetery, lying safe and sound

beside his father. He hadn’t felt her get up. Hadn’t heard her creeping down the stairs.

I want to see what’s down there, she told Not Alec.

Water. Algae. Lost sneakers.

Leslie fed the rope out and walked to the edge of the pit. I want to see.

You’ll get hurt.

She shrugged. I won’t, she said. Go home. She lowered herself over the edge like she had

once lowered herself into the pool in her parent’s backyard. When her feet found the pile of

rubble she switched her grip to the rope around her waist and found her balance. Through her

boot she felt the plate of rock she stood on shift and grind against the pieces beneath it. She

turned to face her rope and gave it another tug, leaning back to rest her weight on it. She felt her

way down, step by step. Every so often she turned her head and let the beam of her headlamp fall

over the mountain of rubble so she could check her trajectory, easing herself down the mildest

face, kicking gravel out behind her. A gentle splash: the rubber soles of her boots meeting the

thin stream coursing over the concrete.

Leslie took a big step back and set to undoing the knot around her waist. She left the end

of the rope trailing like a tongue into the puddle at the base of the rubble and set off into the

tunnel, following the wavering beam of her headlamp, and not looking back for Alec because she

almost knew he wasn’t there. It was surprisingly clean down here. There were water marks up

the wall and a faint musty smell. Pin points of light shone through manholes covers, wider beams

reaching from storm grates.

After a while Leslie came to a step: a six inch drop that led to a level stretch of concrete

about eight feet wide, and then another step, and another past that, further than the light reached.

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The water was slick ribbon down the center of the steps, widening and picking up speed, flashing

black and white as it hurried through the wavering light. Leslie heard a tinkling echo from up

ahead. Every once in a while the air whooshed and rattled around her: reverberations from the

passing traffic overhead.

She matched her footsteps to the rhythm of her breathing: one two three four in, one two

three four out. She thought about the times in the past months she’d tried to meditate: staring at a

candle flame and watching it wiggle, counting her breaths, feeling her lungs hitch with each

count and knowing she was missing the point. Leslie stopped short, standing on a sudden edge.

The walls of the tunnel fell away to empty space, a cavern before her like the inside of blacked

out snow globe. An empty cathedral. The traffic sounds swelled and resounded in the chamber.

Beams of artificial light fell through storm grates and lit fuzzy patches of the curved brick walls.

There was a pool in the chamber’s center and that’s where Leslie’s stream ended, joining the rest

of the leftover rain.

Leslie crouched down and shrugged off her backpack. She unzipped it, trying not to make

any noise. She pulled out a flop-necked soft bear that she’d taken from Alec’s father’s house

after his funeral. Then the crumpled wine-stained card-stock that was the menu from their first

date. Last a black egg shaped rock she’d pocketed from the beach on the last day of their

honeymoon. She arranged these things well back from the water at the edge of the floor and the

wall, then pulled out a Cliff bar, unwrapped it and ate it. She sat, facing the cavern at the edge of

the tunnel and listening to herself chew.

Then something splashed, not the tinkle trickle of the water joining the pool or the plop

of debris falling through a grate. Something with heft and intention was in the water.

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Who’s there? Leslie said. She shoved her trash into her bag, zipped it shut and stood. She

would not be afraid.

Just me, just me.

The voice was followed by a hand waving in the middle of the air, a pale and crinkled

palm rotating in the darkness. Then an arm and a rolled up denim sleeve. Leslie clicked on her

headlamp and trained it on the figure. He held his arm up to shield his eyes. Glen.

What are you doing down here? Leslie said.

Swimming.

Why are you in the tunnels at all? It isn’t safe.

Don’t you want to get in with me?

I think we should both go back up. Leslie said.

It feels good. It’s not too deep. He dipped his hand in the water then splashed it playfully

in Leslie’s direction.

She wiped a few drops from her face. I don’t swim.

Why’d you come to the pool then?

I wasn’t —

Just a toe. A little dip, It’ll feel good.

I have to go. Leslie shifted her bag and tightened the straps. You want a granola bar?

Glen shook his head in disappointment and sloshed away, his feet parting the water. Leslie

turned and hurried back the way she came.

On and on she trudged, retracing her steps through the tunnels. She turned off her

headlamp and felt her way along the smooth pounded concrete, beside the swatch of water that

rushed past her boots urged her to turn around, follow it back to the pool.

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She moved closer to the wall, not liking the exposed feeling of the center, thinking of

Glen’s voice coming at her out of the dark.

Her shoulder met something solid and painful. She held out a hand and felt for what

she’d hit: smooth rounded metal, joined to the wall. A ladder. She looked up and saw the eyes of

a manhole cover. It was quiet here, no rumble of traffic. Leslie climbed the ladder and pushed

against the cover. It gave a little then clanged back down. She lifted it again and hooked her

thumb through one of the holes, scooting it to the side. A crescent of light shined through and

glinted off the dark metal of the ladder. With a grating sound that echoed through the tunnel,

Leslie shoved the manhole cover over and out of sight; she hoisted herself to the surface.

She was in the middle of a brightly lit street she didn’t recognize. A chain link fence

abutted the sidewalk across from her. Behind the fence, a lot filled metal canisters propped

against each other. A rusty corrugated steel building stood behind them, AIRGAS, stenciled on

the side in foot-high letters. Across the street was another chain link fence topped with barbed

wire, and a maze of pipes and wires that sprouted like a jungle gym from a concrete square in the

middle of a field of patchy grass. A collie appeared from behind a narrow pipe and wiggled

under a hole at the bottom of the fence. It came and sat at Leslie’s feet, looking up at her and

panting.

Hi, Leslie said.

The dog turned and trotted down the street.

Trixie, Leslie said. She whistled and followed the dog down the street. Trixie, wait up,

she said. I’ll take you swimming. Let me — Let me take you to Glen! She jogged a little ways

after the dog but slowed and finally stopped. She took off her backpack, mostly empty now, and

fished her phone from the crumby bottom of it. She called for a cab.

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Leslie woke on the couch in the still dark of predawn. She had been sleeping here, nestled

in the corner of the sectional, since the weeks before Alec died, and it was here that she’d woken

up on the morning she found him, glassy-eyed in their bed next to a puddle of vomit and an

empty pill bottle. After the cab dropped her off last night she’d crashed out, still dressed, and had

dreamt Alec, crouched in the tree outside the window like a golem, pawing at the glass to be let

in. He whispered to Leslie that he had something to tell her and dream Leslie was reaching for

the window latch when she woke up. Now she wiped the sleep from her eyes, got up and went to

the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and did a cursory sniff of her armpits. She

moved the dying philodendron from the counter to the kitchen trash, then hurried out the door

and to the courthouse.

Glen was there. Leslie watched him from the far side of the street, half hiding behind a

board menu outside a coffee shop and feeling ridiculous in her hiking boots and spandex. Glen

stood alone at the base of the steps. One of his hands rose and fell in an automatic motion while

the other, the one accustomed to holding Trixie’s leash, twitched confusedly at his side. The rope

Leslie had tied to the lamppost the night before was missing.

Leslie ducked into the coffee shop and emailed Pam from her phone saying she’d be out

again today, ignoring the voicemails piled in her inbox, switching her ringer to silent.

She realized she was lurking, standing hunched over her phone in a corner, so she went to

the counter and ordered a latte and a ham sandwich and settled at table by the window. Next she

Googled real estate agencies, called the first name that came up and left a message about getting

her condo on the market. She pulled up a handful of blank tabs on the browser on her phone and

got to work: drafted listings to sell the TV, the car, the lawnmower Alec had insisted on getting

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for the patch of grass outside their back door. She searched for medium-sized dogs that would

travel well; she searched for buff young men, and women with hoops through their noses, and

tattoo designs that would match the curve of her hip well, and in one URL bar she just typed a

string of destinations so she wouldn’t forget all the places she needed to get to. When she

finished her sandwich she ordered another and took it across the street and put it in Glen’s

confused and twitching hand, which closed around it reflexively. What are you doing here this

time of day? Glen said. You look exhausted.

I’m not, Leslie said. Not at all. I wanted to see if I could meet you tonight, for a swim.

Glen nodded curiously and took a bite of his sandwich.