Still Lives

It was early March when the news from home first became worrying. “I’m nervous about leaving him when I go to London for a few days,” my mother said on the phone. This wasn’t itself unusual, but when she came back, he was very sick—bad, even for him. When she described the symptoms—fever, delirium, flushed cheeks—I could remember him in that same state when he’d had pneumonia nearly a year ago. Grim hospital wards, old machines, and dying men whose relatives were nowhere to be seen. It was always miserable, how lonely illness was. It always seemed chaotic as well, the edge of life, or death. Bed sheets falling off, nurses running around, people confused as to what they were doing there, why they felt this way.

He had nearly died then; not for the first time, the doctors said that it was incredible he survived, that they “were preparing for the worst.” When people tell you that so many times, and for so many years, it becomes hard to imagine that the worst can ever really happen. I began to feel idiotic for being scared of it, caught up in a strange emotional battle, where feeling scared seemed, in hindsight, like an overreaction, because the threat never fully appeared. The same prognosis was given and then withdrawn again and again and again.

I should have been happy he had lived through another scare, and yet I felt deflated and confused for having gone through so much grief only to be back at the default state of fear. Another few months became something taunting by the end, something weirdly unbearable. Time felt meaningless and tyrannical.

It was happening this time, though, even if it seemed unreal. While my mother was away, a family friend had gone to check on him. She had fed him dinner, looked after him, and made his last days comfortable and kind. Without that, he may have been dead when my mother returned. Instead, he was well enough to say that he didn’t need the hospital, although he did. He was taken in and the diagnoses given: pneumonia and stroke. Oncology did not explain the connection to his cancers. By this stage, he had over seventy tumors on his liver, in the bones of his spine and in his remaining kidney. They had worn him down, despite all his efforts, some seemingly endless reservoir of strength. I could not imagine this cycle of stoicism and resurrection ever failing.

—

The day before he died, I went to see an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe at the Grand Palais in Paris with my boyfriend, an Irish writer, Darran. At that time, I was living in Paris, while he was still back home in Ireland, and he’d visit regularly. He had arrived in Paris a few days earlier, and we’d been spending our time in museums and cafes, stretching out our free tickets and expensive espressos, to fill the frozen, bright days.

We went to the Mapplethorpe exhibition in the morning. I was reviewing it for a magazine. I knew my dad was ill, but I didn’t know quite how badly he had deteriorated. I was waiting to find out whether I needed to book flights back, whether it could really be that bad. Death loomed, though; I saw it in everything, everywhere. I tried to concentrate on work—I wanted to get as much finished as I could in case I had to leave Paris—but even my work was all about death, it turned out.

We took the Metro from Montmartre to the Grand Palais, an imposing building surrounded by decorative gardens and busy roads and police marching around. It was eerie and dark inside, like a mausoleum. Women in veils and latex, dying flowers and bowed heads. Fur and lipstick and Irish hair, props and faces lit to seem as blank as sculptures from Ancient Greece. A large white, minimal cross on the wall, next to all the other crucifixes and dying roses. A figure in a blank hood.

There were Polaroids that Mapplethorpe had taken in the 1970s, and then formal black and white portraits of the artist and his friends. He had created a system of iconography that embraced S&M and Catholicism at once, in this pursuit of true beauty. There were classical, sculptural nudes and arrangements of flowers. “I am looking for perfection in form,” he had said. ‘“I do that with portraits. I do it with cocks. I do it with flowers.” He lined up Saints and rent-boys, celebrities and Michelangelo. Striving for transcendence, perfection, and immortality, he had developed an aesthetic, spiritual code in these figures, flowers, and icons. He had reappropriated religious iconography to show how art and sex, for him, were his own religion. He had written a letter to Patti Smith: “I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together.” There was Robert and a skull, Robert in drag. Robert with a cigarette. Robert living with and dying from AIDS.

But his photographs betrayed none of these horrific struggles. Instead, they were an altar to his idols and ideals, beyond good and evil, beauty and ugliness, success and failure. He had used art to transcend, to go beyond struggle, to assert his own ideals in spite of the doubt he must have felt or experienced from other people. By transforming images of death, sex, and himself so that he triumphed, transcendent, by turning what seemed pornographic into a form in the language of Michelangelo, he sought redemption not only from personal, spiritual dilemmas, but from life itself.

His work is about death, I wrote down, sitting on a bench in front of some of his portraits, and reconciling with death. Redemption through art was a way of making peace with death. This central concern explains the sublime atmosphere of the exhibition, even as it feels like a graveyard or shrine. The nudes are so still that they cannot be alive and, of course, frozen in time and a photograph, they are not. The flowers seem to be placed as carefully as funeral arrangements. The little altar, with images of Jesus’ crucifixion, together with the lines and lines of photographs of Mapplethorpe’s friends and idols, complete the reconstruction of a fantastical funeral. He has reconciled with doubt, pain and death; he has created his own meticulously executed send-off.

—

We walked out of the exhibition, out of the darkness. Outside, the pond shone turquoise and shallow, with statues and tourists in the distance, and a froth of fine algae at the bottom. I sat on a chair by the pond and smiled and smiled, and Darran took a picture of me. We were both wearing black; I had a scarf with little skulls on it. I had not picked out these things intentionally.

I was surprised by the brightness of the sun outside, the fresh green of the gardens and trees we walked through, after the soft tones of marble and spot-lit flesh and bone. We walked on to the Jardins des Luxembourg, where the pathways were covered in fine cream gravel. I heard a strange noise as we walked that I couldn’t quite place—a lone cry—and looked around to see what it was. I saw a single black crow, seemingly oblivious to the people straying around, standing still on a spot of the lawn, continuing to make its odd, eerie cry, beak open, toward the sky. “Isn’t that creepy?” I said to Darran, and he nodded and we kept walking. It had seemed so incongruous there, in the green and the sun, as tourists in neutral travel clothes wandered by.

We had just come back from the exhibition when my mother phoned and told me how bad things were. “He’s not getting better,” she said. I had been so used to being told he was dying that it didn’t seem fully possible. But I booked flights to Scotland for the next day, anyway, in a daze. By the time we got home, he was gone.

—

In the week or so before the funeral, so many flowers were delivered that they took up every surface: lilies, their scent pervading over every other, white roses of various shapes and arrangements. They covered everything: a large dinner table, side tables, sideboards, a dresser, two desks. They arrived in cellophane and paper, with sad notes from friends. So much white, but occasionally some purple, from a thistle, the dark green stalks and long, winding leaves. When all the vases were used up, I found other things, jugs and glasses, to put them in. We bought a couple more vases. I took most of the leaves off the stems, cut them down, arranged them.

As they days went on, I plucked out the dead ones as they wilted, rearranged the bouquets with those flowers missing, merging them together. Cutting stalks, refilling water, bundling all of the cellophane and ribbons into rubbish bins. There was so much clearing up, cutting things away. I thought of Mapplethorpe, the flowers he had photographed. I imagined the actual process that had gone into them. How many flowers had he bought, for a photograph of one? What did all the waste look like, scattered around his studio? What did he do with the leftover flowers, and the flowers he’d finished photographing, when he was done with them? Or did he just discard them, decadently, or busily, efficiently, entirely focused on the art at the end? Why had he not photographed more dead flowers, decaying things, why this stark purity?

I thought of those flowers again—his entwined white tulips and his star-like orchids and his sensual, begging lilies. The dark and light, the harmony and the desire, pushing through. I thought of them over and over, as they flickered in my mind, and somehow, it was consoling.

—

A lot of the flowers had already started to wilt by the time of the funeral, which was later than usual because Easter had made the church’s schedule busy. The service itself was to be in the afternoon, but the cremation, which was to be more private, was in the morning. Most of the family did not go, but I went with my mother and aunt and uncle, in a black car, over the Tay to Dundee. The crematorium was in a part of the city I hadn’t been to before, in a well-kept garden, surrounded by gray stone tenements on the hill.

I went with my mother inside, and we sat near the aisle, on the left. I noticed the coffin placed on the altar, raised up. The priest gave a short service, the words of which passed over me, as I kept looking at the patterns of color on his robes, so I would not look at the coffin.

I held her hand as he sunk beneath the ground to be burned in a chamber. It seemed like some somber magic spell—a clunky disappearing act. So strange, I kept thinking, that there were only moments between his body being there, solid and still, and then gone to ashes. A lever pulled, it sounded like it, a steel door open and then shut, a measured fall, a letting down. A camera shutter, shut. A man, gone. A man down.

—

Over the next few days, the last of the cut flowers died off and were discarded, and the place felt emptier for it. I couldn’t take it all in at once, so I began just drawing. Robert Mapplethorpe took me by the hand, and perhaps my father did too—gave me lilies and roses, morbid confetti.

I tried to capture the flowers before they died, too. I drew each one, recording their gradual wilting, as they fell.

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Stanley’s Bowl

Every spring my husband and I discuss
the long-dead animals in the Cadbury commercial
running since we were kids: pig, cat, lion, turtle,
bunny. The wrong animals audition
to become the clucking bunny. This is the American
symbol of Easter, which I didn’t grow up with,
except for jelly beans and chocolate. (When my father
was a boy he would use a chocolate bunny’s head
as a goblet for his milk.) Instead I had the ten plagues,
parsley dipped in saltwater, buttered and salted matzoh,
opened door. Judaism is all about the symbols
and the stories and the food and the funny-sad. The minor key.
The tragic violin and exuberant clarinet, the klezmer absurd.

Vegetarians, my family put a Milk-Bone on our seder plate.
The Passover seder is the story of enslavement and then freedom,
and never forgetting that there were those who hated us
from whom we had to flee. And that when oppressors die,
we must not rejoice in their human pain. Sure, sure,
but who wouldn’t cheer as tyrants fall, as the waters
whale-gulp them down. Saltwater means tears, food is a story
of survival, and parsley means the green coming back to the yard.
The seder means, Here is who hated us and tried to kill us
and here we are still. Now, my sister chops apples and nuts,
brings the haroset in the yellow bowl that Stanley, our terrier,
once ate from. He’s there, just outside my dad’s kitchen,
our perennial digger and yard escapee, thief and planter of dolls
whose miniature limbs would protrude from the dirt, the tiny undead.

Stanley sleeps under the yard and not alone, long ago buried
and returning to us with the trees and grass and apples and spring.
We will not forget. I will not forget Charna, my grandma’s spunky friend,

jovial baker of mandel bread, and how she had survived the camps.

Grinning, she divulged to me and my sister how she told
the Nazis to their faces that they needed more food, thicker soup,
and her demands were met. What did she give up in negotiating this,
and what did she earn, a secret skeleton of steel and courage and love.

We also learned that the women fashioned and passed around
a bloody menstrual pad as protection, to try to ward off rape
by crafting the guards’ disgust. What seeds existed in her
that nudged her to ask Nazis for anything, to scavenge fabric
and blood and deliver it from woman to woman, clutched and folded,
a love letter, a ballad about generosity and pain, lantern-bright.

Where does this bravery in the midst of horror
come from, and how can we get more. Why is this night
different from all other nights, a question we ask ourselves
every year, when we should ask, How is this time different
from all other times, how is this agony different from other agonies.

When someone suffers, the Jew also suffers,
says the Passover story. And we want this to be true.
But between suffering and safety, there is a heavy door.
Closed. On this side, we eat apples and chocolate
and eggs full of candied yolk and drink simulated tears.
On the other side, all we can barely look at or hold in our
minds, the flame-ravaged house we could be chased from,
the thirst and loneliness of the exiled, the small hands
reaching up from yard’s cold mud that we see silhouetted
in the twilight and call broadleaf, dollarweed, thistle.

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A Greek Myth

Mother wore a nightgown and peignoir, the white filmy kind,
walked barefoot out the front door and into our back yard
to sit in her crescent-moon-shaped rose garden,
her tangled hair caught in the rattan chair.

Those were the days when she got out of bed before noon.

O Etoile de Hollande, her favorite deep red rose—so fragrant.
Did she imagine it could be heaven, as she sat motionless
with her breakfast tray, melba toast, the loose tea leaves
floating in the china pot?

When I was in third grade my father paid me to make his breakfast
before he went to work early in the morning.
Bacon, toast, fried eggs, coffee—I served him
at the somber mahogany table
where he ate alone, wearing his Air Force uniform.

Much later, when my parents moved again,
there was no rose garden.
On good days, she climbed a stunted apple tree
and set her tray on the low gnarled branch in front of her.

My father pointed to the tree when I came home from college once.

When she came into an inheritance
she spent the cash on trips to Ireland and some Greek islands,
going by herself, never told me, and invested the rest
with hopes of getting rich but the broker swindled her.

Gone, except for this picture she kept of wildflowers in Delos—

She used to sing—I am weary unto death—

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A Parable is Related

It had been the girl’s mother’s idea, after consulting mystics and holy sages, to procure a wedding gown before finding her a groom.

It is a meritorious act, Sara, her mother assured.

We are told that Bella had done all that was required to have her daughter successfully married, though the order of attempts is disputed—Bella had sent the girl to the most proper of religious schools in Jerusalem, worn the correct style of wig, attended ladies’ breakfasts, never repeated a Sabbath dress, and encouraged her daughters to visit the sick on Sunday afternoons. And with time, according to various sources, her attempts grew more desperate—forty days of prayer at the Wall, sages paid to invoke the merit of the family’s maternal line when reciting Psalms, kabbalists consulted about constellations and energies, eighteen sheqels paid to Hasidic women in Mea Shearim squalor to pour boiling tar into a pot and thus save Sara from others’ evil eyes and from the girl’s painful solitude.

This was how things had been done There, back in the place they had come from, in the Carpathian Mountains, in the Time Before Forgetfulness and Red Flags and the Tanks in Red Square: A girl without a husband must prove her faith that she would find one.

And thus a campaign began to ensure Sara’s marital happiness. Under no circumstance would the girl be permitted to sit by the corner of the table, lest she be cursed with a seven-year wait for her wedding day; every wine glass spilled on a Sabbath tablecloth was quickly marked as a sign of blessing; at every circumcision and betrothal party, she was handed toffees, kushai kushai, eat, eat, some sweetness in your mouth will bring you the sweetness of marriage. As every girl from her high school class married, one by one, wearing long-sleeved satin gowns with tall collars, each wedding held in the same hall and with that same ancient orchestra, Sara increasingly received sad nods. Soon by you, they crooned.

It is said that her entire life, the girl had been lavished with exaggerated praise: nannies and grandmothers would cry out as she walked by, Lucky is the man who makes her his bride! Yet here she was, twenty-one, and there was something unfinished about her, the way her head remained uncovered, no headscarf, no wig. What was so puzzling to us was that the girl was seemingly fine material for a wife. If Isaac the bakery owner’s daughter had found a husband that didn’t mind her bleary eyes and irritating lisp, and even her loudmouthed classmate Shifra, despite her ceaseless gossiping, was married, and to a diamonds salesman no less, surely Sara could somewhere find a husband who would be enamored by her peacock-colored eyes. The girl had been matched with plenty of bachelors, and one after another she’d shyly shake her head, no, it’s not it, and then return to the pages of her book. Even mothers of prospective grooms were not completely averse to the notion of Sara as a daughter-in-law: a reaction which was rare, as most mothers disapproved of most girls categorically. But this girl seemed kind enough, despite her love of reading; a daughter of Israel raised by simple parents to be a woman of valor, a wife who would resemble merchant ships, dressed in fine linens and purple honor, a mother who would arise while it is still night and open her mouth in wisdom, her words tumbling out like pearls.

“If you wanted to, you could be long married with two children,” Bella would tell her offhand, jotting down the number of a mother who knew a rabbi who knew of someone. It had become a constant occupation, a flurry of files, phone numbers, emails with enumerated references and small passport photos of a nineteen-year-old Sara, powdered and hair curled.

The word that the community used for girls of this sort was, of course, whispered, and even her mother wouldn’t hear it outright from the gossips, yet she knew it was being said. Particular. Spoiled. Some commentaries have even interpreted particular to mean arrogant. “She thinks she’s above our sons,” Naomi the podiatrist’s wife said aloud one Friday afternoon at the butcher’s, to which the cashier girl and even the rabbi’s wife nodded. “Who does she think she is, some mythical beauty? And the daughter of a teacher, at that! As if her father were a millionaire!”

It must also be mentioned that we couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Bella’s other girls, the four of them; they were undoubtedly afraid that soon their turn would come and Sara would still be single. What then? To ask for her permission to start dating, while she is yet unmarried? Of course she’ll give us her blessing to date; but what if we get engaged before she does? She can’t keep us single, too, just because she’s being, ah, particular.

And so Sara found herself one dreary morning in a dressmaker’s basement office in the neighborhood of Geulah, for the sake of a meritorious act.

“Heaven would see our faith in God that the girl would marry one day, and then send the right man,” Bella said. The girl had nodded in response, wearily, letting them take her by the hand to the seamstress for fittings and debates over designs (beading? ruffles? princess gown or simpler a-line?). She invited her younger sisters to join, hoping they would bring some comic relief as she stood in front of a mirror in a white gown and tried to giggle with them. Bella sat on a stool, radiating with light, as commentaries would later describe her. “I think the high-collar would be very elegant,” she said to the dressmaker. “What do you think, Sara?”

“Yes,” the girl said coolly. “That would be nice, but please, the sleeves should be halfway past the elbows, not any longer.” She’d get hot while dancing. There’s no reason to have unnecessary fabric, she explained as she looked out the small basement window.

—

And when word came that the son of a wealthy man of a far away city—of Antwerp, no less—had looked into Sara’s resume, through an American matchmaker, Bella went as pale as the fabric they had consulted over.

It was a well-known secret, of course, that the expensive son of the diamond seller had inquired himself, that very bachelor who was famed for having gone out with over two hundred young women and still not found a bride. But many of us had suspected it to happen, because having a wedding dress made in the name of Faith is no simple business.

“He is the top of the Neman yeshiva, a brilliant student,” Bella whispered, sitting at the table across from her daughter one evening over tea. “And his parents, respected in the best of homes…who are we, to be considered by a family like that?” She glanced around the dining room, which she’d no doubt have to get freshly painted before hosting the future in-laws. “Sara, do you understand what this means?”

It was a fluke, of course, that the family was even considering a girl like Sara.

And of course the girl understood what it meant. If she went out with this yeshiva student, she’d be obliged to him, would have to wait for the moment in which he’d decide to cast her off. She, of course, could never dare to reject the boy, as she had done with every other young man until now, and if she did, the entire world’s eyes would question her angrily. And if he did indeed desire her, she would have to marry him— there was no alternative.

But the thought of imminent marriage scared Sara, and she pushed it away. After all, she didn’t like her wedding gown very much, and it would need more tailoring until she’d like it, a project which might take longer than one month of courtship and another three of engagement—and anyways, didn’t that kabbalist which her mother dragged her to last year, didn’t she say that she wouldn’t be married for at least another year? Better not to fight destiny.

“He probably wants a rabbi’s daughter, or someone wealthy at least,” the girl reportedly said, setting her tea cup down.

But Bella did not hear her daughter any more; she was already making phone inquiries.

A month later a date was set.

She wore a deep blue blouse carefully selected to highlight her eyes, kitten heels; when she looked in the mirror for the last time before stepping out, she was almost startled by her eyes’ color. Something moved her to tears—she tried taking a deep breath and saw that her eyes only grew more blue. She didn’t want to go, she insisted in the very last moments, as her parents and sisters watched her put on her jacket. That preceding Sabbath she had trembled so much that she was unable to eat the food.

Just look beautiful tonight, that’s all you have to do, Mrs. Hart the matchmaker had told her, according to most versions.

And he? Sara asked without thinking. Mustn’t he also look handsome?

No, no. That is your job, the matchmaker said, laughing throatily into the phone, a secret smile of relief, for now, finally, she had clearly found a match for the unmatchable, and one of them the son of this wealthy house-holder of a far-away city! Two of the most notoriously particular people to match, and she had managed to come up with this innovation so cleverly, a wedding was surely destined. Listen, Sara, I don’t know you, but your name was mentioned so here I am letting you have a go at this, and let me tell you, this guy is a prince, every family wants him for a son-in-law, you’re lucky you’re getting even one date, and he’s even excited about you, so you should feel blessed. Listen, I’ll tell you the truth, he just wants a girl who is smart and put-together. “Put-together,” ahem, that means beautiful, you understand?

The yeshiva student came fifteen minutes late. Well, he wasn’t exactly the lanky and stuttering yeshiva student we had all imagined: Leah, the next-door neighbor and wife of the pharmaceuticals businessman, later informed us that the boy was clean-shaven, black-haired, very tall (by our standards, at least), in a tailored suit of course, a black Italian-made hat.

“How are you?” he had asked as Sara approached him and as he opened the car door for her. His Hebrew had a slight accent.

“Good, thank God.” What a silly question, she thought. We’re complete strangers—why would it matter how I’m doing now, as opposed to yesterday? Though perhaps it was a test to see if she invoked the Divine in her response. Thank God. And you?

He must have sensed the girl’s nervousness, because immediately he began asking her questions, gently, about details which he had had his investigators procure for him. She was surprised, pleasantly—how did he know that she loved Edith Wharton, that she insisted on playing only Chopin on the piano, and absolutely no Bach? And that she knew the Song of Songs by heart? What would a yeshiva student know of these things?

He surprised her again, as they later walked along the promenade overlooking Jerusalem’s twinkling hills, when he told her of the very Places she was told about as a child, that dark Europe of demons, as if he was singing back to her the secret lullabies of her childhood: toy-like streets, gothic palaces overlooking rivers, little magical bridges. He told her he found her purity and passions—what a combination!—exciting. And now, now they were talking over each other, there were too many verses and politics and opinions to discuss.

It is said that at two in the morning, they stood outside her house and he turned to her with a smile that was later described as “teasing” though other versions say “nervous”.

“I had such a wonderful time tonight,” he said. “I want to see you again. Tell me, Sara, what are we going to do about this?”

She laughed, in shock. Had he just invited her out again, without consulting the matchmaker? She was speechless.

“Okay,” she said softly, just like her grandmother had taught her. Slushai menya, make a man think that you agree with everything he’s saying. You’ll spend the rest of your life disagreeing with him—at least in the beginning be peaceable.

Their evenings took them to hotel lobbies, then to strolls through parks. Despite his reputation, she found him surprisingly humble in front of her, at times too cautious, well-read though not a reader of literature—he was much more comfortable in the jungles of Aramaic.

Later, she would tell her girlfriends about her evenings, slightly breathless, and her friends would exchange glances. I don’t want to part from him in the evenings, and I can’t hold his gaze always and sometimes have to turn away. Though I shouldn’t get swayed by a man’s showing interest, of course. Just because he’s looking at me in that way doesn’t mean anything—any man can give any woman that look and lavish her with praise and attention. It’s not like he’s the first or the last, right?

We knew exactly where and how long each date went, naturally. We knew that the young student was in no way frugal in his courtship, each evening taking her to the center of the city; we looked on enviously as Sara would come home late, entering the small house with lit-up eyes and swaying from exhaustion. Over a Sabbath table once, Zissel, the wife of the computer programmer, expressed wonder that it had gone this far; what would a diamond-seller’s son like him want from a difficult child like her? It won’t last long, just watch.

Whoever thought of the match is brilliant, remarked Miriam, the wife of the local steakhouse owner, to Bella as they gathered their younger children from school one afternoon. Bella brushed it off with a nervous smile, spitting under her breath like they did Back There to ward off the evil eye.

—

And it was that the gown was almost finished, earlier than Sara had expected. Adina the seamstress had not let any of us see her hard work, under strict orders from Bella, but her assistant Zahava told her mother who then informed us that surely even Queen Esther did not own a more resplendent gown than the one that Adina the seamstress was making for Bella’s daughter. Even Sara seemed satisfied, after all of her tireless adjustments. Perhaps she didn’t care any more; it was plain to all of us that all she could think about was the warmth she felt when she caught him looking at her.

But you must watch out for the evil eye from others, her mother would warn her. Everyone else wishes they had a boy like this for their daughter—you must hold on tight until you get engaged. Tread carefully, daughter.

At the office in the city, the other girls whispered and peeked over cubicle walls, hoping to catch Sara daydreaming, and then grew disappointed to see her concentrating on her work. When she went to the grocery, she suddenly felt eyes; people were watching her. Had her skirt ridden up to expose her knees, her face powder worn off? What if she was seen exchanging pleasantries with the neighbor’s son—what then? And what if someone told him that she was seen with a slightly uncovered collarbone? She found herself running always, back into the house or into the car, afraid of whoever might be watching and would slander her modesty. Somehow, everything had become a possibility for disaster. A get-together with friends, a street crossing, a bus ride—anything could happen under the evil eye.

We are told that on the following date she came in a gray silk blouse, her eyes the color of vapor; the young man was surprised by her quietness that night. “Are you all right?” he asked, as they entered the hotel lobby where they were meeting.

Yes, yes, I’m sorry, it’s just been a long day.

But she was immersed in thought, ambushes of feeling, wonderments, what if, and that gown, and those evil eyes—she had to watch out, there was such a thing, an evil eye, of course there was. Negative energies, subconscious but exceedingly powerful. Hide your face, your pictures, your good news, your successes. Lower your head lest someone hate you for your goodness and bring evil upon yourself and even upon your family. Your house, your health, your blue eyes. Everything was in danger.

He was studying the menu now, and she could only think, eyes, watch your eyes: be wary, eyes eyes eyes everywhere, black eyes that the gypsies used to extol, that the peasants used to sing ballads about. Eyes which could know your innermost thoughts, glares which could burn through even the most beautiful of silks and chiffons. Even the woods of Rabbi Nahman’s stories were not thick enough to protect her, she thought, remembering the mystical fairytales her father would tell her as a child, or so we are told. Maybe she’d trek across the thousand Mountains that were outside another thousand mountains to the caves of the east and there beg the king of demons to release her from the many many eyes that now pursued her. Why do those Hasidic tales never include God? Where does He hide, among this madness of eyes and woods?

They ordered sushi and iced coffees, the waiter later confirmed to us. The young suitor assured Sara that he was comfortable with the silence, that it was a sign of a good match if the two could sit together quietly.

But while he leaned back against the park bench later that night, watching her from a small distance, she found herself paralyzed by that very silence, terrified by the heated distance joining them, or perhaps by some turmoil inside which he would never know, this electricity that was her own doing, she knew, something in her eyes that had spurred his eyes to look at her like this, a silence in which she heard, turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me.

—

After these things, four weeks after that first turquoise night, Bella picked up the finished gown. “The dressmaker told me to bring it back in case it needs anything else, but I think it’s simply perfect.” She stood in the living room, fingering the fall of the fabric from the waistline.

Sara nodded, setting down her hair iron (she was going out that night), yes yes, here, let me hang it in the closet. The two went upstairs together, carrying the gown in its layered garment bag, her mother leading and Sara carrying the end carefully, dutifully, like some funeral procession. They placed the dress in the front of Sara’s closet.

Her mother breathed deeply as they looked at it.

“We prayed and yearned for your wedding day, for so long,” she whispered, shaking her head.

And it came to be that Sara was not wrapped in mysterious silence that night, to the yeshiva student’s relief; she had sworn to herself to stop thinking about evil eyes, and about that wedding gown in her closet, which had now become a dybbuk, a demon, in her mind, and instead she was laughing, smiling, crossing her legs, looking out dreamily from the rooftop bar where they sat. He watched her and asked her shyly if she’d mind if he’d meet her parents: she looked up at him suddenly, and he noticed that tonight her eyes flickered from blue-green to the silver color of her skirt. She laughed.

When he drove her home that night, he said they ought to speak seriously, and in stilted syllables explained that he enamored (his exact wording has also been disputed, see commentaries below), behold thou art fair, yet something was holding him back. And when she turned to him, she saw that his dark eyes were now moist. Something in her (did this now make her a woman?) wanted to reach across and stroke his cheek, to console this boy-man with the same tenderness of Ruth the Moabite; he continued to weep silently, and with her hands folded in her lap, she waited in vain for him to continue speaking.

Leah, the next-door neighbor and the wife of the pharmaceuticals businessman, later informed us that Sara did not stay long in the car, and that from the limited view from Leah’s living room window, the girl exited the car after what looked like a brief conversation.

What puzzled us most was that the match seemed faultless; no one could understand the young man’s sudden change of spirit, and no one dared entertain the thought that it may have been the girl who had broken it off. Who are we to know of God’s mysterious ways? Shulamith the Bible teacher’s wife threw up her hands. Children these days, they’re so spoiled that they’re afraid of marriage.

Well, her family lineage was nothing special, noted Raizy, the high-end wedding planner.

Yes, said Zissel with a smirk. It made no sense.

He must have heard reports about her skirt length, said Yehudis, the school principal. She was not particularly careful.

Sharon, the divorcee who lived across the street, vowed that she had seen Bella’s daughter talking to the neighbors’ son. There’s something coquettish about that girl, the way she laughs, it’s too airy.

It was said that Bella took the news the hardest. According to reports which were later reluctantly confirmed by Sara’s sisters in school, Sara had gracefully sauntered into the house that night, smiled to her anxious parents and exclaimed how utterly exhausted she was and what a lovely night she had had and that she was off to bed—and it was only the next morning when the girl had casually informed her mother that she and the young man would no longer be seeing each other, and that Bella quickly canceled the Sabbath guests and took to her bed.

That evening, we are told, Sara rearranged her closet.

The young man, in the meantime, disappeared. In the days that followed, reports trickled in, sightings of him in an airport terminal a few weeks later, just before the beginning of the fall semester; his family confirmed that he had left for another yeshiva, hoping the streets and hills of another place, one that was truly far, far away, would help him find order.

That Friday, the local bakery was abuzz with discussion. No other girl, of a hundred prospective brides, had ever made this boy go crazy. To book a ticket, flee the country? Like a film! We weren’t so worried about the failure of the match; instead, as we returned to our children and our houses strewn with toys and our husbands whom we’d have to greet that evening like Sabbath queens, we each secretly wondered at Bella’s daughter and at her forgotten dress. We thought about her as we sat at our Sabbath tables, listening to our husbands drone on, singing about our valor and our righteous kindness as they fell asleep at the table.

Additional testimonies were given as to the young man’s distraught behavior. We are told that he called his friends and teachers depressed, muttering something about how he couldn’t he couldn’t he couldn’t, a girl like that is indecipherable, harder than any tractate he’d ever learned, a tractate without commentaries and without a conclusion, just one long passage of gaps and disputes and contradictions. Something about her silver eyes, like silent doves—What, I don’t understand you, his parents would ask over the dining room table. Please explain, what’s a silver dove? His father told the frustrated matchmaker to give his son some time, perhaps recommend another girl, someone simpler, someone wealthy this time, please.

The matchmaker called Sara and, breaking away from her own norms, did not seek to take the boy’s side. Listen, who needs this prince? I have another one for you in the meantime. This one’s a lawyer.

The girl wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m busy,” she said simply, suppressing a yawn as she waited for the elevator in her office building.

You have to prove to God that you’re trying. Give me a reason why you won’t give this one a try, the matchmaker exclaimed.

Reason? Sara thought. Reasons are, obviously, irrelevant here.

We were given various accounts, and there was even a dispute as to which was more accurate: There were sightings of the young yeshiva student in America, going from sage’s study to synagogue to library, each time coming out shaken and pale, swaying as if in the midst of the silent meditation. Then, upon his return, he was seen again in restaurants, each time with a different girl, dull-eyed perhaps but certainly with brighter smiles. He’ll forget her one day, said Chana, wife of the cantor, after Sabbath services one morning.

Now it came to pass that Sara decided that waiting was useless, a waste of time and sleep and thinking-energy.

We are told that she waited for her mother to leave for the grocery store, and then picked up and took the wedding gown to the community’s free-loan fund, which was housed in the synagogue basement, and donated that ivory masterpiece for impoverished (yet clearly more fortunate) brides. That week, of course, we busied ourselves driving to the synagogue basement to admire the handiwork on the sleeves, the delicate bodice and the long train of the skirt—each of us, even Zissel, wife of the computer programmer, found an excuse to stop by—and we were too excited by the prospect of finally seeing that legendary dress to even notice the awkward vapor-eyed child who stood praying in the back of the women’s balcony.

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Graduate School

My mother was mortified when she heard:

No curtains? How do you live without curtains?

All thanks to my sister who insisted on visiting:

a plot to see what San Francisco had done to me

after half a semester. Just how many rooms

does this apartment have anyway? “Flat,” I said.

“We say flat here. Like in Europe.” LA DI DA,

my mother sang. But no TV, Mister Fancypants?

Five roommates and not one TV—uchh. Had I

given up God, denounced the religion of things,

uprooting myself from her sane Long Island?

I just wanted to study poetry, in “a room, with

some lace and paper flowers.” Like Stevie Nicks.

I just wanted to be a Gypsy. Hadn’t she began here?

Opening for Janis? And Jimi? Writing her songs.

If Stevie had curtains, she likely tore them down.

To wear as a shawl. When my mother mailed some,

I said, “But I’d rather watch the city.” To imagine

the orange bridge stretching behind the rows

of grubby Victorians, to listen to the pigeons

on my roof cooing to orgasm each morning.

I stopped there, sensing my mother’s threshold.

No TV—did ya ever? Likely addressing my sister,

the rat. I assumed she hadn’t mentioned my neighbor,

his slow-mo strip tease in the frame of his window

every dusk—just for me. My sister blew him

a kiss when I refused to let her snap a photo.

“Even this city has limits,” I explained. My mother

threatened a TV for my birthday. “But I need to read.”

Life without commercials, canned laughter. Besides,

hadn’t this been her plan? An educated son, a man

of the world, her little boy in a room with a view?

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Two Poems

Elegy for Recording the Light

with “Victor Jacquemont Holding a Parasol, 1865” & a line from bell hooks

Do you ever get sad thinking that all the dogs

in old paintings are dead? More helpless

than the past is the bruise that carves

it into canvas & the root of martyr,

I learned, is witness. So I practice saying no

to dusk’s orange heel, poised above

my throat. As if existence has a bloodthirst

for testimony. As if stillness is a eulogy

I’m working up the bravery for.

Contemplating death leads us

back to love. It’s not that the dark

is thicker, but that in the meteoric

hours under a soup’s-ladle
of Orionids, I’m embedded with need

to pass sunflower atoms from my tongue

to your tongue. There are so many people

I will never see old: Most. My father

hiding in the blackberry field

lacing the sun to his ghost boots. After

you tell me about the island mangroves,

I gift you a jar of blackberry jam
from my grandmother’s land & remember

Monet’s admission that while

watching someone he loved

die, he spent up the time analyzing

the pigments in her eyelids, deciding

how to paint them. We can only learn

so much from squatting in the dirt

with capillaries hung like dried roses

to preserve in the shroud

of pages. I’ll spend a life failing

to befriend the fear that all of this glows

& ends: a faint slash of tenderness

before the sorrow festival.

Tallahassee Spring

Passing a rare live deer at the side
of the highway, far enough
in the grass to pretend it doesn’t know

the twisted necks & blank eyes

its kind are prone to, a lineage of split livers

ant-eaten like cupcakes

My mother says possums kill
by tunneling up through a creature’s ass

It’s true. Kick a dead calf, a possum

peeks sheepishly out the bloated mouth

Hold my hand ten more miles & I’ll stop

myself from telling you, again, about the dead

bird in my Kentucky yard & the other
who landed to stare. Unflinching

Even the rabbits are hiding
long-eared ghosts—someone they swallowed

for safekeeping. What if we chose to forget

the impulsive deployment of knives, if we believed

honeybees were the only blameless beings

Birds & more birds
plow the bluegray morning
The shivery opulence with which we split

into a nest of hotbreathed animals

Splayed like iguanas in the daylight
Sometimes you are touching me
& I am thinking up ways to get ovened into dirt

Witnesses, too, are actors
in the grieving process. Driving
into Florida’s oblong belly, I memorized

new spells for desire: tying hair strands

around a bay leaf, then burying it

with both hands in red mud. If you have someone

who will bury with you, what we call tenderness

is simply the condition

Again I lay at your back, wearing

the face of the wolves that ate me

III

Who will tell the bees
the names of all the dead?

My friend’s mother says

she packed the hive in wool

but within days

she found them frozen

in breathless Arkansas winter

Huddled in a ball of ice

When a leaf sprouts does it name itself

Preparation For The Rotting

If you love someone why not make them happy

without you

There is nothing so alive as crying
under purgatorial dawn filtered
through the clanking brogue of a train tunneling backwards

Watching briary porches on the brick tenements
slide away from us like futures
The whole sweet metal sow, inside its glass stomachs

I grow fat with wonder

How potato chip bags & dogs & daylight are all

made of dark space matter & us too, yes, your finger

hooked through my finger like the tiniest window latch, my heart

clinking between your teeth,
the smallest unlatched window

I feel dying. Small children say this
Hothouse as fuck this Tallahassee spring
Slivers of broken lightbulb glittering the bedsheets

There was a woman sleeping in the road

that wraps around the cemetery
A stranger

Green green bottomland

wilding my sorrow
with unrelenting blooms

Let us look on one another
with the joyful urgency of cakebearers

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Watching Sermons on Facebook Live

i don’t know

if i’ve ever been happy

joy for me, a Rectory

built next

to the real thing

i try, i do

i shovel the front steps

i feel the proximal chill

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Fugues

Pumpkins rattling in the bed of a wagon. Paper crinkling around hot apple turnovers. Hay crunching under the weight of children crowding around the teenage girls serving them hot cider. Marjorie’s friend Raylene hummed through a bite of caramel-drizzled donut, nodding as she licked the fine dusting of brown sugar and cinnamon that clung to her lips. She’d waited over half an hour for this, inching past pies and cakes and generous jars of jams and butters made with fruit grown right there in Wilson’s Orchard. Raylene had suggested the outing—clearly intending it as a date but never technically using that word—and Marjorie, just fifteen days shy of her fifty-third birthday, had acquiesced in spite of the fact that she hadn’t been on a first date since her late husband Greg bought them tickets to Dune in 1984. She was twenty-one then, and broke, and the fact that he took her to Dune charmed her, as Raylene’s pumpkin patch charmed her, because she hadn’t expected to be known so well, so soon. She had been smiling gently since they arrived and was cradling a cup of apple cider to her chest, inhaling the warm, fragrant steam, when her phone started buzzing in her coat pocket, where she couldn’t feel it. Raylene had to tell her.

“What? Oh. Sorry, I thought I turned it off.”

“It’s been ringing for a full minute.”

“Stupid thing,” Marjorie muttered, shifting her cup to her right hand so she could take the smartphone out with her left. This particular phone was brand new—a much-needed upgrade that she’d been putting off for years while she debated getting rid of her phone entirely—so it still felt large and unwieldy to her, its smooth, flat face looking more to her like a tinted window on a car, maybe, or a sheet of thin black ice on the road. She flashed the screen. “See? Unknown. Probably just some telemarketer.”

Raylene groaned softly around her donut. “You want some?”

Its last shallow curve appealed to Marjorie, and she broke off a piece just small enough to tuck into her mouth like a marshmallow in front of a campfire. While Raylene ducked behind her toward a trashcan, Marjorie found herself longing for the smell of leaves burning inside of a steel drum and the sound of crackling as paper was tossed into the flame. This orchard was just remote enough and just spare enough for her to feel that she’d stepped back into her childhood and found herself standing at the edge of a wooded forest, crunching acorns with her boots. From where she stood, she could see hundreds of apple trees, dozens of dirt paths, and two large pumpkin patches speckled with orange fruits that appeared to glow in the soft autumn light. “Shall we?” she asked, finding Raylene suddenly beside her.

Without discussing it, they agreed to go the long way around, winding past the pond, then picking their way through the orchard itself, taking great care not to step on one of the many fallen fruits left to rot along the path. Raylene leaned close to whisper, “Smell that fermentation,” and wished aloud that she’d brought a bit of whiskey to spike their apple cider. Its warmth had begun to dissipate, but Marjorie still clung to her cup, finding its presence soothing, oddly, and familiar. In the course of their walk she’d learned that Raylene had two brothers (one older, one younger) but didn’t have any nieces or nephews and had lost both her parents to pneumonia within two months of each other. “They hadn’t spent more than a day apart in sixty years.”

Marjorie smiled tearfully. Greg had died just three years before—from kidney failure, not pneumonia—and she’d never let go of him. Sometimes, she still curled up in his big red chair and read him the newspaper. She wondered what he would say of this middle-aged woman who wore ripped jeans and bomber jackets and thought nothing of turning fifty in December. Careful. She’s the kind that likes to make herself at home.

Raylene had just picked up a pumpkin. “What about this one? I could see it with a face.”

Marjorie shook her head. “Too soft on the bottom. It’ll rot in less than a week.”

“You’re right.” Raylene nodded, turning the pumpkin over. “Good eye.”

Pickings were slim, and what pumpkins were left were typically small and misshapen, the lingering little runts that had survived weeks of culling by adults and children alike. Marjorie had thought there’d be more left, and walked around the patch with one hand in her pocket, toeing the smaller ones sullenly with her boots. Nobody else appeared to be interested in the pumpkins. The families had all gone for a ride on the tractor train, and when Marjorie heard any of them at all, it was only because a kid had tripped and skinned his knee on a rock. Raylene was kneeling, lifting a decent-looking specimen by the stem, when Marjorie’s phone started buzzing again. “Geez,” Raylene said. “Someone’s persistent.” She eyed Marjorie carefully. “Do you have a boyfriend I don’t know about?”

Marjorie shook her head, frowning down at her phone, which told her she’d received over six hundred texts from an unknown sender. I know you’re with her, the first read. I know you lied to me. Marjorie’s mind immediately flashed to Sharon, her work friend and technical assistant, to whom she’d lied in order to skip brunch and spend time with Raylene. But Sharon would’ve been overjoyed—ecstatic, really—to hear that she was going on a real date; she couldn’t possibly have written Ann said she saw you at the Co-op. Marjorie dismissed the possibility that these texts were meant for her after she read that. She didn’t know any Ann, and furthermore she’d never been to the Co-op with Raylene, so no one could’ve seen them there. Marjorie tucked her phone into her pocket, determined to ignore the texts and enjoy her time with Raylene, whose bright and complicated happiness seemed even more attractive after the little scare she’d had. She marveled at the ease with which Raylene inched into traffic and headed toward Marjorie’s house, as if she’d done this a thousand times before. This could be my life, Marjorie thought, then turned to look at Raylene and realized it already was.

—

It took them the better part of the afternoon just to carve, hollow, and rig the pumpkins on Marjorie’s porch with lights, and in all that time she forgot the messages only once: early, around 1:30, when Raylene gasped and said they should roast the pumpkin seeds and eat them as snacks. This prompted a bubbly half hour in which they sifted through the pumpkin pulp, plucked out the seeds, then attempted to rinse them off in a plastic colander ill-suited for the job. Cheeks flushed, hands sticky with juice, Raylene leaned in and with a faint smile invited Marjorie to meet her lips with her own. The kiss was gentle, close-mouthed, and lingering, and when it was over, Marjorie was so surprised that all she could say was, “I’ll heat up the oven.”

Raylene smiled at the jars of cardamom pods on the counter, brushing her thumb over the little red dish where Marjorie kept her plums. “You have a beautiful kitchen,” she said.

Marjorie shrugged, suddenly shy. “Greg liked to cook. I’m afraid I’m pretty helpless.”

“I doubt that.” With wet fingers, she touched the oyster shells stacked in one corner of the windowsill, where their dark, nacreous shells appeared almost bruised in the light. Marjorie liked their white ripples, their way of looking just like an eye encased in bone, and collected them like some people collect vases or coins. Greg had treated her to oysters whenever there was reason to celebrate: her promotion to Audio & Lighting Engineer at The Englert, his cleanest bill of health to date, the birth of their only granddaughter, Lily. Every occasion called for a different recipe. Fried oysters with tomato remoulade. Grilled oysters with a citrusy fennel butter. Smoked oyster chowder, and the best: raw oysters with a shallot rosé mignonette. “You ate raw oysters in Iowa? That’s brave,” Raylene said.

“I haven’t died yet.”

Raylene pointed to the pumpkin seeds, smirking. “These should go in the oven.”

While the seeds baked, Marjorie and Raylene dug around in the basement, looking for the Halloween decorations Marjorie had collected over the years. “Greg used to do all the organizing down here. I can’t find anything anymore.” He’d fancied himself a tinkerer, and the basement was littered with his unfinished projects: stalled watches halfway fixed, rocking chairs minus the rock, pebbles he’d forgotten to run through a tumbler to unlock their little gems for their daughter, Anita, the professional jeweler. “Anita was always a princess for Halloween—she loved tiaras. All those little stones, you know.”

Raylene brushed the dust off a box. “You said Anita was coming to visit?”

“She’s flying in on the 29th.” It was a tradition of theirs: dinner on the 30th—for Marjorie’s birthday—and then trick-or-treating with Lily. “It’s safer here than in New York, you know. Plus, Lily being here gives me a good reason to go out. It’s never as fun staying in and playing haunted house.” Marjorie put on a pair of slinky glasses and pulled the eyeballs straight ahead of her until the steel coils began to creak. She thought this would make Raylene laugh, and when it didn’t she finally heard the disappointment in Raylene’s question and knew she’d been hoping to ask her out to dinner for her birthday. She sifted through the decorations, searching for something to say.

“What is this?” Raylene lifted a kind of marionette out of the box.

Marjorie laughed, as if it should be obvious. “That’s Mr. Chainsaw. Greg liked to rig it so he’d dance down the steps whenever someone opened the front door; really freaked the neighbors out.” Mr. Chainsaw was a grinning, dancing skeleton standing just over two feet tall and wearing a brown plastic apron with a set of miniature gardening gloves. His chainsaw could be controlled with wires that pulled it up and down. Raylene mimicked the roaring sound as she faked slashing at Marjorie, who shielded herself with her arms. “Oh no, Mr. Chainsaw, don’t hurt me!”

“Give me all your candy!”

“But I don’t have any candy! All I have is pumpkin seeds!”

“That’s right,” Raylene breathed. “I almost forgot.”

Once the pumpkin seeds had cooled and Mr. Chainsaw was in position, Marjorie set out a pair of comfortable sienna-colored floor cushions so she and Raylene could sit on the floor of her living room and share a bottle of hard cider she’d bought at the Orchard. Marjorie was quiet then, listening to Raylene describe her job in the Admissions Office and thinking, all the while, of how loud her house used to be, of the rocks turning into gems, of Anita playing with her friends in the front yard, up in her room, and back in the kitchen, where Greg had taught them how to make pancakes, letting them clatter the bowls and whisk the eggs and spill milk on the floor; she hadn’t invited anybody new into their house since he died. It had been silent.

Raylene pointed to the sunset. “What color do you think that is?”

“Coral. Persimmon. Rust.” Marjorie’s phone beeped, but she ignored it.

“Whoever that is, they must really want to talk to you.”

“Oh, I think it just needs to be charged.” Marjorie didn’t check. She couldn’t bear it.

Her unwillingness to acknowledge her phone seemed to signal something to Raylene. She said, “Well, I should probably head out,” then finished her cider, glancing around the living room as if it were a fantasy she’d been indulging in despite knowing it could never really come true.

“You could stay a while,” Marjorie said, but Raylene shook her head, disengaging.

“It’s okay. I have to feed my dog, anyway.”

“You have a dog?” Marjorie followed Raylene into the foyer.

Raylene’s smile flashed and disappeared. “Yeah. Lucky. The dumb lug.”

Only then did Marjorie think to grab Raylene’s arm and prevent her from saying goodbye. When her fingers closed on the cool brown leather of Raylene’s jacket, Marjorie wasn’t quite sure what she’d say or how she’d fare under Raylene’s reserved yet hopeful scrutiny, but somehow she found the sense of mind to ask Raylene out to dinner that week. Her relief when Raylene said yes made it easier to face the messages on her phone.

653.

Marjorie made herself a pot of tea, snuggled into her favorite blanket, and began the slow process of unraveling the story behind these texts: they’d been sent by a woman; this woman was dating or had dated another woman, Sophie, and it had gone badly or perhaps was still going badly (she couldn’t be sure). What she did know was this: the texts were completely untraceable—there was no name, no callback number, nothing, just that day’s date (October 15th) and the timestamp (11:42 a.m.) indicating that all 653 messages had arrived at the exact same moment, like a swarm of bees. Her phone wasn’t supposed to do that. In fact, technical support said this was impossible, and yet—they couldn’t find Unknown either. Her messages had left her phone, bounced around a satellite, and arrived unexpectedly in a stranger’s coat pocket, where her cries of love and longing and frustration were wasted. Marjorie read the messages again and again, but always came to the same conclusion: that it was over.

Whatever relationship Unknown thought she was having, it was with a void.

—

Marjorie never stopped thinking about the messages. On her morning walks, as the winter light stretched like icicles through the clouds, she considered the corners of her town, seeing it as if through Unknown’s eyes. Here, the store where she’d picked out a birthday card; there, the café where she’d waited two hours just to realize her girlfriend wasn’t coming. Marjorie recognized all the landmarks: the bar on Market Street, that park with the swings, even the small hospital where Marjorie had seen the very same handprint as the sender (on a window by the children’s ward, on the inside of the glass, where Marjorie thought a febrile child had pressed their hand in farewell). Unknown’s texts referred to many dinners, parties, and dates that may or may not have happened, and may or may not have been happy; one even mentioned a concert that Marjorie had worked at the theater just that spring. She might’ve seen them there, Marjorie realized—their upturned faces might’ve swelled with laughter and gone quiet without her even knowing.

She threw herself into work at the theater, preparing for four different shows: one modern jazz-inspired ballet produced by the university, one reading and Q&A with a visiting writer, and one screening each of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu with original scores performed live by the Alloy Orchestra, a group famed for composing on unusual instruments like sheet metal, garbage lids, and pots and pans. Of the four, the jazz ballet required the most attention, necessitating that she sync light cues to music in 5/4 and 7/4 time, whereas the writer just needed a spotlight and a microphone, and the Orchestra would most likely take care of itself. Matters were made worse by the ballet director, who didn’t know what he wanted. “Maybe a pink filter here?” His hands waved toward the dancer’s face. “Or the orange?”

Sharon dutifully replaced the optical filter on the third floor light stage left.

Up in the balcony, Marjorie muttered into mint tea, “Insufferable.” She shut her eyes for a moment, thinking again of Raylene’s hands: how they felt touching her own, how they’d hovered just above her cheeks, afraid to touch down for fear of smearing her with sticky pumpkin juice as their lips touched. She found it charming—that hesitation, that desire to get it right. Marjorie had made so many mistakes, when she was young and new to love, and this felt like that, like she had to relearn the rules, be careful not to get too attached too soon. She didn’t realize when her phone was ringing. Sharon had to wave up at her from the orchestra.

“Marge! Hey, Marge! Your phone’s blaring! Want me to get it?”

“Nevermind. It’s probably just a wrong number. I’ve been getting a lot of those.”

Sharon plopped herself down by Marjorie’s jacket. “I’m this close. This close,” she hissed, pressing her thumb and pointer finger together as Marjorie drew near. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

Marjorie nodded and retrieved her phone from her coat pocket. “He is tiresome,” she said, hesitating over her phone, which she’d yet to unlock. She felt sure it would be Unknown, but as it happened, that missed call was from Raylene—she’d called twice, actually, then left a message to see if they were still on for dinner. Marjorie’s pleasure at hearing this was marred by the fact that, immediately after playing Raylene’s message, her phone queued up a voicemail left by Unknown the night before: Sophie…Sophie…please, pick up….

Sharon leaned forward, worried by the strain on Marjorie’s face. “You okay?”

Marjorie shook her head. “I just need to make a call.” She retreated into the dark stairwell next to the stage, where she could ramble on in private about how work was really hectic and she couldn’t do dinner with Raylene that night. Or the next night. “I’m sorry.”

There was a long pause. “It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind.”

Marjorie sighed. “I haven’t.” She tried to make this clear to Raylene, keeping her tone low and affectionate as she explained that this just happened to be the busiest week of the season. She wasn’t lying. “Look—why don’t you come to the show tomorrow? It’s at eight.” She shut her eyes happily when Raylene said yes.

Sharon was stretching when Marjorie came back out. “I’ll need a wheelchair pretty soon.”

“You’re twenty-five.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not infirm. You don’t know my body.”

“Indeed, I don’t.” Marjorie dropped her phone into her pocket.

“You’re blushing,” Sharon said, pointing to her cheeks. “Was that a man on the phone?”

Marjorie smirked, knowing what Sharon would do, waiting for the slow, happy smile that would spread across her face when she said, “A woman, actually.” Marjorie had been waiting for this, for this moment of comfort, and finding it made it possible for her to relax, to breathe a little after a stressful week. Time passed quickly then. Music jittered out of the speakers, dancers leapt off the stage, and pretty soon it was the next day and the show was about to begin.

Doors opened at 7:30 p.m., when Kent, their volunteer doorman, stationed himself happily in front of the theater like a shepherd guiding his flock through the gates. The show was sold out, and Marjorie had to climb up toward the balcony to pick Raylene out of the crowd. “I might have to duck out,” she said, after leading them to their seats.

“Have you had dinner, at least?” Raylene frowned, slipping out of her jacket. Underneath, she was wearing a black fringe dress with a small pearl necklace. Marjorie was so unprepared for this sight that she just nodded and blushed as one of the ushers came by with a program and gave her a wink. Evidently amused, Raylene scanned the program.

“Am I going to like this?”

Marjorie smiled. Then, when Raylene looked unsure, she said, “Just wait.”

Soon, she was enraptured of the film, of the sweet, gentle Maria who captures the heart of the young, naïve Freder, the son of a wealthy industrialist who profits off the hard work of others in his employ. Much of the plot had eluded Marjorie when she last watched the film, but this new restoration, paired with the orchestra’s score, made it very clear that this film was less about class and privilege and more about chaos—that driving force that leads men to lust, machines to break, and cities to flood where no one can escape the flooding alive. Marjorie felt the drums pounding, the metal screeching in her heart, hollowing her out to better accommodate the sound. All at once she realized that she wanted to live exactly like this: in silence, in the theater, accompanied by an orchestra that could translate her every thought into great and terrifying music; there would be no miscommunication then, no chance of her saying the wrong thing or pushing Raylene away, only this hand holding onto hers, only this touch keeping her warm and this fear of the word Sophie… Sophie…Sophie…

—

Hermit thrushes had built nests in Marjorie’s backyard. She heard them singing, their high notes rising through the branches and piping into Marjorie’s bedroom, which overlooked the west side of Hickory Hill Park. Raylene had commented on it early one morning, asking, “Does one of your neighbors play the flute?” while listening to their melancholy tune—Oh, holy, holy, sweetly, sweetly. Theirs was an eerily human music. Marjorie taught Raylene how to hear it right: a single whistle followed by a series of notes in varying pitches, in a minor key, so that the thrush seemed almost to echo itself. She often lingered in bed, listening to their singing, but was awoken the day of her birthday by Lily’s boisterous call, “Grandma! Grandma!”

Anita followed Lily into the room. “I couldn’t hold her back any longer.”

Marjorie chuckled, sitting up in bed. “Hey there, Lily Pad. Who’s this?” Lily was showing off her favorite doll, telling Marjorie to say hi to Mr. Toad—he was shy, she said. This was Toad from the popular children’s book series Frog and Toad, and when Marjorie saw this doll, her first thought was that it was sad to see the two separated, after all the pages they’d spent quietly sitting together. She pinched the doll’s foot. “We must get Mr. Toad a friend.”

Anita settled in the armchair by the window. “There’s a Mrs. Toad back home.”

“Is there?” She tickled Lily’s stomach. “How incongruous.”

Anita smirked; the fragrant steam of her coffee had turned the tip of her nose faintly pink. Her legs were crossed at the ankle, and she’d straightened her naturally curly hair already, though Marjorie couldn’t figure out where she’d found the time. It was wise of her to move to New York, Marjorie thought—that city was more her speed. Anita always had a million projects. “She asked me to make some dresses so she could dress Mr. Toad up.”

“That’s my granddaughter—always ready for Halloween.” She strummed her fingers over Lily’s leg. “Guess what Grandma’s costume’s going to be.”

“A piano?”

“A princess!”

“Talk about incongruous,” Anita muttered into her coffee. “Let me guess—Ariel?”

“Princess Wensicia, actually. From Children of Dune.”

“Ahh, yes, Daddy’s favorite.” Her smile faded at the mention of her father. “You okay?”

Marjorie glanced up thoughtfully, wondering why Anita was the only one who ever asked that question. It seemed to her that she hadn’t been really okay for a very long time—since before Greg died, perhaps before he was diagnosed—and that she had instead been performing a kind of simple diminuendo, lowering her voice, softening her vowels, in preparation for that slow, lonely glide into the unknown. Until she received those messages, she’d been content to go quietly, even peaceably, bringing nothing with her, not even music; and then came the shrill, insistent buzzing, sounding like an alarm on her hip. No, Marjorie thought, she couldn’t tell Anita about this, so she ducked the question, asking Lily, “What would you like for breakfast, Lily Pad?”

Lily flung her arms open. “Pancakes!”

“How about pumpkin pancakes?”

With a gasp, Lily jumped up and ran down to the kitchen to get started. Marjorie laughed.

Her birthdays were always more or less the same: breakfast with her family, a little cream in her coffee, a nice long walk through the park, then a couple hours in between lunch and dinner when she could just sit at a piano and play Lily some music; sometimes, she chose Shostakovich, Fugue No. 4 in E minor; sometimes, she chose Mozart, Requiem in D minor. And then again, she sometimes liked to go to Nodo inside the Ace Hardware on N. Dodge St. and order a corned beef and pastrami sandwich to eat while she walked around the graveyard and visited the Black Angel under the gray Iowa sky. This year, she traded her coffee for tea, her walk for a romp through the leaves in her backyard, and her somber fugues for the gayer waltzes of Chopin. These were some of the few pieces that Anita still knew how to play, and when Anita took over, Marjorie started to guide Lily through a neat and happy waltz, letting the girl stand on her shoes so she wouldn’t fall. In the midst of this, there came a knock at the door.

Raylene had come to take her to lunch. “Am I too early?”

Behind them, Lily ran up the steps, excited to see Mr. Chainsaw in action.

Marjorie laughed. “No, no—we were just playing. Come in.” She guided Raylene into the foyer, touching her sleeve lightly as she leaned in for a kiss. Anita saw this from the living room, and when she came and joined them, she had a look on her face like this was the most interesting thing that Marjorie had ever done. Introducing Raylene was surprisingly simple—even Lily, who didn’t always take to strangers, slowly edged up to Raylene and plucked the thin white threads on her thigh, where her jeans had frayed. “We were just going to go to lunch,” Marjorie said.

Anita was quick to protest. “Stay, stay. We’ll order in. Do you like Wig and Pen? They’ve got a carnivore pizza that has all the meats.”

Raylene glanced at Marjorie. “Sure,” she said, very carefully, in case Marjorie objected.

Marjorie wasn’t quite prepared for this, but she accepted it easily and with a kind of grace that pleased her, because she hadn’t expected Raylene to fit so readily into all the facts of her life. Raylene held up well during Anita’s dutiful interrogation, detailing how they met (at the Saturday farmers market in the Chauncey Parking Garage: Raylene had been buying fresh mustard greens; Marjorie, turnips) and what their first date was like.

Anita’s last question was a simple one: “Where do you live?”

Raylene pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “A few blocks that-a-way.”

“That’s pretty close. Maybe we’ll come trick or treat at your place.”

Raylene smiled. “I’m actually going to a party. But I’ll leave some candy out for you.”

Anita didn’t know if she liked this answer. “Is this a costume party?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be going as Annie Oakley, Little Sure Shot.” She mugged a bit for them, pointing her fingers like mock pistols and engaging in a little shootout with Lily, who aimed with one hand and clutched Mr. Toad with the other. When Raylene faked falling, Anita shot Marjorie a quick smile of approval. Yes, Marjorie thought, Raylene would do. When the doorbell rang and Anita followed Lily to the door, Marjorie paused a moment to think of her happiness, of the hand pressing hers, the receipt being signed, the plates clacking against the counter as everyone helped themselves to sausage and pepperoni pizza. It was a good birthday—the best in recent memory—and for that afternoon at least she didn’t think of Sophie or Unknown or the bright, brief joy she’d felt when she woke up in the morning and thought Greg was there beside her. Instead of dwelling on it, Marjorie took the board games out of the bureau, breezed through Lollipop Woods, and got mired in Molasses Swamp, too warm and loud and pleased with herself to hear it when her phone started to ring. This time, Unknown didn’t leave a message.

—

Trick-or-treating started at dusk, when the candles in Marjorie’s pumpkins lit up. Outside, wayward teenagers were roaming around, half in costume, half in jest, wearing vampire masks to hide their identities while decorating houses with toilet paper and robbing children of candy. Lily had been head-to-toe ready since 10:15 that morning (she’d dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood and required nothing in the way of real make-up), but Anita took her time, mixing her face paints and gluing her eyebrows in order to transform herself into Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. This process was slow and methodical, so after Marjorie attached her own elaborate headpiece, she sat off to the side and watched as her daughter become the evil witch from the movie. Anita was still gluing on her nails when she asked, “How heavy is that thing?”

Marjorie brought her hand to the back of her head, where thin gold wires extended out of the crowned dips of her headband, shivering like the filaments of an incandescent bulb whenever she moved or breathed. “I’d say three pounds. Maybe four.”

Anita lifted one hand, studying her nails. “Let’s hope there isn’t any wind.”

Thankfully, the night was cool and dry, and the streets were lit with small orange lanterns flickering like ghosts in the moonlight. Marjorie walked in the grass, listening to the earth squish, while Lily walked hand in hand with Anita. “Mommy,” she said, “are there wolves in Iowa?” She was staring at a dog then, peering down his chocolate snout as he sniffed her tentatively.

Anita said there were no wolves. “Just corn. Lots and lots of corn.”

“That’s not true,” Marjorie said. “We also have fossils. And…football players; they might as well be animals.” Only last week, one of them had been caught urinating on a statue in the Ped Mall. And just a week before that Marjorie saw a group of tailgaters playing beer pong on a table they’d dragged out onto the sidewalk. It was 7:00 a.m. then, and she was walking to the river to meet Raylene. She was tired, and cold, and declined the tailgaters’ offer of a game, but gladly accepted the thermos of coffee Raylene handed her upon arrival. That was a good day, she thought.

Lily tugged her sleeve. “Grandma, can you hold my basket? My arm’s getting tired.”

“It isn’t even six yet.” She took the basket, weighing it contemplatively.

Anita tilted her head. “You’re thinking of going to that party, aren’t you?”

Marjorie smiled softly, glad that she’d been caught. “I’m just not sure I want to meet all of Raylene’s friends while I’m pretending to be somebody else. What if they don’t get it?” Marjorie’s Halloween costume painted her as a manipulative, fair-haired, middle-aged princess continuously plotting against her enemies; to look at her then, one would think she was a murderer, employing genetically modified tigers to hunt children through the desert. Princess Wensicia wasn’t who she wanted to be, wasn’t the right costume for her. She’d only worn it out of love for Greg, who listed the princess third in his top ten characters from Dune. Marjorie wished he could’ve seen her then. He would’ve known what to do.

“Lily won’t notice if you go,” Anita said. “She’s all about the candy.”

Marjorie nodded to herself, as if finding the courage. “I’ll walk back with you, then go.” It would be quite some time before Lily tired of filling her basket with sweets. Her riding cloak had pockets stitched inside the flaps and a large hood into which Lily snuck half a dozen Crunch bars and Snickers without Anita noticing. Marjorie saw their wrappers gleaming when a pale, ethereal light fell on them inside a haunted house. Poltergeists were hovering over them, she realized. The house’s architect had rigged them to descend from the rafters and glow in the dark. Like Marjorie and Anita, Lily seemed to find these ghosts soothing, their soft green glow like that of fairies in a forest clearing. Anita lifted her face, and when the light touched her cheeks it looked like she was staring at herself in an enchanted mirror. Marjorie watched Anita and Lily disappear into her house and then set out alone to the party.

It was a mile, maybe a mile and a half, across the train tracks and down by the river to the party. Marjorie wondered when the trick-or-treating would end and watched as the small children living next door toddled into the street, chasing after a golden, rounded truffle. She stopped about five blocks from her house when she saw the pale red siding of a house she’d passed many, many times before. Unknown had said she lived in a red house: no, it’s the Red House next door. I have my light on. Marjorie had imagined a tidy, one-story house, one with a porch swing and gas stove and rhododendrons out front, but this house was larger—emptier—the windows darkened as if in protest of the holiday. Just looking at it filled Marjorie with panic. Quickly, she walked down the road, turning left and then left again to check all the houses. To find the one Sophie had found on a night not unlike this one: bitter and cold and terrifying.

She stopped on the corner of East Bloomington and North Johnson. She’d been there before, on that late night walk when she’d seen the handprint in the window of the hospital. Mercy Hospital, its ambulance doors opened wide outside of its emergency room. There was a red house directly across the street—tall, handsome. Its paint was blood red. Its pale white columns as lustrous and polished as bone. This was where Unknown lived, she thought. In this house, on the first floor, in what sounded like a state of perpetual anticipation. Had it killed her? Marjorie wondered. Had all the waiting finally driven her mad? If only she knew. Marjorie wished she’d picked up the phone, wished she’d heard it ringing while she sat playing Candyland with her family. She’d changed her ringtone since, chosen something grand, orchestral, and easily recognizable: Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the dramatic allegro cued to burst from her phone whenever Unknown called. She’d been waiting for that sound all day, taking care to always keep her phone within earshot. When it didn’t come, Marjorie turned away from the red house. She walked a block, maybe two, and then paused to listen to her phone, its silence broken only by the distant cries of children whose voices followed her into the night.

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Two Poems

A Patient’s Family Asks What Do I Know

In the ICU, my friend washed another friend’s

face with the serum and cream samples

they hoarded from Sephora. She sloped

and shaped his eyebrows like calligraphy.

The nurses envied his stainless skin,

saintly, like he hadn’t made a perfect O

on an imaginary dick to teach me

about efficient blowjobs. When I die

I know my friends will be dragged

up in sequins and blush, will cut cake

with their contour. But I know death

has always picked my more beautiful

loves over me. What a lucky bastard, to burn

a candle in wild fire. To make breath

into moan and song. How we learned

hunger and feast from our own fabulous

bodies. I don’t know much of anything.

I don’t think as much as do, as much

as want and miss and admire. I hope

you have love letters for my friends.

I wouldn’t blame you. Those handsome

boys. But I’d say find another messenger

because when I see my boys, my girls,

I will kiss them, and perform nothing

else, forever, for so long we will be reborn

as trees joined at the trunks, a set of summer

winds over sweaty sunbathing hunks, a handful

of hard candies melted into rainbow.

Cadaver Lab

I figured it’d be months without laughter.

Understandably. On pelvic dissection day

my friend Amelia whispers I’m sorry,

girlfriend before starting the saw.

Another friend unknowingly holds

his cadaver’s hand during the biggest

incisions. Classmates I don’t even like

point out veins and nerves to spare me

hours of inhaling fat and fascia. Then

one group finds a penis pump and we decide

yes he meant it as a surprise and the boys

fist bump his cold hands. Another group

shares their cadaver’s perfect pink polish,

another has fresh, unwrinkled ink

across her chest. Like tiny treasures

for us. Of course no one donates their body

without a sense of humor. Of course the body

is a gift. We admit on dissection days

we all leave hungry, specifically for chicken.

I booked my calendar with hook-ups

as if to practice how the blood flows

while it can. One boy I brought home

had a scar down his sternum, a souvenir

of a heart condition. He apologized

years after the incision healed, like the scar

didn’t pucker like lips. I imagined the lights

baring on him, how so many lucky

hands got to press against his skin.

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Snake Eyes

We found the snake lying stretched across the road, a black gash extending from the sewage grate on one side of the street to the rain gutter on the other, and I wondered what it would be like to fill space, to lounge, to occupy more than the boundaries allotted to me.

It was a muggy afternoon in the middle of July, and heat radiated off the asphalt in waves. The air smelled of tar and leaves, and of something else, something sweet and vegetal. Sweat dripped between my shoulder blades and pooled in the small of my back, soaking the waistband of my shorts. From where I stood near the foot of the driveway, I could see the snake’s tongue, flicking in and out of its mouth, as if to sample the air.

Abhi, who stood beside me, took a tentative step forward. I could tell from the look on his face that he was planning something stupid. He would be thirteen in September and thought much of this fact, all puffed up with the pride of impending manhood that was his inheritance. Just that morning, he had insisted on having coffee with his breakfast, insisted too on having it without sugar or milk. He’d taken a big gulp but ended up spitting it right back into the cup. He was all bluster.

Predictably, Roshni wanted us to shoo the snake away. “It’s going to get in the house if we don’t do something,” she said. She kept a good several yards back from the snake, turned half toward it and half toward us, one eye trained on it, warily, the other on us, no less wary.

At seventeen, Roshni was the de facto leader of our little group. I say group, but that makes it sound more organized and volitional than it was. In reality, it was just the three of us, Roshni, Abhi, and me, together only because of the circumstance of birth—me and Roshni to the same parents; Abhi to our dad’s sister—together only because it was summer and Roshni was in charge while our parents were at work.

“It’s not doing anything. This is so retarded,” Abhi said, with a slight whine that irritated me to no end.

“Abhi! You can’t say that,” I said, shoving his arm. “That’s really offensive. You’re such a jerk.”

“You’re really annoying, you know that, Poonam?”

“You’re really ugly, you know that, Abhi?” I said. Back then, my verbal sparring prowess was no better than Abhi’s, and I exhibited all of the sophistication one might expect of a fourteen-year-old.

“You can’t call me ugly. That’s offensive to ugly people,” he said.

I took another step towards Abhi, thinking a good shove toward the snake was just the thing to put him in his place. Everything about him infuriated me—his insufferable voice, the way he wore his T-shirt tucked into his cargo shorts and his socks pulled up almost to his knees, the way he always insisted on explaining things to me like I was an incompetent, vacuous idiot, as if I wasn’t fifteen months older than him. He’d been staying with us for a week, and by that point, I was sick of him. It didn’t used to be that way—back when we were younger, we’d been inseparable. I don’t know when I’d started to hate his guts.

“Cut it out,” Roshni said. She jerked me back, pulling my arm hard. She wouldn’t have been so rough with anyone else, of course—wouldn’t risk Abhi telling our parents on her. Me, she knew she had under her thumb.

I rubbed my arm where she had grabbed me and took a grudging step away from Abhi.

“I’m going to poke it,” Abhi said. He bent to pick up a fallen branch from the side of the road and thrust it out in front of him, wielding it like a sword as he approached the snake.

“Stop it, Abhi. You’re going to get hurt,” Roshni said. She tried to reach for him, but he was too far away, and she was too afraid of the snake to move from where she was rooted.

It seemed like the whole neighborhood and the entire surrounding mountainside had fallen still, the birdsong and chatter of squirrels and cicadas silent as every creature waited with bated breath.

The snake lay motionless too, its thick form still roped across the asphalt. At some point, it had raised the front of its body off the road and turned to look in our direction, hovering in an s-curl, poised and ready to strike.

Abhi alone was still moving, and he inched slowly toward the snake. The branch trembled in his hands as he lowered it. Roshni and I watched, entranced by his audacity and his stupidity. A clump of dead leaves and grass dangled from one end of the branch and quivered in the air, threatening to fall, hanging on by a blade.

Abhi took another step forward, and then I don’t know what came first: Roshni’s scream, Abhi’s scream, the snake’s disappearance, Abhi lying on the ground clutching his left leg, the bite.

Probably the bite.

—

“Mummy, you need to come home right now,” Roshni was saying into the kitchen phone. “Abhi needs to go to the hospital.”

She sounded surprisingly calm for someone who, only a few minutes earlier, had been screaming like she’d just witnessed a murder or was about to become the victim of one.

After the bite, we had rushed Abhi up the driveway and into the house. Roshni made Abhi lie down in the living room and wrapped a tea towel around his calf. Two red specks bloomed on the white and gray checkered fabric. Abhi was still clutching his leg and moaning almost continuously. Snot bubbled out from his nose. Some of it had already dried in a beige, boogery patch on the tip of it and smeared across his cheek.

“Do you want ice?” I asked. “Does it hurt?” I stood well away from where he was lying, keeping the coffee table between us. I wanted to be useful, but I also hated sick people, and the latter feeling was winning out. Something soft brushed my foot. I looked down and realized I’d unwittingly carried Abhi’s branch inside; the clump of leaves and grass hanging from it had fallen onto my foot. I set the branch down on the coffee table.

“No, don’t give him ice. Are you stupid or what?” Roshni yelled from the kitchen. “What if it stops the blood flow and the poison just stays there and he gets gangrene or something? The tissue could die. He could lose his leg.”

As soon as our parents had agreed that Roshni could go to UNC in the fall, she’d announced her plan to be pre-med. She’d let it go to her head. I suspected that she had no idea what she was talking about.

“Nothing, Mummy, it’s fine. Poonam was just being annoying,” Roshni said into the phone.

“Venom,” Abhi said, his voice strained and croaking.

“What?” I asked him.

“It’s venom. Poison is absorbed. Venom is injected,” he said, lifting his head up off of the faded flowered armrest. He sounded more cogent, the feebleness gone from his voice.

“What?” I repeated. I was still feeling dazed and overexcited from all that had happened, and thinking felt strangely like wading through molasses. “Why are you giving me a science lesson?”

“God, you are stupid.”

“Mummy and Pappa are on their way,” Roshni said as she came back into the room. She sat down on the coffee table, on the couch side.

“Ooooh, my leg,” Abhi said, letting his head fall back against the armrest. “Oooh, the pain.” He flung an arm over his forehead and closed his eyes, grimacing.

“Don’t just stand there—make yourself useful. Get him some water and the ibuprofen,” Roshni said to me. Then, turning back to Abhi, she said, her voice softer, “Does it hurt a lot? Can you still feel your leg? Can you wriggle your toes?”

I left Roshni to minister to Abhi and went into my parents’ bathroom down the hall to look for the ibuprofen. As I rummaged through the medicine cabinet, I could still hear them both, their voices only a little muffled through the thin wall separating the bathroom from the living room.

“Did you see where the snake went? Should we try to find it? In case they need to make an antidote?” Roshni was saying.

I rolled my eyes. I suspected the snake wasn’t venomous—it just looked like a rat snake—but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I knew all too well that Abhi and Roshni wouldn’t believe me. They were both enjoying themselves far too much to be persuaded to see reason.

When I returned to the living room, Roshni was telling Abhi not to elevate his leg. “It’ll make the poison flow backwards into your bloodstream. It could eventually reach your heart. Or even your brain.”

“Here,” I said, holding the bottle out to Abhi. He just looked at me blankly, unmoving.

“Here, let me,” Roshni said, snatching the bottle from me. “Is he supposed to take this without water?” she asked, with her back to me.

I rolled my eyes again and stormed away, muttering to myself. I hated when Roshni ordered me around, but I knew if I didn’t do as she said, I’d have hell to pay later.

From the kitchen, I could still hear Abhi’s moans. “Oooh, it hurts.” I opened a cabinet door more forcefully than was necessary, and it slammed against the cabinet beside it. “Oooh, my leg.” He was milking this. He would be so much more unbearable now than he already was.

“Maybe I should make a tourniquet. Maybe it’ll stop the poison from spreading,” Roshni was saying when I returned with a glass of water.

Luckily for Abhi, that was when we heard my parents pull into the driveway.

“Can you hold the glass to my mouth, Poonam?” Abhi said, fluttering his eyes weakly open, his arm still flung over his forehead. “I’d do it myself but—ooooh—I’m too weak to do—oooh, my leg—to do anything.”

—

The hospital was halfway between our town and the neighboring one. It would take us a good forty minutes to drive there on our own, but my parents hadn’t wanted to call an ambulance.

“We’ll be left with a bill for close to $1,000,” I’d heard my father tell my mother when they’d gotten home. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

“Varun could afford it. It’s his own son.”

But my father had made up his mind, so we’d all packed into the car. Roshni wouldn’t hear of being left behind, and my parents wouldn’t hear of my staying home alone, no matter how much I begged them. “How can you even think of staying home when your cousin is hurt?” they’d said. “How could you be so heartless?”

Easily.

On the drive to the hospital, Abhi sat between me and Roshni, with his leg extended and resting on the center console. I held my torso as rigidly as possible and had squeezed close to the window so that no part of me was touching Abhi. He disgusted me. And what if obnoxiousness was contagious?

“Who’s at the store?” I asked my parents when we passed Main Street and turned onto the only road out of town. They ran a convenience store a few blocks away, back in the other direction, an off brand 7/11 of sorts, only smaller and less corporate.

“We had to close up. It was Pratik’s day off,” my father said, with a little snort. I heard the usual note of bitterness that inflected his words whenever he mentioned Pratik.

Pratik was a recent hire—one of those friend of a friend of a friend deals, a fresh transplant from a village outside of Ahmedabad, where we’d moved from. Pratik had worked nearly every day at first, taking only five days off a month, which he said he spent at a temple down in Atlanta. But then five days became six, then seven, then eight, and so on, until he took more days off than he worked.

It had seemed obvious to me from the start that Pratik wasn’t praying on his days off. I’d seen him wipe up spilled coffee with the yellowing print of Ganesh that my mother kept taped to the side of the cash register for good luck. Once, when Roshni and I were waiting for my parents at the store, he’d asked Roshni to accompany him to Atlanta. Roshni had reddened and didn’t have a chance to answer before my parents came back out from the backroom, where they had their office. I don’t think Roshni ever told them about the invitation. They would probably have found a way to blame her for Pratik’s creepiness. They were always making excuses for him.

I tried to catch my sister’s eye, but Roshni was intently looking out the window on the other side and pretending not to listen. Her right ear, which peeked through her hair, had grown pink.

“Why don’t you just fire him?” I asked my parents. Even if Pratik weren’t so creepy, I still would have disliked him. At that age, it didn’t take much for me to develop strong aversions to people, and to me, Pratik was especially gross—he had a paunch; at thirty, already had hair tufting from his ears; and he smelled perpetually of cabbage and tobacco. He always wore short-sleeve button-down shirts with the top three buttons undone, revealing a thick gold chain and his chest hair. I didn’t understand how my parents could bear to keep him around. “Does he even do any work?”

“He’s threatened to turn us in to the police,” my father said, still with the same bitterness. He gripped the steering wheel more tightly, his knuckles pale from the effort. “He’s here illegally. He said he’d tell them that we’ve been paying him under the table. We could lose everything.”

“But he wouldn’t do that—he’d get deported,” I said.

“Leave it,” my mother said, turning to me from the passenger seat. “Your father doesn’t want to think about that good for nothing man.”

“Ooooh,” Abhi said, sounding like an especially irritating ghost, but for once I was glad he was there.

“We’re almost there,” my mother said. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Is there any weakness?” my father asked. “Can you move your toes?”

“I—I think so,” Abhi said, his words thin and shaky. “Oooh, my leg.”

I couldn’t stand listening to them anymore. They were all so annoying—they never focused on what was important. I put my headphones in and spent the rest of the car ride looking out the window.

The mountains were an effulgence of green. The road twisted and wound its way through thick forest, and at times the deciduous trees were so dense around us that it seemed like we were making our way through a tunnel of leaves. I was beginning to feel nauseous—my father was driving more aggressively than usual and kept rounding the bends sharply—so I was relieved when the sign marking the turn to the hospital came into sight.

My father pulled into the hospital complex, and he told us to wait outside until he found a place to park.

“I could park—I need to practice for my driver’s test,” Roshni said, hopefully, but my father drove away, dousing her optimism.

“Oooh, my leg,” Abhi said, as if in send off, almost cheerful.

My mother, Roshni, Abhi, and I stood to one side of the entrance, near an overflowing trashcan that smelled like overripe bananas and rotten eggs. Birdsong sounded from the trees, joyful and incessant. The air was humid and damp, and my shirt clung to me. I scowled up at the big red letters that spelled Emergency over the door. The day was just becoming more and more annoying.

—

Inside the hospital, we all went up to the check-in window. The woman who worked there was in the middle of a conversation and didn’t look our way. Roshni pushed past me to stand in front, next to our father. She was standing taller than usual, her chin tilted up ever so slightly. She kept looking around, taking it all in—the gray carpeting, the fluorescent lighting, the fake lemon tree sprouting from a dinky plastic pot, the clipboard with a chewed-up pen tied to the metal clip, the tiny American flag planted on the counter.

The rest of us crowded behind them. Abhi was no longer moaning, and my mother seemed to shrink into herself. She, like Roshni, kept looking around her, but furtively. I couldn’t help but think of a dog, shamefaced and frightened, cowering. I tried to wipe the image from my mind but couldn’t.

My father, who’d been drumming his fingers against his legs, cleared his throat. The receptionist finally turned our way. She was an older woman, probably at least in her fifties, and heavily made up, with her gray roots showing through her purplish-red hair. Her long fake nails were painted a garish fuchsia.

“Oh, my,” she said when she saw us, startled.

“My nephew was bitten by a snake,” my father said.

“It happened at around oh-two-hundred hours,” my sister said. “The specimen was black. I’d say eight to nine feet long. Scaly.” She either ignored or didn’t see the angry look my father shot at her. “I had the patient keep his leg lower than his heart, but there’s no telling what kind of damage there’s been.”

“It was more like six feet,” I said. “She’s just exaggerating.”

To my right, my mother said to my father, “We weren’t there when it happened. Can you tell her that? Tell her Roshni is old enough to watch them both. We had to work. It was an accident. Can you tell her that?”

“Oooh, my leg,” Abhi said.

It was the receptionist’s turn to clear her throat, but no one heard her over the chatter. I could see a vein in my father’s forehead had started to pulse, and with one hand, he rubbed his neck and shoulders, as if to smooth away his tension.

The waiting room was empty except for an older couple. Both of them watched us intently, like we were aliens, like they’d never seen a spectacle quite like us before. I felt myself getting warm, and I stepped back and to one side, separating myself from the rest of the group.

The receptionist cleared her throat again, and my father shhhed the others.

“Look, you can’t all be at the window. One of you sign the injured person in and we’ll be right with you.” She picked up the clipboard on the desk to show us and then put it down again, slamming it with a loud thwap.

“What happened? What did she say?” my mother asked. “Do they think it’s our fault?”

My father shook his head at her and waved us all away. We walked hesitantly to the waiting area. The only remaining seats were arranged in two groups of three on opposite ends of the space, so my mother went with Abhi to one set, and Roshni and I went to the other end, closer to where the older couple was sitting. They were still staring openly at us. I was used to the attention—back then, we were still one of the only non-white families in town—but most people were more discreet. I stuck my tongue out at them, and the woman, flushing, looked away; the man glowered at me but looked away too.

—

It was a good hour before anyone came to get Abhi. I was bored out of my mind. The TV that hung in one corner of the waiting room was turned to the weather, and I must have watched at least five cycles of their afternoon loop—local weather, commercial, county weather, commercial, repeat. I had looked through probably every magazine they had there and was flipping idly through an old National Geographic with a picture of a lion on its cover, my eyes glazed over, the words a blur.

Over on the other side of the waiting room, Abhi had fallen asleep in his chair with his mouth open. He still had snot dried on his face, and now he had dried spit too, a white splotch near the corner of his mouth. My parents sat on either side of Abhi, silent and stony-faced, staring at the TV.

Roshni, amazingly, seemed to be enjoying herself. She had wandered over to the coffee and tea station. She didn’t drink either beverage, but the station was set up right by the check-in desk, and from the surreptitious glances she kept casting in that direction, I could tell she was only heating up water so she could listen to the gossip of the women working behind the window. I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying, but it sounded like some nurse or orderly was having an affair with a doctor. I couldn’t tell if they were talking about real life or about a soap opera.

A door near the check-in desk opened, and a woman emerged, looking at her clipboard, frowning. She wore scrubs the same shade of fuchsia as the receptionist’s nails, and a pair of earrings shaped like hot air balloons dangled from her ears.

“Pay-tell. Pat—Petal?” she said. She looked up from the clipboard and looked around the room. “Petal?” she repeated, more confidently this time.

We all looked at each other and then around the waiting room. We were the only ones there—the older couple was long gone and no one else had come in after us.

“Patel?” my dad said, half standing from his seat. “Abhi?”

“Must be,” the woman said. She pushed the door open further and stood to one side. Her earrings twirled like two tiny spinning beach balls.

“Come on, Abhi,” my father said.

My mother gently shook Abhi awake. He yawned and got to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Can I come too?” Roshni asked.

When my father shrugged his response, she set her Styrofoam cup down next to the coffee pot a little too enthusiastically, sloshing hot water onto the table, too delighted to mind the drops that splashed her hand. All four of them disappeared through the swinging door.

A plume of steam floated over Roshni’s abandoned cup. From somewhere behind the check-in window, something beeped—a microwave, I guessed, from the garlic-y, tomato-y smell that soon permeated the room. On the other side of the waiting area, across from me, my mother stared mutely at the television, its blue fluorescence reflected on her glasses. I turned to the National Geographic on my lap and tried to read again.

“—wet afternoon. A few lingering thunderstorms until evening—”

—

Abhi was the first to emerge from the swinging door an hour later, limping slightly, his left leg bandaged. My father followed closely behind, and my sister behind him, but holding back a little. She looked grim, and when she approached, I could see her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying.

“Let’s go,” my father said, pausing only long enough to jerk his head in the direction of the exit. He brushed past Abhi and out the door, leaving the rest of us to hurry to catch up.

Outside, it was even stickier than before. An afternoon thunderstorm had swept through, leaving the parking lot shiny and slick and the air smelling of petrichor. Water had pooled in spots where the ground dipped. Abhi, who walked beside me, tromped through a puddle, splashing brown rainwater on me. I started to say something but thought better of it—my father was watching us from where he stood near the car, stern and tight-lipped.

We piled into the car again, and this time, I was forced into the middle. I noticed my mother glance at my father, but she looked quickly away when he turned to check behind him before pulling out of the parking spot.

No one spoke, not even Abhi, for the rest of the drive home. I heard my sister sniffle a couple of times, and once, Abhi had a sneezing fit. Otherwise, the only sounds were the spray of water, the clatter of traffic, the low, distant rumble of thunder.

When we pulled into the driveway at home, Roshni was the first one out of the car, before my father had even shifted into park. She slammed the car door closed behind her. I noticed a muscle in my father’s neck tense, the clench of his jaw, but he didn’t say anything.

“What’s her problem?” I asked, unable to hold my tongue any longer. Everyone was being so weird—even Abhi had been more subdued than I’d ever known him to be. He hadn’t moaned about his leg even once on the whole drive home.

“Roshni’s mad she can’t volunteer at the hosp—”

“Abhi,” my father said, a note of warning clearly discernible, and Abhi cut himself off.

That may have been enough to shut Abhi up, but it wasn’t enough for me. I kept pressing.

“Why can’t she? She’s going to be a doctor. She’s going to be pre-med.”

“Don’t you start too now,” my father said. He sighed, seeming suddenly weary and old, and got out of the car.

—

I found Roshni in our room, lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes were no longer red, but the skin around them was still puffy and swollen, looking a little bruised.

“They’re so annoying,” I said, collapsing onto my own bed. “I can’t wait to get out of here. You’re so lucky you get to leave soon.”

Roshni made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh.

“What?”

“Keep dreaming.”

“What do you mean?” I sat up and swung my legs off my mattress, dangling them into the space between our twin beds. The room was so cramped and our beds so close together that I could touch Roshni’s bed frame without having to extend my legs. I gripped the metal frame with my toes, flexing and unflexing my feet. “What does dreaming have anything to do with it?”

“You know what Pappa said when we were in there and waiting for the doctor?”

“Abhi said something about not being able to volunteer at the hospital. So what? That’s not the end of the world.”

“That’s not all he said.”

“Oh. So what did he say?” I asked, though a slight nagging, tugging sensation told me I knew the answer already.

“You’re so slow sometimes. Figure it out yourself.”

With that, Roshni climbed down from her bed and left the room.

Light streamed in through the worn bedroom curtains, filtered and fluttering, casting long shadows across Roshni’s crumpled comforter and the carpet. Elsewhere in the house, life had moved on. The faint aroma of onions and ghee and cumin suffused the air, and familiar house noises drifted through the open door—the clatter of dishes, the steamy hiss of the pressure cooker, a Jagjit Singh ghazal, a sitcom laugh track. There was no comfort in these smells or noises, no comfort in what they stood for or what they offered, and I lay back down on my bed, feeling strangely empty.

—

The next day was Friday, and I woke to find myself alone in the house. My parents were usually long gone by the time I woke up in the mornings, but I was surprised that Roshni and Abhi were nowhere to be found. The air conditioner hummed as I creaked through the house, ducked my head into my parents’ bedroom, the hall bathroom, the living room.

In the kitchen, I found two cereal bowls next to the sink, the milk still left behind in one of them, tinged the color of wheat fields ready for harvest, a few bloated Cheerios huddled together, bobbing on the surface.

I was ready to give up and make myself some toast when I heard voices coming from out in the backyard. It had to be them.

Outside, the air, muggy and wet, suggested rain. A thick mist had descended on the mountain, obscuring the surrounding trees and rhododendron thickets. I ran around to the back of the house, following the sound of their voices, the damp earth soft beneath my bare feet.

“Maybe it slithered into that rotten log,” Abhi was saying when I found them, pointing a few yards away. His voice seemed peculiar, almost giddy. “Should we look there?”

“I’ll check,” Roshni said, yelling the words, sounding as keyed up as Abhi. She wielded a branch like the one Abhi’d had the day before and was using it to push her way through the underbrush, the look of a huntress about her. “We’ll teach that stupid snake not to mess with us.”

There was something in the way she spoke, or perhaps the set of her figure, that made me think that looking for the snake had been her idea, that this was her battle.

They had their backs to me and hadn’t seen me yet. I kept away, cleaving close to the house. For some reason, I knew that I shouldn’t interfere. It wasn’t my place to get involved. I wouldn’t tell them that they were wasting their time, and that there was little they could do, that the snake was long gone. I suspected that Roshni knew that already, deep down, in some inner recess. But it felt good, even if for a morning, even if for a moment, to pretend to forget.

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