Tommy is clumsy, and sometimes when they walk he hits her hand with his hand. Sometimes he stares at her, but she doesn’t say anything because she wouldn’t know what to say, and anyway, she needs him now.
Forlorn—the word you’d cry into the door of our bedroom when I would shut it in your face (although now I wonder where you got it from)—is the past participle of a verb extinct for centuries that used to mean to part with or be parted from, a close relation of the German word verloren, meaning alone and lost and (sometimes) doomed.
The day of the Lambda Chi luau Amy takes a picture of the pack
On the outside are Hoffman and Vijay, Hoffman with his furry arms and puffy hands protruding from his high-contrast Hawaiian shirt, Vijay with his hair slicked back and his sepia-toned jacket sleek and all the way zipped up. In the middle, Tommy and Katie, Tommy wearing what he always wears, an old gray T-shirt riddled with holes, his belly hanging down an inch or two beneath the bottom. His beard is sparse and scruffy; his mustache is just a few sprouts across his upper lip. Here he has a pea-sized pimple on the right side of his mushroom-shaped nose. Katie is skin and bones, her dyed-black hair straight down in the back, her face blank, her arms hanging along her sides, her palms to the camera. Her shoulders are slightly shrugged. Her lips are slightly ajar. It’s an action shot, Amy tells her, when she complains.
One Wednesday in mid-November Amy comes home from class and finds Zoe making a fort out of the desk in her dorm room
When Zoe sees her sister she stops what she is doing and just stands there staring for a second, and then she bursts into tears.
Amy looks around. Both beds have been stripped to provide for the fort. On the inside Amy swells. She sets her backpack down on the cheap gray carpet, gets down on her knees and enters the fort. Zoe follows.
Ever since Zoe ran away from home their dad comes to visit at the Honors House, trying to broker an agreement between Zoe and their mom
Amy supervises these meetings, experimenting with her face and carriage as she attempts to convey the maximum amount of disdain.
There are just a few problems with Zoe living with Amy now. The first problem is that Amy does not want Zoe to see her drunk because Zoe’s only twelve, although her birthday’s soon. But after just a few days Amy misses the parties like she’s lost whatever all she gained by growing up, and she debates what to do with Katie, who is the only one who knows about Zoe. Some of the other girls have seen Zoe, like when she has to go to the bathroom, but she has been instructed to say she is just visiting. Katie knows the truth and helps Amy smuggle food out from the cafeteria, which is another problem, because it’s hard to feed a kid on dinner rolls and sugar cookies and impossible to transport vegetables in one’s pockets.
The other thing is Zoe keeps on being in pain like she’ll get the flu but keeps not getting it, and she is running out of the Tylenol she brought in her bag she packed to run away from home. And they don’t tell their dad, but she is having seizures, too—worse and worse ones, more and more often. They don’t tell their dad that Zoe’s heart keeps racing, either, sometimes even waking her up during the night.
The other thing is Zoe misses the dog, which makes her get tempted sometimes to hear their father’s nonsense, even though it is clear he is on their mother’s side.
The good thing is that Amy reads her textbooks now, to Zoe in the evenings, to keep her entertained. There are so many things they can’t talk about, like Sasha, that all of Amy’s undone homework turns out to be a blessing. The best is the Introduction to Marine Biology, which they are doing chapter by chapter, in order. But just when they’re about to get to the part about octopi, which they have both been looking forward to, Zoe has a seizure she can’t come out of, and although every muscle in her body strains against it, there is something else in Amy’s brain that makes her call their parents. And just like that they drive right up to campus and carry Zoe off in their car.
They say the Portuguese saudade is a springy double helix of bereavement and relief over a missing person, place or thing (although they also say they can’t really explain it using words besides saudade).
On Thanksgiving at their grandparents’ they have turkey and stuffing, rehydrated potato flakes, and cranberry sauce slid straight out of the can, with the grooves still in it, jiggling
They have sweet potatoes with marshmallows, which Zoe can’t eat because sweet potatoes look like orange homemade Play-Doh, which made her sick once when she ate too much of it when she was little. Zoe does eat, on the other hand, the entire bottle of aerosol whipped cream, spraying it directly into her mouth. The crime is not discovered until it is time to eat the pumpkin pie, and by then the stores are closed. Zoe does not get in trouble now, but no one is particularly happy.
The girls watch old Cary Grant movies, each curled up with their heads at opposite ends of the couch, their feet almost but not touching, and it’s all right, but Zoe laughs and cries too much. Amy says she has homework to do, and Zoe says so does she. Amy rolls her eyes. Zoe bursts into tears.
On the day after Thanksgiving their dad says he has an announcement to make. They are back at their grandparents’ eating leftovers. They put their forks down and look at each other and then at him. Although it’s been a hard decision, says their dad, and Amy’s sure he’s going to say that he and their mom are getting a divorce, but looking at her mom it doesn’t look like that, so then she wonders, and their dad clears his throat and says, I have decided to accept a job in Minnesota, at the Rochester Community and Technical College. It’s too good of an offer to pass up, he says, and the best part of it is it has full medical for all of us, and the hospital in Rochester is one of the top ten hospitals in the whole world.
In the hush that follows, all the things on the earth come unstuck and fly off into space very fast. Amy sees Zoe off in the distance against a deep dark sky, smaller and smaller and smaller.
They put the house up for sale
The girls learn the square footage and that the name of its style is ranch-style, like the beans their dad heats up to serve with grilled cheese sandwiches, which is the only thing he knows how to make.
Strangers come and wander up and down the hallways. Amy looks up from studying for finals and looks at Zoe, but Zoe is always too busy watching the strangers to look back.
Amy spends more time with her family, always returning to the dorm in the evenings, for parties or TV. Since Amy’s had her license for a couple of months now their dad lets her borrow his car. Once backing out down their long driveway she crashed into their mom’s car because she was listening to the radio loud and didn’t hear their mom when she pulled in and started honking. Their grandparents found it funny and said it just goes to show what they mean when they say that most accidents happen close to home and that most murders are committed by friends and family. Their mom did not find it funny and said she shouldn’t get to drive anymore if she was going to drive like such a lunatic, but then with all the stuff about the move, she seemed to just forget.
Whenever they go anywhere now they notice their house when they come back, low to the ground, brick, with all its greenery and sidewalks. The cool cement of the porch hidden from the street by the bushes with the tiny, waxy leaves.
The people they sell to make only one demand, which is that they cut down the big tree in the backyard, since inspection has shown it to be what they refer to as a structural threat. In spite of the girls’ protests, their parents assent. So one day as Amy is about to leave some men come and climb the tree and start hacking off its limbs, limb by limb, bolts of thunder when they hit the ground.
And there is no single word in any other language that means the same thing as the Welsh hiraeth, which I’m told is a refusal to surrender what has already been lost (akin, but not identical, to homesickness).
A lot of their stuff they’re getting rid of, whatever they no longer need
Most of their old toys and clothes they take in their dad’s car to the Salvation Army.
Their My Little Ponies, most of their stuffed animals, the little red suitcase, the dingy fake metal frame with the picture from The Wizard of Oz. All but a few smaller fossils Amy returns to the ground. The arrowheads she keeps.
They excavate from beneath the pile of abandoned sweaters the doll case that contains the condoms they bought some three years before. Zoe starts to open it. But to Amy, the spirit of the contraband has been transformed. Once fascinating, funny and disgusting, now the contents of the case are like a distant horizon abruptly thrust forward, like something irrelevant that suddenly makes claims.
As they evacuate the home that carried them through childhood, lead lines on the walls like little cracks made by how tall they were on every birthday, Amy becomes aware for the first time of having had a family. She thinks of their mother’s story about the girlfriend who got raped by a rifle. She thinks of Sasha in his glossy coffin, his ghost-white face made up by the morticians, no longer his, already rotting.
She snatches the box away from Zoe.
Zoe whines. Zoe won’t stop whining.
In comes their mother. And Zoe stops. She looks from face to face like she doesn’t know who to be more scared of.
In the spring semester, Amy takes Russian Conversation, Russian Poetry, English Literature Prior to 1800, The French Revolution, and Photography II, which is her favorite
Even though Russian Poetry is taught by a famous poet named Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Photography II is her favorite. Poetry makes Amy think of Sasha.
Amy likes taking pictures. But what she really loves is the lab. She goes at night when no one’s there. You have to arrange it all before you start, anticipate all the steps, because then it’s dark, and you can’t turn the lights back on. Amy is good at anticipating the steps. You have to lay out the film canister, a bottle opener, scissors, the reel, and the developing tank, in that order. You have to space them evenly so you don’t accidentally knock anything over and lose it on the ground somewhere. Then you turn all the lights off and use the bottle opener to pop the bottom off the canister, and then, carefully, you pull out the film.
You pour water in for one minute (Amy counts to sixty), and then you drain it and pour in the developer all at once. If the developer is too hot or too cold, it will mess up everything. Knowing this exhilarates her, makes her heart race. Once you have poured the developer in, you shake the tank gently for thirty seconds and then for five seconds every thirty seconds until it’s done. Then you drain the tank and rinse four times with stop bath. Then you put the fixer in, and then the hypo-clearing agent.
Then the film is negatives, and delicately then you hang them up to dry.
The next day you make the prints, and the best part of everything is when you slide the white paper into the tray and gently make the waves of solution wash over it, back, forth, back, forth, and slowly, slowly, the image unfolds
You do have to be careful because photographic paper is expensive, and you can’t waste it.
Being in the lab reminds Amy of being in the cave at the Tulsa Zoo with her sister. The cave was fake but still a little slimy, and they would chase each other through it, squealing at the slime and the bats and snakes they pretended they could sense, lurking in the clammy dark. Which was almost as fun as the earthquake machine, which was as fun as the rides at the State Fair. When there wasn’t anyone waiting they would ride it over and over again, one hand on the padded railing, Amy’s other hand over Zoe, just in case.
Then you have to cut the mats to the right size and frame the pictures. Amy gets frustrated cutting the mats. She sits on the floor of her dorm room trying to get everything perfect. One night her hand slips, and the box knife slices into the base of her other hand, eliciting a steady stream of blood. Amy looks at her hand, motionless. As she watches the mat turn red, her disgust blooms into something else.
This gives her a new idea.
Not people die but worlds die in them
Amy reads the poetry of Professor Yevtushenko. Her favorite starts by saying there is no such thing as boring people, that in fact every single person in every single place is so fascinating as to be unfathomable, and when they die, all of what’s unfathomable dies with them: not people die but worlds die in them. She sounds the words out to herself in her dorm room, quiet as she can, tracing the rise and fall of the letters with the tip of her right middle finger.
Людей неинтересных в мире нет.
Их судьбы—как истории планет.
У каждой все особое, свое,
и нет планет, похожих на нее.
А если кто-то незаметно жил
и с этой незаметностью дружил,
он интересен был среди людей
самой неинтересностью своей.
У каждого—свой тайный личный мир.
Есть в мире этом самый лучший миг.
Есть в мире этом самый страшный час,
но это все неведомо для нас.
И если умирает человек,
с ним умирает первый его снег,
и первый поцелуй, и первый бой …
Все это забирает он с собой.
Да, остаются книги и мосты,
машины и художников холсты,
да, многому остаться суждено,
но что-то ведь уходит все равно!
Таков закон безжалостной игры.
Не люди умирают, а миры.
Людей мы помним, грешных и земных.
А что мы знали, в сущности, о них?
Что знаем мы про братьев, про друзей,
что знаем о единственной своей?
И про отца родного своего
мы, зная все, не знаем ничего.
Уходят люди … Их не возвратить.
Их тайные миры не возродить.
И каждый раз мне хочется опять
от этой невозвратности кричать.
At the end of the poem the poet rages against the irreversibility of death, the impossibility of restoring the people that we lose. One day in class Amy looks up from her book at him as he paces before the board: a rare moment of abandon, arisen from her nighttime readings. Professor Yevtushenko catches her eye. Amy feels the blood flash across her cheekbones. Professor Yevtushenko stops talking mid-sentence. The world turns black around the edges, and in her terror all she sees is him. You will be very beautiful, he says. But you must wear lipstick. Amy laughs, and her vision slowly relaxes and expands. Professor Yevtushenko is sixty-five years old, but his face is young except for the depth of his laugh lines. His eyes are bright and full of play. Red, he says, gaze sparkling. Red lipstick.
And he returns to his unfinished discourse on Russian railways.
When you consider the plenitude of any word’s experience you might think all words are untranslatable.
Amy agrees to go to a youth group meeting with Katie without knowing what exactly youth group meeting means
They drive and drive, over the Arkansas River, out of Tulsa, southwest. They enter and then pass through Sapulpa. Katie talks the whole time, slapping the steering wheel, jostling the clump of keys lolling out of the ignition, turning up and down the radio, swerving. Katie is a terrible driver, but Amy doesn’t care: she has a friend.
At around ten they arrive at a big powdery gravel parking lot overflowing with SUVs and red and blue Chevy pickup trucks. They squeeze into the only spot there is, and since there is no spac
e on her side, Amy scooches over and gets out on her friend’s. Once they’re out they hear bellowing. Amy looks in the direction of the vehement voice and sees a thousand people packed into a square off in the distance. She glances at Katie thinking maybe Katie will want to just go home, but Katie is already heading towards the people.
Amy follows, and when they get there, Katie says something to one of the security guards, who lifts a rope up to let them inside the square. Amy follows Katie deeper and deeper into the people. She holds her breath. The minister is saying spitfire, unconnected things: Laziness is the difference between the five foolish virgins and the five good ones; The fire is being turned up and that is exactly the way it is supposed to be as we head toward the return of Christ; Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie; our position of zero tolerance for homosexuality, same-sex marriage, abortion or murder, fornication, graven images or idols, women or Jezebel preachers.
There is a split second of silence. Then he reads: And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the Lord, But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.
The crowd erupts in cries and hollers, people raising their right hands and dancing around as though there’s music. Amy is frightened and glances at Katie, but Katie has fallen down on the ground. Amy reaches down to help her, but Katie pushes her away. She talks, but Amy can’t understand her. It’s like when her sister had her first seizures, and Amy can’t know what to do. Sweat floods her armpits and her thighs. She starts to take her coat off but can’t maneuver with all the people around. She bends down again to try and hear what Katie is saying, but the language they once shared has turned to quicksand. The boy beside her grapples for her fingers. Amy rips her hand away and takes a step back trying to keep herself from sinking, jamming her heels into someone else’s toes. She whirls around to say she’s sorry and hits the boy beside her in the side with her arm. He takes her by the shoulders, shakes her, explains: Katie has received the Holy Spirit holy spirit of the Lord, and that’s why she is speaking this way, in tongues. It is a blessing.
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