All My Mother's Lovers

by Ilana Masad

  You are my favorite person, my love, and always will be. Unless, of course, I find that delicious actor who plays the detective in that show I love so much. Just kidding! I know you won’t mind sharing if I do come across him. No matter what, if you show up here, or if our molecules find one another one day, we will be together again eventually.

  Never forget me—you with the big brain and long memory, you won’t forget a thing, I’m sure—but keep living, my love.

  Yours, in life and after and before and always,

  Iris

  CODICIL TO LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF IRIS JUDITH KRAUSE

  I, Iris Judith Krause (the “Testatrix”) of Oxnard, California, declare this to be my codicil (my “Codicil”) to my last will and testament being dated the 5th day of May, 2017 (my “Last Will”).

  1. My Last Will is hereby modified by deleting the following clause:

  “8. I bequeath to Ariel Michael Krause my wedding and engagement rings and to Margaret Agata Krause my amber necklace.”

  2. My Last Will is to be modified by adding the following clause after clause 8:

  “8B. I bequeath to Ariel Michael Krause my engagement ring, and to Margaret Agata Krause my amber necklace and my wedding ring.”

  3. I hereby confirm and republish my Last Will dated the 5th of May, 2017, in all respects other than those mentioned here.

  AUGUST 30, 2017

  Maggie wakes up into a dream. The room is dark, but she isn’t alone. Someone is breathing on her face. She can smell orange and cherries, faintly. Like Lucia’s Tic Tacs and ChapStick. She tries to cling to the dream but can feel herself stirring properly awake.

  “Hello, Maggie-mine.”

  Maggie leaps up in shock and her head knocks against something which yelps. She wrestles with the bedside lamp and gets it on. Lucia is kneeling by the bed and clutching her nose, laughing in that gasping, hiccupping way of hers. “Oof, what a welcome!”

  “Omigod, Lucia, what did I do? What are you doing here? Show me, show me—oh no, you’re bleeding! Fuck, fuck me, I can’t believe I did that! Shit, come on, come on—” She pulls the inexplicably there and still laughing Lucia up from the ground and leads her to the bathroom.

  “Shit,” Ariel says from down the hall, making Maggie’s shoulders grow rigid again with the surprise. She whips her head around and he’s standing there with Peter, both of them still wearing clothes, though she thought they’d gone to bed soon after her. But no, Ariel’s car keys are dangling from his hand. “We thought you’d be glad to see her. What, you beating on your girlfriend, sis?”

  “Fuck you!” she calls. Lucia is already in the bathroom, sitting on the closed toilet lid with her head leaned back and a wad of tissue held up to her bleeding nose.

  “Hey, be nice,” she says, starting to laugh again. “Your brother picked me up from the airport and brought me all the way back here and saved me a late-night Lyft.”

  “Yeah, say thank you!” Ariel yells.

  Maggie feels torn in a hundred directions. She wants to kiss Lucia, and hug her, and hold her. She wants to go flick Ariel in the forehead and also hug him fiercely and say thank you. She wants to go ask Peter if he knew, if he helped make this happen.

  But her body, running on the surprise of the moment, remembers suddenly that it was in a serious accident less than forty-eight hours ago. “Fuck,” she says as her back and neck seize up. She tries to bend down to Lucia, but the pain is so intense that tears well up in her eyes. “Okay, okay,” she mutters, and breathes in deeply. “I, uh, can’t move so well yet,” she adds sheepishly, keeping her head very still as she swivels her eyes down to Lucia.

  “Baby!” Lucia gets up and tosses the tissue in the trash. She holds Maggie’s shoulders gently. “Can I?” she asks, widening her arms.

  “Yes, oh god, yes, just gently,” Maggie says, and Lucia hugs her as if Maggie were a delicate or maybe dangerous thing, and perhaps she is a bit of both in her volatile emotional state and weakened physical one.

  “Come on, let’s say thank you to your dad too, for keeping it a secret,” Lucia says.

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY END UP doing a lot more than say thank you—they sit with Ariel and Peter around the kitchen island as Peter pours them glasses of red wine. Lucia explains how she had friended Ariel on Facebook, how they’d put together a plan for her to come a few days ago when Ariel was still worried about Maggie never coming back. Peter paid for the ticket after convincing Lucia that it was her birthday and Christmas present rolled into one for that year, because of course he would get her those because she was Maggie’s girlfriend. He makes it sound like he’s always given Maggie’s girlfriends birthday and holiday gifts, and Maggie raises her eyebrows at him. Peter winks at her, as if to say, Shh, it’ll be our little secret. After Lucia gets the bottle of wine from the counter and pours them all a little more, she and Ariel begin exchanging rap lyrics from a band they listened to on the way from the airport and fist bump, laughing.

  Maggie watches them all, this, her family, born into and chosen. Minus her mother. Her mother who will never get to witness this. She begins to cry again, but quietly, and no one notices, or they pretend not to.

  Finally, around three in the morning, they all get ready to go to bed, Maggie for the second time. While Lucia is brushing her teeth, Ariel calls Maggie over to his room.

  “Here,” he says. “Dad showed me the codicil thingy. This is yours. Just, you know. You should keep it close, just in case.” His face is red with the wine and maybe with some other embarrassment, but he pats her awkwardly on the arm, and holds Iris’s wedding ring out to her.

  Maggie takes it and closes her hand tightly around the smooth surface. It’s strangely hot, or maybe that’s just her own skin. “Ariel, the letters,” she starts, but he waves a hand.

  “Tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” He shuts his door, and Maggie feels her stomach clench. This isn’t over yet, she thinks. Maybe it never will be.

  Hobbling into her room, she finds her backpack hanging on the hook on the back of the door, and she puts the ring in a mint tin that she always keeps in the smallest pocket. She’ll put it somewhere safer when she and Lucia get home. In the same pocket, she finds the necklace, which she asked Ariel to put there yesterday, and she holds the cracked amber for a moment before putting the chain around her neck and clasping it.

  Lucia helps Maggie settle on her back with a thin pillow so she can lie flat and then curls up to her in the narrow bed, throwing a thick, warm leg over both of Maggie’s own. “What’s this?” she asks, touching the necklace.

  “It’s the one from my mom,” Maggie says. “It’s, well, she originally gave Ariel the rings and she gave me just this, the necklace. It was her mom’s, I know that much.”

  “So she gave him the future, and she gave you the past?” Lucia asks, tracing her finger over Maggie’s collarbone, careful to avoid the bandage covering the stitches in her neck. “That’s nice.”

  “I didn’t really think about it like that. But, well, she changed her mind. She gave me the wedding ring, too, and left the engagement one for Ariel,” Maggie says. I guess you gave me a bit of the future after all, Mom. She doesn’t know who she’s thinking it to, but she adds, Thank you.

  “Good, engagement rings are always ugly,” Lucia says, and Maggie snorts. “Babe, how are you doing, though? Really?”

  In a soft voice, Maggie starts telling Lucia about what her father told her. Lucia listens, occasionally interjecting a clarifying question, all the while tracing her fingers along Maggie’s skin. “So, yeah, I guess . . . I guess you were right not to jump to conclusions,” Maggie says, finally finished, feeling depleted.

  Lucia is silent for a moment before saying, “Damn, Mags. Your family is so cool.” Maggie is so surprised by this reaction that she doesn’t know what to say. She supposes her parents’
relationship is . . . well, it’s certainly not what she expected, that’s for sure. But cool? “Wait, so what about Harold?”

  “What about him?” Maggie isn’t sure what Lucia means.

  “You said he was the first, but your mom was hanging out with him again recently, right? Gotta say, I’m impressed with the dude,” Lucia says, nuzzling up to Maggie’s neck and heaving a sigh. “I hope I still got it when I’m that old.”

  “Oh—ew, no! I mean, I don’t think it was like that at this point.” Maggie can’t imagine Harold, with his walker and his wrinkles and his slow movements being capable of any kind of sexual activity. She doesn’t want to picture it. Instead, she thinks about Lucia getting older, her skin sagging slowly, face gaining wrinkles, and she smiles in the darkness. She wants to tell Lucia how beautiful she’ll be when she’s eighty, but then Lucia asks the question that’s plaguing Maggie.

  “What are you going to tell your brother?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Maggie says. “I really fucking don’t.” They’re quiet, and Maggie can feel how they’re both sinking into the mattress, sleep coming for them. She nudges Lucia. “Kiss?” she asks.

  Lucia lifts herself on an elbow and looks into Maggie’s face intently before kissing her deeply, and when she pulls away, Maggie thinks she’s about to say it, but she wants to say it first, to make this promise, even if it’s temporary, even if it’s just for now.

  “I love you,” she whispers, and feels Lucia tense and then relax beside her, feels her own banged-up and bruised body shedding something too, as if a layer of thin ice that’s encased her skin since the night her mother died is melting. Part of her is aware that this can’t last, that surely it isn’t this easy, that the ice—and the anger, the sadness, the frustration, all of it—will come back. But in this moment, Maggie feels calm, even secure, in this bed with her beloved, in this house she grew up in, where something of her mother’s essence will likely linger forever.

  “I love you too,” Lucia whispers back, and kisses her again. “And when you get better,” she continues, grinding her pelvis into Maggie’s side, “you better believe I’m going to show you how much.”

  It takes Maggie a long time to fall asleep. Her underwear is fairly soaked.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My first acknowledgment is to you, reader. Thank you for being here.

  I read the acknowledgments of most books these days, and they almost always make me cry, because they’re a testament to something I wasn’t aware of as a young writer dreaming of publishing a book—which is that while the physical act of writing is solitary, everything around it isn’t, and community is one of the most important assets we have as writers. No one who gets to see their book published—be that as physical pages bound with glue, as digital formatting, as audio recording—does it alone. There are many, many people along the way, and I’ll do my best to thank each and every one of them. If I haven’t thanked you but you think I should’ve, you’re probably right, and any negligence to do so is purely due to faulty memory and a tight deadline.

  In chaotically chronological order, my abiding thanks to:

  My small first family—Ima/Andi, Aba/Uri, David, Aunts Michelle and Vero, Grandma Ronna whose voice I recall so clearly, Grandpa Jerry for letting me jump on the couches, Saba Zvi for the pearl necklace we drew together, Savta Helen for the stories of swimming and breaking the rules—for keeping books around, for reading to me until I snuck away to read on my own, for encouraging my love of stories, for believing in me.

  And extended family—Dani, for joining us and letting us in; Libby, for thinking I was writing a book about rainbows during Pride month (you weren’t that far off) and for being a miraculous human; Uncle Jack and Aunt Nancy, for the trips to Barnes & Noble when I was little and the dinners when I was big and a love of Harry Potter everywhere in between; Aunt Candy, for gifting my brother the first three HP books (they’re mine now; sorry, David) which I’ve worn to tatters over the years; Jonathan and Peter, talented artists and gracious cousins, for all the love and humor and conversations over the years; Hilda, who isn’t a cousin though for years I thought you were, for the books you recommended when I was too young; and Joe(y), the first person who ever came out to me, long before I was out to anyone about anything, for being patient with your loved ones while always fighting for what you believe in.

  My seventh grade literature teacher, whose name I’m unsure of but whose habit of sitting on the desk, boldly showing off striped orange-and- black tights I will never forget, for assigning us to write “novels” that year, and for teaching me how to close-read the first piece of flash fiction I’d ever encountered, Etgar Keret’s “Break the Pig.”

  My first girlfriend, Gal, for the introduction to my first-ever poetry reading, showing me a world I hadn’t known I yearned for, where I was also introduced to performance art when a long-haired metalhead dude breathed deeply, centered himself, yelled (in Hebrew) bitch son of bitch as loudly as he could into the microphone, bowed, and left the stage.

  Amanda, whether or not you were who you said you were, for spending time with my writing, telling me you were impressed with it when I was all of sixteen and self-loathing and feeling impossibly ugly.

  My friends throughout high school (and prior) and to this day for letting me be who I was, who I am, who I became, and for never telling me how nuts my dreams were: Orin, Yael, Maya, Omri, Lia, Keren, Erez. I love you all so very much.

  Amos, Miki, Tami, and Aya, for being a second family, for loving me, for supporting me in tough times, for giving me some doses of reality without scaring me away. It’s what Aba would have done if he was around, and I’m grateful.

  Brian Morton, teacher, mentor, friend, for believing in me from that very first writing workshop in college, for continuing to champion me throughout the years since, for the conversations and disagreements and challenges and warmth, for sharing invaluable advice about publishing anxiety, for being a true mensch.

  Teachers and classmates of every writing workshop or class I was lucky enough to take in undergrad, for your wisdom, your words, your enthusiasm, your writing, your reading, your inspirational selves, including (but not limited to): Kieron Winn, for encouraging me to play with language and read scary-big books; Kit Haggard, for sharing early morning coffee and writing and late night dance parties in Oxford; Amy Hempel, for leading the kindest of groups at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, whom I met there, for the friendship and advice and camaraderie ever since; David Hollander and the Enemies of Fiction for letting me be amongst you.

  SLC family and friends—whether we connected then or after—for solidarity, artistic talks, general weirdness, inspirational work, amazing style, and love. There were many of you, and we’ve lost track of one another over the years. I want to especially thank India, Matt, Jean, Laurel, Ben, Emma, Montana, Gemma, Rob, Alec, Laura, Lukas, Tasha, Anna, and Will—all of you have taught and given me so much, in so many realms. And to instrumental teachers who changed the way I read and thought: Joe and Ann Lauinger, Lyde Sizer, Ilja Wachs, and Marvin Frankel.

  Michael Mejias, for telling me the truth (and being right, goddammit. Look, I did it!), and everyone I interned with and learned from at Writers House.

  Leigh Feldman, for friendship, employment, knowledge, laughter, gossip sessions, trust, not to mention invaluable email addresses and a deep, abiding faith that I could do it.

  Joy Parisi and Paragraph: Workspace for Writers, for the space, the friendships, the wisdom, the coffee, the employment, the events, the drinks, and the company, including, but not limited to: Will, Maya, Ryan, Rebecca, Sarah-Jane, Kavita, Aurvi, Danielle, Anne-Sophie, Caroline, Laura, Matt, Julia, and Jane Hoppen (who is no longer with us, but who I think, I hope, would have approved of this book). I’m sure I’m forgetting some people; if we shared coffee and space and conversations across rickety tables and mutually-agreed-upo
n silence, thank you. You all made New York City and being a writer feel real and tolerable even in the depths of imposter syndrome and a sense of doom.

  Natalie Zutter, writing-date pal extraordinaire and early reader, for the many early mornings, bites of doughnut, profound (and petty and silly and fun) conversations, and sustained friendship.

  Chelsea Laine Wells, writer-wife forever, inspirational teacher and tattoo goals, for the texts and the writing prompts and the forever support. Ily.

  Residencies where I didn’t work on this book, but where I wrote other things, because each bit of writing somehow leads to the next one: 100W Corsicana, especially Kyle Hobratschk for the incredible building and sharing Pinto Bean, and Katie Ford and Adam Raymont for the company, the art, the conversations, and the tattoo. And Vermont Studio Center, where I met so many incredible people and feasted my eyes on art, with special thanks to Brenda Peynado, Lena Valencia, Michael Badger, Mo Davieu, Eloisa Amezcua, and Kelly Johnson.

  All the people I’ve ever slept with, crushed on, kissed, obsessed over, been ghosted by, for the life experience. I mean it. No regrets.

  Garth Greenwell, workshop leader and Dalloway-lover, and all the fellows at Lambda Literary’s 2017 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, for your fully emerged and wondrous voices, for sharing nighttime cigarettes and daytime space, for getting me to my room that time I fainted in the elevator, for all you taught me and still do.

  Grad school colleagues, friends, and writers who’ve shared workshop space and presence, for all the support, community, belief, poetry, smarts, and love. Special thanks to early readers Rachel Cochran and Scott Guild for their encouragement, cat-sitting, and abiding friendship; early reader Zamira (Zamy) Atluhanova for the honesty and presence and love; Stevie Seibert Desjarlais and James Desjarlais for the introduction to Lincoln, Bachelor Nation, home-brews, and so much more; cohort mates Claire Jimenez, David Henson, and Alex Ramirez, for the education, empathy, beer, and incredible writing. And more, for sharing coffee, tea, intelligence, booze, kindness, stress-hugs, cards, stickers, department meetings, office space, friendship, and conversation: Jamaica, Jess, David, Katie, Katie, Ángel, Kate, Kathrine, Raul, Teo, Charlotte, Saddiq, Linda, Linda, Christian, Gina, Cameron, Adam (and Tiff!), Adrienne, Michelle, Jordan, Jessica, Anne, Nicole (and Pumpkin, may she rest in peace and doggy treats, and Sheila), Robert, Ashley, Damion, Keshia, Regan, Jeremy, Maria, Zoe, Alex, Gretchen, Maria, Emily, Emily, Nick, Dillon, Erin, Rosamond, Natalie, and if there’s anyone I’ve left out, it’s probably because you’re smart and have left Facebook. I am so grateful to you all for being my community.