The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015

by Adam Johnson

  Kate and I sit at the glossy black tabletop, the long cardboard storage box of D10-2009 open, its contents now in makeshift rows before us. Sitting here with Patty spread out in front of me, I know that I will not be able to tell the Robinsons that I handled their mother’s bones, that I have done what they may never choose to do. That I’ve held their mother’s skull in my hands. That I’ve lined up the pieces that make up her fingers, and held the halves of her pelvis. That Kate and I assessed her remains, remarked on how diminutive her frame was, for a 5’io’’ woman. “You can see she’s very petite,” says Kate. “She had a very narrow face.”

  She did have a narrow face, her jaw especially long and lean, with apple cheeks set round and high above her long grin. I know this from the photographs—not the ones published in that forensic journal (her face was hidden then, having become both Patty and not- Patty) but the family photos Mary sent me. There’s teenaged fan-girl Patty, in gingham and librarian’s glasses, standing next to Bob Hope; twenty-something Patty, visibly pleased to be at work on a theater fundraiser at some Baton Rouge Holiday Inn; Patty, now married and in feathered hair, watching Carl and Jim play in their Berlin living room; Patty on the rocks by the water in Corpus Christi, beaming in one of her signature bathing suits; Patty mid-laugh as she watches her barely-adult kids build a human pyramid on her fiftieth birthday. Each of these is a piece of her, not unlike the slivers she tried to piece together of her own family—her parents, her grandparents—in her letters to Mary. Patty wrote about her mother Ruth’s memory of a one-armed Civil War vet coming to visit when she was a little girl, and how he helped sweep the house with “the broom handle in his armpit.” And how her stern father, while a student in Maine, had “stoked people’s coal furnaces to put himself through school.” She wrote of how Ruth, in “long sausage curls and flowers,” had won a Mary Pickford look-alike contest while also playing on her high school basketball team. And how Ruth had somehow carved out a career in the 1930s as a nurse—but that later, at home raising her daughter in lean times during the war, she “took out her official nurse’s cape, navy blue wool with a red wool lining, and cut it up to make clothes for both of us.” Patty wrote of summers by the sea in Islesboro with her Grammy, in a cabin that had an old water pump in the kitchen sink, and an outhouse, and how they “dug clams and baked them in a sand pit, with seaweed to make steam.” She tells Mary that years later, while she was at college against her father’s wishes, Grammy would mail her money so she could eat.

  These are fragments—less tangible than bone, but of stronger substance, perhaps. Taken together, they make up a kind of catalogue, a measuring-up of the past.

  When a researcher, with gloved hands, peels the last vestiges of mummified flesh off the donor, and with a toothbrush scrapes away the most stubborn tendons clinging to the joints and soaks each of the bones in dishwashing liquid, down to the smallest segments that make up each finger and toe, what is she cataloguing? There is data to measure and chart, to scan and upload—but no matter how carefully each of her phalanges is collected from the grasses beyond the locked gates, Patty Robinson remains scattered. You can never gather up all of her.

  In a later letter to her daughter, Patty wrote of their relationship as adults, which had been strained when Mary was a teenager.

  I love you so much more now that you’re YOU, instead of Mary-in-training. I have loved you from the time you were on the way—I never would have guessed how much bigger love can stretch to encompass the well-grown woman. Now that I know, I predict my love bubble with your name on it will be visible from Connecticut. Keep an eye on the sky—it will look like a giant purple balloon.

  Whether as a balloon or lifted up by God or an “energy” or a gross, red-headed bird, Patty believed the best part of her would be airborne.

  TJ JARRETT

  Four Poems

  FROM Zion

  Meridian, MS 1958: My Grandmother Meditates on the Miracles of the Christ

  In the world we knew, what went blind stayed blind.

  What was laid low, languished. The world we knew was dark

  but manageable. The world we knew favored speed

  or steel. Or both. We could run when they took up arms or

  we could square the body against the pain we each would know.

  The world revealed itself in this way, the choice it offered.

  Hard then, to pray for more than this. But we did pray. Oh,

  how we prayed. We prayed to the river to spare us flood. To the trees

  and their turning. To the wind and its lamentation. If you know

  nothing of prayer, know this: to pray is to ask—Lord, will we be delivered?

  The world we knew said no. Said wait. Said no again. To pray is to ask—

  Lord, have mercy. The world we knew said no, said wait, said wait.

  And the Lord said unto us: You ask not for My mercy; go forth

  and ask your brethren. And we were sore and right afraid.

  Meridian, MS 1963: My Mother Considers the Mechanics of Flight

  I want to save you, dark girl of thunderhead, dark girl falling upward.

  I want to tell you the voices fluttering in the dark of your body are all true:

  you will leave this place, and those who would harm you will pass over.

  Dark Girl,

  even now you cannot be held within your soft, slight bones—synapses

  firing all at once—first the aura, then borealis of red and yellow light

  sparking your firmament—your body thundering, writhing, thundering

  against the ground. What did you find in those liminal places? Consider

  the jewel-throated hummingbird; keep your wings by beating them faster

  than the human eye can see. Did you return to your mother standing guard,

  gently thrusting a stick into your mouth to hold the tongue, to save it?

  Kyrie: Notes to the God I Cannot See

  When you consider creation, Lord—think of me:

  this misfiring body, this broken machine.

  We die here on earth, spinning like a child’s top—

  spin and gyre then falling down. Have mercy.

  This may not be of much import, Lord—there is so much

  wind and distance. So many birds and stars. There are those

  who know not of their suffering. Knowledge of suffering

  is amplitude. Lord, have mercy. Is this what is meant

  to clothe a man in thunder? I know I suffer, Lord

  and I am afraid. Have mercy. Shall I praise this body?

  What can I praise when all You have done

  may be undone? Have mercy. Have mercy.

  We Are Soldiers in the Army of the Lord

  The old gods are falling. So are we all.

  Citizen, they will not tell you that falling

  can be forward motion, or that freedom is less

  being broken than will to rise. Go, my dark sweet girl.

  Praise our fresh dead. Raise them up—

  Call each by rightful name.

  Citizen. Citizen.

  Have they called you animal, Citizen?

  You are bone and spirit too.

  Rise, girl, for we are soldiers.

  This earth is littered with our fallen.

  Weep not. The ground shifts

  with the ghosts of the fallen. Rise.

  KATIE COYLE

  Fear Itself

  FROM One Story

  ON A TRIP with their U.S. History class to a presidential wax museum in a nearby city, three girls make up a game they call Categories, the rules of which are perfectly simple. First, one girl suggests a type of person or thing—Beatle Wife, Pride and Prejudice Sister, Greek Goddess, Mode of Fortune Telling. Second, each girl tries to identify one another within said category. That’s it. That’s the extent of the game. As they play, one girl feels like crying and another feels like screaming and another wants to stop playing Categories altogether, because no one wants to be t
he Yoko Ono, and no one wants to be the Mary Bennett. But they never officially quit. They are sixteen. They’ve been best friends since grade school. They are Kara (The Mean One), Ruthie (The Funny One), and Olive (The Smart One). All three are mean and funny and smart, but Kara is probably the most of each.

  By noon, their classmates have scattered across the museum to smoke and take inappropriate pictures of themselves with Millard Fillmore. The girls, cursed with a sense of moral superiority correlating directly to their social inferiority, find a corner of the lobby in which to become invisible. After an hour, they’ve exhausted ideas for Categories, even Alcoholic Beverages (which none of them have drunk) and Women of the Bible (which none of them have read).

  “What else, what else,” says Kara.

  “Maybe we should walk around the museum for a little while?” says Olive, Old-Fashioned and John the Baptist’s Mom. Olive can tell Kara’s getting bored, and when Kara gets bored, she gets nasty. “We do have to write a response paper . . .”

  “We could write it in haiku and Olsen would accept it,” says Kara. Their teacher, Mr. Olsen, is fresh from college, bright-eyed and weirdly-bearded. He has a habit of rewarding substandard effort with high grades for the sake of irony.

  Ruthie laughs a bit too loudly at this. “Imagine him reading the haikus out loud to Cassidy Fontana. ‘Listen to this one, honey. I think I’m really getting through to them.’ And she’s all, ‘You’re so Mr. Holland’s Opus, baby. Take me now.”

  Cassidy Fontana is a creation of the girls’ collective imagination: Mr. Olsen’s beautiful, hypothetical girlfriend, the primary audience for his sardonic puns and excessive interest in mumbly indie rock bands. At the beginning of the school year, all three indulged in fantasizing about Cassidy, who, if the Category was Girlfriends, would be the coolest possible option, the one none of them would feel confident enough to claim. But now it’s November, and Ruthie alone won’t let it go. While Mr. Olsen reads A People’s History of the United States out loud to their class, Ruthie writes awkward erotica about his afterschool trysts with this imaginary woman. ‘You be the robber baron and I’ll be the anarchist,’ Cassidy moaned in ecstasy as Mr. Olsen slid himself inside her. She passes one fevered page at a time to Kara and Olive, and though the dread that Mr. Olsen will one day notice is a constant sickness in her stomach, she can’t stop.

  Kara was the one who came up with the name “Cassidy Fontana”—alluring and perfectly unreal—but now she stares at Ruthie through half-closed eyes, sleepy with disdain. “Sometimes it feels like Cassidy Fontana is just an excuse for you to think about Olsen’s dick.” Ruthie’s mouth pops open in protest, but Olive, the oldest of four sisters and a natural diffuser of conflict, quickly rattles off a list of prospective Categories before the argument can snowball. “Sandwiches? European Cities? Pink Ladies?”

  There’s a pause. Then Ruthie’s eyes widen; she points. In the center of the lobby is a reproduction of LBJ taking the Oath of Office, one hand raised beside a wax ear, the other resting on an invisible Bible. Beside him is Jackie O., blank-eyed in her bloodstained pink suit. “First Ladies!” cries Kara.

  “No good,” says Olive. “By default I’m Michelle Obama. Or Sally Hemings.”

  “Laura Bush,” says Ruthie. “Black Laura Bush. Do you accept?”

  Olive thinks this over. “Laura Bush is a librarian. And possibly a secret feminist. I’ll consider it.”

  “Ruthie should be Jackie O., since she’s the most virginal,” says Kara. Kara always makes Ruthie the most virginal one—Joan of Arc when the Category was Historical Figures, and “Only the Good Die Young” when it was Billy Joel Songs. It doesn’t matter that, as Ruthie constantly reminds her, all three of the girls are virgins—that none of them have so much as kissed a boy.

  “What about Kara?” Olive prompts, before Ruthie can object.

  There’s a beat of silence, and then Ruthie says, “Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  “What does that mean?” Kara cries. Ruthie always identifies Kara as the ugliest thing in any given Category. Kara has already been named Ursula (Disney Villainesses), Rocky (Oscar-Winning Films of the 1970s), and Tugboat (Modes of Transportation).

  Ruthie sighs. “Eleanor Roosevelt helped write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She practically was president. Easily the best First Lady.”

  “Right,” Kara says. “It has nothing to do with the fact that bitch was horse-faced as fuck.”

  “Eleanor Roosevelt is a compliment. It means you’re strong,” Olive says. “And by the way? I find it upsetting that you can dismiss a woman’s entire body of work just because she didn’t fit a patriarchal society’s definition of beautiful.”

  Kara snorts. “God, Olive. You sound like a lesbian.”

  Olive’s stammering retort (“And what exactly does a lesbian sound like, Kara?”) is interrupted by a man clearing his throat nearby. Mr. Olsen stands beside them in his jeans and tweed blazer, twisting a strand of beard between two fingers, watching them with eyebrows raised.

  “Hey, dudes,” he says.

  “Hey,” say Kara and Ruthie and Olive.

  “This museum’s pretty cool, huh?” He takes a step. “I mean, in a totally lame way.”

  Ruthie shoots Kara a quick, smiling glance—a peace offering that lasts no longer than a second. Though Kara can feel her friend’s eyes on her, she does not turn her head. “Still.” Mr. Olsen puts his hands in his pockets. “Maybe you should walk around a bit? Take some notes? You might learn something! Probably not, though.”

  Kara and Ruthie and Olive begin to shuffle away in a tight pack—staying, even during an altercation, no more than an arm’s span apart. They stop when Mr. Olsen clears his throat again.

  “Separately,” he says.

  Olive looks to Ruthie who looks to Kara. If anyone could challenge Mr. Olsen’s authority at this moment, it would be Kara, who regularly calls him a “man-child” to his face, in front of other students. Each time she does it, a shivery thrill goes up the spines of Ruthie and Olive—they know it’s mean, but they love watching their fierce friend make this tiny man squirm. Even Ruthie, who—it must be said—continues to talk about Cassidy Fontana as an excuse to think about Mr. Olsen’s dick, gets off on how cruel Kara is to him. They wait for it now, the delicious snap of Kara’s retort. But Kara has already begun to stalk away, down a corridor over which hangs a sign reading In Times of War . . . Ruthie and Olive have no choice. They separate.

  The war corridor holds Dolley Madison in flight, a portrait of Washington held tight to her wax breast; Abraham Lincoln at a podium, the Gettysburg Address crackling through a speaker behind him; and Kara’s huge, insurmountable anger. She is sick to death of her only two friends. She used to have more; they used to be a group of six or seven. But when high school started, the other girls drifted away to drink beers in the basements of thick-necked football players, to give blowjobs in the backs of mini-vans. They didn’t invite Kara or Ruthie or Olive to join and the remaining three never figured out how to invite themselves. Now they’re stuck with each other.

  Kara never actually forgets that she’s a virgin; she just believes that the larger she makes Ruthie’s virginity, the more impossible it is to miss, and the smaller her own becomes. The problem is that Ruthie and Olive carry their virginity around as if it is a gift, a choice, whereas for Kara it is an impossible oppression, so much dead weight. Kara is not as skinny as Ruthie and Olive, not as take-off-your-glasses-and-let-down-your-hair secretly beautiful as Ruthie and Olive. And every time Ruthie compares her to Eleanor Roosevelt, to a tugboat, it’s as if she is saying, No one will ever love you.

  “Fuck!” Kara shouts into the abandoned corridor.

  She hears a laugh just beyond Woodrow Wilson. She imagines one of her asshole classmates, Rob Rafi or Andrew Atwell or somebody, hiding and watching and laughing at her.

  “Fuck you!” she calls out.

  “That’s not very ladylike,” says the laugher, and Kara knows she does not know him. A
figure in a wheelchair moves out of the line of presidents and towards her. She’s embarrassed by the wheelchair, the expletive.

  “Sorry!” she calls before she can see his face. “I thought you were someone I knew.”

  “You usually scream ‘fuck you’ at people you know?” asks the figure. He’s directly in front of her now, illuminated by the spotlight hanging over Lincoln. The funny thing is, he looks like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Same jaw, same hairline, same round glasses perched on the same strong nose. Between his teeth is a long black cigarette holder. Kara does not recognize the look the man gives her. His mouth grins but his eyes are dead, two expressionless blue glass beads. She feels a wave of cold spread from her center, some combination of curiosity and fear.