The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015

by Laura Furman

  “I was always in the less-is-more camp, just wanted a nice, retro flip-phone, but sometimes you don’t realize you need something until you have it; like it creates its own need. It’s manipulative and horrible and now I can’t live without it.”

  Emily was at her desk, eyes fixed on her biology textbook, chewing pizza in staccato, I’m-not-listening Morse code. When I came in she looked up at me with begging eyes.

  “Hey,” said Miranda, “if it isn’t Miss Whole Hog herself. Any customers yet?”

  I hovered in the doorway to the kitchen and tried to look exhausted beyond conversation. “Not yet,” I said. “You and Amy should come out sometime.”

  “For the coleslaw? No thanks. Get some veggie dogs, then we’ll talk.”

  “Well,” I said, and backed away.

  “Jenny,” Emily said, very loudly. “Come and have some pizza.”

  Emily rarely raised her voice. Rarely spoke at all, except in Skype conversations with her German boyfriend late at night, so I couldn’t deny her. I edged back into the living room and sat on the flowered couch beside Miranda.

  “Where’s Amy?” I said.

  “Sulking,” said Miranda. “We’re in a fight.” She rolled her eyes. “We’ll be over it by tomorrow, you know how it goes. How was your day?”

  “There’s a woman who’s gone missing in Potomac,” I said. “Her husband stopped by with flyers. Weird guy.”

  “Weird how?”

  “I don’t know. Just…something about him.”

  Miranda reached for another piece of pizza. “So you think she ran away?”

  “Oh—no. I mean, I hadn’t thought of that. I was thinking he might’ve killed her, actually.”

  “Well, Montana’s a good place to disappear,” Miranda said. “If she’s gone on purpose. Though of course you can’t always tell from looking at someone.”

  “If they’re running?” I said.

  “If they’re cruel to their partner,” she said. “I had a boyfriend who treated me like a black-and-white starlet when we were in public—opening doors for me, kissing my hand, paying me these witty compliments—but when we were alone he liked to slap me around. You have that problem less with lesbians, I think. It’s different between two women. The power thing is different.”

  I thought that sounded true. Though I’d never been in love with a girl, at twenty-two my defining relationships had so far all been with women: my mother, my best friend, various roommates, and most recently my grandmother, whose tissue-lidded cirrus eyes still chased me into sleep at night. The year I’d lived with her, she’d never raised a hand to me, and even if she had, she’d have been too weak to even leave a bruise…yet there had been no question in my mind that I was subjugated to her. Her power over me was not physical. At the level of the body, the control was mine. Each morning I waded through the swampy, florid air of her bedroom to help her rise from her pillows, holding her up by her birch-limb arms (skinny and pale with dark splotches), leading her to the bathroom in breath-measured steps. After her shower, while I guided her ankles through the holes of her terrible underwear, she said things like “This is the best job you’ll ever hope to get” and “I can see the nigger in you when you kneel like that.”

  If she hadn’t gotten sick, I’d’ve had no dealings with her. I thought about that often, listening to her breathe over the baby monitor by my bed, the constant static of her lungs; I wished her well, or dead.

  That night, after Miranda had gone, I took the flyer into bed with me and Googled Patricia (“answers-to-Peggy”) Cataluno. She worked for the Providence historical society, and was the kind of woman who made the same face in every photograph. There she was, steel-eyed in front of an old farmhouse; there she was, steel-eyed in front of an old mill. There she was, steel-eyed at a Christmas party with her husband’s arm wrapped around her, the man I’d met just that morning. Brian. He was grinning, relaxed, but when I enlarged the photograph I thought I could see the indentation of his fingers on the skin of her bare shoulder, and his knuckles seemed pale, like he was gripping very hard. Maybe he’d known she’d soon slip away. There was a set to her chin that made her look difficult, cruel even, a certain telltale crease between her eyebrows, and I felt a sudden muddled lean toward sympathy for Brian—if he had killed her, I guessed it had been accidental.

  “You think I care about fly-fishing?” Peggy might have shouted. They’d have been inside their camper, a bright enclosed bullet surrounded by darkness. “You think I give a shit about your pathetic last-ditch urge to be a man? You can’t know how stupid you looked in that life vest. Like a big fat baby in a snowsuit. I can’t believe I ever let you touch me! Just the thought makes me sick to my stomach.”

  Standing so close. His fingers fisting shut without his say-so. A blinding howl building up inside.

  When my grandmother called for me over the monitor, panicked, four a.m., the night she died, that same howl kept me lying in my bed. She’d never said my name with any semblance of affection or respect, but now she was gasping for me with a desperate yearning: “Jenny! Jenny! Jenny, please!” I only wanted to listen to her need me, take a moment’s power for myself, but instead I’d listened to her die. I’d doomed myself to an eternity of my own name raising goose bumps in my soul.

  And Brian, too, would suffer. I couldn’t pity a murderer, but I had sympathy for that pivot moment right before. Action: inaction. Sometimes the only difference was the “in”: what we spun ourselves into.

  —

  The next afternoon we had a customer. A family of them—two moppy-headed sons and their athletic parents, fresh from a morning of fishing at Johnsrud. They were pure Missoula, with their strong calves and even tans and the way the mother lowered her voice and said, sickly-sweet, “Tell the lady what you want, honey. Come on, tell her.”

  I didn’t like being called “the lady.”

  “A pulled-pork sandwich,” said one of the boys. “Please.”

  “Except tell her you don’t want a pickle,” the mother prompted. “And tell her you can’t have any bread, just the pork.” She looked up at me. “He can’t have bread.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Holt said, squinting at the ticket. “What didn’t they order?”

  “Just be glad they’re here,” I said.

  “It’s better with no customers,” he said. “That way it’s not even like a job.”

  “You know how else it’s not like a job?” I said, and rubbed my thumb and fingers together.

  “Gotta holla for the dolla,” Holt said, resigned.

  The mom and dad were tucking napkins into their kids’ T-shirts, and the dad tried to tuck one into the mom’s neckline, too, but she batted him away with an open hand and laughed. He pushed her aside and went for the neck again.

  They were finishing their meal, all of them merrily smeared in rusty barbecue sauce, when Holt’s dog started barking. She was a sharp-toothed heeler with the erratic territorialism of a cokehead landlord, so Holt always kept her on a run out back, but she’d gotten into the habit of stationing herself at the rear door and barking straight into the restaurant. Now the place filled with the sound of her, drowning out the jingle of the bells as the front door swung open.

  It was Miranda. She looked sweaty and expectant, grinning when she saw me behind the counter.

  “I came!” she said.

  “Wow!” I said. “Welcome. Can I get you a table?”

  “Nah,” she said, “I’m not here to eat. Just wanted to take a look around the place.” She leaned on the countertop to pluck a napkin from the holder beside the register, and swiped at her damp brow. “It’s so pretty out here. Long drive without A/C, though.”

  Behind her, the mother of the family caught my eye and mouthed check.

  “Just one minute,” I said, and Miranda granted me time with a queenly nod. She sat at the counter on one of the high-backed wooden stools and watched me bring the check, box the leftovers, run the credit card. She wa
s bright-eyed in the way of a feverish child, breathing with her mouth open, and I remembered that she was sick—a fact usually overshadowed by my irritation with her.

  “Can you get a break?” she asked as the family traipsed out the door. “Show me around?”

  I wanted to say no, wanted to say, This is my job, I have to work, but anyone could see that I did not. I glanced at Holt, hoping he’d interfere, and he must have misunderstood my big, pleading eyes, because he said, “Do I look like I give a shit? Just keep your eye on the driveway and hustle back if someone shows.”

  “Not such a bad gig, huh?” Miranda said, leading me down the steps. “Can we get to the river from here?”

  “Through the trees,” I said. “It’s kind of a steep climb down, though.”

  “Give me a challenge while I’m still up to it,” she said. “Sooner or later I won’t be good for much except puking my guts out from all the chemicals they’re feeding me.”

  I thought of my grandmother’s vomit smeared across tissues in my hand, the proud way she stared me down when I wiped her face. “How’s that going?” I said, trying to be delicate.

  “Cancer?” Miranda said, and snorted.

  We walked through the dry grass surrounding the restaurant, still flattened from the winter’s snows and pressed against the ground in swirls. Around us the mountains stretched their jagged edges to the unpierceable blue sky. The sun was hot on my neck and I could feel myself start to sweat through the black Whole Hog tank top I was forced to wear, but it felt good after the beef stench I’d been soaking in for the past three hours. At the tree line we picked our way down the rocky slope toward the water, its rushing mechanical voice growing louder as we approached.

  “Do people fish this part of the river?” Miranda asked.

  I cast my eyes like a line across its clear bed, the white froth and the moss-slick rocks below, shining from the constant hand of the water. “I know next to nothing about this place,” I said. “I just work here.”

  She leaned to unlace her shoes and reveal her pale, well-formed feet, the toenails painted a cheerfully ugly orange. Wading out, she stopped when the water was just above her ankles, and clasped her hands behind her back, head down. I’d been raised in the city, where beauty was the greening crumble of an old foundation, or a sunset blooming on the mirrored faces of the skyscrapers, and I still couldn’t believe I was allowed to live here among healthy streams and molting birches and the constant upsurge of rocky earth. The land made me feel blindly cared for.

  Behind us, up the bank, a stick cracked and someone said, “Hey down there.”

  I turned, shading my eyes against the tree-rippled sun. It was the husband, scrambling toward us. Miranda had turned, too, reaching for her shoes as if she didn’t want to be caught barefoot by a stranger.

  “I’ve been walking all over these grounds,” he said as he reached us, breathless, ruddy-faced. “I feel like I’m supposed to find her. You know when you feel something deep in your gut? It’s got to be me.”

  “This is Brian. He’s looking for his wife,” I said to Miranda—unnecessarily, since her eyes were already bright with interested comprehension.

  “I heard about that,” Miranda said. “I’ve been thinking about both of you.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thoughts can’t hurt.”

  “Well,” she said, “they can. But.”

  “I can’t believe this is my life,” he said. He threaded his hands through his thinning hair and squeezed his eyes shut, lips clamped. There was a smudge of dirt on one puffy cheek.

  “I assume you called the cops,” Miranda said. “The forest service. I assume there’s been a search party?”

  Brian opened his eyes again. “They won’t take me seriously,” he said. “They looked for two days, then bam. Left me on my own.”

  “Did she have her money with her?” Miranda said, crossing her arms. “Her wallet? Her passport, maybe?”

  “Yes,” Brian said, and his ruddy face grew even ruddier, flushed and petulant. He poked his sunglasses down onto his nose. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “That’s what the cops are thinking, too. But Peggy wouldn’t just leave me like this, out in the middle of nowhere. She’s the one who always deals with our plane tickets. I mean, they’re in her e-mail box, not mine. She wouldn’t just leave me here without a ticket home.”

  He was talking loudly, almost yelling, to be heard over the chatter of the water. From beyond the riverbank came the sound of a car, followed by the frantic yapping of Holt’s dog, and I began to back toward the restaurant. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I need to get back to work.”

  I glanced at Miranda, expecting her to follow me, but her eyes were fixed on Brian.

  “I’ll help you look,” she said.

  —

  Emily was deep in Skype with her boyfriend when I got back to the house that night, her crispy German vowels coming strong through the door of her room. Miranda’d left the restaurant just before the sun set, and I’d seen her embrace Brian on the porch, reaching up to pat his cheek with force, a gesture caught between chastisement and affection. After her car had battered down the driveway, he came in to eat a chicken sandwich at the counter. Holt watched him with bloodhound eyes and flared nostrils, like he was catching some elusive scent. “One thing that always tastes good,” Brian had said, swiping his finger through a trail of sauce, “is food.”

  I exchanged my Whole Hog tank top for a red T-shirt, then stared into the chilly maw of the fridge until the freezer-burned reek of old food began to sicken me. Finally I ate a cherry tomato and took a bottle of beer and went outside into the hot night. The air was dry, rich with the smell of flowers and forest fires, and as I settled myself onto the porch steps I could hear strains of music from the houses of my neighbors: Kanye, country.

  Miranda came by in the middle of my beer, and before I could check myself, don’t encourage her!, I smiled. She was wearing a long, loose dress, and when she sat beside me on the step I felt the heat coming off her body. “You just get home?” she said.

  “Little bit ago.” I didn’t stand. She wasn’t quite a guest. “Want a beer?”

  “I’m not supposed to drink,” she said. “But if I may, I’d take a tiny sip of yours.”

  I passed her the bottle.

  “That poor man,” she said. “Brian.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Are you still certain Peggy left him?”

  “Oh, he knows too,” she said. “He’s in denial, but he may as well have told me outright. Her backpack was gone, not just her shoes, not just her favorite sweater. Most all her clothes. They’ve been unhappy for a while. Still, it’s not a nice thing to do, to leave someone in unknown territory.” She passed my beer back to me.

  “How long do you think he’ll stay?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “How long does it take to give up on someone? An idea of someone, anyway. An idea of yourself.”

  “So he’s sticking around?”

  “We didn’t talk about it.” In the porch light her face was waxy as a leaf. “If I were him, I wouldn’t want to go home any time soon. That’s when shit gets real. At home. That’s when reality sets in. So you know, in some ways I think it’s good for me, to live at Amy’s while I’m going through this business.” She gestured to her midsection. “If I still lived here, in my own familiar house, I’d be more likely to fall victim to self-pity. Like when a little kid falls down and feels okay until their mother shows them sympathy. Then they bust out crying even though deep down, they’re not too badly hurt.”

  “I really thought Brian might’ve killed her,” I said. “I was sure of it.”

  “Who’s to say he wouldn’t have?” Miranda said, and laughed. “From what he told me, Peggy’s not a simple lady. Maybe she got out right in time.”

  “That takes guts,” I said, thinking of myself, and my own cowardice. “To up and go.”

  “Sure,” Miranda said, and was quiet, staring out into the arid street. I looked a
t her, her open, farmwife face, and remembered all the times I hadn’t met her eyes, had ignored her questions or given her one-word answers in the hopes she’d take the hint and leave me be.

  “I guess there’s some things you’d like to get away from,” I said.

  For a moment she didn’t respond, then she sighed and propped her chin up on her hand. “No,” she said. “Actually, I want to face this thing. Being sick. Right now it’s like we’re in the preliminaries. I know the awfulness is still to come, and I’m a sitting duck for it. Give me something to fight! Or at least complain about.” She grinned.

  I only knew Miranda as she was now: bald, intrusive, overtalkative, ill. And she only knew my current incarnation, a taciturn waitress who lived in her house and refused to meet her halfway. The difference was, I had never asked to be known, because I didn’t plan to be this me for long.

  But here I was.

  “You can complain to me anytime,” I said, and impulsively I reached over to take her hand. Her palm turned up and opened to me like a morning glory. It had been a while since I’d touched another person with tenderness; since my grandmother, maybe. Even when I hated her the most, I had to be gentle with her: running soap across her bony shoulders, tilting her head back to hook oxygen to her nose, fastening the buttons on her blue dress. All that gentleness…it was bound to sometimes feel like love.

  “Right back atcha,” Miranda said, and squeezed my fingers for a long moment. Then she stood to go. Not home; but somewhere like it.

  —

  Back in the house, Emily was still talking to her boyfriend. I paused outside her door and listened to her muffled, foreign words, and the tinny crackle of his voice coming back at her through cheap computer speakers. I tried to guess by the rise and fall of her language what they were saying, but everything sounded like Where are you, I’m sorry, good-bye.