The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015

by Laura Furman

  —

  “All right,” Annie finally said. Her siblings had been silent for many minutes and their faces seemed so young and sad although they were middle-aged faces with middle-aged lines. “All right, we’ll deal with this.” She nodded at them reassuringly. Later she went next door to see her grandmother, who seemed surprisingly unchanged. She lay on the couch and watched her granddaughter go about turning on lights. “You came home to deal with your father? Your mother’s had a hell of a time.”

  “Yes,” Annie said, and sat in the big chair nearby.

  “If you want my opinion your father went mad because of his behavior. Being a pervert. I always knew he was a homo, and that can drive you insane, and now he’s insane, that’s my opinion if you want it.”

  “I don’t,” Annie said gently.

  “Then tell me something exciting. Where have you been that’s exciting?”

  Annie looked at her. The old woman’s face was expectant as a child’s, and Annie felt an unbidden and almost unbearable gash of compassion for this woman who had lived in this house for years. She said, “I went to the ambassador’s home in London. They had the whole production there for dinner. That was exciting.”

  “Oh, tell me everything, Annie.”

  “Let me sit a minute.” And so they were silent, her grandmother lying back down like a young person trying to be patient, and Annie, who up until this very day had always felt like a child—which is why she could not marry, she could not be a “wife”—now felt ancient. She thought how for years onstage she had used the image of walking up the dirt road holding her father’s hand, the snow-covered fields spread around them, the woods in the distance, joy spilling through her—how she had used this scene to have tears immediately come to her eyes, for the happiness of it, and the loss of it. And now she wondered if it had even happened, if the road had ever been narrow and dirt, if her father had ever held her hand and said his family was the most important thing to him.

  “That’s right,” she had said earlier to her sister, who cried out that were it true they would have known. What Annie did not say was that there were many ways of not knowing things; her own experience over the years now spread like a piece of knitting in her lap with shadows all through it. In her thirties now, Annie had loved men; her heart had often been broken. Currents of treachery and deceit seemed to run everywhere; the forms it took always surprised her. But she had many friends and they had their disappointments too, and nights and days were spent giving support and being supported; the theater world was a cult, Annie thought. It took care of its own even while it hurt you. She had recently, though, had fantasies of what they called “going normal.” Having a house and a husband and children and a garden. The quietness of all that. But what would she do with all the feelings that streamed down her like small rivers? It was not the sound of applause Annie liked—in fact, she often barely heard it—it was the moment onstage when she knew she had left the world and joined fully another. Not unlike the feelings of ecstasy she’d had in the woods as a child.

  Her father must have worried she would come across him in the woods. Annie shifted in the big chair.

  “Did they tell you about Charlene?” her grandmother asked.

  “Charlene Daigle?” Annie turned to look at the old woman. “What about her?”

  “She’s started a chapter for incest people. Incest Survivors I believe they’re called.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Soon as that father died, she started it. Ran an article in the newspaper, said one out of five children are sexually abused. Honestly, Annie. What a world.”

  “But that’s awful. Poor Charlene!”

  “She looked pretty good in her picture. Heavier. She’s gotten heavier.”

  “My God,” Annie said softly. She stood to go, touching lightly the top of her grandmother’s head, thinking how in the kitchen Cindy had said quietly, “We must have been the laughingstock of the county.”

  “No,” Jamie had said to her. “Whatever he did, he hid.”

  Annie had seen how their distress showed in their guarded faces. “Oh,” she had said, feeling maternal, protective toward them. “It doesn’t really matter.”

  But it did! Oh, it did.

  —

  Back in the main house, Sylvia sat with her children for supper in the kitchen. “I heard about Charlene,” Annie said. “It’s unbelievably sad.”

  “If it’s true,” answered Sylvia.

  Annie looked at her siblings, but they looked at the food they moved into their mouths. “Why would it not be true? Why would someone make that up?” Jamie shrugged and Annie saw—or felt she saw—that Charlene’s burdens were nothing to them; their own universe and its wild recent unmooring was all that mattered now. Sylvia went upstairs to bed, and the three sat talking by the wood stove. Jamie especially could not stop talking. Their silent father in his state of dementia seemed unable to keep himself from spilling forth all he had held on to secretly for years, and Jamie, who had been silent himself, now had to tumble all he heard before them. “One time they saw you in the woods, Annie, and he was always afraid after that you’d find them.” Annie nodded. Cindy looked at her with a pained face, as though Annie should have had more of a reaction than that. Annie put her hand over her sister’s for a moment. “But one of the strangest things he said,” Jamie reported, sitting back, “was that he drove us to school so he could, just for those moments, be near Seth Potter. He didn’t even see him, dropping us off. But he liked knowing he was close to him each morning. That Seth was only a few feet away, inside the school.”

  “Oh God, it makes me sick,” Cindy said.

  Jamie squinted at the wood stove. “It puzzles me, is all.”

  The vulnerability of their faces Annie could almost not bear. She looked around the small kitchen, the wallpaper that had water stains streaking down it, the rocking chair their father had always sat in, the cushion now with a rip large enough to show the stuffing, the teakettle on the stove that had been the same one for years, the curtain across the top of the window with a fine spray of cobwebs between it and the pane. Annie looked back at her siblings. They may not have felt the daily dread that poor Charlene had lived with. But the truth was always there. They had grown up on shame; it was the nutrient of their soil. Yet, oddly, it was her father she felt she understood the best. And for a moment Annie wondered at this, that her brother and sister, good, responsible, decent, fair minded, had never known the passion that caused a person to risk everything they had, everything they held dear heedlessly put in danger—simply to be near the white dazzle of the sun that somehow for those moments seemed to leave the Earth behind.

  Vauhini Vara

  I, Buffalo

  THE EVENT IN QUESTION took place at the end of the summer. I don’t recall which day. That summer the days failed to distinguish themselves from one another, and given that failure, I don’t see why I should do the distinguishing for them. I can tell you that this anonymous day began warmly. I know this because I began the day on the bus and recall perching on the edge of the seat so that my thighs wouldn’t stick to the plastic. I had woken early and, unable to sleep, decided to go to the park.

  The only other people on the bus were a young black woman and her son, who sat across from me. The mother wore a fur coat, and the boy sat on her lap facing me with the hem of his mother’s coat tight in his fist. He might have been four years old.

  “Hot day for a coat like that,” I said to the mother.

  “Pardon?” the mother said defensively, as if I had cast an accusation.

  “Hot day,” I said. “I’m going to Golden Gate Park.”

  The mother ignored me. The boy fidgeted and squirmed on her lap and, finally, his mother said tiredly, “Baby, you want a grenade?” The boy looked up at her with delight and nodded.

  “What do you say?” she said.

  “Momma. Give me a grenade.”

  “Nuh-uh. What do you say?”

  “Please
, Momma. Give me a grenade.”

  The mother seemed satisfied with this. She said, “All right,” and reached into her purse.

  As I watched her fumble, I realized I was sweating. The heat was part of it, but I was also starting to feel anxious. I had my hand on the bell cord, ready to pull at any time, as if it were some sort of alarm, but when the mother drew her hand from the purse and opened it to the boy, her thick-lined palm was empty.

  “Here you go, baby,” said the mother.

  The boy took the imaginary grenade, pulled on an imaginary pin, and the next thing I knew, he had his eyes fixed on me and his arm pulled back. A gasp flew from my lips, and one of my own arms threw itself up in defense. I put it this way because they, the gasp and my arm, seemed to act of their own accord. I never would have done such a thing myself.

  The boy froze, then turned to look at his mother, who shook her head at me.

  “Child’s just playing. Dang.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got a hangover.”

  I’ve always had a habit of sharing too much with strangers. In my youth, my mother coached me against this, and for a long time I held back. But over the past eight months, my opportunities for conversation had been limited. No more morning banter with the man and the dog. No more phone calls with clients. I couldn’t help it.

  “I don’t drink,” the mother said through pious pursed lips. “Haven’t in five years.” She indicated, with her chin, the boy.

  “That’s good,” I said. “Nothing good comes of it.” I added, “You hear stories like that—a woman has a child, and it saves her life.” I wanted badly for the mother to think well of me. “I like your coat,” I said, when she didn’t respond.

  But she didn’t respond to that, either—only pushed a big horse’s breath of air through her nostrils, then turned her gaze toward the front of the bus and sat silently.

  —

  Nothing good does come of it. I wasn’t lying about that, nor am I lying about anything else that happened that day. I haven’t lied since I took an oath, long ago, to behave in a manner consistent with the truth. At the time I found the language strange—that I behave not necessarily in a truthful manner but only in a manner consistent with the truth—but after a while I got used to it.

  That was a long time ago.

  Still, I know some facts consistent with the truth.

  I am a woman. I am thirty-six years old.

  At the time of the event, my apartment had been recently vacated by the others who had formerly inhabited it with me—a forty-four-year-old man from Oregon and a sixteen-year-old dog of unknown breed. The man was a hopeful and bighearted man who demanded much goodness of others and was therefore often disappointed. I trusted him completely.

  He had taken the dog, too.

  They left behind them a great and holy emptiness. It resembled the alarming emptiness that cathedrals and mosques hold for those of us who believe in nothing beyond what is proven to exist. We feel ourselves surrounded only by unfilled space. That’s where I lived at the time of the event.

  —

  I awoke that afternoon to the smell of spoiled fish and a fierce headache, and I could remember nothing of what had transpired between the bus and my awakening. Not a single detail. The morning on the bus seemed as far away as another continent.

  This was not, I’ll admit, an altogether alien feeling. I’ll be direct. I’ve blacked out many times in my life. I was a teenager when it began. I’m ashamed of this. Any addict who says she’s not ashamed is lying to you or to herself. I believe it makes matters worse if you don’t fit a particular profile. You spend your days all buttoned up in your white shirt and pressed pants and iron-flattened hair like a perfect productive citizen. It’s not a lie—it’s not as if colleagues say, “Are you an addict?” and you say, “No way!” Still. Fraudulent—that’s probably the term.

  The smell of spoiled fish brought a couple of details back. At some point earlier in the day, I recalled, I had opened a takeout box of sushi and a bottle of wine. I had finished the wine. I had vomited.

  That’s all I had.

  My apartment has two floors, which makes it sound larger than it is. I woke in my bed in the bedroom, which is upstairs, with the door open to the hallway. It seemed that the smell came from the hallway. I ventured out there and found that my hunch was correct: Out in the hallway, the smell was truly noxious, as if the entire, brackish marine world had washed up into my apartment. I felt a prick of recollection: Something had gone wrong. I hadn’t reached the toilet in time; I hadn’t reached a garbage can; I hadn’t found my way to the kitchen sink.

  But where had I done it, then?

  Downstairs, the smell was fainter—enough that my sense of urgency diminished. In the kitchen, the sun shone warmly onto the countertop. The sky that day was fogless and clear and blue. I checked the living room, ducking to inspect the fireplace for good measure, but saw nothing. I felt clearheaded and alert as I went through these motions, but as soon as I became aware of this, my anxiety welled up again. I’d been through enough evenings like this. I knew the hangover was only dormant. It would surely come alive at some point later in the night. Good God, I thought. How had I slept so long?

  That’s when my sister called.

  —

  They were on their way up from Los Angeles for the weekend.

  “Who?” I accused.

  She and Sam and Mara, she said. Right now they were outside of Sacramento.

  “You’re staying here?”

  “You’re asking?”

  “This is an ambush. Whose idea was this?”

  “Where do you want us to stay? The Hyatt?”

  “Did they put you up to it?”

  “Oh my God. Are you seriously that paranoid? Hold on. She’s being paranoid. Hold on. Mara’s got an audition. She’s all excited. Sam says we’ll be there in a couple hours.”

  “Cool,” I deadpanned.

  “You act like you don’t want us to come. Mara wants to know why you don’t want us to come.”

  “Tell Mara it’s because I know you have ulterior motives.”

  “She doesn’t know what that means, ulterior motives. Hold on. Nothing, Mara. She says she does want us to come. Hold on. Mara wants to know what’s for dinner.”

  “Dinner?” I said. “Pizza?”

  “Takeout?”

  “No. I don’t know why you’d assume that.”

  “I’m not assuming anything. We get takeout all the time.”

  “It’s not takeout,” I said.

  Because I know how to make pizza. In fact, I’d already had the idea earlier that week at the grocery store when I came across the cheap premade dough sitting next to the hummus like a bagged breast. I had tried to pick out good tomatoes for that purpose. To make good pizza sauce, you have to pick tomatoes that smell a certain way, according to an Italian friend of mine—yeasty, my friend said, almost like beer. So I had held a tomato to my face and sniffed. The tomato smelled only like itself—tomatoey. I had picked up another one and smelled, then another, then another. My mind had latched on to this one word, yeasty, and wouldn’t allow me to move on. Yeasty, said my mind, yeasty, and finally I just picked the best-looking tomatoes, the reddest and closest to bursting, and continued to the meat department.

  By the time I hung up with my sister, I’ll admit, I’d forgotten all about the smell. I started making the pizza. I chopped the tomatoes. I rolled out the dough. I had a great satisfying sense of being a civilized person in a civilized world. Only when it was all ready to go did I pour myself a drink. A glass of wine. I can handle, you understand, a glass of wine.

  At the sound of the doorbell, panic rose in my throat. I lit a vanilla-scented candle and set it on the kitchen table. The candle had already burned down nearly to the bottom. When I opened the door, and Mara came bounding inside and took a running leap into my arms, I can’t explain the feeling I had. I want to call it euphoric. But I know how that makes me sound. As if this might have been the
onset of some kind of episode.

  “Auntie Sheila!” she said into my shoulder.

  “Mars Bar!” I said. I’ll tell you—I had nearly forgotten how much I love my niece. My Mars Bar. When was the last time we’d seen each other? I never saw her these days. Mara was wearing what looked like pajamas—a dinosaur-patterned jumper with built-in footies. Sam and Priya stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. They were the same height and had grown to look alike over the ten years of their marriage—the same mildly skeptical smile, the same slight stoop of their shoulders. “Let’s play!” I said.

  “It’s almost bedtime,” Priya said.

  “She has to wake up early for the audition,” Sam added.

  Mara is a child actress. She auditions for all sorts of roles. I knew they sometimes traveled. But San Francisco? What kind of a film got made in San Francisco? Who had ever heard of that? Once Woody Allen made a movie in the Haight. A colleague of mine saw him at Zam Zam. So maybe this wasn’t only a pretense for checking in on me. Maybe our parents hadn’t put Priya up to this after all. I started to let my guard down. Then Sam sniffed at the air, and I felt a sharp synaptic twitch as I remembered the vomit. I shifted Mara’s weight onto my hip.