The Physics of Imaginary Objects

by Tina May Hall

  Mercy and Jake Go Backpacking

  There is something she loves about it, beyond the trees and the lichen and the clear streams. It is the release of knowing the only things she has to think about are shelter and food, how to get from one point to the next. By the end of the third day, her shoulders and hipbones are too sore to be touched. Jake blows on them, singing songs he remembers from church camp. The tent is tiny, a nylon shroud they share. “What will we do now?” she asks. He sings, “All is well, safely rest.” He says, “There is no limit to loveliness,” and his breath floats over the raw places. Rocks push through the foam pads, and trees growing on the bones of those cut years ago inch toward the night sky. Everything struggles upward, as if the stars are apertures to brighter worlds. Mercy and Jake eat freeze-dried beef stroganoff with the map stretched between them. It belonged to his father, and its creases are white with use. Some things have changed: landslides, shifted rivers, dried-up waterholes, and new highways. They often are lost, often must rely on nostalgia to guide them.

  Mercy Searches Out Small Graces

  This is the year of missing children and confessed serial killers who go by acronyms like revamped fast-food restaurants. This is the year of media alerts, dead girls in cheerleading outfits, and alarmist digital-ticker headlines synchronized to symphonies in B minor. Mercy and Jake's neighbor believes the spirits of five children circle every woman's head, waiting to be called down into the bloody mess of her womb. She says her seventh child is one of theirs, a celestial adoption. In the driveway, over a borrowed pair of hedge clippers, she tells Mercy about the child's surprise asthma, the nine-hour emergency-room visit last week, the stockpile of hermetically sealed inhalers taking up the toothbrush drawer. She says all this while looking accusatorily at Mercy, or rather, at the space over Mercy's left shoulder. She says, “He is still our little angel though, a perfect angel.” The ice cream truck squeals at the corner. Mercy opens and closes the clippers, snip snip, as if cutting holes in the neighborhood. All the missing children seem to pass through Florida. Mercy likes to imagine them there in the swamps, swaddled in mosquitoes and moss, feet happily muddy, wrestling the alligators, loving them for their bumps.

  Like a Snake, a Cicada's Greatest Art Is Its Doubling

  Late August. The things they planted have grown and been plucked or eaten or given away. No more Xs bloom on their siding. Jake builds a bonfire of vines and tree branches in the backyard. The charred ring that results is as solid as the moon. Mercy chews hard lozenges of gum and spits them into the garden or swallows them. Seven years, she thinks, but maybe that is bad luck and mirrors or growing a new skin. There is a lull in the evening news, and the anchors turn to politics and taxes. A new season of disasters is predicted, but no one can ever truly know what might happen. Earlier in the summer, they helped their entomologist friend tag cicadas with white dots. Each bug was a hard suitcase of longing and patience, difficult to hold—their hearts were so steady and droning. As a child, Mercy used to tie them onto strings and launch them into the air as if casting a bit of her own heart into orbit. Now, sitting on the porch with Jake, drinking day-old wine, she spots a paper-skin ghost of a cicada gripping her chair leg and is suddenly awash in happiness, recalling the way these somnolent insects sip tree sap and wait out the dark, the way they sing themselves from the ground.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to all the kind and patient editors who published stories from this collection in their super fabulous literary magazines and who were scrupulous and inspired in their edits. “By the Gleam of Her Teeth, She Will Light the Path Before Her” appeared in the Collagist. “Erratum: Insert ‘R' in ‘Transgressors'” appeared in 3rd Bed. “Faith Is Three Parts Formaldehyde, One Part Ethyl Alcohol” appeared in the minnesota review. “For Dear Pearl, Who Drowned” appeared in Water-Stone Review. “In Your Endeavors, You May Feel My Ghostly Presence” appeared in descant. “There Is a Factory in Sierra Vista Where Jesus Is Resurrected Every Hour in Hot Plastic and the Stench of Chicken” appeared in Quarterly West. “This Is a Love Story, Too” appeared in Fairy Tale Review.

  An extra special thanks to Joseph Reed and Amanda Raczkowski of the wonderful Caketrain Press who published “All the Day's Sad Stories” as a chapbook and made it more lovely than I ever could have imagined.

  Much gratitude to The Corporation of Yaddo for a magical snowy February.

  And many, many thanks to Drue Heinz, Renata Adler, and the University of Pittsburgh Press for putting their faith in this odd collection and making an actual book of it. I am especially grateful to Deborah Meade for her meticulous and intuitive edits.

  Thank you to Trudy Lewis, friend, mentor, and writer extraordinaire, whose sense of humor and integrity have taught me how to make a writing life work. Thank you also to Jeff Williams, whose unshakeable support has been invaluable. And thanks to all of my friends, students, and colleagues at Hamilton College whose kindness and enthusiasm have made my teaching life a joy.

  Love to all of my family, especially my parents, who never flinched when I talked about being a writer. And to Hoa, who always steps in to do what I cannot. And to Tycho, who came into my world and blew it apart in beautiful ways.

  Book design and composition by Landesberg Design, Pittsburgh, Pa., typeset in Charter ITC and Whitney.

  Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc., on 60 lb. Natures Book Natural, an FSC certified paper containing 30% post-consumer waste.

  Table of Contents

  Visitations

  Erratum: Insert “R” in “Transgressors”

  Skinny Girls' Constitution and Bylaws

  Kick

  For Dear Pearl, Who Drowned

  Faith Is Three Parts Formaldehyde, One Part Ethyl Alcohol

  Last Night of the County Fair

  A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Long-Gone Love

  By the Gleam of Her Teeth, She Will Light the Path Before Her

  Gravetending

  In Your Endeavors, You May Feel My Ghostly Presence

  The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Meteorologist and Stopped the Rain

  This Is a Love Story, Too

  How to Remember a Bird

  There Is a Factory in Sierra Vista Where Jesus Is Resurrected Every Hour in Hot Plastic and the Stench of Chicken

  All the Day's Sad Stories: A Novella

  Acknowledgments