The Best American Short Stories® 2011

by Geraldine Brooks

  There were hugs and there were kisses, and Tendler—the master of the house—was given his parents' bedroom upstairs, the two boys across the hall, and below, in the kitchen ("It will be warmest"), slept the mother and the father and the fat-ankled girl.

  "Sleep well," Fanushka said. "Welcome home, my son." And, sweetly, she kissed Tendler on both eyes.

  Tendler climbed the stairs. He took off his suit and went to bed. And that was where he was when Fanushka popped through the door and asked him if he was warm enough, if he needed a lamp by which to read.

  "No, thank you," he said.

  "So formal? No thanks necessary," Fanushka said. "Only 'Yes, Mother,' or 'No, Mother,' my poor reclaimed orphan son."

  "No light, Mother," Tendler said, and Fanushka closed the door.

  Tendler got out of bed. He put on his suit. Once again without any shame to his actions, Tendler searched the room for anything of value, robbing his own home.

  Then he waited. He waited until the house had settled into itself, the last creak slipping from the floorboards as the walls pushed back against the wind. He waited until his mother, his Fanushka, must surely sleep, until a brother intent on staying up for the night—a brother who had never once fought for his life—convinced himself that it would be all right to close his eyes.

  Tendler waited until he too had to sleep, and that's when he tied the laces of his shoes together and hung them over his shoulder. That's when he took his pillow with one hand and, with the other, quietly cocked his gun.

  Then, with goose feathers flying, Tendler moved through the house. A bullet for each brother, one for the father and one for the mother. Tendler fired until he found himself standing in the warmth of the kitchen, one bullet left to protect him on the nights when he would sleep by the side of the road.

  That last bullet Tendler left in the fat baby girl, because he did not know from mercy, and did not need to leave another of that family to grow to kill him at some future time.

  "He murdered them," Etgar said. "A murderer."

  "No," his father told him. "There was no such notion at the time."

  "Even so, it is murder," Etgar said.

  "If it is, then it's only fair. They killed him first. It was his right."

  "But you always say—"

  "Context."

  "But the baby. The girl."

  "The baby is hardest, I admit. But these are questions for the philosopher. These are the theoretical instances put into flesh and blood."

  "But it's not a question. These people, they are not the ones who murdered his family."

  "They were coming for him that night."

  "He could have escaped. He could have run for the gate when he overheard. He didn't need to race back toward the outhouse, race to face the brother as he came the other way."

  "Maybe there was no more running in him. Anyway, do you understand 'an eye for an eye'? Can you imagine a broader meaning of self-defense?"

  "You always forgive him," Etgar said. "You suffered the same things—but you aren't that way. You would not have done what he did."

  "It is hard to know what a person would and wouldn't do in any specific instance. And you, spoiled child, apply the rules of civilization to a boy who had seen only its opposite. Maybe the fault for those deaths lies in a system designed for the killing of Tendlers that failed to do its job. An error, a slip that allowed a Tendler, no longer fit, back loose in the world."

  "Is that what you think?"

  "It's what I ask. And I ask you, my Etgar, what you would have done if you were Tendler that night?"

  "Not kill."

  "Then you die."

  "Only the grownups."

  "But it was a boy who was sent to cut Tendler's throat."

  "How about killing only those who would do harm?"

  "Still it's murder. Still it is killing people who have yet to act, murdering them in their sleep."

  "I guess," Etgar said. "I can see how they deserved it, the four. How I might, if I were him, have killed them."

  Shimmy shook his head, looking sad.

  "And whoever are we, my son, to decide who should die?"

  It was on that day that Etgar Gezer became a philosopher himself. Not in the manner of Professor Tendler, who taught theories up at the university on the mountain, but, like his father, practical and concrete. Etgar would not finish high school or go to college, and except for his three years in the army, he would spend his life—happily—working the stand in the shuk. He'd stack the fruit into pyramids and contemplate weighty questions with a seriousness of thought. And when there were answers Etgar would try employing them to make for himself and others, in whatever small way, a better life.

  It was on that day too that Etgar decided Professor Tendler was both a murderer and, at the same time, a misken. He believed he understood how and why Professor Tendler had come to kill that peasant family, and how men sent to battle in uniform—even in the same uniform—would find no mercy at his hand. Etgar also came to see how Tendler's story could just as easily have ended for the professor that first night, back in his parents' room, in his parents' bed, a gun with four bullets held in a suicide's hand—how the first bullet Tendler ever fired might have been into his own head.

  Still, every Friday Etgar packed up Tendler's fruit and vegetables. And in that bag Etgar would add, when he had them, a pineapple or a few fat mangos dripping honey. Handing it to Tendler, Etgar would say, "Kach, Professor. Take it." This, even after his father had died.

  La Vita Nuova

  Allegra Goodman

  FROM The New Yorker

  THE DAY HER FIANCÉ LEFT, Amanda went walking in the Colonial cemetery off Garden Street. The gravestones were so worn that she could hardly read them. They were melting away into the weedy grass. You are a very dark person, her fiancé had said.

  She walked home and sat in her half-empty closet. Her vintage 1950s wedding dress hung in clear asphyxiating plastic printed "NOT A TOY"

  She took the dress to work. She hooked the hanger onto a grab bar on the T and the dress rustled and swayed. When she got out at Harvard Square, the guy who played guitar near the turnstiles called, "Congratulations."

  Work was at the Garden School, where Amanda taught art, including theater, puppets, storytelling, drumming, dance, and now fabric painting. She spread the white satin gown on the art-room floor. Two girls glued pink feathers all along the hem. Others brushed the skirt with green and purple. A boy named Nathaniel dipped his hand in red paint and left his little handprint on the bodice as though the dress were an Indian pony. At lunchtime, the principal asked Amanda to step into her office.

  You are like living with a dark cloud, Amanda's fiancé had told her when he left. You're always sad.

  I'm sad now, Amanda had said.

  The principal told Amanda that for an educator, boundaries were an issue. "Your personal life," said the principal, "is not an appropriate art project for first grade. Your classroom," said the principal, "is not an appropriate forum for your relationships. Let's pack up the wedding dress."

  "It's still wet," Amanda said.

  Her mother could not believe it. She had just sent out all the invitations. Her father swore he'd kill the son of a bitch. They both asked how this could have happened, but they remembered that they had had doubts all along. Her sister, Lissa, said she could not imagine what Amanda was going through. She must feel so terrible. Was Amanda going to have to write to everyone on the guest list? Like a card or something? She'd have to tell everybody, wouldn't she?

  I waited all this time because I didn't want to hurt you, Amanda's fiancé had said.

  After school, she went for a drink with the old blond gym teacher, Patsy. They went to a bar called Cambridge Common and ordered gin and tonics. Patsy said, "Eventually you're going to realize that this is a blessing in disguise."

  "We had too many differences," said Amanda.

  Patsy lifted her glass. "There you go."

  "For example, I loved hi
m and he didn't love me."

  "Don't be surprised," said Patsy, "if he immediately marries someone else. Guys like that immediately marry someone else."

  "Why?" Amanda asked.

  Patsy sighed. "If I knew that, I'd be teaching at Harvard, not teaching the professors' kids."

  Amanda tried writing a card or something. She wrote that she and her fiancé had decided not to marry. Then she wrote that her fiancé had decided not to marry her. She said that she was sorry for any inconvenience. She added that she would appreciate gifts anyway.

  Her parents told her not to send the card. They said that they were coming up for a week. She said that they couldn't come, because she was painting her apartment. She did not paint the apartment.

  In the winter, Amanda cut her hair short like a boy's.

  "Oh, your hair," said Patsy. "Your beautiful curls."

  In the spring, the principal told Amanda that, regretfully, she was not being renewed for the following year, because the art program at the Garden School was moving in a different direction.

  In the summer, Amanda's fiancé married someone else.

  ***

  When school ended, Amanda took a job babysitting Nathaniel, the boy with the red handprint. Nathaniel's mother asked for stimulating activities, projects, science. No TV. Nathaniel's father didn't ask for anything.

  Their first day together, Amanda asked Nathaniel, "What do you want to do?"

  "Nothing."

  She said, "You read my mind."

  They ate chocolate mice at Burdick's and then they stood in front of the Harvard Coop and listened to Peruvian musicians. They explored the cemetery, and Amanda told Nathaniel that the gravestones were dragons' teeth. They walked down to the river and she said, "If you trace the river all the way to the beginning, you'll find a magic cave." They took the T to Boston and stood in line for the swan boats in the Public Garden. She said, "At night, these boats turn into real swans."

  Nathaniel said, "You have a great imagination."

  His mother lived in a Victorian house on Buckingham Street. She worked at the Media Lab at MIT and she had deadlines. The house had a garden full of flowers, but Nathaniel didn't play there, because you couldn't really dig.

  His father lived in an upside-down town house on Chauncy Street. The bedrooms were on the bottom floors, and the kitchen and living room on top. His father was writing a book and he came home late.

  Amanda and Nathaniel had pizza delivered to Chauncy Street and watched Charlie Chaplin movies from Hollywood Express. Sometimes they spread a sheet over the couch and ate a big bowl of popcorn.

  It's hard to be with you, her fiancé had said. I feel like I'm suffocating.

  Open a window, Amanda had said.

  When the movie was done, Amanda gathered the sheet and stepped onto the balcony, where she shook out the crumbs.

  Amanda and Nathaniel had play-dates with his friends at Walden Pond. They went canoeing on the Charles, and Nathaniel dropped his paddle in the water. Amanda almost tipped the boat, trying to fish it out. They wrote a book about pirates. Nathaniel told the stories and Amanda typed them on the computer in his father's study. "Aarrr, matey," she typed, "I'm stuck on a ship."

  When his father stayed out past Nathaniel's bedtime, Amanda tucked Nathaniel in, and then she read books in the study. The books were about American history. She read only a few pages of each, so she didn't learn anything.

  If you ever stopped to listen, her fiancé had said, then you would understand.

  She stood on a chair and pulled out some small paperbacks from the top shelf. Dante, The Divine Comedy, in a new translation. Boccaccio, The Decameron, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, complete and unabridged. Dante again, La Vita Nuova.

  La Vita Nuova explained how to become a great poet. The secret was to fall in love with a perfect girl but never speak to her. You should weep instead. You should pretend that you love someone else. You should write sonnets in three parts. Your perfect girl should die.

  Amanda's mother said, "You have your whole life ahead of you."

  She fell asleep on the couch waiting for Nathaniel's father to come home. When she woke up, she saw him kneeling in front of her. She said, "What's wrong?"

  He said, "Nothing's wrong. I'm sorry. I didn't want to wake you."

  But he did wake her. She went home and stayed awake all night.

  "Let's go somewhere," she told Nathaniel the next day.

  "Where?"

  "Far away. "

  They took the T to Ashmont, at the end of the Red Line. They sat together in the rattling car and talked about doughnuts.

  "I like cinnamon doughnuts, but they make me cough," Nathaniel said.

  She slept lightly. She dreamed she was walking with Nathaniel in a pine forest. She was telling him not to step on the dead hummingbirds. The birds were sapphire-throated, brilliant blue. She stole La Vita Nuova. It was just a paperback.

  Her sister called to check in. Her friend Jamie said she knew someone she'd like Amanda to meet. Amanda said, "Soon."

  Jamie said, "What exactly are you waiting for?"

  Nathaniel's father pretended not to look at her. Amanda pretended not to notice his dark eyes.

  "The question is what you're going to do in September," Amanda's mother told her on the phone.

  "The question is what you're going to do with your life," her father said.

  Dante wrote, "O you who on the road of Love pass by / Attend and see / If any grief there be as heavy as mine."

  "When was the last time you painted anything?" her mother asked. "Apart from your apartment?"

  Her father said, "I paid for Yale."

  All day Amanda and Nathaniel studied the red ants of Buckingham Street. They experimented with cake crumbs and observed the ants change course to eat them. Nathaniel considered becoming an entomologist when he grew up.

  The next day he decided to open his own ice cream store.

  They hiked to Christina's, in Inman Square. Nathaniel pedaled in front on his little bike. Amanda pedaled behind on her big bike and watched for cars.

  At Christina's, Nathaniel could read almost all the flavors on the board: adzuki bean, black raspberry, burnt sugar, chocolate banana, chocolate orange, cardamom. Nathaniel said, "I'll have vanilla." They sat in front near the bulletin board with ads for guitar lessons, tutoring, transcendental meditation.

  "What's an egg donor?" Nathaniel said.

  I want to be with you for the rest of my life, her fiancé had told her once. You are my best friend, he had written on her birthday card. You make me smile, you make me laugh. "Love weeps," Dante wrote.

  "Could I have a quarter for a gumball?" Nathaniel asked Amanda.

  "You just had ice cream," she said.

  "Please."

  "No! You just had ice cream. You don't need candy."

  "Please, please, please," he said.

  "You're lovely," Nathaniel's father whispered to Amanda late that night. She was just leaving, and he'd opened the door for her.

  "You're not supposed to say that," Amanda whispered back. "You're supposed to write a sonnet."

  Nathaniel said that he knew what to do when you were upset. She said, "Tell me, Nathaniel."

  He said, "Go to the zoo."

  Nathaniel studied the train schedule. They took the Orange Line to Ruggles Station and then the No. 2 2 bus to the Franklin Park Zoo. They watched orangutans sitting on their haunches, shredding newspapers, one page at a time. They climbed up on viewing platforms to observe the giraffes. They ran down every path. They looked at snakes. They went to the little barnyard and a goat frightened Nathaniel. Amanda said the goat was just curious. She said, "Goats wouldn't eat you."

  Nathaniel fell asleep on the T on the way home. He leaned against Amanda and closed his eyes. The woman sitting next to Amanda said, "He's beautiful."

  Amanda's friend Jamie had a party in Somerville. The wine was terrible. The friend that Jamie wanted Amanda to meet was drunk. Amanda got drunk too, but it did
n't help.

  She was late to work the next day. She found Nathaniel waiting on his mother's porch. "I thought you were sick," he said.

  "I was," she told him.

  They walked to Harvard Square and watched the street magicians. They went to Le's and shared vegetarian summer rolls and Thai iced tea.

  "This tastes like orange chalk," Nathaniel said.

  They went to a store called Little Russia and looked at the lacquered dolls there. "See, they come apart," Amanda told Nathaniel. "You pop open this lady, and inside there's another, and another, and another."

  "Do not touch, please," the saleslady told them.

  They walked down to the river and sat on the grass under a tree and talked about their favorite dogs.

  "Labradoodle," Amanda said.

  Nathaniel giggled. "No, schnoodle."

  "Golden streudel."

  Nathaniel said, "Is that the kind you had when you were young?"

  She dreamed that she was a Russian doll. Inside her was a smaller version of herself, and inside that an even smaller version.

  She ordered a set of blank wooden dolls online and began painting them. She covered the dolls with white primer. Then she painted them with acrylics and her finest brushes.

  First, a toddler only an inch high, in a gingham bathing suit.

  Second, a fingerling schoolgirl, wearing glasses.

  Third, an art student, with a portfolio under her arm.

  Fourth, a bride in white with long flowing hair.

  Fifth, a babysitter in sandals and sundress. She painted Nathaniel standing in front of her in his gecko T-shirt and blue shorts. He stood waist high, with her painted hands on his shoulders.

  When the paint was dry, she covered each doll with clear gloss. After that coat dried, she glossed each doll again until the reds were as bright as candy apples, the blues sparkled, and every color looked good enough to eat.