The Best American Short Stories® 2011

by Geraldine Brooks

  Hyunjee, he says, I accept your apology.

  And just like that everything's back to normal?

  No, he thinks, isn't that the point? Nothing was, nothing is ever normal. I'll see you tomorrow, he says, and lifts the heavy receiver away from his ear, holding her protesting voice between thumb and index finger for a moment before dropping it, clattering, onto the cradle.

  She's popped an infection, the night nurse said on the phone. Fever one-oh-two. They think it's the stent. Should I call her ? And he said, Ten minutes ago. Licking the dust of sleep off his lips. You know how she is. Get off and do it right now. Tell her I'm coming. But it's four-thirty—don't I still get the rest of my shift? Do it now! he shouts. Do it! And then clear out. Consider your ass fired.

  Sorry, he keeps saying to Hyunjee, on the way back from the coffee machine, sorry, sorry. Should never have hired her. Should never have even looked at her twice.

  Would you shut up?

  Her skin, under the fluorescent lights, is shockingly gray. Corpse-like. Raw-lipped, bare-eyed, in red Harvard sweatpants and a hooded sweater. She backs into the wall of the elevator and closes her eyes.

  I mean, it looks like they've got it under control, right? The drug's working. I shouldn't bring the girls in to say goodbye, right?

  She'll still be here in the morning.

  Then go home. I'll stay.

  Is that really what you want?

  I don't think you should work for me any longer, she says, opening her eyes and staring past him at the wall. I mean, I'll pay you. I'll keep paying you. What, a month's severance, two months, is that fair?

  He laughs, the dazed, punch-drunk laugh all nurses have at the end of the graveyard shift. He can't help himself. Hyunjee, he says, you think that'll make it better? A golden handshake?

  I made a mistake, okay? Distractedly she undoes the haphazard knot holding her hair in place, and lets it fall across her forehead, the streak of gray curving like a nautilus shell. I needed someone to be objective, she says, flicking the hair back with her thumb. Not that I thought I wasn't a good daughter. Not that I felt guilty. But she deserves more than that, you know? Everybody deserves more than one. It wasn't her fault that they didn't know what endometriosis was back in those days. It's not that she wanted a son. She just wanted a second try. And she was right, goddamn it! Nobody should ever be so fucking alone that they have to hire strangers to be family. I'm sorry. I can't help myself. Here, hold this.

  She holds out her coffee cup to him, and zips her sweater up to the neck, and begins to cry, dropping her hands in front of her like a rag doll, and when he embraces her, when he covers her face with his chest, does not raise them, does not wrap them around his waist, but shrinks into him, into herself, like a dried-out stem, he thinks, like a twig, clasping his awkward paws around her with a Styrofoam cup of hot liquid in each, like urine samples, or blood vials, anything vital, anything carrying the body's warmth away.

  This is the way to tell the story. When the grandchildren ask, how was it that they met, those two, a Portuguese sailor and an ex-nun from Estonia, or, how did they communicate, if he didn't speak Finnish and she didn't speak Taiwanese, you don't say, he was already drunk when they met in the airport bar. Or, they were locked in the basement accidentally for three hours before the manager let them out. You say, in this case there was no other way. The world is made choice after choice after choice. The body makes logic, not the other way around.

  And then they ask, is it fair, is it just, to reduce it to that? Isn't it the height of selfishness, these willy-nilly associations, this refusal to plan, this projecting the future from the momentary bubble of your own ego?

  Well, you say, which is it better to be seduced by: the future in the form of a woman with hair the color of streaming silver, or the future in the form of an organizing principle?

  Samantha, she says, when he backs open the door in the morning, his arms full of new bedding. Samantha. Pearl. Turn around. I want you to say hi to Kevin.

  They turn away from the bed awkwardly, darting looks at one another: It's just the nurse. It's just the nurse, right? Hi, the older one says, flipping her bangs back. Tiny bright green eyes. Um, thanks for taking such good care of Grandma.

  I'm Pearl, the little one says. Yeah, thanks.

  Kevin's coming out to lunch with us. Aren't you?

  There's no one to take over. I'd have to make a call.

  It's all right. Just an hour.

  Aren't you kids supposed to be in school?

  In-service. Pearl sucks a lollipop, knocking it against her teeth. Professional development day.

  Something is sticking in his throat, a crooked knuckle, a little jagged stone. He can't look at them straight on. Little suns, he thinks, little flames of the future. Their shifting brown limbs, their twitching fingers. Outrageous, the claims they make on us! Outrageous, the way they judge us from thirty years hence!

  So, Hyunjee asks, interrupting his reverie. Are you coming or not?

  It makes a kind of tableau, he thinks, a frieze, these women's faces, women and soon-to-be women, waiting to see what he'll do next. As if in some obscure way that's what he's always wanted. The measure of a man. Behind the girls, Mrs. Kang stirs, wraps her blue fingers around the rail, and pulls her face a few inches up from the pillow.

  I never had a son, she says. Nahantaenen adeul op da! I don't know who you are.

  Escape from Spiderhead

  George Saunders

  FROM The New Yorker

  "DRIP ON?" Abnesti said over the PA.

  "What's in it?" I said.

  "Hilarious," he said.

  "Acknowledge," I said.

  Abnesti used his remote. My Mobi-Pak™ whirred. Soon the Interior Garden looked really nice. Everything seemed super-clear.

  I said out loud, as I was supposed to, what I was feeling.

  "Garden looks nice," I said. "Super-clear."

  Abnesti said, "Jeff, how about we pep up those language centers?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "Drip on?" he said.

  "Acknowledge," I said.

  He added some Verbaluce™ to the drip, and soon I was feeling the same things but saying them better. The garden still looked nice. It was like the bushes were so tight-seeming and the sun made everything stand out? It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea. It was as if the garden had become a sort of embodiment of the domestic dreams forever intrinsic to human consciousness. It was as if I could suddenly discern, in this contemporary vignette, the ancient corollary through which Plato and some of his contemporaries might have strolled; to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral.

  I sat, pleasantly engaged in these thoughts, until the Verbaluce™ began to wane. At which point the garden just looked nice again. It was something about the bushes and whatnot? It made you just want to lay out there and catch rays and think your happy thoughts. If you get what I mean.

  Then whatever else was in the drip wore off, and I didn't feel much about the garden one way or the other. My mouth was dry, though, and my gut had that post-Verbaluce™ feel to it.

  "What's going to be cool about that one?" Abnesti said. "Is, say a guy has to stay up late guarding a perimeter. Or is at school waiting for his kid and gets bored. But there's some nature nearby? Or say a park ranger has to work a double shift?"

  "That will be cool," I said.

  "That's ED763," he said. "We're thinking of calling it NatuGlide. Or maybe ErthAdmire."

  "Those are both good," I said.

  "Thanks for your help, Jeff," he said.

  Which was what he always said.

  "Only a million years to go," I said.

  Which was what I always said.

  Then he said, "Exit the Interior Garden now, Jeff, head over to Small Workroom 2."

  II

  Into Small Workroom 2 they sent this pale tall girl.

  "What do you think?" Abnesti said over the PA.

  "Me?
" I said. "Or her?"

  "Both," Abnesti said.

  "Pretty good," I said.

  "Fine, you know," she said. "Normal."

  Abnesti asked us to rate each other more quantifiably, as per pretty, as per sexy.

  It appeared we liked each other about average, i.e., no big attraction or revulsion either way.

  Abnesti said, "Jeff, drip on?"

  "Acknowledge," I said.

  "Heather, drip on?" he said.

  "Acknowledge," Heather said.

  Then we looked at each other like, What happens next?

  What happened next was, Heather soon looked super-good. And I could tell she thought the same of me. It came on so sudden we were like laughing. How could we not have seen it, how cute the other one was? Luckily there was a couch in the Workroom. It felt like our drip had, in addition to whatever they were testing, some ED556 in it, which lowers your shame level to like nil. Because soon, there on the couch, off we went. It was super-hot between us. And not merely in a horndog way. Hot, yes, but also just right. Like if you'd dreamed of a certain girl all your life and all of a sudden there she was, in your Domain.

  "Jeff," Abnesti said. "I'd like your permission to pep up your language centers."

  "Go for it," I said, under her now.

  "Drip on?" he said.

  "Acknowledge," I said.

  "Me too?" Heather said.

  "You got it," Abnesti said, with a laugh. "Drip on?"

  "Acknowledge," she said, all breathless.

  Soon, experiencing the benefits of the flowing Verbaluce™ in our drips, we were not only fucking really well but also talking pretty great. Like, instead of just saying the sex-type things we had been saying (such as "wow" and "oh God" and "hell yes" and so forth), we now began freestyling re our sensations and thoughts, in elevated diction, with eighty percent increased vocab, our well-articulated thoughts being recorded for later analysis.

  For me, the feeling was, approximately: Astonishment at the dawning realization that this woman was being created in real time, directly from my own mind, per my deepest longings. Finally, after all these years (was my thought), I had found the precise arrangement of body/face/mind that personified all that was desirable. The taste of her mouth, the look of that halo of blondish hair spread out around her cherubic yet naughty-looking face (she was beneath me now, legs way up), even (not to be crude or dishonor the exalted feelings I was experiencing) the sensations her vagina was producing along the length of my thrusting penis were precisely those I had always hungered for, though I had never, before this instant, realized that I so ardently hungered for them.

  That is to say: a desire would arise and, concurrently, the satisfaction of that desire would also arise. It was as if (a) I longed for a certain (heretofore untasted) taste until (b) said longing became nearly unbearable, at which time (c) I found a morsel of food with that exact taste already in my mouth, perfectly satisfying my longing.

  Every utterance, every adjustment of posture bespoke the same thing: we had known each other forever, were soul mates, had met and loved in numerous preceding lifetimes, and would meet and love in many subsequent lifetimes, always with the same transcendently stupefying results.

  Then there came a hard-to-describe but very real drifting-off into a number of sequential reveries that might best be described as a type of nonnarrative mind scenery, i.e., a series of vague mental images of places I had never been (a certain pine-packed valley in high white mountains, a chalet-type house in a cul-de-sac, the yard of which was overgrown with wide, stunted Seussian trees), each of which triggered a deep sentimental longing, longings that coalesced into, and were soon reduced to, one central longing, i.e., an intense longing for Heather and Heather alone.

  This mind-scenery phenomenon was strongest during our third (!) bout of lovemaking. (Apparently Abnesti had included some Vivistif™ in my drip.)

  Afterward, our protestations of love poured forth simultaneously, linguistically complex and metaphorically rich: I daresay we had become poets. We were allowed to lie there, limbs intermingled, for nearly an hour. It was bliss. It was perfection. It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

  We cuddled with a fierceness/focus that rivaled the fierceness/ focus with which we had fucked. There was nothing less about cuddling vis-à-vis fucking, is what I mean to say. We were all over each other in the super-friendly way of puppies, or spouses meeting for the first time after one of them has undergone a close brush with death. Everything seemed moist, permeable, sayable.

  Then something in the drip began to wane. I think Abnesti had shut off the Verbaluce™? Also the shame reducer? Basically, everything began to dwindle. Suddenly we felt shy. But still loving. We began the process of trying to talk après Verbaluce™: always awkward.

  Yet I could see in her eyes that she was still feeling love for me.

  And I was definitely still feeling love for her.

  Well, why not? We had just fucked three times! Why do you think they call it "making love"? That was what we had just made three times: love.

  Then Abnesti said, "Drip on?"

  We had kind of forgotten he was even there, behind his one-way mirror.

  I said, "Do we have to? We are really liking this right now."

  "We're just going to try to get you guys back to baseline," he said. "We've got more to do today."

  "Shit," I said.

  "Rats," she said.

  "Drip on?" he said.

  "Acknowledge," we said.

  Soon something began to change. I mean, she was fine. A handsome pale girl. But nothing special. And I could see that she felt the same re me, i.e., what had all that fuss been about just now? Why weren't we dressed? We real quick got dressed. Kind of embarrassing. Did I love her? Did she love me? Ha. No.

  Then it was time for her to go. We shook hands. Out she went.

  Lunch came in. On a tray. Spaghetti with chicken chunks.

  Man, was I hungry.

  I spent all lunchtime thinking. It was weird. I had the memory of fucking Heather, the memory of having felt the things I'd felt for her, the memory of having said the things I'd said to her. My throat was like raw from how much I'd said and how fast I'd felt compelled to say it. But in terms of feelings? I basically had nada left.

  Just a hot face and some shame re having fucked three times in front of Abnesti.

  III

  After lunch in came another girl.

  About equally so-so. Dark hair. Average build. Nothing special, just like, upon first entry, Heather had been nothing special.

  "This is Rachel," Abnesti said on the PA. "This is Jeff."

  "Hi, Rachel," I said.

  "Hi, Jeff," she said.

  "Drip on?" Abnesti said.

  We Acknowledged.

  Something seemed very familiar about the way I now began feeling. Suddenly Rachel looked super-good. Abnesti requested permission to pep up our language centers via Verbaluce™. We Acknowledged. Soon we too were fucking like bunnies. Soon we too were talking like articulate maniacs re our love. Once again certain sensations were arising to meet my concurrently arising desperate hunger for just those sensations. Soon my memory of the perfect taste of Heather's mouth was being overwritten by the current taste of Rachel's mouth, so much more the taste I now desired. I was feeling unprecedented emotions, even though those unprecedented emotions were (I discerned somewhere in my consciousness) exactly the same emotions I had felt earlier, for that now unworthy-seeming vessel Heather. Rachel was, I mean to say, it. Her lithe waist, her voice, her hungry mouth/hands/loins—they were all it.

  I just loved Rachel so much.

  Then came the sequential geographic reveries (see above): same pine-packed valley, same chalet-looking house, accompanied by that same longing-for-place transmuting into a longing for (this time) Rachel. While continuing to enact a level of sexual strenuousness that caused what I would describe as a gradually tig
htening, chest-located, sweetness rubber band to both connect us and compel us onward, we whispered feverishly (precisely, poetically) about how long we felt we had known each other, i.e., forever.

  Again the total number of times we made love was three.

  Then, like before, came the dwindling. Our talking became less excellent. Words were fewer, our sentences shorter. Still, I loved her. Loved Rachel. Everything about her just seemed perfect: her cheek mole, her black hair, the little butt-squirm she did now and then, as if to say, Mmm-mmm, was that ever good.

  "Drip on?" Abnesti said. "We are going to try to get you both back to baseline."

  "Acknowledge," she said.

  "Well, hold on," I said.

  "Jeff," Abnesti said, irritated, as if trying to remind me that I was here not by choice but because I had done my crime and was in the process of doing my time.

  "Acknowledge," I said. And gave Rachel one last look of love, knowing (as she did not yet know) that this would be the last look of love I would be giving her.

  Soon she was merely fine to me, and I merely fine to her. She looked, as had Heather, embarrassed, as in, What was up with that just now? Why did I just go so overboard with Mr. Average here?

  Did I love her? Or her me?

  No.

  When it was time for her to go, we shook hands.

  The place where my MobiPak™ was surgically joined to my lower back was sore from all our positional changes. Plus I was way tired. Plus I was feeling so sad. Why sad? Was I not a dude? Had I not just fucked two different girls, for a total of six times, in one day?

  Still, honestly, I felt sadder than sad.

  I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing.