This was back in the art gallery days, and Roy’s mother had been sick, too, dying of cancer at the same time that Joan’s mother was dying of cancer. Different kinds, different hospitals, and Roy and Joan sprawled morosely in their chairs at work all day, comparing notes. Sometimes they closed the gallery and went to the movies, where they would sit in the darkness and hold hands. One day Joan started crying and couldn’t stop, another day Roy. Once, they blew everything off to go down the street after work and drink until they were beside themselves. They staggered to a local hotel and tried to get a room, but were not allowed. Neither could figure out why not—they shouted at the desk clerk, a young black woman who shook her head and walked away, then came around from behind the desk and escorted them by the elbows out the revolving door. They climbed into Joan’s little car and drove up and down the empty pedestrian mall, honking and veering around the benches and stone planters. That’s all that happened, though it became one of Joan’s most vivid memories: the dark beery neighborhood bar, the beautiful old restored hotel, the kindness of the desk clerk, the late-night interior of the Volkswagen. A few weeks later, when she came home from the hospital after her mother’s death, Joan sat down on the sofa and stared straight ahead for a long time, waiting for something.
Whatever she was waiting for never came, but Roy did. They sat in silence, eating the donuts Roy brought with him and drinking the coffee that Joan made. At some point Roy said, “I guess my mom won.”
* * *
—
The first time had been a game—Pilgrim digging at the base of the stump with Spock positioned behind him, jumping up and biting at the loose dirt as it was flung into the air. Suddenly, the dirt took shape and the shape was a mole and Spock caught it, and dropped it. A flat lozenge of fur with no face and little flesh paddles for feet. Pilgrim turned it over with his nose, stepped on it, and bit it.
Done.
* * *
—
His mother had been fed up with him before he was even born, according to the legend, pounding on her own stomach wherever he kicked, Whac-A-Mole style. He remembered exactly nothing of her except a looming sense of dread and an expanse of cool gray. Apparently he crawled over top of one of her magazines and tore the pages, and she rolled it up and whipped him with it until he ended up living elsewhere.
I moved out when I was one, he used to tell people.
The cool gray was probably from when they took him up to her casket. Not because anyone gave a shit, but because they wanted to see what he would do. Which was nothing, just like now. Do nothing while they’re expecting it and soon enough they won’t be expecting it.
* * *
—
Out at the edge of the pond, the heron was poised on one stick leg, neck extended and head tilted, as still as a lawn ornament. In the heron’s mind time didn’t swirl or move; the past and the future were thoroughly blended into the present and the present was focused, like a gooseneck lamp, on the dappled bank. In the shallows were the flickerings of tiny fish, and right at the edge of the water a small delectable frog sat motionless, indistinguishable from the mud and grass as long as he didn’t blink.
The bird’s success was based on movement so slow it was indiscernible. The frog’s was based on blending, and powerful back legs that could propel him with a plop two feet out into the pond. Should the need arise.
* * *
—
The second time they worked in tandem had been a squirrel. Spock didn’t want to let go when Pilgrim grabbed it too, and for a moment it became a tug toy, until it made a sound like a kitten and then Spock did let go.
The third time they worked in tandem, the groundhog had been coming perilously close to the invisible fence. Pilgrim and Spock were at their stations, waiting, as he dragged his blubber back and forth between one mound of dirt and a neighboring mound of dirt.
When the groundhog finally made his mistake, they were on him, and just for an instant, before they dragged him in, the fence got involved too, vibrating through their collars in its own excitement.
* * *
—
The heron slept in an enormous laundry basket at the top of a tall tree. There was a certain point when it would be summoned up there by an invisible force that was both external and internal. The force was exerted at a specific moment, right before darkness settled its skirts over the pond.
* * *
—
He no longer looked like a sandbag. He was flat and still, but the air around him seemed animated. Joan stepped back, reached out, and put the blade of the shovel on his shoulder and pushed. Nothing, but it felt different somehow.
* * *
—
Light was penetrating his dark living room; it was grainy and swirling, amniotic. He felt rinsed clean and pure, like the baby with its head full of rainwater, getting ready to be born.
He moved his finger and it moved.
* * *
—
Joan felt it more than saw it. Some subtle movement. The hand under the edge of the wineglass cupboard was awake.
The frog blinked a split instant before the invisible force caused the heron to open its wings and lift off. The frog was either in the pond or in the heron as it flew slowly past the kitchen window, long legs dangling, and Joan felt the gray shadow just as the dogs arrived at the kitchen door and threw themselves at the screen.
Somehow, lightning fast, the stranger had her by the ankle. Joan lifted the shovel like a sword as the dogs bayed at the screen.
When the mighty turtle had grabbed the shovel, Joan had to drag him across the grass for a few feet before he let go, and that’s what she did now, tugging her foot until the stranger’s arm was fully outstretched, his head lolled back, the hand like a constrictor around her ankle.
Turtles are not amphibians, as Joan always forgot. They are reptiles.
She leaned back as far as she could until she could just reach the screen door with the shovel.
Let the dogs work for you.
* * *
—
His grandmother had come out in the yard and picked up those long-ago posies from the ground, dropped them in a coffee can, and carried it back inside. He heard himself grunting now the way she did when she bent over, and he was being hurried along, tugged back and forth as the dogs worked in tandem, until he heard himself making a sound like a kitten. When the delicate blue stem of his windpipe was finally unwrapped, the stranger felt a great happiness overtake him. In morte voluptas. From death into pleasure.
Chances were he’d end up where Kyle had ended up, and nobody didn’t have fun when they were with Kyle.
Marjorie Celona
Counterblast
WE WERE ON THE PLANE, Barry and I, when he put his wedding ring in his mouth and started flipping it around with his tongue. This was six years before the divorce. We were on our way to Barry’s father’s funeral in Cincinnati. It was the end of June, muggy season in the Midwest. The ring fell, pinged off the tray table in front of us, bounced off his shoe, and disappeared. We looked at each other. I was too tired to be annoyed, my one-year-old daughter, Lou, balanced on my knee, a sweet sheen of drool on her chin foreshadowing an incoming incisor. Everyone was buckled. We were about to take off. Like worms, Barry and I bent from our midsections, trying to see the floor, our legs in the way. My husband leaned one way, I leaned the other.
Barry Sr. liked to drink and he liked women, especially me. He liked to hold me and tell me things about my husband. He was a crier when he drank, tears running into his beard. Barry is so special, so very special, he used to say, referring, I think, to my husband’s inability to hold down a job. Back then, my husband was the kind of guy who was always on the cusp of doing something great. He was the kind of guy who had potential.
My husband unbuckled, and then the stewardess was there.
&n
bsp; “My wedding ring,” my husband said, still a worm, his head bobbing around my calves.
I could see the stewardess waiting to hear the bitchiness in my tone, the tired mother of a teething baby come alive, the dragon-hell-beast wife let loose. She looked at me and I said nothing.
At the time, Barry was so attractive that everyone wanted our marriage to fail. What Barry never understood was that 90 percent of his good fortune was because of his looks. No balding fatso walks into a bar and gets a free drink is all I’m saying. Right out of college, he got an agent for a book of essays he was writing about growing up with an alcoholic father. He had yet to finish a single one. But people wanted to be seen with Barry. They thought he was “going places.” Barry, on the other hand, just thought people were kind. I’d put a lot of money on this: if my husband had been ugly, he would have been homeless.
Barry took off his shoe and peered into it. If memory serves, they were tan desert boots—we both wore desert boots back then. He took out the insole, peered in again. “I felt it bounce off my shoe,” he said. I gave him hell-beast eyes.
The stewardess was on her hands and knees now, using a tiny flashlight to scan under our seats. She shimmied up the aisle, checking under the seats in front of us. I could see the backs of her thighs. “His wedding ring,” she said, and everyone snapped to attention. She had big hair and seemed too enthusiastic. Everyone became a worm, bobbing. I felt so sad I could hardly stand it. The tiny engraving on the inside of the wedding band: our initials and the date it happened. I kissed Lou’s fat cheek.
My husband took off his other shoe. I felt a sort of nondescript rage. He took out the insole. Peered into the shoe as though it went on for miles. He shook the shoe. He shook it again.
The people around us were bobbing, rooting, uprooting. The stewardess stood. She flipped her big hair. She announced to the passengers, though oddly not to us, that when the plane landed we would search for the ring. And we would find it, she said. My husband looked at me, and I saw that he was sadder than I.
“I bet you can’t believe you married me right now,” he said. “I bet you’re regretting your life.”
“I love you,” I told him, but he was looking in his shoe again. “Stop it,” I said. “Stop looking in your shoe.”
“Hmm?” he said, peering into its inner depths.
“It’s not in your shoe.”
“I felt it go in.”
My husband was the only person who had ever loved me as much as I needed to be loved. Everyone up to this point had loved me in a sinister way. My husband was the first good person I had ever met.
“It’s either in the shoe, or not in the shoe,” I said. “There’s no secret cavity, no porthole to another time, no wormhole into another universe. Stop looking in your shoe.”
“Hey,” said the man behind us. “Hey, guys.”
We looked over our shoulders, through the tiny gap between our seats. Lou was already looking at the man. He was bald, like she was at the time, and she gave him a big, gummy smile.
“Look,” said the man. In his hand was my husband’s wedding ring. “It was in my backpack.”
“See,” said my husband, “that’s almost impossible. It would have been more likely for it to be in my shoe.”
“Thanks,” I told the man. “Wow. Thanks so much.”
Lou protested in my arms. She had just been diagnosed with in-toeing, which was a fancy way of saying pigeon-toed, but only on the left side. We were supposed to put her in this thing that looked like a little ski boot, but we kept making excuses.
Barry Sr. died in his cabin in Kentucky. Cirrhosis of the liver. My husband was writing an essay about it. And a poem. The funeral was going to be a small affair—me, the baby, Barry, and Barry’s older sister, Lonnie. Barry’s mother had taken off years ago. I’d never met her. After her kids were born, Lonnie had hired a private detective to try to find her, but it was as if she didn’t exist.
My flying phobia comes and goes, even now. I get tics when I’m stressed. The flying phobia is one of them. I also become ticklish, cripplingly so. But I wasn’t too anxious on that flight to Cincinnati. Besides, if we had died, that’s how I would have wanted it to happen: all of us together; a quick, lethal plunge.
* * *
—
In those days, my brain was a vortex, a sinkhole, a maelstrom. I was still nursing round the clock, hadn’t had a period in almost two years, could gather my stomach in my hands and shape it into a loose doughnut, my belly button in the center. Stop the planet, I want to get off! was something I said a lot in those days.
Barry and I had brought too much luggage to Cincinnati, including a giant backpack with all of Lou’s stuff that made Barry look like a snail. He was bumping into other disembarking passengers with it, and so I trailed behind him, baby in my arms, apologizing. Lonnie was waiting in a maroon station wagon outside. She was a large woman, as tall as Barry, with dark brown hair to her shoulders and frizzy bangs. She wore rimless glasses that magnified her eyes, jean shorts, and a Reds T-shirt. White orthotic sandals. She was fifteen years older than Barry and I. She was a no-nonsense Midwesterner. The kind of woman who doesn’t flinch when a baby cries. The kind of woman who gets things done.
I sort of hated her.
The humidity found its way between my breasts, between my legs. Lou and I panted, pulled away from each other’s sticky skin. Barry loaded the luggage, then the big backpack, and took Lou from my tired arms. I loved this about him, this masculine call to action—I’ll load the things! Sit tight, you woman! I looked at Lonnie. I hugged her. I held her shoulders, then ran my hands down her body until I was holding her by the waist. It wasn’t meant to be sexual. But somehow I got it wrong, and she wiggled away from me. “Whoa there, Edie,” she said to me.
The only thing to say was, “I’m sorry for your loss,” so I said it and then we got in the car. I sat in the back with Lou in my arms and let Lonnie talk at Barry. She told him all the family gossip—so many goddamned cousins, every one of them named Anna—while I stared at the shape of her head, how she and Barry had the same high cheekbones. I could see her hands on the steering wheel and they were Barry’s hands, only smaller. The same weird, curved thumb. Lou had it, too.
While Lonnie drove, I pointed at things out the window to Lou, but she was interested in her feet. She could put her toes in her mouth. I loved her feet in a way I thought wasn’t entirely normal. Did other people love their babies this much? I had searched the index of a parenting book for what to do when you love your baby too much but had come up with nothing. I’d wanted to write an angry essay ever since I’d had Lou. I wanted to give the essay to people like Lonnie, who believed in letting babies cry themselves to sleep, and thought that babies should sleep in cribs in their own rooms the day they came home from the hospital. But I couldn’t shout at Lonnie now. Her father had just drunk himself to death.
“Oh, so you abandoned your baby?” I’d said when Lonnie told me her babies had slept through the night after doing “cry it out” for a week. I don’t even remember why I’d called. I think I’d been having trouble nursing.
“It worked for our family,” she said flatly.
“I’ve heard torture works, too,” I said.
It had been our last exchange.
We wound through the hills of Kentucky, and then the Cincinnati skyline was upon us, looking—it always surprised me—like a miniature London. Lou had fallen asleep. Lonnie took a small detour and took us over the Roebling Bridge, my favorite bridge into the city. It was her Midwestern way of telling me I was forgiven.
The trouble was neither Barry nor I had made any money in almost two years. My pregnancy had decimated me. I’d vomited for nine long months. Other women went back to work when their babies were six weeks old, but I couldn’t fathom it. I knew it was wrong to abandon Lou so young. Stop the planet, I want to get off! I
t seemed to me that the world was kinder to dogs than it was to babies.
Barry had a gig freelancing for the local alt-weekly but had trouble finishing articles. His desk was littered with yellow legal pads filled with brilliant half-written pieces, deadlines blown. We had seven credit cards between us, about sixty grand’s worth of debt. I’d had a complicated delivery. Three days in the hospital. The fact that Barry couldn’t look after us brought out the old equality-versus-liberation argument in me. To pay our bills I got a visiting professorship in women’s studies, and I took Lou with me. I nursed her while I talked to my students about Germaine Greer. She slept in the front-pack carrier while I wrote on the blackboard about the construct of gender. She played with little wooden blocks during department meetings. When I was told this was unacceptable, I quit. I was so angry at the world that I could hardly stand it. I wanted grand gestures of rage. I wanted a sword fight. I wanted a beheading. I wanted ugly, ugly violence. Instead, Barry walked Lou around the neighborhood while I taught part-time at the community college. I returned home three days a week, breasts so big they barely fit in the car. I made fifty dollars a week. We were both hoping for some kindness in Barry Sr.’s will.
Lonnie had bought our plane tickets. She put us in her guest room—a cramped affair with a double bed and an old crib set up in the corner, though I knew we’d sleep with the baby wedged between us. I nursed Lou in secret. Lonnie dragged up a high chair from her basement and placed mashed sweet potatoes and shredded chicken and a cup of whole milk on the tray, and I pretended that my baby was fully weaned.
* * *
—
I lay on the bed in the guest room while Lou napped, her mouth around my nipple. She was snoring, and I stroked her forehead, her little nose. Photos of Lonnie’s three children were all over the walls, so many photos that it looked like they had spent their whole childhoods at the photo center at Sears. All three of them—teenagers now—were in Canada with Lonnie’s husband. None of them was coming to the funeral.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 Page 7