The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018

by The O Henry Prize Stories 2018 (retail) (epub)

  Marcia was in the kitchen painting a hunk of bread with Nutella. While I waited for her to offer me some—since that might take forever—I poured two glasses of mineral water and put one in front of her. “When we get back,” she said, “I’m getting a labret.”

  “A lab rat?” I felt my nostrils widen: the gloss on her lips smelled like grape jelly.

  “A piercing. Right here. A little silver loop over my lip. Alicia says it’s good for kissing.”

  “Alicia would know. God. You’re consuming that whole thing? What would Mom say…”

  Marcia chewed intently. “You really don’t get it?” She licked her fingertips. “Our parents are breaking up, Mary: divorcing, separating, ending things, moving on.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “They’re probably working out the details now.”

  “Shut up. You sound like something on TV.”

  “Yeah…okay…My brain weighs as much as an adult’s. Yours won’t for at least another year.” She took a giant bite of the loaded bread and walked away, leaving her mess behind.

  I wanted to shout: “I’m not a dumping ground for your MOODS.” Instead I rested my cheek on the marble counter and breathed. Anyway, it wasn’t true. Nothing was going to change. Was it? I reached for the sparker wand and clicked out sparks. Spark-lick. Spark-lick. Bizarre: Why didn’t they just have pilot lights? Why didn’t we just have wands?

  I put the Nutella away: I didn’t want to get blamed and have a fattening-foods discussion with Mom. Of course, I’d seen Marcia at her worst—puffy face, matted hair, blotchy skin, so thirsty we’d had to feed her ice from a spoon. This was all because I knew her—I really did—and she was trying to become somebody else.

  She sat on the living room couch, her head on Alicia’s shoulder. I didn’t go in.

  The car keys lay in a bowl on a table by the door. Hey, the compass on the key ring was real! I looked out: our car was right there, so Mom and Dad hadn’t really gone to Monteriggioni…Unless they’d taken a bus?

  “I said, ‘Don’t even ask me,’ ” Alicia was saying. “ ‘I’m no judge of what’s normal.’ ”

  So, there was the car. I was tall enough. I understood the signs. It was an automatic.

  “Anyway,” Marcia said, “she’s supposedly very nice. We’re going to be there for at least one night while my mom and dad do…whatever they do when they abandon us.”

  I slipped my jacket on, stepped into my shoes. Stepped out of them again and looked into the living room: they were reading an old church magazine and giggling.

  “Listen to this! ‘Dance, which works to arouse the senses, can never be pure.’ ” They laughed.

  I didn’t. Because, actually, if you were honest about it, wasn’t it kind of a serious thing, to rouse the senses? Just because it’s easy to do at first didn’t mean it would go on being easy. THE BODY SEEKS THAT WHICH HAS WOUNDED THE MIND WITH LOVE.

  I stuck my head in. “Hey. I’m going out to walk around a bit. See you.”

  Alicia looked up: they went on talking. I snagged her license on the way out. Ciao, ragazze!

  It was quiet in the car. I sat gripping the steering wheel. People my age could probably drive here anyway—couldn’t we drink wine? Have sex? Be emperor, if all that started up again?

  I strapped myself in, adjusted the seat, played with the mirror until I could see behind me. The engine started right up. I let it run for a bit, pressed down on the brake, and shifted: a jolt of power told me I could move. No one was around. Ready or not…

  I pulled out—whoa, too fast. I went easier on the gas, made a turn, and there I was, driving through streets full of cars and people! No one noticed or cared. I went faster, faster, until I had to stop and pressed the brake too hard: a truck in the mirror came suddenly close.

  After that I was a little too careful, too slow; cars collected behind me, but somehow no one honked. I got nervous, pulled off onto a side street, and sat breathing. Sky brightened. Trees rushed and went still. A lean, toast-colored cat trotted by, leaped up onto a wall, and picked his way along: a Siamese. The engine ran on. A woman in a window went on brushing the hair of a doll with brief, fierce strokes. The doll was the size of a child, the woman ancient. When the sun caught her eyes I saw she was blind.

  No tourist would come here. Maybe this was what Italy was really like. (Though I had no idea, of course.)

  I turned the car around. It took me an hour to get back, but, just as I pulled in, a tiny truck backed out of our spot. Whew. I parked, cut the engine—and remembered to shift into P.

  Mom and Dad were back. Alicia and Marcia sat slumped under a blanket, watching TV. I dropped the keys into the bowl. No one even noticed I’d been away.

  * * *

  —

  I put earrings in, little buttons made of gold. Mom and Dad were going to dump us at the country house of some couple we’d never met, so we were dressing up. Why not make it fun?

  Alicia, busy pinning up part of her hair, offered to lend me a skirt.

  “Don’t bother,” Marcia said. “She’ll never wear it because of her ugly legs.”

  I just looked at her.

  “What? You said so yourself!”

  “After I flipped my bike, and was all bruised and scabby? Anyway, I have tights. Thanks, Alicia.” The charcoal skirt was wonderful: lana cotta lined with silk. It was nice to wear something so adult. Even Marcia said I looked five years older—“Non è una gag.”

  Mom stared at us, but said nothing. She and Dad drove us way out into the country, pulled up at a big old farmhouse—part stone, part brick, with pinkish uneven roof tiles—waited for us to get out, and just drove away.

  No one answered our knock. No one answered our pounding, either. Was it even the right place? We stood there like idiots.

  Around the side we found a door propped open with a chair. Alicia called Hello! and led us into a huge kitchen with uneven ceiling beams and an arch at one end. Shrivelly sausages hung next to strings of peppers; big piles of American mail lay on a long pine table in the sun.

  “HELLO?” No answer. A pot steamed and rattled on the stove.

  We stood waiting like children in a fairy tale.

  A man with shoulder-length gray hair came in, smiled, mock-bowed, and welcomed us. He wore sandals and comfortable pants. His loose black polo shirt didn’t minimize his belly at all, if that’s what he was after, but he was very polite; we sat and had acqua minerale with lime slices in little unadorned glasses. We’d expected a whole family, but Milt Melling—he made us call him Milt—was all alone: his wife had just taken off for Milan with their nephew Giorgio, a boy my age (probably perfect for me). Milt asked us what we’d thought of Naples and Pompeii, and we talked about ancient villas, each with its hidden interior open to the sky.

  “Wouldn’t work in Connecticut,” he said, “except as a metaphor.”

  Alicia smiled. Milt leaned in close and took her hand “to get a better look at your charms,” as he put it. I’d seen that smile in a fresco. Her red lipstick smiled back.

  He inspected Alicia’s bracelet and looked up happily. “But this is the real thing!”

  His face was red and puffy, as if he spent too much time in the sun. He was older than Dad, but she definitely flirted back. It even seemed to give her energy in some weird way.

  He released her hand and turned to Marcia. I was being ignored, as usual. I stared at a bowl of artichokes, the long stems still on them; reached over to pet his black, silky cat, who got up, stretched, and moved to a sunnier spot with a view of vineyards, hills, distant dirt-colored buildings. The pot rattled away. Milt got up and turned it down.

  “We’ll need a few things from the village,” he said. “Anyone up for a walk?”

  Alicia and Marcia volunteered. Milt gave them a map, a bag, a list, and some cash; they went off holdi
ng hands. I sipped my mineral water, but, man, I still didn’t understand Diodorus Cronus. Lots of things are possible. Once something has happened, sure, its having happened stays true. But all the things that have failed (so far) to happen are not untrue, or not untrue yet. You have to come to a definite end before you can say: Well, here’s the list of things that never happened; their possibility was always just an illusion. Ah! Just thinking about it (or trying to) was like swimming underwater, straining to hold your breath till you touch the wall. And what if the things that hadn’t happened (yet) but might were not for that reason unreal or false, but only balanced in some unknowable state of potential? The pre-real. The ready.

  Milt uncovered the pot and stuck a long fork in. He quizzed me over his shoulder: Had I known Alicia long? Did she go to school? Where? What was she studying?

  “Hats,” I wanted to say. I could feel the steam on my face from across the room. He covered the pot, opened the fridge, and put a bottle of pale green wine in front of me.

  “A nice, crisp Greco di Tufo. Do you know Greco? One of my favorite whites: medium dry, a little tart.” He gave me a slow grin. “I have some prep work to do. Why don’t you open it and pour us both a glass.”

  Wait: he thought I knew how to open a bottle of wine? The corkscrew he put in my hand was dark with age, heavier than it looked. I peeled back the foil, put the tip against the cork, and did what I’d seen my parents do but never tried. I knew you had to get it in deep, so I aimed at the center; it kept slipping off. Then it went in, but at an angle. I leaned over and got a grip. The farther it went in, the more it straightened: a little pressure and the cork came out.

  He set two plain glasses down. “You know, Greco may well be ancient. Pompeian graffiti allude to it—and here it is, straight from Vesuvio to our table. I have a Lacryma Christi as well, also white, or, as Marlowe calls it, ‘liquid gold…mingled with coral and with orient pearl.’ ” He smiled like an old statue. “Nothing to prevent us from sampling both.”

  “Oh, no, this one’s fine,” I said. “Thanks!”

  I forced my hands steady—I don’t know why they seemed to want to tremble—and poured two glasses out, with just an inch in mine. Moisture condensed on them right away.

  Before I could even move he claimed my glass, filled it all the way, and raised it to toast me.

  I’d never been toasted before. As our glasses clicked, I probably even blushed. I took a sip, just to taste: made my nose wrinkle. But it was nice to be treated as a person for once.

  Milt sat down with a little cutting board, kitchen scissors, and some herbs. He finished his glass and poured himself another. “Something’s up with your sister,” he said. “Am I right?”

  I definitely blushed. Was it that obvious? I took a sip: watery and strong, cool and tart. I had to force myself not to make a face, but I didn’t have to talk if my mouth was full.

  He snipped at an herb. “Did you notice Alicia’s charm bracelet? The hourglass?”

  “Oh, the kiss timer?”

  “Ahh. Then you’ve divined the secret.” He snuck the bottle’s snout into my glass and poured me more wine before I could even say yes, all right, sure, thanks: glig glug glug. “It’s an old trick, you know. It looks like your time would run out right away, but there’s a pinch too much sand.” A broader smile. “So it never runs out.”

  “Cute.” I took a sip. Though I didn’t really get how you could kiss while looking at a tiny hourglass on your wrist? And anyway, why would you? When you like someone enough to kiss them, don’t you just want to keep on kissing? I would kiss until I caught fire.

  He went back to the sink. “How long have those two been an item?”

  “Not long,” I said—not what I’d meant to say at all.

  He turned and gave me a happy look. I took a quick gulp of wine. I wanted to kick myself under the table, but I wanted to laugh, too! Though it really wasn’t funny. (Yes, it was!)

  Milt put out a red plate with a slumped-over little loaf of goat cheese surrounded by these amazing pieces of bread toasted up in olive oil, and started asking me all about myself—which was weird because he always seemed to be insinuating something, and I didn’t even know what he was getting at? So I just kept swallowing little mouthfuls of wine while he chopped and stirred and whisked and told me funny things about his neighbors and the local towns and the history of the region, and something about Renaissance philosophers and the local wine, and someone called Gallino Nero (another emperor?). I was about to mention Diodorus Cronus when he topped up my glass again, exactly to the brim. It was like a test: could I avoid spilling it? I had to lean over the table and take a long, slurpy sip before I could even lift the glass.

  He watched me, smiling. I got very quiet, which seemed to amuse him even more. He kept asking questions; I kept taking long, slow sips. It was actually kind of fun. I drank the last of my wine and tried to smear goat cheese on a piece of toast but it was cakey and crumbly and wouldn’t smooth out so I made a mess of it and ate it in one bite: delicious!—but of course I’d left my glass unattended: it was full again. He had to know I wouldn’t drink a third glass of wine (fourth? fifth?), but maybe he was just being ceremonious. Or wanted me drunk so he could drag me off somewhere. I made a note of where they kept the knives, because fuck that.

  Anyway, how had he even poured it so full without spilling? You could see the surface tension making a dome. Plus, I couldn’t reach. I had to climb halfway onto the table to bring my lips to the glass—slipped; caught myself and laughed. He laughed, too, but I hadn’t spilled!

  The glass sweated. I could smell the wine. I bent over, kissed the rim, and slurped.

  He stopped stirring to stare. He didn’t deserve those blue, blue eyes. Of course, if everyone only had what they deserved, the world wouldn’t be so easy to recognize. I sat back in my seat and drank the rest. “Funny,” I said, a little out of breath, “how people with good luck can usually manage to—I don’t know. Muster up a feeling that they deserve it?”

  Milt made a grave tilt of his head. He poured more wine, but I liked it now—I mean, I was totally used to it. He started to ask another question, but it was my turn: “So…Milt. What do you actually do?” Because I was finding his whole existence a little hard to understand. Was he on vacation? Like, all the time? I mean, he mostly cooked and drank wine?

  Once again there was that little smile. “I suppose you could say, having failed at the things I wanted to do most—and having succeeded at something I did not want to do at all—I’m taking time out to rethink my life. For the moment, that means I cook, shop, tidy up, run errands, open and close the blinds, and find my days quite busy enough. I travel a little. I read. Friends come to visit, or we visit them. Do you mind if I put on music?”

  I shook my head. He went down a hall and up some stairs, leaving his little smile in midair.

  I lolled back in my chair, chuckling to myself without making a sound. Whatever he was cooking smelled good, but it was hot in here. I got up, unbuttoned my cardigan, and snooped around a little—sloppily, not caring at all what kind of mess I made. I almost tripped—over nothing. Found a hand-carved walking stick topped with a sort of pinecone; traced the vines that wrapped around its shaft. Ha! I loved D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. Lots of mail from investment funds. Fancy invitations. But where was the bathroom?

  Leaning, laughing, I swayed down a dim hallway that was all books, touching spines with my fingertips. In the bathroom, framed pictures showed Milt’s wife (amazing cheekbones, ponytail) and Milt himself from years and years ago; he’d been handsome, which explained a lot.

  I sat on the toilet and let my head drop back, mouth open, not needing to move. Actually, I felt pretty good. With a loud, scratchy sound, a needle touched vinyl and fast old asymmetrical jazz came on—wind instruments going wild, drums all feathery except for an occasional punch.

  As I flushe
d I saw I’d forgotten to close the door. Whoops! I grabbed the doorframe: the hall tilted away. I liked this place. I wanted to explore. Was it really a farmhouse, like Mom had said, or random buildings, yoked together at various times…?

  Milt stood at the stove, stripped to the waist. His potbelly glistened with oil and sweat. It was huge—bigger than I’d thought—and very tan.

  “Mary. Would you care to see what we’re having for dinner?” I swayed there for a second, but had no choice: tucked my hair behind my ears and came up just out of reach of the rattling steam, willing myself not to wobble. I was a brimful glass, trying not to spill my self.

  Milt’s face shone. He poked his fork into the pot, speared something enormous, raised it, and held it dripping for me to see. The huge lump of flesh—a disgusting pinkish gray, pores everywhere—flattened down to a rounded tip.

  Oh—gross. It was a tongue. An enormous tongue.

  “You’ve had tongue before, of course.” He cut a slice from the tip and held the steaming bit of meat, pierced with the point of his knife, right up to my lips.

  Actually, it smelled all right: like corned beef. I took it in, worked it over slowly, and swallowed. It was okay, once you got over what it was (if you ever did).

  I floated to my chair and sat down with a thump. The glass I’d left empty was full to the top. I stared at the sweating green wine and wondered what would happen if I had even one more taste. I was going to throw up anyway. Were Marcia and what’s-her-name ever coming back?

  People keep offering me tongues.

  I snorted, almost spilling; leaned over and took a long, slow sip.

  “Delicious with a little Dijon,” he said. “Or the local senape, when you can find one sharp enough.” He dabbed his face with a cloth. “Hot work, this.” His eyes were incredibly blue. “You don’t like Alicia much, do you?”

  “No, no, no, sometimes I do!” I said loudly. “I don’t know. I think…” (I forgot to talk for a minute.) “She steeps herself in her own psychology.”