The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018

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

He laughed so hard he had to wipe his cheeks. “The shape of your lips,” he said, “is really quite something. You have an audacious little mouth, Mary. But you know that, of course.”

  I rolled my eyes, picked up my glass, held it in front of my face, and looked at him through it: he was fatter, greener, smaller. I liked the Wine Milt better. I peeped over the rim.

  “No. It isn’t even Alicia—not as herself. It’s just…she’s having this effect on my sister.” I swallowed more than I’d meant to and coughed. “We went to Solfatara,” I explained.

  My glass was empty. A chilly new bottle stood in front of me, unopened, complete. Milt came up behind me and leaned in to whisper something secret, but didn’t whisper; didn’t move away. Just stayed there, close enough to smell. Before I could think I felt his hand slip down to my waist, his lips brush my ear, his tickly fingers reach in under my hair—

  I ducked under the table and ran. Books, bathroom—I slammed into a cabinet and set it rocking. In a side room with dark furniture, a woman sat in the glow of a computer screen—sparse white hair, an ancient face, a profile like the Duke of Urbino, but with headphones on. I scrambled up more steps, turned again, and raced down a second hallway, lined with vinyl records. The hall went on, narrowing as it went, until there were no more records, no more shelves, only plain white walls spotty with dirt or mold. An empty jar rolled after me. Would the hall NEVER come to an end?

  A narrow arch led down to a rough-walled room where, past brown quilted jackets, through a glass-paned door, there were hills and sky. I dodged a sink, jumbled a lineup of rubber boots, twisted an old iron key back and forth, and kicked and kicked and kicked the dried-out door until I forced it wide enough to squeeze through: free.

  I half-waded, half-limped across a freshly planted field to a country lane, which I trudged along till I could breathe again. It was getting dark. Burrs stuck to my clothes. A dog barked somewhere. I pulled a leaf from my hair, tucked my chin down, and kept walking.

  They left me alone with him? Really?

  Milt didn’t follow: he probably just smiled, topped up his glass, grabbed the big fork—

  I vomited into a ditch. Vomited again. Remembered, too late, to pull back my hair.

  * * *

  —

  Mom and Dad were in their room with the door closed, but we could hear everything: Dad insisting he had “business” in Rome, Mom saying, “Fine! Then I’m going with you. Leave Alicia the car. She can drive the girls down to Terracina. We’ll meet them in a few days.”

  Dad said something very quietly, and that was it: they came out of the room with their bags.

  “Dad,” Marcia said. She was reading a gossip magazine. “Who’s Vittorio Bazzini?”

  “Why, dear?”

  “He’s gross and old and has a saggy potbelly, but the woman he’s been seeing (not his wife, though she’s nice, too, apparently) is incredibly pretty.”

  I sat on the couch and watched my parents move around, their eyes never meeting. The emperor’s pallor worried his advisers. Alicia, in a rust-brown silk wrap, turned cushions over, looking for a lost bracelet. “Can I speak with you?” Mom asked. They went off.

  I unzipped my bag and took out the rock I’d picked up at Solfatara: it still smelled exactly like that day, like sulfur and sun, already memory. The emperor carried the bags out to the taxi, Mom kissed us good-bye, and they were gone.

  Alicia threw her wrap at Marcia, spread her arms, whirled around, and sang: “WE’RE FREE!”

  I’d seen her naked before, so no big deal.

  * * *

  —

  I sat on the cemetery wall, hugged myself, and turned toward the sunrise: didn’t help at all. Edges were brightening, making it seem a little warmer, but we were freezing. We were lost. We hadn’t slept. Alicia and Marcia had gone off to have a smoke and maybe make some kind of plan, but Alicia just kept kicking the side of someone’s mausoleum. She wore dark lipstick and more eye makeup than I’d ever seen her use. She looked fantastic. It seemed to amuse her that so many things had gone wrong: the worse things got, the funnier she thought it was—and she was the one in charge. She went on kicking, scuff, scuff, scuff, her short skirt flipping up. The weathered marble sparkled like sugar cubes. (I used to sneak those cubes home from restaurants and lie very still while a temptingly crisp shape dissolved in my mouth, uncrunched.)

  First Alicia had driven us all over Italy. We saw some amazing things, but our theories about where we were stopped making sense. We circled and circled an enormous crater lake and then got lost in some dusty industrial countryside. We stopped in a random hill town to pee and finally got to eat, in a long, fluorescent basement filled with local soccer players in uniform. After dinner we explored the town on foot, down to its narrowest, most dead-end street, until we were ready to lie down on the cobblestones and sleep; Alicia couldn’t find the car keys. We spent hours searching everywhere in the dark, getting lost, arguing, circling back, and found the keys hanging on a nail outside the locked restaurant. The car wasn’t where we were pretty sure we’d parked, so we hiked all the way to the other edge of town, ran from a barking dog we never actually saw into someone’s vineyard (a bad place to run in the dark), and ended up watching the sun come up from inside a little shop that hadn’t technically opened, drinking espresso and staring at a mortadella the size of a man. Alicia thought we might be able to see the car from higher up, so we climbed all the way up here, but no. Of course not.

  I popped the last mint into my sour mouth. My skin felt sticky and I needed to pee. Were we ever going to sleep? I yawned. A humpbacked dog trotted by, nose to the ground: wiry fur, big teeth, spindly legs…I had to laugh. Maybe being amused when things go wrong was a good approach. Strange how the wild boar either had no neck or was nothing but neck: just a massive head with legs and a tail. It was definitely a boar: certain animals have that medieval look. Pelicans don’t seem modern either; the ones on coats of arms seem as real as any photograph. What did wild boars eat? Acorns? Mushrooms? Girls from Connecticut? I closed my eyes and tried to will myself warm. Alicia had not only lost the car, she’d lost the keys again, in a stream we were crossing. We’d ended up groping about in freezing shallows for quite a while before Marcia held the key ring up on a wrinkly thumb. They were going to lose me next.

  I took a walk to get warm. Some of the tombs were actual little houses where you could visit your dead relatives. It seemed like make-believe to me, a child’s tea party with bodies instead of dolls, but the Romans had done it, too; they’d even poured wine into a special hole in the grave.

  Wine. Had Milt thought I liked him? Oh God. That couldn’t be it. More likely he’d been too lazy and self-amused to care who I was at all.

  I wandered past slabs, headstones, a pedestal with a sort of stone bathtub on it, and more little houses: NANONE. BIZZARO. CARBONE. STELLACIO. Old marble, slightly rough to the touch; stone vases empty, or full of dirty plastic flowers, or dried-out husks of real flowers, or fresh flowers just beginning to droop. It was quiet, except for my steps and the wind. I didn’t even feel tired anymore—though I really needed to pee. Just not enough to risk it in the open, with wild boars running around. D’ELIA. VECCHIONE. PARADISO. MAROTTA. Surprising breezes would sweep past, fade suddenly. I tried but couldn’t really picture the lives these people had lived, whoever they were: COLLOMOSSE. CRISCI. DELLE DONNE. I didn’t know enough: about the past, about this place, about these people. I could hardly imagine my own life, much less theirs. PAVORONE. ACQUAVELLA. DOCILE. One slab looked comfortable enough to stretch out on, close my eyes, and rest like a marble angel in the sun…

  I heard them both—their voices suddenly there, my sister sucking in smoke in a dramatic way, letting it out endlessly. I could tell by the harsh way she breathed and gave dull, one-word replies that she’d been crying and was miserable. Why?

  Alicia was saying, “That’s si
lly. You’re beautiful. You’re intelligent. You’ll find someone.”

  “I already did.”

  Wind rushed the trees. Marcia tried to laugh bitterly but only coughed. Alicia murmured something, but it was none of my business: really. I tiptoed away, turned a corner, and went on. Old slabs blanked with shadow, blanked with sun. A row of tombstones sparkled: DETUCCIO. FICINO. VERDONE. CHIAROLANZA. Maybe I could loop around from the other side, so they’d at least see me coming. Or just take off, head for Venice or Sicily. Why not? They wouldn’t notice for days. AGITI. SICONDOLFI. AUTULLO. LA LANCIA. This adventure wasn’t going to turn out well. But how do most things turn out? They all end here: grandparents, parents, kids, whole families, nothing left but old buttons and bones. Skeletons in boxes, dressed in rotten clothing long out of style. Atoms and the void.

  I turned, walked for a bit, turned again. A cigarette burned on the edge of a slab.

  They sat on the front step of a mausoleum, backs to the bronze-barred door. They leaned into each other and seemed to be whispering. No, they were kissing. Really kissing.

  “Nothing I haven’t seen in a movie,” I said in a flat voice that didn’t sound like me.

  Dogs were barking: two, three, maybe more; faint but getting louder, coming this way.

  Alicia and Marcia didn’t look up. Alicia’s hand moved under my sister’s shirt.

  I chose a big white tomb (DA PORTO), grabbed the window bars, and hoisted myself up to the roof. The barking got louder. A man shouted nearby. Marcia and Alicia stopped, stared into each other’s eyes from an inch away, and went on kissing.

  Bristling, its jaws wet with foam, the wild boar ran right past them. Gravel chips flew.

  Alicia shrieked. I saw Marcia’s open mouth, heard only squealing barks.

  Dogs formed a ring, but the wild boar whipped around, its snout glistening with snot and grit—and went for one of the dogs. Like an explosion, they all spun away—but circled back right away to face the boar. Dense and muscular, it broke through the line and took off fast. The rush knocked Alicia down. In a second the animals were out of sight.

  She leaned over and spat. A spittle thread hung from her lips and disappeared.

  “Alicia? Allie, are you okay?” Marcia crept out from behind a tomb. “I think they’re gone.”

  “Um,” I said from above, “I wouldn’t be too sure—”

  More loud barks; an awful yelp. The boar made a strange cry, sharp with agitation and rage.

  Marcia was gone. Alicia crouched down, her back to a tomb, and looked around rapidly.

  More dogs rushed by. The boar screamed again, sounding almost like a monkey or a man.

  A worker in a blue jumpsuit jogged past; a tall man followed, taking his time. His stiff gray hair looked oddly like the boar’s; a rifle hung from his shoulder by a strap. He was eating an apple. The sounds moved off with them.

  Alicia sat on the gravel, knees to her chest. She raised her head—as another boar swept past.

  “Alicia!” I called. “Up here!”

  She ran to my tomb, jumped up, grabbed at the roof, and tried to claw her way up.

  “No, look, it’s really easy—use the window. Put your foot—grab my hand!” She almost made it; fell back. “Come on, you can do it. Take a breath.”

  With a stunned, angry look, she made a running leap, gripped the roof, got a leg up, and slid off before I could catch her. Her lip was bleeding.

  Bits of gravel stuck to her cheek.

  “Use the bars. Put your knee on the window,” I advised. My knuckle was raw; Alicia was shaking. Twenty dogs poured in, shouts and barks came from all directions, and the sky was so wonderfully blue! Italy was by far the best place I’d ever been.

  Another boar rounded the corner, leaning hard, going nearly sideways. Alicia ran, tripped on a step, and crawled off rapidly on her hands and knees.

  My mouth was open and I was making noise. I didn’t know what noise at first: I might have been screaming for help or crying, but I was laughing—laughing so hard it hurt. From the roof I saw more men in coveralls, an old farmer limping along, dogs rounding corners only to run into other dogs, and—appearing and disappearing here and there—a blur of brown bristle with live little eyes, enraged or frightened or both.

  “What are you laughing about!” Marcia screamed. “She could have been trampled or bitten or gored! They could be taking her to the hospital right now! We all could have died!”

  I couldn’t help it. I was aching. Aching! Face wet, nose running, hardly able to breathe, I couldn’t stop laughing: just couldn’t. My face must have had the shape of the empty mask they hang over theater doors. At the edge of the roof, stooped over, shaking, I laughed.

  Marcia yelled, “He’s back. He’s coming! RUN!” but I couldn’t even see, which made me laugh harder, though I was so tired of laughing and so needed to breathe…

  With a quick scrape like a match being lit, the cemetery reeled away: I hit gravel, hard. Lay on my back looking up at blue, blue sky. Carefully, bruise by bruise, bone by bone, I sat up.

  After a minute Marcia came up and leaned over me, breathing heavily. Her face was wet: she’d been laughing too. When we looked at each other we started to laugh again; tried not to, but only started laughing harder, though every laugh was its own stab of pain. And of course Marcia was my sister and I was hers; it didn’t matter if we liked each other or not. So, that was that—except for the sound of gunshots, far away. I’d been hoping the wild boars would escape somehow, and get on with their lives; and who knows, maybe they did. But probably not.

  * * *

  —

  I wondered what it was like to think in Latin. My suitcase having been packed, I sat out on the cozy modern balcony, leaned back in my chair, and picked cloudflowers. Traffic passed below, or didn’t pass; I heard its sounds but saw only sky. I felt good: though I was going to miss all this. I even missed driving through the arch, which Alicia had been wrong about—I’d checked.

  Harsh lipstick. Wouldn’t look at me. Even the way Marcia stood now was weird. Her slip dress was on backward and she wore Alicia’s socks, the ones with the maps of Portugal. She picked up a terra-cotta Buddha and put it back on the shelf; headed off to the kitchen, walking slowly, tilting to one side, the way our grandmother had the year she died. It made me feel like being nice to her, though she hadn’t been nice to me. Anyway Marcia had to be feeling what I felt, that Alicia’s power or glamour or charm was just gone: as if she’d been disproven.

  I went inside. My jaw felt heavy, delicate as glass. It rested on my chest as if on a velveted display in some old museum. Without moving my chin, I picked up the remote: on BBC News, people carried bodies from a blast-scarred building. An angry woman vowed revenge. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know what side I’d be on if I had to choose; though probably the woman hadn’t had a choice herself, but it was weird: she was Alicia’s age. In her situation, I’d be screaming and cursing, too, obviously—but what then?

  Alicia had taken the barbell out of her tongue. She hardly spoke, unless to say something like “I’ll bruise if you touch me. Sorry: I think I’m ill.” All she seemed to want to do was sleep.

  Someone—and this made me really sad—had taken a pair of pliers and crushed Alicia’s hourglass. She’d shown me the little wad of wreckage, the twisted silver, the burst glass, and just looked at me. There were tears in her eyes, but she’d refused to cry. Anyway, we both knew it wasn’t me.

  Marcia was busy emailing everyone using her phone—it would cost more than our house when the bill came. I skipped from channel to channel until I found an old American movie dubbed into Italian. A boy hid in a school bus from some kids who wanted to beat him up. Now what? How do I get out of here? What do I do? But I knew the answer: you just have to wait.

  I poured a glass of wine and sat with it. I’d never had wine all on my own.
I took a sip: it was a different kind, dark red, and I absolutely hated the taste. It was practically poison, it could do you harm, you had to force yourself to like it—so of course it was part of being an adult.

  Dad drove us to the airport. No one talked. Mom would be staying on for a week (if you believed what she and Dad kept telling us in serious tones), so she could “wind up some important business in Rome.” When I finally saw the sign they’d been joking about—

  INVERSIONE

  DI MARCIA

  —no one even noticed. We passed old walls, umbrella pines: I was going to miss Italy.

  * * *

  —

  There was snow all over Connecticut—filthy mountain ranges at the edges of parking lots, lumps and crusts still glittering in the woods—but it was easy to be back: I went to school, hung out with friends, used my phone and laptop like a regular person, and glided along in the familiar strangeness of being myself. I tried to take things as they seemed to want to be taken, which wasn’t quite so easy anymore. In school, on the bus, at volleyball, during meals, I’d think of random things that had happened (or almost happened: always more of those), and the oddest moments would come back: My sulfury chewing gum. The sparker wand. That irresistible arch. My taste of hot tongue. How easy it was to drive. The old man in Terracina (when we finally got there) who wanted to know why we’d bombed the town in 1944, after the Germans had left, and killed his girlfriend. He showed us a colorless, scallop-edged photo of a girl my age and looked intently at each of us in turn.

  An older boy—in Marcia’s class, actually—started calling me. I wasn’t sure about him, but we texted all the time and talked for hours very late at night. Or we’d be silent and listen to the connection, which had its own sound sometimes, like faraway surf. I’d lie on my back, fingers laced across my stomach, phone propped up by my ear, and fall asleep listening to him talk.