The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018

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

  Finn turned and spoke to Anna, but Seline did not catch the words, so caught up was she in her own stream of thought. What, she wondered, would happen if she told Finn the painting could be his? Couldn’t he as easily be its provisional guardian? Might Finn see her differently then? She could speak to the attorney, find out if such a thing could be arranged, and under what terms.

  “Actually,” Finn was telling Anna, “it’s a desert cottontail.”

  Seline, still caught in her thoughts, said, “I don’t recall.”

  “That’s what it is. Dad was curious, so when we got back, he looked it up.”

  “Got back?” Anna said.

  “We found it on the old road. In Traeger’s grove.”

  Jonathan had known Kit Traeger nearly all his life, and in those final weeks, he’d telephoned the man to ask if, when the time came, his ashes could be scattered at the grove’s property line. At the time, Traeger agreed, but days before it was to take place, Traeger called Seline to say he’d changed his mind. He’d thought it over, he said, and in the end, he had acreage and crops to consider.

  “Dad said the hare was hit by a car,” Finn was saying. “Thrown back into the mud. He didn’t want to paint the fur like that. He wanted it to look like a Dürer. So when we got home, he washed it under the hose.”

  “What’s a Dürer?” Anna said.

  No one answered. The room was silent except for Chloe’s humming. A sensation came alive in Seline’s chest, somewhere beneath the glass beads. It was the feeling of Jonathan’s physical presence, engaged in an act that, until this moment, was unknown to her. She saw him vividly, not in memory, but anew. His large hands pushing the carcass into the sack, his determined footfalls on the trail. She could see him in the driveway, turning the nozzle on the hose, the streams of water mixed with Traeger’s precious soil running in inky lines to the gutter. The streams snaked past his shoes, which, like Finn’s, would have been covered in pale barbs.

  From the drawing table, the sound of paper rustling. Only Seline seemed to hear it; Finn was pointing out some aspect of the cottontail to Anna. Seline turned and saw Chloe kneeling precariously on the stool, reaching across the table as the red pencil rolled away. Seline took a step forward, but it was too late. Chloe’s arm knocked against the pitcher of brushes. It crashed to the floor, but not before colliding with a trio of Seline’s paintings propped on a low bench.

  In an instant Seline was at her side. She grasped the child’s arm, still outstretched, and held it firm. Startled, Chloe looked up. She fixed a fearless gaze on Seline, her eyes wide and lips glossed with spittle. They were so near, Seline could feel the girl’s warm breath, see the sticky remnants of orange juice on her chin. The paintings lay facedown on the concrete floor, but Seline couldn’t bear to look at them, couldn’t feel anything but her own heart racing.

  “You don’t reach,” she said. The child tugged and tried to pull away, but Seline tightened her grip and held her. “Things break if you’re not careful.”

  Anna slid past and swooped Chloe into her arms. The child pressed her face to her mother’s neck and broke into sobs.

  “It’s not the place for a child,” Anna said, gently raising Chloe’s arm to inspect it. For injury from the pitcher, Seline told herself, certain she had done no harm.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Finn said, though the look in his eyes was hard, protective.

  Another of Seline’s paintings had fallen faceup, and its surface was littered with clay fragments. As the child sobbed, Finn picked off the shards one at a time. Seline ignored the scars left on the tacky paint. She could see Finn was upset with her. “There doesn’t look to be any harm done,” she said.

  Anna shot a look at Finn.

  “Take her outside,” he said, and Anna stepped out, Chloe’s legs wrapped around her waist. In the high glare of the afternoon, they dropped into silhouette, a single, indeterminate shape.

  Seline gathered the brushes from the floor, her grip tight to keep her fingers from trembling. The damage to her paintings was minor and could be repaired, but Jonathan’s picture had nearly been lost. And the field journals lost, too: the trove of notes and images given away in a lapse of judgment. She knew better now. She knew sentiment could not influence her. She would follow Jonathan’s wishes and keep the collection together. There was no room for discretion, not even hers.

  * * *

  —

  Upstairs, Anna gathered Chloe’s toys and blanket and the bag of graham crackers and placed everything in the tote bag. “Let’s go to the potty,” she said, and led the child to the half bath off the living room. In the kitchen, Seline made coffee while Finn watched, leaning against the counter. She opened the bag of grounds and considered the sacripantina, but she couldn’t imagine presenting that airy lightness, as though nothing were amiss.

  A prickling danced along the back of her neck. It was the residue of losing her temper. Her temper: a part of her long hidden and suddenly exposed, as though under a rock that the child had unwittingly kicked away. Still, she aimed to appear at ease.

  “You’ll be going against traffic. The 405 should be fine.”

  He looked sidelong at the coffeepot. “I hate the freeways in LA.”

  The words stung, as though she was the place, and the hated roads a part of her. “How’s the traffic in San Francisco?”

  “Not like here.”

  She checked the coffeemaker, which was brewing at a pathetic rate, and took three mugs from the cupboard. “Your father never mentioned you were with him when he found the hare.” She reached into the refrigerator for the half-and-half. That sounded disapproving. “I only meant, I’m glad to know you were there.”

  Just then Anna came from the bathroom and stood beside Finn. Leaning against the counter they were nearly the same height and made a striking pair. The baby would no doubt be good-looking.

  “Chloe’s going on her own,” she said, and Finn nodded.

  Anna turned to Seline. “How are your paintings?”

  “They’ll be fine. Wet paint is forgiving. The child—”

  “Chloe.”

  “Yes, Chloe. She’ll be in school this fall?”

  “Pre-K.”

  “She’s bright. She should do well.” Finally, the coffee was finished, and Seline poured three cups.

  “She’s very bright,” Anna said. “She understands more than most kids her age.”

  “That must be a challenge.”

  “In fact,” Anna said, reaching for a cup, “she’s just asked me why you don’t like her, and I couldn’t think what to say, so I told her I didn’t know.”

  “She misunderstood.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sorry if she didn’t like being interrupted. It had to be done.”

  “Not that way, it didn’t.”

  Seline glanced at the bathroom door. From inside, there was the faint sound of singing. “Children have to have rules,” she said.

  “It’s just…” Finn struggled. “Anna and I don’t think it works, being harsh.”

  “We think adults should follow rules, too.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  There was a pause. Chloe’s singing grew quiet, then suddenly rose again. “Finn,” Anna pleaded.

  “Don’t, Annie.”

  “It’s just, you’ve got rights, too.” She turned to Seline. “Fine then, I’ll say it. It’s wrong that Finn’s father didn’t leave him any of his paintings. Why give them all to strangers and not his own son?”

  As she spoke, Anna’s features took on a taut quality, one that, Seline now understood, had been there all along, from those first moments she emerged from the car, and in the living room, and over lunch. Perhaps, Seline thought, these were the words Anna had meant to say since the first moment of her arrival.

  “The s
ituation, it’s complicated.” Seline felt compelled to say more, but there was no explaining the situation to someone like Anna, a person who knew nothing about the obligations and duties an artist had to his work.

  “He should have thought about his son. But all he thought about was himself, his own reputation. That was obviously more important.”

  “Annie, that’s enough.”

  Seline turned to Finn. “These decisions were not mine to make.”

  “I know that. I—”

  The bathroom door opened and Chloe jumped into the living room. She was shouting a song, a made-up one without rhyme or rhythm. She swayed with her head thrown back, singing to the beams. The song overtook the room, and Seline watched with a curious detachment. As Chloe saw it, the empty space was hers alone. Like Seline at that age, she saw a world that belonged only to her, one in which adults were necessary inconveniences, obstacles who stood in the way of true desire.

  * * *

  —

  To ensure nothing was left behind, they searched the rooms a final time. Seline checked the washroom. When she opened the door, she found the soap dispenser overturned and its contents smeared along the basin. The mess had been hastily wiped away, but traces were still visible. She righted the soap dispenser, nearly empty now when she had filled it only that morning. Nearby, the wastebasket was overspilling with clumps of wadded tissue. There would be time after they were gone to empty the wastebasket, to refill the dispenser again, but for now, she closed the door behind her. She was about to return to the kitchen when she saw the door to her bedroom was open.

  She stepped to the box, still waiting on the bed. Checking it now, she found each book in place and the seals on the wrapping unbroken. She replaced the lid carefully, and after opening the closet doors set the box on the upper shelf, pushing it deep into the shadows. Soon she’d return the notebooks to Jonathan’s studio, where they’d be cataloged along with the rest of his work.

  She was about to go when she saw a string of amber beads on the carpet. So the child had been here, though not for reasons she’d expected. After collecting the beads, Seline caught sight of herself in the mirror. Too thin now, with ample room in the dress that was once snug, gray showing in her dark hair. More unsettling though was the haunted look in her eyes, as though living alone was too difficult. Being alone was bearable now only when she was at work, when the earbuds were in and she silently laid down paint, keeping vigilant for something wild and abrupt in the only form that still mattered.

  On the bureau top, the tube of lipstick was open, its cap removed and tossed aside. The top drawer was ajar, and its contents had clearly been rummaged through. Quickly, she replaced the cap and shut the drawer, as if that would erase what had happened. Then it came to her. The Damascus bracelet was gone. She reopened the drawer, didn’t see it, then went through the others. She checked beneath the bureau, then the bed. With its ornate clasp and glittering tracery, it was the kind of fancy object a child would covet. And the overalls, with all those small pockets. How easily it might slip into any of them.

  “Chloe, sit still.” Seline heard Anna’s voice in the next room. “I can’t tie your shoes.”

  It wasn’t so outrageous an act. As Seline well knew, children took things. She could ask for it back, but thinking of Anna’s words, how could she, Seline, ask for anything? If one day she traveled north to see the baby, Jonathan’s grandchild, she might inquire in an offhand way if anything was found, but even that seemed impossible now. Seline stepped from the bedroom and closed the door.

  “Nothing here,” she said.

  She saw them off, standing in the driveway until the Volvo’s brake lights disappeared.

  After, she went inside and pushed the door closed. Her face felt like a board. She thought of Finn in the moments before he left, leaning over the car seat, ensuring the child was safely buckled in. By spring he would be father to two, swallowed up by a job, by San Francisco, and by Anna’s people, who would take him in as their own.

  She stepped down into the living room. All was in order except for a stray throw pillow on the floor. Later, she would clear away the remaining dishes, gather the tablecloth, and throw it by the back door where that night it would go into the washing machine. Once the house was in order, she’d go to the studio and put that in order, too. She would examine her pictures and see what, if any, repairs were necessary. She’d straighten the worktable, return her tools and tubes of paint to their customary places, and all would be as it was before the visit. She’d return to her cataloging, to the work of going through each of Jonathan’s drawings, listing them for the provost to approve. She had an obligation to fill on Jonathan’s behalf, and the balance of a year in which to fill it.

  In a single movement, she pulled the drapes closed. Too late for the sun, not that it mattered. In the darkness, she took the string of beads from her neck and let them pool in her hand. She thought of the Damascus bracelet, the way it felt on her arm, the metallic filigree moving as she moved, grazing and light, so familiar. She imagined it plucked from the bureau, held by a small hand. How irresistible it must have seemed. How unexpected. The child must have marveled at her luck, that she had found something she could pretend belonged to her.

  Brad Felver

  Queen Elizabeth

  MANY YEARS LATER, knots of grief cinched intractably within her, Ruth still urged her memory back to their first evening together: drinks at a posh restaurant on the shores of Lake Erie, how Gus offered to pay long before the bartender even noticed them, how he spoke so earnestly of dovetail joints. He wore a flannel shirt and carpenter’s jeans with fabric gone thin at the knees. He was wiry as a cornstalk and always would be. That night he spoke of how he wanted to make desks. “Desks!” he said, smiling as if he knew how absurd it sounded. For now he had his union card and worked what jobs came his way.

  Ruth was working on her Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Case Western, studying stochastics. She spoke at length about her research, which involved probability theory, random variables, and chaotic systems. Gus listened with genuine interest, and when she finally paused to say, “Does that make sense?” he admitted that he wasn’t a graduate student, wasn’t a student at all, had in fact never been to a college campus. “I doubt I can even spell stochastic,” he said, “but I love listening to you talk about it.” The only fancy bit of math he knew was about Euclidean planes requiring three points, and this only because he felt strongly that all desks—all tables of any kind—should have only three legs. Two legs could not balance a load, but four created wobbles. Three created a perfect Euclidean plane.

  His knowledge seemed so practical compared to her own—how to fix squeaky floorboards, what made a diesel engine different, why oak leaves fell later in the season than maple leaves. She had never met anyone like him at Case or back home in Boston. He was wholly without pretension, frequently offered remarkable compliments but quickly grew embarrassed when similar compliments were returned. Even that name of his, Gus, seemed clipped short, as if his mother and father considered extra syllables an extravagance.

  When the bartender did finally bring the check, Gus reached for his wallet and realized he didn’t have nearly enough money. Who had ever heard of $6 bottles of beer? Cold shame spread over him, and he knew immediately that such a gaffe would quash the small, snug world they had built during their evening together. But Ruth thought little of it, pulling out a wad of cash while Gus went quiet like a penitent little Catholic boy, which of course he was. What Ruth never told him—never told anyone—was that it was his mortification over such a small trifle, so utterly sincere, that made her love him immediately.

  * * *

  —

  He visited her family before she visited his. Theirs was a three-and-a-half-story house of deep maroon brick and cream trim in Beacon Hill and boasted a view of Boston Common. The sidewalks were of cockeyed brick, framed by cobblesto
nes, and the shrubs were manicured into perfect moons.

  They sat on a back veranda and ate eggs Florentine. Gus never did see the kitchen or who had prepared the meal. Her father flinched when they shook hands—just a small twitch, barely perceptible—and only later did Gus realize this was because he was a vascular surgeon of some note, ever afraid of rough calluses and strong grips. Her mother had tight gray hair and picked at her food with a single tine of her fork. Gus felt her eyes that morning as he reached for what was almost certainly the improper cutlery.

  After brunch, the men separated from the women in a way that felt mannered and Edwardian. Gus stood next to her father on the front stoop and drank down a glass of coconut rum. They watched dog walkers wander the Common. His eyes cruised around all the sights. He had never been so far east, had never experienced the extravagance of an old city. For a long while they didn’t speak, and he felt as if he was being tested. Who could maintain the silence longer? Eventually, her father said, “Desks.” He nodded ever so slightly. “Is that a growth industry?” It wasn’t entirely clear what the suggestion was. Was he afraid he would have to support them himself if they got married? Embarrassed that his daughter was dating a man who owned more than one hammer? Or was this just the easy contempt that New Englanders reserve for Midwesterners?

  “They didn’t know what to make of you,” Ruth said on the drive back to Cleveland.

  “Unfortunately, I think they knew exactly what to make of me.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s their problem.”

  * * *