“Of course it was nothing,” the ghost and Mary said. Up her esophagus, over its ribbed tubing and slick red muscle, past the tonsils and the epiglottis, at the root of her tongue, at the back of her teeth, the sticky feet and bristling chest, the buzz, the buzz, the wings long stiff, now limbering. On the tip of her tongue, the million facets of its eyes finally refracted light. “Not yet, at least,” the ghost and Mary said. The fly perched for the briefest of moments on Mary's lower lip. It rubbed its forelegs together, tested its wings. “At the moment,” they said, “it was nothing at all.”
The bird, or something else, began to wail. Its noise spilled out of it and racketed around the room. Something else was said, but no one could tell what it was. There was a pervasive sense of lethargy, of weight. There was a lurch and then another. The room steeled itself to stillness and the dream it had been having of itself flared and went out.
Later, Irma came in. Mary was sitting in the maroon chair, the ghost perched beside her, balancing on the chair's arm. Irma had been at school and was still wearing her school uniform which, Mary saw, was too small for her, too tight at the waist, flaring over her buttocks in an odd shape like the bell of an umbrella. Otherwise, she looked fine. She had beautiful skin, truly lucent skin, and long brown hair which she wore bound up at the nape of her neck in a style that was much too old for her. Irma looked just like her brother and they both looked just like Charlie. Mary could see nothing of herself in Irma's face and for that, among other things, she loved her very much.
Irma walked past Mary and the ghost and stood by the side of the bed. “Mom?” she said, but she had it wrong. Mary wasn't what was in the bed anymore; she had left all that behind her. Mary was over here, in the chair, by the window. She sighed in exasperation. Children got everything wrong the first time. It was like a game for them, but they played it so seriously it was tedious for everyone else involved. The ghost had tidied herself up considerably, rebuttoned her blouse, done something with her hair. What was in the bed was lying there in the most slovenly way. Its mouth was open. Everything else in the room was closed: all the doors, all the windows. The air was heavy, cloying and the only sign left of the bird was a tiny comet of blood arcing across a lower plane.
“Otherwise, everything is just as I left it,” Mary said.
“Well, that's an accomplishment, I suppose,” said the ghost. Mary didn't like her tone, but she supposed they had all been under a great deal of stress. A long journey had been taken, and at the end of it they were both still here, no closer to illumination.
“Mom?” said Irma. She reached out and put her hand over the hand of what was in the bed. She already knew, that much was clear. Irma had already known for all of her life, but what could she do? She was a child, at the most hideous of disadvantages. Mary considered that she was handling herself quite well if all the factors were taken into account.
“What happens next?” said Mary, but the ghost was not listening to her. She swung her leg back and forth as if enjoying the motion of the joint and hummed a little song under her breath. Outside the trees tossed back and forth in a breeze that had been circling the world for some time, gaining and losing strength. That breeze had crested off the top of a pyramid, got caught up in the spume from a whale's blowhole. It had been chopped to pieces by a plane's propeller but reassembled itself and moved on. Soon enough, it was gone and no one had answered Mary's question. No one had answered Irma's question. No one had said anything at all.
Mary watched as her daughter lifted the hand and pressed it against her cheek. She watched as her daughter climbed into the bed and tucked herself under the arm attached to the hand, adjusted the fit until she was wholly contained within an embrace. Irma's lips were artificially pink as if she had been eating something she probably should not. Her eyes were as glossy as buttons. The moment continued for a long time and then another one came along and replaced it.
Acknowledgments
My grateful thanks to the editors at whose journals the following stories were previously published:
“Listen,” New Orleans Review
“A Category of Glamour,” The Burnside Review
“A Terrible Thing,” Web Conjunctions
“The Cherry Tree,” American Fiction
“A Beautiful Girl, A Well Loved One,” Fairy Tale Review
“The Dinner Party,” Alaska Quarterly Review
“Mother Box,” Conjunctions
“Conversation,” Western Humanities Review
Deepest thanks also to: the University of Alabama MFA program, particularly Kate Bernheimer, Michael Martone, Joel Brouwer and Wendy Rawlings: for the beginnings, the middles, and the ends. To Lance Olson, Dan Waterman, Noy Holland and all the other editors, copyeditors and readers at FC2 and University of Alabama Press who have helped this book on its way to print. To Dr. Roy Fluhrer and the Fine Arts Center for the time and the Vermont Studio Center for the space. To Mike Stutzman, Jillian Weise, Carl Peterson, Rachel Mack, Molly Dowd, Laura Hendricks Ezell, Tim Croft, Bard Cole and Alissa Nutting: first readers, dear friends. To my sister, Katie Blackman, first friend.
To my father for his philosophy of kindness. To my mother for her philosophy of happiness.
To John Pursley III who knows my heart. To Helen Maria Pursley who owns my heart.
Notes
The Joy Williams epigram is taken from her book, The Changeling, reissued by Fairy Tale Review Press in 2008.
The line “Time to make more cats,” in the story “Listen,” is taken from Louise Gluck's poem, “After the Storm,” originally published in The New Yorker.
The title of “A White Hat on his Head, Two Wooden Legs,” is taken from a Welsh children's song called “I Saw a Jackdaw,” which is about just that.
The lines that Charlie and the singer in the band sing in “The Silent Woman,” are from the children's poem “Stars” by Charles Sandberg.
In the same story, the image of a headless woman serving drinks is borrowed from the signs of various pubs and bars called either The Silent Woman or The Good Woman which are spread across the United Kingdom. I owe the discovery of this image to my good friend the poet Mike Stuzman who thought I would think it was funny.
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