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After the first, which was of course televised, a silence swept over the land. Networks later reported a full four minutes and thirty-nine seconds of dead air during which the camera simply recorded the creeping progress. It was the black-haired man—whose body was slowly rising from the exam table, carried by invisible hands to hover six inches above the linoleum tiles of the vaccine site—who finally broke the silence. “Jesus,” he whispered.

From his ratty armchair my father said, “Those nonbelievers on Possum Drive must be shitting themselves right about now.” Over the course of the four and a half minutes, during which the man’s body had moved steadily, gracefully through the air, my brother Jeb had scooted closer and closer to the television. The blues and golds from the screen illuminated the soft round skin of his cheeks. My mother crossed herself and said, “God is good.”

My father included the black-haired man, Jacob Blackwell, in our evening prayers that night. Fingers twisted into my nightgown, I tried to focus on his wooden voiced recitation, but another moment hung in my mind, twisting and flashing and untwisting on its long string, a suncatcher grabbing all the surrounding light and scattering it, fracturing everything with its sharp angles.

# #

The floating man was on the front page of the Kentucky Gazette the next morning alongside an interview with a scientist who spent a lot of time talking about density and gas in the body and possible chemical reactions in the bloodstream.

“These people wouldn’t know God if He hit them upside the head with a two-by-four,” my father said, letting the thin pages flutter back into place on the table. “Miracle!” he declared over the rim of his coffee cup. “Miracle!”

My mother flipped to the case count for Alabaster. “Two more deaths.”

“Who?”

There was quiet in the kitchen as she rifled through to the obituaries.

“Nonbelievers.”

My father nodded. No one from the congregation had died of the virus.

As I was pouring cereal, we received a call from the Grace Fellowship phone tree. Ma put the call on speakerphone, so we could all listen to Sister Alice share the pastor’s message about God’s gift. Sister Alice had a stutter, and Jeb was bouncing in place, impatient to return to his Lincoln logs long before she finished. She got it out at last. The plague was over. The earth had been cleansed of wickedness. Sloth, gluttony, covetousness, wrath, pride, and lust had been wiped out. Adulterers, homosexuals, murderers, rapists, criminals, and thieves had received their judgement. God had sent a sign that it was time to begin anew in His holy name, and Jacob Blackwell was that sign.

“Amen,” we said as one into the speakerphone, and then my mother hung up and called the Bradburys to repeat the message. My father cut Blackwell’s picture out of the paper, emptied a gold picture frame of a photo of his mother, and inserted the floating man. He hung it in the kitchen between a print of the Madonna and a brass crucifixion.

At school the Grace fellowshippers were already talking about Blackwell as the Second Coming. After lunch we piled into the gym.

“Six feet apart! Six feet apart!” Mrs. Kanoffel kept yelling as the science teacher fussed with the projector which was showing nothing but blue. In the echo chamber of cement bricks, I heard Millie Zarturo laugh, or I thought I heard her laugh. She would be in the back with the nonbelievers. I didn’t turn my head to look for her. Then the Fox News logo came into focus. It was warm in the gym, and the breath in my mask slipped up to fog the lenses of my glasses until I had to take them off and wipe them every few minutes. Blackwell was still floating. They showed a short clip of him hovering around the hospital room where he was being kept for observation, eating his breakfast in mid-air. They were doing it again, this time with a woman. She had short red hair that curled out on either side of her face. Black wires and electrodes were connected to her temples, her chest, and just about everywhere. The doctor administering the vaccine stepped back as soon as the liquid entered her body.

At first, nothing happened and the fellowshippers sitting together in the front row of the bleachers nodded at one another. “He shall come again in glory to judge—” Shirly Baker began, then there was a tugging on the wires. The camera frame zoomed out. Her legs were lifting. Her shoulders rose. There she was, a solid two inches above the red pleather of the exam table. I think she could have gone higher if she weren’t hooked up to all those machines which just kept chugging along. Nothing beeped rapidly like in those hospital shows. No plunging red lines appeared on the monitors. A few of the nonbelievers on the back rows of the bleachers laughed.

“There seem to be no adverse side effects,” one doctor said later, standing beside the floating woman.

When we got home from school, Dad wasn’t there. We ate without him and didn’t hear his car in the driveway until late. Every afternoon that week after lunch we trekked to the gym to watch the breaking news coverage. Our experiments for the county science fair went forgotten. The trifold was tucked away in the back of my closet, and although I often thought of those five green dots left by her sleeping hand, I did not take the board out to study them. I tried to let the dust settle over my guilt.

On Wednesday, an older man levitated six and a half inches off the ground. On Thursday, a young woman made it nearly a foot. On Friday monozygotic twins hovered at exactly the same height. On Saturday, to quiet Jeb, Ma ushered us into the station wagon, and we drove the two hours to the Louisville Slugger Museum. “Your father needs to rest,” she said when Jeb asked why he wasn’t coming.

On Sunday, in the sun-filled sanctuary, which smelled overpoweringly of disinfectant, the pastor gave a sermon called, “Are You Worthy of God’s Kingdom?” He began with the flood. Our congregation, he said, was a mighty ark which protected us from the waters of destruction because we were found to be righteous in His eyes. The virus had cleansed the earth of the sinful, but only those who were truly pure of heart would enter heaven. Pastor Pierce explained that the vaccine was a test of holiness. The higher we floated, the closer we were to God. My father, clean shaven for the first time this week, seemed finally at peace in the warm glow of the pastor’s words.

The monozygotic twins died of back-to-back heart attacks that night. The doctors said it had nothing to do with the injection, but suddenly nobody besides us wanted anything to do with the clinical trials. Government funding was cut overnight, and the plan for the multi-city pilot delivery program was halted. That’s why the experimental trials were moved to Alabaster. There was such a clamour for it from Grace Fellowship that those white coats packed up their Erlenmeyer flasks and came on out here in two weeks flat. Everyone wanted to know they were worthy of God’s kingdom. It was the school nurse who told me, when I couldn’t stop crying during the annual 7th grade eye exam, that children wouldn’t be included in the experimental trials.

“Not until you’re eighteen,” she said, eyes kind over her powder blue mask.

So I tried to erase the memory of Milly Zarturo. If I couldn’t remember the sin, maybe it wouldn’t count.

# #

The doctors thought the floating would dissipate with time, but Blackwell was still averaging four and three-eighths inches off the ground three months later. Soon the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly were full of floating men and women. Nonbelievers would ask my mother to hand them the last box of Bisquick on the top shelf, and she would extend her arm. Jeb and I had to get the groceries on the bottom shelves. Once you were up there, floating, it didn’t seem you could come down so easily. The bike shop in town had offered to install clips on the brake and gas pedals, so vaccinated adults could drive, and soon all the elders in the congregation were floating around in cycling shoes.

I had thought it would be a sort of graceful gliding, but my father, one of the highest floaters at eleven and a quarter inches, couldn’t carry a cup of coffee to his armchair without spilling it. “At least I don’t have to wear those dang masks anymore,” he would say cheerfully every time the coffee sloshed from his mug. The floaters walked through the air, which seemed to be an invisible bumpy surface beneath their feet. Sometimes they stepped into holes, sinking to nearly an inch above the floor. When this happened, they stumbled, but they didn’t seem capable of falling. Something in the air seemed to catch them before they reached the ground. Mrs. Popejoy with her flowered cane and thick prescription glasses had taken to shuffling everywhere so as to avoid the craters.

Not long after all the adults had been vaccinated, Grace Fellowship began a petition to allow children into the experimental trials. Pretty soon news vans were parked outside the church day and night. Men and women with perfect hair, wearing tailored suits and surgical masks, milled around in the courtyard as Pastor Pierce preached about salvation and waved his clipboard in the air. One of the Sisters had tied a pen on a string to the clipboard, and it shook and trembled and jumped as the pastor gesticulated.

A girl from the high school, a nonbeliever named Sarah-Bell, dressed up in a Grace Fellowship jumper and kerchief and gave an interview to Robert MacNeil. A couple of fellowshippers saw it on the PBS news hour. Apparently Sarah-Bell talked a bunch of BS about wanting to float and how her ma told her she would throw her out of the house if she didn’t make it at least five inches off the ground. Jeremiah showed me the clip in the library while we were working on our social studies homework. “You can tell she’s trying not to laugh,” he said, as Sarah-Bell lifted a hand to cover her face. The shot switched to a closeup of Mr. McNeil looking directly into the camera. He sighed deeply and began talking about societal pressures in religious communities. I pulled off the headphones, looked out the window, chewed on my lip, then looked back at Jeremiah. “Did you hear about Mayweather?” He shook his head.

There had been a rumor going around the school that Tommy Mayweather had sex with a nonbeliever back in September, but when he got the vaccine on his eighteenth birthday, he floated eight and a half inches. I whispered this to Jeremiah over the large, laminated map showing Christopher Columbus’ travels which we were supposed to be copying into our notes. “Maybe God doesn’t care if you have sex. Maybe all this time we’ve been wrong about what He has forbidden.” Jeremiah’s tongue was protruding from his lips, and the tip wiggled slightly as he glanced at the map and then back at his drawing, forehead scrunched in concentration. “Or maybe that whole thing was a rumor and Tommy never had sex with anyone.”

At night in bed, after Jeb had turned out the light, I lay awake wondering how God measured sin. Apparently none of the adults had a sin heavy enough to keep them on the ground, even Mrs. Perzinsky who used to be an underwear model. Pastor Pierce had said the virus cleansed the world of wickedness, and I was still here, so that must mean my sin had been forgiven, at least part-way. I tried to forget about Millie Zarturo and the shimmer of tiny golden hairs on her flushed cheek and the scent of the warm air just above her skin.

# #

In November, a lawyer from Grace Fellowship sued the experimental trials on the grounds of religious freedom, saying children had a right to receive the vaccine. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. It took a long time, and during those months I tried to be good and righteous. I did visualizations like when the gym teacher told us to imagine the ball striking the center of the bat. I imagined washing the stain from my soul the way Ma had taught me to scrub the menstrual blood from my underwear. I closed my eyes hard until I could see the soap froth turn pink and feel my fingers become icy beneath the cold water, until I saw the stain stream over the porcelain basin and spiral down the drain.

We were hanging garland at the church, getting ready for the Christmas pageant later that week, when one of the older boys poked his head into the sanctuary and yelled, “They found one.” He took off down the carpeted hall. We clutched the skirts of our jumpers and followed.

The large room in the church basement was packed. The television showed a grainy recording of a woman I didn’t recognize. She was small with short brown hair and a stern mouth. After nine months of the pandemic, a few nonbelievers had shown up for the experimental trials. All had floated.

A man in a white coat administered the vaccine. There was a long silence. The digital timestamp on the bottom right of the footage flashed away the seconds. Nothing happened. The woman’s feet remained on the floor. The scene cut back to a bright newsroom where Robert MacNeil was interviewing a scientist. The red and white headline along the bottom of the screen read, “Anomalous Woman.” I looked around for the pastor but couldn’t find his face in the crowded room. “What does it mean?” one of the younger kids asked in a whisper. My father, leaning against a beat-up piano in the corner, said simply, “God missed one.”

She was dead by the eleven o’clock news. From my hiding spot, I peeked through the slats in the banister. They showed the crumpled sheet-metal of her white Honda illuminated in the darkness by flashing ambulance lights at the intersection of fifth and Broadway, and then a bunch of photos from her Facebook page. She had been a nurse and a single mom. Two of her coworkers had recently died of the virus. “She was desperate to protect herself and her son,” a crying woman explained to a shaky camera beside the accident site in the gently falling snow. The screen cut to a photo of the woman on a sled, holding a child on her lap. My mother turned off the television and rose from the couch with her tea. It was then that I noticed the empty armchair. My father was still at the deacon’s meeting.

At school the next day, Ronny Buckman said his older brother had seen the woman walking the boulevard plenty of times and that she had been a prostitute. He said all those photos of her in scrubs were just from a Halloween party. By lunchtime there was a rumor that the car accident had been a setup, and that Pastor Pierce had something to do with it. I wasn’t sure if the rumor came from a fellowshipper or a nonbeliever, but suddenly it was everywhere. Older nonbelievers shouted the rumor to one another with a smile in the hallway between classes. In the cafeteria, a group of older fellowship boys began banging on the table and chanting Pastor Pierce’s name until Mrs. Kanoffel approached with a stern look.

It was taco day, and the beans had soaked through the bottom of the hard-shell taco, so it tore in my hands and spilled in my lap when I lifted it to my mouth. I put the taco down and drank two cartons of chocolate milk. I glanced across the cafeteria to where a group of nonbelievers were exchanging gifts. Millie Zarturo was somewhere behind the shiny gift bags and thick red ribbons, but I could not make out her face.

It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation, and we had a test in every class that afternoon. When I asked Jeremiah what he thought about the rumor, he just shrugged over his flashcards and said the woman’s death was inevitable, i-n-e-v-i-t-a-b-l-e. It was one of the words on our English spelling list. “Of course God was going to intervene. I-n-t-e-r-v-e-n-e.” But did he think Pastor Pierce had intervened? “Only He is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.” And he proceeded to spell each word.

# #

In February, they came out with another vaccine that didn’t make you float. Most of the nonbelievers in town got vaccinated with the new one, and things finally started to feel normal again.

That spring every boy in fifth grade signed up for the baseball team. We went to every game, my parents hovering over the last row in the bleachers, behind the nonbelievers and the out-of-towners. Jeb played shortstop like Pee Wee Reese, pounding his left hand into his glove and spitting into the red clay. His raggedy bowl cut was too long, and he was forever shaking the hair from his eyes before crouching into his low stance, glove hovering in the air before him. He refused to let my mother cut his hair all season. He said it was his good luck charm. When my mother repeated the Grace Fellowship adage, “There is no such thing as good luck, only God’s luck,” he only shrugged and went to his room.

One Saturday he jumped nearly three feet to catch a rogue hit, the maw of his red-brown glove roaring into the air. The out-of-towners gave him a standing ovation. My father whooped and clapped and said, “Just think of when he can fly.” Pastor Pierce had started to call it flying, even though you still had to lift your feet to move, and no one seemed to be able to make it higher than fourteen inches. A girl from the school newspaper caught the play with her camera, and the picture was on the front page, “Miraculous Catch.” My father shook his head over the headline. “These people wouldn’t know a miracle if it hit them upside the head with a two-by-four.”

# #

We were in the middle of Kentucky-mandated standardized testing when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Grace Fellowship. None of the teachers told us, but we knew because Grace Fellowship parents started picking their kids up early. I imagined holding the sin in my hand, closing it in my fist, pictured it compacting, draining, shrinking to nothing. How much sin were you allowed to carry into His Kingdom? How much was too much to fly? What if they gave me the shot and I rose a quarter of an inch and nothing more?

From inside the silent rooms with butcher paper hanging over the reference charts on the walls, I could hear my father’s voice in the hallway, arguing with Mrs. Kanoffel. “She can finish the test later.” “State rules require-” He was already walking towards the door. I knew the skid and shuffle of my father’s footsteps, knew them in the aisles at church, knew them coming down the stairs early on Sundays, knew the soft sound as he moved through the uneven air. I could hear my blood rushing through my ears like a river rushing towards an edge. Ma and Dad had taken us to Niagara Falls when I was nine and Jeb was six. For a moment I could feel the clouds of cold mist on my skin, feel the force of the water stampeding against the eroding rocks, and hear the middle-aged woman in the blue raincoat behind us muttering to her friend, “They never talk about how many people died going over those falls by accident.”

On my way to the front of the room, I passed Millie Zarturo’s bent head. The tributaries of her brown curly hair split off one after the other, revealing a sliver of her milk-white scalp as she meticulously filled in perfect circles with her number two pencil. Millie was a nonbeliever. She would finish her test uninterrupted. She would walk home, maybe stopping at the corner store for a pack of gum, then she would watch some after-school sitcom my father would never let us see. During the commercial breaks maybe she would check the local news, but she wouldn’t think of me. I was nothing to her, and she didn’t know; it was the only reason I hadn’t asked her to forgive me. I had thought about apologizing a hundred times, but I couldn’t apologize without telling her what I had done. I thought if I never said it out loud, maybe it would cease to exist.

“Hurry up,” my father kept saying as we walked down the hallways covered in student artwork. “Hurry up. There’ll be a line already.” Jeb was with him, and as we ran to keep up with my father’s long strides, I could hear the hiss and rub of his backpack straps. He was holding his glove. It was a Tuesday, which meant practice. The playoffs were next week.

My hands were trembling, and it took several tries to secure the metal tongue of the seatbelt into place. Pastor Pierce says we all choose our path. Man makes his own fate. Sweat slid down my training bra. I was in seventh grade, and I had already ruined the rest of my life.

The sun was in my eyes as we drove to the vaccine site. I raised a hand against the bright orb, but my face still felt hot in the shade of my palm. We rode across the train tracks, and as the car jolted over each bump, I realized I wasn’t going to heaven. The car lurched once more and puke erupted, orange and stinging from my nose and mouth, coating the yellow and blue atlas in the backseat pocket of the passenger side, the center console, the window. My gray jumper was warm and wet against my skin. I blinked back whatever else threatened to come up. My father pulled over, but there wasn’t much to be done. We drove the rest of the way with the windows down.

The line was the longest I had ever seen in my life, reaching its thin arm down County Route 603. The afternoon sun baked the vomit onto my dress until it formed a crusty continental outline. We waited, and I watched the shifting of our shadows with the sun’s trajectory across the sky. The whole congregation seemed to be here, but the kids were quiet. Ronny Buckman was two places ahead of us in line, but he didn’t seem to have any jokes today. He just chewed on his fingernails until his mother slapped his hand out of his mouth, and then he scrunched his eyes against the sun and stared into the distance. It wouldn’t be long now.

When she got off work at five, Ma brought me a new jumper and we waited in line together. As the vaccination tents drew nearer, the claps and whoops became audible. Then we could see them, the newly risen emerging from the plastic flaps, boys from the school band, girls I had played tag with at the church potluck, floating slowly, unsteadily, to the glistening parking lot. I flexed my fingers incessantly as I waited until the skin, brittle from so much hand sanitizer, cracked and began to bleed.

It had been over four hours, and I decided I couldn’t get the vaccine.

My father was down the line talking to Neil Caringo, hands pushed deep into his pants pockets, leaning back on his heels, so I turned to my mother. She had her eyes closed against the sharp angle of the sunset, and her lips were moving which meant she was praying. In crowded waiting rooms, when nonbelievers pulled out their cell phones, my mother closed her eyes and talked to God.

“Mom.” I spoke quietly so the McCutchins behind us in line wouldn’t hear. Her eyes remained closed. I tried again. “Mom.”

“Yes, baby.” Her eyelids were pearly orange against the setting sun. I knew I had interrupted her conversation.

“I can’t get the vaccine.”

“Of course, you can, baby.”

“No, I can’t.”

“It’s a small needle. Just a little prick and then it’s over.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“This’ll just take a minute. Don’t you have a minute for Him?”

Her eyes were still closed, the familiar wrinkle lines on her forehead smoothed away, her face a placid lake into which I was throwing an infant to drown. She held one hand in the other, cupping them softly over her stomach. She had come straight from work, still in her dental hygienist’s scrubs. On her breast pocket, an orange tabby batted at a ball of yarn. The toes of her brown clogs were scuffed, and her blue orthotics peeked out by her heels. Around her lake-like face, wisps of hair branched out like streams. If I told her, everything would change. I looked down to hide the water welling in my eyes.

“Mom. I—”

“Baby, if you got something you need to get off your chest, tell it to the Lord.” She opened her eyes now and nodded towards the tents, the dwindling line. “We’ll soon know His reply.”

My stomach clenched around my secret.

“I really don’t feel well,” I tried again. “I read you shouldn’t get a vaccine if-”

“Excuse me.” My mother tapped on the shoulder of the woman in front of us. “My daughter’s got a stomach ache. Would it be okay if we moved up the line, so we can get her home as soon as possible?”

My lip split beneath the pressure of my teeth as we moved rapidly up the remainder of the line this way, stepping ahead of quiet nods and muted smiles until we were next. Jeb stood at my mother’s side, buried in the pages of a baseball book from the library. There were claps and cheers from within the tent in front of us, and then a ninth grade boy with an electric pink Band-Aid on his bicep floated through the flaps.

“Next,” a woman in pink rubber gloves waved.

“Jeb can go first.” I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide their shaking.

“I’m not doing it,” Jeb said, nose still in his book.

“What’s that?” My father was at my mother’s side now, ready to go in with us.

“I’m not doing it,” Jeb repeated.

“Is the kingdom of heaven not-” my father began, but Jeb interrupted.

“Coach says we aren’t eligible for the playoffs if we float.”

The woman with the pink gloves put a hand on her hip. From the tent beside her, another woman poked her head out and called, “I can take whoever’s next over here.”

“Come on,” my mother said, stepping forward. My father reached for Jeb’s hand, but Jeb pulled away and took off running. A ripple passed down the line as folks turned their heads to watch the Douglas boy sprinting down Route 603, his too long hair flowing like a ribbon in his wake. Maybe if I had run too, everything would have turned out differently.

Then my mother’s hand was in the small of my back, pushing me forward. The tent flaps drew back. The woman with the pink gloves was scrubbing my upper arm with an alcohol swab. I closed my eyes and told God I would pay any price to atone for my sin and be allowed into His kingdom. I felt the sting of the needle and imagined the plunger in reverse, imagined the woman drawing the sin out of me, those two minutes of my existence exiting my body, filling the syringe with a thin blue substance which would never again enter my life.

It was back in September, the day Jacob Blackwell floated, in the darkness of morning hours long preceding the school day. The science fair was Wednesday, and I had carried our unfinished trifold over to Millie Zarturo’s house. Thin bodies of markers rolled over the slanted bedroom floor and collected in a dip beneath her bed. When I was finished with my third of the trifold, I reeled myself up from the pool of that exhausted compliance and found Millie asleep on the floor. The uncapped green marker in her hand had left several small dashes on the poster where her sleeping body had shifted.

I found the green cap and reached for the marker, but my fingers settled instead on her mask, and then they were unhooking the elastic from the seashell of her ear. I wanted her to be a fellowshipper. I wanted to walk to church with her and gossip after choir practice. I wanted to brush the hem of her jumper with my pinky as we sat on the worn wooden pews. I wanted to see what was under her mask. Milly’s pink lips were parted in sleep. Her cheeks were flushed, and as I leaned closer in the shine of her desk lamp, I could make out the shimmer of tiny golden hairs, a whisper of the down that covered the goslings in spring. I pulled my mask off and leaned closer, bringing my nose to the warmed air above her cheek. The faintest aroma of laundry detergent and peppermint rose to meet me, and another smell I couldn’t pin down, something gentle, the smell of warmth if warmth had a scent. My lips brushed her cheek, gliding over those soft downy hairs, my mouth opened.

I felt a sharp pain as something was removed from my body; then I heard my mother clapping.

# #

It took my father and the other men from the church a long time to find Jeb. When it grew dark, they returned to the house for flashlights. Still unsteady in the air, I crouched by the hutch in the living room, scrounging for more AAA batteries for our camping lantern. I was still awake when the phone rang in the middle of the night, and I knew that meant they had found him.  “They’re taking him now? God bless,” I heard my mother say softly into the hallway phone.

The next morning, my mother woke me at six to get ready for school. It took longer than usual, being up so close to the shower head, having to crouch to reach the bottom drawer of my dresser. I was running late by the time I entered the kitchen. Jeb sat at the table in front of a bowl of Cheerios. Dark circles crouched under his eyes. My mother hadn’t brushed his hair, and it poked out at awkward angles. An electric pink Band-Aid peeked out from beneath the lip of his shirt sleeve. When my mother grabbed her keys wordlessly, Jeb stood, feet still on the floor, and reached for his backpack, and I knew God had heard my prayer and answered with His swift and terrible judgement.

---

Olivia Fantini grew up in Massachusetts and spent six years teaching middle school. She is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Minnesota where she was awarded the Gesell Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly. She is currently at work on a novel and a memoir.

A young white officer asks her in heavily accented Bengali, “What’s the purpose of your visit?”

“Cancer,” Ameena replies in English, standing in front of a glass window. “My husband cancer.”

The officer at the American embassy, Dhaka, gives her a sharp look, checks her papers, then abruptly disappears through the side door. When he returns, he types on his computer, and says her visa application has been approved.

Ameena thanks Allah that the man hasn’t asked her any complicated questions about her husband. Twenty years ago, when Selim left for America, she was thirty-one, her son was five, and her daughter three.

Selim never returned.

The first few years he called every week and sent enough money that she was contemplating buying a small apartment. Then came the attack on the Twin Towers, and he lost his job at the store in Manhattan. That was when all the trouble began.

Outside the embassy, Ameena catches her son smoking on the street. He drops the cigarette and crushes it underfoot. “Did you get the visa?” he asks.

Ameena nods.

Beside her son in an autorickshaw, her mind wanders back to the early days of her marriage. Selim smoked a pack of Benson & Hedges every day. He loved spending time with friends and talking politics at the neighborhood cafés. He worked buying stock from garment factories and selling them to the local clothing stores.

She thinks of the day Selim took her to a char island. He had heard about this newly deposited expanse of land in the River Meghna. One Friday, they had an early breakfast and took a bus to Narayanganj. From there they had a long but refreshing rickshaw ride on dirt roads through farmlands—mile after mile of mustard fields. The scent of mustard flowers in the spring breeze was intense, intoxicating.

It was a beautiful day. After the boat dropped them off on the island, they wandered about for a few minutes and spotted no sign of human presence anywhere—only a vast, sandy land surrounded by water. Selim pulled her hand and they ran like children. He stopped and gave a Tarzan’s jungle call, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Ameena,” he shouted, “how about we never go back, and just live here? We’ll be the king and queen of this island.”

“Yeah, that’d be fantastic!” she said.

They walked side by side, his arm draped over her shoulder. They dipped their feet into the water of the Meghna. Then without warning he picked her up in his arms. She found herself dangling above the water. He rocked her body, saying, “I’m dropping you.”

“No!” she screamed.

He laughed and kissed her.

**

After Selim lost his job in Manhattan, Ameena heard from him less and less. Whenever he phoned, he talked about uncertainties. Illegal immigrants were being detained. He didn’t go out much fearing deportation. The other day, he said, a fat white man spat on him in the street, calling him a terrorist, telling him to go back where he came from. That same day, after getting home, Selim shaved off his short black beard.

When he had said this, Ameena had trembled and tears raced down her cheeks. She didn’t mention she was having bad dreams about him. Just the night before, she had screamed for help as Selim was dragged into the street and beaten. She woke up panting, soaked in perspiration. When she came to her senses, she clasped her shaking hands together hard and asked Allah to keep her husband safe. Later, in her dawn prayer, she also prayed for the recovery of the Bangladeshi man she’d heard on the news had been shot in the face at a Dallas gas station.

“Please, come back home,” she implored Selim. “We don’t need American dollars. We will be happy here together.”

Selim said he was moving to another state soon. “You know, Ameena, it’s a great country to live in, but you need the legal status.”

Months after he settled in New Jersey, his friend in New York called to tell her that Selim was living with a Mexican woman.

In April, when Ameena finally received a call from Selim, she exploded. He tried to explain that he just rented a room in her apartment in preparation for entering into a contract marriage. “Ameena, don’t be mad. Some people do it here to get papers. It’s not real.”

She cried and begged him to return home immediately. “You have to choose either me or your America.”

“Ameena, listen—”

She wouldn’t listen. She yelled and cursed him. She asked him not to contact her anymore. “Many wives become widows at a young age,” she said. “I’ll consider my husband dead.”

Ameena moved in with her mother. She loved to sew. She became a seamstress for neighbors, friends, and relatives. They paid her well, but she could meet only half of her expenses. Her twin brother, who had a thriving import business, started giving her a monthly allowance.

When anyone asked Ameena about her husband, she faked a smile and said, “He lives in America.” Selim phoned occasionally to speak with the children and wired money prior to festivals. Then news reached Ameena that her husband had moved out of the home of the Mexican woman; his plan didn’t work out, and now he was sleeping with a white woman. Five years later she heard from someone that his asylum application had been granted. But his new status wouldn’t allow him to travel back to Bangladesh. She didn’t understand.

Not long after, her son made her tea in the evening and said, “Daddy wants me to study in the U.S.”

For half a minute, without a word, Ameena observed her nineteen-year-old son. Her face slowly tightened. “Never,” she said. “You want to be like your father?” She pushed the cup away, spilling tea on the table.

**

In September 2016, Ameena learned from Selim’s sister that he had lung cancer. At the end of the year his health deteriorated, and he had surgery. Could she fly to America to take care of her husband, his sister had asked. Ameena said no, and again she was asked in December. Then, in January, Selim called. She heard a forgotten yet familiar voice, now scratchy and strained. She pursed her lips but couldn’t form any words. After a moment she managed to speak. Her words and his words were punctuated by long pauses. He told her that he would send the necessary papers. She would need to get a passport.

Her interview at the embassy was scheduled in early April.

 

**

 

Ameena has never felt so distinguished in her life. For the last three months, no matter who she met, she has heard the same question: When are you going to America?

Her flight is at one in the morning. A day’s journey from Dhaka to New York, with a four-hour layover in Dubai. A bus is hired to carry her relatives, who insisted on coming to the airport to give her a send-off. They all hug her, and some cry at the immigration checkpoint.

She starts sweating when boarding begins. It’s her first time flying. She is given a window seat, and a flight attendant helps her fasten the seatbelt. She stiffens and holds her breath as the plane takes off. She says a prayer, and for a moment thinks she will never see her husband or her children again. But before long she realizes that the aircraft is in midair, and she gazes in wonder at the glittering skyline of Dhaka.

**

In the arrivals lounge at JFK, Ameena catches a stranger waving his hand at her. She does not recognize him until she hears her name. Selim is shockingly thin, his face so red, Adam’s apple sticking out. His head is shaved. Back home on her bedroom wall there is a family picture in which their children are standing on either side of Selim and her. Twenty years later, he matches so little of his earlier self, scarcely resembling that image of him anchored deep in her memory. It must be the cancer, she decides.

“You haven’t changed much,” Selim says in the car. He peppers her with questions. How was the flight? Did she face any problems anywhere? In Dubai? At immigration? He breathes heavily between sentences.

From the driver’s seat his friend, Rafiq Bhai, glances at her in the rearview mirror. He says it was his idea to get her assistance at Dubai Airport, so she wouldn’t have to struggle with her limited English.

“You’ve come at the right time,” he says to her, stopping the car before a condo. “It’s almost summer here.”

When Selim reaches for the luggage, Rafiq Bhai says, “You’re not supposed to lift anything heavy.”

In the elevator, Selim stands close to Ameena, his body brushing against hers. His breathing is labored and rapid.

Selim opens an apartment door numbered 17 and guides her into a sizable living room. His friend leaves, saying to call him whenever they need him.

“You can freshen up,” Selim says, pointing to another room. “I’ll warm up some food.”

Ameena takes one of her suitcases into the bedroom and shuts the door. She hears laughing and loud conversation emanating from outside. Through the window she peers down at the balcony of the apartment opposite. Wine glasses in hand, a couple of men with women in skimpy outfits are sitting in the late afternoon sun. She checks the window, but it has no curtain like back home. She moves into the corner of the room and changes into salwar kameez.

At the kitchen table, there is rice, mashed eggplant, chicken curry and dal.

“Eggplant?” She eyes him. “You don’t eat eggplant.”

“But you like it,” he says, serving her rice.

“You cooked these yourself?”

He nods, asks how the kids are doing.

“Oh, I need to call them!” she says.

“I messaged them already.”

She looks at his plate. He has taken a small portion of rice. He meets her eyes and says, “I can’t eat much.”

A small sigh escapes her lips.

He coughs. “It’s the chemo. It kills the appetite.”

She eats in silence. He eats in small bites.

“You’re a good cook,” she says.

After dinner, while Ameena does the washing-up, Selim makes her milk tea.

“Do you still take two spoons in your tea?” he asks.

She smiles. “No, one spoon now.”

He hands her the tea mug. Her fingers touch his for a second.

An hour later, as she yawns, Selim tells her to get some sleep. Ameena goes to the bedroom. When she wakes up, everything is quiet and dark. She peers out the half-open window; the night sky is clear, with a crescent moon. She slips out of the bedroom to use the bathroom and finds Selim asleep on the living room sofa.

**

The following day he takes her to an Indian grocery store, just around the corner. On the streets she spots Bangladeshi faces, hears them talking aloud, and makes out a Bengali song blaring from a jewelry shop. “It doesn’t feel like America here,” she tells him on their way home.

“It’s Jackson Heights,” he says, laughing. “A little Bangladesh.”

Ameena looks for spices in the kitchen cupboard and sets to cooking. Selim wants to help, but he starts coughing.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes, just tired.”

“Why don’t you lie down?”

“That’s what I do most of the time. Let me sit at the table and talk to you.”

He grabs a chair and inhales. He tells her that he drove a taxi for years, until last August, when he got the diagnosis. That was when he quit smoking.

That night Ameena settles in the sofa bed and says Selim should use the bedroom.

“You have health issues,” she says. “You need a bigger bed.”

“Why don’t we share the bed instead?” he says.

She holds his gaze. He lowers his eyes and enters the bedroom. Rubbing lotion on her hands, Ameena stretches out on the sofa. The rooms are still; the only sound she hears now is Selim’s wheeze, rhythmic and loud as the ticking of a clock at night. His words echo in her head. Why don’t we share the bed instead?

She slides off the sofa and tiptoes into his room. In the semidarkness, she makes out his eyes, looking at her. He moves over and makes room in the bed. For a long while, lying side by side on their backs, they stay silent. Then he places his hand on hers. She trembles. His hand is cold.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She doesn’t answer. Eyes closed; she sees Dhaka: The small one-bedroom apartment they rented after their marriage. Their Saturday nights at the movies. Their first vacation in the mountains of Chittagong. The birth of their first child.

In the first few months, after Selim left for America, she hardly slept at night, staring at his empty side of the bed. She missed his touch. His smell. His cigarette breath. His occasional snoring.

“Forgive me, Ameena,” he murmurs and rubs the back of her hand. “I’m happy you came.”

She sighs, staring up at the ceiling. She imagines unknown figures—the women her husband slept with—filling in the two-inch gap between her and him in the bed, pushing them apart. Hispanic, white…were there more? She feels small. Tears spill from the corners of her eyes.

**

Ameena gets up early, says her morning prayer, makes herself milk tea, and watches the day breaking from the balcony. Then she reads the Quran while sitting at the kitchen table. At eight, she wakes Selim for breakfast.

Every other day she visits the grocery store by herself to buy vegetables. Often Selim asks her to check the mailbox on her way back. She doesn’t understand the washing machines in the building’s basement. She prefers to hand-wash their laundry in the bathtub.

Twice, morning and afternoon, she and Selim sit on the balcony. She sips tea, and he coffee.

“Do you remember the char island in Narayanganj?” she asks him one day.

He squints for a moment and then a slow smile brightens his face. “How can I forget? We spent some beautiful hours there, didn’t we?

Ameena grins.

“I enjoyed the boatman’s song too,” he laughs.

It was already afternoon on the char island, Ameena recalls. She asked him how they would get back to the other side of the river. They’d hired a boat to get here, but no boats were seen anchored at the island. They stood at the shore waving to the passing rowboats in the distance until a man in a canoe noticed them and came to their assistance.

The boatman agreed to ferry them across the river. On board, Selim asked him to sing a song, if he could. The man was in his twenties and chatty. He belted out a Bengali folk song. The world will remain forever as it is. And someday we’ll leave this beautiful world behind…  

**

One warm Monday, Selim says, “I’m feeling good today. Let’s go out.”

He orders an Uber and ten minutes later they are in front of a Bengali clothing store.

“Don’t waste money,” she tells him. “I’ve brought enough dresses from Dhaka.”

He doesn’t listen. He buys her salwar-kameez, a sari, and a pair of sandals. Afterward, he takes her to Hudson River Park. The park is swarming with people. Ameena feels uncomfortable seeing the women everywhere wearing so little clothing.

“Why are they lying like this under this hot sun?” she asks.

“It’s called sunbathing. As we love winter in Bangladesh, Americans love summer. So when it’s a nice sunny day like this, people come out in the park to enjoy the sun.”

They have ice cream. Ameena wonders if Selim remembers that last week was their wedding anniversary.

Later that month, Selim invites his friend to dinner. Ameena cooks all afternoon, then has a shower, and puts on the new sari.

Rafiq Bhai visits with his wife. After the meal, the two men talk about Bangladeshi politics on the balcony. Rafiq Bhai’s wife is fairly young. Ameena learns from the woman that she is his second wife. The first wife, in Dhaka, divorced him and married his cousin while Rafiq Bhai was in the U.S. The young woman has been in America two years now. No, her parents didn’t force her into this marriage. She herself consented to it because Rafiq Bhai had a green card.

**

On a drizzly day in August, Ameena passes Selim his morning medicines and a glass of water. “Your hair has grown long,” she says. “You need a cut.”

He returns the empty tumbler. “Do you want to do it? You once gave me a haircut, remember?”

She does remember. It was in the first year of their marriage. On a rainy day in Dhaka, when he was about to set off for a salon with a tattered umbrella, she suggested giving him a trim.

“It turned out not bad,” he says.

She smiles demurely. “Do you have good scissors?”

Selim finds her scissors. In the living room, Ameena spreads outdated newspapers on the floor and places a chair on them. With another sheet of newspaper, she makes a hole in the center and slides it over Selim’s head to catch the falling hair.

An hour later Selim stands before the bathroom mirror. “It’s almost perfect.” He looks at her and adds quickly, “That’s my fault, of course. I couldn’t provide all of the haircutting kit that barbers need.”

“See, I have many skills.” She leans on the bathroom doorway.

“I know. I’m amazed by your dexterous hands. Maybe we should open a salon.”

They both laugh.

Before going for a shower, Selim says, “Ameena, I didn’t tell, I applied for you and our kids to come over. It’s a lengthy process. The problem is, to sponsor and bring you all here permanently, I need to be employed. But in my current condition—” he pauses and sighs.

She touches his shoulder. “Don’t worry about these things now.”

**

Over the weekend, they attend a small wedding. The groom is Bangladeshi and the bride, Pakistani, Selim informs her. Some women come to chat with Ameena. “So glad that you made it to the US at last,” they say. One short woman about her age sits beside her during dinner. She tells her some of the latest community gossip. A fifteen-year-old girl invited her white boyfriend home when the parents were out, only to get caught by her father who is a devout Muslim and came to the States on DV Lottery. He gave her a good beating. She called the police and had him arrested.

“The child had her father arrested?” Ameena asks. “What kind of daughter is she?”

“Well, this is America.”

She tells Ameena she was a high school teacher in Dhaka. Her early days in New York were full of struggles. She started with a cleaning job. “Think of my situation,” she says. “I was a respected teacher back home. In America, I had to clean shit in toilets. They call it living the American dream.” She laughs and says she now works at a nursing home and earns more than her husband.

**

In early September, Selim has increasing breathing difficulties and coughs up blood. At night, he sleeps with his head and chest elevated with three pillows. Ameena rubs lukewarm mustard oil on his chest. He stays in bed all day now, wearing a beanie she knitted for him.

In October, after two visits to the hospital, a nurse comes to the apartment to set up an oxygen machine beside the bed. She shows Ameena how to use it and tells her to call 911 in case of emergency.

Some weeks after, on a cold and windy evening, Selim is moved to the hospital. Ameena is allowed to stay overnight with him. Rafiq Bhai chauffeurs her back and forth to the apartment. A few days later, she learns how to take a bus. It’s only five stops to the hospital. She cooks and brings meals for him, but he cannot eat. He drinks very little.

The next Saturday it is bitterly cold. That afternoon is the last time Selim can breathe without the ventilator.

“I wish I never came to America,” he says, his hoarse voice almost a whisper. “Wish I could turn back the time.”

“You really think so?”

“I regret what I’ve done to you, to our children.” He pauses and coughs. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“I’ve forgiven you already. That’s why I agreed to come.”

“You have a great heart, Ameena. I am—I’ve been terrible.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You’ll get better soon.” She interlocks her fingers with his. “After you get well, we can visit Dhaka and I will take you to the char island.”

His face beams, then darkens, and then his eyes get misty.

He goes into a deep sleep. He stops responding. Tubes crisscross his body.

**

Rafiq Bhai manages everything. Hospital, burial, certificates. She has to sign a lot of papers.

It starts snowing on the day of her flight. She stands motionless by the bedroom window, watching the silent snow whitening the earth. Everything is so gray, so barren. Ameena thinks of Selim’s phone call the first time he saw snow. She asked him what it looks like. “It’s like cotton floating in the air,” he said. Ameena slides the sash open. She extends her hand through the window to feel the falling flakes on her palm.

---

Rahad Abir is a writer from Bangladesh. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Himal Southasian, Courrier International, The Wire, BRICK LANE TALES anthology, and elsewhere. He has an MFA in fiction from Boston University. He received the 2017-18 Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. Currently he is working on a short story collection, which was a finalist for the 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship.

 

Uncle always lived in the other house. By himself. When he was younger, before I was born, he was a truck driver. Then he was a drummer for a while with a band called Texas Red. Then he got married but his wife left him after three years. Then he got sick and had to stay in a looney bin for a while. When he got out, he moved into the other house on Mama’s property. Ten miles outside of Glenville, in southern Indiana. He stayed holed up in the other house, most of the time, in his bedroom that smelled like a man’s armpit.

When I was in sixth grade, Uncle took me to the pasture where the cows grazed when my Grandpa was still alive and showed me how to shoot his rifle. He taught me how to load in the cartridges and aim and shoot. I pulled the trigger four times before I hit a beer can off the fence post. Uncle whooped and kicked the toe of his boot in the dirt when I did that. He took the gun from me, reloaded it, and handed it back to me.

Smiling he said, “Now shoot me, Stacy.”

He thumped himself on the chest and said, “Aim right here baby girl. Shoot me out of my misery.”

I laughed at him and I heard Mama calling for me, so I handed him back the gun. I thought he was teasing me. I was sure that first time, he was just teasing. He told me we’d do target practice again sometime, but when I told Mama about it, she said no, no more target practice because she wasn’t sure if he was still taking his meds, so we never did.

Sometimes, at night, Uncle would put on his clodhopper boots and light a kerosene lantern and leash up Porter, Mama’s hound dog, and take his gun and Porter up into the thirty-seven-acre woods that grew behind Mama’s house and partly behind his. Sometimes in the morning, there’d be a raccoon, skinned and cleaned and floating headless, in a big pot of cold salt water on Mama’s covered porch. Sometimes he left Porter behind and went up alone. On those times, I could hear him shooting in the woods so late at night that the moon was already to the other side of the sky.

Uncle drank Johnny Walker sometimes and when he was drunk, he didn’t want nobody to come to his house. I’m the one who brought him his breakfast. I’d walk it over, set it on the kitchen counter and yell at him to come down for his breakfast. I’d collect the dishes from the morning before, but when he was heavy drinking, he called Mama on the phone and told her not to send no motherfucking eggs and bacon over because he’s sick of being poisoned by her cooking and she was just a half-sister know nothing bitch.

Mama took the breakfast over herself on those days and made him get out of bed and clean his stinky, drunk ass up. I would go with her, trailing behind like a puppy dog, as she marched the loaded tray over to his door. Mama would get his pills out of the bathroom, shake them into her hand and run him a glass of tap water. While he was taking the pills, Mama took the cartridges from his rifle that sat catty-corner by his refrigerator on those days too, because she said she don’t want to have to clean Uncle’s brains off the greasy walls.

That way of living, that breakfast routine, that coon hunting, went on for a while. From the time I was nine years old until I was thirteen.

One day, Uncle yelled down at me to bring the breakfast up to him and not leave it on the kitchen counter. I never did that before and was a little nervous of what I might find up there in the dark dust at the top of the stairs. I walked it up and left it at the door of his bedroom, then ran down. I feared Uncle because sometimes he yelled cusswords and he had that gun that Mama said she wish he didn’t have but if she took it from him, he’d just call his old drinking buddy, Curtis, to drive him to Junior’s to buy another one. Uncle got a disability check, and he didn’t use it for nothing but to call Curtis to give him a ride to town to buy whiskey and sometimes gave the check to Mama for his groceries or when she needed to pay his phone bill or the property taxes.

Next morning, Uncle told me to bring the breakfast up to him again. I did, and I was fixing to leave it at the bedroom door when Uncle jerked open the bedroom door and stood there with no shirt on, wearing a pair of old jeans, cut off at the knee. Uncle was pale and skinny, and his chest was curved in a little. Uncle smelled terrible, like he just burped up whiskey and blew his breath into the air.

“Bring that tray on in here Stacy and set it down on the nightstand there.”

I wasn’t sure if I should, but he was smiling a little and he seemed normal acting.  I went on in and set the tray down. I tried not to crinkle up my nose at the stinky smell coming from the bed.

“Look what I did to that microwave, Stacy,” Uncle said. He pointed to his broken up dented microwave that was on top of his clothes dresser.  I looked at it, nodded and fast-walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

When I got to the bottom of the staircase, I yelled up to Uncle. “Mama wants you to take your meds.”

He shouted down at me. “Tell your Mama I don’t need no meds. I ain’t crazy. And I taught that coon dog to fly. He can fly now, Stacy. Porter can fly. I’m not dreaming, I taught him. High enough to get in them trees and catch a raccoon. Tell your mom she’s got a special dog.”

I went to the kitchen and picked up the tray of dishes from the morning before and high tailed it back to Mama’s house. I turned to look at Uncle’s house just once. Uncle was watching me from out the bedroom window.

Next day, when I brought over his breakfast, he didn’t say anything. Didn’t yell down the stairs, didn’t look out the window when I walked back to Mama’s.

The day after that was the same and then the same again. Uncle went hunting that second night and, in the morning, Mama found a raccoon floating in water on the covered porch.

On my thirteenth birthday, Mama called Uncle and asked if he wanted us to bring over a slice of birthday cake. After a long quiet conversation, Uncle must have said yes, because Mama hung up the phone, cut a big slice of chocolate cake and put it on a paper plate. Mama was crying while she did this. It was a silent cry. Tears but no sobbing.

“Mama,” I said. “It’s okay. You ain’t seen Uncle for a long time now, he’ll be happy to see you.”

“Yeah, I know. He just makes me sad, though. When I go over there, he always has to argue with me. He’s run out of his meds and won’t let me take him to the doctor for the refills.”

She ran her hand over the top of her head like she was checking to see if it was still there.

“I’ll just put the cake in the kitchen and leave.”

This was different to me, not the routine. Not different in a good way but I can’t figure out why it seemed wrong. It wasn’t usually what happened. I usually carried eggs and toast and bacon and coffee in the early morning. Now Mama was carrying birthday cake in the afternoon.

She took the plate of cake and walked on to Uncle’s house. I went behind her. I saw a movement at Uncle’s window, when I looked up directly, the curtains waved a little like Uncle had been looking and just dropped them back down.

When we got close to the house, Uncle came out naked, with his man stuff hanging out for us to see. He had his gun.

“Happy Birthday, Stacy,” Uncle said, and he grabbed the cake from Mama at the same time he handed me his rifle.

“Reckon you’re old enough now. I don’t have any presents for you so I’m giving you my rifle. Okay?”

I didn’t want his rifle, but I didn’t know how to say no to Uncle, so I took it.

Back to Mama he said, “I’m tired of you using your microwave oven to read my thoughts. And… and I know what goes on in them microwaves. You’re just trying to get proof to send me back to the looney bin, so you can have all the land and my house. I’m not crazy. And I lost your dog. I’m sorry about that. He just flew away, and I can’t find him nowhere.”

“Thank you,” I said loudly, interrupting his rant. I ran the rifle back to the house, while Mama stood and argued with him.

When she came back, I handed her the rifle and she took out the cartridges and put them in the kitchen drawer, then carried the gun down to the basement. Mama hid it behind a rolled-up carpet in the corner by the meat freezer.

Next thing I know, Mama is calling Uncle and continuing the argument about coming outside with no clothes on and giving a loaded rifle to her daughter. Mama told him there is no way to use a microwave oven to get into his brain and that he needs to get back on his meds. Mama said if he ever does anything crazy like that again, she’ll call the sheriff to take him back to the psycho hospital, where he belongs.

In the morning, Mama made him scrambled eggs and biscuits and she took them over herself. Mama said she wanted to apologize for her angry conversation the night before and talk Uncle into letting her take him back to the doctor. Mama only stayed a short time and when she came back, her face was red, and her mouth was in a frown.

Uncle was gone from the house. And Porter was gone too. Mama walked up to the edge of the trees, hoping to see Uncle coming out from the woods. When evening came, Mama waited inside her house, listening all night for a holler from Uncle or a coon dog howl from Porter, and watching out the kitchen window for any sign of Uncle or Porter. When morning came, Mama called the sheriff.

After an hour or so, a brown and tan sheriff’s car pulled into the driveway. Sheriff got out and walked around with Mama looking for clues, I guess, or something. Mama walked the sheriff up to Uncle’s house. They went inside, and I heard Mama yelling then she screamed, and I heard two shots.

Uncle ran outside naked and came running toward Mama’s house. I went quick down to the basement and got my birthday rifle. I ran back up to the kitchen and opened the drawer where Mama hid the cartridges.

By that time, Uncle was on the front porch, with his hand on the door handle. When he opened the door, I raised the rifle. I pointed it straight at his face. Uncle just froze, stood there looking at the end of the rifle, then back at me.

“Shoot me, Stacy, because I just killed your mama and that fat ass sheriff with his own gun.”

My hands went weak when I heard that and I wavered for a moment, but I brought the rifle back up and held it firm.

“Come on, do it, baby girl. Shoot me out of my misery.”

“Why’d you kill Mama?” I screamed.

“It’s your birthday and I wanted to give you something to remember.”

He cried then, tears running down his cheeks, face turning red. I was crying too, but I held the rifle aimed steady at his face.

“That’s a lie, Stacy. I didn’t want to kill nobody, but I don’t want to go back to the looney bin. Microwaves are puttin my thoughts out there so everybody can say I’m crazy.”

Uncle backed away, ran out the front door. Ran back into his house and came out with a set of keys. Uncle got into the sheriff’s brown and tan and backed out of the driveway, squealing tires, and kicking up gravel. I called 911 and soon I see one state police car pull into Mama’s driveway and two other police cars speeding on. A helicopter passed above, and I knew they were chasing Uncle.

A moment later, I saw Porter. He was flying behind the helicopter. His long hound ears were flapping like hummingbird wings. He dipped and bumped through the air but stayed dangerously close to the helicopter. I was scared for him. I called for him to come down, but he didn’t hear me.

---

I am an African American writer who started seriously focusing on writing fiction in the late twentieth century. I was published in literary magazines such as North Atlantic Review, The Crucible, Buffalo Spree, and Punchnel’s. In 2000, I won second place in the Ohio Valley Fiction Contest. I became interested in other things and didn’t start writing again until 2013. Since then, I’ve had some success. In 2017, I won the grand prize in a one-act play contest, presented by the 30XNinety theatre in Mandeville, a suburb of New Orleans. In March 2019, I won the Etchings Press annual competition for novellas. I was second runner-up in the Daisy Pettles writer-in-residence competition in May 2020. I was named as an honoree in the Emerging Author category for the Indiana Author’s Awards in September 2020. This year in April, I was named as one of ten finalists for the SAG/INDIE Screenwriting Fellowship. I did not win. Durn it.  In May, my story, “Savonne, Not Vonny,” was named as a semi-finalist for the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) program for short stories and novelettes.

 

Feral Wives

The Feral Wives have left us, that much is clear. What is less clear is why, and for how long. Surely their absence must be an aberration, a temporary detour from the long, slow, steady march of civilization. For how would we go on without them? And they without us?

We know so little. Their means of survival, their patterns of migration, their social structure—if they can be said to have one—all remain mysterious. We can theorize, of course, but little can be said with any certainty. We have learned that they tend to travel in groups of six to twelve—though communities of twenty or more are not unknown. They prefer to stay on the move, building temporary shelters from the materials close at hand and then disassembling them, so that the only traces they leave behind might be a pile of sticks and leaves, a charcoal pit, a few bones. And yes, they hunt, fish, and trap, though we have little idea how, since they do not appear to be armed in the conventional sense. They seem to know things that we have lost, and to have lost things that we know.

Those who are returned to us—sometimes by misadventure, more often by force—are of little help. They understand our questions but do not answer them. Have they been sworn to secrecy? Attempts to reintegrate them inevitably fail. In extended periods of captivity—for this is clearly how they see it—they become despondent, sometimes even catatonic. We can warehouse them, or we can set them free. Either way, they no longer belong to or among us.

***

We were at a rest stop somewhere in Ohio when Katrina finally bolted.

She’d been slumped over in the passenger seat all morning, face pressed against the glass, staring out at the monotonous landscape of fields, farms, and factories scrolling by on the turnpike. I was at the wheel, trying to put as many miles as possible behind us, with the vague notion that a change of scene might mean a change of outcome. The girls rode in the back, uncharacteristically quiet, Chelsea clinging to her phone, Greta to Mr. Tiddles, her stuffed rabbit. They were anxious, looking to us for cues on this odd, unexpected journey. I had none to offer.

To the extent that I had a plan, it was to keep driving west, chasing the sun until it set, then find a cheap motel for the night. Rinse and repeat. I’d thought maybe we could outrun destiny, and if not, then at least we’d be on the run as a unit. Maybe at some point we’d just ditch the car and the hastily packed suitcases and tramp off into the wilderness together. That didn’t seem to happen to others, but why couldn’t we be different? Or maybe we’d just keep going, all the way to the Pacific, and then . . . what?

Something made Katrina perk up. She raised her head and squared her shoulders, the muscles on the back of her neck tensing. I stole a sideways glance out the passenger window to see what might have caught her attention, but it was just the same thing we’d been seeing for hours: rows of soy and corn stretching into the distance, punctuated by an occasional barn or silo. Perhaps sensing my gaze, she turned to face me. Her eyes, curtained by wisps of her long blond-going-to-gray hair, were open wide, pupils dilated. She was looking, not at me, but right through me, beyond me, to something that wasn’t there, or not yet there, though I had the feeling that the sheer intensity of her gaze could almost bring it into being, whatever it was. Not for the first time in recent weeks, I also had the visceral sense that I was no longer looking at my wife of fourteen years but at a complete stranger. God knows what she saw when she looked back at me.

The angry blast of a truck horn in the left lane snapped my attention back to the road. I’d been drifting, and I jerked the wheel to the right as an oil tanker whizzed by mere inches away.

“What is it, Dad?” said Chelsea, her voice tight with worry. “What happened?” At nine, to her sister’s four, Chelsea had become their spokesperson for the trip.

“It’s fine, honey,” I told her. “I was just getting a little too close to that truck, so he was letting me know.”

“Mom, what were you looking at over there?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Katrina absently. “Go back to sleep.” Neither girl had slept a wink since we’d left our home in Harrisburg in the early dawn.

“I have to pee,” said Greta.

“How bad, muffin?” I asked. “Can you wait a little while?”

“Kinda bad,” she said. In the rear-view mirror I could see her squirming in her seat. She hugged Mr. Tiddles so tightly that his torso slumped forward, his long ears drooping over her tiny thighs.

I sighed. “OK, let me see what I can do.” I’d been holding on myself since at least Pittsburgh and had finally reached that point of Zen where my angry bladder seemed to belong to someone else. Now, with the prospect of relief, the urgency returned. I saw a sign ahead promising a rest stop in five miles.

“Hang in there,” I told Greta, taking the Subaru up to eighty to pass a row of cars and trucks in the right-hand lane. In four minutes flat we were pulling into the Muskingum County Rest Area. We drove past a long line of stopped tractor trailers and turned into one of the angled parking spaces for cars. Ahead, up a paved walkway, was the visitor center, a low concrete building with a flying-saucer-shaped metal roof. A path to the right led to a pavilion with a few empty picnic tables, beyond which lay grassy hills with stands of tall oaks, and, beyond that, the woods. A cell tower loomed out of the trees like a sentry.

“OK, let’s go,” I said, opening the door and unfolding my stiff legs. By the time I stood up, Chelsea and Greta were already out of the car and on their way up the sidewalk. “Wait up!” I called, but they kept going, Greta pulling her older sister by the hand toward the glass doors of the visitor center. I poked my head inside the car. “Are you coming?” I asked Katrina. “I don’t want them running off alone.”

“They’ll be okay,” she said, not looking up. “They’re survivors, Steve.”

“Alrighty, then,” I said, not wanting to argue the point. “Do you want anything? Coffee? A snack?”

She shook her head.

“We may not stop for a while after this.”

“It’s best to keep moving.”

“Suit yourself.” I pushed the door closed and hurried up the path. We’d had a lot of disconnected conversations like this lately, and I was running out of patience. So, apparently, was she.

The bathroom stop turned into a snack run, which was quickly upgraded to lunch, and then I couldn’t resist getting in line at the Starbucks for an iced mocha latté, my one weakness. By the time we emerged from the building, laden with greasy bags and sweaty drinks, Katrina was gone. Not only that, but she’d left the passenger door wide open, with all of our stuff in plain view of anyone wandering by.

“Where’s Mom?” asked Greta.

“I guess she went for a walk,” I said. She’d left her phone in the cup holder between the seats, and her suitcase was still with the others in the luggage compartment. I scanned the surrounding area but saw no sign of her. A wave of panic rose from my gut to my chest and lodged there. I didn’t want to alarm the girls, so I said, “Let’s go over to the picnic tables. We can eat our lunch while we wait for her to come back.”

She didn’t come back.

“Maybe she’s inside, looking for us,” I said, though I didn’t really believe it. “Let’s go check.”

We dumped the remains of our picnic into the waste bin and headed for the building. Several couples passed us on their way out, retirees in tennis shoes and oversized sweatshirts. The kind of people you saw on the road in late September. We must have seemed out of place, and perhaps a bit panicky, as we attracted looks of curiosity and concern. One of the women leaned over and whispered something to her husband, then gave the girls a sympathetic nod. Save your pity, I thought. We’ll be fine.

The visitor center was humming with activity, as people headed in every direction at once, alone and in clumps. I looked around the place and saw no sign of Katrina. I sent the girls into the women’s room, but they returned without their mother. We combed the food court, to no avail. I asked some of the employees if they’d seen a fortyish woman in jeans and a fuzzy brown sweater. Not much to go on, I realized, but we had to try. They just shrugged. Greta began to cry, and Chelsea took her by the hand. More people were staring at us now. More whispers and knowing looks.

“She must be outside,” I said. “C’mon, let’s go, girls.”

We walked the perimeter of the rest area, where the mown grass gave way to woods, calling “Katrina” and “Mom” at the top of our lungs. The dark, silent forest swallowed our cries. The only other sound was the rumble of trucks out on the highway. I saw no paths or obvious points of entry, just weeds and underbrush, thorns and poison ivy. Discarded candy wrappers, Styrofoam cups, and plastic bags had blown up against the edge of the wood, like sea foam washed up by the tide. The idea of stepping over them and into that dense mess of foliage with the girls in tow made me deeply uneasy. So did the idea of leaving them standing there at the edge of the wood.

We went over the entire rest area twice, then returned to the car and sat with the windows down. Greta continued crying and sniffling, while Chelsea stroked her sister’s hair and I sat in the front thinking about next steps. It was Chelsea who finally broke the silence. “We lost her, Dad,” she said.

It sounded like an accusation.

***

HOST: Welcome back. I’m Megan McCready, and this is “Here and Now.” Today we’re talking about the so-called Feral Wives. Who are they? Why are they leaving? Where are they going? What can we do to bring them back? Joining me this morning are two experts: Roger Reed of MROWWW. Roger, why don’t you tell us what that stands for?

ROGER: Sure. It’s Men Rebuilding Our World Without Women.

HOST: Welcome.

ROGER: Pleased to be here.

HOST: And over here we have Vanessa van der Velde, professor of women’s studies at Barnard College and author of Fleeing to the Future: Manifesto for a New Feminism. Professor van der Velde, thanks for joining us.

VANESSA: My pleasure. And just Vanessa is fine.

HOST: Roger, let’s start with you. Why do you think this is happening, and why now?

ROGER: Well, it’s pretty clear, really. As a species we’ve reached a breaking point. For millennia, human society was shaped around a simple concept: the nuclear family, with one man, one woman, and their biological offspring.

VANESSA: Not al- . . .

ROGER: And it worked, or at least it worked well enough that every society in the world ended up adopting some version of this model and building a cosmology around it.

VANESSA: Not ev- . . .

ROGER: And the reason it worked was because there were clearly defined roles and a hierarchy for enacting and enforcing them, with the woman as the primary caretaker, and the man as the head and decision-maker.

VANESSA: Whoa, I . . .

ROGER: But in the last, let’s say, five decades or so, there’s been a coordinated effort to undermine the natural order of things and replace it with something else, something based on destructive and misguided notions of fairness and equality.

VANESSA: What’s mis- . . .

HOST: So you blame feminism?
ROGER: No, not at all, Megan. I blame men.

VANESSA: Can I just . . .

HOST: Why do you blame men?

ROGER: For being weak. Too many of us have abdicated our natural role, and it’s left our women rudderless. They’re leaving because we haven’t been fulfilling our social and biological imperatives as the male of the species.

HOST: Which are?

ROGER: I call it the three P’s: Provide, Protect, and Preside.

VANESSA: If I may . . .

ROGER: It’s like the proverbial three-legged stool. You take away one leg and the whole thing collapses. I’d argue that all three are eroding, and what we’re seeing now are the consequences.

HOST: And you, Vanessa, how about it? Do you think Roger is right?

VANESSA: I couldn’t disagree more. He’s right that we’ve had centuries of patriarchy but look where it’s gotten us. A planet on the brink of disaster, a society that’s literally being pulled apart. And all because of men’s insatiable need to dominate everything—women, nature, each other. This is what’s driving these women away. They’re returning to nature as allies against a system that aims to destroy everything. It’s a survival instinct . . .

ROGER: Vanessa, Vanessa, please, you know that just isn’t true. Our survival as a species has always depended on subduing and exploiting nature at every turn. That’s the whole basis of civilization, going all the way back to the Fertile Crescent.

VANESSA: Fertility is nature, Roger, and women . . .

[Crosstalk]

HOST: We have to . . .

[More crosstalk]

HOST: We have to break for commercial. I want to thank you both for being here. When we come back, we’ll be joined by a bounty hunter who’s been reuniting families across the country. He calls it rescue, others say it’s kidnapping. What do you think? Stay tuned.

***

We stayed in the rest-stop parking lot until dinnertime. I knew with increasing certainty that Katrina was gone, but I was reluctant to leave in case she changed her mind. If we left, how would she ever find us? We made several trips to the visitor center for various things, and to have another look around the premises. And then it started to get dark, and the girls were getting restless and asking too many questions I couldn’t answer, so I decided it was time to move on. But first we had to leave a note or something inside.

I herded the girls into the visitor center one last time, looking for someone official to ask about where to leave a notice. The best I could do was a uniformed janitor emptying trash cans in the food court. I explained our dilemma, and he pointed to a kiosk against the wall that I’d somehow overlooked in our previous passes through the building. Under a sign that read “Have You Seen Us?” was a unit that could easily have been mistaken for an ATM. On the screen, at roughly six-second intervals, appeared a succession of captioned photos of women: “Regina Simpson / Age 36 / Last seen Steubenville, Ohio / August 7, 2023. If located, please contact….” Regina was pictured seated at a table and clutching a large kitchen knife in her hand, blade pointed toward the ceiling. On the table in front of her was a birthday cake, candles ablaze. She was facing the camera, and there it was again, that look I’d seen in my wife’s eyes just hours earlier, gazing past us, through us, into a future we couldn’t see. A wave of vertigo swept over me, and I clutched the edges of the counter to steady myself. Then the picture was replaced by another, and the feeling passed.

A green button to the lower right of the screen was labeled “New Entry.” Reluctantly, I pressed it, and a touchscreen menu appeared. I entered Katrina’s name, date of birth, and “Last seen Muskingum County Rest Area, Ohio,” along with the date and contact info. All that was left was to upload a photo. I pulled out my phone and began scrolling through the gallery: memes, pictures of the girls on their bikes, of a fender-bender I’d been involved in a few months earlier, of the girls in last year’s Halloween costumes, more memes . . . did I really not have a picture of Katrina?

“Chelsea, do you have a decent picture of Mom on your phone?”

After much discussion, we settled on one from last summer, of Katrina kneeling in the garden. She was looking at the camera and smiling, her hand cupped around a large, ripe tomato. We uploaded the photo and then stood there, waiting for it to come around on the screen. After a couple of minutes, she appeared among the procession of the missing and then was gone from us again. For the first time that day, I felt tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.

***

DESPITE SETBACKS, PA HUNTERS HARVEST 74 ELK THIS SEASON

HARRISBURG, PA – Eighty-nine hunters took part in Pennsylvania’s one-week general elk hunt, which closed Nov. 9. Most left elk country with a trophy. For those licensed to hunt bulls, the success rate was 100 percent.

The harvest included eleven bulls estimated to weigh 700 pounds or more. The heaviest, taken in Clinton County, tipped the scales at 800 pounds and had a 10-by-9 rack. Some hefty antlerless elk were also taken in the harvest. Ten of the 62 cows taken by hunters weighed over 500 pounds.

Harvest numbers were down somewhat from previous years, due to the closure of several areas following sightings of non-hunters in the vicinity. State Game Commission wardens also investigated several reports of unlawful harvesting, including the partial remains of one bull discovered in Carbon County. No arrests were made.

All hunters are urged to use caution due to increased activity in state game areas unrelated to licensed harvesting of wildlife. Accidental shooting incidents such as those reported in Illinois, Michigan, and Tennessee have not occurred in Pennsylvania to date. We’d like to keep it that way.

—Pennsylvania State Game Commission Bulletin

***

The closest motel I could find was two exits and twenty-some miles away. The taciturn Indian-American couple who ran the place handed over the keys without comment, and Chelsea and I unloaded the bags and brought them in while Greta stood outside in the pale yellow glow of a streetlight, clutching Mr. Tiddles and sucking her thumb.

“Greta,” I said as I emerged from the room for a second load, “Thumb.” We’d made a bargain whereby she got to take Mr. Tiddles everywhere in exchange for not sucking her thumb.

“Dad, leave her alone,” said Chelsea.

“We can’t suspend the rules just because Mom isn’t here.”

Greta threw Mr. Tiddles to the pavement, stomped into the motel room, and slammed the door.

“Nice going,” said Chelsea.

“You know, you could cut me a little slack,” I said. “It’s not like this is easy for me.”

She rolled her eyes, retrieved the rabbit from the sidewalk, then joined her sister in the room, closing the door behind her.

“Chelsea, Greta, I’m sorry!” I called after them.

I tried the door. It was bolted from the inside.

After much cajoling, I managed to get them out of the room and back in the car, and we drove off in search of a restaurant. The motel owners hadn’t been especially helpful, but it seemed there was a diner a couple of miles down the road. After driving back and forth through the town, which was really just a cluster of dull clapboard houses with rusting cars in the driveways and plastic toys on the lawn, we finally spotted the neon sign on a side road that led back in the direction of the interstate. It didn’t look promising—just a dull stainless-steel-plated box of a place, with a handful of old cars and trucks parked out front—and I was half-tempted to drive the twenty-five miles back to the rest stop for Sbarro or Wendy’s, but the weight of the day was settling over me like a damp wool blanket. I needed a meal and a bed, perhaps not even in that order. I pulled into the lot and parked.

In contrast to the dingy exterior, everything inside was bright and shiny and smelled like disinfectant, even the menus, which were almost as large as the Sunday comics section. Our waitress, whose name was Sandy, wore a white uniform and a cheerful smile that seemed like an extension of the decor. She asked where we were from and where we were going. The first one was easy, the second one not so much. I was about to say that we were “headed west,” but Greta beat me to the punch.

“Our mommy ran away today,” she said.

“Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. You must be worried about her.”

Sandy continued talking to the girls, asking them questions about their mother, all the while ignoring me. Finally, I could stand it no longer and cut in.

“They’re fine,” I said. “We’re fine.”

“No we aren’t,” said Chelsea.

Greta, who had finally calmed down somewhat on the way over, began crying again.

I sensed a coup building and I was outnumbered, so I backed down.

Sandy brought the girls multiple refills on the sodas that came with their grilled cheese sandwiches, and then threw in two free sundaes for dessert—as though an excess of sugar would somehow soften the loss of their mother. With me she was curt and direct. “Are you finished with that, sir?” she asked, looking at my half-finished hamburger and pile of fries.

“I couldn’t eat another bite,” I said. My appetite had fled, and fatigue was settling in.

“Your check.” She slapped it face down on the table in front of me.

Is this how it’s going to be? I thought. Damnit, I’m the one who stayed behind.

Just for spite, I left her an outrageously large tip.

***

It was sometime last year when we first heard about the Feral Wives, though I don’t think they were even called that yet. It was a Sunday morning. The kids were watching TV in the den while Katrina made pancakes and I did the New York Times crossword. We had NPR on in the background, and a report came on about an unusually large number of missing-persons cases involving women in various parts of the country. The women were believed to be alive, and some had been spotted traveling in groups, usually in rural areas. Supermarkets and restaurants in these areas had also reported overnight break-ins that many thought were related to the disappearances. A local sheriff somewhere in the Midwest was interviewed, as was one of the husbands. Both seemed completely at a loss to explain the phenomenon. “I just keep waiting,” said the husband, “and wondering why.”

“That’s weird,” I said. “I mean, it sounds almost like an internet hoax to me, or some kind of hysteria. Remember all those clown sightings back in, when was that?”

“I believe this is real,” said Katrina.

“So what do you think it’s about? Why would they do this?”

“I’m sure they have their reasons.”

“Like what?”

She shrugged and looked out the window. Outside, our neighbor Ted was bent over his lawnmower, tugging repeatedly at the starter cord. Finally it turned over, chugged a few times, and roared to life.

“Everyone is different,” she said. She didn’t elaborate; I didn’t ask.

In retrospect, I probably should have.

***

Deirdre Hendricks, Ted’s wife, was the first to go. We knew them, of course, but weren’t especially close, even though one of their two boys was in Chelsea’s class at school. Word got around, along with various rumors—that she’d run off with an unknown lover, that she’d gone back to California to live with her parents, that she’d joined a religious cult—but eventually, as other women began to follow suit, we connected her disappearance with the larger trend.

We’d see Ted on the other side of the fence, puttering around in his yard, pruning the roses, scooping the leaves out of the pool, running the leaf blower along the deck. He seemed determined to act as though everything was normal, but there was a ferocity to everything he did. I felt sorry for him, of course—but also, I have to admit, a little superior. I imagined that he must not have treated Deirdre very well, after all, for her to take off like that. And there had to be something very wrong with her as well, to abandon her kids like that. I crossed paths with him once at the supermarket and mumbled a few words of sympathy, which he brushed aside in a pretty rude way. Oh well, the guy was suffering. Most of all, though, I felt bad for the boys. Whenever I saw the two of them coming or going from the house, they always had their heads down and seemed lost. Chelsea said that Ted Jr. had been getting in fights at school.

A month or so later, a police car pulled up in front of their house, and two women in uniform got out. They helped Mrs. Hendricks out of the backseat and escorted her up the walkway to where Ted and the boys stood waiting. She wore a long white gown and walked slowly and deliberately, a policewoman at each elbow. Then they all went inside and closed the door. After that, we’d see her out on the back porch now and then, usually accompanied by her husband. There was a chain anchored to one of the porch posts, and sometimes he’d lock the end of it to a little brace she wore around her ankle so he could leave her out there. She’d sit on the folding deck chair in the sun, arms draped at her sides, until he came out and brought her back in. We saw nothing of the boys anymore. Chelsea said they had stopped going to school.

Katrina and I were sitting in the kitchen one morning, drinking coffee. It was a bright, sunny day, and normally we would have been outside, but we’d stopped using the back porch so much because we never knew when Mrs. Hendricks would be out there in her chair. Not that we interacted with her, or her with us, but it was just awkward having her sitting there.

She was out there now, in fact.

“What do you suppose happened to her?” asked Katrina.

“Our sunbathing friend over there? I don’t know.”

“She looks so . . . empty.”

“Yeah, not a lot going on there.”

“But why?”

I shook my head. “Who knows? Drugs, mind control, PTSD.”

“What if she’s only sad because she’s back here?”

“What’s wrong with here?”

“What if she was better off . . . wherever she was?”

I shrugged. “I don’t see how. She was probably half-starved. I mean, what do they eat, anyway?”

I looked out the window and noticed that she was staring at us, or at least in our direction, which was unusual. Most of the time, she seemed to keep her eyes straight ahead, even when Ted was out there with her.

“She’s watching us,” I said.

And then suddenly she stood, opened her mouth, and screamed—a long, protracted shriek that was audible even through the closed windows of our kitchen. It was painful to listen to. Ted came barreling out of the house and tried to put a hand over her mouth, then quickly pulled it away. It appeared she had bitten him. They struggled for a while, until he was finally able to subdue her, unlock the chain, and drag his wife inside the house.

“That was horrible,” said Katrina. She looked pale and shaken.

“I feel so bad for those boys,” I said. “It must be hard with their mom like that.”

***

One day, Ted knocked on our back door and asked if we’d seen his wife. Apparently, he had come outside to discover her missing. Her chain had been cut neatly in two, probably by a hacksaw. Ted said he didn’t even own one, so she must have had an accomplice.

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything?” he asked. His tone had an accusatory edge, and I half wanted to throw a punch at his pinched face.

“No,” I said.

“How about your wife? Did she …”

“No.”

He stood there for a moment, then turned abruptly and walked back across the yard toward his place.

I went down in the basement and checked our hacksaw. It still hung in its usual spot over the workbench, though I couldn’t tell if it had been used recently.

A few days later, a “For Sale” sign went up in front of the Hendricks’s house.

***

THE HOMEFRONT: WHEN MOTHERS LEAVE

It has long been accepted that some fathers will leave their families behind for extended periods of time. The reasons have varied according to culture and time period, and have included military service, sea voyages, colonial adventurism, migratory labor, and numerous other pursuits that have taken men far from home and hearth. And then there are those who choose to walk away from the burdens and responsibilities that attend raising a family. Depending on the circumstances, such men may be lauded for their service, viewed as making noble sacrifices for the sake of their families, or castigated as deadbeats and losers, but the fact remains that their absence is seen as a commonplace and even necessary fact of life.

But what about women who leave their families behind? Extended absences by mothers are likely to be judged far more harshly than those by fathers. This is true even when the woman is serving in the military or working a job that involves frequent or extended travel. While the father is likely to be seen as providing for his family or sacrificing for his country, with a mother there is the negative perception that she found something “more important” than her children, and that the children will suffer as a result.

Ample evidence exists that extended maternal absence has a negative effect on the mental health of children, but it is not clear that the impact is any more severe than it is for paternal absence. Furthermore, children raised by single fathers seem to fare just as well as those raised by single mothers. So why does this disparity in perception persist?

This question has received renewed attention lately due to the so-called Feral Wives. Reports on the phenomenon in the popular press tend to treat it as a kind of epidemic, something that arose suddenly and spontaneously, with very little precedent. Although research supports the notion that the number of women abandoning their families has spiked in the past year, this also represents the culmination of a trend that began decades ago. Much of the evidence remains anecdotal, but a recent U.K. study of walk-away moms covering the years 2015–20 indicated an increase of about 12 percent per year in the number of cases. . .

—Psychology Today

***

In the weeks following Deirdre Hendricks’s second departure, other women in began disappearing. First it was Camille Fogarty, whose husband Rob was a contractor specializing in overpriced additions; then Renée Compton, who worked as a legal secretary and was married to the town supervisor; and finally, Mrs. Romberger, Chelsea’s fourth-grade teacher, who just stopped teaching one day and stared out the classroom window until the confused children finally got up and left. She didn’t come back the next day, or the next, and now they had a long-term substitute.

Not long after that, I awoke one night to find Katrina’s side of the bed empty. I rolled on my side and looked at the clock: 3:24 a.m.

I lay awake, waiting for her to return from the bathroom or wherever. When she didn’t, I slid out of bed, donned a robe, and went downstairs. The kitchen light was on and the back door stood open. I slipped on a pair of shoes and went out into the yard.

I found her standing under a tree.

“Katrina, what are you doing out here?”

“Can’t you smell it?” she said.

“Smell what?”

“The fumes. They’re choking us.”

“Katrina, I think you’re dreaming.”

“We’re dying, Steve. All of us.”

“Come back to bed.”

“You go. I want to stay out here for a while.”

“OK, whatever.” I went inside, got back in bed, and tossed and turned, finally drifting off just in time for my alarm to go off.

When I stumbled downstairs to make coffee, I found Katrina on the back porch, curled up against the door, fast asleep.

Things went downhill fast after that. Katrina stopped cooking, bathing, sleeping in our bed. She kept irregular hours, often staying up all night. I don’t know if she left the house, or where she went. I don’t know what, if anything, she ate. All I knew was that we were losing her, that it was only a matter of time before she was gone altogether from our lives. And that’s when I made the decision to take to the road. We’d head west, the four of us, to the land of new beginnings.

***

We saw them on the way back to the motel. There must have been fifteen or twenty, fanned out at the edge of the road. The high beams from the Subaru lit them up like so many statues, casting long shadows across the field from which they had emerged. Opposite them, to our right, was a stand of fir trees, their pointy peaks registering as a slightly blacker area against the darkening sky to the west. I slowed the car.

“Look, girls,” I said.

Chelsea leaned forward between the seats. Greta, who had been halfway asleep, sat up and craned her neck. “Is Mommy there?” she asked.

I had wondered the same thing, but none of the women in the group resembled Katrina. They were too old or too young, too tall or too short. I got the feeling they had been out here much longer than mere days or hours. And besides, how could she have covered all that distance in so short a time?

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“We should check anyway,” said Chelsea. She unbuckled her seatbelt.

“No, Chelsea,” I said. “Stay in the car. I’ll get us closer.”

I inched the car forward. We stared at them, and they back at us, though I doubt they could see very much with the headlights shining directly on them. Even in the stark light, their faces were darkened, with webs of what might have been paint streaked across them. Most were wrapped in long robes or blankets that hung to the ground, and some wore feathers or garlands around their necks, in their hair. One of them held a long staff, a good ten feet tall, with what looked like the skull of a small animal at the top.

As if on signal, they sprang into motion and bolted across the road, their robes streaming behind them, and disappeared one by one into the trees. The last one to cross hesitated for a moment at the edge of the wood and turned back in our direction. I rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey, wait!” Then she turned and plunged into the darkness.

We drove slowly past the spot where they had disappeared, but the forest had swallowed them, and all was still and silent.

“I want to go home,” said Greta.

“We will,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

Because what else was there to do now but return? Return to the questions, the stares and whispers, the casseroles delivered to the door. The feeling that we had failed at a game whose rules no one understood, least of all the players.

I awoke early the next day to a beam of light in my face. I opened my eyes and saw Chelsea standing by the window with the heavy curtain pulled partway open. A thick slice of morning sun spilled across the double bed where Greta slept, her tiny frame curled around Mr. Tiddles, thumb stuck in her mouth. We’d have to have a talk about that thumb later.

“What do you see, honey?” I asked Chelsea, propping myself up on one elbow.

She showed no sign of having heard me, so I asked again.

“What’s out there, baby doll?”

She turned and stared at me, wordlessly, then dropped the curtain, enveloping us in darkness.

***

The Feral Wives have left us, this much is clear. But we will carry on without them. We will keep the fires burning, the wheels turning, the engines churning. We will hold down the home front, as best as we can, while we await their return. They seem to be compelled by forces beyond our control, beyond our understanding—perhaps beyond theirs as well. We do not know if they are going forward or backward, or if these directions even hold any meaning in relation to their actions. Perhaps it is enough to say that they are going. And when they get there, if they get there, perhaps someday they’ll come back for the rest of us.

---

David L. Updike is a writer and editor based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in Grimoire, Daily Science Fiction, and 365 Tomorrows, among other venues. A member of the Bucks County Writers Workshop, he edited the first two issues of the group’s literary and historical journal, Neshaminy. A long-time museum publishing professional, he is currently director of publications at the Barnes Foundation. He lives in Wyncote with his wife, daughter, and more books than they could possibly ever read.

Dead Women

The dead women are the topic of conversation at dinner. One in a dumpster. One, a hunter found, in the wooded swamp outside of town. One, with a hand that had fallen open, palm asking please, please don’t forget me. One in a river, three in the swamp. Some degraded beyond recognition. The most recent, on the side of I-10. All together eight women, all of them sex workers, white girls and black girls, found in Jennings, New Iberia, Iowa, Louisiana.

It is not the conversation for polite company, but Moira and John pride themselves on the subversive. Of course, these dead women will be discussed over moderately priced cabs.

I love this about them.

Moira and John host: Moira, a history professor at the local university, and John, a chemical engineer at one of the plants. Some of the guests, I know, and some I do not.

It is the end of Moira’s semester, and they were so happy when I arrived. They demanded I stay the night. You could head out first thing. You could at least have coffee with us. Once, I would have acquiesced, but tonight I’m only thinking of my trip back home, willing myself to stay sober enough to drive. Just an hour, east on I-10, a straight shot home to Lafayette.

On the table sits a big bowl of potato salad, yellow and shining. I watch it while the others stand around the table, chatting and watching Moira and John. Moira has tight, dark curls, and a face that isn’t quite pretty. She is smart and loud and funny, so it doesn’t matter.

From the corner where I stand in the dining room, I can see Moira standing over the stove, telling her husband that the pot is too hot to set on the table.

“A towel?” she yells. “It’ll burn through.”

“Who’s the scientist, Doctor?” John replies. John is tall and all arms and legs. He towers over Moira who looks up at him with her hands on her hips.

I take a seat at the table, put my purse on the chair back, and stare at a bottle of wine. I want more but think of the cops monitoring the highway home.

Finally, John marches out of the kitchen, holding the boil pot with potholders on both of his hands. Moira fusses behind him with a hot plate and a towel. She puts the hot plate down, just by the potato salad, then drapes the towel across it and folds it back over, a sacred ceremony. She gestures to her husband: put the damn pot down.

There is comfort in the steaming pot, the scent of the thick broth, of venison sausage, of pulled chicken.

“Sit!” Moira commands the guests. They mill about, make moves toward the table. “Go sit by Erin,” Moira pushes a man near my age. He is also tall and thin, a young John with shaggy hair. He looks down but obeys. I feel my phone buzz in my purse, against my chair back. Maybe it is Sam. I want to get home to him.

Moira carries bowls of rice from the kitchen and places them in front of people at the table. All together, we are twelve.

With my bowl in front of me, I ignore the man to my side and ladle gumbo into my bowl. I take a large spoon of potato salad and throw it on top. The first bite is life-affirming. No decision I make today is so crucial that it can’t be changed. It is thick and silky and salty.

Moira hovers over the table, making sure everyone has filled a bowl before she fills her own. John watches his wife. Brown, gravy dots his beard.

“Erin, Adam, Adam, Erin,” Moira says, taking her seat at the head of the table. Adam is the man beside me. “Adam is John’s nephew and a Chemical Engineer too. He interviewed at Citgo yesterday.”

I smile, and he gives a small wave.

“I’m not sure I want to leave Texas.”

Moira waves this away. “You’ll love it here.”

He starts to speak, but someone yells down the table to Moira.

“The girl on the highway, her throat was slit. Who do you think killed her?”

“Her arms were covered in bruises,” says someone else.

I feel a creeping feeling in my stomach, drawing away the heat from the gumbo. I refill my wine glass a third time.

Moira shakes her head. “Conspiracy.”

“Serial killer!” John calls from the kitchen. “It’s a serial killer. All of those girls dead in a thirty-mile radius.”

Moira crosses her arms and sits back. “Her throat was slit. Someone didn’t want her to speak.”

“We are talking about eight dead prostitutes, Moira. Doesn’t that sound like a Jack the Ripper?”

She waves her arms at him. She is drunk. “Their innards aren’t decorating the highway. Serial killers like a show.”

“I’m glad I’m not a young woman,” one of the other teachers says. “They are almost all under 30.”

“It’s a cover up,” says Moira. “You have to know these towns. That many dead girls?”

Women, I think. I do not want to think about dead girls or dead women. I want to think about Sam who wanted me to stay home to begin with. His wife is out of town for the whole weekend. I’m not too drunk to drive, I think. I know which exits the cops hang out at. I resolve to stick to the speed limit.

 

I knew about the previous murders. I wasn’t afraid. They were all sex workers; they worked out of the same hotel. They had rap sheets, drug habits. Crimes like this just remind you that they can happen, not necessarily to you.

The guests carry on.

“The Lafayette paper said –”

“Yes, but did you read—”

They mention neck bruises, the particular mix of semen in the vagina, the dirt and blood under the nails.

“Our paper says it’s a serial killer”

“Parish cops are not incorruptible.”

My stomach turns again. This morning, Sam asked me why I wanted to hang out with “those old people.” We were lying in my bed, his arm around my shoulders, his other hand moving slowly down my stomach. I didn’t bother mentioning that he was closer to their age than mine.

“They’re my friends,” I said. “I haven’t seen them in months. Come with me.”

Sam laughed at this. Of course, he wasn’t going to come.

“I’m going,” I said.

“What about the slit throat?” This question brings me back to this dinner, which now feels as if it will never end. I want my little studio apartment. I want to curl up with Sam, spend a slow Sunday morning with sunny-side eggs and black coffee.

I think about my apartment: my own, without roommates, above a garage, one big room and a tiny bathroom. I feel years have passed since I lived in Lake Charles, even though it has just been one. My parish job pays more than any job before. I don’t miss the years I spent in Lake Charles: grad school and then low-paying jobs. It was easy living, late dive bar nights, weekends at camp houses on Big Lake, a far cry from my Tennessee home.

The apartment, now, is my haven, full of crazy, mid-century furniture inherited from an aunt: a wooden cabinet with an art deco inlay, two short, puffy little chairs that almost curved all the way around you, a wooden desk with hairpin legs. I bought a couch and a bed for myself. It is cozy. I love it because it is my own, because I have the entire say in how it looks, because I can see every corner at once. It feels safe. Amidst the chatter of murder and conspiracy theories, I want nothing more than to be home, door locked to the world outside.

“Hellooo.” Moira is standing at the head of the table. “Erin?”

“Sorry, what?”

“What do you think? Serial killer or conspiracy?”

“It’s really grim isn’t it?” I ask. “Talking about them at dinner.”

“It’s current events.” She is not the least bit worried.

“I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it.”

“You should wildly speculate like the rest of us.” John is smiling, sensing my unease.

“I’m a historian, John. My job is to wildly speculate on events. These just happen to be very recent events.” The attention turns back to Moira and John, and everyone laughs. John gets up to grab another bottle of wine.

I take a sip of my wine. Adam says, quietly, “it is grim, isn’t it? I saw the news, but I hadn’t really thought of it until now.”

“I hadn’t either. I should, but I don’t want to.” Thinking too hard might bring me somewhere unsafe.

He puts a hand on the back of my shoulder. It is warm and friendly. The others start to get up from the table, moving to help in the kitchen or sit on the couch.

I glance at Moira; she is oblivious, talking to John, gesturing with her entire body.

“Do you want more wine?” Adam moves his hand to his own empty wine glass.

“I have to drive back to Lafayette.”

“Tonight?”

“My boyfriend wants me back.”

I watch the implication cross his face.

“Moira led me to believe otherwise.”

“She doesn’t know.”

“Complicated?”

I nod and take another sip of my wine. I close my eyes to taste it, let it burn the back of my throat.

“Maybe stay?” he says.

“I’m going to get some air,” I say.

I stand on the back patio, wishing I was a smoker with a reason to be outside. The bricks on the patio are sweating in the December humidity, it’s still above 60 degrees outside and as humid as a swimming pool. I draw a line in the condensation with my foot. I feel too tipsy to drive right now. I worry in an abstract way, that there are too many things to manage, to think about.

I look around their yard. It’s dark, but the patio’s floodlights cast harsh bright stripes on the yard. There are stakes in the garden for tomatoes, but no vines. Beyond the garden, the low chain-link fence cannot hide where the land slopes into bayou. Cattails grow haphazardly. The water ripples at a disturbance. I shiver, thinking of womens’ bodies settling into the murk. I take one deep breath and turn to go inside.

Inside, I pass the guest room where the door is only half shut. Adam is in there; his shirt off, his back to me, and I can see the broad definition of his shoulders. I feel a sudden ache, and I want to crawl to him. He could curl around me. I stand and watch him a second longer, dead silent. He starts to turn, and I run to the bathroom.

I look at my face in the mirror, flushed red with smudged eyeliner. The humidity had melted my face. I squeeze some toothpaste out on my finger, then put it in my mouth and swish it around. I spit, run some water on toilet paper, and wipe off the makeup under my eyes. I check my phone, no word from Sam, but his existence feels like a heavy weight all around me.

*

            I finally leave around 11:30 with that hour drive ahead. I feel sober. On the way to the highway, I drive through the downtown strip: lots of young people are out in front of the bars drinking and smoking. From the car, they all look beautiful and happy. For a second, I want to stop and join them. I want to be anywhere but where I am.

The highway calms me down. There are few other cars, and the road is well-lit and freshly paved. Why had they insisted on talking about those girls in that vague, glib way of people drinking? Of academics, always at a distance, always analyzing, asking everyone to zoom out.

I call Sam to let him know I am on my way. No answer, and I leave a message. Hey, I’m headed home, you coming over?

The stretch of I-10 between Lafayette and Lake Charles is completely flat, lined by rice fields and littered by fast food restaurants. I know the stretch by the exits: Iowa, Welsh, Jennings, Crowley, Scott. Otherwise, there is little to tell each mile apart. Almost midnight, the streetlights along the highway grow intermittent. Not all of them work. Any traffic has thinned. My mother would tell me to watch out for drunk drivers. Moira told me to watch out for drunk drivers as I left. She had been faux-enraged that I was leaving. “We have everything you could need here! Look at this handsome nephew! If you have to leave, take this food!” The highway stretches infinitely ahead. I try Sam again.

The phone rings, and all I see is Adam, shirtless, back turned. We had barely spoken, but the appeal of this new person is easy, all potential, no baggage and dead weight. I shake him from my head, shake away the option. Sam wants me back tonight. I like that about him, that he wants me close, whether or not he stays the night with me. Still no answer on the line.

I begin to worry, just a little. He can get so irritated when I don’t answer, and our plan is to meet at my apartment, assuming all went well with his wife. Or, as well as it could. He would stay with me for a week or two. It had felt like a good idea to be out of town when he told her, though now I wish I had just stayed home. I don’t know much about his wife; she is a dentist. I can care less about her the less I know about her. Sam doesn’t talk about her much, unless it is to say he can’t get away for the evening.

I realize I have been driving in silence when I pass the Welsh exit. I find the Cajun station; it is playing Zydeco, which is usually irritating. Right now, though, the accordion, the nasally butchered French lyrics are a comfort. They lighten the night.

When I see the Jennings exit ahead, police lights flashed red and blue in my rearview mirror, as if on cue,

“Fuck,” I say. I slow, as I drive up an overpass to park under the streetlight at the top. To my right, the gas stations and fast food restaurants off the exit ramp are bright and not too far away. I stop the car and watch the cop in the rearview mirror, typing into his computer, doing whatever cops do for ages before they finally get out of their vehicles. I am sober; I am certain. I don’t see any other cars on the horizon.

“Fuck,” I say again. I chug an old plastic bottle of water, watching him in the rearview mirror, swishing it in my mouth. The water tastes like plastic. I think of my apartment and its safety. I look out into the night: the low-lit highway, the haze of humidity, the lingering exhaust. This is too vulnerable. This is unsafe.

He gets out slowly, and I can see his beer belly as he shuts his car door. A car races by on the interstate, but he doesn’t even look at it. I take my eyes off of him to watch the car ride away; its taillights shrink to faint red dots on the horizon. I roll down my window; it is still humid out. The moisture billows into my car. I can smell exhaust and tar and wet grass. I reminded myself what I am doing, where I am going, who I am.

“Ma’am” he says.

“Yes?”

“You’ve got Tennessee plates?”

I try to make these words make sense.

“Sorry?”

“Your license plate, it’s not local. Are you from Tennessee?”

“Oh,” I say. “Yes, I moved to Lafayette not too long ago. There was so much to do. I hadn’t thought about them.” Mostly true, I did completely forget about my plates. The car is still in my mother’s name, though I have lived in this state for almost four years. I realize I have avoided the hassle of tickets or getting pulled over my whole life here.

“You need to do that. How do you like Louisiana?”

“Oh,” I start, wondering where this is going. “It’s good.” I try and stop a shiver.

“Good. I’ve never been to Tennessee. What brings you down here?”

“Work.” I try to say it cheerily. My cell phone buzzes once on the console.

“What kind of work do you do?”

I will another vehicle to pass by, for it to be daylight. I want to have made different choices. Sweat pools under my legs on my car seat. I feel it drip from behind my knees.

“Social services,” I finally say. “Social work.”

“You definitely have a Tennessee accent. Have you spent any time in Jennings?”

“I haven’t.”

“You should visit sometime. We got better gumbo than Lafayette.” The fear of a DUI dissipates, but a new one creeps up my spine. I do not want to talk about gumbo on the side of a highway after midnight.

I think of the dead women in Jennings, about Moira’s suspicions of police corruption. A couple of cops had been taken off the force, and it was rumored to be related. That was what someone said at dinner. Or maybe they were on extended leave? Did they always get everyone though? That was the thing about corruption. It runs deep.

“I guess I will.” My phone begins vibrating again on the console. “My husband is probably worrying about me. It’s so late.”

The cop frowns. A truck speed by; my car shudders faintly in its wake.

I swallow and put on my serious voice that I use for clients: “did you want anything?”

“I noticed your plates. You need to change them. It’s a residency requirement.” His casual chat has turned abrupt.

“Yes sir,” I say.

The silence hangs thick between us. I barely dare to breathe.

“Can I go?” I finally ask.

He nods slowly and turns back to his vehicle but doesn’t walk away.

“You should come to Jennings sometime. I’m Mike.”

I look up and out of the window to see him. He isn’t looking at me; he is looking out over the splendors of the exit, at the Shell and Tobacco Plus, Popeye’s and McDonald’s. His hands are on his hips, which makes his belly poke out even more.

“Ok,” I say, quietly.

Mike takes a step toward his car and looks back at me. The right side of his face is illuminated by the lights. He looks sad, maybe. Then, he turns again and walks away.

I move slowly inside my car, scared to move too fast and catch his attention. I put my foot on the brake, slide the car into gear, then nudge the gas. My car moves easily, as if it knows slow movements will calm me.

*

 My apartment is an over-the-garage, mother-in-law suite, separate from the main house where a family with young children lives. They were happy to rent the apartment to a young professional who was no longer a partying college student. When I pull up in the driveway, the garage floodlight switches on. On the left side of the garage, a wooden staircase leads up to my small deck and door. The porch light is also on. I feel relief to think that Sam must be there.

I turn off the car and grab my purse and the grocery bags with leftovers that Moira sent with me.

Inside, Sam is sitting on my round little chair, and the floor lamp next to him is off. I can only see shadows on his face.

“You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“I got pulled over.” I put my bags down by the door. “It was really weird.”

“Sure.”

“What?”

“Pulled over? You drive like a mawmaw.”

“I know. It was weird.” The back of my neck prickles.

I walk over to him and lean to give him a kiss. He turns his head to the side. I turn on the lamp next to him and look at him, his long, pronounced features, his Roman nose, his high cheekbones. He gazes at some spot on the floor, away from me.

“Are you okay?” I go to pick up the bags and start to put the food away.

“Fine.”

It strikes me suddenly that Sam is drunk. I can smell it now, like a switch has flipped. He doesn’t drink often, but now the scent of whiskey is everywhere. I open the fridge.

“Do you want something to eat? Eggs or toast or something?” I pull out the eggs.

He crosses his arms. “Where were you?”

“I told you. I called when I left Lake Charles. I got pulled over in Jennings.”

“Where’s your ticket?”

“I didn’t get one. It was weird. It was like he just wanted to talk to me.”

Sam stands up. “What happened with the cop?”

“He just asked me a bunch of questions.”

“And let you go?” He says this as if it was the most preposterous thing he has ever heard.

“What’s going on Sam?”

“Was he hot?”

I put the eggs on the counter. “What the hell, Sam.”

He stands over me, a good six inches taller, thin, wiry muscles.

“Was. He. Hot?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that? Jesus Christ. Getting home was hell. You need to drink some water.”

In a second, he has both of my arms in his hands, tight. I pull away, but he grips them firmly. “Just answer me.” I start moving.

“Let go.”

“Answer me, and I’ll let go.”

I look up in his eyes, they are dark and blank. His brow is wrinkled, furrowed.

“No, he wasn’t hot, Sam. He had a beer belly. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he wanted something from me. I don’t know. He let me go. I’m here. What else do you want?”

“The fucking truth, Erin.” He let me go, like he could throw my arms to the floor.

“What happened with Regina?” I move toward him, but I can tell by his face he’s told her nothing.

“I want you to tell me why you took so long to get home. Did you meet someone at Moira’s? Cops don’t just let people go without a ticket that late at night.”

“You need to leave.” I say it firmly, tiredly.

Before I can move, he has both hands around my neck, and I’m against a wall. I try to push his chest, to slap at him, but he is stronger than I can ever be. I cough, choke, struggle for breath. I think of the dead women. How someone was close enough to them to bruise them, to slit their throats. Even if it was a stranger, a serial killer, they had to trust them enough to get that close.

I gasp for breath and let out a ragged scream. Against all logic, I hope the family does not hear me. I think how I do not even want the police to help. Sam loosens his grip and shakes his head. I put my arms between his and push them off of me. His shoulders slump, and he will not look at me.

“Sit down,” I say. “I’ll make you some food.” I watch him walk toward the table and sit, still gazing down.

*

Earlier, when I was leaving Moira’s house, John had walked me to my car.

“You okay, kiddo?”

“I’m okay. Just a lot going on.”

“Ignore her. She thinks she knows what’s best for everyone. You don’t have to see Adam, we’ll still invite you over.”

I laughed. I had wanted to tell him everything. That I was dating a married man, that he was leaving his wife for me, that I found his possessiveness exhilarating and at times a too much. That I was terrified to leave, to head home, but that my home was the only place I wanted to be. That I was completely spooked.

“Invite me over next time he’s in town,” I said.

John gave me a hug and opened my car door for me.

“Be safe out there,” he said.

*

I put a frying pan on the hot plate and crack the eggs into a pint glass. I hold each end of the egg between my finger and my thumb and tap it once on the countertop. Then, I break the egg into the glass. I add a little water and beat the eggs with a fork.

“I didn’t tell Regina,” he says from the table.

I keep beating the eggs. I don’t look at him.

“Why not?” The pan is hot, and I pour in the eggs, throw shredded cheese on top.

“I can’t.”

I keep cooking. Maybe the cop had just wanted to talk to someone. Maybe Sam had just had too much.

For the first time all night, I feel not fear or anxiety, but anger.

“Why didn’t you tell her, Sam?”

I hear him inhale, but he doesn’t answer, and I don’t turn around. I finish the eggs and turn off the heat, lifting the pan. I feel the creeping feeling in my neck again, and I whirl around.

I know that Sam is right behind me. I know that the pan hits his arm. He yells, almost a bark, and I strike him again with the pan, maybe on the shoulder. The eggs are on the floor in a glistening mess. I grip the pan and breathe heavily. Sam stares at me and clutches his arm with his other hand. We stand, staring at each other: me, with my back to the stove, and Sam, with the rest of my apartment behind him. I feel the adrenaline course through me; I see how his eyes cannot focus.

I feel anger and power and powerlessness and sadness, and I try to make a decision. I will put the pan down and leave the eggs. I will run cold water over a rag and put it on Sam’s arm. I will send him to his car, and that will be it. I will leave him to explain his injuries, to account for his own scars, to make his own choices about his marriage. I will keep moving forward. I will make it.

Tomorrow, Moira would call to check on me. She would share more rumors and speculation. The murders would never be solved. Moira would invite me over. I would never make that late-night drive again. Maybe I would let Adam wrap his arms around me. Maybe I would always choose something safe over something exhilarating. Maybe not. Maybe I would give in to impulse again and again. I had to own my story. I knew I controlled it. This was my only power.

I put down the pan, but keep my eyes on Sam. I get out a rag, turn on the faucet, and feel the cool water run over my hand.

---

Allie Mariano’s writing has appeared in CutBank, The Citron Review, Another Chicago Magazine, New Orleans’ The Times-Picayune, and other places. This year, her short story collection, Dead Women and Other Stories was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. When she’s not writing or teaching, she can be found biking in the Ouachita Forest.