3
I scanned my mind, opened my eyes. It was Saturday. I could hear Greta’s metronome—it helped her insomnia—and my head throbbed to the familiar tempo. I awoke fully, my stale breath permeating the air, and the memory came: the body, the beach, the crying.
The sheets had tangled around Greta’s waist in her sleep. Her breasts rolled toward her flanks and her squared stomach puffed around her navel like a cushion punctuated by a button. Sleep didn’t calm Greta’s face the way it does most, smoothing lines into angelic peace. Instead, she appeared elderly—feeble and uncertain.
She was four months along. Recently, I had been catching myself staring at her stomach. As she slept, I put my hand there and watched her face twitch; I pressed as though I were a doctor testing her appendix, feeling for something hard, defined. She awoke with a quick breath, her eyes wide. I reached over her to still the metronome, my hand lingering tenderly on her rib cage.
Good morning, she croaked, watching me until I forced a smile.
 
The previous evening returned in bursts. A gauntlet of parents, armed with questions. The sense that it wouldn’t be over soon. It wasn’t a situation I had thought to prepare for. It wasn’t a situation I could have imagined. And even their simplest question couldn’t, it seemed, be answered satisfactorily—Where were you?
This, more than anything, was what they wanted to know. They wanted me to tell them whom to blame. That is, they had an idea, and they wanted it confirmed. And they wanted to hear, Don’t worry, your kid barely knew what was going on.
The children were tucked safely inside the classroom, waiting to go home, and still their parents had persisted. Did Bridget see it? Did she in particular seem upset afterward? They wanted to know what their child had said. They wanted to know if their child had been quiet or withdrawn on the way home. They wanted to know if their child had cried. Did Mariana mention anything about my mother dying last year? Was Benjamin one of the ones that came and got you?
I told them, These kids are tough, and smart, and they’ll get through this. They will need your help. They will want to talk about it with you. Together, we can create a network of support. But their questions continued. They didn’t ask their children; they asked me. They asked me questions as though I were holding out on them. They asked me questions so that I would see how concerned they were. How angry they were. They asked me questions because they genuinely wanted the answers, yes, but none of them asked what they truly wanted to know: How badly is this going to fuck my kid up?
My attempts at reassurance tacitly accused them of melodrama, my tone implying that all this clamor was an overreaction. But I was transparent, standing before them. My clothes were soaked; I didn’t even have it together enough to carry an umbrella. The ink on my credential certificate wasn’t dry. I was twenty-three years old—some of them were my parents’ age—and I was being exposed as a fuck-up, a kid. I remember saying, I’m sorry, but I really must use the restroom, and being ignored.
In the end, though, they would have to accept my answers. They had no choice. They hadn’t been there. So we continued this pained one-act until they realized that I had nothing else to say, then they tapered off, holding their kids’ hands tight. Mrs. Stone stayed behind a moment, placing three fingers on my arm.
Mr. Mason, she said, go home and get some rest.
 
After everyone had gone, I walked back into the classroom and grasped the phone as though I were strangling it, shaking as I dialed my home number. Greta answered on the first ring—You’re still there? she said—and I felt myself go inexplicably mute.
Frank? Her voice sharpened. Hello?
Greta, I said.
Yeah, I can hear you. Why are you still there?
I don’t—I don’t know, I said stupidly.
Did something happen? Are you okay?
What? I don’t know.
Frank, can you just—
There was a suicide at the beach, I said. The kids saw a girl jump from the bridge.
She said nothing.
Hello? I said.
I’m here, she said. Are you alright?
Through the window I watched the cars pass, the fierce red glow of their brake lights irradiating the classroom. I don’t know, I said again.
Her voice was stern as she said, Come home.
 
After we hung up I went outside and sat in my car for a while, thanking God for the weekend—a break to gauge the Sisyphean weight of what would come next. I realized I had never answered the parents’ first and most primary question: Where were you?
And where had I been? Close enough to pretend I had my eye on them, far away enough that I could miss something like that. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and mistakenly hit the horn, a sharp blast echoing down the side street. I didn’t want to think, didn’t want to experience anything except quiet: a white room, a soft landing. But all I could hear were the questions still to come.
I drove in silence, examining everything like it held an answer. At a stoplight on Fourteenth Street a bum walked a leashed cat; on Fulton sat an orange tweed armchair, abandoned on the sidewalk. The houses rubbed shoulders like people in an elevator, fog obscuring the edges of things, erasing what couldn’t be seen in direct light.
I turned onto my old street and stopped in front of the house where I had once lived. It was a San Francisco house in the style of most San Francisco houses—tall and narrow, pastel-colored, floors joined by a perilously steep staircase. Requisite bay windows on the first and second floors, one set stacked atop another; a pointed roof; sunken concrete leading into the garage. There was no car in the drive. The lights were off. The bush out front had grown wild. It was a habit of mine; when I felt nervous or unsettled or lost, this was an easy destination.
I let the engine idle and closed my eyes, exhausted. I could pull up the image—the most repellent, magnetic thing I had ever seen. And it was most definitely a thing, having ceased to be human. The basic form was there but had shifted, like a totaled car. The skin had split from the inside, like pavement after an earthquake. It was no longer the color of flesh but green-black as a crocodile, features swollen into a ballooned mask. The hair was mostly gone; what was left was discolored and bleached white apart from a few red-orange strands, splayed against the bug-addled sand. Wounds pocked the skin all over. The absent limbs hadn’t been removed cleanly, the joints bore rip marks: some creature or rock or undertow had tugged until the arms and legs came free.
I left the car, headlights illuminating the walkway and porch. The next-door neighbor’s lamp flickered on, a curtain moved. I knelt on the stoop, reaching toward the bush beside the porch, pulling the branches away. The minibar bottles glinted in the faint streetlamp glow. Their paper labels had corroded into pulp. I still had a key. I held it, my hand in my pocket.
I pressed my forehead and hands to the window on the front door and peered in. Mail lay strewn on the foyer floor. I fingered the key uncertainly. The lights in the fish tank were on, visible in the living room beyond the entryway. I put a hand on the porch railing to steady myself. The parents would want deeper answers, would think of more questions over the weekend. The children, too, would need reassurances. There would be no more room for glossing, no more needlepoint phrases. I walked back down the steps, got into my car, and headed out of the city, toward home.
 
Greta was chewing a fingernail when I walked in. I glanced at the clock, forgetting the time even as I looked away.
We spoke two hours ago, she said, her irritation a fungus growing over the words. She saw my smeared, reddened face and relented. Frank, she said.
I know, I said. I’m sorry.
I walked to the kitchen and retrieved our lone bottle of alcohol: spiced rum, kept above the refrigerator for the holidays. I fished some flat ginger ale out of the fridge and mixed the two in a coffee mug.
She followed me. Will you tell me what happened?
I shook my head.
Please, she said.
We were on the bridge, and we saw a woman jump, I said. The refrigerator motor switched gears, the sound gnawing. She went right over, no one could stop her.
Oh my God, she said.
Nobody could have stopped her.
How old was she?
I downed the drink and poured another.
Our age, I said.
004
Debt had aged us. We were in our early twenties and poor in a way that felt like being ground into a fine powder. We scouted out ATM machines that dispensed ten-dollar bills because we never had twenty in checking; we kept a ledger of what we owed Greta’s Aunt Janine even as we borrowed more. Living in San Francisco would have been financially impossible, so after my graduation we had taken up residence in Vallejo, a dirty East Bay suburb on I-80: less a town than a series of half-liquidated strip malls. Greta found us a two-bedroom rental house that we couldn’t afford but took anyway, and we set about destroying our credit. I thought that was what adults did: they bought bookshelves to fill, placed four chairs around a dining table though they never entertained. When we didn’t make our loan payments for six months, we started parking our cars in a 7-Eleven lot to throw off the repo men. We never thought to sell one, to make a choice to live differently. If we couldn’t afford a comfortable life, we wanted at least the semblance of one.
Though it was just the two of us, the space was never enough. Even with the extra bedroom, our possessions choked the house. To move about, one had to turn sideways or lift a leg over something. And our sloppiness made it feel smaller: tiny stains hovered above the stove—tomato sauce stirred too vigorously and never wiped—and striated dirt caked the place where the wall met the floor. Greta dug up prizes from thrift stores and antique markets. To me, age didn’t improve status—it had been junk in ’65 and would be junk a hundred years hence. But here was a bust of a girl, chin in hand; there was an orange piece of banded china. These items were showcased around our house as though pride of place overrode worthlessness.
The two bedrooms lay at opposite ends of the hall. Our bedroom, though the smaller of the two, received plenty of sun. The other bedroom had trees outside both windows and stayed dark and cool even in the summer. When the shades were up, light filtered across the wood floor. It was peaceful, serene. This room is perfect, Greta had said as we unpacked, for the nursery—
I remember the phone rang as she spoke, and before she finished her sentence I had run, relieved, to answer it.
 
And despite all of that—all the sharp words, the household annoyances, the moments when our mutual disgust sat up and made itself apparent like an intrusive houseguest—I loved her. Greta was my first girlfriend, my first sex. Being around her was like being in a warm bath. She made me laugh; she left me alone most of the time; she was smart, kind, and uncomplicated; she didn’t begrudge anyone’s happiness except her own. In the beginning, I often looked at her with a feeling I couldn’t quite identify—a feeling like she needed my protection, like I should bear our burdens for her, like I should be the one to guide us. I thought at the time that this was kindness. I understand now that the name for what I’ve just described is condescension.
It was never that I didn’t love her. It was that I loved her, from the beginning, incorrectly; the motives were wrong, rooted in politeness, comfortable companionship, inequality. It was that I loved her wrong and she let me. She erected no limits. She might bite back, but her innermost impulse was to forgive. Those who are weak, as Greta was weak—and I say this with no malice, only honesty—are like tests to people like me; I often wondered if she solicited my cruelty to know what sort of man I was. I suppose I showed her.
She told me once, not long after we were married, I know this isn’t what you wanted from your life. She searched my eyes. You can tell me. I want you to tell me, so I know we’re always honest with each other.
I told her what she already knew: that things had turned out so differently than I had planned. That we had never planned anything, really.
She turned to the wall beside our bed and sobbed. In the morning, she woke, dressed, and made pancakes and bacon. Good morning, she said at the table, smiling, her eyes like pink pillows.
From the moment we met, she had extended an unknowing invitation to hurt her. In a shorter time than I would like to admit, it became a challenge not to accept.
005
The metronome mercifully off, I cleared my throat. I don’t think I can go today, I said.
Of course not, she said.
Despite her words, I could feel her disappointment, the sting of this new indignity—we got so few weekends together; we had planned to soak up the outdoors now that it had finally stopped clogging our gutters with leaves. I had even said the words—I promise—and now I was canceling. And why? To deal with a tragedy, yes. But one I had at least partially invented.
Why had I told her what I had told her? It had just come out; it had seemed, unaccountably, like the right thing to say.
Greta fidgeted, rubbed her belly. I understand, Frank.
I just feel a little worn out, I said.
As she nodded, stretching her calves, I saw the rest of the day unfold: she and I both quiet, moving about the house like ghosts. Finally, we would settle on the couch, collapsing into a state of paralytic stasis: television, takeout, movies left maddeningly on pause as she chatted on the phone with her mother. The thought of what was surely to come—that halting, dulling day—drove me from where I sat on the bed; I went into the bathroom and started the shower, fighting the headache as it slipped into my stomach to become nausea. I would keep my promise, and go hiking with her in Glen Ellen at the historic Jack London estate.
 
The drive there was an hour of stretched bucolic highway, the orderly vineyards tapering into paved woodland and then a cement parking lot. I parked the car at the base of the main trail. A wall of heat hit us as we opened our doors. The microclimates of northern California could astonish the uninitiated—the penetrating, foggy chill of the city, the bone-dry sear further inland, the wet green lick of the North Coast. Yesterday, I had crouched in the rain; here, it was parched and desperate. We approached the visitors’ center and, beyond it, the thick expanse of woods.
We held on to each other despite the heat. I grazed her stomach with my fingertips. Are you up for this?
She squinted cheerfully into the sun. It’s barely a hike. It’s a walk that curves.
The flat straightaway of the trail opened up beneath a canopy of trees, the sun needling through the branches. Despite two aspirin, the jostling steps cemented the pain in my head.
Thomas, she said. Thomas Mason. Thoughts?
It’s stuffy, I said. Thomas wears tweed and sneaks Latin into conversation.
An elderly couple passed us, the man wheezing slightly. He hunched over, his arms out like feelers, and took an indulgent gulp out of his water bottle as they clamored past us.
William, she said.
Mom would love it, I said. William was her dad’s name.
Your parents aren’t allowed around my baby, Greta said, and we both snickered.
William is nasal and phlegmy. I let go of her hand to rub my temples. Scores of black butterflies hovered above the trail, and we stepped carefully.
You know, when you touch a butterfly, it dies, she said.
I was just telling a kid that three days ago.
What’d he do?
What do you think he did, he touched it. Whatever I say, they have to test it.
Like, ‘don’t eat crayons,’ she said.
There had been a rash of it a few months earlier. They all went for the brown ones—burnt sienna, raw umber—I suppose because they looked like chocolate.
Even the simplest stuff, they just don’t know, I said. Then I reconsidered and shook my head. But then they know all this other stuff. They hear shit and then just carry it around and spit it back out at the most random moments.
Like ‘butt sex,’ she said.
Exactly.
At lunch, there was a small group that ate with me at the multipurpose table. A few weeks earlier, we had each been digging into our unsatisfying meals and covetously eyeing Marisol’s hand-delivered McDonald’s, when it happened: Butt sex, Adrian said. Yeah, butt sex, Angelica chimed in. And then they had all looked up at me, and that was the weirdest and worst part: they didn’t know what it meant, but they knew what it meant—that it was naughty, that it would produce a reaction. Don’t say that, I had said lamely. Don’t say ‘butt sex’ or any other kind of sex.
Greta’s voice lowered. Do you think they’re freaked out about yesterday?
I don’t know, I said. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be—but can we please just not talk about it?
A sweaty old hippie passed by, beaming, as his armpit bouquet wafted toward us. She waited for him to be out of earshot before she continued. Did anybody call the police? Did they try to talk her down?
I pictured how it would have happened. Yeah, I said, tentatively. It seemed like she was set on the idea.
So why’d she talk to the cops at all?
I don’t know.
Why didn’t she just—
Why do people do anything? I snapped. Did I not just ask you to drop it?
Immediately, her face—how can I say this?—it crumpled, as though instead of barking at her I had taken her head in my hands and compressed it like a ball of paper. There was a tightness to her breathing, and I could almost feel what was happening inside her body: that sensation like your chest cavity is filling with remorse and hurt. I had to look away.
And then, as ever, she tested the waters with her standard conciliation—one with a built-in response:
I love you, she said.
I pulled back, examining her face once more. Now, the harsh moment behind us, she looked softened, illuminated. I wondered if that was the outdoor lighting or the pregnancy. I remembered back to when she had been pregnant before and tried to remember if she had looked different those times; whatever it was, I hadn’t seen her this way in a while—I hadn’t had this sort of thought about her in a while. I looked at her and thought about how I so rarely looked at her. I had one of those out-ofbody moments a marriage can provoke: this person is My Wife. Out of everybody in the world, she picked me. I had the impulse to thank her.
She searched my face. I said I love you, Frank.
I love you too, I said.
 
We approached the stone skeleton of London’s home. It had begun to disintegrate with each earthquake and passing year and was now buttressed by steel scaffolding. A huge staircase flanked one side, built for visitors to ascend and view the ruin. We stepped up the staircase slowly, Greta in front of me. She placed one hand on her stomach and the other on the railing for balance. Greta carried herself, in those relatively early months of pregnancy, in the manner of a woman about to deliver. She often placed her hands soothingly on the small of her back and leaned as though balancing an enormous load. As yet, however, she hadn’t really begun to show. Her pants fit tighter, but only she and I noticed that. To the rest of the world she was a well-fed young woman, maybe bulbous around the middle but in a way that appeared healthy, nourished, like she could swing a baseball bat or give a nice volleyball serve. In truth, though, she was just weak—carrying groceries in from the car meant an aching back; this walk would knot her calves into fists. As we reached the top of the steps, she was winded.
I always forget how enormous this is, she said. A mosquito investigated her face and she slapped it away. How about Jack? Jack Mason. Jack is the guy who mans the grill. Jack is a good dancer.
Weeds sprouted in what had been the study. Twin chimneys rose at opposite ends of the house like goalposts. We stood there, done already: we always did that—drove forever and then stayed fifteen minutes.
Sure, I said. I leaned into her, placed a hand on her hip, wanting to touch something soft. Whatever you want, I said.
 
Heading back, we came upon a little boy standing on the trail. Though he looked to be only six or seven, he was alone.
Where’s your mommy and daddy? Greta asked him.
I heard a woman’s voice in the distance: Avery! Avery!
Is your name Avery? I said.
Avery nodded.
He’s here, I shouted back. Over here!
Greta knelt and put an arm around him, her face grim; she awaited the parents’ arrival, almost posed, as if they would show up and take a photo. It’s okay, she said to the boy. They’ll be here in a minute.
The parents arrived and clutched Avery to their knees. They thanked us sheepishly, even as their eyes—you could see it—measured us, trying to decide how trustworthy we were.
Isn’t that the worst panic there is? Greta said.
Oh, absolutely, the mother said, kissing Avery’s head. He’s always running off. Do your kids do that too? Tell me it’s a phase they outgrow!
Greta smiled into the distance. Nice meeting you, she said. The couple walked away, each holding one of the boy’s hands.
We walked a while, stopping at the decades-old water fountain. Greta planted her feet, bending her torso at a sharp angle to avoid getting her shoes wet. I looked at the trail ahead, but turned around when I heard a sudden cry. Greta’s hands were clamped to her face as she stumbled backward.
What? What happened?
She was sputtering. A spider! A spider came out of the tap!
I snickered. Her eyes went cold.
Frank, she snarled. It’s not funny.
I’m sorry, I said, not bothering to hide my smile.
She stormed toward the trail, leaving me behind, and in spite of every impulse to rejoin her, apologize, nip the argument in the bud, I did nothing to close up the gap. After a quarter mile I could no longer see her, and I let the heat wear down the tempo of my steps. Here and there, ridges were cut into the ground in improvised stairs, alleviating the natural incline. At the trail’s fork I weighed my options, unsure if Greta had gone to the car or toward London’s grave. We usually skipped the grave site—it was a lot more walking, uphill at that, to see very little: a rock the size and shape of a sleeping dog, a half-rotted fence, a plaque we didn’t read.
The things I had to do to fix a fight with her—the explaining, the backpedaling, ten thousand close-range reassurances that all missed their mark—would have felled me on that day. So I delayed, walking toward the grave, the blond fields darkening into moist woods. The walk was far enough that my throat went dry, my quads burned, and when I reached the grave site I rested my arms on the fence. It occurred to me that Greta might have left. She could be halfway to Sonoma right now, heading toward the blackened landing strip of the interstate. The thought was laced with dizzy exhilaration, a hope that she would almost reach home, remember what had happened the day before, and realize the insult she had added to my injury.
The plaque said London had been cremated, that his widow had poured the ashes here before the rock was placed above them. I wondered how many small pieces of London had broken free, floating to the visitors’ center, the parking lot, the extravagant restaurants that lined the bottom of the hill.
I noticed something at my feet. I had forgotten—a few yards from London’s grave were two others: two children, a girl and a boy, were buried there. Another small fence surrounded their redwood markers. The plaque said they had been buried there long before London bought the property. They had died the year he was born. My headache began suddenly to intensify, a string section reaching crescendo, and I leaned over and vomited on the edge of the fence. I braced myself against it, wiping my mouth.
Greta found me not long after, sitting on the ground, my head in my arms.
I’ve been waiting at the car, she said tersely. You’re sick?
A cluster of birds flew over the grove and began to shriek. I felt my throat catch. Yes, I said. A thin, icy tide of bile rose inside me and I shuddered. Yes, I said again.
She squinted at me, suspicious. Why?
Why what?
You drank too much last night. You always drink too much.
I barely had—
I stopped myself. We had had this argument a thousand times. If I came home with a forty, she winced. If I ordered a second drink in a bar, she eyed it like it was a live grenade. She accused me once of being an alcoholic—we had just left her cousin’s wedding, and by some unfair and temporary metabolic quirk my three flutes of champagne had rendered me fully drunk, careening into pillars and resting my head on the table during the toasts. I hadn’t overindulged; I had, thanks to an empty stomach, gotten unlucky. She shouted it at me in the parking lot—You’re a fucking alcoholic!—and I turned on my heel, stunned and amused: I must be the world’s only alcoholic who drinks once a month, I said.
Above the graves, the birds approached frenzy and then passed by, the sound vanishing as though a conductor had lowered his wand.
You know what, strike that—it’s not how much you drink, Greta said. It’s why. You do it so you don’t have to feel anything.
Make up your mind, I said. Do I drink too much or do I drink incorrectly?
She ignored me. You don’t ever deal with anything. You just push it down.
I looked away.
You ignore everything you don’t want to see, she said.
I felt myself detach, felt the lightness, the quickening, that always prefaced a lie.
I think it was Nora, I said.
Silence.
Greta, I know it was.
She stared at me, expressionless. That jumped, you mean.
Yes, I said.
How? she said coldly. Why did you say you think?
I know it was. The police—I paused, waiting to see what I would say—they identified the body.
She turned away, and for a moment I thought she was disgusted—by the obviousness, the desperateness of the lie. But when she turned back, she was crying. She stepped toward me, extending her hand. She had asked me never to say that name in her presence, and now she was crying and holding out her hand.
She loved me so much that my grief was her own.
 
She drove us home. The sky had turned an angry shade of peach, and beneath the settling sun I felt weakened. We had gone all day without food.
You can’t do that, you know? I said. You should really carry a granola bar around at least.
Greta was allergic to correction of any kind, fuming when I asked her to wash the dishes, snapping at me if I said the chicken needed salt. Suggestion, to her, was condemnation. She had no problem, however, asking me to sweep up, unclog the toilet, never buy that brand of sliced turkey again. But that day she said nothing, and I knew I would get a pass: I had been through enough. I was untouchable.
You need to start thinking about this baby, you need to start taking care of this baby better, I said. We can’t take any chances, Greta.
Her jaw set. You’re right. Her voice was sharp and cool.
Though money-wise, not having a baby right now would probably be—
She slapped me, or tried to—she was driving and couldn’t get a good purchase on my face. Her palm bounced against my open mouth, my tongue touching her finger long enough to detect the dim tang of salt. She wiped her hand on her lap as yellow highway stripes passed beneath the car, both of us stunned. Finally she spoke, imitating calm: I know what you’re trying to do.
Instinctively, I touched my mouth where she had hit it. What I’m doing is trying to get you to eat a granola bar.
You think I’m stupid, but I’m not, she said.
Then the granola bar won’t present a challenge.
It was always like this. I held it back as long as I could, and when it arrived it surprised both of us.
You think just because—
But I cut her off, punching the dash hard enough that a thin curl of skin lifted from my knuckle and blood began to bead. I watched her flinch, glaring at her profile like a dog about to spring, our hair fluttering in the breeze from the open windows. The sun was retreating. I looked away, feeling the wind begin its nightly easing of the heat.
Once home, she walked into the bedroom and shut the door. I saw the answering machine, blinking an angry red 6. I sprawled across the cat-scratched couch and put the television on mute. I tossed the remote above my head, catching it some and dropping it some. Blood had dried on my knuckle. I was starving. I walked over to the answering machine, pressed play, heard a woman’s firm, clipped voice—my boss, the principal—and held the erase button down until the flashing ceased.
Outside, a half-dozen neighborhood kids played tetherball with their flimsy rig: the pole, anchored by a plastic base filled with sand, wobbled whenever someone got a hit in—too hard, and it fell against the pyramidshaped topiary next door. Another kid rode by on a bike, taunting the rest. How come you only got some shit to say when you’re on your bike? one of them called back.
I could hear Greta moving in the bedroom—opening dresser drawers, walking to the bathroom to wash her face. I felt a still calm overtake me, felt myself sinking into sleep and then dream. I was hunting for ladybugs in my grandmother’s backyard at age nine, like I always did in the summer; the dream wasn’t invention, just replayed memory. I placed hundreds of the insects into a mesh prison fashioned with scrap from the garage. Their insect feet crawled along, poking through the holes, and I held my hand against their flutter. As the sun left the sky, I pulled a final ladybug from a bowing blade of grass. I held it up to the mesh jail, but instead of putting it inside, placed it on my tongue and crushed it against my mouth’s ridged roof. And then I stood in the grass and felt my head lifting, my legs lengthening, the smeared bug on my tongue. And in the way of dreams, where every shift makes sense without explanation, I knew I was growing up, becoming big in time lapse. Once my body had stretched itself fully, I was standing on yesterday’s beach, looking down at a depression in the sand. The police had just gone. The bridge was swinging like a lazy hammock. In the parking lot was a tiny red car; it belonged to me. Put your shoes on, said a voice. I laughed, looking at the sky. The voice came from there. An airplane flew over in air-show loops. I waved to it. Put your shoes on, the voice said again, and my laugh halted sharply when I realized the voice was closer. The words were coming from beneath me—I looked down and the body was there, filling the depression. Ladybugs were crawling over it, lifting off and away. The face was hers, familiar and devastating; her red hair was speckled with wet, filthy sand. Put your shoes on, she said once more, as I looked up and saw that the red car was gone. I was stranded; Nora’s body and I were stranded together. I knew there would be no escape.
I woke with a snap as the streetlights buzzed on, hearing the tetherballers start to leave and walk home. My pulse was in my ears. On the television a bounding dog covered stretches of grass in slow motion before a man entered the frame to hawk pet food.
There were no sounds from the bedroom. In the kitchen, the faucet dripped. The muted pet-food commercial continued, the text appearing in bold white letters at the bottom of the screen: Don’t waste your time with imitators, it said.
I had forgotten all about eating that bug when I was nine. In my tiny twin bed that night, I had felt, bizarrely, as though I had stumbled upon the way things worked. My mother often cried to herself in the kitchen, my father often sat grimly on our apartment’s balcony, smoking for hours—now I understood that adults felt pain because they carried burdens, and those burdens resulted from the choices they made. I had made a choice, too—to eat the ladybug. No one had seen. No one would ever know. Just as adults had secrets, I had one, too. My thoughts and actions—my choices—I realized, were my property alone. No one could take them from me.