Viking Summer 2021 Fiction Sampler

VIKING FICTION SELECTIONS SUMMER 2021

VIKING

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CONTENTS The Damage by Caitlin Wahrer

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Edited by Pamela Dorman

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

15

Edited by Lindsey Schwoeri

Something Wild by Hanna Halperin

26

Edited by Allison Lorentzen

The Stone Loves the World by Brian Hall Edited by Paul Slovak

VIKING

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On sale June 15, 2021

Pa m e l a D orm a n on T he D a ma ge b y C ai t l i n Wa h re r What I love about The Damage is that it’s gritty and American, but it also subtly turns, with a kind of devastating, Highsmithian feel, into a very creepy noir story— one whose shocker of an ending gives new meaning to the term “sang-froid”. . .

I can’t wait to compare notes on whose blood you think runs coldest here!

Share your thoughts with Pam pdorman@prh.com

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An excerpt from The Damage:

One Julia Hall, 2019 The dying detective’s house was a tall, dark blue thing with chipping trim and shutters. It loomed against the bright sky, set back from the snowbank lining the street. The house was dusted with last night’s powder, but the black “23” tacked above the front door was brushed clean. There was room in the narrow driveway but she parked on the street.

Julia Hall shifted in her seat to expose the pocket of her heavy winter coat. She crammed her hand deep inside until her fingers scraped the edges of the folded paper. As she pulled the note free, she willed it to say anything but the address she’d located—anything that would let her drive on, maybe never to find the house. There, on the crumpled sheet, she’d written “23 Maple Drive, Cape Elizabeth,” and here it was.

“Just go,” she said aloud, then looked sideways at the house. Windows abutted the front door, and each appeared empty with the blinds drawn. At least he hadn’t seen her talking to herself, then.

The wind blew the door from Julia’s hand as she climbed out of her SUV. This winter had been bitterly cold. As she aged she found the winter a little less pleasant to weather each year. She pulled her hat tighter over her ears, then turned back to the car. Without thinking, she slammed the door hard. She winced as the sound rocked down the neighborhood street. She hadn’t done that in years—she was thinking of her old Subaru, the one that demanded a rougher touch. The one she’d had three years ago, back when she had occasion to talk to the man waiting for her inside that house.

In spite of last night’s flurry, the front walk was freshly shoveled. Had he done that for her? The path and steps to the porch were layered in salt, and she focused on the sound as she crunched her way up to his door. She shook out her hands and rang the bell. Before the chime had subsided inside, the door swung open.

“Julia,” said the figure in the doorway. “How are you, dear?”

She was certainly better than he was, wasn’t she? Because the man standing before her was Detective Rice, or at least the husk of him. His once towering frame seemed to have caved in on itself like a rotting flower stem. His face was sallow, and he had deep bags under his eyes. A Red Sox cap pushed down on his ears, obscuring what appeared to be a completely bald skull.

“I’m good, Detective Rice. I’m good.”

5

They shook hands awkwardly, as he had leaned in as though to hug her.

“Well, would you like to come in?”

Every day since you called me, I’ve thrown up my breakfast was what she wanted to say. Instead she smiled and lied. “Yes, of course.”

“And please, you can just call me John,” he said as he wobbled backward to make room for her to step inside. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last three, maybe from the cancer. Not that she was doing much better. For most of her life, Julia looked young for her age. Somewhere in the past few years, that stopped. She looked thirty-nine now.

As Julia pulled off her boots, she surveyed Detective Rice’s mudroom, a little voice in her head pointing out how strange it was to be in Detective Rice’s mudroom. The bench she sat on was sturdy, practical.

A few pairs each of work boots and dress shoes butted up against the base. The bench was flanked by a bucket of salt on her right, and a wet shovel leaned against the wall. To her left was the only curious feature: a petite shelf crammed with gardening books. She never would have guessed him to be a gardener when she met him all that time ago. It suggested an earthiness that she had missed.

“I don’t know if I can,” she said as she stood. “I think you’ll always be ‘Detective Rice’ to me.”

He grinned at her and shrugged.

She followed him down a narrow hallway lined with family photos and religious artifacts: there were various portraits of a younger Detective Rice and his deceased wife, Julia assumed, and three children; a crucifix and a dried palm; a picture of a grandchild, probably, next to a picture of Jesus.

Detective Rice said something muffled as he led her down the hallway.

“What?”

He turned and faced her over his shoulder. “Was just saying you got a new car.”

“Oh, yeah.” She pointed her thumb behind her. “Guess I’ve upgraded since I last saw you.”

The change in his height was still jarring. He was still a tall man, she thought as she followed him, but his illness had stolen several inches.

“I was thinking we’d sit in here.”

He motioned to the first room they came upon. It was decidedly a sitting room: something that Julia only ever saw in the homes of older people. Like others she had seen, Detective Rice’s had a buttoned-up air to it, despite its obvious purpose for hosting company. The room was staged around two big recliners with a small table between them.

Detective Rice motioned for Julia to sit in the chair on the right as he continued down the hallway.

She waited a few seconds, then poked her head out into the hall. Another doorway on the right.

Kitchen at the end. She listened but heard nothing.

She turned back into the sitting room. Deep breath, she thought, and inhaled.

She moved toward the picture window across the room. It looked out on Maple Drive and a big house across the street. A steady chill radiated from the pane, and Julia touched a trembling finger to the glass.

There were few things as bleak as Maine in February.

The cold months were hard; always had been. Every year, Julia was faced with the reality of Maine’s 6

autumn and winter, neither of which ever matched the nostalgia-tinged versions that lived in her head.

The snow usually started in December, lasted through April. And after that winter—after the winter she last laid eyes on Detective Rice—winters carried some kind of existential melancholy that had to be shoveled away with the snow.

“Endless, isn’t it?” She started when she heard his voice behind her.

He was in the doorway again, smiling at her. In his hands he held two mugs.

He was just getting coffee. She breathed out, probably with obvious relief.

He motioned to the chair again, and this time she sat. She accepted a mug and watched him settle into his own seat. The scent that met her nostrils was not coffee, in fact, but tea. She tasted it and found it heavily sweetened. That was a surprise.

“How are your children?” Detective Rice asked as he sipped at his drink.

“They’re good, thanks.”

“How old are they now?”

“Uh, ten and eight.”

“You’ll never be ready for them to grow up.”

There was something about him that made it easy to forget he had children of his own. Grown children; grandchildren, judging by the pictures in the hallway. It wasn’t his personality that made her forget—it was his profession. There was something about him being a detective that made her forget that he existed outside of that.

Julia nodded and waited for him to ask her how Tony was.

“I suppose you were surprised to hear from me last week.”

That answers that, she thought. Something about his passing over her husband felt like a personal slight, especially given everything that had happened, and she felt herself suppressing a frown.

She had been surprised on Thursday, when she picked up her cell at the end of a long morning in court to find a single voicemail waiting for her. It was the mark of an easy day if she only had one missed call by noon. She shouted goodbye to the marshal at the door and pressed play as she strode from the courthouse. The voice that had croaked out of her phone halted her mid-step; it was slow but unmistakable. A voice she had come to dread. Years ago she had worked herself into a state of near-panic any time the phone rang or her voicemail blinked for fear that his voice would be on the other end.

“I was surprised to hear from you,” Julia said. “And very sorry to hear that you were sick, too.” She leaned toward him slightly, realizing she hadn’t mentioned it since they spoke on the phone last week and he asked her to come to his home.

“What’s your...prognosis?” There was no comfortable word, not that she could think of.

“Well, it’s not too hot,” he said in a voice like he was discussing the chance of another flurry. “My doc thinks my ‘quality of life’ is going to get pretty bad over the next couple months and it might all go pretty quick after that.”

Julia could hear the quotes around “quality of life,” and she pictured Detective Rice sitting in his doctor’s office in a dressing gown, saying, “‘Quality of Life’? What the fuck does that mean? Just tell me when 7

I’m gonna die.”

She smiled at him warmly. “I’m glad to see that you’re still able to be at home.”

“Oh, well, we’ll see.”

They each took a sip.

“Well,” he said, and laughed lightly. He shrugged. Was he nervous?

“I appreciate you coming up,” he said. “Like I said, I wanted to talk to you before, well,” he shrugged at himself.

“While you still have that ‘quality of life.’”

Detective Rice laughed, let out a wheezing cough, and reached behind his chair. There was the squeaking sound of an ungreased wheel, and he pulled a portable oxygen tank around to his side. He held the mask up to his face and breathed, holding up a “one-minute” finger to her. Jesus Christ, I better not make him laugh again. He began to put the mask away.

“Why don’t you keep that on,” Julia said. “I really don’t—” “No,” Detective Rice said firmly. “Thank you, but no.”

The mask in its place on the tank, Detective Rice sat himself back up. The wind whistled at the window.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come, after everything. But I needed to talk to you. Well, to say some things to you.

And I think you have some things to say to me, too.”

Julia had to push herself to hold his gaze. His eyes were watery pink, and hers wanted nothing to do with them.

“I really wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said again. “But, you always were too nice to say no to anyone.”

The sick ache in her stomach intensified. What was she supposed to say to that?

He didn’t expect a response, it seemed, because he spoke again. “So. Back to the beginning?”

8

Two John Rice, 2015 The first time John Rice saw Julia Hall, she was standing in her kitchen, barefoot, washing a pile of dishes in the sink.

Rice was about twenty hours into the investigation at the time. Until that moment, it had been twenty hours of ugliness. Nothing but the kind of evil only man knows how to execute.

He’d seen the victim, a young man named Nick Hall, at the hospital the night before. He hesitated to think of him as a man at all. Nick was twenty years old, yes, but he should have been on the last legs of his boyhood. Instead there was a look in his eye like he’d woken up that morning to find himself on his hands and knees in a place he didn’t recognize, pushed out of his innocence.

Rice didn’t want to overwhelm Nick by interviewing him that first night, where he’d already given statements to a nurse and an officer. Rice just wanted to introduce himself as the lead detective on Nick’s case and ask him to write out a statement. It always felt a little callous to ask victims to write it out, ask them to relive the crime so soon. It was for the best, though, for everyone. Made Rice’s case stronger; made the victim’s memory better. Not to mention, the beginning of the case was usually the easy part. Most of the time, the victim hadn’t grasped what had happened yet. The mind was in shock, the body in survival mode, and there was little to no affect. Nick had been like this: surprised, a bit confused, but mostly flat. Better for him to relive it now.

And he had. Before coming over to the house, Rice had picked up Nick’s two-page statement at the hospital. Nick’s older brother, Tony, was there again. He’d been there last night, too, and today he had the baggy undereyes of someone who’d tried to sleep in a hospital chair. Tony stepped out of the room and handed Rice the statement. Told him Nick was sleeping. Rice said he’d come back later.

Rice found Tony Hall’s house without trouble. It was a pretty little thing in the rolling outskirts of Orange, unassuming after a drive past some of the other houses in town. Rice’s sister-in-law lived in Orange too, but closer to the town center. Like many towns in southern Maine, probably like many towns everywhere, it was like two different places entirely depending on where you stood. Town center was where the wealthier inhabitants of Orange collected, either crammed into cul de sacs in large, cookie-cutter houses (Rice’s sister-in-law included), or in Maine’s version of mini-mansions on sizeable plots of land (these were the very very wealthy). The greater part of Orange, though, was farmland. Little of it was active. The Hall address was there, two plots down from a giant, ramshackle place overrun with geese, complete with a barn the earth seemed to be taking back. The Hall house, by comparison, was small, old but well kept, and charming, at least what he could see from the road. The driveway was full so he parked on the street.

Rice climbed the steps of the open porch to reach the front door. He could hear voices talking over the doorbell, then the solid inner door swung open and Rice faced a short, spry looking woman with salt and pepper hair. She looked his own age, late fifties, maybe. She opened the outer door and said, “Hello?”

Rice introduced himself and she immediately nodded soberly and said that her son Tony was still at the hospital with his brother.

9

“I’m not Nick’s mom,” she said. “Just Tony’s.”

“Yes,” Rice said. “Tony explained this morning. I just came from the hospital. I’m actually here to see Julia, if she’s available.”

Even three steps inside, the house held certain markers of wealth not enjoyed by many of the families Rice encountered on the job. The floors were gleaming hardwood running down to tiles in the kitchen, and the hall was framed in a rich dark trim. The space immediately evoked a feeling of safety and an impression that this was a deeply functional family. As the thought revealed itself, Rice felt heat on his ears.

He realized quickly he’d made certain assumptions about what the Hall family would be like, based on little information. The address in farm country, the brothers with different mothers. The total absence of Nick’s parents at the hospital at a time like this. The consequence of the mandatory “sensitivity training” the station had done back in the spring was not that his biases disappeared—it was simply that he noticed them more often and felt like an asshole for it.

The short hallway opened into the kitchen, where a younger woman stood at the sink. The October sunlight spilled in through a window just in front of her, making her white blouse glow and illuminating hair that should have been just brown, but seemed to contain strands of yellow and red in the light. She looked almost ethereal, except that she was frowning and rinsing a dish.

“Sorry,” she said, “sorry I’m just...” She turned off the faucet and set a glass casserole dish on the crowded drying rack. “There. I heard you come in but I just had to finish that.” She grabbed a dish towel off the stove and wiped her hands quickly before offering one to the detective. Her hand was damp and warm, and she said, “I’m Julia.”

“John Rice,” he answered. “Detective with the Salisbury Police Department.”

There was a muffled thud upstairs, like feet hitting the ground. “Shall I finish the dishes or go upstairs?” Tony’s mother asked from the hallway.

“Yeah, if you could keep them distracted while we talk,” Julia said.

“On it.”

“Thanks, Cynthia,” Julia called toward the hallway as her mother-in-law ascended the stairs.

“The kids are happy to have their gram over,” Julia said as she pointed at the ceiling. “They don’t really understand what’s going on.”

Julia looked young, so Rice guessed the kids were, too. “How old are they?”

“Chloe’s seven and Sebastian’s five. We told them their uncle is sick so their dad will be busy taking care of him, but,” she shrugged. Now, talking about her children, Julia looked bewildered. “They’re too young to understand, and I think that’s for the best.”

“Sure is,” Rice said. _ “How can I help?” Julia asked as she passed Rice a mug of coffee in the cool morning air on the porch.

Rice had suggested they speak outside, out of the children’s earshot, and Julia agreed. The two settled into side-by-side Adirondacks padded with nautical-looking cushions, and Rice set his mug down 10

on the small table between them. The smell of his steaming coffee mingled with the citronella candle on the table. Acid on acid.

“Well,” he said, “Nick was still asleep when I went over this morning, and your husband looked like he hadn’t slept at all, so I thought I’d give them a couple more hours’ breathing room before I put ‘em through the ringer again. Tony said you could give me a family history for my notes.”

Her face washed with relief. “Oh, that I can do.”

Rice pulled a small pad and pen from his windbreaker. He would have to get into what she knew about Nick, but he’d ease her in first.

“Do you care where I start?” Julia asked.

He shook his head. He was glad for the excuse to stare at her while she spoke. Meeting Tony, who was undeniably handsome, Rice had expected an equally striking wife. And Julia Hall was pretty, yes, but there was a plainness to her that was hard to name, now that she’d moved out of the morning light. Her face was round and without significant definition; as she spoke, her features were the same from all angles. It gave her an air of straightforward honesty—what you saw was what you got. It also made her look younger than she likely was. Rice might have guessed she was thirty were it not for the fine wrinkles she already bore: crow’s feet at her eyes and lines hugging the sides of her mouth. This woman was a smiler and a laugher.

“So Tony’s parents are Cynthia,” Julia pointed backwards at the house, indicating the woman inside, “and Ron. They were married for a while before they had Tony. Ron is—” She paused. “Ron had a really tough upbringing himself and wasn’t the steadiest dad. Ron and Cynthia were together until Tony turned seven.”

She was choosing her words like a politician, or maybe a lawyer. Either job would be ugly on her.

“Ron wasn’t, like, abusive or anything. Or maybe, well,” she paused again.

Rice held up his pen at eye level. “How about I put this down for a minute and you relax about Ron?” Julia laughed and brought her hand to her face as if to hide behind it.

“Just a little background on the family dynamic can be helpful.” He didn’t always make a point to ask about a victim’s family, but regularly enough. More often in a case like this, where the victim’s life would be turned inside out by the defense, looking for blameworthy material.

“I get it,” Julia said, “I’ve worked with just about every family dynamic possible.”

“What do you do?”

“I work in policy now, but I used to be a defense attorney—all juvenile and criminal cases.”

Rice shifted to pull his right leg over his left. “Then you do understand.”

She nodded. “And honestly, Ron would fit right in with maybe the middle of the pack, you know? He’s an alcoholic, he has been Tony’s whole life, and it was easier for Ron to mostly just fade out of the picture after he and Cynthia separated. Cynthia is so warm and loving, Tony got really lucky there. Nick didn’t get so lucky with his mom.”

“So Nick’s side of this.”

“Right,” she said. “So Ron is both of their dads, and Tony was seventeen when Nick was born, so he was, like, maybe fifteen or sixteen when Ron and Jeannie got together.”

11

“So what’s Jeannie’s deal?”

“She’s an addict too, and she gets a little...” Julia waved her hand over her head. The word manic came to Rice’s mind.

“Do they know what happened?”

Julia shook her head. “They don’t even know he’s there. He doesn’t want to tell them.”

Her voice faded out and she shrugged. Her face sank into that frown Rice saw all the time when people tried to hold back their tears in front of him.

“He’s gonna be fine, Julia. It’ll take a while but Nick will be fine.” Rice pulled a packet of tissues from his pocket.

“Nick is just awesome,” she said as she accepted a tissue. “Tony loves him so much. Honestly he made Tony the man he is, you know? Who knows what he would have been like if he hadn’t had that little baby.”

“What do you mean?”

Julia shook her head. “Cynthia says Nick being born softened him. When he was a teenager he was kind of a macho-tough-guy, and so angry at Ron, and kind of the world I think. And you’ve seen what he looks like, he has ‘handsome jerk’ written all over him.”

Rice snorted and concurred. Not only was Tony Hall fit, but he had magazine looks. The kind of face that made you dislike him, just for having what you didn’t. Rice wondered what Julia would have thought of him when he was her husband’s age. Rice had mild acne scarring on his cheeks that persisted to this day, but when he was younger the pock-marks made him look tough. That’s what his wife had told him, at least.

“But Nick just melted his heart,” Julia said, dabbing the tissue at her eyes. “Tony grew up to be warm and emotional and a good communicator, which is probably super cliched to say about your husband,” she laughed. “But whatever, I know I’m lucky. And I know I have Cynthia to thank for some of that, but I really think it was mostly because of Nick. You probably won’t ever meet the real Nick. He’s funny, wickedly funny, and charming and just, like, sincere. But now, I don’t know.”

Behind them, Rice heard the kids come bouncing down the staircase he’d seen inside the house. Seconds later, he heard Tony’s mother trailing behind them. The noise faded down the hall into the kitchen.

Rice’s hand returned the tissues to his pocket and reappeared with a small, silver tape recorder. “I know this is hard,” he said, “but I need to ask you some questions about yesterday.”

“Okay,” Julia said with an exhale. “Nick didn’t call us until after dinner.”

12

Three Tony Hall, 2015 That Saturday evening had been ordinary. Tony and Julia had been sitting on the front porch, watching the sky go pink. Their neighbors had spread a golden blanket of hay over the field across the street, and the view from the porch was like an oil painting. And then the phone rang.

As Tony sat in the waiting room, he tried to remember the caller’s specific words. She said her name, Dr. Lamba, maybe. She was calling from York County Medical Center.

At that point, his first thought was of his father. He’s finally killed himself driving drunk, Tony thought.

Please, please say he didn’t hurt anyone else. But the doctor wasn’t calling about Ron. She was calling about Nick. “Your brother’s been hurt,” she’d said on the phone. That was as specific as she had been.

Tony had asked if it was a car accident. “No,” she’d said. “Can you come see him now?”

Tony had gotten to him as fast as he could—he’d rushed out of the house, sped down the highway, jogged through the parking lot, only to be halted in the lobby. The energy that had pounded through him earlier was still trapped inside him, buzzing, buzzing.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Texted Julia, “ETA?” She was at home with the kids waiting on his mother. He would feel better when she got here, he told himself. Or once they let him back to see Nick. But would he feel better then?

“Your brother has been hurt.” The strange words had played over and over in his head as he sped to the hospital. Vague, yet grave. The doctor had given him nothing, besides that it wasn’t a car accident.

What, then? Alcohol poisoning? A bar fight? Neither sounded like Nick, but things could get a little wild in college. Oh, Jesus, not a school shooting. He would have heard something on the radio on his drive.

Still, he pulled out his phone and opened the browser. “University of Maine Salisbury news.” Nothing.

“Salisbury Maine news.” Nothing.

What else had the doctor said on the phone? Something about Nick’s age. She’d asked how old he was. When Tony said Nick was twenty, she said something about him having a fake ID on him, so she’d wanted to be sure. Said Nick didn’t want her to call his parents, and she wouldn’t have to. He only wanted Tony.

“Mr. Hall?” An older woman in a white coat stood in the doorway. He launched from his seat and met her with a handshake. She said she was Dr. Lamba from the phone, her voice low and confident. He was relieved to detect no message of condolences in her kind, dark brown eyes. Nick could be fine.

Tony followed Dr. Lamba down a long hallway as she explained that Nick had come in earlier that day, late morning, “and as I said on the phone, he only wanted us to call you.” As she talked, Tony found himself fixated on the scrunchy in her silver hair. It was velvety black and sat at the nape of her neck. They were approaching a new set of double doors. Above them read BEHAVIORAL HEALTH UNIT. “Wait.” Tony’s eyes hung on the letters as they walked under them. “Nick’s in here?”

Inside the double doors was a small room surrounded by chicken-wired glass and a heavy door leading into the unit. Dr. Lamba motioned for them to sit in two small black chairs to the right of the room.

13

Dr. Lamba put her hand on Tony’s forearm and said, “Your brother was sexually assaulted last night.”

Tony stared at her.

“Whoever did this to him beat him up pretty badly, so I wanted to prepare you for that. We’ve—.”

“Wait. Stop. Stop.”

Dr. Lamba paused.

Tony shook his head. “No. No, no one would do that to him, that doesn’t—that makes no sense.” As he heard the words he’d said, a strangely detached voice in his mind whispered, no, you make no sense.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Hall,” Dr. Lamba said.

He buried his face in his hands. “Please, no.”

He felt her hand on his shoulder now. “The emergency department treated Nick’s injuries, and the good news is that he could go home now if he wanted. But the other good news is that he took my advice and admitted himself to our mental health unit, to give himself a couple of nights here.”

Through his hands, Tony said, “Could you stop saying good news?”

“Yes.” The hand rubbed his shoulder in a circular motion.

Someone did this. The simplicity struck him like a blow. Tony lifted his face from his hands. “Where’s the fuck who did this?”

“Nick has already spoken to a police officer.” Dr. Lamba met his eyes again and held them as she said, “please, focus on your brother right now. He needs you. Don’t focus on this other person, that’s what the police are for. Focus on Nick.”

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On sale J u ly 1 3 , 2 0 2 1

Li nd se y Sc h w oe ri on C hi na R o o m b y Sun j e e v Sah ota I missed my chance to acquire Sunny Sahota’s previous novel when it went around on submission in 2014, but I never stopped thinking about it.

When the opportunity came to publish Sunny again, with this extraordinary book, I would stop at nothing to have it on my list. This is the kind of fiction I became an editor to publish: stunningly written, political, timeless, unforgettable.

Who says there are no second chances?

Share your thoughts with Lindsey lschwoeri@prh.com

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An excerpt from China Room:

1 Mehar is not so obedient a fifteen-year-old that she won’t try to uncover which of the three brothers is her husband. Already, the morning after the wedding and despite nervous, trembling hands, she combines varying amounts of lemon, garlic and spice to their side plates of sliced onions, and then attempts to detect the particular odour on the man who visits later that same night, invisible to her in the dark. Though it proves inconclusive, the strongest smell by far her fear, she tries again when she overhears one of the trio complaining about the calluses on his hands. Her concentration is fierce when her husband’s palm next rides up her naked arm, but then, too, she isn’t certain. Maybe all male hands felt so rough, so clumsily eager and dry.

It is 1929, summer is breaking, and the brothers do not address her in the presence of one another, indeed they barely speak to her at all, and she, it goes without saying, is expected to remain dutiful, covered and silent, like the other new brides. From her room, she can spy on the brothers’ likeness: she has been told there is not more than two years between them, and can see they share the same narrow build, with unconvincing shoulders and grave eyes. They are all bearded, too, to a similar degree and wear loose turbans cut from the same saffron wrap. Outside the room, she is veiled. Whole days go by and all three brothers will be out working, playing, drinking while she weaves and cooks and shovels and milks until those evenings when their mother says to her, raising a tea-glass to grim lips: ‘Not the china room tonight.’

This is the third time Mehar finishes washing the pewter pots at the courtyard water-pump and, rather than join the women in the china room, has to take herself to the windowless chamber that backs onto the neighbour’s field. She lies on her side, her face to the cement wall, and listens out for him. Five days married. She feels relief at her husband’s pleasure, as though her survival had depended on it, a feeling that has largely done away with the overwhelming terror of her first night, when she’d lain in the pitch black shuddering from arms to toe, both hoping he wouldn’t come and praying that there might be blood.

The day before the wedding, Mehar’s mother had folded into her daughter’s hand a tiny blade. Cut your thumb, to be sure. Mehar hadn’t done that, hadn’t needed to. There’d been lots of blood that first night, and Mai, the mother, her mother-in-law, had been outside waiting for the sheets. He hadn’t said anything to Mehar on that occasion, and little more on the next. Will he say more today, she wonders?

17

The tallow stick on its stony ledge has long blown down to its crater and the obliterating dazzle of the dark, coupled with the silence of it all, makes her think of being underwater, in some submerged world of sea-goats and monsters. She is a light sleeper, always has been, and is quickly, unknowingly, lifted out of her delicate dream by the distant protesting rasps of a charpoy and the courtyard scuffle of leather slippers being toed on. Her stomach does a small anticipatory flip, and then the door opens and he moves to sit at her side. She dares a sidelong glance at what must surely be his naked back, though the darkness is absolute and of the kind that seems to refute all light. It is impossible to make even a distinction between his hair and his cotton wrap, which she can hear him loosening. When she senses him unknotting the langot at his waist she averts her gaze to the black pool of the ceiling and waits. ‘Undress,’ he says, not unkindly, but with the contingent kindness of a husband who knows he will be obeyed. She tries to trap his voice inside her head, to parse its low, deep grain, its surprising hoarseness. Was he the one who’d called for more daal, who’d had her hurrying across the courtyard with the pot and ladle? She gathers the hem of her tunic up around her hips and unties the drawstring to her salwar. She feels a rush of air against her calves as he slides off her salwar in a single swift motion, and then, her eyes still averted, as they will be throughout, he bears down like something come to swallow her whole, until she can’t even see the darkness on either side of him and fears that she really is inside his chest. He is neither rough nor gentle. A little frenetic perhaps, because all three brothers want a child, a child that must be a boy. Mehar’s hands remain at her side, unmoving and cupped up. He smells strongly of grass and sweat, and of fenugreek and taro, the evening meal, but beyond that she can detect soap, and is glad that he had thought to wash before coming to her tonight. He grips her upper arm with one hand – calluses? can she feel calluses? – a final thrust, a stoppered exhalation, and then he climbs off her, one leg at a time and, his back to her again, she hears him return his penis into the pouch of his langot.

‘You’re learning the life here?’

‘Everyone is very kind.’

He gives a wry little snort, and she flicks her eyes towards the sound – nothing, she can see nothing.

‘It’s never been a kind house before,’ he says, and shunts his feet back into the slippers.

2 The vessel is round, copper-bottomed, with a loop of a handle and a spout like a cobra rearing back for the strike. It’s for the tea, this much they’ve been told, but how it is for the tea is not clear to them.

‘It doesn’t even lie flat,’ Harbans says, confounded, holding the thing at arm’s length as if it might curse her. ‘And no hinges. Barely air to spread a fart in this room as it is.’

‘The leaves go inside,’ says Gurleen. She takes the contraption from Harbans and speaks as if all this would be obvious to anyone with a little breeding.

‘Have you used one of these before?’ asks Mehar, and Gurleen makes a frivolous little face which tries to suggest that she might have, once upon a time.

18

‘You’ll need the gauze,’ says Harbans. She tips open one of the drawers and squints through the daydark of the room. ‘Lordy. The nice one for the three princes, yes?’

‘Not so loud,’ says Gurleen.

‘A gauze over every cup?’ asks Mehar, sounding doubtful.

Sisters together, they figure that it must be that the tea is made in the usual way, in the brass pot and on the fire, and then strained into the copper vessel before being poured into cups, and all this they do, efficiently, deftly sliding around each other in a space so narrow if Mehar stood with her arms apart her fingertips would brush the walls. They live in the china room, which is named after the old set of six willow pattern plates that lean on a high stone shelf, a set that arrived with Mai many years ago, as part of her wedding dowry. Far beneath the shelf, at waist level, runs a concrete slab that the women use for preparing food, and under this is a little mud oven. The end of the room fattens out enough for a pair of charpoys to be laid perpendicular to each other and it is across these two string beds that all three women are made to sleep.

‘What a waste of time,’ says Harbans, sieving the tea into the kettle. ‘More things for me to wash.’

‘But it looks so nice,’ insists Gurleen. ‘Mai told me it’s how the English drink.’ She’s smiling at the thing, at the way it’s full bright sheen makes a reddish blur of her reflection. She tilts her face in haughty profile.

‘It looks so nice.’

‘Mai speaks to you about these things?’ asks Mehar, exchanging a droll look with Harbans.

‘She’s very nice to me. I think she sees in me her younger self.’

‘Oh you do?’ says Mehar.

‘We’re both tall. Slim’ – a raised eyebrow towards Harbans – ‘I imagine I’m married to the eldest.’

‘Naturally,’ says Mehar.

Gurleen was all those things, Mehar had to admit. Tall, slim, beautiful. Though there was a tartness to her beauty, the tight puce lips, the hard diagonals of her cheekbones, that Mehar personally thought too much. The first time the three new brides had met and spoken, Mehar and Harbans had walked away readjusting their clothes, as if they’d just been browsed by Gurleen for signs of competition.

Harbans steps in. ‘Go on then, mini-Mai, get this to them before big-Mai comes asking.’

The delight in Gurleen’s face flees. ‘Why me!’

‘You said you know these things,’ Mehar reminds her, and she takes the kettle and presses it into Gurleen’s hands, who resists, and they argue and pass the tea back and forth until – ‘Mehar!’ calls Mai. ‘Must we die of thirst?’

They freeze, and then Mehar mouths a scream, reaches for her veil, and snatches the kettle from a gloating Gurleen.

Her veil makes a red haze of everything, a sparkling opacity against which bodies move as dark shadows. It is pulled so far forward it entirely conceals Mehar’s face and she must cast her eyes down to see anything at all. And what can she see? Her wrists, heavily bangled in red and white; the tea in her hands; and her painted feet, with the silver anklet bells announcing her journey over the swept ground of the 19

courtyard. Her hands shake with the fear that she’s about to make a fool of herself, and, therefore, of the family. A tight slap awaits. The table inches into her vision and she stops, lingers, listens, though it’s hard to hear over the clamour of her heart and the sun like a second cloak of terrible heat pounding her brain.

She’s hungry. How long ago was the midday meal? With her tongue she smears away the sweat from her top lip. Their talk quiets at her approach, as if in some strange deference.

‘Please pour.’

She feels a charge, a sequence of fiery pulses climbing her calves, straightening her spine, her neck.

That was his voice, she is sure of it. The same easy gruffness, the same clear brass. She thinks it came from her right. She can’t be sure and still all she can see is the corner of the squat, square table. She slides her eyeballs up and tries to peer through the top, where the chenille is thinner. It is impossible.

‘Waiting for angels to shit?’ snaps Mai. Through the snake-spout, that is what they’d decided. So, with an inward prayer, Mehar takes a step closer to the table and hears her ankle bells tinkle again. With one hand she holds the veil slightly away from her face and the range of things she can see is suddenly enlarged. The square brown table and four small glass cups, plain cups, set in a row. Mai, or Mai’s feet, in their milk-green salwar, are tapping the ground impatiently and sit to Mehar’s left. And beside her are the three sons, visible from the waist down only. One has a foot tucked under the opposite thigh. Another sits with legs crossed. And the third: knees thrown apart, fingers drumming the oak frame of the charpoy. She is certain those must be his fingers, rough-looking. Callused hands. Callused! She bends and pours the tea, starting with Mai and working rightwards, and feels relief when no challenge comes, when no one cries that she is doing it all wrong. His cup she leaves till last and as the tea flows she dares to raise her veil a little further, her face flushing as she takes in his handsome wrists, the way his white tunic sits over the attractive bump of his stomach, his open-necked collar…

‘You can go,’ says Mai, shrewd-eyed Mai, and at once Mehar drops her veil against her lips, her shoulders, so quickly that some of the itchy material snags on her long lashes, and she turns and leaves.

3 There is no dark tap on the shoulder from Mai, no instruction for anyone to go and wait in the rear chamber, and so Mehar gets in with Harbans in the china room. Gurleen takes the even slighter single, but she seems in need of the other women and has pulled her pillow up so her head is right beside theirs. She fidgets, huffing and turning like a cheetah bothered by a fly, and then she sits up and her shawl slips off her head and falls down her elegant back, sending across a welcome breeze for them all.

‘Sleep,’ Mehar says. ‘She’ll have us up before dawn again.’

‘She’ll have me up before dawn, you mean,’ Harbans says, yawns.

‘God has built you to milk, Harbans: bucket arms, buffalo back,’ Mehar says in a sombre voice that is perfectly Mai. 20

Harbans laughs, effortfully turns over, butting Gurleen who still sits up, knees raised and rocking in the dark. The bed squeaks.

‘Sleep,’ Mehar says again. ‘Stop dwelling on it.’

‘I can’t,’ Gurleen says. Then: ‘I don’t know why I’m here.’

‘I wouldn’t go thinking down that road,’ Harbans warns, in the direction of the wall.

‘I was the prettiest of all five of us. Father promised me a rich city family. He said I’d be a memsahib.’

‘Instead, here you are,’ Mehar says, ‘squeezed two to a bed with a pair of dream-free girls who feel like they’ve gone up in the world. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘But that’s how it sounds. All we really have is each other now.’

‘You milk mine and I’ll milk yours,’ adds Harbans.

‘Exactly,’ says Mehar. ‘And you’re not still brooding about the kettle, are you? That was days ago.’

The embarrassment makes Gurleen’s eyes sting all over again. Of course everyone noticed.

They’d called for more tea and Mehar had been ready to head back out with the funny new kettle when Gurleen blocked her at the door and announced that she’d do it. She could impress her husband too, she’d thought, whichever of the three he might be. She pulled her veil low and sashayed over the courtyard and poured with real flourish, the tea arcing gracefully out of the spout and each cup filled precisely, identically. Then one of the brothers spoke: ‘Not for me. It can go back in,’ and in the circle of vision afforded by the long hood of her veil she saw a hand, nudging the cup back into the middle of the table.

She stood there holding the kettle. Go back in? But how? This was not something she and her new sisters had discussed. She felt the walls of her throat dry out as if to keep her from speaking, moving, from making an utter fool of herself. But equally, in her mind’s eye, she could see them all staring at her, this woman who was happy to see her husband embarrassed, happy to not do as one of the men in the family had instructed. So she picked up the glass and tried to pour the tea back in via the spout and she was spilling it everywhere and half in tears when Mai said – barked, to Gurleen’s ear – to just take the glass to the kitchen, where Mehar and Harbans were biting their laughter into closed fists.

‘We shouldn’t have laughed,’ Mehar now admits. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why didn’t I just lift the lid?’

‘You panicked.’

‘They’ll think I’m stupid.’

‘Let them think what they want.’

‘I won’t let them think me an imbecile.’

‘How posh she talks!’ says Harbans.

Gurleen sighs and lifts her face to the ceiling. Closes her eyes. ‘I think I need some air.’

‘Just lie back down,’ says Mehar, beginning to tire of Gurleen’s self-pity. ‘Here. Hold my hand.’

Then, from Harbans: ‘That’s my foot.’

Laughter. Mehar shifts, turns over, the rough weaves creaking. ‘So does yours talk to you? Properly?’

21

‘A little bit,’ says Gurleen. ‘He swears a lot. Not at me. Just to himself. Does yours?’

‘Do you know which one yours is?’

‘Of course not. Credit me with some shame.’

‘You know, I might just ask Mai,’ Mehar says, if only to provoke Gurleen, who near chokes and asks her if she’s gone mad. Who’d ever heard of a new bride demanding answers about her husband?

‘Mine called me a big strong girl,’ Harbans says. ‘During. He slapped my behind and called me a big strong girl.’

All three chuckle, though real tears come to Harbans’ eyes, which she knuckles away. Mehar, somehow sensing this, reaches over to squeeze Harbans’ shoulder.

‘Mine doesn’t say much either,’ says Mehar, and remembers him calling this an unkind house. She imagines what the place might have been like before the women arrived, when it was only Mai and her three sons, and it chills her to realise that try as she might she can’t hear any laughter in this house’s past.

Her eyes move to the closed window, the only one in this room of unpainted stone. When not set to work, all she can do is stand at that lone window, which has no glass and whose black lacquered slats must be turned individually, by hand. Did Mai once stand at the widow too, when she was young and new and arrived here with her china plates?

‘You two have a lot to learn,’ says Gurleen, seeing a chance to reassert some dominance. She gets herself comfortable on the charpoy again, lying back down. ‘Where’s my shawl? I can hear a mosquito.’

‘Here, sisters,’ says Mehar and they each take a corner of the shawl and billow it out so it floats down and over their faces.

4 It is their second Sunday married and right after the evening prayers have been megaphoned over the small town, about an hour before the sun drops, Mehar, Gurleen and Harbans slip into some old cottons and heave the giant sloshing vat into the courtyard and onto the groundsheet. At this hour, the air is lushly warm rather than oppressive, the mosquitoes frenetic, and the courtyard free of the brothers. They think their men go to the bazaar on these nights, though that is one more thing they have never been told.

Perhaps they play cards, Mehar suggests, as if she knows what that is. All three hitch up their salwars and twine some old jute around their legs, so they’re naked from the knees down. ‘The leaves, they’ve come up,’ Gurleen says, feeling for a way out of the chore, a rare one she finds even more tedious than rubbing clean the spinach leaves. But Harbans is having none of it and points out that there is still plenty of ink left. They hold hands, forming a triad, and one by one step inside the metal vat, the indigo plants sliding around the soles of their feet, the dye ready to be pressed out. The water, as if answering a question, rises up to their calves. They are still holding hands, and then, in silent agreement, the feet begin their work, up-down-up-down, like riding a bicycle on the spot, the water surging, spilling, a tempest, the colour being wrenched out and out. They do not speak, it is enough to keep their balance, and slowly the pool 22

starts to darken, and their clothes and skin, too, indigo staining legs and hips and face, but they keep in harmony, up-down-up-down, again and again, minutes heaped upon minutes, so that by the time the sun disappears and the moon is the whole light, they let go of one another’s hand and double over, gasping.

‘One more week,’ Harbans says, as they haul the vat back to its spot against the wall.

‘Oh, go crack an egg! Surely we’re done now!’ Gurleen complains.

Mehar says nothing, picks up the crumbling soap at the pump and starts on the blue bands striping her feet and legs. It’s up to Mai, in any case. She will decide when the time is right to colour their blooded wedding sheets and hang them out to dry.

5 The days are full of work, work that the three sisters negotiate between themselves, anything to keep Mai at bay. When Mehar finishes scrubbing the stone bath of any incipient moss and her whole back is still aching, she takes up a rolling pin and bends to help Gurleen roll out the freshly picked cotton. Outside, Harbans sweats and takes a hammer to the jaggery. When not doing that, the milking never ceases, and they trudge across the courtyard, Mehar’s arms straining with the iron buckets of milk, her thoughts wheeling. But, she thinks, he knows what I look like so how is that fair?

‘Mehar! The fire needs kindling!’

‘Yes, Mai,’ Mehar sighs, placing the bucket down and turning back, the question of fairness ringing out beneath her feet.

She is still shovelling out the old ashes when Mai enters and kicks the flour barrel to see how much the girls are using for themselves.

‘You three guzzle more than the men,’ Mai says. ‘Halve it next time. Are any of you seeded yet?’ she asks, in a grotesque swerve.

‘No, Mai.’ ‘Get on with it,’ Mai says, though Mehar isn’t certain if she means the shovelling or the babying. Both.

Probably at the same time. ‘I didn’t realise I’d said something funny.’

‘No, Mai,’ Mehar says, her hands slowing in their work. This is her chance. Be strong, she reminds herself. ‘I wondered if sister Gurleen should have her child first. She’s the eldest.’

‘The fool doesn’t know which way round a kettle goes.’

Mehar takes another breath. ‘Is she also married to the eldest?’

When Mehar looks up, Mai is gazing at her, a horrible amusement on her face, as if only now working out that, of course, these girls have no idea who they’ve been married to. How could they? ‘Do you need to know? Even, why would I want you to know?’

‘We don’t need to know,’ Mehar says, wishing she’d never asked.

‘Are you certain I send the same son to you each time?’ Then, Mai’s smile giving in to a huge laugh: ‘The look on your face!’ She strokes Mehar’s head, a touch that Mehar hates, that feels far from maternal.

23

‘I’m only joking with you. But you’re right. You don’t need to know. Just be thankful there’s no drooling father-in-law to paw and prowl over your body every godawful night.’ She pats Mehar’s head in a leavetaking gesture. ‘Ashes. Carry on,’ and Mehar does, industriously, desperate to finish up and wash herself for an hour or more. If this was how asking the question made you feel, then she’d never ask again. She’d just do the work. And she did, they did: Breaking up blocks of jaggery. Picking cotton. Picking guavas. Collecting dung. Shovelling ashes. Cutting Mai’s corns. Milking. Cooking. Preparing for the cooking. Dyeing salwars. Ironing dhotis. Sweeping the yard. Watering the yard. Draining the yard. Polishing the plates. Scrubbing the bath. Going to market.

Going to temple. Going to pray for sons and for the long life of their husband. Sewing buttons. Boiling tea. Midwifing calves. Removing buffalo shit. Going for a shit amongst the high wheat (in pairs). ‘Shit, Mai wanted gourds tonight.’ Back to market. ‘Shit.’ ‘Shit.’ Bathing before dawn. Eating last of all. In their room by dusk. Slats turned, window shut, moon out, veils off. Yet more darkness.

6 ‘You’re used to this life now.’

He strokes Mehar’s anklebone with his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. It tickles and she wants to move her foot but knows she mustn’t. She can see nothing of him. When he stepped across the room and lifted his knee onto the bed, he moved through blackness. When he was on top of her she, like any respectable wife, averted her head. Still he strokes her anklebone. It’s as if he wants to say something. Or perhaps she’s the one who should be doing the saying? No. No. You’ll know when to open your mouth, was her mother’s gravest advice.

‘We went to see the priests.’

Ah, children.

‘Pearls. I need to buy pearls to help you. If you keep them under the bed you will swell. Glow, they said. A boy.’

‘Yes,’ she says, after careful thought.

She thinks she hears him nod or sigh and before he departs he closes his hand around her entire ankle and presses.

Alone, Mehar tries to inhale his smell from the pillow, and then she sighs luxuriously, rising in the same breath, and reties her hair into the nape of her neck. Children, she thinks, and sits very still in the dark to discover what she really feels about the prospect. On the one hand, the sooner sons arrive, the sooner her presence in the house is cemented. Not everyone is as forgiving as her father, willing to overlook a wife 24

who can’t bear males, refusing to switch her for another who can. But, then again, once her child comes she will no longer have even a moment to herself. At least now, when Mai’s out, she and Harbans can steal across the yard for a nap in the shade. What hope for that when her son is latched to her breast? Mehar’s hand goes to her neck, protectively, sadly, as if only now appreciating that her body is so infrequently hers, that it is her husband’s, and soon it will be her son’s. She will never have the luxury of being alone with herself again. Another minute passes, two, until she knows she must go, and she drapes her chunni over her head, ready to yank down the veil should she need to. She opens the door, the hinges complaining, and feels the cool marble meet her feet – her feet – as she steps outside. For a while she stands in the inner courtyard, with its roof and its pillars so thick her arms can’t meet around them. She feels alive, alive enough to levitate and flee into the night, and it is an immense effort to remain grounded, to bring herself back to this horseshoe of a yard with the three doors all opposite. Which did he enter, if any? The marble floor, she knows, had been a decorative addition, completed before the weddings. Mehar descends the two steps that take her beyond the overhang of the veranda and onto the outer yard, where she knows to duck for the bats that often come flying overhead, and to then avoid the deep divot to her right and walk a path between the washing line and, on the other side, the charpoys piled against the wall. Before she knows it, she is at the unmarbled entrance to the china room and places her fingernails in the one spot where the plain blue door can be prised open without a sound. She does all this free from pause or misstep because in a purely practical sense, (getting in beside Harbans), her husband had been right: she was already used to this life, to this small world of hers, which is, she is now saddened to recall, just what Monty said would happen.

VIKING

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On sale August 3, 2021

A lli son L ore n t z e n on S o me t hi ng W i l d b y H a n n a H al p e ri n Hanna Halperin’s debut novel tackles the subject of domestic violence with a fearlessness and an emotional power that devastated me when I first read the novel, and I have been just as haunted and electrified on each reading since. Halperin has worked as a domestic violence counselor, and she writes with love and nuance about terrifying situations that so often happen behind closed doors. I acquired Something Wild because Halperin is a naturally gifted storyteller at the beginning of a brilliant career, and because the book felt honest, risky, heartbreaking, and so necessary.

Share your thoughts with Allison alorentzen@prh.com

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An excerpt from Something Wild: Lorraine Bloom pulls left into the parking lot for Menotomy Beer & Wine and lights a cigarette. It’s nine in the morning and the liquor shop is closed, the lot empty. Menotomy is on Broadway, which is perpendicular to Winter, just around the corner from their house, out of sight. A breeze passes and the grass by the sidewalk quivers, catching light. The girls will be home soon, Nessa by bus, Tanya by car. There are things to do before they arrive.

Her phone chirps. Jesse. Where are you?

Traffic, she writes back. 5 min away.

She watches the ellipses appear on her phone, Jesse typing a response. Then the ellipses disappears, appears again, then goes away for good. Lorraine puts her phone in the cup holder and tosses the cigarette out the window. She keeps mints and mouthwash in her glove compartment, along with a jar of peanut butter, to cover up the mint.

Lorraine rinses her mouth, eats a glob of peanut butter and pulls out of the lot and drives slowly down Winter Street. She no longer knows any of her neighbors, except for the O’Briens, the elderly couple who share the two-family house with her and Jesse. Most of the people who lived on Winter Street when the girls were little have moved out, and at some point, Lorraine went from being the young mom of two pretty little girls to a middle-aged woman who avoids eye contact with her neighbors and sometimes smokes in their driveways before pulling into her own.

Her girls are still pretty of course, but they’re grown up now, busy with their own lives. Tanya is beautiful in the way she’s always been—long, silky hair, wickedly high cheekbones, green inscrutable eyes like a cat’s. Her beauty is sharp and in focus, the first thing you notice about her. She looks like their father, Jonathan. And Nessa has grown into her beauty, though her daughter still doesn’t know it. Lorraine sees the way Nessa moves through the world, seeing everything except for herself—no idea that anyone might be looking at her, too. Her older daughter wears her vulnerability on her face like a milk mustache—unknowingly, cute, and just a little bit pitiful.

Lorraine can’t pinpoint exactly when she was booted out of her daughter’s inner circle, but it happened sometime when they were teenagers. Normal, is what other parents said about this sort of detachment from their mother—not that Lorraine spoke to many other parents about her relationship with her daughters. She wasn’t the type of mother to befriend the other moms or host many play dates. Was that the problem, she wonders sometimes.

28

But no, whatever happened during those teenage years hadn’t felt exactly normal, though nothing, she supposes, felt normal after Jonathan left.

In just a matter of months Lorraine will leave Winter Street behind. For the first time in her life, she won’t live in Arlington. She was born and raised in this town. She knows it the way you know a close family member—how it smells and its moods, what it’s like at its worst and its best, all the details that a visitor would overlook. She’s watched it change over the decades, from when it was a dry town with only a handful of restaurants, back when it was mostly big, Catholic families. People seemed to know each other then.

Now, Arlington has everything—Lebanese food, Indian food, Mexican—Arlington’s become a destination. They have Starbucks. When Menotomy opened, the first beer and wine store since prohibition, Lorraine and Jesse walked there on opening night, and bought two bottles of the most expensive wine she’d ever drank and finished both of them on their front porch.

In 1985, when Alewife Station was built, suddenly Cambridge and Boston were just a train ride away.

People in Cambridge who couldn’t afford Cambridge anymore started to move to Arlington—professors, artists, students, professionals. “Snobs,” Lorraine’s mother complained, back when her mother was still alive.

One of those people had been Jonathan Bloom. A corporate lawyer, Jewish, originally from New York.

“Not the city though,” he’d clarified to Lorraine on their first date, as if it was something to apologize for.

“I’ve never been,” she said.

“Where? To New York, or New York City?”

“Neither.”

“I’ll have to take you. We’ll eat better food than this.” He nodded to the pasta on their plates, and Lorraine smiled, not knowing whether to be excited or insulted. She’d brought him to her favorite restaurant in Arlington.

She and Jesse can’t afford to live in Arlington any longer, especially now that Lorraine is unemployed.

At first Lorraine resisted when Jesse proposed the move. She doesn’t know anyone in New Hampshire and she’ll be farther away from her daughters. Besides, Arlington is home. She can’t imagine herself anywhere else. Now, though, she’s getting more used to the idea. Maybe starting somewhere new is exactly what she and Jesse need.

Jesse’s car is in the driveway and Lorraine pulls in by the curb, behind the O’Briens’ Volkswagen. She wants another Marlboro Lite badly, but she puts the pack back in the glove compartment where she keeps the mouthwash and the peanut butter. Jesse knows she smokes, but he’s also under the impression that she’s trying to quit. Their latest fight, the one they’re still coming down from, was about Lorraine’s smoking. Jesse had come home early from work to find Lorraine in the side yard chain smoking, a graveyard of cigarette butts scattered in the grass in front of her. Ever since she’d been fired from Stand Together, she’s been going through a pack a day. On a bad day, sometimes more. Recently, it seems, she’s always either smoking or brushing her teeth.

She’d been listening to music, earbuds snug in her ears, and hadn’t heard Jesse approach. When she 29

felt his hand on her shoulder, fear shot through her stomach. She jumped and cried out, dropping her iPhone into the grass.

“How many of these are from today?” Jesse had demanded. She’d considered lying, but the risk of being caught in a lie wasn’t worth it.

“All of them.”

Jesse knelt in the grass and gathered the stubs in his palm, counting. “Eight cigarettes in one afternoon.” He looked up at her. “Why would you tell me you were quitting?”

“I am,” she said. “I’m trying. I’m addicted.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Sorry,” she said.

He let out a harsh laugh. “Don’t apologize to me. I’m not the one who’s going to die of lung cancer.”

Then he tossed the cigarette butts back into the grass and stood. “You owe me ten bucks.”

“For what?”

“What the hell do you think? The pack.” He held out his hand. “Give me the rest.”

Lorraine pulled the carton from her back pocket and gave it to Jesse. There were only a few more in there anyway, and she had two unopened packs in her glove compartment.

Inside she hears Jesse in the kitchen. He’s singing and the weight lodged in Lorraine’s chest lifts and floats away.

“Baby,” he calls out.

In the hallway, Sally is asleep on her belly, tail twitching, so Lorraine knows she’s dreaming. She reaches down and gently scratches behind the dog’s ears.

“Hi Sal baby,” she whispers, and Sally stirs, opening her huge, bloodshot eyes without lifting her head.

She blinks sleepily at Lorraine before closing them again. She’s an old woman now, fourteen people years, ninety-eight dog years. And that’s how Lorraine thinks of her; an impossibly old woman.

“She’s sad personified,” Nessa had said wistfully, the day they’d brought the little Basset Hound home as a puppy, when the girls were teenagers.

“Not everyone is sad,” Tanya had countered.

In the kitchen, Jesse’s at the stove in his boxers, and across the room, a giant bouquet sits on the table.

“Lorrie,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

She walks over to the table and touches a silken petal, ducking her head into the bouquet, inhaling.

Flowers mean forgive me. Flowers mean sex. She closes her eyes and tries to make her body relax. She thinks of the woman’s voice on the meditation tapes she’s been listening to. Let go of the tension in your toes. In your calves. Your knees. Breathe the negative energy out.

She can sense him before he touches her—a tightness in the air. He buries his face between her shoulder and her jawbone and she feels the wetness of his eyes on her neck; then the pad of his lips in that same spot, and she almost laughs out loud, that he’s kissing away his own tears. What an idiot, a voice in her head cries out, loud and mocking—though her face reveals none of it.

30

His kisses move from her neck to her collarbone and then he kneels down in front of her and kisses her stomach and the front of her jeans, sliding his hands up her legs.

She hopes the sex goes quickly; she has so much to do. She goes through the list in her head as Jesse picks her up and carries her to the living room. It’s been days since she’s washed her hair. They need more packing boxes. They’re almost out of toilet paper. She imagines Tanya’s repulsion at finding no toilet paper in the house.

Jesse lays her down on the couch and undresses her, removing each piece of clothing as though unwrapping a fragile gift. He folds her jeans and t-shirt neatly, pulls off her underwear, unhooks her bra and guides her arms out through the straps.

Jesse sits on the floor beside her and begins to touch her. He’s so good at touching her, and she hates him for it. He moves his hands over her, softly and tenderly. “I love you,” he says, his voice like a buoy across a dark, calm sea.

For a moment she opens her eyes. From the couch she can make out the top of Sally’s head, her droopy ears splayed out like ponytails on either side of her. Lorraine is glad the dog is asleep. She feels guilty having sex with Sally close by, the way she wouldn’t want to have sex with Nessa or Tanya in the next room.

“What?” Jesse asks.

“Sally,” Lorraine says.

“Sally’s fine,” says Jesse.

Lorraine closes her eyes again. She lifts her hips off the couch and Jesse tightens his grip on her thigh, the other hand still moving patiently. She squeezes her eyes tighter and clenches her muscles and feels that double-sided pang of wanting and not wanting it to be over.

But it ends and she gasps and lets her hips drop.

There it is—home. The brown peeling paint, a faded chocolate, pale yellow trim on the windows and railings and doors. It’s a color combination so familiar to Nessa, so native to Arlington, that a physical sensation accompanies the colors, especially today—coming home for the final time. She knows the gentle slope of the telephone wires against the pale, Spring sky; the forest green trash bins along the side of the house, the way they blend into the chocolate brown.

A realtor’s sign protrudes from their small lawn, which is barely a lawn at all. A big blue banner across: SOLD. A bunch of red balloons are tied to the porch railing, bouncing and bobbing off one another. Someone, the real estate agent probably, has put flower pots leading up the front steps.

Inside, at first Nessa doesn’t recognize her mother. From the back Lorraine looks old and small. Mostly it’s her shoulders, the way she’s curled into herself, her neck bent as if praying, though all she’s doing is washing a dish. Her jeans are too big for her and the seat of her pants sag, the band of her underwear exposed.

“Mom,” she says, walking up behind her and Lorraine whirls around, a flash of alarm in her eyes. She smiles and Nessa is shocked to see that there are braces on her mother’s teeth.

“Sweetie,” Lorraine says, hugging her. When she pulls back, she covers her mouth with her hand.

31

“Aren’t they awful? Dr. Nathan recommended them.”

“They’re not so bad,” Nessa says, horrified. “But I don’t get it, your teeth were fine.”

Jesse appears in the kitchen then with Nessa’s bag. He walks over and puts his arm around Lorraine’s waist and tugs her shirt down a little. Jesse has always towered over Lorraine, but today they look exorbitantly mismatched—like they’re existing on two different scales. Jesse, ten years younger than Lorraine, has never quite lost his boyishness, and even though there is gray in his stubble now, and a softness in his belly, he has the look of an overgrown kid—bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked.

Nessa feels a swell of sadness at her mother’s sloppiness—that she’s allowed her shirt to ride up like that, that she lets her underwear show. Tanya, she’s certain, will feel irritated by Lorraine’s appearance, and therein lies some fundamental difference between her and her sister. Although Nessa could guess, she doesn’t know how this difference came to be—that Tanya ended up one way, and Nessa another.

“I can’t believe it,” Nessa says, glancing around. “The house already feels so empty.”

Lorraine looks around the kitchen as though seeing it for the first time. “It’s felt empty for awhile,” she says, and then she leans into Jesse who squeezes her shoulder.

Nessa begins to wade through the piles of clothing in her and Tanya’s old bedroom. Most of it should have been thrown out years ago—bell-bottom jeans from elementary school, training bras with fraying straps, period-stained Days of the Week underwear. There’s the denim jacket with red roses embroidered onto the back that Nessa wore almost every day in middle school, Tanya’s faux-leather jacket from Limited Too, a metallic blue. Among the clothing is Ellie the Elephant and Lisa the Monkey, their fur worn and faded, their bodies limp.

Each item feels loaded and slightly magical to Nessa, the way the smell of Elmer’s glue might transport you back to a specific classroom, or the opening chords of a song, to a specific childhood crush. Holding the stuffed animals in her hands, Nessa is glad that Tanya isn’t here yet: Tanya, who isn’t drawn to nostalgia, who looks forward with a vengeance, and never back. Her sister would have rolled her eyes at Nessa, cradling these forgotten animals.

Nessa takes out her phone and snaps a picture of the room, then sits down beside the piles. She opens her texting thread with Henry and types a message: my childhood bedroom, she writes, and attaches the photograph. But she deletes the text and writes another: My mom got braces, it’s weird. But she deletes that one, too. She doesn’t want to scare him off, and talk of families means you want someone to understand you.

Nessa types another message: I’m still sore from this morning. Clicks send.

A few seconds later she gets an emoji back: a winking smiley face sticking out its tongue. And then: Come back I miss your body.

She smiles and puts her phone down beside her and collapses onto the floor. Then gets back up and goes to the bathroom; tries to pee but nothing comes out.

She texts Tanya from the toilet. Mom has braces.

Tanya’s response, dictated by Siri, appears immediately: What the actual fuck.

32

When Tanya arrives later that evening, Nessa and Lorraine greet her outside in the driveway.

“The traffic was horrendous getting out of the city,” Tanya announces, as she embraces Lorraine and then Nessa. “It took me literally two hours to go twenty blocks.”

Tanya has always had the mysterious ability to look fresh, even after a five-hour drive. Her hair is pulled up into a neat ponytail, a few dark strands framing her face, and when Nessa leans in to hug her, she gets a whiff of Tanya’s shampoo—coconutty and feminine. She’s wearing black linen pants and a fitted black t-shirt and tiny diamonds sparkle in her earlobes. Her face is clean, free of make-up except for her lips which are painted a matte pink, and the slightest suggestion of blush on her cheekbones. She looks, as she always does, prettier than Nessa remembers.

“You must be starving,” says Lorraine, tucking a strand of hair behind Tanya’s ear.

“I snacked in the car,” Tanya says, recoiling just the tiniest bit from their mother’s touch. Nessa waits for Tanya to mention Lorraine’s braces but Tanya doesn’t say anything. Her sister seems to be avoiding looking at their mother at all.

When they go inside, Jesse appears in the front hall. “Hi there, Tanya,” he says.

She shoots him a one-second smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Hey.” “Want me to grab that?” He reaches for her suitcase, but Tanya holds tight to her bag. “I got it.”

A reaction flickers across Jesse’s face, before disappearing. “How was the trip?”

“Long and uneventful.” Tanya pushes in the retractable handle of her rolling suitcase with a click and starts to make her way upstairs. “Ness,” she says, over her shoulder, her voice warming. “Want to come up?”

Nessa and Tanya drive to the Walgreen’s on Mass Ave to fill Eitan’s prescription. It’s nice being in the car with her sister, driving past The Capital Theatre and Quebrada Bakery, the convenience store on the corner of Mass Ave and Everett where they used to walk to as kids to buy candy. Most things are the same.

Mass Ave is lined with apartment buildings, a mix of pre-war and affordable housing—boxy buildings from the 60’s and 70’s. Colonial houses interspersed among the dozens of small businesses.

They drive past the side street leading down to Spy Pond, where when they were little, their mother and father used to take them on picnics. Then, past their old high school—big, brick and domineering with white columns and a steeple on top like a church. Nessa glances at Tanya but her sister does not look over to the school on their right, not even for a second.

Nessa takes the first dose of antibiotics in the car, in the Walgreens parking lot.

“You really should go see your doctor.”

“I know what a UTI feels like.”

“Yeah but it matters what kind of antibiotics you take.”

“Did Eitan not want to write the prescription or something?”

Tanya regards Nessa with unmasked exasperation. She seems to be deciding what to say next. “The responsible thing is to go to the doctor, Nessa.”

“What I really need to do is start peeing after sex.”

33

Tanya looks out the window and Nessa wishes she hadn’t said the last thing about sex.

“That place looks nice,” Tanya says.

“What?”

“That café.” Tanya gestures out the window, across the street. “With the yellow awning. Mom’s leaving Arlington just as it’s getting kind of cute.”

Nessa looks at the darkened storefront with the pretty yellow awning, Louisa’s in white script across the front. She can’t imagine her mother and Jesse in a coffee shop like Louisa’s—one that sells five dollar cookies and plays mellow, indie music—a bulletin board by the front counter advertising yoga and guitar lessons.

It’s the kind of place her mother might admire from outside the window but if she suggested going in, Jesse would scoff.

“I could make you better coffee in our own goddamn kitchen,” he’d say.

“It’s for the atmosphere, Jesse,” her mother would protest.

“I’ll give you atmosphere, baby.” Then Jesse would put his arm around her and squeeze tight, pulling Lorraine away from the shop.

Those were the kinds of conversations they had. She knew that Tanya found them cheesy—maybe disgusting. It reminded Nessa of teenage love. Always showing off for one another. Always flirting, always fighting.

“So what’s his name again?” Tanya asks. “This guy?”

“Henry.”

“Are you guys in love?” Tanya smiles at her sarcastically.

“I don’t love him,” Nessa says. “Sometimes I don’t even like him.”

“What don’t you like about him?”

“He’s kind of disgusting, actually. He picks his nose in front of me,” Nessa says. “I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. Once I saw him wipe it underneath the seat in my car.”

Tanya laughs. “Ew, Nessa. Did you call him out?”

“No, we don’t have that kind of relationship yet.”

When they get home, Nessa and Tanya and Lorraine sit on the front stoop together. The sun has set and the sky is a deep blue, punctuated by the milky streetlights up and down Winter. Across the street, a neighbor’s big screen TV flashes color in the downstairs window. When Lorraine lights a cigarette, Tanya leans back, fanning the air in front of her. “Mom, you have to quit.” When Lorraine doesn’t respond, Tanya shields her nose and mouth with her hands. “It’s selfish to smoke.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re essentially committing suicide. We want you around. We don’t want to watch you—” “Jesus, Tanya,” Nessa says. “Chill.” Nessa tends to forget how critical her sister is, how quick Tanya is to feel disappointed by everyone, as though each of their flaws is a direct and personal attack on her.

34

Lorraine puts her cigarette out on the porch step and tosses it in one of the flower pots. “How’s your dad?” she asks.

“He’s good,” Tanya says, her voice rising in pitch, content to change the subject now that the cigarette is out. “They’re all doing well. They’re going on a vacation soon, to Maine or something. Ben broke his arm a few months ago, but he just got his cast off.”

Hurt tugs at Nessa. She hadn’t known about their half-brother’s arm or the vacation in Maine.

“It’s so interesting, to imagine your father having a son,” Lorraine muses. “I bet he’s good with him.

Jonathan’s always been confident enough to not get competitive with other males. I always liked that about him.”

“Is Jesse like that?” Nessa asks, though she knows the answer.

“Jesse gets competitive with the mailman for god’s sake. ‘Why does he always wave at you like that?’” she mimics, shaking her head. “Jesus Christ. I’m glad you two are girls. He adores you.”

“What about Eitan?” Nessa asks.

“He’s secure,” Tanya answers shortly. She seems bored by the conversation, or annoyed with it; Nessa can’t tell which.

“He’s so handsome, Eitan,” Lorraine says to Tanya, in a low, confiding voice, like a girl at a sleepover.

Tanya doesn’t respond but she leans her head on Lorraine’s shoulder and closes her eyes. “I’m tired, Mom,” she says, suddenly soft and childlike, and Lorraine puts her arm around Tanya’s shoulder. Nessa envies that about her sister; Tanya’s ability to be nurtured by Lorraine.

“I’m so happy my girls are home,” Lorraine says. She puts an arm around Nessa too, and Nessa sinks into it, and for a moment there’s a feeling of closeness, like they might all sit there for awhile—but then Tanya lifts her head and says, “It’s too cold out here.”

“Go inside, honeys,” Lorraine says. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

Nessa and Tanya stand up and go inside, leaving Lorraine on the steps so she can smoke in peace.

VIKING

35

On sale June 8, 2021

Pa ul Sl ovak on T he S to ne Lo ve s t h e W orl d b y B ri a n H a l l Colum McCann has called Brian Hall “one of the quieter geniuses in American fiction,” and after some time away from the writing world, he’s letting that genius flower again. Brian wanted to be a scientist, like his parents and like some of the characters in his new novel, but I am awfully glad he decided to become an author! He is also a very accomplished classical pianist, which explains why he writes so well about music in this indelible portrait of a very American family.

Share your thoughts with Paul pslovak@prh.com

37

An excerpt from The Stone Loves the World: The thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales In bushes Pipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing, Which a year ago, or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales, Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.

—Thomas Hardy Tuesday, February 16, 2016 Feeling like a freak, she almost ran out of the office, rode the B62 home to pack her bare minimum shit, hopped the G and the E, and here she is under the sign of the dog.

“Where to?”

The lean animal devours miles on the wall behind the bored woman’s head. Ten customer service windows, two open. Possible combinations of two from a set of ten is forty-five, four times five is twenty, largest prime number less than twenty is nineteen, nineteenth letter is S. “Seattle.”

“Seattle, Washington?”

“Is there another one?”

“I meant, that’s a long trip.”

Woman is smiling. Probably pointless friendliness.

“Depends what you’re comparing it to. Can I get a ticket to Saturn?”

Now a puzzled look.

“Never mind.”

38

The woman, like a skee ball machine, produces a chain of tickets, z-folds and hands them over. Liquid scarlet inch-long artificial nails, gold ring on fourth finger with bulky ruby or rhodolite garnet or chromium paste. The gleam of it is terribly distracting.

She takes the ticket, finds the gate. There’s no such thing as luck, but the next departure is only seventy minutes away. First stop, Baltimore. The narrow sprung device bolted to the wall is deliberately designed to be uncomfortable (this fucking world), so she unrolls her pad and settles on the floor. The tiled wall is white, with a black border cutting in at the corners to isolate white squares, very common, there must be a name for it. She googles, finds nothing.

She would take out her Newman, but can’t concentrate. Well she certainly fucked up everything, didn’t she? Instead of escaping on the bus, she could escape under it. They’re everywhere in the city, just wait at a corner and launch yourself so that the two vectors of motion intersect. She envisions the shining wall of white steel and glass humping up and over, then gulping as the driver hits the brakes too late. Windshield wipers like praying hands. Brainless bystanders screaming, fainting. Most people call this ideation. Mathematicians call it “doing a Ramanujan.”

So why doesn’t she? Cowardice?

A man waiting in line at the next gate keeps looking at her. Twenties, scruffy beard, skinny jeans, dun winter jacket. She wants to inform him, the reason you have skin is so that you will always know where you end and the rest of the world begins. Nature provides this service free of charge. He should read Wishner (everyone should read Wishner): “From the eastern chipmunk we have learned the lesson of how an animal survives and prospers by minding its own business.”

Ambling to the corner, minding her own business. The city where no one notices you. The bus approaching, forearm across her eyes, good-bye, cruel world! Maybe it’s not cowardice that’s stopping her, but a modicum of dignity. Too dramatic, too public. Calling attention to herself, the way her mother likes to do. She has never needed anyone, witnesses included. A concealing cornfield and a combine harvester.

A long-abandoned vat of acid in a crumbling factory in the Rust Belt. A turnout in the Cascades with a spectacular view.

What she needs is a little time to think.

1965–1976 When Mark was five years old, his parents took him and his older sister to the New York World’s Fair. They stayed in a dark house that belonged to some lady his mother knew. The front yard sloped down to a busy street. During the boring evenings when they talked, his parents seemed to think he would play in this yard. But he could see: the smallest stumble and he’d roll, roll faster, fall flailing and die under screeching tires.

On the way to the fair, subway doors opened and closed automatically. A family entering a car could be sliced in two, parents and older sister in the accelerating train looking back at the orphaned five-yearold on the platform.

The fair was bright and hot. His mother called it “sweltering,” which made him think uneasily of swim39

ming in sweat. There was a big metal Earth called the Unisphere. It had three rings which his dad said represented satellites named Echo, Telstar 1, and Telstar 2. His dad said the theme of the fair was “Peace Through Understanding,” and both of his parents laughed. Mark sat with his mother in a boat that floated through the Disney pavilion, while puppets twirled, clacked, and sang “It’s a Small, Small World.” When they sang, their faces split in half. Mark liked the igloos.

Everyone was eating Belgian Waffles. They were big fluffy seat cushions with pits to hold all the strawberries in syrup and whipped cream. Mark wanted. He flapped his arms. His father told him to pipe down.

In the sweltering heat, on a stretch of bright sidewalk, he vomited up a Belgian Waffle.

The ferris wheel was a like a big automobile tire. Susan rocked the gondola, but Mark was scared and Dad told her to stop. There was a time capsule that would be opened in five thousand years. There were long lines in the glare. He held his mother’s hand while Susan fidgeted in and out of the line and he worried that a man in uniform would appear and announce that she had lost her place, and they would all have to go to the end of the line and it would be her fault but she would never admit it.

Mark loved the ramps, which rose in curvy sweeps and sweepy curves, like flight paths of whisperjets taking off. There were escalators, monorails, elevators, cable cars, floating seats, rising stands. “Man conquers gravity!” Susan read from a sign. “Pretty corny.” Mark fought with her over who could be first to pretend to drive the luxury convertible on the Magic Skyway. He cried and got his way because he was younger. Susan was ten and should know better. The car floated up a ramp and went through the time barrier. Animatronic Triceratops babies broke out of shells, a Brontosaurus in a swamp lifted its head, chewing weeds. Then came the dawn of man. Cavemen invented the wheel and fought a mammoth. To Mark’s disbelieving delight, one father caveman was rubbing his butt in front of a campfire.

Even better was Futurama. Mark climbed on the conveyor belt and drank in the dioramas, while the chair he sat in whispered in his ear about the wonders to come. Transports on balloon wheels served lunar mining colonies. Submarine trains carried riches from the ocean floor. The best came at the end: the City of Tomorrow! Streamlined cars moved soundlessly down automated highways. Elevated disks of parkland and arcades led to clean skyscrapers that glowed with yellow squares of rooms and offices.

Mark’s whole being ached.

In first grade, he felt serious and adult. The desks were arranged in a grid. The teacher, Miss Peabody, showed the class how to write the full heading that went on top of your schoolwork, if you already knew how to write, which Mark did: Mark Fuller, 1st Grade, Miss Peabody, September 8, 1965.

Writing the year on an official document made him think about it for the first time. He had been born in 1959. He’d just turned six. By the end of this grade, he would be writing “1966” on the heading. 1959 and 1965 would never come back. When he got to Susan’s age, it would be 1970.

How strange.

Then it occured to him that he would probably still be alive, and not even very old, in the year 2000.

Which meant that, one day, he would live in the City of Tomorrow. Happiness flooded him. It was a long way off, but he was content to wait. Waiting, in and of itself, had always made him happy.

40

There was a new show on TV that Mom thought he might like called Lost in Space. It started at 7:30 and was over by 8:00, so he would have time to get ready for bed afterward and have his light out by his bedtime at 8:30. At eight, Mom called downstairs, where he was kneeling on the living room floor with his elbows on the hassock, his face near the screen. Since the show was over, he should come up and brush his teeth.

But the show wasn’t over. There had been a mistake in the TV Guide. The show was an hour long.

And at some point during the previous half hour, Mark had had a revelation: Lost in Space was the most important thing in the world.

Mark had always obeyed his bedtime, but he howled upstairs to his mother: he couldn’t!

Maybe she heard the true note of anguish in his voice. For the first—and it would prove to be the last— time of his childhood, she relaxed the bedtime rule. He rushed upstairs at 8:30, ready to perform speedy, grateful miracles, and his light was out by 8:40. For the rest of Lost in Space’s three-year run, he watched it (elbows on the livingroom hassock, face inches from the screen), in his pajamas with his teeth brushed.

For Christmas that year, he got The Giant Golden Book of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles. He loved the biggest ones, the sauropods—Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus and Brontosaurus—the ones that stood in swamps and chewed weeds. He loved their long necks and tails and their plump strong legs and circular flat-bottomed feet that looked like the hassock. He loved their smooth gray skin. His favorite was Brontosaurus, Thunder Lizard. “Like the two other giants, she is a peace-loving plant-eater,” the Golden Book said. The drawing showed her being attacked by Allosaurus. “He likes meat. Great chunks of fresh meat!” In the drawing, she was up to her shoulders in water. Her long neck was stretched back in a sweeping curve, her long tail curled around her, trying to protect. You couldn’t see her eyes, but the straight line of her jaw made her look sad. Allosaurus was biting her neck, and his clawed foot was digging into her back. Blood was dripping down the smooth skin. “What a battle this is!” But Brontosaurus only wanted to chew weeds. “Brontosaurus cannot save herself now. But as she sinks, she throws her great weight upon the killer. Allosaurus, with his jaws still locked about Bronto’s neck, is pushed beneath the water. Thirty tons pin him, helpless, in the sand.”

So they both died. But only one of them deserved it.

When Mark took the book out, he usually turned to this page. He stared. He read the text again and looked again at the picture. The rainclouds were dark and mottled. The weeds were bright green. The Allosaurus had evil yellow eyes. You couldn’t see her eyes. Sometimes it made Mark cry. “But soon the water rolls peacefully over the hidden forms. Slowly a layer of shifting sand blankets killer and victim alike. And so the years roll on.” This made Mark sadder. Did her pain matter? She was there, and then not there. The years rolled on. Her suffering, like 1965, would never come back.

That winter his parents gave him and Susan a talk about fire safety. If they smelled smoke or saw a fire, they shouldn’t stop to put on clothes or get anything, anything, they should run straight out of the house.

Mark nodded. He had earned their trust. They grilled Susan, whom they suspected of inattention and disobedience. Susan gave Dad the runaround about what if she was in the bathtub, she wasn’t going outside bare naked. Susan was close to getting popped. Mark, meanwhile, was surprised to find himself 41

making a mental reservation. He even seemed to be feeling a sly pleasure from the thought that he knew something his parents didn’t know, and that the reward of earning their trust was that they would never suspect he would harbor such a thought. Yes, of course he would run straight out of the house—except for a lightning fast secret diversion to the toy closet, where (he knew exactly where it was, he always put it in the same place) he would grab the Golden Book of Dinosaurs and carry her out of the fire.

Was the luxury convertible that he’d driven on the Magic Skyway a Chevy or a Ford? Dad said Fords had better bodies, but Chevies had better engines, and that was why he always bought a Chevy.

“It was neither, dumbass,” Susan said. “It was a Lincoln.”

In second grade, the superintendent’s son came in talking about a Vulcan nerve pinch and started tossing other kids around. He spent the day trying to draw what he said was the coolest spaceship ever, but couldn’t get it right, so he got frustrated and scary.

Later, Mark learned that Star Trek came on at 8:30 on Thursdays, which was past his bedtime. One night he woke up with a stomachache and came downstairs and found his father watching the show. He was allowed to lie on the couch for a few minutes. A man wearing those futuristic clothes like pajamas was running through the woods and then a piece of metal like a TV antenna popped up from behind a rock.

Mark thought, “This is the kind of show grown-ups watch,” thus absolving himself from having to spend any time worrying about it, and fell asleep.

Mom brought Mark to an optometrist. He picked nice frames with dark plastic on the top and clear gray plastic on the bottom, because they looked like what scientists on TV wore. The optometrist called them “classic.”

He thought glasses would bring everything closer, but instead they made things slightly smaller and clearer. It was astonishing. He wondered how it worked.

He started taking piano lessons. He practiced on his mother’s Cable & Sons upright.

There were eighty-eight keys on the piano, and there were also eighty-eight constellations, which was pretty interesting. Mom had wanted to be an astronomer, but she also wanted children. “I made the right choice,” she said. He practiced in the dining room while Mom cooked in the kitchen. “That’s a wrong note!” she called out, whenever necessary.

“I loved summer camp,” Mom said, and showed him the brochure. Up until this moment, Mark had assumed he would also love summer camp, but when he looked at the pictures he saw gangs of smirking, confident boys holding balls of various kinds, and he got a dreadful sinking suspicion that camp would be like two straight weeks of gym class.

He was eight. Mom sewed his name tag into all his clothes. She gave him a white cotton laundry bag with a drawstring. She bought him a forest-green sleeping bag with ducks and hunters printed on the flannel inside.

He went.

He had never before experienced the fear and misery of the next two weeks. The kids were bullies. The counselors were inattentive and unjust. One of the latter, refusing to listen to an elementary fact regarding the cause of a disagreement, grabbed the back of Mark’s neck and pinched it so hard that Mark was sore 42

for two days afterward. One of the meanest boys could hawk up and send flying gobs of spit so voluminous and solid they looked like milkweed pods. Mark dreamed long afterward of those floating, saggy, soggy hammocks of mean-spirited spit.

When Mark was ten, his father bought a TV that fit on the kitchen table. Now they had two black-andwhites. Dad scoffed at color TVs, with their red and green ghosts. “They haven’t figured out the technology yet,” he chuckled.

The new TV had a second dial that you turned to reach strange new channels called UHF, which stood for Ultra High Frequency. It turned out the old familiar channels had always been VHF, which meant Very High Frequency, though no one had had to call them that before UHF showed up. The existence of this second dial bothered Mark. It hinted at future additional complications. Also, the two UHF channels had weirdly high numbers: 38 and 56. Why were they so far apart? You could click the dial to dozens of other numbers and you got only static. It seemed like a wasteful system.

But Mark reconciled himself to it because Channel 56 was showing reruns of Lost in Space. They cut off the credits and music at the end, which was extremely annoying.

When he had watched the show at age six, in the living room, Susan would stand behind him sometimes and sneer. “That just wouldn’t happen.” Or, “For chrissake, they don’t even know the difference between a galaxy and a solar system.” Or a final verdict, when the pretty melody came on during the warm family moments: “Vomitous.” But now, passing through the kitchen, age fifteen, she was no longer mean. She’d say, “That’s Zachary Smith, right? He’s an amazing asshole, right?” Or, “Have you noticed the guy playing the dad has this one little spot of gray hair on one side? I wonder why they don’t dye that?”

When she lingered like this, Mark felt proud that the show was holding her attention. He hoped she would sit down after a minute and get absorbed, and then they could watch it together and he could fill her in. If a stupid bit happened to come along—he had begun to notice these—he mentally winced, even though she didn’t pounce. But she always walked out after a little while, and it pained him to think that the show had failed her, and at the same time he wanted to protect the show from her indifference. He wished there were a version of the show with all the great parts and none of the stupid bits.

Now it was his mother who sneered. “That family deserves everything they get,” she’d say, passing through the room. “Smith betrays them over and over, and they still save him.” The boy in the show, Will Robinson, was Mark’s favorite character. He had dreamed many times that Will and he were friends. He’d even had a couple of dreams about Will that were kind of weird and intimate. Will was Zachary Smith’s friend, and always championed the idea of forgiving him after one of his betrayals. “That kid is as soft as a peeled grape,” his mother said. Regarding Zachary Smith, she always proposed the same solution: “I’d kick him in the balls and shove him out the airlock.” Mark didn’t mind these comments, the way he would if Susan or Dad said them. Mom hated all TV. Around this time, he got a frisbee for his birthday. He loved it because it looked sort of like the Jupiter 2. Mark couldn’t think of a more evocative name for a spaceship than “Jupiter 2.” Sometimes he said the words under his breath and was filled with an unnameable emotion, like a key fitting a keyhole in his mind.

He liked drawing the Jupiter 2. If you drew it right, it was wonderfully plump and yet pointy at the rim, 43

sleekly curved yet also paneled in an indescribably pleasing way.

On the show, the ship always crash-landed at an angle behind a rocky ridge, so you never saw the impact itself. Mark practiced in the side yard and got pretty good at throwing the frisbee in a tilted arc.

If he got the range right, the frisbee flew high, then hesitated, slid off the curve and came angling down behind the bushes near the house. When that happened, it looked almost exactly like the crashing ship in the show. Mark would investigate the site: suspended in twigs (the Robinsons clambering down, John helping Maureen, Don helping Judy), or cushioned in moss, or resting half on a little stone that looked exactly like the huge boulder it was supposed be. He would evaluate the site for its potential as a makeshift settlement. Then he’d throw the frisbee again.

His father was a physicist. When Mark asked him what that meant, he said, “A physicist is someone who figures out why some things stand up and other things fall down.”

Mark was bothered by what he suspected was condescension in that answer.

For Christmas Mark got a book called The World of Tomorrow. He recognized the cover—it was a photograph of the City of Tomorrow that he’d seen at the World’s Fair five years ago. Most of the book was about other things; he never read those parts. Instead, he looked at the photos of the City, reading and rereading the accompanying text. “Vacations are very popular in our World of Tomorrow, for every worker has almost five months off each year. Some people do not work, but prefer to get along on the government’s guaranteed annual income of more than $10,000 a year.”

Scrutinized at length and up close, the City was as clean and inviting as he remembered. Little trees and clipped grass and little people and futuristic bubble cars sitting in circular white parking garages. Rosy evening light. People promenading on plazas. Circular buildings, circular fountains. Mark kept gazing at the skyscrapers with their sides that curved out toward the bottom, their random pattern of lit and unlit windows. He gazed at the windows, those translucent squares of uniform yellow light, and became filled with that same unnameable emotion.

That summer camp two years ago, his mother told him, had just been the wrong one. This new camp was recommended by the parents of one of Mark’s friends at school. Doug had gone there last year and loved it, and he would be going again. Mark was going for a month this time and it would be great. Mom’s favorite memories of childhood were all from her times at summer camp.

When he arrived, Mark learned that he and Doug were assigned to different cabins, but he was assured this would make little difference. He waved goodbye to his parents.

For the next four weeks, Mark hardly ever saw Doug. Doug was good at baseball and it turned out he had sports buddies from last year. Mark couldn’t throw, bat, or field. Doug distanced himself. Mark was also terrible at volleyball, basketball, soccer, tennis, and archery. He had the further disadvantage of crying when kids made fun of his tendency to cry whenever they made fun of him.

His cabin of ten was ruled by Kenny, a small boy with a pale face and dark curls who had dirty magazines in his footlocker, and who lay in bed wriggling under his blanket and cooing in a baby voice about the enormous boner he’d just gotten. Like bullies in books, he had two big cabinmates who served as his enforcers. Kenny was kind of a genius. He got all the kids in the cabin to do what he wanted by continually 44

holding out the slight possibility of being accepted by him, and thus of his calling off his two goons, who did whatever he wanted with an unquestioning devotion that puzzled Mark. Between them, they could have torn Kenny in half, so why didn’t they? There came the day when Steve, the only other kid who had consistently been at the bottom of the pecking order along with Mark, and who Mark had occasionally looked to for a spark of compassion, offering Steve the same—there came the day, about two weeks in, when Steve also begged excitedly to see Kenny’s latest boner, and Mark was alone.

One day, Mark came into the cabin to find it empty except for one of the goons. He hesitated at the door, but the goon waved him in. This one was Jeff. He was looking through the other goon’s footlocker.

That one was Russell. “You’re not such a bad kid,” Jeff said. “Kenny’s a little prick, isn’t he?” Relief and hope warmed Mark. Might this be the wished-for rebellion of the goons? He didn’t say anything. He stood in the glow of Jeff’s humanity. Jeff was still rummaging in Russell’s locker. He pulled out some candy bars from Russell’s care package. He unwrapped one and took a bite. “You want one?”

“No thanks.”

“Come on. No one will know.”

“No, that’s OK.” “Russell’s taken some from your care package, you know. And from mine, too, that asshole. That’s why I’m getting back at him. Don’t be a wuss. Take it.”

Mark didn’t want to jeopardize this fragile new bond. “OK.” He reached out his hand.

There was a hoot of glee from the platform above where the tents were stored, and down hopped Russell. “You fuckin’ stealing from me, fag?” He came scooting over the intervening cots and footlockers with simian agility, arms already pinwheeling for the pummeling. As Mark went down, terrified and despairing, a part of his mind considered the possibility that the goons were smarter than he’d credited them for.

He collected Matchbox cars. His parents gave him two or three every birthday and Christmas, and he also bought them with his allowance at Woolworth’s. One car cost fifty cents. They were made in England, by the Lesney company. His mother always said (he was beginning to realize that whatever Mom said, she always said) that Matchbox cars were better than Hot Wheels. “Look at that detailing on the front grill.

Whereas, look at this flakey chrome crap. Leave it to the Great American Businessman to make a shitty toy car.”

Mark’s favorites were a copper-colored 1950 Vauxhall Cresta, a gold Opel Diplomat, a cherry Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, a green Ferrari Berlinetta, and a royal-blue Iso Grifo. There was something about the vibrant color of the Iso Grifo that particularly entranced him. It glowed like a deep pond inviting him to jump in.

One of his blankets was made of a lightweight artificial material that, when you lifted it at its midpoint and let go, would settle into perfect mounds and curvy channels. Bowl-shaped depressions became home sites, whereas channels were roads working their way over the hills. He drove the cars along the channels, admiring the way they handled the curves, which demonstrated their precision engineering.

On his 11th birthday he got an electric train, along with an engineers’ station his father had preliminarily made from a kit. The station was beautiful, with a red brick storage room on the first floor and a green 45

clapboard office above. There were window-shade decals in the upper windows and a tiny broom and lantern glued immaculately next to the door. Over the following months Mark used his allowance to buy other model buildings and tried to construct them as heartbreakingly neatly as his father had done, never quite succeeding. His father had chosen HO-gauge, which fit the Matchbox cars pretty well, and now Mark had a train and buildings and cars and crossings and crossing gates, and he set them up in different configurations. The train circled, the cars waited at the crossings, then crossed. The Vauxhall Cresta turned right, accelerating. The Iso Grifo parked by the old mill. It all gave him that unnameable emotion. He could almost believe it was real, and the closer he got to that fugitive belief, the more he felt that feeling.

He added buildings and cars. Now he had a Mercedes Benz ambulance and a Ford Galaxie police car. He had a cattle truck with a cow and three calves. One of the calves sometimes wandered onto the track and got hit by the train. Sometimes that made the train derail, which looked realistic. He was eleven, twelve. Susan sometimes joined him on the rare occasions when she was in the house, or not heavily asleep and more or less unwakeable in her bedroom. She asked him who lived where, where did they work, who was having affairs with whom, what was the name of the town. Mark was so thrilled at her interest that he would never have admitted that he had never thought about any of this, and so had to make up answers on the spot. “That’s the Feebersons’ house. He’s a dentist.”

“That’s a strange name.”

“Is it?”

“But that’s OK.” Susan was the one who pointed out that his town had hardly any homes in it. He had two different log cabins and one modern house that Susan called a fifties tract house (that was where the dentist now lived), and the rest were train stations, lumber mills, switching towers and factories. He had five train stations (he loved the long platforms with the variously distributed barrels and trollies) and three big factories (he loved the complicated chutes and stacks and conveyor belts). “But that’s OK,” Susan said. “It’s kind of cool. It looks like a Siberian labor camp.” She sometimes even drove one of the cars from one place to another. She put two cars in front of a factory with a space between them, then took the Rolls Royce (“The cigar-chomping factory owner,” she explained) and parallel parked it, with a confident flourish, ending with it beautifully snug against the imaginary curb. Mark worried a little at first, but he was never able to detect mockery in anything she said. After a few minutes she would disappear, and Mark would go back to executing left and right turns, speeding and getting stopped by the police car. Whatever cars Susan had touched, he always left where they were.

How had Dad painted so perfectly, so bubble- and streak-free, so gleaming and uniformly smoothly red the 1962 Ford Thunderbird that sat on the shelf above the desk in his basement study?

How did his mother cut Christmas wrapping paper with one steady thrust of the scissors, not even opening and closing them, simply parting the paper against the sharp inner edge, making a line as straight as a yard stick?

How did she wrap Christmas boxes so that, on the ends, when she folded the last perfect triangle against the other perfect triangles, she didn’t get that little wave of extra wrapping paper at the top that 46

(after Mark applied the last piece of tape on his box) deflated and lifted the paper off the box a little, making the edges frustratingly uncrisp?

How could Dad tell that Mark had missed a patch in the lawn when the uncut grass was barely a quarter-inch longer than the cut grass? “Stand in the sunlight. See? No, bend down. Come on, don’t be dumb, look along the row, surely you see the shadow.”

Why did they have to argue about how to hang the toilet paper? Mom: “It’s supposed to hang off the inside, so when you pull the paper toward you, you tear it off against the roll.”

Dad, pretending patience (but you could tell he was angry because the outside corners of his eyelids were turned down): “If you hang it that way, the flowers are upside down.”

“Why should I give a fuck which way the flowers go?”

“I’m only pointing out that the manufacturer, who might be expected to know, designs it to hang with the flap forward—” “Why should I give a flying fuck what the fucking manufacturer thinks?”

Clementi was charming, Mom said, but Kuhlau was a no-talent bum. The last good composer was Brahms. Scarlatti’s music was fascinatingly different from Bach’s, you could hear it from the first measure.

Schubert had beautiful melodies, but he worked them to death. Schumann was underrated.

The Hardy Boys books were insipid pieces of shit, Mom said. Mark read Enid Blyton, whose books Mom brought home from the library. Blyton was famous in England, but none of Mark’s Hardy-Boy-worshipping friends at school had ever heard of her.

Mark drank Ovaltine, while his friends drank Nestlé’s. Nestlé’s was sweeter, so of course they liked it.

Drake was first, with Yodels and Ring-Dings. They were covered in dark chocolate and were good.

Hostess shamelessly ripped Drake off with Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs, which looked exactly like Yodels and Ring-Dings except they were covered in pandering milk chocolate. When Mark’s friends brought out their Ho-Hos at lunch (no one else seemed to eat Yodels any more) he couldn’t resist telling them the disgraceful corporate history.

All Mark’s friends’ families had multicolored lights on their Christmas trees, which looked gaudy and cheap. The Fuller Christmas tree had only blue lights, and only blue and silver metallic balls, and the old heavy lead icicles that hung down properly but you couldn’t buy them anymore because of stupid safety concerns, and white paper snowflakes made beautifully and variously by Mark’s mother (how did she six-part fold the paper so exactly, how did she cut with the exacto-knife so neatly?) and ironed by her to perfect planar flatness (which when Mark said once, Dad said was a redundancy). When you turned off the room lights and plugged in the tree, it glowed ghostly blue, like a tree from the fourth dimension, signaling to you with its finger-spread arms.

The best candy bar any company had ever made was Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, but you could never find them in the Boston area, and as far as Mom knew, maybe they weren’t even made any more, which would be typical.

VIKING

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