The Best American Short Stories 2013 (17 page)

Morehouse called an ambulance. People said the ambulance service was quick around here, or could be; that was reassuring. As he and his family waited, though, Goodwin stared at his father lying on the floor and was shocked at how much like a house that could not be fixed up he seemed. He stared into the air with his milky eyes as if he did not want any of them to be there and, oddly, covered his mouth with his still-trembling hand. It was a thing he did now at funny times, as if he knew how yellow his teeth were; or maybe it was something else. Goodwin’s father had always been a mystery. Now he was more manifestly obscured than ever. The few things he said were like ever-darkening peepholes into fathomless depths.
You don’t know what old is
, he said sometimes.
Everything take long time. Long, long time
. And once, simply:
No fun
.

His more demonstrative mother cried the whole way to the hospital, saying that his father fell because he didn’t want to move into this house, and that she didn’t either. It was her way of making herself clear. She didn’t care whether or not it was the sort of house a person could live in by herself one day, she said. Chinese people, she said, did not live by themselves.

They were passing the turnoff for Goodwin’s house when she said that. Goodwin was glad they were in an ambulance. He smiled reassuringly at his father though his eyes were closed tight; he had an oxygen mask on.

Right now we need to focus on Dad, Goodwin said.

His mother would not take her pocketbook off her lap.

Morehouse, following them in his car so that they would have a car at the hospital, called Goodwin on his cell phone.

If they ask whether Dad needs a translator, tell them to fuck off, he said.

Does he need a translator? asked the admitting nurse.

He’s lived here for fifty years, answered Goodwin politely.

The nurse was at least a grownup. The doctor looked like a paperboy.

Does he need a translator? he asked.

Fuck off, said Morehouse, walking in.

How Goodwin wished he had said that! And how much he wished he had ended up like Morehouse instead of like Morehouse turned inside out. For maybe if he had, he would not have sat in the waiting room later, endlessly hearing what his mother wanted him to say—
You guys can come live with me
—much less what she would say if he said it:
You are finally learn how to take care of people. Who knows, maybe next time your wife get divorced, she come back, marry you again
.

Instead his mother was probably going to say,
You know why your wife dump you? She is completely American, that’s why. Even she marry you again, she just dump you again. You wait and see
.

Fuck off, he would want to say then, like Morehouse. Fuck off!

But of course, not even Morehouse would say that to their mother anymore. Now, in deference to her advanced and ever-advancing age, even Morehouse would probably nod and agree. Their mother would say,
That’s what American people are. Dump people like garbage. That’s what they are
.

And Morehouse would answer,
That’s what they are, all right, the fuckers
.

Nodding and nodding, even as he went on building.

BRET ANTHONY JOHNSTON

FROM
Esquire

L
AMBRIGHT HAD SURPRISED
everyone by offering to drive his son’s girlfriend home. The girl was three months shy of seventeen, two years older than Robbie. She’d been held back in school. Her driver’s license was currently suspended. She had a reputation, a body, and a bar code tattooed on the back of her neck. Lambright sometimes glimpsed it when her green hair was ponytailed. She’d come over for supper this evening, and though she volunteered to help Robbie and his mother with the dishes, Lambright had said he’d best deliver her home, it being a school night. He knew this pleased his wife and Robbie, the notion of him giving the girl another chance.

Driving, Lambright thought the moon looked like a fingerprint of chalk. They headed south on Airline Road. A couple of miles and he’d turn right on Saratoga, then left onto Everhart, and eventually they’d enter Kings Crossing, the subdivision with pools and sprinkler systems. At supper, Robbie and the girl had told, in tandem, a story about playing hide-and-seek on the abandoned country club golf course. Hide-and-seek, Lambright thought, is that what y’all call it now? Then they started talking about wildlife. The girl had once seen a blue-and-gold macaw riding on the headrest of a man’s passenger seat, and another time, in a pasture in the Rio Grande Valley, she’d spotted zebras grazing among cattle. Robbie’s mother recalled finding goats in the tops of peach trees in her youth. Robbie told the story of visiting the strange neighborhood in San Antonio where the muster of peacocks lived, and it led the girl to confess her desire to get a fan of peacock feathers tattooed on her lower back. She also wanted a tattoo of a busted magnifying glass hovering over the words
FIX ME
.

Lambright couldn’t figure what she saw in his son. Until the girl started visiting, Robbie had superhero posters on his walls and a fleet of model airplanes suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire. Lambright had actually long been skeptical of the boy’s room, worrying it looked too childish, worrying it confirmed what might be called “softness” of character. But now the walls were stripped and all that remained of the fighter fleet was the fishing-wire stubble on the ceiling.

Two weeks ago, one of his wife’s necklaces disappeared. Last week, a bottle of her nerve pills. Then, over the weekend, he’d caught Robbie and the girl with a flask of whiskey in the backyard. She’d come to supper tonight to make amends.

Traffic was light. When he stopped at the intersection of Airline and Saratoga, the only headlights he saw were far off, like buoys in the bay. The turn signal dinged. He debated, then clicked it off. He accelerated straight across Saratoga.

“We were supposed to turn—”

“Scenic route,” he said. “We’ll visit a little.”

But they didn’t. There was only the low hum of the tires on the road, the noise of the truck pushing against the wind. Lambright hadn’t contributed anything to the animal discussion earlier, but now he considered mentioning what he’d read a while back, how bald-eagle nests are often girded with cat collars, strung with the little bells and tags of lost pets. He stayed quiet, though. They were out near the horse stables now. The air smelled of alfalfa and manure. The streetlights had fallen away.

The girl said, “I didn’t know you could get to Kings Crossing like this.”

They crossed the narrow bridge over Oso Creek, then came into a clearing, a swath of clay and patchy brush, gnarled mesquite trees.

He pulled onto the road’s shoulder. Caliche pinged against the truck’s chassis. He doused his headlights, and the scrub around them silvered, turned to moonscape. They were outside the city limits, miles from where the girl lived. He killed the engine.

“I know you have doubts about me. I know I’m not—”

“Cut him loose,” Lambright said.

“Do what?”

“Give it a week, then tell him you’ve got someone else.”

Her eyes scanned the night through the windshield. Maybe she was getting her bearings, calculating how far out they were. Cows lowed somewhere in the darkness. She said, “I love Rob—”

“You’re a pretty girl. You’ve been to the rodeo a few times. You’ll do all right. But not with him.”

The chalky moon was in and out of clouds. A wind buffeted the truck and kicked up the odor of the brackish creek. The girl was picking at her cuticles, which made her look docile.

“Is there anything I can say here? Is there something you’re wanting to hear?”

“You can say you’ll quit him,” Lambright said. “I’d like to have your word on that subject.”

“And if I don’t, you’ll leave me on the side of the road?”

“We’re just talking. We’re sorting out a problem.”

“Or you’ll beat me up and throw me in the creek?”

“You’re too much for him. He’s overmatched.”

“And so if I don’t dump him, you’ll, what, rape me? Murder me? Bury me in the dunes?”

“Lisa,” he said, his tone pleasingly superior. He liked how much he sounded like a father.

Another wind blew, stiff and parched, rustling the trees. To Lambright, they appeared to shiver, like they’d gotten cold. A low cloud unspooled on the horizon. The cows were quiet.

“I see how you look at me, you know,” she said, shifting toward him. She unbuckled her seat belt, the noise startlingly loud in the truck. Lambright’s eyes went to the rearview mirror: no one around. She scooted an inch closer. Two inches. Three. He smelled lavender, her hair or cool skin. She said, “Everyone sees it. Nobody’ll be surprised you drove me out here.”

“I’m telling you to stay away from my son.”

“In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.”

“There’s no mystery here,” Lambright said.

“Silly,” she said.

“Do what?”

“I said you’re silly. There’s mystery all around us. Goats in trees. Macaws in cars.”

Enough, Lambright thought. He cranked the ignition, switched on his headlights.

“A man who drives his son’s underage girl into remote areas, that’s awfully mysterious.”

“Just turn him loose,” he said.

“A girl who flees the truck and comes home dirty and crying. What will she tell her parents? Her boyfriend? The man’s depressed wife?”

“Just leave him be,” he said. “That’s the takeaway tonight.”

“Will the police be called? Will they match the clay on her shoes to his tires?”

“Lisa—”

“Or will she keep it to herself? Will it be something she and the man always remember when they see each other? When she marries his son, when she bears his grandbabies? These are bona fide mysteries, Mr. Lambright.”

“Lisa,” he said. “Lisa, let’s be clear.”

But she was already out of the truck, sprinting toward the creek. She flashed through the brush and descended the bank, and Lambright was shocked by the languid swiftness with which she crossed the earth. Blood was surging in his veins, like he’d swerved to miss something in the road and his truck had just skidded to a stop and he didn’t yet know if he was hurt, if the world was changed. The passenger door was open, the interior light burning, pooling. The girl jumped across the creek and bolted alongside it. She cut to and fro. He wanted to see her as an animal he’d managed to avoid, a rare and dangerous creature he’d describe for Robbie when he got home, but really her movement reminded him of a trickle of water tracking through pebbles. It stirred in him a floating sensation, the curious and scattered feeling of being born on waves or air or wings. He was disoriented, short of breath. He knew he was at the beginning of something, though just then he couldn’t say exactly what.

SHEILA KOHLER

FROM
Yale Review

S
ANDRA HOLDS HER
eldest child, S.P., tightly on her lap while she listens to her sister, who is telling her about her husband, a heart surgeon. S.P. is for Sweet Pea or Sweety Pie or maybe it’s Simply Perfect, Sandra can’t even remember anymore. The child squirms a little, leaning forward as the mother runs her fingers through her fine brown hair. “Of course, his secretary adores him, his nurses adore him, his patients adore him. He’s wonderful with post-op care,” her sister is going on, talking about her blond, handsome husband, her large blue eyes shining with tears, while Sandra watches her two little ones, who sit facing each other on the slate that surrounds the big blue pool, their bare legs stretched before them.

Her babies are in their identical white swimsuits and their white sun hats, with the lace around the brim and the elastic under their chins. They are pouring water, which they scoop up from the pool in their green buckets, over each other’s legs and feet, wiggling their little toes and laughing loudly.

“They are too close to the water,” S.P. says, and Sandra laughs at her and says to her sister, “What a worry wart!” and leans back in the chaise longue.

“I’m not a wart!” S.P. says to her aunt, and adds, “And they can’t swim yet.”

“I’m only joking! You are my Best One! My Angel! My S.P.! who does know how to swim!” Sandra whispers in her ear, talking to her and squeezing her tightly, taking a playful nibble from her ear. The child shifts about on her lap.

“Do sit still, darling,” she says.

Sandra’s head is throbbing as she surveys the scene, shading her dazzled eyes from the glare. She stares in some disbelief across the vast, empty garden, the cluster of oaks, jacarandas, and royal palm trees, in the distance the brilliant beds of dahlias, strelitzias, and nasturtium, the fishpond, and the green lawns that stretch out before her. None of it seems quite real: the light too bright, the shadows too dark, the sky too blue. Even her sister’s blond curls and large blue eyes, which are filling with tears, don’t seem quite real.

There are few visitors visible at the hotel at this dead hour of the afternoon. Perhaps the guests are resting in their rooms in the heat of the day. Or perhaps everyone has gone down to the coast for the holidays, she thinks. The waiters stand about idly in their white uniforms, their arms dangling lifelessly, chatting to one another in low voices.

She feels a little sick, and she has the strangest dizzy-making feeling that she doesn’t know what she is doing out here on her own with the children. Why has she made this long, arduous airplane trip out to South Africa over the Christmas holidays without her husband? Why has she come back to the place where
she
was a child? She thinks of the almost sleepless night in the hotel room, the baby girl up so frequently, screaming with pain. Jessamyn often has the earache.

She holds on to her eldest child, S.P., who is squirming on her lap, but she has her eye on her youngest, who is, if the truth be told, her Favorite, her Pet, an adorable flaxen-headed baby girl only three years old who is carrying her green bucket on her arm like a handbag and tottering dangerously along the edge of the pool. “Careful, Jez, don’t fall in the water!” she calls out to her baby as her sister looks at her watch. She says she should be getting home. Her husband likes her to come home early in the afternoon.