So begins the ancestral laying-on-of-hands. White on green, the first snowfall comes a sad, melting martyr to disaffected, banknote-colored leaves I hope survive. The mason’s terracotta bricks overlay grass and won’t retain warmth, neither will the cherry tart left on the counter for my friend who recently moved in.
As faces flurry, melt upon each other’s cheeks, I feel a sense of relief. The thousand-piece puzzle is nearly complete. No one is dead. The singing whisper of a choir, or the mindful totality of ancients voices, or something close to Hark, the Herald Angles Sing. My anxious breath returns my lungs with frigid air, then warms that air.
Damp snow accumulates on the white cedars’ arms, until they drop stress, then raise themselves again.
Now that we know what today can be like, can we ever go back to yesterday? She addressed her question to the silver toaster on the counter. In response, it threw up two pieces of toast. Burnt and crisp. She took a bite.
Chew, swallow, gulp. Taste? An afterthought.
The toast was eaten. Tea, coffee, and cigarettes consumed. It was too early for wine.
Hers was a ground-floor studio without a balcony. Only a window which looked out to a once-bustling Dubai street. Now it was silent. Forlorn. The birds few and far in between visited every now and then. But mostly she was on her own.
It had been four weeks since the lockdown.
*
A sparrow descended on her window. Flapping its small wings, the shadowy grey patterns like shutters opening and closing, like the aeroplanes that no longer littered the sky.…
Winter’s frozen fist punched through her windows and crawled over the bare boards where her cold feet stood during the day, and the cradle where her little angel slept, and the small bed where men lay on top of her. Her body only brought in so much, and less since the little angel. One rare client, instead of using her, asked something strange. A bag of warm money sang in his hand.
She accomplished the task as the client had requested–easy. A little trip to the Thames during the night. The client left it outside, and she dealt with it.
She sat on the banks for a few minutes, singing her little angel’s favorite lullaby. The frozen fist loosened around her and a little warmth slipped in.…
“So who’s the father?” her mother asked, combing Paulette’s wet hair.
“We’re married, Mama.”
“But who is he?”
“If it matters Mama, he’s a good man, and he comes from a good family.”
“A college student?”
“An ex-college student.”
“And you said you’re married?”
“Yes, Mama. We had our own rites.”
“But this wasn’t a church, or a court wedding.”
She raised her eyes to the mirror, where she met her mother’s blank gaze.
“I’m not questioning the wedding itself, Paulie. You’re clearly in love with this boy. But you’re home, and I’m guessing he’s in the mountains, fighting. Do you really want to return to that, now that you’re going to have a baby?”
This was how their fights usually started: with her mother pretending to respect her.…
He knew it all as soon as he heard the scream. She ran up from the barn, screaming, crying. He knew what it was, knew what he would have to do before she reached the house, knew even as she sprinted through the back door, kicked off her sandals, bypassed her Mama in the kitchen, and screamed, Daddy! Daddy! A snake at the barn! that he would have to kill it.
He sat shirtless in his armchair. It was Sunday. He worked mornings at Foster’s, came home for lunch, slept for an hour, and attended church in the evening. Unless, of course, his relief was late, or problems at home intervened. Either way, come six o’clock he’d be at the church; and for this reason, he regretted his daughter’s screaming in the living room.…
Philip stared at his computer screen, at row on row of black words stretching across the white page, the first of eighty. Some Ph.D. in chemistry from Lexington wanted his paper edited so that it made sense. The company Phil worked for had six months’ worth of projects stacked up for him. They paid well.
Yet each morning he sat in his bathrobe at his desk and stared out the bedroom window at the cold Pacific breaking along the strand. He struggled to concentrate, felt like a clump of dune grass rooted in place but whipped by emotion. Susan and the past two years flooded his mind.
In the kitchen, his mother fixed his breakfast, father already off to work at the Pharmacy. Philip grabbed his coffee mug and shuffled toward the aroma of French toast and fresh-brewed Brazilian.…
