standing watch; Bill helped grill the steaks. Ray mostly kept his own company—not unfriendly, exactly, but perhaps cowed a little by the presence of the priest.
They had been family and neighbors, assembled on a pretty stretch of yard beside a river. Such happy times, these bouts of normalcy, these glimmers of God’s ordinary gifts. He and his sister reminisced about the Island, but never for long. There was too much here-and-now: the tiny girls, the rising moon, bloody steaks spitting on the grill. How did we land here, Mikey? Elizabeth would say, astonished. Why such beautiful luck?
Elizabeth is gone, but Vivienne remembers. For this alone he loves her.
When they emerge once again from his office, Lizzy waylays him: Here’s your badger , she cackles, handing him a shoe. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Her little teeth make him feel bitten.
Is this what people mean when they claim to have fallen in love?
I don’t want this particular badger , he informs her, I don’t care for the sunglasses he’s wearing. He waits for her face, the entire apple-shaped miracle of it, to crinkle hilariously.
Is it normal, this feeling of bursting, this sustained longing? She pitches herself toward him, her stick arms branching around him, the smell of soap or snow or dirt or strawberry ice cream rising from her coppery hair. Is it normal, this monstrous, engulfing anguish that feels like no other thing? Like no other single thing?
He nearly ate her once. She was so small, so newly arrived in his life, he’d just lifted her out of the bath, warm water dripping from her ringlets and the lobes of her flushed ears, one pink leg dangling from the towel he’d wrapped her in. Arrgharrgh-arrgh , he growled, hoping to make her laugh, kissing at her toes, pretending to be a monster—a nice monster, the one they’d invented and named Biggy. Arrgh-arrgh-arrgh , and then he was nipping her, arrgh-arrgh-arrgh , one pink, beloved toe at a time. Then—this is what troubles him—he took in her entire foot as if he meant literally to devour her, to swallow her whole, to eat her up. Expecting laughter, he found her gaping at him instead, her eyes big and blue and startled. He spit her out, ashamed.
Is this normal? To feel so ravenous, so heartsplit? He’s heard prayer described this way, but has found the opposite to be true. Prayer is his journey toward stillness, a calm, white hollow, a noiseless comfort, the opposite, in fact, of the mysterious, disquieting forwardness of parental love.
He does not want his love to be desperate, the result of having lost his family. He does not want his love to weigh too much.
Vivienne steps into his kitchen now, to copy a recipe onto a pad he keeps hidden from Mrs. Hanson. Lizzy is trying to sell them another badger and also a kangaroo. Sometimes hefails to distinguish between his love for her and his fear of losing her. Too , he adds in his head. Losing her, too.
It is he who requires advice.
He admires the quick strokes of Vivienne’s handwriting, her confident presence in another person’s kitchen.
Of course , she will say. Of course it’s normal. But he does not ask.
EIGHT
On my first day back, the school seemed like a place remembered from a dream. From far down the hall came the staccato notes of a new term, the slam-bang of teachers flinging open cabinets, filling trash cans, stapling lists to bulletin boards, dragging desks into optimistic configurations. The students weren’t due back for a week, but already the place ballooned with the sound of industry, destruction, hope, effort—the main ingredients of any school year.
I stepped out of my office and into the guidance lobby—a misnamed cranny containing the reception desk, a cranky copy machine, and a walk-in vault that sheltered a few decades’ worth of student records. Another door opened into a shabby conference room that we shared with the school nurse. Our school district had more hope than money, and the discrepancy showed especially in
They had been family and neighbors, assembled on a pretty stretch of yard beside a river. Such happy times, these bouts of normalcy, these glimmers of God’s ordinary gifts. He and his sister reminisced about the Island, but never for long. There was too much here-and-now: the tiny girls, the rising moon, bloody steaks spitting on the grill. How did we land here, Mikey? Elizabeth would say, astonished. Why such beautiful luck?
Elizabeth is gone, but Vivienne remembers. For this alone he loves her.
When they emerge once again from his office, Lizzy waylays him: Here’s your badger , she cackles, handing him a shoe. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Her little teeth make him feel bitten.
Is this what people mean when they claim to have fallen in love?
I don’t want this particular badger , he informs her, I don’t care for the sunglasses he’s wearing. He waits for her face, the entire apple-shaped miracle of it, to crinkle hilariously.
Is it normal, this feeling of bursting, this sustained longing? She pitches herself toward him, her stick arms branching around him, the smell of soap or snow or dirt or strawberry ice cream rising from her coppery hair. Is it normal, this monstrous, engulfing anguish that feels like no other thing? Like no other single thing?
He nearly ate her once. She was so small, so newly arrived in his life, he’d just lifted her out of the bath, warm water dripping from her ringlets and the lobes of her flushed ears, one pink leg dangling from the towel he’d wrapped her in. Arrgharrgh-arrgh , he growled, hoping to make her laugh, kissing at her toes, pretending to be a monster—a nice monster, the one they’d invented and named Biggy. Arrgh-arrgh-arrgh , and then he was nipping her, arrgh-arrgh-arrgh , one pink, beloved toe at a time. Then—this is what troubles him—he took in her entire foot as if he meant literally to devour her, to swallow her whole, to eat her up. Expecting laughter, he found her gaping at him instead, her eyes big and blue and startled. He spit her out, ashamed.
Is this normal? To feel so ravenous, so heartsplit? He’s heard prayer described this way, but has found the opposite to be true. Prayer is his journey toward stillness, a calm, white hollow, a noiseless comfort, the opposite, in fact, of the mysterious, disquieting forwardness of parental love.
He does not want his love to be desperate, the result of having lost his family. He does not want his love to weigh too much.
Vivienne steps into his kitchen now, to copy a recipe onto a pad he keeps hidden from Mrs. Hanson. Lizzy is trying to sell them another badger and also a kangaroo. Sometimes hefails to distinguish between his love for her and his fear of losing her. Too , he adds in his head. Losing her, too.
It is he who requires advice.
He admires the quick strokes of Vivienne’s handwriting, her confident presence in another person’s kitchen.
Of course , she will say. Of course it’s normal. But he does not ask.
EIGHT
On my first day back, the school seemed like a place remembered from a dream. From far down the hall came the staccato notes of a new term, the slam-bang of teachers flinging open cabinets, filling trash cans, stapling lists to bulletin boards, dragging desks into optimistic configurations. The students weren’t due back for a week, but already the place ballooned with the sound of industry, destruction, hope, effort—the main ingredients of any school year.
I stepped out of my office and into the guidance lobby—a misnamed cranny containing the reception desk, a cranky copy machine, and a walk-in vault that sheltered a few decades’ worth of student records. Another door opened into a shabby conference room that we shared with the school nurse. Our school district had more hope than money, and the discrepancy showed especially in
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