Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher

as she walks through the door, though Jen has no idea what she’s saying. There is dead silence, then a muffled shriek as her mother sees Grampa’s dead eyes staring somewhere off the arm of the couch, his face ashen.
    â€œJennifer! Jennifer!” her mother yells at her, but Jennifer stares valiantly at the puzzle, trying to figurehow the feather goes into Dumbo’s trunk. “Jennifer, your granddad . . .”
    Jen stares harder at the puzzle.
    Her mother takes Jen by the waist and pulls her away from the couch, and Grampa slumps over. Jen automatically moves back to try to prop him up, but her mother snatches her again by the waist and points her toward the door. “You go outside, dear,” she says desperately. “I’ll see to Grampa.”
    Jen turns on her mother then, eyes blazing, defiant. “You won’t see to Grampa,” she says between gritted teeth, her hands locked onto her hips, upper body protruding over her legs so far as to defy gravity. “You won’t see to Grampa. Grampa’s dead. He’s dead. Nobody ever sees to Grampa.” Her mother’s hand flashes out and slaps her hard across the face. The tears and the snot begin to run then, but Jen holds her ground. “And nobody ever sees to me!” she yells, and runs out of the room.
    Her mother stands stunned, as usual, totally ineffectual at dealing with either crisis. She turns to her father’s corpse. . . .
    Jennifer feels the steel casing start to form around her heart from her perch in the tree just outside the back porch. First her father comes home, sees her there butmakes no acknowledgment and disappears into the house. After her father come the fire department and a policeman. Grampa is taken away on a long bed with wheels, and his whole body is covered with a blanket. Jennifer can’t see him, but she knows it’s him. Then other people start to arrive; some she knows are aunts and uncles and cousins and some are just neighbors. Some she doesn’t know at all. Several folks look at her up in the tree, and a few make feeble attempts at coaxing her down; but Jennifer will not budge. She will sit there well into the night.
    If I could have sat him all the way up . . . she thinks. If I could have sat him all the way up, I could have saved him. She hates her mother for making her leave the room before they got the puzzle fixed. She was the only one in the world who really cared about Grampa. And the people who care about you are the only ones who can save you.

CHAPTER 4
    Dear Preston,
    Been thinking a lot since I wrote last. Funny, most of it’s been about Stacy. My thoughts about her keep me in a constant state of confusion. I said before I hated that she loved you and not me, and that’s not exactly true. I didn’t hate that she loved you. I just hated that she didn’t love me. I fell into the trap of believing that strong feelings about a person are exclusive of feelings about any others. That’s what they tell us, but it’s a lie. The part of Stacy that liked me and talked with me and was intimate in all those ways that aren’t man-woman ways didn’t have anything to do with you. And her love for you, her attraction and her sexual draw toward you, didn’t have anything to do with me. I got them confused, I think; thought I couldn’t have my part without your part. I’m sorry I was such a smartass all those times I said things like“Why go for the Plymouth Duster when you can have the ’Vette?” I think that probably hurt you a lot because you believed the analogy. And truth be known, I probably did, too. I have some things to learn about unwarranted arrogance. I keep going back to this time I ran into her at the carnival. You might remember, it was the time I lost Christy and ended up spending three life sentences grounded to my room. I play it over like it happened yesterday—don’t have a clue why it’s