The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel and Rick Moody

he said, an affirmation of life.
    “You have to believe me here,” he said. “Do you see that this is true? Do you know this about yourself?”
    “I do and I don’t,” I said.
    “You do and you do, ” he said.
    I remembered when another doctor made the news. A young retarded boy had found his father’s gun, and while the family slept, he shot them all in bed. The police asked the boy what he had done. But the boy went mute. He told them nothing. Then they called in the doctor.
    “We know you didn’t do it,” the doctor said to the boy, “but tell me, did the gun do it?”
    And yes, the boy was eager to tell him just what that gun had done.
    I wanted the same out, and Dr. Diamond wouldn’t let me have it.
    “Dr. Diamond,” I said, “I am giving up.”
    “Now you are ready to begin,” he said.
    I thought of Andean alpaca because that was what I planned to work up next. The feel of that yarn was not the only wonder—there was also the name of it: Alpaquita Superfina.
    Dr. Diamond was right.
    I was ready to begin.
    Beg, sl tog, inc, cont, rep.
    Begin, slip together, increase, continue, repeat.
     
    Dr. Diamond answered the door. He said Dale Anne had run to the store. He was leaving, too, flying to a conference back East. The baby was asleep, he said, I should make myself at home.
    I left my bag of knitting in the hall and went into Dale Anne’s kitchen. It had been a year. I could have looked in on the baby. Instead, I washed the dishes that were soaking in the sink. The scouring pad was steel wool waiting for knitting needles.
    The kitchen was filled with specialized utensils. When Dale Anne couldn’t sleep she watched TV, and that’s where the stuff was advertised. She had a thing to core tomatoes—it was called a Tomato Shark—and a metal spaghetti wheel for measuring out spaghetti. She had plastic melon-ballers and a push-in device that turned ordinary cake into ladyfingers.
    I found pasta primavera in the refrigerator. My fingers wanted to knit the cold linguini, laying precisely cabled strands across the oily red peppers and beans.
    Dale Anne opened the door.
    “Look out, gal,” she said, and dropped a shopping bag on the counter.
    I watched her unload ice cream, potato chips, carbonated drinks, and cake.
    “It’s been a long time since I walked into a market and expressed myself,” she said.
    She turned to toss me a carton of cigarettes.
    “Wait for me in the bedroom,” she said. “ West Side Story is on.”
    I went in and looked at the color set. I heard the blender crushing ice in the kitchen. I adjusted the contrast, then Dale Anne handed me an enormous peach daiquiri. The goddamn thing had a tide factor.
    Dale Anne left the room long enough to bring in the take-out chicken. She upended the bag on a plate and picked out a leg and a wing.
    “I like my dinner in a bag and my life in a box,” she said, nodding toward the TV.
    We watched the end of the movie, then part of a lame detective program. Dale Anne said the show owed Nielsen four points, and reached for the TV Guide.
    “Eleven-thirty,” she read. “ The Texas Whiplash Massacre : Unexpected stop signs were their weapon.”
    “Give me that,” I said.
     
    Dale Anne said there was supposed to be a comet. She said we could probably see it if we watched from the living room. Just to be sure, we pushed the couch up close to the window. With the lights off, we could see everything without it seeing us. Although both of us had quit, we smoked at either end of the couch.
    “Save my place,” Dale Anne said.
    She had the baby in her arms when she came back in. I looked at the sleeping child and thought, Mercy, Land Sakes, Lordy Me. As though I had aged fifty years. For just a moment then I wanted nothing that I had and everything I did not.
    “He told his first joke today,” Dale Anne said.
    “What do you mean he told a joke?” I said. “I didn’t think they could talk.”
    “Well, he didn’t really tell a joke—he poured his