covering the flat land below, not endless tracts of homogenous homes like ours. The hill houses stood on streets lined with old-fashioned lamps that cast a mellow amber glow. They were covered in ivy, blanketed in bougainvillea, clutched by climbing roses, guarded by trellises. There were always lights shining out of their stained glass. And in the cool shadows of their low-hanging eaves and the fairy-tale tangles of their honeysuckle, where crickets bedded down to sing, the hill houses contained an almost unbearable romance.
When I parked the Skylark to sit and be near them for a while, I thought about the people who lived inside, the husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, babies, brothers, sisters. I would sit with my arm dangling out the open window and my head tipped back against the seat, watching, listening, and longing. I would glance over to the empty passenger seat, past the cellophane cigarette box wrappers and Sunshine Realty notepads bearing Dad’s name and photo, past the pieces of newspaper folded into unfathomable origami airplanes that went nowhere, and I would almost see Rasha sitting there in a white dress with the backs of her legs sticking slightly to the seat. I would almost see her there, and then instead of me behind the wheel it would be Dad. I would be in the backseat, but I would be able to tell he was smiling by the curve in his right cheek, and “Chances Are” would be playing on the radio, and we’d be on our way home to our own house high in the hills because we were one of those families that the streetlamps shone above.
Once, in the middle of such a reverie, I caught a flash of myface in the side-view mirror. When I saw my ravenous expression, I felt embarrassed, even though no one was around but the cricket choir. I drove out of the hills toward home, hoping for one of the rare occasions when Dad had fallen asleep in his recliner and I could gingerly pull his reading glasses from his bowed, stubbled face, cover him with a blanket, and hear the soft purr of his snore, but when I arrived he had already gone up to bed, and his chair was empty.
I TRIED TO TELL SIMON about my night drives to the hill houses. “They gave me a feeling,” I said. We lay in his bed face-to-face with our knees pressed together. Already we had talked, touched, and turned away from each other to finally fall into sated sleep. But, as was our habit, one of us had turned back around to face the other, and the other, sensing a stirring, had done the same at almost the exact same moment, so that, forgoing sleep a little longer, we could touch and talk again. He bathed my face in his hyacinths.
“What was it?” he asked. “The feeling?”
“I can’t explain,” I said.
“Try.” The moonlight slipped into the windows through the trees that enclosed Simon’s house. Annette was tucked in her room down the hall, a babyish stream of saliva slowly dampening her pillow. A nightbird crooned.
“It was,” I whispered, “almost like this.”
5 LOBSTER
(Homarus americanus)
AFTER I HELPED TO FREE THE BIRDS from Azar’s Pet Palace, Simon drew me even closer and enveloped me even deeper in his dark warmth. We whispered away many nights in his bed while I stared at the sharp, shadowed planes of his strong Russian face (it was easy to imagine him as young Melnikov, the dashing, doomed soldier who was never mentioned in
War and Peace
), and traced my fingertips over the broad high cheekbones that rose up into his sad eyes, and petted his lush eyebrows and eyelashes. I loved to pinch the plumpness of his earlobes, which echoed the plumpness of the place where his thumb joined his palm and betrayed the vague vulnerability I’d sensed the first time I saw him.
Simon liked to keep the house completely closed up, but when I saw the eager jasmine vines shooting up from his wife’s garden, which had been left to grow wild and weedy in her absence, I begged him to open the bedroom window. He relented, and we breathed the
When I parked the Skylark to sit and be near them for a while, I thought about the people who lived inside, the husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, babies, brothers, sisters. I would sit with my arm dangling out the open window and my head tipped back against the seat, watching, listening, and longing. I would glance over to the empty passenger seat, past the cellophane cigarette box wrappers and Sunshine Realty notepads bearing Dad’s name and photo, past the pieces of newspaper folded into unfathomable origami airplanes that went nowhere, and I would almost see Rasha sitting there in a white dress with the backs of her legs sticking slightly to the seat. I would almost see her there, and then instead of me behind the wheel it would be Dad. I would be in the backseat, but I would be able to tell he was smiling by the curve in his right cheek, and “Chances Are” would be playing on the radio, and we’d be on our way home to our own house high in the hills because we were one of those families that the streetlamps shone above.
Once, in the middle of such a reverie, I caught a flash of myface in the side-view mirror. When I saw my ravenous expression, I felt embarrassed, even though no one was around but the cricket choir. I drove out of the hills toward home, hoping for one of the rare occasions when Dad had fallen asleep in his recliner and I could gingerly pull his reading glasses from his bowed, stubbled face, cover him with a blanket, and hear the soft purr of his snore, but when I arrived he had already gone up to bed, and his chair was empty.
I TRIED TO TELL SIMON about my night drives to the hill houses. “They gave me a feeling,” I said. We lay in his bed face-to-face with our knees pressed together. Already we had talked, touched, and turned away from each other to finally fall into sated sleep. But, as was our habit, one of us had turned back around to face the other, and the other, sensing a stirring, had done the same at almost the exact same moment, so that, forgoing sleep a little longer, we could touch and talk again. He bathed my face in his hyacinths.
“What was it?” he asked. “The feeling?”
“I can’t explain,” I said.
“Try.” The moonlight slipped into the windows through the trees that enclosed Simon’s house. Annette was tucked in her room down the hall, a babyish stream of saliva slowly dampening her pillow. A nightbird crooned.
“It was,” I whispered, “almost like this.”
5 LOBSTER
(Homarus americanus)
AFTER I HELPED TO FREE THE BIRDS from Azar’s Pet Palace, Simon drew me even closer and enveloped me even deeper in his dark warmth. We whispered away many nights in his bed while I stared at the sharp, shadowed planes of his strong Russian face (it was easy to imagine him as young Melnikov, the dashing, doomed soldier who was never mentioned in
War and Peace
), and traced my fingertips over the broad high cheekbones that rose up into his sad eyes, and petted his lush eyebrows and eyelashes. I loved to pinch the plumpness of his earlobes, which echoed the plumpness of the place where his thumb joined his palm and betrayed the vague vulnerability I’d sensed the first time I saw him.
Simon liked to keep the house completely closed up, but when I saw the eager jasmine vines shooting up from his wife’s garden, which had been left to grow wild and weedy in her absence, I begged him to open the bedroom window. He relented, and we breathed the
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