Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

A car horn screeched the sunlight into her eyes. Bob, she called.

Later that day, El would sit in the front pew of the First Church of Christ on Avenue J and nod along as the choir sang, “Going Up Yonder.” She would be next to her future mother-in-law; her husband was at home, looking out the window.

The church mothers would cast glances her way, happy that a white person had finally sat in the pews without looking over their shoulder. The pastor, Melvin K. Ritter, commanded the congregation to stand and be thankful; El liked this. She liked standing and begging, slowly, not too fast, the pure act of supplication, of asking things of someone who might just actually fulfill her deepest wishes. Just before his final sermon, he introduced Bob’s bride-to-be to the entire congregation.

Child’s too small, said one church mother in the pew behind El. Better put some meat on that skeleton, said another, smiling at Bob’s mother. Them Krauts do indeed have it bad, after all this time.

When the sermons were done (there were five in all), the church people went to the basement and sat at a long table in front of several platters of minute steaks, cornbread stuffing, and okra; many wrinkled hands took hold of El’s, wishing her the best with Bob. Lord knows other girls have tried to get him to change his ways, the hands told her. Hopefully, El would be the lucky one.

You and Meggie head to the watering hole—Monique has texted that she will get there as soon as “lovingly possible.” Meggie blushes as she stuffs her phone into her bra. She says she’s all right with two ladies in love even though there is something creepy about it.

You enter the woods—about a half mile in is the bluestone watering hole, the one that is said (by Aunt Vitrine and others) to contain healing liquids. The trees hang low, and you notice that it is dark but not pitch; you can still find your way. You’d hoped for complete darkness—what would they say when they learned you hadn’t said a proper goodbye to the man? Down here, everyone deserves a proper goodbye, hated or no.

You hope for one of those legendary water moccasins to snake its way to your ankle and take out a huge chunk.

Would it be wrong to tell them that the last time you saw your father, you said nothing specific? That the words forgive and forget never made it past your lips? That you engaged the reams of selves who came before you—the little baby in the carriage, the kindergartner, the science project acolyte—and told them it was time to close up shop, as though your father had never ever existed? He once was alive, and was all things to those former selves. You, on the other hand, despise that idea. Was it wrong to turn your head away from the phone the last time he called? Was it wrong to crunch up the letter in which he explained he’d suffered a major heart attack and needed just a touch of kindness? You hate him for keeping your mother, and you hate your mother for having been kept. You have his last will and testament sewn into a seam of the blouson, sort of like the way slaves traveled with their papers. You’d read about slaves in the fifth grade. Your father tested you on their names for a social studies test. He patted your head when you got the answers correct.

This thirty-seven acres is yours.

Immediately as you step foot under the canopy of trees, you are eaten by mosquitoes. Meg has something in a small flask; she offers it to you, and you take it down fast, lemonade and something bathtubby. Meggie giggles uncontrollably and admits that she’s always wanted to visit California and start herself all over again.

But dreams cost, she suddenly moans, her lips puffed out with fake citrus.

At the next clearing, she stops and puts her cheek against your arm. You had the best mom in the world, Meggie says.

You tell her you know.

Meggie ignores you, saying, She saw me on one of your visits—I think you were only seven at the time. Your mama saw me and marched straight to my mama—God rest Evangeline’s soul but my mother was a dumbass—and told her I was having a quote unquote rough time of it. That I needed more taken care of. That she only had one Meggie in the world, and what was the sense in ignoring that?

Your mama, she says. She saw my belly bowling out like a sail in the wind. She saw my legs bow and the ringworm on my cheeks blossom like flowers. Your mama saw, Sasha Jean. And she said something. And at that point, my mama had no choice but to look at me.

You want to ask her what happened, but Meggie is already walking away. You remember Meggie’s family, the father whose eyes were so outlined in whiskey they looked like huge beetles on his face, the mother whose cough shook every house on the road of relatives. Once they both took you to church and called you their adopted daughter—Look at this good skin, they’d said, almost in unison. You laughed when they did this—was it 1970 or even earlier?

You arrive at a grove of pear trees, tucked away neatly in this back wood against a small bluestone quarry. Vines everywhere come alive as snakes and then go back dead as plants. This is where Grandma Elldine used to go for her canning fruit. You smell their fragrance, wish to reach for the fruit. Your mama, Meggie keeps saying, If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t’ve been alive.

Your mother died on her way to the VFW nursing home where she was a volunteer. She’d been planning to visit her own ailing mother in Kiel, had even booked her tickets. But then her heart conked out, and she had to be placed in the nursing home morgue. The veterans went crazy, sliding their wheelchairs into walls, throwing food at each other. How could Mrs. Elspeth be gone? And so young?

Try as he might, the Polish doctor in charge could not get those men to calm down for weeks and weeks.

You are ten and Fortunoff is the store of dreams. Like your Aunt Vitrine once said to you: don’t let your eyes get bigger than your stomach! Well, this is your mother in Fortunoff. She wants everything; as our neighbor Miss Jerldean sometimes says behind her back, Fifth Avenue tastes on a Bowery budget. It is a Saturday when the two of you escape here; your father lies in the backyard with a cold compress on his forehead; it was only the day before that you told your mother about the nighttime touching. In Fortunoff, you and she can forget the world.

Your mother admires the blue onion pattern of the Wedgwood, the clean dullness of the Rosenthal. Are you in the market for bone today, the salesgirl asks. Her tag says EVIE. It’s a bit early, but have you seen the Christmas Spode?

Your mother says as a matter of fact, she was in the Christmas mood right now. Who says you can’t have Christmas in July?

Here, Evie says, Feel this. Villeroy and Boch, straight from the Manhattan showroom. Hold one of these cups up to the light and you can see clear through, like it’s a veil.

Last spring, the Church Mothers of Pomegranate Baptist chipped in to get your mother a set of white coffee cups, a thank-you for being such an inspiration to the kids at Tuesday Teen Services. Who knew that hearing all that talk about life during the Big War would have made such a difference to these young folks? Always mouthing off as if they knew life better than everybody else—thank God for Miss El and her tales of woe at the hands of that Nazi scum! (The Church Mothers were not above occasionally using a swear word in their speech.) Four white mugs, supposedly out of pure Japanese china, had been stuffed in a Christmas box and tied together with twine. I seen those very same mugs in White’s Department Store, two for a dollar, said Bob. Why these females have to be so damn cheap? There isn’t a damn thing for you in that church.