Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

“This will sound self-centered,” Kirsten says. “But Lucy was really into me. I’m sure it was partly because I wasn’t that into her, and I wasn’t even playing hard to get. I just—” She pauses.

“What?” Casey says.

“I know we have a good life,” Kirsten says. “And the boys—they’re amazing. They amaze me every day. Did I tell you, when we were at the mall last weekend Jack wanted to buy you this purse that was like a fake-diamond-encrusted jaguar head? Its eyes were emeralds.”

“Oh, man,” Casey says. “I can’t wait for my birthday.”

“It’s not that I’m jealous of Lucy Headrick because she’s a rich celebrity,” Kirsten says. “It seems awful to be famous now.” Her voice breaks as she adds, “I just wish that there was someone who was excited about me. Or that when someone was excited about me, I wish I hadn’t taken it for granted. I didn’t understand that would be the only time.”

“ Kirsten. ” Casey uses her top hand to pet Kirsten’s hip.

“I don’t blame you for not finding me exciting,” Kirsten says. “Why would you?”

“We have full-time jobs and young kids,” Casey says. “This is what this stage is like.”

“But do you ever feel like you’ll spend every day slicing cucumbers for lunchboxes and going to work and driving to Little League on the weekend and then you’ll look up and twenty years will have passed?”

“God willing,” Casey says. She moves both her arms up so she’s cupping Kirsten’s breasts over her pajama top. “Do you want me to pretend to be Lucy at camp? Or Lucy now? Do you want me to make you a chocolate soufflé?”

“Soufflé is too French,” Kirsten says. “Lucy would make apple pie.”

They’re both quiet, and, weirdly, this is where the conversation ends, or maybe, given that it’s past eleven and Casey’s alarm is set for six-fifteen or possibly for six, it isn’t weird at all. They don’t have sex. They don’t reach any resolutions. But, for the first time in a while, Kirsten falls asleep with her wife’s arms around her.

In the middle of the night, because she can’t help herself, Kirsten checks to see if Lucy has responded to her tweet; so far, there’s nothing.

My kid walks down Blue Street Diner’s central aisle before slumping into a booth near the toilets. She’s on meds that make her urinate nonstop and requires round-the-clock access to the facilities. Her words.

“The name of the drug is spironolactone, if you’re wondering,” she’d said on our pre-meeting phone call. “Also, I’m trans. The name you gave me is dead and incinerated and I spread its ashes over the Hudson. Say it to my face, and you’ll meet the same fate. I’m Luciana now. Or Luz.”

“You mean trans, like, you’re transsexual?”

“Trans like gender is dead. When can we meet? Should I call you Mom or Jo?”

“Jo’s fine,” I’d said, though I find that name embarrassingly predictable in retrospect. It’s a name I picked for myself after reading Little Women, obsessed, like so many little girls, with the bookish, tomboyish heroine. I should have gone for Beth, or better yet, Amy or Meg.

“Luciana. I really like that. She’s only a minor figure in Catch-22, but something about her kind of sticks with you. Good choice,” I said.

“Whatever. I was just trying to think of a girl version of Lucifer.”

I meet her at Blue Street Diner because I’ve never been. Seemed appropriate to reunite with my stranger of a daughter on neutral ground.

An employee busses tables, pocketing pennies and dollar bills left under jars of Dijon mustard. The screams of a toddler fill the background. For my part there’s some throat clearing, a few aborted questions. Every few seconds I venture a glance in Luciana’s direction. This is the first time I’ve seen my daughter since shortly after she was born, and I am admittedly overwhelmed.

I keep one hand tucked into my handbag, palm secured around the handle of my revolver, ready to shoot if this girl, my child, has re-entered my life in order to harm me in some way, to exact vengeance because I chose to leave her in the care of the state.

Giving up on conversation, I hum the old bluegrass tune “Whiskey Before Breakfast” as I page through the menu. It’s the first song I taught myself on the fiddle, slowly and painfully, when I decided I did not belong to my parents after all and wanted to travel to the South in a caravan.

Mr. Wheelock, Luciana’s father, always wanted me to listen to blues and jazz. He said as a black girl I had no business not knowing Muddy Waters or Billie Holiday, but the fast-paced string melodies of country folk songs spoke to my youthful mania. I told him that as a white man, he had no business not knowing the Osborne Brothers or the Foggy Mountain Boys. Besides, black folks invented country and bluegrass, so I was just going back to the source.

That’s when he told me that I was the most mature young woman he’d ever met. If he’d known then that he’d be dead at my own hands, would he have introduced himself to me that first time? Or would he have gone for another girl? Prone toward awkwardness, I like to think that maybe I was too pretty to resist, that were he able to do it again, he’d choose me knowing I’d murder him.

I suppose that’s why I hated him most—that he found me pretty, and that made me want him. That he knew that and used it. The things an ugly black girl from Brooklyn will do to feel pretty. She’ll dismantle her soul, if it’s required.

“Can I get you guys started with some drinks?” a man says, holding a pen and pad of paper at me and Luz’s table.

“Coffee,” I say. “Says here you guys use a percolator, right? A stove top one?”

“Yeah, miss. And it’s fresh, too.”

“Cookies and cream milkshake, please,” says Luciana. The waiter scribbles down our order before leaving. “What’s a percolator?” Luciana asks.

“You serious?” I say.

“I mean I’m assuming it’s something that percolates, but I could do with a more precise definition.”

When Luciana first walked up the diner, I wondered how much her personality would match up with her appearance. A good deal of it, it turns out. Her hair, coarse red threads that tangle and twist in on each other, contrasts sharply against her noncommittally brown skin, and the effect is overall very striking. She’s got a wide jaw and a wide nose, big lips, like mine. Mascara and eyeliner. Rouge. She’s cute in a kind of dykey way, and I wonder if she’s gay like me. At least I passed down that gift.

The morning after meeting Luz at the diner, I notice frost for the first time on the grass. Autumn is here. The curious chortles of chirping birds are absent. They’ve gone south by now, abandoned upstate New York for Florida, like old rich white people tired of the cold. Flying to warmer climates when the weather turns foul, it’s a pleasant notion. Back in the City, I suspect, New Yorkers are holding fiercely on to the season of sun, beach, and Italian ice. Flip-flops until Halloween, at least.

I remember Mr. Wheelock at about this time of the year buying me a ham and cheese sandwich on a soft white roll at the bodega, preparing us for a picnic on the beach. We’d watch West Indian men play dominoes and backgammon, ignoring the brisk breeze, holding fast on to what was left of September.

See, Coney Island is in decline, preparing for hibernation, and we enjoy a final day. He buys me hot dogs and funnel cakes and cotton candy. I tell him about my dreams, and he tells me I can do anything. He kisses me here, for the first time, a tentative thing that still manages to be sloppy, intrusive. I wonder if this is how it’s supposed to feel. I wonder if I’m supposed to gag, to want to run to the bin and hurl. People stare, but no one says anything because people are people. I see their faces. I know their thoughts. “She can’t be more than fourteen.” I was twelve.