I am alive but not alive. Sister in the kitchen, searching for what we lost. As soon as Mother is home, that will be the end. The lilies on the sill in soft decay. In hushed voices, the fence unlocked. Her words soft, slow, precise. Sister is quiet. I hold her in the light.
She hands me an orange. I peel it and spit. We are as scared as before. Something in this late hour—a spirit hanging in the brush. It is like the wind and the day through the trees. I tell her she must feel it. Her arms fall by her side.
It has been so long. She lays in the grass and moans. I nod, I nod. So that will be it. She will not come. Only the flickering of headlights on this soft breeze. Only the murmur of a voice when the wind catches the hollow of a tree.
Careful. The seeds held in your palm. One day, a grove you say. One day, teeming with life. The drought gone. Through the corridor a cantor, singing faintly on the road. You are sick. I am too, Sister. But there is nowhere for us to go.
What else remains? You will not say. The pictures have long faded to parchment. You hand them to me. You said you are writing a novel? Use this, you say. Write on this. They teem with what was, as a novel should. I say no, Sister—a novel must teem with what is.
+++
Mother is sick like us. She holds the bowl to her chapped lips and slurps. We swallow and her eyes flicker behind her tangled bangs. I knew her best when I was younger, when little had touched us. Now her arms are in bruises. Now her blouse is in frays. Now she is and is not, her voice a low croak which echoes when we sleep.
I talk about the country, about the edge of all things. I talk about the cure and the bodies laid out in grace, in great floral display. The words scrawled on the pantry door.
The doctor removes his stethoscope and puts it to Mother’s heart. He tells her to breathe out slowly. I imagine the cool of the metal on my chest, as if I am her. The air hisses through the tube of her throat.
When we are out on the porch I ask him again if she’ll be alright. He lays the stethoscope around his neck, clicks close his medicine bag. I take a step forward and as he parts his bubbled lips to speak I know from that open gaping mouth that the answer is hiding in his lungs, just as it is with her.
Sister asks but Sister knows. She rocks slowly in bed, a blanket draped around her shoulders. I wish I had better news. I kiss her cheek, whisper in her ear. I wish I had better news.
Mother prepares another bowl. We eat slowly. The kitchen light rocks back and forth. Sister leans back on the counter, popping bread in her mouth.
I read aloud to Mother. It is the Old Book, from the Before Times. The title has long disintegrated.
I say, this is the story of a cat.
She nods slightly. Or maybe it is a rocking. Maybe her head was rocking, and I only thought it was a nod.
I say, the cat goes into a box.
I say, a man comes up to the box, and he leans down next to it.
I say, the cat does not make a sound. Not even a scratch.
I say, the cat’s tail slowly curls around itself but the man does not know,
because he cannot see the cat and the cat cannot see him.
I say, the man must decide if the cat exists.
Sister says yes. The breadcrumbs fly from her mouth, ripple on the surface of the soup. She raises her spoon and widens her eyes and in the evening light says yes.
And in an exhale as cold as the ice which lines the kitchen window, Mother says:
“No.”
+++
No one has come along this trail for several months. I have counted the weeks with bottle caps on my bookshelf. Now there are 28 in all.
“We’re the last ones?”
I nod slowly. Yes, Sister. We’re the last ones.
“What about the doctor?”
The doctor comes here at night, in a puttering cloud of smoke. He comes through the gate and asks for Mother and I blink and tell him she's in the den. He laughs and throws his stethoscope around his neck, follows the path like a blood-sniffing shark.
I light a cigarette. The task is an ugly one but we know it must be done. Never have we said it. But it hangs above us, like the smoke. Like the fading sunlight and the gentle wind, the low humming of the fan.
As he leaves the doctor laughs. I can see it in his gestures, in how quickly he places the money in his pocket. He tells me that when he drives here he sees a creature which steps out into the light and coos, black nose pointed toward the moon. I have always known what must be done.
We could do it with a pillow, says Sister. As gentle as sleep.
No, I say. It will be painful. And slow. The kicking.
We could do it with herbs, she says. She knows the right combination. A quiet nap after supper.
No, I say. That would mean she does it to herself. The poison spoon.
OK, she says. We’ll lay her in the garden. Let the riders take her.
The riders? I say.
They will come.
(This story has been excerpted from The Deer, now available from Dalkey Archive Press)
Recommended reading: Carole Maso AVA, Haruki Murakami After the Quake, Margarita Karapanou Kassandra and the Wolf, Virginia Woolf The Waves, Lewis Hyde The Gift, Jesse Ball March Book, Andrei Tarkovsky Sculpting in Time, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Dictee, Cormac McCarthy The Road, Juan Cárdenas Ornamental, Italo Calvino Cosmicomics, Pablo Katchadjian What to Do, Nathalie Sarraute Tropisms, Emily Hall The Longcut, Ashton Politanofff You'll Like It Here
