The Best American Short Stories 2016

by Junot Díaz

  He bought eggplants, he bought leeks, he bought endives and grapes; he bought butter and cream and crème fraîche, he bought six different cheeses all wrapped in brown paper.

  At the wine store, he bought a case of a nice Bourgogne. We have enough champagne at the house, I think, he said.

  Grant thought of the full crates stacked in the corner of the kitchen. I’m not sure, he said.

  Manfred looked at Grant’s face for the first time, worry passing over his own, then relaxed. Ah, he said. You are joking.

  At the butcher’s, lurid flesh under glass. Manfred bought sausages, veal, terrine in its slab of fat, he bought thin ham. Grant, who was carrying nearly all the crates and bags, could barely straighten his arms when they reached the car. Manfred looked to the sky and whistled through his front teeth at something he saw there, but Grant couldn’t see what he did.

  We shall have a feast tonight, Manfred said, once they’d gotten in and closed the doors.We shall, Grant said. The little car felt overloaded starting up the hill.

  From behind, from the east, there came a whistling noise, and Grant looked in the rearview mirror to see a wall of water climbing the hill much more swiftly than the car could go. He flipped on the wipers and lights just as the hard rain began to pound on the roof. Grant couldn’t see to drive. He pulled into the culvert, leaving two wheels in the road. If anybody sped up the hill behind him, the Fiat would be crushed.

  Manfred watched the sheets of water dreamily, and Grant let the silence grow between them. It wasn’t unpleasant to sit like this with another man. All at once, Manfred said, his voice almost too soft under the percussive rain, I like your wife.

  Grant couldn’t think quite what to say to this. The silence became edged, and Manfred said with a small smile, More than you do, perhaps.

  Oh, no, Grant said. Amanda’s great.

  Manfred waited, and Grant said, feeling as if he should have more enthusiasm, I mean, she’s so kind. And so smart too. She’s the best.

  But, Manfred said.

  No. No, Grant said. No buts. She is. It’s just that I got into law school in Ann Arbor and she doesn’t know yet. That I’m going.

  He did not say that Amanda would never go with him, couldn’t leave her insane battered mother behind in Florida. Or that as soon as he’d realized he would go up to Michigan alone, leaving behind the incontinent old cat he hated, the shitty linoleum, the scrimping, the buying of bad toilet paper with coupons, Florida and its soul-sucking heat, he felt light. A week ago when they drove up to the ancient stone house framed in all of those grapevines, he knew that this was what he wanted: history, old linen and crystal, Europe, beauty. Amanda didn’t fit. By now, she was so far away from him, he could barely see her.

  He felt a pain somewhere around his lungs: dismay. What he did say was so small but still a betrayal of its kind.

  I’m waiting for the right time to tell Amanda, so don’t say anything, please, he said.

  Manfred’s hands held one another. His face was blank. He was watching the wall of rain out the windshield.

  Grant took a breath and said, I’m sorry. You weren’t even listening.

  Manfred flicked his eyes in Grant’s direction. So, leave. What does it matter. Everyone leaves. It is not the big story in the end.

  Like that, the stone that had pressed on his shoulders had been lifted. Grant began to smile. Grade-A wisdom there, buddy, he said. Lightning sizzled far off in the sky. They watched.

  Except there is one thing you must tell me, Manfred said suddenly. Who is this Ann Arbor woman? And, when Grant looked startled, Manfred gave another small smile and said, That was also a joke, and Grant laughed in relief and said, Seriously, please don’t tell Amanda, and Manfred inclined his head.

  Grant felt uncomfortably intimate with Manfred so close in the tiny car. There had been something he’d wanted to say since Genevieve’s wedding in Sarasota ten years ago, during what was in retrospect clearly a manic swing of Manfred’s pendulum. There had been peacocks running around the gardens; the guest favors were silver bowls. Grant had watched, making little comments about the excess that Amanda lobbed back with bitter spin. He saw things differently now.

  Forgive me for saying this, Grant said. But sometimes, you even look like an Austrian count. You have a certain nobility to you.

  But I am only a Swiss baron, Manfred said. It means nothing.

  It means something to me, Grant said.

  It would, Manfred said. You are very American. You are all secretly royalists.

  In the distance, the clouds cracked and the sky showed blue through them. Manfred sighed. He said, We have had a pleasant talk. But I believe you may drive.

  Grant turned the car on and pushed up the hill, home.

  The women gave out little yodels of surprise when they arrived to find the men in the kitchen in aprons, chopping vegetables. The men looked at Mina when she came out of the car, and Leo felt power turning and beginning to flow in her direction, like the stream at the bottom of the hillside when he shifted rocks in its bed. Outside smelled like rich earth, like cows. Manfred had poured them all champagne and brought the flutes out on a platter, and they drank it on the wet white gravel, looking at the way the vines sparked with late light, the green and purple tinge to the edge of sky. To Mina, they all said. Even Leo got an inch of champagne, which he had always loved like cola. He downed it. His mother was watching his father carefully over her drink, and it was true his father had a dangerous pink in his cheeks. Badness moved in Leo. He stole into the kitchen, now dim with dusk, and to the fireplace, the small ceramic box that had ALLUMETTE written on it, or so Manda had said a few days earlier with her shy French. Leo had to wait for Grant to come in, bouncing Mina’s suitcases up the stairs. His mother and Mina followed behind, his mother explaining the wonky shower, Leo’s schedule, how Leo couldn’t swim yet so everyone had to be careful with the pool. Leo’s father gravely handed him a purple macaron and turned back to cook, and Leo put the sweet thing up the chimney for the pigeons to eat. He hated macarons. He came out on the grass, past the pool, down into the cool orchard with its sticky smell. It appeared that the hawk had grown while he’d gone. It was huge with the shadows that had fallen on it. He stood over the bird on its nest and said words in German, then English, then French. He made some magic words up and said them. In one of his father’s old books, back at home in the castle in the Alps, there had been a drawing of an old bird set aflame and in the next illustration it turned into a glorious new bird. Leo thought with longing of his own bed there, his own books and his own toys and the mountain in his window when he awoke. He struck the match on a stone. The flame sizzled then took. The sticks were wet, but not right under the bird, and those dry twigs caught just before the flame touched his hand. The bird’s feathers, burning, let off a reek that he hadn’t foreseen. He stepped back, crouching on his heels, to watch. Black roil of smoke. When he looked up again it was much later, shadows around him deepened. The bird was a charred, ugly thing now, half-feathered, half-flesh. The fire had gone out entirely, and there was no more red in the embers. A voice was calling for him, Leo, Leo! He stood and ran up the hill, feeling weariness in his legs and all along the back of his neck. It was Mina, with the sunset bright in her hair, with another glass of champagne shining in her hand. Someone is burning something awful, she said, sniffing. An orange-faced boy rode by on a tractor that looked like a leggy animal; he stood up and shouted gleeful words that neither of them caught over the noise. Mina waved, smiled with her teeth. She looked at Leo’s dirty face, his dirty hands. She said, laughing, Wash yourself, eat your dinner fast, and I’ll give you a bath and put you to bed. His heart could hardly bear all that he was feeling. It was either expanding to the sky or contracting to a pin, hard to say. Leo, his mother called, come give me a kiss. Die, he thought, but kissed her anyway on her soft and powdery cheek. He kissed Manda up the giraffe’s neck on her neck, and she blushed and laughed. His father, he would not. Let the boy be, his fathe
r murmured to his mother. The gleam on Mina’s legs up the stairs. He would eat her if he could. He let her wash him with warm water, and she put him in clean pajamas, and he petted her soft cheek and smelled her while she sang him to sleep.

  It was chilly outside on the veranda. Amanda wore a fleece, Genevieve wore a brocaded shawl. They waited for the food to cook and ate terrine on baguettes and drank champagne, listening in the monitor to Leo’s little piping voice and Mina’s gravelly one answering him. There was light coming from the kitchen and on the table one candle in a pewter candlestick that looked ancient. Manfred had put on Peter and the Wolf, which was Leo’s CD, but all of the other music in the house was his sister’s, and all of it was 1990s grunge. There was some kind of newborn glitter in Manfred’s eyes that Amanda was having a difficult time looking at directly. Something had shifted between Grant and Manfred; there was a humming line between them there had never been before.

  Yesterday, Manfred said suddenly, I poisoned the rats in the kitchen. I forgot to say. Do not eat the cheese you will find in the corners.

  Poor little rats, said Genevieve. I wish you had told me. I would have found a humane trap somewhere. It’s an awful thing to die of thirst. She pulled the shawl tighter to her.

  Oh! That explains the falcon, Amanda said. The others looked at her.

  Leo saw a falcon fall dead out of the sky this morning, she said. It was huge. It was in the driveway. I don’t know how you all missed it. I bet it ate a poisoned rat and croaked midair.

  No, Genevieve said, too quickly.

  It seems likely, doesn’t it, Manfred said. Oh dear. It is terrible luck to kill a raptor. It signifies the end of things.

  I mean, the thing probably just had a heart attack, Amanda said, but rested her head on her husband’s shoulder, and it took him a moment to slide his chair over and put his arm around her.

  The wind restrained itself, the treetops shushed. The moon came from behind a cloud and looked at itself in the pool.

  Now Mina was singing in the monitor, and Amanda said, Listen! “Au Clair de la Lune.” She sang along for a stanza, then had to stop.

  Why are you crying, silly? Genevieve said gently, touching Amanda’s hair. Twice in a day and you never used to cry. I once saw all four of your big old brothers sitting on you, one of them bouncing on your head, and you didn’t cry. You just fought like a wild thing.

  Hormones, I think, Amanda said. I don’t know. It’s just that all those nights when Sophie would go out and leave Mina at our house, I would sing this to her until she went to sleep. For hours and hours. Everybody would be screaming downstairs, just awful things, and once in a while the cops would show up, and there would be flashing lights in the window. But in my bed there’d be this sweet baby girl, sucking her thumb and saying, Sing it again. And so I’d sing it again and it was all I could do.

  They listened to Mina’s beautiful, raspy voice over the monitor . . . Il dit à son tour—Ouvrez votre porte, pour le Dieu d’amour.

  Well, thank God for Madame Dupont, Genevieve said. Forcing us to learn it in seventh grade. She made us sing at school assembly, remember? God, I wanted to die.

  Manfred gave a dry cough, and the clammy ghost of his attempt in the spring, how Genevieve had found him, brushed by. Nobody looked at him; they studied the knives, the bread. The moment passed.

  Grant said, What’s she saying? Genevieve turned to him, a softness in her face.

  Amanda saw tears in her husband’s eyes; she squeezed the back of his neck. She was moved. It had been so long since she had seen the side of him that would weep during movies about dolphin harvests. A different Grant had grown up over him, a harder one.

  Manfred didn’t seem inclined to translate. Amanda listened for a minute to gather herself. It’s a story, she said. Harlequin wants to write a letter, but he doesn’t have a pen and his fire went out, and so he goes to his buddy Pierrot to borrow them. But Pierrot is in bed and won’t open the door, and he tells Harlequin to go to the neighbor’s to ask because he can hear someone making a fire in her kitchen. And then Harlequin and the neighbor fall in love. It’s silly, she said. A pretty lullaby.

  But Manfred was looking at her from the shadows. He leaned forward. Dear Amanda, he said. The world must be hard for you. All substance, no nuance. Harlequin is on the prowl. He wants sex, pour l’amour de Dieu. When Pierrot turns him away, he goes to the neighbor to battre le briquet. Double-entendre, you see. He is, in the end, fucking the neighbor.

  Genevieve sat back slowly in the darkness.

  Manfred smiled at Amanda, and there was a strange new electricity in the air; there was something here, announcing itself to Amanda, in the very back of her head. It had almost arrived, the understanding; it was almost here. She held her breath to let it step shyly forward into the light.

  Mina watched the couples from the doorway, feeling as if she were still flying over the Atlantic, the ground distant and swift beneath. Nobody was speaking; they were not looking at one another. Something had soured since she’d left them a half hour ago. She had come from a house of conflict. She knew just by looking there would be an argument breaking out in a moment and that it would be bad.

  She took a step out to distract them, smiling. The other four snapped their eyes up at her. She felt herself expanding into her body as she always did when she was watched. She was new tonight, strange. The champagne was all she’d consumed since leaving Orlando, and it made her feel languorous, like a cat.

  Sometime after arriving she’d come to a decision that she’d been mulling over for the past few days; and now what she knew and what they didn’t filled her with a secret lift of joy. Internal helium. She wouldn’t board the plane at the end of the summer. School was so gray and useless compared to what waited for her in Paris; her life on hold in that hot place where she’d lived out her terrible childhood. Florida. Well. She was finished with all of that. A whole continent in the past. She would go toward the glamour. She was only twenty-one. She was beautiful. She could do whatever she wanted. She felt herself on the exhilarating upward climb. As she walked toward them, she saw how these people at the table had stopped climbing, how they were teetering on the precipice (even Amanda; poor tired Amanda). That Manfred man was already hurtling down. He was a mere breath from the rocks, it was clear.

  This sky huge with stars. Glorious, Mina thought, as she walked toward them. The cold in the air, the smell of cherries wafting up from the trees, the veal and endives cooking in the kitchen, the pool with its own moon, the stone house, the vines, the country full of velvet-eyed Frenchmen. Even the flicks of candlelight on those angry faces at the table were romantic. Everything was beautiful. Anything was possible. The whole world had been split open like a peach. And these poor people, these poor fucking people. Why couldn’t they see? All they had to do is reach out and pluck it and raise it to their lips, and they would taste it too.

  MERON HADERO

  The Suitcase

  FROM Missouri Review

  ON SABA’S LAST day in Addis Ababa, she had just one unchecked to-do left on her long and varied list, which was to explore the neighborhood on her own, even though she’d promised her relatives that she would always take someone with her when she left the house. But she was twenty, a grownup, and wanted to know that on her first-ever trip to this city of her birth, she’d gained at least some degree of independence and assimilation. So it happened that Saba had no one to turn to when she got to the intersection around Meskel Square and realized she had seen only one functioning traffic light in all of Addis Ababa, population four million people by official counts, though no one there seemed to trust official counts, and everyone assumed it was much more crowded, certainly too crowded for just one traffic light. That single, solitary, lonely little traffic light in this mushrooming metropolis was near the old National Theater, not too far from the UN offices, the presidential palace, the former African Union—a known, respected part of the city located an unfortunate mile (a disobliging 1.6 kilometer
s) away from where Saba stood before a sea of cars, contemplating a difficult crossing.

  Small, nimble vehicles, Fiats and VW Bugs, skimmed the periphery of the traffic, then seemed to be flung off centrifugally, almost gleefully, in some random direction. The center was a tangled cluster of cars slowly crawling along paths that might take an automobile backward, forward, sideward. In the middle of this jam was a sometimes visible traffic cop whose tense job seemed to be avoiding getting hit while keeping one hand slightly in the air. He was battered by curses, car horns, diesel exhaust as he nervously shifted his body weight and tried to avoid these assaults. Saba quickly saw she couldn’t rely on him to help her get across. She dipped her foot from the curb onto the street, and a car raced by, so she retreated. A man walked up next to her and said in English, “True story, I know a guy who crossed the street halfway and gave up.”

  Saba looked at the stranger. “Pardon, what was that?”

  “He had been abroad for many years and came back expecting too much,” the man said, now speaking as slowly as Saba. “That sad man lives on the median at the ring road. I bring him books sometimes,” he said slyly, taking one out of his messenger bag and holding it up. “A little local wisdom: don’t start what you can’t finish.” Saba watched the stranger dangle his toes off the curb, lean forward, backward, forward and back, and then, as if becoming one with the flow of the city, lunge into the traffic and disappear from her sight until he reemerged on the opposite sidewalk. “Miraculous,” Saba said to herself as he turned, pointed at her, then held up the book again. Saba tried to follow his lead and set her body to the rhythm of the cars, swaying forward and back, but couldn’t find the beat.

  As she was running through her options, a line of idling taxis became suddenly visible when a city bus turned the corner. She realized that, as impractical as it seemed, she could hail a cab to get her across the busy street. The trip took ten minutes; the fare cost 15 USD, for she was unable to negotiate a better rate, though at least she’d found a way to the other side. She turned back to see the taxi driver leaning out the window talking to a few people, gesturing at her, laughing, and she knew just how badly she’d fumbled yet another attempt to fit in. All month Saba had failed almost every test she’d faced, and though she’d seized one last chance to see if this trip had changed her, had taught her at least a little of how to live in this culture, she’d only ended up proving her relatives right: she wasn’t even equipped to go for a walk on her own. What she thought would be a romantic, monumental reunion with her home country had turned out to be a fiasco; she didn’t belong here.