Fight No More
Page 19
Jake had liked to walk, could walk for hours and never get tired. Lived in California for decades but didn’t get used to cars. Fitting that he chose a car to die in, fitting that he chose gas. So many wounds that never healed. He hated the American way of thought that said all things could be repaired, all things surmounted by a trick of attitude. History is trivial in this country, he said. Forgetting is the way to bliss. Ignorance is a badge of honor.
All accurate. All known. And yet, she’d said to him. Begged, honestly, because begging was what you did when you were powerless. Look what it gives them, Jake. What it gives us, if we choose to accept the gift. They’re always beginning. You begin again every day, when you have almost no memory. It’s a country of phoenixes!
It’s a country of dodos, he said. And look what happened to them.
She got it. One was mythological, the other simply extinct. But she’d always come down on the side of the myths.
There was satisfaction in walking, even with the awkward contraption. Manicured shrubs, tall trees, grand houses—grand in size, at least. Nobody else walking on the street. It wasn’t a neighborhood for pedestrians. Wait: a young girl walking her dog. Slender and tall. The dog also. A whippet or a greyhound. Did she greet her? Did she meet her eyes? Did she think, old lady?
It was all she thought, probably. If she thought anything.
Cars were beginning to pull into drives, the end of work. The close of business. Nearing the cocktail hour. Here a woman in a Range Rover, a man in a Porsche. Revving, revving. Showing off its engine.
What had they done with their days? Were they proud? Or was it resignation?
She passed each house in turn, each gate, each privacy hedge or showy rock garden, but as she passed them she also passed nothing at all. They were different and the same: she moved and did not move. What was ahead was past.
Was that what it was like? When you were coming to the end?
A car beside her didn’t pass. It slowed and stopped. Silver. Window came down. Silent. Paul’s face. Paul’s car, therefore.
“Time to get in,” he said. Earbuds.
“I’m taking a walk,” she said.
“People are worried about you,” he said.
Did he even hear her? He might be on his phone. He might be talking to anyone.
“Lexie says you’ve been out here for hours. Two and a half hours now, she said.”
“No, that’s not true,” she said.
Impossible. She’d only just got here.
“It felt like minutes,” she added.
“You’re going in circles,” he told her, impatient. “Lexie saw you walk past the house. Three times. You’ve got to be getting tired. Aren’t you? We should call it a night. I’ll drive you home. OK?”
She leaned on the walker’s handles. Turned and gazed in at him. His face was partly Jake’s, of course. Partly his own face as a child, beneath the bulk and jowls.
“It’s called walking around the block,” she said. “There are beautiful gardens.”
He looked at her. Waiting.
“I only want to keep going.”
Something changed in his expression. Almost softened.
“Of course you do,” he said.
They looked at each other for another moment, and then his window went up. He pulled away again.
She watched his taillights flash on as he stepped on the brakes at the stop sign, turned the corner. And then her son was gone.
ALSO BY LYDIA MILLET
Sweet Lamb of Heaven
Mermaids in Paradise
Magnificence
Ghost Lights
How the Dead Dream
Love in Infant Monkeys
Oh Pure and Radiant Heart
Everyone’s Pretty
My Happy Life
George Bush, Dark Prince of Love
Omnivores
FOR YOUNG READERS
Pills and Starships
The Shimmers in the Night
The Fires Beneath the Sea
The Bodies of the Ancients
Fight No More is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Many thanks to my friends David Hancocks, Susie Deconcini, Matthew Silverman, and Aaron Young for their help on the details of these fictions, as well as to my dear agent Maria Massie, my editor Tom Mayer, and my publicist Elizabeth Riley. I’m grateful to Lauren Abbate, Sarah Bolling, Steve Colca, Dan Christiaens, Julia Druskin, Emma Hitchcock, Rebecca Homiski, Francine Kass, Ingsu Liu, Dave Mallman, Meredith McGinnis, Joe Murphy, Steven Pace, Golda Rademacher, Karen Rice, Don Rifkin, and Nomi Victor at Norton, and to my wonderful copy editor Amy Robbins, for all they did to make this book.
Copyright © 2018 by Lydia Millet
All rights reserved
First Edition
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Millet, Lydia, 1968–author.
Title: Fight no more : stories / Lydia Millet.
Description: First Edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017054853 | ISBN 9780393635485 (hardcover)
Classification: LCC PS3563.I42175 A6 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054853
ISBN 978-0-393-63549-2 (e-book)
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