Book Read Free

Other People's Love Affairs

Page 21

by D. Wystan Owen


  “Your umbrella. You mustn’t forget that today.” His arm is out-

  stretched, holding the thing.

  When pain was inflicted upon the ill sister she turned aside, as

  if ashamed to be seen. Your heart wanted to break when you saw

  her. You never loved a creature more in the world. But it wanted

  to break for the well sister, too, who would slump a little, fatigued by remorse, and resume with the chair, more gingerly now.

  The Well Sister

  207

  At length, she accepts the umbrella, taking care that their

  hands shouldn’t touch.

  She waits until the last moment to pull the cord for her stop,

  stepping down without calling thanks to the driver.

  On the street, the rain has slowed to a drizzle. The side-

  walks appear darkened and slick. She moves quickly, is nearing the press when she hears him, a thin voice calling her name.

  “Rose, is it?”

  She turns. “Now what’s this about?”

  Some people have paused to observe. A man with a paper cup

  for loose change stands and moves a short way down the block.

  “It’s Myron,” he says. “Myron Idris. The boy who was always

  alone.”

  He regards her face, not looking away, no longer surreptitious

  or shy. He tries to discern friendship, recognition. He beseeches

  her for it, thinking that word.

  Beseeching.

  “I used to watch you. Pushing your sister.”

  Rigidly, she stands without speaking. One finger strokes the

  leather strap of her purse, the gesture repeated like a kind of devotion. She says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I watched you all through the summer. In Glass. I loved you.

  Both you and your sister I loved.”

  A wind rises, stirring up leaves from the ground. A blue plastic

  shopping bag scrapes past his feet.

  Vaguely, she sees the outline of an image: a boy with eyeglasses,

  a twig in his hand.

  208

  OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

  “I’ve often felt my whole life began when I saw you.”

  Her face, which for the briefest moment had softened, now

  quickly hardens again. In her eyes is the same look he saw in the

  bookshop when the touch of his hand caused a woman’s revulsion.

  He goes on, a little desperately now: “Imagine it, after so many

  years, and in the city: That we should meet in this way.”

  An old gentleman steps out of the press. He stands in the door-

  way, holding a broom.

  “I could hardly believe it when I saw you last week. ‘It can’t be,’

  I said, but I knew that it was.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” she says. “Stop it. Please.”

  “Is there a problem?” the old man is saying. “Mrs. Goodrum,

  is this man bothering you?”

  “I saw everything. You are not to be blamed. That’s all I ever

  wanted to say.”

  In her heart is a pain she can scarcely withstand, an uncanny

  mix of gratitude and disgust. She feels she would fall to her knees if she could, or that she would run, that she would do herself

  harm. What she did to Camille has been her secret alone, a shame

  that made up the better part of herself. She hadn’t known that

  she’d wanted to share it, that she’d longed for someone to say what he has. She has not wished for love, but he offers it, regardless: this madman, this lunatic does.

  “I loved you more because your strength broke,” he says. “It

  was cruel, but cruelty is part of us, too.”

  She nods, meeting his eye for a moment, then turns away

  toward the old man’s embrace. She moves without any violence

  or speed, but he can see nonetheless that the gesture is final. She

  The Well Sister

  209

  would not wish to meet him in a café for tea or to dine at Usak’s

  near the window with him. He knows that, as he should have

  before. Never would she wish to visit his rooms. If he cleaned

  them, if he dressed more smartly, she still wouldn’t. If he rides her bus again she will call the police; if, by chance, he encounters her again in the city she will cross to the other side of the street.

  “It’s all right, Rose,” he says, calling after her faintly.

  Passing through the door of the office, she hears it.

  “I know everything,” he says. “It’s all right.”

  In fact, he knows very little at all. He does not know, for

  instance, what became of Camille, how she screamed when they

  left her behind in the home, how one day she seemed to cease

  wishing to live. He does not know about the sound she made

  while she slept, a wet, guttural clicking at the back of the throat.

  How it woke the well sister in the dark of the night, a sound as

  familiar as crickets or rain. He does not know that the sound was

  thought to signal a dream, of what exactly no one could know. A

  dream of running, perhaps. Of being led in a waltz. Of singing.

  Of saying, “You’re hurting me, love.”

  On those nights, the well sister would rise, apply a compress

  until the clicking had ceased. She would reach down and touch

  the beautiful face with the rag—a face that, in sleep, was as though unafflicted—and kiss the cool dampness left behind on the skin.

  He does not know that. Nobody does. How in the quiet that

  followed she imagined a violence, the same one she sometimes

  imagines today. It is a great violence, absolute and pristine, like the one that long ago created the world.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  z z z

  A first book is a delicate thing. (So, at times, is its author.)

  Thank you to my agent, Janet Silver, for so fiercely protecting

  this one. Thank you to my editor, Kathy Pories, Brunson Hoole,

  Michael McKenzie, Lauren Moseley, Craig Popelars, and the rest

  of the team at Algonquin, for giving it shelter.

  Thank you to those editors who took an early chance: Brigid

  Hughes; Wendy Lesser; Sudip Bose. And to those institutions who

  supported the work: University of California, Davis; the University

  212

  Acknowledgments

  of Iowa. Thanks to Vincent Torre and the Museo Giardino Irene

  Brin in Sasso di Bordighera, Italy.

  I am grateful for the generosity of my many fine teachers,

  each of whom answered that highest of callings. From Berkeley

  Unified: Ann Gilbert. From UC Davis: Jodi Angel, Clarence

  Major, Pam Houston, Lucy Corin, Lynn Freed. From the Iowa

  Writers’ Workshop: Lan Samantha Chang, Kevin Brockmeier,

  Marilynne Robinson, Paul Harding, Ethan Canin, Margot

  Livesey. Elsewhere: Ron Carlson, Jess Walter.

  Thanks to my classmates at UC Davis for friendship and faith,

  and for those many late nights at Danny’s apartment: Ashley

  Clarke, Megan Cummins, Daniel Grace, Maria Kuznetsova,

  Noah McGee, Carrie Newman, Richard Siegler. Let this be the

  first book of many for us.

  The opportunity to spend three years at the Iowa Writers’

  Workshop was among the great privileges of my life. Many thanks

  to Deb West and Jan Zenisek. Thank you, again and forever,

  Sam Chang.

  Connie Brothers is a national treasure. Thank you, Connie.

  My workshop classmates read these stories with tremendous

  care and att
ention. My deepest gratitude to Garth Greenwell, for

  advocacy, insight, and the highest example; Fatima Farheen Mirza,

  who reads, as she writes, with her whole heart; Chia-Chia Lin,

  who is, quite simply, a genius, and whose reading gave a breath of new life to this book; and Jamel Brinkley, who was my first, best

  friend in that strange place, and whom I admire immensely.

  Thanks also to Noel Carver, Jed Cohen, Heidi Kaloustian,

  Nyuol Lueth Tong, and the many others, too numerous to name,

  Acknowledgments

  213

  whose talent, sincerity, and relentless exactitude have imprinted

  themselves on this project.

  I fear I can never adequately thank Yiyun Li—teacher, men-

  tor, friend—who believed in these stories long before I did, and

  without whose seemingly bottomless generosity and wisdom this

  book would not exist, in any form.

  Thank you to my family for their love and support. My parents,

  Julie and Geoffrey. My sister, Emily. Kevin. Ann. David. Elliot. In memory of Bill and Nell Owen, of Frank and Lee Tarloff.

  And to my partner, Ellen Namakaokealoha Kamoe, who is

  so deeply good, and so kind, who hears even what is said in a

  whisper.

  Document Outline

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  Lovers of a Kind

  At the Circus

  Virginia’s Birthday

  A Romance

  What Is Meant to Remain

  A Bit of Fun

  Housekeeper

  The Patroness

  Other People’s Love Affairs

  The Well Sister

  Acknowledgments

 

 

 


‹ Prev