Other People's Love Affairs
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“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.
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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.
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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
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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