The Best American Short Stories® 2011 (16 page)

Amanda and Nathaniel had pizza delivered to Chauncy Street and watched Charlie Chaplin movies from Hollywood Express. Sometimes they spread a sheet over the couch and ate a big bowl of popcorn.

It's hard to be with you, her fiancé had said. I feel like I'm suffocating.

Open a window, Amanda had said.

When the movie was done, Amanda gathered the sheet and stepped onto the balcony, where she shook out the crumbs.

Amanda and Nathaniel had play-dates with his friends at Walden Pond. They went canoeing on the Charles, and Nathaniel dropped his paddle in the water. Amanda almost tipped the boat, trying to fish it out. They wrote a book about pirates. Nathaniel told the stories and Amanda typed them on the computer in his father's study. "Aarrr, matey," she typed, "I'm stuck on a ship."

When his father stayed out past Nathaniel's bedtime, Amanda tucked Nathaniel in, and then she read books in the study. The books were about American history. She read only a few pages of each, so she didn't learn anything.

If you ever stopped to listen, her fiancé had said, then you would understand.

She stood on a chair and pulled out some small paperbacks from the top shelf. Dante,
The Divine Comedy
, in a new translation. Boccaccio,
The Decameron
, Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
, complete and unabridged. Dante again,
La Vita Nuova.

La Vita Nuova
explained how to become a great poet. The secret was to fall in love with a perfect girl but never speak to her. You should weep instead. You should pretend that you love someone else. You should write sonnets in three parts. Your perfect girl should die.

Amanda's mother said, "You have your whole life ahead of you."

She fell asleep on the couch waiting for Nathaniel's father to come home. When she woke up, she saw him kneeling in front of her. She said, "What's wrong?"

He said, "Nothing's wrong. I'm sorry. I didn't want to wake you."

But he did wake her. She went home and stayed awake all night.

"Let's go somewhere," she told Nathaniel the next day.

"Where?"

"Far away. "

They took the T to Ashmont, at the end of the Red Line. They sat together in the rattling car and talked about doughnuts.

"I like cinnamon doughnuts, but they make me cough," Nathaniel said.

She slept lightly. She dreamed she was walking with Nathaniel in a pine forest. She was telling him not to step on the dead hummingbirds. The birds were sapphire-throated, brilliant blue. She stole
La Vita Nuova.
It was just a paperback.

Her sister called to check in. Her friend Jamie said she knew someone she'd like Amanda to meet. Amanda said, "Soon."

Jamie said, "What exactly are you waiting for?"

Nathaniel's father pretended not to look at her. Amanda pretended not to notice his dark eyes.

"The question is what you're going to do in September," Amanda's mother told her on the phone.

"The question is what you're going to do with your life," her father said.

Dante wrote, "O you who on the road of Love pass by / Attend and see / If any grief there be as heavy as mine."

"When was the last time you painted anything?" her mother asked. "Apart from your apartment?"

Her father said, "I paid for Yale."

All day Amanda and Nathaniel studied the red ants of Buckingham Street. They experimented with cake crumbs and observed the ants change course to eat them. Nathaniel considered becoming an entomologist when he grew up.

The next day he decided to open his own ice cream store.

They hiked to Christina's, in Inman Square. Nathaniel pedaled in front on his little bike. Amanda pedaled behind on her big bike and watched for cars.

At Christina's, Nathaniel could read almost all the flavors on the board: adzuki bean, black raspberry, burnt sugar, chocolate banana, chocolate orange, cardamom. Nathaniel said, "I'll have vanilla." They sat in front near the bulletin board with ads for guitar lessons, tutoring, transcendental meditation.

"What's an egg donor?" Nathaniel said.

I want to be with you for the rest of my life, her fiancé had told her once. You are my best friend, he had written on her birthday card. You make me smile, you make me laugh. "Love weeps," Dante wrote.

"Could I have a quarter for a gumball?" Nathaniel asked Amanda.

"You just had ice cream," she said.

"Please."

"No! You just had ice cream. You don't need candy."

"Please, please, please," he said.

"You're lovely," Nathaniel's father whispered to Amanda late that night. She was just leaving, and he'd opened the door for her.

"You're not supposed to say that," Amanda whispered back. "You're supposed to write a sonnet."

Nathaniel said that he knew what to do when you were upset. She said, "Tell me, Nathaniel."

He said, "Go to the zoo."

Nathaniel studied the train schedule. They took the Orange Line to Ruggles Station and then the No. 2 2 bus to the Franklin Park Zoo. They watched orangutans sitting on their haunches, shredding newspapers, one page at a time. They climbed up on viewing platforms to observe the giraffes. They ran down every path. They looked at snakes. They went to the little barnyard and a goat frightened Nathaniel. Amanda said the goat was just curious. She said, "Goats wouldn't eat you."

Nathaniel fell asleep on the T on the way home. He leaned against Amanda and closed his eyes. The woman sitting next to Amanda said, "He's beautiful."

Amanda's friend Jamie had a party in Somerville. The wine was terrible. The friend that Jamie wanted Amanda to meet was drunk. Amanda got drunk too, but it didn't help.

She was late to work the next day. She found Nathaniel waiting on his mother's porch. "I thought you were sick," he said.

"I was," she told him.

They walked to Harvard Square and watched the street magicians. They went to Le's and shared vegetarian summer rolls and Thai iced tea.

"This tastes like orange chalk," Nathaniel said.

They went to a store called Little Russia and looked at the lacquered dolls there. "See, they come apart," Amanda told Nathaniel. "You pop open this lady, and inside there's another, and another, and another."

"Do not touch, please," the saleslady told them.

They walked down to the river and sat on the grass under a tree and talked about their favorite dogs.

"Labradoodle," Amanda said.

Nathaniel giggled. "No, schnoodle."

"Golden streudel."

Nathaniel said, "Is that the kind you had when you were young?"

She dreamed that she was a Russian doll. Inside her was a smaller version of herself, and inside that an even smaller version.

She ordered a set of blank wooden dolls online and began painting them. She covered the dolls with white primer. Then she painted them with acrylics and her finest brushes.

First, a toddler only an inch high, in a gingham bathing suit.

Second, a fingerling schoolgirl, wearing glasses.

Third, an art student, with a portfolio under her arm.

Fourth, a bride in white with long flowing hair.

Fifth, a babysitter in sandals and sundress. She painted Nathaniel standing in front of her in his gecko T-shirt and blue shorts. He stood waist high, with her painted hands on his shoulders.

When the paint was dry, she covered each doll with clear gloss. After that coat dried, she glossed each doll again until the reds were as bright as candy apples, the blues sparkled, and every color looked good enough to eat.

She bought another set of blanks and began all over. She stayed up late each night painting.

"Why are you so sleepy?" Nathaniel asked her in the afternoons.

In the mornings, his mother asked her, "Why are you always late?"

She fell asleep with Nathaniel at eight o'clock. She curled up next to him in his captain's bed and woke when his father came in and touched her cheek.

"I was wondering if you could come to the Cape with us," Nathaniel's father said as they tiptoed out into the hall.

She shook her head.

"Just for a few days in August."

His voice was low. His eyes were almost pleading. You are so beautiful, her fiancé had said.

She painted Nathaniel's father on a set of Russian dolls.

First, she painted a toddler in a romper.

Second, she painted a boy in a little Catholic school uniform with short pants and a tie.

Third, she painted a bridegroom, dashing in a dark suit with white stephanotis for his boutonnière.

Fourth, she painted a new father, with a baby Nathaniel in his arms.

Fifth, she painted a gray-haired man in reading glasses. She painted Nathaniel's father older than he was, and stouter. Not handsome, as he was in real life, but grandfatherly, with a belly following the contours of the bell-shaped doll.

As before, she coated each painted doll with clear gloss until the colors gleamed. As before, she made each doll a perfect jewel-like object, but she spent the most time on the biggest, oldest doll.

After that, she bought more blanks and painted more sets: people she knew, people she didn't know. People she met. Portraits in series, five dolls each. She painted Patsy, blonder and blonder in each incarnation. She painted her fiancé as a boy, as an athlete, as a law student, as a paunchy bald guy, as a decrepit old man. She didn't kill him, but she aged him.

She lined up the dolls and photographed them. She thought about fellowships. She imagined group shows, solo shows. Refusing interviews.

She took Nathaniel to swimming lessons. She went down to the harbor with him and they threw popcorn to seagulls that caught the kernels in midair.

Nathaniel had his seventh birthday party on Castle Island. He and his friends built a walled city of sandcastles with a moat. Nathaniel was the architect. Amanda was his assistant. His father was the photographer. His mother served the cake.

At the end of the party, Amanda gathered the presents. Nathaniel was leaving for the Cape with his father, and then his mother was going to take him to the Vineyard for Labor Day weekend. Nathaniel said, "When we come back, it will be September."

She said, "You're right."

He said, "Could you come with me?"

Amanda said, "I can't. I'm painting my apartment."

He said, "What color?"

She said, "Actually, I'm moving."

"Moving away?"

She told him, "You can talk to me on the phone."

Nathaniel started to cry.

His mother said, "Honey!"

He held on to Amanda and cried. "Why can't you be my babysitter anymore?"

"I'm going to New York," she said.

"Why?"

Because your mother doesn't like me, she told him silently. Because your father wants to sleep with me. Because the only reason I came to Boston was my fiancé. Because the question is what I'm going to do with my life. But all she said aloud was, "That's where I'm from."

She knelt down and gave him a map she'd drawn. She'd singed the edges of the parchment to make it look old.

The map showed the cave at the source of the Charles River, the swan boats flying away, the chocolate mice at Burdick's. Christina's Ice Cream, Ashmont, the cemetery with dragons' teeth.

Nathaniel's mother said, "This is gorgeous."

Nathaniel's father said, "You're really very talented."

Nathaniel said that he didn't want a map. He said that he would rip it up.

His mother said, "Nathaniel, is that any way to treat a gift?"

His father said, "Come here."

Nathaniel tore a big piece out of the map. He screamed at his parents, "I don't want you!"

"He's tired," Nathaniel's mother told Amanda. "He's exhausted. Too much excitement in one day."

"I'm not tired!" Nathaniel screamed, and he wouldn't let go of Amanda. He held on to her, half strangling her with his arms around her neck.

"Look, Nathaniel—" his father began.

His mother interrupted. "You're making it worse!"

Nathaniel was crying harder. He cried with his whole body. No one could get him to stop.

Amanda closed her eyes. She said she was sorry. She said, "Please stop." Finally, she rocked him in her arms and said, "I know. I know."

FROM
TriQuarterly

O
N A JANUARY DAY
, a little before nine in the morning, this was the situation: Sokolov, fifty-two, lecturer in Russian literature at Lehman College in the Bronx, two years post-transplant for leukemia, stood on Riverside Drive looking north to Canada, while Lermontov, his suffering aged wolfhound, tried with trembling exertions to relieve himself, looking south toward New Orleans. The day was cold, scrubbed clear, one of the January days in New York that slice through you and deride your hopes that winter will ever open its fist. The vet, a young woman with auburn hair braided and an athlete's bony litheness, the kind who caught Sokolov's eye (the kind whose eye
he
used to catch—alas, no longer), told him dogs Lermontov's size were lucky to reach ten, eleven. If, as Sokolov said, he was thirteen, it was a miracle, and she smiled at the dog tenderly while Sokolov (she didn't know him) thought sourly that only the carelessly youthful and naive (the healthy) could have the gall to think surviving is blessing enough.

It had not snowed in a week and the last storm's remnants were pocked glacial outcroppings crusted with soot and cigarette ends and animal droppings (alas again: none Lermontov's). In the trees along the drive half-a-dozen crows perched without a sound. Sokolov chanced a quick peek. The dog had an intestinal blockage, perhaps a tumor, and on top of the diabetes was too old for surgery. (Thirteen, Sokolov had said. Could be thirty-five for all he knew. He was Kelly's dog, and Kelly wasn't there to ask, was she?) If he didn't somehow (more miracles) come through in the next few days, it wasn't fair to let him suffer. Again, Sokolov stared broadly at the pretty young face that hadn't more than glanced at his in passing since he hauled the reluctant dog through the office door. Let him suffer, as if she knew, as if anybody knew the tipping point between life's durance and life's ending. Ten years ago this might have been his opening, the moment he'd inject a wry observation, oblique, evocative, European.