He puts her down on the bed. She, panting, looks at him. He is more humble than she has ever seen him.
“You want a cigarette?”
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Chariya made me quit. We’ll have to go outside.”
Maya pauses at the baby’s door to check her sleeping. Her mouth is open, sucking. Mark and Maya put on scarves and hats and coats and step through the sliding door to the back porch. He draws a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and lights it cleanly. She sticks an unlit stick into her mouth and pretends to smoke. Still drunk.
“Can you feel her here?”
“Can you?”
She shakes her head. The cold burns at their fingertips. They’re quiet for a while.
“There it is,” he says, and points to the nest. Still bunched in the folds of the house like a tumor. “Will you come back?”
“Don’t ask me that yet.”
“Oh, have it,” he says, flicking flame from the lighter and holding it out. She cups her hand around it. Draws the nicotine deep into her, the tar. There is no moon out, but stars. She smoked cigarettes with Chariya. Home from college for Thanksgiving, and Chariya already working. Snuck booze and cigarettes into their parents’ pristine house and giggled like wicked children. An animal noise pierces the dark: the baby. It is Mark who tamps down the end of his cigarette and goes inside. Without switching on the light, he lifts her. It is a strange heft in his arms, his arms that have missed this weight. Chariya used to scold him, saying the baby would never learn to walk if he carried her everywhere.
“What is it, honey?”
The baby quiets, becomes watchful. She can smell his cigarettes, but forgives him.
“She has a new tooth,” says Maya, unwinding the scarf from her throat.
“How about that,” he says to the child, rocking her, as the alcohol leaves his body. Soon she is asleep. The house is soaked in night: night has contracted like a fist around the house. No matter. They can light every lamp in the house until morning burns.
My Brother At The Station
On the front porch, my little brother was sitting with the neighborhood cat. He was gazing very intently at it. He had crouched down, meeting it almost at eye level. At first the cat hissed and raised its skin like it was scared. Then it settled down and became very still. It stood with all four paws gathered very neatly and gazed at my brother with its bright yellow eyes.
“What are you doing?” I crossed my arms. Who ever wants to be a big sister?
“Nothing,” he said. He didn’t look up at me. Four years old and he had just begun to lose his baby fat, but his hands and elbows were still soft as cheese. His hair was growing back in from the hair-cutting ceremony my parents had done for him, belatedly, a month or so before. He had a serious look.
“That’s my cat,” I said.
“No it’s not. It’s the Epsteins’s.”
“That’s my cat,” I said again. It was no use. I used to catch the cat between my knees and put my nose right up against its dusty belly, pulling in the warm, hayish smell of it. But now their gaze was so thick it was almost physical, a cord tied between them.
“He doesn’t like it when you hold him so tight,” said my brother.
“How would you know?”
“He told me.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“I’m not a liar,” he said.
“Prove it,” I said.
“You prove it.”
“Tell him to do something.”
My brother paused, frowned. “He doesn’t want to.”
“Yeah, right. I knew you were a liar.”
He turned his attention back to the cat. There was a very determined expression on his face. They were quiet for a little while. “Okay.”
“Make him jump up to my hand.” I stretched my arm out at shoulder level. The cat looked at me, my brother, back at me. Then he leapt at my hand, butted its forehead against my fingertips. For a second I was so stunned I thought almost that I would cry. But I didn’t want my little brother to see me cry so I didn’t. I gathered myself into a black knot. “Does he love me more than you?”
My brother shrugged.
“Ask him,” I said.
“Can’t tell you,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Ishi says so.”
“Who’s Ishi?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even have a mean look on his face. His eyes were so dark it was impossible to tell the pupil from the iris. Three weeks ago when our grandma died he said he could see her standing behind me. But I thought he was just lying or imagining like babies do.
“Ishi says there’s a bad black thing in you that eats up the good part.”
“Who’s Ishi?” I said. “Who’s Ishi?”
That night I woke to my father shaking my shoulder in the dark room. “Baby, we have to go,” he said.
“Go where?”
Light came in from the living room, and as my eyes adjusted I saw he was dressed. Outside, a row of evergreens that lined the fence between our house and the neighbors’ striped the grass with thick shadows. I could see the deck chairs and my brother’s tricycle sitting lonely in the yard.
“We have to go to the hospital,” he said. “We’ll be back soon.”
“What’s happening?”
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
I got out of bed and followed my dad to the living room. My mother was holding my brother in her arms, sleeping, it seemed, but not quite, for his eyes were glazed and open. There was a strange sucking noise coming from my brother’s mouth. His feet were in socks but not shoes, hanging loosely from his ankles. “Go back to bed,” said my mother.
“Can I come with you?”
“No, baby,” said my dad. He was putting on his jacket. “If we’re not back in the morning then Mrs. Epstein will come over. Okay?” And, “Do you have the insurance information?” he asked my mother.
My mother said yes.
I climbed up onto the kitchen counter and watched them leave through the window. After they left I turned on every light in the house. I tried to be excited to be left alone. I switched on the TV. But there was nothing for kids on that late. And my mom didn’t keep any junk food in the house. There was nothing bad I could think of doing. My parents already let me jump on my bed.
The house seemed, all at once, terrifically empty. I could hear the moan of a dog coming from outside, or maybe a wolf, though I knew that was stupid. I could see myself reflected in the window, a little girl in a lonely bed, and beyond that the trees turned into the fingers of a monstrous thing. Were my mom and dad coming back? I went outside and called for the cat, and after a while he came. The cat was tight in my arms and even though he squirmed I didn’t let him go.
Slowly I started to become aware of the dead, gathered in the corners of the house. I couldn’t see them, but I sensed them the way you know someone is standing behind you before you turn around to look. If it was my brother, he would see them, but they would glow for him, beautiful and benevolent as moons. For me, they were leeched of color, their bone-white faces and hands and mouths smelling of rotted wood and leaves. In my mind I could see them circling my bed, their hands reaching, reaching. They were saying—what? Their mouths didn’t work. They were trying to tell me something, only I couldn’t hear it. What did my brother mean about the bad part eating the good part? Under the blankets I put my head close to the cat’s, to feel its breath in my ear.