A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli Page A

dream. She walks down the hall and hands the newborns to their spectral mothers in the maternity ward. She sits talking with them for a time, discussing the beautiful infants, their bright and open futures. I can almost hear the mothers sobbing with joy, kissing the tiny foreheads of children whose eyes haven’t yet opened.
    Sister Lucretia thanks the holy name of Flying Walenda and walks her own wire of conscience. We all do. She stares out the window up at the stars and moves her patch over her good eye.
    Moonlight fills her empty socket until it runs into her mouth.
    Her teeth glow in the night as she turns blindly to face me, arms wide.
     
    S WEAT DRIBBLES TO THE KITCHEN FLOOR. D ODI AND Sarah, the two women of the house, face off like ancient enemies watching each other across desert wastes. They’re in the kitchen, equidistant from the knife drawer. This has been a battleground for much longer than they’ve been in the house, and the ghosts in the walls and closets are proof that all it takes to go to war is a matter of time.
    Sarah’s parents have been mailing long letters to her, begging her to come back home and resume her life as a film student. They offer to pay for graduate school, a new apartment overlooking Central Park, a therapist in midtown, whatever it is she might need. I can see by the phone bill that she calls them often, but their conversations usually last for less than five minutes. They no more understand her than she understands herself lately.
    Fred has been sending letters too, written on yellow stationery, college-ruled. His penmanship is excessively large and he only writes on every other line. He’s in rehab, doing well, clean for nineteen days, and preparing to film a documentary on addiction.
    He’s in with two famous rappers, a mediocre actress from a prime-time courtroom drama, the grandson of the guy who invented Tater Tots, and a NASCAR driver who hit the fence and took out three bleachers of fans in his last race. After the guy gets clean he’ll be formally brought up on manslaughter charges and he’s eager to talk about his troubles.
    Fred already has six tapes of the driver’s confessions on video. Fred’s arm is healing okay though it annoys him on rainy afternoons. He hopes she’s doing well with the retards. He still wants to be friends and have coffee someday, maybe discuss a few of the older projects that they shelved.
    So far as I know, Sarah hasn’t written him back yet.
    Dodi glares and clicks her fingernails together like castanets. There’s a nice salsa rhythm there that almost gets my foot tapping. She and Sarah eye one another with death on the plate. They’ve shared their beds, but when it comes to my brothers there’s no longer enough room for everybody. The tension has been building for weeks now and it’s about to snap.
    This isn’t mere possessiveness. This is desperation. This is a hunger for what the future may bring—love, acceptance, wealth, poetry, maybe even the fate of Potts County. Dodi is still under orders from her mother to keep an eye on me. I’ve been expecting her to move out, but she remains, night after night, a helpmeet for my brothers.
    Jonah defies Dodi’s advances. He won’t let her give him a sponge bath or feed him or help to brush his teeth anymore. Sarah aids him when she can get by Dodi’s defenses. He keeps the three mouths of my brothers going at all hours with the wooing of Sarah. His sonnets have poorly stressed syllables but the meaning is worthy. He has talents that would have meant something a century ago.
    His hands, which are the softest of any of ours, can touch her in the right way, delicately brushing her flesh like the advent of a fall leaf. It takes a real passion. Sarah still doesn’t join them in bed. She hovers and lingers and abides.
    Theirs is a classic structure of tragedy in the making. Dodi floats back and forth between sleeping with me, my brothers, or alone in one of the other bedrooms. There are