Fitting Ends by Dan Chaon Page A

meaning always drifted just beyond a certain edge of clarity.
    â€œWent to see O’Connor,” Arlinda’s mother said, “like you said.”
    â€œWhat did he say?”
    â€œHe didn’t give me anything.”
    â€œWhy?” The grandmother cupped her hands over her coffee, as if to gather warmth. Arlinda, pretending not to pay attention, swung her legs gently, fascinated.
    â€œHarvey goes and talks to them,” Arlinda’s mother said, giving the name a sharp twist, as if it were dirty. “Don’t they think I know when it hurts?” She glared at Arlinda, as if she were about to protest. “I know when I’m sick.”
    â€œI’ve got something,” the grandmother said, and Arlinda’s mother cast another sharp glance at Arlinda.
    â€œLittle pitchers,” she said, and the grandmother, too, looked at Arlinda.
    Arlinda felt her skin prickle. Were they speaking of the little pictures she’d found in her mother’s drawer? She stared down at her swinging legs, as if she hadn’t heard, and she saw her grandmother take a pill from her sweater pocket, passing it quickly under the table to her mother’s hand. Her mother brought the hand nonchalantly to her mouth, and then took a swallow of coffee.
    So that was all, Arlinda thought. She already knew that her mother and grandmother shared their pills. She scorned them for thinking she was too dumb to notice. She had decided that they had the same illness. She could tell this by comparing them to women she knew to be normal. Her Aunt Sharon, for example, had breasts; most women did. Aunt Sharon’s breasts were large and round. They were not like lumps of fat, which was what her mother said breasts were made of; instead, they seemed like a part of Aunt Sharon’s body, like an elbow or an ear. Arlinda’s mother’s breasts were not fleshy—her chest was almost as flat as Arlinda’s, except that her mother had two pointy, purplish nipples, hard and angry looking. The mother in the dirty pictures had real breasts, but that was one of the things Arlinda found frightening.
    Also, she knew that her mother and grandmother had babies that died. The grandmother would go on Memorial Day to lay flowers on their three tiny graves, but her mother’s baby had no grave. Her mother did not like to talk about it, but Arlinda pressed her, once, and finally the mother had snapped: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, it wasn’t a real baby. It wasn’t developed. It was like a fish.” Most women, Arlinda knew, did not give birth to such things.
    The mother and grandmother sat for a long time in silence, their hands folded on the table like closed wings. The coffee cups sat in front of them, untouched. After a while, Arlinda began to wonder whether they were somehow talking without her hearing, making signs with their eyes, reading one another’s minds. When her mother breathed in, she closed her eyes, and then opened them as she breathed out, a kind of sleepy rhythm that seemed to mean something important. Finally, after trying hard to see what they were saying, Arlinda got up and left the kitchen. “I’m going outside,” she said, and her mother mumbled under her breath.
    Arlinda walked around the side of the house, peering through little tears in the plastic-covered windows. She stared for a long time at her mother and grandmother, and she pretended that she was a girl who was going to steal a magic potion, and that they were the witches who guarded it. They sat there like stones, casting their spells. After a time, Arlinda crept back around the house, imagining she was following an ogre who would lead her to the hidden entrance of their den. But as she slipped along the wall, sliding around corners, it began to seem that the ogre she was following was now behind her, watching. The idea so startled her that she immediately stopped making believe, half afraid, almost wanting