squeezed the back of my neck, kneaded the knots out.
I listened to the shifting of the world outside. This is either the eye or we’ve made it through, I said.
Well, he said. There will always be another storm, you know.
I stood, woozy, the bottles clanking off my body back into the bathtub. I know, I said.
You’ll be A-OK, he said.
That’s no wisdom coming from you, I said. Everything’s all right for the dead.
When I opened the door to the bedroom, the room was blazing with light. The plywood over the windows had caught the wind like sails and carried the frames from the house. There were rectangular holes in the wall. The creatures had left the room. The storm had stripped thesheets like a good guest, and they had all blown away, save one, which hung pale and perfect over the mirror, saving myself from the sight of me.
----
—
The damage was done: three-hundred-year-old trees smashed, towns flattened as if a fist had come from the sun and twisted. My life was scattered into three counties. Someone found a novel with my bookplate in it sunning itself on top of a car in Georgia. Everywhere I looked, the dead. A neighbor child, come through the storm, had wandered outside while the rest of the family was salvaging what remained, and had fallen into the pool and drowned. The high school basketball team, ignoring all warnings, crossed a bridge and was swallowed up by the Gulf. Old friends were carried away on the floods; others, seeing the little that remained, let their hearts break. The storm had stolen the rest of the wine and the butler’s pantry, too. My chickens had drowned, blown apart, their feathers freckling the ground. For weeks, the stench of their rot would fill my dreams. Over the next month, mold would eat its way up the plaster and leave gorgeous abstract murals of sage and burnt sienna behind. But the frame had held, the doors had held. The house, in the end, had held.
On my way downstairs, I passed a congregation of exhausted armadillos on the landing. Birds had filled theFlorida room, cardinals and whip-poor-wills and owls. Gently, the insects fled from my step. I sloshed over the rugs that bled their vegetable dyes onto the floorboards. My brain was too small for my skull and banged from side to side as I walked. Moving in the humidity was like forcing my way through wet silk. Still, I opened the door to look at the devastation outside.
And there I stopped, breathless. I laughed. Isn’t this the fucking kicker, I said aloud. Or maybe I didn’t.
Houses contain us; who can say what we contain? Out where the steps had been, balanced beside the drop-off: one egg, whole and mute, holding all the light of dawn in its skin.
FOR THE GOD OF LOVE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
Stone house down a gully of grapevines. Under the roof, a great pale room.
Night had been drawn out by the way the house eclipsed the dawn. Morning came when the sun flared against the hill and suddenly shone in. What had begun as a joke in the dark came clear to the man in the fields who was riding a strange sort of tractor that straddled the vines. He idled, parallel the window, to watch. Amanda thought this was a very French thing to do. The heat in her face was not because of the nudity; rather, the plagiarism. Her idea had come from the tractor’s first squatting pass in the window. She slapped her husband’s stomach below and said, Finish.
A minute later she strode off the bed and went to the window and, leaning for the curtains on each side, pressedher chest against the glass, to tease. The man on the tractor wasn’t a man but a young boy. He was laughing.
In the curtained dark again, they heard the tractor moving off, then the flurries of roosters down in the village.
Nice surprise, Grant said, sliding his hand down her thigh. Hope we didn’t wake them up. He stretched, lazy. Amanda imagined their hosts in the room below: Manfred staring blankly at the wall. Drooling. Genevieve with her passive-aggressive buzzing
I listened to the shifting of the world outside. This is either the eye or we’ve made it through, I said.
Well, he said. There will always be another storm, you know.
I stood, woozy, the bottles clanking off my body back into the bathtub. I know, I said.
You’ll be A-OK, he said.
That’s no wisdom coming from you, I said. Everything’s all right for the dead.
When I opened the door to the bedroom, the room was blazing with light. The plywood over the windows had caught the wind like sails and carried the frames from the house. There were rectangular holes in the wall. The creatures had left the room. The storm had stripped thesheets like a good guest, and they had all blown away, save one, which hung pale and perfect over the mirror, saving myself from the sight of me.
----
—
The damage was done: three-hundred-year-old trees smashed, towns flattened as if a fist had come from the sun and twisted. My life was scattered into three counties. Someone found a novel with my bookplate in it sunning itself on top of a car in Georgia. Everywhere I looked, the dead. A neighbor child, come through the storm, had wandered outside while the rest of the family was salvaging what remained, and had fallen into the pool and drowned. The high school basketball team, ignoring all warnings, crossed a bridge and was swallowed up by the Gulf. Old friends were carried away on the floods; others, seeing the little that remained, let their hearts break. The storm had stolen the rest of the wine and the butler’s pantry, too. My chickens had drowned, blown apart, their feathers freckling the ground. For weeks, the stench of their rot would fill my dreams. Over the next month, mold would eat its way up the plaster and leave gorgeous abstract murals of sage and burnt sienna behind. But the frame had held, the doors had held. The house, in the end, had held.
On my way downstairs, I passed a congregation of exhausted armadillos on the landing. Birds had filled theFlorida room, cardinals and whip-poor-wills and owls. Gently, the insects fled from my step. I sloshed over the rugs that bled their vegetable dyes onto the floorboards. My brain was too small for my skull and banged from side to side as I walked. Moving in the humidity was like forcing my way through wet silk. Still, I opened the door to look at the devastation outside.
And there I stopped, breathless. I laughed. Isn’t this the fucking kicker, I said aloud. Or maybe I didn’t.
Houses contain us; who can say what we contain? Out where the steps had been, balanced beside the drop-off: one egg, whole and mute, holding all the light of dawn in its skin.
FOR THE GOD OF LOVE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
Stone house down a gully of grapevines. Under the roof, a great pale room.
Night had been drawn out by the way the house eclipsed the dawn. Morning came when the sun flared against the hill and suddenly shone in. What had begun as a joke in the dark came clear to the man in the fields who was riding a strange sort of tractor that straddled the vines. He idled, parallel the window, to watch. Amanda thought this was a very French thing to do. The heat in her face was not because of the nudity; rather, the plagiarism. Her idea had come from the tractor’s first squatting pass in the window. She slapped her husband’s stomach below and said, Finish.
A minute later she strode off the bed and went to the window and, leaning for the curtains on each side, pressedher chest against the glass, to tease. The man on the tractor wasn’t a man but a young boy. He was laughing.
In the curtained dark again, they heard the tractor moving off, then the flurries of roosters down in the village.
Nice surprise, Grant said, sliding his hand down her thigh. Hope we didn’t wake them up. He stretched, lazy. Amanda imagined their hosts in the room below: Manfred staring blankly at the wall. Drooling. Genevieve with her passive-aggressive buzzing
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