North of Boston by Elisabeth Elo

half the building knowing about it. Then I remember that I fiddled with the front door when I came home—thought I’d unlocked it, but it seemed to stick, so I locked and unlocked it a couple of times before I felt the bolt slide. The door must have been unlocked when I put my key in the first time. The intruder picked the lock to get in but didn’t have the key to lock it when he or she left.
    I go next door and ask my neighbor if she saw anyone. She’s suspicious of everyone—has been known to report a car idling too long in the street. She says no. Then her eyes narrow, and her door inches a few more degrees toward closed. She’s even suspicious of me.
    I call the super, tell him someone was in my apartment. The baseball game’s going in the background, so loud we have to shout. He tells me to call the cops. So I do. They’ll send a car.
    While I’m waiting, I retrace my steps, check all my valuables one more time. Nothing’s missing. Maybe I’m wrong about the oud wood, but I swear I can still smell its traces in the air.
    I wonder if someone was watching the apartment this afternoon and saw me leave. Maybe whoever it was is still out there. I sidle to the window. On Tappan Street cars are parallel parked along the curb. A couple strolling. A kid on a skateboard. Teenage girls with long hair and bulky scarves. Am I going to live this way now, watching everything like a hawk? I go to the back of my apartment, where the bathroom window overlooks the parking lot. Peer through the blind. Cars, the usual cars. That’s all.
    The cops fill the apartment with their big chests and beer guts, their snapped-shut leather holsters. Handcuffs, flashlights, nightsticks clanging in their belts. Loud, husky voices.
Hey, don’t worry. It happens.
Like they’ve known me for years. They walk around being big and strong. Touch nothing, jot some fictitious notes. It’s just another call for them.
    â€œDidn’t take anything, huh?” one of them says.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSure there was someone here?”
    â€œThere was a scent,” I say. “Oud wood.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI know fragrance. I can tell.”
    â€œWhat wood?”
    â€œOud wood.”
    â€œUh-huh.” An exchange of glances. The memo pad’s stuffed in a pocket. They’re sure I’m a crackpot now. They tell me to change the locks, then leave the door wide open when they go.
    â€”
    I used to steal into my parents’ room on Sunday mornings and watch my mother sleep. Milosa rose religiously at five to disappear into his life, so Isa would be alone on the king-size bed until she rose at noon or one. All week she would have been busy, coming and going, mostly going, a whirlwind of early mornings and late nights. Sunday morning was one of the few times she stayed in one place. She slept clumsily, almost aggressively, helter-skelter in the sheets.
    Work and sleep, work and sleep. That was her cycle. No middle gear, no liminal time. All that changed every year in late June, on the eve of the summer solstice. It was Jaaniõhtu, a national holiday in her native Estonia, and my mother always chose that day to begin her monthlong summer vacation. In Estonia, the shops and businesses close, and people gather outside to sing, dance, and drink around bonfires that blaze all night. My mother’s lonelier Americanized version of the holiday was to take me by plane to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and from there by ferry and rented car up the coast of Labrador to a secluded house on the beach, close to the Hudson Strait. The house had been designed by its owner, an architect from Montreal who vacationed in it with his family every August and rented it to my mother in July. It was so far north that we wore jackets and sweaters, daytime lasted until nine or ten o’clock, and the night sky occasionally swirled with the eerie parabolas of the northern lights.
    We’d buy