their kitchen apart.
I lie there watching the man’s face as he watches me, until he tires of seeing what might be his own face transposed over mine-has the window become a mirror? He holds up his hand, presses it to glass, then walks back to his car. I pull the curtains closed. His handprint still smudges the pane. The car engine catches, and after a minute, I can picture the headlights drawing away.
2010 | The pond in the backyard of the Springs house is skimmed over with ice. On top of that ice is a coating of snow that hasn’t melted in weeks. The snow hasn’t really stopped since a few days before Christmas, and it bewilders me that anything could still be alive down there. But many things live here that aren’t supposed to live in this climate: the fig tree, the crepe myrtle, the needle palm by the door of my study.
Just where the pump flows back into the water, there’s an opening in the ice. What must it be like to look up through that opening, no wider than a foot or two? The smaller, younger fish draw to it, their mouths hitting the moving, wet surface as if they’re gorging on oxygen. Or maybe it’s nothing as extreme as all that. They’re curious. They want to see what’s up there, on the other side: the sky with its rushing clouds, the sun, the geese that fly overhead in groups of four. They want to see people.
But the older fish seem to think there isn’t any value in looking through that window. The world is cold and deep in these months, and they know energy needs to be conserved. They do what they can to turn away from that aperture, to abide the darkness above their heads. They know how tired they can get. They don’t need to know what they can’t have. They’ve seen light too often only to have it taken away again and again. For what is its purpose if only to show them what they don’t have? So they cradle near the bottom, in a mush of soft leaves, while the young ones keep tossing themselves up at that window above. They say, give us light. We want to see you.
1986 | Denise sends the revision to Iris. She tries to busy herself with all the chores she’s put off during these hectic months: putting up bookshelves, rearranging those bookshelves. She thinks about the next book and how she might arrange it. Maybe she’ll finally write the book based on her ex-husband’s colleague, Otto Krupp, the high school math teacher who stabbed the biology teacher forty-one times until she stopped screaming and fighting him off. But when she sits down to write, she can’t look at the screen without leaping up from her seat. Instantly she starts waxing the surface of her desk, and when she’s finished with that, she pulls the books down from one of those bookshelves and starts the tedious but involving work of rearranging them once again.
It’s not that she doesn’t like what she’s written, but the doubts spread. If she’d held on to the book for a few more days, she could have made it a better book. She fears the news isn’t going to be good. She tries to list all the things that Iris might hate about it: Emily’s capacity to be wounded, Emily’s capacity to fall in love with people who manipulate her, betray her, leave her behind. Is Iris even thinking about the book, Denise wonders, or is she thinking about Denise, or more likely, a quality Iris doesn’t like about herself? She wonders whether she’s prepared to write this book one more time—or many more times. She thinks about that question as she beats pillows, does five loads of laundry, anything to resist the impulse to lie down on the couch, stare at the wall, and smoke half a pack.
Then Iris’s phone call comes. The voice on the other end is neutral, supportive, relaxed. You’ve done it, Iris says, with a tiredness that suggests she’s been up night after night with the book. She talks about possible edits: the opening, the ending, the passages from Emily’s mother’s perspective. We can’t help but wonder whether
I lie there watching the man’s face as he watches me, until he tires of seeing what might be his own face transposed over mine-has the window become a mirror? He holds up his hand, presses it to glass, then walks back to his car. I pull the curtains closed. His handprint still smudges the pane. The car engine catches, and after a minute, I can picture the headlights drawing away.
2010 | The pond in the backyard of the Springs house is skimmed over with ice. On top of that ice is a coating of snow that hasn’t melted in weeks. The snow hasn’t really stopped since a few days before Christmas, and it bewilders me that anything could still be alive down there. But many things live here that aren’t supposed to live in this climate: the fig tree, the crepe myrtle, the needle palm by the door of my study.
Just where the pump flows back into the water, there’s an opening in the ice. What must it be like to look up through that opening, no wider than a foot or two? The smaller, younger fish draw to it, their mouths hitting the moving, wet surface as if they’re gorging on oxygen. Or maybe it’s nothing as extreme as all that. They’re curious. They want to see what’s up there, on the other side: the sky with its rushing clouds, the sun, the geese that fly overhead in groups of four. They want to see people.
But the older fish seem to think there isn’t any value in looking through that window. The world is cold and deep in these months, and they know energy needs to be conserved. They do what they can to turn away from that aperture, to abide the darkness above their heads. They know how tired they can get. They don’t need to know what they can’t have. They’ve seen light too often only to have it taken away again and again. For what is its purpose if only to show them what they don’t have? So they cradle near the bottom, in a mush of soft leaves, while the young ones keep tossing themselves up at that window above. They say, give us light. We want to see you.
1986 | Denise sends the revision to Iris. She tries to busy herself with all the chores she’s put off during these hectic months: putting up bookshelves, rearranging those bookshelves. She thinks about the next book and how she might arrange it. Maybe she’ll finally write the book based on her ex-husband’s colleague, Otto Krupp, the high school math teacher who stabbed the biology teacher forty-one times until she stopped screaming and fighting him off. But when she sits down to write, she can’t look at the screen without leaping up from her seat. Instantly she starts waxing the surface of her desk, and when she’s finished with that, she pulls the books down from one of those bookshelves and starts the tedious but involving work of rearranging them once again.
It’s not that she doesn’t like what she’s written, but the doubts spread. If she’d held on to the book for a few more days, she could have made it a better book. She fears the news isn’t going to be good. She tries to list all the things that Iris might hate about it: Emily’s capacity to be wounded, Emily’s capacity to fall in love with people who manipulate her, betray her, leave her behind. Is Iris even thinking about the book, Denise wonders, or is she thinking about Denise, or more likely, a quality Iris doesn’t like about herself? She wonders whether she’s prepared to write this book one more time—or many more times. She thinks about that question as she beats pillows, does five loads of laundry, anything to resist the impulse to lie down on the couch, stare at the wall, and smoke half a pack.
Then Iris’s phone call comes. The voice on the other end is neutral, supportive, relaxed. You’ve done it, Iris says, with a tiredness that suggests she’s been up night after night with the book. She talks about possible edits: the opening, the ending, the passages from Emily’s mother’s perspective. We can’t help but wonder whether
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