The Best American Short Stories 2015 (25 page)

I let the door close behind me. The bartender, a small old black man, raised his eyebrows, and I said, “Scotch rocks, Red Label.” Talking, I felt discourteous. The piano played in the gloom of the farthest corner. I recognized the melody as a Mexican traditional called “Maria Elena.” I couldn't see the musician at all. In front of the piano a big tenor saxophone rested upright on a stand. With no one around to play it, it seemed like just another of the personalities here: the invisible pianist, the disenchanted old bartender, the big glamorous blonde, the shipwrecked, solitary saxophone. And the man who'd walked here through the snow . . . And as soon as the name of the song popped into my head I thought I heard a voice say, “Her name is Maria Elena.” The scene had a moonlit, black-and-white quality. Ten feet away, at her table, the blond woman waited, her shoulders back, her face raised. She lifted one hand and beckoned me with her fingers. She was weeping. The lines of her tears sparkled on her cheeks. “I am a prisoner here,” she said. I took the chair across from her and watched her cry. I sat upright, one hand on the table's surface and the other around my drink. I felt the ecstasy of a dancer, but I kept still.

Whit

My name would mean nothing to you, but there's a very good chance you're familiar with my work. Among the many TV ads I wrote and directed, you'll remember one in particular.

In this animated thirty-second spot, you see a brown bear chasing a gray rabbit. They come one after the other over a hill toward the view—the rabbit is cornered, he's crying, the bear comes to him—the rabbit reaches into his waistcoat pocket and pulls out a dollar bill and gives it to the bear. The bear looks at this gift, sits down, stares into space. The music stops, there's no sound, nothing is said, and right there, the little narrative ends, on a note of complete uncertainty. It's an advertisement for a banking chain. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but that's only if you haven't seen it. If you've seen it, the way it was rendered, then you know that it was a very unusual advertisement. Because it referred, really, to nothing at all, and yet it was actually very moving.

Advertisements don't try to get you to fork over your dough by tugging irrelevantly at your heartstrings, not as a rule. But this one broke the rules, and it worked. It brought the bank many new customers. And it excited a lot of commentary and won several awards—every award I ever won, in fact, I won for that ad. It ran in both halves of the twenty-second Super Bowl, and people still remember it.

You don't get awards personally. They go to the team. To the agency. But your name attaches to the project as a matter of workplace lore—“Whit did that one.” (And that would be me, Bill Whitman.) “Yes, the one with the rabbit and the bear was Whit's.”

Credit goes first of all to the banking firm who let this strange message go out to potential customers, who sought to start a relationship with a gesture so cryptic. It was better than cryptic—mysterious, untranslatable. I think it pointed to orderly financial exchange as the basis of harmony. Money tames the beast. Money is peace. Money is civilization. The end of the story is money.

I won't mention the name of the bank. If you don't remember the name, then it wasn't such a good ad after all.

If you watched any prime-time television in the 1980s, you've almost certainly seen several other ads I wrote or directed or both. I crawled out of my twenties leaving behind a couple of short, unhappy marriages, and then I found Elaine. Twenty-five years last June, and two daughters. Have I loved my wife? We've gotten along. We've never felt like congratulating ourselves.

I'm just shy of sixty-three. Elaine's fifty-two but seems older. Not in her looks but in her attitude of complacency. She lacks fire. Seems interested mainly in our two girls. She keeps in close contact with them. They're both grown. They're harmless citizens. They aren't beautiful or clever.

Before the girls started grade school, we left New York and headed west in stages, a year in Denver (too much winter), another in Phoenix (too hot), and finally San Diego. San Diego. What a wonderful city. It's a bit more crowded each year, but still. Completely wonderful. Never regretted coming here, not for an instant. And financially it all worked out. If we'd stayed in New York I'd have made a lot more money, but we'd have needed a lot more too.

Last night Elaine and I lay in bed watching TV, and I asked her what she remembered. Not much. Less than I. We have a very small TV that sits on a dresser across the room. Keeping it going provides an excuse for lying awake in bed.

I note that I've lived longer in the past now than I can expect to live in the future. I have more to remember than I have to look forward to. Memory fades, not much of the past stays, and I wouldn't mind forgetting a lot more of it.

Once in a while, I lie there as the television runs, and I read something wild and ancient from one of several collections of folktales I own. Apples that summon sea maidens, eggs that fulfill any wish, and pears that make people grow long noses that fall off again. Then sometimes I get up and don my robe and go out into our quiet neighborhood looking for a magic thread, a magic sword, a magic horse.

SARAH KOKERNOT

FROM
West Branch

M

I
T WAS THAT
moment in the reception when women leave their high heels on the porch and men take off their jackets and drape them over chairs. The bride and groom and immediate family members went off with the photographer to take advantage of the late afternoon light. The sun disappeared behind a hill, and what remained in the air was a honeyed glow that forgave the tense smiles and dark circles under their eyes. Miriam and Gloria both wore long yellow bridesmaid dresses, gathering their hems above their knees as they waded through the unmowed grass. Although it hadn't rained, the field behind the house was damp enough to soak through a good pair of leather boots. Miriam waited as Liam rolled up his pants and discarded his socks and shoes by a patch of woods. Then the three of them ducked through a tight web of branches to the neighboring field, owned by a couple who'd struck rich in the music business and now tended to a menagerie of exotic pets.

The camel, explained Miriam, was a real sweetheart. A dromedary rescued from a petting zoo in Pigeon Forge that had gone out of business. At the sight of an apple, she'd growl happily and gently take it from your hand with her long cleft lips. Earlier Gloria had raided the appetizer trays and stuffed a handful of carrot sticks into Liam's jacket pocket, along with his wallet and keys. They all squeezed by a rusted metal gate without splashing their cocktails or ruining their clothes, but were stopped a few feet later by an electric fence, the metal wire so thin that it was nearly invisible.

Unfortunately the camel was nowhere in sight. More than likely she was getting fed in the black tobacco barn that stood at the opposite end of the field.

Liam reached into his jacket pocket for a carrot stick. Miriam had never seen him in a suit before and now that he wore one, she no longer found it impossible to believe he was an attorney. He was six foot four, broad shouldered, and handsome in that peculiar way tall redheads are, like he had too many bones in his face.

“How can we tell if it's on?” Gloria waved her hand over the fence like it was a burner on a hot stove.

Miriam balanced her glass on top of the fence post. She bent over, plucked a blade of grass, and held it out to Liam. They had dated for three years in high school after what had been, at least for Liam, an agonizing crush that could be traced back to the fifth grade. It had begun on the day she was captain for recess basketball. He was the shortest kid back then and always chosen last, shifting from one foot to the other and smiling good-naturedly to show it didn't bother him. She'd admired him because of this, and pitied him a little. So she'd tapped him first. Afterward he seemed to be everywhere, trembling as he passed her a box of markers, staring at her with undisguised longing across the rows of cafeteria tables. It was all tremendously flattering. It was all tremendously irritating. She would ignore him for weeks and then, for reasons she couldn't explain, return a look of equal longing, pass notes to him in the shape of origami cranes, share answers to the math homework, which he always forgot. By seventh grade she had the second-biggest boobs of any girl in the middle school. Grown men honked their horns and whistled as she walked home from the bus stop. Miriam had convinced Liam to steal the answers to a test, hand over his spending money on a field trip to an art museum, buy cigarettes from the vending machine at the pizzeria.

She held out the blade of grass to him. He shook his head no. “Just make sure your hands aren't wet,” he said.

Miriam took a deep breath. When she touched the grass to the metal wire, the fine hairs on her arm rose. A low, steady pulse tickled up her neck. It almost hurt. She remembered they had done this in Mrs. Walter's science class, walking past the edge of the schoolyard through the new subdivision, over the creek to the farm with Jersey cattle. One recently escaped, causing a highway accident that left a cow-sized bloodstain on the asphalt for days. The farmer had since installed an electric fence as a precaution. They'd formed a chain that was six children long before the current tapered out. Miriam had held hands with Liam. Did Liam remember how she made a big show of wiping her palm on her jeans so the other kids wouldn't tease her? Miriam was tempted to grab Liam's hand but was stopped by all the possible interpretations of this gesture.

She reached for Gloria's instead. Gloria squealed. Liam rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Not everyone grew up in the country,” Gloria said, reaching for him. The current traveled along the blade and circulated through their bodies. Above the distant chatter of the reception and the hum of cicadas, a bass note thudded inside Miriam's head like a second heartbeat. How pleasant it was to feel invaded by this other heart! The end of the day was beautiful. A bluish softness coated the trees and the grass, and a few fireflies blinked over the field. Had she held Liam's hand she would have squeezed it just now.

They almost forgot the camel. “Leave something for when she gets back,” said Miriam. And Liam tossed the carrot sticks far over the fence, where they landed near a water barrel. As they walked to the house, Gloria unfastened her bun and a breeze rippled through her long dark hair. She looked like a pretty maiden in an old painting. Miriam realized that she must look like this too—pretty, old-timey—and became aware of Liam's gaze on the back of her neck. The lights of the house appeared through the trees. The guests had congregated on the patio and were talking loudly while the band tuned up indoors. At the corner of the balcony a man stood alone, loosening his tie. He leaned on his elbows and took a sip from his drink. Miriam stopped. The muscles in her chest contracted over her heart as though she'd plunged into freezing water.

It looked just like Caleb. Same angle of the jaw, same curly brown hair—even the same broken nose. She shook herself. By now she was used to these missightings, these minor hallucinations. The man had turned around and she could see that it was clearly not Caleb. His neck was longer. His smile looked easy. He straightened and walked into the house.

“You all right there?” Liam asked. Few other people would have noticed.

“It's nothing.” She looked down into her glass and shrugged. “Seems I've run out of liquor.”

Miriam ordered one gin and tonic, one rum and Coke, and watched Liam sign the guestbook in the entryway. You could see his beer belly with his jacket unbuttoned. A few months ago his girlfriend had broken up with him—the same girl he'd left Miriam for, their freshman year of college. She was nothing less than delighted to hear this news. She noted that Liam had clearly not been working out, nor had he lost the apologetic stoop of a tall man who was uncomfortable with his height. He put the pen between his teeth. He had not changed much. All in all he reminded her of a skittish orange cat.

She set his drink on the table and glimpsed the message he had taken so long in writing.
To Beth and John, a beautiful couple. Wishing a long life to you both, full of happiness and love!

The kindness of these words filled her with shame.

When she looked at him her eyes came up only to the top buttons of his shirt.

“How many for you this year?” he asked, nodding to the surroundings. White and yellow paper lanterns draped the porch and swayed in the wind. Beth, the bride, had fought her mother to put these up. A pack of young nieces and nephews roamed between the tables of appetizers, their lips dyed red from multiple Shirley Temples. Aunts and distant cousins, stepfamily, coworkers, and the friends of grandparents shook hands vigorously and gave half kisses on cheeks. A small wedding with a big reception—the whole effect was like being invited to eat at a nice restaurant with someone else's family.

“Four,” she said, squeezing a lime into her gin and tonic. “Not as bad as it could be. You?”

Liam's eyes darted to Miriam's right arm.

“It's gone,” she told him, touching her bicep where a patch of skin was discolored. “Took a whole paycheck to get it removed.” As soon as Liam had turned eighteen they had driven to a tattoo parlor in downtown Nashville. After years of drawing possible designs in the margins of their notebooks, they'd finally settled on something they hoped they would still like at age thirty—their first initials in medieval-manuscript letters. Miriam had volunteered to go first. Fifteen minutes into the appointment, Liam had gone for some fresh air. He had not returned. When it was over, Miriam had wandered outside and found Liam sitting on the curb three blocks away with his head between his knees.