“You,” she says. “At least it was nice out.” His father was there. It was he who’d cut the cord, had held the bloody scissors. “I thought it was a sign,” she says.
“Of what?” he says.
“I really couldn’t tell you.”
“What happened?” he says.
“The fire,” he says.
It had to mean something, is what she had thought. “What else?” she says. “They put it out.”
STEAM
My mother called to tell me that today was her birthday.
“I didn’t think,” I said, “that you would be alive.”
She wasn’t, of course. In the morning I went to the pool where I go when I go to swim laps. The pool is high up and has a view of the city. After I swam, I went to see a movie. I could not go to work because a steam pipe had broken — exploded — outside the building, the high rise, that has my office in it. A violent plume had obstructed the sky, ruddy and thick, and there were shards flying everywhere, of masonry and glass. People were screaming, believing the worst.
I wished just a little that I had been there.
It was all of it cordoned: papers, files, information irretrievable, the windows blown. The news showed the street, laid bare save for rubble.
Outside the theatre, the rain fell hard. The roof had a leak. Drops, great drops, then showers of water poured onto the plastic — hefty, black — that someone had laid on the topmost seats. I had just come from a country, from visiting a country, where things like this happened. Water that fell rolled all down the floor. The handful of people watching the movie in the middle of the day in a city where things such as this were not prone to happen did not appear troubled. They moved to dry chairs. The star of the movie, a world-famous actress was dying and dying, and then she died.
I went home and baked treats to mail off to my sons via overnight service, throwing away all the ones I had burnt. There were many I had burnt.
I called my office voice mail.
My sister was not home. I left her a message, which might or might not have recorded, I thought.
My mother had called me the night before the morning she did not wake up. She was coming to see me, had purchased a ticket, would be here, she said. She said, “I have to get away.” She said, “Out of this place.” She wanted to talk about food we would eat, in the future, in the city. Bread from the bakery, Chinese, cake. She said, “I must.” (“Must you go?” my great aunt said before she died.) My mother, I thought, did not sound distraught. But I have not told the truth. I didn’t, in fact, speak to my mother on the night before the morning she did not wake up. I am off by a day, a week at most.
The call came at work. I was not at my desk. This did not matter. I said they were wrong. My stepfather lay dying himself on his side of the bed, and he was quite hard of hearing. The housekeeper found her.
The telephone, the catering, the burial, bills. The carpeting, the realtor asserted, had to go. It was I who placed the papers and tissues into the bag — it was a big, dark bag — and then I wiped the surfaces. The carpet was cream. It was all done correctly.
The corporate hotline did not have an update.
The boys sent a message from somebody’s gadget in digits and type.
I cleaned up the kitchen. The call was my sister. I said, “What’s new?”
“It’s raining,” she said.
“Here, too,” I said, “and I am so far away.”
MIGHTY BREAKERS OF THE SEA
All along the waterfront, the girls fan out. Look at them there! In red and in blue, in yellow, white. They are young, there! In red and in blue, in yellow, white. They are young, these girls; they are dressed in swaths of gauze. They are walking in the water.
The moment should be frozen. The story we are witnessing should have had a different start, such as, Once upon a time, or, In another country.
The water rises. The girls are subsumed — to the breast, the neck.
It is a very old tale.
The girl in yellow appears to be looking for something under the surface she will not find, or must not find. The other girls take her and lead her ashore.
“If,” says the king of the kingdom to girl in the yellow. “If you find the feather, you may marry the prince.” He says, “The feather is enchanted and will carry good fortune.” The boy will be king regardless of outcome. The mothers are absent, as it must happen. The feather, according to the king, will be in water. “Come,” the king says to the girl in yellow. “Do you not wish to be the wife and then the mother of a prince and then a king?”
He had buried his previous wife alive in ice, the prince had, for a minor infraction — a wayward glance, not even a kiss. The wife before that, a child, no less, not much past twelve, was believed to have been poisoned with a drop on the tongue.
The king takes the girl in yellow by the shoulder. Old as he is, he has all of his teeth. “Will you not look for the feather?” he says.
“But where?” she says.
“In the morning,” he says, and shuts the girl in yellow in a room in which the window is broken.
Day break, a bird flies in through the frame. “I will help,” the bird says. “If you will give me your pledge.”
“What pledge?” says the girl. “And what if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll die,” the bird says.
And so the girl clambers out through the window and follows the bird, at least as well as she can, because the bird is swift. “What have I promised?” the girl asks the bird.
“To keep me,” the bird says.
The bird leads the girl to a very deep forest. “Bird, I am hungry and thirsty,” she says.
They fly and they walk to a well that is deep. The girl looks down from the light into water. “There is no feather here,” the girl says.
The bird is on the ledge.
“You misled me,” the girls says, and drinks her fill.
Back in the palace, the king takes the girl in yellow, increasingly shabby, deeply to task. “No supper for you,” the king decrees. “And as for the feather, if you don’t find it, I will stone you to death.”
The son of the king is playing a flute. The girl in red is dancing for him, ashimmer in jewels.
The king says, “The feather.”
Daybreak, the bird reappears at the foot of the bed to the girl in yellow. “Do not fear,” the bird says. “Follow me,” the bird says.
“Why should I?” the girl says. “You failed me the last time.”
“Because,” the bird says, “you promised to keep me.”
The girl appears not to believe she has made such a vow but follows the bird through the forest, and then to the field. Thorns pierce her feet, and her garment of yellow is stained and torn. “I am hungry and thirsty and dirty,” she says.
Rain falls in torrents. “There,” the bird says.
“Where?” the girl says. “There is no feather in the rain in the field.”
The bird is in the grass.
“Then you are not looking,” the bird says.
The girl drinks handsful and washes herself.
Meanwhile, the girl in white has gone to the sea in search of the feather alone, she has. “If I find the feather,” she thinks to herself, “then the son of the king must marry me.” The girl in the white trips on a rock, which is sharp, which is hidden by the water, which has risen to her eyes. There is nobody there. She drowns.
Back at the palace, the king shakes the girl in yellow until she cries, “Mercy.”
“No supper for you,” the king says.
Music is playing.
“One last chance,” the king says. “If you do not find the feather—”
“I know,” she says.
“Only the feather will save you,” he says. “Do you not wish to be the wife and then the mother of a prince and then a king?”