Emily found J.C.’s box, looked through the glass, and saw there was nothing in it.
The little girl who had inserted the tiny key and opened her box and drawn out some mail, lovely long envelopes and a magazine, looked at Emily smugly as she left, but Emily ignored her. The other girl was still crying bitterly. “There are more things to life than this,” Emily would’ve told them if she spoke to children younger than herself, which she never did.
She picked up the burritos and pedaled home, hoping her mother and J.C. were not developing a desperate passion. Emily wished her mother would just settle down, but the world was just too full of distractions for her. In the last year she had joined the volunteer ambulance corps and taken up firearms instruction. She’d taken courses in bartending and blackjack dealing, all, Emily suspected, in the hope of meeting a desperate passion. Such dilatoriness was wasteful and improvident, Emily felt. You needed to know only one person in life, and that was yourself. You had to find that person and make friends with it if you could and hope it wouldn’t turn on you before you had a chance to familiarize yourself with its habits and tear you limb from limb. She wished she could meet the person that was herself instead of all those distracting other people, but maybe that happened later and not when you were eight years old. Her mother said that she wanted to hurry things too much, that she had even hurried her own being born, appearing three weeks before she was supposed to. Emily never tired of hearing this story, which verified her belief that she’d been someone else from the get-go. She had been born on a glass-bottom boat in the Gulf of California. “I just wanted to get one last little holiday in before my obligations,” her mother recounted. Emily loved hearing the story of her appearance and didn’t take offense at some of its meaner particulars, such as the demand by certain patrons for a refund, mostly an elderly contingent who undoubtedly saw in Emily’s unexpected entry the writing on the wall. The vessel, which was named The Bliss, was scrapped shortly afterward, as underwater visibility had been declining for years. The crew was enthusiastic, perhaps even deluded, and kept the glass clean enough; but they were increasingly garrulous about an ecosystem in which the gulf no longer played a part. The paying customer saw not at all what had been promised or inferred, only a vague, grainy drift, an emptiness that with effort might suggest some previous thriving and striving, but all in all a disappointment.
Turning into the alley, Emily saw that something new had been added to the garbage-container vista, a neatly wrapped package that leaned against the great receptacle. It seemed a different caste from ordinary refuse. In many respects it was prerefuse. Emily stopped to look at this extremely inviting parcel. She put the kickstand of her bike down, went over, and picked it up. It was unaddressed and exceptionally light. The wrapping paper was beautifully creased and folded with geometric precision, tied and secured with string. She put it in the basket with the burritos.
J.C. was still taking his ease in the reclining chair.
“Where’s my mom?” Emily asked.
“She’s changing her dress for supper. You raised in a barn? You should dress nice for supper, even in your own home. Am I the only one who knows simple etiquette around here?”
Emily had the bag of burritos in one hand and the mystery parcel in the other.
“What the hell’s that?” J.C. demanded. “You didn’t get that out of my box.”
“You didn’t have anything in your box,” Emily said. “I found this.”
“You just go around picking up suspicious-looking parcels? If I’ve ever seen anything in my life that looked more suspicious, I don’t know what it would be. You better stand back while I open it.”
“Emily,” her mother called, “come in and put this zipper back on its track for me.”
“I think your mother’s putting on a few pounds,” J.C. said. “She doesn’t want to put on too many more.” He took the ring from his belt loop again and pulled out the blade of a knife with this thumbnail. Emily turned from him and walked toward the demands of a stuck zipper with small enthusiasm. She opened the screen door, and as it fell behind her on its coiled spring, almost clipping her heels as it always did, a concise explosion of demiurgical ambition occurred. Emily looked behind her, puzzled. Her mother ran past, her mouth freshly lipsticked, the wide-open back of her dress exposing the prominent vertebrae of her spine. Emily had always found her mother’s spine terribly attractive.
The bomb had gone off compactly. J.C. was gripping his lap upon which, it appeared, a whole fistful of bright poppies had fallen. “Oh my God, it blew off Little Wonder,” he said. “Holy frigging God.”
A peculiar calm descended upon Emily. She stood just out of J.C.’s snatching reach — had he been interested in reaching for her, which was the furthest thing from his mind — and looked at him. It already seemed monotonous, though it had scarcely begun. Would this event lend itself to poetry? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t even actually sure what had happened.
J.C. peered between his outspread fingers and howled.
“Call the ambulance, Emily!” her mother screamed. “Call the emergency, call 911!” Then she said, “No, I’ll do it.” She looked at J.C. in an exasperated way and ran into the house.
Emily got a little dirt and sprinkled it on her head, rubbing it in good.
The ambulance arrived and the one who wasn’t the driver greeted Emily’s mother warmly. “What a coincidence,” he said. “Didn’t think we’d meet again like this.” He pried J.C.’s fingers off his shredded shorts.
“My stuff, my stuff,” J.C. mumbled.
“Be calm,” the medic said. “We’ve encountered this before, I can assure you of that. If we can find the damn thing, the docs will be able to sew it back on.”
“It’s around here somewhere,” J.C. whispered.
“That’s what I’m saying,” the medic said. “I’m sure it is. We’ll just get you stabilized, then we’ll start looking.”
“Couldn’t have flown far,” J.C. said, his eyes rolling whitely.
The driver started canvassing the yard in a desultory manner, having no patience at all with victims of illegal fireworks. None. Damn thing shouldn’t be so hard to find in this yard, which was very cruddily maintained.
“This your husband, Karen?” the medic asked Emily’s mother.
“No, no. Just a friend.” She smiled at the medic, then thought to reassure J.C. “We’re going to start looking for it right now, J.C.”
“Should I get a jar, Mom?” Emily said.
Her mother didn’t answer. She and the medic were heading off to the ambulance with J.C. strapped to a gurney. The driver was standing meditatively at one of the corners where the fence met itself, then thought better of it. “You got a rest room I could use?” he asked Emily. She nodded and pointed toward the house. Alone, she struck out across the dilapidated terrain. She didn’t know what the thing looked like, exactly. She guessed it had rings and was petaled sort of and squashed on top. She’d pieced this conception together from a number of sources. She would recognize it by its being there.