in one of three corduroy sports coats: brown, gray or beige. By the time he started his tenure at The Hill he had already made his only tie, a black clip-on, last four and a half years. The tie was a going-away present from his younger brother, who inherited Mark’s room over the garage.
His tie was the last straw with Mindy, who made the issue of a state institution an ultimatum.
“I can’t stand the thought of you working in an asylum ,” she said. Her nose wrinkled up in that way he’d thought cute, but now he thought officious. After all, he was the only one in the room with her at the time—not his patients, not the asylum. She was not wrinkling her nose at them but at him and at his pitiful prospects, a pungent substitute for what his medical degree had implied.
Mark White had a firm confidence in the skills of his head and his hands. The year of psychotherapy required for his matriculation in psychiatry had not gone wasted. He looked forward to The Hill, not down on it, and every time he saw Mindy picking imaginary lint off the arm of her chair he felt the gulf between them widen. She was digging a hole between them by the bucketful. He knew that nothing short of continental drift could save them.
Mindy had been his only intimate relationship, and he regretted his inexperience, particularly his inexperience in ending it. Even the best therapy only reached so far.
In the end, he didn’t have to worry. She took charge of the ending as she had taken charge of their meals or their selection of movies that she preferred to call “films.”
“I respect your social conscience,” she told him. “But I believe that money saves more people than good intentions. You should be an example for them to aspire to, not grubbing around among them.”
He had simply smiled and taken her hand.
“You’re being understanding,” she said. Again, that wrinkle of the well-tanned nose. “ Being understanding is not the same as understanding. You’ll see what I mean. Someday, you’ll need something or someone and nothing will quite bring it off like money. That’s why I’m going to Houston.”
She flew to Houston as the first vice-president of the BankWest International Investments division and married her Chief Executive Officer a year later. Mark circled the date on his calendar after he received the invitation, but by the time the wedding rolled around he had already met Eddie Reyes.
In dreams begin responsibilities.
—W. B. Yeats
The boy Rafferty dragged stones to the uncle’s grave to prop up the lid of an old toolbox that he’d inscribed with “Uncle Hungry” in neat black letters. Above and below the name, and to either side of it, four clusters of translucent wings caught the rising March sun and licked the bleached backdrop of wood like cold flame. Rafferty dropped the young sack of his body down on the gravetop and watched a finger of sun pry apart the iron lips of the sky.
Wind whipped around the corner of the barn, last of the night wind running for cover. Rafferty was tired, sweaty from the night’s digging. The wind that had teeth in it last night passed him this morning without a snap. Along this side of the barn, the morning-sun side, a scatter of crocuses nodded their lavender heads. The uncle saved those bulbs an extra year before planting, just to be safe.
“Quiet as a grave,” the older man might have said. Rafferty said it for him and added the quick snort that his uncle used for a laugh. Wind-sighs, the raspy rattle of loose dust off the stone-tops, his crow on the barn roof stretching his right wing out—everything was waiting for Uncle to show up so they could get on with things.
Right after the hatch, inside the still, things were much quieter than this. Those quiet days dragged into months, a year, two years thick with fear, with knives in the night and the heavy stink of rotting flesh from the barn and from the spring. Visits from the Roam had been their only relief.
Rafferty
His tie was the last straw with Mindy, who made the issue of a state institution an ultimatum.
“I can’t stand the thought of you working in an asylum ,” she said. Her nose wrinkled up in that way he’d thought cute, but now he thought officious. After all, he was the only one in the room with her at the time—not his patients, not the asylum. She was not wrinkling her nose at them but at him and at his pitiful prospects, a pungent substitute for what his medical degree had implied.
Mark White had a firm confidence in the skills of his head and his hands. The year of psychotherapy required for his matriculation in psychiatry had not gone wasted. He looked forward to The Hill, not down on it, and every time he saw Mindy picking imaginary lint off the arm of her chair he felt the gulf between them widen. She was digging a hole between them by the bucketful. He knew that nothing short of continental drift could save them.
Mindy had been his only intimate relationship, and he regretted his inexperience, particularly his inexperience in ending it. Even the best therapy only reached so far.
In the end, he didn’t have to worry. She took charge of the ending as she had taken charge of their meals or their selection of movies that she preferred to call “films.”
“I respect your social conscience,” she told him. “But I believe that money saves more people than good intentions. You should be an example for them to aspire to, not grubbing around among them.”
He had simply smiled and taken her hand.
“You’re being understanding,” she said. Again, that wrinkle of the well-tanned nose. “ Being understanding is not the same as understanding. You’ll see what I mean. Someday, you’ll need something or someone and nothing will quite bring it off like money. That’s why I’m going to Houston.”
She flew to Houston as the first vice-president of the BankWest International Investments division and married her Chief Executive Officer a year later. Mark circled the date on his calendar after he received the invitation, but by the time the wedding rolled around he had already met Eddie Reyes.
In dreams begin responsibilities.
—W. B. Yeats
The boy Rafferty dragged stones to the uncle’s grave to prop up the lid of an old toolbox that he’d inscribed with “Uncle Hungry” in neat black letters. Above and below the name, and to either side of it, four clusters of translucent wings caught the rising March sun and licked the bleached backdrop of wood like cold flame. Rafferty dropped the young sack of his body down on the gravetop and watched a finger of sun pry apart the iron lips of the sky.
Wind whipped around the corner of the barn, last of the night wind running for cover. Rafferty was tired, sweaty from the night’s digging. The wind that had teeth in it last night passed him this morning without a snap. Along this side of the barn, the morning-sun side, a scatter of crocuses nodded their lavender heads. The uncle saved those bulbs an extra year before planting, just to be safe.
“Quiet as a grave,” the older man might have said. Rafferty said it for him and added the quick snort that his uncle used for a laugh. Wind-sighs, the raspy rattle of loose dust off the stone-tops, his crow on the barn roof stretching his right wing out—everything was waiting for Uncle to show up so they could get on with things.
Right after the hatch, inside the still, things were much quieter than this. Those quiet days dragged into months, a year, two years thick with fear, with knives in the night and the heavy stink of rotting flesh from the barn and from the spring. Visits from the Roam had been their only relief.
Rafferty
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