Down the hall Maddie clopped across the hard wood floor. Skinny like her mother, but loud and graceless as an ox. “Nobody woke me up!” she hollered into the ether. “Why didn’t anybody wake me up?” Then she was off, down the stairs and in the kitchen, where she would suck the juice out of a sliver of grapefruit, toss the pulp, and declare herself full. Then she and Meg would fight until he left for work, and neither would notice that he was gone.
Don’t you know there are people out there with real problems? he wanted to yell. Don’t you understand how lucky we’ve been? But the human psyche is the same as its immune system. When it has no enemies to fight, it invents them.
Fenstad waited for Meg to come out of the shower. The door opened in a cloud of steam. Her skin was bright red, like she’d been trying to scald his touch
from her body. She shrank from his hand as she passed him, as if his touch was repulsive.
He entered the bathroom and shut the door. It was so hazy with perfume that he sneezed. He closed his eyes and thought about how she had looked on the front lawn. So uncertain. Like she hadn’t known if she would go to work today, or how she’d found herself in Corpus Christi, or whether she’d go back inside at all. A pause, as if her person was a mask she wore every morning, but she’d left the house without it, and for an instant been free. He thought about that, and then he thought about the black German shepherd in his dream, and the satisfying sound its teeth had made when they’d crunched on her bones.
F O U R
The War Between the States
A
t the same time that Lois Larkin discovered she’d accidentally abandoned her least favorite pupil to
the desolate Bedford woods, Meg Wintrob was flipping through the pages of the double September issue of Pub- lishers Weekly. She circled in red marker the young adult books she planned to acquire. So far she’d picked JT Petty’s Scrivener Bees , and Stefan Petrucha and Thomas Pendleton’s Wicked Dead .
Corpus Christi’s library had been built in the 1970s, which explained why it was such a god-ugly heap of cinder blocks. Her office was a Plexiglas enclosure in the center of the main floor. One door opened onto the reference section, and the other led to the children’s li- brary. She had all the privacy of a goldfish.
The cheese and tomato sandwich she’d packed for lunch was wilting on her desk, but she didn’t feel like eating it. The Great Chickadee Fiasco had soured her stomach. It was less about the bird now than about Fen- stad. There are certain things you don’t insult, and a man’s performance in the sack is one of them. It had been cruel. She had been cruel. That was the problem: When it came to Fenstad, sometimes she couldn’t help
herself. He was so cold that she got tired of hugging him and started pinching him, just to be sure he still felt.
“Aheem. Aheem!” Albert Sanguine ticked at a library- volume whisper. Albert was sitting at the Internet termi- nal that faced Meg’s desk. She watched his head twitter, and then become still as he focused on the screen. He was wearing a strange getup, even for Albert. Wingtips, a black turtleneck, and camouflage army pants with pockets full of what looked like junked L. L. Bean catalogs.
Meg picked up her sandwich. She’d had the bright idea of going gourmet, and adding balsamic vinaigrette, which had made the bread soggy. Right now Fenstad and Maddie were probably cursing her.
“Aaaheem! Aaaheem!” Albert ticked again. She wasn’t sure if he was clearing his throat or having a spasm, but his voice was getting louder, so she struck her pen against the Plexiglas. He waved his acknowledg- ment with a shaking hand while his eyes remained fo- cused on the screen.
Years of booze had rotted out Albert’s nervous sys- tem, and he now had alcohol-induced Tourette’s. After state cutbacks, the mental institution in Bangor had booted all its nonviolent patients, no matter
Don’t you know there are people out there with real problems? he wanted to yell. Don’t you understand how lucky we’ve been? But the human psyche is the same as its immune system. When it has no enemies to fight, it invents them.
Fenstad waited for Meg to come out of the shower. The door opened in a cloud of steam. Her skin was bright red, like she’d been trying to scald his touch
from her body. She shrank from his hand as she passed him, as if his touch was repulsive.
He entered the bathroom and shut the door. It was so hazy with perfume that he sneezed. He closed his eyes and thought about how she had looked on the front lawn. So uncertain. Like she hadn’t known if she would go to work today, or how she’d found herself in Corpus Christi, or whether she’d go back inside at all. A pause, as if her person was a mask she wore every morning, but she’d left the house without it, and for an instant been free. He thought about that, and then he thought about the black German shepherd in his dream, and the satisfying sound its teeth had made when they’d crunched on her bones.
F O U R
The War Between the States
A
t the same time that Lois Larkin discovered she’d accidentally abandoned her least favorite pupil to
the desolate Bedford woods, Meg Wintrob was flipping through the pages of the double September issue of Pub- lishers Weekly. She circled in red marker the young adult books she planned to acquire. So far she’d picked JT Petty’s Scrivener Bees , and Stefan Petrucha and Thomas Pendleton’s Wicked Dead .
Corpus Christi’s library had been built in the 1970s, which explained why it was such a god-ugly heap of cinder blocks. Her office was a Plexiglas enclosure in the center of the main floor. One door opened onto the reference section, and the other led to the children’s li- brary. She had all the privacy of a goldfish.
The cheese and tomato sandwich she’d packed for lunch was wilting on her desk, but she didn’t feel like eating it. The Great Chickadee Fiasco had soured her stomach. It was less about the bird now than about Fen- stad. There are certain things you don’t insult, and a man’s performance in the sack is one of them. It had been cruel. She had been cruel. That was the problem: When it came to Fenstad, sometimes she couldn’t help
herself. He was so cold that she got tired of hugging him and started pinching him, just to be sure he still felt.
“Aheem. Aheem!” Albert Sanguine ticked at a library- volume whisper. Albert was sitting at the Internet termi- nal that faced Meg’s desk. She watched his head twitter, and then become still as he focused on the screen. He was wearing a strange getup, even for Albert. Wingtips, a black turtleneck, and camouflage army pants with pockets full of what looked like junked L. L. Bean catalogs.
Meg picked up her sandwich. She’d had the bright idea of going gourmet, and adding balsamic vinaigrette, which had made the bread soggy. Right now Fenstad and Maddie were probably cursing her.
“Aaaheem! Aaaheem!” Albert ticked again. She wasn’t sure if he was clearing his throat or having a spasm, but his voice was getting louder, so she struck her pen against the Plexiglas. He waved his acknowledg- ment with a shaking hand while his eyes remained fo- cused on the screen.
Years of booze had rotted out Albert’s nervous sys- tem, and he now had alcohol-induced Tourette’s. After state cutbacks, the mental institution in Bangor had booted all its nonviolent patients, no matter
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